1NC
Ocean development and exploration are imperialist ambitions – we
seek to control the world the “new frontier” and it is this obsession
with personal pleasure that makes destruction inevitable
Astro 77 – Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University, Ph.D. American Literature,
M.A. English, (Richard, “VOYAGES INTO OCEAN SPACE: A VIEW FROM THE HUMANITIES”,
1977, IEEXplore,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1154360,
RSpec)
Writing in 1847, Herman Melville affirmed that "from time immemorial many fine things have been said and sung of the
sea. And the days have been, when sailors were considered veritable mermen; and the ocean itself as the peculiar theatre
the sea or of inland waterways,
promotes our glorious self-image of ourselves and our ability to
subdue external nature . But Cooper, Melville and Conrad make what Melville calls the "poetry of salt-
of the romantic and wonderful."" Indeed early maritime literature, whether of
water" hard to relish. Indeed, what we learn from these writers' portrayals of explorations
into the maritime
frontier, almost all of which are rendered with great attention to precise nautical detail , is that man
rarely possesses adequate physical or meta- physical means to achieve his ends . Amidst
Conrad's raging sea storms, in the darkness and sterility of Cooper's Antarctic winter, and before the fury of Melville's
great whale, we can assess the range of human ability, indeed of rational inquiry itself and mark
Yet still we push on . We talk about " the ocean as a new
frontier of opportunity " and the cor- responding need for a national marine effort!' to further
exploration and promote overseas markets. We realize that we have ravished our land
frontiers , but we continue to be enraptured by the idea of growth in our attitudes
toward the sea. We pay lip service to the need to maintain our marine environment, but our thirst for
individual power propels us onward toward uncontrolled proliferation . The
their furthest limits.
failure, our failure, to negotiate multilaterally acceptable laws of the sea has its roots in the thirst for power among those
capital , the technology , and the perceived
need to exploit ocean resources . This is not to say that we should not explore the seas. They
few nations--and we are one--which have the
offer us much if we employ their wealth wisely. But too often we do not. And the problem as it is and
collective vision of
empire . We want to control the world "out there." We want to make it part of
ourselves, subject to our command . There is even an element of play involved here. For while we
want and need to control our environment to keep it from hurting us, we take plea- sure from
as it has been throughout our history is one of
individual pride and our
making it jump through our hoops. Indeed, whether for pleasure or for profit, we continue to reveal
through our actions toward the sea the clean,
sharp edges of imperial design .
This frontier mentality is the root cause of ocean destruction
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
Today, we
routinely hear reports of ocean pollution and depleted fisher- ies, exposes
on dying coral reefs and endangered whales, and triumphant tales about preservation in the
National Marine Sanctuaries and the Hawaii Ocean Preserve. These stories should have a familiar
ring; they echo a century of ef- forts to conserve and preserve the American
landscape. The plight of today's ocean, however, has been long in the making. When the ocean became
an im- portant geography in the American mind at the beginning of the twentieth century, so
too began a process of utilization, degradation, and pollution, the consequences
of which we are only beginning to realize. The central thesis of this book is that the ocean in the
twentieth-century American imagination took on many of the characteristics that
were typically associated with fron- tier territories: a trove of inexhaustible
resources, an area to be conserved for industrial capitalism, a fragile ecosystem
requiring stewardship and protection from "civilizing" forces, a geography for sport, a
space for recreation. and a sea- scape of inspiration. The frontier meanings
enjoyed wide circulation in the social imagination of the terrestrial frontier since the
beginning of the nine teenth century." Ocean explorers, like many Americans, enacted similar
attitudes in their interactions with the marine frontier of the twentieth century.
With a rapacity that would have stunned Lord Byron, one frontier replace: another, and the fate
of both seem equally assured.
This frontier mythology also guarantees nuclear imperialism and violence
SLOTKIN 1985 (Richard, Olin Professor of American Studies @ Wesleyan, The Fatal Environment,
p. 60-61)
This ideology of savage war has become an essential trope of our mythologization of history, a
cliche of political discourse especially in wartime. In the 1890s imperialists like Theodore Roosevelt rationalized
draconian military measures against the Filipinos by comparing them to Apaches. Samuel Eliot Morison, in his multivolume
history of naval operations in the Second World War, recounts the posting of this slogan at fleet headquarters in the
South Pacific: "KILL JAPS, KILL JAPS, KILL MORE JAPS!" Suspecting that peacetime readers may find the sentiment unacceptably
extreme, Morison offers
the following rationale; This may shock you, reader; but it is exactly how we felt. We were
fighting no civilized, knightly war . . . We were back to primitive days of fighting Indians on the
American frontier; no holds barred and no quarter. The Japs wanted it that way , thought they could thus
terrify an "effete democracy"; and that is what they got, with the additional horrors of war that modem
science can produce.17 It is possible that the last sentence is an oblique reference to the use of the
atomic bomb at the war's end. But aside from that, Morison seems actually to overstate the extraordinary character of the
counterviolence against the Japanese (we did, after all, grant quarter) in order to rationalize the strength of his sentiments. Note too the
dramatization of the conflict as a vindication of our cultural masculinity against the accusations of
"effeteness." The trope of savage war thus enriches the symbolic meaning of specific acts of war,
transforming them into episodes of character building, moral vindication, and regeneration. At
the same time it provides advance justification for a pressing of the war to the extreme point of
extermination, "war without quarter": and it puts the moral responsibility for that outcome on the
enemy, which is to say, on its predicted victims. As we analyze the structure and meaning of this mythology of violence,
it is important that we keep in mind the distinction between the myth and the real-world situations and practices to which it refers.
Mythology reproduces the world with its significances heightened beyond normal measure, so
that the smallest actions are heavy with cosmic significances, and every conflict appears to press
toward ultimate fatalities and final solutions. The American mythology of violence continually
invokes the prospect of genocidal warfare and apocalyptic, world-destroying massacres; and there
is enough violence in the history of the Indian wars, the slave trade, the labor/management strife of
industrialization, the crimes and riots of our chaotic urbanization, and our wars against nationalist and Communist
insurgencies in Asia and Latin America to justify many critics in the belief that America is an
exceptionally violent society.
Colonial representations shape individual actions – the judge is an
educator who should reject the colonial assumptions of the frontier to
challenge this legacy of violence
Trofanenko 5 – Professor in Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (Brenda, “On Defense of the Nation”, The Social Studies, Sep/Oct
2005, ProQuest, pgs. 196-197, RSpec)
The debates about the overwhelming problems, limitations, and disadvantages of social studies education noted in the
Fordham report attempt to reconcile and advance the idea of nation through a collective history. Our more pressing
role as educators, in light of the Fordham report, is to discuss a more
nuanced understanding
U.S. history . This would advance, as noted in La Pietra Report, an understanding about “the
complexity and the contexts of relations and interactions, including the ways in which they are infused with
a variety of forms of power that define and result from the interconnections of distinct but related histories” (OAH
of the
2000, 1). Taking the U.S. nation as only one example of social analysis involves recognizing the meanings and conditions
out of which nations are formed. There is no one experience of belonging to a nation, no single
understanding or enactment of sovereignty, and certainly no one meaning or experience of
colonization or being colonized. There is, then, a need for these issues to be realized and to be a
part of the questioning occurring within our classrooms. That would allow for the
substantial
reframing of the basic narrative of U.S. history (OAH 2000, 2). Toward a More Global
Sense of the Nation Knowing how history is a site of political struggle, how we engage with social
studies
emphasizing how power, processes, and practices bear
tangible effects on forging a national (and common) history by reproducing and
vindicating inclusions and exclusions . Such a critique requires questioning how a
education means
singular, fixed, and static history celebrates the U.S. nation and its place in the world as that “common
base of factual information about the American historical and contemporary experience” (27) argues for in the Fordham
report. Our world history courses are central to defining, understanding, and knowing not only other nations but also the
position of each nation in relation to the United States. The centrality that the west holds (notably the United
States as an imperial power) is ingrained and willful in framing
specific representations
of the west that normalize the imperial practices that established this nation. The
role that the United States holds on the world stage frequently remains unquestioned in social
classrooms . Certainly, we engage with various images and tropes to continue to advance how the
colonialist past continues to remain present in our historical sensibilities. Moreover, the increasing number and choices of
archival sources function as a complement to further understanding the nation. If students are left to rely on the variety of
historical resources rather than question the use of such resources, then the most likely outcome of their learning will be
the reflection on the past with nostalgia that continues to celebrate myths and colonial sensibility. To evaluate the history
narrative now is to reconsider what it means and to develop a historical consciousness in our students that goes beyond
archival and nostalgic impulses associated with the formation of the nation and U.S. nation building. We need to insist
that the nation, and the past that has contributed to its present day understanding, is simultaneously material and
symbolic. The nation as advanced in our histories cannot be taken as the foundational grounds . The
studies
means by which the nation is fashioned calls for examining the history through which nations are made and unmade. To
admit the participatory nature of knowledge and to invite an active and critical engagement with the world so that
students can come to question the authority of historical texts will, I hope, result in students’ realizing that the
classroom is not solely a place to learn about the nation and being a national, but rather a place to develop a
common understanding of how a nation is often formed through
sameness . We need to continue
to question how a particular national history is necessary as an educational function, but especially how that element has
been, and remains, useful at specific times. My hope is to extend the current critique of history within social studies, to
move toward understanding why history and nation still needs a place in social studies education. In understanding how
the historicity of nation serves as “the ideological alibi of the territorial state” (Appadurai 1996, 159) offers us a starting
point. The challenge facing social studies educators is how we can succeed in questioning nation, not by displacing it from
center stage but by considering how it is central. That means understanding how powerfully engrained the history of a
nation is within education and how a significant amount of learning is centered around the nation and its history. History
is a forum for assessing and understanding the study of change over time, which shapes the possibilities of knowledge
itself. We need to reconsider the mechanisms used in our own teaching, which need to be more than considering history as
a nostalgic reminiscence of the time when the nation was formed. We need to be questioning the contexts for learning that
can no longer be normalized through history’s constituted purpose. The changing political and social contexts of public
history have brought new opportunities for educators to work through the tensions facing social studies education and its
racism , equality , and
the plurality of identities and histories mean that there is no unified knowledge
as the result of history, only contested subjects whose multilayered and often
contradictory voices and experiences intermingle with partial histories that are presented
as unified. This does not represent a problem, but rather an opportunity for genuine
productive study, discussion, and learning .
educational value to teachers and students. Increasing concerns with
issues of
Links
Frontier Specific
Arctic
The arctic is viewed as savage land that is uninhabitable to the normal
person – scholars have created the unknown as fantastical
McGhee 2005, PhD, archaeologist and author specializing in the archaeology of the Arctic
(Robert, “The Last Imaginary Place A Human History of the Arctic World”, Oxford University
Press, Print.)
The treeless tundra and steppe environments that invaded earth’s mid-latitudes during the last ice age
supported vast herds of grazing animals. These were ideal conditions for hunters who
had developed the weapons and skills to undertake cooperative hunts for caribou, horses, wild
oxen and other animals as large as mammoths.The major leap from slowly developing archaic forms to
modern humans, with their rapidly evolving cultures and technologies, occurred at a
time when ice-age environmental conditions prevailed in most temperate regions of the world. It has been
argued that the challenges imposed by these Arctic-like conditions were an important stimulus to the developing ingenuity
of modern humans. A century ago, when this theory first appeared, it
seemed to support the new racial
politics that claimed natural superiority for the European peoples, Friedrich Nietzsche’s
new Hyperboreans whose northern ancestors had been honed and tested against cold and ice. These ideas seemed to
accord with the remarkable archaeological discoveries that were then being made, revealing the sophisticated hunting
technologies and artistic accomplishment of the people who lived in European caves at the time of the last ice age. Since
then it has become clear that similar levels of accomplishment characterized all human groups of the period, not just those
whose remains were well preserved in the cold and dry limestone caverns of Europe.However, the vast herds of animals
grazing the mid-latitude grasslands and tundras across Eurasia and America in the last ice age may have been the
economic base that allowed some hunting peoples to develop the cultural and social complexity that served as the
springboard to later human accomplishments. Of course, the peoples of ice age Europe, Asia and America did not have to
contend with the most fundamental characteristic of polar Arctic regions: the long night of winter when cold and darkness
make hunting almost impossible, and when most animals have disappeared through migration to the south or to refuge
beneath the sea ice.
The usual assumption has been that humans developed the skills
enabling them to live under such conditions only after the Ice Age had ended. Recently, however,
Russian archaeologist Vladimir Pitul’ko reported the discovery of a small collection of tools associated with radiocarbon
dates of between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago, on the Yana River near the coast of Siberia at a latitude of greater than 70°
north. At about the same time, and at a slightly lower latitude, early hunters may have been crossing the land bridge that
joined Siberia to Alaska during the Ice Age, to become the early ancestors of native American peoples. When the Ice Age
ended, about 11,000 years ago, it was as though a giant climatic switch had been thrown.We used to think that major
changes in the earth’s climate happen gradually, over centuries or millennia, but we now suspect that they can and do
occur in periods of a decade or less, and perhaps at times as abruptly as in a single year or a single season. For hunters in
the river valleys of Europe, on Asiatic plains or across North America, an exceptionally hot summer or a warm winter
followed by a prolonged change in the climate could mean that animal herds were not where they had always been before;
that rivers once easily forded had become impassable torrents of meltwater; or that ice failed to form on lakes where it had
always provided a platform for winter fishing and travel. A hunting people’s life depends on an intricate knowledge of the
animals they hunt and the environment in which they live, and climatic change would mean that their knowledge,
accumulated over dozens or hundreds of generations, was suddenly obsolete. Those families and bands that survived the
first few years of the postglacial found themselves in a new world of constant change. While the climate is capable of
altering virtually overnight, its effects on other elements of the environment proceed at a slower pace.The melting of
continental glaciers took a few millennia to complete, and during that time forests and grasslands moved northwards to
replace glacier-edge tundra as the biological zones of the northern hemisphere became established in something like their
current form.The mid-latitude tundras that were home to Ice Age hunters expanded northwards while their southern
boundaries were invaded by shrubby conifers, the pioneers of dense boreal forests that would themselves be replaced by
deciduous forests, parklands, grasslands and deserts. Melting glaciers drained southwards to form huge icy lakes, or into
mid-latitude inlets of the sea where walrus and whales swam among calving icebergs. As the earth’s crust rose from
beneath its burden of glacial ice these lakes and inlets drained, at times with terrifying suddenness as new channels
opened. By about 8,000 years ago the earth had been transformed into a semblance of its present state. Climates in most
regions were significantly warmer than at present, and most human groups had lost all contact with the icy world that had
been known to their ancestors, the world of snow, sea ice, walrus, reindeer, and the cold that sucked the life from humans
unprotected by fire, shelter and heavy clothing. The hunting way of life became increasingly demanding for most peoples
of the new postglacial age. Although the temperate and subtropical forests that advanced into their old homelands were
biologically rich, the great variety of animals they supported were dispersed across small and specialized niches. Making a
living from hunting such animals was a far more difficult enterprise than following the great herds of reindeer, muskoxen,
horses and elephants that had roamed the tundra and northern grasslands of the Ice Age. Some bands of hunters,
fortunate in their local circumstances or prepared to fight to maintain their ancestral livelihood, moved northwards with
the animals and the open treeless environments on which they depended. For these groups the past 10,000 years saw a
constant succession of adjustments, inventions, strife with changing neighbours, and adaptations to new home territories
as they evolved into the hunting and herding peoples of the Arctic world. Most human groups followed a different course.
Bands became dispersed across the changing environments, each concentrating on the particular resources of their new
and limited homelands. Certain bands began to think of themselves as river fishers, others as coastal shellfish collectors,
still others as forest hunters who snared deer and smaller game. The new environments also provided an array of food
resources that had been practically unknown to northern hunters: seeds, nuts and roots often became the staple of their
survival.Within a few millennia of the Ice Age, peoples living in southeastern Asian forests, the river valleys of western
Asia and the highland plateaus of Mexico had established a livelihood on the seeds of wild plants. Particularly useful forms
of plants were discovered and protected, and their favoured forms encouraged or replanted. This activity began the
process of genetic modification that resulted in ancestral varieties of rice, barley, wheat and maize. Other regions saw
practical experiments with tropical root-crops—yams, taro, manioc—and elsewhere with legumes, squashes and fruits. By
about 8,000 years ago, while the last remnants of the continental ice sheets were still melting in northern Canada and
Scandinavia, people from Japan to Mesopotamia to Central America were living in small agricultural villages. This was the
first step in what seems to have been an inevitable chain of events leading to the establishment of ancient civilizations.
Many observers have characterized these developments as exemplifying the human spirit’s triumphant progress. However,
the development of civilization might more convincingly be described as a treadmill on which human groups found
themselves toiling whenever they occupied an environment that was rich enough to support a large population. At first,
plant foods provided a stable and secure resource in return for relatively little labour, and the new farming way of life
offered an easier existence without the constant travel and the discomforts of temporary camps that had been a part of
their ancestors’ lives for so long. More children survived in farming villages, but as populations began to grow rapidly it
became apparent that people would have to work harder than ever to avoid starvation. There were two ways to cope with
the problem: they could devote themselves to more intensive farming, which involved an ever-increasing burden of labour,
drudgery and stress on the local environment, or they could opt for the path of warfare, mounting attacks on neighbouring
groups to gain access to their land, their stored food or the labour that they could provide as slaves or tribute- paying
subjects. Most agricultural peoples followed some combination of these alternatives, with the result that by about 5,000
years ago the stage was set for the revolving cycle of empire- building, conquest and destruction that has affected most
humans living between the tropics and the temperate zones to the present day. Only during
the past century
has this process begun to have a significant effect on the lives of those peoples whose ancient ancestors
chose to remain hunters, and to follow the hunting environments of the Ice Age
northwards into the lands that were to be known as the Arctic. To urban peoples
the known world has generally been seen as a series of concentric zones around the
hub of the home city.With each step outward from the centre the world seems less
civilized, the people stranger and less predictable, and the world itself more fantastic. The first
cities developed in the temperate and subtropical zones, and their inhabitants saw
the north and south as barbarian lands where one might expect to find fierce
warriors, people who didn’t understand the benefits of civilization but did appreciate
commerce, and had access to rich sources of amber, ivory, furs, gold and precious stones. Beyond these zones
lay even wilder lands that were barely habitable from the intensity of heat or cold.
