AT: Impact
AT: Nuke War
A2 Nuclear Miscalc
1. [DL] They have no precedent to draw from. Realize the world has been producing nuclear
weapons since the 1940s and there has never been a single event of nuclear miscalculation in
history. We have 70 years of history on our side, they have nothing.
2. [DL] Mutually assured destruction checks back — there’s a reason Putin hasn’t launched nukes,
there’s a reason why no country has launched them since World War II, it’s because they know a
nuclear strike would inevitably come back at them from various alliances and defensive pacts.
3. [DL] hotlines remain open and check back–Stewart ‘22 finds: As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
advances, the DoD recently established a de-confliction line with Russia for preventing
miscalculation. The US military has successfully created hotlines with Russia in the past,
including Syria.
Stewart 22 - Phil Stewart, military & intelligence correspondent @ Reuters. [“New U.S.-Russia military hotline as Ukraine war
rages,” Reuters, March 3 2022, accessed 3/3/3]
The Pentagon has established a new hotline with Russia's ministry of defense to prevent "miscalculation, military incidents and
escalation" in the region
as Russia's invasion of Ukraine advances, a U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday. The
United States says it has no troops in Ukraine but it and NATO allies in Europe are worried about potential spillover, including
accidents, as Russia's stages the largest assault on a European state since World War Two. The U.S. and its allies are also channeling
millions of dollars worth of weaponry to Ukraine's armed forces, which are using the arms against Russian troops, despite Moscow's
warnings against foreign interference. "The
Department of the Defense recently established a
de-confliction line with the Russian ministry of defense on March 1 for the purposes of preventing
miscalculation, military incidents, and escalation," a senior U.S. defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity,
confirming a move first reported by NBC. The U.S. military has successful[ly] created hotlines with Russia
in the past, including during the war in Syria, where Moscow intervened on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. There,
the United States and Russia were waging parallel military campaigns, with the United States focused on battling Islamic State. The
move is just the latest effort to lower soaring tension between the United States and Russia, where President Vladimir Putin -- in a
clear warning to the West -- announced last weekend he was putting his nuclear forces on high alert.
https://archive.ph/GXcIP
AT: Climate Change
No UV emissions impact – Warming will be gradual, cushioned by inevitable
intermediate mitigation.
Wade ’21 [Robert H.; 2021; Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of
Economics, DPhil and MPhil in Social Anthropology from Sussex University, Master’s in Economics
from Victoria University, BA in Economics from Otago University; Global Policy Journal, “What is the
Harm in Forecasting Catastrophe Due to Man-Made Global Warming?”
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/22/07/2021/what-harm-forecasting-catastrophe-due-man-made
-global-warming]
Conclusion
I have argued that the “plausible” risks of climate change are commonly exaggerated within the climate community. Recall for
example, Christiana Figueres, 2020, “The scary thing is that after 2030 it basically doesn’t really matter what humans do”; Kevin Drum, 2019,
“[The Green New Deal] would only change the dates for planetary suicide by a decade or so”; Frank Fenner, 2010,
“We’re going to
become extinct. Whatever we do now is too late.” Many more in the same doomsday vein.
We have seen that the
standard global warming models have a powerful built-in bias to exaggerate the rate of
future temperature rise, as seen in (most of) them “hindcasting” temperature rises several times faster than
actually observed. We have seen that forecasters commonly take “worst-case scenarios” as “likely scenarios in the
absence of radical action” (eg reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050), to the point where Nature recently published a paper sub-titled, “Stop
using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome”.
The dismaying thing is that scientists and advocates have
been making catastrophising global warming forecasts of this
decades past, normally dated some 10 to 30 years into the future. The due date comes without catastrophe, but
never a retrospective holding to account. Rather, on to the next catastrophising forecast another 10 to 30 years ahead.
Scientists-writers-activists know the catastrophe forecasts get the attention, the clicks, the research funding. We saw the
kind for
exaggeration mechanism spelled out by Richard Betts of the BBC, Holman Jenkins of the Wall St Journal, and climate scientist Judith Curry.
The built-in exaggeration of the costs of climate change blunts the parallel with nuclear power plants. We know with high certainty the costs of
nuclear explosions. We know the costs of global temperature going above 1.5 C above “pre-industrial” much less certainly, and we can see the
mechanisms by which the likely costs are being systematically exaggerated.
On the other hand, there is abundant evidence that even without the doomsday exaggerations the plausible risks of climate change could be very serious, in particular because of the inherent
political economy difficulty of getting needed global or regional cooperation when political action is mostly at the level of sovereign nation states (see the G20).
Coal power generation is the single biggest source of GHG emissions, and emissions from coal consumption will probably not fall fast, whatever the promises. First, coal is cheap, accessible and
generates reliable power for many developing countries; in Asia, coal alone generates 40 percent of energy consumption, much higher than the world average of 29 percent. (12) Second,
developing countries, including China, assert a strong claim on carbon space to power their economic development. They see it partly as a matter of fundamental justice, since developed
countries emitted most of the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere and seas as the necessary condition for them becoming developed. Developed countries promise finance and technical
assistance on a massive scale to accelerate the energy transition in developing countries – and have a long track record of leaving promises as promises. (See the global distribution of Covid
vaccines. See the results of vaunted “voting reform” in the World Bank, leaving the US with 17% and China with 6%.) What is more, the Japanese government plans up to 22 new coal power
plants, as it closes nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima.
Then comes a question: does drawing attention to the doomsday exaggerations of the CCC – “disaster”, “catastrophe”, “extinction”, “fiddling while the planet burns” - serve to reduce the
political and public pressures for necessary ameliorative action, in a world where powerful fossil lobbies seek to block or delay such action for reasons independent of “evidence”? Should “Third
Way” essays like this one not be published, because “give them (deniers, sceptics) an inch and they will take a mile”? To what extent must mass publics be “panicked” in order to induce enough
collective political and business action – national, international – to substantially slow the growth of GHG emissions? If we can sustain emission- and temperature-curbing action only by holding
up the certainty of disaster, catastrophe, extinction, then better to let the doomsday exaggerations continue as the necessary condition for that ameliorative action. What is the harm, when the
alternative is ruin for humanity and the biosphere?
The danger is that the repeated wild exaggerations produce a public backlash, a discrediting, and a strengthening of the many “deniers” who see “leftists, governments, and the United Nations” as
the source of malevolence in the world. A more accurate accounting of the evidence would (hopefully) produce a more calibrated and sustained public and business response.
What to do? (13)
The IPCC should allocate some 10% of its budget to a Red Team, dedicated to independent scrutiny of its evidence and conclusions (especially the Summary for Policymakers). (14) The IPCC
should revise its mandate to require it explicitly to focus on interactions between natural forces and human actions, as it is now almost required not to, biassing its assessment of the state of
scientific knowledge towards “man-made global warming” as an almost separate system.
Learned societies should more actively seek to understand and publicize the reasons for repeated large-scale discrepancies between “hindcasts” and “forecasts” on the one hand and actual
observations on the other, discrepancies strongly biased towards “disaster”.
It is particularly important that the knee-jerk attribution of extreme weather events to global warming be challenged with reference to evidence. Judith Curry explained – quoted earlier -- why
CCC advocates have a powerful incentive to attribute cases of extreme weather to global warming, tout
court. She has recently written, “Apart from the reduced frequency of the coldest temperatures, the signal of global
warming in the statistics of extreme weather events remains much smaller than that from natural climate
variability, and is expected to remain so at least until the second half of the 21rst century.” She goes on to amplify a
point made earlier about the limits of the climate models used for the IPCCassessment reports: they are driven mainly by
predictions of future GHG emissions. They do not include predictions of natural climate variability
arising from solar output, volcanic eruptions or evolution of large-scale multi-decadal ocean circulations.
They do a particularly poor job of simulating regional and decadal-scale climate variability. (15)
Participants on both sides have to learn the art of respecting the principle of free speech while maintaining the standards of civil discourse.
While I have stressed the CCC’s support for urgent and radical changes to the way we live, work and govern, some CCC champions argue that the world economy could continue on a largely
unchanged growth trajectory provided that we switch fast from fossil fuels to renewables. Indeed, this switch is beginning to happen fast, with coal and nuclear energy production unable to
compete without subsidies in areas where natural gas, wind and solar resources are readily available.
But to say that life can continue as before provided we substitute renewables for fossil fuels obscures the huge difficulties for many developing countries of getting out of fossil fuels while
growing fast enough to reduce the income gap with developed countries.
We must give high priority to investments in “clean coal” technologies, such as carbon capture, storage and use, to make the dirtier coal cleaner in existing and new coal-power plants; and link
coal-power retirement to the coming on-stream of attractive alternatives. The multilateral development banks have recently or will soon announce bans on coal power. The G7 leaders meeting in
mid 2021 promised to stop using government funds to finance new international coal power plants by the end of 2021. China’s Belt and Road Initiative should increase its pressure on host
countries to cut back on dirty coal and boost clean coal and renewables.
A high and immediate priority is to build a robust financing and technical assistance mechanism for help from developed to developing countries. The Paris Agreement instituted a Mitigation
pillar and an Adaptation pillar. Intense debate took place around the third, Loss and Damage, the name of a mechanism to compensate for the destruction that Mitigation and Adaptation cannot
prevent. Developed countries by and large have sought to marginalize the Loss and Damage pillar, as they have long sought to marginalize Special and Differential Treatment for developing
countries in trade and investment agreements. “Finance is something that really rich countries, particularly the US, have made sure that there is no progress and not even discussion on”,
remarked Harjeet Singh, senior advisor at Climate Action Network International. (16)
My “forecast” is that in
the next two to three decades to midcentury we will make rapid progress in scientific knowledge
about weather and climate, helped by longer and more accurate satellite and ocean records and by a new generation of
climate models that operate at one to ten kilometers scale (as distinct from the current models’ 50 kilometer scale). We will probably
continue to make rapid progress in decoupling GHG from GDP growth, with a combination of state
direction-setting and private innovation focused on transformations in energy, transport, buildings, industry and agriculture, using
incentives like research and development subsidies and tax credits for technology investment, and penalties for carbon-intensive activities. (17) In
transport, this entails coordination across urban planning decisions, public transport investment, future of remote working, infrastructures for
electric charging and hydrogen loading. (18) Transformations in these systems are
already underway, and the prospect of
vast new green investments, supported and under-written by the state, will intensify them. These green investments will open
productive investment opportunities previously limited by stagnant wages and rising debt, which have driven investment into increasingly
speculative ventures. If by two or three decades ahead it looks as though the second half of this century could well experience globally extreme
climate and ocean events, we will be much more knowledgeable about what to do than we are today. (19)
Climate change is decreasing right now – economy decrease and clean energy
investment prove
Storrow 23 [Benjamin Storrow is a reporter for Climatewire. E&E News, 1-6-2023, "Will Global
Emissions Plateau in 2023? Four Trends to Watch," Scientific American,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-global-emissions-plateau-in-2023-four-trends-to-watch/
DOA: 7-7-23 //Ewan
Experts say 2023 could be the start of an emissions plateau, as the world’s largest emitters
experience slow growth and invest more in renewable technology. But uncertainty reigns—especially on whether
the world can begin the emissions dive necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
“I think we’re still in a world of pretty flat global emissions,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist who works at Stripe, a
payment processing firm. “It is unlikely that we see deep global emission cuts over the next two years. Flattening was still better than what we
were seeing in previous decades, but
it is going to take time for the energy transition to pick up steam.”
Emissions likely increased in 2022. Carbon Monitor, an academic emissions tracker, estimates that emissions through October
were 1.8 percent higher than 2021 levels. That’s far less than the 5 percent bump the Global Carbon Project forecast in 2021, as inflation
and rising interest rates tamped down the economy’s recovery.
So what does 2023 hold? Below are four trends that will shape the world’s emissions trajectory in the years to come.
1. IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Historically, the easiest way to predict emissions growth is to check the world’s economic outlook. A growing economy has
historically meant more energy consumption and higher emissions. A recession usually spells the
opposite.
Many prognosticators are cutting growth expectations in 2023. Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary
Fund, recently said she expects slow economic growth in China, the U.S. and Europe, which rank as the world’s first, second and
fourth largest emitters, respectively.
But just how slow, and whether the world slips into recession, remains to be seen.
Three major world economies face large uncertainties. Will the U.S. economy continue to shrug off rising interest
rates in 2023? Will Europe be able to repeat its successes of 2022, when it phased out Russian gas shipments thanks to a combination of
energy conservation, liquefied natural gas imports and warm weather?
Then there’s China. Global emissions growth was relatively muted in 2022, in part due to China’s "zero-Covid" policy and
the damper it put on the Chinese economy. But the country recently rescinded that policy—a decision that will no doubt affect the
2023 outlook.
“We could see a large rise in global emissions if there is a making up for lost time with the Chinese
economy,” Hausfather said. At the same time, he said, emissions growth could be muted if a wave of Covid cases
throws China’s economy off kilter.
2. GREEN INVESTMENT SURGE
One of the biggest developments in recent years has been the surge in clean energy spending.
The International Energy Agency estimates that such spending has risen 12 percent annually since 2020,
up from 2 percent per year over the five previous years. In 2021, China led with clean energy investments of $380 billion,
followed by the European Union at $260 billion and the U.S. at $215 billion. Oil, coal and gas investment, by contrast, has yet to return
to pre-pandemic levels.
All that was before the U.S. weighed in with even more clean energy spending in 2022. The Inflation
Reduction Act will provide $369 billion in clean energy tax credits over the next decade. Congress has
also poured money into the sector through the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science
Act.
It's too late
Arie 19 - Sam Arie. "It is likely too late to stop dangerous global warming". FT, 7-17-2019, https://archive.is/37VTm. Accessed 7-17-2023
Yet pessimism comes from the fact that all of this may not be enough. In our research at UBS, we estimate[s] that to
avoid a dangerous level
of global warming, the
world would need to commission an asset the size of New Jersey’s Ocean Wind every day for the next 30 years, without
wind and solar construction overnight and sustain that new growth
rate for decades, with no room for setbacks. The hard truth is that we are not on track for that. Nor are we close to an
overnight technical solution to the many other challenges of the energy transition that must be solved before we can
develop a 100 per cent clean energy system. Of course, these realities do not stop us from telling ourselves fairy tales. The first one is that energy
missing a day. Or put another way: we need to triple
efficiency will save the day. The facts show just the opposite: over 50 years since the oil price crises of the 1970s, we have seen rising energy efficiency in almost all
walks of life, yet in the same time period energy demand and carbon emissions have tripled. As the Victorian economist WS Jevons understood already in 1865, the
more efficient you become in your use of a fossil fuel, the more valuable that fossil fuel becomes to you, and the more of it you will consume. The second fairy tale is
a type of deus ex machina, a divine intervention usually staged in the last act of a play. Variously we hear that carbon capture, or nuclear fusion, or geoengineering
could play this role. Suggestions include sending mirrors into space to reflect away heat, or ploughing crushed volcanic rock into fields to soak up carbon dioxide.
These concepts may one day have potential but few are viable today, and with government debt already at levels similar to the period immediately after the second
world war, we see little hope for a programme of public sector investment to speed things up. So the irony remains: the most realistic pathway to mitigate global
warming is to deploy existing renewable technologies at maximum scale, and minimum cost, although the world is most likely now too late and too indebted to get the
job done on time. From this we reluctantly draw two contrasting conclusions: the first is that we may very well be on the cusp of a 20 or 30 year sustained bull market
in renewable power — promising a fundamental reshaping of our energy industry; our natural landscape; and perhaps even similar in social importance to the rollout
of clean water and sanitation in the 19th century, or mobile phones and the internet at the end of the 20th. But the second conclusion is that we will still most likely fail
to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050. Humanity may, therefore, achieve in the space of a hundred years what used to take 10,000 or 20,000 years — an increase in
average surface temperatures of 2, 3, 4 degrees Celsius or more. That means a belated prevention strategy will not be enough. We must now begin in earnest on a plan
for adaptation. We must not only ask how we can switch on more sources of clean, renewable power — but also how we can live with the consequences of the fossil
fuel sources we are not yet willing to switch off. In short, we have started too late on the investments that could have allowed us to live
without global warming. So we must now make a faster, better start on the investments that could enable us to live with it.
Turn - Emissions prevent Ice Age---extinction.
Whitehouse ’12 [David; 2012; Science Adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation; Public
Service Europe, “Could Rising CO2 Levels Help Prevent The Next Ice Age?”
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/1338/could-rising-co2-levels-help-prevent-the-next-ice-age]
That the trees no longer completely canopy this land is due to mankind as we cleared the forests. That the ice is no longer here is due to global
warming. Without doubt, we live in an interglacial period – a warm time between ice ages. There have been many during the current great
glaciation. Some have these periods have been warmer than today, many shorter than our current interglacial's duration. The
return of the
ice would, short of a giant meteor strike, be the biggest disaster to face humanity. Vast swathes of the northern
Hemisphere would be frozen. Northern Europe, Asia, Canada and the United States would have extensive
regions rendered uninhabitable. Mankind would have to move south. There would be no choice as no technology could stop
the ice or allow our high populations to life amongst it. Some believe the returnof the ice will not happen for
thousands of years, other that the signs could be visible within decades.
But could it be that the greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere, that many believe are responsible
for a recent warming of the planet, might counteract the forces bringing us a new glaciation? Could it be that
greenhouse gassesmight actually stave off the return of the ice and save the lives of tens of millions, if not
civilisation itself? A recent study by scientists at Cambridge University and published in the Journal Nature Geoscience suggests that the
carbon dioxide might extend the current interglacial until carbon dioxide levels fall. They believe that the
atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be about 240 parts per million before glaciation could start.
Currently, it is about 390 ppm. In a 1999 essay, Sir Fred Hoyle said: "The
renewal of ice-age conditions would render a large
fraction of the world's major food-growing areas inoperable and so would inevitably lead to the
extinction of most of the present human population. We must look to a sustained greenhouse effect to maintain the
present advantageous world climate. This implies the ability to inject effective greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the opposite of
what environmentalists are erroneously advocating."
Turn - Warming unlocks Siberian ag productivity, creating a breadbasket for East
Asia.
Parnell ’19 [Maarten; 2019; Founder and Managing Director of Vosbor; The Diplomat, “The Dormant
Breadbasket of the Asia-Pacific,”
https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/the-dormant-breadbasket-of-the-asia-pacific/]
Although some Siberian farmers in the south are anticipated to face production declines due to climate change, the
perspectiveswill improve significantly for the rest of Siberia. With the growing seasons becoming
longer and warmer, crop yields are anticipated to improve substantially. Moreover, abandoned cropland
and forest areas further north are becoming more attractive for cultivation, with April-July temperatures now on average 1.3
to 2 degrees Celsius higher than in 1960. Nonetheless, (re)cultivation of these lands could release significant amounts of carbon stored in the soil
and plants and aggravate climate change. Sustainable intensification of current agricultural lands should therefore have priority over cropland
expansion. Substitution of summer fallows, efficient no-till crop rotation schemes, increased water-use-efficiency, and equipment sharing
programs are the most cost-effective approaches to a sustainable intensification strategy in Siberia.
The logical destination for Siberian crop surplus is East and Southeast Asia, due to their proximity and
large demand. However, in 20 17 only 3.3 percent of all Russian grain exports went to East Asia and 7.8 percent to
Southeast Asia. The Russian government is acutely aware of the potential for increased Siberian agricultural exports
and has actively pursued foreign policy, regulation and the development of infrastructure to that end. In 2015 it created a free-port zone in
Primorsky Krai, the administrative region that borders the Pacific in the east and the Chinese border in the west. Named the Free Port of
Vladivostok, its benefits include a free-customs regime for resident companies, lower corporate taxes, fast-track VAT reimbursement, and a
simplified visa process for foreigners.
Vladivostok is directly linked to the Trans-Siberian Railway network, connecting the Western Siberian grain belt with the free port over more than 5,000 kilometers. This railway, however, has
limited capacity and although there are plans to increase its capacity, the infrastructure network has yet to expand to accommodate this growth. The Free Port zone, which handles mainly energy,
metals and mining commodities alongside containers, is also not equipped to efficiently load bulk grain and oilseed. To remedy this, a relatively minor fishing port called Zarubino, at the
southern tip of the Free Port zone, was designated to become home to the first grain terminal on the Pacific coast of Russia. The project is largely supported by Chinese investors, who are
interested in creating port access for the neighboring Chinese provinces Jilin and Heilongjiang, the country’s largest corn and soybean production areas. Currently, crops from these provinces
need to be transported up to 1,000 km by a congested railway to the nearest Chinese port in the Bohai Bay, while Zarubino is a mere 50 km from the border with China. The terminal was to be
completed by 2020 and initially slated to have an annual capacity of 40 million tonnes. Due to various setbacks, the project has yet to get off the ground.
Besides infrastructural issues, sparsely populated Siberia also suffers from a lack of skilled labor. To counter this the Russian government has actively supported foreign investment in the region.
Last year for example, it has made 1 million hectares of arable land in the Far Eastern Federal District available to foreign buyers, who are normally only eligible for leasehold. Although most of
the land is located in remote regions with low productivity, many Chinese buyers indicated interest. Wealthy farmers from China have been moving into the eastern part of Siberia ever since the
collapse of the USSR, as centrally planned local economies imploded and agricultural subsidies disappeared. As crop production in some regions of China becomes more difficult in the face of
climate change, more Chinese farmers may look north of the border for better opportunities.
