EIA CP
Contents
EIA CP ............................................................................................................................................ 1
Notes ............................................................................................................................................... 4
1NC ................................................................................................................................................. 6
1NC .......................................................................................................................................... 7
*** Solvency................................................................................................................................. 10
2NC ............................................................................................................................................ 11
CP Solves: 2NC...................................................................................................................... 12
A2 Rollback: 2NC .................................................................................................................. 13
A2 Delay: 2NC ....................................................................................................................... 15
Solvency – NRG ........................................................................................................................ 18
Natural Gas ............................................................................................................................. 19
New Tech ............................................................................................................................... 22
Wind ....................................................................................................................................... 23
*** Environment ........................................................................................................................... 26
General....................................................................................................................................... 27
2NC Impact Overview ........................................................................................................... 28
Warming 2NC ........................................................................................................................ 31
Turns Warming: 2NR ............................................................................................................. 34
A2: Environment Impact Defense .......................................................................................... 35
Offshore Nat Gas ....................................................................................................................... 36
Offshore Nat Gas: 1NC .......................................................................................................... 37
Cuba Models Process: 2NC.................................................................................................... 41
Cuban Drilling Threatens Environment: Ext. ........................................................................ 43
Wind – Offshore ........................................................................................................................ 44
Wind – Offshore 1NC ............................................................................................................ 45
*** E-Leadership .......................................................................................................................... 47
Top-Level .................................................................................................................................. 48
1NC ........................................................................................................................................ 49
Uniqueness: 2NC.................................................................................................................... 51
Link: 2NC ............................................................................................................................... 52
Impact: 2NC ........................................................................................................................... 53
*** Politics.................................................................................................................................... 57
Politics – 1NC ........................................................................................................................ 59
Politics – 2NC ........................................................................................................................ 60
*** Perms...................................................................................................................................... 63
General....................................................................................................................................... 64
“Do Both” .................................................................................................................................. 65
A2 Perm Do Both: 2NC ......................................................................................................... 66
A2: NEPA = Non-Binding ..................................................................................................... 69
“Do CP” ..................................................................................................................................... 70
A2: Do the CP: 2NC............................................................................................................... 71
“Plan then EIS” .......................................................................................................................... 76
A2: Perm – Plan Then EIS ..................................................................................................... 77
“Lie” .......................................................................................................................................... 80
A2: Lie Perm .......................................................................................................................... 81
*** Theory .................................................................................................................................... 83
Theory: 2NC ........................................................................................................................... 84
A2 Textual Competition: 2NC ............................................................................................... 87
*** Specific Answers ................................................................................................................... 88
A2 Delay .................................................................................................................................... 89
A2 Delay: 2NC ....................................................................................................................... 90
A2 Delay - Ext........................................................................................................................ 92
A2 Agencies Bad ....................................................................................................................... 94
A2 Agency Deception (Karkkanien) ...................................................................................... 95
A2: Biased Decision-Making (Rossi) .................................................................................... 98
A2 Too Much Info ................................................................................................................... 100
A2 Overload (Rossi)............................................................................................................. 101
Aff Answers ................................................................................................................................ 103
A2 EIS CP: 2AC .................................................................................................................. 104
Perm Do CP: 1AR ................................................................................................................ 110
Solvency: 1AR ..................................................................................................................... 111
Delay: 1AR ........................................................................................................................... 112
Notes
This counterplan initiates an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) about the plan, and then
implements the plan if and only if the outcome of the assessment meets the criteria established
by NEPA. In that sense it is a pretty straight-forward process counterplan.
NEPA
The National Environmental Policy Act was enacted on January 1, 1970. It requires that any
federal agency action that could result in environmental harm be assessed, as well as any activity
that requires federal permitting. Essentially all affirmative proposals this year fall under the
purview of NEPA.
EIA
The environmental impact assessment that the counterplan engages in could result in one of two
things. 1.) A Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) in which case the action would proceed.
2.) The preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a long document regarding the
environmental consequences of an act and recommendations for mitigating those consequences.
If 1) then the plan is implemented relatively quickly. If 2) then a full EIS is prepared, and
addresses the significant environmental harms of the aff.
It is likely that most affirmative policy proposals would require the preparation of a full EIS,
given the nature of developing and exploring the earth’s oceans.
Why competitive?
Given that NEPA review would probably be normal means, why is the counterplan competitive?
1.) Review not mandated in the plan.
2.) Categorical Exclusion – there is a process whereby an agency can avoid NEPA review by
granting a Categorical Exclusion (CE). The argument here is that the plan would grant a
CE, obviating the need for a review. See A2 Perm Do Both.
3.) Counterplan is uncertain, while the plan is certain. See A2 Perm Do CP
1NC
1NC
Text – The United States Federal Government should initiate an
environmental impact assessment regarding the consequences of
and adopt such a measure if, and only if, it meets compliance requirements
under the National Environmental Policy Act.
We’ll clarify.
-- Competes –
Tests “resolved”
AHD 6 (American Heritage Dictionary, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/resolved)
Resolve TRANSITIVE VERB:1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To cause (a person) to reach
a decision. See synonyms at decide. 3. To decide or express by formal vote.
And “should”
AHD 92 (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language) (4ed, 1992); Pg. 1612
Should—1. Used to express obligation or duty: You should send her a note.
– Counterplans that test the resolution are key to predictable ground
-- Net-beneficial –
Environmental Impact Assessments solve the aff and avoid environmental
consequences
Gilpin 2k (Dr. Alan, Commissioner of Inquiry for Environment and Planning with the New
South Wales Government, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): Cutting Edge for the
Twenty-first Century, p. 14-15)
EIA is a procedure for evaluating the environmental impacts of a product, process, or activity,
throughout its whole life cycle; a vertical exercise running from cradle to grave The main purposes of LEIA are: • to assess
the environment effects of the retrieval and consumption of the raw materials and other inputs during the
different life cycle phases of a product, process, or activity, including the fate of all pollutants and residuals; • to assess the disposal
problem, if any, of the superseded process or activity; • to provide information useful for an aggregated EIA of products, processes and activities, throughout the life cycle; • to
Life cycle
evaluate the environmental consequences of alternative processes and design concepts,
permitting a comparison between products, processes, and activities. Each phase might be accorded a score on environmental index, for example, for: natural resources, raw materials,
land use; emissions to air, water, and soil; noise; manufacturing procedures about economy, energy, work and public safety; waste handling; recycling, and ultimate disposal. A LEIA
mends beyond the boundaries of responsibility of the individual company or producer, backwards and forwards, into matters entering the public domain,
It goes beyond the realm of
into the full social and resource implications of, say, car manufacture and ownership, including the disposal of car tyres,
batteries, and abandoned vehicles. The principle could be applied as readily to household appliances, beverage containers, packaging materials, plants, plastics,
steels, fuels, lubricants, detergents, cables, fast food, fertilizers, energy production , and major infrastructure developments.
private ownership
EIA provide open public debate about the environment, providing a key
global mechanism
Andrews 6 (Richard N.L, Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Professor at the University of
North Carolina, “Learning From History: US Environmental Politics, Policies, and the Common
Good,” Environment Volume 48, Number 9, November 2006)
Most fundamentally, U.S. consumption of energy and material resources continued virtually unchecked, drawing on an increasingly global economy whose environmental and social
costs elsewhere remained largely invisible to most U.S. consumers. As historically poorer countries— China in particular—began to adopt U.S. aspirations for material and energy
consumption, the prospect was for continued increases in human impacts on natural processes and ecosystems rather than stabilization or reduction of them. In addition to its impacts on
environmental outcomes, the environmental era also left an important political legacy.
The distinctive positive element of this legacy was the
democratization of information, access, and rights of challenge to governmental decisionmaking affecting the environment. Key examples included
the Freedom of Information Act, NEPA's environmental impact statements , and statutory rights to sue both businesses and government
agencies to enforce the environmental protection statutes. These policies did not fully or permanently neutralize the
influence of entrenched commercial interests, but they did substantially open the process to other stakeholders' values, the full range of relevant
information, and far more widespread and transparent public debate . Coupled with the concurrent Internet revolution in public
access to information and organizational networks, the environmental era produced a powerful and enduring increase in the public's knowledge and its role in environmental decisions. This
increase continues to spread worldwide, notwithstanding the resurgence in corporate power and influence that has also occurred. This political legacy did not, of course, automatically
favor groups that identified themselves with the organized environmental protection movement. Environmental advocacy groups pioneered in its development and benefited from its initial
successes, but over time these procedures proved equally open to groups representing the interests of property owners against environmental regulations, conservative law groups using the tactics
by making all the impacts of
proposed decisions more visible to everyone who might be affected, this increase in transparency and access
marked one of the distinctive and enduring contributions of the environmental era, to environmental
of the "green" groups in pursuit of different outcomes, and even front groups for business interests. Nonetheless,
policy
and to governance more generally.
This prevents planetary extinction from eco-collapse
Andrews 6 (Richard N.L, Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Professor at the University of
North Carolina, “Learning From History: US Environmental Politics, Policies, and the Common
Good,” Environment Volume 48, Number 9, November 2006)
rapid and extensive change in
human ecosystems has resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life on
In 2005 the United Nation commissioned Millennium ecosystem assessment reported that over the past 50 years
Earth . More land has been converted to cropland since 1945 than in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries combined, and water withdrawals from rivers and lakes have doubled since
1960. Since 1750, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the major contributor to
global warming, has increased, with 60 percent of that
increase happening between 1959 and the present. Fifty percent of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer ever used has been applied since 1985; flows of biologically available nitrogen in
terrestrial ecosystems have doubled since 1960 and may increase by thirds more by 2050. An estimated 10 to 30 percent of all mammal, bird, and amphibian
species are
currently threatened with extinction. These changes have contributed to substantial gains in human well-being
and economic development at growing costs to the essential services that ecosystems provide to human societies; providing food, water, fuel, wood,
and fiber,
supporting; and regulating natural processes that are necessary for human life
and health (nutrient cycling, soil
formation, water purification, the climate system, and the control of disease organisms) and providing spiritual and recreational values. These damaging trends are substantially reducing the
availability of these services for future use.
U.S. environmental policies have been prominent causes of these damaging trends and must be
part of any solution. Throughout American history, the United States' dominant policies have been to promote the economic exploitation of natural resources, first
nationally and now globally. The United States has not been unique in this: European trade and colonization initiated these trends, and other governments have done likewise. But
the world's largest single market for material and energy resources—at least until 2005, when China surpassed it in total consumption—and a
leading exporter of both production technologies and consumption lifestyles, the United States has had a
prominent influence , and its policies are essential to any solution.
as
*** Solvency
2NC
CP Solves: 2NC
Counterplan solves 100% of the case –
A. Project approved – the counterplan is approved with minimal changes
that improve environmental policymaking, that’s Gilpin.
B. Transparency – the counterplan provides a key model of environmental
transparency, improving outcomes the impact is global environmental
collapse and extinction, that’s Andrews.
C. Minor Modifications - The counterplan results in the approval of the
plan, with minor modifications that protect the environment
Gilpin 2k (Dr. Alan, Commissioner of Inquiry for Environment and Planning with the New
South Wales Government, Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): Cutting Edge for the
Twenty-first Century, p. 14-15)
The EIS, sometimes known as the environmental effects statement (EES), the environmental stale-ment (ES), or as the environmental impact assessment (EIA), depending upon
country, is a document, prepared by a proponent, describing a proposed development, or activity (or a plan, or program) and disclosing the possible,
probable, or certain effects of that proposal on the environment. An EIS should be comprehensive in its treatment of the subject matter,
objective in the; approach, and should be sufficiently specific for a reasonably intel-ligent mind to examine the potential environmental consequences, good and bad, of carrying out, or not
carrying out, that proposal. An EIS should meet the requirement that it alerts the decision-maker, the proponent, members of the public and the government, to the consequences for the
community;
it should also explore possible alternatives to the project that might maximise the
benefits while minimising the
disbenefits
[ disadvantages ). The primary purpose of an EIS, however, is to assist the decision-maker
(usually government at some level, or a government agency) to arrive at a better informed decision than would otherwise have been the case. A decision might involve the outright
usually the project is approved, subject to a
range of legal conditions and requirements that are attached to the development consent, approval, or permit.
rejection of the proposal or its deferment for further studies or revision, though more
[Insert Specific Solvency]
A2 Rollback: 2NC
No Rollback - EIS key to favorable court ruling
Rosenbaum 5 (Walter A., Director Emeritus of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service and
Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Florida, Fellow in the Global
Environmental Assessment Program and a Visiting Scholar at the International Center of
Harvard University, “Environmental Impact Statements: Gift Box or Black Box?,” in
Environmental Policymaking: Assessing the Use of Alternative Policy Instruments, Michael T.
Hatch, Editor, State University of New York Press, Albany, p. 212)
These prospects aroused critics to predict a multitude of objectionable consequences: long
and costly delays in constructing needed public works, a proliferation of harassing litigation causing
more delay and expense, an enlargement of environmentalist political power at the expense of extractive industries using ,public
land, a degradation of agency authority and much else. Most of this anticipated malaise has never
materialized . After a large number of NEPA lawsuits in the first few years, NEPA-related litigation declined
sharply through subsequent decades. By the mid-1980s it was apparent delays in implementing
NEPA-related agency programs were more often caused by the frequently tedious process
of acquiring the stockpile of information thought necessary to bulletproof EISs and by the
procedural intricacies required than by litigation. “The federal courts,” writes judicial scholar Lettie
McSpadden, “came to treat the writing of environmental impact statements as a paper exercise.
They generally ruled in favor of government projects as long as the EIS requirement had
been observed ”(McSpadden, 1997, p. 175), By 1997, for instance, the CEQ estimated that 102 NEPA cases were initiated against
federal agencies and only 2 resulted in injunctions against agency actions (Council on Environmental Quality, 1997a: p, 355). About half
the lead plaintiffs in NEPA stilts against federal agencies are public interest and citizen
organizations, a large proportion of which represent environmental and conservation
interests. But many public interest organizations have also been created to advance ideologically conservative resource agendas aligned with
extractive industries. While few federal programs are ultimately cancelled by agency action or
judicial injunction arising from the EIS process, considerable expense may be imposed on the participants by
procedural delays and litigation, or by the need for affected private interests (such as extractive industries) to produce the necessary technical and
scientific data required by the EIS process.
Plan will be challenged in the courts
WEA 12 (Western Energy Alliance, non-profit trade association representing 400 companies,
“2012 Onshore Oil and Natural Gas Legislative Proposals,” 2-1-12,
http://westernenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Western-Energy-Alliance-2012Onshore-Legis-Proposals.pdf)
Virtually every decision to proceed with energy development on federal lands,
including wind, solar, geothermal, coal, oil, and natural gas, is legally challenged. The
bureaucratic processes necessary before a decision can be made are of such complexity that
Background:
there are many opportunities for obstructionist groups to challenge and delay or halt
projects . No matter how much careful analysis and consideration the government gives to a decision, there is a virtual
certainty that some group somewhere is going to challenge it, and will find a sympathetic
judge.
Vote Neg on presumption – failure to perform an EIS means the plan is struck
down
Court of Appeals 8 (United States Court Of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2-29-8, Natural
resources defense council, Inc v. Donald C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy, 518 F.3d 658; 2008)
The district court's interpretation also comports with well-established Supreme Court
precedent that narrowly interprets NEPA's requirement that agencies comply with its
provisions "to the fullest extent possible." The Supreme Court has made clear that the "to the fullest extent possible"
language was intended to address only cases in which there is an "irreconcilable and fundamental conflict" between NEPA's requirements and the
requirements of another statute. See Flint Ridge Dev. Co. v. Scenic Rivers Ass'n. of OK, 426 U.S. 776, 787-88, 96 S. Ct. 2430, 49 L. Ed. 2d 205
(1976). [**76] Here,
as the district court noted, the Navy has never contended that it could not
reconcile the district court's injunction with the requirements of NEPA Similarly, HN9NEPA
regulations interpret the language "to the fullest extent possible" to mean that "each agency of the
Federal Government shall comply with that section unless existing law . . . expressly
prohibits or makes compliance impossible." 40 C.F.R. § 1500.6. The legislative history of § 1500.6 explains that this
language "shall not be used by any Federal agency as a means of avoiding compliance with [NEPA's] directives . . . ." 115 Cong. Rec. (Part 29)
39702-39703 (1969); see also Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Comm. Inc. v. U.S. Atomic Energy Comm'n, 146 U.S. App. D.C. 33, 449 F.2d 1109,
1114 (D.C. Cir. 1971) ("We
must stress as forcefully as possible that this language does not provide
an escape hatch for footdragging agencies; it does not make NEPA's procedural
requirements somehow ' discretionary .' . . . Indeed, [the language] sets a high standard for the agencies, a standard which
must be rigorously enforced by the reviewing courts."). The Navy asserts that national policy requires that it must be confident that its west coastbased strike groups [**77] are prepared and certified for deployment to hostile areas overseas during a time of war. However,
as the
district court noted, nothing prevented the Navy from preparing an EIS prior to
commencing the SOCAL exercises; indeed, the fact that the Navy is currently developing an EIS for exercises in the Southern
California Operating Area confirms that it is fully capable of meeting NEPA's requirements. See Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental
Impact Statement/Overseas Environmental Impact Statement for the Southern California [*686] Range Complex, 71 Fed. Reg. 76,639 (Dec. 21,
2006). Although the Navy argues that "NEPA must give way" so that it may proceed with its training and certification unhindered by
environmental rules, quoting Flint Ridge, 426 U.S. at 788, Flint
Ridge itself holds that NEPA's procedural
requirements are not discretionary and do not give way unless a "clear and unavoidable
conflict in statutory authority exists," id, here, the district court carefully examined the record, with which it has
longstanding familiarity, and determined that there was no such conflict in statutory authority, concluding
that conditioning phrases like "consistent with other essential considerations [**78] of national
policy," 42 U.S.C. §4331(b), and "to the fullest extent possible," id. §4332, do not indicate Congressional
intent to create a statutory escape hatch. Nor does any intent appear in the implementing regulations, that would allow the
Navy to conduct its exercises before completing an EIS. 46 Feb. 4, 2008 Dist. Ct. Order at 22-23, 527 F. Supp. 2d 1216, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS
8110 *38.
A2 Delay: 2NC
No Delay - new guidelines have streamlined the EIS process
CEQ 12 (Council on Environmental Quality, the United States Government, Executive Office
of the President, “Council on Environmental Quality Issues Final Guidance to Promote Efficient
Environmental Reviews,” 3-6-12,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/Press_Releases/March_6_2012)
WASHINGTON, DC — The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) today released final
guidance for Federal agencies on improving the efficiency of their environmental reviews
under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The guidance, part of CEQ’s broader
effort to modernize and reinvigorate Federal agency implementation of NEPA, also supports the
goals of President Obama's August 31, 2011 Memorandum on "Speeding Infrastructure
Development through More Efficient and Effective Permitting and Environmental Review."
NEPA ensures that the Federal Government makes informed and transparent decisions
when it evaluates actions that could have an impact on the environment. NEPA provides a
number of techniques for preparing efficient and timely environmental reviews. The
guidance highlights and clarifies these opportunities to encourage efficient, thorough
environmental reviews and quicker and better informed Federal decisions. “NEPA ensures the
Federal Government makes informed decisions and engages Americans in decisions that
will impact their communities and environment,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White
House Council on Environmental Quality. “This guidance will help agencies improve the
quality and timeliness of their environmental reviews to protect the health of communities
and support a strong American economy.” Currently, CEQ’s NEPA regulations describe
efficiencies that can be applied when preparing E nvironmental I mpact S tatements, the
most intensive type of NEPA environmental review. The guidance clarifies that these
efficiencies can and should be applied to all types of environmental reviews, including
Environmental Assessments. For example, the guidance makes it clear that scoping—a technique
to identify the relevant review issues and eliminate unnecessary work—can and should be used
for all types of environmental reviews. The guidance outlines the following principles for
agencies to follow when performing NEPA environmental reviews: NEPA encourages
straightforward and concise reviews and documentation; NEPA should be integrated into
project planning to ensure decisions reflect environmental considerations and avoid delays
later in the process rather than be an after-the-fact process that justifies decisions already
made; NEPA reviews should coordinate and take appropriate advantage of existing documents
and studies; NEPA reviews should use early and well-defined scoping to focus
environmental reviews on appropriate issues and avoid unnecessary work; Agencies should
develop meaningful and expeditious timelines for environmental reviews; and Agencies should
target their responses to comments to appropriate issues raised. The draft guidance was
available for 45 days of public comment. CEQ reviewed and incorporated public input before
finalizing the guidance. Other Administration efforts to modernize and reinvigorate Federal
agency implementation of NEPA include launching a NEPA pilot program to identify and
promote more efficient ways to do effective environmental reviews that can be replicated
across the Federal Government, and forming rapid response teams to help expedite the
review process for transportation, transmission and renewable energy projects.
Current EIS Process slow only because of the backlog – the counterplan puts
the EIS at the top of the stack, it could take as little as one day to complete
CBD 10 (Center for Biological Diversity - Defenders of Wildlife - Earthjustice - - The Humane Society of the United States - - The International Center for Technology Assessment - Natural Resources Defense Council - National Wildlife Federation - - Marine Fish Conservation Network – Ocean Conservancy - Sierra Club - - Southern Environmental Law Center - The
Wilderness Society, “ATTENTION: Ted Boling, Senior Counsel, Council on Environmental Quality, RE: Draft NEPA Guidance on Consideration of the Effects of Climate Change and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” 5-24-10, http://www.defenders.org/publications/draft_nepa_guidance_on_consideration_of_the_effects_of_climate_change_and_greenhouse_gas_emissions.pdf)
Even if CEQ explicitly clarified in the next iteration of the guidance that as a matter of law,
appropriate consideration of climate change effects is required for the whole panoply of
covered federal actions, the omission of discussion of federal land and resource management
actions in this guidance would be doing a tremendous disservice to the agencies and to the
public. Indeed, it would truly be the exception that swallows the guidance. Over the past
three years, based on the statistics available through www.nepa.gov, proposed federal land
and resource management actions account for the overwhelming majority of
Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). From May 18, 2007 through May 7, 2010,
1,504 EISs (draft, final and supplemental) were filed with the Office of Federal Activities
at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Of those, the majority were focused on federal
land and resource management actions. 2 Many of those agencies are clearly looking to CEQ for
guidance. For example, recent policy guidance from the Bureau of Land Management
Oregon/Washington State Office states that, “[a]ddressing effects on atmospheric greenhouse gas
levels within the scope of NEPA is difficult due to the lack of explicit regulatory guidance on
how to meaningfully apply existing NEPA regulations to this evolving issue . . . ” 3 Pursuant to
NEPA and the Environmental Quality Improvement Act, CEQ’s role is to provide this guidance.
It is needed and, in many cases, wanted now.
*Note: 3 years = 1095 days, 1.5 EIS/day
Even the plan’s permitting process could take a year
WEA 12 (Western Energy Alliance, non-profit trade association representing 400 companies,
“2012 Onshore Oil and Natural Gas Legislative Proposals,” 2-1-12,
http://westernenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Western-Energy-Alliance-2012Onshore-Legis-Proposals.pdf)
Background: Since Fiscal Year 2008, yearly appropriations have levied a fee on oil and
natural gas companies for processing Applications for Permit to Drill (APD), despite the
fact that companies return $66 in royalties and lease revenue for every dollar spent by the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) managing the federal oil and natural gas program. Since the oil
and natural gas is the second largest source of revenue to the federal government after the
IRS, the fee is analogous to charging taxpayers a fee for processing their tax return.
Despite paying a fee, permitting times are extremely long , especially compared to state
permitting which is otherwise indistinguishable from federal permitting. Companies have
not received better APD service as a result of paying the fee, and BLM takes 298 days on
average to process a permit compared to about 45 days for states. Permits can take several
years in many cases. Companies must pay the fee no matter how long the government takes,
and even if the permit is denied.
Solvency – NRG
Natural Gas
Counterplan solves faster than the aff – they spark litigation
Pifer 11 (Ross H., “Drake Meets Marcellus: A Review Of Pennsylvania Case Law Upon The
Sesquicentennial Of The United States Oil And Gas Industry,” Spring 2011, 6 Tex. J. Oil Gas &
Energy L. 47)
In Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics v. United States Forest Service, a
number of environmental advocacy organizations , including the Allegheny Defense Project and the Sierra Club,
filed suit alleging that the Forest Service had violated the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) by failing to conduct Environmental Impact Statements or Environmental
Assessments prior to issuing Notices to Proceed (NTP) for natural gas exploration and
development activities [*67] within the Allegheny National Forest. n170 The plaintiffs sought a declaration
that the Forest Service had failed to comply with NEPA as well as an injunction barring the
Forest Service from issuing any NTPs until it complied with these statutory requirements.
n171
NEPA review solves the aff and avoids potential environmental consequences
of oil drilling
Kurtz 94 (M. David, “Managing Alaska's Coastal Development: State Review of Federal Oil
and Gas Lease Sales,” December 1994, 11 Alaska L. Rev. 377)
Federal activities of almost any sort outside of the three-mile zone of state control on the
OCS are governed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act ("OCSLA"). n14 Congress passed the
OCSLA with the explicit purpose of providing for the development of the nation's submerged natural resources, with particular emphasis on
lessening American dependency on foreign energy sources. n15 However, Congress
was clearly concerned with the
secondary effects of coastal development . Therefore, the OCSLA enumerates several other
considerations that must be balanced against national energy goals during the development of the OCS, including: (1) fair returns on oil
and gas resources; (2) preservation of competition; (3) protection of human, marine and coastal environments ;
and (4) local and state governments' rights to be involved in a process that will affect their
jurisdictions. n16 The OCSLA arranges the development of offshore resources on federal lands by dividing the process into four distinct
stages: pre-leasing, lease sale, exploration and development. n17 At each stage, the Secretary of the Interior must
review increasingly detailed environmental information, and he or she retains the power to
halt the process at any time if such action would be necessary to protect the environmen t. n18
Courts have used this pyramidal structure to justify exceedingly lenient review of actions by the Secretary at early stages of the process. n19
Lease sales are governed by 43 U.S.C. § 1337, which allows the Secretary of the Interior to grant leases of submerged lands to the highest bidder.
n20
Prior to the issuance of any lease , the Secretary [*381] must prepare an environmental
impact statemen t and determine that the lease is consistent with the coastal management
program of the affected state. n21 The lessee must provide further environmental reports explaining any planned exploration or
development activities once the lease is sold. n22 These
reports must consider such issues as the adequacy of
clean-up facilities, the impact of onshore support facilities, possible pollution caused by any
operation and " the direct affects on the offshore and onshore environments. " n23
NEPA review addresses environmental concerns with offshore drilling –
solves the aff
White 10 (Jonathan P., “Drilling in Ecologically and Environmentally Troubled Waters: Law
and Policy Concerns Surrounding Development of Oil Resources in the Florida Straits,”
Summer, 2010, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, 21 COLO. J.
INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 557)
In order for oil drilling to occur in U.S.-controlled waters off the Florida Keys, federal and state interests must align, and the
Department of the Interior must perform environmental impact assessments . The [*561] following
overview of the U.S. laws governing offshore development notes the federal-state cooperative relationship, which is critical to the issue of offshore development in the Florida Straits because of
Florida's historic intransigence over any offshore development that might threaten its economically important marine resources. As a general matter, the United States federal government
oversees offshore oil drilling pursuant to an Executive Order issued by President Harry Truman in 1945 that declared "that the natural resources of the subsoil and sea bed of the
continental shelf beneath the high seas ... appertain to the United States." n13 The individual states generally control tidal areas up to three miles offshore, though along Florida's Gulf coast,
state-controlled waters extend nearly nine miles offshore. n14 Accordingly, responsibility for the development of oil in U.S.-controlled waters of the Florida Straits vests in the federal
government. n15 Despite federal control of offshore resources, the State of Florida has influence over the management of the Florida Straits under the terms of the federal Coastal Zone
Management Act ("the CZMA"). The CZMA envisions a cooperative relationship between the states and the federal government over coastal resources. n16 Under the CZMA, projects
initiated by federal agencies in offshore areas that impact state-controlled coastal waters must be "consistent to the maximum extent practicable" with individual state coastal management plans.
n17 In exchange for the federal government's obligation to ensure consistency with individual state plans, the CZMA requires coastal states to implement their own state-specific coastal zone
management plans. n18 Therefore, the federal government must consider Florida's designs over management of its coastal waters in light of the CZMA's model of "cooperative federalism." n19
In the end, however, the Secretary of Commerce must [*562] approve each state's coastal zone management plan, and the Secretary of Commerce is the final decisionmaker if a state
challenges a federal offshore drilling plan on the grounds that the plan is inconsistent with the state's coastal zone management plan. n20 As a result, a federal imprimatur constrains state
plans. Turning to Florida law, the state's coastal zone management plan operates as the Florida Coastal Management Program ("the FCMP"), promulgated under the Florida Coastal Management
Act. n21 The FCMP comprises twenty-four statutes designed to "protect and enhance" Florida's "natural, cultural, and economic coastal resources." n22 A portion of the FCMP details how
consistency analyses should be conducted. n23 One pertinent FCMP section for offshore energy exploration is Florida's Ocean and Coastal Resources Act. n24 The Ocean and Coastal Resources
Act mandates environmentally sustainable development of the Sunshine State's coastal areas, and that mandate, however ambiguous, must be reconciled with federal plans for oil drilling off
Florida's coast. n25 The Ocean and Coastal Resources Act thus memorializes the importance of Florida's marine environments. n26 The law states that "Florida's oceans and coastal
resources comprise habitats that support endangered and threatened species and extraordinary marine biodiversity," and that "the coral reefs of southeast Florida and the barrier
reef of the Florida Keys, the only barrier reef in the United States, are a national treasure and must continue to be protected." n27 These words set a high bar for environmentally
sensitive offshore development, though at the moment, Florida does not have laws addressing offshore drilling because of the various drilling moratoria protecting the state's coastal waters. n28
Lastly, [*563] under the FCMP, the Florida State Clearinghouse serves as the primary state agency for consistency reviews, and that agency consults with eight other state agencies to evaluate
protection of Florida Straits marine resources in
U.S. waters will occur through a collaborative evaluation period among both state and
federal agencies. Federal-state consistency is not the only prerequisite for drilling to proceed in U.S. waters. Returning to federal law, in order for drilling to commence in
and comment upon any proposed federal program. n29 Considered together, these laws suggest that
U.S.-controlled portions of the Straits, the Secretary of the Interior ("the Secretary") must undertake an environmental review process. n30 First, before the actual environmental review
takes place, the Secretary must develop a five-year leasing program that authorizes drilling, a requirement imposed by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act ("the OCLSA"). n31 The OCLSA
states that the Secretary's lease program shall include a schedule for prospective lease sales that details the lease size, timing, and location. n32 The lease program is comprehensive; it
covers all potential development in all U.S. offshore waters in the specified five-year period. n33 The Secretary has authority under the OCLSA to grant a lease to the highest bidder once
the Department of the Interior opens leasing pursuant to its planned schedule. n34 As a result, Florida Straits offshore waters would have to be included in a five-year offshore drilling lease
plan in order to be opened to oil and gas exploration. As mentioned,
an environmental impact review must occur before any
drilling takes place, and this step happens after the Secretary releases the five-year lease plan. n35 The Minerals Management Service ("MMS"), a bureau of the
Department of the Interior, conducts the environmental impact reviews. n36 MMS oversees all oil and natural gas deposits located [*564] in the outer continental shelf. n37 If drilling in the
Florida Straits proceeds, MMS will first prepare a comprehensive "Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement" supporting the Secretary's five-year leasing plan and covering
all areas proposed for leasing, be it Florida Straits, Gulf of Mexico, or Pacific Ocean waters. n38 MMS will then complete either a secondary environmental impact statement, or a shorter
environmental assessment, once a specific block of offshore land has been leased, and this second environmental impact statement is specific to the block to be leased. n39 The OCLSA
describes the procedure for the MMS to follow in conducting these environmental impact reviews. n40 The process contemplates a public notice and comment period, and a notice and
to consider "the
potential impact of oil and gas exploration on ... the marine, coastal, and human environment ." n42
Because U.S. laws mandate this environmental impact review process by MMS, proposed offshore industrial
activities must conform to minimum environmental standards , underscored by the directive to consider potential
comment period from individual state governments impacted by the proposed leasing. n41 Importantly, the OCLSA obligates the Secretary
impacts. This review process, along with the consistency requirements, creates a layering effect to environmental safeguards covering development in U.S. offshore waters. Following the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, controversy has engulfed MMS, and the Obama administration has proposed splitting the agency, separating its compliance section from other divisions to reform its
allegedly industry-friendly practices. n43 [*565]
New Tech
NEPA review address safety concerns with new technologies – solves the aff
Brooks 11 (Richard Oliver, Professor of Law, Vermont Law School; Founding Director of
Vermont Law School‘s
Environmental Law Center, “The Gulf Oil Spill: The Road Not Taken,” Albany Law Review,
Vol. 74.1 2010/2011)
Despite my pessimism, I recommend the refunding of the Technology Assessment Act and
its reform. The Act should be focused upon the complete technological process, and not
simply specific machinery. This broader assessment can draw upon more specific studies
of technological components within these processes. The studies should be limited to those
processes which threaten catastrophic risks, since it is not feasible to provide in-depth studies of
the myriad of risks in modern society. The purpose of the assessment should be to entertain
the possibility of recommending the banning of certain technologies, the modification of
them, and/or the promotion of technology forcing. The variety of intellectual tools identified
above should be employed with an awareness and full statement of their limits. This entire
analysis should be undertaken within the context of a statement of the specific objectives
of each statute relevant to the technology in question, and a discussion of their relationship,
one to another. 128 The assessment should be communicated to a newly-formed special joint
committee in Congress established for the sole purpose of evaluating technologies. 129
Wind
NEPA review process is fast – solves the aff and avoids environmental damage
Ling 10 (Katherine Ling of Greenwire “Senate Dems Build Case to Include Clean Energy, Solar
in Jobs Bill,” 1-25-10, http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/25/25greenwire-senate-demsbuild-case-to-include-clean-energy-95186.html?pagewanted=all)
The growth of U.S. solar energy projects and manufacturing has also been weighed down
by a slow permitting process. Large open spaces are prime areas for either "concentrating solar
power" or traditional solar panel farms, but many of the suitable places are on federal lands,
especially in the West. Until recently, the federal government has been slow in reviewing
applications and environmental impact statements , delaying the construction of hundreds of
clean energy projects. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who will testify at the hearing, last year
streamlined the application process for renewable energy siting and Interior was expected
to complete the environmental impact statements for five solar energy projects by the end
of last year (Greenwire, Nov. 6, 2009). Salazar has aggressively pushed his department to
facilitate the siting of renewable energy projects , including opening up renewable energy
offices in several states, setting aside almost 676,000 acres of public lands to study solar
capacity, and creating an energy and climate change task force to create renewable energy
zones. The U nited S tates has about 30 million acres of solar energy potential in the
Southwest, 20 million acres of potential wind development in the West and 140 million
acres of geothermal energy in the West and Alaska, according to Interior.
NEPA review approves offshore wind projects – key to US environmental
leadership
Wickersham 4 (Jay, Partner, Noble & Wickersham LLP, Cambridge, MA; Lecturer in
Planning and Environmental Law, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Kennedy School of
Government, “Sacred Landscapes and Profane Structures: How Offshore Wind Power
Challenges the Environmental Impact Review Process,” 2004, 31 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 325)
As currently proposed, the
Cape Wind project would consist of 130 offshore wind turbine units,
generating up to 420 megawatts of electrical power. n4 Each turbine would be mounted at the top of a tubular steel
tower, at a height of 262 feet above mean sea level. n5 The turbines would be powered by three vanes, each 164 feet in length. n6 The maximum
height of each unit when a vane is extended directly upward would be 426 feet--approximately the height of a thirty-story office tower. n7 [*327]
The towers would be spaced on a grid approximately one-half mile apart. n8 The location is
a twenty-four square mile area
of shallow water at the center of Nantucket Sound, outside of the shipping channels, known as Horseshoe Shoal. n9
Electrical cables laid on the seabed would connect the towers to one another and to the onshore electrical grid in Cape Cod. n10 At the nearest
points to land, the towers would be located over four miles from Point Gammon in Yarmouth, Cape Cod, over eight miles from Edgartown on
Martha's Vineyard, and thirteen miles from Nantucket. n11 The total power generation of the project at its peak would be 420 megawatts. n12
Average generation, based on wind speeds over the course of the year, is estimated to be 170 megawatts. n13 In November, 2001, the proponent,
Cape Wind Associates, filed an Environmental Notification Form with the MEPA Office n14 and a permit application with the New England
District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the
lead federal agency for review under NEPA . n15 After a
coordinated six-month scoping process that involved over a dozen federal, state, and regional agencies, in April, 2002, the
MEPA
Office issued the scope for the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to be submitted and
reviewed under MEPA. n16 In June, 2002, the Corps issued its own scope, which incorporated the MEPA scope by reference, for
the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to be submitted and reviewed under NEPA. n17 [*328] The draft of the joint EIS/EIR has not yet been
submitted to the agencies. Following
the public comment period for the draft EIS/EIR, both the
Corps and the Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs must find the document
adequate. n18 After findings of adequacy, the final EIS/EIR will be prepared, submitted, and reviewed.
n19 Once that document is found adequate, the project moves on to the permitting stage . The
project will require up to seventeen different federal, state, regional, and local permits and approvals, each with its own standards, procedures,
and opportunity for appeal. n20 II. IS THE CAPE WIND PROJECT RIPE FOR REVIEW? Project
opponents have argued
that the NEPA/MEPA review process should be stayed because opportunities for public
involvement have been lacking, because the review has been purely federal without
adequate state involvement, and because the review will not produce adequate information.
n21 The principal organized opposition group, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound (the Alliance), has taken the position [*329] that the
review should be halted because "the regulatory process to govern [the placement of offshore wind power] does not exist" and because the
regulatory process to date has not been adequate or impartial. n22 Elected officials have voiced similar views. In a joint letter to Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney dated February 26, 2003, Massachusetts Attorney General William Reilly and Congressman William Delahunt
called the NEPA process "a limited review" that was "woefully inadequate to address the many environmental, economic and public policy
concerns" raised by the project. n23 They also wrote
that the process "did not even begin to address the state
interest in the appropriate use of one of the Commonwealth's most precious natural
resources." n24 Senator Edward Kennedy, in a letter to the Cape Cod Times in August, wrote that although the project needed to receive
"enough state and federal scrutiny to justify its going forward, . . . so far . . . Cape Wind hasn't met that test, and I doubt they ever will." n25 In
response, let us review the process so far. The initial ENF filed for the Cape Wind project was longer and more detailed
than many EIR/EIS submittals. n26 The NEPA/MEPA scoping process lasted seven months, from the filing of the ENF to the issuance of the
Corps scope. n27 During
that time, the federal and state agencies jointly hosted six public
hearings and held two oceanic site visits. n28 Hundreds of people spoke at the public
hearings. n29 The agencies received thousands of written comments; more than once the MEPA analyst for the project received [*330] so
many email comments that his electronic mailbox was shut down. n30 During the scoping process, a dozen or more
federal, state, and regional agencies--most of which will ultimately issue permits on the
project--met on a weekly basis to discuss the contents of the scope. n31 Federal agencies
involved in the scoping included the U.S. E nvironmental P rotection A gency and the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. n32 State and regional agencies included the Massachusetts Department of Environmental
Protection, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management (now the Department of Conservation and Recreation), the
Massachusetts Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Environmental Law Enforcement, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management,
the Energy Facilities Siting Board, and the Cape Cod Commission. n33 The
agencies took the collective position,
reflected in the MEPA and Corps scopes, that a unified set of federal and state documents
should examine the full range of project impacts , without regard for questions of
territorial or subject matter jurisdiction. n34 As further evidence of the level of state involvement, the MEPA Office
issued the initial scope for the state-level Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in April 2002. n35 The Corps then incorporated the MEPA scope
by reference as the basis for the federal Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) as well, while requiring certain elements to be added to the
document. n36 The
NEPA/MEPA review process has served to draw broad public attention to
the project, extending well beyond those who commented directly. The Cape Cod Times maintains a
website devoted solely to the project. n37 On that website are key government documents, including [*331] the NEPA and MEPA scopes, an
archive of the paper's articles going back over the past two years, and links to many other sites, including those of the proponent and the Alliance.
n38 The
project has attracted national and international press coverage . n39 Finally, it has
sparked a variety of proposals for legislative and executive action at both the state and
federal level. n40 All of this participation by permitting agencies and the public has occurred
just to develop the scope of the EIS/EIR. n41 The process of actually reviewing the
documents, n42 which will undoubtedly be even more intense, has not even begun. This has
not been a "limited" or "inadequate" review; in my experience, the review process for the
Cape Wind project is the best recent example in Massachusetts of a NEPA/MEPA review
that has fulfilled its core functions of public input and informed agency decisionmaking .
n43
NEPA review of offshore wind is key to environmental protection – solves the
aff
Wickersham 4 (Jay, Partner, Noble & Wickersham LLP, Cambridge, MA; Lecturer in
Planning and Environmental Law, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Kennedy School of
Government, “Sacred Landscapes and Profane Structures: How Offshore Wind Power
Challenges the Environmental Impact Review Process,” 2004, 31 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 325)
The Cape Wind process shows how the reviews of individual projects under NEPA/MEPA
can actually serve to crystallize policy in this new and important arena. n58 It is a settled principle of
administrative law that an agency may make policy through individual decisions, as well as through the adoption of plans or regulations. n59
The Cape Wind review is teaching us more about the scientific, economic, legal, and
political questions raised by offshore wind power than any expert commission could have
done. No one can claim that there has been a lack of public debate on the issues; in fact, the review has brought the issues
to the attention of the legislative and the executive branches, at both the state and federal level, giving these
branches ample time to insert themselves through new legislation or regulations, if they so choose. n60 The NEPA/MEPA process
has served its desired role of opening up government decisionmaking to public scrutiny and
of ensuring the consideration of environmental issues in those decisions. n61 In this way the
[*334] review can help guide us to an outcome that establishes valuable precedent and policy
for future wind power projects .
*** Environment
General
2NC Impact Overview
Environmental collapse outweighs – even if it doesn’t solve –
A) Magnitude –
Its complete and irreversible extinction – all life on Earth will be destroyed as
global ecosystems and temperature regulation fail – that’s Andrews.
Biggest impact: extinction is the only thing you can’t come back from –
outweighs war
Tobin 90 (Dr. Richard, Associate Professor of Political Science – SUNY-Buffalo, The
Expendable Future, p. 22)
Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental degradation “is anywhere so significant as the fallout of
species.” Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in assessing the relative consequences of human-caused
extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of energy
supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events might be, Wilson reasons that they can “be repaired within
a few generations. The one process ongoing…that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and
species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.
B) Turns case –
1. Prevents energy production – only the counterplan solves
Patzek 6 (Tad W., Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of
California Berkeley, “The Earth, Energy, and Agriculture,” presented at Climate Change and the
Future of the American West
Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions June 7-9, 2006, Boulder, Colorado,
http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/BoulderCOClimateChangePaper.pdf)
Humans need air, water, food, and energy to survive . Clean air is an increasingly rare
natural resource in industrialized nations 2 . Much of drinking water must now be
manufactured in the energy-intensive chemical purification factories 3 . Uncontaminated food is
increasingly more difficult to catch, even in seemingly pristine ecosystems 4 . Industrial
agriculture and forestry for food and fuels are funded from massive fossil fuel subsidies and, in
good part, groundwater mining. As such, they are unsustainable (Patzek, 2004; Patzek and
Pimentel, 2006). As new energy resources are tapped 5 and substitute for the old ones 6 ,
they remain subject to the same laws of physics, and are limited in total volume and rate
of production. If we bring more technology to produce these resources, their depletion will
occur faster, and the environmental destruction their production and use bring about will
be more severe . So the question most relevant to energy supply for the living is as follows: Not
can we produce more energy (we can), but what will be the consequences of doing so for the
earth’s life-support systems on which we depend for breathing, drinking, eating, and
enjoyment of life? It appears that the U.S. and China 7 , the largest consumers of energy and the
environment on the earth, will have to answer this question first. 3 The Need for New Thinking
Each year for 20 years now, the U nited S tates of America has been using more fossil and
nuclear energy than all its vegetation can produce (Good and Bell, 1980), see Figure 4. In
addition to consuming 1/4 of world’s energy with 1/22th of world’s population, we are now
producing far too little crude oil relative to our appetite, see Figure 5, and insufficient natural
gas, see Figure 6. Therefore, our competitiveness will suffer severely in a global economy
constrained by very expensive hydrocarbons. Creative ways of moving the U.S. economy
towards conservation and efficient alternative energy sources must be found soon. When
searching for new sources of energy, it becomes obvious that we do not have a common
language to talk about their relative merits and disadvantages. For example, it is very difficult to
compare objectively ethanol from corn with gasoline from a tar sand, or with biodiesel from
soybeans or palm seed oil. Today, it is almost impossible to meaningfully compare liquid fuels
with photovoltaic cells, fuel cells, and other more exotic energy systems, Since the United
States must soon make epic choices for the future directions of its society and economy, it is
imperative that these choices be based on a solid scientific foundation. When retooling much
of our future economy, we want to preserve the environment and our quality of life, not
endanger them by the hasty pursuit of poor energy technologies.
2. War inevitable under environmental stress – its try-or die Neg
Homer-Dixon 98 (Thomas, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace
and Conflict Studies Programme – University of Toronto, World Security Challenges for a New
Century, p. 342-343)
Another possibility is that global
environmental damage might increase the gap between rich and poor societies, with
the poor then violently confronting the rich for a fairer share of the world’s wealth. Severe conflict may also arise from
frustration with countries that do not go along with agreements to protect the global environment, or that “free-ride” by letting other
countries absorb the costs of environmental protection. Warmer temperatures could lead to contention over more easily harvested resources
in the Antarctic. Bulging populations and land stress may produce waves of environmental refugees, spilling across
borders and disrupting relations among ethnic groups. Countries might fight among themselves because of dwindling
supplies of water and the effects of upstream pollution.6 A sharp decline in food crop production and grazing land could lead to
conflict between nomadic tribes and sedentary farmers. Environmental change could in time cause a slow deepening of poverty in
poor countries, which might open bitter divisions between classes and ethnic groups, corrode democratic institutions, and
spawn revolutions and insurgencies. In general, many experts have the sense that environmental problems will
“ratchet up”
the level of stress within states and the international community, increasing
kinds of conflict—from
war
the likelihood of many different
and rebellion to trade disputes—and undermining possibilities for cooperation.
Warming 2NC
NEPA review process is necessary to solve warming
Reitze 12 (Arnold W. Reitze, Jr., Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, “The Role of
NEPA In Fossil Fuel Resource Development And Use In The Western United States,” Boston
College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 39 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 283)
Courts are increasingly using NEPA as a tool to force federal agencies to consider global
climate change related to actions within the agency's jurisdiction. n817 Over the past decade, courts have
decided several cases concerning whether consideration of climate change implications is a necessary part of NEPA analysis. n818
Moreover, the CEQ has determined that reasonably foreseeable trans-boundary impacts of
proposed agency actions must be included in NEPA-based reviews . n819 In Border Power Plant Working
Group v. Department of Energy, the court held that an EA for a federal action contravened NEPA because it failed to disclose and analyze
potential environmental impacts [*368] incident to construction of a power line carrying electricity from new power plants in Mexico to
Southern California. n820 The
first federal appellate decision to impose the need to consider
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the resulting air pollution in a NEPA case was Mid
States Coalition for Progress v. Surface Transportation Board. n821 In 2003, the Eighth Circuit held that the
Surface Transportation Board (Board) did not fully comply with NEPA because it failed to consider potential increases in emissions resulting
from the creation of a new rail line. n822 The petitioners challenged the Board's approval of a proposal to construct 280 miles of new rail line,
and to improve 600 miles of existing rail line in Minnesota and South Dakota for transporting coal from Wyoming's Powder River Basin. n823
Petitioners were concerned about the substantial increase in train traffic and the
corresponding increase in noise levels in the city of Rochester, Minnesota. n824 The Eighth Circuit
conducted an extensive review of the NEPA methodology and analysis of the environmental impacts and other effects of the related mitigation
efforts on Rochester residents. n825 The court next addressed the Sierra Club's argument that the Board failed to consider the effects on air
quality from an increase in the supply of low-sulfur coal. n826 The
Sierra Club argued there would be a
significant increase in air pollutants, including carbon dioxide, that are not subject to the
National Ambient Air Quality Standards limits that are applicable to other criteria
pollutants such as sulfur dioxide. n827 The court reasoned that the direct and indirect
environmental effects of a federal action causing degradation in air quality must be
addressed in an EIS if the effect is reasonably foreseeable. n828 The court found the Board "completely
ignored" the effects of increased coal consumption and did not fulfill the requirements within the CEQ regulations. n829 The [*369] court
held "it would be irresponsible for the Board to approve a project of this scope without
first examining the effects that may occur as a result of the reasonably foreseeable
increase in coal consumption ." n830 The court found "the Board did a highly commendable and professional job in evaluating
an enormously complex proposal" but remanded the case to the Board. n831 The Board then prepared a SEIS, which the Eighth Circuit found to
be adequate. n832
Counterplan is key to international legal responses to transboundary pollution
Hall 9 (Noah D . is Assistant Professor, Wayne State University Law School, and Executive
Director, Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, “Interstate Environmental Impact
Assessment,” Environmental Law Reporter, July 2009,
http://law.wayne.edu/pdf/hall_elr_ieia.pdf)
The concept of environmental impact assessment first provided by NEPA has not only
spread to state law, but also to other countries. Since NEPA was enacted in the United States, over 100 countries have
established some form of domestic environmental impact assessment laws. 26 The widespread adoption of domestic
environmental impact assessment law has facilitated growth of the concept of
transboundary environmental impact assessment under international law . 27 But international
transboundary environmental impact assessment law should not be viewed as merely an extension of domestic environmental impact assessment
laws.
It is also a necessary procedural duty related to preventing transboundary pollution
harms, and in this way can serve as a useful model for addressing interstate
environmental harms . International transboundary environmental impact assessment is a
logically required first step to prevent international transboundary pollution, since
addressing a harm requires knowing something about it. 28 The importance of transboundary environmental
impact assessment under international law is evident in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development Rio Declaration of
1992: States
shall provide prior and timely notification and relevant information to
potentially affected States on activities that may have a significant adverse transboundary
environmental effect and shall consult with those States at an early stage and in good faith.
29
Transboundary framework created by the counterplan is key to address
climate change
Dannenmaier 12 (Eric, Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Environmental and
Natural Resources Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, “Constructing
Transnational Climate Regimes,” in Günther Handl, Joachim Zekoll and Peer Zumbansen
Beyond Territoriality: Transnational Legal Authority In An Age Of Globalisation, 5-12-12,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2056430)
Climate change is a complex problem that calls for collaborative global and local solutions.
