Topicality
1. Interpretation: The affirmative must defend the implications of a United States
federal government policy action
Should indicates desirable
Oxford Dictionaries 13 2013 http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/should
Definition of should verb (3rd sing. should) 1used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions:he
should have been careful I think we should trust our people more you shouldn’t have gone indicating
a desirable or expected
state:by now students should be able to read with a large degree of independence used to give or ask advice or suggestions:you should go
back to bed what should I wear? (I should) used to give advice:I should hold out if I were you.
2. Standard and Impact Limits - USFG action is the filter through which we view the topic. If they don’t defend
a desirable action by the federal government then it reframes the debate in a way that
makes the number of actors infinite and the number of potential outcomes infinite
which makes it impossible to engage the affirmative.
Counterplan
Text: Resolved: we stand to affirm the exploration of the earth’s oceans and to allow
the earth’s oceans to explore us.
Beginning with the state merely locks genocide management, makes white supremacy
and extinction inevitable
Rodríguez 10 (Dylan, The Disorientation of the Teaching Act: Abolition as Pedagogical Position, Radical
Teacher, Number 88, Summer 2010, MUSE)
I have had little trouble “convincing” most students—across distinctions of race, class, gender, age, sexuality, and geography—of the gravity
and emergency of our historical moment. It
is the analyti-cal, political, and practical move toward an abolitionist
positionality that is (perhaps predictably) far more challenging. This is in part due to the fraudulent and stubborn default
position of centrist-to-progressive liberalism/reformism (including assertions of “civil” and “human” rights) as the only
feasible or legible response to reactionary, violent, racist forms of state power. Perhaps more troublesome, however, is
that this resistance to engaging with abo- litionist praxis seems to also derive from a deep and broad epistemological and cultural disciplining of
the political imagi- nation that makes liberationist dreams unspeakable. This
disciplining is most overtly produced through
hegemonic state and cultural apparatuses and their rep- resentatives (including elected officials, popular political
pundits and public intellectuals, schools, family units, religious institutions, etc.), but is also compounded through the pragmatic imperatives of
many liberal and progressive nonprofit organizations and social movements that reproduce the political limitations of the nonpro it industrial
complex.22 In this context, the
liberationist historical iden-ti ications hailed by an abolitionist social imagination
also require that such repres-sion of political-intellectual imagination be fought, demysti ied, and displaced.
Perhaps, then, there is no viable or defensible pedagogical position other than an abolitionist one. To live
and work, learn and teach, and survive and thrive in a time deined by the capacity and political willingness to
eliminate and neutralize populations through a culturally valorized, state sanctioned nexus of institutional violence, is
to better understand why abo-litionist praxis in this historical moment is primarily pedagogical, within and against the
“system” in which it occurs. While it is conceivable that in future moments, abolitionist praxis can focus more cen-trally on matters of
(creating and not sim-ply opposing) public policy, infrastructure building, and economic reorganization, the present moment clearly
demands a convening of radical pedagogical ener-gies that can build the collective human power, epistemic
and knowledge appara-tuses, and material sites of learning that are the precondition of authentic and liberatory
social transformations. he prison regime is the institutional-ization and systemic expansion of mas-sive human misery. It is the
production of bodily and psychic disarticulation on multiple scales, across different physi-ological capacities. he prison industrial
complex is, in its logic of organization and its production of common sense, at least proto-genocidal. Finally, the prison regime is
inseparable from—that is, pres-ent in—the schooling regime in which teachers are entangled. Prison is not sim-ply a place to
which one is displaced and where one’s physiological being is disar-ticulated, at the rule and whim of the state and its
designated representatives (police, parole officers, school teachers). The prison regime is the assumptive premise of classroom teaching
generally. While many of us must live in labored denial of this fact in order to teach as we must about “American democracy,” “freedom,” and
“(civil) rights,” there are opportune moments in which it is useful to come clean:
the vast majority of what occurs in U.S.
classrooms—from preschool to graduate school—cannot accommodate the bare truth of the proto-genocidal
prison regime as a violent ordering of the world, a primary component of civil soci-ety/school, and a material
presence in our everyday teaching acts. As teachers, we are institutionally hailed to the service of genocide management, in which our
pedagogical labor is variously engaged in mitigating, valorizing, critiquing, redeeming, justifying, lamenting, and otherwise reproducing or
tolerating the profound and systemic violence of the global-historical U.S. nation build- ing project.
As “radical” teachers, we are
politically hailed to betray genocide man- agement in order to embrace the urgent challenge of
genocide abolition. The short-term survival of those populations rendered most immediately vulnerable to the mundane and
spectacular violence of this system, and the long-term survival of most of the planet’s human population(particularly those
descended from survivors of enslavement, colonization, conquest, and economic exploitation), is signi icantly dependent on our
willing- ness to embrace this form of pedagogical audacity.
Attempts to gain spatial knowledge are projects of sovereign domination
Steinberg 9 (Phillip E. - Department of Geography at Florida State University, “Sovereignty, Territory, and the Mapping of Mobility: A
View from the Outside”, Annals of the Association of American Geographer, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnetpsteinbe/Annals%20Offprint2.pdf, JS)
A key concept here, as stressed by Sahlins (1989), is¶ that the rise of the territorial state is characterized not¶ simply by the
construction of its bounded territory as¶ a homogenous administrative zone (as Sahlins charges¶ that Allies [1980] and Gottman
[1973] emphasize), but `¶ that the territorial state constructs its space as a differentiated set of points that are
amenable to being plotted (and thus manipulated and rationalized) against an abstract spatial grid (see also T.
Mitchell 1991). Historically, the development of technologies and institutions for performing cadastral
mapping and land surveying stand out as mechanisms through which the state has achieved a “bird’seye” view over territory as a means toward achieving social control over people (Bohannan 1964; Kain and
Baigent 1992; Vandergeest and Peluso 1995; Edney 1997; Scott 1998; Biggs 1999). Thus, Biggs (1999) locates the origins of
the territorial state in national surveying efforts of the seventeenth century. As surveyors mapped royal
domains, they graphically noted each village’s affiliation. What had been thought of as a personal
relationship came to be expressed as a territorial relationship, and, at the same time, surveyors imposed a grid of
¶
¶
¶
¶
¶
abstract space over the domain to¶ facilitate mapping. Eventually, these two phenomena¶ associated with surveying converged
in an example of¶ what Pickles (2003) calls “overcoding”: The abstract, geometric space of the map came to define
the lived in space of the state, and the territorial relationship between land and sovereign came to be
seen as predicating the personal relationship between individual and sovereign. Other scholars have further
illustrated the relationship between the way that we hierarchically map¶ space and the way that we hierarchically organize
social relationships. Knowledge of space is a crucial tool for control, and the technologies of mapping (and the¶
underlying assumptions about society and space that enable modern mapping), joined with hierarchical systems for
drawing lines and assigning names, play a crucial role in constructing instruments of sovereign
domination (Akerman 1984, 1995; Carter 1987; Buisseret 1992; Ryan 1996; Edney 1997; Brotton 1998; Burnett 2000; Craib
¶
¶
¶
2000; Hakli 2001; Harley 2001; Pickles 2003; ¨¶ Jacob 2006).4 In short, these scholars emphasize the key role that ¶ the ordering
of space plays in the construction of state¶ territoriality. This is an important advance over a¶ perspective that simply looks at the
bounding of space,¶ but, as Strandsbjerg (2008) notes, these scholars of the¶ cartographic origins of modern state sovereignty
still¶ tend to analyze the state as an isolated unit. Given that¶ the modern institution of sovereignty necessarily exists¶ within a
system of sovereign units, a study of the modern¶ state (or a story of its origins) that works only from the¶ perspective of the
inward-looking aspect of sovereignty¶ cannot be complete. As Taylor (1995) asserts, the starting point of political
geography (and political history) must be a theory of the states rather than a theory of the state. In a similar
vein, geographies and histories of territoriality (or the ordering of space) must examine not just the
“emptiable” and “fillable” space constructed inside the territories of sovereign states but also the spaces
on the outside that are designated as not being amenable to this organization of space. Otherwise, any study of
¶
¶
state territoriality risks falling into the “territorial trap”¶ wherein states are viewed as internally coherent units,¶ existing
ontologically prior to the overall ordering of¶ the state system, and wherein cross-border processes¶ can be viewed only as
“international relations” among¶ these preexisting states (Agnew 1994; see also Sparke¶ 2005).