Agricultural (land) investments are also attractive to institutional investors, in particular long-term investors like pension funds or sovereign wealth funds, as these investments have historically
delivered stable returns, increased diversification, and outpaced inflation. Various institutional investors have committed to Russian agriculture recently, mostly through shareholdings in foreign
listed groups focused on farmland acquisition and agribusiness. Among the major funds that invested in Russian farming are Sweden’s AP2 pension fund ($38 billion assets under management or
AUM), Dutch pension fund PFZW ($234 billion AUM), California’s CalPERS pension fund ($365.5 billion AUM), Nordea Investment Funds, and insurer Swiss Life. Some investors have even
acquired Russian farmland directly, such as New York based hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital and Harvard University’s endowment fund. The most active foreign investors are the large commodity
traders and food processors, who invest not only in land and farming, but also in infrastructure (storage and export terminals) and processing (grain milling or oilseed crushing).
Investment risks remain substantial however, as reflected in the overall level of foreign investment in Russia. The risks are not specific to agriculture, but inherent to investing in Russia. Unstable
regulation, red tape, corruption, and geopolitical uncertainty are some of the key concerns. More supportive economic policies and a better regulatory framework, as well as public spending on
infrastructure would go a long way in improving investment climate in Russia, regardless of economic sanctions.
As surpluses in other growing regions are anticipated to decline, countries will compete for food
supplies and put pressure on global prices, which will negatively affect food security worldwide. The
underperforming agriculturalsector of Siberia has great potential to support the growing demand of Russia’s
neighbors in the Asia-Pacific. Local crop production can be increased significantly, especially through sustainable
intensification. The existing infrastructure, albeit aging and insufficient for cost-competitive handling of agricultural bulk, has the
potential to facilitate large agricultural exports eastward. Like Catherina the Great and her grandson Alexander I, who both
successfully promoted the immigration of vast numbers of German farmers to areas that were sparsely populated and transformed them to what
remain today the most productive agricultural regions of Russia and Ukraine, the current Russian government should consider policies that will
make it more attractive for (foreign) investors to settle in Siberia if it earnestly wants to unlock the agricultural potential of the region. Siberia
could become the breadbasket of the Asia-Pacific and boost global food security in the process.
Increasing Asian food supply prevents crises that escalate to World War III.
Heneghan ’15 [Carolyn; 2015; Contributing Editor at Food Dive, BA in Communication and
Journalism from Tulane University, Citing UN Experts; Global Harvest Initiative Report – Food Dive,
“Where Food Crises and Global Conflict Could Collide,”
http://www.fooddive.com/news/where-food-crises-and-global-conflict-could-collide/350837/]
World War III is unimaginable for many, but some experts believe that not only is this degree of global conflict imminent, but it may be
instigated notby military tensions, oil and gas, or nuclear threats, but instead by, of all things, food.
As it stands, countries across the globe are enduring food crises, and the U.N.’s Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that about 840
million people in the world are undernourished, including the one in four children under the age of 5 who is stunted because of malnutrition.
Assistant director-general of U.N.
FAO Asia-Pacific Hiroyuki Konuma told Reuters that social and political unrest,
civil wars, and terrorism could all be possible results of food crises, and “world security as a whole
might be affected.” Such consequences could happen unless the world increases its output of food production
60% by mid-century. This includes maintaining a stable growth rate at about 1% to have an even theoretical opportunity to circumvent severe
shortages. These
needs are due to the growingglobal population, which is expected to reach 9 billion by
2050 while demand for food will rise rapidly.
Where the problems lie
Exacerbating this issue is the fact that the world is spending less on agricultural research, to the dismay of scientists who believe global food
production may not sustain the increased demand. According to American Boondoggle, “The pace of investment growth has slowed from 3.63
percent per year (after inflation) during 1950–69, to 1.79 percent during 1970–89, to 0.94 percent during 1990– 2009.” Decreased growth in
agricultural research and development spending has slowed across the world as a whole, but it is even slower in high-income countries.
Water scarcity is another problem, including in major food-producing nations like China, as well as climate change. Extreme weather events are
having a severe effect on crops, which have been devastated in countries like Australia, Canada, China, Russia, and the U.S., namely due to
floods and droughts. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change recently warned that climate change may result in “a 2% drop each decade
of this century,” according to RT.
Rising food costs also contribute to poor food security across the world as prices remain high and volatile. Higher food costs inhibit lower
socioeconomic people’s access to food, which contributes to the FAO’s disturbing figure of global malnutrition. In addition to an inability for
people to feed themselves, poverty can also reduce food production, such as some African farmers being unable to afford irrigation and fertilizers
to provide their regions with food.
Still another issue for decreased food production is the fact that many farmers are turning crops like soy, corn, and sugar into sources for biofuel
rather than edible consumption, which means these foods are taken away from people to eat.
Could these shortages lead to a major global conflict?
Studies suggest that the food crisis could begin as early as 2030, just a short 15 years from now, particularly in areas such as
East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Both regions have significant problems with domestic food production.
Some experts believe that, to
secure enough food resources for their populations, countries may go to war over
the increasingly scarce food supply. This could be due in part to warring parties blocking aid and commercial food
deliveries to areas supporting their enemies, despite the fact that such a practice breaks international humanitarian law.
Future wars are advanced – extinction even without nukes.
Dvorsky 12 George Dvorsky, 12-12-2012, "9 Ways Humanity Could Bring About Its Own Destruction," [Dvorsky is a Canadian bioethicist,
transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9[1] and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast. He was Chair of the Board for
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)[2][3] and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,[4] a
group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI
(Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Bio from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dvorsky]
https://io9.gizmodo.com/9-ways-humanity-could-bring-about-its-own-destruction-5967660, SJBE
World War III At the close of the Second World War, nearly 2.5% of the human population had
perished. Of the 70 million people who were killed, about 20 million died from starvation. And disturbingly, civilians accounted for nearly 50 percent of all deaths — a stark indication that war isn't just for soldiers any
more. Given the incredible degree to which technology has advanced in the nearly seven decades since
this war, it's reasonable to assume that the next global ‘conventional war' — i.e. one fought without
nuclear weapons — would be near apocalyptic in scope. The degree of human suffering that could
be unleashed would easily surpass anything that came before it, with combatants using many of the
technologies already described in this list, including autonomous killing machines and weaponized
nanotechnology. And in various acts of desperation (or sheer malevolence), some belligerent nations
could choose to unleash chemical and biological agents that would result in countless deaths. And
like WWII, food could be used as a weapon; agricultural yields could bebrought to a grinding halt.
Thankfully, we're a far ways off from this possibly. Though not guaranteed, the global conflicts of the 20th century may have
been an historical anomaly — one now greatly mitigated by the presence of nuclear arms.
Turn - Warming opens the Northwest Passage
Borgerson 7 - International Affirs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Scott, “Artic Meltdown”, Foreign Affairs, http://www.rhumb-line.com/pdf/BorgersonForeignAffairsarticle.pdf
A sea route to the Orient through the Arctic was passionately pursued by early European mariners, including Franklin, whose entire crew lost their lives in the process (Canadian Geographic,
the Northwest Passage across northern Canada proved impossible due to difficult ice
conditions and is used as a shipping route only during a short summer thaw. Recently, milder ice
conditions have been reported and linked toglobal warming (Black, 2005; Amos, 2007). These conditions may present
new opportunities for merchant shipping since east-west voyages through the polar latitudes are shorter
than southerly alternatives.
2007). However,
Solves Hormuz miscalc
Borgerson 7 - International Affirs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Scott, “Artic Meltdown”, Foreign Affairs, http://www.rhumb-line.com/pdf/BorgersonForeignAffairsarticle.pdf
polar express An even greater prize will be the new sea-lanes created by the great melt. In the nineteenth century, an Arctic seaway represented the Holy Grail of Victorian exploration, and the
seafaring British Empire spared no expense in pursuing a shortcut to rich Asian markets. Once it became clear that the Northwest Passage was ice clogged and impassable, the Arctic faded from
power brokers’ consciousness. Strategic interest in the Arctic was revived during World War II and the Cold War, when nuclear submarines and intercontinental missiles turned the Arctic into the
world’s most militarized maritime space, but it is only now that the Arctic sea routes so coveted by nineteenth- century explorers are be- coming a reality.
The shipping
shortcuts of the Northern Sea Route (over Eurasia) and the Northwest Passage (over North America)
would cut existing oceanic tran- sit times by days, saving shipping companies—not to mention navies and
smugglers—thousands of miles in travel. The North- ern Sea Route would re- duce the sailing distance between Rotterdam and
Yokohama from 11,200 nautical miles—via the current route, through the Suez Canal—to only 6,500 nautical miles, a savings of more than 40
percent. Likewise, the Northwest Passage would trim a voy- age from Seattle to Rot- terdam by 2,000 nautical miles,
making it nearly 25 percent shorter than the current route, via the Panama Canal. Taking into account canal fees, fuel costs, and
other variables that determine freight rates, these shortcuts could cut the cost of a single voyage by a large container ship by as much as 20 percent—from approximately $17.5 million to $14 million—saving the shipping
industry billions of dollars a year. The savings would be even greater for the megaships that are unable to fit
through the Panama and Suez Canals and so currently sail around the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.
Moreover, these Arctic routes would also allow commercial and military vessels to avoid sailing through
politically unstable Middle Eastern waters and the pirate-infested South China Sea. An Iranian
provocation in the Strait of Hormuz, such as the one that occurred in January, would be considered far
less of a threat in an age of trans-Arctic shipping.
Extinction
Avery 13 – (11/6, John Scales, Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry,
University of Copenhagen, Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs and received the Nobel Peace
Prize for his work, Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998, former Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for
Europe , former Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, PhD in Theoretical Chemistry and MSc in Theoretical Physics, “An Attack On Iran
Could Escalate Into Global Nuclear War,” http://www.countercurrents.org/avery061113.htm)
As we approach the 100th anniversary World War I, we should remember that this colossal disaster
escalated uncontrollably from what was intended to be a minor conflict. There is a danger that an attack on Iran would
escalate into a large-scale war in the Middle East, entirely destabilizing a region that is already deep in problems. The unstable government of Pakistan
might be overthrown, and the revolutionary Pakistani government might enter the war on the side of Iran, thus introducing nuclear weapons into
the conflict. Russia and China, firm allies of Iran, might also be drawn into a general war in the Middle
East. Since much of the world's oil comes from the region, such a war would certainly cause the price of oil to reach unheard-of heights, with catastrophic effects on the global economy. In
the dangerous situation that could potentially result from an attack on Iran, there is a risk that nuclear weapons would be used, either
intentionally, or by accident or miscalculation. Recent research has shown that besides making large
areas of the world uninhabitable through long-lasting radioactive contamination, a nuclear war would
damage global agriculture to such a extent that a global famine of previously unknown proportions
would result.Thus, nuclear war is the ultimate ecological catastrophe. It could destroy human
civilization and much of the biosphere. To risk such a war would be an unforgivable offense against the lives and future of all the peoples of the
world, US citizens included.
Turn - Warming guarantees Russia energy production
Komsomolets 8 Moskovskiy, BBC News, Apr 3, “Duma MP says Russia's expansion in Arctic inevitable,” Lexis
the Arctic "is regarded by our
government as having no prospects, whereas the prospecting and exploitation of its mineral deposits as
economically unfeasible." Allow me to express doubt that the Cabinet of Ministers has this approach. I would start with saying that such major
gas fields in the western Arctic as Shtokmanovskoye, Leningradskoye and Rusanovskoye are already
prospected and being prepared for exploitation and geological prospecting work in the region continues. As
regards our further energy expansion into the Arctic, it has no alternative. First, economically feasible
mineral deposits in our country will, indeed, be exhausted soon. Second, Arctic ice is melting equally fast.
According to forecasts, a major part of the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free due to global warmingas early as
2040, which will substantially facilitate the extraction of natural resources from the seabed and reduce
shipping costs. Therefore, Russia's energy independence and security as a whole depend on the outcome of the dispute over the Arctic shelf. The demand for energy in the world is
It was stated in the report entitled "Oil in the Sieve" published in the Monday [31 March] issue of Moskovskiy Komsomolets that
growing so fast that even energy required for basic life support may be in short supply soon. Possession of energy resources will then become a more serious weapon in international relations
than missiles are at present. When viewed from this perspective, the primary question is that of territorial ownership of the Arctic shelf and its mineral deposits, whereas the issue of cost
effectiveness of their exploitation is of a secondary nature. We sold Alaska for a song by geopolitical standards. America became rich on its gold and now extracts oil there. Therefore, we did not
place our flag on the North Pole just for fun and we will not stop at this.
Absent this, Russia state collapse goes nuclear - extinction
AFR 15 – Australian Financial Review, “If Vladimir Putin's Russia Crumbles, A Nuclear Nightmare
Looms. Here's Why”, 8-5,
http://www.afr.com/news/world/europe/if-vladimir-putins-russia-crumbles-a-nuclear-nightmare-looms-her
es-why-20150805-girutb
WHAT HAPPENS IF PUTIN GOES
If Mr Putin goes and the money runs out, Chechnya could be the first to break off. This would have a
dramatic effect on the rest of the north Caucasus region. Neighbouring Dagestan, a far bigger and more complex
republic than Chechnya, could fragment. A conflict in the Caucasus combined with the weakness of the central
government in Russia could make other regionswant to detach themselves from Moscow's problems.
Tatarstan, home to 2 million Muslim ethnic Tatars and 1.5 million ethnic Russians, could declare itself the separate khanate it was in the 15th
century. It has a strong identity, a diverse economy, which includes its own oil firm, and a well-educated ruling class. It would form a special relationship with
Crimea, which Crimean Tartars (at last able to claim their historic land) would declare an independent state.
The Ural region could form a republic — as it tried to do in 1993 — around Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth-largest city, or else it could form a
union with Siberia. Siberiaitself could revive its own identity, from a base in the cities of Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk, and lay claim to its oil-and-gas
riches, which it would sell to China. Unlike Russia, China might not have much interest in territorial expansion into the sparsely populated Far East and Siberia, but it
could (and already does) colonise these regions economically. Vladivostok
and Khabarovsk, two of the largest cities in the Far East, are more
economically integrated with China and South Korea than they are with the European part of Russia.
Despite Russia's deep paranoia that America is trying to
break it up, such a scenario is one of the West's worst nightmares. It
opens the question of control over Russia's nuclear arms. Although the command centre would remain in Moscow,
securing missiles spread across Russian territory could be harder than it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the time,
the Russians and Americans worked successfully together to move the nuclear arsenal from Ukraine and Kazakhstan to Russia. Ukraine was given a piece of paper —
called the Budapest memorandum and signed by Russia, America and Britain — which guaranteed its territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its nuclear arms.
Now, Russia's annexation of Crimea has made any such assurance worthless. The spectre of disintegration is already haunting Russia. Politicians and pundits are
scared to discuss it publicly. Shortly after annexing Crimea and stirring separatism in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin introduced a law which makes "incitement of any
action undermining Russia's own territorial integrity" a criminal offence. Yet the
itself and its policies in Ukraine.
greatest threat to Russia's territorial integrity is posed by the Kremlin
By breaking the post-Soviet borders, Mr Putin opened a Pandora's box. If Crimea "historically" belongs to Russia as he has
claimed, what about Kaliningrad, the former Königsberg, an exclave which Germany lost to Russia after the second world war? Should not eastern Karelia, which
Finland ceded to the Soviet Union after the winter war in 1940, be Finnish and the Kuril Islands return to Japan? Even
more perilously for Russia's
lacks the
dynamism, resources and vision that empire-building requires. They are forces of chaos and
disorganisation. Eastern Ukraine has turned into a nest of criminals and racketeers. They cannot spread Russian civilisation, but they can spread
anarchy. In short, Russia under Mr Putin is much more fragile than it looks. Vyacheslav Volodin, his deputy chief of staff, recently equated Mr Putin with
future, Mr Putin brought into motion forces that thrive on war and nationalism.These are not the forces of imperial expansion — Russia
Russia: "No Putin, no Russia," he said. It is hard to think of a worse indictment.
Turn - CO2 key to carbon cycle – solves extinction
Moore 16 [Dr. Patrick Moore is a Senior Fellow with the Energy, Ecology and Prosperity program at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
He has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 40 years. Dr. Moore is a Co-Founder of Greenpeace and served for nine
years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. Following his time with Greenpeace, Dr.
Moore joined the Forest Alliance of BC where he worked for ten years to develop the Principles of Sustainable Forestry, which have now been
adopted by much of the industry. In 2013, he published Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout – The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist,
which documents his 15 years with Greenpeace and outlines his vision for a sustainable future. “The Positive Impact Of Human Co2 Emissions
On The Survival Of Life On Earth”, https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/moore-positive-impact-of-human-co2-emissions.pdf ,
June 2016
All life is carbon based and the primary source of this carbon is the CO2 in the global atmosphere. As
recently as 18,000 years ago, at the height of the most recent major glaciation, CO2 dipped to its lowest level in recorded history at
180 ppm, low enough to stunt plant growth. This is only 30 ppm above a level that would result in the death
of plants due to CO2 starvation. It is calculated that if the decline in CO2 levels were to continue at the
same rate as it has over the past 140 million years, life on Earth would begin to die as soon as two million
years from now and would slowly perish almost entirely as carbon continued to be lost to the deep ocean sediments. The combustion of
fossil fuels for energy to power human civilization has reversed the downward trend in CO2 and promises to bring it
back to levels that are likely to foster a considerable increase in the growth rate and biomass of plants,
including food crops and trees. Human emissions of CO2 have restored a balance to the global carbon
cycle, thereby ensuring the long-term continuation of life on Earth. This extremely positive aspect of
human CO2 emissions must be weighed against the unproven hypothesis that human CO2 emissions will
cause a catastrophic warming of the climate in coming years. The one-sided political treatment of CO2 as a
pollutant that should be radically reduced must be corrected in light of the indisputable scientific evidence that it is essential to life on Earth.
Turn - Warming increases underwater cables.
Sorokanich 14 (Robert Sorokanich received his BS in Biochemistry from Syracuse University and
attended the Jefferson Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He was a researcher at the James
C. Dabrowiak Lab, Editorial Fellow at Gizmodo, and Auto News Reporter for Hearst Digital Media.
Sorokanich, R. “The Trans-Arctic Internet Cable Project Made Possible by Climate Change,” Gizmodo,
8/09/2014,
http://gizmodo.com/the-trans-arctic-internet-cable-project-made-possible-b-1618696732//ghs-kw)
Running a telecom cable from London through the Northwest Passage to Tokyo was, for a very long time,
impossible: The sea route was solid ice year-round. Now, thanks to rising temperatures, the ice
disappears from August to October, and a Canadian telecom startup wants to thread a 10,000-mile internet cable through that gap.
Toronto-based Arctic Fibre will soon start surveying the underwater route that would connect the UK with Japan and
several spots in between, diversifying the globe's fiber optic data network without relying on
land-based cables going through volatile regions of the Middle East, as current connections do. Similar
projects, on a much smaller scale, have recently been completed to connect Russia and Crimea. As BuzzFeed reports, telecoms and
corporations are clamoring for redundant data connections, still wary of the trouble caused in 2008 when
disruptions to the Mediterranean Sea cable slowed or stopped communications across Asia. But routes through the Middle East
couldmake tempting targets for disruption. The Arctic Fibre project would avoid that exact scenario: Aside from its termini in
England and Japan, and an anchor point in Canada, the cable would run almost entirely undersea. This, of course, will require elaborate surveying
to find a path where the cable won't get snagged by rocks, pulled by tides, or crushed by rock slides. The $620 million project will also bring
internet connections to northern Alaska and regions of Canada where data is often unreliable. Undersea surveying will begin in the next few
months, using side-scan sonar, digital cameras, electromagnetic probes, and core samples to plot a route across the sea floor. In the past, such a
surveying trip wouldn't have been feasible due to year-round ice. Doug Cunningam, Arctic Fibre's CEO, didn't mince words when he explained to
BuzzFeed why this project is now feasible: "It is made possible by climate change."
Cable cuts deck military readiness
Sechrist 10 (Michael Sechrist is the former project manager and research fellow for ECIR. He is an
expert on undersea communication cable security policies and economic models and is the author of
"Cyberspace in Deep Water: Protecting Undersea Communications Cables", a policy paper presented to
the Department of Homeland Security in spring 2010. He has presented these findings to the Pacific
Telecommunications Council and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) and has helped
the ICPC develop the first international public-private partnership to protect undersea cables. Current
Affiliation: Vice President for Threat and Risk Management. Prepared by Michael Sechrist of the Harvard
Kennedy Schoool for the Department of Homeland Security, “CYBERSPACE IN DEEP WATER:
PROTECTING UNDERSEA COMMUNICATION CABLES,” 3/23/2010.
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/PAE_final_draft_-_043010.pdf//ghs-kw)
A “September 10th” mindset permeates relations between the United States (“U.S.”) government and undersea
communications cable companies. Communication before and after a cable break is sparse, disjointed and
compartmentalized. For catastrophic cable outages, no coordinated mitigation plan exists. Nor is
there adequate defense-in-depth in place. There is plenty of room for improvement among all parties. To improve the process, this paper
proposes that the Department of Homeland Security create an international public-private partnership to prevent and prepare for the world’s next major cable outage.
