The answer that best describes the tone in those lines is b, lonely.
Answer:
A "The spring of 1998 was the Halley’s Comet of desert wildflower years." (lines 1–2)
Explanation:
This is the excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's scientific essey "Called Out". It describes events in the spring of 1998 and gives insight on magnificent and complex life cycle of desert plants.
The given sentence provides description of the highway medians suggesting that there were unusually many flowers, rarely seen before.
That provides evidence to answer A. which claims that that spring was the Halley's Comet of desert wildflower years. Halley's Comet is a rare phenomenon that happens only once every 76 years, so by making this comparison, the author claims that what happened that spring was a true botanical rarity.
Roosevelt had big plans in relation to the military power that the USA would have because of that, he decided to empower the American navy, providing resources and technologies, to expand and modernize it, as the text says. However, he stated that the reason for investing in the navy was protection in the country, not involvement in the conflict between European countries as we can see from the excerpt "Just after the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared that the United States would remain neutral. It would become the job of the Navy to protect the nation's neutrality at sea and at home by stationing destroyers in the Boston Navy Yard. "
However, the conflict was too great to keep the country neutral. At one point, in the name of freedom and in order to suppress Germany's injustices and barbarities, the United States decided to declare war on Germany. At that time, a large number of workers (including women, according to the text) were needed to reinforce the available resources for the war, in addition, this moment established the time to put the American navy in direct conflict and use all its modernity and structure against enemies.
Even without remaining neutral, Roosevelt concluded his desire to use the Boston Navy Yard to protect the country, as it was paramount in defense at the military level. In addition, it promoted international well-being. According to the text "the Navy department selected the Boston Navy Yard for the construction of the first ship specifically built to transport supplies and provisions for refueling the fleet abroad."
This established the United States as a major world power, as well as showing the entire world how to avoid US enmity>