¶
Case
Impact Debate
1. Their Geronen card indicates that they reject technological enframing of the
environment by rejecting iron fertilization
a) Carbon sequestration through OIF is the best way to combat rapid CO2 and
temperature increases.
Leinen et al 9 (Dr. Margaret Leinen: Chief Science Officer for Climos; Former Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science
Foundation, Kevin Whilden: Director Market Strategy for Climos; M.S. Geology from University of Washington specializing in climate impacts on
polar regions, Dan Whaley: CEO Climos, K. Russell LaMotte: Former Deputy Assistant Legal Adviser, US Department of State, specializing in
ocean law, 3/12/09, Climos, “Why Ocean Iron Fertilization?,” http://www.climos.com/pubs/2009/Climos_Why_OIF-2009-03-12.pdf, ND)
The Fourth Assessment Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that “It is extremely likely
that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750” [Solomon
et al., 2007], and that this “is having a discernible effect on physical and biological systems at the global
scale” [Rosenzweig et al., 2007]. Starting with the Kyoto Protocol, efforts to mitigate these effects have focused on reducing carbon
emissions. Recent international discussions focused on long term targets of about 60-80% reduction in
emissions by the year 2050 with the goal of holding the total warming to 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures
to “limit the impacts of climate change and the likelihood of massive irreversible disruptions of the
global ecosystem” [CEC, 2007]. However, analyses of the proposed emission reduction frameworks suggest that these targets
will be insufficient: e.g., “If a 2.0°C warming is to be avoided [by 2100], direct CO2 capture from the air, together with subsequent
sequestration, would eventually have to be introduced in addition to sustained 90% global carbon emissions reductions by 2050”[Weaver et al.,
2007]. Furthermore,
new observations show that the climate change impacts are already greater than
expected and happening more rapidly than predicted [Tin, 2008]. These changes and the potential for abrupt
changes due to climate feedbacks suggest that it will be necessary to remove atmospheric CO2 as well as reduce
anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in order to avoid even more serious impacts. It is widely accepted that
the terrestrial biological carbon sink can be enhanced to reduce atmospheric CO2 through forestation and
agriculture practices. However, the deep ocean is the single largest reservoir of mobile carbon on the
planet , and ocean phytoplankton (microscopic algae) are responsible for nearly half the annual CO2
exchange and a majority of all carbon sequestered over geologic time. For decades, researchers have studied how the
ocean takes up atmospheric CO2 through the action of phytoplankton that sequester carbon to the deep ocean as they continually bloom, die,
and sink (a process call the “biological pump”). A
large body of oceanographic research (e.g., [Boyd et al., 2007; Martin and
that the availability of iron, a micronutrient essential to
photosynthesis in all plants, limits the growth of phytoplankton in large areas of the ocean. Three decades ago, John
Martin and Steve Fitzwater proposed the “Iron Hypothesis”, i.e. that the deliberate addition of iron to stimulate
phytoplankton growth could mimic the CO2 reduction during glacial maxima measured in ice core
samples [Martin and Fitzwater, 1988]. Since 1993, twelve open ocean experiments have demonstrated that ocean
iron fertilization (OIF) is one method of increasing phytoplankton biomass and, potentially [is]increasing
carbon sequestration. Given the threat posed by rapid climate change and the dominant role of the
biologic pump in the Earth’s carbon cycle, it seems important that we determine conclusively whether the purposeful
Fitzwater, 1988]) and the geologic record [Winckler et al., 2008] indicate
enhancement of oceanic carbon sinks, as well as terrestrial ones, is a possibility that is available to man—and what the impacts of doing so
might be. This document discusses the need for expanded research into OIF, highlights the key research questions, and presents some ideas on
how this research can be conducted in an effective and environmentally responsible manner.
b) Geoengineering is the only way to stop climate change. Their arguments to the
contrary are romantic fantasies.
Allenby 14 (Brad, Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, 2/12/14, Elementa, “Geoengineering redivivus,”
http://www.elementascience.org/article/fetchArticleInfo.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.12952%2Fjournal.elementa.000023#sthash.ztq7
PCVh.dpuf, ND)
In sum, we
are now deep into the process of terraforming this planet. Although we might not like such a
state, it is far too late, and the human species far too large and active, to pretend otherwise. It is not
hubris, or technological fantasy, that drives this realization: it is looking out the window at the world as it is. The response of
falling back on ideological certainties, romantic visions, and over-simplistic worldviews at some point becomes simply a
form of irresponsible denial, because the complexity of the systems within which we are embedded mean
that there is no home base, no golden age to return to — and our network of systems continues to evolve, and to reflect the growing
dominance of human influence. And it will do so regardless of what stories we tell ourselves to try to avoid our responsibilities. What
we
can do is, to the best of our ability, rationally and ethically respond to the challenges we face.
