1AC
Contention one is overfishing
Current federal policy impedes offshore aquaculture—ensures the US is dependent on
unsustainable sources
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
The United States' attitude toward developing its offshore aquaculture industry must soon mirror its
taste for seafood. The average American eats about sixteen pounds of seafood each year - the third-highest
per-capita consumption rate in the world n221 - yet the nation still imports over 91 percent of its seafood products
from other countries. About half of these products come from foreign aquaculture operations. In order to meet its own demand as well
as become an important player in global seafood production, clearly the United States needs to step up its domestic
aquaculture industry. Marine aquaculture currently accounts for less than 20 percent of domestic aquaculture and predominately
occurs in the state-owned waters close to shore. However, competition for space nearshore, along with technological developments in offshore
facilities, has led to an increased interest in expanding aquaculture to federally regulated waters.
While offshore development has
the potential to increase U.S. aquaculture production, no comprehensive legislative or regulatory
framework to manage such an expansion exists. Instead, multiple federal agencies have authority to
regulate different aspects of offshore aquaculture under a variety of existing laws that were not
designed for this purpose. This spotty supervision does not adequately address the potential
environmental effects of offshore aquaculture and leaves each agency's basis for regulatory authority
vulnerable to challenge. Furthermore, the lack of any federal policy decreases aquaculturists' incentives to take their operations
offshore. Now is the time for the federal government to take the lead in enacting a national and
comprehensive regulatory framework for offshore aquaculture. The creation of such a framework is best
achieved through enactment of new legislation, rather than relying on existing laws. Offshore
aquaculture must be allowed to develop and grow into a thriving part of our domestic economy, but not
at the expense of a healthy ocean.
Off-shore aquacultures are inevitable- having the proper regulatory regime is the only
way to ensure they are sustainable and economic
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
there is nothing smart about the way the United States currently
manages its seafood production. Although the U.S. government has long promoted the health benefits of
products from the sea - even urging Americans to double their seafood intake n2 - it has fallen far behind in
developing a domestic source for this seafood. Currently, the United States relies on an almost primitive
method for domestic seafood production: taking animals found naturally in the wild. However, this approach is no
longer sustainable: most federally managed capture fisheries are either stable or declining, with fortyFish might be considered "brain food,"
n1
but
eight currently overfished, and forty subject to overfishing in 2010.
n3
What seafood the United States does not
in [*683] 2011 the United States imported as much as 91 percent of
its seafood supply. Fortunately, there is a way for the United States not only to ease the pressure on
traditional fisheries - allowing them to recover - but also to provide a significant domestic source of
seafood products: through the development and promotion of its domestic offshore aquaculture industry.
take from its own fisheries it imports;
n4
However, this industry should not be allowed to expand free from regulation, as offshore aquaculture may have serious
This Note recommends that a comprehensive
regulatory framework be put in place now, in advance of the offshore industry's development, to ensure
not only that the industry grows, but also that it does so in an environmentally conscious and
sustainable way. Aquaculture is the farming of shellfish, finfish, and plants in water. n5 Growing sources for protein, instead of taking
consequences for both marine and human environments.
them from the wild, is not a novel concept: humans have been raising their own beef, poultry, and pork ever since they switched from a huntergatherer lifestyle to an agrarian one. Aquaculture has been around for thousands of years, but it has not until recently received much attention
or been actively utilized in many parts of the world. The United States has an even shorter history of aquaculture compared to the global
industry, n6 and has only recently recognized aquaculture's economic potential. Despite its slow start, the
United States has begun to
push toward developing its domestic industry in order to provide jobs and to reduce reliance on foreign
seafood imports. n7 Now, aquaculture is the fastest-growing agricultural sector in the nation. n8
Federal permitting policy makes offshore aquacultures impossible
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
As interest in offshore aquaculture grows, the developmental and technological barriers that were once major
impediments to the industry will disappear. Now, the most significant obstacle is the lack of any clear and
comprehensive regulatory framework to guide the industry's development. n41 An excellent example of this problem is
illustrated by the experience of the Hawaii-based aquaculture corporation Kona Blue. n42 The company, whichfarms all of its yellowtail tuna in open-ocean facilities,
has experienced relative success since 2001. Its high-quality tuna, along with its more "ocean-friendly" farming techniques, has gained support from consumers,
n43environmentalists, n44 and even the U.S. government. n45 [*691] Producing over one million pounds of Kona Kampachi per year, n46 the company increased its
monthly sales by 200 percent in 2007, n47 and in 2009 even served its signature tuna to President Obama and his family. n48 Kona Blue's open-ocean commercial
operations, however, have so far been limited to state waters. Although its first experiment growing fish far offshore yielded a successful harvest, n49 the
company's expansion into the EEZ has encountered significant challenges. According to Kona Blue CEO and cofounder Neil Sims, the
most difficult
aspect of launching a commercial project in federal waters is the permit process. n50 Under existing law, there is
no way to obtain an aquaculture permit for operation in federal waters. Instead, aquaculturists must navigate their way
through a bewildering array of authorities and jurisdictions. Several government agencies have a hand in aquaculture and can
issue permits for their respective responsibilities, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (regulating
fisheries), the Army Corps of Engineers (regulating navigation), the Environmental Protection Agency (water quality), and the Food and
Drug Administration (food safety) - yet no agency has the ultimate authority to issue an aquaculture permit in
federal waters. n51 In fact, it is possible that an agency may simply choose not to become involved in a project's regulation or supervision. One aquaculture
researcher commented that "if you were to submit an application for an aquaculture site in the EEZ, it's possible it
would never be looked at by anyone." n52 At the same time, it is also possible that each [*692] agency could assert
jurisdiction over a different aspect of the operation, resulting in a disjointed and patchy administrative
regime that is both costly and confusing. n53 Without a clear or defined framework that streamlines the
permitting process and clarifies regulatory requirements, aquaculturists like Kona Blue looking to expand offshore seem
to be swimming against the current. n54 A comprehensive federal framework for regulating the offshore
industry is needed to address another significant obstacle inhibiting the industry's growth. As long as the
government fails to put in place a framework that both guides offshore aquaculturists and protects their
exclusive right to farm fish in federal waters, any offshore project is vulnerable to legal challenge. Kona Blue,
the first company to receive a one-year federal permit from the National Marine Fishery Service ("NMFS") to farm fish in the EEZ, dealt with this very challenge in
federal court. In 2011, NMFS was sued by a native Hawaiian nonprofit, KAHEA, and a consumer-rights organization, Food & Water Watch, for issuing a fishing permit
to Kona Blue allowing it to operate its offshore facility in federal waters. n55 Without clear federal oversight of the industry, offshore operators like Kona Blue are
left to defend their projects on a case-by-case basis. For example, Food & Water Watch, a group opposed to all aquaculture activities, has challenged individual
aquaculture operations in court numerous times under various laws. n56 Other opponents ofaquaculture, such as commercial and recreational fishing interests
hoping not to have to compete with aquaculture, have also challenged aquaculture projects under the existing legal scheme. For instance, opponents have lobbied
their respective Regional Fishery Councils, n57 which were created [*693] by the Magnuson-Stevens Act n58 to regulate all fisheries matters in their respective
regions, to keep them from implementing aquacultureprograms. In 2009, aquaculture opponents sued the Gulf of Mexico Regional Fishery Council for implementing
an aquaculture program into its management plan. n59 Opponents have even lobbied their congressional representatives to introduce legislation that would halt all
aquaculture activities in the United States. n60 Without
a comprehensive regulatory framework in place to guide the
offshore industry, the attacks on aquaculture projects in federal waters such as those proposed in the Gulf of Mexico or
launched by Kona Blue will not stop. Aquaculturists must be given the incentives and legal assurances needed to
expand offshore, or else they will move their operations abroad. Indeed, frustrated by the lack of any clear or predictable regulatory or permitting
framework, companies such as Kona Blue are already starting to take their offshore operations overseas. Although most express their wish to stay in U.S. waters,
they admit it makes more sense to move to an area that has clear and predictable management. n61 Indeed, would-be investors and lenders interested in offshore
operations are suspicious of investing in activities in the United States given the industry's uncertain future, and would rather finance foreign operations: U.S.
investors have already contributed to offshore operations in areas off the Caribbean and Latin America. n62 Kona Blue recently chose to expand its operations from
waters [*694] off Hawaii to Mexico; n63 another offshore aquaculturist recently moved his business from U.S. waters off the coast of Puerto Rico to Panama. n64 As
Kona Blue's CEO explained, The concern going forward is the permit pathway ... . If you make it available, [entrepreneurs] will come and make investments.
American entrepreneurs realize an opportunity when they see one. The biggest constraint we hear from them is, "Will we be allowed to scale this [up]? How can we
be sure that we can build an industry here?" n65 Thus, if
the U.S. government wishes to keep its domestic offshore
aquaculture industry afloat, it must focus on revising its current regulatory regime. D. Regulations Needed to
Address Environmental Concerns While a federal regulatory framework is crucial to promoting
the offshore aquaculture industry, it is also needed to create rules and regulations addressing the
extensive environmental concerns associated with such activities.Offshore aquaculture can negatively
impact the marine environment through (1) biological pollution, (2) organic pollution and
eutrophication, (3) chemical pollution, and (4) habitat modification.
The current framework drives fish farms to other countries and guarantees a
Malthusian collapse
Freeza 2012 (Bill; Regulatory uncertainty drives fish farmer to foreign waters; Nov 26;
www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/11/26/regulatory_uncertainty_drives_fish_farmer_to_foreign
_waters_100008.html; kdf)
Feeding 7 billion people is no small challenge. As it has from time immemorial, high quality protein
harvested from the sea plays a major role in avoiding Malthusian collapse. Commercial fishermen bring in a wild
catch of roughly 90 million tons of fish each year, with another 70 million tons coming from aquaculture. The latter number is the one to watch.
While the world's wild fish catch has flattened over the past two decades, with many fishing grounds
facing depletion and certain species being threatened with extinction, fish farming continues to grow at
a sharp clip, doubling over the last decade. This should come as no surprise to anyone who understands the very different economic
incentives that prevail under the tragedy of the commons versus those that yield the bounty produced under private property regimes. Yet
farmed fish still carries a bad rap, both from environmentalists concerned about the pollution caused by on-shore and
near-shore farms, and from food snobs who favor the more robust taste of wild caught fish. Enter a firm called Open Blue, a novel
deep-water fish farm founded by entrepreneur and lifetime fish fancier Brian O'Hanlon. Brian figured that if he could solve the
technology and logistics problems required to anchor a fish farm 10 or 20 miles offshore, where swift
currents carry away and disperse the waste produced by concentrated fish stocks, it would allow the farmed fish
to swim in the same fresh water as their wild cousins-the best of both worlds. Open Blue farms a fish called Cobia, also known as black salmon,
ling, or lemonfish. It's a tasty, fast-growing species especially amenable to being raised under controlled conditions. The
economics are
compelling-a mere 1.85 pounds of feed can yield a pound of Cobia. Compare this to the 2:1 ratio for
poultry and anywhere from 5:1 to 20:1 for cattle, not to mention the thousands of gallons of water it
takes to grow a pound of beef. It took a while to figure out the proper siting, anchoring, and operating parameters required to run a
fish farm so far from shore, but Brian, like any dedicated entrepreneur, was persistent. Resistance from local fishermen slowly turned into
support when they realized they could get steady work delivering feed and materials to the farm sites while transporting harvested fish back to
shore on a scheduled basis. But where
did Brian set up shop, and why? Panama. The reason? Regulations. "Panama has a
small and limited government, which made it easier to navigate the business and permitting process,"
explained Brian. "Deep water fish farming is so new that we wanted to work with agencies that were responsive and flexible. This was just
not possible in the U.S." Getting the required permits and licenses to operate a deep-water fish farm in
the U.S. would require running the gantlet of dozens of federal and state regulatory agencies, some with
overlapping jurisdictions and none with a mandate to lead the process. Agencies would include the Environmental
Protection Agency, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, Food and Drug Administration, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). Regulations that would have to be complied with include the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and
Management Act, Jones Act, OSHA rules, and who knows how many others. Regional Fishery Management Councils and various state agencies
involved in historic preservation and tourism would all have a say. And all of this is before the courts get involved. Setting up deep-water fish
farms in the U.S. would require a hefty budget for defending against lawsuits from NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists and competing onshore and near-shore fish farms, as well as paying an army of lobbyists to fend off opposition from states like Alaska and Maine where fishing
fleet interests have considerable political pull. The cost and uncertainties introduced by dysfunctional crony capitalism, pay-to-play politicians,
and misguided environmental activists would be deadly to any entrepreneur. Hence Panama, which is great for Panamanians, as they get the
jobs, the fish, and the export revenue, but not so great for us. Which is a shame, because the U.S. has the largest federal water zone in the
world, with more ocean area suitable for deep-water fish farming than the country has arable land area. Different fish would have to be
selected suited to the water temperature and conditions found in different regions, but there is no reason why you couldn't grow Cobia in the
Gulf, striped bass up the mid Atlantic Coast, cod and halibut as far north as Maine, and a wide variety of species in the vast stretch between
southern and northern California. That is, if anyone in their right mind would dare to start a business like this in California. NOAA
made
several attempts a decade ago to promote a national aquatic farming initiative that would cut through
the red tape and set up a one-stop-shop for deep-water fish farming permits. Bills were introduced in Congress
twice but were shot down due to opposition from entrenched fishing interests. While this sort of short-term protectionism is
always politically popular, the reality is that domestic fisheries continue to shrink due to catch
limitations. A thriving deep water aquaculture industry could provide sustainable jobs for old fishing
communities, repurposing much of the fishing fleet and dockside infrastructure to handle the new
business. Perhaps someday. As for now, Brian is focused on making his venture a success in a country that still understands the value of
economic freedom.