Cables are vital to global communications and U.S. interests. In the U.S., approximately 95% of all international
internet and phone traffic travel through undersea cables.1 Nearly all government traffic, including
sensitive diplomatic and military orders, travels these cables to reach officials in the field. In the military,
DoD’s net-centric warfare and Global Information Grid (e.g., DoD’s information interoperable system) rely on undersea cables.2 The GIG uses undersea
communication cables to provide large segments of DoD personnel living and working overseas with fast, reliable and relatively cheap
communication.3 4 A major portion of DoD data traveling on undersea cables is unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
video.5 In 2010, UAVs “will fly 190,000 hours”6 and the Air Force estimates that “it will need more than one million UAV
hours annually to be prepared for future wars.”7 Without ensuredcable connectivity, the future of modern
warfare is in jeopardy. The stability of the modern financial system isalso at risk. Companies use
cables to transfer trillions of dollars every day.
Readiness collapse causes global war
Spencer 00 (Jack Spencer, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation's Roe Institute for
Economic Policy Studies, “The Facts About Military Readiness”, Heritage Backgrounder #1394, 9-15,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2000/09/bg1394-the-facts-about-military-readiness)
Military readiness is vital because declines in America's military readiness signal to the rest of the
world that the United States is not prepared to defend its interests. Therefore, potentially hostile nations will be
more likely to lash outagainst American allies and interests, inevitably leading to U.S. involvement in
combat. A high state of military readiness is more likely to deter potentially hostile nations from acting
aggressively in regions of vital national interest, thereby preserving peace.
AT: Cyber War
AT: Economic Decline
Turn - Continued Economic Growth makes ecosystem collapse and extinction
inevitable
Barry 14 [7-30-14 (Dr. Glen, President and Founder of Ecological Internet, Ph.D. in "Land Resources"
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Global Ecosystem Collapse,”
http://www.ecologicalinternet.org/2014/07/30/global-ecosystem-collapse/)
Old-Growth Forests Necessary to Avert Ecosystem Collapse The global environment is collapsing as human industrial
growth overruns ecosystem habitats that make life possible. Either we choose now to embrace personal and
societal changes necessary for global ecological sustainability, first and foremost stopping the destruction of ecosystems, or we
face collapse and the end of being. The meaning of life is radical freedom, sustained ecology, freethinking, truth and justice, and loving
all life like kin – so the biosphere, humanity, and all life continue to naturally evolve forever. HABITAT DESTRUCTION The global
ecological system is collapsing and dying. Humanity wantonly destroys natural ecosystems and
climatic patterns that provide all life’s environmental habitats. Ourone shared, overpopulated, ecologically
diminished, abjectly unfair biosphere is careening toward scarcity, war, disease, and social, economic and ecosystem
collapse. Threats facing the global environment are far more than climate change and include deterioration of water,
forests, food, and oceans which cumulatively threaten all life’s very being. Large, intact old-growth forests
andother naturally evolved ecosystems maintain local and regional ecological habitability and livelihoods. Without
large, natural ecosystems and agro-ecology as humanity’s surrounding context, our own and all other species face abrupt
climate change and biosphere collapse. What sharpens the problem on climate change and ecosystem loss is that we think we have time, when
the biosphere is well into collapse. We
face an unprecedented global ecological emergency as natural life-giving
ecosystems collapse and die under the weight of human industrial growth. Our overpopulated, over-consuming, inequitable,
human decimated Earth continues to wildly careen towardecosystem collapse unless we find a way to come
together as one human family and change fast.
AT: Bioterror
1. DL- Bioterror’s impossible---technical hurdles and dilution.
Jefferson et al. 14—Faculty in the Department of Social Science, Health, and Medicine at King’s College London [Catherine
Jefferson, Filippa Lentzos, and Claire Marris; “Synthetic biology and biosecurity: challenging the ‘myths,’” Frontiers In Public Health, Vol. 2, Art.
115, August, Emory Libraries]
Challenges to Myth 5There are two dimensions to Myth 5. The first is about the intention of would-be terrorists, and the assumption is that
terrorists would seek to produce mass casualty weapons and pursue capabilities on the scale of twentieth century state-level bioweapons programs.
While most leading biological
disarmament and nonproliferation experts believe that the risk of a small-scale bioterrorism
attack is very real and very present, they consider the risk of sophisticated large-scale bioterrorism attacks to be very
small (65). This is backed up by historical evidence. The three confirmed attempts to use biological agents
against humans in terrorist attacks in the past were small-scale, low casualty events aimed at causing
panic, and disruption rather than excessive death tolls: (i) the Rajneesh cult’s use of Salmonella on salad bars in local
restaurants to sicken potential voters and make them stay away from the polls during Oregon elections in 1984; (ii) the 1990–95 attempted use of
botulinum toxin and anthrax by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult; (iii) and the “anthrax letters” sent to media outlets and members of US Congress
in 2001 resulting in at least 22 cases of anthrax, five of which were fatal (66, 67). The
second dimension to Myth 5 is the implicit
assumption that producing a pathogenic organism equates producing a weapon of mass destruction. It does
not. Considerable knowledge and resources are necessary for the processes of scaling up, storage, and
developing a suitable dissemination method. These processes present significant technical and logistical
barriers. Drawing from her in-depth study of the Iraqi, Soviet, and US bioweapons programs (3, 4), Ben
Ouagrham-Gormley explains: Scaling up fragile microorganisms that are sensitive to environmental
conditions and susceptible to change — and viruses are more sensitive than bacteria — has been one of
the stiffest challenges for past bioweapons programs to overcome, even with appropriate expertise at hand.
Scaling-up requires a gradual approach, moving from laboratory sample, to a larger laboratory quantity, to
pilot-scale production, and then to even larger-scale production. During each stage, the production
parameters need to be tested and often modified to maintain the lethal qualities of the agent; the entire scaling-up
process can take several years (68).The dissemination of biological agents also poses difficult technical challenges.
Whereas persistent chemical agents such as sulfur mustard and VX nerve gas are readily absorbed through the intact skin, no bacteria and viruses
can enter the body via that route unless the skin has already been broken. Biological
agents must either be ingested or inhaled
to cause infection. To expose large numbers of people through the gastrointestinal tract, possible means of delivery are contamination of
food and drinking water, yet neither of these scenarios would be easy to accomplish. Large urban reservoirs are usually unguarded, but unless
terrorists added massive quantities of biological agent, the dilution effect would be so great that no healthy
person drinking the water would receive an infectious dose (66). Moreover, modern sanitary techniques such
as chlorination and filtration are designed to kill pathogens from natural sources and would probably be
equally effective against a deliberately released agent. Bacterial contamination of the food supply is also
unlikely to inflict mass casualties. Cooking, boiling, pasteurization, and other routine safety precautions
are generally sufficient to kill pathogenic bacteria.
Diseases don’t cause extinction
Owen Cotton-Barratt 17, et al, PhD in Pure Mathematics, Oxford, Lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford,
Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute, 2/3/2017, Existential Risk: Diplomacy and
Governance, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf
For most of human history, natural pandemics have posed the greatest risk of mass global fatalities.37 However, there are some reasons to believe
natural pandemics are very unlikely to cause human extinction. Analysis of the International Union for
of the 833 recorded plant and animal species extinctions
known to have occurred since 1500, less than 4% (31 species) were ascribed to infectious disease.38
None of the mammals and amphibians on this list were globally dispersed, and other factors aside from
infectious disease also contributed to their extinction. It therefore seems that our own species, which is very
numerous, globally dispersed, and capable of a rational response to problems, is very unlikely to be
killed off by a natural pandemic.
that
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list database has shown that
One underlying explanation for this is that
highly lethal pathogens can kill their hosts before they have a chance to
spread, so there is a selective pressure for pathogens not to be highly lethal. Therefore, pathogens are likely to
co-evolve with their hosts rather than kill all possible hosts.39
Biological weapon attacks are too complex – even with large-scale funding, access to
information, and gene-editing tools – terrorists will choose not to pursue or will
likely fail.
Revill ’17 [Dr. James Revill, Research Fellow with the Harvard Sussex Program at SPRU, Past as
Prologue? The Risk of Adoption of Chemical and Biological Weapons by Non-State Actors in the EU,
European Journal of Risk Regulation, 8 (2017), pp. 626–642,
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/6B824CDE0E25FD86AC3D
0BD07822A743/S1867299X17000356a.pdf/div-class-title-past-as-prologue-the-risk-of-adoption-of-chem
ical-and-biological-weapons-by-non-state-actors-in-the-eu-div.pdf]
[t]he complexity of an
innovation, as perceived by members of a social system, is negatively related to its rate of adoption”.41 Several scholars of terrorist
innovation have also highlighted the issue of complexity;42 or, as Cragin et al have stated, “[h]ow simple or complex a technology appears affects perceptions of how
risky it will be to adopt.”43 In most cases terrorist groups appear to have largely opted for the simplest pathway towards
the achievement of their goals and the weapons used tend to be vernacular, functional devices
drawing on local and readily-available materials, rather than sophisticated, “baroque” technologies.
The second factor is “the perceived complexity of the innovation in terms of adoption and use”.40 This is important in the innovation literature, as Rogers remarked, “
This is certainly the case with IEDs, the history of which is characterised largely by incremental innovations – although nevertheless frequently effective ones – with many means of delivery recycled from the past.44 Complexity can
therefore be seen as important in the adoption of technology by terrorists generally, but is perhaps particularly acute in the case of CBW technology. Some CBW can be relatively simple: “chlorine-augmented, vehicle-borne IEDs,” as
employed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) from 2006 to 2007 are not sophisticated weapons.45 Attacks on chemical production facilities, an apparent tactic of Serbian forces in the early to mid-1990s,46 employed relatively simple
technologies – specifically explosives – with toxicity a secondary by-product. Direct contamination of food,47 drink48 or healthcare products49 does not require particularly sophisticated technology for the purposes of delivery –
although may require some considerable skill to culture and scale-up a biological agent – and has been a common approach in European CBW incidents.50 Similarly, the contamination of water systems, something familiar to
Europe,51 can also be relatively easily attempted. However, in most cases such methods of dissemination have generated results that are far short of the “mass destruction” that CBW are associated with, although this does not mean
mass casualty attacks still require
considerable expertise, something particularly acute in the context of biological weapons.52 The most
effective route to weaponising biology is arguably through the process of aerosolising agents, something recognised mid-way through the last century
as opening up the theoretical possibility of using biological weapons on a gigantic scale.53 However, realising such theoretical potential is difficult and it took
states decades to develop more predictable biological weapons,54 and even then such weapons were
acutely vulnerable to environmental factors.55 For non-state groups such complexity has proven a
significant barrier to CBW development. By means of an example, one of the best-resourced biological weapons
programs, that of Aum Shinrikyo, failed variously because the group acquired the wrong strain, contaminated
fermenters and were faced with insurmountable production and dissemination difficulties.56 There are of
course exceptions, such as the 2001 anthrax Letter Attacks in the US. However, if one accepts the conclusions of the
FBI that this sophisticated attack with aerosolised anthrax in the US postal system was perpetrated by a US biodefence researcher, Dr
Bruce Ivins,57 it is an exception that proves the rule. To circumvent the difficulties with aerosolisation, arguably one
could use human-to-human transmissible biological agents as part of a suicide bioterror operation. There are good reasons for concern over how crude suicide bioterrorists could
employ such a tactic. However, the use of highly contagious agents is also poorly predictable and would have to deal
with social factors, such as the “spatial contact process among individuals”, which can spell “out the difference between large-scale epidemics
and abortive ones”.58 The counter to this argument is the growing access to data and the changing human geography
such a possibility can be ignored by those working on public health preparedness. Although some relatively simple approaches could cause significant harm,
of the life sciences. Some 83% of European households reportedly are online, effectively allowing access to what is a growing body
of available data on CBW, including so-called bioterrorist “recipes” and “blueprints” that are available in both mainstream scientific
as well as more subversive literatures online. It is also clear that there is a changing human geography in European life sciences (for peaceful purposes), with the emergence of 30 DIY-bio groups located in Europe59 and some 80
This is compounded by reports that groups such as Daesh
have deliberately sought to recruit foreign fighters “including some with degrees in physics, chemistry,
and computer science, who experts believe have the ability to manufacture lethal weapons from raw substances”.61 Whilst it would be unwise to ignore such developments, there is a need
for caution in looking at the extent to which new technologies and geographies will facilitate the
adoption of chemical and biological weapons by groups seeking to target European countries. First, data is not information, and
information is not knowledge, let alone the tacit knowledge required for CBW.62 In many cases a degree of
determination and dedication will be required merely to separate online fantasy from fact and identify
operationally useful information (of relevance to the European context) from nonsense (or information pertinent to contexts other than Europe). Second, with new technologies there is the
potential for such tools to enable some, but certainly not all, actors, and even then new technologies bring new challenges. CRISPR, gene editing
technology is currently seen as a particular source of promise and peril, which purportedly enables “even largely untrained people to
manipulate the very essence of life”.63 As much may be technically true, yet “untrained people” would nonetheless require
some guidance in identifying suitable areas of genetic structures to manipulate. Moreover, CRISPR would only
get aspiring weaponeers so far, with the process of culturing, scaling-up and weaponisation still
requiring considerable attention and interdisciplinary skills, typically generated through “large
interdisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians”,64 in order to be effective. Indeed, for all
the progress in science and technology, biological weapons are still not used, in part, because of the
complexity of such weapons; and the chemical weapons that are used today are largely the same as the chemical weapons of 100 years ago. As Robinson noted “It remains the case today that, in the
design of CBW, increasingly severe technological constraint sets in as the mass-destruction end of the spectrum is approached: the greater and more assured the
area-effectiveness sought for the weapon, the greater the practical difficulties of achieving it”.65
European teams in the international Genetically Engineered Machines (IGEM) competition in 2016.60
Bioterror is not exisential
Hugo-Jan Jansen 14, Ph.D. in Oral Microbiology, Senior advisor at Netherlands Ministry of Defense,
May 2014, “Biological warfare, bioterrorism and biocrime,”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262773383_Biological_warfare_bioterrorism_and_biocrime
So far, bioterrorism
has claimed few lives as compared with the more traditional forms of terrorism
using guns and explosives. The risk that use of the infectious agents as selected in Table 1 will result in casualties is
real, but also should not be overestimated. For example, natural variations in incubation period, as can be seen
from Table 1, will usually allow for diagnosis before the peak of symptomatic cases for most of the
agents (and the longer the incubation period, the more this is so). Then, unless a multiresistant but highly aggressive ‘superbug’ is envisaged,
effective antibiotics are available for the majority of bacterial agents at least. Nevertheless, there is some
reason for concern that future bioterrorism attacks may be more effective than incidents in the past. Terrorists will usually use
readily available weapons, but some also will keep trying to adopt tactics to inflict mass casualties to
achieve ideological, revenge or religious goals. Sects such as Aum Shinrikyo have tried to master the method of aerosol
dissemination of biological agents. Al-Qaida sought to acquire biological weapons [53]. Many of its assets in Afghanistan may have been
destroyed in the past decade, but its aims and motivation have probably not changed. Also, because of increasing technological innovation and
sophistication of equipment, and the proliferation of knowledge through the Internet across the world, equipment has become cheaper, smaller,
and easier to operate, and methods have become easier to execute. What once required an expensive laboratory may now be done by a skilled
individual in a garage, and will be difficult to prevent or detect. Laboratories have oversight mechanisms, colleagues peering in, and preventive
measures in place to protect workers and the environment against inadvertent releases, but this is not the case in the do-it-yourself (DIY)-type
garage box biology. Beyond doubt, in almost all cases the ingenuity and creativity displayed by these researchers and engineers is fully
transparent within the community, and will be applied for beneficial purposes. Ultimately, it may result in biofuel-producing bacteria, lighting
from luminescent microorganisms, or even biological computers [54]. The
dual-use nature of life sciences technology and
the diffusion of advanced technological capabilities could facilitate the development of a biological
weapon, including mechanisms for effective dissemination. However, it must also be noted that, although equipment and
techniques have become more readily available, considerable skills and expertise are still required
to carry out this kind of DIY research [55]. The likelihood of rogue individuals carrying out DIY
biology is real, but small. Self-regulation and transparency of DIY biology research should be encouraged. Possibly more disturbing
for the future, some terrorists might gain access to the expertise and or agents generated by a state-directed BW programme. Civil war, revolt and
lawlessness in countries possessing such a BW programme would cause a significant proliferation risk.
On the bright side, the technological innovations and rapid advances in life sciences have greatly
increasedour understanding of the ways in which pathogens interact with the host, and have
stimulated the development of medical countermeasures. It must be stated that the benefits for
society provided by these advances far outweigh the potential adverse effects. Also, they have greatly
increased our abilities to detectand identify pathogens in a timely manner. At the same time,
technological advances such as networked video cameras and software designed to identify
important intelligence information have become powerful tools for counterterrorism operations,
and have increased the effectiveness of antiterrorism countermeasures in order to prevent attacks.
In the USA, the majority of bioterrorism attempts [21,43] were foiled in the early stages, indicating
the success of the surveillance and counterterrorism activities. Technological advances have
resulted in an increase in our forensic ability to investigate an incident and track down the origins.
No impact---attacks will be small, no dispersion, and countermeasures solve
Filippa Lentzos 14, PhD from London School of Economics and Social Science, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King’s College
London, Catherine Jefferson, researcher in the Department of Social Science, Health, and Medicine at King’s College London, DPhil from the University of Sussex, former senior policy advisor
for international security at the Royal Society, and Dr. Claire Marris, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine at King's College London, “The myths
(and realities) of synthetic bioweapons,” 9/18/2014, http://thebulletin.org/myths-and-realities-synthetic-bioweapons7626
The bioterror WMD myth. Those
who have overemphasized the bioterrorism threat typically portray it as an imminent
concern, with emphasis placed on high-consequence, mass-casualty attacks, performed with weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). This is a myth with two dimensions.¶ The first involves the identities of terrorists and what their intentions are. The assumption is that
terrorists would seek to produce mass-casualty weapons and pursue capabilities on the scale of 20th century, state-level bioweapons
programs. Most leading biological disarmament and non-proliferation experts believe that the risk of a small-scale
bioterrorism attack is very real and present. But they consider the risk of sophisticated large-scale bioterrorism attacks to be quite
small. This judgment is backed up by historical evidence. The three confirmed attempts to use biological agents against humans in
terrorist attacks in the past were small-scale, low-casualty events aimed at causing panic and disruption rather than excessive death tolls. ¶ The second
dimension involves capabilities and the level of skills and resources available to terrorists. The implicit assumption is that producing a
pathogenic organism equates to producing a weapon of mass destruction. It does not. Considerable knowledge
and resources are necessary for the processes of scaling up, storage, and dissemination. These processes present
significant technical and logistical barriers.¶ Even if a biological weapon were disseminated successfully, the outcome of an
attack would be affected by factors like the health of the people who are exposed and the speed and manner with which public health authorities and medical
professionals detect and respond to the resulting outbreak. A prompt response with effective medical
countermeasures, such as antibodies
and vaccination, can significantly blunt the impact of an attack.
No bioterror risk.
Cross-21 [Glenn; November 9; PhD, Former Deputy National Intelligence Officer, Weapons of Mass Destruction; War on the Rocks, “Biological Weapons in the ‘Shadow War’,”
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/biological-weapons-in-the-shadow-war/]
The threat of terrorists using biological agents exists but is very limited. The fear of nonstate actors using biological agents
rose with Aum Shinrikyo’s 1995 failed efforts to spread botulinum and anthrax in Japan. Fears of bioterror reached its most recent crescendo with
the 2001 anthrax letter mailings, coming as they did within weeks after the 9/11 attacks. The threat
of further bioterror attacks, however,
never materialized.
Despite the fact that terrorist biological weapons attacks have not materialized since the Amerithrax scare, some
continue to argue that
thesupposed ease and lower cost of biological weapons development, production, and use along with the
societal disruption of COVID-19 has incentivized bad actors to adopt biological weapons. These concerns have been
echoed by others who assume that misuse is inevitable and following the COVID-19 example will result in mass
casualties and crippling political, societal, and economic repercussions.
However, the bioterror threat seems to have diminished — not grown — since the 2001 Amerithrax letter mailings. The core
al-Qaeda biological weapons efforts were first envisioned in the late 1990s and began in earnest shortly afterward. Yet the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan and the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 effectively disrupted al-Qaeda’s biological weapons work which largely centered on anthrax.
Left without a suitable safe haven, al-Qaeda was never able to reconstitute its biological weapons efforts. The Taliban’s return to power in
Afghanistan, however, may result in a reemergence of al-Qaeda and its biological weapons ambitions. Time will tell whether the Taliban now will
grant safe haven to al-Qaeda that could be used for biological weapons work. What is undoubted is that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have a shared
history and have continued to work closely together. Without a presence in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence will have a more difficult time
detecting any resurgent al-Qaeda biological weapons efforts.
The threat of a biological weapons effort by the Islamic State in Iraq never materialized, although the group did manage to produce and use
chemical weapons agents until that program was effectively disrupted. Other terrorist
groups’ interest in biological weapons has
been rudimentary with a focus predominately on toxins such as ricin and botulinum. U.S. domestic extremists,
self-radicalized individuals, and lone actors also have gravitated toward ricin, but no known casualties have resulted from the
decades-long interest in ricin.