Here one might expect to find semi-human creatures, fantastic animals and regions
where the land and the sea, even the sun and moon, behaved in ways that were beyond the normal laws or
conditions of the world. In records left by the scholars of early civilizations, the Arctic was
one of those distant and fantastic lands. No traveller’s tale of the North was too
bizarre to be believed. It is startling to realize that remnants of this view still cling to the region. The Arctic
is still a place that is seen primarily through the eyes of outsiders, a territory
known to the world from explorers’ narratives rather than from the writings,
drawings and films of its own people.To most southerners the Arctic remains what it was to their counterparts
centuries and perhaps even millennia ago: the ultimate otherworld.
Exploration
The deep sea is the next frontier of exploitation, as resource scarcity
increases from human depletion we turn to the ocean for a space to
settle, develop and exploit.
Barbier, 13
(Edward Barbier, John S Bugas Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Finance,
University of Wyoming, March 5, 2013, “The Deep Sea is in Deep Trouble,” Accessed: 6/26/14,
NC)
In my book, Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource
Exploitation, I chronicle how, since the Agricultural Transition 10,000 years ago, a critical
driving force behind global economic development has been the discovery and
exploitation of “new frontiers” of natural resources. Natural resource scarcity
both drives this process – as costs rise with scarcity we develop the
technologies to exploit new resource frontiers – and it is a consequence –
once frontiers are settled, developed and exploited, scarcity ensues
again.
Today, we are embarking on rapid exploitation of a vast new frontier,
the Deep Sea of the world’s oceans.
The Deep Sea begins at around 200 meters (m) depth, which is the limit at which sufficient
sunlight penetrates the sea for photosynthesis to occur, and extends to nearly 11,000 m. The
area comprising the Deep Sea is vast, covering around 90% of the ocean floor.
This region consists of many diverse and interconnecting ecosystems, including
abyssal plains, continental slopes, deep-sea canyons, manganese nodule fields,
seamounts, cold water coral reefs and gardens, cold seeps and hydrothermal
vents. The structure, functioning and dynamics of Deep Sea ecosystems are complex and shaped
by many factors, including the depth of the water column above them. In addition, it is still
poorly understood how these Deep Sea ecosystems interact with the rest of the
ocean on which humankind depends for food, climate and ocean regulation,
recreation and other ecosystem goods and services.
The Deep Sea is also rich in terms of natural resources, principally sources of
seafood, fossil fuels and minerals. As a result, the world is already embarking on the
industrialization of the Deep Sea. Trawling in this region has been increasing for decades,
pollution is already reaching the ocean depths and climate change is acidifying
the seas at global scale. Oil and gas exploration and extraction have started on
the shallower fringes of the Deep Sea, and the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has
pre-approved leases to mine the ocean floor. As Deep Sea ecosystems are extremely vulnerable to
these activities, the global community needs to develop strategies for ecosystem conservation,
restoration and overall management of the diverse habitats that constitute the deep-sea
environment.
The American epic is one of oceanic imperialism founded upon
hegemonic and destructive notions of exploration
Astro 77 – Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University, Ph.D. American Literature,
M.A. English, (Richard, “VOYAGES INTO OCEAN SPACE: A VIEW FROM THE HUMANITIES”,
1977, IEEXplore,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1154360,
RSpec)
beginning , when all of America was a frontier , the business of Americans was
business. And the metaphor of exploration on land and at sea was a utilitarian , an
expedient , and ultimately a martial one. Captain Smith who took his cue from John Hakluyt and
From the
from Adam Moleyns before him (who told
his fellows to “cherish marchaundyes, keep th’ admiratee,/That we be
maysteres of the narrow see.”5) wrote his A True Relation (1608) with alternating heroic and pastoral pens. But as
John Seelye has noted, in advocating exploration of Virginia’s inland waterways, Captain smith put both instruments in
the service of empire and self.6 And the Puritan
new world errand—that of promulgating the
Puritan
gospel —was at once a mercantile , military and maritime mission , though
cast with a transcendent millennialism . In Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), Samuel Purchas
notes that commerce “is the purpose that God hath encompassed the earth with the sea, adding so
many inlets, bays, havens, and other natural inducements and opportunities to invite men to this
mutual commerce.”7 William Woods’ New England Prospect (1634) is carefully articulated propaganda which evokes
images of limitless opportunity on the outermost perimeters of settlement along the banks of the Merrimack River. And in
what Seelye so aptly calls the imaginary “geopornographics” of the New England Canaan (1634) by the prototypic
borderer, Thomas Morton, personal
freedom and material sufficiency are linked in
sexual
metaphors and penetration and possession with “the green and golden light of the
mystic dindem of the Lake of iroquoise.”8 In short, in the journals and histories of our earliest writers, both in
Virginia and in New England, our waterways became thresholds of advance and the writing about
these waters is, as Seelye suggests, less apologia than acpocalypsis or even epcohalypsis and
human and natural forces which
reflects the counterplay of
define the course of empire which is the
American epic .9 Our earliest maritme writers regard the oceans and our inland waterways as
avenues where they can transact John Gilpin’s “ untranscacted destiny ,” to “ subdue
the continent —to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean—to animate the many
hundred millions of its people, and to cheer them upward, and to shed blessings around the
world.”10
Ocean exploration is founded in ideology of the frontier – the
affirmative has seen the wilderness as something the must be tamed
in order to exploit for resources
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
In 2002, listeners of National Public Radio heard Sylvia Earle, famed ocean explorer and then director of National
Geographic's Sustainable Seas proj- ect, characterizing the practice of oceanic
exploration. "So little of the has
been seen," she noted; "it is like the early days of exploring the American West?" At the same
time as Earle was cruising through Caribbean waters in a one-person submersible, the directors of the Center for Marine
Conservation announced that the organization was undergoing a concept change and would hence be known as the Ocean
Conservancy. They
were drawing from the analogous protectorate of landed spaces, the
Nature Conservancy. The con- cept and name change, according to its directors, reflected "our
new emphasis on conserving significant parts of our ocean as marine protected
areas and as ocean wilderness." Similarly, Leon Panctta, chair of the Pew Oceans Commis- sion,
elaborated on this theme in a zooz Earth Day address that took a page from Aldo Leopold, whose midtwentieth~ccntury call for a new "land ethic" helped raise awareness for the need
for a more humane and ethical treatment of the land. "After all," Panetta exclaimed, "whether
we live along the coast or in the heartland, the stewardship of our lands-and
oceans----is our common national bond. This Earth Day, let us look beyond our parks, past the forests, and
out into the sea with admiration and a new ocean ethic."-' The goal of these
statements was to extend the predominantly terrestrial nature of America's
"wilderness ethic", to the oceans. This mental process—the territorialization of the
ocean—seems innocent enough. It comes as little surprise that humans make
reference to the familiar to help understand the unknown, and that Americans specifically
make refer- ence to the western frontier wilderness to understand other frontiers
like the ocean or outer space. American ocean explorers have been doing just this for at least the last century, and
they are the subject of this book. Contemporary readers are probably most familiar with Jacques Cousteau, but other
explor- ers figured prominently as well. From the start of the twentieth century, Roy chapman Andrews, Robert Cushman
Murphy, William Beebe, Rachel Carson. Eugenie Clark, and Thor Heyerdahl have also imagined the look, feel, sound,
smell, uses, and abuses of an American ocean and reported back to us with slide shows, public talks, museum dioramas,
world’s fair exhibits, articles in newspapers and magazines, books, radio shows, movies, and television pro- grams. Even
today, we
understand an ocean that has been shaped by explorers who have used
the landed western frontier wilderness as their point of refer- ence. Although it is
important to know a little about this history, it is vital to recognize that the territorialization of
the ocean may not be as innocent as it at first appears. But before we get to the moral of the
story, we should con- sider the story itself-a narrative that begins at the start of the twentieth cen- tury, a time when many
Americans were developing a new relationship with the ocean. Some Americans
were beginning to view
the oceans as a wilderness frontier that could replace the American West. Most
nineteenth-century Americans thought of the ocean as a mare in Cognita- an unknown
space that flanked both sides of the continent. For in- stance, Washington Irving noted in The
Voyage that "the vast space of waters. that separates the hemispheres is like a
blank page of existence." The great sage of American sea writing, Herman Melville, described a seaman's
thoughts on experiencing an ocean calm: "To his alarmed fancy, parallels and meridians become emphatically what they are merely designated as being: imaginary lines
drawn round the earth's surface." Other times the ocean was a barrier, a wil- derness
to be feared and traveled as quickly as possible. Ralph Waldo Emer- son, for instance, thought it
"strange that the first man who came to sea did not turn round & go straight back again." Nineteenth-century sea stories
are about ships, storms, and whales; in them, the ocean became the setting for a human drama, and it
usually
represented the capricious force of nature or the will of God. Many American explorers took to the
oceans during the nine- teenth century, but for the most part, the thrust of American exploration was aimed elsewhere.
Fishing
Fishing and frontier methodology are intertwined – the way we try to
capture fish creates same damage we did on the frontier in west
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print. Pg 28-29)
The gaming of ocean fauna represented a move to extend America's frontier into
new space, namely the oceans surrounding the continent. Like western game, ocean fauna
promised a test of strength. The president of the Salt water Anglers of America noted, "He of faint heart
should not take up the sport of big game fishing, for the taking of large and stubborn sea monsters
presents thrills and problems that call for good generalship and a hefty brand of
stick-to-it-iveness." Sea fishing provided a new place for the contest between
civilization and the savage frontier. Moise N. Kaplan, one of the several authorities of south Florida Sea
fishing, claimed that "the marine assaulter . . . is equipped with inherited instinct, with crafty
reasoning powers and appropriate perception. Gifted in making sudden and
violent approach--contact with the enemy--silently, un-observed, he is able to harass and fatigue
the defensive element while guarding and shielding himself." There is no greater
evidence of this movement from western frontier to ocean, from hunting to deepsea fishing, and the life trajectory of the great western novelist Zane Grey, also the holder of the yellowtail world
record--one hundred eleven pounds on light tackle--for over ten years. In the first three decades of the twentieth century,
Grey became one of the foremost my-thologizers of the American western frontier. Grey's
scores of novels
and short stories were among the most widely read representations of the West.
He in-troduced the beauty of the western landscape of eastern urbanites; his
stories are full of struggles and battles between different human cultures. He focused
on "cattle culture imbued with individualism, rustling, and justified violence." And
he glorified the virtues of hunting game. The overall moral of his stories was to describe how
remnants of frontier culture remained extant in the twen- tieth century." In the 19105 Grey could be
found deep-sea fishing off Florida's coasts, and in 1924 he purchased a three-masted schooner, rechristened it the
Fisherman, outfitted the vessel with ocean fishing gear, and sailed to the fertile waters off southern California. The
chronicle of this expedition was published in his Tales of Fishing Virgin Seas (1925), a book that codified his status as
America's most prominent spokesperson for ocean game fishing-a title that would pass to Ernest Hemingway in the
19305. For Grey, the Pacific was a virgin land, a frontier of adventure, sport, and abundant resources. The
frontier
themes that characterize his western fiction can all be found in his experiences
with tuna, yellowtail, and swordfish. And Grey was just one of the many hunters and
fish- ers who had cut their teeth in the frontier West before exchanging horse for
ship, gun for rod, and elk for marlin." Grey made even a more formidable
contribution to Andrews's world of metropolitan-based natural history display. In 1928 the American Museum
opened the doors to its new hall, Fishes of the World, an exhibit that would, according to naturalist
Mlliam Gregory. "keep our visitor fascinated with the wonders of the fish world on the
trip around the hall." The climax of the entire exhibition was the collection of big
game fishes. The background display of the sailfish group portrayed the rocky islands of Cape San Lucas and
featured a battle between a nine-foot sailfish breaching the ocean's surface and a deep-sea angler in a nearby boat who
"pits his quick hand and unflinching will against the plunging weight of the maddened fish." The
entire north
wall of the exhi- bition displayed the mounted specimens of ocean sunfish, tunas.
marlins, and swordfishes-all the trophies of Mr. Zane Grey, the well-known "Nimrod of the Seas." Indeed, the worlds of
hunting and natural history--of mounted tro- phy and preserved specimen---converged in both field and museum."
Clearly, to call Andrews an ocean fisherman would be foolhardy. His game was the whale, and his weapons were the
camera and the harpoon gun. Nev-
ertheless, Andrews was part of a larger project of
transforming the ocean into a geography of sport, an endeavor in which ocean fauna
became game for America's leisure class. Oceanic life was taking on new
meanings in these early decades, and Andrews became both a participant and an
architect of the trans- formation of ocean fauna into game-an event that was
driven by a certain frontier anxiety, a desire to recreate America's western
frontier in new parts of the world.
Generic Ocean
The ocean is the new east; in the same ways that we have made one
half of the globe the other, our relation to the ocean has been to
develop, explore, poke, prod and exploit it.
Montroso, 14
(Alan Montroso, Embedded Librarian at Wyle Information Systems, Kent State MLIS, Cleveland
State BS, March 23, 2014, “Ocean is the New East: Contemporary Representations of Sea Life and
Mandeville’s Monstrous Ecosystems,”
http://bacchanalinthelibrary.blogspot.com/2014/03/ocean-is-new-east-contemporary.html,
Accessed: 6/25/14, NC)
Thus as I wandered the Sant Ocean Hall, I thought about what it means to
“wander,” who gets the privilege of wandering (Americans, human knowledge-seekers),
and what remains the stationary object of scrutiny (the nonhuman body, the foreign
object, the subject of scientific knowledge). These marvelous displays are discrete islands
of monstrous creatures that underscore humanity’s desire to safely navigate
strange waters. I chose the adjective “marvelous” very carefully, for my wandering about the
various exhibits reminded me of a medieval journey to the marvels of the East and, more
specifically, of Mandeville’s travels around the monstrous islands just past the Holy Lands and off
the ocean , it seems, is the new East, compared
against the way the medieval Western hegemony represented the East
in its travel literature. The inhabitants of Earth’s oceans are put on display to
be navigated, plundered, studied and represented by the sovereign powers of
Western thought. Like Mandeville’s tale of fish that deliver themselves to the shore for human
consumption, we expect the seas to divulge their mysteries for our ravenous desire
to control by means of knowledge-making.
the coasts of Africa and India. For
The Ocean is used as new frontier to bolster the empire of wealthy
technocratic elites – their framing makes disasters of exploitation
inevitable
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science(Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
The nineteenth-century frontier was not oceanic; it was largely a century of terrestrial expansion, and that is where we
find the explorers." They mapped, cataloged, and prepared a continent for settlement. (Geographers, botanists, zoologists, and federal scientists spent their time exploring rivers, breaking trails, and following railroad surveys. Lewis and
Clark, Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Charles Fremont, Clarence King, John Wesley Powell, and John Muir imagined huge
swathes of land and annexed them into an imperial archive so that the state and its citizens could make the landscape
legible. The
migrating popula- tion grew in size, and by the end of the century, the
American consciousness entered a new phase. Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 analysis of the
closing of the frontier was a mere flash point of a wider anxiety that a postfrontier
Amer-ica was doomed to social and economic turmoil. Such sentiments spawned
two important changes. First, a new ethic of scientific conservation sought to use
the expertise of technocratic elites to manage the dwindling natural resources of a still
young nation. The
primary geography for this stratagem, according to Theodore Roosevelt, was
the American West. Second, American explorers began to search for new
geographies beyond the continental margins. Explor- ers, previously hemmed in to the
American continent, were unleashed at the end of the nineteenth century, and reports
filtered in from Alaska, Hawaii. Guam, Puerto Rico, Panama. and the Philippine islands.' A "splendid little _war"
against Spain transformed the ocean's status from a barrier to a conduit of empire. About this
time, in the icy waters of the North Pacific. Roy Chapman An- drews cut his teeth as a naturalist by investigating the
biology of Pacific whales. He operated out of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and his
exploration brought him into intimate contact with the business of American and Japanese shore-station whaling, a
brutally efficient industry that led to the decline of whale popultations in the world's oceans. Andrew's work on Pacific
whales between 1908 and 1912 demonstrates he movement of the American Hunter into the ocean, but this was a
"refined" class of hunters. Andrews was a memeber of a growing number of wealthy men who sought ref- uge from the
decadent city in America's frontier wilderness. They were mem- bers of an elite eastern establishment whose wealth and
status depended on the rule of efficient bureaucracy. Many
of these hunters shared a notion of the
frontier as a region full of commodities and resources valuable both for American industry and recreation. They also were becoming aware of the shortage of game species in what
appeared to them an ever-shrinking frontier, a sentiment that spawned a desire
for nationalizing resources through conservation laws. Finally, many of these hunters were
either naturalists or included naturalists within their network of social exchanges. Theodore Roosevelt and members of
the Boone and Crocket Club were representative of this hunter class. An- drews used this hunting ideology as he explored
the natural history of whales in the North Pacific Ocean. In his writings, the
ocean was filled with
resources for human consumption--commodities in need of conservation through
the expertise of a thoroughly modernized and efficient natural history. The ocean, for
Andrews, was also a place to conquer and subdue with a hunter's cun- ning and skill.
Andrews's stories, public presentations, and museum exhibits all conveyed these meanings,
which were shared by a rising class of wealthy Americans who went to the ocean
for a new frontier of manageable resources and sport. Although Andrews conceived of
the ocean as a place for modern business and sport, his colleague at the American Museum,
Robert Cushman Murphy, painted a portrait of the ocean that was, by comparison, a bit more
nostalgic. Murphy was the quintessential naturalist, an ocean explorer interested in
de- scribing the rich history of ocean life and the deleterious effects of humans subdued by the
"myth of inexhaustibity." He was the nations expert on oce- anic birds, those aerial
organisms that spend their lives drawing sustenance from the ocean. In Murphy's travels to the sub-Antarctic island
of South Geor- gia, the guano islands of Peru, and the distant island nation of New Zealand, we find a naturalist
who pays careful attention to the human and natural his- tory of island territories
whose fates are linked to the ocean. Through the use of biogeographical tools forged
in the American West, he described a hetero- geneous ocean in which life was
linked to the peculiarities of climate, tempera- ture, and ocean chemistry.
Murphy saw the ocean as a true agent in the fate of nations, similar to the work of his
favorite conservationist, George Perkins Marsh. He cautioned American audiences through books, articles, and museum displays that rampant overuse of the ocean would lead to certain di-saster.
