1NC

David R.
, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at
Swansea University Wales, and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, 2012,
International Drug Control, Consensus Fractured, p. 315
Another strategy would be for Parties to simply ignore the treaties
¶ or certain parts of them. In this way, they could institute any policies deemed to be necessary at the national level, including for example the regulation of the cannabis market and the introduction of a licensing system for domestic producers. Disregarding all or selected components of the treaties
, however, raises serious issues beyond the realm of drug control
.
The possibility of nations unilaterally ignoring drug control treaty commitments could threaten the stability of the
.
As a consequence states may be wary of simply opting ¶ out. Drawing on provisions within the 1969 Vienna Convention on the ¶ Law of
Treaties, some international lawyers argue that all treaties can
¶
naturally cease to be binding when a fundamental change of circum-
¶ stances has occurred since the time of signing or when an 'error' of
¶
fact or situation at the time of conclusion has later been identified by
¶
a party."" Both are lines of reasoning pursued in 1971 by Leinwand in
¶
relation to removing cannabis from the Single
Convention.
¶ Bearing in mind the dramatic changes in circumstances in the nature, ¶ extent and understanding of the 'world drug problem' since the 1960s,
¶
the fundamental change of circumstances approach could be applied to
¶
the drug conventions or parts thereof. It has been noted how this doc-
¶
trine of rebus sic stantibus has largely fallen into misuse, probably due to
¶
the general availability of the option to denounce. That said, the case ¶ for both this and 'error' at time of founding may be useful rationales for ¶ reform-minded states to note when pursuing the denunciation option.
¶
Once again the selective application of such principles alone would call
¶ into question the validity of many and varied treaties
.
This remains an area of concern for many, particularly European, states that in general maintain a high regard for international law.
David A.
, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Applied Legal Studies at
Georgetown University Law Center, former Special Counsel for Arms Control to the DOD
General Counsel, Winter 2013, “Indisputable Violations: What Happens When the United States
Unambiguously Breaches a Treaty?” Fletcher Forum of International Affairs Vol. 37:1, http://www.fletcherforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Koplow_37-1.pdf
However, there is a cost when the world’s strongest state behaves this way.
One
potential danger is that other countries may mimic
this disregard for legal commitments and justify their own cavalier attitudes toward international law by citing U.S. precedents
.
Reciprocity and mutuality are fundamental tenets of international practice; it is foolhardy to suppose
that other parties will indefinitely continue with treaty compliance if they feel that the U nited
S tates is taking advantage of them by unilateral avoidance of shared legal obligations
.
So far, there has not been significant erosion of the treaties discussed in the three examples. The United States and Russia will fall years short of compliance with the CWC destruction obligations, but other parties, with the notable exception of Iran, have reacted with aplomb, comfortable with the two giants’ unequivocal commitment to eventual compliance. Likewise, the VCCR is not unraveling, even if other states lament the asymmetry in consular access to detained foreigners. And while many states pay their UN dues late and build up substantial arrearages, that recalcitrance seems to stem more from penury than from a deliberate choice to follow the U.S. lead.

But that persistent flouting undermines
the treaties
— and
by extension, it jeopardizes the entire fabric of international law
.
Chronic noncompliance
— especially ostentatious, unexcused, unjustified noncompliance
— also sullies the nation’s reputation and degrades U.S. diplomats’ ability to drive other states to better conform with their obligations under the full array of treaties and other international law commitments from trade to human rights to the Law of the Sea
.
The U nited
S tates depends upon the international legal structure more than anyone else:
Americans have the biggest interest in promoting a stable, robust, reliable system for international exchange.
It is shortsighted and self-defeating to publicly and unblushingly undercut the system that offers the U nited
S tates so many benefits
. It is especially damaging when, following an indisputable violation, the United States acknowledges its default, participates in an international dispute resolution procedure, and apologizes—but then continues to violate the treaty. The CWC implementation bodies, the International Court of Justice, and even the UN General Assembly and Security Council are unable to effectively do much to sanction or penalize the mighty United States, but it is still terrible for U.S. interests to disregard those mechanisms.
Graeme P.
, Head of the International Security Programme, Co-Director of the
International Training Course in Security Policy, Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 2010, “Great
Powers: Towards a “cooperative competitive” future world order paradigm?,” in Great Powers and Strategic Stability in the 21 st Century, p. 197-198
Given the absence of immediate hegemonic challengers to the US
(or a global strategic catastrophe that could trigger US precipitous decline), and the need to cooperate to address pressing strategic threats
- the real question is
what will be the nature of relations between
these
Great Powers
?
Will global order be characterized as a predictable interdependent one-world system
, in which shared strategic threats create interest-based incentives
and functional benefits which drive cooperation
between Great
Powers?
This
pathway would be evidenced by
the emergence of a global security agenda based on
nascent similarity across national policy agendas
. In addition.
Great Powers would
seek to cooperate by strengthening multilateral partnerships in institutions
( such as the UN, G20 and regional variants
), regimes
(e.g., arms control, climate and trade), and shared global norms, including international law
.
Alternatively, Great Powers may rely less on institutions, regimes and shared norms, and more on increasing their
order-producing managerial role through geopolitical-bloc formation
within their near neighborhoods.
Under such circumstances, a re-division of the world into a competing mercantilist nineteenth-century regional order emerges
17
World order would be characterized more by
hierarchy and balance of power and zero-sum principles
than by interdependence.
Relative power shifts that allow a return to multipolarity - with three or more evenly matched powers - occur gradually. The transition from a bipolar in the Cold War to a unipolar moment in the post-Cold War has been crowned, according to Haass, by an era of non-polarity, where power is diffuse — "a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power"18
Multilateralism is on the rise
, characterized by a combination of stales and international organizations, both influential and talking shops, formal and informal
("multilateralism light"). A dual system of global governance has evolved. An embryonic division of labor emerges, as groups with no formal rules or permanent structures coordinate policies and immediate reactions to crises, while formal treatybased institutions then legitimize the results.'9
As powerfully advocated by Wolfgang Schauble:
Global cooperation is the only way to master
the new, asymmetric global challenges
of the twenty-first century. No nation can manage these tasks on its own, nor can the entire international community do so without the help of nonstate, civil society actors. We must work together to find appropriate security policy responses to the realities of the twenty-first century.20

Highlighting the emergence of what he terms an "interpolar" world - defined as "multipolarity in an age of interdependence" — Grevi suggests that managing
in an unstable multipolar world is the key
.21
Such complex interdependence generates shared interest in cooperative solutions
, meanwhile driving convergence, consensus and accommodation between Great Powers
.22 As a result, the multilateral system is being adjusted to reflect the realities of a global age
- the rise of emerging powers and relative decline of the West
: "The new priority is to maintain a complex balance between multiple states."23 The G20 meeting in London in April 2009 suggested that great and rising powers will reform global financial architecture so that it regulates and supervises global markets in a more participative, transparent and responsive manner: all countries have contributed to the crisis; all will be involved in the solution.24

Andrew
, Vox, “Nate Silver and Sam Wang now agree: Current polls show GOP
Senate takeover,” http://www.vox.com/2014/9/29/6862781/republicans-senate-takeover-odds
Polls have turned against Democrats in three crucial races
¶ In three key races —
Colorado, Iowa, and Alaska
—
Dem ocrat s
had seemed
to be narrowly favored
in mid-September. Yet several new polls in each state suggest
that things
may have changed
— and that Democratic candidates may now be underdogs in all three states:¶
In Colorado
, Rep. Cory
Gardner
(R) has led the most recent four polls, and posted margins in the high single digits in two
of them. Polling in Colorado overestimated how well Republicans would do in the 2010 Senate race and 2012 presidential race, but considering that nearly all polls before this showed Senator Mark Udall (D) ahead, this isn't good news for Democrats.¶
In Iowa, the most recent four polls have shown either a tie or a 6 point lead for Republican
Joni
Ernst
. And the most recent poll showing Ernst up is
from the highly respected Selzer & Company, which FiveThirtyEight evaluated as " among the best in the country
."¶
In
Alaska,
a state where we've gotten little polling,
Republican
Dan
Sullivan has led the most recent three polls.
Even more notably, since July
, Senator Mark
Begich
(D) has only ever led in polls sponsored by Democratic firms
. Silver also notes that polling has frequently overestimated how well Democrats will do in
Alaska.
¶
Democrats
could lose one of these seats and hold onto the Senate with a victory in Kansas (if independent Greg Orman decides to caucus with them), or a surprise in some other race. But if they lose
even two of these
three, it will be highly likely that they've lost the Senate
. If they lose all three, it's near-certain
.
Harry
, senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight, “Sorry Democrats,
Marijuana Doesn’t Bring Young Voters to the Polls,” http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sorrydemocrats-marijuana-doesnt-bring-young-voters-to-the-polls/
The good news for Begich is that the marijuana referendum almost certainly won’t hurt him
.
His race looks tight, but the polls are still sparse and unreliable.
A slim majority of Alaskans support legalization
, according to a March poll by Dittman Research,6 one of the few pollsters to predict Lisa Murkowski’s 2010 write-in Senate victory.¶
If Begich really wanted to tap into the marijuana vote, he could
try something Obama didn’t: embrace legalization.
(Begich hasn’t yet.)
Marijuana could act as a priming effect to convert voters who might not otherwise vote for him.
7 Sometimes to win, you have to take a risk
. Best to inhale deeply first.¶ 7. Political scientists Daniel Smith,
Matthew DeSantis and Jason Kassel argued that in
George W.
Bush’s second campaign
in 2004, he may have been helped by an amendment against same-sex marriage in Ohio. Evangelicals
there connected being against same-sex marriage with being for Bush
at a larger rate than they otherwise would have because Bush was for the amendment.
With the majority of Alaskans in favor of legalized marijuana
at this point,
Begich could follow Bush’s example and do the same.
^
Zachary
, Managing Editor of The Diplomat, Former Hill Staffer, The Midterm
Elections and the Asia Pivot: The Republican Party taking the Senate in the 2014 elections could be a boon for the Asia Pivot, April 22, 2014

But it needn’t be all doom and gloom for U.S. foreign policy, including in the Asia-Pacific. In fact, the Republicans wrestling control of the
Senate from the Democrats
this November could be a boon for the U.S. Asia pivot
. This is true for at least three reasons.¶ First, with little prospect of getting
any of his domestic agenda
through Congress, President Barack
Obama will naturally focus
his attention on foreign affairs
. Presidents in general have a tendency to focus more attention on foreign policy during their second term, and this effect is magnified if the other party controls the legislature. And for good reason: U.S. presidents have far more latitude to take unilateral action in the realm of foreign affairs than in domestic policy. Additionally, the 2016 presidential election will consume much of the country’s media’s attention on domestic matters. It’s only when acting on the world stage that the president will still be able to stand taller in the media’s eyes than the candidates running to for legislative office.¶ Second, should the Democrats get pummeled in the midterm elections
this year, President
Obama is likely to make
some personnel changes in the White House and cabinet
. For instance, after the Republican Party incurred losses in the 2006 midterms, then-President George W. Bush quickly moved to replace Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the less partisan (at least in that era) Robert Gates. Obama followed suit by making key personnel changes after the Democrats “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm elections.¶ Should the Democrats face a similar fate in the 2014 midterm elections, Obama is also likely to make notable personnel changes. Other aides
, particular former Clinton aides, are likely to leave the administration early
in order to start vying for spots on Hillary Clinton’s
presumed presidential campaign
. Many of these changes
are likely to be with domestic advisors
given that domestic issues are certain to decide this year’s elections. Even so, many nominally domestic positions— such as Treasury and Commerce Secretary—have important implications for U.S. policy in Asia. Moreover, some
of the post-election changes are likely be foreign policy and defense positions
, which bodes well for Asia given the appalling lack of Asia expertise among Obama’s current senior advisors.¶ But the most important way
a
Republican victory
in November will help the Asia Pivot is that the GOP in Congress are
actually more favorable to the pivot than
are members of Obama’s own party
. For example,
Congressional opposition to
granting President
T rade
P romotional
A uthority — which is key to getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership ratified — is largely from Democratic legislators
. Similarly, it is the Democrats who
are largely in favor
of the defense budget cuts
that threaten to undermine America’s military posture in Asia.¶
If Republicans
do prevail
in November, President
Obama will naturally want to find ways to bridge the
very wide partisan gap
between them.
Asia offers the perfect issue area
to begin reaching across the aisle.¶ The
Republicans would have every incentive to reciprocate
the President’s outreach. After all, by giving them control of the entire Legislative Branch, American voters will be expecting some results from the GOP before they would be ostensibly be ready to elect them to the White House in 2016. A Republican failure to achieve anything between 2014 and 2016 would risk putting the GOP in the same dilemma they faced in the 1996 and 2012 presidential elections.
Working with the president to pass
the
TPP and strengthen America’s military’s posture in Asia would be ideal ways for the GOP to deliver results
without violating their principles.
– Elbridge Colby, research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, served as policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense’s Representative to the New START talks, expert advisor to the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, August 10, 2011, “Why the U.S. Needs its
Liberal Empire,” The Diplomat, online: http://the-diplomat.com/2011/08/10/why-us-needsits-liberal-empire/2/?print=yes
But the pendulum shouldn’t be allowed to swing too far toward an incautious retrenchment. For our problem hasn’t been overseas commitments and interventions as such, but the kinds of interventions.
The US
alliance and partnership structure, what the late William Odom called the
United States’ ‘ liberal empire’ that includes
a substantial military presence and a willingness to use it
in the defence of US and allied interests, remains a vital component of
US security and global stability and prosperity
. This system of voluntary and consensual cooperation under
US leadership
, particularly in the security realm, constitutes a formidable bloc defending the liberal international order
. But, in part due to poor decisionmaking in Washington, this system is under strain, particularly in East Asia, where the security situation has become tenser even as the region continues to become the centre of the global economy. A nuclear North Korea’s violent behaviour threatens South Korea and Japan, as well as US forces on the peninsula; Pyongyang’s development of a road mobile Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, moreover, brings into sight the day when
North Korea could threaten the U nited
S tates itself with nuclear attack
, a prospect that will further imperil stability in the region. More broadly, the rise of China
– and especially its rapid and opaque military build-up – combined with its increasing assertiveness in regional disputes is troubling
to the United States and its allies and partners across the region
.
Particularly relevant to the US military presence in the western Pacific is the development of Beijing’s anti-access and area denial capabilities, including the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, more capable anti-ship cruise missiles, attack submarines, attack aircraft, smart mines, torpedoes,