Some analysts, however, argue that the life science revolution and global proliferation of related scientific and technical capabilities has opened a
Pandora’s Box of biothreats. The argument goes that the rapid revolution in genetic engineering — including synthetic biology — the DIY bio
movement, and the advent of technologies like CRISPR (acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) makes their
misuse likely. However, as
noted in the2018 National Academies of Science report, Biodefense in the Age of Synthetic Biology, the
large-scale production and delivery ofbiological weapons agents is inherently difficult, with biological weapons
use favoring small-scale, highly targeted attacks.
Covid doesn’t change the risk of bioterror
Matt Field, 8-11-2022, "Why COVID probably hasn’t helped bioterrorists, despite fears," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
https://thebulletin.org/2022/08/why-covid-probably-hasnt-helped-bioterrorists-despite-fears/, accessed 1-12-2023//IB
An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times argued that COVID shows world leaders the harm bioweapons can cause. The fears are well-justified in at
least one regard: Thanks to scientific advances, the technical barriers to bioterrorism are going down. But COVID isn’t playing a big role there.
As a technical matter, COVID’s bolstering of terrorists’ abilities to acquire biological
weapons is likely modest at best. The main potential concern is the proliferation of medical and public health resources aimed at
combatting COVID and whether any of these can be reappropriated to serve bioterrorism schemes. In most cases, the answer is no. Nonetheless,
new laboratories might create opportunities to steal equipment or pathogens. Terrorists might also be able to more readily acquire skills related to
handling pathogenic material through the rapid training that occurred to meet pandemic needs. But these effects are likely minimal. The
pandemic has caused millions of deaths, a lot of illness, and huge economic and societal disruption. It has also shown the limits of vaccinations:
20 percent of Americans still remain hesitant to get their shots. Pandemic-prompted responses may also be less effective for non-contagious
agents like Bacillus anthracis. For example, masking is unlikely to be effective response absent an unlikely early warning. Yet, it’s
not at all
clear that a terrorist group will see new opportunities for bioweapons based on how society
has responded to COVID. Contrary to fears, the way some governments have responded to the
pandemic might deter rather than encourage would-be bioterrorists. For example, the experience of the
Operation Warp Speed program in the United States showed that governments can rapidly develop,
disseminate, and update a novel vaccine. Efforts to bolster early warning systems, like waste-water
surveillance programs, may likewise make a bioweapon less effective. In short, those terrorists who would
have pursued bioweapons before COVID will probably still pursue them, while terrorists who would previously have
rejected bioweapons are unlikely to see sufficient new benefits in the COVID experience to
override their concerns. Well, what now? Though COVID has not changed the threat of bioterrorism much, there might be some
worthwhile policy adjustments to make in light of the pandemic.
AT: US Heg (Impact Stuff)
No heg impact
- empirics and political psychology prove US posture is unrelated to great power peace
- other factors aren’t accounted for in their analysis
Fettweis 17 [Christopher Fettweis, associate professor of political science at Tulane University.
Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace. May 8, 2017.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09636412.2017.1306394?needAccess=true]
After three years in the White House, Ronald Reagan had learned something surprising: “Many people at
the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans,” he wrote in his autobiography.
He continued: “Perhaps this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did … I’d always felt that from our deeds it must be clear to anyone that
Americans were a moral people who starting at the birth of our nation had always used our power only as a force for good in the world….
During my first years in Washington, I think many of us took it for granted that the Russians, like
ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them.” 100
Reagan is certainly not alone in believing in the essential benevolent image of his nation. While it is
common for actors to attribute negative motivations to the behavior of others, it is exceedingly difficult
for them to accept that anyone could interpret their actions in negative ways. Leaders are well aware of
their own motives and tend to assume that their peaceful intentions are obvious and transparent.
Both strains of the hegemonic-stability explanation assume not only that US power is benevolent, but that
others perceive it that way. Hegemonic stability depends on the perceptions of other states to be
successful; it has no hopeto succeed if it encounters resistance from the less powerful members of the
system, or even if they simply refuse to follow the rules. Relatively small police forces require the general
cooperation of large communities to have any chance of establishing order. They must perceive the sheriff
as just, rational, and essentially nonthreatening. The lack of balancing behavior in the system, which has been puzzling to many
realists, seems to support the notion of widespread perceptions of benevolent hegemony.101 Were they threatened by the order constructed by the
United States, the argument goes, smaller states would react in ways that reflected their fears. Since internal and external balancing accompanied
previous attempts to achieve hegemony, the absence of such behavior today suggests that something is different about the US version.
Hegemonic-stability theorists purport to understand the perceptions of others, at times better than those
others understand themselves. Complain as they may at times, other countries know that the United States is acting in the common
interest. Objections to unipolarity, though widespread, are not “very seriously intended,” wrote Kagan, since “the truth about America’s dominant
role in the world is known to most observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast
portion of the world’s population.” 102 In
the 1990s, Russian protests regarding NATO expansion—though nearly
universal—were not taken seriously, since US planners believed the alliance’s benevolent intentions were
apparent to all. Sagacious Russians understood that expansion would actually be beneficial, since it would bring stability to their western
border.103 President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher were caught off guard by the
hostility of their counterparts regarding the issue at a summit in Budapest in December 1994.104 Despite
warnings from the vast majority of academic and policy experts about the likely Russian reaction and
overall wisdom of expansion itself, the administration failed to anticipate Moscow’s position.105 The
Russians did not seem to believe American assurances that expansion would actually be good for them.
The United States overestimated the degree to which others saw it as benevolent.
Once again, the culture of the United States might make its leaders more vulnerable to this misperception.
The need for positive self-regard appears to be particularly strong in North American societies compared to
elsewhere.106 Western egos tend to be gratified through self-promotion rather than humility, and
independence rather than interdependence. Americans are more likely to feel good if they are unique
rather than a good cog in society’s wheel, and uniquely good. The need to be perceived as benevolent,
though universal, may well exert stronger encouragement for US observers to project their perceptions onto others.
The United States almost certainly frightens others more than its leaders perceive. A quarter of the 68,000
respondents to a 2013 Gallup poll in sixty-five countries identified the United States as the “greatest
threat to world peace,” which was more than three times the total for the second-place country (Pakistan).107
The international community always has to worry about the potential for police brutality, even if it occurs
rarely. Such ungratefulness tends to come as a surprise to US leaders. In 2003, Condoleezza Rice was dismayed to discover resistance to US
initiatives in Iraq: “There were times,” she said later, “that it appeared that American power was seen to be more dangerous than, perhaps,
Saddam Hussein.” 108 Both liberals and neoconservatives probably exaggerate the extent to which US hegemony is everywhere secretly
welcomed;
it is not just petulant resentment, but understandable disagreement with US policies, that
motivates counterhegemonic beliefs and behavior.
To review, assuming for a moment that US leaders are subject to the same forces that affect every
human being, they overestimate the amount of control they have over other actors, and are not as
important to decisions made elsewhere as they believe themselves to be. And they probably perceive their
own benevolence to be much greater than do others. These common phenomena all influence US beliefs
in the same direction, and may well increase the apparent explanatory power of hegemony beyond what
the facts would otherwise support. The United States is probably not as central to the New Peace as either
liberals or neoconservatives believe.
In the end, what can be said about the relationship between US power and international stability? Probably not much that will satisfy partisans,
and the pacifying virtue of US hegemony will remain largely an article of faith in some circles in the policy world. Like most beliefs, it will
remain immune to alteration by logic and evidence. Beliefs rarely change, so debates rarely end.
For those not yet fully converted, however, perhaps
it will be significant that corroborating evidence for the
relationship is extremely hard to identify. If indeed hegemonic stability exists, it does so without leaving
much of a trace. Neither Washington’s spending, nor its interventions, nor its overall grand strategy seem to
matter much to the levels of armed conflict around the world (apart from those wars that Uncle Sam starts). The
empirical record does not contain strong reasons to believe that unipolarity and the New Peace are
related, and insights from political psychology suggest that hegemonic stability is a belief particularly
susceptible to misperception. US leaders probably exaggerate the degree to which their power matters, and could retrench without
much risk to themselves or the world around them. Researchers will need to look elsewhere to explain why the world
has entered into the most peaceful period in its history.
The good news from this is that the New Peace will probably persist for quite some time, no matter how
dominant the United States is, or what policies President Trump follows, or how much resentment its
actions cause in the periphery. The people of the twenty-first century are likely to be much safer and more
secure than any of their predecessors, even if many of them do not always believe it.
AT: Democracy:
CASE TURN:
Democratic peace studies fail to account for endogeneity – democracy is conflict driving.
Chiba and Gartzke, 21 (Dr. Daina Chiba, Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department
of Government and Public Administration at the University of Macau, Ph.D. in Political Science from
Rice University, LL.M in Jurisprudence and International Relations from Hitotsubashi University, and Dr.
Erik Gartzke, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, PhD in Political
Science from the University of Iowa, “Make Two Democracies and Call Me in the Morning: Endogenous
Regime Type and the Democratic Peace”, 2/19/2021,
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Make-Two-Democracies-and-Call-Me-in-the-Morning%3A-Chiba
-Gartzke/801c599c6827fbae5cf0aa86a34a8b3c54050bdb)//babcii
The democratic peace — the observation that democracies are less likely to fight each other than are other pairings of states — is one of
the most widely acknowledged empirical regularities in international relations. Prominent scholars have even characterized
the relationship as an empirical law (Levy 1988; Gleditsch 1992). The discovery of a special peace in liberal dyads stimulated
enormous scholarly debate and led to, or reinforced, a number of policy initiatives by various governments and international organizations.
Although a broad consensus has emerged among researchers regarding the empirical correlation between joint democracy and peace,
disagreement remains as to its logical foundations. Numerous theories have been proposed to account for how democracy produces peace, if only
dyadically (e.g., Russett 1993; Rummel 1996; Doyle 1997; Schultz 2001). At
the same time, peace appears likely to foster or
maintain democracy (Thompson 1996; James, Solberg, and Wolfson 1999). A vast swath of research in political science and economics
proposes explanations for the origins of liberal government involving variables such as economic development (Lipset 1959; Burkhart and
Lewis-Beck 1994; Przeworski et al. 2000; Acemoglu and Robinson 2006; Epstein et al. 2006) and inequality (Boix 2003), political interests
(Downs 1957; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003), power hierarchies (Moore 1966; Lake 2009), third party inducements (Pevehouse 2005) or
impositions (Peceny 1995; Meernik 1996), geography (Gleditsch 2002b), and natural resource endowments (Ross 2001), to list just a few
examples. Each
of these putative causes of democracy is also associated with various explanations for
international conflict. Indeed, some as yet poorly defined set of canonical factors may contribute both
to democracy and to peace, making it look as if the two variables are directly related, even if possibly they are
not. We seek to contribute to this literature, not by proposing yet another theory to explain how democracy vanquishes war, but by
estimating the causal effect of joint democracy on the probability of militarized disputes using a
quasi-experimental research design. We begin by noting that some of the common causes of democracy and peace may be
unobservable, generating an endogenous relationship between the two. Theories of democracy and explanations for peace are at a formative state;
it is not possible to utilize detailed, validated and widely accepted models of each of these processes to assess their interaction. Indeed, to a
remarkable degree democracy and peace each remain poorly understood and weakly accounted for empirically, despite their central roles in
international politics. We
address the risk of spurious correlation by applying an instrumental variables
approach. Having taken into account possible endogeneity between democracy and peace, we find that
joint democracy does not have an independent pacifying effect on interstate conflict. Instead, our findings
show that democratic countries are more likely to attack other democracies than are non-democracies.
Our results call into question the large body of theory that has been proposed to account for the apparent pacifism of democratic dyads. This
article proceeds as follows. In the next section we briefly review previous attempts to estimate the effect of democracy on conflict and point out
methodological issues that have plagued these previous efforts. We then introduce our research design and data. After presenting the main
findings, we provide further support for our results with a series of falsification tests to assess the plausibility of the assumptions behind our
empirical strategy. The final section concludes with recommendations for future research.
Turn - Democracy causes short-termism – extinction.
Krznaric, 19 (Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher, former political scientist, and founder of the
world’s first Empathy Museum. He is currently writing a book on the power of long-term thinking,
3-18-19, accessed on 4-24-2022, bbc, “Why we need to reinvent democracy for the long-term”,
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term)//babcii
Today Hume’s view appears little more than wishful thinking, since
it is so startlingly clear that our political systems have
become a cause of rampant short-termism rather than a cure for it. Many politicians can barely see beyond the next
election, and dance to the tune of the latest opinion poll or tweet. Governments typically prefer quick fixes, such as putting more criminals behind
bars rather than dealing with the deeper social and economic causes of crime. Nations bicker around international conference tables, focused
on their near-term interests, while the planet burns and species disappear. As the 24/7 news media pumps out
the latest twist in the Brexit negotiations or obsesses over a throwaway comment from the US president, the myopia of modern democratic
politics is all too obvious. So is there an antidote to this political presentism that pushes the interests of future generations permanently beyond the
horizon? Let’s start with the nature of the problem. It’s common to claim that today’s short-termism is simply a product of social media and other
digital technologies that have ratcheted up the pace of political life. But the fixation on the now has far deeper roots. One
problem is the
electoral cycle, an inherent design flaw of democratic systems that produces short political time
horizons. Politicians might offer enticing tax breaks to woo voters at the next electoral contest, while
ignoring long-term issues out of which they can make little immediate political capital, such as dealing
with ecological breakdown, pension reform or investing in early childhood education. Back in the 1970s, this form of myopic
policy-making was dubbed the “political business cycle”. Add to this the ability of special interest
groups – especially corporations – to use the political system to secure near-term benefits for themselves
while passing the longer-term costs onto the rest of society. Whether through the funding of electoral
campaigns or big-budget lobbying, the corporate hacking of politics is a global phenomenon that pushes
long-term policy making off the agenda. The third and deepest cause of political presentism is that
representative democracy systematically ignores the interests of future people. The citizens of
tomorrow are granted no rights, nor – in the vast majority of countries – are there any bodies to represent their concerns or potential
views on decisions today that will undoubtedly affect their lives. It’s a blind spot so enormous that we barely notice it: in the
decade I spent as a political scientist specialising in democratic governance, it simply never occurred to me that future
generations are disenfranchised in the same way that slaves or women were in the past. But
that is the reality. And that’s why hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren worldwide, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, have
been striking and marching to get rich nations to reduce their carbon emissions: they have had enough of democratic systems that render them
voiceless and airbrush their futures out of the political picture. The time has come to face an inconvenient reality: that
modern
democracy – especially in wealthy countries – has enabled us to colonise the future. We treat the future
like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation,
technological risk, nuclear waste and public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please. When Britain colonised
Australia in the 18th and 19th Century, it drew on the legal doctrine now known as terra nullius – nobody’s land – to justify its conquest and treat
the indigenous population as if they didn’t exist or have any claims on the land. Today our attitude is one of tempus nullius. The future is an
“empty time”, an unclaimed territory that is similarly devoid of inhabitants. Like the distant realms of empire, it is ours for the taking. The
daunting challenge we face is to reinvent democracy itself to overcome its inherent short-termism and to
address the intergenerational theft that underlies our colonial domination of the future. How to do so is, I believe,
the most urgent political challenge of our times. Some suggest that democracy is so fundamentally short-sighted that
we might be better off with “benign dictators”, who can take the long view on the multiple crises facing humanity on behalf
of us all. Amongst them is the eminent British astronomer Martin Rees, who has written that on critical long-term challenges such as climate
only an enlightened despot could push through the
measures needed to navigate the 21st Century safely”. When I recently asked him in a public forum
change and the spread of bioweapons, “
whether he was offering dictatorship as a serious policy prescription to deal with short-termism, and suggested that perhaps he had been joking,
he replied, “actually, I was semi-serious”. He then
gave the example of China as an authoritarian regime that was
incredibly successful at long-term planning, evident in its huge ongoing investment in solar power.
Turn - Democracy causes Nigerian state collapse and civil war
Dr. Moses E. Ochonu 19, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in History and Professor of African History at
Vanderbilt University, PhD and MA in African History from the University of Michigan, BA in History
from Bayero University, Graduate Certificate in Conflict Management from Liscomb University, “Why
Liberal Democracy is a Threat to Nigeria’s Stability”, Logos: A Journal of Modern Society & Culture,
May 2019, http://logosjournal.com/2019/liberal-democracy-is-a-threat-to-nigerias-stability/
In 2015, Nigeria, a country of about 190 million, spent $625 million to conduct federal and local elections. By
comparison, India, with a population of 1.2 billion, spent $600 million on its 2015 election, according to figures released by the
Electoral Commission of India (ECI).[1]
In 2019, the election budget of Nigeria’s Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) rose to $670 million. This
represents about 2.5
percent of Nigeria’s $28.8 billion budget for 2019, a portion of which is being financed through borrowing. To put the electoral
spending in context, more than half of the country subsists on about a dollar a day, and the country recently acquired the
dubious distinction of being named the poverty capital of the world, with more people living in extreme poverty there than in any
other country.[2] Key
infrastructures and services such as roads, railway, electricity, water supply, healthcare, and education are
severely inadequate, requiring urgent investments and interventions.
Election-related expenditure is expected to rise in the near future as INEC implements a wider slate of digital technologies to
combat manipulation and improve the integrity of the electoral process. For comparison, Nigeria typically devotes about 7 percent of its budget to
education. And yet Nigeria continues to maintain a four-year election cycle, with smaller by-elections occurring in between. This electoral
calendar guarantees that about $1 billion is spent on elections every four years. As the electoral price tag has grown, democratic dividends have
plummeted.
Nigeria’s predicament is a microcosm of the phenomenon of rising financial costs of elections in Africa and diminishing returns on democracy.
Across the continent, the
cost of electoral democracy is increasing and threatens the delivery of social goods.
As African countries battle myriad socioeconomic challenges, the question needs to posed: is it wise for these countries to
continue to spend a large percentage of their revenue every four or five years on a political ritual with fewer and fewer positive socioeconomic
consequences for their populations? Is this expensive, periodic democratic ritual called election worth its price?
It is not only the monetary cost of elections that now threatens to defeat their purpose and engender
disillusionment and, along with disillusionment, the erosion of trust in the state and its ability to
produce and distribute public goods. The social cost of periodic elections has been arguably greater,
depleting, with each election cycle, the residual stability of the state and the credibility of its
institutions.
Elections conducted in Nigeria since the return of civilian rule in 1999 have brought with them anxiety, tension, death,
violence, and dangerous rhetoric that, taken together, have frayed the national political and social fabric. Elections
have widened fissures and intensified preexisting primordial cleavages.
I can recall no electoral cycle since at least 2003 that was not been accompanied by fears of Nigeria’s disintegration or at the very least the
acceleration of its demise. In 2007 and 2011, post-election violence claimed hundreds of lives in Northern Nigeria as supporters of then candidate
Muhammadu Buhari rioted after his loss. In the 2019 presidential and national assembly elections, at least 46 people were reported to have died
from election-related violence. In the state assembly and governorship elections two weeks later on March 9, 2019, another 10 people died across
five states in what the Sunday Tribune newspaper described in its headline as “another bloody election.”[3]
Two riders below the same Sunday Tribune headline encapsulate the turbulent character of Nigerian elections. One was “Thugs, vote buyers,
arsonists take over on election day”; the other was “Nigerians condemn militarization of elections in Rivers, Bayelsa, Kwara, Akwa Ibom,
Benue,” a reference to the government’s deployment of soldiers and other military assets to opposition strongholds before and during the election.
The involvement of soldiers and other military personnel in the election was a brazen violation of Nigeria’s Electoral Act, an action which many
observers interpreted as the incumbent administration’s effort to use its might to manipulate the election in states held by the opposition.
Every election cycle in Nigeria sees massive, fear-induced demographic mobility as members of different ethnic groups and religions relocate to
areas considered dominated by their kinsmen and co-religionists to await the
conclusion of elections that often degenerate into
communal clashes especially in the volatile north of the country.
Periodic national
elections have thus worsened Nigeria’s notoriously frail union and caused apathy and
discontent. The Nigerian people, the major stakeholders in Nigeria’s democracy, have grown weary of being periodically endangered and
rendered pawns in an elaborate elite ritual with little or no consequence for their lives.
Electoral aftermaths have not improved economic conditions or strengthened the capacity of citizens to hold elected leaders accountable.
Moreover, as I shall discuss shortly, the familiar abstract freedoms that democracy, lubricated by periodic elections, can confer on citizens who
participate in such exercises, have eluded Nigerians.
The result has been noticeable apathy represented most poignantly by voter turnout, which declined from a peak of 69.1 percent in 2003 to 46.3
percent in 2015 and to about 35 percent in 2019. In the same 2019 election cycle, turnout declined to less than 20 percent in the governorship and
state assembly elections, with many Nigerians on social media stating that they had lost faith in the electoral process and that the official results of
the presidential elections two weeks earlier had shown that their votes would not count towards the declared outcome.
Voter apathy alone is not an indication of democratic disillusionment but it can portend or indicate something more devastating: diminishing trust
in the state, its institutions, and its processes.
Such a trust deficit exists already and it predated the return of civilian rule in 1999 after about two decades of military dictatorship. However, by
all theoretical formulations, such a cumulative loss of confidence in the transactional sociopolitical contract between the state and citizens should
be corrected by the democratic ideals of voting, representation, and accountability. This has not happened in Nigeria. In fact, the opposite scenario
is visible: a negative correlation between successive electoral cycles and citizens’ trust in the Nigerian state. Therein lay the paradoxical
consequences of democratic practice in Nigeria.