The challenge cannot be met by sovereign states acting independently regardless of their ability to project power beyond their territory. It
requires, instead, sustained co-operation. In responding to the challenge to date, states have moved
tentatively to construct a dedicated transboundary framework . The process does not
contest territorial sovereignty but, instead, relies on sovereign states as architects and
executors. It exemplifies the spatially co-existing and overlapping jurisdictional architecture that Handl posits. The recent move towards a
more “bottom up” approach to seeking GHG reduction commitments in Copenhagen and Cancún118 further affirms the sovereign prerogative
even while extending the search for multilateral commitment to institutions that will work both within and outside state territories .
The
international climate process also reveals the growing importance of non-state actors in
international lawmaking – a phenomenon with even greater long-term implications for the idea of state sovereignty and territorial
exclusivity in international law. Some might argue that this demonstrates a re-location of transnational
legal authority in the climate-change context away from states and towards more dynamic
and responsive (or, on the other hand, more chaotic, less accountable) actors. But their participation, far from arrogating legal authority,
has re-inforced the location of authority in states. The impact of these new transboundary institutions (and the
impact of non-state actors helping to construct and animate them) does not appear to be on a trajectory towards
some Asimovian “I, Robot” nightmare where an unwitting population embraces a machine
that learns to think for itself and ultimately threatens its creators and benefactors. There is,
perhaps, evidence of a sort of institutional sentience in the emerging treatment of climate issues
by multilateral institutions and forums. But this merely demonstrates that structures designed by states
can adapt organically to problems such as climate even while states are still struggling to
manage the issue through more traditional means.
Turns Warming: 2NR
Addressing transboundary pollution is necessary to solve warming
Dannenmaier 12 (Eric, Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Environmental and
Natural Resources Law, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, “Constructing
Transnational Climate Regimes,” in Günther Handl, Joachim Zekoll and Peer Zumbansen
Beyond Territoriality: Transnational Legal Authority In An Age Of Globalisation, 5-12-12,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2056430)
transnational climate responses have driven, at least in some instances, an
expansion of transnational legal authority, even a re-allocation of that authority, but not a relocation of the source of authority. That is, multilateral institutions and processes have grown, even
achieved a level of autonomous operation, but without threatening the state’s sovereign
prerogative. Although embryonic and incomplete, transboundary climate responses have tended to be
multilateral rather than unilateral, and they have been co-ordinated, if not well choreographed.
Formal institutions have been constructed by states to address climate concerns, and these
The author finds that
institutions are making headway, albeit slow and painstaking. In addition, transboundary
networks and dialogues – among states and non-state actors – have worked to shape and animate these
and other new climate institutions. These informal arrangements have given rise to
institutional alternatives that might be described as “soft” forums – negotiation and cooperation spaces that some endorse as forging stronger climate-change governance, and some
deride as undermining a universal solution. Institutional alternatives have also been pursued through international institutions that do not have
explicitly climate- or environment- driven mandates, but have binding (“hard”) features which can advance environmental values while calling
attention to the need for more universal solutions.
A2: Environment Impact Defense
-- Eco collapse causes extinction
Jayawardena 9 (Asitha, London South Bank University, “We Are a Threat to All Life on
Earth”, Indicator, 7-17, http://www.indicator.org.uk/?p=55)
Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995) explain in detail why
the natural environment is so important for life on Earth. It is from the environment that the
living organisms of all species import the energy and raw material required for growth, development and reproduction. In almo st all ecosystems plants, the most important primary producers,
carry out photosynethesis, capturing sunlight and storing it as chemical energy. They absorb nutrients from their environment. When herbivores (i.e. plant-eating animals or organisms) eat these
plants possessing chemical energy, matter and energy are transferred ‘one-level up.’ The same happens when predators (i.e. animals of a higher level) eat these herbivores or when predators of
even higher levels eat these predators. Therefore, in ecosystems, food webs transfer energy and matter and various organisms play different roles in sustaining these transfers. Such transfers are
possible due to the remarkable similarity in all organisms’ composition and major metabolic pathways. In fact all organisms except plants can potentially use each other as energy and nutrient
sources; plants, however, depend on sunlight for energy. Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995) further reveal two key principles governing the biosphere with respect to the transfer of energy and
matter in ecosystems. Firstly, the energy flow in ecosystems from photosynthetic plants (generally speaking, autotrophs) to non-photosynthetic organisms (generally speaking, heterotrophs) is
essentially linear. In each step part of energy is lost to the ecosystem as non-usable heat, limiting the number of transformation steps and thereby the number of levels in a food web. Secondly,
unlike the energy flow, the matter flow in ecosystems is cyclic. For photosynthesis plants need carbon dioxide as well as minerals and sunlight. For the regeneration of carbon dioxide plants, the
primary producers, depend on heterotrophs, who exhale carbon dioxide when breathing. Like carbon, many other elements such as nitrogen and sulphur flow in cyclic manner in ecosystems.
However, it is photosynthesis, and in the final analysis, solar energy that powers the mineral cycles. Ecosystems are under threat and so are we Although it seems that a continued energy supply
from the sun together with the cyclical flow of matter can maintain the biosphere machinery running forever, we should not take things for granted, warn Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995). And
they explain why. Since the beginning of life on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago, organisms have evolved and continue to do so today in response to environmental changes. However, the
overall picture of materials (re)cycling and linear energy transfer has always remained unchanged. We could therefore safely assume that this slowly evolving system will continue to exist for
aeons to come if large scale infringements are not forced upon it, conclude Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995). However, according to them, the present day infringements are large enough to
upset the world’s ecosystems and, worse still, human activity is mainly responsible for these infringements. The rapidity of the human-induced changes is particularly undesirable. For example,
the development of modern technology has taken place in a very short period of time when compared with evolutionary time scales – within decades or centuries rather than thousands or millions
human activity is capable of making the
collapse of web of life on which both humans and non-human life forms depend for their existence. For Laszlo (1989: 34), in Maiteny
and Parker (2002), modern human is ‘a serious threat to the future of humankind’. As Raven (2002) observes, many life-support
systems are deteriorating rapidly and visibly. Elaborating on human-induced large scale infringements, Sloep and Van DamMieras (1995) warn that they can significantly alter the current patterns of energy transfer and materials recycling,
posing grave problems to the entire biosphere. And climate change is just one of them! Turning to a key source of this crisis, Sloep and Van Damof years. Their observations and concerns are shared by a number of other scholars. Roling (2009) warns that
Mieras (1995: 37) emphasise that, although we humans can mentally afford to step outside the biosphere, we are ‘animals among animals, organisms among organisms.’ Their perception on the
place of humans in nature is resonated by several other scholars. For example, Maiteny (1999) stresses that we humans are part and parcel of the ecosphere. Hartmann (2001) observes that the
modern stories (myths, beliefs and paradigms) that humans are not an integral part of nature but are separate from it are speeding our own demise. Funtowicz and Ravetz (2002), in Weaver and
Jansen (2004: 7), criticise modern science’s model of human-nature relationship based on conquest and control of nature, and highlight a more desirable alternative of ‘respecting ecological
limits, …. expecting surprises and adapting to these.’
-- Damage snowballs – collapse likely
Diner 94 (Major David N., JAG – US Army, Military Law Review, Winter,
http://www.stormingmedia.us/14/1456/A145654.html)
As biologic simplicity increases, so does
the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are
relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all
its dimly perceived and intertwined effects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new
extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, mankind may be
By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems.
edging closer to the abyss.
Offshore Nat Gas
Offshore Nat Gas: 1NC
Cuba models US environmental policy on offshore drilling – failure to review
means they rollback regulations
White 10 (Jonathan P., “Drilling in Ecologically and Environmentally Troubled Waters: Law
and Policy Concerns Surrounding Development of Oil Resources in the Florida Straits,”
Summer, 2010, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, 21 COLO. J.
INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 557)
Resolution 132/2009, Law No. 77, and the overarching Law No. 81, provide the legal foundation for drilling in Cuba's offshore waters to proceed in an environmentally sensitive manner. Under
the blanket Law No. 81, there is a general cause of action for environmental pollution that could be applied to offshore drilling. Meanwhile, Resolution 132/2009 requires the assembly of
information on the environmental impact of a project in order to evaluate and mitigate the project's undesirable consequences. These several laws contain a potential flaw in that the EIS
completed pursuant to Resolution 132/2009 must be paid for by the company sponsoring the proposed project. n106 Resolution 132/2009 somewhat restrains this potential conflict of interest
with the requirement that CITMA certify the entities conducting any EIS. n107 This issue aside, the three laws indicate that Cuba has the legal means to arrest pollution from drilling in the
Cuba has not shied away from protecting its natural resources with a
series of environmental laws. The issue that emerges, and that this Note will contemplate, is Cuba's
willingness to enforce these protective laws . An examination of Law No. 212, Cuba's coastal zone management law, provides a useful
Florida Straits. An overarching theme is that
conclusion to this review of Cuban environmental statutes related to offshore drilling, if not a glimpse into how Cuba might act
should drilling advance on a
large scale. Law No. 212 shows that the Cuban government has used additional codes promulgated under Law No. 81 to target environmental impacts generated by specific
industries. n108 In 2000, Cuba issued its coastal zone management law, modeled on coastal management statutes from other
countries, including the United States, and developed in collaboration with U.S. scientists and [*574]
attorneys. n109 The law restricts beachfront coastal development in a "coastal zone" and "zone of protection." n110 The coastal zone extends from offshore waters of 100 to 200 meters in depth
to a point twenty to forty meters inland from the ocean shore's high water mark. n111 The law forbids the construction of permanent structures in the coastal zone except for marinas and
ports. n112 The public may use the coastal zone for recreation without user fees. n113 The "zone of protection," the second of the coastal zones set forth by the law, extends into the Cuban
mainland from the upper, land-based boundary of the coastal zone for another twenty to forty meters inland. n114 In this strip of land, Law No. 212 restricts development of permanent structures,
though crops may be grown in the zone subject to the public right of way to the beach and provided that the crops do not disrupt the ecology of the beach. n115 The ultimate effect of Decree
Law No. 212 is to subject ocean-oriented development to set-back restrictions. n116 Decree Law No. 212 is a touchstone despite having little immediate relevance to offshore drilling. The
law underscores Cuba's commitment to protecting the ecology of its shores and its unwillingness to let lucrative tourism-related development overrun the island's scenic coastline. n117 The
passage of the law in 2000, a time when tourism was the only industry giving the nation an economic pulse, demonstrates that Cuba's professed dedication to sustainability is genuine.
Cuba has adopted a
National Environmental Strategy that contemplates offshore drilling activities. The government adopted
The law may be an omen for future legislation that directly targets offshore oil drilling. Finally, looking beyond Cuba's environmental detailed thus far,
the first National Environmental Strategy in 1997; the current National Environmental Strategy covers 2007 to 2010. n118 The National Environmental Strategy serves as a policy blueprint to
direct new environmental regulations. n119 [*575] Its focus is on sustainability, and it identifies economic and social developments that will impact environmental policy over the years
addressed by the strategy. n120 The 2007-2010 National Environmental Strategy identifies increased petroleum and gas production as an ongoing area of transformation in the Cuban
economy, and in Section 4.1.3.e, the document discusses the exploration and production of hydrocarbons. n121 This section's overarching objective is to diminish environmental pollution caused
by oil development, and it sets forth specific goals for the government to attain, such as developing a regulatory framework to guide oil exploration, creating contingency plans for oil spills, and
devising pipeline regulations. n122 That Cuba has anticipated oil development in this most recent National Environmental Strategy suggests, along with the development of industryspecific laws such as Decree Law No. 212, that the nation willingly crafts regulations and policy to fit emerging environmental challenges. This forward-looking, rather than reactive,
approach bodes well for future offshore development, though as will be seen,
drag on
these otherwise laudable
infrastructural and economic challenges create a
regulations.
Unregulated drilling threatens the everglades
Bowermaster 11 (Jon, A six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council,
“Cuba's deepwater-drilling plans put the Everglades, Florida Keys and coral reefs at risk,”
http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/12/15/cuban-oil-wells-put-florida-shores-risk
Cuba will soon start drilling in waters of 5,000-6,000 feet just 70 miles off the Florida Keys,
which is closer to the Florida Straits than the Deepwater Horizon was to the Louisiana
shoreline. The BP spill tarred Florida beaches that were 150 miles away from the site of the
accident. A Chinese-made, Spanish-owned drill rig—the Scarabeo 9—is on its way to the site.
Drilling is expected to begin in January. While it is all perfectly legal, given the recent history
of the BP mess, many in the U.S., from the White House to the Senate and residents of
Florida, are just now pondering the ramifications of a Cuban-operated spill . Drilling that
close to the U.S. raises a variety of questions such as, if it breaks, who would clean it up?
Should the embargo be modified to at least assure the well has plenty of working parts and
replacements? Given its proximity to U.S. shores, should a U.S. agency be able to inspect
Cuban rigs ? Inside the White House, apparently the question is one of balancing environmental
protection for all while simultaneously not stepping on Cuba’s rights. The $750 million
submersible drilling rig was built in China and Singapore. To satisfy the U.S. trade embargo, less
than 10 percent of its parts could be from U.S. companies. Those same sanctions prevent spare
parts made in the U.S. from being used for the rig’s blowout preventer. If there is a spill, cleanup workers and companies would most likely come from Canada, Norway and the U.K.
Despite the proximity, U.S.-based clean-up companies would have to appeal to the government
for waivers. Madrid-based Repsol owns the drill rig. Its plan is to drill to between 5,000 and
6,000 feet, a similar depth the Deepwater Horizon was exploring when it blew. If successful, the
rig will be used in the region by companies from as near as Venezuela and Brazil and as far
as Malaysia, Russia and Vietnam. On the local political front, Florida’s U.S. senators have
traditionally done a good job keeping drilling away from its beaches. Now they find the state’s
pristine tourist destinations potentially at risk thanks to a foreign country and foreign laws.
Bill Nelson, Florida’s senior senator, has introduced a bill that would hold foreign oil companies
directly accountable for oil spills that pollute U.S. territory and removes the existing $75 million
cap. “ If there is a spill there , we could lose part of the Everglades , or the Keys, or the
coral reefs, or our fishing industry or tourism—and jobs,”says Nelson.
Biodiversity hotspot
Alles 7 (David L. Professor of Biology – Western Washington University, “Biodiversity Hot
Spots: The Florida Everglades”, 3-7-2007, http://www.biol.wwu.edu/trent/alles/Everglades.pdf)
"Biodiversity
hot spots are areas where endemic species with small ranges are concentrated.
Not all are in the tropics, but most are. Hot spots can be extraordinarily concentrated; thousands of species may be found within a relatively small
area. Species with small ranges are particularly vulnerable to impacts. Nature has put her eggs in a small number of baskets, and we are in danger
of dropping them. On land, worldwide 25 areas are recognized as hotspots which contain concentrations of endemic species that are
disproportionately vulnerable to extinction from regional habitat destruction. These areas retain less than 10% of their original habitat and have
unusually high human population densities." (Pimm, 2001) The
Florida Everglades contains one of the highest
concentrations of species vulnerable to extinction in the United States. The 5,000-square-kilometre
wetland in southern Florida is home to at least 60 endangered species, including the American crocodile (Mason, 2003). And the area retains less
than 10% of its original habitat as the human population density of southern Florida threatens to over-run one of the most unique habitats in North
America. Nourished by the rain soaked Kissimmee River Basin and stretching south from 700 square mile Lake Okeechobee (left center), the
Everglades are a wide slow moving river of marsh and saw grass covering some 4,500 square miles, flowing slowly towards the mangrove
estuaries of the Gulf of Mexico (right below center). The
Everglades are a unique habitat ; there are no other
everglades in the world. No other place combines a subtropical climate, a broad, shallow river, and a stunning
diversity of plants and animals into such a complex and fragile ecosystem. No other place is so
dramatically defined by annual rhythms of drought and flood, fire and sunshine and torrential rain. Everglades National Park is the largest
remaining subtropical wilderness in the United States. Its
abundant wildlife includes rare and endangered
species, such as the American crocodile, Florida panther, and West Indian manatee. Alligators, like the one
shown above, are an important part of this ecosystem, and are regarded as a “keystone”
species of the Everglades. The Florida Everglades ecosystem is also the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles
exist side by side. The American crocodile, shown above, was listed as an endangered species in Florida in 1975. It’s numbers had dropped
dramatically because of hunting and loss of habitat. Today, it’s estimated that between 500 to 1,200 crocodiles live in Florida, up from
approximately 200 to 400 two decades ago. They are found in the U.S. in the remaining tidal marshes in the Everglades along Florida Bay and in
the Florida Keys. Though the species resemble one another, crocodiles vary greatly from the more than 1 million alligators found in Florida.
Crocodile color ranges from olive green to gray compared with the black hue of alligators. Their snouts are narrower, and the bottom and top
teeth are visible from the side when the mouth is closed; only the upper teeth are seen on an alligator. Adult crocodiles are 7 to 15 feet long and
weigh 150 to 450 pounds. Decidedly less aggressive than the infamous Nile and Australian crocodiles, American crocodiles are rarely seen by
people. The
West Indian manatee is a large, herbivorous, aquatic mammal. These gentle
creatures are endangered throughout their range. High annual mortality, primarily associated with human activity,
as well as a low reproductive rate and loss of habitat continue to keep the number of manatees low and threaten the species’ future. The manatee
population has long been the focus of battles between conservationists and boaters. Boating kills dozens of manatees a year, crushing or gashing
the slow-moving mammals as they rise to the surface to breathe. Red
tide algae blooms have been another cause of
mortality for manatees along Florida's south-central Gulf Coast. The one-cell organism that causes red tide releases a toxin when it
dies, sickening manatees. Once the toxin is in the animal, it affects their coordination and causes paralysis (Flewelling, et al., 2005). "Manatees
on Florida’s Gulf coast are frequently exposed to brevetoxin, a potent neurotoxin produced by the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, during red tide
events. In 1996, 151 manatees were documented to have died in southwest Florida from brevetoxicosis. This epizootic was particularly
detrimental to the manatee population because more adults were killed than any other age class. Other red tide epizootics in 1982, 2002, 2003,
and 2005 resulted in the deaths of 37, 34, 96, and (preliminarily) 81 manatees, respectively. There is no clear evidence that these events have
been increasing in frequency along Florida’s coast, but certainly the impact on the manatee population has increased over the past two decades.
Viewed globally, harmful algal blooms have been increasing over the past 25 years in
frequency and in their impacts on the economy, public health, and marine life." In addition to rare
and endangered species, the Everglades are rightly famous for the profusion of bird species found there, with 347 species recorded within the
Park boundaries. The mangrove estuaries of Florida Bay, in particular, are a breeding habitat for Roseate Spoonbills, Wood Stork, White Ibis,
Glossy Ibis, and eleven species of egrets and herons. Once, water flowed freely from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay in a “river of grass”,
Florida environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas's poetic phrase. It is a river that is 120 miles long and 50 miles wide, but less than a foot
deep. In this flat landscape, even a few inches of elevation meant the difference between wet marsh and dry ground. Today, the
Everglades is an ecosystem in danger of extinction . Canals and levees capture and divert its water for human use,
including drinking water, irrigation, and flood control. Often, too much water is withheld from the Everglades during the wet season, or too much
is diverted into it during the winter drought, disrupting the natural cycles of feeding and nesting which depend on these patterns. Much of the time
the water is contaminated by pollutants.
Extinction
Kunich 1 (John C., Assoc. Prof Law – Roger Williams University School of Law, 52 Hastings
L.J. 1149, Lexis)
It is rather well known, even beyond the scientific community, that many of the world's
species have either gone extinct or are on the road to extinction. It is much less well known,
but equally important, that enormous numbers of these species are confined to a few " hotspots "
of biodiversity, far beyond the norm for the average region of comparable size. These hotspots
are the key to the future of life on this planet . To understand why, we must first examine the
degree of risk to which earth's biodiversity is exposed today.
Cuba Models Process: 2NC
Cuba models the US process of offshore drilling
White 10 (Jonathan P., “Drilling in Ecologically and Environmentally Troubled Waters: Law
and Policy Concerns Surrounding Development of Oil Resources in the Florida Straits,”
Summer, 2010, Colorado Journal of International Environmental Law and Policy, 21 COLO. J.
INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 557)
Despite Washington's recent approval of new offshore oil and gas development, drilling off
Florida's coast is a more uncertain matter, given the moratoriums unique to that state's
offshore waters. A 2006 moratorium on drilling off Florida's Gulf coast bars industrial leasing and development until the year 2022. n54
The moratorium, part of federal legislation entitled the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, barred "leasing, preleasing, or any related activity"
in areas of the Gulf within 100 or 125 miles of Florida's coast in exchange for opening 8.3 million acres for oil and gas leasing in other parts of
the Gulf. n55
The discrepancy in the 100 or 125 mile limitation arises from the division of the
Gulf of Mexico into several lease planning zones by the MMS. n56 The 2006 moratorium remains in effect
despite the abandonment of offshore drilling bans by the federal government in the fall of 2008. n57 The prohibitions in the Gulf
of Mexico Energy Security Act demonstrate that for drilling to proceed in the Florida
Straits, Congress must repeal bans on drilling in offshore waters around Florida's Gulf
coast. These moratoria, along with the MMS environmental review process and the
federal-state consistency review process, reveal the layered complexity of the U.S. legal
regime relating to offshore drilling . The previously described legal checks indicate that drilling in the U.S.- [*567]
controlled waters of the Florida Straits must meet environmental thresholds. The impact of drilling must be assessed by
state and federal agencies, and undoubtedly litigation challenging the agencies' decisions
will follow. Looking beyond the laws that might safeguard the Florida Straits, some have suggested that the best stewards of U.S. offshore
waters are voters, who maintain pressure on politicians in states like Florida to limit offshore leasing. n58 In the end, public
sensitivities over offshore drilling, heightened by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as well as
the layers of legal hurdles, make drilling off Florida an uncertain matter. B. Cuban Environmental
Law Environmental regulations in Cuba protect the Caribbean's "most ecologically diverse
island." n59 The island's coastal zone harbors mangroves, tropical forests, coral reefs, estuaries, archipelagos similar to the Florida Keys, and
long stretches of white sand beaches. n60 Cuba has embraced sustainability to protect these outstanding
natural resources, and it has implemented laws reflecting sustainability's core tenets. n61 This
Section explores Cuban environmental laws that may impact development of the nation's offshore oil deposits, as well as the nation's policydriven National Environmental Strategy as it pertains to offshore development. Placed in historical context, Fidel Castro's speech at the
1992
World Summit in Rio de Janeiro was a watershed moment reflecting Cuba's emerging
environmentalism. n62 Castro spoke in Rio while Cuba found itself in an economic tailspin following the end of the Cold War and the
Soviet Union's collapse; Moscow had been Havana's economic lifeline since the 1959 revolution ("the Revolution") that ushered in the Castro
regime. n63 Signaling the start of a new era for the beleaguered nation, Castro
aligned environmentalism with
communist ideology in his Rio speech, stating: "If we want to save humanity from destroying itself, we have to
distribute more equitably the riches and the available technologies on this planet ... . No more transfer to the Third World of [*568] lifestyles and
habits of consumerism that ruin the environment. Make
human living more rational." n64 Prior to Rio, Cuba took
steps towards creating a national environmental mandate with Cuba's 1976 constitution
identifying the need to protect the air, water, and soil, and with Cuba's adoption of a
comprehensive environmental law in 1981. n65 Reflecting Castro's Rio sentiments, the Cuban National
Assembly of the People's Power promulgated Law No. 81, the "Law of the Environment,"
in 1997. n66 The law is Cuba's flagship environmental statute . n67 This expansive law established the
following foundations for environmental law in Cuba. First, it confirmed the Ministry of Science, Technology, and the Environment ("CITMA")
as the bureaucratic arm that oversees the nation's environment and administers its environmental laws. n68 The
Cuban government
created CITMA three years prior in 1994. n69 Second, Law No. 81 charges the state with oversight of natural resources
by reaffirming state sovereignty over the environment as expressed in the Cuban Constitution. n70 Third, Law No. 81 set six policy objectives,
detailed as follows in Article 9: a) to create a legal context that favors the design and development of socioeconomic activities in ways that are
compatible with the protection of the environment; b) to establish principles to guide the actions of natural and legal persons in environmental
matters, including the mechanisms of coordination among the various agencies and bodies for efficient management; c) to promote public
participation in environmental protection and in sustainable development; [*569] d) to develop public awareness regarding environmental
problems by integrating education, disclosure, and environmental information; e) to regulative the development of evaluation, control and
surveillance activities regarding the environment; f) to foster the protection of human health, improvement of the quality of life and of the
environment in general. n71 These ambitious objectives encompass matters ranging from passing laws, to educating the public, to managing
human health. Imbued with
this broad policy-driven foundation, Law No. 81 is the animating force
behind any environmental measure that Cuba adopts, and it is in Law No. 81 that protection for Cuba's
Florida Straits waters originates. Towards that end, Law No. 81 may come to bear on offshore oil
drilling in several ways. First, the law comprehends the regulation of marine resources
and Cuba's maritime zones in Chapter IV. n72 That chapter obligates Cuban citizens and "every natural and legal
person" to protect and conserve the country's aquatic ecosystems in a manner that balances development with environmental sensitivities; this
mandate presumably reaches corporations operating in offshore waters. n73 Chapter IV also issues strong prohibitions against water pollution.
n74 Most importantly for Florida Straits drilling concerns, Article 103 of Chapter IV, which pertains to "activities directed at the exploration and
exploitation of the seabed and its resources," requires
that such activities take place without impairment to
marine ecosystems. n75 Second, Law No. 81 will impact offshore drilling because it establishes environmental
impact reviews and government licensing for projects initiated by any party, be it the Cuban
government or foreign entities, provided that the project has "significant environmental effects." n76 The statute refers to the
reviews as "Environmental Impact Assessments" ("EIAs"), and it includes an exhaustive
list of activities subject to these EIAs. n77 On that list of activities are both mining and "drilling wells to extract
hydrocarbons." n78 Thus, if oil drilling proceeds in Cuba's portion of the Florida Straits, Law No. 81 commands environmental permitting and
review.