Murphy based these warnings on the centuries of recklessness that the landed
frontier had experienced under the witness of the pioneers axe, which lent special relevancy
to his argument.
Research
Science exploration of the ocean creates a frontier anxiety that makes
research into exploitation – this allows us to colonize the ocean
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
The ocean was as flat as a millpond when Andrews, clad in field khakis and campaign hat,
manned a cannon that contained a hundred-pound explosive-tipped harpoon that
was backed by three hundred drains of gunpowder. Despite carefully studying the hunting techniques of his Norwegian
fellows. The
first harpoon grazed off one unlucky specimen's head. After a few minutes
passed, during which several of the crew scurried to reload the cannon, Andrews sent the second harpoon
to the mammal's lungs. This particular whale was flensed and converted into oil and fertilizer before
Andrews could pose with his trophy. but he would have other opportunities to stand next to whales
while a camera captured the image of hunter and game. This is a peculiar place to begin a story
about a naturalist who is largely remembered for his leadership of the Central Asiatic
Expedition of the 1920s a large-scale expedition that failed in its goal to uncover evidence
of human origins in central Asia, yet succeeded in discovering a large cache of dinosaur fossils in the dry sands of the Gobi
Desert.' But Andrews cut his teeth as a museum naturalist with his cetacean studies in the cold waters of the North Pacific.
The story may also seem to be a strange place to begin this
analysis of Andrews as an American
scientist at sea doing the serious work of explor- ing the natural history of whales.
But the transformation of Andrews's scien- tific subject into an object of sport
reveals the nature of his scientific practice and helps to explain the meanings behind his
popular representations of both whales and the ocean. Andrews was a naturalist in one of the
premier muse- ums on the American continent, but he was also a hunter living in turn of- thecentury America. The ocean was his new frontier. the whale his game.' Andrews was
one of a breed of hunters new to early twentieth-century American culture whose cultural predecessors came from
Europe's imperial hunting class. I le was not 21 commercial hunter, nor was he a poor backwoodsy hunter out to secure
food for the winter. He
was adopted into a group of elite urban professionals, sometimes
characterized as "the eastern establishment." The eastern establishment was a network of elite
people and institutions that arose in the late nineteenth century in order to meet the challenges of Ameri- ca's new
industrial order.' Hunters
of the eastern establishment shared a coin- mon vision of the
frontier wilderness, albeit a complicated and sometimes contradictory one. They viewed the frontier
as both a resource of raw mate- rial for incorporation into the American economy
and as a market for sell- ing eastern manufactured goods. As much as they wished to
incorporate the frontier into the eastern economy, they also defined the frontier, specifically the
West, as the antithesis of- and antidote to-an industrialized civilization. A
hunting expedition in the frontier promised certain rejuvenation. a sport- ing venture in
which the sedentary male could test his mettle against a savage nature. Hunting stories and hunting
trophies circulated. after the expeditions. in metropolitan men’s clubs and were
incorporated into a growing industry of popular culture that mythologized the
West as an imaginary geography of frontier promise and adventure. These hunters were
sometimes naturalists, or they brought naturalists into their circuit of social inter-actions-an easy task given that Americas
scientific elite occupied the same metropolitan spaces as America's financial elite. The
eastern establishment
was equally captivated by the practice of exploration. Many of them toured the
U.S. West as a kind of rite of passage; others became the source of funding for grand explorations and
expeditions into unknown territories.' Part of the animus that energized the
hunter's ideology was a spirit of "frontier anxiety," at widely shared concern that the
"closing of the frontier" presented serious challenges to American culture and
economics." Hunters of the eastern establishment reacted in a number of ways. They sought to preserve an ostensibly pristine and undeveloped fragment of the frontier West
through the establishment of parks and preserves. They also attempted to use the tools of science
and technology to efficiently conserve the nation's remain- ing natural resources.' The goal of efficiency
became something of a business credo in turn-of-the-century America. In this capacity,
the scientific bureau- crat became an instrumental tool for managing both
industry at the core and resources at the periphery.' Finally, the eastern
establishment hunter, anxious over the closing of the frontier and all that it portended, became an
instrument of the spirit of American imperialism in his search for new
extracontinental frontiers to conquer. The icons of this hunter ideology were, of course, Theo- dore
Roosevelt, the members of the Boone and Crockett Club, or--as was the case for Andrews-members of the New York-based Explorers Club.
Resource Exploitation
Resource extraction relies on frontierist ignorance
Molvar 12 – M.Sc Wildlife Management at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Erik, “WILL
DRILLING SPELL THE END OF A QUINTESSENTIAL AEMERICAN LANDSCAPE”, 2012, pg. 1,
http://energy-reality.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/25_Will-Drilling-Spell-theEnd_R1_030813.pdf, RSpec)
The natural resource perhaps most important to the character of the West, yet given least weight in land-use planning, is
the region’s wide-open spaces. For many years, a prevailing
frontier mentality has clung to the
myth that open spaces are inexhaustible , that because spectacular landscapes shaped by
nature have been abundant here since time immemorial they will never disappear . But as public lands
and private ranches have been converted to industrial landscapes by
oil , gas , and coalbed methane
drilling , in increments ranging from thousands to millions of acres, westerners have been confronted by the reality
that, while open space may be considered a birthright, it is not limitless .
More evidence
Gramling 96 – Ph.D. Sociology (Robert, “Oil on the Edge: Offshore Development, Conflict,
Gridlock”, 1996, Google Books, pg. 39, RSpec)
As sever and irrevocable as this damage is, it can only be understood in light of the environment (both physical and social)
in which it occurred. Movement into the Louisiana marsh in the 1920s and 1930s happened at a time when not only was
the idea of environmental protection nonexistent (Freudenburg and Gramling 1993, 1994a) but the concept of the marsh
as a valuable resource was literally unavailable. “ Resources ” are only
those things that are
valued
by human cultures at a particular place and time (Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling 1995). Only a
scant seven decades before this period, petroleum itself was not a resource because no one considered it to have
social or economic worth. The same was true of the marsh in the 1930s, a hostile environment, which was seen
with a “conquest of the frontier” mentality . This was an exuberant age with almost
unlimited faith in technology (Catton and Dunlap 1980), and, as such, the exploration
and development of oil and gas occurred in state waters as ane environmental ignorant, not
malevolent, activity.
Oceanography
Oceanography is founded upon frontierist notions of the ocean
Eidenbach 8 – (Kirstin, “CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES AND THE LAWLESS FRONTIER”, The
Crit, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pgs. 103-104, http://thecritui.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/kirstin.pdf,
RSpec)
Oceanography represents a frontier spanning all three Ages with borders that ebb and flow
depending upon the predominant paradigm. Initially, exploration of the ocean was limited to its use as a means to trade.
At the onset of the Second Age, the ocean itself became the object of exploration. Oceanic exploration began at
the behest of Thomas Jefferson. In 1807, Jefferson founded the United States Coast Survey.36 The initial
explorations focused on the collection of empirical scientific data . Following Jefferson’s commission of
coastal exploration, other voices
began to join in the
chorus of discovery . In 1842, “Darwin publishes
The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, in which he suggests that coral atolls are the final stage in the subsidence
and erosion of volcanicislands.”37 In 1843, “Sir James Clark Ross takes the first modern sounding in the deep sea at
Latitude 27 S Longitude 17 W.”38 This chorus continued until the Third Age shifted the focus to issues of relativity rather
than empiricism. Under the current paradigm, or Third Age, oceanography focuses on physical oceanography
which includes “coastal oceanography, numerical modeling, ocean acoustics, ocean mixing,
fisheries oceanography, laboratory fluid dynamics, ocean instrumentation and operational
oceanography.”39 In keeping with the Third Age, modern oceanography allows for fluidity and relativity within its
paradigm. Without going into specific scientific details, oceanic exploration fully exemplifies a frontier that has shifted
according to Goetzmann’s Ages of Discovery
Oil Drilling
Oil drilling is the epitome of violent, masculine, frontierst logic
Ives 11 – M.A. Candidate in Sustainable International Development, Visiting Fellow at the
Institute of the North in Sustainable Development and Education (Christopher, 2011, “The Effects
of Segregated Development Ideologies on the
Achievement of Sustainable Development: An Alaskan Case Study”, pgs. 46-47,
http://www.institutenorth.org/assets/images/uploads/articles/Ives.MAthesis.pdf, RSpec)
Alaskan development thus far has been an attempt to establish a self-sustaining American society through the
exploit ation of finite local resources. Inevitably, pragmatically, this system is flawed as long as the
means of development rest on limited supplies . The irony lies in the fact that the immigrant
settlers have spent billions of dollars to convince themselves and the world that Alaska is unique and can sustain itself
on its own terms, by doing business just like everyone else. For thousands of years prior, the residents of Alaska had
indeed sustained themselves in a vast and unique land, having adapted and developed in accordance with the
particularities of the land around them. Alaska has exchanged the wilderness for urban sprawl and shopping
malls;
the frontier for open pit mines and oil development ; the Alaska Natives for
corporate suits and homelessness. Was this their purpose? How has modern development and the introduction of
industry caused such a retrograde in equity and resiliency ? How can one speak to and appreciate the distinct
quality of the Alaskan experience, yet develop away from its inimitable grace? Robert Weeden described it best:
“ Frontierism
was a dream , and because people must dream, we should speak without bitterness of
yesterday’s fantasies whose flaws seem so clear in retrospect. With honest nostalgia we can say goodbye to the best of it, which was the search: a vigorously masculine , outrageously
romantic search . What destroyed the frontier was the discovery of
[oil] . Ironically, it was discovered not by frontiersmen but by corporation men. The Big Rock Candy Mountain was
plumbed, and it was full of oil, and the crude taste of money killed the dream.
Pacific
History of the Pacific is not neutral – it has created the mentality of
the new western frontier
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
They calm the spirit and soothe the soul. They speak of a
prelapsarian paradise, an Eden not only before the Fall,
but a paradise untrammeled by the destructive feet of western homo sapiens. Above
all, these exhibits exuded a profound fragility. The peculiar evo-lutionary histories of oceanic and
island seabirds had produced some of na-ture's most fantastic organisms, but just as
certainly, they were organisms that would easily fall victim to the heedless onslaught
of human history. Visitors who had toured the hall when it was completed in 1953 had ex-perienced quite a
different image of the Pacific during the previous decade. World War II introduced a Pacific theater
to the American consciousness that was sometimes at odds with the literary and artistic
representations of the Pa-cific as paradise. Far from the scene of beauty and tranquility
represented in the bird groups, the pacific was more often associated with war, death,
atomic bombs, forced migrations of indigenous islanders, and the terraforming
bull-dozers of the Fighting Seabees. The actual Pacific had undergone massive
ecological changes well before the 1940s, a consequence of the long history of European
and Asian colonization of the islands. This process was dramatically accelerated
as the Pacific became America's new western frontier and a post- war military buffer zone. A
visitor to the Hall of Pacific Birds wrote to Murphy that she was "amazed at the beauty of the settings. We felt as though
we had actually visited some of the spots that are in the headlines today, and now we can think of them in terms of their
real natural beauty and charm, instead of just devastation and death
Preservation
Criticism is just another way to extend the frontier mentality –
conservatism has been a way to extend the history of the west to the
ocean
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
Andrews represented the forward movement of a mod- ern
technocratic business elite into an ocean full of manageable commodities and game.
Robert Cushman Murphy moved into the ocean as a historian a historian who was
passionately ambivalent about the progress of modern civilization. He was a historian of
If Roy Chapman
the naturalist sort, devoting his life to the time-honored practice of observing nature, compiling life histories of various
aquatic organisms, and tilting them into the context of their natural surround- ings. But he was also one of the many
urban industrial professionals of Pro- gressive America who felt quite uneasy with the quick changes of the modern world.
Affiliated with this antimodernism was a kind of criticism, and other times outright hostility,
toward a modern world defined by technology and heedless development. This
sentiment was a vestige of a Romantic tradition that swept modern environmental thought beginning with the
Transcenden- talists and perhaps best represented by John Burroughs in Murphy’s day. The criticism, however, was not
doled out solely to the world of cities and sprawl- ing suburbs. His antimodernism also framed a certain antireductionism-a desire to see connections between organisms, or rather, to view nature as a whole instead of an assemblage of parts. In
turn-of-the-century America, natural history was part of a tradition that was fast
becoming somewhat irrelevant in the modern world of laboratorv- oriented technoscience. In
contrast, Murphy characterized himself as a "si- mon-pure" naturalist, and he
believed that something was lost when compli- cated natural phenomena were
reduced to chemical and physical abstractions. If the modern experimental scientist wanted to
clean the slate and build a new system of natural knowledge, natural historians like Murphy thought of Them- selves as
just the latest bearers of a torch that had been carried by the great luminaries of natural history. A detailed knowledge of
Pliny, Linnaeus, and Darwin was as important as knowing your way around a specimen workroom. Murphy
came
of age during the early days of ecology, a growing discipline at the turn of the century that some
commentators found different from "natu- ral history" only in name. "'Ecology' is erudite and profound." noted the great
American naturalist Marston Bates, "while 'natural history' is popular and su- perficial. Though, as far as I can see, both
labels apply to just about the same package of goods.''' Murphy's
particular brand of ecology
emphasized geo- graphical and evolutionary questions-practices of science that
were largely developed on land, and at times, in America's frontier West. Murphy's
antimodernism, rooted in his love for both nature and history, did not preclude a desire to use science for addressing the
thorny conservation and environmental issues that were so prevalent in early twentieth-century Amer-ica. Indeed, his
American Museum colleague, Dick Pough, once remarked that "conservation is little more than applied natural history."
Murphy couldn’t' agree more, and consequently became one of New York's prominent conser-vation leaders, always
banging his drum to the beat of developing the practice of "conservation as scientific forecast." His
conservation
ideas were primarily influenced by the work of George Perkins Marsh, whose pathbreaking book, Man and Nature
(1864), criticized the heedless rush of advanced societies that put profit and gain
ahead of wise, and economically sustainable, resource use. Indeed, as Murphy's conservation ethic
evolved, it became more pointed and to a certain extent Americanized in a way that
evaded Marsh's scope. The key problem was not just big societies outstripping limited resources, as Marsh would have it;
rather, the fountain of America's problems, Murphy be-lieved, was the dangerous frontier myth of inexhaustible resources.
This is what became of Murphy's ocean, especially the islands and seabirds that became his primary
subjects of interest. His thoughts on the forty-barrel bull were representative of his critique of the
modern use of natural resources; his confessed sympathy of the sperm whale extended to the guano birds
of Peru, the anchove-tas of the Humboldt Current, the endemic life forms of New Zealand, and the wildlife of his native
Long Island. The
puzzling fact of modern American his-tory is the resiliency of a "free
lunch" idealogy--the idea that a purported trove of resources lay just beyond the
civilized world. The ocean was as susceptible to this myth as was the American
West and, later, outer space. Murphy's movements across the oceans, his scientific research, and his conservation
efforts all demon-strate a sustained critique of his fundamental axiom. Speaking at a luncheon of the Garden Club of
America, he noted that "the idea behind the new term 'proper land use' must, of course, extend its meaning to the sea. The
wealth of life in the Sound and ocean, as it was described by our ancestors, is almost incredible read-ing today." Here is
clear evidence of Murphy's forethought; today, monographs on the emptying of the oceans now issue forth with great
regularity. But to stop here would be to miss a more important point. Murphy's critique of the uses of the ocean, even the
tools he used to investigate the ocean, drew from a history of terrestrial exploitation, a history of exploration in the
frontier West. To make sense of the problems, potentials, and very nature of the world's oceans, Murphy
sim-ply
extended a terrestrially constructed template onto wetter geographies. In short,
Murphy's criticisms were a constitutive part of, not a move against, the transformation of the ocean into America's new wilderness frontier. His first exploratory activities
did not bring him to the American West, as had many of his predeces-sors working at the American Museum of Natural
History in the late nineteenth century. Instead, he went to the ocean to undertake a peculiar voyage.
.
Cap/Consumpt Specific
Aquaculture
Aquaculture is the wrong answer to the wrong question. It subjects
fish to even more harsh environments than they would normally
suffer in the conditions of overfishing and then calls it the sustainable
solution for future generations.
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
The immense problems associated with the overharvest of industrial capture
fisheries has led some optimistically to offer aquaculture as an ecological
solution. However, capitalist aquaculture fails to reverse the process of
ecological degradation. Rather, it continues to sever the social and
ecological relations between humans and the ocean. Aquaculture: The Blue
Revolution? The massive decline in fish stocks has led capitalist development to turn
to a new way of increasing profits—intensified production of fishes. Capitalist
aquaculture represents not only a quantitative change in the
intensification and concentration of production; it also places
organisms’ life cycles under the complete control of private for-profit
ownership. 31 This new industry, it is claimed, is “the fastest-growing form of agriculture in
the world.” It boasts of having ownership from “egg to plate” and substantially alters the
ecological and human dimensions of a fishery.32 Aquaculture (sometimes also referred to as
aquabusiness) involves subjecting nature to the logic of capital. Capital attempts to
overcome natural and social barriers through its constant innovations. In this,
enterprises attempt to commodify, invest in, and develop new elements of nature
that previously existed outside the political-economic competitive sphere: As Edward Carr wrote
in the Economist, the sea “is a resource that must be preserved and harvested….To enhance its
uses, the water must become ever more like the land, with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen
must behave more like ranchers than hunters.”33 As worldwide commercial fish stocks
decline due to overharvest and other anthropogenic causes, aquaculture is
witnessing a rapid expansion in the global economy. Aquaculture’s contribution to
global supplies of fish increased from 3.9 percent of total worldwide production by weight in 1970
to 27.3 percent in 2000. In 2004, aquaculture and capture fisheries produced 106 million tons of
fish and “aquaculture accounted for 43 percent.”34 According to Food and Agriculture
Organization statistics, aquaculture is growing more rapidly than all other animal food producing
sectors. Hailed as the “Blue Revolution,” aquaculture is frequently compared to agriculture’s
Green Revolution as a way to achieve food security and economic growth among the poor and in
the third world. The cultivation of farmed salmon as a high-value, carnivorous species destined
for market in core nations has emerged as one of the more lucrative (and controversial) endeavors
in aquaculture production.35 Much like the Green Revolution, the Blue Revolution may produce
temporary increases in yields, but it does not usher in a solution to food security (or
environmental problems). Food security is tied to issues of distribution. Given that the Blue
Revolution is driven by the pursuit of profit, the desire for monetary gain trumps the distribution
of food to those in need.36 Industrial aquaculture intensifies fish production by
transforming the natural life histories of wild fish stocks into a combined animal
feedlot. Like monoculture agriculture, aquaculture furthers the capitalistic
division of nature, only its realm of operation is the marine world. In order to
maximize return on investment, aquaculture must raise thousands of fish in a confined net-pen.