If elections are increasingly burdensome as they have become in Nigeria, the corrective potential of
democracy, broadly speaking, is lost. Citizens consequently lose faith in the state and resort to self-help, including
criminal self-help. That is how states collapse. Nigeria is not far off this possibility.
In Nigeria, recent political realities reveal a blind spot of pro-democracy advocacy: without the modulating effect of decentralization, sustained
economic growth, a growing, secure middle class, and a literate, hopeful poor, liberal democracy can do and has done more damage than good.
Liberal democracy has ironically become both an incubator and protector of mediocrity, corruption, and
bad governance. The overarching casualty has been Nigeria’s very stability.
Nigerian instability escalates to global great power war.
Charles A. Ray 21, Member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign
Policy Research Institute, Former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of
Zimbabwe, “Does Africa Matter to the United States?”, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1/11/2021,
https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/01/does-africa-matter-to-the-united-states/
Africa matters in terms of size, population, and rate of population growth. It is the continent currently most
affected by climate change but is also a continent that can have a devastating impact on climate change globally
because of the importance of the Congo Basin rainforest, which is the second-largest absorber of heat
after the Amazon rainforest. The destruction of this important ecosystem could further accelerate global
warming. As residents of the region come into increasing contact with the animals of the rainforest, this region could be the origin
of the world’s next viral pandemic. Violent extremism and terrorism are increasing in Africa, and while
now mostly localized, the danger has the potential to spread beyond the continent. Crises—natural and
man-made—cause massive relocations of populations, both on the continent and abroad, which can have negative economic,
social, and political impacts.
Why Africa Matters
The African continent is the world’s second-largest, with the second-fastest growth rate after Asia. With 54 sovereign countries, four territories, and two de facto independent states with little
international recognition, the continent has a current population of 1.3 billion. By 2050, the continent’s population is predicted to rise to 2.4 billion. By 2100,
Nigeria, Africa’s
most populous country, will havea population of one billion, and half the world’s population growth will be in Africa by then.
The population of African countries is also overwhelmingly young. Approximately 40% of Africans are under 15, and, in some countries, over 50% is under 25. By 2050, two of every five
children born in the world will be in Africa, and the continent’s population is expected to triple. These developments have positive and negative potential impacts on the United States and the rest
of the world. Young Africans have, for the most part, completely skipped the analog age and gone directly digital. Comfortable with technology, they form a huge potential consumer and labor
If, on the other hand, the countries of Africa fail to develop economically and do not create gainful employment for this
will become a huge potential source of recruits to extremist and
terrorist movements, which currently target disadvantaged and disenchanted youth.
market.
young population, then there is the risk that they
Lack of economic opportunity, increased urbanization, and climate-fueled disasters will also contribute to movement of people seeking better
lives, which will impact economies and security not only on the continent of Africa, but also the economic and security situations around the
world. Nations,
lackingadequate critical infrastructure, education, and job opportunities are ripe for internal unrest
and radicalization. In particular, inadequate health delivery systems, when coupled with natural disasters, such as droughts or floods that
limit food production, cause famine and mass movements of populations.
The Challenges for U.S. Policy
Prior to World War II, the U.S. policy towards Africa was not as active as it was toward Europe, Asia, or Latin America. During the Cold War, Africa policy was primarily viewed from a perspective of super-power competition. The
end of the Cold War and the rise of international terrorism introduced this as a major component in U.S. Africa policy along with competition with a rising China and increased Chinese engagement in Africa.
Before his first official trip to Kenya, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “Africa had become an idea more than an actual place . . . with the benefit of distance, we engaged Africa in a selective embrace.” This is probably an apt
description of U.S. policy towards African nations despite the bipartisan nature of that policy. The United States, with the many domestic and international issues it has to cope with, can ill afford to continue to ignore Africa. Going
forward, U.S. policy must include a hard-headed look at where Africa fits in policy priorities.
The incoming Biden administration will face a number of important issues and challenges as it develops its Africa policy. The most pressing issues are the following:
Climate Change: Climate change is an existential problem that affects the entire globe, but Africa has probably suffered more from the effects of climate change than other continents—and the problem will only get worse with time. In
an October 2020 article, World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said,
Climate change is having a growing impact on the African continent, hitting the most vulnerable hardest, and contributing to food insecurity, population displacement and stress on water resources. In recent months we have seen
devastating floods, an invasion of desert locusts and now face the looming specter of drought because of a La Nina event. The human and economic toll has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Climate change impacts water quality and availability, and millions in Africa will likely face persistent increased water stress due to these impacts. A multi-year drought in parts of South Africa, for instance, threatened total water
failure in several small towns and had livestock farmers facing financial ruin. Another pressing climate-change issue is the need for protection of the Congo Basin rainforest. This 178-million-hectare rainforest is the world’s second
largest after the Amazon and is currently threatened by agricultural activities in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Countries in the Congo
Basin need to address the preservation issue, while also enabling sustainable agricultural activities to ensure food security for the region’s population. In addition to the impact on global climate caused by destruction of the rainforest,
such destruction also brings human populations into closer contact with the region’s animals, creating the risk of future animal-to-human transmission of new and possibly more virulent viruses similar to COVID-19, which will have a
global impact. In a January 2021 CNN report, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum, who as a researcher helped discover the Ebola virus in 1976, warned of possible new pathogens that could be as infectious as COVID-19 and as
virulent as Ebola.
Rule of Law/Mitigation of Corruption: A key to African development, given the increasing urbanization, population increases, and youthfulness of the continent’s population, will be an increase in domestic and international
investment to build the industries that can provide meaningful employment and improved standards of living. In order for this to be successful, African nations will need to address the issues of rule of law and corruption. Investors will
not risk money if the business climate comes with a level of political risk that is too high. Government leaders throughout Africa need to establish legislation that provides an acceptable level of security for investments and take action
to curb the endemic corruption that currently discourages investment. Corruption in Africa ranges from wholesale political corruption on the scale of General Sani Abachi’s looting of $3-5 billion of state money during his five years as
Nigeria’s military ruler to the bribes paid by businessmen to police and customs officials. The “tradition” of having to pay bribes, or “sweeteners,” drives away domestic investment and scares away foreign investment, leaving many
countries mired in poverty.
Violent Extremism and Terrorism: A number of African nations are currently plagued with rising extremist movements. While primarily a domestic issue, the mass movement of people fleeing violence and the disruption of economic
activity have the potential to negatively impact the rest of the world. African nations need regional responses to curb extremist and terrorist organizations, many of which are supported by international terrorist organizations, such as
Terrorist groups in Africa range from relatively large
and dangerous groups, such as Boko Haram, a group in Nigeria that has received support from al Qaeda and that aims to implement sharia law in the country;
ISIS and al Qaeda. In addition, the underlying conditions that helped to create these movements must be addressed.
Al-Shabab, an al Qaeda affiliate aiming to overthrow the government in Somalia and to punish neighboring countries for their support of the Somali regime; and Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, a fundamentalist Christian group.
Terrorist groups in the fragile political climate of Libya also pose a threat to sub-Saharan Africa.
Great Power Competition: As the world’s second-largest economy, and with its increasing participation in international activities,
China willcontinue to be a factor in Africa for the foreseeable future. This, however, is more a problem for the nations
of Africa than it is for the rest of the world. The West can compete best by outperforming China in areas of strength by providing those goods and
services that are unquestionably superior, and let African governments decide how to deal with China and its often-predatory lending practices
and the Chinese tendency to import Chinese workers for its projects and investments rather than hiring locals. At the same time, Russia, which
did not completely turn away from Africa at the end of the Cold War as many in the West sometimes believe, must still be considered a
significant factor on the African landscape. In an effort to compensate for Western sanctions and to counter U.S. and Western influence, Russia
is once again increasing its presence on the continent. Russian mercenaries, in exchange for diamond mining rights, have
trained military forces in the Central African Republic, raising concerns about human rights abuses. Of particular concern is the presence of the
Wagner Group, a private military company associated with Yevgeny Progozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin, who was
indicted in the United States for trying to disrupt the 2016 U.S. elections. To date, Russia has, in addition to seeking basing rights, signed military
cooperation agreements with 28 African nations. Russian activity is a combination of military and commercial, with Progozhin at the center of
both. From 2010 to 2018, Russia nearly tripled its trade with African countries. While the activities of both Russia and China in Africa are of
concern, and should be closely monitored, neither is of critical importance to U.S. national security.
With climate change, disease outbreaks, famine, extremism, and inter-ethnic violence, Africa will still experience crises in the foreseeable future
that will be beyond the capacity of most nations on the continent to deal with. Climate change is probably the greatest cause of humanitarian
crises in Africa, but mainstream media outside the continent either fail to notice or under-report them. Some of the crises, like Ebola or the next
viral infection, can
impact the rest of the world. These crises will cause starvation, mass movement of people, and increase internal
matters to the United States and the rest of the world. Its impacts can be felt far
beyond the continent’s borders, but if approached as a partner rather than as a patron—with a focus on assisting African nations to
and regional instability. Africa
improve governance, build critical infrastructure, boost domestic economies, and provide essential services to all—then Africa can be a positive
contributor on the global stage.
Future wars are advanced – extinction even without nukes.
Dvorsky 12 George Dvorsky, 12-12-2012, "9 Ways Humanity Could Bring About Its Own Destruction," [Dvorsky is a Canadian bioethicist,
transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9[1] and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast. He was Chair of the Board for
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)[2][3] and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,[4] a
group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI
(Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Bio from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dvorsky]
https://io9.gizmodo.com/9-ways-humanity-could-bring-about-its-own-destruction-5967660, SJBE
World War III At the close of the Second World War, nearly 2.5% of the human population had
perished. Of the 70 million people who were killed, about 20 million died from starvation. And disturbingly, civilians accounted for nearly 50 percent of all deaths — a stark indication that war isn't just for soldiers any
more. Given the incredible degree to which technology has advanced in the nearly seven decades since
this war, it's reasonable to assume that the next global ‘conventional war' — i.e. one fought without
nuclear weapons — would be near apocalyptic in scope. The degree of human suffering that could
be unleashed would easily surpass anything that came before it, with combatants using many of the
technologies already described in this list, including autonomous killing machines and weaponized
nanotechnology. And in various acts of desperation (or sheer malevolence), some belligerent nations
could choose to unleash chemical and biological agents that would result in countless deaths. And
like WWII, food could be used as a weapon; agricultural yields could bebrought to a grinding halt.
Thankfully, we're a far ways off from this possibly. Though not guaranteed, the global conflicts of the 20th century may have
been an historical anomaly — one now greatly mitigated by the presence of nuclear arms.
Turn - American-grown democracies in the Middle East fuel terrorism
Piazza 07 (James A. Piazza holds a PhD in Politics from NYU and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies
from the University of Michigan. He was, when this study was published, an Assistant Professor on the
tenure track at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and he is now an Associate Professor and
Director of Graduate Studies at Penn State University, “Draining the Swamp: Democracy Promotion,
State Failure, and Terrorism in 19 Middle Eastern Countries”, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30:6,
521-539, April 27, 2007)
Will promoting democracy in the Middle East reduce terrorism, both within Middle-Eastern countries and among countries that
are potential targets of Middle Eastern–based terrorist groups? The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York,
Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania have led to a dramatic re-orientation of United States foreign policy
toward the Middle East. Predicated on the hypothesis—now the dominant foreign policy paradigm within the Bush
administration—that terrorism is a product of nondemocratic governance, a new idealistic interventionism has
replaced the legacy of Cold War realism, culminating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq for the purposes of
“draining the swamp”; that is to say removing the conditions that foster terrorism, namely dictatorship.How
might promotion of democracy and civil freedoms in the Middle East reduce terrorism? Proponents of democracy promotion view the climate of “unfreedom” that
pervades most Middle-Eastern countries as a dangerous precipitant to extremist thought and behavior that results in terrorist activity.1 The repression, violence, and
systematic humiliation used by Middle Eastern regimes like Iraq or Syria as tools of popular control foster public rage and increase the appeal of fanaticism. In the
absence of a free press or freedom of public expression, proponents of democracy promotion argued, an “epistemological retardation” pervades political discourse
fostering a mood of paranoia and giving credence to conspiracy stories in which the United States and its allies, namely Israel, are perpetual villains. Also, in these
nondemocracies, public grievances are not addressed and are allowed to fester, providing extremist groups with material for propaganda, facilitating their recruiting
efforts and legitimizing their acts of political violence. Finally, the nature of nondemocratic regimes retards the public virtues of political moderation and compromise,
which are necessary ingredients of nonviolent political expression (Muravchik 2001). Jennifer L. Windsor, executive director of the Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit
Freedom House, articulates a similar vision of the relationship between democratic governance and the reduction of terrorism in the Middle East: The underlying logic
is that democratic institutions and procedures, by enabling the peaceful reconciliation of grievances and providing channels of participation in policymaking, can help
to address those underlying conditions that have fueled the rise of Islamist Extremism. ... More specifically, promoting democratization in the closed societies of the
Middle East can provide a set of values and ideas that offer a powerful alternative to the kind of extremism that today has found expression in terrorist activity, often
against U.S. interests. (Windsor 2003, 43) Democracy, Civil Liberties, and Terrorism: Political Access versus Strategic Targeting By and large, scholarly research on
the relationship between terrorism, dictatorship, and democracy does not lend empirical support to the argument that there is a linear relationship between democratic
governance or protection of civil liberties and the incidence of terrorism. Traditionally, scholars
have proposed the opposite: that
democracies are more conducive to terrorist activity than are dictatorships (Schmid 1992; Charters 1994; Eubank and
Weinerg 1994, 1998 and 2001). Other research indicates that the relationship between democracy and terrorism is either mixed and qualified (Li 2005) or nonlinear
(Eyerman 1998). Recent research by Li (2005) finds that although “democratic participation” is a negative predictor of the incidence of international terrorism within a
country, “government constraints” in the form of institutional limitations to executive power found in most democracies increases terrorism in countries. Li further
illustrates that various electoral institutions within democracies—for example, proportional verses “first-past-the-post” systems—are also positive and negative
predictors of the incidence of terrorism. In his seminal study Eyerman (1998), using the assumption that terrorist groups, like all political groups, seek to maximize
their rational utility and weigh the costs against the benefits associated with each terrorist act, observes that there are two theoretical schools of thought regarding the
relationship between democracy and terrorism. The first, termed the “political access” school, holds that by providing multiple avenues by which actors can advance
their political agendas, democracies increase the utility of legal political activity for all political actors, including terrorists. Within democracies there is more political
space available than in dictatorships, so there is room “within the system” for actors who subscribe to anti-status quo or non-mainstream opinions. It is important to
note that the access school is a “political actor-focused” conceptual framework, meaning that it argues that democracy
provides greater
opportunities for terrorists to join mainstream politics. This is in contrast to “consumer-focused” conceptions that argue that democracy
makes extremists who may engage in terrorism less appealing to the public. One would therefore expect democracies to have fewer terrorist attacks, as would-be
terrorists merely pursue legitimate political activities to achieve their goals (Crenshaw 1990; Denardo 1985). The second, termed the “strategic school,” maintains that
democracies are more tempting targets for terrorism than are dictatorships because their respect for civil
liberties constrain them from more effective antiterrorism efforts such as surveillance, control over
movement and personal ownership of weapons, associational life, and media. These same restrictions of executive and
police power that are features of democracy also make democratic countries good hosts for terrorist groups. Moreover, the legitimacy of
democratic government rests ultimately on the public’s perception of how well it can protect it citizens,
and in a democracy citizens can punish elected officials at the ballot box for failure to protect the public.
This quality of public responsiveness makes democracies more willing to negotiate with terrorists, thus
increasing the potential benefits reaped for extremist groups by terrorist action (Charters 1994; Schmid 1993; Eubank and
Weinberg 1992). Eyerman (1998) and a new generation of scholars find empirical support for both the access and strategic schools. In his own study, Eyerman found
that although democracies overall did exhibit fewer terrorist acts, “new” democracies were more prone to terrorism. New
democracies possess all of
the liabilities inherent in democracies in general, making them tempting targets for terrorists as expected by the
strategic school, but they are not as able as established democracies to provide to terrorists benefits that
consistently outweigh the costs of engaging in political violence as opposed to legal political action
because they lack strong and durable political institutions. Similar results are found by Abadie (2004) and Iqbal and Zorn (2003), that
nonconsolidated democracies are more likely to exhibit terrorism and political violence, and are consistent with earlier empirical work by Gurr (2000, 1993), which
finds that democratization itself can promote political violence because powerful actors may seek to preserve their authority in the midst of uncertainty fostered by the
democratic process. The findings produced in these studies linking new democracies to terrorism, however, are limited by several design and theoretical qualities.
First, with the exception of Li (2005), they employ rather limited time-frames—most are confined to one or two decades of events or less—and therefore might be
distorted by medium-term episodic rises or falls in general levels of political violence. This is a limitation given that some scholarship has indicated terrorism occurs
in waves that coincide with longer-term changes in global political and economic trends (Bergensen and Lizardo 2004). The exception is Iqbal and Zorn (2003), but
their study is limited only to examination of predictors of assassinations of heads of state from 1946 to 2000 rather than general incidents of terrorism. Second, all but
one of the studies (Abadie 2004) considers only international terrorist acts, where the perpetrators and the victims or targets are of different nationalities, rather than
both domestic and international incidents, and all of the studies code their dependent variable (terrorism) based on the country where the incident took place. These
design features not only eliminate a rather large number of events from the studies, but also severely impair any examination of both the access school and the
neoconservative hypothesis on the causes of terrorism. In the post-911 context, in which policymakers speculate that political conditions, namely the lack of
democracy, in the “home” countries of the terrorist perpetrators themselves (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates) are important causes for
attacks, it seems particularly important to be able to consider the regime typology of the country from which the perpetrators are based and to consider all
manifestations of terrorism, including the most common manifestation: domestic terrorism. Finally, with the exception of Iqbal and Zorn (2003) who include a
variable for civil wars, none of the studies control for domestic political instability. The
shift in Washington toward democratic
state-building as a means to reduce terrorism has been accompanied by a much less pronounced
discussion among foreign policymakers about the appropriate timeframe for the withdrawal of United
States troops from Iraq. Within this discussion lies the question of whether or not Iraq is becoming a
“failed state:” a society experiencing severe political instability in which the state is unable to provide
basic “political goods” to its citizens such as personal security. This raises a second foreign policy conventional wisdom, though
one that is much less vociferously articulated by the Bush administration, that failed states like Colombia, Somalia, or Indonesia (or potentially Iraq) are
incubators for terrorist groups and terrorist activity(Campbell and Flourney 2001). U.S. Republican U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel explains
that these types of states pose the most severe threat to U.S. security at home and abroad because, “Terrorism finds sanctuary in failed or failing
states...” (Hagel 2004, 65), Terrorism and State Failure There is a small body of literature on the relationship between failed states and terrorism, but it is theoretical or qualitative case study–oriented rather than empirical (Rotberg
2002, 2003; Kahler 2002; Takeyh and Gvosdev 2002). The relationship has two mutually reinforcing features: (1) state failure helps to create the conditions that create terrorists and (2) failed states provide crucial opportunities for
already existing terrorist groups. First, by failing to provide for basic human needs and lacking functioning governing institutions, failed states cannot adequately manage conflicts in society or provide citizens with essential public
goods such as security, education, or economic opportunity. This damages the legitimacy of the state and of mainstream, legal political behavior, thus propelling individuals into extralegal action such as terrorism. Failed states are also
characterized by predatory political elites that prey on citizens and damage the government’s ability to manage social strife. The result is that significant proportions of the population reject the authority of the central government,
providing a wider recruiting pool for terrorist groups and a citizenry that will tolerate, if not aid, them. Second, state failure erodes the ability of national governments to project power internally, creating a political space for non-state
actors like terrorist groups, and creates the conditions under which state agents may provide organizational and financial assets to terrorists. Terrorists can rely on large amounts of territory to base operations such as training,
communications, arms storage, and revenue generating activities that go beyond the much more limited network of safe houses they are limited to constructing in countries with stronger states. Frequently, political elites within failed
states are willing to tolerate the presence of large-scale terrorist operations within national borders in exchange for material compensation, political support or terrorist services during times of political turmoil. Failed states lack
adequate or consistent law-enforcement capabilities, thus permitting terrorist organizations to develop extra-legal fundraising activities such as smuggling or drug trafficking. However, failed states are recognized nation-states within
the world community and therefore retain “the outward signs of sovereignty” (Tadekh and Gvosdev 2002, 100), thus providing terrorist groups with the necessary legal documentation, such as passports or end user certificates for arms
acquisition, and protection from external policing efforts. The Middle East Although the Middle East is the primary laboratory for testing the utility of democracy promotion as anti-terrorism policy—exemplified by the 2003 war and
occupation in Iraq and ruminations of the use of military force against Syria and Iran—the states of the Middle East provide a useful universe to empirically test the relationship between (lack of) democracy, civil liberties, state failure,
and terrorism. Table 1 illustrates that the states of the Middle East afford researchers with a large number of illiberal political regimes as well as significant numbers of states that have experienced state failures, making the region
central to the discussion of regime type and political stability as determinants of terrorism. The Middle East is arguably the least democratic region of the world. Freedom House notes that in 2003, only 5.6 percent of Middle Eastern
and North African states could be considered “free” in terms of political rights or civil liberties, placing it behind every other developing world area including Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, the Middle East is “bucking the trend” of
democratization in the world. The “Freedom in the World 2004” report issued by Freedom House notes that while every other region has increased the number of states considered to be free—the so-called Third Wave of
democratization—the Middle East has actually seen a reduction in the number of free states since the mid-1990s. Only two democracies exist in the Middle East: Israel and Turkey. While the former, Israel, guarantees democratic
freedoms only for Israeli citizens, who are roughly 65 percent of the population of the total territory Israel administers, the latter, Turkey, is an incomplete and unconsolidated democracy where elected civilian government is regularly
punctuated by military rule. A second strata of states—Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait—are all nondemocracies, but have at times experimented with limited political and civil liberalization. The remaining states are solid
dictatorships, one group of which—Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen—are bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes characterized by one-party rule and personalistic dictators and another group—Bahrain, Morocco, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—are autocratic monarchies. Next to Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East is the region exhibiting the largest percentage of states that suffer from state failures from 1998 to 2003,
although all of the regions of the world dominated by developing or transitional states besides Latin America have relatively high levels of state failure. What makes the Middle East unique, and what is not captured by the figures in
Table 1, is the intense and chronic nature of state failure exhibited in some states in the region. Several states—Lebanon from 1975 to 1991; Israel from 1987 to 2004; Iraq from 1980 to 1998; and Turkey from 1984 to 2000—have
experienced prolonged periods of armed ethnic conflict, civil war, and widespread political insurgency. Others suffer from prolonged but low-grade insurgencies such as the Saharawi insurrection in Morocco 1975 to 1989 or the
Dhofar tribal insurgency in Oman from 1970 to 1976, or from short but intense bouts of large-scale conflict such as the Syrian confrontation with Islamist guerrillas in 1982 or the suppression of a separatist insurgency by Yemen in
1993. Like many African states, Middle Eastern states suffer from what Kahler (2002) refers to as “stateless areas,” a condition linked to the incubation of terrorism where the central government is unable to project its power in
substantial regions of the country controlled by insurgents or regional actors. A report on terrorism in Yemen by the International Crisis Group faults the weakness of Yemeni political institutions, poverty and the inability of the state to
extend its authority to more remote tribal regions as precipitants of domestic terrorism (International Crisis Group 2003). Kahler does allow for a non-spatial variant of the stateless area condition in the case of Saudi Arabia, arguing
that the Saudi government was not able to penetrate powerful civil society and parastatal institutions, namely Muslim charities, that provide material sustenance to groups like Al Qaeda. Lebanon from 1975 to 1982 (and possibly later)
also fits the bill as failed state suffering from stateless areas, which permitted the Palestine Liberation Organization to base its operations in Beirut and Southern Lebanon. Analysis This study seeks to add to the discussion of
dictatorship and state failures as root causes of terrorism by conducting a cross-national, pooled, time-series statistical regression analysis on the incidence of terrorism in 19 Middle Eastern states from 1972 to 2003.