Starvation kills billions –We have a moral obligation to act
Andre 92 (Claire and Velasquez, Manuel Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Andre and Velasquez are professors
at SCU http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/hunger.html
Spring)
Between now and tomorrow morning, 40,000 children will starve to death. The day after tomorrow, 40,000
more children will die, and so on throughout 1992. In a "world of plenty," the number of human beings
dying or suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and hunger-related diseases is staggering. According to
the World Bank, over 1 billion people—at least one quarter of the world's population—live in poverty.
Over half of these people live in South Asia; most of the remainder in sub-Saharan Africa and East
Asia. Many maintain that the citizens of rich nations have a moral obligation to aid poor nations. First, some
have argued, all persons have a moral obligation to prevent harm when doing so would not cause
comparable harm to themselves. It is clear that suffering and death from starvation are harms. It is
also clear that minor financial sacrifices on the part of people of rich nations can prevent massive
amounts of suffering and death from starvation. Thus, they conclude, people in rich nations have a
moral obligation to aid poor nations. Every week more than a quarter of a million children die from
malnutrition and illness. Many of these deaths are preventable.
The lack of a legal framework will collapse fish stocks and ruin ecosystems, kills the
oceans
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
[*684] Traditionally, U.S. aquaculture farms are located inland, typically in ponds or tanks that grow freshwater fish. However, as Americans come to prefer
products grown in the sea rather than in freshwater - saltwater
shrimp is the number one imported seafood product n9 - marine
aquaculture operations are sure to grow. Most marine farms are currently located nearshore or in state-owned coastal
waters; however, as competition for space near the coast increases, the industry will inevitably move
offshore. n10 Much to the delight of environmentalists and consumers alike, "offshore aquaculture" may also be healthier for
both the marine environment and the human community, as effluents and diseases are more easily diluted and dispersed in the
open ocean than in nearshore sites, which are usually located in bays or other areas with poor circulation. Offshore aquaculture, thus, has
enormous potential in the United States: some proponents even believe we are in the early stages of a
"blue revolution" of offshore aquaculture production. n11At the same time, offshore aquaculture poses a host of
environmental risks, most of which are not properly addressed by current regulatory schemes. One of the
biggest risks is the impact of intentionally or accidentally released farmed fish on native fish populations
and marine ecosystems. Fish escapes can harm native populations by altering the genetic makeup of the wild population
- many farmed fish are genetically modified to grow larger and mature faster - or by transferring diseases and pathogens generated in
the high-density conditions of most farms. And while offshore aquaculture farms may enjoy the benefit of
being located far offshore, making for easier dilution and dispersion of waste discharge, these farms also create
substantial amounts of organic pollution in the form of nutrients which, when released in excess, can harm marine ecosystems in areas with weak currents and poor
circulation. The
use of drugs such as pesticides and antibiotics in offshore fish farms can also endanger the
marine environment: once these chemicals are added to marine farms, they [*685] readily disperse into the marine environment and can impact
nontarget species. The increased use of antibiotics in fish farms can threaten the human environment as well:
overuse has led to an increased resistance in both fish and human bacteria, reducing the effectiveness
of these drugs. Finally, offshore aquaculture farms may harm the marine environment by interfering with
wild animals' use of their natural habitat, displacing wild fish populations, blocking passages for
migrating species, or attracting marine predators. These environmental risks are significant, yet current
federal regulation of offshore aquaculture does not adequately address them - mainly because there is
no specific federal regulatory scheme for offshore aquaculture.
Overfishing destroys the oceans, guarantees global extinction
Sielen 2013 (Alan [Senior Fellow for International Environmental Policy at the Center for Marine
Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography]; The devolution of the seas;
Foreign Affairs. Nov/Dec2013, Vol. 92 Issue 6, p124-132. 9p. 2 Color Photographs; kdf)
Of all the threats looming over the planet today, one of the most alarming is the seemingly inexorable descent of the
world's oceans into ecological perdition. Over the last several decades, human activities have so altered the basic
chemistry of the seas that they are now experiencing evolution in reverse: a return to the barren
primeval waters of hundreds of millions of years ago. A visitor to the oceans at the dawn of time would have found an underwater
world that was mostly lifeless. Eventually, around 3.5 billion years ago, basic organisms began to emerge from the primordial ooze. This microbial soup of algae and
bacteria needed little oxygen to survive. Worms, jellyfish, and toxic fireweed ruled the deep. In time, these simple organisms began to evolve into higher life forms,
resulting in the wondrously rich diversity of fish, corals, whales, and other sea life one associates with the oceans today. Yet that sea
life is now in peril.
Over the last 50 years -- a mere blink in geologic time -- humanity has come perilously close to reversing
the almost miraculous biological abundance of the deep. Pollution, overfishing, the destruction of habitats, and climate change are
emptying the oceans and enabling the lowest forms of life to regain their dominance. The oceanographer Jeremy Jackson calls it "the rise of slime": the
transformation of once complex oceanic ecosystems featuring intricate food webs with large animals into simplistic systems dominated by microbes, jellyfish, and
disease. In effect, humans are eliminating the lions and tigers of the seas to make room for the cockroaches and rats. The prospect of vanishing whales, polar bears,
bluefin tuna, sea turtles, and wild coasts should be worrying enough on its own. But the disruption of entire ecosystems threatens our very survival, since it is the
healthy functioning of these diverse systems that sustains life on earth.
Destruction on this level will cost humans dearly in terms
of food, jobs, health, and quality of life. It also violates the unspoken promise passed from one
generation to the next of a better future. LAYING WASTE The oceans' problems start with pollution, the most visible forms of which are the
catastrophic spills from offshore oil and gas drilling or from tanker accidents. Yet as devastating as these events can be, especially locally, their overall contribution
to marine pollution pales in comparison to the much less spectacular waste that finds its way to the seas through rivers, pipes, runoff, and the air. For example,
trash -- plastic bags, bottles, cans, tiny plastic pellets used in manufacturing -- washes into coastal waters or gets discarded by ships large and small. This debris drifts
out to sea, where it forms epic gyres of floating waste, such as the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which spans hundreds of miles across the North Pacific
Ocean. The most dangerous pollutants are chemicals. The seas are being poisoned by substances that are toxic, remain in the environment for a long time, travel
great distances, accumulate in marine life, and move up the food chain. Among the worst culprits are heavy metals such as mercury, which is released into the
atmosphere by the burning of coal and then rains down on the oceans, rivers, and lakes; mercury can also be found in medical waste. Hundreds of new industrial
chemicals enter the market each year, most of them untested. Of special concern are those known as persistent organic pollutants, which are commonly found in
streams, rivers, coastal waters, and, increasingly, the open ocean. These chemicals build up slowly in the tissues of fish and shellfish and are transferred to the larger
creatures that eat them. Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have linked exposure to persistent organic pollutants to death, disease, and
abnormalities in fish and other wildlife. These pervasive chemicals can also adversely affect the development of the brain, the neurologic system, and the
reproductive system in humans. Then there are the nutrients, which increasingly show up in coastal waters after being used as chemical fertilizers on farms, often
far inland. All living things require nutrients; excessive amounts, however, wreak havoc on the natural environment. Fertilizer that makes its way into the water
causes the explosive growth of algae. When these algae die and sink to the sea floor, their decomposition robs the water of the oxygen needed to support complex
marine life. Some algal blooms also produce toxins that can kill fish and poison humans who consume seafood. The result has been the emergence of what marine
scientists call "dead zones" -- areas devoid of the ocean life people value most. The high concentration of nutrients flowing down the Mississippi River and emptying
into the Gulf of Mexico has created a seasonal offshore dead zone larger than the state of New Jersey. An even larger dead zone -- the world's biggest -- can be
found in the Baltic Sea, which is comparable in size to California. The estuaries of China's two greatest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, have similarly lost their
complex marine life. Since 2004, the total number of such aquatic wastelands worldwide has more than quadrupled, from 146 to over 600 today. TEACH A MAN TO
FISH-THEN WHAT? Another
cause of the oceans' decline is that humans are simply killing and eating too many
fish. A frequently cited 2003 study in the journal Nature by the marine biologists Ransom Myers and
Boris Worm found that the number of large fish -- both open-ocean species, such as tuna, swordfish,
and marlin, and large groundfish, such as cod, halibut, and flounder -- had declined by 90 percent since
1950. The finding provoked controversy among some scientists and fishery managers. But subsequent studies have confirmed that fish populations have indeed
fallen dramatically. In fact, if one looks back further than 1950, the 90 percent figure turns out to be conservative. As historical
ecologists have shown, we are far removed from the days when Christopher Columbus reported seeing large numbers of sea turtles migrating off the coast of the
New World, when 15-foot sturgeon bursting with caviar leaped from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay, when George Washington's Continental army could avoid
starvation by feasting on swarms of shad swimming upriver to spawn, when dense oyster beds nearly blocked the mouth of the Hudson River, and when the earlytwentieth-century American adventure writer Zane Grey marveled at the enormous swordfish, tuna, wahoo, and grouper he found in the Gulf of California. Today,
the human appetite has nearly wiped those populations out. It's no wonder that stocks of large predator
fish are rapidly dwindling when one considers the fact that one bluefin tuna can go for hundreds of
thousands of dollars at market in Japan. High prices -- in January 2013, a 489-pound Pacific bluefin tuna sold for $1.7 million at auction in
Tokyo -- make it profitable to employ airplanes and helicopters to scan the ocean for the fish that remain; against such technologies, marine animals
don't stand a chance. Nor are big fish the only ones that are threatened. In area after area, once the long-lived predatory species, such as tuna and
swordfish, disappear, fishing fleets move on to smaller, plankton-eating fish, such as sardines, anchovy, and herring. T he overexploitation of
smaller fish deprives the larger wild fish that remain of their food; aquatic mammals and sea birds, such
as ospreys and eagles, also go hungry. Marine scientists refer to this sequential process as fishing down
the food chain. The problem is not just that we eat too much seafood; it's also how we catch it. Modern industrial fishing fleets drag lines with thousands of
hooks miles behind a vessel, and industrial trawlers on the high seas drop nets thousands of feet below the sea's surface. In the process, many untargeted species,
including sea turtles, dolphins, whales, and large sea birds (such as albatross) get accidentally captured or entangled. Millions of tons of unwanted sea life is killed or
injured in commercial fishing operations each year; indeed, as much as a third of what fishermen pull out of the waters was never meant to be harvested. Some of
the most destructive fisheries discard 80 to 90 percent of what they bring in. In the Gulf of Mexico, for example, for every pound of shrimp caught by a trawler, over
three pounds of marine life is thrown away. As the oceans decline and the demand for their products rises, marine and freshwater aquaculture may look like a
tempting solution. After all, since we raise livestock on land for food, why not farm fish at sea? Fish farming is growing faster than any other form of food
production, and today, the majority of commercially sold fish in the world and half of U.S. seafood imports come from aquaculture. Done right, fish farming can be
environmentally acceptable. But the impact of aquaculture varies widely depending on the species raised, methods used, and location, and several factors make
healthy and sustainable production difficult. Many farmed fish rely heavily on processed wild fish for food, which eliminates the fish-conservation benefits of
Farmed fish can also escape into rivers and oceans and endanger wild populations by
transmitting diseases or parasites or by competing with native species for feeding and spawning
grounds. Open-net pens also pollute, sending fish waste, pesticides, antibiotics, uneaten food, diseases,
and parasites flowing directly into the surrounding waters. DESTROYING THE EARTH'S FINAL FRONTIER Yet another
factor driving the decline of the oceans is the destruction of the habitats that have allowed spectacular
marine life to thrive for millennia. Residential and commercial development have laid waste to once-wild coastal areas. In particular, humans are
aquaculture.