Fish are separated from the natural environment and the various relations of exchange found in a
food web and ecosystem. The fish’s reproductive life cycle is altered so that it can be propagated
and raised until the optimum time for mechanical harvest. Aquaculture interrupts the most
fundamental metabolic process—the ability of an organism to obtain its required
nutrient uptake. Because the most profitable farmed fish are carnivorous, such as
Atlantic salmon, they depend on a diet that is high in fishmeal and fish oil. For
example, raising Atlantic salmon requires four pounds of fishmeal to produce every one pound of
salmon. Consequently, aquaculture production depends heavily on fishmeal imported from South
The inherent contradiction in
extracting fishmeal is that industries must increase their exploitation
of marine fish in order to feed the farm-raised fish—thereby
increasing the pressure on wild stocks to an even larger extent. Such
America to feed the farmed carnivorous species.37
operations also increase the amount of bycatch. Three of the world’s five largest fisheries are now
exclusively harvesting pelagic fish for fishmeal, and these fisheries account for a quarter of the
total global catch. Rather than diminishing the demands placed on marine ecosystems, capitalist
aquaculture actually increases them, accelerating the fishing down the food chain process. The
environmental degradation of populations of marine species, ecosystems, and tropic levels
continues.38 Capitalist aquaculture—which is really aquabusiness—represents a parallel
example of capital following the patterns of agribusiness. Similar to combined
animal feedlots, farmed fish are penned up in high-density cages making them
susceptible to disease. Thus, like in the production of beef, pork, and chicken,
farmed fish are fed fishmeal that contains antibiotics, increasing concerns about
antibiotic exposure in society. In “Silent Spring of the Sea,” Don Staniford explains, “The
use of antibiotics in salmon farming has been prevalent right from the beginning,
and their use in aquaculture globally has grown to such an extent that resistance
is now threatening human health as well as other marine species.” Aquaculturists use
a variety of chemicals to kill parasites, such as sea lice, and diseases that spread quickly
throughout the pens. The dangers and toxicities of these pesticides in the marine environment are
magnified because of the long food chain.39 Once subsumed into the capitalist process, life
cycles of animals are increasingly geared to economic cycles of exchange by
decreasing the amount of time required for growth. Aquabusiness conforms to these
pressures, as researchers are attempting to shorten the growth time required for fish to reach
market size. Recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) has been added to some fish feeds to
stimulate growth in fishes in aquaculture farms in Hawaii. Experiments with fish transgenics—the
transfer of DNA from one species to another—are being done to increase the rate of weight gain,
causing altered fish to grow from 60 percent to 600 percent larger than wild stocks.40 These
growth mechanisms illustrate capitalist aquaculture’s drive to transform nature
to facilitate the generation of profit.
Bottom Trawling
High seas fishing necessitates bottom trawling which devastates the
carbon sequestration possibilities of the ocean and kill local fisheries
profits.
Leahy, 14
(Stephen Leahy, independent journalist covers international environmental issues in the public
interest, Co-winner of the 2012 Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for reporting on
Climate Change, 6/10/14, “Deep Sea Fishing Threatens to Wipe Out a $150 Billion Carbon Sink,”
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/unregulated-deep-ocean-fishing-threatens-a-148billion-carbon-sink-report, Accessed: 6/29/14, NC)
Bottom trawling is a particularly destructive method of fishing, in which entire
swathes of the ocean bottom are bulldozed and every living thing scooped up.
While it's long been known to be harmful to reefs and other bottom-dwelling life, recent studies
suggest bottom trawling is also leading to “long-term biological desertification." In the new
report, the authors argue that a ban on fishing in the high seas, which represent 58
percent of the world’s oceans, would be valuable just for protecting and enhancing
their role as a carbon sponge, Sumaila said. But that is just one of 14 other valuable
services the high seas provide humanity, according to the study. The study was
commissioned by the Global Ocean Commission, an 18-month-old
organization comprised of former senior politicians and business
leaders concerned about threats to the oceans. The High Seas And Us report
will be officially launched at a meeting in New York City on June 24 along with the Commission’s
short- and medium-term solutions. Last May scientists writing in the journal Science called for an
end to “the frontier mentality of exploitation” of the high seas, and recommended a ban on
trawling to protect the carbon-removal service and halt the decline in the productivity of the
oceans. The amount of wild fish caught peaked 25 years ago. About 70 percent of fish caught
inside EEZs spend some time in the high seas. If the high seas are protected from
fishing, those fish are likely to grow larger and become more numerous,
benefiting near-shore fisheries, Sumaila said. A number of studies of marine protected
zones where fishing is banned or very limited show that these become baby-fish incubators that
increase the numbers of fish outside of the protected areas. If fishing was banned in the
high seas, fisheries’ profits would soar more than 100 percent, the amount of fish
caught would exceed 30 percent and ocean fish stocks would increase 150
percent, according to estimates published in a study in PLOS Biology last March.
Fishing
Species extinction is the direct impact of overfishing driven by the
pursuit of capital accumulation and facilitated by technological
innovations
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
Industrialized capitalist fishing allows for vast quantities of target fish to be
harvested at once. At the same time, it leads to an immense amount of non-target
marine life—bycatch—being captured. Bycatch are commercially unviable
species, thus they are seen as waste. The “trash fish” are often ground up and
thrown back into the ocean. Part of the bycatch includes juveniles of the target
fish, which, if the mortality is increased among this population, undercuts the
success of recovery. Obviously, the populations of the discarded species are negatively
affected by this practice, furthering the depletion of marine life. The most wasteful
operation is trawling for shrimp. The capture and discarding of bycatch disrupts
the habitats and trophic webs within ecosystems. The scale of the disruption is
quite significant. It is estimated that an average of 27 million tons of fish are discarded each
year in commercial fisheries around the world, and that the United States has a .28 ratio of
bycatch discard to landings.22
Species extinction is the direct impact of overfishing, which is in part
driven by the pursuit of capital accumulation and is facilitated by the
technological innovations that are employed for this particular
purpose, in what has become known as a “race for fish.” 23 Capitalist
practices are creating a loss of marine biodiversity and undermining the resiliency of marine
ecosystems. Valiela states, “The magnitude of the fishing harvest and the examples of
major alterations to marine food webs by predator removal suggest that effects of
fishing are ecologically substantial at large spatial scales.” The “major alteration
to marine food webs” due to overexploitation provides the clearest example of
ecological degradation in the metabolic processes of the ocean.24
Overfishing has shortened the food chain and removed food chain
“links,” increasing the system’s vulnerability to natural and human
induced stresses
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
Equally disrupting, but less apparent than species effects, are the
ecosystem effects caused by fishery exploitation, especially “fishing down the
food chain.”25 As overfishing depletes the most commercially viable top predators
(i.e., snapper, tuna, cod, and swordfish), competition drives commercial fishers to begin
harvesting species of lower trophic levels. The downward shift is global, according
to the model analysis of UN statistics describing worldwide catches of fish over a forty-year time
If this quest is pursued to its logical end, scientists warn it will
lead to the wholesale collapse of marine ecosystems. Fishing down the food
span.
chain erodes the base of marine biodiversity and undermines the biophysical cornerstone of
ocean fisheries. The recent discoveries of marine trophic interactions suggest that
the lower trophic levels of marine food webs provide an integral and complex
foundation—disrupting this base undermines the metabolic cycle of energy flows within marine
ecosystems. Overfishing of lower trophic levels has shortened the food
chain and sometimes has removed one or more of the “links,”
increasing the system’s vulnerability to natural and human induced
stresses. For example, in the North Sea the cod population has been so depleted that
fishermen are now harvesting a lower trophic species called pout, which the cod
used to eat. The pout eat krill and copepods. Krill also eat copepods. As the pout
are commercially harvested, the krill population expands and the copepod
population declines drastically. (In other areas of the ocean, krill are captured and used as
an animal-feed additive, hindering the recovery of the whales that depend upon them for food.)
Because copepods are the main food of young cod, the cod population cannot recover from initial
Fishing down the food chain illustrates how capture
fisheries organized under competitive market conditions and the
drive to accumulate capital are dismantling the marine ecological
system that has been developing for millions of years. In addition, fishing
fisheries exploitation.26
for lower trophic level species deceptively masks marine fish extraction, as millions of tons of fish
are harvested each year from the oceans. People continue to be provided with seafood on their
menus, never realizing the full impact of overfishing the top predators. Fishing down the food
chain, due to overfishing in the higher tropic levels, depletes the food resources on which
predatory fishes depend. As noted earlier, marine predatory species are extremely vulnerable to
losses of prey.
Oil
Big oil will never be held legally or fiscally accountable for the
humans lives they have taken or species extinction they have caused
Monbiot, 10
(George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political
activism, June 8, 2010, “The Oil Firms' Profits Ignore the Real Costs,”
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/08, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
The total costs imposed by the oil companies, which include the loss of human
lives and the extinction of species, cannot be accounted. But even if they could,
you shouldn't expect the companies to carry them. They might be incapable of
capping their leaks; they are adept at capping their liabilities. The Deepwater Horizon
rig, which is owned by Transocean, is registered in the Marshall Islands. Most oil companies pull
the same trick: they register their rigs and ships in small countries with weak governments and no
international reach. These nations are, in other words, incapable of regulating them. Flags of
convenience signify more than the place of registration: they're an unmistakable sign that
responsibilities are being offloaded. If powerful governments were serious about tackling
pollution, the first thing they would do would be to force oil companies to register their property
in the places where their major interests lie. US lawyers are drooling over the prospect of
what one of them called "the largest tort we've had in this country". Some financial
analysts are predicting the death of BP, as the fines and compensation it will have to pay outweigh
its earnings. I don't believe a word of it. ExxonMobil was initially fined $5bn for the
Exxon Valdez disaster, in 1989. But its record-breaking profits allowed it to pay
record-breaking legal fees: after 19 years of argument it got the fine reduced to $507m.
That's equivalent to the profit it made every 10 days last year. Yesterday, after 25 years of
deliberations, an Indian court triumphantly convicted Union Carbide India Ltd of causing death
by negligence through the Bhopal catastrophe. There was just one catch: Union Carbide India Ltd
ceased to exist many years ago. It wound itself up to avoid this outcome, and its liabilities
vanished in a puff of poisoned gas. BP's insurers will take a hit, as will the pension
funds which invested so heavily in it; but, though some people are proposing
costs of $40bn or even $60bn, I will bet the price of a barrel of crude that the
company is still in business 10 years from now. Everything else – the
ecosystems it blights, the fishing and tourist industries, a habitable
climate – might collapse around it, but BP, like the banks, will be
deemed too big to fail. Other people will pick up the costs.
Subsidies
Fishing subsidies motivate deep sea fishing, which directly
accelerates global warming by making carbon sequestration
impossible.
Leahy, 14
(Stephen Leahy, independent journalist covers international environmental issues in the public
interest, Co-winner of the 2012 Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for reporting on
Climate Change, 6/10/14, “Deep Sea Fishing Threatens to Wipe Out a $150 Billion Carbon Sink,”
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/unregulated-deep-ocean-fishing-threatens-a-148billion-carbon-sink-report, Accessed: 6/29/14, NC)
Marine life in the high seas soak up an amount of carbon equivalent
to 30 percent of the US’s annual emissions. This carbon-sequestering
service is worth about $148 billion a year, according a new study from the Global Ocean
Commission At the same time, increased fishing activity threatens the whole
process , according to the researchers. The high seas are the deep water, unclaimed
oceans beyond each nation's 200-mile exclusive economic zone ( EEZ) . As such, they
make up the majority of the world's oceans, and sit outside the local regulation of
individual countries. The high seas also happen to be hugely productive carbon sinks.
Plankton are the carbon-eating plants of the seas, which then makes it way up the
food chain; dissolved carbon dioxide in the world's oceans thus gets locked up in
all marine life. When organisms die in the deep seas, pretty much everybody ends
up on the bottom of the ocean, which makes for an effective, natural sequestration process.
(It's also the phenomenon driving ocean fertilization schemes.) The authors estimate that in the
high seas, this amounts to taking more than 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 out of the
atmosphere and burying it in the seabed every year. The thing is, with fisheries
impacted worldwide, more governments are subsidizing fishing
operations on the high seas. More fishing activity could put a dent in the ocean's
sequestration effect, co-author Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries
Center said. Here’s the kicker: The dollar value of all the fish caught way out there is
actually negative when costs of fishing like fuel and subsidies are subtracted. A
2009 analysis of 12 nations' bottom-trawling fleets on the high seas by Sumaila found that fleets
received $152 million a year in government subsidies—some 25 percent of the value of their catch.
“Most would not be fishing the high seas without subsidies,” Sumaila told me.
Surface Development
The surface centered approach that humanity takes to the ocean,
viewing it only as a means of transportation, ecology of the violetblack deep sea.
Alaimo, 13
(Stacy Alaimo, Ph.D. University of Illinois, Department of English, Certificate. The Unit for
Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Ilinois, 2013, “Violet-Black: Ecologies of the
Abyssal Zone,” Accessed: 6/26/14, NC)
A violet-black ecology hovers in the bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadal zones, the
three regions of the deep seas, 1000 meters down and much deeper, where sunlight
cannot descend. The violet-black depths--cold, dark regions under the crushing weight of
the water column--were long thought to be “azoic,” or devoid of life. It is not surprising
that Edward Forbes’ azoic theory of the 1840s (preceded by that of Henry de la Beche a decade
earlier) stood as the accepted doctrine for a quarter of a century, since it is difficult for terrestrial
creatures to imagine what could possibly survive in the unfathomable seas. William J. Broad
argues that generations of scientists “dismissed the abyss (a dismissive word in some
respects) as inert and irrelevant, as geologically dead and having only a thin
population of bizarre fish”1 Even as deep sea creatures have been brought to the surface, it
remains convenient to assume that the bathyl, abyssl, and hadal zones are empty, void, null--an
The deep seas epitomize how most ocean waters exist
beyond state borders, legal protection, and cultural imaginaries. Even
as some marine areas such as coastal zones are considered inexhaustibly abundant, the open
seas have long been considered empty space. As Philip Steinberg argues, the social
construction of the ocean in industrial capitalism has been that of a
“vast void,” an “empty transportation surface, beyond the space of social
relations .”2 The emphasis on the transportation surface here neglects vertical
zones in favor of horizontal trajectories, making the deep seas the void of the
void. Such a colossal, global, oceanic void is of an entirely different scale than
Derrida’s domestic encounter with the gaze of his cat, certainly. And yet Derrida’s
ruminations are already drenched in the language of the depths, as he describes
the question of human and nonhuman subjectivity as “immense and abyssal”
requiring that he wrestle with the “several tentacles” of philosophies which
become, together, “a single living body at bottom.”3 If we shift Derrida’s ruminations on
abyss of concern.
the “animal abyss” from an encounter with the gaze of a specific animal to the collective
“composition” (in Bruno Latour’s terms) of the vast abyssal zone and its surrounding territories,4
we discover the same sort of vertiginous recognition that there is, indeed, “being rather than
nothing.” But what does it mean for the abyssal being to be or become “too much”?
Impacts
Frontier Specific
Colonialism
The myth of the frontier causes endless colonialism
Eidenbach 8 – (Kirstin, “CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES AND THE LAWLESS FRONTIER”, The
Crit, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pg. 103, http://thecritui.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/kirstin.pdf,
RSpec)
Linked almost inextricably with the American frontier myth is the
colonial paradigm . In fact it has been with some difficulty that I discuss the two concepts in separate parts
of this paper. However, regardless of how entangled the two have historically been, these concepts are indeed discrete.
Colonization does represent one part of the cycle of the American frontier myth, but the process of
systematic oppression of native populations. Thus far, this
oppression has dominated nearly every frontier Americans have created. Commenting on the
colonization itself includes the
relationship between Native Americans and foreign explorers, Frederick Jackson Turner notes that “between the
aborigines and the Western whites others came, and went away, or else merged their blood and customs with the native
populations. None transformed vast expanses of the unknown into recognizable counterparts of their homelands.”48
The Frontier myth ensures colonization
Eidenbach 8 – (Kirstin, “CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES AND THE LAWLESS FRONTIER”, The
Crit, Vol. 1, Issue 1, pg. 101, http://thecritui.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/kirstin.pdf,
RSpec)
The frontier myth operates in four parts. As will be discussed throughout the paper, this temporal cycle will
appear and often will dominate intellectual and cultural paradigms as widely disparate as oceanic
exploration and patent and trademark law. The first phase of the frontier myth is the search. A search begins as
colonization ends. In other words, as soon as one frontier becomes fully colonized , the search for
new ‘empty’ spaces begins. The second phase is the discovery of the new space. In many ways, this process
parallels the exploration of Lewis and Clark.25 The new spaces are explored, mapped out, described and
defined. The third phase is colonization. During the third phase, the new space is
“ recognizable
made into a
[counterpart] of [its] homeland .”26 The colonizers populate the
spaces with their own paradigms, plants and animals, forcing whatever nameless natives remain to conform
or be exiled.27 Once this phase has been completed and conformity achieved, the search begins anew.