Geoengineering technologies are a part of the technology response that must be developed, but they are
only a part, and as we explore them and their implications we need to be far more sophisticated in how we
think about them as technologies, and manage them as part of an increasingly engineered planet.
c) Multiple reasons continued climate change risks extinction – empirical evidence
proves
Snow and Hannam, 14 (Deborah, Senior Writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter, Sydney Morning Herald writer who covers
broad environmental issues, “Climate change could make humans extinct, warns health expert,” March 31, 2014, Sydney Morning Herald,
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-could-make-humans-extinct-warns-health-expert-2014033035rus.html, AW)
The Earth is warming so rapidly that unless humans can arrest the trend, we risk becoming ''extinct'' as a
species, a leading Australian health academic has warned. Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra,
said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet's history, the rate of
change has never been as fast as it is today. ''What is remarkable, and alarming, is the speed of the
change since the 1970s, when we started burning a lot of fossil fuels in a massive way,'' she said. ''We can't
possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our
extinction eventually.'' Professor Berry is one of three leading academics who have contributed to the health chapter of a
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due on Monday. She and co-authors Tony McMichael, of the Australian National
University, and Colin Butler, of the University of Canberra, have outlined the health risks of rapid global warming in a companion piece for The
Conversation, also published on Monday. The three warn that the adverse effects on population health and social stability have been ''missing
from the discussion'' on climate change. ''Human-driven climate
change poses a great threat, unprecedented in
type and scale, to wellbeing, health and perhaps even to human survival,'' they write. They predict that the
greatest challenges will come from undernutrition and impaired child development from reduced food
yields; hospitalizations and deaths due to intense heatwaves, fires and other weather-related disasters;
and the spread of infectious diseases. They warn the ''largest impacts'' will be on poorer and vulnerable
populations, winding back recent hard-won gains of social development programs. Projecting to an average
global warming of 4 degrees by 2100, they say ''people won't be able to cope, let alone work productively, in the
hottest parts of the year''. They say that action on climate change would produce ''extremely large health benefits'', which would
greatly outweigh the costs of curbing emission growth. A leaked draft of the IPCC report notes that a warming climate would lead to fewer cold
weather-related deaths but the benefits would be ''greatly'' outweighed by the impacts of more frequent heat extremes. Under
a high
emissions scenario, some land regions will experience temperatures four to seven degrees higher than
pre-industrial times, the report said. While some adaptive measures are possible, limits to humans' ability to
regulate heat will affect health and potentially cut global productivity in the warmest months by 40
percent by 2100. Body temperatures rising above 38 degrees impair physical and cognitive functions, while
risks of organ damage, loss of consciousness and death increase sharply above 40.6 degrees, the draft report
said. Farm crops and livestock will also struggle with thermal and water stress. Staple crops such as corn, rice,
wheat and soybeans are assumed to face a temperature limit of 40-45 degrees, with temperature
thresholds for key sowing stages near or below 35 degrees, the report said.
d) Warming reproduces structural violence – the impoverished are hit harder
Barnett 3 (Jon, School of Anthropology, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Melbourne, Security and Climate Change,
Global Environmental Change 13 (2003) 7–17, ScienceDirect)//rh
Following this definition of security, climate change
is a security issue for some nation-states, communities and
individuals. It is a problem that is complex in origin and has uncertain impacts. In the case of atollcountries such as Tuvalu or Kiribati, for example, there is widespread agreement that climate change and associated
sea-level rise threatens the long-term ability of people to remain living on their islands (Barnett and Adger,
2001; Nurse and Sem, 2001; Rahman, 1999; Watson, 2000). In this respect it is the most serious form of environmental
change and the most serious security problem that these countries face. The President of the Federated
States of Micronesia has put this bluntly: ‘‘sea-level rise and other related consequences of climate
change are grave security threats to our very existence as homelands and nation-states.’’ (Falcam, 2001). It is
not just small island states which face climate related security risks. It poses significant risks to the livelihoods, culture and
health of many millions of people in many different social and ecological and contexts; consider Inuit
communities living in the Arctic circle where snow cover is less predictable and thinner ice sheets
restricts hunting, families living on low-lying deltas in Bangladesh increasingly prone to flooding, and
people living in areas prone to invasion by malaria carrying mosquitoes as a function of changed
temperature and rainfall regimes. So. climate changc is a security issue for certain communities and countries. Following on
from this, in so far as its failure Lo rcduce emissions may spell thc end of the functionality of aLoll-countrics. the displacement of
peoples from their homelands, and increased disease and mortality, then the UNFCCC is a critically
important security treaty.
2. Apocalyptic framing is good - motivates environmentalism
Salvador and Norton 11 (Michael Salvador - Michael Salvador is an Associate Professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of
Communication at Washington State University and Todd Norton - Todd Norton is an Assistant Professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of
Communication at Washington State University, “The Flood Myth in the Age of Global Climate Change,” 2/18/11,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2010.544749) Gangeezy
For Killingsworth and Palmer (1996), use
of apocalyptic rhetoric has shifted in response to the changing relationship
between the prevailing paradigm of human domination over nature*limitless American progress through
technology and economic development*and the oppositional environmental paradigm of humans as subject
to nature and in need of ecologically sustainable practices. When this prevailing paradigm was at its zenith, stronger
apocalyptic visions were advanced, as in Rachel Carson’s (1962) Silent Spring. As environmental activism took hold in the public consciousness,
less threatening visions of the Earth’s future were offered, as in Barry Commoner’s (1971) The Closing Circle. Thus, apocalyptic
rhetoric
served as a malleable framework for discussing environmental problems, allowing those concerned to
transform growing awareness of environmental problems ‘‘into acceptance of action toward a solution
by prefacing the solution with a future scenario of what could happen if action is not taken, if the
problem goes untreated’’ (Killingsworth & Palmer, 1996, p. 22).
3. Their rejection of technology reproduces elitism and environmental destruction –
rejecting all technology is doomed to fail
White 96 (Richard, Pulitzer-Prize nominated historian specializing in the history of the American west, environmental history and Native
American history, 10/17/96, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon, Chapter: “Are You an
Environmentalist or do You Work for a Living?: Work and Nature,” http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/White.pdf, ND)
The intellectual, social, and political costs of limiting our choice to these two attitudes toward work and
nature are immense. Condemning all work in nature marks environmentalists, as the Forks bumper sticker
declares, as a privileged leisure class. Approving of archaic work while condemning modern work marks
environmentalists as quaint reactionaries; they seem oblivious to the realities of the modern world.
Environmentalists appeal to history to maintain these positions, but they turn history into just-so-stories. We need to
do better. The choice between condemning all work in nature and sentimentalizing vanishing forms of work is simply
not an adequate choice. I am not interested in replacing a romanticism of inviolate nature with a romanticism of local work. Nor am I
interested in demonizing machines. Environmentalists need to come to terms with modern work. The problem is
not that modern work has been defiled by machines. Women who did much of the backbreaking labor
on American farms before electricity have never, to the best of my knowledge, grown nostalgic for the work of
pumping and carrying water or cleaning clothes on zinc washboards or any of what Senator George Norris of Nebraska called “the
unending punishing tasks” of rural life. Anyone in doubt about the hopes for liberation through machines and the kind
of labor in nature that prompted those hopes should read the literature surrounding rural electrification; it described
the tedium and social cost of this work in graphic detail. Coming to terms with modern work and
machines involves both more complicated histories and an examination of how all work, and not just the
work of loggers, farmers, fishers, and ranchers, intersects with nature. Technology, an artifact of our work,
serves to mask these connections. There are clearly better and worse technologies, but there are no
technologies that remove us from nature. We cannot reject the demonization of technology as an independent source of harm
only to accept a subset of technologies as rescuing us from the necessity of laboring in, and thus harming, nature. We have already been down
this road in the twentieth century. In the twentieth century technology has often become a container for our hopes or our demons. Much
of
the technology we now condemn once carried human hopes for a closer and more intimate tie to nature. Over time
the very same technology has moved from one category to another. Technology that we, with good reason,
currently distrust as environmentally harmful—hydroelectric dams, for example—once carried utopian environmental
hopes. To Lewis Mumford, for instance, damns and electricity promised an integration of humans and nature. Humans were “formed
by nature and [were] inescapably…part of the system of nature.” He envisioned a Neotechnic world of organic machines and
ecological balance. In an ironic and revealing shirt, Mumford’s solution—his liberating technology, his union of humans
and nature—has become redefined as a problem. It is not just that dams, for example, kill salmon; they symbolize the
presence of our labor in the middle of nature. In much current environmentalist writing such blurred boundaries are the mark of our fall.