eliminating coastal marshes, which serve as feeding grounds and nurseries for fish and other wildlife, filter out pollutants, and fortify coasts against storms and
erosion. Hidden
from view but no less worrying is the wholesale destruction of deep-ocean habitats. For
fishermen seeking ever more elusive prey, the depths of the seas have become the earth's final frontier. There, submerged mountain chains called seamounts -numbering in the tens of thousands and mostly uncharted -- have proved especially desirable targets. Some rise from the sea floor to heights approaching that of
Mount Rainier, in Washington State. The steep slopes, ridges, and tops of seamounts in the South Pacific and elsewhere are home to a rich variety of marine life,
including large pools of undiscovered species. Today, fishing vessels drag huge nets outfitted with steel plates and heavy rollers across the sea floor and over
underwater mountains, more than a mile deep, destroying everything in their path. As
industrial trawlers bulldoze their way along, the
surfaces of seamounts are reduced to sand, bare rock, and rubble. Deep cold-water corals, some older
than the California redwoods, are being obliterated. In the process, an unknown number of species from
these unique islands of biological diversity -- which might harbor new medicines or other important
information -- are being driven extinct before humans even get a chance to study them. Relatively new problems
present additional challenges. Invasive species, such as lionfish, zebra mussels, and Pacific jellyfish, are disrupting coastal ecosystems and in some cases have caused
the collapse of entire fisheries. Noise from sonar used by military systems and other sources can have devastating effects on whales, dolphins, and other marine life.
Large vessels speeding through busy shipping lanes are also killing whales. Finally, melting Arctic ice creates new environmental hazards, as wildlife habitats
disappear, mining becomes easier, and shipping routes expand. IN HOT WATER As if all this were not enough, scientists estimate that man-made climate change will
drive the planet's temperature up by between four and seven degrees Fahrenheit over the course of this century, making the oceans hotter. Sea levels are rising,
storms are getting stronger, and the life cycles of plants and animals are being upended, changing migration patterns and causing other serious disruptions. Global
warming has already devastated coral reefs, and marine scientists now foresee the collapse of entire reef systems in the next few decades. Warmer waters drive out
the tiny plants that corals feed on and depend on for their vivid coloration. Deprived of food, the corals starve to death, a process known as "bleaching." At the
same time, rising ocean temperatures promote disease in corals and other marine life. Nowhere are these complex interrelationships contributing to dying seas
more than in fragile coral ecosystems. The oceans have also become more acidic as carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere dissolves in the world's water. The
buildup of acid in ocean waters reduces the availability of calcium carbonate, a key building block for the skeletons and shells of corals, plankton, shellfish, and many
other marine organisms. Just as trees make wood to grow tall and reach light, many sea creatures need hard shells to grow and also to guard against predators. On
top of all these problems, the most severe impact of the damage being done to the oceans by climate change and ocean acidification may be impossible to predict.
The world's seas support processes essential to life on earth. These include complex biological and physical systems, such as the nitrogen and carbon cycles;
photosynthesis, which creates half of the oxygen that humans breathe and forms the base of the ocean's biological productivity; and ocean circulation. Much of this
activity takes place in the open ocean, where the sea and the atmosphere interact. Despite flashes of terror, such as the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of
2004, the delicate balance of nature that sustains these systems has remained remarkably stable since well before the advent of human civilization. But these
complex processes both influence and respond to the earth's climate, and scientists see certain recent developments as red flags possibly heralding an impending
catastrophe. To take one example, tropical fish are increasingly migrating to the cooler waters of the Arctic and Southern oceans. Such changes may result in
extinctions of fish species, threatening a critical food source especially in developing countries in the tropics. Or consider that satellite data show that warm surface
waters are mixing less with cooler, deeper waters. This reduction in vertical mixing separates near-surface marine life from the nutrients below, ultimately driving
down the population of phytoplankton, which is the foundation of the ocean's food chain. Transformations in the open ocean could dramatically affect the earth's
climate and the complex processes that support life both on land and at sea. Scientists do not yet fully understand how all these processes work, but disregarding
the warning signs could result in grave consequences. A WAY FORWARD Governments and societies have come to expect much less from the sea. The base lines of
environmental quality, good governance, and personal responsibility have plummeted. This passive acceptance of the ongoing destruction of the seas is all the more
shameful given how avoidable the process is. Many solutions exist, and some are relatively simple. For example, governments could create and expand protected
marine areas, adopt and enforce stronger international rules to conserve biological diversity in the open ocean, and place a moratorium on the fishing of dwindling
fish species, such as Pacific bluefin tuna. But solutions will also require broader changes in how societies approach energy, agriculture, and the management of
natural resources. Countries will have to make substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, transition to clean energy, eliminate the worst toxic chemicals,
and end the massive nutrient pollution in watersheds. These challenges may seem daunting, especially for countries focused on basic survival. But governments,
international institutions, nongovernmental organizations, scholars, and businesses have the necessary experience and capacity to find answers to the oceans'
problems. And they have succeeded in the past, through innovative local initiatives on every continent, impressive scientific advances, tough environmental
regulation and enforcement, and important international measures, such as the global ban on the dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans. So long as pollution,
overfishing, and ocean acidification remain concerns only for scientists, however, little will change for the good. Diplomats and national security experts, who
understand the potential for conflict in an overheated world, should realize that climate change might soon become a matter of war and peace. Business
leaders should understand better than most the direct links between healthy seas and healthy
economies. And government officials, who are entrusted with the public's well-being, must surely see the importance of
clean air, land, and water. The world faces a choice. We do not have to return to an oceanic Stone Age.
Whether we can summon the political will and moral courage to restore the seas to health before it is
too late is an open question. The challenge and the opportunity are there.
And, overfishing is the root cause of ocean decline
Radar 2014 (Douglas [Environmental Defense Fund's chief ocean scientist, advises our leadership on the scientific aspects of policies and
programs affecting oceans]; Feb 26; www.edf.org/blog/2014/02/26/trending-concern-ocean-health-and-resources-help; kdf)
Last week, a CBS news story highlighting a 2006 study on the decline of oceans' health, was rediscovered and began trending on Facebook.
With the study back in the spotlight, I was delighted to join lead author Dr. Boris Worm on HuffPo Live to discuss the study’s findings and
solutions for improving the state of our oceans. While great strides have been made in the eight years since the study was written, overall
oceans' health continues to decline. Globally, nearly two-thirds of fisheries are in trouble with pollution,
overfishing, and habitat loss all continuing to pose a very real threat to oceans and their resilience in the
face of new threats, including climate change and ocean acidification. Overfishing: The root cause of oceans decline
During our talk, Dr. Worm and I discussed these issues and took a deeper dive into the root cause of oceans decline—overfishing. The
world’s population is rising steadily and is estimated to reach about 8 billion people by 2024 and 9 billion by 2040. As the
population increases, so too does the world’s appetite for seafood. As a result, fish are taken out of the
ocean faster than they can reproduce. This can cause obvious problems up to and including extinction of especially vulnerable
species (thus the catchy but grim headline on the HuffPo story, “Scientists Predict Salt-Water Fish Extinction”). Frankly, extinction is not
the biggest problem. Overfishing reduces the abundance of vulnerable species, but it also alters
ecosystem structure and function, as other species react to the reduced abundance through what ecologists call “ecological
cascades.” Valuable large fish that help maintain stable ocean ecosystems can be replaced by more
opportunistic, “weedy” species. Under severe fishing pressure, the ability of marine food webs to sustain themselves can be
compromised – a real problem with the challenges that lie ahead from climate change. When our oceans suffer, we do too.
Overfishing affects the three billion people around the world who rely on seafood as a source of protein
and millions more that depend on healthy fisheries for their livelihoods. Furthermore, poor management
costs the world’s fisheries $50 billion annually. Programs and resources to help But this isn’t a post of doom and gloom.
There are sustainable fishery management systems that are helping to keep marine ecosystems
balanced, fish on our plates and wages in the pockets of the fishermen and industry workers that rely on
healthy oceans. These management programs are called catch shares. To date there are about 200 programs
managing more than 500 different species in 40 countries. Many studies tout the benefits of catch shares including one worldwide review
which found that catch shares significantly lower the incidence of overfishing compared to conventional management practices. At EDF, we
work to share lessons from these successful programs and develop sustainable fishery managementresources that help fishermen design these
programs. Along the way, we’ve partnered – and become fast friends – with fishermen, as well as NGOs, academics and others who wish to
secure a healthy ocean for future generations to come. We
want the passion and ideas around sustainable fisheries to
go viral.
Plan: The United States federal government should pass the National Sustainable
Offshore Aquaculture Act.
The plan creates a regulatory framework and puts NOAA in charge of offshore
aquacultures—ensures sustainable development
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Because of the concerns expressed above, existing statutes are not adequate bases of authority for implementing a federal regulatory [*715]
framework for offshore aquaculture. Instead, Congress
should enact new legislation that explicitly creates a national
regulatory framework. Below, I will discuss what a proper framework should include and describe previous attempts to implement a
marine aquaculture policy. I will conclude by endorsing the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of
2011 as the ideal piece of legislation to create such a framework. B. What Does an Effective Regulatory Framework
Look Like? In 2003, the Pew Oceans Commission, a bipartisan, independent group of American leaders in science, fishing, conservation,
government, education and business, recommended that Congress implement a "new national marine aquaculture policy based on sound
conservation principles and standards." n180 Five years later, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources
commissioned the Government Accountability Office ("GAO") to research and report to it how to go about developing such a framework. After
meeting with a wide variety of important aquaculture stakeholders and analyzing laws, regulations, and studies, the GAO identified the key
issues that should be addressed in the development of effective regulation. First, the GAO noted that identifying a lead federal agency, as well
as clarifying the roles and responsibilities of other relevant federal agencies, was central to the administration of an offshore aquaculture
program. n181Specifically, most stakeholders identified NOAA as the appropriate lead federal agency because of its expertise in fisheries and
oceans management. n182 Indeed, most scholars and scientists agree that NOAA
is best suited for assuming the role of lead
federal agency due to its long history of managing ocean resources and its unique positioning through
the Regional Fishery Councils to address the user-conflict problems associated with any resource
proposal. As one article put it, "There are obvious impacts on wild capture fisheries and on marine mammals which no other federal agency
could more effectively evaluate." n183 The GAO also recommended that a streamlined permitting system be created to give
offshore aquaculturists the legal right to occupy a given area and to establish terms and conditions for
offshore aquaculture [*716] operations. n184 Stakeholders again agreed that NOAA should be the primary
agency to manage a permitting or leasing program for offshore aquaculture facilities. n185 Another important
aspect of a regulatory framework was some kind of process to ensure proper management of environmental impacts, either by mandating
facility-by-facility environmental review and monitoring, and / or enforcing policies mitigating the potential impacts of escaped fish and
remediating environmental damage. n186 Finally, a regulatory framework must include a federal research component to help fill current gaps
in knowledge about offshore aquaculture. n187 As of 2013, Congress had yet to establish by legislation any such framework. However, this is
not to say that legislators have not tried. Several bills have come before the House that, if enacted, would set up a comprehensive regulatory
framework for offshore aquaculture. So far, Congress has failed to take the bait.