and other assets. While Beijing remains a constructive contributor on a range of matters, these capabilities will
give China the growing power to deny the United States the ability to operate effectively in the western Pacific, and thus the potential to undermine the USguaranteed security substructure
that has defined littoral East Asia since World War II. Even if China says today it won’t exploit this growing capability, who can tell what tomorrow or the next day will bring? Naturally, US efforts to build up forces in the western Pacific in response to future Chinese force improvements must be coupled with efforts to engage Beijing as a responsible stakeholder; indeed, a strengthened but appropriately restrained military posture will enable rather than detract from such engagement. In short, the U nited
S tates must
increase its involvement in East Asia rather than decrease it
. Simply maintaining the military balance
in the western Pacific will
, however, involve substantial investments
to improve US capabilities. It will also require augmented contributions to the common defence by US allies that have long enjoyed low defence budgets under the
US security umbrella. This won’t be cheap, for these requirements can’t be met simply by incremental additions to the existing posture, but will have to include advances in air, naval, space, cyber, and other expensive high-tech capabilities. Yet such efforts are vital, for
East Asia represents the economic future
, and its strategic developments will determine which country
or countries set the international rules that shape that economic future
. Conversely,
US interventions in the Middle East
and, to a lesser degree, in south-eastern Europe have been driven by
far more ambitious and aspirational conceptions of the national interest
, encompassing the proposition that
failing or illiberally governed peripheral states can contribute to an instability
that nurtures terrorism and impedes economic growth. Regardless of whether this proposition is true, the effort is
rightly seen by the new political tide not to be worth the benefits gained
. Moreover, the United States can scale (and has scaled) back nation-building plans in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and the Balkans without undermining its vital interests in ensuring the free flow of oil and in preventing terrorism. The lesson to be drawn from recent years is not, then, that the United States should scale back or shun overseas commitments as such, but rather that we must be more discriminating in making and acting upon them. A total US unwillingness to intervene would pull the rug out from under the US-led structure, leaving the international system prey to disorder at the least, and at worst to chaos or dominance by others who could not be counted on to look out for US interests.
We need to focus on making the right interventions
, not forswearing them completely. In practice, this means a more substantial focus on East Asia
and the serious security challenges there, and less emphasis on the Middle East
. This isn’t to say that the United States should be unwilling to intervene in the Middle East. Rather, it is to say that our interventions there should be more tightly connected to concrete objectives such as protecting the free flow of oil
from the region, preventing terrorist attacks
against the United States and its allies, and forestalling
or, if necessary, containing nuclear proliferation
as opposed to the more idealistic aspirations to transform the region’s societies. These more concrete objectives can be better met by
the more judicious and economical use of our military power
. More broadly, however, it means a shift in US emphasis away from the
greater
Middle
East toward the Asia-Pacific
region, which dwarfs the former in economic and military potential
and in the dynamism of its societies.
The Asia-Pacific
region, with its hard-charging economies and growing presence on the global stage, is where the future of the international security and economic system will be set
, and it is there that Washington needs to focus its attention, especially in light of rising regional security challenges.
In light of US budgetary pressures
, including the hundreds of billions in ‘security’ related money to be cut as part of the debt ceiling deal, it’s
doubly important
that
US security dollars be allocated to the most pressing tasks
– shoring up the US position in
the most important region of the world, the Asia-Pacific
. It will
also
require restraint in expenditure on those challenges and regions that don’t touch so directly on the future of
US security and prosperity
.

David R.
, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at
Swansea University Wales, and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, March
2012, “Towards revision of the UN drug control conventions: The logic and dilemmas of Like-
Minded Groups,” http://www.tni.org/files/download/dlr19.pdf
However, in another scenario, an effective and strategically shrewd development of a cannabis regulation group, might generate enough support for, or critically limit resistance towards
, treaty amendment
.
This would be more likely if the LMG contained a credible mix of nations
, including one or more ‘critical states’
, which could withstand or pacify opposition from other sections of the international community
.
In terms of process
, it is worth pointing out that although strengthening the prohibitive credentials of the regime
, the 1972 Protocol Amending the Single Convention is the final product of numerous amendment proposals from the US
with support from other states including the UK.43
In this respect, the use of denunciation may also be appropriate, but
here as a trigger for treaty revision
.
By
merely making moves to leave the confines of the regime
, an LMG might be able to generate a critical mass sufficient to compel states favouring the status quo to engage with the process
. Moreover, prohibition-oriented states
, as well as those parts of the UN apparatus resistant to change, might be more open to treaty modification or amendment if it was felt that such a concession would prevent the collapse of the control system
. By Lawrence Helfer’s analysis ‘withdrawing from an agreement (or threatening to withdraw
) can give a denouncing state additional voice
… by increasing its leverage to reshape the treaty
…’ (Emphasis added).44
Under such circumstances, subsequent changes may be an acceptable cost to nations favouring the dominant architecture of the existing regime
.
Such a scenario is possible since
it is generally agreed that
.
This would be possible in relation to the drug control treaties due to the nature of the issue and a reliance on widespread transnational

adherence
. Indeed, a sufficiently weighty ‘denouncers’ group may be able not only to withstand pressure from prohibitionoriented states, but also to apply significant pressure itself. Moreover, regular meetings between likeminded countries
outside the formal setting of CND sessions may
, over time, also create sufficient momentum to elicit a change in outlook within the Commission itself
. And although driven by the specific goal of the group, circumventing the Commission in Vienna through engagement with other UN bodies elsewhere, such as the Human Rights Council in Geneva or the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples in New York, may generate additional pressure for substantive change. Again,
(and declarations) upon which those forums are based
. While certain to be an even more lengthy process, in the long run such a route might be preferable to
any
and reservation since it could create more general flexibility within the regime as a whole
, as opposed to a somewhat limited one time fix
. It would seem that, conscious of both a wide range of national, even local, imperatives and, as noted several times above, a range of concurrent obligations relating to other treaties, the most productive result of any revisionist endeavour would be the creation of a more flexible and accommodating treaty framework
. On this point, it is worth recalling the prescient words of the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands when addressing the 1988 International Conference on Drug Abuse and Trafficking in Vienna. Then, the former Minister of Justice of the
Netherlands, Frits Korthals Altes urged, ‘international cooperation is indispensible. However, an attempt to reach an internationalization of drug policies in the sense of a single, non-differentiated approach is bound to be counterproductive for many countries…’ 45

Steven W.
, Professor, Seattle University School of Law, 2013, “ARTICLE: JOINT
REFORM?: THE INTERPLAY OF STATE, FEDERAL, AND HEMISPHERIC REGULATION OF
RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA AND THE FAILED WAR ON DRUGS,” Albany Government
Law Review, 6 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 359
Gauging the effect of U.S. legalization requires some sense of the economic importance of marijuana to the Mexican drug cartels.
Unfortunately, the nature of the beast of an illegal enterprise with diffuse money laundering throughout the hemisphere is that estimates of revenues vary widely, both as to the dollar amount of overall revenues and the percentage role that marijuana plays in cartel proceeds from a variety of drugs. No doubt by any measure those revenues are enormous, with the swing in estimated annual revenue to Mexican cartels ranging from one estimate of $ 80 billion to a U.S. government estimate of $ 13.8 billion - with $ 8.5 billion of that revenue coming from marijuana and the vast amount coming from U.S. sales. n174 According to this government estimate, marijuana comprises more than 60% of cartel revenue, with the remainder coming from cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking, as well as other illicit drugs and activities. n175 As I speculated in Run for the Border, if this estimate is accurate, legalization of marijuana should have a "cataclysmic effect" on the Mexican cartels, n176 allowing cross-border enforcement to better focus on remaining (and more dangerous) illicit drugs for which U.S. demand is less pervasive. Presumably, the south-of-theborder violence might ultimately ease as the cartels succumb to this economic squeeze. Yet there are many reasons to be less optimistic about the impact
[*388] of state legalization on Mexican trafficking, even if that reform takes hold nationally
. First, some
commentators discount the estimate that marijuana plays such a key role in cartel revenues, with one
commentator suggesting a more accurate figure falls in the range of 15-to-26%.
n177 Having become the gateway for illicit drugs from South and Central America into the United
States,
Mexican cartels might also send their product elsewhere, such as Canada or within Mexico
, n178 redouble their efforts to export drugs that remain illicit in the U nited
S tates, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, or concentrate on expanding demand for these illicit drugs as cartels did within
Mexico when enhanced U.S.-border enforcement prompted them
at times to liquidate their inventory to Mexican users.
n179 Presumably, legalization within the U nited
S tates that leaves minors unable to purchase marijuana lawfully might reserve some of that illicit market to cartels
, yet the likelihood is that, as with alcohol, this demand would be supplied through fake identification or by friends and relatives purchasing lawful marijuana for minors. Some commentators have looked to the tobacco market and speculated that should government tax legal marijuana too steeply, an illicit market might emerge
, n180 perhaps to be supplied by the cartels
[*389] rather than by licensed domestic producers operating outside the law. Still, given the history of spraying of illicit marijuana crops with toxic chemicals, the lesser environmental policing in Mexico, and the reality that some marijuana has been smuggled, while soaked in gasoline or perfume, in such unsanitary conveyances as the inside of a full septic tank truck, n181 presumably most U.S. users would be willing to pay extra for the assurance of some quality and safety control over the production of legalized marijuana. Surely, too, the cost of bribes that divert a fair share of cartel revenue is an expense that lawfully produced marijuana need not duplicate. Most alarmingly, however,
Mexican drug cartels of late have augmented their drug profits with other enterprises for which their infrastructure of vast capital, weaponry, manpower, and graft is well suited
.
These sidelines include kidnapping the family members of the wealthy
for ransom, n182 trafficking undocumented immigrants and sex workers
into and within the
United States, n183 and robbing undocumented immigrants
, whether from Mexico or Central America, who aim to reach U.S. employers. n184
The most ominous scenario ahead is one in which the drug cartels expand these other ventures to replace marijuana revenues
. Immigration is driven and limited by job opportunities available within the United States and thus depends on labor demand. Therefore, cartels searching for replacement revenue presumably would be drawn to expand their kidnappings or their role in illicit sex markets
, such as those for underage prostitutes. n185 Overall, then, the impact of legalization on cartel revenues, and the surging violence within Mexico, is hard to predict.

Sandra
, master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, worked at The
Miami Herald for nearly a decade, specializing in coverage of the Cuban, Nicaraguan and
Haitian communities, got the Pulitzer Prize as part of the team that uncovered Iran-Contra,
4/15/2014, “Mexico homicides down, but other drug-related crimes persist”, http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/Apr/15/mexico-crime-violence-report-university-sandiego/2/?#article-copy
Mexico’s crackdown on powerful drug cartels has succeeded in driving homicides down
for the second year in a row, but it has opened the door for an increase in crimes, such as kidnapping and extortion, that affect greater numbers of ordinary citizens, according to report released Tuesday. The crimes are being carried out by smaller
and weaker groups “that focus on making money where they can
,” said David Shirk, one of the authors of the University of San Diego study. “Unfortunately, improvements in the homicide rate did not entail universal improvements in citizen security.” The study comes as President Enrique Peña Nieto is well into the second year of his six-year term. Unlike his predecessor, Felipe Calderón, Peña Nieto has played down public rhetoric against drug trafficking organizations, focusing instead on the need for political and economic reforms. But analysts say that Peña Nieto’s administration has continued to deploy federal forces to combat organized crime, and continued to arrest major drug traffickers. “I think the government repression of the bigger groups pulverizes them
,” said John Bailey, a professor emeritus at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and author of the book, “The Politics of Crime in Mexico.” “The criminals look at other ways to make money.” The USD study, entitled “Drug Violence in Mexico,” was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the fifth annual report prepared under the auspices of the university’s Justice in Mexico Project. In documenting drug violence, the researchers looked at different tallies, including those of Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information and data from the National
Security System, as well as independent counts by Mexican media organizations. The report comes amid public discussion in Mexico about the federal government’s crime statistics under Peña Nieto. The Tijuana newsweekly, Zeta, has challenged statements by highranking officials that homicides fell by 16.1 percent in Mexico in 2013, reporting last month that 23,640 murders related to organized crime have taken place since Peña Nieto took office in December 2012. The USD study reported 15 percent drop in homicides in 2013, but says “these findings should be viewed with caution, due to questions raised by analysts over “possible withholding or manipulation of data.” It also reported significant increases in extortion and kidnapping cases. The states that registered the highest number of homicides in 2013 were Guerrero, Mexico, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Jalisco, according to government figures cited in the study. The largest decreases from the previous year were registered in Nuevo Leon, Chihuahua,
Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Morelos. Of those states showing the largest increases in 2013, Baja California presented the highest rate,
31 percent, the study reported.
¶
Among other findings:
¶
• Mexico's homicide rate is about average for the Americas, well below
Honduras and Venezuela but higher than the United States, Cuba and Canada.
¶
• Many homicides in Mexico continue to be attributable to drug trafficking and organized crime groups.
¶
• Community self-defense groups have expanded in Guerrero,
Michoacan and other states.
¶
• Compared with previous years, recent organized crime arrests have not appeared to produce large spikes in violence
.
¶ Tijuana has been held up as an example of how civic participation and improved law enforcement can lead to reduced crime rates. But the report listed 492 homicides in
Tijuana in 2013, up from 320 the previous year
and second only to Acapulco, with 883. It called the spike “the most significant surge in intentional homicides among major municipalities in 2013.”
The numbers are still far below the city’s homicide peak in 2008
, and Tijuana’s homicide rate in 2013 remained lower than those of the cities of
Acapulco, Culiacán, Juarez, Chihuahua and Torreon, according to the report. “Tijuana stands out in part because things had gotten so much better,” Shirk said. The study does not delve into the causes of Tijuana’s rise in homicides. But the rise has drawn calls for greater crime-fighting efforts by state and municipal law enforcement officials. “Local authorities are not recognizing these figures, they are saying, ‘no everything is fine,’” said Roberto Quijano, a Tijuana attorney who studies the city’s crime trends for the umbrella group, Tijuana Coordinating Council. “We have mixed results. We have to recognize that.” Baja California government figures show that overall crime in Tijuana
, Baja California’s largest city, has gone down since 2008
, most notably car thefts, commercial robberies and armed robberies. But house break-ins have remained high. Kidnappings have been relatively low, though there has been an increase in abductions in which there are no ransom demands — frequently a form a retribution among members of criminal organizations. With most of the illicit drugs in Mexico destined for users in the United States, U.S. users “are a major driving force behind this (drug) violence,” Shirk said. And criminal groups in Mexico who perpetrate the violence typically used weapons smuggled across the border from the United States, Shirk said. But save for certain high-crime areas, U.S. citizens should not fear traveling to Mexico
, Shirk said: “When you consider the volume of travelers and the volume of crimes against U.S. citizens, there is very little cause for concern.”