The
analysis is limited to the Middle East, specifically the cases of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel–Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, in order test the contention that democracy is a
panacea for terrorism in the
region of the world that U.S. foreign policymakers have chosen as their laboratory for
their counterterrorism policy model
and to also provide an empirical base to the largely descriptive and theoretical body of scholarship on terrorism produced by Middle Easternists2 (see, for example, Zunes 2003; Khashan 1997;
Lewis 1987; Martin 1987; Amos 1985). There are three hypotheses tested in the analysis, using 16 negative binomial regression models on a total of 493 observations: Hypothesis 1: Democratic governance and state protection of civil liberties in the Middle East are negatively related to the
incidence of terrorism. Hypothesis 2: Democratic governance and state protection of civil liberties in the Middle East are positively related to the incidence of terrorism. Hypothesis 1 captures the expectations of the political access school of thought regarding terrorism where one would
expect more politically liberal states to be equipped to integrate the political expectations of would-be terrorists into a legal rather than extra-legal framework. The result would be fewer terrorist attacks both at home and abroad. Hypothesis 2 captures the expectations of the strategic school of
thought, which argues that democracies are both particularly vulnerable to attack from domestic and or international terrorists and may find themselves hosts to terrorist groups because their antiterrorism policies are constricted by the rights protections inherent in all democratic societies. The
states of the Middle East also provide a wide range of state failures to examine as predictors of terrorist activity. Controlling for democratic governance and other socioeconomic variables, a third hypothesis is also studied: Hypothesis 3: State failures, measured in the aggregate, are positively
related to the incidence of domestic and international terrorism in the cases examined. Because of the nature of the dependent variable in the study, a Poisson distribution is more appropriate that an ordinary least squares (OLS) statistical regression model to analyze the data. The study seeks
to explain change or variation in the incidence (frequency) of terrorist incidents, sorted by country targeted by the attacks and the country that is the “host” of the group launching the attacks. Terrorist attacks are sporadic and concentrated in certain countries or at certain time periods, and
therefore from a quantitative perspective cannot be expected to be conform to a normal distribution. Also, an event count of terrorist incidents cannot produce negative count data for any given observation; the lowest value of any observation is a zero, indicating that no terrorist attacks have
occurred in that country in that year. Both of these qualities violate basic assumptions of OLS regression analysis and recommend a Poisson distribution instead. Furthermore, given that the individual event counts used in the study are not theoretically independent of each other—a country
may very well experience a rash of attacks spread out across multiple years by the same terrorist group—a negative binomial Poisson distribution is most appropriate. It produces the same mean as a basic Poisson distribution, but is better suited to data exhibiting a wider variance, thus
reducing standard errors and netting less biased estimators (Brandt et al. 2000; Cameron and Trivedi 1998; King 1989). In the study the state of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are operationalized as one aggregated case, though this may be a controversial methodological
decision. There are two justifications for aggregating these two entities into one case: First and foremost, the two entities are highly interconnected in terms of political, economic, and social life. The political conflict that produces terrorism within both of the entities was produced by the
political conflict originating in the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem by Israeli forces that continues to this day. Moreover, nationals of both political entities reside throughout Israel proper and the occupied territories, and until recently, Palestinians in Gaza and
the West Bank regularly commuted into Israel for employment. Second, the state of Israel has effectively controlled public policy within the occupied territories since 1967, and this has meant that the Israeli government has helped to determine the shape of political and economic
development both for Jewish residents of Israeli proper and Palestinians living in the territories. This poses a simple methodological problem: there is no independent government, or economy, on which to base measurements of variables for the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.
Although a semi-independent Palestinian National Authority was created in 1994, it still lacks sovereignty, the quintessential quality of all nation-states. To remedy this, all variables for the case Israel–Palestine are operationalized as indexes of population-weighted averages that include the
State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, producing aggregate measures of the regime type, economy, and demographic structure of the populations of both entities. However, this methodological decision could potentially bias the study and is vulnerable to charges of subjectivity
on the part of the researcher. Therefore, a separate set of statistical models are run that exclude Israel–Palestine as a case to determine the dependence of models on the total 19 cases on inclusion of Israel–Palestine. The source for yearly terrorist incidents by case—the unit of analysis for the
study—is the data collected by the Rand Corporation and collated by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, which operationally defines terrorism as: ...violence, or the threat of violence, calculated to create an atmosphere of fear and alarm. These acts are designed to
coerce others into actions they would not otherwise undertake, or refrain from actions they desired to take. All terrorist acts are crimes. Many would also be violation of the rules of war if a state of war existed. This violence or threat of violence is generally directed against civilian targets.
The motives of all terrorists are political, and terrorist actions are generally carried out in a way that will achieve maximum publicity. Unlike other criminal acts, terrorists often claim credit for their acts. Finally, terrorist acts are intended to produce effects beyond the immediate physical
damage of the cause, having long-term psychological repercussions on a particular target audience. The fear created by terrorists may be intended to cause people to exaggerate the strengths of the terrorist and the importance of the cause, to provoke governmental overreaction, to discourage
dissent, or simply to intimidate and thereby enforce compliance with their demands.3 To fully test the two hypotheses, especially in order to examine both the access and strategic schools, and to make appropriate use of the MIPT data, terrorism is operationalized as four dependent variables
which are run in separate models: (1) international terrorist incidents sorted by the country targeted from 1972 to 1997; (2) international and domestic terrorist incidents sorted by the country targeted from 1998 to 2003; (3) terrorist incidents sorted by country or countries that serve as the base
for terrorist attacks abroad from 1972 to 1997; (4) terrorist incidents sorted by country or countries that serve as the base for terrorist attacks both domestically and abroad from 1998 to 2003. The first distinction, between international and international and domestic incidents, is one driven by
the data available from MIPT. Although it is methodological desirable to consider both domestic and international attacks combined—incidents committed where the perpetrator and the target or victim may or may not be nationals of the same country—for the entire time-series, aggregation
of incidents in this way is only available post 1998.4 Prior to 1998, data is only available for international incidents. Terrorists incidents are also sorted both by “target,” the country and year within the time-series in which the terrorist act occurred, and by “source,” the country or countries per
year that serve as bases of operation for terrorist groups that engage in operations, as defined by the MIPT database of terrorist organizations. Targeted countries and source countries are analyzed in separate dependent variables. Examining both states targeted by terrorism and states that are
sources for terrorist groups facilitates a more confident evaluation of both the access and strategic schools as well as the role played by state failures because it paints a complete picture of the domestic vulnerability of the state to terrorist attacks and the domestic political conditions that may
breed terrorists. The analysis contains no incidents that occurred across two different countries, thereby yielding two target countries. However, as is often the case, terrorist groups base their operations in more than one state. For the analysis, each state that is the host of the terrorist group
perpetrating the act in question is allocated an equal count of the event. As an example, because the Black September Organization, a Palestinian militant group active in the 1970s and 1980s, is listed by MIPT as having bases of operation in Jordan, Lebanon, and in the Palestinian Occupied
Territories during its active period, a terrorist act committed by Black September in a given year will be recorded as one incident for Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel–Palestine. This is an imperfect methodology because it equally weights three states as sources for terrorism though in reality the
“stateless area” afforded Black September by civil-war wracked Lebanon in the 1980s or the lack of political freedom that plagues Palestinians living in Jordan or the limitations to counterterrorism efforts placed on the Israeli state by its democratic process and legal institutions might play a
disproportionate role in fueling terrorist incidents. However, data do not permit fine-tuning of this nature and this is the least-subjective method of distribution of acts by source country. Table 2 lists all variables used in the models as well as their operationalization. To test the hypotheses,
three independent variables are used: one that measures the degree of democratic governance in each case per year, “Democracy (Polity IV)”; another that measures the degree of civil liberties protections in each case per year, “FH Civil Liberties”; and the other measures the presence and
intensity of state failures in each case per year, “State Failures.” The first independent variable is operationalized as the yearly “POLITY” measurement from the Polity IV database. This measurement is an index ranging from -10, signifying a complete autocracy, to 10, signifying a complete
democracy. The expectation, given the two-tailed nature of the first hypothesis, is that Democracy (Polity IV) will either be a positive or negative predictor of the incidents in terrorism, measured all four ways in the statistical models. The second independent variable is operationalized as
annual index of civil liberties protections coded by the independent nongovernmental agency Freedom House in its annual publication “Freedom in the World.” The Freedom House civil liberties index is an ordinal measure between “1,” which would indicate a status of the highest protection
of civil liberties such as freedom of speech, conscience or association, and “7,” which would indicate a status of the lowest protection of aforementioned rights. As with Democracy (Polity IV), the expectation given the two-tailed nature of the first hypothesis is that FH Civil Liberties will
either be a positive or negative predictor of the incidents in terrorism, measured all four ways in the statistical models. The third independent variable is operationalized as a measure of aggregate state failures suffered by a given case in a given year. All data for state failures is taken from the
State Failure Task Force database, collected by researchers associated with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) at the University of Maryland. The CIDCM State Failure Task Force defines state failures as episodes of extreme political instability that
test the ability of the state to preserve order and identifies four major types of state failure: ethnic wars, revolutionary wars, genocides and politicides, and adverse regime changes. The variable “State Failures” in this analysis is an additive index ranging from 0 to 16 of the intensity levels of
all four types of state failure, which themselves are coded by the State Failure Task Force as measures of intensity where 0 indicates no state failures and 4 indicates highly intense manifestations of state failures. The expectation is that State Failures will be a positive predictor of the incidence
of terrorism across all of the models. The models control for several socioeconomic features. The first is “Area,” or the total surface area contained within the recognized boundaries of each state, and the second is “Population,” or the yearly total population count in millions. Eyerman (1998)
notes that geographically large countries have higher policing costs and are therefore more susceptible to terrorist attacks. Likewise, populous countries also raise the costs associated with counterterrorism efforts as terrorist groups can more easily obscure their activities and escape detection.
Gross domestic product (“GDP”), measured yearly in millions of $U.S., is a control used by Abadie (2004) and Eyerman (1998) in their respective studies and measures the total resources available to enhance state policing and or repressive measures. It is something of a conventional wisdom
that poverty and poor economic development are root causes of terrorism, although this has not been validated by a slate of recent empirical studies (Piazza 2006; Abadie 2004; Krueger and Maleckova 2003), though Li and Schaub (2004) in their statistical study of 112 countries from 1975 to
1997 did find that a country’s GDP was a negative predictor of terrorism, positioning level of economic development as an interaction variable linking international economic openness to lower levels of terrorism. It is nonetheless considered as a control and is expected to be a negative
predictor of terrorism across the models, if significant at all. Finally, a variable measuring the total years that the current political regime has been in place in each observation, labeled “Regime Durability,” is also included in the analysis. Regime Durability is operationalized by inserting the
value for “Durable” coded in the Polity IV dataset. It is expected that more durable regimes are less likely to experience terrorism. (Li 2005) Sixteen statistical models are run in all. The nucleus of the analysis is contained in models 1 through 8 to accommodate four dependent variables—the
two measures of terrorist incidents, international and international and domestic attacks, each of which is sorted into attacks by target and attacks by source—and to accommodate two independent variables—both Democracy (Polity IV) and FH Civil Liberties—which are run in separate
models. Furthermore, models 1 through 8 are run yet again omitting Israel–Palestine as a case as models 9 through 16 to control for the outlier effect that those observations may contain. Finally, two features are added to the models to correct for autocorrelation and multicollinearity errors. A
1-year lagged dependent variable [B1Incidents(t-1)j] is inserted after the intercept, as is appropriate in time-series multiple regression analysis, and a collinearity test is run on all of the independent variables. Results Table 3 presents the results of the first four models, which examine the
effects of the independent variables on the incidence of terrorism by target country in the Middle East The results of models 1 through 4 lend partial support to the strategic school, rather than the political access school, as it applies to Middle Eastern states. In Models 1 and 3, which examine
international terrorist attacks only, specifically where the perpetrator and the target or victim are of different national origins, Democracy (Polity IV) is a positive predictor of terrorism whereas FH Civil Liberties is a negative predictor. This suggests that terrorism is more likely to occur in
Middle-Eastern states that are political democracies and that protect civil liberties. (Note that the operationalization of FH Civil Liberties is inverted—regimes that protect civil liberties are scored low on the scale—so results are interpreted using the opposite sign of results for Democracy
[Polity IV]). However, when terrorism is measured as both domestic and international attacks by target, neither Democracy (Polity IV) nor FH Civil Liberties are signfiicant. This is an interesting result because the two measurements of terrorism are logically and quantitatively—there are
more total attacks coded per year when using the international and domestic aggregation—different. However, it is also possible that the different results found in models 1 and 3 and models 2 and 4 are due to the very different time-series used: the 26-year series (1972 to 1997) for
international only verses the six year series (1998 to 2003) for the international combined with domestic. A more comparable span of data would be desirable, although presently unobtainable. However, across three of the first four models, State Failures is a strong, significant, and positive
predictor of terrorism, regardless of how terrorism is measured. This suggests that Middle-Eastern states that suffer from state failures are more likely to both host groups that will commit terrorist acts at home and abroad and are also more likely to be the target of terrorist groups from other
states. Moreover, in three of the four models, the coefficient for State Failures is the largest in the model, and the coefficients are significant at the highest (.000) level. Few of the control variables are significant across models 1–4, and there are two surprising results. Population is a significant
predictor in models 1 and 3, as expected, but GDP is a significant positive predictor of terrorism in models 2 and 4 whereas Regime Durability is a significant negative predictor in model 2. The results for GDP and Regime Durability run counter to expectations, but it is telling that these
counterintuitive results occur in the models with the shorter time series, as previously found. Table 4 presents the results of models 5 through 8, in which the dependent variable, terrorism, is sorted by source country among Middle-Eastern states. As in models 1 through 4, models 5 through 8
provide partial vindication for the strategic school at the expense of the political access school but leave some nagging questions. In Table 4, Democracy (Polity IV) is a consistent, significant positive predictor of terrorist attacks; however, FH Civil Liberties is not. That is to say that more
politically liberal regimes in the Middle East, as measured by Polity IV, are more prone to harbor terrorist groups that commit terrorist acts either at home or abroad than are politically illiberal regimes. However, Middle-Eastern states that respect civil liberties—the very same freedoms that
pose barriers to state actors who may seek to apprehend terrorists or quash terrorist networks—are no more likely than Middle-Eastern states with poor civil liberties protections to host terrorist groups. This is difficult to reconcile within the confines of the strategic school and either prompts a
consideration of Middle-Eastern exceptionalism or a re-conceptualization of the relationship between the self-imposed limitations within democracies fighting terrorism. It may be possible that within the Middle East, mass political participation serves to inhibit governmental efforts to arrest
terrorists and disrupt terrorist networks because the significant segments of the public regards them as having a legitimate political agenda. A cases in point would be Yemen, where Al Qaeda militants might enjoy some sympathy from a public that is permitted to participate in albeit
incomplete elections. Or, a second possibility is that in countries where public outrage against terrorists has prompted an over-zealous antiterrorism policy from the government that itself fuels terrorist activity and recruitment. The case here would be Turkey, where public outrage against
Kurdish Worker Party (PKK) attacks in the 1980s and 1990s facilitated a harsh antiterrorism policy that included torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, and sentencing, and direct military reprisal against Kurdish civilians. These measures on the part of Turkish government security forces
enhanced Kurdish support for the PKK’s objectives, thus assisting PKK recruitment, organization of safe houses, and procurement of supplies. Again, in models 5 through 8 state failures is a significant, at times highly significant, positive predictor of the incidence of terrorism. This illustrates
that regardless of whether or not the Middle-Eastern state in question is considered to be a target of terrorist attacks or a source of terrorist attacks, terrorists thrive in countries beset with state failures. A few control variables are significant, and again yield results that counter expectations.
GDP is a negative predictor of international terrorism in model 5, but is a positive predictor of terrorism in model 8, as is regime durability. Again, it is possible that sample size is responsible for these differences. Finally, all models are re-run omitting the potentially problematic case of
Israel–Palestine, producing the results shown in Table 5: Roughly the same results are obtained in the modified data set analyzed in models 9 through 16. Democratic governance seems to be a somewhat consistent positive predictor of terrorism, while in at least one model (model 11), civil
liberties protections are a positive predictor of international terrorism by source—given the negative relationship between FH Civil Liberties, an indicator where states exhibiting poor protections of civil rights are scored higher. Some support for the strategic school is found, although no
support is evident for the political access school. And State Failures is a nearly perfectly consistent positive predictor of terrorism, regardless of how terrorism is measured or how terrorist attacks are sorted. Population, as a control variable, is significant in two of the models (9 and 11) and is
a positive predictor, as expected. However, GDP and Regime Durability continue to exhibit inconsistent and counterintuitive results. Overall, models 9 through 16 dispel the possibility that the results found in Tables 1 and 2—that state failure is the most significant predictor of the incidence
Conclusion The results of
this study are preliminary, but they do not lend support to the hypothesis that fostering democracy in the Middle
East will provide a bulwark against terrorism. Rather, the results suggest the opposite: that more liberal
Middle-Eastern political systems are actually more susceptible to the threat of terrorism than are the more
dictatorial regimes, as predicted by the strategic school approach to the relationship between democracy and terrorism. Furthermore, the result of the study
of terrorism, while democracy and civil liberties are more weakly associated with terrorist incidents—are a mere product of the inclusion of a set of observations from an outlier case: a combined Israel and Palestine.
do lend empirical support to the descriptive literature linking failed states to terrorism: those Middle-Eastern states with significant episodes of state failures are more
likely to be the target of and the host for terrorists. Because the study examines multiple measurements of terrorism, by target and by source, multiple measures of
political liberalization, democratic processes and civil liberties, and includes what is strangely overlooked by other studies of democracy and terrorism, the role played
by state failures, it contributes to scholarly understanding of the relationship between terrorism, democracy, and political stability while assessing the potential
effectiveness of current antiterrorism policy. These findings have significant policy implications. The
results suggests that a foreign policy
toward the Middle East constructed around democracy promotion, or around widening of civil liberties,
will not reap a significant security dividend in terms of terrorism. Rather, it may exacerbate the problems
of terrorism, both within Middle-Eastern states and for other countries targeted by terrorist groups based
in Middle-East states. These findings potentially dampen the enthusiasm of some scholars of the Middle
East who have hoped that stalled (or nonexistent) efforts at democratization or the widening of rights through the creation of “civil
society” in the Middle East would be revived as the beneficiaries of a new U.S. foreign policy imperative
toward the region. For much of the past ten years, the Middle East has lagged far behind every other world region in terms of democratization, as noted
previously, and the field of Middle East Studies has vainly searched for signs of nascent democratization among civil society actors in Middle-Eastern countries. This
study is the first to lend empirical support to a criticism of democracy-promotion already present within the field of foreign policy research. In his December 2003
article in Foreign Affairs (2003), director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Thomas Carothers critiques
the Bush administration emphasis on democracy-building in the Middle East as a means to preventing terrorism. Although
lionizing the principle of promoting democracy in a region so characterized by dictatorial rule—but seriously questioning whether or not the new policy really will
really prove to be a departure from the Cold War policy of supporting pro-U.S. dictatorships in the region out of self-interest in the final analysis—Carothers warns
that democracy might not prove to be the solid bulwark against terrorism that it is fashioned to be. He notes that democracy-promotion policy in the Middle East
relies too heavily on what is essentially a fairly simplistic modernization theory conception of Islamic
radicalism, that it is a manifestation of traditional society that can be eradicated through more modern and
Western political and social engineering. The roots of radical Islamist movements, on the contrary, are
complex, varied and “multifaceted” Carothers argues, and democracy is not likely to be the cure-all. Moreover,
borrowing a page from the strategic school, Carothers warns that democratization might widen the political space for radicals in
the Middle East and he regards the histories of newly democratized states as a cautionary tale to those who see rapid democratization as a stabilizing force in
Islamic societies. Finally, Carothers observes that democracy, itself is not always a simple panacea for terrorism outside of the Middle East. He specifically notes
Spain as a case study: it is a consolidated, though newer, Western democracy that is the target of regular and violent terrorist attacks from the Basque separatist
movement, ETA. One could add a host of other established democracies to the list of countries that are either sources for or targets of terrorism: Great Britain, India,
Italy, Greece, and the United States.