Cuban Drilling Threatens Environment: Ext.
Unregulated drilling causes spills – damages the Florida Keys environment
Goodhue 12 (David, “New drilling off Cuba may pose more risk to Florida,” The Miami
Herald, 7-6-12, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/06/2884309/new-drilling-off-cuba-maypose.html)
New oil drilling expected to begin offshore of Cuba at the end of the summer is at least 50
miles farther away from Key West than a well that came up dry in May. But industry
watchers say the drilling sites’ location in the Gulf of Mexico pose more of an
environmental threat to the Keys and other coastal areas of the U.S. than did the well that
was only 70 miles away from Key West in the Florida Straits. “National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration models of spill scenarios indicate the obvious: The further west
from the Keys, the greater the potential exposure of the Keys and western Florida to oil
reaching the U.S. coast. This is much like NOAA’s hurricane prediction cone,” said Lee Hunt,
president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors.
Wind – Offshore
Wind – Offshore 1NC
Wind construction without an EIS causes irreparable losses of marine animals
USG 7 (United States Government, “Executive Summary of the Energy Policy Act of 2005,”
October 2007,
http://ocsenergy.anl.gov/documents/fpeis/Alt_Energy_FPEIS_ExecutiveSummary.pdf)
Wind turbines harness the kinetic energy of the moving air and convert it to electricity. A
wind turbine can be compared to a fan operating in reverse: rather than using electricity to produce wind, the turbine uses the wind to make
electricity. Principal components of an OCS wind turbine generator (WTG) include the following: • Rotor (blades and blade hub), which is
connected through a drivetrain to the generator; • Turbine assembly, which includes the gearbox and generator and is enclosed by a shell or
nacelle; • Tower, which supports the turbine assembly, houses the remaining facility components, and provides sheltered access for personnel;
and • Foundation or structure to support the tower.
A wind energy facility would also have an electric service
platform (ESP) to provide a common electrical interconnection for all of the WTGs. The ESP
would house transformers to bring the generated electricity into phase and step up the voltage for transmission to an onshore substation. An ESP
could have up to four transformers containing up to 37,500 L (10,000 gal) of dielectric fluid each. In general, most impacts would be negligible to
moderate for all phases of wind energy development assuming that proper siting and mitigation measures are followed. Human
activity
on the OCS related to a wind facility is relatively low, with only a few support vessels in
operation at any one time during the highest activity period (construction). Potential
impacts during the construction phase are the highest, because this phase involves the
highest amount of vessel traffic, noise generation, and air emissions. There is a potential for
major impacts to some threatened and endangered species of marine mammals , birds, or sea
turtles from vessel or turbine strikes, disturbance of nesting areas, alteration of key habitat, or low-probability large spills of fuel or lubricating oil
population-level impacts are possible from injury or death of individual
females if population numbers are critically low. Compliance with the regulations and
coordination with appropriate wildlife protection agencies would ensure that project
activities would be conducted in a manner that would greatly minimize or avoid impacting
or dielectric fluids, because
these species or their habitats. Moderate impacts to fish and fisheries could occur due to the establishment of exclusion zones
within wind energy facilities. Potential visual impacts can be mitigated through several means, especially siting facilities away from sensitive
areas. The following summary discusses the more notable impacts that could occur during each phase of development.
Marine mammals are crucial to nitrogen replenishment in the atmosphere
Roman 10 (Joe Roman Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont,
Burlington, Vermont, United States of America and James J. McCarthy Museum of Comparative
Zoology, Harvard University, “The Whale Pump: Marine Mammals Enhance Primary
Productivity in a Coastal Basin,” PLoS ONE 5(2010): e13255.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013255)
It is well known that microbes, zooplankton, and fish are important sources of recycled
nitrogen in coastal waters, yet marine mammals have largely been ignored or dismissed in
this cycle. Using field measurements and population data, we find that marine mammals can
enhance primary productivity in their feeding areas by concentrating nitrogen near the
surface through the release of flocculent fecal plumes. Whales and seals may be responsible
for replenishing 2.3×104 metric tons of N per year in the Gulf of Maine's euphotic zone,
more than the input of all rivers combined . This upward “whale pump” played a much larger
role before commercial harvest, when marine mammal recycling of nitrogen was likely more
than three times atmospheric N input . Even with reduced populations, marine mammals
provide an important ecosystem service by sustaining productivity in regions where they occur in
high densities.
Extinction
Rockström 9 (Johan, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Nature Vol. 461,
“A safe operating space for humanity,” 9-24-9)
Humanity may soon be approaching the boundaries for global freshwater use, change in
land use, ocean acidification and interference with the global phosphorous cycle (see Fig. 1).
Our analysis suggests that three of the Earth-system processes — climate change, rate of
biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle — have already transgressed their
boundaries. For the latter two of these, the control variables are the rate of species loss and the
rate at which N2 is removed from the atmosphere and converted to reactive nitrogen for
human use, respectively. These are rates of change that cannot continue without
significantly eroding the resilience of major components of Earth-system functioning . Here
we describe these three processes.
*** E-Leadership
Top-Level
1NC
The Counterplan is key to reinvigorate U.S. Environmental Leadership
Schiffer 4 (Lois J., “The National Environmental Policy Act today, with an emphasis on its
application across U.S. Borders,” Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, Vol. 14:2, 2004,
http://www.eli.org/pdf/seminars/NEPA/NEPA%20Today.pdf)
countries have emulate d NEPA . The CEQ website lists seventeen states (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) that have
laws similar to NEPA. 7 Further, over one hundred countries, as well as many international organizations such as the World Bank, have analogous laws and procedures. 8 The
United States has been considered a model of environmental leadership , in part because of the
States and other
importance of its environmental review process . So what is happening to NEPA as middle age wears on? This article will focus on two
conditions of NEPA’s advancing middle age. First , efforts by the Bush Administration to limit this important tool through statutory interpretation,
litigation, and legislation to the detriment of the statute and to United States global leadership in environmental issues
will be discussed. Then, the influence of NEPA beyond U.S. borders will be considered. NEPA’s influence beyond U.S. borders, sometimes referred to as “extraterritorial application of
NEPA in an increasingly globalized world with growing
concern about the United States’ environmental leadership.
NEPA,” has long been contentious. It is a helpful case study of
Environmental Leadership is key to overall leadership
Walter 2 (Norbert, Chief Economist – Deutsche Bank Group, The New York Times, 8-28,
Lexis)
At present there is much talk about the unparalleled strength of the United States on the world stage. Yet at this very moment the
most
powerful country in the world stands to forfeit much political capital, moral authority and international good will by
dragging its feet on the next great global issue: the environment. Before long, the administration's apparent unwillingness to
take a leadership role -- or, at the very least, to stop acting as a brake -- in fighting global environmental degradation will
threaten the very basis of the American supremacy that many now seem to assume will last forever. American authority is
already in some danger as a result of the Bush administration's decision to send a low-level delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development in Johannesburg -- low-level, that is, relative to America's share of both the world economy and global pollution. The absence of
President Bush from Johannesburg symbolizes this decline in authority. In recent weeks, newspapers around the world have been
dominated by environmental headlines: In central Europe, flooding killed dozens, displaced tens of thousands and caused billions of
dollars in damages. In South Asia, the United Nations reports a brown cloud of pollution that is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a
year from respiratory disease. The pollution (80 percent man-made) also cuts sunlight penetration, thus reducing rainfall, affecting agriculture and
otherwise altering the climate. Many other examples of environmental degradation, often related to the warming of the atmosphere, could be
cited. What they all have in common is that they severely affect countries around the world and are fast becoming a chief concern for people
everywhere. Nobody is suggesting that these disasters are directly linked to anything the United States is doing. But when a country that
emits 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases acts as an uninterested, sometimes hostile bystander in the
environmental debate, it looks like unbearable arrogance to many people abroad. The administration seems to believe it is
merely an observer -- that environmental issues are not its issues. But not doing anything amounts to ignoring a key source of
world tension, and no superpower that wants to preserve its status can go on dismissing such a pivotal dimension of
political and economic -- if not existential -- conflict.
Global nuclear war
Khalilzad 95 (Zalmay, RAND Corporation, Losing The Moment? Washington Quarterly, Vol
18, No 2, p. 84)
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to
multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end
in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment
would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a
better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade
states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling
the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a
global
nuclear exchange . U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a
multipolar balance of power system.
Uniqueness: 2NC
EU has overtaken the US in global environmental leadership – clear domestic
regulations are crucial to retake the lead
Kelemen 10 (R. Daniel Kelemen Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Rutgers
University David Vogel Professor, Haas School of Business and Department of Political Science
UC Berkeley, “Trading Places: The Role of the United States and the European Union in
International Environmental Politics,” Comparative Political Studies, 2010 43: 427)
the E uropean U nion replaced the U nited S tates as the
international environmental leader. Though we examine U.S. and EU positions on a number of multilateral environmental
This article seeks to explain why
agreements over the past four decades, this is not a “large-N” study that treats each environmental treaty as an independent case. We do address
the contributions of large-N studies but demonstrate that they cannot account for the shifts in U.S. and EU positions. We
treat U.S. and
EU positions on particular treaties as crucial pieces of evidence, but our focus is on the
broader question of why the United States and European Union have “traded places” as
leader and laggard in international environmental politics. Our focus on the European Union and the United
States is a reflection of the fact that these are the only two political entities with the capacity for
exercising global environmental leadership (Vig & Faure, 2004). We recognize that the concept of global environmental
leadership is multifaceted (Skodvin & Andresen, 2006; Young, 1991) and that the United States has arguably maintained leadership in some areas
of domestic environmental regulation (Weiner, 2004). Nevertheless,
we argue that with respect to international
environmental politics, a dramatic and systemic shift from U.S. to EU leadership has
occurred since the early 1990s. A “regulatory politics” model (DeSombre, 2005; Raustiala, 1997) that synthesizes the effects of
domestic politics and international regulatory competition provides the most powerful explanation of why the United States and European Union
have traded places in international environmental politics. Domestic
politics shapes governments’ positions on
questions of international environmental policy through two channels. First, and most directly, the
stronger the domestic political influence of environmentalists, the more likely they will be successful in pressuring their government to support
new international environmental policy agreements. Thus,
just as a government’s commitment to domestic
environmental policy fluctuates along with the political influence of proenvironment forces,
so too will its support for international environmental policies. The second causal path is more indirect: the
stronger the domestic political influence of environmentalists, the more likely that stringent domestic standards will be adopted. The
existence of these more stringent domestic standards in turn reduces the economic costs (or
generates positive incentives) for domestic producers to support international agreements
that impose similar standards on foreign jurisdictions. Alternatively, when domestic standards are laxer, or
nonexistent, the dynamics of international regulatory competition provide governments and domestic firms with a stronger interest in opposing
international agreements that would impose additional burdens on them.
Link: 2NC
The review process of the counterplan reinvigorates US environmental
leadership, that’s Schiffer.
-- EIS K2 U.S. environmental leadership
Wexler 8 (Lesley, Professor of Law – Florida State University and Former Debater – University
of Michigan, “Human Rights Impact Assessments: An Immigration Case Study”, Georgetown
Immigration Law Journal, 22 Geo. Immigr. L.J. 285, Winter, Lexis)
Such international interactions might also facilitate the transmission of human rights
assessments and impact statements throughout the world . Human rights review might complement U.N.
efforts to mainstream human rights and integrate them at an operational level . 48 The visibility and leadership
capabilities of the United States make it particularly able to promote the use of human
rights assessments. 49 Just as the United States' development and implementation of
environmental impact statements has shaped environmental policy in a significant
number of countries, 50 the United States could also reinvigorate its human rights policy
through its leadership and assist other countries in developing a stronger commitment to human rights. 51 Impact
assessment provides other countries with an opportunity [*292] to embrace the importance of human rights without making a
strong commitment to a treaty regime they might be unwilling to or be incapable of enforcing.
Impact: 2NC
The CP model stops global environmental destruction that risks extinction
Harris 1 (Paul G., Lecturer – Lignan University, Associate Fellow – Oxford Center for
Environment, Ethics, and Society at Mansfield College, Oxford University, The Environment,
International Relations, and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 241-242)
In addition to promoting U.S. global interests, a more robust acceptance by the U.S. government of
international equity as an objective of global environmental policy—and indeed of foreign policy
generally—has potentially beneficial implications for humankind . Implementation of the equity provisions of
international environmental arrangements may reduce human suffering by helping to prevent changes to local, regional, and global environmental
commons that would adversely affect people, most notably the many poor people in the economically developing countries who are least able to
cope with environmental changes. Insofar as environmental protection policies focus on sustainable economic development, human suffering may
be mitigated as developing countries—especially the least-developed countries—are aided in meeting the basic needs of their citizens. Economic
disparities within and between countries are growing. At least one-fifth of the world’s population already lives in the squalor of absolute
poverty.59 This situation can be expected to worsen in the future. If this process can be mitigated or reversed by international policies focusing
on environmentally sustainable economic development, human well-being on a global scale will rise. ‘What is more, international
that are made more likely and more effective by
provisions for international equity will help governments protect their own environment and the
global environment if they are successful. Insofar as the planet is one biosphere—that it is in the
case of ozone depletion and climate change seems indisputable-persons in every local and national
cooperative efforts to protect the environment
community are
simultaneously members of an interdependent whole . Most activities, especially widespread
activities in the United States and the rest of the industrialized world, including the release of ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases,
are likely to adversely affect many or possibly all persons on the planet. Efforts to prevent such harm or make amends for historical harm (i.e.,
past pollution, which is especially important in these examples because many pollutants continue doing harm for years and often decades) require
that most communities work together. Indeed, affluent lifestyles in the United States, ‘Western Europe, and other developed areas may harm
people in poor areas of the world more than they will harm those enjoying such lifestyles because the poor are ill-equipped to deal with the
consequences.6° Furthermore, by concerning themselves with the consequences of their actions on the global poor and polluted, Americans and
the citizens of other developed countries will be helping their immediate neighbors—and themselves—in the long run. Actualization of
international equity in conjunction with sustainable development may help prevent damage to the natural environment worldwide, thereby
promoting human prosperity. The upshot is that the United States has not gone far enough in actively accepting equity as an objective of global
environmental policy. It ought to go further in doing so for purely self-interested reasons. But there are more than self-interested reasons for the
United States to move in this direction. It ought to embrace international equity as an objective of its global environmental policy for ethical
reasons as well. We can find substantial ethical justification for the United States, in concert with other developed countries, to support politically
and financially the codification and implementation of international equity considerations in international environmental agreements. The United
States ought to be a leader in supporting a fair and just distribution among countries of the benefits, burdens, and decision-making authority
associated with international environmental relations.61 To invoke themes found in the corpus of ethical philosophy (but without here assuming
the burden of philosophical exegesis!), the United States ought to adopt policies that engender international equity in at least the environmental
field (1) to protect the health and well-being of the human species; (2) to promote basic human rights universally; (3) to help the poor be their
own moral agents (a Kantian rationale); (4) to help right past wrongs and to take responsibility for past injustices (i.e., past and indeed ongoing
U.S. pollution of the global environment); (5) to aid the world’s least-advantaged people and countries (a Rawlsian-like conception); (6) and to
fhlflll the requirement of impartiality (among other ethical reasons)62—all in addition to the more dearly self-interested justification that doing so
U.S. credibility and influence in international environmental negotiations and contemporary global politics more
generally. One might argue, therefore, that the U nited S tates ought to be aiding the developing countries to achieve
sustainable development because to do so may simultaneously reduce human suffering and reduce
or potentially reverse environmental destruction that could otherwise threaten the healthy survival of
will bolster
the human species.
Insofar as human-caused pollution and resource exploitation deny individuals and their communities the capacity
to survive in a healthy condition, the United States, which consumes vastly more than necessary, has an obligation to stop that unnecessary
consumption. From this basic rights perspective,63 the U.S. government should also take steps to reduce substantially the emissions of pollutants
from within the United States that harm people in other countries.64 The United States ought to refrain from unsustainable use of natural
resources and from pollution of environmental commons shared by people living in other countries—or at least make a good effort toward that
end—because the people affected by these activities cannot reasonably be expected to support them (we would not be treating them as
independent moral agents, to make a Kantian argument65).
Specifically – it stops ozone depletion – extinction
Greenpeace 95 (Full of Holes: Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone
Layer -- A Greenpeace Report with contributions from Ozone Action,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html)
a link between c hloro f luoro c arbon s and ozone layer depletion
was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible scientists have
since confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the
sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist. Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin
cancer, and immune system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and
Molina's theory was taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.
When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated
in 1974, the news
U.S. environmental leadership prevents CCP collapse
Economy 7 (Elizabeth, Senior Fellow and Director for Asian Studies – Council on Foreign
Relations, “The Great Leap Backward?”, Foreign Affairs, September/October,
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/great-leap-backward)
In the view of China's leaders, however, damage to the environment itself is a secondary
problem. Of greater concern to them are its indirect effects: the threat it poses to the continuation
of the Chinese economic miracle and to public health, social stability, and the country's
international reputation. Taken together, these challenges could undermine the authority of
the Communist Party . China's leaders are worried about the environment's impact on the
economy. Several studies conducted both inside and outside China estimate that environmental degradation and pollution cost the Chinese economy between 8 percent and 12 percent
of GDP annually. The Chinese media frequently publish the results of studies on the impact of pollution on agriculture, industrial output, or public health: water pollution costs of $35.8 billion
one year, air pollution costs of $27.5 billion another, and on and on with weather disasters ($26.5 billion), acid rain ($13.3 billion), desertification ($6 billion), or crop damage from soil pollution
($2.5 billion). The city of Chongqing, which sits on the banks of the Yangtze River, estimates that dealing with the effects of water pollution on its agriculture and public health costs as much as
4.3 percent of the city's annual gross product. Shanxi Province has watched its coal resources fuel the rest of the country while it pays the price in withered trees, contaminated air and water, and
land subsidence. Local authorities there estimate the costs of environmental degradation and pollution at 10.9 percent of the province's annual gross product and have called on Beijing to
compensate the province for its "contribution and sacrifice." China's Ministry of Public Health is also sounding the alarm with increasing urgency. In a survey of 30 cities and 78 counties
released in the spring, the ministry blamed worsening air and water pollution for dramatic increases in the incidence of cancer throughout the country: a 19 percent rise in urban areas and a 23
percent rise in rural areas since 2005. One research institute affiliated with SEPA has put the total number of premature deaths in China caused by respiratory diseases related to air pollution at
400,000 a year. But this may be a conservative estimate: according to a joint research project by the World Bank and the Chinese government released this year, the total number of such deaths is
750,000 a year. (Beijing is said not to have wanted to release the latter figure for fear of inciting social unrest.) Less well documented but potentially even more devastating is the health impact of
China's polluted water. Today, fully 190 million Chinese are sick from drinking contaminated water. All along China's major rivers, villages report skyrocketing rates of diarrheal diseases,
cancer, tumors, leukemia, and stunted growth.
Social unrest over these issues is rising. In the spring of 2006, China's top environmental official, Zhou
Shengxian, announced that there had been 51,000 pollution-related protests in 2005, which amounts to almost 1,000 protests each week. Citizen complaints about the environment, expressed on
official hotlines and in letters to local officials, are increasing at a rate of 30 percent a year; they will likely top 450,000 in 2007. But few of them are resolved satisfactorily, and so people
throughout the country are increasingly taking to the streets. For several months in 2006, for example, the residents of six neighboring villages in Gansu Province held repeated protests against
zinc and iron smelters that they believed were poisoning them. Fully half of the 4,000-5,000 villagers exhibited lead-related illnesses, ranging from vitamin D deficiency to neurological
problems. Many pollution-related marches are relatively small and peaceful.
But when such demonstrations fail, the protesters
sometimes resort to violence. After trying for two years to get redress by petitioning local, provincial, and even central government officials for spoiled crops and
poisoned air, in the spring of 2005, 30,000-40,000 villagers from Zhejiang Province swarmed 13 chemical plants, broke windows and overturned buses, attacked government officials, and
torched police cars. The government sent in 10,000 members of the People's Armed Police in response. The plants were ordered to close down, and several environmental activists who attempted
to monitor the plants' compliance with these orders were later arrested. China's leaders have generally managed to prevent – if sometimes violently – discontent over environmental issues from
spreading across provincial boundaries or morphing into calls for broader political reform. In the face of such problems, China's leaders have recently injected a new urgency into their rhetoric concerning the need to
protect the country's environment. On paper, this has translated into an aggressive strategy to increase investment in environmental protection, set ambitious targets for the reduction of pollution and energy intensity (the amount of
energy used to produce a unit of GDP), and introduce new environmentally friendly technologies. In 2005, Beijing set out a number of impressive targets for its next five-year plan: by 2010, it wants 10 percent of the nation's power to
come from renewable energy sources, energy intensity to have been reduced by 20 percent and key pollutants such as sulfur dioxide by 10 percent, water consumption to have decreased by 30 percent, and investment in environmental
protection to have increased from 1.3 percent to 1.6 percent of GDP. Premier Wen Jiabao has issued a stern warning to local officials to shut down some of the plants in the most energy-intensive industries – power generation and
aluminum, copper, steel, coke and coal, and cement production – and to slow the growth of other industries by denying them tax breaks and other production incentives. These goals are laudable – even breathtaking in some respects –
but history suggests that only limited optimism is warranted; achieving such targets has proved elusive in the past. In 2001, the Chinese government pledged to cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 percent between 2002 and 2005.