Nature, many environmentalists think, should ideally be beyond the reach of our labor. But in taking
such a position, environmentalists ignore the way some technologies mask the connections between our
work and the natural world. The idea that pure nature, separate from our work, might no longer exist can
prompt near hysteria. Bill McKibben fashioned a best-seller, The End of Nature, from that possibility. For McKibben global warming
proved the final blow. “We have changed the atmosphere and thus we are changing the weather. By changing the weather, we make every
sport on earth man-made and artificial.” “We have deprived nature of its independence, and that is fatal to its meaning. Nature’s independence
is its meaning; without it there is nothing but us.” Now, nature as I have used it in this essay is only an idea. When
we use the word
“nature,” we assert a unity, a set of relations, and a common identity that involves all the things humans have
not made. Nature is, in this sense, purely cultural. Different cultures produce different versions of nature. Although nature is only an idea, it
is unlike most other ideas in that we claim to see, feel, and touch it. For in everyday speech we use the word not only to
describe a unity of all the things we have not made but also to name a common quality--the natural--possessed
by seemingly disparate things: for example, sockeye salmon, Douglas fir, and cockroaches. When we see rocks, animals, or rivers in certain
settings, we say we are seeing nature. McKibben admits that his nature is only an idea, but that it raises the question of why he is so upset over
the end of an idea. The answer is, I think, that McKibben, like the rest of us,
doesn’t really carry the distinction between
nature as an idea and nature as the living, breathing world around us over into daily life or practice. It is hard to read
his The End of Nature without thinking that he considers our modern, Western construction of nature to be largely congruent with a real world
that is also ending. Most
human beings can, after all, easily accommodate a change in the meaning of a word.
We all change our minds. We don’t often pine for old definitions and ideas. What we miss more are people,
animals, landscapes that have vanished. And if all McKibben is lamenting is the loss of an idea, then he is a man who lives far more deeply in his
head than in the natural world he writes about. It is as if, all the while insisting on the distinction between mothers and motherhood, he
mourned the death of his mother, not, so he claimed, for her own sake, but because the idea of motherhood has for him died with her. To
the extent to which McKibben is upset and not merely being histrionic, it is hard not to suspect that it is
the end of what he regards as the natural world itself that upsets him. Thunderstorms, mountain ranges,
and bears persist, but without the ability to draw a clear line between weather, mountains, animals, and plants and the
consequences of our labor, they have ceased for McKibben to be natural, and we have become unable to “imagine
that we are part of something larger than ourselves.” If McKibben’s angst is widely shared, then the issue of our contamination of
nature is a serious one indeed. For while it is in part the deleterious effects of our labor that McKibben objects
to, it is ultimately the ability of our labor to touch all aspects of the natural world, even the climate, that
dismays him. The popularity of McKibben’s book indicates that for many of us the meaning of the world depends on clear boundaries, pure
categories, and the separation of nature our there from us, our bodies, and our work in here. This is, I think, a common American
reaction to the modern world, and it is worth some notice. This fixation on purity and this distrust of our
own labor—along with our casual, everyday ahistoricism that robs us of any sense of how our current dilemmas
developed—explain at least some of our own inability to deal with mounting environmental problems, bitter
social divisions, and increasing despair about our relations with the rest of the planet.
Framing
1. No prior questions of ontology
a) The USfg has an obligation to reject ontology – theory-driven work creates ivory
tower policy
Owen, 2 – (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7)
Commenting on the ‘philosophical turn’ in IR, Wæver remarks that ‘[a]
frenzy for words like “epistemology” and
“ontology” often signals this philosophical turn’, although he goes on to comment that these terms are often used
loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear that debates concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the
contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect, this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of
disciplinary disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical approaches, and there is
no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse
theoretical positions. Yet, such a philosophical turn is not without its dangers and I will briefly mention three
before turning to consider a confusion that has, I will suggest, helped to promote the IR theory wars by motivating this philosophical turn.
The first danger with the philosophical turn is that it
has an inbuilt tendency to prioritise issues of ontology and
epistemology over explanatory and/or interpretive power as if the latter two were merely a
simple function of the former. But while the explanatory and/or interpretive power of a
theoretical account is not wholly independent of its ontological and/or epistemological commitments (otherwise criticism of
these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on
these philosophical commitments. Thus, for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that
it can provide powerful accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective action
It may, of course, be the case that the advocates of rational choice theory cannot
give a good account of why this type of theory is powerful in accounting for this class of problems (i.e., how it is
that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that approximate the assumptions of rational choice theory) and, if
this is the case, it is a philosophical weakness—but this does not undermine the point that, for a
certain class of problems, rational choice theory may provide the best account available to us. In
other words, while the critical judgement of theoretical accounts in terms of their ontological
and/or epistemological sophistication is one kind of critical judgement, it is not the only or even
necessarily the most important kind. The second danger run by the philosophical turn is that because
prioritisation of ontology and epistemology promotes theory-construction from philosophical
first principles, it cultivates a theory-driven rather than problem-driven approach to IR.
Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there is always a plurality of
possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon, the challenge is to decide
which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on the action, event or phenomenon
in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from this standpoint, ‘theory-driven work is
part of a reductionist program’ in that it ‘dictates always opting for the description that calls for
the explanation that flows from the preferred model or theory’.5 The justification offered for this
strategy rests on the mistaken belief that it is necessary for social science because general
explanations are required to characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms.
However, as Shapiro points out, this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since ‘whether there are
general explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be
prejudged before conducting that inquiry’.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the
promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is that
the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of disciplinary
debate in IR—what might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) ‘the Highlander view’—
namely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite occasional temporary tactical alliances,
are foregrounded.
dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the disciplinary field. It encourages this view because the turn to, and
prioritisation of, ontology and epistemology stimulates the idea that there can only be one
theoretical approach which gets things right, namely, the theoretical approach that gets its
ontology and epistemology right. This image feeds back into IR exacerbating the first and
second dangers, and so a potentially vicious circle arises.
b) An ethical obligation to prevent specific atrocities precedes ontology—the death of
the "other" calls our very being into question
Bulley 4 (Dan, PhD Candidate @ Department of Politics and International Studies--University of Warwick, "Ethics and Negotiation,"
www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/politics/events/aber/ethics%20and%20negotiation%20-%20bulley.doc)
Crucially an openness to justice cannot be an a priori good thing. Indeed, like the future, one can say it can only be “anticipated in the form
of an absolute danger.” As incalculable and unknowable, an unconditional openness to the future-to-come of justice risks the coming of
what he calls the “worst.” The most obvious figures of this “worst,” or, “perverse calculation,” are atrocities such
as genocide,
Nazism, xenophobia, so-called ‘ethnic cleansing.’ These we can and must oppose or prevent. But why?