The plan simplifies the regulatory framework by putting NOAA in charge of offshore
fisheries- doing so results in increased review and monitoring—solves the impact
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
The National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act is the ideal legislation for creating a federal
regulatory framework. The bill contains every aspect the GAO recommended that an effective framework must include. First, it creates a
comprehensive framework that integrates the relevant national and state laws and regional ocean
planning and management efforts. n206 This eliminates the patchwork way in which environmental laws
are currently applied to offshore aquaculture, providing regulatory certainty and legitimacy to the industry while also encouraging
collaboration between federal, state, and regional agencies. Second, the Act identifies one federal agency as having primary
regulatory authority over offshore aquaculture, and properly designates NOAA as the lead agency to
ensure environmental protection. n207 The Act also satisfies the third aspect of an effective regulatory
system: a process for environmental review and monitoring. It establishes rigorous environmental standards to guide federal
rulemaking and industry performances. n208 These standards address some of the major environmental concerns
associated with offshore aquaculture, including fish escapes, disease, pollution, chemicals, and impacts
on wildlife and predators. For instance, the Act allows fish to be cultured only if they are native to the local
ecosystem and prohibits the culture of genetically modified species, decreasing the risk of harm to
native fish populations in the event of escape. n209To prevent the incidence of escape, the Act requires that all facilities
"be designed, operated, and shown to be effective at preventing the escape of cultured fish into the
marine environment and withstanding severe weather conditions and marine accidents." n210 Additionally, a
permittee must tag or mark all cultured fish, and in the event of an escape, report the number of escaped
fish and circumstances surrounding the incident to NOAA. n211 To minimize the impact of disease and
pathogens on wild fish stock, the
Act requires that all facilities be designed, located, and [*720] operated to prevent the
incubation and spread of disease and pathogens. n212 It also prohibits the use of antibiotics, pesticides, drugs, and other chemical
treatments except where necessary to treat a diagnosed disease, and in such case only where its use is minimized to the maximum extent practicable and is
approved by the Commissioner of the FDA. n213 The
Act requires that NOAA consult with the EPA and other local and regional
agencies to establish appropriate numerical limitations of nutrient inputs into the marine environment
and that each permittee prevent discharges of pollutants into ocean waters to the maximum event
practicable. n214 Finally, the Act requires NOAA to consult with other federal agencies, coastal states,
Regional Fishery Management Councils, academic institutions, and other interested stakeholders to
establish and conduct a research program for sustainable offshore aquaculture. n215 The program would
inform NOAA "how offshore aquaculture permitting and regulation can adopt a precautionary approach
to industry expansion to ensure ecological sustainability" and help it "develop cost-effective solutions to
the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of offshore aquaculture." n216 This requirement is
consistent with the GAO's recommendation that a framework include a research component. n217
The plan sends a signal that increases commercialization of off-shore aquacultures,
transitioning away from worst forms of fishing
Cates 2010 (Randy [Member, Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce];
U.S. Open Ocean Fish Farming: Are We There Yet?; Marine Technology Society Journal; Vol 44, No 3;
kdf)
It is clear that America should not
rely on imports to meet its growing demand for seafood. Interference with
international supplies can occur for a variety of reasons, including political, economic, bureaucratic, and food safety concerns. Domestic
marine aquaculture, particularly sustainable commercial farming in the EEZ, is one means to provide
significant increases in supply. However, the fledgling offshore industry and potential investors in it are
languishing because of government indecision and the uncertainties of the political process. This
situation prevails despite the very pertinent policy and planning for marine aquaculture already
completed and adopted by the NOAA as well as candidate legislation introduced in the Congress by the
previous administration and members to implement expanded development and a permitting and leasing program for the EEZ. These efforts
stalled in large part because of concerns expressed by certain environmental and consumer advocacy groups. Open ocean aquaculture has its
steadfast detractors in the nongovernmental organization community. However, I believe that both the recent
scientific research and
the real-world farming experience in Hawaii, in the United States, and elsewhere, when accurately analyzed, clearly indicate
that commercial farms can be properly sited, monitored, and managed with minimal or no impacts. What
lessons can be taken away from this brief review of the Hawaii offshore aquaculture experience and progress nationally? There are several I want
to emphasize: ■ Hawaii offers a model permitting and leasing process that should be studied to help develop a national process for enabling
commercial aquaculture development in federal waters. ■ Facilitating development of largescale, commercial-scale demonstration projects in a
timely manner can provide additional real-world data from which siting criteria and standards can be better addressed, formulated, and fine tuned.
To do so, the
United States needs to rapidly develop a permitting and leasing process to allow the siting,
operation, and monitoring and oversight of commercial farms in the EEZ. ■ Federal funding for increased marine
aquaculture research and development is needed to move the industry forward. A regional approach to funding is suggested with the diverse
potentials available for marine aquaculture. The R&D focus should be on technological constraints to offshore aquaculture and improving farm
economic performance rather than on environmental questions, where extensive data and understanding already exist and which can be better
studied with operating farms. If increased federal R&D funding is not available, then private sector investment should be facilitated. ■
Tackling the expansion of marine aquaculture technology into the EEZ must be a multidisciplinary team
effort, with collaboration and cooperation among government, university, and private sector expertise.
In addition, the siting process should include ample opportunity for stakeholder input to discuss and resolve issues before a farm begins
operation. ■ Lastly, let us not “reinvent the wheel” and spend a great deal of time considering new policy language, plans, and actions. The
previous NOAA planning efforts and the comprehensive, long-term research agenda already developed with the involvement of industry provide
an excellent foundation for moving forward. The groundwork has been laid to rapidly decide on a new policy that leads to a revitalized, new
course of action for U.S. marine aquaculture development and commercial farming of the EEZ. The bottom line for expanding commercial
marine farming is that there will be a learning curve. We have seen this in Hawaii, and we know it occurs with all new technologies. Helping
ensure the long-term stability of U.S. seafood supplies by greater domestic marine aquaculture production is a priority issue for the economy and
the health and wellbeing of the American people.
Everyone involved with producing, distributing, selling, and
consuming seafood, the majority of theU.S. population, should be concerned that supplies are going to
be adequate in the next 10 to 20 years. Putting in place a positive NOAA policy now, one that facilitates
meaningful progress, will allow marine aquaculture to grow and the private sector to begin farming the EEZ. An
effective national policy followed by significant action and investment can rapidly move U.S. open ocean aquaculture up the learning curve to a
global leadership position.
A shift to offshore aquacultures is inevitable- only a federal framework ensures this
occurs in a precautionary and sustainable way
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
II. WHY REGULATE NOW?
Prompt regulation of offshore aquaculture is needed for several reasons. As demand for seafood
continues to increase, it is imperative that aquaculture supplements the U.S. domestic seafood supply.
However, traditional U.S.aquaculture farms are no longer adequate: farms located inland or in coastal
waters must compete more and more for space not only with commercial fishermen, but also with
those wishing to use these waters for recreational purposes. Thus, aquaculture will inevitably
move offshore from state-controlled to federally controlled waters. However, without a clear and
comprehensive regulatory framework giving aquaculturists the incentives or legal assurances to operate
in federal waters, developers are discouraged from taking their operations offshore. At the same time,
the lack of any comprehensive regulatory framework has allowed some of the environmental risks
ofoffshore aquaculture to go unchecked. Regulations are needed, then, to ensure not only that the
industry is developed, but that it does so in a sustainable and precautionary way.
Contention two: framing
Don’t preference war impacts- it is a poor form of scholarship—such sloppy
intellectualism drives a false sense of insecurity
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.295-6; kdf)
You would think that the disappearance of the gravest threat in the history of humanity would bring a
sigh of relief among commentators on world affairs. Contrary to expert predictions, there was no
invasion of Western Europe by Soviet tanks, no escalation of a crisis in Cuba or Berlin or the Middle East to a
nuclear holocaust! The cities of the world were not vaporized; the atmosphere was not poisoned by
radioactive fallout or choked with debris that blacked out the sun and sent Homo sapiens the way of the
dinosaurs. Not only that, but a reunified Germany did not turn into a fourth reich, democracy did not go the way of
monarchy, and the great powers and developed nations did not fall into a third world war but rather a long peace,
which keeps getting longer. Surely the experts have been acknowledging the improvements in the world's fortunes
from a few decades ago. But no-the pundits are glummer than ever! In 1989 John Gray foresaw "a return to
the classical terrain of history, a terrain of great power rivalries ... and irredentist claims and wars."2 A New York
Times editor wrote in 2007 that this return had already taken place: "It did not take long [after 1989] for the gyre
to wobble back onto its dependably blood-soaked course, pushed along by fresh gusts of ideological violence and
absolutism."' The political scientist Stanley Hoffman said that he has been discouraged from teaching his course on
international relations because after the end of the Cold War, one heard "about nothing but terrorism, suicide
bombings, displaced people, and genocides." 4 The pessimism is bipartisan: in 2007 the conservative writer
Norman Podhoretz published a book called World War IV (on "the long struggle against Islamofascism"), while the
liberal columnist Frank Rich wrote that the world was a more dangerous place than ever."5 If Rich is correct, then
the world was more dangerous in 2007 than it was during the two world wars, the Berlin crises of 1949 and 1961,
the Cuban Missile Crisis, and all the wars in the Middle East. That's pretty dangerous. Why the gloom? Partly it's
the result of market forces in the punditry business, which favor the Cassandras over the Pollyannas. Partly
it arises from human temperament: as David Hume observed, "The humour of blaming the present, and
admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endowed with the
profoundest judgment and most extensive learning." But mainly, I think, it comes fron1 the innumeracy of
our journalistic and intellectual culture. The journalist Michael Kinsley recently wrote, "It is a crushing
disappointment that Boomers entered adulthood with Americans killing and dying halfway around the world, and
now, as Boomers reach retirement and beyond, our country is doing the same damned thing."6 This assumes that
5,ooo Americans dying is the same damned thing as 58,ooo Americans dying, and that a hundred thousand Iraqis
being killed is the same damned thing as several million Vietnamese being killed. lf we don't keep an eye on the
numbers, the programming policy "If it bleeds it leads" will feed the cognitive shortcut "The more
memorable, the more frequent," and we will end up with what has been called a false sense of
insecurity.'
Nuclear war will never occur—instead of preferring false hype look at systemic
impacts
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.249-50; kdf)
Zero is the number of times that nuclear weapons have been used in conflict. Five great powers
possess them, and all of them have waged wars. Yet no nuclear device has been set off in anger. It's
not just that the great powers avoided the mutual suicide of an all-out nuclear war. They also avoided using the
smaller, "tactical" nuclear weapons, many of them comparable to conventional explosives, on the battlefield or in
the bombing of enemy facilities. And the United States refrained from using its nuclear arsenal in the late 194os
when it held a nuclear monopoly and did not have to worry about mutually assured destruction. I've been
quantifying violence throughout this book using proportions. If one were to calculate the amount of
destruction that nations have actually perpetrated as a proportion of how much they could
perpetrate, given the destructive capacity available to them, the postwar decades would be many
orders of magnitudes more peaceable than any time in history. None of this was a foregone conclusion.
Until the sudden end of the Cold War, many experts (including Albert Einstein, C. P. Snow, Herman Kahn, Carl
Sagan, and Jonathan Schell) wrote that thermonuclear doomsday was likely, if not inevitable.137 The
eminent international studies scholar Hans Morgenthau~ for example, wrote in 1979, "The world is moving
ineluctably towards a third world war-a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to
prevent it."'38 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, according to its Web site, aims to "inform the public and
influence policy through in-depth analyses, op-eds, and reports on nuclear weapons." Since 1947 it has published
the famous Doomsday Clock, a measure of "how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction-the figurative
midnight." The clock was unveiled with its minute hand pointing at 7 minutes to midnight, and over the next sixty
years it was moved back and forth a number of times between 2 minutes to midnight (in 1953) and 17 minutes to
midnight (in 1991). In 2007 the Bulletin apparently decided that a clock with a minute hand that moved two
minutes in sixty years was due for an adjustment. But rather than tuning the mechanism, they redefined midnight.
Doomsday now consists of "damage to ecosystems, flooding, destructive storms, increased drought,
and polar ice melt." This is a kind of progress.