Imperialism
Human control of the frontier creates imperial knowledge which
becomes problematized and exacerbates ecological problems
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
Perhaps the most memorable ocean
explorer of the early twentieth century was William Beebe, the
eminent naturalist who climbed into a steel ball eight feet in diameter to be submerged to oceanic depths of up to
a half mile. Hailing from an age that was witness to various firsts, such as the race to the Poles, the first transatlantic flight,
and ballooning into the stratosphere, Beebe saw
the ocean as a geography that provided similar
physical challenges. But if Beebe was notable for his adventurous conquest of ocean
depths, he was equally known for his portrayal of the dark and mysterious region
of the earth that is the ocean deep. In the nineteenth century, romantic writers routinely brought the
ocean into their repertoire of sublime landscapes, but they did so in a twodimensional fashion along the plane of the ocean. Beebe's deep-water descents
provided the venue for turning the ocean depths into another sublime region. But Beebe's
articulation of an ocean sublime, in a manner similar to Clarence King and Iohn Muir in the
American West, was a function of his own identity as a naturalist making his way
in a world largely dominated by modern labora- tory science. A sensational character who
was always in the public eye, Beebe managed the presentation of his own exploits in order
to make his sometimes fantastic activities appear more scientific. One of the most
important themes of Beebe's ocean literature was that the planet earth was primarily a
water planet, and the ocean affected the lives of landed humans in unpredictable and ubiquitous ways. I call this an
"ocean- centric" point of view. Oceancentrism took its cue from biocentrism, the idea that
humans play only a small role in the drama of life. Rachel Carson took the biocentric philosophy
of landed nature writers and forcefully extended the philosophy seaward in the 19505. The scientific field of oceanograplay
had ex- perienced massive patronage during and after World War II, and so Carson thought it an auspicious time to write
about The Sea Around Us. In this best- selling work, she
presented an all-powerful and
unpredictable ocean. Her work was at least partly motivated by her belief that
both the destruction of the landed world in terms of land use and toxic pollution,
and the corresponding geometrical increase in world population, would lead to the increasing importance of the ocean world. She couldn't have been more correct, and her job with the US.
Fish and Wildlife Service gave her ample opportunity to view the expanding world of
government science that subsidized exploitation of the postwar ocean. Carson,
however, was a peculiar explorer; she found the beauty of the ocean in humble places along
the American coast, and she called on her audience to do likewise. Although the lens of science
could certainly provide expert knowledge of the ocean environment, it was just as
certain that the typ- ical American citizen could develop a sense of wonder. While
Carson was hard at work on The Sea Around Us, Eugenie Clark was serving as a naturalist for the Pacific Science Board in
the distant American trusteeship of Micronesia. In 1952 she published a book that described her travels to the far Pacific
and the Red Sea. Lady
with a Spear created a new kind of ocean for the American
public. It was a kinder and gentler ocean; full of beauty, wonder, and domestic
wholesomeness, it was an ocean that Americans could experience for themselves with
increased access to recently developed diving equipment. Just as American frontiers became popular
spots for out- door excursions among America's elite in the nineteenth century, so too did
Clark help to create an ocean that could be similarly enjoyed and explored by the lay
public. Whether she was cataloging poisonous fish in Micronesia or modifying the behavior of nurse sharks at (jape Mote
Lab in Sarasota, Florida, Clark explored the ocean not as a conquering marauder but rather as a com- passionate and even
matronly nurturer. The
domestication of the ocean, in Clark's hands, had everything to do with her own
position as a naturalist in 21 held dominated by men, a fact made doubly complicated by
the cult of domes-ticity that saturated postwar American culture. Two of the most
important shapers of Americais postwar conception of the ocean were not themselves
American, but their impact on the popular imagination should not be underestimated.
Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 experi- ment to replicate the hypothesized migration of Native
Americans to Polyne- sia captured a postwar American audience whose conceptions of the
Pacific were products of death and destruction in the form of battleships and atomic
bombs. Heyerdahl's idyllic float on a balsam raft was a kind of anti-technologi- cal narrative that
emphasized the natural healing properties of nature and the ocean. Middle-class
Americans began experiencing the Pacific as paradise after the war as Hawaii became a
vac-ationer's destination; at a lesser cost, they could visit the Pacific at any one of the numerous
tiki restaurants and bars that pop- ulated the postwar Sunbelt. Heyerdal's experience with the
ocean promised a simpler move back to nature, Jacques Cousteau's ocean moved in the oppo- site
direction, one that embraced a technologically savy culture mediate humans and the ocean.
More than providing a window to undersea life, Cous- teau's books, articles, films, and television
series highlight an ocean populated by scuba-equipped man-fish, underwater scooters,
underwater flying saucers, and housing units. (Cousteau created an ocean that was easily explored and imminently
habitable through the genius of science and technology. As Cous- teau the explorer turned into Cousteau the
environmentalist in the 1970s, he
continued to look to the scientific and technological
advances that would ame- liorate the ocean's environmental problems. Taken together,
Heyerdahl and Cousteau represent the oceanic extremes of a familiar terrestrial
schism be- tween people who fear science and technology as an environmental
problem, and others who view it as the savior and redeemer of human activities.
Psychic Desire
Frontierism causes endless crises – we can never fulfill our desire for
more
Gouge 2 – Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University, Ph.D. (Catherine, “The
Great Storefront of American Nationalism: Narratives of Mars and the Outerspatial Frontier”, The
Journal of American Popular Culture, Fall, 2002, Vol. 1, Issue 2,
http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/gouge.htm, RSpec)
cultural narratives of the frontier teach us that by
participating in the exploration of new frontiers through our activity as consumers of new
Robinson notwithstanding, most American
frontier technologies, we can become tourists, or temporary inhabitants, of a more powerful
subjectivity.
fictions suggest that on the "new" frontier we can be who we were not on
previous frontiers. The frontier fantasy is, thus, a prosthetic psychic fantasy of
wholeness and power that promises to render us psychically complete . The
Moreover, these
power the frontier affords us by rejuvenating our spirit or making us more "American" also
reproduction of such a capitalist
fantasy of the frontier is necessarily a process which is predicated on the proliferation
of utopian frontier narratives like those that Zubrin offers. This process is, of course, as Edward
Soja argues about the reproduction of capitalist spatiality , "a continuing source
of conflict and crisis " (129). And it is around such crises that frontierism reconfigures
and modernizes itself.
promises to free us from our incompleteness. The
Racism
The logic of frontierism is rooted in gendered and racist conceptions
Ballvé 11 – Ph.D. Candidate Geography at University of California Berkeley, M.A. International
Affairs at the New School, B.A. Anthropology/History at Colorado College (Teo, “States of
Violence”, 8/7/11, http://territorialmasquerades.net/states-of-violence/, RSpec)
discourse of civilization and
barbarism and, by extension, frontiers . Frontiers are state fixations that are produced
by the view of their populations as somehow problematic —and often, as borderline or
outright fugitives (gauchos, cowboys, bandits, natives, etc.). “In the official histories of Latin American and
Another spatial dimension shared by many of the essays is the
European nations, bandits and other frontier populations appear as an obstacle to
while the structural conditions that shaped them and the
the nation’s progress ,
moral codes they lived by are ignored ” (19).
Discourses surrounding nation-building and state-making—both of which encompass frontier discourses—are also
deeply gendered . In the essays, the links between masculinity and violence are
particularly apparent. “They show that both imperial states and anti-colonial nationalisms have linked
constructs of masculinity to the state in their efforts to
an ideal
mobilize support and to configure
collective identity” (22). Silvio Duncan Baretta and John Markoff’s essay on the cattle frontier in
the making of Latin American centers and peripheries includes many of the trends cited above—except for gender, though
their mention of “honor” begs it. For them, frontiers are places where no one has a monopoly of violence. The
racial
construction of frontier populations was a central part of their equation with
barbarism , facilitating their criminalization by newly independent Latin American states. Frontier people were
also stigmatized as vagrants and wanderers, though “vagrant” economies were firmly entwined with “sedentary” ones—
often, through licit/illicit channels.
The endpoint of racism is dehumanization, endless military aggression and
environmental destruction, it impacts us all, but by rejecting every instance of
it we can begin to systemically break it down
Barndt, 91
(Joseph R., Author and Pastor in the Bronx in New York City and co-director of Crossroads, a ministry
working to dismantle racism and build a multicultural church and society, 1991, “Dismantling
Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America”, Google Books, Pages 155-156, Accessed
6/30/14, NC)
To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations,
The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white
people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the victim. The walls forcibly keep
ghettos and prisons.
people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all
The limitations
imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are
cruel, inhuman, and unjust ; the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed,
which are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well. But we have
also seen that the walls of racism can be dismantled. We are not condemned to an
prevented from achieving the human potential that God intends for us.
Brick by brick, stone
by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cultural racism can be
destroyed. You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear
down, once and for all, the walls of racism. The danger point of self-destruction seems to be
drawing ever more near. The results of centuries of national and worldwide
conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggression, of
overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no
return. A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and
inexorable fate, but are offered the vision and the possibility of freedom.
privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and
ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.
Securitization/Myth
Evaluate the affirmative as a mthyic story – this form of critical
analysis accesses the only method for delinking hegemonic
epistemologies of control and colonization
Stoeltje 87 – (Beverly, “Making the Frontier Myth: Folklore Process in a Modern Nation”,
Western Folklore, Vol. 46, No. 4, October, 1987, pgs. 238-241, RSpec)
Taking the position that as folklorists
we must utilize our special expertise and sensitivity to folklore materials at the
theory and larger units of communicative form , I want to argue
same time as we embrace larger critical
critical analysis of the concept of Frontier as used in reference to the
American historical experience, specifically for an interpretation of the American Frontier
as American Myth and against the commonly held belief that the American Frontier works as a metaphor.
for a more
As Kenneth Burke has said, "a critic cannot get at the very core of a work except by specifying exactly what kind of work it
is."16 Epic, myth, legend, and history as well, have commonly featured heroes who investigate the unknown, assert control
over it, and appropriate its resources. The hero launches his adventure with an accompaniment of troops, sailors,
horsemen, or other supporters and a troubador or recorder who can memorialize his adventure. If and when our hero
returns, he regales the folks back home with stories of his exploits, which include the discovery and conquest of exotic
lands and people. Spices, gems, and beautiful artifacts are all available for the explorer and his troops, who exploit the
newly discovered territory by violence or guile and claim the land and the people for their native empire, country, or
kingdom. Brave pioneers will follow his route and settle the newly conquered land, bringing their idea of civilization with
them and imposing it in the name of some ideologically rationalized enterprise. Stories that follow this pattern are
pervasive in the mythology, history, and literature of Western civilization: the Greeks, the Romans, King Arthur, the
our heritage as comparative
mythology, our own history and religion as stories that fulfill sociopolitical
functions . And, if we do, we rarely place modern themes such as Manifest Destiny
European explorers, the American frontiersman. Yet we seldom examine
in the same category with the classical, the religious, and the literary. Nevertheless, in the construct known as
Western Civilization each empire, kingdom or nation tells about itself some
story of the " bringing of civilization ," a formula we might consider the nucleus of a cultural
"formation" that has shaped large scale behavior from one era to another. 17 Large scale behavior of any period operates
with goals, strategies, and rhetoric directed by the politically powerful forces of the place and time. These
hegemonic forces implement their goals by utilizing some cultural formation which
coordinates the familiar and the strange with ideas and images easily identified by the
general populace , and by linking a plan for action to a compelling natural or
supernatural force that voices authority and provides the populace with the illusion that
the right forces are in control , that "we" are winning in a battle against
" them ." Akin to ideology, tradition, base metaphors, key symbols, religious systems, and other intellectual constructs,
the cultural formation has vague outlines and can change characters or position swiftly but subtly. It rests, however, on a
foundation of granite purpose. Created from, transmitted by, and effected through familiar
communicative forms of a particular era, the cultural formation employs
language as
symbolic action and incorporates devices, principles, and strategies from the domain of
poetics, all in the interest of organizing large scale behavior . Although this behavior,
its texts, and its heroes have captured the attention of scholars, all too often these studies fail to
distinguish between the literal and the rhetorical and to notice how the story repeats itself as if it
were the "beginning." Consequently, our familiar story, The Conquest and Transformation of the
Unknown, is repeated over and over again for each new generation as myth, epic, history, war,
art, novel, and film retell the story. We focus here upon a unique point in the telling of the story-the point at
which the story shifts from one setting to another and replaces old images with new ones.
The title of the
America variant of the story , of course, is Frontier . The old story takes place in the last
period of Anglo-American settlement of the West and tells of exploration, conquest, new beginnings, and the
transplantation of civilization until it covered North America, validated by the belief in the progress of Western
civilization. The story remains popular today, but the act itself was concluded a century ago when Anglo-Saxon residents
settled on the land and their cities reached for the sky. As the last frontiersmen of the West put away their pistols and
placed their shotguns on their pick-up gun racks, science and technology gave birth to a new era-the Space Age-which
would explore and claim the space above the earth. Predictably, the term "High Frontier" was employed to validate the
exploration of space, and before our very eyes the covered wagon magically became a space rocket and the
pioneer/cowboy metamorphosed into the astronaut. Mythmaking and expansion, still running in tandem, have taken to
the skies for the twentieth-century version of the story. The space age myth appeals as new and different, but its
relationship to the western myth is closer than it appears on the surface. Not only does the space myth belong to the same
cultural formation as the western myth, but the Space Age Myth and the Old West Myth, both Frontier stories, were born
of the same social circumstances in the same period of history. When the attention, energy, and resources of the United
States switched from westward expansion to expansion into space, the western frontier myth easily became the space age
myth. But we might cast a glance behind the stage where myth is performed and look at the context from which these
myths emerged, keeping in mind Malinowski's observation that myth surfaces and flourishes in times of social and
historical change, and that myth replicates and validates social structure.
Try or Die
It is dangerous to deny the truth of environmental degradation
behind our relation to the ocean. We should take any and all action to
end our view of the ocean as a frontier to exploit.
Steinberg, 8
(Philip E. Steinberg, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 2008, “Its so Easy Being
Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Accessed:
6/26/14, NC)
Contemporary concern for the marine environment typically is grounded in
worries about the increasing rate at which humanity is using the ocean's
resources. For instance, the Pew Oceans Commission, another high-level panel that recently
studied US oceans policy, notes in its 2003 report that ocean management regulations
to date have been based on a 'frontier mentality' that holds that marine resources
are inexhaustible and that encourages users to extract as much as they can from
the ocean, as quickly as possible (Pew Oceans Commission 2003, vii-viii). The Pew
Commission report asserts that this mentality and the patchwork of species-specific, allocationoriented regulations associated with it need to be replaced with a management system based on
'principles of ecosystem health and integrity, sustainability, and precaution' (Pew Oceans
Commission 2003, x). Similarly, An Ocean Blueprint argues for a new era in which
'management boundaries correspond with ecosystem regions and policies
consider interactions among all ecosystem components' (United States Commission
on Ocean Policy 2004a, xxxiv). This would require abandonment of the current
management paradigm in which, through inattention, lack of information, and
irresponsibility, we have depleted fisheries, despoiled recreation areas, degraded
water quality, drained wetlands, endangered our own health, and deprived many
of our citizens of jobs' (United States Commission on Ocean Policy 2004a, x). These
sentiments echo similar proclamations from the 1990s - in documents surrounding the
1998 U nited N ations International Year of the Ocean and in popular magazines including
Time, National Geographic, and The Economist- that argued for a switch from
thinking of the ocean as a frontier to be exploited to thinking of it as a
space of 'finite economical assets' that need to be stewarded through purposive
and integrated management (Steinberg 1999, 2001, 176--180). At one level, this story
of marine environmental degradation - what I am calling the Overuse Narrative cannot and should not be questioned: few would disagree that the ocean's
nature is being transformed with a new intensity, with lasting impacts on human
society. Nor should we necessarily reject the normative principles that are associated with this
narrative: that the ocean should be rationally stewarded and managed in an attempt to stabilize
the relationship between humans and their marine environment. As an explanation, however, the
Overuse Narrative falls short. An explanation derived solely from observation of a current
condition seldom forms a reliable basis for interpreting environmental history, especially when
that condition is identified as a 'crisis' because of deviation from a supposedly stable norm. And a
poor understanding of environmental history, in turn, can lead to ill-conceived environmental
policy (Roe 1994, 1995).
War
Conquest of the frontier causes endless exterminatory violence
Slotkin 92 – Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University, Ph.D. at Brown
University (Richard, ‘Gunfighter Nation”, 1992, book, pgs. 11-12, RSpec)
Myth of the Frontier relates the achievement of “progress” to a
particular form or scenario of violent action . “Progress” itself was defined in different ways: the Puritan
In each stage of its development, the
colonists emphasized the achievement of spiritual regeneration through frontier adventure; Jeffersonian (and later, the
disciples of Turner’s “Frontier Thesis”) saw the frontier settlement as a re-enactment and democratic renewal of the
original “social contract”; while Jacksonian Americans saw the conquest of the Frontier as a means to the regeneration of
personal fortunes and/or of patriotic vigor and virtue. But in each case, the Myth represented the redemption of
American spirit or fortune as something to be achieved by playing through a scenario of
separation , temporary regression to a more primitive or “natural” state, and
regeneration through violence . At the core of that scenario is the symbol of
“ savage war ,” which was both a mythic trope and an operative category of
military doctrine . The premise of “savage war” is that ineluctable political and
social differences —rooted in some combination of “blood” and culture— make
coexistence between primitive natives and civilized Europeans impossible on any basis other than
that of subjugation . Native resistance to European settlement therefore takes the form of a fight
for survival ; and because of the “savage” and bloodthirsty propensity of the natives, such
struggles inevitably become “wars of extermination” in which one side or
the other attempts to destroy its enemy root and branch. The seventeenth-century Puritans envisioned this
struggle in biblical terms—“Two Nations [are in] the Womb and will be striving”—and urged their soldiers to exterminate
the Wampanoags as God commanded Israel to wipe out the Amalekites. But similar ideas informed the military thinking
of soldiers in the Age of Reason, like Colonel Henry Bouquet, who described an “America war” as “a rigid contest where all
is at stake and mutual destruction the object…[where] everything is terrible; the face of the country, the climate, the
enemy…[where] victories are not decisive but defeats are ruinous; and simple death is the least misfortune that can
happen.” Military folklore from King Philip’s War to Braddock’s Defeat to Custer’s Last Stand held that in battle against a
savage enemy you always saved the last bullet for yourself; for in savage war one side or the the other must perish,
whether by limitless murder or by the degrading experience of subjugation and torture.20
Cap/Consumpt Specific
Fishery Collapse
Capitalist industrialization is the root cause of fishery collapse
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
Capitalism and Marine Fishery Exploitation Humans have long been connected to the
ocean’s metabolic processes by harvesting marine fish and vegetation. Harvesting
methods and processes have varied depending on the structure of social
production. Subsistence fishing is a practice woven throughout human history,
beginning with the harvesting of shellfish along seashores and shallow lakes, and progressing
with the development of tools such as stone-tipped fishing spears, fishhooks, lines, and nets. This
was originally based upon fishing for use of the fish. What was caught was used to feed families
and communities. Through the process of fishing, human labor has been intimately linked to
ocean processes, gaining an understanding of fish migrations, tides, and ocean currents. The size
of a human population in a particular region influenced the extent of exploitation. But the
introduction of commodity markets and private ownership under the capitalist system of
production altered the relationship of fishing labor to the resources of the seas. Specific species
had an exchange value. As a result, certain fish were seen as being more valuable. This led to
fishing practices that focused on catching as many of a particular fish, such as cod, as possible.