Extinction – terror magnifies every other scenario
Arguello and Buis 18, Irma, and Emiliano J. Buis Arguello is an international security expert and chair of the
Nonproliferation for Global Security Foundation, MA in Defense/Security studies from Escuela de Defensa Nacional, Argentina.
Buis prof of Public Intl Law/Humanitarian Law @ University of Buenos Aires School of Law, LLM in national defense from
Escuela de Defensa Nacional, Argentina. "The global impacts of a terrorist nuclear attack: What would happen? What should we
do?." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74.2 (2018): 114-119. SJCP//JG
Though hard to accept, the detonation of a nuclear device – by states or non-state actors – is today a
plausible scenario. And while much of the world’s focus has been on the current nuclear weapons
arsenals possessed by states – about 14,550 warheads, all of which carry the risk of intentional or
unintentional use – the threat of nuclear terrorism is here and increasing. For more than a decade, Al Qaeda,
Aum Shinrikyo, and other terrorist groups have expressed their desire to acquire fissile material to build
and detonate an improvised nuclear bomb. None of them could fulfill that goal – so far. But that
does not mean that they will not succeed in the future. Making matters worse, there is evidence of
an illicit market for nuclear weapons-usable materials. There are sellers in search of potential
buyers, as shown by the dismantlement of a nuclear smuggling network in Moldova in 2015. There
certainly are plenty of sites from which to obtain nuclear material. According to the 2016 Nuclear Security Index
by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, 24 countries still host inventories of nuclear weapons-usable materials, stored in facilities with different degrees
of security. And in terms of risk, it is not necessary for a given country to possess nuclear weapons, weapons-usable materials, or nuclear facilities
for it to be useful to nuclear terrorists: Structural
and institutional weaknesses in a country may make it
favorable for the illicit trade of materials. Permeable boundaries, high levels of corruption,
weaknesses in judicial systems, and consequent impunity may give rise to a series of transactions
and other events, which could end in a nuclear attack. The truth is that, at this stage, no country in
possession of nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials can guarantee their full protection
against nuclear terrorism or nuclear smuggling. Because we live in a world of growing insecurity, where explicit and tacit
agreements between the relevant powers – which upheld global stability during the postCold War – are giving way to increasing mistrust and
hostility, a question arises: How would our lives be affected if a current terrorist group such as the Islamic State (ISIS), or new terrorist groups in
the future, succeed in evolving from today’s Manchester style “low-tech” attacks to a “high-tech” one, involving a nuclear bomb, detonated in a
capital city, anywhere in the world? We attempted to answer this question in a report developed by a high-level multidisciplinary expert group
convened by the NPSGlobal Foundation for the Latin American and Caribbean Leadership Network. We
found that there would be
multiple harmful effects that would spread promptly around the globe (Arguello and Buis 2016); a
more detailed analysis is below, which highlights the need for the creation of a comprehensive
nuclear security system. The consequences of a terrorist nuclear attack A small and primitive
1-kiloton fission bomb (with a yield of about one-fifteenth of the one dropped on Hiroshima, and
certainly much less sophisticated; cf. Figure 1), detonated in any large capital city of the developed
world, would cause an unprecedented catastrophic scenario. An estimate of direct effects in the
attack’s location includes a death toll of 7,300-to-23,000 people and 12,600-to-57,000 people injured,
depending on the target’s geography and population density. Total physical destruction of the city’s
infrastructure, due to the blast (shock wave) and thermal radiation, would cover a radius of about
500 meters from the point of detonation (also known as ground zero), while ionizing radiation
greater than 5 Sieverts – compatible with the deadly acute radiation syndrome – would expand
within an 850-meter radius. From the environmental point of view, such an area would be unusable
for years.In addition, radioactive fallout would expand in an area of about 300 square kilometers, depending on meteorological conditions
(cf. Figure 2). But the consequences would go far beyond the effects in the target country, however, and
promptly propagate worldwide. Global and national security, economy and finance, international
governance and its framework, national political systems, and the behavior of governments and
individuals would all be put under severe trial. The severity of the effects at a national level, however, would depend on the
countries’ level of development, geopolitical location, and resilience. Global security and regional/national defense
schemes would be strongly affected. An increase in globaldistrustwould spark rising tensions among
countries and blocs, that could even lead to the brink of nuclear weapons use by states (if, for
instance, a sponsor country is identified). The consequences of such a shocking scenario would include a decrease in states’
self-control, an escalation of present conflicts and the emergence of new ones, accompanied by an increase in military unilateralism and military
expenditures. Regarding the economic and financial impacts, a severe global economic depression would rise from the attack,
likely lasting for years. Its duration would be strongly dependent on the course of the crisis. The main results of such a crisis would include a 2
percent fall of growth in global Gross Domestic Product, and a 4 percent decline of international trade in the two years following the attack (cf.
Figure 3). In the case of developing and less-developed countries, the
economic impacts would also include a shortage of
high-technology products such as medicines, as well as a fall in foreign direct investment and a
severe decline of international humanitarian aid toward low-income countries. We expect an
increase of unemployment and poverty in all countries. Global poverty would raise about 4 percent after the attack,
which implies that at least 30 million more people would be living in extreme poverty, in addition to the current
estimated 767 million. In the area of international relations, we would expect a breakdown of key doctrines
involving politics, security, and relations among states. These international tensions could lead to a
collapse of the nuclear order as we know it today, with a consequent setback of nuclear
disarmament and nonproliferation commitments. In other words, the whole system based on the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty would be put under severe trial. After the attack, there would be a reassessment of existing security doctrines, and a deep
review of concepts such as nuclear deterrence, no-firstuse, proportionality, and negative security assurances. Finally, the
behavior of
governments and individuals would also change radically. Internal chaos fueled by the media and
social networks would threaten governance at all levels, with greater impact on those countries with
weak institutional frameworks. Social turbulence would emerge in most countries, with consequent
attempts by governments to impose restrictions on personal freedoms to preserve order – possibly
by declaring a state of siege or state of emergency – and legislation would surely become tougher on
human rights. There would also be a significant increase in social fragmentation – with a deepening of antagonistic views, mistrust, and
intolerance, both within countries and towards others – and a resurgence of large-scale social movements fostered by ideological interests and
easily mobilized through social mediaPrevention, preparedness, response Given
the severity of the impacts, no country in
possession of nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials Figure 3. Estimated global economic
impact of a nuclear terrorism attack. The detonation of even one small nuclear bomb by a terrorist
group would have multiple far-reaching, terrible effects, going far beyond a target city’s
boundaries. In addition to the tens of thousands of dead and injured, and the total destruction of the city’s infrastructure, there would likely
also be a years-long global economic depression, with 30 million more people reduced to extreme poverty. © NPSGlobal BULLETIN OF THE
ATOMIC SCIENTISTS 3 can guarantee its full protection against nuclear terrorism or nuclear smuggling for proliferation purposes. Nor is it
realistic to conceive of full compensation to others in the international community, if a catastrophic event happens because of any country’s acts
or omissions. Therefore,
we consider that prevention is the only acceptable wayforward to preserve
global stability. Consequently, it is essential for countries to make every effort to prevent nuclear
terrorists from fulfilling their goals. It is true that the “primitivism” of currently active terrorist organizations gives a certain space
to do what is necessary to enhance the current nuclear security effort concerning prevention and response. However, the perception of
the “low likeliness” of a nuclear terrorist attack neutralizes the required sense of urgency in
decision-making. Being in fact a “high-risk” scenario, it is imperative that governments consider
this reality when setting priorities and making decisions about nuclear security. In practical terms, the
essential measures that all countries should take include securing all their nuclear materials and facilities (both civilian and non-civilian) to an
agreed minimum acceptable level, eliminating highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium, and becoming accountable for their nuclear
security practices toward the international community. This means that there is a need to strengthen supervision over nuclear materials and
weapons, which in turn calls for ratifying and complying with the provisions in the key treaties that regulate prevention of terrorism and nuclear
materials, and to implement global measures within the scope of the United Nations Security Council.
It is imperative that all
countries establish strategies to comply with these nuclear security commitments and participate in
international partnerships aimed at strengthening the global capacity to prevent, detect, and
respond to nuclear terrorism. More supervision, in its turn, means implementing reliable border control systems and training
personnel at all levels involved in handling and securing nuclear materials and facilities. A sound prevention strategy is crucial, but it is also
essential to have adequate mechanisms and capabilities in place to manage the crisis, if it occurs. These capabilities of preparedness and response
should include, at an international level, the negotiation and approval of innovative crisis management protocols or guidelines, worked out jointly
within the United Nations Security Council. They should also include improved international control over measures taken by states that could
affect human rights and individual guarantees, and the creation of crisis management mechanisms in formal multilateral institutions (community
banks, interstate cooperation blocks) to lessen the impact of a crisis and secure aid flows. At a national level, all countries should adopt measures
aimed at establishing mechanisms for prompt decisionmaking – which may include the creation of crisis management teams. These mechanisms
should be accompanied by the creation of contingency funds to mitigate any economic effects; the definition of protocols to use in responding in
the public and private sectors; the setting of economic priorities to secure sustained fast access to basic goods such as water, food, fuel, medicine;
and the design of crisis management mechanisms to secure the continuity of payment systems. These
measures require the
enforcing of national policies and contingency plans to respond to possible attacks, based on best
practices, but avoiding causing panic in society.
Turn - Autocracies solve emerging pandemics – studies prove democratic failure
Kavanagh & Singh 20 – (Matthew M. Kavanagh, assistant professor of global health and visiting
professor of law at Georgetown University, where he directs the Global Health Policy & Politics Initiative
at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Renu Singh, fellow at the O’Neill Institute for
National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, “Democracy, Capacity, and
Coercion in Pandemic Response—COVID 19 in Comparative Political Perspective,” 5-28-2020, Journal
of Health Politics, Policy and Law, Duke University Press,
https://read.dukeupress.edu/jhppl/article/doi/10.1215/03616878-8641530/165294/Democracy-Capacity-an
d-Coercion-in-Pandemic)
Is Democracy Good or Bad for Health in a Pandemic? In general, social scientists have tended to agree,
albeit with caveats, that democracy is beneficial for public health. COVID-19 is raising important questions
about this contention as high-profile cases show authoritarian countries winning praise for their response
while leading democracies have struggled to respond. This complicates, perhaps in helpful ways, the exploration of health
and of democracy. A wide literature has long debated the value of democracy for health. Electoral pressures and political
freedoms of democratic regimes, it is argued, contribute to improved health and longer lives (Ruger 2005; Sen
1999). These claims have empirical support in political science (Gerring, Thacker, and Alfaro 2012; McGuire 2010; Przeworski et al. 2000;
Wigley and Akkoyunlu-Wigley 2017), economics (Kudamatsu 2012), and public health (Bollyky et al. 2019)—though not without challenge, as
some have shown weak or no connection (Ross 2006). A range of mechanisms have been proposed and tested for how democracy improves
health including incentives—median voters desire redistribution, and a norm of equality increases support for accessible health services;
information—open media and opposition ensure that information both flows to the public about health and from the public to government about
how to calibrate policy; accountability—enabling voters can punish leaders who fail; and association—enabling knowledge networks and interest
groups to drive good policy. The
narrative of Chinese success and U.S. failure has led to concern that COVID-19
represents bad news about the value, and future, of democratic governance (Diamond 2020). Initial studies
have already been conducted showing a correlation between democracy and worse outbreaks as well
as less effective policy responses (Cepaluni, Dorsch, and Branyiczki 2020). Pandemic response is different from
much of population health—with effective responses requiring the ability to act quickly, implement
effectively, and gain public compliance. With the exception of HIV (e.g., Lieberman 2009), disease outbreaks and political
institutions have been under-studied in comparative politics—with much of the literature focused on infant mortality or life expectancy,
long-running trends that have far different mechanisms from a pandemic. Here,
the accountability mechanisms that help
democracies perform better may not be as beneficial. Political leaders with short time horizons may
have relatively weak incentives to invest in pandemic preparedness and response (Dionne 2010; Healy and
Malhotra 2009). And some of the benefits of associational networks and civil society can be shut down in the
face of an emergency—facing, for example, stay-at-home orders. Democracies also have the added
challenge of managing competing political factions and institutions, some of whom may have political
incentives to undermine response. Once the outbreak broke into the public and Beijing was moved to
act, China was able to quickly shut down the Wuhan market, shut down the movement of tens of millions
of people, screen and isolate the sick, and even build two hospitals in a matter of days. Singapore is
another autocracy that has gained praise for its quick response. The U.S., on the other hand, has
struggled to respond. The Trump administration focused on travel bans to keep the “foreign” virus out
rather than on mobilizing public health capacities to detect and respond—a message that aligns with the
Trump administration’s election-year antiimmigrant and anti-China political frame. The President’s incentive
structure has been clear, as his administration has tried to label COVID-19 the “Wuhan Virus,” continuing a trade war with China, the largest
producer of medical goods needed by the U.S. Perhaps these incentives were clearest in early March when Trump resisted allowing a cruise ship
with COVID-19 cases to dock because “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship” (The White House 2020).
Pandemics risk extinction
Yaneer Bar-Yam 16, Founding President of the New England Complex Systems Institute, “Transition
to extinction: Pandemics in a connected world,” NECSI (July 3, 2016),
http://necsi.edu/research/social/pandemics/transition
Watch as one of the more aggressive—brighter red — strains rapidly expands. After a time it goes extinct leaving a black region. Why does it go extinct? The answer is that it spreads so rapidly
That the rapidly spreading pathogens die out has important
implications for evolutionary research which we have talked about elsewhere [1–7]. In the research I want to discuss here, what we were
interested in is the effect of adding long range transportation [8]. This includes natural means of dispersal
as well as unintentional dispersal by humans, like adding airplane routes, which is being done by real
world airlines (Figure 2). When we introduce long range transportation into the model, the success of more
aggressive strains changes. They can use the long range transportation to find new hostsand escape local
extinction. Figure 3 shows that the more transportation routes introduced into the model, the more higher aggressive pathogens are able to survive and spread. As we add more long
range transportation, there is a critical point at which pathogens become so aggressive that the entire host
population dies. The pathogens die at the same time, but that is not exactly a consolation to the hosts. We call this the phase transition to
extinction (Figure 4). With increasing levels of global transportation, human civilization may be approaching
such a critical threshold. In the paper we wrote in 2006 about the dangers of global transportation for pathogen evolution and pandemics [8], we mentioned the risk from
that it kills the hosts around it. Without new hosts to infect it then dies out itself.
Ebola. Ebola is a horrendous disease that was present only in isolated villages in Africa. It was far away from the rest of the world only because of that isolation. Since Africa was developing, it
was only a matter of time before it reached population centers and airports. While the model is about evolution, it is really about which pathogens will be found in a system that is highly
connected, and Ebola can spread in a highly connected world. The traditional approach to public health uses historical evidence analyzed statistically to assess the potential impacts of a disease.
A key
point about the phase transition to extinction is its suddenness. Even a system that seems stable, can be
destabilized by a few more long-range connections, and connectivity is continuing to increase. So how
close are we to the tipping point? We don’t know but it would be good to find out before it happens. While
As a result, many were surprised by the spread of Ebola through West Africa in 2014. As the connectivity of the world increases, past experience is not a good guide to future events.
Ebola ravaged three countries in West Africa, it only resulted in a handful of cases outside that region. One possible reason is that many of the airlines that fly to west Africa stopped or reduced
flights during the epidemic [9]. In the absence of a clear connection, public health authorities who downplayed the dangers of the epidemic spreading to the West might seem to be vindicated. As
with the choice of airlines to stop flying to west Africa, our analysis didn’t take into consideration how people respond to epidemics. It does tell us what the outcome will be
unless we
respond fast enough and well enough to stop the spread of future diseases, which may not be the same as the ones we saw in the past.
As the world becomes more connected, the dangers increase. Are people in western countries safe because of higher quality health systems?
Countries like the U.S. have highly skewed networks of social interactions with some very highly connected individuals that can be “superspreaders.” The chances of such an individual
If a sick food service worker in an airport
infects 100 passengers, or a contagion event happens in mass transportation, an outbreak could very well
prove unstoppable.
becoming infected may be low but events like a mass outbreak pose a much greater risk if they do happen.
AT: Pandemics
Pandemics don’t cause extinction
Barratt 17 Owen Cotton-Barratt 17, et al, PhD in Pure Mathematics, Oxford, Lecturer in Mathematics at Oxford, Research Associate at
the Future of Humanity Institute, 2/3/2017, Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance,
https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf
For most of human history, natural pandemics have posed the greatest risk of mass global fatalities.37 However, there are some reasons to believe
thatnatural
pandemics are very unlikely to cause human extinction. Analysis of the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list database has shown that of the 833 recorded plant and animal species extinctions
known to have occurred since 1500, less than 4% (31 species) were ascribed to infectious disease.38
None of the mammals and amphibians on this list were globally dispersed, and other factors aside from
infectious disease also contributed to their extinction. It therefore seems that our own species, which is very
numerous, globally dispersed, and capable of a rational response to problems, is very unlikely to be
killed off by a natural pandemic. One underlying explanation for this is that highly lethal pathogens can kill their
hosts before they have a chance to spread, so there is a selective pressure for pathogens not to be highly
lethal. Therefore, pathogens are likely to co-evolve with their hosts rather than kill all possible hosts.39
Turn - Pandemics solve great power war
Posen 20 [BARRY R. POSEN is Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT and Director
Emeritus of the MIT Security Studies Program. “Do Pandemics Promote Peace? Why Sickness Slows the
March to War”, April 23rd,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2020-04-23/do-pandemics-promote-peace]
War is a risky business, with potentially very high costs. The historian Geoffrey Blainey argued in The Causes of War that
most warsshare a common characteristic at their outset: optimism. The belligerents usually start out
sanguine about their odds of military success. When elites on both or all sides are confident, they are
more willing to take the plunge—and less likely to negotiate, because they think they will come out better
by fighting. Peace, by contrast, is served by pessimism. Even one party’s pessimism can be helpful: that party will be more
inclined to negotiate and even accept an unfavorable bargain in order to avoid war.
When one side gains a sudden and pronounced advantage, however, this de-escalatory logic can break
down: the optimistic side will increase its demands faster than the pessimistic side can appease. Some analysts
worry that something like this could happen in U.S.-Chinese relations as a result of the new coronavirus. The United States is experiencing a
moment of domestic crisis. China, some fear, might see the pandemic as playing to its advantage and be tempted to throw its military weight
around in the western Pacific.
What these analysts miss is that COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is weakening all of
the great and middle powers more or less equally. None is likely to gain a meaningful advantage over
the others. All will have ample reason to be pessimistic about their military capabilities and their overall
readiness for war. For the duration of the pandemic, at least, and probably for years afterward, the odds of a war
between major powers will go down, not up.
PAX EPIDEMIA?
A cursory survey of the scholarly literature on war and disease appears to confirm Blainey’s observation
that pessimism is conducive to peace.
Scholars have documented again and again how war creates permissive conditions for disease—in armies as well as civilians in the fought-over
territories. But one
seldom finds any discussion of epidemics causing wars or of wars deliberately started in
the middle of widespread outbreaks of infectious disease. (The diseases that European colonists carried to the New World
did weaken indigenous populations to the point that they were more vulnerable to conquest; in addition, some localized conflicts were fought
during the influenza pandemic of 1919–21, but these were occasioned by major shifts in regional balances of power following the destruction of
four empires in World War I.)
That sickness slows the march to war is partly due to the fact that war depends on people. When people
fall ill, they can’t be counted on to perform well in combat. Military medicine made enormous strides in the years leading
up to World War I, prior to which armies suffered higher numbers of casualties from disease than from combat. But pandemics still threaten
military units, as those onboard U.S. and French aircraft carriers, hundreds of whom tested positive for COVID-19, know well. Sailors
and
soldiers in the field are among the most vulnerable because they are packed together. But even airmen are
at risk, since they must take refuge from air attacks in bunkers, where the virus could also spread rapidly.