Why only these? Derrida states that what we can oppose is only those “events that we think obstruct the
future or bring death,” those that close the future to the coming of the other. We can oppose this futurepresent (a future that will be present) coming then on the basis of the future-to-come (a future with no expectation of presence). Or to put
it in terms of the other, we
can oppose those others who prevent our openness to other others. Such was
the ideology of National Socialism in its desire to entirely negate the Jews. We have a duty to
guard against the coming of such a theory or idea. Why? Because such an other closes us to the other; a future that
closes the future. However, if, as Derrida says there is no ultimate way of judging between our responsibility for others, as “Every other
(one) is every (bit) other,” whose calculation can we say is perverse, or the ‘worst’? Why are we responsible to victims rather than the
perpetrators of atrocities if both are equally ‘other’? Who makes this decision and how can it be justified? Levinas suggests that our
“being-in-the-world” our being-as-we-are, is only conceivable in relation to, and because of, the
other. Thus the death of the other calls our very being into question. Ethics in this sense precedes
ontology as our responsibility to the other precedes our own being. We may say then that our
commitment is to those that accept the other as other, that allow the other to be. There is a danger
though that this becomes foundational, treated as a grounding principle outside traditional modernist ethics on which we can build a new
‘theory of ethics’. This is not the value of Derridean and Levinasian thinking however. What makes their different ways of thinking the
other interesting is not that they are absolutely right or ‘true,’ but rather that they take traditional ethical thinking to its limit. Whether or
not a Jewish tradition is privileged over Greek, they remain within the bounds of Western metaphysics. Derrida’s “responsibility [to the
Other] without limits,” does not escape this, establishing itself unproblematically as a ‘ground’ outside traditional thinking. Rather, his
thinking of the ethical shows that we
can think these things differently, while still accepting the exigency to
prevent the ‘worst’. There can be no ultimate foundation for what we think is the worst. And such a foundation cannot come from
outside Western metaphysics. Limit thinking is not an immovable basis for judgement of the worst, and this is why it is so dangerous and
troubling. The non-basis of judgement is rather the desire to stay as open as possible, while recognising that a judgement necessarily
closes. The goal is for our closure to have the character of an opening (closing the future-present to allow the future-to-come), but it
nevertheless remains a closure. And every closure is problematic.
2. The aff’s rejection of “blunt science” rejects the only way that real world
destruction can be prevented
Joe Romm Feb 26, 2012 “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on
Climate” http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-onclimate/?mobile=nc
The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday
messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually
counterproductive! These myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a
serious shot at a climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200
million communications effort (see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so
deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest
studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study
on climate messaging“) The only
time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but
what I’d call blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and
2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth (and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the
public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). You’d think
it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why
they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising
and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the
needle.
3. Claims to moral obligation and ontology undercut political obligation and allow for
violence to occur
Isaac, 2002 (Jeffrey C., James H. Rudy professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life
at Indiana University, Bloomington, “Ends, Means and politics,” Dissent, Spring) – <^.^>
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an
unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally
laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the
purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or
refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such
tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean
conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral
purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why,
from the standpoint of politics— as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In
categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3)
it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the
effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with
“good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of
communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally
important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and
historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not
true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
4. Only consequentialism can resolve conflicting moral values and promote healthy
society
Bailey 97 (James Wood 1997; “Oxford University Press; “Utilitarianism, institutions, and Justice” pg 9 ) Phil Papers
A consequentialist moral theory can take account of this variance and direct us in our decision about whether a
plausible right to equality ought to outweigh a plausible right to freedom of expression. 16 In some circumstances
the effects of pornography would surely be malign enough to justify our banning it, but in others they may be not
malign enough to justify any interference in freedom. I? A deontological theory, in contrast, would be
required either to rank the side constraints, which forbid agents from interfering in the free expression
of others and from impairing the moral equality of others, or to admit defeat and claim that no
adjudication between the two rights is possible. The latter admission is a grave failure since it would
leave us no principled resolution of a serious policy question. But the former conclusion is hardly attractive
either. Would we really wish to establish as true for all times and circumstances a lexical ordering between two
side constraints on our actions without careful attention to consequences? Would we, for instance, really wish to
establish that the slightest malign inegalitarian effect traceable to a form of expression is adequate grounds for an
intrusive and costly censorship? Or would we, alternatively, really wish to establish that we should be prepared to
tolerate a society horrible for women and children to live in, for the sake of not allowing any infringement on the
sacred right of free expression?18 Consequentialist accounts can avoid such a deontological dilemma. In so
doing, they show a certain healthy sense of realism about what life in society is like. In the world outside
the theorist's study, we meet trade-offs at every tum. Every policy we make with some worthy end in
Sight imposes costs in terms of diminished achievement of some other plausibly worthy end.
Consequentialism demands that we grapple with these costs as directly as we can and justify their incurrence. It
forbids us to dismiss them with moral sophistries or to ignore them as if we lived in an ideal world.
Case
--Impact Debate
Geoengineering
Overview
If we win the geoengineering argument then the aff goes away – their warrant for
destruction is that technology is destroying humanity but iron fertilization is a unique
instance in which that technology is capable of decreasing structural and large scale
violence. Their generic cards aren’t responsive in a world where we have specific
solvency evidence.
Impact Overview
The impact is twofold
a) Extinction – warming triggers massive biodiversity collapse because it messes with
plant growth which is the base of the food chain. This means there are cascading
effects throughout global ecosystems. CO2 independantly causes ocean acidification
which means that coral reefs die and fish aren’t able to survive gutting the food chain
in the ocean
b) Structural violence – the aff’s refusal to do anything about warming locks
themselves in their ivory tower. Refusing to solve warming is a refusal to help people
who cannot afford to adapt to quickly increasing sea level rise, food shortages, etc.
This reproduction of structural violence must be rejected.
A2: Geoengineering Bad
1. Allenby card is devastating. He critiques the exact framing of the aff that rejects
things like fertilization on face just because it sounds like some scary technology. Their
evidence does just that.
2. Their evidence is all alarmist – moderate scale OIF proves there are no noticeable
negative environmental effects – means the aff’s wholesale rejection doesn’t allow
empirically proven projects to take place.