Randy
, freelance contributor to the Voice of San Diego, interviewing David Shirk, director of the Justice in Mexico Project, 4/18/14, “Tijuana Violence Ticks Up, But Don’t Blame
Cartels”, http://voiceofsandiego.org/2014/04/18/tijuana-violence-ticks-up-but-dont-blamecartels/
But now, for most of Mexico
at least,
the days of extreme drug violence are on the wane.
A new report by a team at the University of San Diego finds that violence in the country peaked in 2011, and intentional killings declined by an estimated 15 percent last year
.
¶
Tijuana bucked the trend
, with
492 homicides reported in 2013. That’s up from 320 in 2012, but still far from the worst 1,000-plus numbers just a few years ago
.
¶
For perspective, I turned to David Shirk, a political science professor at USD and director of the Justice in
Mexico Project. He is a co-author of the new report, which analyzes drug violence in Mexico.
¶
We talked about the effects of violence on ordinary residents of Tijuana, the evolving nature of killings in the city and why the mayhem hasn’t crossed over to the American side of the border.
¶
How does use of illegal drugs in the U.S. affect violence in Mexico?
¶
We’re the largest market for drugs in the world, and we consume at a higher rate than many other countries.
¶
If Americans stopped illegal drug use, you’d have a very different organization of crime in Mexico. You wouldn’t have highly profitable, extremely well-financed and well-armed drug cartels and organized crime groups in the way that you do now. That’s undeniable.
¶
And if you took that market away, you could see an annual homicide rate as low as 7 or 8 per 100,000 people in Mexico, which is not dissimilar from our own.
¶
The drug wars in Mexico heated up about 25 years ago as cartels began competing for market share. What happened?
¶
The Mexican government was basically forced by the United States to stop protecting the Guadalajara Cartel and allowing it to operate with impunity. The dismantling of the Guadalajara Cartel led to a fragmentation into three regionally based organized crime groups that began to fight against each other.
¶
Why did violence suddenly explode in 2008
, a year after Mexico saw a record-low homicide rate?
¶
The Sinaloa Cartel and its former partners suddenly began to fight against each other
. We’re not sure why the feud broke out between those organizations, but it led to a no-holds-barred attempt to take over major zones of control in different parts of Mexico, especially along the border.
¶
As a result, we saw an explosion of violence in Tijuana, Ciudad
Juarez and (the Mexican state of) Nuevo Leon from 2008-2010.
¶
But in 2011, things had begun to shift
. There were
418 homicides in Tijuana that year, and people were already talking about how good things were.
¶
Of course, 10-15 years ago, no one would have found close to 500 homicides to be an acceptable level.
¶
How has violence in Tijuana evolved
from the worst days of the drug-war period?
¶
It’s a different kind of violence now
.
¶
You don’t see bodies hanging from bridges, decapitated heads, running gun battles in the streets of Tijuana.
¶
Instead, there’s more localized, street-corner violence among local criminals fighting over turf
, nothing like what we saw in 2008 and 2009.
¶
What does the current level of violence mean for residents of Tijuana who aren’t criminals?
¶
I don’t think the change in the level of violence — 160 additional homicides — has the same direct effect on daily lives as the 2008 violence, which was really terrifying for people in
Tijuana.
¶
For ordinary citizens
, for schoolkids, for housewives, for businesspeople, this does not mean a major change in their day-to-day lifestyle.
If you’re driving your kids to school every day, this year is no different than last year.
¶
In 2008, you were much more likely to be directly confronted with a sign of this violence.
¶
You were driving under those bridges and seeing those guys hanging from them. I had Mexican students who’d go shopping at Costco and see someone run out with an automatic weapon in front of their car. ¶
I don’t think what we saw last year entered the radar screen of ordinary people
.
¶
What calmed the drug wars?
¶
Part of the reason we’re seeing things calm down
is that competition has largely eroded
. The
Sinaloa
Cartel largely won
.
You have one big organization that calls the shots, and nobody really challenges them.
¶
The cartel is still very strong even after the arrest of
leader Joaquin “
El Chapo
” Guzman. It’s still the largest and most powerful organization, and his business partners who are at large still have effective control of the organization’s drug operations.
Ildefonso
, Award winning journalist at Breitbart Texas covering the drug trade,
9/8/14, “ALLEGED CARTEL ALLIANCE COULD MEAN MORE VIOLENCE FOR MEXICO,” http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/09/8/Alleged-Cartel-Alliance-Could-Mean-
More-Violence-For-Mexico

An apparent alliance by four
different cartels could mean a shift in power in
the ongoing violent struggle that has led to
Mexico
becoming one of the most violent countries in the world.
According to Mexican media reports, the top leaders of the Zetas
, the Carrillo Fuentes (
Juarez
Cartel), the Beltrán
Leyva and
the Cartel
Jalisco
Nueva Generacion met recently in the city of Piedras Negras Coahuila where they discussed a possible alliance
.
The reports show a who’s who of the drug trafficking underworld
, with Omar (Z42) Treviño Morales, his right hand man who has only been identified as Z43, representing the Zetas, Vicente “El Viceroy” Carrillo Fuentes the head of the
Juarez Cartel, Nemesio “El Mencho” Cervantes the leader of the CJNG, and Fausto Isidro “El Chapo Isidro” Meza, the second in command of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel.
With the exception of the Zetas who are one of the largest cartels, the Beltrán
Leyva and
the
Juarez
organizations have been on the decline
in recent years. The CJNG was part of the Sinaloa federation and one point went by the name of the
Mata-Zetas because they had been specifically targeting that criminal organization.
Currently Mexican authorities have been focusing on the Gulf Cartel in the border state of
Tamaulipas
leaving the Zetas largely unchecked.
“If the reports of talks of an alliance
between these groups are legitimate, then this is very bad news for the Sinaloa
Federation and the Gulf cartel
,” said Breitbart Contributing Editor and Border Security Expert Sylvia Longmire. “
Even though these groups have been enemies
at one point or another, those animosities can go away quickly
-- and begin to develop as well -- when it's convenient. For example, the CJNG was a strong ally of the Sinaloa Federation until it felt the grass was greener on the other side of the fence about a year ago and went independent. “
The series of rivalries and alliances is a repeating story similar to the one between the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels who in the early
2000’s used to be bitter rivals, however by 2010 the two had joined forces to take on the Zetas, Longmire said.
“If this works out, Los
Zetas will be running the show because there's not much left of the Juárez cartel and the
Beltrán
Leyva Organization
, she said. “They need a lot of help to stay in the game, and the CJNG and Los Zetas play the game the same way -- very brutal and force first before negotiation. No good can come of this alliance, for either the Gulf or
Sinaloa cartels or the levels of drug-related violence near our southwest border.
Vanda
, senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and
Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, 9/23/10, “Why
Legalization in Mexico is Not a Panacea for Reducing Violence and Suppressing Organized
Crime,” http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2010/09/23-mexico-marijuanalegalization-felbabbrown
Increasingly, voices in Mexico, including some highly influential ones, such as former President Vicente Fox, are calling for legalization, especially of marijuana. Yet it is doubtful
that legalization
under the current conditions would
necessarily reduce the violence and weaken the DTOs
. In fact, it could exacerbate violence and
paradoxically increase the DTOs’ political power
.
Proponents
of legalization in Mexico make
at least two arguments:
The
DTOs are believed to make 60% of their income from marijuana, so taking this income away
from them via legalization will severely weaken them
. Second, legalization
of marijuana (and perhaps other drugs) would free
Mexico’s law enforcement to concentrate on murders
, kidnappings, and extortion.
A country may have good reasons to want to legalize the use and even production of some addictive substances (many, such as, nicotin and alcohol, are legal) and ride out the consequences of greater use. (It is difficult to estimate how much additional use

would result from legalization since elasticity price-consumption relations and other factors, such as social stigmas and attitude changes, are not fully known.) Such reasons could include providing better health care to users, reducing the number of users in prison, changing the priority and resource allocation of law enforcement, and perhaps even generating greater revenues for state and giving jobs to the poor.
But, even if legalization did displace the DTOs from
the marijuana
production and distribution market in
Mexico, they can hardly be expected to take such a change lying down
. Rather, they may intensify the violent power struggle over remaining hard-drug smuggling and distribution
. (Notably, the shrinkage of the U.S. cocaine market is one of the factors that precipitated the current DTO wars.) Worse yet, the DTOs could intensify their effort to take over other illegal economies
in Mexico, such as the smuggling of migrants and other illegal commodities
, prostitution, extortion, and kidnapping,
and also over Mexico’s informal economy – trying to franchise who sells tortillas, jewelry, clothes on the zócalo -- to mitigate their financial losses
. They are already doing so.
If they succeed in franchising the informal economy
and organizing public spaces and street life in the informal sector (40% of Mexico’s economy), their political power over society will be greater than ever
.
Nor would law enforcement
necessarily become liberated to focus on other issues
or turn less corrupt:
The state would have to devote
some resources to regulating the legal economy
and enforcing the regulatory system. Corruption could well persist in a legal or decriminalized economy. In Brazil, after drug possession for personal use was decriminalized, the deeply corrupt police did not clean up. Instead, they often continue to extort users and franchise pushers by threatening to book users for greater amounts than personal limits unless they pay a bribe or buy from their pushers.
Additionally, a gray marijuana market would likely emerge. If marijuana became legal, the state would want to tax it
– to generate revenues and to discourage greater use.
The higher the tax, the greater the opportunity for the DTOs to undercut the state by charging less
. The narcos could set up their own fields with smaller taxation, snatch the market and the profits, and the state would be back to combating them and eradicating their fields.
Such gray markets exist alongside a host of legal economies, from cigarettes, to stolen cars, to logging. Often, as in the case of illegal logging alongside legal concessions, such gray markets are highly violent
, dominated by organized crime, generating corruption, and exploitative of society.
Moreover, if the state does not physically control the territory where marijuana is cultivated – which in Mexico it often does not – the DTOs could continue to dominate the newly legal marijuana fields, still charge taxes, still structure the life of the growers, and even find it easier to integrate into the formal political system. Many oil and rubber barons started with shady practices and eventually became influential (and sometimes responsible) members of the legal political space. But there are good reasons not to want the very bloody Mexican capos to become legitimized.
Legalization is not a panacea
.
There are no shortcuts to improving Mexico’s law enforcement
.
Without a capable and accountable police that are responsive to the needs of the people from tackling street crime to suppressing organized crime and that are backed-up by an efficient, accessible, and transparent justice system, neither legal nor illegal economies will be well-managed by the state. Rather, legalization of marijuana in Mexico would be more viable, if Mexico first got the DTOs under control and pulled off effective law-enforcement and justice reform.
– Associated Press, 9/25/14, “As Mexico opens oil to foreign investment, industry plagued by cartels stealing billions,” http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2014/09/25/asmexico-opens-oil-to-foreign-investment-industry-plagued-by-cartels-stealing/
Mexico overcame 75 years of nationalist pride to reform its flagging, state-owned oil industry. But as it prepares to develop rich shale fields
along the Gulf Coast, and attract foreign investors
, another challenge awaits: taming the
brutal drug cartels
that rule the region and are stealing billions of dollars’ worth of oil from pipelines.
Figures released by Petroleos Mexicanos last week show the gangs are becoming more prolific and sophisticated. So far this year, thieves across Mexico have drilled 2,481 illegal taps into state-owned pipelines, up more than one-third from the same period of
2013. Pemex estimates it’s lost some 7.5 million barrels worth $1.15 billion.

Pemex director Emilio Lozoya called the trend “worrisome.”
More than a fifth of the illegal taps occurred in Tamaulipas, the Gulf state neighboring Texas that is a cornerstone for Mexico’s future oil plans. It has Mexico’s largest fields of recoverable shale gas, the natural gas extracted by fracturing rock layers, or fracking.
Mexico, overall, is believed to have the world’s sixth-largest reserves of shale gas — equivalent to 60 billion barrels of crude oil.
That’s more than twice the total amount of oil that Mexico has produced by conventional means over the last century.
The energy reform
passed in December loosened Mexico’s protectionist policies, opening the way for
Pemex to seek foreign investors and expertise to help it exploit its shale fields
. It hopes to draw $10 billion to $15 billion in private investment each year.
.
“The energy reform won’t be viable if we aren’t successful
... in solving the problem of crime and impunity,” said
Sen. David Penchyna, who heads the Senate Energy Commission. “
The biggest challenge
we Mexicans have, and I say it without shame, is Tamaulipas
.”
One foreign oil company that had a brush with violence appears undeterred.
In early April, gunmen opened fire at a hotel in Ciudad Mier, in Tamaulipas’ rough Rio Grande Valley, where eight employees of
Weatherford International Ltd., a Swiss-based oil services company, were staying.
They were not injured, and Weatherford said in an email message that “Mexico continues to be a focused market for us with growing potential in 2014 and 2015.”
But other potential bidders may be put off by such incidents.
Energy analyst David Goldwyn said the Mexico government is going to have to be a lot clearer about its security plan for most shale exploration and production companies, which don’t have experience working in risky areas.
“What’s the government going to do, what kind of protection, what is it going to allow the operators to do inside their fence line?” he said in a recent conference call with reporters.
Two rival gangs
, the Zetas and the Gulf cartel
, long have used Tamaulipas as a route to ferry drugs
and migrants to the United States and, in recent years, diversified their business: stealing gas and crude and selling it to refineries in Texas or to gas stations on either side of the border.
At least twice a day, the gangs pull up to one of the hundreds of pipelines that crisscross the state. Workers quickly shovel down a couple of yards (meters) to uncover a pipeline and siphon their booty into a stolen tanker truck, said army Col. Juan Carlos Guzman, whose troops have raided a number of such illegal taps.
A dirt farm road led down to one site outside Ciudad Victoria, 180 miles southwest of McAllen, Texas. About a half-mile from a nearby highway, thieves had dug out a pit and inserted a large needle-like device into the pipeline. By the time soldiers arrived, the gang members had fled, and only the driver of the half-loaded gasoline truck was arrested.
The knowledge needed to tap into the pressurized pipelines leads authorities to suspect the gangs have infiltrated Pemex or co-opted company workers.
“It is impossible to do this without information on the timing and level of flows,” said Marco Antonio Bernal, a federal congressman from Tamaulipas who is drafting legislation to toughen punishment for pipeline thefts.
The suspicions were reinforced earlier this month when detectives nabbed a Gulf cartel leader who was found carrying a fake Pemex employee credential, complete with his photo and a false name.
Pemex is installing more automated pipeline shut-off valves operated remotely from a control room in Mexico City. Such controls allow them to not only stop spills often caused by illegal taps but to avoid having to send workers out to unpopulated, dangerous areas to turn off valves manually.
With thousands of miles of pipeline stretching over far-flung regions of Tamaulipas, stopping oil theft is proving hard to do.
Mexico has taken steps to rein in the cartels, putting military leaders in charge of the state’s security and sending in soldiers, marines and federal police to patrol key cities
.