Case Debate
Inherency
Fish Demand up
The demand for fish is increasing—new sites needed
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
While domestic
aquaculture can play an important role in U.S. seafood production, nowhere is this
potential more significant than in the offshore sector. Currently, the domestic aquaculture industry is
dominated by the production of freshwater fish: of the 5 percent of the U.S. seafood supply that is attributed to aquaculture,
only 20 percent occurs in saltwater. n28 Indeed, freshwater species such as catfish and trout account for the vast majority of seafood raised in
U.S. fish farms. n29 Yet, demand for freshwater fish may change as Americans' tastes evolve. In 2011, for instance, the United States' main
seafood import was shrimp (measured at 1.3 billion pounds and valued at $ 5.2 billion), which grows in saltwater. n30 Several other marine
species made up a significant portion of U.S. imports, including salmon ($ 1.9 billion) and tuna ($ 568 million). n31 Furthermore, while catfish
consumption in the United States increased only 63 percent [*689] from 1987 to 2006, salmon consumption increased a whopping 359 percent.
n32 Demand for marine aquaculture products will therefore contribute to the shift from land-based aquaculture operations to marine projects.
At the same time, the
growing marine aquaculture industry will have to compete for high-quality sites in the
nearshore and coastal waters typically selected for marine farms. Competition for space and use of these
state-owned waters with those wishing to use these areas for recreational activities, wildlife protection,
or shipping operations will only intensify, n33 making offshore sites more and more appealing. And, although
such offshore operations are often more expensive because they require more durable facilities to withstand storms and surges, new
technology and interest in the industry will make this industry increasingly lucrative. Due
to improved technology, increasing
experience, and economies of scale, costs will shrink and the economic potential for offshore
aquaculture will grow. n34
Aquaculture development limited
Development is currently limited- the plan is a prerequisite to further development
and investment
Corbin 10 [John S. Corbin; Guest Editor and President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC;
“Sustainable U.S. Marine Aquaculture Expansion, a Necessity”; May/June 2010; Marine Technology
Society Journal; Volume 44; Number 3; JW]
In recent years, the scientific literature has contained numerous dire and controversial descriptions of the increasing decline of the oceans’ well
documented, finite yield of seafood and its essential contribution to human nutritional wellbeing. Important marine ecosystems
and fish populations may in fact be exhaustible, or at the least damaged beyond recovery by human
activity (Myers and Worm, 2003; Pauly and Palomares, 2005; Pauly, 2009). Evidence indicates that many of the world’s
major fisheries are being pushed beyond sustainable yields by excessive fishing pressure and over
stressed by loss of critical habitat through pollution, natural and manmade disasters, and the emerging
specter of the impacts of global climate change (Mora et al., 2009; Food and Agriculture Orga nization [FAO], 2009a; FAO,
2009b). Expansion of capture fishery supplies for a fishhungry world is deemed unlikely by most scientists, and aquaculture
is widely viewed as one solution (albe it a partial solution) to increase global seafood availability to meet the inevitable
growth in demand from an expanding population (FAO, 2009b).¶ Despite these awakening realizations and the potentially
highly disruptive impacts on the American seafood industry, U.S. domestic aquaculture development in recent years
has slowed and currently contributes very little to American seafood consumption. U.S. scientists,
government policy makers, and a diverse array of stakeholders (proponents and opponents) continue to debate the
desirability of investing in expanding domestic sources of sea food through marine aquaculture and
aquacultureenhanced fisheries in the face of the complex economic and social challenges facing America today (U.S. Department of Commerce
[USDOC], 2007).¶ In this unsettling climate, it is timely to consider the recent history and current status of American seafood consumption and
supply and review projected product needs and the issues in meeting those needs in the next 10 to 20 years. The growing importance of the
culture of macroalgae (seaweed) and microalgae to future world seafood and energy supplies must be noted; however, these sources are not
primary topics in this discussion (Forster, 2008; Roesijadi et al., 2008). Fortunately, the United States has a diverse and experienced domestic
fishing industry and a fledgling marine aquaculture sector on which to craft solutions. Ongoing discussions by the federal government and
Congress are also reviewed in the context of America’s expansive ocean resources in its enormous Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The
major issues constraining the greater ocean use for expanded and sustainable domestic seafood
production are discussed, and recommendations for immediate action are considered.
Permitting=Barrier
Federal permitting policy makes offshore aquacultures impossible
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
As interest in offshore aquaculture grows, the developmental and technological barriers that were once major
impediments to the industry will disappear. Now, the most significant obstacle is the lack of any clear and
comprehensive regulatory framework to guide the industry's development. n41 An excellent example of this problem is
illustrated by the experience of the Hawaii-based aquaculture corporation Kona Blue. n42 The company, whichfarms all of its yellowtail tuna in open-ocean facilities,
has experienced relative success since 2001. Its high-quality tuna, along with its more "ocean-friendly" farming techniques, has gained support from consumers,
n43environmentalists, n44 and even the U.S. government. n45 [*691] Producing over one million pounds of Kona Kampachi per year, n46 the company increased its
monthly sales by 200 percent in 2007, n47 and in 2009 even served its signature tuna to President Obama and his family. n48 Kona Blue's open-ocean commercial
operations, however, have so far been limited to state waters. Although its first experiment growing fish far offshore yielded a successful harvest, n49 the
company's expansion into the EEZ has encountered significant challenges. According to Kona Blue CEO and cofounder Neil Sims, the
most difficult
aspect of launching a commercial project in federal waters is the permit process. n50 Under existing law, there is
no way to obtain an aquaculture permit for operation in federal waters. Instead, aquaculturists must navigate their way
through a bewildering array of authorities and jurisdictions. Several government agencies have a hand in aquaculture and can
issue permits for their respective responsibilities, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (regulating
fisheries), the Army Corps of Engineers (regulating navigation), the Environmental Protection Agency (water quality), and the Food and
Drug Administration (food safety) - yet no agency has the ultimate authority to issue an aquaculture permit in
federal waters. n51 In fact, it is possible that an agency may simply choose not to become involved in a project's regulation or supervision. One aquaculture
researcher commented that "if you were to submit an application for an aquaculture site in the EEZ, it's possible it
would never be looked at by anyone." n52 At the same time, it is also possible that each [*692] agency could assert
jurisdiction over a different aspect of the operation, resulting in a disjointed and patchy administrative
regime that is both costly and confusing. n53 Without a clear or defined framework that streamlines the
permitting process and clarifies regulatory requirements, aquaculturists like Kona Blue looking to expand offshore seem
to be swimming against the current. n54 A comprehensive federal framework for regulating the offshore
industry is needed to address another significant obstacle inhibiting the industry's growth. As long as the
government fails to put in place a framework that both guides offshore aquaculturists and protects their
exclusive right to farm fish in federal waters, any offshore project is vulnerable to legal challenge. Kona Blue,
the first company to receive a one-year federal permit from the National Marine Fishery Service ("NMFS") to farm fish in the EEZ, dealt with this very challenge in
federal court. In 2011, NMFS was sued by a native Hawaiian nonprofit, KAHEA, and a consumer-rights organization, Food & Water Watch, for issuing a fishing permit
to Kona Blue allowing it to operate its offshore facility in federal waters. n55 Without clear federal oversight of the industry, offshore operators like Kona Blue are
left to defend their projects on a case-by-case basis. For example, Food & Water Watch, a group opposed to all aquaculture activities, has challenged individual
aquaculture operations in court numerous times under various laws. n56 Other opponents ofaquaculture, such as commercial and recreational fishing interests
hoping not to have to compete with aquaculture, have also challenged aquaculture projects under the existing legal scheme. For instance, opponents have lobbied
their respective Regional Fishery Councils, n57 which were created [*693] by the Magnuson-Stevens Act n58 to regulate all fisheries matters in their respective
regions, to keep them from implementing aquacultureprograms. In 2009, aquaculture opponents sued the Gulf of Mexico Regional Fishery Council for implementing
an aquaculture program into its management plan. n59 Opponents have even lobbied their congressional representatives to introduce legislation that would halt all
aquaculture activities in the United States. n60 Without
a comprehensive regulatory framework in place to guide the
offshore industry, the attacks on aquaculture projects in federal waters such as those proposed in the Gulf of Mexico or
launched by Kona Blue will not stop. Aquaculturists must be given the incentives and legal assurances needed to
expand offshore, or else they will move their operations abroad. Indeed, frustrated by the lack of any clear or predictable regulatory or permitting
framework, companies such as Kona Blue are already starting to take their offshore operations overseas. Although most express their wish to stay in U.S. waters,
they admit it makes more sense to move to an area that has clear and predictable management. n61 Indeed, would-be investors and lenders interested in offshore
operations are suspicious of investing in activities in the United States given the industry's uncertain future, and would rather finance foreign operations: U.S.
investors have already contributed to offshore operations in areas off the Caribbean and Latin America. n62 Kona Blue recently chose to expand its operations from
waters [*694] off Hawaii to Mexico; n63 another offshore aquaculturist recently moved his business from U.S. waters off the coast of Puerto Rico to Panama. n64 As
Kona Blue's CEO explained, The concern going forward is the permit pathway ... . If you make it available, [entrepreneurs] will come and make investments.
American entrepreneurs realize an opportunity when they see one. The biggest constraint we hear from them is, "Will we be allowed to scale this [up]? How can we
be sure that we can build an industry here?" n65 Thus, if
the U.S. government wishes to keep its domestic offshore
aquaculture industry afloat, it must focus on revising its current regulatory regime. D. Regulations Needed to
Address Environmental Concerns While a federal regulatory framework is crucial to promoting
the offshore aquaculture industry, it is also needed to create rules and regulations addressing the
extensive environmental concerns associated with such activities.Offshore aquaculture can negatively
impact the marine environment through (1) biological pollution, (2) organic pollution and
eutrophication, (3) chemical pollution, and (4) habitat modification.
Fisheries in decline
Current fishing practices our collapsing fish stocks
Branch et al 2011 (TREVOR A. BRANCH1,*, OLAF P. JENSEN2, DANIEL RICARD3, YIMIN YE4 andRAY
HILBORN; Contrasting Global Trends in Marine Fishery Status Obtained from Catches and from Stock
Assessments; Conservation Biology Volume 25, Issue 4, pages 777–786, August 2011; kdf)
There are differences in perception of the status of fisheries around the world that may partly stem
from how data on trends in catches over time have been used. On the basis of catch trends, it has been
suggested that about 70% of all stocks are overexploited due to unsustainable harvesting and 30% of all
stocks have collapsed to <10% of unfished levels. Catch trends also suggest that over time an increasing
number of stocks will be overexploited and collapsed. We evaluated how use of catch data affects
assessment of fisheries stock status. We analyzed simulated random catch data with no trend. We
examined well-studied stocks classified as collapsed on the basis of catch data to determine whether
these stocks actually were collapsed. We also used stock assessments to compare stock status derived
from catch data with status derived from biomass data. Status of stocks derived from catch trends was
almost identical to what one would expect if catches were randomly generated with no trend. Most
classifications of collapse assigned on the basis of catch data were due to taxonomic reclassification,
regulatory changes in fisheries, and market changes. In our comparison of biomass data with catch
trends, catch trends overestimated the percentage of overexploited and collapsed stocks. Although our
biomass data were primarily from industrial fisheries in developed countries, the status of these stocks
estimated from catch data was similar to the status of stocks in the rest of the world estimated from
catch data. We conclude that at present 28–33% of all stocks are overexploited and 7–13% of all stocks
are collapsed. Additionally, the proportion of fished stocks that are overexploited or collapsed has been
fairly stable in recent years.
Overfishing
AT: Turns
Their turns are assumptive of the status quo- the plan avoids those risks
Leonard and Ferro 2011 (George and James; A precautionary approach to US open-ocean
aquaculture; Ocean Conservancy;
act.oceanconservancy.org/site/DocServer/federalMarineAquaculture7.pdf; kdf)
The Need for a National Framework Responding to these real and well-documented risks, Congresswoman
Capps has introduced legislation to ensure that the expansion of this new industry in U.S. federal waters does not proceed without strong,
performance-based environmental, socio-economic, and liability standards. Previous attempts to pass federal legislation were strongly opposed
by both the fishing and conservation communities because the legislation lacked the necessary protection for ocean ecosystems. In the absence
of federal legislation, regional expansion of the industry is quietly proceeding. In September 2009, the Secretary of Commerce allowed the
legally-dubious “Aquaculture Fishery Management Plan” to go into effect in the Gulf of Mexico, paving the way for industry expansion in those
important waters. Meanwhile, in California, Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute is attempting to navigate the current regulatory process hoping
to install the first commercial fish farm in federal waters, located five miles west of San Diego. Finally, plans for un-anchored, self-positioning
fish farm cages have just been approved in Hawaiian state waters which could pave the way for additional development in offshore waters as
well. However, a
precautionary national framework is urgently needed in advance of industry development.