Leinen et al 9 (Dr. Margaret Leinen: Chief Science Officer for Climos; Former Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science
Foundation, Kevin Whilden: Director Market Strategy for Climos; M.S. Geology from University of Washington specializing in climate impacts on
polar regions, Dan Whaley: CEO Climos, K. Russell LaMotte: Former Deputy Assistant Legal Adviser, US Department of State, specializing in
ocean law, 3/12/09, Climos, “Why Ocean Iron Fertilization?,” http://www.climos.com/pubs/2009/Climos_Why_OIF-2009-03-12.pdf, ND)
In thinking about the environmental effects of OIF, it is important to make a distinction between the
currently proposed OIF projects (e.g., 100x100km to 200x200km), which we will refer to as moderate scale, and OIF at the scale that
would be necessary as a carbon mitigation strategy (large scale or ‘basin scale’). None of the previous experiments, including
the 50 x 50 EiFEX experiment caused any anoxia or harm to ocean ecology. Concerns raised about environmental harm
from OIF generally imagine potential harm from large-scale deployment of OIF, not from research experiments. As the
Scientific Group of the London Convention (LC-SG) recently noted, even these concerns should be considered “potential”
impacts rather than “likely” impacts” (see Regulatory Concerns section below) [LC-SG, 2008]. Because we are presently concerned
with the research necessary to understand these concerns, we will first discuss potential environmental impacts of the experiments. We will,
however, also discuss potential environmental impacts of large scale OIF and how the moderate scale experiments provide information that will
allow these impacts to be evaluated. With
careful project design, moderate scale OIF experiments are highly
unlikely to have long-term effects on the ocean. The IOC consultative group on OIF observed that if properly designed,
moderate scale OIF would be “benign even though conducted over many thousands of square kilometers”
[IOC, 2008]. The scientific results from these projects are vital to understand the potential effectiveness and
environmental impacts of large scale OIF. For example, moderate scale experiments are necessary to increase our
understanding of chemical effects on the ocean environment, including changes in oxygen, nutrient cycles, biogenic gases, etc. They will also be
required to look at the impact on phytoplankton assemblages, and other components of the food web [IOC, 2008].
A2: We don’t reject that
1. Hold them to the 1AC. We isolated specific warrants in the card and answered
them. Allowing the aff to claim that they don’t defend those warrants justifies aff
conditionality and is a reason that you should make them defend the discourse of the
1AC.
2. Even if you don’t reject it explicitly, your rejection of interacting on a technical level
with nature means that whatever the hell the world of the aff looks like wouldn’t be
able to access that.
3. Your rejection of political institutions means that you can never solve it. The USFG is
key.
Caldeira and Keith 2013 (Caldeira) is a senior scientist in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution in
Stanford, California. Keith is director of the Energy and Environmental Systems Group at the Institute for Sustainable Energy. “The Need for
Climate Engineering Research,” November 27, 2013, http://issues.org/27-1/caldeira/)
Like it or not, a
climate emergency is a possibility, and geoengineering could be the only affordable and fastacting option to avoid a global catastrophe. Climate change triggered by the accumulation of greenhouse gases emitted into the
atmosphere has the potential of causing serious and lasting damage to human and natural systems. At today’s atmospheric concentrations, the
risk of catastrophic damage is slight—though not zero. The risk will probably rise in coming years if atmospheric concentrations continue to
increase. Although not everyone agrees with this assessment, it is supported by the bulk of the scientific evidence. For
the moment, the
United States and other nations are trying to address this risk by controlling emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with mixed success at best. The time may well come, however, when nations judge the risk of
climate change to be sufficiently large and immediate that they must “do something” to prevent further warming. But since “doing something”
will probably involve intervening in Earth’s climate system on a grand scale, the potential for doing harm is great. The
United States
needs to mount a coordinated research program to study various options for mitigating climate change
in order to ensure that damaging options are not deployed in haste. The United Kingdom and Germany have initiated
research programs on such climate intervention technologies, and many U.S. scientists are already engaged in this topic,
funded by a hodgepodge of private funds and the redirection of federal research grants. Some senior managers at federal
agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), and National
Aeronautics and Space Administration would like to initiate research funding, but they cannot act
without political cover, given the understandably controversial nature of the technology. Given the rapid pace at which the
research debate about governance is moving in the United States and abroad, delay in establishing a
federal program will make it progressively harder for the U.S. government to guide these efforts in the
public interest. There is, therefore, a need to establish a coordinated program with deliberate speed. Making an objective
analysis of the economics of CDR systems is one area where cross-cutting research is needed. Of course,
it remains critically important that the United States and other nations continue efforts to reduce
emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Indeed, much deeper cuts are needed. Reducing emissions will require,
first and foremost, the development and deployment of low-carbon–emission energy systems. But even with improved
technology, reducing emissions might not be enough to sufficiently reduce the risk of climate change.
Scientists have identified a range of engineering options, collectively called geoengineering, to address the
control of greenhouse gases and reduce the risks of climate change. One class of geoengineering strategies is carbon
dioxide removal (CDR), which removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere after they have already been released. This approach
may involve the use of biological agents (such as land plants or aquatic algae) or industrial chemical processes to remove CO2 from the
atmosphere. Some CDR operations may span large geographic areas, whereas other operations may take place at centralized facilities
operating in a relatively small area. Another class of strategies is solar radiation management (SRM), which involves a variety of methods for
deflecting sunlight away from Earth or otherwise reducing the levels of solar energy in the atmosphere. These two strategies are radically
different. CDR
seeks to address the underlying cause of the climate problem: elevated greenhouse gas
concentrations.
A2: Science bad
1. Romm card indicates that an outright rejection of science is problematic because it
is all we have. Even if they win that there is some alternative down the road, there are
threats now and our only option is science. Only a risk that the aff goes away from this
system – vote neg on presumption
2. Their rejection is just an excuse for elitism and ivory tower politics – prefer real
action over whatever the aff is.
Apocalyptic Framing
A2: Not our arg
1. Concede this arg – it takes out the whole aff. If the way the status quo frames
problems motivates people for action then there is only a risk that the aff takes away
the motivation for action.
2. They will try to squirm out of this in the 1AR – don’t let them do that. Apocalyptic
rhetoric good was very explicitly in the 1NC. We are winning that which means any
direct 1AR answers are new and should be rejected because the 2AC is the statis point
that we based the block on
A2: Political Action bad
1. Geonengineering proves this wrong – political action is the only thing that can
actually save humanity from ecological destruction. Their argument is just fantasy
2. Political action and security is the only way to mobilize action; prefer specific
evidence
Mazo, 10 – PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental Security
and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010, “Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens
security and what to do about it,” pg. 12-13
The expected consequences of climate change include rising sea levels and population displacement,
increasing severity of typhoons and hurricanes, droughts, floods, disruption of water resources,
extinctions and other ecological disruptions, wild- fires, severe disease outbreaks, and declining crop
yields and food stocks. Combining the historical precedents with current thinking on state stability, internal conflict and state failure
suggests that adaptive capacity is the most important factor in avoiding climate-related instability. Specific global and regional
climate projections for the next three decades, in light of other drivers of instability and state failure, help identify regions and
countries which will see an increased risk from climate change. They are not necessarily the most fragile states, nor
those which face the greatest physical effects of climate change. The global security threat posed by fragile and failing
states is well known. It is in the interest of the world’s more affluent countries to take measures both to
reduce the degree of global warming and climate change and to cushion the impact in those parts of the world where
climate change will increase that threat. Neither course of action will be cheap, but inaction will be costlier. Efficient targeting of the right
kind of assistance where it is most needed is one way of reducing the cost, and understanding how and why different
societies respond to climate change is one way of making that possible.