Instead, emissions rose by 27 percent. Beijing is already encountering difficulties reaching its latest goals: for instance, it has failed to meet its first target for reducing energy intensity and pollution. Despite warnings from Premier
Wen, the six industries that were slated to slow down posted a 20.6 percent increase in output during the first quarter of 2007 – a 6.6 percent jump from the same period last year. According to one senior executive with the Indian
wind-power firm Suzlon Energy, only 37 percent of the wind-power projects the Chinese government approved in 2004 have been built. Perhaps worried that yet another target would fall by the wayside, in early 2007, Beijing revised
its announced goal of reducing the country's water consumption by 30 percent by 2010 to just 20 percent. Even the Olympics are proving to be a challenge. Since Beijing promised in 2001 to hold a "green Olympics" in 2008, the
International Olympic Committee has pulled out all the stops. Beijing is now ringed with rows of newly planted trees, hybrid taxis and buses are roaming its streets (some of which are soon to be lined with solar-powered lamps), the
most heavily polluting factories have been pushed outside the city limits, and the Olympic dormitories are models of energy efficiency. Yet in key respects, Beijing has failed to deliver. City officials are backtracking from their pledge
to provide safe tap water to all of Beijing for the Olympics; they now say that they will provide it only for residents of the Olympic Village. They have announced drastic stopgap measures for the duration of the games, such as
banning one million of the city's three million cars from the city's streets and halting production at factories in and around Beijing (some of them are resisting). Whatever progress city authorities have managed over the past six years –
such as increasing the number of days per year that the city's air is deemed to be clean – is not enough to ensure that the air will be clean for the Olympic Games. Preparing for the Olympics has come to symbolize the intractability of
China's environmental challenges and the limits of Beijing's approach to addressing them. PROBLEMS WITH THE LOCALS Clearly, something has got to give. The costs of inaction to China's economy, public health, and
international reputation are growing. And perhaps more important, social discontent is rising. The Chinese people have clearly run out of patience with the government's inability or unwillingness to turn the environmental situation
around. And the government is well aware of the increasing potential for environmental protest to ignite broader social unrest. One event this spring particularly alarmed China's leaders. For several days in May in the coastal city of
Xiamen, after months of mounting opposition to the planned construction of a $1.4 billion petrochemical plant nearby, students and professors at Xiamen University, among others, are said to have sent out a million mobile-phone text
messages calling on their fellow citizens to take to the streets on June 1. That day, and the following, protesters reportedly numbering between 7,000 and 20,000 marched peacefully through the city, some defying threats of expulsion
from school or from the Communist Party. The protest was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube. One video featured a haunting voice-over that linked the Xiamen demonstration to an ongoing environmental crisis near Tai
Hu, a lake some 400 miles away (a large bloom of blue-green algae caused by industrial wastewater and sewage dumped in the lake had contaminated the water supply of the city of Wuxi). It also referred to the Tiananmen Square
protest of 1989. The Xiamen march, the narrator said, was perhaps "the first genuine parade since Tiananmen." In response, city authorities did stay the construction of the plant, but they also launched an all-out campaign to discredit
the protesters and their videos. Still, more comments about the protest and calls not to forget Tiananmen appeared on various Web sites. Such messages, posted openly and accessible to all Chinese, represent the Chinese leadership's
greatest fear, namely, that its failure to protect the environment may someday serve as the catalyst for broad-based demands for political change. Such public demonstrations are also evidence that China's environmental challenges
cannot be met with only impressive targets and more investment. They must be tackled with a fundamental reform of how the country does business and protects the environment. So far, Beijing has structured its environmental
protection efforts in much the same way that it has pursued economic growth: by granting local authorities and factory owners wide decision-making power and by actively courting the international community and Chinese NGOs for
their expertise while carefully monitoring their activities. Consider, for example, China's most important environmental authority, SEPA, in Beijing. SEPA has become a wellspring of China's most innovative environmental policies:
it has promoted an environmental impact assessment law; a law requiring local officials to release information about environmental disasters, pollution statistics, and the names of known polluters to the public; an experiment to
calculate the costs of environmental degradation and pollution to the country's GDP; and an all-out effort to halt over 100 large-scale infrastructure projects that had proceeded without proper environmental impact assessments. But
SEPA operates with barely 300 full-time professional staff in the capital and only a few hundred employees spread throughout the country. (The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a staff of almost 9,000 in Washington, D.C.,
alone.) And authority for enforcing SEPA's mandates rests overwhelmingly with local officials and the local environmental protection officials they oversee. In some cases, this has allowed for exciting experimentation. In the eastern
province of Jiangsu, for instance, the World Bank and the Natural Resources Defense Council have launched the Greenwatch program, which grades 12,000 factories according to their compliance with standards for industrial
wastewater treatment and discloses both the ratings and the reasons for them. More often, however, China's highly decentralized system has meant limited progress: only seven to ten percent of China's more than 660 cities meet the
standards required to receive the designation of National Model Environmental City from SEPA. According to Wang Canfa, one of China's top environmental lawyers, barely ten percent of China's environmental laws and regulations
are actually enforced. One of the problems is that local officials have few incentives to place a priority on environmental protection. Even as Beijing touts the need to protect the environment, Premier Wen has called for quadrupling
the Chinese economy by 2020. The price of water is rising in some cities, such as Beijing, but in many others it remains as low as 20 percent of the replacement cost. That ensures that factories and municipalities have little reason to
invest in wastewater treatment or other water-conservation efforts. Fines for polluting are so low that factory managers often prefer to pay them rather than adopt costlier pollution-control technologies. One manager of a coal-fired
power plant explained to a Chinese reporter in 2005 that he was ignoring a recent edict mandating that all new power plants use desulfurization equipment because the technology cost as much as would 15 years' worth of fines. Local
governments also turn a blind eye to serious pollution problems out of self-interest. Officials sometimes have a direct financial stake in factories or personal relationships with their owners. And the local environmental protection
bureaus tasked with guarding against such corruption must report to the local governments, making them easy targets for political pressure. In recent years, the Chinese media have uncovered cases in which local officials have put
pressure on the courts, the press, or even hospitals to prevent the wrongdoings of factories from coming to light. (Just this year, in the province of Zhejiang, officials reportedly promised factories with an output of $1.2 million or more
that they would not be subjected to government inspections without the factories' prior approval.) Moreover, local officials frequently divert environmental protection funds and spend them on unrelated or ancillary endeavors. The
Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, which reports to SEPA, disclosed this year that only half of the 1.3 percent of the country's annual GDP dedicated to environmental protection between 2001 and 2005 had found its way
to legitimate projects. According to the study, about 60 percent of the environmental protection funds spent in urban areas during that period went into the creation of, among other things, parks, factory production lines, gas stations,
and sewage-treatment plants rather than into waste- or wastewater-treatment facilities. Many local officials also thwart efforts to hold them accountable for their failure to protect the environment. In 2005, SEPA launched the "Green
GDP" campaign, a project designed to calculate the costs of environmental degradation and pollution to local economies and provide a basis for evaluating the performance of local officials both according to their economic
stewardship and according to how well they protect the environment. Several provinces balked, however, worried that the numbers would reveal the extent of the damage suffered by the environment. SEPA's partner in the campaign,
the National Bureau of Statistics of China, also undermined the effort by announcing that it did not possess the tools to do Green GDP accounting accurately and that in any case it did not believe officials should be evaluated on such a
basis. After releasing a partial report in September 2006, the NBS has refused to release this year's findings to the public. Another problem is that many Chinese companies see little direct value in ratcheting up their environmental
protection efforts. The computer manufacturer Lenovo and the appliance manufacturer Haier have received high marks for taking creative environmental measures, and the solar energy company Suntech has become a leading
exporter of solar cells. But a recent poll found that only 18 percent of Chinese companies believed that they could thrive economically while doing the right thing environmentally. Another poll of business executives found that an
overwhelming proportion of them do not understand the benefits of responsible corporate behavior, such as environmental protection, or consider the requirements too burdensome. NOT GOOD ENOUGH The limitations of the
formal authorities tasked with environmental protection in China have led the country's leaders to seek assistance from others outside the bureaucracy. Over the past 15 years or so, China's NGOs, the Chinese media, and the
international community have become central actors in the country's bid to rescue its environment. But the Chinese government remains wary of them. China's homegrown environmental activists and their allies in the media have
become the most potent – and potentially explosive – force for environmental change in China. From four or five NGOs devoted primarily to environmental education and biodiversity protection in the mid-1990s, the Chinese
environmental movement has grown to include thousands of NGOs, run primarily by dynamic Chinese in their 30s and 40s. These groups now routinely expose polluting factories to the central government, sue for the rights of
villagers poisoned by contaminated water or air, give seed money to small newer NGOs throughout the country, and go undercover to expose multinationals that ignore international environmental standards. They often protest via
letters to the government, campaigns on the Internet, and editorials in Chinese newspapers. The media are an important ally in this fight: they shame polluters, uncover environmental abuse, and highlight environmental protection
successes. Beijing has come to tolerate NGOs and media outlets that play environmental watchdog at the local level, but it remains vigilant in making sure that certain limits are not crossed, and especially that the central government
is not directly criticized. The penalties for misjudging these boundaries can be severe. Wu Lihong worked for 16 years to address the pollution in Tai Hu (which recently spawned blue-green algae), gathering evidence that has forced
almost 200 factories to close. Although in 2005 Beijing honored Wu as one of the country's top environmentalists, he was beaten by local thugs several times during the course of his investigations, and in 2006 the government of the
town of Yixing arrested him on dubious charges of blackmail. And Yu Xiaogang, the 2006 winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, honoring grass-roots environmentalists, was forbidden to travel abroad in retaliation
for educating villagers about the potential downsides of a proposed dam relocation in Yunnan Province. The Chinese government's openness to environmental cooperation with the international community is also fraught. Beijing has
welcomed bilateral agreements for technology development or financial assistance for demonstration projects, but it is concerned about other endeavors. On the one hand, it lauds international environmental NGOs for their
contributions to China's environmental protection efforts. On the other hand, it fears that some of them will become advocates for democratization. The government also subjects MNCs to an uncertain operating environment. Many
corporations have responded to the government's calls that they assume a leading role in the country's environmental protection efforts by deploying top-of-the-line environmental technologies, financing environmental education in
Chinese schools, undertaking community-based efforts, and raising operating standards in their industries. Coca-Cola, for example, recently pledged to become a net-zero consumer of water, and Wal-Mart is set to launch a nationwide
education and sales initiative to promote the use of energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Sometimes, MNCs have been rewarded with awards or significant publicity. But in the past two years, Chinese officials (as well as local
NGOs) have adopted a much tougher stance toward them, arguing at times that MNCs have turned China into the pollution capital of the world. On issues such as electronic waste, the detractors have a point. But China's attacks, with
Internet postings accusing MNCs of practicing "eco-colonialism," have become unjustifiably broad. Such antiforeign sentiment spiked in late 2006, after the release of a pollution map listing more than 3,000 factories that were
violating water pollution standards. The 33 among them that supplied MNCs were immediately targeted in the media, while the other few thousand Chinese factories cited somehow escaped the frenzy. A few Chinese officials and
activists privately acknowledge that domestic Chinese companies pollute far more than foreign companies, but it seems unlikely that the spotlight will move off MNCs in the near future. For now, it is simply more expedient to let
international corporations bear the bulk of the blame. FROM RED TO GREEN Why is China unable to get its environmental house in order? Its top officials want what the United States, Europe, and Japan have: thriving economies
with manageable environmental problems. But they are unwilling to pay the political and economic price to get there. Beijing's message to local officials continues to be that economic growth cannot be sacrificed to environmental
protection – that the two objectives must go hand in hand. This, however, only works sometimes. Greater energy efficiency can bring economic benefits, and investments to reduce pollution, such as in building wastewater-treatment
plants, are expenses that can be balanced against the costs of losing crops to contaminated soil and having a sickly work force. Yet much of the time, charting a new environmental course comes with serious economic costs up front.
Growth slows down in some industries or some regions. Some businesses are forced to close down. Developing pollution-treatment and pollution-prevention technologies requires serious investment. In fact, it is because they
recognize these costs that local officials in China pursue their short-term economic interests first and for the most part ignore Beijing's directives to change their ways. This is not an unusual problem. All countries suffer internal tugs
of war over how to balance the short-term costs of improving environmental protection with the long-term costs of failing to do so. But China faces an additional burden. Its environmental problems stem as much from China's corrupt
and undemocratic political system as from Beijing's continued focus on economic growth. Local officials and business leaders routinely – and with impunity – ignore environmental laws and regulations, abscond with environmental
protection funds, and silence those who challenge them. Thus, improving the environment in China is not simply a matter of mandating pollution-control technologies; it is also a matter of reforming the country's political culture.
Effective environmental protection requires transparent information, official accountability, and an independent legal system. But these features are the building blocks of a political system fundamentally different from that of China
today, and so far there is little indication that China's leaders will risk the authority of the Communist Party on charting a new environmental course. Until the party is willing to open the door to such reform, it will not have the
Given this reality, the U nited S tates –
and the rest of the world – will have to get much smarter about how to cooperate with China in
order to assist its environmental protection efforts. Above all, the United States must devise a
limited and coherent set of priorities. China's needs are vast, but its capacity is poor; therefore,
launching one or two significant initiatives over the next five to ten years would do more good
than a vast array of uncoordinated projects. These endeavors could focus on discrete issues, such
as climate change or the illegal timber trade; institutional changes, such as strengthening the
legal system in regard to China's environmental protection efforts; or broad reforms, such as
promoting energy efficiency throughout the Chinese economy. Another key to an effective
wherewithal to meet its ambitious environmental targets and lead a growing economy with manageable environmental problems.
U.S.-Chinese partnership is U.S. leadership . Although U.S. NGOs and U.S.-based MNCs are
often at the forefront of environmental policy and technological innovation, the U.S. government
itself is not a world leader on key environmental concerns. Unless the U nited States improves
its own policies and practices on, for example, climate change, the illegal timber trade, and
energy efficiency, it will have little credibility or leverage to push China.
Chinese collapse causes CCP lashout with WMD that kills billions
Rexing 5 (San, Staff – Epoch Times, The CCP’s Last Ditch Gamble: Biological and Nuclear
War, 8-5, http://english.epochtimes.com/news/5-8-5/30975.html)
Since the Party’s life is “above all else,” it would not be surprising if the CCP resorts to the use
of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in its attempt to extend its life. The CCP, which
disregards human life, would not hesitate to kill two hundred million Americans, along with seven or
eight hundred million Chinese, to achieve its ends. These speeches let the public see the CCP for what it really is. With evil filling
its every cell the CCP intends to wage a war against humankind in its desperate attempt to cling to life. That is the main theme of the speeches.
This theme is murderous and utterly evil. In China we have seen beggars who coerced people to give them money by threatening to stab
themselves with knives or pierce their throats with long nails. But we have never, until now, seen such a gangster who would use biological,
chemical, and nuclear weapons to threaten the world, that they will die together with him. This bloody confession has confirmed the
CCP’s
nature: That of a monstrous murderer who has killed 80 million Chinese people and who now plans
to hold one billion people hostage and gamble with their lives.
*** Politics
Politics – 1NC
-- Plan drains capital – Energy production without federal environmental
review stirs up the environmental lobby – Counterplan solves their link turns
O'Grady 12 (Mary Anastasia, an editor of the Wall Street Journal, M.B.A. in financial
management from Pace University, “Obama's Keystone Delay Flouts the Law,” 1-23-12,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577172852629309954.html
Banana republics have trouble attracting capital because of a reputation for arbitrarily changing the rules whenever it suits the populist in power.
With last week's decision to block TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline, President
Obama stunned investors by
demonstrating that he doesn't see anything wrong with the banana republic way of doing
things. The administration seems to think that it can use environmental claptrap to
convince the American public that it is behaving ethically and legally in denying the TransCanada permit,
even after the company has spent $1.9 billion over 40 months carefully adhering to the federal regulatory process. And a lot of Americans will
not have the time or inclination to get into the weeds on this issue. Yet what is unseen by the public is likely to be more dangerous to the wellbeing of the society than what is seen, as the 19th-century journalist and political philosopher Frédéric Bastiat famously warned. In this case, the
unseen is the effect that Mr. Obama's unmitigated cynicism and abuse of power is likely to have on investors. Unlike the general public, those
who have ready capital to deploy to infrastructure projects like Keystone will fully analyze this decision. Seeing how our president has behaved,
they are not likely to come away feeling confident about the rule of law. To
understand how Mr. Obama is thumbing
his nose at the law, recall the State Department's decision in November to delay permit
approval based on a complaint from the state of Nebraska about the pipeline route there.
State had already issued three environmental impact statements over three years finding that there would be "no significant impact" on the
environment from the pipeline.
But as it prepared to issue its final ruling, the environmental lobby
descended on the White House with protests. Within days, State announced that a rerouting in Nebraska was
necessary, which implied yet another
round of environmental impact studies . It was a "green"
victory because it meant delaying the permitting at least another three years, not counting the
inevitable litigation and notwithstanding State's forecast that it would be done in 15 months. It was an absurd proposition. Keystone XL will run
more than 2,000 miles. The disputed segment is about 100 miles and by late November the company had already begun working with Nebraska
on a rerouting plan. With some 20,000 new direct construction jobs and more than 100,000 indirect jobs along the pipeline route hanging in the
balance, Republicans decided to give Mr. Obama a way out of the problem he faced of having to do another long, drawn-out environmental
impact study. They attached a rider to the Dec. 23 payroll-tax bill that instructed the president to rule within 60 days on whether the oil pipeline
crossing the U.S. border is in the national interest. In making the determination, the rider said, the president should consider factors like the
economy, energy security, foreign policy, employment, trade and even, notably, the environment. For example, Mr.
Obama could
have said that oil from Canada's oil sands is bad for the global environment. Perhaps that's what he
wanted to say. It is, after all, the position of some of his most generous campaign contributors. But with unemployment at
8.5%, Iran threatening to close off the Strait of Hormuz and Hugo Chávez jailing dissidents, denouncing Canadian energy
isn't a winning campaign slogan . It may also be discriminatory, and thus a violation, under the North American Free Trade
Agreement and U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization. Out of options, Mr. Obama concluded last week that it
is not in the national interest to grant the permit because of the State Department's view
that further environmental studies are required due to the Nebraska rerouting. It's a nice try. But
it directly contravenes the rider, which specifically states that the one thing Mr. Obama need not concern himself about—indeed could not
consider—is any new environmental impact studies.
Politics – 2NC
-- Counterplan solves their link turns and avoids angering the environmental
lobby
Zuckerman 12 (Mortimer B., editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report, “The Cost of
President Obama's Keystone XL Dithering,” 2-17-12,
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2012/02/17/the-cost-of-president-obamaskeystone-xl-dithering_print.html)
It has not gone so far as to
kill the proposed 1,700-mile underground pipeline to carry crude oil from
Canada to American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. That might play badly against the
president's vision in his State of the Union address of "a future where we're in control of
our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren't so tied to unstable parts of the world" (which stand to get a lot less stable, the way
things are going). Instead, in Machiavelli's dictum, the president has been willing to wound but afraid to
strike. He has contrived an excuse to delay a decision yet again. An environmental impact
statement
was issued by the State Department on Aug. 26, 2011, the conclusion of three years of reviews and negotiation. The approval
process typically takes from 18 months to two years. That's understandable given the variety of concerns and interests a massive project entails
about safeguarding water supplies, disturbing local landowners and communities, and restoring the landscape. [Read Mort Zuckerman and other
columnists in U.S. News Weekly, now available on iPad .]
The original Keystone pipeline won approval after
two years and is operational. But in 2013, the Keystone XL (extension) will be in its fourth year of review, a Great Dither not
justified when the State Department conducted three consecutive environmental reviews to reach its conclusion of minimal environmental impact.
In that time, there have been many public hearings to satisfy local communities and private
property owners. More than a dozen alternative routes have been surveyed, and TransCanada Corp., the builder, agreed to 57 special
conditions beyond current federal pipeline regulations. The president wants a relatively short section of the
route from Alberta through Nebraska reconsidered. It means the State Department will have to agree to a new
understanding with Nebraska and secure the governor's approval. Given the long history of Keystone XL, that is not a big deal. By all accounts, it
could be done within a couple of months. Yet after three years of satisfying intense reviews, the
president says that decision
will not come until 2013. Hello? That wouldn't have anything to do, would it, with appeasing a
particular left-wing environmental lobby until after the general election ? [Check out the U.S. News
On Energy blog.] It's a calculation which assumes that the voters concerned about the energy
future that Obama paraded will be less active than the more extreme environmental
lobbyists —who, in fact, will never be satisfied with anything to do with villainous Big Oil. Throwing a sop to the leftist
anti-oil campaigners and "four more years" are apparently more important to the
president and his campaign advisers than reducing our dependence on those unstable regions he mentioned and
maintaining the momentum of the small improvement in the lamentable unemployment totals.
This outweighs – the environmental lobby controls the agenda
Anderson 2 (William, Adjunct Scholar – Mises Institute, Economics Teacher – Frostburg State
University, "The Oil Dependency Myth,"
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=861&id=73)
If Feldstein and other "energy independence" advocates wish to ask us to believe that
domestically produced oil will not be held hostage to politics, they are either naive or stupid. The
single most powerful lobby in Washington, D.C., is the green lobby, and environmentalists are
much more hostile to the energy needs of our economy than are even the most anti-American
Middle Easterners. Obtaining crude oil means someone has to drill, and most oil-producing or
potential oil-producing lands in this country are the property of the national government, which
means that by definition, drilling and exploration in those areas will be determined by the
political process.
No turns – we solve any reason plan is popular – its only a question of
including environmental assessments – link can only go one way
-- Public support –
Genuine EIS is vital to it
Borgstrom 9 (Carol, Director – Office of NEPA Policy and Compliance, “Integrating NEPA
into Long-Term Planning at DOE”, 3-23,
http://www.eli.org/pdf/seminars/NEPA/Borgstrom.NEPA.pdf)
In conclusion, for DOE-- in general and in the long run-- PEISs appear to be worthwhile. If the
timing and scope of a PEIS are consistent with the overall timing and scope of planning and
decision making, maximum benefits are possible. Moreover, a PEIS process that includes good
public involvement may serve to garner public support and forge consensus , resulting in
sustainable decisions.
*Note – PEIS = Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement
Public support key
Eshbaugh 5 (Ph.D., Professor of Political Science – Texas A&M University, “The Politics of
Presidential Agenda”, Political Science Quarterly, 58)
Public Approval. Presidential approval may also influence the content of the president's agenda.
Despite evidence to the contrary (Bond and Fleisher 1990; Collier and Sullivan 1995),
presidents, Washington insiders, and some researchers perceive public approval to be an
important means of achieving legislative success (Edwards 1997; Neustadt 1990; Rivers and
Rose 1985). Given the pervasiveness of public opinion polling in the White House (Edwards
1983) and high public expectations (Waterman, Jenkins-Smith, and Silva 1999), presidents are
bound to be aware of their public standing. More popular presidents should be inclined to offer
more long-term and important policies than less popular presidents, if only because they think
that a stronger public standing gives them greater leeway to pursue such policies. In other words,
H3: Higher approval ratings will lead to a larger legislative agenda, including more major and
incremental policies. Approval is the yearly average of the presidents Gallup approval ratings.
*** Perms
General
“Do Both”
A2 Perm Do Both: 2NC
-- Mutually exclusive –– EIS is an alternative strategy that rejects immediacy
– either links or severs –Severance is a voter: makes offense impossible
-- Intrinsic – adds non-binding assessments – in neither plan nor counterplan.
Voting issue: allows them to fiat out of offense
-- Links to politics – includes the plan, which shatters civil support – genuine
key – only way to give environmentalists equal footing – that’s O’Grady.
- Genuine key – perm doesn’t solve
Ivanova and Esty 8 (Daniel C., Professor of Environmental Law and Policy – Yale University
and Maria, Assistant Professor of Government and Environmental Policy – College of William
and Mary, “Reclaiming U.S. Leadership in Global Environmental Governance”, SAIS Review,
28(2), Summer-Fall)
Third, mere U.S. participation in international environmental efforts will be insufficient.
The United States must actively take a leadership role in bringing about a successful
response to climate change and other issues. The history of past success in galvanizing the
global community into action shows that the United States can and must take the lead. However,
any attempt at U.S.-led reform without credible proof of genuine U.S. leadership based
on common values and the common good is likely to be met with distrust and opposition.
- Mutually Exclusive – the plan establishes a categorical exclusion, removing
the possibility of an EIS
Reitze 12 (Arnold W. Reitze, Jr., Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, “The Role of
NEPA In Fossil Fuel Resource Development And Use In The Western United States,” Boston
College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 39 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 283)
To achieve consistency in the determination of what constitutes a major federal action, CEQ
regulations call for federal agencies to identify three classes of actions: (1) those that
normally require an EIS ; (2) those that normally do not require either an EIS or an EA
( categorical exclusions) ; and (3) those that normally require EAs but do not necessarily
require an EIS. n141 The most common technique agencies use for avoiding NEPA's
requirement for drafting an EA or EIS is the categorical exclusion. n142 Categorical
exclusions are defined as actions that do not individually or cumulatively have a significant
effect on the human environment [*301] using the procedures set out in CEQ regulations. n143
The application of a categorical exclusion is not allowed if there are "extraordinary
circumstances " that indicate a specific activity may have a significant environmental
effect. n144 The DOE's supplemental regulations provide guidelines for when an agency may
use categorical exclusions-only if "[t]here are no extraordinary circumstances related to the
proposal that may affect the significance of the environmental effects of the proposal." n145 The
regulations further describe extraordinary circumstances as "unique situations presented
by specific proposals, such as scientific controversy about the environmental effects of the
proposal; uncertain effects or effects involving unique or unknown risks; or unresolved
conflicts concerning alternate uses of available resources within the meaning of section
102(2) (E) of NEPA." n146
- Independently, this destroys ESA
Reitze 12 (Arnold W. Reitze, Jr., Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, “The Role of
NEPA In Fossil Fuel Resource Development And Use In The Western United States,” Boston
College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 39 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 283)
On November 23, 2010, the CEQ issued its final guidance on how federal agencies should
establish, apply, and revise categorical exclusions. n147 The guidance includes the admonition
that agencies must consider whether extraordinary circumstances exist when evaluating
whether a categorical exclusion applies. n148 An example of extraordinary circumstances
in energy development projects is the potential for impacting protected species habitat
under the ESA. n149 In California v. Norton, for example, Interior failed to prepare an EA
or an EIS before granting oil and gas lease suspensions based on its claimed categorical
exclusion. n150 The Ninth Circuit affirmed the lower court's holding that the claimed categorical
exclusion was not adequately documented. n151 The record showed the lease suspensions
could affect the threatened southern sea otter, the Monterey Bay National Marine
Sanctuary, and the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. n152 The court held that
if any of the exceptions to the categorical exclusion apply, a categorical [*302] exclusion
may not be utilized to avoid NEPA-based requirements. n153 Moreover, prior to making a
decision, the agency must consider the environmental consequences of its actions and make a
factual determination that a categorical exclusion applies. n154 CEQ guidance identifies the
documentation that may be needed to utilize a categorical exclusion. n155
- Extinction
Hanson 6 (Jaydee, February 10, pg. http://www.pcusa.org/washington/issuenet/enviro060203.pdf)
Why Do We Need A Strong Endangered Species Act ? Healthy species indicate a healthy
environment. Plant and animal species often warn us of toxic pollution threats or subtle
changes in the environment that could threaten human survival . Plants, animals and other
creatures not only provide us food and medicine, but have a right to share the Earth with us. God
commanded them, too, “to go forth and multiply” after leaving the Ark. We have greatly
interfered with their fulfilling that commandment. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson warned the
1992 gathering of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment that thousands
of species become extinct worldwide each year. Given this rapid decline, within 50 years one
quarter of the world's species could be lost forever. A stronger ESA could reverse this
disturbing trend in species endangerment and extinction. Recovery plans must be developed
and executed. And the Bush administration must give the US Fish & Wildlife Service adequate
funding for the program. Egregious under funding could cause the extinction of many
species. Money and staff shortages have hampered the implementation of recovery plans, while
resource constraints have kept 257 species waiting as candidates for listing, meaning that the
species will be officially listed when funding becomes available for their protection. The
proposals in both the Pombo and Crapo bills to pay landowners to protect endangered species
would divert already limited funds from the real task of protecting God’s creatures and provide a
windfall for those persons willing to threaten destruction of endangered species habitats.
A2: NEPA = Non-Binding
-- NEPA is binding and requires prior consideration
Code of Federal Regulations 9 (9-4, http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/textidx?c=ecfr&sid=2413866b856d37627144de133c29383e&rgn=div8&view=text&node=40:1.0.1.