Non-commercially viable species harvested indiscriminately alongside the target species were
discarded as waste. As capitalism developed and spread, intensive extraction by
industrial capture fisheries became the norm. Increased demands were placed on
the oceans and overfishing resulted in the severe depletion of wild fish stocks. In
Empty Ocean, Richard Ellis states, “Throughout the world’s oceans, food fishes once believed to
be immeasurable in number are now recognized as greatly depleted and in some cases almost
extinct. A million vessels now fish the world’s oceans, twice as many as there were twenty-five
years ago. Are there twice as many fish as before? Hardly.” How did this situation develop?10
The beginning of capitalist industrialization marked the most
noticeable and significant changes in fisheries practices.
Mechanization, automation, and mass production/consumption
characterized an era of increased fixed capital investments. Profit-driven
investment in efficient production led to fishing technologies that for the first time made the
exhaustion of deep-sea fish stocks a real possibility. Such transformations can be seen in how
groundfishing, the capture of fish that swim in close proximity to the ocean’s bottom, changed
through the years. Industrialization began to influence the groundfishery around the early 1900s,
as technological developments were employed to further the accumulation of capital. The
introduction of steam-powered trawlers from England in 1906 heralded a significant change in
how groundfish were caught and rapidly replaced the sail-powered schooner fleets. Prior to steam
trawling, groundfish were caught on schooners with baited lines during long journeys at sea. Due
to lack of refrigeration and freezing, most of the cod catch was salted. The competitive markets
organized under capitalist production welcomed the increased efficiency of steam-powered
vessels, without a critical assessment of the consequences of increased harvest levels. More
captured fish meant more profit. The switch to trawling was complete by 1920, and the
consequences of the second industrial revolution organized under capitalist forces would soon
change the human-nature relationship to the ocean, extending the reach of capital. The
expanded geographic range and speed of fishing fleets allowed for increased
productivity of catch as well as increased diversity of captured species that were
deemed “valuable” on the market. Technological developments and improved
transportation routes allowed the fishing industry to grow, increasing its scale of
operations. Cold storage ensured that fish would be fresh, reducing spoilage and loss of capital.
In Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky explains, “Freezing
[cod] also changed the relationship of seafood companies to fishing ports. Frozen fish could be
bought anywhere—wherever the fish was cheapest and most plentiful. With expanding markets,
local fleets could not keep up with the needs of the companies.” Advances in the
transportation infrastructure allowed people in the Midwest to consume the
increased harvests of cod and haddock, leading to a significant expansion in the
market. Major marketing campaigns promoted the consumption of fish to
increase sales. Together these factors enhanced the accumulation of capital within the fishing
industry, and companies invested some of this capital back into their fleets.11 By 1930 there were
clear signals that the groundfishing fleet’s ability to capture massive quantities of fish had
surpassed natural limits in fisheries. A Harvard University investigation reported that in 1930 the
groundfishery landed 37 million haddock at Boston, with another 70–90 million juvenile haddock
discarded dead at sea. The sudden rise in fisheries harvest (creating a subsequent rise in
consumer demand through marketing campaigns) resulted in stress in the groundfish
populations, and landings plummeted. Competitive markets create incentives to expand
production, regardless of resource decline. Thus, in reaction to decreased stocks due to
overfishing, groundfishing fleets moved farther offshore into waters off of the coast of Canada to
increase the supply of valuable fish to new markets. The fleet’s ability to continue moving into
unexploited waters obscured recognition of the severe resource depletion that was occurring. As a
result, the process of overfishing particular ecosystems to supply a specific good for the market
expanded, subjecting more of the ocean to the same system of degradation.12 The distant water
fleets were made possible by the advent of factory trawlers. Factory trawlers represent the
pinnacle of capital investment and extractive intensification in the global fisheries. In Distant
Water William Warner presents a portrayal of a factory trawler’s capacity: Try to imagine a
mobile and completely self-contained timber cutting machine that could smash through the
roughest trails of the forest, cut down trees, mill them, and deliver consumer-ready lumber in half
the time of normal logging and milling operations. This was exactly what factory trawlers did—
this was exactly their effect on fish—in the forests of the deep. It could not long go unnoticed.
Factory trawlers pull nylon nets a thousand feet long through the ocean, potentially capturing 400
tons of fish during a single netting. Industrial trawlers can process and freeze their catch as they
travel.13 Such technological development extended the systematic exploitation and scale of
harvesting of fishes. The natural limits of fish populations combined with capital’s need to expand
led to the development of immense trawlers that increased the productive capacity and efficiency
of operations. These ships allowed fishermen to seek out areas in the ocean where valuable fish
were available, providing the means to capture massive quantities of fish in a single trip.
Overcoming the shortage of fishes in one area was accomplished by even more intensive
harvesting with new ships and equipment, such as sonar, in other regions of the oceans. The
pursuit of vast quantities of commercial fishes in different areas of the ocean expanded the
depletion of other species, as they were exploited and discarded as bycatch. The swath of the seas
subjected to the dictates of the market increased, whether a fish was sold as a commodity or
thrown overboard as a waste product.14 Competition for market share between companies and
capital’s investment in advanced technology intensified fishery exploitation. Competing
international companies sought nature’s diminishing bounty, causing further international
conflict in the “race for fish.” President Truman responded to these disputes by attempting to
expand U.S. corporate interests. He issued two proclamations expanding U.S. authority beyond
territorial waters trying to further territorial enclosure of its adjacent seas out to the limits of the
continental shelf. Coastal states around the world struggled to transform the property rights of
the open ocean to benefit their nations. In response to growing conflict, the United Nations
convened the First United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in Geneva in 1958.
Eventually, most nations voted to sign the UN Law of the Sea article, “irrevocably transforming”
international law and constituting “a fundamental revision of sometimes age-old institutions.”15
(The U.S. Senate, however, has still not ratified the Law of the Sea Convention.) In the end, the
convention established a property regime according to the prescription of an exclusive economic
zone (EEZ). The EEZ put regions of the high seas adjacent to coastal waters entirely within the
management purview of the coastal state, up to two hundred miles from their shore. In this zone,
states have exclusive rights to living and non-living resources for extraction and economic
pursuits. The collapse of fisheries due to overexploitation coupled with the
expanding seafood market forced companies to look elsewhere for “the most
traded animal commodity on the planet.” African nations—such as Senegal, Mauritania,
Angola, and Mozambique—confronting dire economic conditions sold fishing access to European
and Asian nations and companies. In the case of Mauritania, selling fishing access provided over
$140 million a year, which equaled a fifth of the government’s budget. Few countries can
resist such bait, given the need for monetary resources. Industrialized trawlers
descended into African waters, combing their seas for the treasured fish
commodities. In the past three decades, Africa’s fish population in the ocean has
decreased by 50 percent and thousands of fishermen have become
unemployed.16 The expansion of capitalist fishing practices continues to
decimate fisheries and spread ecological degradation, as profits and food are
funneled back to core nations.
Unsustainable
Global development projects have disrupted the marine ecosystem in
every area of its existence. It is on the verge of total collapse from over
fishing, deadzones, acidification, biodiversity loss and more. If we do
not change our approach to the ocean we will take ourselves down
with it.
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
The world ocean covers approximately 70 percent of the earth. It has been an integral
part of human history, providing food and ecological services. Yet conservation
efforts and concerns with environmental degradation have mostly focused on
terrestrial issues. Marine scientists and oceanographers have recently made
remarkable discoveries in regard to the intricacies of marine food webs and
the richness of oceanic biodiversity. However, the excitement over these
discoveries is dampened due to an awareness of the rapidly accelerating threat
to the biological integrity of marine ecosystems. 1 At the start of the
twenty-first century marine scientists focused on the rapid depletion of marine
fish, revealing that 75 percent of major fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. It
is estimated “that the global ocean has lost more than 90% of large predatory fishes.” The
depletion of ocean fish stock due to overfishing has disrupted
metabolic relations within the oceanic ecosystem at multiple trophic
and spatial scales.2 Despite warnings of impending collapse of fish
stock, the oceanic crisis has only worsened . The severity is made evident
in a recent effort to map the scale of human impact on the world ocean. A team of
scientists analyzed seventeen types of anthropogenic drivers of ecological
change (e.g., organic pollution from agricultural runoff, overfishing, carbon dioxide emissions,
etc.) for marine ecosystems. The findings are clear: No area of the world ocean
“is unaffected by human influence,” and over 40 percent of marine
ecosystems are heavily affected by multiple factors. Polar seas are on
the verge of significant change. Coral reefs and continental shelves
have suffered severe deterioration. Additionally, the world ocean is a crucial
factor in the carbon cycle, absorbing approximately a third to a half of the carbon
dioxide released into the atmosphere. The increase in the portion of carbon dioxide
has led to an increase in ocean temperature and a slow drop in the pH of surface
waters—making them more acidic—disrupting shell-forming plankton and reef-
building species. Furthermore, invasive species have negatively affected 84 percent
of the world’s coastal waters—decreasing biodiversity and further undermining
already stressed fisheries.3 Scientific analysis of oceanic systems
presents a sobering picture of the coevolution of human society and
the marine environment during the capitalist industrial era. The
particular environmental problems related to the ocean cannot be viewed as isolated issues or
aberrations of human ingenuity, only to be corrected through further technological development.
these ecological conditions must be understood as they relate to
the systematic expansion of capital and the exploitation of nature for
profit. Capital has a particular social metabolic order—the material interchange between
Rather
society and nature—that subsumes the world to the logic of accumulation. It is a system of selfexpanding value, which must reproduce itself on an ever-larger scale.4 Here we examine the
social metabolic order of capital and its relationship with the oceans to (a) examine the
anthropogenic causes of fish stock depletion, (b) detail the ecological consequences of ongoing
capitalist production in relation to the ocean environment, and (c) highlight the ecological
contradictions of capitalist aquaculture.5
Alt
Imagination
1NC
The alternative is to reject frontiersm and align the ballot with
universal harmony – this avoids the illusion of control that makes
destruction inevitable
Farrer 87 – Professor of Anthropology at California State Chico, Ph.D. Anthropology and
Folklore (Claire, “On Parables, Questions, and Predictions”, Western Folklore, Vol. 46, NO. 4,
October, 1987, JSTOR, pgs. 288-289, RSpec)
We are led to the conclusion that we must
construct a
new mythology , a mythology that partakes
heavily of the old mysticism. The new mythology for a new age suggests that control-by-technique is only
the
illusion of control . Is the natural world really subdued and made to perform when performance knows
no bounds? Those who point us toward the new mythology tell us it is hard to think the unimaginable, even
when it is manifest in its detritus. They tell us of new worlds in- side the formerly smallest units; these are worlds about
which most of us can scarcely dream. They imply that there may be larger worlds be- yond the bounds of
we think we know . They prepare us to kill the old king myth while
crying, "Long Live King Myth!" Young reminds us of the harmony inherent in the world-as-is
and the value some place on the harmony of the self within and with the universe rather
the world
than the mastery of the universe by the self. Ignoring this tenet was part of the motivation that allowed our
EuroAmerican ancestors to "open" the West, the old New Frontier. Seeing ourselves as masters or husbanders, the
EuroAmerican model, leads to very dif- ferent perceptions than does seeing ourselves as a portion of an or- ganic whole, as
exploit and deplete one portion of
Creation when we ourselves are an equal portion . It is as though we hacked off one of our
do most Native Americans. Truly it
becomes senseless to
own limbs to satisfy a growling stomach; perhaps it is satisfying in the short term but totally ruinous in the long one.
When God is displaced from Heaven by our habitations in the heav- ens, will we re-locate sacred space on Earth? Will we
all is
intimately connected and that we are simultaneously being connected
and a part of the connection as well ? Will we demon- strate the truth of many Native American
become more like the Indians of the American Southwest when we, too, come to the real- ization that
philosophies and cosmolo- gies that maintain we live in but a shadow of the real world of Power and the Supernatural?
Will we ever learn what the Zunis state to be true, that inner and outer realities are but segments of each other which we
parse in our minds? The heroine of my parable, Science, never sought to assume the burdens we place upon
her. She merely questioned and tried to ex- plain on the basis of her past knowledge and experience. Yet we deny her
Euro- American realities ; she
must ignore the reality predicated upon dif- ferent premises. She must shoulder the responsibilities not only of
Technology but also, it seems, of Folklore. AND PREDICTIONS Do you listen to the words of contemporary mystics? Do
you hear them saying they can heal through the power of mind and conjoined spirits? Do you listen to the words of various
medical practitioners who are telling us to imagine the cancer gone, or the blood pressure lowered, and it will be?
Bateson5 wrote of mind and nature being a necessary unity, bringing our EuroAmerican vision more in conso- nance with
the significance of experience unless it comes packaged in
If we but imagine it, it can be . Our former Cartesian
dualism is moving toward an isomorphism. But an isomorphism representing what
reality ?
a Native American one.
2NC Ev
The way we think about the frontier mentality shapes reality
Kroll 08 Ph.D., University of Oklahoma, Specialization: History of Science (Gary, “America's Ocean Wilderness: A
Cultural History of Twentieth-Century Exploration”, University Press of Kansas, 2008, Print.)
Frontiers, the wilderness, and the West are all highly ambiguous concepts to use
in systematic histories of space. At various times, and from different view- points, they could be
conceived as regions of extraordinary danger to avoid; places of peril for seekers
of adventure; lands to improve and settle; troves of natural resources and mineral
riches; wildernesses to tame or conquer; land- scapes in need of conservation for
economic growth; a paradise necessary to exploit for human recreation; and
ecosystems to preserve for the health of the natural environment. The definition of the frontier
can include any one or a combination of these objectives, depending on a person's social and
cultural identity. In the final analysis, it can only be said that the frontier is a mental
conception of space that may bear little resemblance to the physical landscape. But
that mental concept is important. It shapes policies such as military ma- neuvers,
settlement patterns, environmental reforms, exploitative industries, social
oppression. and racial inequity. How we think about frontiers can de- fine our
repertoire of behaviors toward these places and toward the organisms that
inhabit them. If we wish to understand the contemporary issues that will clearly
determine the fate of the ocean, then we must also understand how Americans have
come to think about the ocean.
Marx
The alternative is to reject frontierism and endorse a movement of
Marxism – this is the only way to endorse true education and avoid
destruction
McLaren and Faramandpur 99 (Peter – Professor in Critical Studies, College of Educational
Studies, Chapman University, and Ramin, “Critical Pedagogy, Postmodernism and the Retreat
from Class: Towards a Contraband Pedagogy”, Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory,
No. 93, Science and Civilisation, June, 1999, pgs. 89-90, JSTOR, RSpec)
Addicted to its own self-induced adrenaline rush, capitalism's reckless gun-slinging
financial assaults on vulnerable nations has
frontierism and goon squad
brought itself into a naked confrontation with its own
expanding limits, the ne plus ultra extremity of accumulation,
turning it upon itself in a
cannibalistic orgy of self-destruction . The collapse of the former Soviet Union and eastern
European state-sponsored bureaucratic socialism, following in the wake of a speeded-up process of globalisation and its
unholy alliance with neoliberalism,1 has fostered hostile conditions for progressive educators who wish to create
coalitions and social movements that speak to the urgent issues and needs inside and
outside our urban schools. These include growing poverty , racism , and jobless futures for generations of increasingly alienated youth . Confronted by the fancifully adorned avant-garde guises worn by
postmodernists as they enact their wine-and-cheese-party revolution, the education left
is hard- pressed to
make a case for Marx . It has become exceedingly more dif- ficult to mobilise against
capital, which is conscripting the school curriculum and culture into its project of
eternal accumulation . Postmodern theory has made significant contributions to the edu- cation field by
examining how schools participate in producing and reproducing asymmetrical relations of power, and how discourses,
systems of intelligibility, and representational practices continue to support gender inequality, racism, and class
advantage. For the most part, however, postmodernism has failed to develop alternative democratic social models. This is
partly due to its failure to mount a sophisticated and coherent opposition politics against economic exploitation, political
oppression, and cultural hegemony. In its celebration of the aleatory freeplay of signification,
postmodernism exhibits a profound cynicism - if not sustained intellectual contempt - towards what it
Eurocentric Enlightenment project of human progress, equality, justice,
rationality, and truth, a project built upon patriarchal master narratives that can be traced to
regards as the
seventeenth- century European thinkers (Green 1994). Perry Anderson, para- phrasing Terry Eagleton, aptly describes the
phenomenon of post- modernism as follows: Advanced capitalism . . . requires two contradictory systems of justifica- tion:
a metaphysics of abiding impersonal verities - the discourse of sov- ereignty and law, contract and obligation - in the
political order, and a casuistic of individual preferences for perpetually shifting fashions and gratifications of consumption
in the economic order. Postmodernism gives paradoxical expression to this dualism, since while its dismissal of the
centered subject in favor of the erratic swarming of desire colludes with the amoral hedonism of the market, its denial of
any grounded val- ues or objective
truths undermines the prevailing legitimations of the state. (1998: 115)
Framework
Education
Modern relations to the ocean are mystified by a lack of material
relation with the sea. Rather than seeking to respect its importance to
our existence, we fetishize the ocean and remain ignorant to its
function.
Steinberg, 8
(Philip E. Steinberg, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 2008, “Its so Easy Being
Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Accessed:
6/26/14, NC)
In this article, I am proposing that the fascination
with the ocean, expressed in arenas
as diverse as aquarium attendance and White House environmental policy , is
so pervasive because a concern for overuse of the ocean has emerged in tandem
with a complementary (if superficially contradictory) trend: underexposure. Increased
extraction of the ocean's resources has been accompanied by decreased
integration of the ocean's material nature into everyday lives.
Until relatively recently, there likely was a high correlation between one's level of consciousness
of the ocean and the degree to which one encountered it as a space that provided daily sustenance.