Arrests and violence have taken out so many key Zetas leaders that the cartel’s members have taken to camping out in the bush
, dragooning Central American migrants into their ranks. They live off the land and change campsites constantly to avoid detection.
“They don’t have structures. They sleep under the trees, near rivers to get water,” said Gen. Mario Lopez Miguez, who commands nearly 600 soldiers at a base in the once cartel-dominated town of Ciudad Mier.
The Gulf cartel, for its part, remains in control of Tamaulipas’ largest city, Reynosa, which sits across from McAllen, although the military has increased its patrols, making some residents feel safer.
“
The situation has gotten a lot better
,” said Nora Gonzalez, who runs a secondhand furniture shop near downtown
Reynosa.
Pablo
, senior researcher at the North-South Institute working on Canada-Latin
American relations; and Jorge Madrazo, independent consultant on energy and extractive industries, 1/28/14, “Energy Reforms in Mexico Could Spell Competition for Canada,” http://www.nsi-ins.ca/newsroom/energy-reforms-mexico-competition-canada/
Mexico is the world’s 10th-largest oil producer and has some of the largest reserves in the Western Hemisphere. However, most of the easy-to-access reserves have been consumed, and the country’s state oil company
Pemex lacks the funds and technology needed to exploit deep-water oil and shale gas reserves
.
This
situation has forced Mexico to revise its constitution and energy sector regulations to allow private companies,
possibly including foreign ones, into that industry
. Canadian oil producers and service companies are moving into pole position for this new horizon, with help from the Canadian government. However, these reforms down south have much wider implications for Canada’s oil trade and domestic energy industries. Canada’s strong position in the energy sector and its political, geographic and economic ties to Mexico provide both challenges and opportunities.
Investors and Canadian firms with expertise in horizontal drilling, multi-stage fracking, offshore drilling, as well as service and equipment companies stand to gain the most from these reforms. While NAFTA will provide Canadian firms and investors with a competitive advantage through certain investment protections and tax advantages, it should be noted that Mexico is now the country with the most Free Trade Agreements in the world. Thus, firms from the European Union, Russia, Japan, Malaysia, the Gulf nations and China will prove to be strong competitors with comparable incentives and advantages.
From a geopolitical perspective,
these reforms could provide the stimulus for a North American energy alliance of Mexico with the US and Canada that could transform the continent into a net exporter of energy
and could provide energy security for the whole region. Achieving such a milestone would entail a shift in
Canadian foreign policy, particularly regarding its positions in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, the sources of most of
Canada’s imported energy.
An increase in energy exports from Mexico would
, however, entail increased direct competition with Canadian energy
internationally and most importantly, in the U nited
S tates.
Currently, both Mexico and
Canada send most of their oil exports to the US
. Just as Canada, Mexico sends upwards of 85 per cent of its oil to the US and those countries have negotiated a Transboundary Hydrocarbons Agreement
, which sets rules for handling potential oil reserves along the dividing line between the two countries in the Gulf of Mexico.
This treaty will become key in the US-Mexico relationship as companies start drilling for deep oil in a post-reform environment
, leaving Canadian firms at a disadvantage
in that new business opportunity.
Renewed interest in energy from its southern neighbour could
thus shift the US’s focus away from considering
the shipping of Canadian heavy crude through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.

Michael
, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College,
2/10/13, “A Presidential Decision That Could Change the World,” http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175648/
Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the
Keystone XL
pipeline, which, if built, is slated to bring some of the “dirtiest,” carbon-rich oil on the planet
from Alberta, Canada, to refineries
on the
U.S. Gulf Coast. In the near future, President
Obama is expected to give its construction a definitive thumbs up or thumbs down
, and the decision
he makes could
prove far more important than anyone imagines.
It could determine the fate of the Canadian tar-sands industry and
, with it, the future well-being of the planet
. If that sounds overly dramatic, let me explain.
Sometimes, what starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war -- and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, providing a desperately needed boost to the
Canadian energy industry.
If Obama says no, the Canadians
(and their American backers) will encounter possibly insuperable difficulties
in exporting their heavy crude oil
, discouraging further investment and putting the industry’s future in doubt
.
The battle over Keystone XL was initially joined in the summer of 2011, when environmental writer and climate activist Bill
McKibben and 350.org, which he helped found, organized a series of non-violent anti-pipeline protests in front of the White
House to highlight the links between tar sands production and the accelerating pace of climate change. At the same time, farmers and politicians in Nebraska, through which the pipeline is set to pass, expressed grave concern about its threat to that state’s crucial aquifers. After all, tar-sands crude is highly corrosive, and leaks are a notable risk.
In mid-January 2012, in response to those concerns, other worries about the pipeline, and perhaps a looming presidential campaign season, Obama postponed a decision on completing the controversial project. (He, not Congress, has the final say, since it will cross an international boundary.) Now, he must decide on a suggested new route that will, supposedly, take
Keystone XL around those aquifers and so reduce the threat to Nebraska’s water supplies.
Ever since the president postponed the decision on whether to proceed, powerful forces in the energy industry and government have been mobilizing to press ever harder for its approval. Its supporters argue vociferously that the pipeline will bring jobs to
America and enhance the nation’s “energy security” by lessening its reliance on Middle Eastern oil suppliers. Their true aim, however, is far simpler: to save the tar-sands industry (and many billions of dollars in U.S. investments) from possible disaster.
Just how critical the fight over Keystone has become in the eyes of the industry is suggested by a recent pro-pipeline editorial in the trade publication Oil & Gas Journal:
“Controversy over the Keystone XL project leaves no room for compromise. Fundamental views about the future of energy are in conflict. Approval of the project would acknowledge the rich potential of the next generation of fossil energy and encourage its development. Rejection would foreclose much of that potential in deference to an energy utopia few Americans support when they learn how much it costs.”
Opponents of Keystone XL, who are planning a mass demonstration at the White House on February 17th, have also come to view the pipeline battle in epic terms. “
Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb
,”
McKibben wrote at TomDispatch. “
If you
could burn
all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from
its current
390 parts per million
(enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to
nearly
600
parts per million, which would mean
if not hell
, then at least a world with a similar temperature.”
Halting Keystone would
not by itself prevent those high concentrations, he argued, but would impede the production of tar sands, stop that “carbon bomb” from further heating the atmosphere, and create space for a transition to renewables
. “Stopping Keystone will buy time,” he says,
“and hopefully that time will be used for the planet to come to its senses around climate change.”
A Pipeline With Nowhere to Go?
Why has the fight over a pipeline, which, if completed, would provide only 4% of the U.S. petroleum supply, assumed such strategic significance? As in any major conflict, the answer lies in three factors: logistics, geography, and timing.

Start with logistics and consider the tar sands themselves or, as the industry and its supporters in government prefer to call them, “oil sands.” Neither tar nor oil, the substance in question is a sludge-like mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen (a degraded, carbon-rich form of petroleum). Alberta has a colossal supply of the stuff -- at least a trillion barrels in known reserves, or the equivalent of all the conventional oil burned by humans since the onset of commercial drilling in 1859. Even if you count only the reserves that are deemed extractible by existing technology, its tar sands reportedly are the equivalent of 170 billion barrels of conventional petroleum -- more than the reserves of any nation except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The availability of so much untapped energy in a country like Canada, which is private-enterprise-friendly and where the political dangers are few, has been a magnet for major international energy firms. Not surprisingly, many of them, including
ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell, have invested heavily in tar-sands operations.
Tar sands, however, bear little resemblance to the conventional oil fields which these companies have long exploited. They must be treated in various energy-intensive ways to be converted into a transportable liquid and then processed even further into usable products. Some tar sands can be strip-mined like coal and then “upgraded” through chemical processing into a synthetic crude oil -- SCO, or “syncrude.” Alternatively, the bitumen can be pumped from the ground after the sands are exposed to steam, which liquefies the bitumen and allows its extraction with conventional oil pumps. The latter process, known as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), produces a heavy crude oil. It must, in turn, be diluted with lighter crudes for transportation by pipeline to specialized refineries equipped to process such oil, most of which are located on the Gulf Coast.
Extracting
and processing tar sands is an extraordinarily expensive undertaking
, far more so than most conventional oil drilling operations.
Considerable energy is needed to dig the sludge out of the ground or heat the water into steam for underground injection; then, additional energy is needed for the various upgrading processes. The environmental risks involved are enormous (even leaving aside the vast amounts of greenhouse gases that the whole process will pump into the atmosphere). The massive quantities of water needed for SAGD and those upgrading processes, for example, become contaminated with toxic substances. Once used, they cannot be returned to any water source that might end up in human drinking supplies -- something environmentalists say is already occurring. All of this and the expenses involved mean that the multibillion-dollar investments needed to launch a tar-sands operation can only pay off if the final product fetches a healthy price
in the marketplace.
And that’s where geography enters the picture. Alberta is theoretically capable of producing five to six million barrels of tarsands oil per day. In 2011, however, Canada itself consumed only 2.3 million barrels of oil per day, much of it supplied by conventional (and cheaper) oil from fields in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. That number is not expected to rise appreciably in the foreseeable future. No less significant,
Canada’s refining capacity
for all kinds of oil is limited to 1.9 million barrels per day
, and few of its refineries are equipped to process tar sands-style heavy crude.
This leaves the producers with one strategic option: exporting
the stuff.
And that’s where the problems really begin.
Alberta
is an interior province and so cannot export its crude by sea
.
Given the geography, this leaves only three export options: pipelines heading east across Canada to ports on the Atlantic, pipelines heading west across the Rockies to ports in British Columbia, or pipelines heading south to refineries in the United
States.
Alberta’s preferred option is
to send the preponderance of its tar-sands oil to its biggest natural market, the U nited
S tates. At present, Canadian pipeline companies do operate a number of conduits that deliver some of this oil to the U.S., notably the original Keystone conduit extending from Hardisty, Alberta, to Illinois and then southward to Cushing, Oklahoma.
But these lines can carry less than one million barrels of crude per day, and so will not permit the massive expansion of output the industry is planning for the next decade or so.
In other words, the only pipeline
now under development that would significantly expand Albertan tarsands exports is Keystone XL
. It is vitally important to the tar-sands producers because it offers the sole short-term -- or possibly even long-term
-- option for the export and sale of the crude output now coming on line
at dozens of projects being developed across northern Alberta.
Without it, these projects will languish
and Albertan production will have to be sold at a deep discount -- at, that is, a per-barrel price that could fall below production costs, making further investment in tar sands unattractive
. In January, Canadian tar-sands oil was already selling for $30-$40 less than West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the standard U.S. blend.
The Pipelines That Weren’t
Like an army bottled up geographically and increasingly at the mercy of enemy forces, the tar-sands producers see
the completion of
Keystone XL as their sole realistic escape route to survival
. “Our biggest problem is that
Alberta is landlocked,” the province’s finance minister Doug Horner said in January. “In fact, of the world’s major oil-producing

jurisdictions, Alberta is the only one with no direct access to the ocean. And until we solve this problem... the [price] differential will remain large.”
Logistics, geography, and finally timing. A presidential stamp of approval on the building of
Keystone
XL will save the tar-sands industry
, ensuring them enough return to justify their massive investments
.
It would
also undoubtedly prompt additional investments in tar-sands projects and further production increases by an industry that assumed opposition to future pipelines had been weakened by this victory
.
A presidential thumbs-down and resulting failure to build Keystone
XL, however, could have lasting and severe consequences for tar-sands production
. After all, no other export link is likely to be completed in the near-term
.
The other three most widely discussed options
-- the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, British Columbia, an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver, British Columbia, and a plan to use existing, conventional-oil conduits to carry tar-sands oil across Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland,
Maine -- already face intense opposition
, with initial construction at best still years in the future.
The Northern Gateway project, proposed by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, would stretch from Bruderheim in northern
Alberta to Kitimat, a port on Charlotte Sound and the Pacific. If completed, it would allow the export of tar-sands oil to Asia, where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sees a significant future market (even though few Asian refineries could now process the stuff). But unlike oil-friendly Alberta, British Columbia has a strong pro-environmental bias and many senior provincial officials have expressed fierce opposition to the project. Moreover, under the country’s constitution, native peoples over whose land the pipeline would have to travel must be consulted on the project -- and most tribal communities are adamantly opposed to its construction.
Another proposed conduit -- an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver -- presents the same set of obstacles and, like the Northern Gateway project, has aroused strong opposition in Vancouver.
This leaves the third option, a plan to pump tar-sands oil to Ontario and Quebec and then employ an existing pipeline now used for oil imports. It connects to a terminal in Casco Bay, near Portland, Maine, where the Albertan crude would begin the long trip by ship to those refineries on the Gulf Coast. Although no official action has yet been taken to allow the use of the U.S. conduit for this purpose, anti-pipeline protests have already erupted in Portland, including one on January 26th that attracted more than 1,400 people.
With no other pipelines in the offing, tar sands producers are increasing their reliance on deliveries by rail. This is producing boom times for some long-haul freight carriiers, but will never prove sufficient to move the millions of barrels in added daily output expected from projects now coming on line.
The conclusion is obvious: without Keystone XL, the price of tar-sands oil will remain substantially lower than conventional oil
(as well as unconventional oil extracted from shale formations in the United States), discouraging future investment
and dimming the prospects for increased output. In other words, as Bill McKibben hopes, much of it will stay in the ground
.
Industry officials are painfully aware of their predicament. In an Annual Information Form released at the end of 2011,
Canadian Oil Sands Limited, owner of the largest share of Syncrude Canada (one of the leading producers of tar-sands oil) noted:
“A prolonged period of low crude oil prices could affect the value of our crude oil properties and the level of spending on growth projects and could result in curtailment of production... Any substantial and extended decline in the price of oil or an extended negative differential for SCO compared to either WTI or European Brent Crude would have an adverse effect on the revenues, profitability, and cash flow of Canadian Oil Sands and likely affect the ability of Canadian Oil Sands to pay dividends and repay its debt obligations.”
The stakes
in this battle could not be higher
. If Keystone XL fails to win the president’s approval, the industry will certainly grow at a far slower pace than forecast and possibly witness the failure of costly ventures, resulting in an industry-wide contraction.
If approved
, however, production will soar and
global warming will occur at an even faster rate than previously projected
. In this way, a
presidential decision will have a n unexpectedly decisive
and lasting
.