1.6.2.1.1&idno=40)
Title 40: Protection of Environment
PART 6—PROCEDURES FOR IMPLEMENTING THE NATIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT AND ASSESSING THE ENVIRONMENTAL
EFFECTS ABROAD OF EPA ACTIONS Subpart B—EPA's NEPA Environmental Review Procedures Browse Next § 6.200
General requirements. (a) The Responsible Official must determine whether the proposed action meets the criteria for categorical exclusion or whether it requires
preparation of an EA or an EIS to identify and evaluate its environmental impacts. The Responsible Official may decide to prepare an EIS without first undertaking an
EA. (b) The Responsible Official must determine the scope of the environmental review by considering the type of proposed action, the reasonable alternatives, and
During the environmental
review process, the Responsible Official must: (1) Integrate the NEPA process and the
the type of environmental impacts. The scope of an EIS will be determined as provided in 40 CFR 1508.25. (c)
procedures of subparts A through C of this part into early planning to ensure appropriate
consideration of NEPA's policies and to minimize or eliminate delay; (2) Emphasize cooperative consultation among federal agencies,
state and local governments, and federally-recognized Indian tribes before an EA or EIS is prepared to help ensure compliance with the procedural provisions of
subparts A through C of this part and with other environmental review requirements, to address the need for interagency cooperation, to identify the requirements for
other agencies' reviews, and to ensure appropriate public participation. (3) Identify at an early stage any potentially significant environmental issues to be evaluated in
detail and insignificant issues to be de-emphasized, focusing the scope of the environmental review accordingly; (4) Involve other agencies and the public, as
appropriate, in the environmental review process for proposed actions that are not categorically excluded to: (i) Identify the federal, state, local, and federallyrecognized Indian tribal entities and the members of the public that may have an interest in the action; (ii) Request that appropriate federal, state, and local agencies
and federally-recognized Indian tribes serve as cooperating agencies consistent with 40 CFR 1501.6 and 1508.5; and (iii) Integrate, where possible, review of
applicable federal laws and executive orders into the environmental review process in conjunction with the development of NEPA documents. (d) When preparing
NEPA documents, the Responsible Official must: (1) Utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach to integrate the natural and social sciences with the
environmental design arts in planning and making decisions on proposed actions subject to environmental review under subparts A through C of this part (see 40 CFR
1501.2(a) and 1507.2); (2) Plan adequate time and funding for the NEPA review and preparation of the NEPA documents. Planning includes consideration of whether
an applicant will be required to prepare an EID for the proposed action. (3) Review relevant planning or decision-making documents, whether prepared by EPA or
another federal agency, to determine if the proposed action or any of its alternatives have been considered in a prior federal NEPA document. EPA may adopt the
existing document, or will incorporate by reference any pertinent part of it, consistent with 40 CFR 1506.3 and 1502.21. (4) Review relevant environmental review
documents prepared by a state or local government or a federally-recognized Indian tribe to determine if the proposed action or any of its alternatives have been
considered in such a document. EPA will incorporate by reference any pertinent part of that document consistent with 40 CFR 1502.21. (e) During the decisionmaking process for the proposed action, the Responsible Official must: (1)
Incorporate the NEPA review in decision-making
on the action. Processing and review of an applicant's application must proceed concurrently with the NEPA review procedures set out in subparts A
through C of this part. EPA must complete its NEPA review before making a decision on the action. (2) Consider the relevant NEPA documents, public and other
3)
Consider the alternatives analyzed in an EA or EIS before rendering a decision on the
action; and (4) Ensure that the decision on the action is to implement an alternative analyzed or is within the range of alternatives analyzed in the EA or EIS (see
agency comments (if any) on those documents, and EPA responses to those comments, as part of consideration of the action (see 40 CFR 1505.1(d)). (
40 CFR 1505.1(e)). (f) To eliminate duplication and to foster efficiency, the Responsible Official should use tiering (see 40 CFR 1502.20 and 1508.28) and
incorporate material by reference (see 40 CFR 1502.21) as appropriate. (g) For applicant-related proposed actions: (1) The Responsible Official may request that the
applicant submit information to support the application of a categorical exclusion to the applicant's pending action. (2) The Responsible Official may gather the
information and prepare the NEPA document without assistance from the applicant, or, pursuant to Subpart C of this part, have the applicant prepare an EID or a draft
EA and supporting documents, or enter into a third-party agreement with the applicant. (3) During the environmental review process, applicants may continue to
compile additional information needed for the environmental review and/or information necessary to support an application for a permit or assistance agreement from
EPA. (h) For all NEPA determinations (CEs, EA/FONSIs, or EIS/RODs) that are five years old or older, and for which the subject action has not yet been
implemented, the Responsible Official must re-evaluate the proposed action, environmental conditions, and public views to determine whether to conduct a
supplemental environmental review of the action and complete an appropriate NEPA document or reaffirm EPA's original NEPA determination. If there has been
substantial change in the proposed action that is relevant to environmental concerns, or if there are significant new circumstances or information relevant to
environmental concerns and bearing on the proposed action or its impacts, the Responsible Official must conduct a supplemental environmental review of the action
and complete an appropriate NEPA document.
“Do CP”
A2: Do the CP: 2NC
1.) Mutually exclusive – the plan is distinct from implementation that requires
prior and legally binding environmental review – the CP is a competing
approach that requires rejection of immediate action – the CP does not result
in the exact implementation of the plan – instead minor modifications that are
proposed as part of the assessment are incorporated, this makes the
counterplan competitive.
2.) Defer to field experts – they’re most knowledgeable, precise, and define the
literature base that should determine competition – its critical to topic
education
3.) Severs certainty –
A) “Resolved” and “should” require certainty – plan must be “firm” and
“obligated” to act – that’s 1NC evidence – EIS isn’t – makes law uncertain –
B) Mechanism mandates certainty –
“Should” means must – its mandatory
Foresi 32 (Remo Foresi v. Hudson Coal Co., Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 106 Pa. Super.
307; 161 A. 910; 1932 Pa. Super. LEXIS 239, 7-14, Lexis)
As regards the mandatory character of the rule, the word 'should' is not only an auxiliary verb,
it is also the preterite of the verb, 'shall' and has for one of its meanings as defined in the Century
Dictionary: "Obliged or compelled (to); would have (to); must; ought (to); used with an infinitive
(without to) to express obligation, necessity or duty in connection with some act yet to be carried
out." We think it clear that it is in that sense that the word 'should' is used in this rule, not merely
advisory. When the judge in charging the jury tells them that, unless they find from all the
evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant is guilty of the offense charged, they
should acquit, the word 'should' is not used in an advisory sense but has the force or meaning
of 'must', or 'ought to' and carries [***8] with it the sense of [*313] obligation and duty
equivalent to compulsion . A natural sense of sympathy for a few unfortunate claimants who
have been injured while doing something in direct violation of law must not be so indulged as to
fritter away, or nullify, provisions which have been enacted to safeguard and protect the welfare
of thousands who are engaged in the hazardous occupation of mining.
“Substantial” means that the plan must be definite, mandated
Words and Phrases 64 (40W&P 759)
The words" outward, open, actual, visible, substantial, and exclusive," in connection with a
change of possession, mean substantially the same thing. They mean not concealed; not hidden;
exposed to view; free from concealment, dissimulation, reserve, or disguise; in full existence;
denoting that which not merely can be, but is opposed to potential, apparent, constructive, and
imaginary; veritable; genuine; certain: absolute: real at present time , as a matter of fact, not
merely nominal; opposed to form; actually existing; true; not including, admitting, or pertaining
to any others; undivided; sole; opposed to inclusive.
“Increase” means the exploration or development must be actualized, not
simply proposed
HEFC 4 (Higher Education Funding Council,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200304/jtselect/jtchar/1 67/167we98.htm# n43)
9.1 The Draft Bill creates an obligation on the principal regulator to do all that it "reasonably can
to meet the compliance objective in relation to the charity".[ 45] The Draft Bill defines the
compliance objective as "to increase compliance by the charity trustees with their legal
obligations in exercising control and management of the administration of the charity".[ 46] 9.2
Although the word "increase " is used in relation to the functions of a number of statutory
bodies,[47] such examples demonstrate that "increase" is used in relation to considerations to be
taken into account in the exercise of a function , rather than an objective in itself. 9.3 HEFCE
is concerned that an obligation on principal regulators to "increase" compliance per se is
unworkable, in so far as it does not adequately define the limits or nature of the statutory
duty. Indeed, the obligation could be considered to be ever-increasing.
4.) Severs immediacy – “should” means done now – voting issue
Summer 94 (Justice, Oklahoma Supreme Court, “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of
Durant”,
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=20287#marker3fn14)
4 The legal question to be resolved by the court is whether the word "should"13 in the May 18 order connotes
futurity or may be deemed a ruling in praesenti.14 The answer to this query is not to be divined
from rules of grammar;15 it must be governed by the age-old practice culture of legal professionals and its
immemorial language usage. To determine if the omission (from the critical May 18 entry) of the turgid phrase, "and the same hereby is",
(1) makes it an in futuro ruling - i.e., an expression of what the judge will or would do at a later stage - or (2) constitutes an in in praesenti
resolution of a disputed law issue, the trial judge's intent must be garnered from the four corners of the entire record.16 ¶5 Nisi prius orders should
be so construed as to give effect to every words and every part of the text, with a view to carrying out the evident intent of the judge's direction. 17
The order's language ought not to be considered abstractly. The actual meaning intended by the document's signatory should be derived from the
context in which the phrase to be interpreted is used.18 When applied to the May 18 memorial, these told canons impel my conclusion that the
judge doubtless intended his ruling as an in praesenti resolution of Dollarsaver's quest for judgment n.o.v.
Approval of all counsel plainly appears on the face of the critical May 18 entry which is [885 P.2d 1358] signed by the judge.19 True minutes20 of
a court neither call for nor bear the approval of the parties' counsel nor the judge's signature. To reject out of hand the view that in this context
"should" is impliedly followed by the customary, "and the same hereby is", makes the court once again revert to medieval notions of ritualistic
formalism now so thoroughly condemned in national jurisprudence and long abandoned by the statutory policy of this State. [Continues
–
To Footnote] 14 In praesenti means literally "at the present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792 (6th Ed. 1990).
In legal parlance the phrase denotes that which in law is presently or immediately effective, as opposed to
something that will or would become effective in the future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360,
365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27 L.Ed. 201 (1882).
CP delays – prepares the environmental assessment first
5.) Winning this permutation presumes they win a theory argument – if we
win conditions are good, then the counterplan is competitive
6.) Fiat should be certain and unconditional:
A) Neg ground – key to every disad – politics, relations, etc. all rely on actual
implementation – and, allowing conditionality means the Aff can shift to avoid
our best case arguments – makes them a moving target
B) Aff ground – guarantees durability and makes debates about “should”, not
“would” – otherwise the Aff would always lose on rollback
7.) Logic Disad:
A. The plan is logically certain, the counterplan is empirically certain,
preserving this distinction is necessary to avoid paradox
Hirst 2 (Rodney Julian, Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at the University of Glasglow, The
Problems of Perception, 2002 p. 141-142)
If this suggestion is followed then a distinction will be recommended within “possible” and
“certain” on the ground that the two fields to which they are applied, the empirical and the a
priori, are so different in character that to use the same sense of these words for both merely
results in paradox and confusion. One should distinguish between logical and empirical
types of both possibility and certainty. A statement is logically certain if there is no logical
possibility of its being false, i.e., if its denial is self-contradictory (or if it is otherwise
unconditionally necessary). No empirical statement will thus be logically certain, for they
are all contingent and can be denied without self-contradiction. This is an analytical statement
following from the definition of empirical (as not a priori), and so to say that a given empirical
statement was not certain in this sense would merely be to say that it was empirical. We therefore
need a second sense of “certain” which can significantly be used to make distinctions within
empirical statements. Let us say that a statement is empirically certain if there is no empirical
possibility of its falsity; the problem then is to define empirical possibility, and it is not exact
enough for philosophy to say like Malcolm that it is the familiar sense of “possibility”. We could
interpret there is ‘no empirical possibility of error’ as ‘no further empirical tests are of any value
for confirmation; it has passed all relevant ones’. This criterion may be elucidated by considering
how one would set about verifying an empirical statement, e.g. ‘There is a blue book on the
table’. We should look at the table, should pick up the book, feel it and examine it, i.e. use the
simple evidence of the senses in confirmation of each other; then we should think of various
possibilities of illusion, e.g. that it was a whisky flask designed to look like a book, and these
possibilities could be ruled out by opening it and turning the pages, or by reading it; finally the
possibility of hallucination would be dealt with, and here the evidence of others would be most
convincing—we should get other people to handle and read it and confirm that there was a book
there, and we could also check its purchase and recent history. Normally much of this would not
be needed, but we are trying to rule out error completely. After a finite number of tests of this
sort—they would naturally vary for different situations—we should reach saturation point, at
which any further tests would be useless. The characteristics of saturation point are that we
cannot conceive any new kind of relevant test to make or any new kinds of illusion or
hallucination to be guarded against; any more tests would simply be repetitions of old ones.
When saturation point has been reached and no empirical possibility of error is then left, we can
say that the empirical statement is certain.
B. Avoiding paradox is necessary for debate
Mackie 3 (J.L, fellow of University College, Oxford, where he served as praelector, became a
fellow of the British Academy, Truth, Probability and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic,
Oxford University Press, p. 276)
To get anything like a paradox out of the remark of Epimenides the Cretan that all Cretans
are liars, we must take this as meaning that everything said by any Cretan is false. So construed,
the remark cannot be true, but it seems that it can be simply and non-paradoxically false. But this
is where the hidden subtlety comes in. As Prior, following Church, points out, if this dictum is
fake, as it apparently must be, there must be some other, true, Cretan statement. But now we
seem to have discovered a logically necessary connection between two distinct
occurrences : a Cretan's merely saying one thing logically guarantees that some Cretan
should say something else. This would violate Hume's principle, which in itself is utterly
convincing—and on which, incidentally, I have relied in criticism of the rationalist view of
dispositions and propensities and the doctrine of objective chance in Chapters 4 and 5—that
there cannot be logically necessary connections between distinct events . There would, of
course, be nothing puzzling or anti-Humean in a logical connection between a certain
saying's being true and some other occurrence; or in a logical connection between a saying's
having reference and some distinct occurrence (e.g. for any remark about the first man to land on
Mars to have reference it is necessary that some man should land there sometime); or in a logical
connection between one event and the aptness of some description given to another (e.g. the
correctness of the description of one event as the second landing on the Moon requires that just
one other landing on the Moon should have been made earlier). But it would be very different
from all of these, and very surprising, if Epimenides' merely saying that everything said by
any Cretan is false requires the making, and the truth, of some other Cretan remark.
“Plan then EIS”
A2: Perm – Plan Then EIS
1.) Intrinsic: adds temporal sequencing – in neither plan nor counterplan.
Voting issue: allows them to fiat out of offense.
2.) Links to politics – does the plan immediately – collapsing environmental
support – that’s O’Grady.
3.) Doesn’t Solve A. Business Predictability – prior assessment key to investor decisionmaking
Pokharel 10 (Bipin Pokharel, Master of Science Candidate Environmental Assessment Option,
McGill-UNEP Collaborating Centre on Environmental Assessment, Depart of Natural Resource
Sciences, McGill University, MacDonald Campus, Montreal, QC, Canada, “Power Shortage, its
impacts and the Hydropower Sustainability
Assessment Protocol: in the context of South Asia,” NRSC 616 Project Paper, 12-8-10,
http://lnweb90.worldbank.org/exteu/SharePapers.nsf/(ID)/9FC30006ED600CA08525785E00780
506/$File/nrsc_616_project_paper_bipin_pokharel.pdf)
The Early Stage assessment tool is a preliminary strategic screening tool that identifies
environmental, social and economic risks and opportunities of a potential project. The Early
Stage is a tool that promotes early analysis in a project enabling awareness for knowledge gaps
that may exists in a project. Having an assessment prior to start of the project, also helps
drastically reduce cost for investors . Thus, encouraging investor to finance urgently needed
hydro projects such as those in South Asia. In the Preparation, which follows the
commencement of the hydropower project, a detailed assessment of social and
environmental criteria is conducted. Unlike in the past, where EIA and SIA were conducted
without properly defining the scope (as in the case of ARUN III), with HSAP, scope is clearly
defined and management plans are designed based on knowledge from the assessment, and
these plans are strictly implemented, evaluated and monitored. In addition, environmental and
social issues specifically associated with the hydropower project – resettlement, downstream
flow regimes, water quality just to name few- are assessed, designed and enforced separately
(Table 2). Preparation is conducted before awarding construction contracts to eligible
contractors. Contractors must design and implement, if required, environmental social issues
management plans in order for to be awarded with the contracts. This eradicates any possibility
for delayed implementation of management plans.
B. Sustainable Development – Prior EIS critical
Dernbach 8 (“Navigating the U.S. Transition to Sustainability: Matching National Governance
Challenges With Appropriate Legal Tools,” Tulsa Law Review, Vol. 44:93, 2008)
Horizontal
integration is required for sustainable development ; all governmental and nongovernmental decision makers operating
on the same level need to be working effectively together toward the same goal. 99 This requires integration of administrative agencies and decision making at the national level, and on a
range of issues that go beyond environmental regulation. Experience with national sustainable development strategies in other countries indicates that “[g]overnment spending is a key policy
instrument for implementing and influencing sustainable development.” 100 As a result, horizontal integration of federal agencies with the government’s fiscal planning and budgeting
system is especially important. 101 In the United States, the most obvious choice (but perhaps not the best) is the Office of Management and Budget, which manages and controls the
budgets of the federal agencies and publishes the President’s annual proposed budget. Substantive goals, administered and applied through an amended GPRA, would likely help achieve that
integration.
The great variety of U.S. administrative agencies and decision makers suggests the need for
additional decision making criteria or
such
principles
that would be used by all agencies and decision makers. 102 As in Canada, sustainable development by itself might be
a principle. Another set of choices is provided by the sustainable development principles contained in the Rio Declaration. Among these are two principles that are already firmly
established in U.S. l
a w. The first i s
the
N ational E nvironmental P olicy A ct ’s
requirement that federal agencies prepare an
environmental
impact assessment prior to making a decision that may significantly affect the quality of the human
environment. 103 The second principle requires citizen participation in environmental decision making. 104 However imperfect, these requirements apply to all agencies and
establish procedural limits on their activities. Each of these is also an example of reflexive law. Environmental impact statements mean that agencies must
consider environmental and social consequences of major decisions before they make them . 105
Public participation in governmental decision making influences proposed decisions before they are even submitted to the public and yields
information and ideas that influence final decisions .
Independently prevents extinction
Baum 9 (Jacob D. Haqq-Misra, Department of Meteorology & Astrobiology Research Center,
The Pennsylvania State University, and Seth D. Baum, Department of Geography & Rock Ethics
Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, “The Sustainability Solution To The Fermi
Paradox,” Arxiv preprint arXiv:0906.0568, 2009,
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0906/0906.0568.pdf)
The consequences of unsustainable development are often dire . In many documented cases, resource
depletion caused by human activities has led to the permanent collapse of human populations [11], and
resource depletion and environmental degradation can also cause or 4 exacerbate violent conflict [12]. Note that collapsed human populations do not necessarily
disappear—they may persist in diminished numbers. This is particularly evident in the case of Easter Island, where resource depletion is believed to have caused or significantly
contributed to a major population decline [11]. Some analysts are concerned that the
unsustainable practices of human civilization could lead to a
global-scale collapse [10]. Should such a collapse occur, human civilization would not be able to colonize the galaxy. All hope is not lost for human civilization. There
are many documented cases of human populations managing their resources sustainably and achieving long-term survival [13]. On the global scale, human population growth is
declining, with a peak of around 9 billion projected for approximately 2075 [14]. Meanwhile, increasing
development
attention is being given to sustainable
[9]. Should human civilization successfully transition to sustainable development, it would have the opportunity to colonize the galaxy.
“Lie”
A2: Lie Perm
Doesn’t solve any of the process – this is not a consultation counterplan, it
isn’t simply the perception of environmental protection that is important, but
the real implementation of assessment procedures that solve – that’s both
pieces of Andrews evidence from the 1NC.
-- It will leak
Wilson and DiLulio 98 (James Q., Professor of Political Science at UCLA, and John J.,
Professor of Political Science at Princeton, American Government: Institutions and Policies, p.
291)
American government is the leakiest in the world. The bureaucracy, members of Congress, and the White
House staff regularly leak stories favorable to their interests. Of late the leaks have become geysers, gushing forth
torrents of insider stories. Many people in and out of government find it depressing that our government seems unable to keep
anything secret for long. Others think that the public has a right to know even more and that there are still too many secrets. However
you view leaks, you should understand why we have so many. The answer is found in the Constitution. Because we have separate
institutions that must share power, each branch of government competes with the others to get power. One way
to compete is to try to use the press to advance your pet projects and to make the other side look bad . There are far
fewer leaks in other democratic nations in party because power is centralized in the hands of a prime minister, who does not need to leak in
order to get the upper hand over the legislature, and because the legislature has too little information to be a good source of leaks. In addition,
we have no Official Secrets Act of the kind that exists in England; except for a few matters, it is not against the law for the press to receive
and print government secrets.
-- Lying immoral – reject it
Murphy 96 (Mark C., American Journal Juris., 41 Am. J. Juris. 81, Lexis)
Bok’s remarks capture the insight that what disturbs people about lying is not fundamentally that lies are contrary to the good of knowledge,
though lies certainly are contrary to that good. What is most troubling about being lied to is that lies infect the decisionmaking process,
undermining the good of practical reasonableness. Thus, the account of the moral absolute against lying defended here does justice to
what bothers reflective people about being the victim of lies. I have argued that although Finnis is right to think that the lie is an act directed
against the intrinsic good of knowledge, the wrongfulness of lying is most adequately explained by reference to the good
practical reasonableness. Lying is absolutely morally forbidden, in last analysis, because refraining from lying is
necessary to show adequate respect for the status of other agents as practical reasoners. On this matter, at the very least,
natural law theory should affirm its agreement with Kant. 40
of
-- Perm is undemocratic, doesn’t incorporate meaningful citizen participation
Shepherd 97 (Anne, and Christi Bowler, City Planning Program, Georgia Institute of
Technology, “Beyond the requirements: Improving public participation in EIA,” Journal Of
Environmental Planning & Management 40, no. 6: 725, 1997)
Public participation is based on the democratic ideal of citizen representation in decision
making. Public participation requirements seek to maintain this democratic ethic: government decision making is opened up to the public;
democratic practice is revitalized by citizen participation; and citizen involvement helps to
guard the public interest (Efram & Lucchesi, 1979). Barber (1984) maintains that when citizens become
involved in working out a mutually acceptable solution to a project that affects their
community, they mature into responsible democratic citizens and reaffirm democracy.
Portney (1991,p. 202) argues that citizen involvement in EIA is not only desirable, but necessary in a
democracy ; democratically derived decisions are superior to others since "the only legitimate answers are those derived through a process
that incorporates the public will".
-- Extinction
Diamond 95 (Larry, Senior Fellow – Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s,
December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through
increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones.
The very source of life
Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
on Earth, the
new and unconventional threats to security are
global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered . Most of these
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of
democracy , with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a
truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize
themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to
face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They
do not build w eapons of m ass d estruction
to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In
the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because
they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor
international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret.
Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only
reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
*** Theory
Theory: 2NC
1. Counter-interpretation: Neg can condition if they have a solvency advocate
We meet – 1NC Gilpin– says U.S. should engage in a binding EIS on the
environmental effects of energy production
2. Solves Aff ground – limits counterplans to be manageable, predictable, and
based in literature and guarantees they can research answers
3. Tests the resolution –
-- Forces the aff to prove desirability of definite action which tests
“resolved”
-- Tests “should” which is “obligation or duty”
Testing is good: its educational because it forces clash about core questions of
the resolution and fairly divides ground between both sides
4. Topic education –
EIS debates are key to open and democratic decision-making on the
environment
McGuire 5 (Shane, “Environmental Impact Statements: A Necessity For Texas,” 38 Tex. Tech
L. Rev. 159)
The NEPA's EIS requirement serves two purposes. n23 The requirement forces federal
agencies to be exceedingly thorough when approving projects that affect the environment
on federal land, and it creates a means for public [*162] participation in those decisions. n24
The EIS must contain several sections. n25 The EIS must take a "hard look" at all foreseeable environmental impacts of the proposed project for
which it is written, address feasible alternatives that would achieve the purposes of the project, and address issues raised by various levels and
areas of government, as well as the public. n26 The
EIS requirement is more than a mere report, it consists
of a process, the chief portion of which is a required forum for public comment. n27 The NEPA
may require an EIS for the completion of a wide range of projects needing federal agency approval, including building oil
refineries, drilling oil and gas wells on federal land or offshore, constructing highways,
building dams, and constructing sewage treatment plants. n28 Congress has recognized the "'profound impact
of man's activity on . . . the natural environment.'" n29 Consequently, Congress enacted the NEPA "'[t]o declare a national policy which will
encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; [and] promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage
to the environment.'" n30 The
NEPA places no restrictions on whether an agency, after reviewing a
project, can approve the proposal or on whether the agency must somehow alleviate the
foreseeable effects identified in the EIS. n31 The procedural nature of the NEPA's EIS requirement has been succinctly
labeled as a "full disclosure law" for the environment. n32 The
EIS requirement, though procedural in nature,
provides for expanded participation by the public in the form of open hearings, thereby
creating a "decision making process [that] is assumed to be more open and democratic ." n33
5. Conditional fiat increases Aff ground – guarantees delay and potential nonadoption of the plan – structurally ensures ground based on immediacy or
critical advantages
6. Tons of ground exists
Gaines and Lurie 7 (Lisa and Sue, Ph.D., Associate Director and Consultant in the Institute
for Natural Resources – Oregon State University, “NEPA for the 21st Century: A Comparative
Analysis of Other Organizations’ Environmental Review Structures”, 5-16,
http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/about/programs/fsd/NEPA/Final%20Draft%20 Report-160507.pdf)
Since NEPA’s passage more than 35 years ago, a considerable body of literature has
developed regarding its controversy, prescriptive recommendations for better
implementation, and technical guidance. Less has been written about the perceptions and practical challenges
experienced by federal agencies responsible for its implementation. Two studies are particularly instructive.