For members of households
in coastal communities or on small islands that
earned their livings from the ocean (whether as fishers, sailors, or harvesters of non-fish
resources, or by providing land-based support to these industries), the ocean was a crucial
space of their everyday lives. Others, who lived inland or who lived land-bound
lives in spite of their proximity to the sea,6 were relatively ignorant of the ocean's
existence. In recent decades, however, there has arisen around the world a large
population for whom the sea is crucial for their livelihoods but for
whom it is removed from the experiences of their everyday lives. Today, 11
of the world's 15 largest cities are on the coast or an estuary (Greenpeace no date) and, within the
United States, 10 of the 15largest cities and 53% of the nation's population are located in coastal
counties (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration 2004). Residents of these
burgeoning port cities likely are aware that their cities owe their existence to historic and, in
many cases, continuing economic complexes based on maritime transportation (and often
marine resource extraction as well). How- ever, for the majority of these city dwellers, the ocean,
although ever present, is encountered only as a virtual space: a space of history and
potentialities, an abstract surface to be gazed at and reflected upon or learned
about as a source of civic pride, but not a material space of contemporary social
life (Steinberg 2001).
In short, even as the ocean maintains its role in
national (and local) economies, its
materiality is encountered only by a select and marginal few. This process began
several centuries ago with the denigration of sailors as wild misfits beyond
civilization and it continues to this day with the relocation of container ports to
inaccessible districts on the edges of cities. As a space whose significance is
whose underlying processes and structures are poorly
understood, the ocean has emerged as a site of fetishization. In 19th-
acknowledged but
century Europe, the marine 'other' was a favored space of romantic writers and artists - different,
but proximate enough that one could gaze at its expanse from the safety of an urban harbor or a
beachside villa. The ocean was idealized as beyond society, where a 'pure' nature
could be imagined and recovered and where a 'foreign' exoticism could be
apprehended (Raban 1992).
Discourse Key
Rhetorical focus is key – it underlies the motives for our actions
Farrer 87 – Professor of Anthropology at California State Chico, Ph.D. Anthropology and
Folklore (Claire, “On Parables, Questions, and Predictions”, Western Folklore, Vol. 46, NO. 4,
October, 1987, JSTOR, pgs. 292-293, RSpec)
enabling myths being called
upon yet again to serve political, mercantile, and rhetorical imperatives . Do we really have to
Stoeltje reminds us of the effects of following a failed model and sees our
do busi- ness as usual in our next exploration? Must it also be exploitation? I, for one, want folklorists
and anthropologists, and even mytholo- gists and philosophers, to accompany the engineers and technocrats-not only on
shuttle flights and in those space colonies but also right now in NASA and the Congress. I want in positions of
power those of us who instantly recognize the
motifs and stories we tell ourselves
to justify our actions . Anthropologists and philosophers can alert us to the value in examining the
different and the hypothetical, while folklorists and mythologists are essential to remind us that the Emperor's new
clothes, although surely cut from the finest fabric, are nonetheless brilliantly transparent. We cannot allow those in
power to forget that Science has two hands: one holds fast to Technology; but the other, the other
is
extended ...
Prereq to Prag
Our investigation is critical – understanding our anthropocentric
projections onto the ocean is a pre-requisite to all progressive change
Astro 77 – Distinguished Professor of English at Drexel University, Ph.D. American Literature,
M.A. English, (Richard, “VOYAGES INTO OCEAN SPACE: A VIEW FROM THE HUMANITIES”,
1977, IEEXplore,
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1154360,
RSpec)
If, however, we face what happens when we, like Ahab, confront
Melville's whale , perhaps we
save ourselves and our world . And here is where the humani- ties can be so useful. They
can help us internalize and understand our strengths and our weaknesses , our
designs and our actions . They can help us understand our place within the
"toto-picture " and our feelings of fellowship with all creation . And finally
can
and most specifically, they can help us understand and control the forces which have determined
course of empire and so make safer our continuing voyages into
ocean space .
our
Ontology
Critical evaluation of the ocean unlocks new critical locations from
which to evaluate Being
Blum 13 – Associate Professor of English at Penn State University, Ph.D. English at University of
Pennsylvania (Hester, “Introduction: oceanic studies”, 2013, Atlantic Studies, pg. 152,
http://sites.psu.edu/hester/wp-content/uploads/sites/2509/2013/04/Blum-intro-AtlanticStudies.pdf, RSpec)
shoving off from land- and nation- based perspectives , we might find new
critical locations from which to investigate questions of affiliation , citizenship ,
economic exchange , mobility , rights , and sovereignty . If our perspectives have been
By
repositioned in recent decades to consider history from the bottom up, or the colonizer as seen by the colonized to gesture
would happen if we take the oceans’ nonhuman scale
and depth as a first critical position and principle? While transnational forms of exchange (whether cultural,
to just two critical reorientations then what
political, or economic) have historically taken place via the medium of the sea, relatively
little literary critical
attention has been paid to that medium itself. Oceanic studies finds capacious possibilities for
new forms of relationality through attention to the sea’s properties, conditions, and shaping
or eroding forces.
Line By Line
AT: Generic Frontier Answers
The ocean is subject to a unique discourse of wilderness, which
justifies the frontier myth. Their generic frontier K answers don’t
apply.
Earnest 10 – B.A. and M.A. English at the University of Texas at Arlington (Marykate, “An
Ecocritical Exploration of the Unique Nature of Oceans in The Blazing World”, Early English
Studies, Volume 3, 2010, pgs. 2-3, https://www.uta.edu/english/ees/pdf/earnest3.pdf, RSpec)
oceanic space diverged from standard perceptions of
nature on land (or land-nature) because oceans presented a different type of wilderness . This
environment was uninhabitable and untamable , deviated from traditional
definitions of nature , and made possible a connected, global perspective that conventional conceptions of
I argue that early modern perceptions of
land-nature as apportionable did not support. Deviations of ocean-nature from
land-nature – the inability
to support human steps, the hidden and diverse ecosystem, and the spatial and temporal expanse
that overwhelms the field of vision – facilitated textual representations combining utopian
fantasy, science fiction, and travel narrative. Because oceans defied early modern definitions of nature, they
refused to support the developing mechanistic approach in the same way that land-nature did. Instead, oceanic space
required that travelers and writers retain aspects of an organic paradigm to integrate with those of the scientific revolution
in order to understand and represent the vast and seemingly supernatural nature of oceans.
AT: Not Anthropogenic
Overfishing, deforestation and global warming have put the marine
environment at risk of total collapse
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
Collapse of Coastal Marine Ecosystems The previous examples demonstrate how species
extinction decreases the resiliency of trophic level interactions. Even more problematic,
however, is the
widespread collapse of entire ecosystems resulting from
overfishing. Historical data suggests that species and population declines due to
overfishing are direct preconditions for the collapse of entire coastal ecosystems.
The collapse of whole-scale ecosystems not only threatens the
ecological resiliency of the marine environment, but also disrupts the
human populations that rely on the coastal ecosystem for subsistence
or livelihoods. “Overfishing and ecological extinction predate and precondition
modern ecological investigations and the collapse of marine ecosystems in recent times,
raising the possibility that many more marine ecosystems may be
vulnerable to collapse in the near future .”27 Kelp forests, coral reefs,
seagrass beds, and estuaries are examples of coastal ecosystems that have
collapsed in parts of the world due to overfishing and other forms of
environmental degradation. These ecosystems provide complex habitats for a
multitude of species and often are the foundation of many local fishing communities. For
example, the kelp forests of the Gulf of Maine experienced severe deforestation and widespread
reductions in the number of trophic levels due to the population explosion of sea urchins, the
primary herbivores that eat kelp. The following account details such a sequence of events: Atlantic
cod and other large ground fish are voracious predators of sea urchins. These fishes kept sea
urchin populations small enough to allow persistence of kelp forests despite intensive aboriginal
and early European hook-and-line fishing for at least 5000 years. New mechanized fishing
technology in the 1920s set off a rapid decline in numbers and body size of coastal cod in the Gulf
of Maine….Kelp forests disappeared with the rise in sea urchins due to removal of predatory
fish.28 In other words, industrial fishing operations intensified the exploitation of marine
A number of human activities are
leading to the collapse of coral reefs. Overfishing is one of the causes.
Deforestation is another. Clearing forests leads to muddy rivers filled with sediment, which
moves downstream and smothers coral reefs. But the main force driving massive
destruction of coral reefs is global warming. The increase of carbon dioxide in the
ecosystems, transforming natural conditions.
atmosphere contributes to a warming and increase in the acidity of ocean water. As a result,
multicolored, healthy coral reefs filled with a rich abundance of biodiversity are being bleached
and turned into gray-white skeletons. Without radical changes to the social metabolic order, the
death of the world’s coral reefs could take place within a few decades. When coral reefs die, the
fauna dependent upon them also die.29 Natural conditions, everywhere, are being
transformed by the social metabolic order of capitalism. A general progression of
environmental degradation accompanies this system of growth, creating
ecological crises in the conditions of life.
AT: No Collapse
The biological functions of the ocean are just now being understood,
their evidence doesn’t assume nuances in marine biodiversity.
Clark and Clausen, 8
(Brett Clark teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen
teaches sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, 2008, “The Oceanic Crisis:
Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,”
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-ofmarine-ecosystem, Accessed: 7/29/14, NC)
Marine Metabolism: Biological Richness, Energy Cycles, and Trophic Levels Ecologists now
appreciate the complexity of biological relationships at multiple scales, including
primary productivity, carbon sequestration, and intricate food webs. New light is
being shed on oceanic ecosystems offering an emerging picture of the sea’s metabolism. In
particular, research reveals great complexity and a resultant integrity among trophic level
interactions (food webs) between microscopic organisms, plankton, and larger predators. Ivan
Valiela, a marine biologist, states: No topic within marine ecology and biological
oceanography has changed more…than our notions about components and
structure of planktonic food webs. Knowledge about marine water column food webs has
been considerably enlarged, and made much more complex, by recent findings about the
existence and role of smaller organisms, release and reuse of dissolved organic matter, and
reassessment of the function of certain larger organisms.6 The metabolic interactions
expressed among trophic levels are proving to be the underlying source of great
biological wealth and ocean resiliency. According to marine scientists, “the genetic,
species, habitat, and ecosystem diversity of the oceans is believed to exceed that
of any other Earth system.” For example, ocean environments contain seventeen different
taxa of life forms compared to eleven land-based taxa. Oceans account for 99 percent of the
volume that is known to sustain life—most of which is still unknown. Scientists exploring the
ocean’s middle depths have discovered a host of new species composing
productive ecosystems. The deep-sea bottom, of which little more than 1.5
percent has been explored, has recently been the object of great interest due to its
abundant biodiversity.
Aff Answers
Impact Turns
American frontierism sets the foundation for global democracy
Monten 5 – M.A. Security Studies at Georgetown University, (Johnathan, “The Roots of the
Bush Doctrine: Power, Nationalism, and Democracy Promotion in U.S. Strategy”, International
Security, Volume 29, Number 4, Spring 2005, pgs. 112-156,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ins/summary/v029/29.4monten.html, RSpec)
Although a radical departure in many other respects, the current
U.S. grand strategy's privileging of
liberalism and democracy falls squarely within the mainstream of American diplomatic traditions.
For reasons unique to the American political experience, U.S. nationalism—that is, the factors that define and
differentiate the United States as a self-contained political community—has historically been defined in terms of
universal political ideals and a perceived obligation to
spread those norms internationally . The concept of the United States as agent
of historical transformation and liberal change in the international system therefore
informs almost the entire history of U.S. foreign policy . As Jeanne Kirkpatrick has observed, no
modern idea "holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans than the belief that it
is possible to democratize governments anytime , anywhere , and under
any circumstances ." Or as Thomas Paine wrote to George Washington in the dedication of The Rights of
Man, the United States was founded to see "the New World regenerate the Old." Democracy
promotion is not just another foreign policy instrument or idealist diversion; it is central to U.S.
political identity and sense of national purpose .
both adherence to a set of liberal,
Democracy is good – it solves all impacts
Maiese 3 – M.A. Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Colorado (Michelle, “Social
Structural Change”, July 2003, http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/social-structuralchanges, RSpec)
Today, there is
much
conflict within states, characterized by a general breakdown of
government , as well as economic privation and civil strife.[18] Bad governance is a form of injustice that
must be corrected. Thus, one very broad type of social structural change is state reform and
democratization . State reform must involve more than just reorganization of the administrative system or the
system of resource allocation. These social
structural changes should contribute to the establishment of
democratic development ,
nonviolent and just dispute resolution systems , the participation of
the population , and rule of law .[19] In some cases, parties are chiefly concerned with replacing or
participatory nation-building processes by fostering
altering existing legal and political institutions. Reform of government institutions typically involves measures aimed at
democratization and increased political participation.[20] Societies strive to develop a "workable political
system in which the multiple social groups can participate to their satisfaction."[21] This sort of state
reform has the potential to mitigate and heal the effects of
violent intrastate conflict , as well as
prevent future conflict. One type of structural change is the strengthening of civil society. Civil society involves various
sectors, including the business world, trade unions, women's groups, churches, and human rights activists.[22] In many
alienated from the institutions and practices of governance, and public
institutions are unable to solve social problems.[23] Community relationships and civic life either do not exist or
societies, citizens are
have disintegrated . When civil society is absent or inactive, it is a sign of an oppressive
regime . Many think that strengthening community and civil society is one way to address persistent social
problems such as destructive injustice , poverty , violence , and environmental
degradation .[24] Strong civil society can promote dialogue and reconciliation , foster good
governance, and build peace across cultures .[25] It can also foster the values of caring ,
tolerance , and cooperation , and encourage public discourse and broad participation in the
construction of public policy.[26] People who
care about community are less likely to participate in
mindless development, environmental pollution, and
racial and economic
segregation . Various types of structural reform aim to strengthen community and civil society. These measures
strive to foster public participation and create institutions of governance that can "become vehicles not just for making
and enacting policy decisions but for fostering citizenship."[27] Such measures include forums for meaningful public
engagement, real opportunities for community members to communicate with public officials, and other forms of
inclusive governance.
Only our representations solve the case—frontier imagery is key to motivate space
exploration
GRAY 1999 (D.M., “Space as a frontier - the role of human motivation,” Space Policy, August)
Whether in the striking of a new vein of gold, the invention of a new process or the “Imagineering” of a new space-based communication
industry, the
threshold for primary frontier ignition is usually quite high. The sturdy
prospector/inventor must parlay sweat equity and knowledge of the new discovery into a debtfinanced second generation of development. The products of this effort, if successful, can then be used as collateral for
further investment. This process continues until the energy applied to the resource is of such a scale that the frontier wave becomes selfsustaining and the wealth generated is harvested by the controlling investors. With each successive successful generation of development,
the scale of investment becomes larger. At
each step, the developing frontier resource that cannot justify
additional financing joins the ranks of failed investments. Any developed assets are either abandoned or absorbed
into the holdings of more viable enterprises. The feedback driving an active frontier is economic in nature. Outside investing, more
commonly known as speculation, serves to amplify this feedback. As the scale of outside investment expands, the development of the
frontier resource becomes increasingly directed by the economic needs of the adjacent civilization. However, the efficiency of the
speculative capital when applied to the frontier is affected by the unique nature of the frontier resource and several non-economic
conditions derived from the contact civilization. Each frontier is a unique blend of wilderness resources and the contact society.
Anthropologists have long known that societies
expand and contract thanks to changes in technology, social
systems and ideology. There is no evidence that mankind's expansion into space will be an exception.
These factors affect both the threshold for the sparking of frontier and the speed with which , once
sparked, the frontier advances . Within the realm of the today's society interfacing with the present space frontier these three
environmental conditions can be labeled technology, legislation and charisma (TLC). Technology is the means by which undeveloped
wilderness resources are transformed into a viable frontier industry. Machines and systems enable human economic activity in hostile
wilderness environments. Both mainstream and seemingly trivial technological developments have been adapted for use in historical
frontiers. These frontier enabling technologies can be a new way to chip stone on the African Plains, a windmill to pump water on the
American Plains or ultra-light composite materials to wrap strap-on boosters for expendable rockets. Many wilderness settings with known
resources have had to await technological advances before frontier development could occur. Many oil fields below the ability of historic
drilling technology have had to await the development of new methods of drilling before they could be tapped. Many played-out frontiers
have been rejuvenated by the influx of a new technology. In the American West, many a gold mine was reopened when the new cyanide
process was introduced around the turn of the 20th century. Legislation is the means by which human endeavor in a wilderness is
legitimized and trade to and from the frontier is safeguarded. Since frontiers are areas of economic speculation, frontier participants are
vitally interested in official recognition and protection of their investment. Debt financing, the life-blood of frontier, is simply not possible
until a set of rules is hammered out on all levels of frontier activity. Historic miner courts were nearly always set up as soon as prospectors
realized they had a viable strike. By "ling his claim at one of these miner courts, the prospector protected his investment of capital and sweat
equity from any who would &jump' his claim. Further, the legitimate holding of the claim allowed the miner to approach financial
institutions - whether formal or informal - and use the claim as collateral for the funds for further speculative development. Charisma,
often overlooked in frontier histories and economic plans, is
the motivation that pulls men and women forward
into the wilderness to seek their fortunes. Reasons to participate in frontiers can be as numerous as participants - ranging
from personal desire for wealth to larger ideologies that shape the course of nations. Among the most common reasons to
participate in a frontier is the belief that frontiers offer opportunities no longer available in
civilization. It is this belief that sustains participants through unimaginable hardships and
failures. In the 1840s, families struggling to make a living on too small farms packed their possessions and crossed the North American
continent on the Oregon Trail. Businesses utilize the charisma of frontier to increase profits. From the 1870s through 1890s railroads
promoted rail travel to the American West in crowded cities in the American east and in Europe by advertising the cheap and fertile western
lands. Nations
also utilize frontier issues and ideologies to advance their own agendas. Manifest
Destiny which was a belief that the United States should stretch from sea to sea, was a rallying cry
for those promoting the settlement of Oregon. Without human motivations, there would be little
reason for a frontier participant to work the long hours, face the dangers and assume the risk of a
frontier when economic security can be more easily obtained in the comforts of civilization.