Tech Good
1. White card is really good on this issue. Some tech is bad for the environment. For
example oil drilling is deadly and should probably stop. Some technology, however, is
good for making us interconnected with nature. They are right that we aren’t
connected in the way that people were in the old days however what “nature” means
has also shifted. Technology is nature now which means the aff cannot overcome it
and their claims to do so reentrench elitism because it makes them a kind of
“privileged leisure class” and they can just say everyone that relies on tech is lesser
than them/isn’t as connected.
2. It turns the aff. Their focus on some sort of “pure” ontological state or being is
impossible and prevents political action. Their aff may have been possible when
Heidegger was alive but in 2014 there are other actions that need to take place in
order to actually solve problems. Their evidence is super generic and should be
rejected.
--Framing Stuff
No Prior Questions
Extensions
1. Owen card was mishandled. In a world where they are defending a plan text
centered around the USFG there is no way that an ontology focus makes sense. –
totalizing theories in the context of the government produce gridlock and inaction.
That means that nothing ever happens in the world of the aff
2. Even if they win that they aren’t the USFG on an individual level ethics should come
before ontology. As the “other” dies it calls who and what we are into question.
Saving the other is saving ourselves. Allowing genocide to happen in the name of
some totalizing metaphysic is ethically unjustifiable
A2: We access ethics/link turns
1. It’s a question of starting points. Subjectivity is shaped historically not theoreticallyfocus on ontology produces mass murder
Philip Graham School of Communication Queensland University of Technology, Heidegger’s Hippies Sep 15
1999 http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html
Societies should get worried when Wagner’s music becomes popular because it usually means that distorted
interpretations of Nietzsche’s philosophy are not far away. Existentialists create problems about what is, especially
identity (Heidegger 1947). Existentialism inevitably leads to an authoritarian worldview: this, my Dionysian world of
the eternally self-creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without
a goal, unless the joy of the circle itself is a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will towards itself – do you want a name for this world? A
solution to all its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men? – This world is the will to
Armed with a
volume of Nietzsche, some considerable oratory skills, several Wagner records, and an existentialist
University Rector in the form of Martin Heidegger, Hitler managed some truly astounding feats of
strategic identity engineering (cf. Bullock, 1991). Upon being appointed to the Freiberg University, Heidegger pronounced the end of
power – and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power – and nothing besides! (Nietzsche 1967/1997).
thought, history, ideology, and civilisation: ‘No dogmas and ideas will any longer be the laws of your being. The Fuhrer himself, and he alone, is
the present and future reality for Germany’ (in Bullock 1991: 345). Heidegger signed up to an ideology-free politics: Hitler’s ‘Third Way’ (Eatwell
1997). The idealised
identity, the new symbol of mythological worship, Nietzsche’s European Superman, was to rule
from that day hence. Hitler took control of the means of propaganda: the media; the means of mental production: the education
system; the means of violence: the police, army, and prison system; and pandered to the means of material production: industry and
agriculture; and proclaimed a New beginning and a New world order. He ordered Germany to look forward into the next thousand years and
forget the past. Heidegger and existentialism remain influential to this day, and history remains bunk (e.g. Giddens , 1991, Chapt.
2).Giddens’s
claims that ‘humans live in circumstances of … existential contradiction’, and that
‘subjective death’ and ‘biological death’ are somehow unrelated, is a an ultimately repressive
abstraction: from that perspective, life is merely a series of subjective deaths, as if death were the
ultimate motor of life itself (cf. Adorno 1964/1973). History is, in fact, the simple and straightforward answer
to the “problem of the subject”. “The problem” is also a handy device for confusing, entertaining, and selling
trash to the masses. By emphasising the problem of the ‘ontological self’ (Giddens 1991: 49), informationalism and
‘consumerism’ confines the navel-gazing, ‘narcissistic’ masses to a permanent present which they selfconsciously sacrifice for a Utopian future (cf. Adorno 1973: 303; Hitchens 1999; Lasch 1984: 25-59). Meanwhile
transnational businesses go about their work, raping the environment; swindling each other and whole
nations; and inflicting populations with declining wages, declining working conditions, and declining
social security. Slavery is once again on the increase (Castells, 1998; Graham, 1999; ILO, 1998). There is no “problem
of the subject”, just as there is no “global society”; there is only the mass amnesia of utopian propaganda, the strains
of which have historically accompanied revolutions in communication technologies. Each person’s identity is, quite simply, their
subjective account of a unique and objective history of interactions within the objective social and
material environments they inhabit, create, and inherit. The identity of each person is their most intimate historical
information, and they are its material expression: each person is a record of their own history at any given time. Thus, each person is a
People are not theoretical entities; they are
people. As such, they have an intrinsic identity with an intrinsic value. No amount of theory or
propaganda will make it go away. The widespread multilateral attempts to prop up consumer society and hypercapitalism as a
recognisably material, identifiable entity: an identity. This is their condition.
valid and useful means of sustainable growth, indeed, as the path to an inevitable, international democratic Utopia, are already showing their
disatrous cracks. The
“problem” of subjective death threatens to give way, once again, to unprecedented
mass slaughter. The numbed condition of a narcissistic society, rooted in a permanent “now”, a blissful
state of Heideggerian Dasein, threatens to wake up to a world in which “subjective death” and ontology
are the least of all worries.
A2: Dasein first
1. Make them explain this to you without big high theory bullshit. Their lack of
warranted analysis in the 2AC is proof that there is no practical application of the
affirmative’s metaphysic/whatever the hell we are gonna call it.
2. Even if they win Dasein first in the abstract, in the context of extinction events
ethics and real world praxis for action should come first.
Macauly 96 (David Macauley, Minding Nature: The philosophers of ecology, 1996 p. 74)
We may approach the issue of what Heidegger may teach today's radical environmentalists by examining an issue about which they and
Heidegger would profoundly disagree. I Heidegger
claimed that there is a greater danger than the destruction of all
life on earth by nuclear war.40 For radical environmentalists, it is hard to imagine anything more dangerous than
the total destruction of the biosphere! Heidegger argued, however, that worse than such annihilation
would he the totally technologized world in which material "happiness" for everyone is achieved, but in
which humanity would be left with a radically constricted capacity for encountering the being of entities.
This apparently exorbitant claim may be partially mitigated by the following consideration. If human existence lost all relationship to
transcendent being, entities could no longer show themselves at all, and in this sense would no longer "be." Who needs nuclear war, Heidegger
asked rhetorically, if entities have already ceased to be? For many environmentalists, such
a question reveals the extent to
which Heidegger remained part of the human-centered tradition that he wanted to overcome. By
estimating so highly human Dasein's contribution to the manifesting of things, Heidegger may well have
underestimated the contribution made by many other forms of life, for which the extinction of
humankind's ontological awareness would be far preferable to their own extinction in nuclear war!
Ontology 1st = Violence
1. This is just a kritik of their absolutist politic. We think that a less radical stance that
acknowledges real world problems is good. That has been a pretty big theme
throughout this speech.