7. Policy analysis: CP constructs better energy policy – discussing opportunity
costs is necessary for decisionmaking – we’ll use it for the rest of our lives.
Williams 8 (Candace, An Educator’s Guide to Opportunity Cost and Rational Choice Theory, or
“How I Learned to Continue Worrying but Advocate for TFA Reform (Instead of Total
Dissolution)”, 6-20-8, http://educatorblog.wordpress.com/2008/06/20/opportunity-cost/)
The concept of opportunity cost is important to all decision-making processes The
opportunity cost of a course of action is the forgone benefit from an alternative action. In order for a benefit to be
forgone, the chosen and alternative actions have to be mutually exclusive. This means that one cannot do both actions
act the same time. Our lives are made up of choices about mutually exclusive actions, from deciding to go to college instead of working
full-time for four years, to choosing between coffee and tea during a quick break. Opportunity cost can be computed in terms of anything –
including money, ice cream cones, love, life experience, friendship, and “achievement”. The concept of opportunity cost reflects the scarcity of
our resources – especially time and money. When we integrate opportunity cost into our decision-making, we ensure the most efficient use of our
scarce resources.
8. Neg flex: its necessary to debate new affs and capture unpredictable addons. We need it – the topic is aff biased, there are innumerable restrictions
that the aff can roll back without affecting energy production, this
counterplan provide a crucial check
9. Hard debate good – forces strategic decisions and makes debate more fun –
they must prove the counterplan makes it impossible for the Aff to compete
10. Not a voter – reject the argument, not the team
A2 Textual Competition: 2NC
- This counterplan is textually competitive – it doesn’t include the ENTIRE
plan text, only a part. This is justified and most counterplans include part of
the plan. Any other interpretation of textual competition makes no sense
because common words such as “the” and “should” are likely to be a part of
every counterplan.
--Forces better plan writing – the aff’s interpretation provides an incentive to
specify as little as possible so any specific CP would not be “textually”
competitive. Forcing the aff to defend the function of the plan leads to better
plan writing
--Textual competition is a bad standard –
A) Eliminates necessary counterplans: Ban the plan and “US should not” do
not compete textually, which disrupts the neg’s ability to say the opposite of
the aff or defend logical alternatives to the plan. That is unpredictable and
creates worse debates.
B) The plan is not the policy that is implemented—it is only a marker for the
law that is passed, so textual competition replaces actual policy analysis.
Otherwise, we win on presumption because the plan doesn’t have all the
words necessary to be U.S. law.
--Easy workarounds – we can simply replace “should” with “ought” or use
other synonyms.
-- Makes word-pics the best counterplan which is terrible unless you are
Harrigan.
--It’s unclear what textual competition even means – the burden is on them to
explain it.
--Playing scrabble: Ignoring the meaning of words and shuffling them around
on paper is inherently bad for education.
--Subjectivity is inevitable: standardizing one part of a debate isn’t enough.
*** Specific Answers
A2 Delay
A2 Delay: 2NC
No Delay - new guidelines have streamlined the EIS process
CEQ 12 (Council on Environmental Quality, the United States Government, Executive Office
of the President, “Council on Environmental Quality Issues Final Guidance to Promote Efficient
Environmental Reviews,” 3-6-12,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/Press_Releases/March_6_2012)
WASHINGTON, DC — The
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) today released final
guidance for Federal agencies on improving the efficiency of their environmental reviews
under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The guidance, part of CEQ’s broader effort to modernize
and reinvigorate Federal agency implementation of NEPA, also supports the goals of President Obama's August 31, 2011 Memorandum on
"Speeding Infrastructure Development through More Efficient and Effective Permitting and Environmental Review." NEPA
ensures
that the Federal Government makes informed and transparent decisions when it evaluates
actions that could have an impact on the environment. NEPA provides a number of
techniques for preparing efficient and timely environmental reviews. The guidance highlights and
clarifies these opportunities to encourage efficient, thorough environmental reviews and quicker and better informed Federal decisions.
“NEPA
ensures the Federal Government makes informed decisions and engages Americans
in decisions that will impact their communities and environment,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White
House Council on Environmental Quality. “This guidance will help agencies improve the quality and
timeliness of their environmental reviews to protect the health of communities and
support a strong American economy.” Currently, CEQ’s NEPA regulations describe
efficiencies that can be applied when preparing E nvironmental I mpact S tatements, the
most intensive type of NEPA environmental review. The guidance clarifies that these efficiencies can and should be
applied to all types of environmental reviews, including Environmental Assessments. For example, the guidance makes it clear that scoping—a
technique to identify the relevant review issues and eliminate unnecessary work—can and should be used for all types of environmental reviews.
The guidance outlines the following principles for agencies to follow when performing NEPA environmental reviews: NEPA
encourages straightforward and concise reviews and documentation; NEPA should be
integrated into project planning to ensure decisions reflect environmental considerations
and avoid delays later in the process rather than be an after-the-fact process that justifies
decisions already made; NEPA reviews should coordinate and take appropriate advantage of existing documents and studies;
NEPA reviews should use early and well-defined scoping to focus environmental reviews on
appropriate issues and avoid unnecessary work; Agencies should develop meaningful and expeditious timelines for
environmental reviews; and Agencies should target their responses to comments to appropriate issues raised . The draft guidance
was available for 45 days of public comment. CEQ reviewed and incorporated public input before finalizing the
guidance. Other Administration efforts to modernize and reinvigorate Federal agency
implementation of NEPA include launching a NEPA pilot program to identify and promote
more efficient ways to do effective environmental reviews that can be replicated across the Federal
Government, and
forming rapid response teams to help expedite the review process for
transportation, transmission and renewable energy projects.
Current EIS Process slow only because of the backlog – the counterplan puts
the EIS at the top of the stack, it could take as little as one day to complete
CBD 10 (Center for Biological Diversity - Defenders of Wildlife - Earthjustice - - The Humane Society of the United States - - The International Center for Technology Assessment - Natural Resources Defense Council - National Wildlife Federation - - Marine Fish Conservation Network – Ocean Conservancy - Sierra Club - - Southern Environmental Law Center - The
Wilderness Society, “ATTENTION: Ted Boling, Senior Counsel, Council on Environmental Quality, RE: Draft NEPA Guidance on Consideration of the Effects of Climate Change and
Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” 5-24-10, http://www.defenders.org/publications/draft_nepa_guidance_on_consideration_of_the_effects_of_climate_change_and_greenhouse_gas_emissions.pdf)
Even if CEQ explicitly clarified in the next iteration of the guidance that as a matter of law,
appropriate consideration of climate change effects is required for the whole panoply of
covered federal actions, the omission of discussion of federal land and resource management actions in this guidance would be
doing a tremendous disservice to the agencies and to the public. Indeed, it would truly be the exception that swallows
the guidance. Over the past three years, based on the statistics available through www.nepa.gov,
proposed federal land and resource management actions account for the overwhelming
majority of Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). From May 18, 2007 through May 7,
2010, 1,504 EISs (draft, final and supplemental) were filed with the Office of Federal Activities at the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Of those, the majority were focused on federal land and resource management actions. 2 Many of
those agencies are clearly looking to CEQ for guidance. For example, recent policy guidance from the Bureau of Land Management
Oregon/Washington State Office states that, “[a]ddressing effects on atmospheric greenhouse gas levels within the scope of NEPA is difficult due
to the lack of explicit regulatory guidance on how to meaningfully apply existing NEPA regulations to this evolving issue . . . ” 3 Pursuant to
NEPA and the Environmental Quality Improvement Act, CEQ’s role is to provide this guidance. It is needed and, in many cases, wanted now.
*Note: 3 years = 1095 days, 1.5 EIS/day
Even the plan’s permitting process could take a year
WEA 12 (Western Energy Alliance, non-profit trade association representing 400 companies,
“2012 Onshore Oil and Natural Gas Legislative Proposals,” 2-1-12,
http://westernenergyalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Western-Energy-Alliance-2012Onshore-Legis-Proposals.pdf)
Since Fiscal Year 2008, yearly appropriations have levied a fee on oil and natural
gas companies for processing Applications for Permit to Drill (APD), despite the fact that companies
Background:
return $66 in royalties and lease revenue for every dollar spent by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) managing the federal oil and natural
gas program. Since
the oil and natural gas is the second largest source of revenue to the federal
government after the IRS, the fee is analogous to charging taxpayers a fee for processing
their tax return. Despite paying a fee, permitting times are extremely long , especially
compared to state permitting which is otherwise indistinguishable from federal permitting.
Companies have not received better APD service as a result of paying the fee, and BLM takes 298 days on average to
process a permit compared to about 45 days for states. Permits can take several years in
many cases. Companies must pay the fee no matter how long the government takes, and even if the permit is denied.
A2 Delay - Ext
New Guidelines – CEQ has streamlined the process, there is better scoping
and specific task forces to speed up the preparation of environmental
assessments. They solve -Stolorow 12 (Adam,“White House CEQ Issues Guidelines to Streamline NEPA Review,” 3-2712,
http://blog.sprlaw.com/2012/03/white-house-ceq-issues-guidelines-to-streamline-nepa-review/)
As part of its ongoing effort to “modernize and reinvigorate” the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA), the White House Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) this month issued
guidelines for streamlining federal environmental reviews under NEPA. While the 15-page guidance
document primarily provides an overview of the time-saving strategies and tools contained in various existing CEQ regulations (rather than
announcing new CEQ policy), it
does clarify that many of the CEQ regulations that specifically refer
to Environmental Impact Statements (“EIS”s) can also be applied to the preparation of Environmental Assessments
(“EA”s). The new guidance specifically endorses the use of scoping for EAs and encourages the
coordination of federal NEPA reviews with state, local, and tribal environmental review processes and with reviews
under other federal laws (such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act). The guidance also
recommends that agencies use their websites to facilitate public review and comment on
draft EAs and EISs when those documents are being circulated for review.
-- Mitigated FONSI solves fast – plus there are 500 EIS per year
Shepherd 97 (Anne, and Christi Bowler, City Planning Program, Georgia Institute of
Technology, “Beyond the requirements: Improving public participation in EIA,” Journal Of
Environmental Planning & Management 40, no. 6: 725, 1997)
Third, a project proponent can short-circuit the public participation process with a
mitigated FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact) in the following way. A project proponent
conducts environmental assessment (EA) to determine if a full EIS is necessary. If the EA reveals significant impacts, the
project proponent can include mitigations to reduce impacts enough to issue a FONSI, and
avoid doing an EIS. As a result, the number of EISs has fallen to less than 500 per year (down from
over 1000 per year in the 1970s), and the number of mitigated FONSIs has skyrocketed. Over 40 000 EAs are prepared
each year and the public is involved in fewer than half (Blaug, 1993, p. 57). It might be argued that better
project planning has led to the reduction of negative impacts at the EA stage and the
reduced need for EISs
(Moore, 1992). However, others suggest that the mitigated FONSI is being used as a way to avoid public
participation (Ensminger & McLean, 1993).
-- Counterplan is faster than that – no delays
Lawrence 3 (David Phillip, Governance Director – Diageo Global Procurement, Environmental
Impact Assessment: Practical Solutions to Recurrent Problems, p. 251)
EIA Expediting and Focusing Approaches
All four jurisdictions have sought to focus on proposals
likely to induce significant impacts and on significant impacts resulting from proposed
actions. They also have strived to expedite the preparation and review of documents and
the implementation of requirements. Screening procedures focus the system on significant proposals. Different types
of assessment, class and categorical assessments, and separate requirements for minor projects address variations in degrees of significance
among proposed actions. Scoping
and significance requirements, procedures, and guidelines enable
EIA systems to zero-in on significant impacts. Time limits, suggested timelines, document
circulation limits, quick-test EIA triggers, and accelerated project planning reduce the
likelihood of delays or extended timelines. Checklists, electronic registries, and clearly defined standards and
performance criteria accelerate the review process. Page limits, combined documents, tiering, cross-referencing and document content, style,
summary, and appendix requirements reduce unnecessary paperwork. Studies of EIA costs and competitiveness and valuation, pricing, and
incentive mechanisms address the overall efficiency of the EIA system.
A2 Agencies Bad
A2 Agency Deception (Karkkanien)
-- No Agency Manipulation - new guidelines solve information overload
Stolorow 12 (Adam,“White House CEQ Issues Guidelines to Streamline NEPA Review,” 3-2712,
http://blog.sprlaw.com/2012/03/white-house-ceq-issues-guidelines-to-streamline-nepa-review/)
As part of its ongoing effort to “modernize and reinvigorate” the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA), the White House Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) this month issued
guidelines for streamlining federal environmental reviews under NEPA. While the 15-page guidance
document primarily provides an overview of the time-saving strategies and tools contained in various existing CEQ regulations (rather than
announcing new CEQ policy), it
does clarify that many of the CEQ regulations that specifically refer
to Environmental Impact Statements (“EIS”s) can also be applied to the preparation of Environmental Assessments
(“EA”s). The new guidance specifically endorses the use of scoping for EAs and encourages the
coordination of federal NEPA reviews with state, local, and tribal environmental review processes and with reviews
under other federal laws (such as the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act). The guidance also
recommends that agencies use their websites to facilitate public review and comment on
draft EAs and EISs when those documents are being circulated for review. Other suggested
strategies and tools for improving efficiency and timeliness in NEPA reviews include the
following: Make NEPA documents more concise : Reviews should not be “encyclopedias of
all applicable information,” but should include only enough discussion to show why more
study is not warranted on insignificant issues. Reviews should be written in plain language
to avoid unnecessary confusion or risk of litigation from ambiguous or opaque analysis.
Integrate reviews early in the planning process: For actions initiated by non-federal entities, federal agencies should guide
applicants to gather and develop environmental information and analyses in advance of
submitting applications. This may include soliciting an environmental report from the applicant to facilitate the lead agency’s
review. Adopt existing EAs or EISs and incorporate material by reference: Subject to public review requirements,
CEQ regulations provide for the adoption of one federal agency’s EIS or portion of that
EIS by another federal agency preparing an EIS or EA. Agencies can also incorporate relevant analyses and
information from existing documents. Set clear time lines for NEPA reviews: CEQ recommends that
agencies establish clear time limits and designate a lead person to shepherd the NEPA
review process.
-- Post impact assessment evaluations solve agency manipulation – New NEPA
guidelines solve
Kalen 10 (Sam, Associate Professor, University of Wyoming College of Law; Visiting
Assistant Professor, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, “Ecology Comes of Age:
NEPA's Lost Mandate,” Fall 2010, Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum, 21 Duke Envtl.
L. & Pol'y F. 113)
Probing Congress's intent in passing NEPA remains acutely relevant today. To begin with,
aside from the pedagogical goal of ensuring that what Congress accomplished in NEPA does
not remain relegated to a fading past, emphasizing NEPA's fundamental objective of incorporating
ecological principles into public administration highlights the statute's flexibility to adapt
to modern ecological concerns. Two implicit and related assumptions existed when many of the modern environmental laws
were first passed: first, there was a presumption that the natural environment encompassed a static ecological unit free from human interference -
that is, we can identify and describe a stable geographic area in equilibrium over time and
not influenced by human development. n25 Second is a corollary presumption; that we can
effectively take a snapshot of the environment - that is, describe an environmental baseline
both spatially and temporally - and predict how human actions might alter that picture. But
ecosystems are not in equilibrium; they are complex, dynamic and quite possibly chaotic. n26 Predicting the precise impact of [*120] decisions,
therefore, is problematic and, absent an ability to employ adaptive management techniques, our judgments are but educated and statistically
driven guesses that may risk unanticipated effects. n27 Yet
many of our modern environmental and natural
resource programs presume such predictive ability. Robert Glicksman, for example, describes how our public land
management laws all assumed a "natural equilibrium" and that since these laws were passed "the science of ecology experienced a 'paradigm
shift.'" n28 Bradley
Karkkainen similarly writes that "we continue to muddle through with
statutory and regulatory frameworks predicated upon outdated and erroneous midtwentieth-century assumptions about the ease of acquiring and processing the information
required for sound environmental decision making." n29 Both NEPA and the Endangered Species Act ("ESA"), in
particular, are presently administered under the classic paradigm. The ESA, for instance, assumes that we can predict from a snapshot of an
"environmental baseline" what the [*121] direct and indirect effects of an action will be when "added" to that baseline. n30 And Karkkainen
argues that NEPA requires too much clairvoyance and we need to focus on follow-up monitoring, empirical testing, and adaptive management to
mitigate unanticipated or incorrectly assumed impacts. n31 If
we accept that those who orchestrated the passage
of NEPA intended that the Act would mandate environmentally sound decisions and
enshrine ecology into the national agenda, the Act can be administered flexibly to respond
to evolving ecological and other principles. To begin with, to the extent that modern ecology recognizes the difficulty
with predicting the impact of decisions on continually changing ecosystems, NEPA can employ adaptive management
as urged by Karkkainen, or provide the ability to continuously monitor, assess, and
readjust decisions based on the cycling of new information. n32 CEQ recently nudged in this
direction, when it recognized that our "environment ... is evolving and not static" and, as
such, " monitoring can help decision-makers adapt to changed circumstances." n33 Moreover,
elevating NEPA to the status intended by Congress diminishes the need for pursuing alternative creative legal or political solutions, which are
often difficult to achieve. Alyson Flournoy, Heather Halter, and Christina Storz, for instance, suggest that, in lieu of pursuing NEPA's flexibility,
we explore passing a National [*122] Environmental Legacy Act with a substantive mandate to protect legacy resources for future generations.
n34 The realities of politics unfortunately make this difficult to achieve. And
the authors' dialogue about NEPA's
shortcomings arguably overlooks the fact that NEPA can be administered in a manner
similar to their proposed Legacy Act. Similarly, Mary Wood, for instance, opines that our 1970's-era environmental laws
cannot cope with our present crises and calls for a revolutionary change in our legal approach to environmental issues. She suggests that a
principle of "Nature's Trust," imbued with constitutional overtones, serve as the foundation for a paradigm shift toward a legal regime whose goal
will mandate protecting our common natural resources. n35 But again, this is, in part, what Congress expected to accomplish when, in the fall of
1969, it delivered NEPA
to President Nixon. Additionally, Congress's decision to make ecology
part of the national agenda offers the necessary latitude for agencies to incorporate
modern scientific tools for better decision-making . n36 Agencies already regularly employ
Geographic Information Systems ("GIS") in their analyses, allowing them to better
identify ecological resources. The development of "ecosystem services" as an approach to
ascribe value to natural systems is gaining sufficient currency that it could soon prove
fundamental in the NEPA process n37 and be [*123] particularly helpful in ensuring that
agencies make environmentally sound - and not merely informed - decisions . Robert Fischman, for
instance, suggests that the Environmental Protection Agency could use its section 309 Clean Air Act authority to provide guidance on
incorporating ecosystem services into NEPA documents. n38 Of course, CEQ could accomplish this as well and receive deference in any
subsequent judicial arena. n39 As these and other new ideas surface,
addressing our society's evolving threats.
we need to appreciate NEPA's resilience for
A2: Biased Decision-Making (Rossi)
EIS Process eliminates biased decisionmaking Tai 5 (Stephanie, Visiting Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law;
J.D., Georgetown University Law Center; Ph.D., “Three Asymmetries of Informed
Environmental Decisionmaking,” Fall 2005, 78 Temp. L. Rev. 659)
More specific to environmental actions, NEPA, modeled to some extent upon the APA,
provides the general public access to federal decisions that might significantly [*674] affect
the environment, beyond the promulgation of rules. n98 According to the Supreme Court, NEPA's mandate is to
insure a "fully informed and well-considered decision," n99 but courts of appeals have viewed NEPA's goal as
"fostering both informed decision-making and informed public participation ." n100 Regulations
promulgated by the Council on Environmental Quality ("CEQ"), the agency in charge of administering NEPA, further elaborate on how federal
agencies are to comply with NEPA. Under
these regulations, an agency must prepare an environmental
impact statement ("EIS") for "major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of
the human environment." n101 For example, the CEQ regulations require an agency to provide notice to the public of its plans to
prepare an EIS, n102 to solicit public input about both the scope of the issues and the alternatives to be considered in the EIS, n103 and to obtain
public comments on both the draft EIS n104 and the final EIS. n105 By requiring a federal agency to present all pertinent information to its
decision-making process in its EIS, courts have interpreted NEPA as providing a public right of access to the environmental information gathered
by the responsible agency. n106 The
CEQ regulations also attempt to promote agency deliberation by
requiring an agency to respond to the comments it receives on the draft EIS when it
prepares the final EIS. n107 In addition, if there are "significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental
concerns and bearing on the proposed action or its impacts," the CEQ regulations require that an agency prepare
a supplemental EIS, thus mandating consideration of new information. n108 Like the APA,
NEPA encourages agencies to study the effects and reasons behind [*675] their decisions
more thoroughly than they might have without the statute. For example, the Army Corps of Engineers
("Corps") and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a state agency, conducted various reviews under NEPA regarding their "plan to
construct a multipurpose dam on the North Fork of the Hughes River, thereby creating a 305-acre lake in the North Fork area of northwestern
West Virginia." n109 The
EPA, other agencies, and individuals informed the Corps that the dam
project could lead to a zebra mussel infestation in the North Fork, which in turn could have
negative environmental consequences. n110 According to the EPA, such an infestation could be avoided without the dam
project. n111 The Corps nevertheless decided not to prepare a supplemental EIS, relying upon two telephone conversations with its water quality
employees, who indicated that zebra mussel infestation was possibly inevitable anyway, with or without the dam project. n112 The
Fourth
Circuit reversed and remanded the EPA's decision not to prepare a supplemental EIS,
holding that the Corps needed to address directly the expert evidence furnished to it. n113 On
remand, the agencies "sponsored two expert studies ," had an expert comment on the
second study, compiled a report regarding zebra mussel infestation at a lake with conditions similar to those anticipated for the dam
project, "drafted comprehensive responses to comments received in response" to prepare supplemental EIS for the dam project, and decided to
develop a monitoring plan for zebra mussel density and distribution, despite concluding that zebra mussel infestation was unlikely. n114 This
time, the Fourth Circuit upheld the Corps' analysis, holding that the Corps "took a sufficient "hard look' at the issue of zebra mussel infestation in
conformity with our earlier instructions on remand ... ." n115 The
significance of NEPA in promoting the
production of both new scientific studies and information is demonstrated by the fact that
Corps would not have performed the newer studies without the earlier court decision. Also,
like the APA, NEPA offers an avenue for parties to provide additional information to agencies.
When the U.S. Forest Service considered "amending forest land and management plans in the Southwestern Region to incorporate guidelines for
habitat management of the northern goshawk," environmental
organizations submitted comments on the
Forest Service's draft EIS arguing that the northern goshawk is a foraging specialist, thus needing a habitat that provides mature,
tall trees or old-growth stands, rather than a habitat generalist, as was assumed in the Forest Service's plans, as [*676] well as in the management
recommendations relied upon in the draft EIS. n116 To
support their argument, the environmental
organizations included references to "numerous goshawk studies that were not discussed in
the [management recommendations relied upon in the draft EIS]." n117 When the organizations felt that
the Forest Service inadequately responded to their comments, they challenged the Forest Service's determination in court. n118 The Ninth
Circuit agreed that the Forest Service's response was inadequate because the final EIS
failed to disclose and discuss the responsible opposing scientific views. n119 Although the Forest Service
claimed that other documents in its planning record demonstrated that it directly responded to the issue of goshawk habitat
specialization/generalization, the court found that claim insufficient to satisfy NEPA's disclosure and response requirement. n120
A2 Too Much Info
A2 Overload (Rossi)
This evidence doesn’t apply --- most of it is about how the process is
undemocratic, which links more to the plan and has no impact --Their evidence strongly concludes Neg --- the best option is to reform
participation --- not to shut it out --- plan collapses transparency and
accountability of policy
Rossi 97 (Jim, Assistant Professor and Dore Professor of State Administrative Law – Florida
State University College of Law, “Participation Run Amok: The Costs of Mass Participation for
Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking”, Northwestern University Law Review, Fall, 92 Nw. U.L.
Rev. 173, Lexis)
VI.