Frontier imagery inspires support for space projects
GRAY 1999 (D.M., “Space as a frontier - the role of human motivation,” Space Policy, August)
Frontiers have an intrinsic appeal not only to nations and investors, but to individuals as well. Daniel Boone sought the
solace of solitude of the wilderness. The Pilgrims were only the first of many groups to escape religious constraints by moving to the
American frontier to set up utopian communities. Talented young men eager to prove their worth, tended to enter into frontiers to make a
name for themselves. Others, with dubious pasts, escaped to the frontier so that they could start life anew with a clean slate. The
reasons for individuals to participate in frontiers are many, but in their basic forms they can be
listed as: freedom, opportunity and adventure. The call of the frontier brings meaning and
challenge to personal lives. It inspires. The chance to live and work in space is a motivator that
has inspired students for four decades. Homer Hickam in the autobiographical movie October Sky found a way out of a
dying West Virginia coal town by following his rocketry interests. Ultimately, he was able to attend college and work for NASA as an
engineer. The motivator is not exclusively American, Franklin ChangDiaz who grew up in Costa Rica followed his dreams
to the USA to graduate from MIT and become an astronaut. He has to date flown on six Shuttle missions.
TERRORISM DA TO THE ALT- they misunderstand the frontier
mentality. The American frontier was a place of unknown wilderness
and individual ignorance. FIGHTING THE MODERN FRONTIER
MENTALITY MEANS GOING HEAD TO HEAD WITH THREATS TO
OUR COUNTRY.
Geyer, 96
(Georgie Anne Geyer, Universal Press Syndicate, August 02, 1996, “Confronting Terrorism Means
Giving Up Frontier Mentality,” http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-0802/news/9608020028_1_american-frontier-overpopulation-iranian, Accessed: 6/30/14, NC)
WASHINGTON — After these weeks of terrorist horror, it may seem odd to think back to a
little-celebrated event of 1893. Could something that happened 103 years ago possibly
be a source of understanding the travails that are tearing at our national sanity
this summer? I think so. For in 1893, the superintendent of the census duly announced that the
United States of America no longer had a continuous line of free, unsettled land visible on the
American horizon. Translated from the bureaucratese, that meant that the American Frontier was
declared "closed." And what a profoundly historic marker that announcement really was.
Frontier historian Frederick Jackson Turner called it the end of "the first period of
American history." For the closing of the frontier--with all that meant in terms of free
land and limitless futures for the ambitious and the foolish alike--marked the end of
America's age of innocence. Its escape valve for the aggressive impulses of its people and for
their creative energies was cranked shut; after that, we had to start struggling to live with
ourselves. But we didn't. Like many peoples facing changes that call for different character
traits than they are used to, we have never quite come to grips with that fact, much less
the reality that today our frontiers are instead closing in upon us. And so
when we have a series of catapulting events such as these that remind us that the world really is
very much with us--the Saudi bombing of American troops, the TWA crash, the Atlanta Olympic
bombing--we not at all unnaturally become unnerved and frightened. What in the world is the
it is bound to get worse before it gets better, if
only because of uncontrolled overpopulation across the world, which
graciously supplies endless numbers of alienated potential terrorists;
because of (my term) a "democratization of weaponry" that is giving
every [person] man everywhere the capacity to become a one-man hit
squad a la the Afghan rebels; and because of passivity and wishful thinking on
the part of the decent governments of the world, most definitely including
ours. Our relationship to the world's overpopulation? We are still haggling over even moderate
world doing here? What's more,
immigration reform, much less discussing the crucial question of who belongs here. (In the past
few weeks, illegal aliens without papers were found working on the president's helicopter pad!).
We refuse to discuss national identity cards (even though every European country has them, and
it paradoxically makes people more free). Etc. Weaponry? This week,
it was revealed
how in March the endlessly creative Iranian government, still deep
into terrorism, was trying to ship a new kind of mortar for use in
Europe. Discovered in an Iranian ship in Belgium, supposedly
transporting cucumbers and garlic, the mortar was inventive because it
could be dismantled into three pieces that were much easier then to hide.
Meanwhile, every nation from Syria to China seems to be avidly getting into the "own your own
It was barely noticed last winter when China, in one of
its recurrent fits of aggressiveness, noted to an American envoy that
its missiles could now hit Los Angeles. Finally, and in the long run most
missile" business.
important, attitude. Is a change of attitude--toward terrorism, toward the world, toward ourselves
and even toward our principles--really going to affect these ominous new realities? Or are we in
truth helpless before this growing anarchization of the world, destined to respond in an ad hoc
fashion, without strategy or coherence, to whatever this newly assertive world decides to render
changing our attitudes will change everything
and, no, we are not helpless unless of course we choose to make
ourselves helpless. The frontier, you see, gave Americans the idea that nothing
ever had to be planned or warded against. You didn't need to anticipate or build
where you were because you could always move on. These attitudes are still with us
unto us? The answers are: Yes,
today, along with the idea that we are an untouchable nation protected by the arms of those two
great oceans, forever and ever, amen. Today, of course, we "know" that missiles can fly from
Beijing to Pasadena, and we "know" that information travels with the speed of light, but we know
those things intellectually, not psychologically and operationally. The sad thing is that, to begin to
confront terrorism and defeat, we don't really need to do much as a nation. We should be today
the single most successful and inspiring nation in history. Yet our definition of ourselves seems to
be the story of TV's "NYPD Blue," where victory is no longer in anybody's vocabulary and the good
guys are always in the corner, courageously fighting but never ever winning. Protecting America
from terrorism means long-term efforts--but also changes in that old frontier mentality. We need
to protect our borders, rationally regulate immigration and refugee status according to our needs,
be civil, and live together with care. We should also punish aggressors instead of sappily
"forgiving" them. We must stop play-acting at conflict (President Clinton and his "economic
wars," the wars of sports heroes, the posturing adversarialness of much of the media) and begin
seriously fighting the real wars.
Policy Action
The status quo is unacceptable and the oceans are at risk from
multiple extinction risks; however, the only way to reverse out
frontier mentality is through specific policy recommendations.
Kirby, 13
(Alex Kirby, Bernard William Alexander Kirby is a British journalist, specializing in
environmental issues. He worked in various capacities at the British Broadcasting Corporation for
nearly 20 years, June, 2003 “US 'has frontier mentality' on oceans,” Accessed: 6/29/14, NC)
In a telling indictment of US marine policy, a group of influential Americans say their
country has lacked the imagination to care properly for its oceans. It has
undertaken the first review of US ocean policy since 1969. It paints a picture of
ignorance, neglect and short-term attempts at policy-making. And it presents a
detailed plan for protecting the seas long into the future. The group is the Pew Oceans
Commission, 18 independent and bi-partisan scientists, government and business leaders and
conservationists. Still time It is chaired by a former White House chief of staff, Leon Panetta, and
its members include Governor George Pataki of New York and Dr Charles Kennel, director of the
Every eight months, nearly 11 million
gallons of oil run off our streets and driveways into our waters - the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
equivalent of the Exxon Valdez oil spill Pew Oceans Commission The commission's report, the
fruit of a three-year study, is America's Living Oceans: Charting A Course For Sea Change. Mr
Panetta said: "For centuries, we have viewed the oceans as beyond our ability to harm and their
There is
consensus that our oceans are in crisis. The good news is that it is not too late
to act." The report says Americans "have reached a crossroads" because of overfishing, coastal
bounty beyond our ability to deplete. "We now know that this is not true...
development, pollution, nutrient runoff, and the ability of alien species to establish themselves off
US coasts. No option but change More than 175 alien invaders have now settled in San Francisco
Bay, and almost a million farmed Atlantic salmon have escaped to the wild off the US west coast
since 1988. Drowned diamondback terrapins NOAA Drowned diamondback terrapins (Image:
Other dangers the report identifies include climate change, with
rising sea-levels damaging wetlands and mangrove forests, coral at
risk of bleaching, and unpredictable changes in ocean and
atmospheric circulation affecting fish stocks. It says: "The root cause of
this crisis is a failure of both perspective and governance. "We have failed to conceive
Noaa)
of the oceans as our largest public domain, to be managed holistically for the greater public good
in perpetuity... We have come too slowly to recognise the interdependence of land and sea."
Believing " the
status quo is unacceptable", the report sets out several
priorities: a unified national policy based on using marine resources sustainably
redirecting fisheries policy towards protecting ecosystems managing coastal
development to minimise habitat damage and loss of water quality controlling
pollution, especially nutrients. The report calls for a national system of fully
protected marine reserves, and for an independent national oceans agency. It
wants funding for basic ocean science and research to be doubled. Alaskan harbour
Deb Antonini/Pew Oceans Commission The commissioners visit Alaska (Image: Deb
Antonini/Pew Oceans Commission) It says the principal US marine laws are "a hodgepodge of
narrow laws", many introduced 30 years ago "on a crisis-by-crisis, sector-by-sector basis" focused
on exploiting the oceans' resources. It says: "We have continued to approach our oceans
with a frontier mentality." The commission paints a vivid picture of the plight of the seas
surrounding the US. Of the fish populations that have been assessed, it says, 30% are overfished
or are being depleted unsustainably. The commissioners say: "Every eight months, nearly 11
million gallons of oil run off our streets and driveways into our waters - the equivalent of the
Exxon Valdez oil spill." They quote President Kennedy: "Knowledge of the oceans is more than a
matter of curiosity. Our very survival may hinge upon it."
Perm
A shift in our relation to the ocean as a piece of humanity does not
preserve it from degredation.
Steinberg, 8
(Philip E. Steinberg, Department of Geography, Florida State University, 2008, “Its so Easy Being
Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Accessed:
6/26/14, NC)
Despite the analytical richness of this alternate perspective, a geographic approach to the
ocean will not, in itself, necessarily lead to attitudes, behaviors, or policies that
value its environmental system over the short-term services that it provides to
humans. There are many places on land that are univer- sally recognized as
spaces within societies but that nonetheless are subjected to environmental
degradation, and there is no guarantee that a geographi- cally informed analysis that views
the ocean as a space (as opposed to it being merely a set of geographically clustered resource
management challenges) will lead to enlightened stewardship. Indeed, one could easily
point to the sales figures for books and documentaries celebrating the mysteries
of the ocean, the attendance figures at attractions like Sea World, and the attention paid to the environmental degradation of the ocean by institutions like
the US Commission on Ocean Policy and the Bush White House and argue that there is no
reason to veer from the present course. Twenty-first- century marine environmentalism,
which combines fears of overuse of marine resources with a lack of actual
exposure to the ocean's material nature, has been remarkably successful in
generating environmental awareness and policies, notwithstanding its analytical
shortcomings.
Criticizing frontier history does nothing without concrete policy solutions—we’re
responsible to the present
GITLIN 2005 (Todd, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, The
Intellectuals and Patriotism, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/git01/)
From the late New Left point of view, then, patriotism meant obscuring the whole grisly truth of
the United States. It couldn’t help spilling over into what Orwell thought was the harsh, dan- gerous, and
distinct phenomenon of nationalism, with its aggres-sive edge and its implication of superiority. Scrub up
patriotism as you will, and nationalism, as Schaar put it, remained “patrio- tism’s bloody brother.”
Was Orwell’s distinction not, in the end, a distinction without a difference? Didn’t his patriotism, while
refusing aggressiveness, still insist that the nation he affirmed was “the best in the world”? What if there was
more than one feature of the American way of life that you did not believe to be “the best in the world”—the
national bravado, the overreach of the marketplace. Patriotism might well be the door through which you
marched with the rest of the conformists to the beat of the national anthem.
Facing these realities, all the left could do was criticize empire and, on the positive side, unearth and
cultivate righteous tradi-tions. The much-mocked “political correctness” of the next aca-
demic generations was a consolation prize. We might have lost politics but we won a lot of the
textbooks.
The tragedy of the left is that, having achieved an unprece-dented victory in helping stop an appalling war,
it then proceeded to commit suicide. The left helped force the United States out of
Vietnam, where the country had no constructive work to do—ei- ther for Vietnam or for itself—but did so at
the cost of discon-necting itself from the nation. Most U.S. intellectuals substituted the pleasures
of condemnation for the pursuit of improvement.
The orthodoxy was that “the system” precluded reform —never mind that the antiwar movement had
already demonstrated that reform was possible. Human rights, feminism, environmentalism—these worldwide initiatives, American in their inception, flowing not from the American Establishment
but from our own American movements, were noises off, not center stage. They
were outsider tastes, the stuff of protest, not national features, the real stuff. Thus when, in the nineties, the
Clinton administra-tion finally mobilized armed force in behalf of Bosnia and then
Kosovo against Milosevic’s genocidal Serbia, the hard left only could smell imperial motives, maintaining
that democratic, anti-genocidal intentions added up to a paper-thin mask.
In short, if the United States seemed fundamentally trapped in militarist imperialism, its
opposition was trapped in the mir-ror-image opposite. By the seventies the outsider stance had
be-come second nature. Even those who had entered the sixties in diapers came to maturity
thinking patriotism a threat or a bad joke. But anti-Americanism was, and remains, a mood and a
metaphysics more than a politics. It cannot help but see practical politics as an illusion, entangled
as it is and must be with a sys-tem fatally flawed by original sin. Viewing the ongoing politics of
the Americans as contemptibly shallow and compromised, the demonological attitude naturally
rules out patriotic attachment to those very Americans . Marooned (often self-marooned) on university
campuses, exiled in left-wing media and other cultural
outposts—all told, an archipelago of bitterness—what sealed it- self off in the postsixties decades
was what Richard Rorty has called “a spectatorial, disgusted, mocking Left rather than a Left
which dreams of achieving our country.”
History can’t be undone—even if the US is responsible for frontier violence, we have
to act in the present
GITLIN 2005 (Todd, professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University, The Intellectuals and
Patriotism, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/git01/)
Indeed, the United States does not have clean hands. We
are living in tragedy, not melodrama. Recognizing the complex
chains of cause and effect that produce a catastrophe is defensible, indeed necessary—up to a point. If only history could be
restarted at one pivotal juncture or another! That would be excellent. But the past is what it is, and the killers are who they are.
Moral responsibility can never be denied the ones who pull the
triggers, wield the knives, push the buttons. And now that fanatical Islamists are at work in real time, whatever causes spurred
them, the question remains: what should the United States do
about thousands of actual and potential present-day killers who
set no limits to what and whom they would destroy? The question is stark and unblinkable. When a cause produces effects and
the effects are lethal, the effects have to be stopped —the citizens
have a right to expect that of their government. To say, as did
many who opposed an invasion of Afghanistan, that the terror
attacks should be considered crimes, not acts of war, yet without
proposing an effective means of punishing and preventing such
crimes, is useless—and tantamount to washing one’s hands of
the matter. But for taking security seriously in the here and now,
and thinking about how to defeat the jihadists, the fundamentalist left had little time, little interest, little hard-headed curiosity—
as little as the all-or-nothing theology that justified war against
any “evildoers” decreed to be such by the forces of good.
Epistemology Correct
Our epistemology is correct – we are wired to transcend boundaries
du Toit 11 – Professor of Science and Religion at the University of South Africa (Cornelius,
“Shifting frontiers of transcendence in theology, philosophy and science”, Vol. 67, No.1, Pretoria,
2011, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S0259-94222011000100045&script=sci_arttext,
RSpec)
A
revised version of transcendence not only affects the existence and nature of an absolutely transcendent
God, but also has
implications for humans as self-transcending and transcendence-oriented beings,
such as fresh insight into our thought processes, philosophies and epistemologies . If crossing
frontiers is a hallmark of human nature , it means we are wired for
transcendence . We not only 'erect' frontiers but also cross them and shift them to accord
with the insights and challenges of our age. Crossing a frontier is not to demolish it but to
shift it – after all, new frontiers keep materialising. To some people God must invariably come to
humankind perpendicularly from 'above' or from some 'beyond'. But we are only able to conceive of transcendence via our
biological equipment. And even when God is perceived as immanently active in this world, he remains transcendent and
the questions are no different from those asked by people who see him as descending from 'above' or 'beyond'. The
question raised by secular transcendence is not what has replaced transcendence – that would mean asking what has
replaced human beings – but how the frontiers of the transcendent have shifted in our global, techno-scientific
dispensation.
The idea of Western imperialism is wrong – criticizing it obscures
oppressive practices of imperial regional powers
Shaw, 2
(Martin Shaw, professor of international relations at University of Sussex, April 7,
2002, “Uses and Abuses of Anti-Imperialism in the Global Era,”
http://www.martinshaw.org/empire.htm, NC)
It is fashionable in some circles, among which we must clearly include the
organizers of this conference, to argue that the global era is seeing 'a new
imperialism' - that can be blamed for the problem of 'failed states' (probably
among many others). Different contributors to this strand of thought name this
imperialism in different ways, but novelty is clearly a critical issue. The logic of
using the term imperialism is actually to establish continuity between
contemporary forms of Western world power and older forms first so named by
Marxist and other theorists a century ago. The last thing that critics of a new
imperialism wish to allow is that Western power has changed sufficiently to
invalidate the very application of this critical concept. Nor have many considered
the possibility that if the concept of imperialism has a relevance today, it
applies to certain aggressive, authoritarian regimes of the nonWestern world rather than to the contemporary West. In this paper I
fully accept that there is a concentration of much world power - economic,
cultural, political and military - in the hands of Western elites. In my recent book,
Theory of the Global State, I discuss the development of a 'global-Western state
conglomerate' (Shaw 2000). I argue that 'global' ideas and institutions, whose
significance characterizes the new political era that has opened with the end of
the Cold War, depend largely - but not solely - on Western power. I hold no brief
and intend no apology for official Western ideas and behaviour. And yet I
propose that the idea of a new imperialism is a profoundly misleading,
indeed ideological concept that obscures the realities of power and
especially of empire in the twenty-first century. This notion is an obstacle to
understanding the significance, extent and limits of contemporary Western
power. It simultaneously serves to obscure many real causes of oppression,
suffering and struggle for transformation against the quasi-imperial
power of many regional states. I argue that in the global era, this separation
has finally become critical. This is for two related reasons. On the one hand,
Western power has moved into new territory, largely uncharted -- and I argue
unchartable -- with the critical tools of anti-imperialism. On the other hand, the
politics of empire remain all too real, in classic forms that recall both modern
imperialism and earlier empires, in many non-Western states, and they are
revived in many political struggles today. Thus the concept of a 'new
imperialism' fails to deal with both key post-imperial features of
Western power and the quasi-imperial character of many nonWestern states. The concept overstates Western power and
understates the dangers posed by other, more authoritarian and
imperial centres of power. Politically it identifies the West as the
principal enemy of the world's people, when for many of them there
are far more real and dangerous enemies closer to home. I shall return to
these political issues at the end of this paper.