2. Ethics precedes ontology— 2 reasons
a) The criticism is an excuse to avoid action to combat suffering
Edkins 99 (Jenny, lecturer in the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth,
Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In, p. 141)
To enact a repoliticization requires an acceptance of the impossibility of ontological fullness. 7 This
ontological paradox appears in theoretical physics, where two complementary properties of a subatomic particle are mutually exclusive-it is only possible to know
one or the other to the necessary degree of accuracy. This notion of complementarity is reflected in the way "the subject is forced to choose and accept a certain
fundamental loss or impossibility" in a Lacanian act. As Zizek puts it, "My
reflective awareness of all the circumstances which
condition my act can never lead me to act: it cannot explain the fact of the act itself. By endlessly
weighing the reasons for and against, I never manage to act-at a certain point I must decide to `strike
out blindly.-''9 The act has to take place without justification, without foundation in knowledge, without
guarantee or legitimacy. It cannot be grounded in ontology; it is this "crack" that gives rise to ethics:
"There is ethics-that is to say, an injunction which cannot be grounded in ontology in so far as there is a
crack in the ontological edifice of the universe: at its most elementary, ethics designates fidelity to this
crack."90
b) Only through our responsibility to the Other can a radical autonomy emerge
Cochran 99 (Molly, Asst Prof @ Sam Nunn School of International Affairs—Georgia Institute of Technology,
Normative Theory in International Relations, p. 140)
Campbell, on the other hand, puts a different spin on beginning from our day to day practice, which potentially distances him from the 'radical autonomy' position
that can result from Foucauldian poststructuralism. According to Campbell, what follows from a Levinasian position, with the help of Derrida, is a notion of
ethical conduct is a matter of 'how the interdependencies of our relations with
Others are appreciated', such that 'what is transcendent is our embeddedness in a radically
interdependent condition, where we are inescapably responsible to the Other' (Campbell 1996: 131 and 138). Such
'radicalized interdependence':
an ethics is generated from the philosophical implications of one overriding fact about our everyday experience: it is shaped by interdependence (Campbell 1996:
this interdependence is the most compelling aspect of a Levinasian-inspired ethics of
responsibility because, in regard to conflicts such as the Balkan crisis, 'it maintains that there is no
circumstance under which we could declare that it was not our concern' (1994: 462). Thus, the universal
moment of this ethics has an absolute, sovereign quality as well, that we cannot escape this
responsibility, no matter what the circumstances are; and, as a consequence, engagement with the
other is ethically secured. The interdependence which connects our everyday experience is the ground for Campbell's ethics. While Campbell does
131). For Campbell,
not self-consciously acknowledge his own weak foundation, what his ground aims to establish are links or points of connection between persons - the many - which
the radical autonomy position fails to do. 13 However,
this ethics may still reflect an aspect of radical autonomy, since it is
not located in normative structures that we share in local practices and regard as mutually constituting, but in the fact of our
coexistence.
Consequentialism/Util
1. Explain why util is good
2. Answer specific bullshit. Probably cross apply a lot
3. Saving the most lives is not calculative. They deny human dignity by failing to
maximize life
Cummiskey ’96 (David, Associate Philosophy Professor at Bates College, Kantian Consequentialism, p.
129-131)
It does, however, support the consequentialist interpretation. Since the moral demand to respect other persons is based on the equal moral
status of all persons, Kant’s argument presupposes the equal value, or dignity, of all persons. Such beings are comparable, and the comparison
demonstrates the equal objective value of all. The
equal value of all rational being provides a clear basis for a
requirement to maximally promote the flourishing of rational agency (chapter 5). Nonetheless, while the extreme
interpretation must be rejected, the dignity- price distinction still accurately signifies the priority of rationality. If we refuse to sacrifice a person
for the sake of the maximization of happiness or any other market value, then we have shown a “reverence”
for such beings. But as
we shall see more fully in chapter 9, this reverence is compatible with the sacrifice of some for the sake of other
persons with dignity. It is mere dogmatic intuitionism or groundless deontology to insist that all such
sacrifices are inconsistent with the equal dignity of all. At times the dignity principle seems to function like an inkblot where
each sees whatever conclusions he or she is predisposed to accept. If one believes that a particular way of treating people is morally
unacceptable, then such treatment is inconsistent with respect for the dignity of persons. Too often, when a deontologist uses the dignity
principle as a normative principle, the cart is put before the horse: This reasoning presupposes that we have a standard of unacceptable
conduct that is prior to the dignity principle. The dignity principle cannot then provide the reason why the conduct is unacceptable. The goal of
the Kantian deontologist is to (directly) vindicate ordinary commonsense morality; but it is not at all clear how the dignity principle can even
support the intuitive view that the negative duty not to kill is more stringent than the positive duty to save lives. How is the common view that
we have only slight, if any, duties to aid those in desperate need consistent with the lexical priority of the dignity of persons over the price of
the inclinations? Of course, on the one hand, it is commonly maintained that killing some persons to save many others fails to give due regard
to the incomparable and absolute dignity of persons. On the other hand, it is maintained that respect for the dignity of persons does not
require that one spend one’s discretionary income on saving lives rather than on one’s own personal projects. As long as one has done some
minimum and indeterminate amount to help others, then one need not do any more. So the Kantian deontologist wants to use the dignity-price
distinction to resolve conflicting grounds of obligation in an intuitively acceptable way, but it is far from obvious why allowing a loss of dignity
for the sake of something with price is consistent with the dignity principle. In short, ordinary morality permits one to place the satisfaction of
one’s inclinations above a concern for the dignity of all. Consequentialists have produced indirect justifications for many of these common
intuitive judgments; it would seem that those appealing to the dignity principle must rely on similar arguments. Finally, even
if one
grants that saving two persons with dignity cannot outweigh and compensate for killing one—because dignity cannot
be added and summed in this way—this point still does not justify deontological constraints. On the extreme interpretation,
why would not killing one person be a stronger obligation than saving two persons? If I am concerned with the priceless dignity of each, it
would seem that I may still save two; it is just that my reason cannot be that the two compensate for the loss of the one. Consider Hill’s
example of a priceless object: If I can save two of three priceless statutes only by destroying one, then I cannot claim that saving two makes up
for the loss of the one. But similarly, the loss of the two is not outweighed by the one that was not destroyed. Indeed, even if dignity cannot be
simply summed up, how is the extreme interpretation inconsistent with the idea that I should save as many priceless objects as possible?
Even if two do not simply outweigh and thus compensate for the loss of the one, each is priceless; thus, I have
good reason to save as many as I can. In short, it is not clear how the.extreme interpretation justifies the ordinary killing/lettingdie distinction or even how it conflicts with the conclusion that the more persons with dignity who are saved, the better.
Topicality
Limits good. Their kritik doesn’t make sense…. We are just trying to engage the aff
which is inherently vague. Holding them to implementing a specific USFG action
means that we can engage and read international CPs and things like that. Should
solve the aff
Extra T is also a voter – no reason that they should be able to reorient toward the
topic. Justifies affs doing infinite things ABOUT the resolution that aren’t a direct
action of the plan and means we can never gain specific offense which makes it way
harder to be negative.
USFG PIC
Just read some fucking Kappeler cards – starting with a state is bad. The fact that they read a plan
externalizes agency….