Provisions of a Precautionary Approach An overarching federal framework, with nationwide standards, is needed
to help ensure aquaculture development in offshore waters is ecologically sustainable. Such a framework must
adopt the precautionary approach13 as its operating principle and establish a priority for the protection of wild fish, functional ecosystems, and
coastal and fishing-dependent communities. The National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009 is an opportunity to protect the U.S.
from the risks of poorly regulated open ocean aquaculture.
The National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009
will: • Require regional environmental impact statements that explicitly address the impacts of industry
expansion, before any commercial permits are granted. • Implement a comprehensive, ecologicallybased research program to ensure that critical environmental and socio-economic information is
integrated into a precautionary federal permitting system. • Enforce specific, legally-binding standards
for: Fish Escapes: Only native fish, genetically similar to their wild counterparts, and never genetically modified, may be farmed in U.S.
federal waters. All farmed fish must be marked or tagged for identification in the event of escapement.
Disease Transfer: Antibiotics and other drugs may only be used in the open-ocean to treat a diagnosed
condition. In all cases, fish farmers must minimize the use of drugs and chemicals and always choose the treatment option with least
environmental impact. Nutrient Impacts: Fish farms must meet measurable, numeric standards for discharging
nutrients into the ocean, and permitting decisions must consider the impact of multiple farms on the
surrounding ecosystem. Interactions with Marine Wildlife: Fish farmers must use non-lethal predator deterrents
and prevent the disruption of wildlife or their use of critical habitats. Underwater acoustic deterrent devices are
specifically prohibited. Use of Wild Fish for Feed: Fish meal and fish oil may only come from abundant wild
stocks with ecosystem-based management measures in place, while using alternatives to wild fish in feed compounds as
much as possible. Impacts on Fisheries: Permits must include terms and conditions necessary to minimize the displacement and economic harm
that fish farm operations may have on fishing communities. • Provide
financial guarantees and liability provisions to
address potential environmental damage from aquaculture operations. • Collect permit fees and resource use fees to
cover program administration and a reasonable portion of the value of the use of our public ocean resources. • Limit permits to a 10-year
period with annual Secretarial review to provide business certainty while ensuring continued environmental compliance. • Show a preference
for technologies that substantially exceed permit requirements. • Prohibit siting of aquaculture facilities in specific sensitive marine habitats,
including marine reserves and National Marine Sanctuaries, or on oil and gas platforms. • Require operators to monitor and report on
environmental performance, while mandating that federal regulators evaluate this information and make the findings available to the public. •
Provide sufficient authority to federal regulators to modify, suspend or revoke permits for violations or emergence of new information. • Give a
strong voice to fishing communities through the regional fishery management councils, including requirements that aquaculture not impede
access to fish stocks. • Enable states to determine if they wish to participate in marine fish farming off their coasts, while not overriding their
existing authority granted under the Coastal Zone Management Act. • Require open-ocean aquaculture to be integrated with future federal
marine spatial planning efforts, in recognition of the nation’s move toward ecosystem-based management. Window of Opportunity
Now
is the time for strong leadership from members of Congress on the future of open-ocean aquaculture in
the United States. If Congress fails to act, a piecemeal, poorly-regulated industry is likely to develop with
potentially severe environmental consequences. But with bold action, Congress can ensure an overarching
national vision for environmentally responsible ocean fish farming and develop the legislative
framework necessary to ensure strong protection of U.S. waters. Doing anything less is a gamble with
our oceans that we simply should not take.
AT: Alt causes of ocean decline
Over-fishing exasperates global class divides, causing poverty in the short term and
risking extinction in the long run
Pauly 2009 (Daniel [professor at the Fisheries Centre of the University of British Columbia];
Aquacalypse now; Sep 28; www.newrepublic.com/article/environment-energy/aquacalypse-now/; kdf)
The scheme was carried out by nothing less than a fishing-industrial complex--an alliance of corporate fishing
fleets, lobbyists, parliamentary representatives, and fisheries economists. By hiding behind the romantic image of the smallscale, independent fisherman, they secured political influence and government subsidies far in excess of
what would be expected, given their minuscule contribution to the GDP of advanced economies--in the United States, even less than
that of the hair salon industry. In Japan, for example, huge, vertically integrated conglomerates, such as Taiyo or the better-known Mitsubishi,
lobby their friends in the Japanese Fisheries Agency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them gain access to the few remaining plentiful
stocks of tuna, like those in the waters surrounding South Pacific countries. Beginning in the early 1980s, the United States, which had not
traditionally been much of a fishing country, began heavily subsidizing U.S. fleets, producing its own fishing-industrial complex, dominated by
large processors and retail chains. Today, governments provide nearly $30 billion in subsidies each year--about one-third of the value of the
global catch--that keep fisheries going, even when they have overexploited their resource base. As a result, there are between two and four
times as many boats as the annual catch requires, and yet, the funds to “build capacity” keep coming. The jig, however, is nearly up. In 1950,
the newly constituted Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimated that, globally, we were catching about 20
million metric tons of fish (cod, mackerel, tuna, etc.) and invertebrates (lobster, squid, clams, etc.). That catch peaked at 90 million tons per
year in the late 1980s, and it has been declining ever since. Much like Madoff’s infamous operation, which required a constant influx of new
investments to generate “revenue” for past investors, the global fishing-industrial complex has required a constant influx of new stocks to
continue operation.
Instead of restricting its catches so that fish can reproduce and maintain their
populations, the industry has simply fished until a stock is depleted and then moved on to new or
deeper waters, and to smaller and stranger fish. And, just as a Ponzi scheme will collapse once the pool of potential investors has been
drained, so too will the fishing industry collapse as the oceans are drained of life. Unfortunately, it is not just the future of the
fishing industry that is at stake, but also the continued health of the world’s largest ecosystem. While the
climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people--even those who profess great environmental
consciousness--continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice. But eating a tuna roll at a sushi
restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning
a manatee. In the past 50 years, we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin
tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent. One study, published in the prestigious journal Science, forecast that, by 2048, all
commercial fish stocks will have “collapsed,” meaning that they will be generating 10 percent or less of their peak catches. Whether or not that
particular year, or even decade, is correct, one thing is clear: Fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we. The
extent of the fisheries’ Ponzi scheme eluded government scientists for many years. They had long studied the health of fish populations, of
course, but typically, laboratories would focus only on the species in their nation’s waters. And those studying a particular species in one
country would communicate only with those studying that same species in another. Thus, they failed to notice an important pattern: Popular
species were sequentially replacing each other in the catches that fisheries were reporting, and, when a species faded, scientific attention
shifted to the replacement species. At any given moment, scientists might acknowledge that one-half or two-thirds of fisheries were being
overfished, but, when the stock of a particular fish was used up, it was simply removed from the denominator of the fraction. For example, the
Hudson River sturgeon wasn’t counted as an overfished stock once it disappeared from New York waters; it simply became an anecdote in the
historical record. The baselines just kept shifting, allowing us to continue blithely damaging marine ecosystems. It was not until the 1990s that a
series of high-profile scientific papers demonstrated that we needed to study, and mitigate, fish depletions at the global level. They showed
that phenomena previously observed at local levels--for example, the disappearance of large species from fisheries’ catches and their
replacement by smaller species--were also occurring globally. It was a realization akin to understanding that the financial meltdown was due
not to the failure of a single bank, but, rather, to the failure of the entire banking system--and it drew a lot of controversy. The notion that fish
are globally imperiled has been challenged in many ways--perhaps most notably by fisheries biologists, who have questioned the facts, the
tone, and even the integrity of those making such allegations. Fisheries biologists are different than marine ecologists like myself. Marine
ecologists are concerned mainly with threats to the diversity of the ecosystems that they study, and so, they frequently work in concert with
environmental NGOs and are often funded by philanthropic foundations. By contrast, fisheries biologists traditionally work for government
agencies, like the National Marine Fisheries Service at the Commerce Department, or as consultants to the fishing industry, and their chief goal
is to protect fisheries and the fishermen they employ. I myself was trained as a fisheries biologist in Germany, and, while they would dispute
this, the agencies for which many of my former classmates work clearly have been captured by the industry they are supposed to regulate.
Thus, there are fisheries scientists who, for example, write that cod have “recovered” or even “doubled” their numbers when, in fact, they have
increased merely from 1 percent to 2 percent of their original abundance in the 1950s. Yet, despite their different interests and priorities--and
despite their disagreements on the “end of fish”--marine ecologists and fisheries scientists both want there to be more fish in the oceans.
Partly, this is because both are scientists, who are expected to concede when confronted with strong evidence. And, in
the case of
fisheries, as with global warming, the evidence is overwhelming: Stocks are declining in most parts of the
world. And, ultimately, the important rift is not between these two groups of scientists, but between the public, which
owns the sea’s resources, and the fishing-industrial complex, which needs fresh capital for its Ponzi
scheme. The difficulty lies in forcing the fishing-industrial complex to catch fewer fish so that
populations can rebuild. It is essential that we do so as quickly as possible because the consequences of an end to fish are frightful. To
some Western nations, an end to fish might simply seem like a culinary catastrophe, but for 400 million
people in developing nations, particularly in poor African and South Asian countries, fish are the main source of animal
protein. What’s more, fisheries are a major source of livelihood for hundreds of million of people. A recent
World Bank report found that the income of the world’s 30 million small-scale fisheries is shrinking. The decrease in
catch has also dealt a blow to a prime source of foreign-exchange earnings, on which impoverished countries, ranging from Senegal in West
Africa to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, rely to support their imports of staples such as rice. And, of course, the
end of fish
would disrupt marine ecosystems to an extent that we are only now beginning to appreciate. Thus, the
removal of small fish in the Mediterranean to fatten bluefin tuna in pens is causing the “common” dolphin to become exceedingly rare in some
areas, with local extinction probable. Other marine mammals and seabirds are similarly affected in various parts of the world. Moreover, the
removal of top predators from marine ecosystems has effects that cascade down, leading to the increase of jellyfish and other gelatinous
zooplankton and to the gradual erosion of the food web within which fish populations are embedded. This is what happened off the coast of
southwestern Africa, where an upwelling ecosystem similar to that off California, previously dominated by fish such as hake and sardines, has
become overrun by millions of tons of jellyfish. Jellyfish population outbursts are also becoming more frequent in the northern Gulf of Mexico,
where the fertilizer-laden
runoff from the Mississippi River fuels uncontrolled algae blooms. The dead algae then
fall to a sea bottom from which shrimp trawling has raked all animals capable of feeding on them, and so they rot, causing
Massachusetts-sized “dead zones.” Similar phenomena--which only jellyfish seem to enjoy--are occurring throughout the world,
from the Baltic Sea to the Chesapeake Bay, and from the Black Sea in southeastern Europe to the Bohai Sea in northeastern China. Our oceans,
having nourished us since the beginning of the human species some 150,000 years ago, are now turning against us, becoming angry opponents.