Ground campaigns in urban areas pose still greater dangers in pandemic times. Much recent ground combat has been
in cities in poor countries with few or no public health resources, environments highly favorable to illness. Ground combat also usually produces
prisoners, any of whom can be infected. A vaccine may eventually solve these problems, but an abundance of caution is likely to persist for some
time after it comes into use.
The most important reason disease inhibits war is economic. Major outbreaks damage national
economies,which are the source of military power. COVID-19 is a pandemic—by definition a worldwide phenomenon. All
great and middlepowers appear to be adversely affected, and all have reason to be pessimistic about their
military prospects. Their economies are shrinking fast, and there is great uncertainty about when and how
quickly they will start growing again.
Even China, which has slowed the spread of the disease and begun to reopen its economy, will be hurting
for years to come. It took an enormous hit to GDP in the first quarter of 2020, ending 40 years of steady
growth. And its trading partners, burned by their dependence on China for much of the equipment needed to fight COVID-19, will surely scale
back their imports. An export-dependent China will have to rely more on its domestic market, something it has been attempting for years with
only limited success. It
is little wonder, then, that the International Monetary Fund forecasts slower growth in
China this year than at any time since the 1970s.
Even after a vaccine is developed and made widely available, economic troubles may linger for years.
States willemerge from this crisis with enormous debts. They will spend years paying for the bailout and
stimulus packages they used to protect citizens and businesses from the economic consequences of social
distancing. Drained treasurieswill give them one more reason to be pessimistic about their military
might.
LESS TRADE, LESS FRICTION
How long is the pacifying effect of pessimism likely to last? If a vaccine is developed quickly, enabling a relatively swift
economic recovery, the mood may prove short-lived. But it is equally likely that the coronavirus crisis will last long enough to
change the world in important ways, some of which will likely dampen the appetite for conflict for
some time—perhaps up to five or ten years. After all, the world is experiencing both the biggest
pandemic and the biggest economic downturn in a century.
Most governments have not covered themselves with glory managing the pandemic, and even the most
autocraticworry about popular support. Over the next few years, people will want evidence that their
governments are working to protect them from disease and economic dislocation. Citizens will see themselves as
dependent on the state, and they will be less inclined to support adventures abroad.
At the same time, governments
and businesses will likely try to reduce their reliance on imports of critical
materials, having watched global supply chains break down during the pandemic. The result will probably
be diminished trade, something liberal internationalists see as a bad thing. But for the last five years or so,
trade has not helped improve relations between states but rather fueled resentment. Less trade
could mean less friction between major powers, thereby reducing the intensity of their rivalries.
In the Chinese context, less international trade could have positive knock-on effects. Focused on growing
the domestic economy, and burdened by hefty bills from fighting the virus, Beijing could be forced to
table the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious trade and investment project that has unnerved the
foreign policy establishments of great and middle powers. The suspension of the BRI would soothe the fears of those who
see it as an instrument of Chinese world domination.
Future wars are advanced – extinction even without nukes.
Dvorsky 12 George Dvorsky, 12-12-2012, "9 Ways Humanity Could Bring About Its Own Destruction," [Dvorsky is a Canadian bioethicist,
transhumanist and futurist. He is a contributing editor at io9[1] and producer of the Sentient Developments blog and podcast. He was Chair of the Board for
the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)[2][3] and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,[4] a
group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI
(Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence). Bio from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Dvorsky]
https://io9.gizmodo.com/9-ways-humanity-could-bring-about-its-own-destruction-5967660, SJBE
World War III At the close of the Second World War, nearly 2.5% of the human population had
perished. Of the 70 million people who were killed, about 20 million died from starvation. And disturbingly, civilians accounted for nearly 50 percent of all deaths — a stark indication that war isn't just for soldiers any
more. Given the incredible degree to which technology has advanced in the nearly seven decades since
this war, it's reasonable to assume that the next global ‘conventional war' — i.e. one fought without
nuclear weapons — would be near apocalyptic in scope. The degree of human suffering that could
be unleashed would easily surpass anything that came before it, with combatants using many of the
technologies already described in this list, including autonomous killing machines and weaponized
nanotechnology. And in various acts of desperation (or sheer malevolence), some belligerent nations
could choose to unleash chemical and biological agents that would result in countless deaths. And
like WWII, food could be used as a weapon; agricultural yields could bebrought to a grinding halt.
Thankfully, we're a far ways off from this possibly. Though not guaranteed, the global conflicts of the 20th century may have
been an historical anomaly — one now greatly mitigated by the presence of nuclear arms.
AT: BioD
Biodiversity loss is good — it solves disease, increases ecosystem productivity, AND
adaptation checks the impact.
Alexander ’17 [R. Alexander; Robert F. Griggs Associate Professor of Biology at the George
Washington University; 11-22-2017; "We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of
evolution.", Washington Post;
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/we-dont-need-to-save-endangered-species-extinction-is-part-of
-evolution/2017/11/21/57fc5658-cdb4-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html, accessed 6-20-2021; RG]
Mass extinctions periodically wipe out up to 95 percent of all species in one fell swoop; these come
every 50 million to 100 million years, and scientists agree that we are now in the middle of the sixth such
extinction, this one caused primarily by humans and our effects on animal habitats. It is an "immense and hidden" tragedy to see
creatures pushed out of existence by humans, lamented the Harvard entomologist E.O. Wilson, who coined the term "biodiversity" in 1985. A
joint paper by several prominent researchers published by the National Academy of Sciences called it a
"biological annihilation." Pope Francis imbues the biodiversity crisis with a moral imperative ("Each creature has its own purpose," he
said in 2015), and biologists often cite an ecological one (we must avert "a dramatic decay of biodiversity and the subsequent loss of ecosystem
services," several wrote in a paper for Science Advances). "What is Conservation Biology?," a foundational text for the field, written by Michael
Soulé of the University of California at Santa Cruz, says, "Diversity of organisms is good . . . the untimely extinction of populations and species is
bad . . . [and] biotic diversity has intrinsic value." In her book "The Sixth Extinction ," journalist Elizabeth Kolbert captures the panic all this has
induced: "Such is the pain the loss of a single species causes that we're willing to perform ultrasounds on rhinos and handjobs on crows."
But the
impulse to conserve for conservation’s sake has taken on an unthinking, unsupported,
unnecessaryurgency. Extinction is the engine of evolution, the mechanism by which natural selection
prunes the poorly adapted and allows the hardiest to flourish. Species constantly go extinct, and every
species that is alive today will one day follow suit. There is no such thing as an “endangered species,” except for all species.
The only reason we should conserve biodiversity is for ourselves, to create a stable future for human beings. Yes, we have altered the environment
and, in doing so, hurt other species. This seems artificial because we, unlike other life forms, use sentience and agriculture and industry. But we
are a part of the biosphere just like every other creature, and our actions are just as volitional, their
consequences just as natural. Conserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to
discharge our own guilt, but little else.
Climate scientists worry about how we’ve altered our planet, and they have good reasons for apprehension: Will we be able
to feed ourselves? Will our water supplies dry up? Will our homes wash away? But unlike those concerns, extinction does not carry moral
significance, even when we have caused it. And unless
we somehow destroy every living cell on Earth, the sixth
extinction will be followed by a recovery, and later a seventh extinction, and so on.
Yet we are obsessed with reviving the status quo ante. The Paris Accords aim to hold the temperature to under two degrees Celsius above
preindustrial levels, even though the temperature has been at least eight degrees Celsius warmer within the past 65 million years. Twenty-one
thousand years ago, Boston was under an ice sheet a kilometer thick. We are near all-time lows for temperature and sea level ; whatever effort we
make to maintain the current climate will eventually be overrun by the inexorable forces of space and geology. Our concern, in other words,
should not be protecting the animal kingdom, which will be just fine. Within a few million years of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the
post-apocalyptic void had been filled by an explosion of diversity — modern mammals, birds and amphibians of all shapes and sizes.
This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction. The inevitability of death is the only constant in life, and 99.9
percent of all species that have ever lived, as many as 50 billion, have already gone extinct. In 50 million
years, Europe will collide with Africa and form a new supercontinent, destroying species (think of birds, fish and anything vulnerable to invasive
life forms from another landmass) by irrevocably altering their habitats. Extinctions
of individual species, entire lineages and even
complete ecosystems are common occurrences in the history of life. The world is no better or worse for the
absence of saber-toothed tigers and dodo birds and our Neanderthal cousins, who died off as Homo sapiens evolved. (According
to some studies, it's not even clear that biodiversity is suffering. The authors of another recent National Academy of Sciences
paper point out that species richness has shown no net decline among plants over 100 years across 16,000
sites examined around the world.)
Conserving biodiversity should not be an end in itself; diversity can even be hazardous to human health.
Infectiousdiseases are most prevalent and virulent in the most diverse tropical areas. Nobody donates to
campaigns to save HIV, Ebola, malaria, dengue and yellow fever, but these are key components of
microbial biodiversity, as unique as pandas, elephants and orangutans, all of which are ostensibly endangered thanks
to human interference.
Humans should feel less shame about molding their environment to suit their survival needs. When
beavers make a dam, they
cause the local extinction of numerous riverine species that cannot survive in the new lake. But that new lake
supports a set of species that is just as diverse. Studies have shown that when humans introduce invasive plant
species, native diversity sometimes suffers, but productivity — the cycling of nutrients through the
ecosystem — frequently increases. Invasives can bring other benefits, too: Plants such as the Phragmites
reed have been shown to perform better at reducing coastal erosionand storing carbon than native vegetation
in some areas, like the Chesapeake.
And if
biodiversity is the goal of extinction fearmongers, how do they regard South Florida, where about 140 new
reptile species accidentally introduced by the wildlife trade are now breeding successfully? No extinctions of
native species have been recorded, and, at least anecdotally, most natives are still thriving. The ones that are
endangered, such as gopher tortoises and indigo snakes, are threatened mostly by habitat destruction. Even if all the
native reptiles in the Everglades, about 50, went extinct, the region would still be gaining 90 new species — a
biodiversity bounty. If they can adapt and flourish there, then evolution is promoting their success. If they outcompete the
natives, extinction is doing its job.
There is no return to a pre-human Eden; the goals of species conservation have to be aligned with the acceptance that large numbers of animals
will go extinct. Thirty
to 40 percent of species may be threatened with extinction in the near future, and their
loss may be inevitable. But both the planet and humanity can probably survive or even thrive in a world with fewer species. We don't
depend on polar bears for our survival, and even if their eradication has a domino effect that eventually affects us, we will find
a way to adapt. The species that we rely on for food and shelter are a tiny proportion of total
biodiversity, and most humans live in — and rely on — areas of only moderate biodiversity, not the Amazon or the Congo
Basin.
Developed human societies can exist and function in harmony with diverse natural communities, even if those communities are less diverse than
they were before humanity. For instance, there
is almost no original forest in the eastern United States. Nearly every square
verdant wilderness we see now in the Catskills, Shenandoah and the
Great Smoky Mountains has all grown back in the past 100 years or so, with very few extinctions or permanent
inch was clear-cut for timber by the turn of the 20th century. The
losses of biodiversity (14 total east of the Mississippi River, counting species recorded in history that are now apparently extinct), even
as the population of our country has quadrupled. Japan is one of the most densely populated and densely forested nations in
the world. A model like that can serve a large portion of the planet, while letting humanity grow and shape its own future.
Diseases cause extinction
Diamandis 21 (Eleftherios P. Diamandis, Division Head of Clinical Biochemistry at Mount Sinai
Hospital and Biochemist-in-Chief at the University Health Network and is Professor & Head, Clinical
Biochemistry, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, April 14th 2021, “The Mother of All Battles: Viruses vs. Humans. Can Humans Avoid Extinction
in 50-100 Years?” modified to fix author typo [“could result n” “could result in”
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202104.0397/v1) MULCH
The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which is causing COVID 19 disease, has taught us unexpected
lessons about the dangers of human extinction through highly contagious and lethal diseases. As the
COVID 19 pandemic is now being controlled by various isolation measures, therapeutics and vaccines, it
became clear that our current lifestyle and societal functions may not be sustainable in the long term. We
now have to start thinking and planning on how to face the next dangerous pandemic, not just overcoming
the one that is upon us now. Is there any evidence that even worse pandemics could strike us in the near future and
threaten the existence of the human race? The answer isunequivocally yes. It is not necessary to get
infected by viruses of bats, pangolins and other exotic animals that live in remote forests in order to be in
danger. Creditable scientific evidence indicates that the human gut microbiota harbor billions of viruses
which are capable of affecting the function of vital human organs such as the immune system, lung, brain,
liver, kidney, heart etc. It is possible that the development of pathogenic variants in the gut can lead to contagious viruses which can cause pandemics,
leading to destruction of vital organs, causing death or various debilitating diseases such as blindness, respiratory, liver, heart and kidney failures. These
diseases could result [in] the complete shutdown of our civilization and probably the extinction of
human race. In this essay, I will first provide a few independent pieces of scientific facts and then combine
this information to come up with some (but certainly not all) hypothetical scenarios that could cause
human race misery, even extinction. I hope that these scary scenarios will trigger preventative measures
that could reverse or delay the projected adverse outcomes.
Biod is not exisential—
Kareiva ’18 [Peter, Ecology PhD; Valerie Carranza; Institute of the Environment and Sustainability,
University of California, Los Angeles; “Existential Risk Due to Ecosystem Collapse: Nature Strikes
Back.” Futures 102, p. 39-50]
The interesting question is whether any of the planetary thresholds other than CO2 could also portend existential
risks. Here the answer is not clear. One boundary often mentioned as a concern for the fate of global
civilization is biodiversity(Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 2012), with the proposed safety threshold being a loss of greater than .001% per year
(Rockström et al., 2009). There is little evidence that this particular .001% annual loss is a threshold—and it is hard to
imagine any data that would allow one to identify where the threshold was (Brook et al., 2013; Lenton & Williams,
2013). A better question is whether one can imagine any scenario by which the loss of too many species
leads to the collapse of societies and environmental disasters, even though one cannot know the absolute number of
extinctions that would be required to create this dystopia. While there are data that relate local reductions in species richness
to altered ecosystem function, these results do not point to substantial existential risks. The data are
small-scale experiments in which plant productivity, or nutrient retention is reduced as species number
declines locally (Vellend, 2017), or are local observations of increased variability in fisheries yield when
stock diversity is lost (Schindler et al., 2010). Those are not existential risks. To make the link even more
tenuous, there is little evidence that biodiversity is even declining at local scales (Vellend et al 2017; Vellend et
al., 2013). Total planetary biodiversity
may be in decline, but local and regional biodiversity is often staying
the same because species from elsewhere replace local losses, albeit homogenizing the world in the
process. Although the majority of conservation scientists are likely to flinch at this conclusion, there is
growing skepticism regarding the strength of evidence linking trends in biodiversity loss to an existential
risk for humans (Maier, 2012; Vellend, 2014). Obviously if all biodiversity disappeared civilization would
end—but no one is forecasting the loss of all species. It seems plausible that the loss of 90% of the world’s species
could also be apocalyptic, but not one is predicting that degree of biodiversity loss either. Tragic, but
plausible is the possibility our planet suffering a loss of as many as half of its species. If global
biodiversity were halved, but at the same time locally the number of species stayed relatively stable, what
would be the mechanism for an end-of-civilization or even end of human prosperity scenario?
Extinctions and biodiversity loss are ethical and spiritual losses, but perhaps not an existential risk. What
about the remaining eight planetary boundaries? Stratospheric ozone depletion is one—but thanks to the Montreal Protocol
ozone depletion is being reversed (Hand, 2016). Disruptions of the nitrogen cycle and of the phosphorouscycle have
also been proposed as representing potential planetary boundaries (one boundary for nitrogen and one boundary for
phosphorous). There are compelling data linking excesses in these nutrients to environmental damage. For
example, over-application of fertilizer in Midwestern USA has led to dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, excessive nitrogen has polluted
groundwater in California to such an extent that it is unsuitable for drinking and some rural communities are forced to drink bottled water.
However, these impacts are local. At the same time that there is too much N loading in the US, there is a
need for more N in Africa as a way of increasing agricultural yields (Mueller et al., 2012). While the disruption
of nitrogen and phosphorous cycles clearly perturb local ecosystems, end-of-the-world scenarios seem a
bit far-fetched. Another hypothesized planetary boundary entails the conversion of natural habitats to
agricultural land. The mechanism by which too much agricultural land could cause a crisis is
unclear—unless it is because land conversion causes so much biodiversity loss that is species extinctions
that are the proximate cause of an eco-catastrophe. Excessive chemical pollution and excessive atmospheric aerosol
loading have each been suggested as planetary boundaries as well. In the case of these pollution boundaries,
there are well-documented mechanisms by which surpassing some concentration of a pollutant inflicts
severe human health hazards. There is abundant evidence linking chemical and aerosol pollution to
higher mortality and lower reproductive success in humans, which in turn could cause a major die-off. It
is perhaps appropriate then that when Hollywood envisions an unlivable world, it often invokes a story of
humans poisoning themselves. That said, it is doubtful that we will poison ourselves towards
extinction. Data show that as nations develop and increase their wealth, they tend to clean up their air and
water and reduce environmental pollution (Flörke et al., 2013; Hao & Wang, 2005). In addition, as economies
become more circular (see Mathews & Tan, 2016), environmental damage due to waste products is likely to
decline. The key point is that the pollutants associated with the planetary boundaries are so widely
recognized, and the consequences of local toxic events are so immediate, that it is reasonable to
expectnational governments to act before we suffer a planetary ecocatastrophe.
Coop is uniquely working now
Alison Snyder,Andrew Freedman, 7-11-2023, "Kerry's visit to China could open door for renewed
climate cooperation," Axios,
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/11/kerry-china-visit-climate-cooperation-yellen-xie SJRP
The Biden administration's full-court press on climate change cooperation with Beijing could
hinge(s) on climate envoy John Kerry's upcoming visit to China. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are the world's
Climate action between them could help to achieve global
climate goals and pave the way for smoother negotiations at the COP28 summit in the United Arab
Emirates later this year. Driving the news: Kerry plans to visit China this month, according to a
spokesperson, in what would be the first formal climate talks between the two countries in nearly a
year. Kerry's visit will come on the heels of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's trip that wrapped up
over the weekend. Yellen highlighted cooperation between the U.S. and China around climate
change in her remarks in Beijing, specifically calling on Beijing to contribute more to global climate
funds that help developing nations cut their greenhouse gas emissions. In the U.N. climate talks,
China is considered a developing country and does not have the same climate finance
responsibilities as the U.S. The big picture: Finding a way to cooperate on climate change is
"important for the rest" of the U.S.-China relationship, says Thom Woodroofe, a senior fellow at
the Asia Society and founding director of the organization's China Climate Hub."The area of
climate change represents one where they can put meat on the bone" and test "whether the Chinese
want to build a constructive relationship," he tells Axios. Kerry has a personal relationship and
history with his counterpart in Beijing, Xie Zhenhua, which Woodroofe says could be leveraged for
a substantive outcome from the trip.Flashback: The U.S. and China — led by Kerry and Xie — struck a bilateral
agreement on climate action in 2021 at the COP26 climate summit. That plan, which included efforts to reduce methane emissions and
potentially speed up emissions cuts during the 2020s, had yet to be fully implemented when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to
Taiwan last August. Beijing responded to the visit by ending cooperation on a handful of issues, including climate change. Kerry's engagement
top two emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
is an opportunity for both countries to get the Glasgow agreement back on track, Woodroofe says. What's happening: Kerry and, to some extent,
the Biden administration overall, has long pushed for Beijing to agree to carve out climate change cooperation from the rest of their relationship.
It would be an "insurance policy" against geopolitics trumping climate concerns, Woodroofe says, adding it isn't a likely outcome from Kerry's
trip. But Kerry could resuscitate what was agreed on in Glasgow, including a working group for experts to exchange "updates on their
respective national efforts." "If Kerry can walk away and say we can effectively do what we agreed to do in 2021, that is a good outcome,"
Woodroofe says. There are several opportunities for the U.S. and China to cooperate on climate action, says David Waskow, director of the World
Resources Institute's International Climate Initiative. Those could include technological challenges like how to best build out the grid and how to
alleviate debt for developing nations that are turning to producing more fossil fuels to generate revenue. Yellen's message to China to contribute
to international finance mechanisms like the Green Climate Fund helps "to hold China’s feet to the fire in terms of its global climate pledges and
to encourage them to get on the field in general," Woodroofe says.But the U.S. "needs to step thoughtfully" regarding the issue of China providing
more finance to global climate funds, Waskow says. Those funds already struggle to get public finance from countries that have committed to
them. "It is important but that conversation needs to be done in a way that recognizes the context around it and doesn’t jeopardize the other
objectives the U.S. and others have at the moment," he says. "If we have any hope of achieving progress in terms of building cooperation or at
least healthy competition or ideally both, these are the two people who can do it," Woodroofe says. Both Kerry and Xie have unique leverage in
their domestic systems, he adds. As a former secretary of state, Kerry brings gravitas to the role that past climate envoys lacked, for example, and
Xie was brought out of retirement to be his Chinese counterpart. But Kerry is only publicly committed to his post through this year's UN climate
summit and Xie has had health issues. Woodroofe says he is concerned "both of them might not be in their jobs a year from now — and that
points to this being an important year to forge progress."