-- Analyst at Stratfor, Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Colorado at Boulder
(Rebecca, 2013, "Bioterrorism and the Pandemic Potential," http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/bioterrorism-and-pandemic-potential)
It is important to remember that the risk of biological attack is very low and that, partly because viruses can mutate easily, the potential for natural outbreaks is unpredictable. The key is having the right tools in case of an outbreak, epidemic or pandemic, and these include a plan for containment, open channels of communication, scientific research and knowledge sharing. In most cases involving a potential pathogen, the news can appear far worse than the actual threat.
Infectious Disease Propagation Since the beginning of February there have been occurrences of
H5N1 (bird flu) in Cambodia, H1N1 (swine flu) in India and a new, or novel, coronavirus (a member of the same virus family as SARS) in the United Kingdom. In the past week, a man from Nepal traveled through several countries and eventually ended up in the
United States, where it was discovered he had a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report stating that antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals are on the rise. In addition, the United States is experiencing a worse-than-normal flu season, bringing more attention to the influenza virus and other infectious diseases. The potential for a disease to spread is measured by its effective reproduction number, or R-value, a numerical score that indicates whether a disease will propagate or die out. When the disease first occurs and no preventive measures are in place, the reproductive potential of the disease is referred to as R0, the basic reproduction rate. The numerical value is the number of cases a single case can cause on average during its infectious period. An R0 above 1 means the disease will likely spread (many influenza viruses have an R0 between 2 and 3, while measles had an R0 value of between 12 and 18), while an R-value of less than 1 indicates a disease will likely die out.
Factors contributing to the spread of the disease include the length of time people are contagious, how mobile they are when they are contagious, how the disease spreads (through the air or bodily fluids) and how susceptible the population is. The initial R0, which assumes no inherent immunity, can be decreased through control measures that bring the value either near or below 1, stopping the further spread of the disease. Both the coronavirus family and the influenza virus are RNA viruses, meaning they replicate using only
RNA (which can be thought of as a single-stranded version of DNA, the more commonly known double helix containing genetic makeup). The rapid RNA replication used by many viruses is very susceptible to mutations, which are simply errors in the replication process. Some mutations can alter the behavior of a virus, including the severity of infection and how the virus is transmitted. The combination of two different strains of a virus, through a process known as antigenic shift, can result in what is essentially a new virus.
Influenza, because it infects multiple species, is the hallmark example of this kind of evolution. Mutations can make the virus unfamiliar to the body's immune system. The lack of established immunity within a population enables a disease to spread more rapidly because the population is less equipped to battle the disease. The trajectory of a mutated virus (or any other infectious disease) can reach three basic levels of magnitude. An outbreak is a small, localized occurrence of a pathogen. An epidemic indicates a more widespread infection that is still regional, while a pandemic indicates that the disease has spread to a global level. Virologists are able to track mutations by deciphering the genetic sequence of new infections. It is this technology that helped scientists to determine last year that a smattering of respiratory infections discovered in the Middle East was actually a novel coronavirus. And it is possible that through a series of mutations a virus like H5N1 could change in such a way to become easily transmitted between humans.
Lessons Learned There have been several influenza pandemics throughout history. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is often cited as a worst-case scenario, since it infected between 20 and 40 percent of the world's population, killing roughly 2 percent of those infected. In more recent history, smaller incidents, including an epidemic of the SARS virus in 2003 and what was technically defined as a pandemic of the swine flu (H1N1) in 2009, caused fear of another pandemic like the 1918 occurrence. The spread of these two diseases was contained before reaching catastrophic levels, although the economic impact from fear of the diseases reached beyond the infected areas. Previous pandemics have underscored the importance of preparation, which is essential to effective disease management. The World Health Organization lays out a set of guidelines for pandemic prevention and containment. The general principles of preparedness include stockpiling vaccines, which is done by both the United States and the European Union (although the possibility exists that the vaccines may not be effective against a new virus). In the event of an outbreak, the guidelines call for developed nations to share vaccines with developing nations. Containment strategies beyond vaccines include quarantine of exposed individuals, limited travel and additional screenings at places where the virus could easily spread, such as airports. Further measures include the closing of businesses, schools and borders. Individual measures can also be taken to guard against infection. These involve general hygienic measures -- avoiding mass gatherings, thoroughly washing hands and even wearing masks in specific, high-risk situations. However, airborne viruses such as influenza are still the most difficult to contain because of the method of transmission. Diseases like noroviruses, HIV or cholera are more serious but have to be transmitted by blood, other bodily fluids or fecal matter. The threat of a rapid pandemic is thereby slowed because it is easier to identify potential contaminates and either avoid or sterilize them. Research is another important aspect of overall preparedness. Knowledge gained from studying the viruses and the ready availability of information can be instrumental in tracking diseases. For example, the genomic sequence of the novel coronavirus was made available, helping scientists and doctors in different countries to readily identify the infection in limited cases and implement quarantine procedures as necessary. There have been only 13 documented cases of the novel coronavirus, so much is unknown regarding the disease. Recent cases in the United Kingdom indicate possible human-to-human transmission. Further sharing of information relating to the novel coronavirus can aid in both treatment and containment. Ongoing research into viruses can also help make future vaccines more efficient against possible mutations, though this type of research is not without controversy. A case in point is research on the H5N1 virus. H5N1 first appeared in humans in 1997. Of the more than 600 cases that have appeared since then, more than half have resulted in death. However, the virus is not easily transmitted because it must cross from bird to human. Human-to-human transmission of H5N1 is very rare, with only a few suspected incidents in the known history of the disease.
While there is an H5N1 vaccine, it is possible that a new variation of the vaccine would be needed were the virus to mutate into a form that was transmittable between humans. Vaccines can take months or even years to develop, but preliminary research on the virus, before an outbreak, can help speed up development. In December 2011, two separate research labs, one in the United States and one in the Netherlands, sought to publish their research on the H5N1 virus. Over the course of their research, these labs had created mutations in the virus that allowed for airborne transmission between ferrets. These mutations also caused other changes, including a decrease in the virus's lethality and robustness (the ability to survive outside the carrier). Publication of the research was delayed due to concerns that the results could increase the risk of accidental release of the virus by encouraging further research, or that the information could be used by terrorist organizations to conduct a biological attack. Eventually, publication of papers by both labs was allowed. However, the scientific community imposed a voluntary moratorium in order to allow the community and regulatory bodies to determine the best practices moving forward. This voluntary ban was lifted for much of the world on Jan. 24, 2013. On Feb. 21, the National Institutes of Health in the United States issued proposed guidelines for federally funded labs working with H5N1. Once standards are set, decisions will likely be made on a case-by-case basis to allow research to continue. Fear of a pandemic resulting from research on H5N1 continues even after the moratorium was lifted. Opponents of the research cite the possibility that the virus will be accidentally released or intentionally used as a bioweapon, since information in scientific publications would be considered readily available. The Risk-Reward Equation The risk of an accidental release of H5N1 is similar to that of other infectious pathogens currently being studied. Proper safety standards are key, of course, and experts in the field have had a year to determine the best way to proceed, balancing safety and research benefits. Previous work with the virus was conducted at biosafety level three out of four, which requires researchers wearing respirators and disposable gowns to work in pairs in a negative pressure environment. While many of these labs are part of universities, access is controlled either through keyed entry or even palm scanners. There are roughly 40 labs that submitted to the voluntary ban. Those wishing to resume work after the ban was lifted must comply with guidelines requiring strict national oversight and close communication and collaboration with national authorities. The risk of release either through accident or theft cannot be completely eliminated, but given the established parameters the risk is minimal.
The use of the pathogen as a biological weapon requires an assessment of whether a non-state actor would have the capabilities to isolate the
virulent strain, then weaponize and distribute it
. Stratfor has long held the position that while terrorist organizations may have rudimentary capabilities
regarding biological weapons, the likelihood of a successful attack is very low.
Given that the laboratory version of H5N1 -- or any influenza virus, for that matter -- is a contagious pathogen, there would be two possible modes that a non-state actor would have to instigate an attack.
The virus could be refined and then aerosolized and released into a populated area, or an individual could be infected with the virus and sent to freely circulate within a population.
There are severe constraints that make success
using either of these methods unlikely
.
The technology needed to refine and aerosolize a pathogen for a biological attack is beyond
the capability
of most non-state actors. Even if they were able to develop a weapon, other factors such as wind patterns and humidity can render an attack ineffective
.
Using a human carrier
is a less expensive method, but it requires that the biological agent be a contagion
. Additionally, in order to infect the large number of people necessary to start an outbreak, the infected carrier must be mobile while contagious, something
that is doubtful with a serious disease
like small pox.
The carrier
also cannot be visibly ill
because that would limit the necessary human contact.
As far as continued research is concerned, there is a risk-reward equation to consider.
The threat of a terrorist attack using biological weapons is very low
. And while it is impossible to predict viral outbreaks, it is important to be able to recognize a new strain of virus that could result in an epidemic or even a pandemic, enabling countries to respond more effectively. All of this hinges on the level of preparedness of developed nations and their ability to rapidly exchange information, conduct research and promote individual awareness of the threat.

John
, the Robert B. & Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public
Service and Director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government,
Lafayette College, April 2008, “CONTEMPORARY U.S. FEDERALISM: COERCIVE CHANGE
WITH COOPERATIVE CONTINUITY,” http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/2601994.pdf
Contemporary American federalism exhibits historically unique characteristics while retaining characteristics associated with two previous eras of federal history commonly called “dual federalism” and “cooperative federalism.”
U.S. federalism today can be described as “coercive” because major political, fiscal, statutory, regulatory, and judicial practices entail impositions of many federal
(i.e., national government) dictates on state and local governments. This era began in the late 1960s
and followed a 35-year era of cooperative federalism.
Coercive federalism has involved a shift in federal policy-making from the interests of places (i.e., state and local governments) to the interests of persons (i.e., voters
and interest groups), thus making the federal government much more like a truly national government
than ever before.
Elected federal officials
, as well as the federal courts, are much more responsive to nationwide election coalitions
, campaign contributors, and interest groups and much less responsive to the elected officials of state and local governments
than they were during the eras of dual and cooperative federalism.
State and local officials have no privileged voice in Congress
or the White House as elected representatives of the people; instead, they must act like interest groups and compete with all the other interest groups in the federal policy-making arena where
, frequently
, they cannot prevail against powerful interest groups that can bring crucial financial, ideological, and voter rewards and punishments to bear
on the electoral fortunes of federal officials. As U.S. Senator Carl Levin (Dem-Michigan) commented to this author in 1988, “
There is no political capital
[for members of Congress] in intergovernmental relations
,” that is, in responding to the concerns of governors, state legislators,
county commissioners, mayors, and the like.
Somewhat paradoxically
, though, substantial characteristics of cooperative federalism still thrive
in the administrative interstices of the federal system.
Federal, state, and local bureaucrats generally cooperate and coordinate
with each other in implementing intergovernmental programs and policies. Federal officials
(except for federal judges) are rarely coercive with respect to policy implementation
, and state and local bureaucrats rarely obstruct implementation
.
Even elected state and local officials are usually cooperative with respect to policy implementation.
Of course, conflicts arise in intergovernmental administrative relations, but bargaining and negotiation are the principal tools of conflict resolution, with recourse to the courts being a last resort.
Matt
, Ph.D. in Zoology from Oxford, worked for the Economist for nine years as science editor, Washington correspondent and American editor, fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 9/17/13, “Dialing Back the Alarm on Climate Change,” http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324549004579067532485712464?mo
d=trending_now_1&mg=reno64-

wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324549004579067
532485712464.html%3Fmod%3Dtrending_now_1
Later this month, a long-awaited event that last happened in 2007 will recur. Like a returning comet, it will be taken to portend ominous happenings. I refer to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (
IPCC) "fifth assessment report
," part of which will be published on Sept. 27.
There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm
. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of
man-made emissions
of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007
.
Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.
Specifically, the draft report says that " equilibrium climate sensitivity
" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur— is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius
(1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), " likely" to be above 1.5
degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius
(10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees
Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.
Still, the downward movement since 2007 is clear
, especially at the bottom of the "likely" range. The most probable value (3 degrees Celsius last time) is for some reason not stated this time.
A more immediately relevant measure of likely warming has also come down: "transient climate response
" (TCR)— the actual temperature change expected from a doubling of carbon dioxide about 70 years from now
, without the delayed effects that come in the next century. The new report will say that this change is "likely" to be 1 to 2.5 degrees Celsius and
" extremely unlikely" to be greater than 3 degrees
. This again is lower than when last estimated in 2007 ("very likely" warming of 1 to 3 degrees Celsius, based on models, or 1 to 3.5 degrees, based on observational studies).
Most experts believe
that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius
from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage
. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC's emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083
, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm
.
Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places).
Increased carbon dioxide levels
also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth
—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher.
Up to two degrees of warming
, these benefits will generally outweigh the harmful effects
, such as more extreme weather or rising sea levels, which even the IPCC concedes will be only about 1 to 3 feet during this period.
Yet these latest IPCC estimates of climate sensitivity may still be too high
.
They don't adequately reflect the latest rash of published papers estimating
" equilibrium climate sensitivity" and
"transient climate response" on the basis of observations, most of which are pointing to an even milder warming
.
This was
already apparent
last year with
two papers—by scientists at the University of
Illinois and Oslo University
in Norway— finding a lower ECS than assumed by the models
. Since then, three new papers conclude
that
ECS is well below the range assumed in the models
.
The most

significant
of these, published in Nature Geoscience by a team including 14 lead authors of the forthcoming IPCC scientific report
, concluded
that " the most likely value of equilibrium climate sensitivity based on the energy budget of the most recent decade is 2
.0 degrees Celsius
."
Two recent papers
(one in the Journal of the American Meteorological Society, the other in the journal Earth System Dynamics) estimate
that
TCR is
probably around 1.65 degrees Celsius
. That's uncannily close to the estimate of 1.67 degrees reached in 1938 by Guy Callendar, a British engineer and pioneer student of the greenhouse effect. A Canadian mathematician and blogger named Steve McIntyre has pointed out that Callendar's model does a better job of forecasting the temperature of the world between 1938 and now than do modern models that "hindcast" the same data.
The significance of this is that Callendar assumed that carbon dioxide acts alone, whereas the modern models all assume that its effect is amplified by water vapor. There is not much doubt about the amount of warming that carbon dioxide can cause. There is much more doubt about whether net amplification by water vapor happens in practice or is offset by precipitation and a cooling effect of clouds.
Since the last IPCC report in 2007, much has changed.
It is now more than 15 years since global average temperature rose significantly
. Indeed, the IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri has conceded that the "pause" already may have lasted for 17 years, depending on which data set you look at. A recent study in Nature Climate Change by Francis Zwiers and colleagues of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, found that models have overestimated warming by 100% over the past 20 years
.
Explaining this failure is now a cottage industry in climate science
. At first, it was hoped that an underestimate of sulfate pollution from industry (which can cool the air by reflecting heat back into space) might explain the pause, but the science has gone the other way—reducing its estimate of sulfate cooling. Now a favorite explanation is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean
.
Yet the data to support this thesis come from ocean buoys and deal in hundredths of a degree of temperature change
, with a measurement error far larger than that
. Moreover, ocean heat uptake has been slowing over the past eight years
.
The most plausible explanation
of the pause is
simply that climate sensitivity was overestimated in the models because of faulty assumptions about net amplification through water-vapor feedback
. This will be a topic of heated debate at the political session to rewrite the report in Stockholm, starting on Sept. 23, at which issues other than the actual science of climate change will be at stake.
Craig
, founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon
Dioxide and Global Change, member of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, Arizona-Nevada
Academy of Sciences, and Association of American Geographers; Sherwood Idso, research physicist with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service at the US Water Conservation
Laboratory and adjunct professor at the ASU Office of Climatology; and Keith Idso, Vice
President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, July 11, 2012, “The
Potential for Adaptive Evolution to Enable the World's Most Important Calcifying Organism to
Cope with Ocean Acidification,” CO2 Science, Vol. 15, No. 28
In an important paper published in the May 2012 issue of Nature Geoscience, Lohbeck et al. write that "our present understanding of the sensitivity of marine life to ocean acidification is based primarily on short-term experiments," which often depict negative effects. However, they go on to say that phytoplanktonic species with short generation times "may be able to respond to environmental alterations through adaptive evolution." And with this tantalizing possibility in mind, they studied, as they describe it, "the ability of the world's single most