That dynamic will only grow more antagonistic as the oceans become warmer and more acidic because
of climate change. Fish are expected to suffer mightily from global warming, making it essential that we
preserve as great a number of fish and of fish species as possible, so that those which are able to adapt are around to
evolve and propagate the next incarnations of marine life. In fact, new evidence tentatively suggests that large quantities of fish biomass could
actually help attenuate ocean acidification. In other words, fish could help save us from the worst consequences of our own folly--yet we are
killing them off. The jellyfish-ridden waters we’re seeing now may be only the first scene in a watery horror show. To halt this slide toward a
marine dystopia, government
intervention is required. Regulatory agencies must impose quotas on the
amount of fish caught in any given year, and the way they structure such quotas is very important. For
example, simply permitting all fisheries to catch a given aggregate number of fish annually results in a wasteful build-up of fleets and vessels as
fisheries race to grab as large a share of the quota as possible before their competitors do. Such a system may protect the fish, but it is
economically disastrous: The entire annual quota is usually landed in a short period, leading to temporary oversupply, which, in turn, leads to
low prices. The alternative is to limit the number of fishermen, with those retaining “access privileges” being able to catch their assigned
fraction of the overall quota whenever they want, without competing against other fishermen. Such individual quotas lead to less overall fishing
effort and, hence, bigger profit in the fishery. Unfortunately, most
fisheries economists, fixated solely on corporate
short-term profits, argue that, for such a system to work, access privileges must (a) be handed out for
free, (b) be held in perpetuity, and (c) be transferrable (i.e., sellable and buyable like any other commodity). They call this
construct “fishing rights” or “individual transferable quotas.” However, there is no reason why a government should not auction off quotas with
access privileges. The highest bidder would secure the right to a certain percentage of the quota, with society as a whole benefiting from
providing private access to a public resource. This would be similar to ranchers paying--as they do--for the privilege to graze their cattle on
federal lands. Grazing “rights” on the other hand, would simply give ownership of public land to ranchers, which is something few would
consider. Some Pollyannas believe that aquaculture, or fish farming, can ensure the health of stocks without government action--a notion
supposedly buttressed by FAO statistics showing such rapid growth in aquaculture that more than 40 percent of all “seafood” consumed now
comes from farms. The problem with this argument is that China reports about 68 percent of the world’s aquaculture production, and the FAO,
which has been burned by inflated Chinese statistics before, expresses doubt about its stated production and growth rates. Outside of China-where most farmed fish are freshwater vegetarians, such as carp--aquaculture produces predominately carnivorous marine fish, like salmon,
which are fed not only vegetal ingredients, but also fishmeal and fish oil, which are obtained by grinding up herring, mackerel, and sardines
caught by “reduction fisheries.” Carnivore farming, which requires three to four pounds of smaller fish to produce one pound of a larger one,
thus robs Peter to pay Paul. Aquaculture in the West produces a luxury product in global terms. To expect aquaculture to ensure that fish
remain available--or, at least, to expect carnivore farming to solve the problem posed by diminishing catches from fisheries--would be akin to
expecting that Enzo Ferrari’s cars can solve gridlock in Los Angeles. Others believe that fish populations can be rebuilt through consumer
awareness campaigns that encourage buyers to make prudent choices. One such approach is to label seafood from fisheries deemed
sustainable. In Europe, for example, consumers can look for the logo of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a nonprofit started by the
World Wildlife Fund and Unilever, which has a large fish-trading division. At first, the MSC certified only small-scale fisheries, but lately, it has
given its seal of approval to large, controversial companies. Indeed, it has begun to measure its success by the percentage of the world catch
that it certifies. Encouraged by a Walton Foundation grant and Wal-Mart’s goal of selling only certified fish, the MSC is actually considering
certifying reduction fisheries, with the consequence that Wal-Mart, for example, will be able to sell farmed salmon shining with the ersatz glow
of sustainability. (Given the devastating pollution, diseases, and parasite infestations that have plagued salmon farms in Chile, Canada, and
other countries, this “Wal-Mart strategy” will, in the long term, make the MSC complicit to a giant scam.) The other market-based initiative,
prevalent in the United States, distributes wallet-size cards designed to steer consumers toward fish that the group issuing the cards deems to
have been caught sustainably. Their success is considerable if measured by the millions of cards given away, for example, by the Monterey Bay
Aquarium, but assessing the impact on the fisheries is difficult. For one thing, the multitude of such cards leads to contradictions and confusion,
as the same fish are assessed differently by different organizations. For example, ahi tuna is rated as “safe,” “questionable,” and “avoid” on the
wallet cards issued by three U.S. nonprofits. A bigger issue, however, is that these cards generate only “horizontal” pressure--that is, a group of
restaurant-goers might chide each other for ordering the cod filet or might ask the overworked student who served them where the fish came
from, but this pressure does not reach wholesalers, fleet operators, or supermarket chains. “Vertical” pressure exerted by environmental NGOs
on such decision-makers is far more effective. But, if that’s true, why not directly pressure the government and legislators, since they are the
ones who regulate the fisheries? The
truth is that governments are the only entities that can prevent the end of
fish. For one thing, once freed from their allegiance to the fishing-industrial complex, they are the ones with the
research infrastructure capable of prudently managing fisheries. For another, it is they who provide the billions of dollars in annual subsidies
that allow the fisheries to persist despite the lousy economics of the industry. Reducing these subsidies would allow fish populations to rebuild,
and nearly all fisheries scientists agree that the billions of dollars in harmful, capacityenhancing subsidies must be phased out. Finally, only
governments can zone the marine environment, identifying certain areas where fishing will be tolerated
and others where it will not. In fact, all maritime countries will have to regulate their exclusive economic zones (the 200-mile
boundary areas established by the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty within which a nation has the sole right to fish). The United States has
the largest exclusive economic zone in the world, and it has taken important first steps in protecting its
resources, notably in the northwest Hawaiian islands. Creating, or re-creating, un-fished areas within which fish populations can regenerate
is the only opportunity we have to repair the damage done to them. There is no need for an end to fish, or to fishing for
that matter. But there is an urgent need for governments to free themselves from the fishing-industrial
complex and its Ponzi scheme, to stop subsidizing the fishing-industrial complex and awarding it fishing rights, when it should in fact pay for
the privilege to fish. If we can do this, then we will have fish forever.
The affirmative provides valuable knowledge about overfishing, the root cause of
ocean decline
Radar 2014 (Douglas [Environmental Defense Fund's chief ocean scientist, advises our leadership on the scientific aspects of policies and
programs affecting oceans]; Feb 26; www.edf.org/blog/2014/02/26/trending-concern-ocean-health-and-resources-help; kdf)
Last week, a CBS news story highlighting a 2006 study on the decline of oceans' health, was rediscovered and began trending on Facebook.
With the study back in the spotlight, I was delighted to join lead author Dr. Boris Worm on HuffPo Live to discuss the study’s findings and
solutions for improving the state of our oceans. While great strides have been made in the eight years since the study was written, overall
oceans' health continues to decline. Globally, nearly two-thirds of fisheries are in trouble with pollution,
overfishing, and habitat loss all continuing to pose a very real threat to oceans and their resilience in the
face of new threats, including climate change and ocean acidification. Overfishing: The root cause of oceans decline
During our talk, Dr. Worm and I discussed these issues and took a deeper dive into the root cause of oceans decline—overfishing. The
world’s population is rising steadily and is estimated to reach about 8 billion people by 2024 and 9 billion by 2040. As the
population increases, so too does the world’s appetite for seafood. As a result, fish are taken out of the
ocean faster than they can reproduce. This can cause obvious problems up to and including extinction of especially vulnerable
species (thus the catchy but grim headline on the HuffPo story, “Scientists Predict Salt-Water Fish Extinction”). Frankly, extinction is not
the biggest problem. Overfishing reduces the abundance of vulnerable species, but it also alters
ecosystem structure and function, as other species react to the reduced abundance through what ecologists call “ecological
cascades.” Valuable large fish that help maintain stable ocean ecosystems can be replaced by more
opportunistic, “weedy” species. Under severe fishing pressure, the ability of marine food webs to sustain themselves can be
compromised – a real problem with the challenges that lie ahead from climate change. When our oceans suffer, we do too.
Overfishing affects the three billion people around the world who rely on seafood as a source of protein
and millions more that depend on healthy fisheries for their livelihoods. Furthermore, poor management
costs the world’s fisheries $50 billion annually. Programs and resources to help But this isn’t a post of doom and gloom.
There are sustainable fishery management systems that are helping to keep marine ecosystems
balanced, fish on our plates and wages in the pockets of the fishermen and industry workers that rely on
healthy oceans. These management programs are called catch shares. To date there are about 200 programs
managing more than 500 different species in 40 countries. Many studies tout the benefits of catch shares including one worldwide review
which found that catch shares significantly lower the incidence of overfishing compared to conventional management practices. At EDF, we
work to share lessons from these successful programs and develop sustainable fishery managementresources that help fishermen design these
programs. Along the way, we’ve partnered – and become fast friends – with fishermen, as well as NGOs, academics and others who wish to
secure a healthy ocean for future generations to come. We
go viral.
want the passion and ideas around sustainable fisheries to
Oceans Key
Saving the oceans staves off extinction- six reasons
Nature Conservancy 2014 (Discover how we are all connected to the oceans;
www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/oceanscoasts/explore/five-reasons-we-are-all-connected-to-oceans.xml; kdf)
Peanut butter, every other breath you take, cancer medicine and one in six jobs in the United States.
What’s the connection? It’s not Kevin Bacon. But if you guessed our oceans: you’re right! You don’t need to live near the beach to
be connected to the ocean. Oceans and coasts affect people’s lives every day, around the world. The air we breathe.
Oceans are a critical player in the basic elements we need to survive. Ocean plants produce half of the
world’s oxygen, then these amazing waters absorb nearly one-third of human-caused carbon dioxide
emissions. Oceans also regulate our weather and form the clouds that bring us fresh water. The food on your
plate. Besides seafood, oceans are connected to what you eat in many more ways. Ocean ingredients, like algae
and kelp, are used in making peanut butter beer, soymilk and frozen foods. Plus, 36 percent of the world’s total fisheries catch each year is
ground up into fishmeal and oil to feed farmed fish, chickens and pigs. The items in your medicine cabinet.
You’ll find ocean
ingredients flowing out of your medicine cabinet in everything from shampoos and cosmetics to medicines that help
fight cancer, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, viruses and other diseases. Jobs and the economy. One in six jobs in the
United States is marine-related and more than $128 billion in GDP annually results from ocean tourism,
recreation and living resources. Healthy marine habitats like reefs, barrier islands, mangroves and wetlands help protect coastal
communities from the results of hurricanes and storm surges. A shared resource. While many of us enjoy the spectacular recreational activities
that oceans offer, for some people oceans are a lifeline for survival. Keeping
oceans healthy keeps people healthy, and we
each have a personal responsibility to protect our oceans.
Using policy to reverse over-fishing is the only way to avoid ocean extinction
Reuters 2011 (Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions: study; Jun 21; www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/21/us-oceansidUSTRE75K1IY20110621; kdf)
(Reuters) -
Life in the oceans is at imminent risk of the worst spate of extinctions in millions of years due to
threats such as climate change and over-fishing, a study showed on Tuesday. Time was running short to counter
hazards such as a collapse of coral reefs or a spread of low-oxygen "dead zones," according to the study led by
the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO). "We now face losing marine species and entire marine
ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," according to the study by 27 experts to be presented to the
United Nations. "Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing,
through the combined effects of climate change, over-exploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next
globally significant extinction event in the ocean," it said. Scientists list five mass extinctions over 600 million years -- most
recently when the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago, apparently after an asteroid struck. Among others, the Permian period abruptly
ended 250 million years ago. "The findings are shocking," Alex Rogers, scientific director of IPSO, wrote of the conclusions from a 2011
workshop of ocean experts staged by IPSO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) at Oxford University. Fish
are the
main source of protein for a fifth of the world's population and the seas cycle oxygen and help absorb
carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities. OXYGEN Jelle Bijma, of the Alfred Wegener Institute,
said the seas faced a "deadly trio" of threats of higher temperatures, acidification and lack of oxygen, known as anoxia, that had featured in
several past mass extinctions. A build-up of carbon dioxide, blamed by the U.N. panel of climate scientists on human use of fossil fuels, is
heating the planet. Absorbed into the oceans, it causes acidification, while run-off of fertilizers and pollution stokes anoxia. "From a geological
point of view, mass extinctions happen overnight, but on human timescales we may not realize that we are in the middle of such an event,"
Bijma wrote. The
study said that over-fishing is the easiest for governments to reverse -- countering global warming
means a shift from fossil fuels, for instance, toward cleaner energies such as wind and solar power. "Unlike climate change, it can be
directly, immediately and effectively tackled by policy change," said William Cheung of the University of East Anglia.
"Over-fishing is now estimated to account for over 60 percent of the known local and global extinction of
marine fishes," he wrote. Among examples of over-fishing are the Chinese bahaba that can grow 2 meters long. Prices per kilo (2.2 lbs) for
its swim bladder -- meant to have medicinal properties -- have risen from a few dollars in the 1930s to $20,000-$70,000.