Conclusion
[A] major task of any society is to create a social environment in which self-interest has reason to be enlightened. 393 Modern political theory has
consistently erred in favor of enhanced participation as a solution to the perceived failure of government. The ideals embraced by modern
bureaucratic deliberative democrats attempt to make the agency decisionmaking process something more than rational jargon or confrontational
EIS process , and sunshine laws illustrate how
some types of participation, if not tempered, may defeat the goals of administrative process.
exchange politics. However, the examples of citizen suits, NEPA's
Participation may also cause deliberative decisionmaking, particularly [*248] as encouraged by deliberative democracy, to lapse into
expertocratic or pluralist decisionmaking cultures. Such
mechanisms, it would seem, should be a part of
contemporary discussions aimed at reforming the administrative process. For example,
Congress should consider enhancing agency discretion to supervise enforcement and
policymaking agendas, rather than encourage private interests dissatisfied with agency decisions to bypass the administrative process and sue in
court. While efforts to enhance the amount of information available to agency decisionmakers and participants, such as NEPA's EIS process, are
well intentioned, Congress should proceed cautiously before imposing rigorous public participation and information-gathering requirements as a
part of cost or risk assessment mandates. In addition, Congress should take seriously the problems the Sunshine Act poses for multi-member
agencies and consider adopting a provision that will allow pre-decisional deliberations outside of the sunshine or closed discussions so long as an
agency has publicly deliberated about the necessity of a closed meeting. Agency approaches to managing participation can often be understood as
enhancing, not diminishing, the quality and democracy of their decisionmaking processes. The
point of this entire exercise
has been to explore whether, in any circumstances, we might justify regulating, instead of
blindly increasing, participation in agency decisionmaking. Balanced participation may
provide hope for improving ordinary deliberative democratic decisionmaking by
restoring agency control over agendas, increasing accountability and neutrality. It may
increase the quality of decisionmakers' analysis of information and discourage strategic
uses of information by participants. Finally, it may encourage collegial decisionmaking in
multi-member agencies. Moreover, regulation of participation may also help to ensure that
decisionmakers, as an institutional matter, do not select a sub-optimal decisionmaking
culture. Limiting participation alone will not necessarily make agency decisionmaking
more deliberative if it also works to exclude perspectives that do not have representation in
the administrative process. However, although for many individuals and interest groups too little meaningful participation
currently occurs, 394 this should not justify embracing broad participatory reforms for those who already participate actively in agency decisions.
Limitations on participation, by contrast, will likely jump start a discussion about who represents whom in the administrative process. To
extent that this forces a shift in emphasis towards the issue of representation, it holds
promise to make administrative procedure more democratic than blindly embracing
the
participation.
[*249] On the other hand, to the extent that we feel uneasy regulating participation in bureaucratic decisionmaking,
another option exists: re-evaluate deliberative democracy as an account of bureaucracy. But, even a re-evaluation of deliberative democracy as a
theory of administrative law must address whether we can have anything at all approaching democracy in agency governance absent deliberation.
Aff Answers
A2 EIS CP: 2AC
1) Perm - Do Both
2) Perm – Do the CP - acceptably within the range of “should”
GAO 8 (Government Accounting Office, “Exposure Draft of Proposed Changes to the
International Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal Auditing,” 3-31-8,
http://www.gao.gov/govaud/cl_iia080331.pdf)
The second sentence of the “must” definition used in the exposure draft instructions is more aligned with the definition of “should” as used by
other standards setters, including GAO. The
definition of “should” as used by GAO, which is intended to be consistent with
a presumptively mandatory requirement and contains
the following language: “…in rare circumstances, auditors and audit organizations may depart from
a presumptively mandatory requirement provided they document their justification for the
departure and how the alternative procedures performed in the circumstances were sufficient to
achieve the objectives of the presumptively mandatory requirement .” We suggest that the IIA move the
second sentence of the “must” definition to the “should” definition. The definition of “must” needs to be clear that
“must” indicates an unconditional requirement and that another procedure cannot substitute
for a “must.” Also, we suggest adding language to the definition of “should” to indicate that substituting another procedure for a “should”
the definition used by the AICPA and the PCAOB, indicates
requirement is allowed only if the auditors document their justification for the departure from the “should” and how the alternative procedures
performed in the circumstances were sufficient to achieve the objectives of the “should” requirement. The
IIA should review every
“must” requirement in the Standards to determine whether there are acceptable alternatives to the
procedure; if so, “should” is the appropriate word .
3) Perm - Do the Plan then engage in an environmental review
4) No impact - Environmental factors improving
PRI 5 (Pacific Research Institute, “America Makes Significant Improvements in Overall
Environmental Quality”, 4-19, http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/rel/2005/pr05-04-19.html)
have reason to be optimistic about the nation’s environmental progress
and its future health, according to the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, released today by the
SAN FRANCISCO – Americans
Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The tenth anniversary edition of the Index reveals that
environmental quality continues to improve in many key areas , including air pollution,
mercury emissions, wetlands, and forestlands. The trends mirror the feeling among Americans that the overall state
of the environment is improving. According to an April 2005 PRI Harris Interactive poll, 56 percent of respondents revealed they
are optimistic about the state of the environment and future progress on environmental quality. “The findings of this year’s Index may
surprise many environmental activists,” said Dr. Steven F. Hayward, senior fellow at PRI, F. K. Weyerhaeuser fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute, and author of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. “ The
environment is perhaps the most
successful public policy story of the last 30 years and the good news is getting noticed by the public.” Among the
environmental quality improvements highlighted in the Index are the following: Air Pollution has fallen to the lowest level
ever recorded. Virtually the entire nation has achieved clean air standards for four of the six “criteria”
pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act (carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and lead). In addition, air quality in the 10 largest
metropolitan areas – five of which are in California – has improved by more than 53 percent since 1980. Despite widely-held beliefs, there
continues to be very little correlation between regional air pollution rates and asthma rates. In fact, while air pollution rates have consistently
declined, asthma rates have increased. In the U.S., asthma rates in children under the age of five rose more than 160 percent between 1980 and
1994 – a period when air pollution rates fell from 25 to 80 percent. Mercury
Emissions have declined by 45 percent
during the 1990s, most of which is due to the phase-out of municipal and medical waste incineration. As a result, consumers can feel
comfortable consuming fish, such as salmon and trout. Recent concerns about the safety of fish due to high mercury levels have abated thanks to
guidance published in 2004 by the EPA which emphasized that “for most people, the risk from mercury by eating fish and shellfish is not a health
concern.” Forestland in the eastern half of the United States is
increasing at a rate of one million acres a year. Wetlands
continue to multiply, with a growth of 26,000 acres a year. Car Emissions, one of the largest contributors to air pollution, will
be reduced by more than 80 percent over the next 25 years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. According to an
April PRI Harris Interactive poll, 74 percent of respondents revealed their belief that cars are less polluting now than they were 25 years ago.
“Opinion is now becoming an accurate reflection of reality,” said Dr. Hayward. “We’re gratified that the Index, now in its tenth edition, has
helped contribute to this turnaround.” Toxic Releases have declined since 1988, a sign of increasing efficiency and the “dematerialization” of our economy. Global Warming’s “hockey-stick” graph, believed to be one of the leading indicators of global warming, is now
being called “rubbish.” Scientists have shown that the graph’s underlying equation would generate the same result for any series of random
numbers. “In the 1990s most Americans believed environmental quality was declining,” said Dr. Hayward. “But now, with
a decade of
compiled research in the Index, we’ve found that it is nearly impossible to paint a grim, doomand-gloom picture anymore. The facts speak for themselves, and the facts are hugely
encouraging. ”
5) CP solves none of the aff –
A. Delay - EIS takes forever – around 7 years each
WEA 11 (Western Energy Alliance, “Top Ten Ways the Federal Government is Preventing
Onshore
Oil and Natural Gas Production,” May 2011, http://westernenergyalliance.org/wpcontent/uploads/2011/06/Western-Energy-Alliance-Prevention-of-Federal-Onshore-ProductionDetailed1.pdf)
Project Approvals: Whether a small project under fifty wells or a large one with
thousands, the Department of the Interior (DOI) is simply not approving oil and natural
gas projects. Environmental analysis must occur before companies can even apply for drilling permits. Companies submit
project proposals to the government, which then completes the analysis in accordance with
the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), but paid for by companies. • The
government is taking more than seven years to complete NEPA analyses. To compound the problem,
many projects are currently experiencing indefinite delays with no realistic plan by the government to clear the backlog in NEPA project
approvals. • Small
Environmental Assessments (EA) often take over four years, and large
Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) regularly take over seven years, despite White House
Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) guidance that EAs should take three months and EISs twelve months. • Between 1994 and 2005, the
government took a little over three years on average to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Since 2005, the average time is just
with that poor record – an almost doubling of government inefficiency – it
is likely that many major projects across the West will far exceed that timeframe, as many
large projects are on indefinite hold for a variety of excuses from the federal government. •
under six years. Even
Without project NEPA approvals, a company cannot even start to drill and create jobs. Delays are preventing project NEPA approval representing
about 21,000 and 17,500 wells in Utah and Wyoming respectively. Each rig running represents about 150 direct and indirect jobs, and each well
drilled creates about 26 jobs and generates about $250,000 in annual government revenue. • According to an Interior Department Lease
Utilization Report, about 43% of leased acreage is in production or exploration, a much higher percentage than their original messaging. Of the
remaining acreage, Western Energy Alliance estimates that about half is undergoing preparatory work, such as NEPA analysis and permitting.
B. Agency Bias – no accountability
Rossi 97 (Jim, Assistant Professor and Dore Professor of State Administrative Law – Florida
State University College of Law, “Participation Run Amok: The Costs of Mass Participation for
Deliberative Agency Decisionmaking”, Northwestern University Law Review, Fall, 92 Nw. U.L.
Rev. 173, Lexis)
However, citizen
suits may work to undermine accountability and to impair neutrality important goals of the expertocratic and deliberative democracy models. In contrast to the pluralist
understanding of agencies, which "threatens to ... reflect[] private whim," n245 expertocratic and deliberative
democracy decisionmaking models foresee a more independent role for agency
administrators and staff. n246 For deliberative democrats, for example, although the requirement of deliberation "does not
exclude compromises among those with different conceptions of appropriate government ends," it does "demand that representatives engage in
some form of discussion about those ends." n247 In order to do so, politically ac- [*221] countable decisionmakers must retain supervision over
agency agendas. n248 Agency-supervised agenda setting is important for two reasons: first, it provides accountability; second, it ensures a
decisionmaking setting that is conducive to neutral analysis. To
begin with, citizen suits dilute the direct
accountability of agencies to formal political institutions. Unlike Congress and the
executive branch, agencies are not directly accountable to the political process. The supervision of
agenda setting by politically accountable agency decisionmakers provides a linkage between agency policy choices and the political process. As
nonaccountable private enforcers sue under citizen suits, the President and Congress lose
some of their ability to control agency decisions through their oversight functions, which are
integral to the deliberative decisionmaking process. n249 Thus, by encouraging immediate participation in courts
by affected individuals and entities, such mechanisms may have the effect of crowding out
participation through other institutional channels. n250 For example, one of the President's most important
constitutional duties is the responsibility to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." n251 A unitary executive is important in the
policymaking context for several reasons. n252 First, access to the President as a mechanism for influencing policy ensures that the political
process is open to any concerned [*222] citizen who disagrees with the steps an agency has taken to address public problems. n253 Second, if
agency decisionmakers are accountable both to Congress and the executive branch, the opportunities for participants to avail themselves of
strategic behavior, causing delay and, potentially, capturing the agency decisionmaking process, are minimized. n254 Third,
and most
important to policymaking, giving control over policy decisions to the President brings
significant control and coordination advantages. n255 Further, while agency-supervised agenda
setting provides for a certain degree of accountability, or responsiveness, to the political
process, it also helps to ensure that the decisionmaking process is not entirely political . This
is important for the operation of the expertocratic model, to the extent it reinforces rationality in the decisionmaking process, and the deliberative
democracy model, to the extent it facilitates consideration of scientifically informed alternatives in the deliberative process. As described by
Thomas McGarity, agency
experts are often required to assume the role of policy advocates in
order to minimize political backlash against an agency's decision. However, this does not
necessarily create a sufficient layer of insulation to allow rational or scientific dialogue to
flourish. Expert decisionmaking is grounded in facts and analysis, and must maintain some degree of neutrality if it is to take scientific and
professional norms seriously. To maintain neutrality, agency experts should limit their role to
informing politically accountable decisionmakers about how various options work toward
achieving the goals politically accountable decisionmakers have selected and prioritized. n256
Neutrality depends, in this account, upon effective agenda setting norms within an agency that encourage politically accountable decisionmakers,
not policy analysts, to select and rank goals. With respect to the selection of broad subjects for agency discussion, often referred to as agenda
items, John Kingdon - in contrast to McGarity - suggests that the top-down model of the executive branch is a more accurate description of actual
agency decisions. By
and large, political appointees - not politically insulated experts on an
agency's staff - are responsible for setting agendas or determining the subjects to which
subordinates will be paying attention. n257 Once policy or enforcement agendas are [*223] set, career bureaucrats are
better-positioned than political appointees to deal on a day-to-day basis with such issues because they have more longevity, better expertise, and
Citizen suits
have an adverse effect on ordinary expertocratic and deliberative democracy
decisionmaking cultures to the extent that they interfere with agency-supervised agenda
the relationships with interest groups, committees, and other agencies to forge sound and accountable decisions. n258
setting . For example, it has been observed that private enforcement of water pollution laws through citizen suits has not been directed, as
intended, against local violations that tend to escape EPA enforcement. n259 By duplicating the EPA's already effective regulation of point
source pollution, citizen suit provisions may have led to over-enforcement.
6) Conditioning CP’s are illegit and a voting issue –
A. Education – trades off with topic discussion, forces affs to the margins of
the topic, no solvency evidence for the counterplan.
B. Fairness – moots the entire 1AC allowing the neg to pick the focus of the
debate, coupled with the block this is an insurmountable obstacle for the aff.
7) Counterplan fails to protect the environment –
A. Counterproductive – one shot assessments prevent agency evolution,
produce bad info
Karkkainen 2 (Bradley C., Associate Professor, Columbia Law School, “Toward a Smarter
NEPA: Monitoring And Managing Government's Environmental Performance,” May, 2002, 102
Colum. L. Rev. 903)
Yet there is a crucial difference. Under
most circumstances, we get feedback from our environment
that allows us to identify our errors, adjust course, and move on. The corporate CEO, for example, can
constantly reevaluate and revise plans and strategies as conditions change because a well managed firm provides continuously updated
information on market conditions and revised predictions of future trends. In contrast,
NEPA's one-time-only
comprehensive prediction requirement in effect says to agency managers, "Go ahead and
make your decision today based on your best informed current prediction; if it turns out that you are
wrong, neither you nor anyone else need know, or care." No self respecting corporate CEO would countenance such a management philosophy.
Other pathologies are associated with NEPA's insistence on an unattainable level of
clairvoyance. The rigors of EIS production , coupled with the risk of judicial reversal, may
induce the agency to delay any action until "all the facts are in" - the familiar problem of "paralysis by
analysis." n116 Indeed, it appears that this is often the chief purpose and effect [*930] of NEPA litigation. n117 CEQ regulations attempt to
address this problem by explicitly acknowledging that uncertainties pervade the predictive analyses required by NEPA. n118 The
regulatory response, however, is to establish a triage system aimed at getting the agency
through the one-time NEPA analysis. If it is feasible and not prohibitively costly to obtain the missing information, the
agency must do so. If that is not feasible, the agency must state what information is unavailable or incomplete, summarize the relevant scientific
evidence, and do its best to estimate the impacts anyway, using methods "generally accepted in the scientific community." n119 In
short,
the approach of the CEQ regulations is to endorse reliance on low quality predictions or
"guesstimates " when higher quality information is unavailable or prohibitively costly. Courts
are generally quite deferential to agencies when it comes to accepting uncertainties in an EIS, n120 although some courts would apparently insist
on production of an EIS in the case of highly uncertain environmental harms, even if the circumstances suggest that the production of the
EIS
would yield little additional information. n121 [*931] Alternatively, the demand for a one-shot predictive assessment
may encourage the agency to proceed with false confidence in its own predictive powers
when a sounder course, given the uncertainties, might be to develop a range of contingency plans or "adaptive mitigation"
measures, to be triggered by the information produced by monitoring actual outcomes. n122 More generally, NEPA's one-shot
approach assumes that an agency's responsibility for assessment and evaluation of the
environmental impacts of management decisions ends upon completion of the predecision
EA or EIS, rather than following the agency continuously throughout its involvement in the project or program. n123 An agency
that does not monitor the actual environmental consequences of its activities will have
little capacity to develop useful performance benchmarks against which to measure present and proposed
activities - for example, by comparing actual results against baseline conditions, performance targets (including those predicted in the EIS), or
other projects. n124 Consequently,
it will have an underdeveloped capacity to evaluate and learn
from its own experience and to improve its performance over time. n125 Similarly, in the absence of
ongoing monitoring, interested actors outside the agency, including Congress, the White House, other agencies, and the
concerned public, will be unable to evaluate the agency's actual environmental performance, or to
assess the quality of the predictive [*932] judgments contained in its EA/EIS statements. Lack of continuing accountability
for "postproject" (i.e., actual) environmental performance may also reinforce the tendency on
the part of some agencies to view the NEPA process as simply a pro forma paperwork
exercise , rather than an integral part of ongoing management responsibilities. n126 Finally, the
NEPA once-and-for-all approach is self-limiting even as a matter of pure predictive
judgment, insofar as an agency that fails to verify its predictions against monitored results
will be less likely to identify and correct errors in the assumptions and models upon which its predictions are based,
or otherwise to improve its own predictive capacity. n127
B.) No enforcement – bad policies go forward based on biased information
Davis 6 (Wendy B., Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Albany Law School, The Fox is
Guarding the Henhouse: Enhancing the Role of the EPA in FONSI Determinations Pursuant to
NEPA, 2006, 39 Akron L. Rev. 35)
The EPA and other environmental agencies should play an increased role in the preparation of the EIS. NEPA
requires the
preparation of an EIS when the facts alleged, if true, "show that the proposed project would
materially degrade any aspect of environmental quality." n130 The EIS must include a discussion of the
environmental impact of the proposed action and any reasonable alternative actions. n131 The lead agency preparing the EIS
must consult with and obtain the comments of any Federal agency which has jurisdiction by
law or special expertise with respect to any environmental impact involved ... . Such statement and the comments ... shall be made available to the
President, the Council on Environmental Quality, and to the public... . n132 [*53] Mandating consultation and comments is
not the same
as requiring approval. Many projects proceed over the protests of the EPA and other
environmental agencies, n133 and many times consultation is never requested because the
lead agency determines that no significant environmental impact is likely. n134 Although the EPA has
some authority to review the final EIS and refer concerns to the CEQ, n135 other environmental agencies lack such authority. More importantly,
this final review authority is limited to the information contained in the EIS, including the
data and analysis prepared by the lead agency. Environmental experts may differ on a lead agency's analysis, testing
procedures, and data gathering methods; therefore it is important for environmental experts to be involved earlier in the EIS preparation process.
The EIS may be drafted by an agency that has neither environmental expertise , nor an
incentive to evaluate environmental impact with any greater concern than economic
benefits. Even a contractor hired to construct a project has been deemed an appropriate
party to draft an EIS. n136 An appraiser of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was deemed to be an
appropriate person to prepare an environmental assessment and make a FONSI determination for a proposed low income apartment project. n137
The Navy prepared an EIS proposing sonar testing, which has been proven to cause
whales and marine mammals to die by beaching themselves, without any reasonable
alternatives included in the EIS. n138 This bias and lack of environmental expertise is an
obvious detriment to a meaningful environmental assessment. In addition to a lack of environmental
expertise in the lead agency, another problem with the drafting of the EIS is the use of professional
[*54] authors, where the lead agency hires a consultant for the purpose of paper compliance.
The hired expert may be more skilled in paper compliance than in the management and mitigation of harm to the environment. It is not
reasonable to expect a hired contractor to undermine the desires of its employer by emphasizing adverse environmental harm or criticizing the
proposed project. n139
Perm Do CP: 1AR
-- Strong admonition – not mandatory
Taylor and Howard 5 (Michael, Resources for the Future and Julie, Partnership to Cut Hunger
and Poverty in Africa, “Investing in Africa's future: U.S. Agricultural development assistance for
Sub-Saharan Africa”, 9-12, http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001784/5-USagric_Sept2005_Chap2.pdf)
Other legislated DA earmarks in the FY2005 appropriations bill are smaller and more targeted: plant biotechnology research and development
($25 million), the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad program ($20 million), women’s leadership capacity ($15 million), the International
Fertilizer Development Center ($2.3 million), and clean water treatment ($2 million). Interestingly, in the wording of the bill, Congress uses the
term shall in connection with only two of these eight earmarks; the others say that USAID should make the prescribed amount available. The
difference between shall and should may have legal significance—one is clearly mandatory
while the other is a strong admonition —but it makes little practical difference in USAID’s need to
comply with the congressional directive to the best of its ability.
“Should” allows deviation from the plan
IIA 10 (The Institute of Internal Auditors, “International Standards for the Professional Practice
of Internal Auditing (Standards),” 2010, http://www.theiia.org/guidance/standards-andguidance/ippf/standards/)
Should The Standards use the word “should” where conformance is expected unless, when
applying professional judgment, circumstances justify deviation.
Solvency: 1AR
Agencies provide bad information in the EIS
Karkkainen 2 (Bradley C., Associate Professor, Columbia Law School, “Toward a Smarter
NEPA: Monitoring And Managing Government's Environmental Performance,” May, 2002, 102
Colum. L. Rev. 903)
As we have seen, the "detailed statement" must include a copious volume, detail, and variety of information to survive judicial scrutiny. But
neither the statute nor the implementing regulations offer any discernible standard concerning the quality of the information that must be
produced. 77 Nor, for understandable reasons, have courts been inclined to impose one. In reviewing the substantive adequacy of an EIS, courts
generally use a flexible "rule of reason" standard to determine whether the EIS contains a "reasonably thorough discussion of the significant
aspects of probable environmental consequences," with the goal of ensuring that the agency has taken a "hard look" at the environmental impacts.
78 This standard is highly variable in application, 79 but the general thrust is to focus on the exhaustiveness of the inquiry, rather than the
accuracy or quality of the information - which courts in any event are not well situated to determine. Courts
generally defer to
agency expertise on such [*922] questions as what weight to give to various pieces of scientific
evidence, 80 especially if they implicate the agency's "area of special expertise." 81 Courts have also held that even
demonstrably flawed data or analyses need not be fatal to the EIS. As one explained,
"'When an agency relies on a number of findings, one or more of which are erroneous, we must
reverse and remand only when there is a significant chance that but for the errors the agency
might have reached a different result.'" 82 The upshot is that agencies have an incentive to
overstuff the EIS with information from every available source, regardless of its quality, so as
to achieve a protective layer of redundancy or "overkill" while at the same time inoculating
themselves against the charge that they overlooked relevant information. 83 Critical comments
from NGOs, academic experts, EPA, or other federal agencies at the scoping and draft EIS stages
quickly translate into an even more bloated final document, as agency managers seek to incorporate, recharacterize,
or rebut relevant details of the critiques. If high quality information is included, it may be diluted or simply lost under the avalanche of lesser
quality information, vague case-specific analysis, marginally germane off-the-shelf studies, reports and data sets, and boilerplate cribbed from
previous EISs. 84 [*923] The net result, then, is that EISs occur rarely and sporadically, and, when they are produced, tend
of exhaustive compilations of recycled information, sometimes of dubious quality. 85
to consist
Delay: 1AR
New Guidelines don’t address the delayed implementation of the counterplan
Reitze 12 (Arnold W. Reitze, Jr., Professor of Law, S.J. Quinney College of Law, “The Role of
NEPA In Fossil Fuel Resource Development And Use In The Western United States,” Boston
College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 39 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 283)
The purpose of NEPA is to develop better information for federal agency decision-makers
that will lead to better decisions. n1001 NEPA generally accomplishes this goal, but at a
substantial cost in time and money . n1002 A 2003 federal report estimated that a typical EIS required six
years to complete at a cost of $ 250,000 to $ 2,000,000. n1003 A typical EA required nine to eighteen months to prepare at a
cost of $ 50,000 to $ 200,000. n1004 Often, the applicant for a federal benefit pays these costs because the agencies shift the financial burden of
compliance. n1005 If
NEPA compliance requires an analysis of climate change impacts, especially
if the analysis includes dealing with indirect effects as well as cumulative impacts, costs
could increase substantially. n1006 An issue to be considered is whether the increased costs and other challenges of NEPA
compliance would produce information that results in better [*386] decisions. n1007 On December 7, 2011, the CEQ released
draft guidance aimed at fostering efficiency and timeliness in the NEPA process, but it is
unknown whether this will be effective in modifying how agencies approach their NEPA
responsibilities. n1008
Delay prevents environmental solvency
Kendall 4 (Katie, “The Long and Winding "Road": How NEPA Noncompliance for
Preservation Actions Protects the Environment,” 2004, 69 Brooklyn L. Rev. 663)
When it enacted NEPA, Congress recognized that the environment should become a
priority in the nation's decision making. For approximately two hundred years, governmental policies were designed to
enhance production and increase monetary gains. To that end, the United States has become one of the most prosperous nations in the world;
however, this "material well-being" has come at the price of a swiftly declining natural environment. n132 "Today
it is clear that
we cannot continue on this course. Our natural resources - our air, water, and land - are
not unlimited. We no longer have the [*683] margins for error that we once enjoyed." n133 The legislative history of NEPA suggests that
an attempt to slow down or stop environmental degradation in its tracks is NEPA's ultimate purpose. Unfortunately, the time it
may take to file an EIS and later defend its soundness in court subverts environmental
preservation . The conservation measures of the Roadless Rule were delayed from October 1999
until December 2002 n134 because of the time it took to prepare an EIS and the numerous lawsuits
regarding the quality of the EIS. In this case, the time constraints associated with an EIS
actually hindered environmental protection, as human damage and modification to the
ecosystem could continue. Accordingly, prohibiting human modification of the environment in many cases will preserve and
protect the environment, which, under the trust analogy, will not trigger the accounting duties of a trustee. For certain projects, the
EIS process could last up to twelve years . n135 The significant environmental damage that
can occur during that twelve-year period may be irreparable. In such a case, the trustee should be able to
deviate from its accounting requirements in order to preserve the land for the greater good for generations to come. n136