important calcifying organism, the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi, to evolve in response to ocean acidification in two 500-generation selection experiments."
Working with freshly isolated genotypes from Bergen, Norway, the three German researchers grew them in batch cultures over some 500 asexual generations at three different atmospheric CO2 concentrations - ambient (400 ppm), medium (1100 ppm) and high (2200 ppm) - where the medium CO2 treatment was chosen to represent the atmospheric CO2 level projected for the beginning of the next century. This they did in a multi-clone experiment designed to provide existing genetic variation that they said "would be readily available to genotypic selection," as well as in a single-clone experiment that was initiated with one
"haphazardly chosen genotype," where evolutionary adaptation would obviously require new mutations. So what did they learn?
Compared with populations kept at ambient CO2 partial pressure, Lohbeck et al. found that those selected at increased CO2 levels "exhibited higher growth rates, in both the single- and multi-clone experiment, when tested under ocean acidification conditions."
Calcification rates, on the other hand, were somewhat lower under CO2-enriched conditions in all cultures; but the research team reports that they were "up to 50% higher in adapted
[medium and high CO2] compared with non-adapted cultures." And when all was said and done, they concluded that "contemporary evolution could help to maintain the
functionality of microbial processes at the base of marine food webs in the face of
global change [our italics]."
In other ruminations on their findings, the marine biologists indicate that what they call the swift adaptation processes they observed may "have the potential to affect food-web dynamics and biogeochemical cycles on timescales of a few years, thus surpassing predicted rates of ongoing global change including ocean acidification." And they also note, in this regard, that "a recent study reports surprisingly high coccolith mass in an E. huxleyi population off Chile in high-CO2 waters (Beaufort et al., 2011)," which observation is said by them to be indicative of "across-population variation in calcification, in line with findings of rapid microevolution identified here."

2NC

Joshua D.
, “NOTE: EPIC FAILURE: THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT THE
UNITED STATES' ROLE IN THE FAILURE OF THE GLOBAL WAR ON DRUGS AND HOW IT
IS GOING TO FIX IT,” Summer 13, Suffolk Transnational Law Review, 36 Suffolk Transnat'l L.
Rev. 423
The U.S. wields considerable influence over the rest of the world, so it is no surprise that its call for the development and maintenance of prohibitive, punitive drug policies resulted in a majority of the international community following. n105 Conversely, if the U.S. leads the call for the development and maintenance of more tolerant drug policies grounded in health, humanity and science,
. n106 Cultural shifts do not take place overnight, and the idea of complete U.S. drug policy reformation is too aggressive and stark in contrast to succeed against modern bureaucracy and political alliances. n107 On the other hand, a more moderate, piecemeal approach could effectively act as a catalyst for this transformation while simultaneously serving as a case study for opponents of legal regulation. n108

Dave
, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at Swansea
University and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, March 2014, “The Rise and Decline of Cannabis Prohibition: the History of cannabis in the UN drug control system and options for reform,” http://www.tni.org/sites/www.tni.org/files/download/rise_and_decline_web.pdf
The political reality of regulated cannabis markets
in
Uruguay, Washington and Colorado operating at odds with the conventions makes it unavoidable to discuss options for treaty reform or approaches that countries may adopt to adjust their relationship with the regime
. As explained in detail in the final chapter in this report, there are no easy options
; they all entail procedural complications and political obstacles. Possible routes to move beyond the existing framework
and create more flexibility at the national level include: the rescheduling of cannabis by means of a WHO review
; treaty amendments; modifications inter se by a group of like-minded countries
; and the individual denunciation of the Single Convention followed by re-accession and a reservation
, as recently accomplished
by Bolivia in relation to
the coca
leaf.
The chosen path for reform would be dependent upon a careful calculation around the nexus of procedure, politics and geopolitics
.
The current system favours the status quo with efforts to substantially alter its current form easily blocked by states opposing change
.
That group remains sizeable and powerful
, even in light of the U.S. federal government’s awkward position after the Colorado and Washington referenda.
A coordinated initiative by a group of like-minded countries agreeing to assess possible routes and deciding on a road map seems the most likely scenario for change and the possibility for states to develop legally regulated markets for cannabis while
.
Such an approach might
even lead to the ambitious plan to design a new “single” convention
.
Such an option would
address far more than the cannabis issue and could help reconcile various inconsistencies within the current regime such as those related to scheduling
.
It could improve UN system-wide coherence relative to other UN treaty obligations
, including human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples
.
A new convention could borrow from other
UN treaties and institute
much-needed inbuilt review and monitoring mechanisms
.
Cannabis might be removed from the drug control apparatus altogether and placed within an instrument modelled on the WHO Tobacco Convention
. Another option would be to encourage the UN General Assembly to use its authority to adopt treaty amendments, all the more interesting in light of the upcoming UNGASS on drugs in 2016.

, Law Dictionary, 2010, “TERM: legalize,” p. lexis
TERM: legalize.
TEXT: To make legal that which otherwise is illegal. To confirm something already done; not to authorize something in the future.
AUTHORITY: Barker v Chesterfield, 102 Mass 127.

David
, Researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Ph.D. in Ecosystem
Dynamics from the Australian National University, developed the Genetic Algorithm for Ruleset Production system making contributions modeling of invasive species, epidemiology of human diseases, the discovery of new species, and effects on species of climate change, April 21,
2011, “Errors of Global Warming Effects Modeling,” online: http://landshape.org/enm/errorsof-global-warming-effects-modeling/
Predictions of massive species extinctions due to AGW
came into prominence with a January 2004 paper in
Nature called Extinction Risk from Climate Change by Chris Thomas et al.. They made the following predictions:
“we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be ‘committed to extinction’.
Subsequently, three communications appeared in Nature in July 2004. Two raised technical problems
, including one by the eminent ecologist Joan Roughgarden. Opinions raged from “Dangers of Crying Wolf over Risk of Extinctions” concerned with damage to conservationism by alarmism, through poorly written press releases by the scientists themselves, and Extinction risk [press] coverage is worth the inaccuracies stating “we believe the benefits of the wide release greatly outweighed the negative effects of errors in reporting”.
Among those believing gross scientific inaccuracies are not justified, and such attitudes diminish the standing of scientists, I was invited to a meeting of a multidisciplinary group of 19 scientists, including Dan Bodkin from UC Santa Barbara, mathematician
Matt Sobel, Craig Loehle and others at the Copenhagen base of Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. This resulted in Forecasting the Effects of Global Warming on Biodiversity published in 2007 BioScience.
We were
particularly concerned by the cavalier attitude to model validations in
the Thomas paper, and the field in general
:
Of the modeling papers we have reviewed
, only a few were validated.
Commonly, these papers simply correlate present distribution of species with climate variables, then replot the climate for the future from a climate model and
, finally, use one-to-one mapping to replot the future distribution of the species
, without any validation using independent data
. Although some are clear about some of their assumptions (mainly equilibrium assumptions), readers who are not experts in modeling can easily misinterpret the results as valid
and validated. For example, Hitz and Smith (2004) discuss many possible effects of global warming on the basis of a review of modeling papers, and in this kind of analysis the unvalidated assumptions of models would most likely be ignored.
The paper observed that few mass extinctions have been seen over recent rapid climate changes, suggesting something must be wrong with the models to get such high rates of extinctions.
They speculated that species may survive in refugia, suitable habitats below the spatial scale of the models
.
Another example of an unvalidated assumptions that could bias results in the direction of extinctions, was described in chapter 7 of my book Niche Modeling.
When climate change shifts a species’ niche over a landscape (dashed to solid circle) the response of that species can be described in three ways: dispersing to the new range (migration), local extirpation (intersection), or expansion (union). Given the probability of extinction is correlated with range size, there will either be no change, an increase (intersection), or decrease
(union) in extinctions depending on the dispersal type. Thomas et al. failed to consider range expansion (union), a behavior that predominates in many groups. Consequently, the methodology was inherently biased towards extinctions.
One of the many errors in this work was a failure to evaluate the impact of such assumptions.
The prevailing view now, according to Stephen Williams, coauthor of the Thomas paper and Director for the Center for Tropical
Biodiversity and Climate Change, and author of such classics as “Climate change in Australian tropical rainforests: an impending environmental catastrophe”, may be here.

Many unknowns remain in projecting extinctions
, and the values provided in Thomas et al. (2004) should not be taken as precise predictions. … Despite these uncertainties, Thomas et al. (2004) believe that the consistent overall conclusions across analyses establish that anthropogenic climate warming at least ranks alongside other recognized threats to global biodiversity.
So how precise are the figures? Williams suggests we should just trust the beliefs of Thomas et al. — an approach referred to disparagingly in the forecasting literature as a judgmental forecast rather than a scientific forecast (Green & Armstrong 2007).
These simple models gloss over numerous problems in validating extinction models
, including the propensity of so-called extinct species quite often reappear
.
Usually they are small, hard to find and no-one is really looking for them.
Compared with populations kept at ambient CO2 partial pressure, Lohbeck et al. found that those selected at increased CO2 levels "exhibited higher growth rates, in both the single- and multi-clone experiment, when tested under ocean acidification conditions."
Calcification rates, on the other hand, were somewhat lower under CO2-enriched conditions in all cultures; but the research team reports that they were "up to 50% higher in adapted
[medium and high CO2] compared with non-adapted cultures." And when all was said and done, they concluded that "contemporary evolution could help to maintain the
functionality of microbial processes at the base of marine food webs in the face of
global change [our italics]."
In other ruminations on their findings, the marine biologists indicate that what they call the swift adaptation processes they observed may "have the potential to affect food-web dynamics and biogeochemical cycles on timescales of a few years, thus surpassing predicted rates of ongoing global change including ocean acidification." And they also note, in this regard, that "a recent study reports surprisingly high coccolith mass in an E. huxleyi population off Chile in high-CO2 waters (Beaufort et al., 2011)," which observation is said by them to be indicative of "across-population variation in calcification, in line with findings of rapid microevolution identified here."

1NR

Heath
, MA, International Relations, Melbourne School of Government,
2/4/14, “Why Do States Mostly Obey International Law?,” http://www.eir.info/2014/02/04/why-do-states-mostly-obey-international-law/
All states in the contemporary world, including great powers
, are compelled to justify their behaviour according to legal rules and accepted norms
. This essay will analyse the extent to which states comply and the reasons for their compliance. Essentially, the extent to which states follow their international obligations has developed over the past 400 years. From a historical perspective, international obligations and accepted norms were founded following two key developments in European history. In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War by acknowledging the sovereign authority of various European princes.[1] This event marked the advent of traditional international law, based on principles of territoriality and state autonomy. Then in 1945, again following major wars initiated in Europe, states began to integrate on a global scale.[2] The UN Charter became the international framework for which norms of sovereignty and non-intervention were enshrined.
Now, as a result of modern technology, communication, transport, and more, the evolving process of
Globalisation
, “The internationalization of the world”,[3] has provided an opportunity for international law and accepted norms to reach every corner of the globe
.
However, the development of international law and accepted norms has not compelled states to comply all the time. Instead, the trend over the past 400 years has shown that states have been mostly compelled to justify their behavior according to legal rules and accepted norms
. The emphasis on mostly should be stressed. Even though the UN
Charter does not permit violating sovereignty through the use of aggression, the extent to which states follow their international obligations varies. Louis Henkin’s book, How Nations Behave, articulates the extent of compliance.[4] He said, “
Almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all the time
”.[5]
As such, the trend in contemporary international relations is that war remains possible
, but it is much less acceptable now
than it was a century or even half a century ago.[6] The benefit of the trend is that almost full compliance is said to lead states into a pattern of obedience and predictable behaviour
.[7]
Therefore
,
.
States
attempt to manage
the friction with ongoing compliance through
the principle of pacta sunt servanda – the adherence to agreements
.[8] Over time, such agreements to norms and treaties have diminished sovereignty, increased international institutions, given rise to non-state actors, and rapidly developed the contemporary customary and treaty based rules system.[9] The evolution of the dispute-settlement procedures of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the establishment of the
International Criminal Court (ICC), and the establishment of numerous global treaties illustrate states agreeing voluntarily to give up a portion of their sovereignty.
Heather
, New York consultant for the International Drug Policy Consortium and the Harm Reduction Coalition, 2014, “The 2016 Drugs UNGASS: What does it mean for drug

reform?,” http://drogasenmovimiento.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/13-10-14-the-2016-drugsungass-e28093what-does-it-mean-for-drug-reform_.pdf
But why? With all of the progress made in reform around the world lately, many
- especially in the US - are asking if the
UN is even relevant to domestic drug reform
at this point.
With the recent marijuana laws passed in
Colorado and Washington
and the proposed legislation in Uruguay - not to mention decriminalization measures enacted in
Portugal and a growing number of other countries - reform seems inevitable. At some point, the argument goes, the UN system will simply be overtaken by "real world" reform on the ground. Why even bother with advocacy at the UN?
This is not an easy question to answer; however, 1 truly believe that to be effective
, reform efforts must be made at every level
- locally, nationally, and globally
.
It may be true that reform efforts in the US and around the world have made significant progress in the last 10 years. But there is still a long way to go - marijuana is still not completely legal anywhere in the world (despite state laws to the contrary, marijuana still remains illegal under federal law throughout the US), and many human rights abuses continue to be carried out against drug users throughout the world in the name of drug control. Meanwhile, the international drug control treaties - the 1961
Single Convention
on Narcotic Drugs and its progeny
- remain in place and,
in fact, enjoy nearly universal adherence by 184 member states
.
That so many countries comply
- at least technically, if not in "spirit" - with the international drug treaty system, shows just how highly the international community regards the system
. As well it should - the
UN system is invaluable and even vital in many areas
, including climate change
,
HIV/AIDS reduction, and
, most recently, the Syrian chemical weapons crisis
(and don't forget that the international drug treaty system also governs the flow of licit medication).
While it is not unheard of for a country to disregard a treaty
, a system in which countries pick and choose which treaty provisions suit them and ignore the rest is
, shall we say, less than ideal.
Idil
, Associate Professor & Director of the Certificate Program in Practical Ethics,
Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University,
6/11/14, “The Progression of Multilateral Talks on Climate Change and the Challenge of
“Equity”: Notes from the UN Climate Conference in Bonn, June 2014,” http://blogs.law.widener.edu/climate/2014/06/11/the-progression-of-multilateral-talks-onclimate-change-and-the-challenge-of-equity-notes-from-the-un-climate-conference-in-bonnjune-2014/#sthash.AMOBmAtk.dpuf
This year’s intersessional meetings are of special importance, the June session currently under way being a critical one. This is because multilateral negotiations on climate change are on a track to reach a comprehensive and legally binding agreement by
the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21), to be held in Paris at the end of 2015
. But more importantly, everything to be agreed upon
at COP 21 must be drafted
at COP 20 the year before
, that is
in
December 2014
. It is the present intersessional meeting – taking place in June in Bonn – where the hard work needs to be done, so that all the substantive recommendations can be presented, negotiated, and drafted in Lima. In this spirit, the UN Climate Change Conference convened on June 4 with determination to achieve as much as possible before Lima.
At this point in time, the negotiations are at an important juncture
.
The goal
for the international community is to draw lessons from
the
Kyoto
Protocol era, and
to articulate the terms of an entirely new system of

cooperation for the Post-Kyoto era
. In other words, the goal is to avoid the weaknesses of
the
Kyoto
Protocol.
Given that the Kyoto Protocol was motivated by a well-defined conception of equitable distribution of responsibility, many questions arise at this juncture over how equity will be defined within the new agreement. Equity has always been central to multilateral negotiations on climate change. This makes sense for many reasons. First, climate change is expected to affect lives in important ways. Second, the way in which people’s lives will be affected is expected to be more severe in some places than others. Third, climate change is a phenomenon that is associated with human activity, which has been going on for some time and which is intertwined with economic development and growth. For these reasons alone, it becomes obvious to anyone with a sense of fairness that – to the extent that the international community is to cooperate on addressing the effects of climate change – the terms of cooperation ought to be fair.
The terms of cooperation set by the Kyoto Protocol were devised in light of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Given that industrialized nations are responsible for the problem of climate change, the idea was to adopt an allocation of responsibilities that requires developed nations to take up the bulk of the burden. This gave rise to roughly two categories of nations: those who are to assume the costs of curbing climate change by contrast to those who are not expected to do much. But this structure also became highly divisive and unable to generate agreement and compliance, which is desperately needed for action on climate change to be effective.
As part of the new rounds of negotiations, the UNFCCC adopted the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action at COP 17 in Durban in
2011, where negotiations were put on an ambitious track to work out the details of an entirely new international agreement by 2015.
When it was first put in place, the Durban Platform did not include too many substantive decisions, for the objective was to allow the terms of international cooperation to be discussed and decided upon through negotiations from 2012 to 2015. The single prior decision that was made, however, was the rejection of the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” and the adoption of a principle of “universality” instead, as the central guiding principle of a post-Kyoto agreement. On this principle, all nations are to contribute to the cooperative scheme on climate change in some capacity. This shift gave the international community the opportunity to have a fresh start and to rethink the terms of cooperation on a
(relatively) clean slate
.
Additionally, the new international agreement under negotiation is
one that is expected to have a richer composition than
the
Kyoto
Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was focused exclusively on mitigation through reduction of emissions. The new agreement is expected to have both a mitigation component and an adaptation component. Within the adaptation component, an International Mechanism on Loss and Damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries vulnerable to the effects of climate change is being negotiated as well. This is an entirely novel issue under negotiations, and one with important implications for the philosophical, legal, and ethical aspects of international cooperation. In short, this broader range of issues adds significant dimension to the talks
. The principle of “universality” may well be more suitable for this new round of negotiations, as the allocation of responsibility may need to be customized to each specific issue.
Contrary to what might seem at first blush, the principle of “universality” need not require every nation to assume exactly the same amount of costs and responsibilities for a given issue. So far, no one has suggested that. Negotiators are discussing how to achieve equitable conditions within a system of cooperation for each issue. Take the discussions on the Warsaw International Mechanism on
Loss and Damage, adopted recently in Warsaw in November 2013. As the issue is still in its earlier stages, the discussions are mostly over procedural matters at this point. But the question of equity arises nevertheless, and remains a central concern. For example, representatives of countries that are particularly vulnerable to the threat of loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, such as the members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), want to see greater representation of these countries in the decision-making body. There is an equity argument that motivates this request. A competing argument is that the advisory and decision-making bodies on this matter will secure more appropriate decisions if they are composed of members with the appropriate expertise, which may or may not align with regional or national affiliations. This argument, which is also motivated by a sense of justice, suggests that the expert-based composition will be conducive to decisions that would maximize the benefits to those whose interests are at stake.
How the discussions will unfold is yet to be seen, but
the general parameters of the negotiations are such that equitable terms are to be discussed and tailored
. The concept of “equity” is neither a monolithic nor an inert concept. It often needs to be formulated from within the concrete circumstances that make it relevant. Sometimes, equitable conditions devised for specific circumstances can become obsolete if circumstances change, and may need to be rethought and reformulated. Seen in this way, equity is not lost in this new round of negotiations, it is being worked out as new issues arise. Since any decision coming out of these negotiations will set precedents for future debates on international relations, it is important that the international community take the time to think through, and to carefully consider various (and sometimes conflicting) arguments, leaving no stone unturned.
The advantage of the present round of negotiations is that there is a general motivation to advance the debates in a productive way, and to reach a genuinely effective and mutually

acceptable agreement
. How the talks will unfold in the second week of the June session at the UNFCCC will set the tone for the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) in Lima. And for anyone interested in the philosophical, legal, and ethical dimensions of public policy and international cooperation, a close examination of the dynamics of the negotiations is worthwhile.
Heather
, New York consultant for the International Drug Policy Consortium and the Harm Reduction Coalition, 2014, “The 2016 Drugs UNGASS: What does it mean for drug reform?,” http://drogasenmovimiento.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/13-10-14-the-2016-drugsungass-e28093what-does-it-mean-for-drug-reform_.pdf
But beyond the idea of simple respect for international law, there are practical aspects of reform to consider. The drug problem is a global one, involving not only consuming countries but producing and transit countries as well. Without global cooperation, any changes will at best be limited (marijuana reform in Washington and Colorado hardly affects the issue of human rights abuses in Singapore or the limitations on harm reduction measures in Russia). At worst, reform efforts enacted ad hoc around the world could be contradictory and incompatible - as might be the result if, for example, Colombia and the US opted for a regulated market without the cooperation of Costa Rica or Honduras, both transit countries.
Melissa T.
, J.D., New York University School of Law, class of 2003, Spring 2005,
“NOTE: BEYOND PUNITIVE PROHIBITION: LIBERALIZING THE DIALOGUE ON
INTERNATIONAL DRUG POLICY,” New York University Journal of International Law and
Politics, 37 NYUJ Int'l L. & Pol. 555
One might also question the need for an international discourse rather than simply permitting states to grapple with drug policy in isolation. The reason that the drug problem should be addressed through an international dialogue is that the drug problem is global in nature, not only because the drug market transcends national boundaries but also because drug abuse represents a health risk that nearly every country must confront. Thus, there is a need to balance the necessity of tailoring policies to fit a particular country and the need to discuss and coordinate efforts on a global level. As such, the existence of an international discourse on useful or effective measures to address the harms associated with drug use is critically important.

Nathaniel
, J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School, 2013, “ARTICLE: INITIATIVE
502 AND CONFLICTING STATE AND FEDERAL LAW,” Gonzaga Law Review, 49 Gonz. L. Rev.
187
Although both conventions are not self-executing, both are unequivocal in requiring that the parties make marijuana production, distribution, and possession criminal offenses under its domestic law. n92 In both instances though, this provision is "subject to its constitutional limitations" n93 or "the funda-mental provisions of their respective domestic legislative systems." n94 This indicates that although the United States could not use federalism as an excuse to derogate from the treaty, n95 neither treaty requires the United States to make these actions punishable offense at the state level if the federal nature of the legal structure prevents this possibility. n96
However, both conventions state that parties shall adopt measures "as may be necessary," which may require efforts beyond national legislation where state non-enforcement would pose a barrier to effective execution of the provisions. n97 Since Washington will stop prosecuting possession of marijuana for those over twenty-one or those that produce and distribute according to the guidelines of the Initiative, this has the potential to create a gap in enforcement.
Law enforcement resources for investigations, prosecutors and judges for trials, and parole officers and prisons in sentencing must all now be conducted at the federal level. If the level of enforcement is inadequate such that the penal provisions are not given effect, then the United
States will have failed to "give effect to ... the provisions of this Convention" n98 and to perform in "good faith" n99 and will have violated its obligations under the Conventions. As providing a meaningful level of enforcement would likely require some shifting of resources to capacitate federal enforcement agencies, Initiative 502 places the United States in danger of violating its obligations under the Conventions. In fact in the International Narcotics Regulatory Board's annual report from [*200] 2011, the Board, a treaty body for the Single Convention on Narcotic
Drugs, n100 called "upon the States parties concerned to take all necessary measures to ensure that state and/or provincial policies and measures do not undermine efforts to combat drug abuse and trafficking in narcotic drugs ... ." n101 To ensure that the United States does not breach its duty, it must either increase federal enforcement or push to resume state enforcement. Such a mechanism is possible through strategies similar to the National Minimum
Age Act, which reduces the amount of apportioned funds to a state unless the state has a law setting the minimum age of purchase or public possession of alcohol to twenty-one years of age. n102
Robert L.
, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School,
President of the Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc. and Vice-president of Bensinger, DuPont and Associates, was the first Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the

second Director of the White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, 2004,
Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, John Ashcroft et al v. Angel McClary Raich et al,
Supreme Court of the United States, No. 03-1454, http://www.ibhinc.org/pdfs/ARAmicusBrief.pdf
The Treaty Power provides an independent source of congressional authority upon which the
Controlled Substances Act should be upheld in this case. By enacting and enforcing the CSA, the
United States has thus far served as an exemplar to the international community regarding compliance with the obligations of the Single Convention. The Court of Appeals' ruling, if allowed to stand, will subvert those efforts. In addition, the activities at issue here, if aggregated with similar activities around the country, will eviscerate the federal regulatory system governing medical products—a system resulting from a century of difficult choices and hardwon lessons. Congress can without question conclude that such an evisceration would substantially and adversely affect interstate commerce. For the foregoing reasons, amici urge this Court to reverse the Court of Appeals' ruling.
Rachel
, Assistant Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, Summer 2009,
“Unpacking the State’s Reputation,” Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2
States are said to want a good reputation for cooperativeness, but defining this concept is
more difficult
than it immediately appears. In international relations, states do not face a dichotomous choice between cooperation and defection. For instance, the U nited
S tates withdrew from the ABM Treaty
in 2001.106 The withdrawal
from the treaty was completely legal. The
ABM
Treaty specifies
that either party can withdraw from the treaty with six months notice
,107 and the U nited
S tates gave the requisite notice
.108
No state argued that the United States did not live up to its legal obligations, but many criticized the U nited
S tates for renouncing the arms control agreement and not upholding international goals of arms limits
.109
This goes to the definition of a “good reputation” for cooperation: is it complying with the terms of the treaty or demonstrating a commitment to a course of action?
In the political science literature, a reputation for “cooperativeness” is viewed as a reputation for reliability in commitment to the goals of the regime
(“reliability reputation”).110 International law scholars are less clear. Often they switch between an idea of reliability and one of strict compliance with legal commitments (“legality reputation”).111 Yet a reputation for reliability and a reputation for legal exactness do not go hand in glove
: a state can completely fulfill its legal obligations and yet develop a reputation for being unreliable
.112
Failing to differentiate between a reputation for reliability and one for legality leads to confused causal statements about an action’s consequences on the state’s reputation
.
Similarly, the two types of reputations will have different effects on states’ decision making.

Dave
, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at Swansea
University and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, October 2012, “The
Contemporary International
Drug Control System: A History of the UNGASS Decade,” in Governing the Global Drug Wars, http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR014/SR-014-FULL-Lo-Res.pdf
With the growth, complexity, and multi-faceted nature of illicit drug issues, it became evident to an increasing number of countries that the benefits of a flexible interpretation of the conventions outweighed the costs of deviating from the regime’s normative expectancy
. In this respect, support for the zerotolerance US federal approach
, and by association for the punitive international prohibition approach, was increasingly regarded as contrary to national interest
. As pragmatic domestic concerns came to the fore, fewer governments were content to formulate policy through an American, morally inspired, conceptual lens. This shift in focus took place in relation to both a more efficient use of finite law enforcement resources, as well as a public health context surrounding injecting drug use and the spread of HIV/AIDS. This coincided with a realignment of the international environment after the collapse of the
Berlin Wall.
It was these concerns
that became important drivers for the behaviour of some states
and the growing systemic tensions that were to characterise the UNGASS decade.
Increasingly dissatisfied with the punitive approach
promoted by the conventions, a significant number of regime members engaged in a process of
‘soft defection
.’5
Rather than quitting the regime
, these states deviated from its prohibitive norm, and exploited plasticity within the treaties
, while technically remaining within their legal boundaries
.
Since norms are crucial to the essential character of a regime
, such a process of normative attrition represented a form of regime transformation.
Crucially
, however, in this case transformation involved
regime weakening and changes from within
, rather than a more substantive change of the regime.
Melissa T.
, J.D., New York University School of Law, class of 2003, Spring 2005,
“NOTE: BEYOND PUNITIVE PROHIBITION: LIBERALIZING THE DIALOGUE ON
INTERNATIONAL DRUG POLICY,” New York University Journal of International Law and
Politics, 37 NYUJ Int'l L. & Pol. 555
The preceding excerpts from a public letter sent to Kofi Annan on the eve of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on
Drugs in New York (June 1998) illustrate an escalating concern in the international community about the deleterious effects of "drug-war politics
."
The global debate
n2 over drug policy has become increasingly divisive
, n3 despite the existence of a system of treaties that govern such policy
. n4
Some
commentators have rejected punitive prohibitionist policies
[*557] closely linked to the American
"war on drugs
," advocating for the treatment of drug abuse as a public health, rather than a criminal justice, issue. n5
Proponents of prohibitionist policies have responded by asserting that
harm minimization and legalization approaches neglect the obligations of parties to the major, non-self-executing U.N. drug conventions
: n6 the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 n7 (180 States parties) [*558] (Single Convention);

the Protocol of 1972 Amending the Single Convention (175 States parties) (1972 Protocol); the Convention on Psychotropic
Substances of 1971 (174 States parties) (1971 Convention); and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and
Psychotropic Substances (170 States parties) (1988 Convention). n8 In particular, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), created pursuant to the Single Convention to supervise the enforcement of the Convention through a system of narcotic drug estimates and statistical returns, n9 has been outspoken in its disapproval of harm reduction measures undertaken by states such as
Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
Keith
, Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Mental Health Policy,
Stanford University, 11/25/13, “Can the United Nations Block U.S. Marijuana Legalization?,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-humphreys/can-the-united-nations-bl_b_3977683.html
4. Wouldn't a new UN marijuana drug treaty just be a vehicle for the U.S. to push its tough marijuana policies worldwide? Get ready for a surprise.
If all nations adopted current U.S. marijuana policy, the result would be significant relaxation of international control over marijuana
. Prior to the Obama Administration, a Rand
Corporation study found that the level of marijuana enforcement in the U.S. was similar to that of Western Europe
. Since Obama was elected, marijuana enforcement intensity has plummeted and the federal government has dropped its longstanding opposition to state-level marijuana decriminalization and legalization efforts.
Last but not least, remember that the only legal recreational marijuana markets in the world are not in the Netherlands or in Portugal but
right here in the U nited
S tates.
Transplanting current U.S. marijuana policy worldwide via a new UN treaty would mean
somewhat more liberal marijuana control policy in Europe, and dramatically more relaxed policy in most of Africa, the Middle
East and Asia.

David R.
, Professor of International Relations and Public Policy at
Swansea University Wales, and founding Director of the Global Drug Policy Observatory, March
2012, “Towards revision of the UN drug control conventions: The logic and dilemmas of Like-
Minded Groups,” http://www.tni.org/files/download/dlr19.pdf
[Note: LMG = like-minded group, i.e., group of countries acting together to push a reform agenda]
Secondly, and closely related to this point, it seems clear that as in other issue areas the success of any like-minded group would not only be dependent upon its size, scope and geopolitical muscle, but also the legal rigour of its revisionist case
.
to revise the drug control regime that ran counter to the principles of international law would
and
. Furthermore, aware of the issue of sequencing
discussed above, in order to maximize the chances of success, revisionist states
consequently must also be prepared to engage in a degree of reciprocity
. In this way support for any treaty revision that may not ostensibly appear to be within the national interest of a state may in fact be exactly that, since it would generate support in relation to more immediate issues of concern.47 Ironically, this was precisely the quid pro quo that the Bolivian delegation in Vienna was hoping for when it joined the Interpretative Statement group in 2009.
Marie
, Rapporteur, Drug Policy Dialogue in South East Europe, May 2013,
“Informal Drug Policy Dialogue Report,” http://www.diogenis.info/ckfinder/userfiles/files/Informal%20Drug%20Policy%20Dialogue%2
0in%20Warsaw_FINAL.pdf
Yet another possibility would be to adopt an approach similar to that of Bolivia – that is, denunciating the convention and re-accessing it with a reservation on cannabis control.
However, this process would be politically difficult for countries such as the USA and the
Netherlands to adopt, since they openly criticised Bolivia’s move as a breach of the spirit of the conventions. This could nevertheless be an option for Uruguay. The case of India, in this regard, is interesting, since cannabis can be used for traditional purposes in the country, thanks to a reservation introduced by the Indian government when it signed the 1961 Convention. However, for both Bolivia and India, these reservations are specific to the local context at hand.

Chad
, MA, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington
University, 4/26/11, “Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations and Marijuana: The Potential
Effects of U.S. Legalization,” https://elliott.gwu.edu/sites/elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/acad/lahs/mexico-marijuana-
071111.pdf
Federal legalization of marijuana is unlikely. There is no indication that a complete removal of marijuana from the list of controlled substances is a politically viable option in the short, medium, or long term. To unilaterally do so would put the United States in noncompliance with several international legal obligations. In order to avoid this, the United States would have to convince the signatories to the international conventions discussed in Chapter 2 of this report to agree to end marijuana controls.
John
, PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London
School of Economics, 10/11/11, “De-emphasising the Single Convention - The Lessons of Drug
Control History,” Global Policy, http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/11/10/2011/deemphasising-single-convention-lessons-drug-control-history
These observations have practical as well as analytic significance.
By misreading the Single Convention as
sui generis, and a direct product of US drug control imperialism
, reform advocates risk overlooking many of the historical forces that helped create - and continue to underpin
- the system
. For example, some regime critics are drawn to a repealist narrative
- one that suggests that the path to change is through a retraction of the Single Convention
. The problem with such a conception
is that it is likely to lead down the path of most resistance
.
The Single Convention was the product of an extremely complex interplay of forces
: geopolitical, economic, cultural, diplomatic and personal.
It would be impossible now to reach a consensus at the international level on the future shape of the control system outside of the Single Convention
. The realisation of this fact helps explain the almost paranoid defensive crouch that has long characterised the regime and its bureaucrats.
The transnational bureaucracies and layers of civil society that underpin the system are over a century old.
The regime has survived two world wars and the geopolitical tides of the twentieth century
.
In the pantheon of international cooperation it certainly qualifies as one of the great survivors
.
The odds that it will simply pack-up shop or cede control of the issue to a new epistemic community are very poor
.
Understanding the broader historical forces
, rather than focusing intently on their manifestation through treaty documents like the Single Convention, is
therefore important for critics
.
Meaningful change will be most likely to occur when the regime internalises an understanding of it’s own failures
and its bureaucrats begin to see their own futures as dependent on moving away from the failed norms and policies of the past.
Such a change will not happen in a revolutionary manner
. Instead it will be evolutionary and incremental.
To expect anything more is to underestimate the forces of bureaucratic inertia
as well as the byzantine structures of international politics.

The means to effect such an outcome is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, for the social entrepreneurs and international networks working to effect change, a strong understanding of ones opponents is always a useful tool. Historical lessons can have some pretty practical uses in this regard.

– Professor of Philosophy, Bates (David, Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics 100.3, p 601-2, p 606, jstor)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract "social entity."
It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive "overall social good
." Instead, the question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has."30 Why, however, is this not equally true of all those that we do not save through our failure to act?
By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the cost if we act, one fails to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction
.
In such a situation, what would
a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for the existence of rational beings,
but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an endin-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for rational beings.
If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational beings.
Persons
may have "dignity
, an unconditional and incomparable value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436), but
, as rational beings, persons also
have a fundamental
equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others.
The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then equal consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many
.
[continues] According to Kant, the objective end of moral action is the existence of rational beings.
Respect for rational beings requires that, in deciding what to do, one give appropriate practical consideration to the unconditional value of rational beings
and to the conditional value of happiness. Since agent-centered constraints require a non-value-based rationale, the most natural interpretation of the demand that one give equal respect to all rational beings lead to a consequentialist
normative theory
. We have seen that there is no sound Kantian reason for abandoning this natural consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a consequentialist interpretation does not require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it does not involve doing evil so that good may come of it. It simply requires an
uncompromising commitment to the equal value
and equal claims of all rational beings and a recognition that
, in the moral consideration of conduct, one's own subjective concerns do not have overriding importance.

John
, the Robert B. & Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public
Service and Director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government,
Lafayette College, April 2008, “CONTEMPORARY U.S. FEDERALISM: COERCIVE CHANGE
WITH COOPERATIVE CONTINUITY,” http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/2601994.pdf
State action on environmental protection captured considerable media attention in 2006-07, especially when California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, joined Prime Minister Tony Blair of the United Kingdom to sign an accord on global warming in August 2006. In September,
Schwarzenegger signed a bill to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by
2020. In 2004, California implemented rules on vehicular greenhouse gases that are stricter than the federal standards. Ten other states have adopted California’s rules, which limit the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases that automobiles can expel into the atmosphere. In addition, California, New York, and eight other states sued the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency for failing to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Some 23 states have set standards requiring utilities to generate up to 33 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.
In short, using their still considerable powers retained within the U.S. constitutional system, the states are major actors in domestic policy-making and, occasionally, minor actors in foreign policy-making, such as economic sanctions against various countries (Kincaid 1999). As such, it should be noted that many U.S. states are huge polities individually. California, for example, with 37.7 million residents, has a larger population than Canada and all but 34 countries in the world. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, California’s economy ranked tenth in the world in 2005 (with Spain’s economy being fourteenth), though the California Legislative
Analyst’s Office contended that the Golden State’s economy ranked eighth in the world in 2005
(with Spain’s economy being ninth). In January 2008, Governor Schwarzenegger proposed to the legislature an austere $141 billion (E94.8 billion) 2008-09 state operating budget that includes a 10 percent reduction in state spending in order to cope with an expected $14.5 billion
(E9.7 billion) deficit. Indeed, most U.S. states have larger economies, revenues, and government budgets than the majority of the world’s nation-states.
Richard A.
, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, the
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall
Distinguished Service Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of Chicago; and Mario
Loyola, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Summer 2014, “Saving Federalism,”
National Affairs, Issue #20, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/savingfederalism
The Supreme Court at first mounted some resistance, but then, starting in 1937, it dramatically backed down.
By the mid-20th century, the Court had abdicated its responsibility of judicial review in
the areas most crucial to checks and balances: the protection of property rights and economic liberty; the guarantee that federal revenue would be raised only to provide for the "general Welfare of the United States," rather than to reward special interests; and the maintenance of the boundary between state and federal authority, particularly with respect to the regulation of

commerce
.
One
cumulative effect of these abdications was the rise of "cooperative federalism
": the integration of state and federal governments under an umbrella of federal control
.
Among the many troubling questions raised by this constitutional transformation, one stands at its hub, connected in some way to virtually all the others: Can the states still serve their crucial but limited role as platforms for self-government within a properly functioning scheme of checks and balances? The Supreme Court has gotten the question mostly wrong since the passage of the 14th
Amendment shortly after the Civil War.
The Court has opened the door to federal control of state governments where exclusive state jurisdiction was most vital, while substantially curtailing federal protection against state abuses where federal protection was most vital
.
The result is a constitutional arrangement that diminishes liberty
, empowers government at every level
, and has left much of the original Constitution in disarray
.
For decades, proponents of state sovereignty — and of the principle of limited and enumerated powers — have argued that modern theories of "cooperative federalism" are just a veil for a vast expansion of federal power over state governments
. Progressives have traditionally fought back by arguing that state autonomy is protected in a variety of ways without judicial review, making fears of a federal takeover overblown. The Supreme Court has generally agreed with them.
But progressive legal thinkers are increasingly apt to champion the view conservatives have long warned of. A symposium published in the Yale Law Journal this past spring lifted the curtain on "cooperative federalism." Led by Yale law professor Heather Gerken, these scholars of "National Federalism" now insist that the conservatives were right — the federal government has,
in fact, already taken substantial control of many state activities and possesses ample powers to extend its dominion further
. As champions of centralized government, they believe that this transformation is all to the good. In the course of several hundred pages, they argue that federalism has become an indispensable tool of nationalism, improving national politics and national policymaking, integrating the national polity, and entrenching national power.
Their theories offer no clear limit to the further aggrandizement of federal power
.
Richard A.
, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, the
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall
Distinguished Service Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of Chicago; and Mario
Loyola, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Summer 2014, “Saving Federalism,”
National Affairs, Issue #20, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/savingfederalism
There was only one problem: Like New York, Printz left the door wide open for the cooperative-federalism programs that are almost as effective in establishing federal control of the states as direct rule would be
.
Cooperative federalism uses
either fiscal or regulatory inducements to rope states into implementing federal policy
.
Examples include state Medicaid programs and state implementation plans under the Clean Air Act
(such as the EPA's new state-based carbon rule), both of which require states to seek federal approval to gain benefits and avoid penalties
. The Rehnquist Court held fast to the fiction that such programs are voluntary for the states and constitute mere "encouragement" on the part of federal authorities, which is permissible unless and until it rises to the level of coercion. As the Court explained in New York, "Where
Congress encourages state regulation rather than compelling it, state governments remain responsive to the local electorate's preferences; state officials remain accountable to the people."
But what is the conceptual difference between encouragement and coercion?
Both involve free will but both involve the imposition of onerous penalties
if states refuse to comply with federal policy. Federal funds, which now account for 32% of state budgets on average, often come with so many conditions attached that any state variations to a program can be only marginal.
If states refuse to comply, they lose funds under programs that their citizens have already been taxed for
.
Likewise, through what scholars call "conditional preemption," the federal government
, exercising its commerce power, grants states permission to implement federal regulations
in areas such as health care, the environment,

education, and transportation — but only if the states comply with a host of conditions
. The conditions are normally so extensive that if states comply they are reduced to mere field offices of the federal government
.
But if they don't comply, the federal government preempts them and imposes its own implementation program
, often with little consideration for local constituents
. Indeed, sometimes the federal agency comes to "crucify" local constituents
, as former EPA regional administrator
Al Armendariz boasted at a closed-door meeting in the first months of the Obama administration. One troubling example of such
"crucifixion" arose when Texas refused to implement the EPA's first greenhouse-gas regulations: EPA preempted the field and then massively delayed the implementation of the regulation, leaving key industries with no access to necessary operating permits. Texas was forced to back down.
Unlike the Supreme Court, the National Federalists have no trouble praising cooperative-federalism programs
that increase federal control of state governments
.
Federal conditions shape most state policies
, chiefly because they are almost impossible for state officials to resist as a matter of political reality. The blandishment of hard tax dollars, which if rejected will go to other states even if raised from the citizens of the refusing state, plus the specter of unfriendly federal regulators stepping in if state regulators refuse to comply, are usually more than enough to force the hands of state officials.
Richard A.
, the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at New York University, the
Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and the James Parker Hall
Distinguished Service Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of Chicago; and Mario
Loyola, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Summer 2014, “Saving Federalism,”
National Affairs, Issue #20, http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/savingfederalism
It is particularly vital to disentangle the operations of state and federal governments. It is one thing for the federal government to locate a research institute at a state university or manage multiple federal, state, and local agencies in response to a disaster. It is quite another to systematically integrate the finances of governments with separate taxing authorities. As
Michael Greve convincingly argues in his 2012 book, The Upside Down Constitution, the intermingling of state and federal finances has led to a disastrous and unsustainable fiscal dysfunction across the whole government. The money Washington sends to the states is not
"assistance"; it is rent for the use of state agencies as field offices of the federal government, in transactions that contain a strong element of coercion. Much the same is true for cooperative regulatory programs under "conditional preemption." The separation of state and federal government is every bit as vital as the separation of powers within government, and given the much greater disparities in bargaining power, judicial policing of that troubled boundary is as indispensable for long-term national prosperity as for federalism itself.