AT: Animal Cruelty
Aquacultures are an efficient and environmentally sound way to feed the earth—
transitioning away from worse forms of meat production
Strasser 2014 (Annie-Rose [Senior Editor of ThinkProgress]; The new, innovative and more efficient
way of feeding people; Apr 21; thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/21/3422486/big-ag-takes-to-theocean/; kdf)
Kent, whose organization studies the intersection of nature and human activity and offers solutions on how the two can co-exist, is one of the
people who believes there’s a different way to approach how we get our protein here in the United States. He insists that there’s
a new,
innovative, and more efficient method of feeding people — not just in La Jolla, but all over the world.
Aquaculture. Or, as it’s known to most people, fish farming. “We spend 130 million dollars a year on air freight for the
300,000 metric tons of salmon that get flown into the U.S. from Chile. Think of the carbon footprint
associated with that,” he says. “There’s absolutely no reason why that brazino shouldn’t be a white sea bass grown three miles off the
coast. And then imagine the carbon footprint that’s saved in doing that.” What, exactly, is aquaculture? The basic idea is that you’re farming
aquatic life. The specifics, however, vary quite a bit. In the case of fish, eggs are fostered into small fish at a hatchery, raised for food, and
farmed whenever they’re needed. The fish can be raised in tanks or in net pens, in fresh water, off the coast, or out in the open ocean. And fish
are just one kind of aquaculture; a similar process is utilized to farm shellfish — like mussels or oysters — and for seaweeds. Aquaculture right
now is in an age of innovation. The advent of indoor tank farming is one promising way fish farming could grow. Another would be going out
into the open ocean and dropping fish in large, globe-shaped aquapods down below the surface. “Open-ocean
aquaculture is one
of the emerging frontiers,” says Michael Rubino, Director of the Aquaculture Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. “There’s not much of it yet but we have crowded coastlines, we have coastlines that have a lot of new
trees and they’re shallow, or they’re multiple uses, so some people think that going further offshore, you avoid those multiple use conflicts and
get a more stable environment.” Attempts to take aquaculture offshore include building farms off of decommissioned oil rigs. Farmers also
hope it can help them to farm in rougher waters where weather events like hurricanes might get in the way. Some aquaculture groups even
hope that there is a way to fuse offshore farms with renewable energy projects. Spend just a
few minutes reading news about
agriculture and climate change these days, and you’ll understand what’s driving people to consider scaling up
aquaculture: The latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us we’re headed toward
a “breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and
extremes.” Studies come out every week, practically, that say drought threatens our supply of key grains like wheat, corn, and rice. The
warming globe is even slowing down cows’ production of milk. And not only is our food on the fritz, but it’s causing a lot of
the problems that seem to be leading to its own demise. Cows, a growing source of protein here in the United States, are
major emitters of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Meat production is also a serious drain on other resources: A
quarter pound of hamburger meat uses up 6.7 pounds of grains and 52.8 gallons of water. We’re paying a high price to get our protein, and all
the while our population is growing at a breakneck speed. There
are a lot of hungry mouths to feed. The United Nations has
urged “a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products” altogether. But aquaculture
might be a good stepping stone. “Overall, if we’re going to continue to consume the amount of seafood we consume — or put more
apocalyptically, if we’re going to adequately nourish the increasing number of billions of people on this
planet,” Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress, told ThinkProgress, “more and more
protein is going to have to come from aquaculture.” Experts say there are myriad reasons why the world can and should
shift toward getting more of its sustenance from aquaculture. For one thing, it can be much more efficient than the status quo. “The thing
about aquaculture is that from a resource efficiency perspective it’s one of the most resource-efficient ways to produce protein in terms of the
amount of food and the amount of space it takes,” says NOAA’s Rubino. “Far more than land animals. You’re not using fresh water [to grow
crops to feed land animals], and the feed conversion of fish is roughly one to one — one pound of food for one pound of flesh — as opposed to
pork or beef where it’s seven or ten to one … So from an environmental footprint perspective, it’s very efficient. You can
also grow a lot of fish in a very small space. They don’t need a lot of space whether it’s a pond or a tank, as opposed to grazing land or all the
corn or soybeans that it takes to feed animals.”
AT: Alt Causes
Coral loss proves that overfishing does the most damage to the ocean
Rodgers 2014 (Paul; Solved! The mystery of the disappearing coral reefs; Jul 3;
www.forbes.com/sites/paulrodgers/2014/07/03/tourism-and-fishing-not-climate-change-caused-coraldeaths/; kdf)
Blaming Caribbean coral reef destruction on global warming is leaving them vulnerable to overfishing, tourism, and the Panama Canal. Coral
cover has more than halved since the 1970s and the reefs could be entirely dead within 20 years, warned the report, Status
and Trends of Caribbean Coral Reefs: 1970-2012. Although global warming is expected to add to the problems faced
by corals in the future, particularly by raising acidity in the oceans, making it harder for them to build their exoskeletons, more
immediate threats are doing greater damage. “The threats of climate change and ocean acidification
loom increasingly ominously for the future, but local stressors including an explosion in tourism, overfishing, and
the resulting increase in macroalgae [seaweed] have been the major drivers of the catastrophic decline of Caribbean
corals,” says the report, edited by Jeremy Jackson, Mary Donovan, Katie Cramer and Vivian Lam. Gustaf Lundin, the director of the global
marine programme at the International Union for Conservation of Nature – which commissioned the review of 35,000 studies by 90 experts –
told The Times that that climate change had become a “convenient truth”, a reference to former US vice president Al Gore’s Academy Awardwinning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. “Some
countries have said: ‘There is nothing we can do. If there isn’t
global action on climate change, it’s all doomed’,” he said. “They have basically thrown in the towel. That’s a great
mistake. There are always things you can do locally that enhance the resilience of the reefs and their
ability to recover.” The report says the consequences of global warming “pale in comparison to the introduction of the unidentified
pathogen that caused the die-off of Diadema antillarum”. D antillarum, a sea urchin, grazes on large seaweeds, preventing them from
smothering the coral. A mysterious disease first noticed near the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal all but wiped it out in 1983-84. Because
the Caribbean has been isolated for millions of years, its species are particularly vulnerable to new diseases introduced from the Pacific through
the canal. The report compared them to “Native Americans after their first contact with Europeans”. The other creature that controls seaweed
growth is the parrotfish, Scarus frenatus, which has been over-fished in recent decades. “The consequences have been catastrophic for coral
reefs,” says the report. “Overfishing caused steep reductions in herbivores, especially large parrotfishes, which are the most effective grazers
on Caribbean reefs.” The other big threat to corals comes from humans, both residents and tourists. In some cases human populations along
the coast can reach as high as 25,000 per km2. The researchers found an inverse relationship between the number of people and the amount of
live coral. The exceptions were Grand Cayman and Bermuda. “The exceptional situation at Bermuda most likely reflects progressive
environmental regulations in place since the 1990s and the infrastructure required to make them work. “Otherwise, the harmful environmental
costs of runaway tourism seem to be inevitable.”
AT: No Feed
Aquaculture farmers are able to meet all of the health needs of fish
John Forster ‘10 (John Forster specializes in application of experience to new aquaculture species, is a
director of four aquaculture companies and serves on NOAA’s Marine Fishery Advisory Committee.)
“What Can U.S. Open Ocean Aquaculture Learn From Salmon Farming?” from “Marine Technology
Society Journal” Volume 44, Number 3, May/June 2010 titled “Sustainable U.S. Marine Aquaculture
Expansion in the 21st Century” pages 68-79
1. Nutritionists developed a better understanding of the nutritional requirements of salmon and how to
better formulate feed to meet those requirements. 2. Feed companies adopted new feed extrusion
technology in the manufacture of salmon feeds. This resulted in improved pellet quality that reduced
breakage and allowed for higher rates of inclusion of fish and vegetable oils in the feed. 3. Farmers
learned to feed their fish more accurately, helped by new research on optimal feed intake and
monitoring devices that showed when satiation is reached. 4. Farmers were also able to improve fish
survival by better fish husbandry the use of vaccines against bacterial disease.
Feed shorts don’t prevent the plan, different types of feed solve
John Forster ‘10 (John Forster specializes in application of experience to new aquaculture species, is a
director of four aquaculture companies and serves on NOAA’s Marine Fishery Advisory Committee.)
“What Can U.S. Open Ocean Aquaculture Learn From Salmon Farming?” from “Marine Technology
Society Journal” Volume 44, Number 3, May/June 2010 titled “Sustainable U.S. Marine Aquaculture
Expansion in the 21st Century” pages 68-79
Salmon can use several other types of edible oils in their feed as alternative energy sources, but this
leads to reduced levels of marine omega-3 fatty acids in their tissues and thus to less nutritional value
for people who eat salmon meat. (Friesen et al., 2007; Turchini et al., 2009). To overcome this, “finishing
feeds” that contain fish oil can be fed for 2 or 3 months before harvest. (Friesen et al., 2007). 2.
Genetically modified soybeans that produce omega-3 fatty acids are under development, which will
yield soy oil with comparable nutritional value to fish oils. Since, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
has ruled that this oil is safe in human foods (Coghlan, 2009), its use in fish feed is a probable future
development. 3. The supply of fish oil may be increased by recovering more of it from fish processing
wastes. In many cases now, the cost of recovery is more than the fish oil is worth, or it is put to other
uses. In Alaska, for example, most of the 8 million gallons of fish oil that is now produced by seafood
processors is burned as biodiesel (Alaska Energy Authority, 2010). 4 . M i c r o o r g a n i s m s , su c h a s
Shcizochytrium sp., or marine microalgae can be mass cultured and processed to extract oils containing
the omega-3 fatty acids needed for salmon feed. These are expensive presently (for example, see
Advance Bionutrition, 2010), but costs may come down, especially given the effort now directed to
growing marine microalgae for biodiesel.
AT: Organchlorine
Salmon farming is cost efficient and promotes job growth
John Forster ‘10 (John Forster specializes in application of experience to new aquaculture species, is a
director of four aquaculture companies and serves on NOAA’s Marine Fishery Advisory Committee.)
“What Can U.S. Open Ocean Aquaculture Learn From Salmon Farming?” from “Marine Technology
Society Journal” Volume 44, Number 3, May/June 2010 titled “Sustainable U.S. Marine Aquaculture
Expansion in the 21st Century” pages 68-79
1. Bulk handling of feed, which, in many cases, is delivered directly to storage barges at sea avoiding the
need for storage on land and double handling. These barges are usually equipped with automated
feeding systems (Figure 7). 2. Larger and better equipped workboats with lifting gear that reduces the
labor required to change nets, in turn enabling larger nets to be used. 3. Larger individual cages whose
use is made possible by mechanized feeding and net handling. This lowers the cost of a unit of cage
volume and reduces operating costs because fewer individual cages must be tended. 4. Fish pumps and
elevators thatmove live fish for grading or harvesting. 5. Development of service companies that provide
specialized farm services such as net changing and washing and harvesting. Specialization allows these
companies to equip and staff themselves to be more efficient than if each salmon farm company had to
equip and staff itself to do the same work.
AT: Salmon Turn
Salmon would not be farmed as per the plan
Leschin-Hoar 2011 (Clare; Ocean of trouble: Report warns of offshore fish farming dangers; Oct 13;
grist.org/food/2011-10-12-report-warns-of-the-dangers-of-offshore-fish-farming/; kdf)
Genetically engineered salmon eggs (mentioned in a recent Grist article) are not yet licensed to be sold to openwater systems in the U.S., but some experts worry it’ll only be a matter of time before that changes. (The fish are already being
shipped for use in Panama and Canada’s Prince Edward Island.) While NOAA’s policy doesn’t explicitly address genetically modified fish, it
does say that they support “the use of only native or naturalized species in federal waters unless best
available science demonstrates use of non-native or other species in federal waters would not cause
undue harm to wild species, habitats, or ecosystems in the event of an escape.”
Aquacultures safe
Farmed Fish is Safe to Consume
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
Farmed seafood is both safe and healthy to eat – studies have shown this time and time again. Both the
diets and environments of farmed seafood are monitored throughout the life of the animal. Because of
their controlled diet, the heart-healthy long chain omega-three fatty acids and other nutrients in farmed
seafood have levels similar to wild. In the U.S., seafood farmers follow the same food safety guidelines
as other seafood producers and land farmers, as well as undergo regular inspections. Safety-related
regulations address siting, what the animals are fed, and processing, to name just a few.
Aff solves ecosystems
Aquacultures can preserve endangered aquatic species and re-store damaged marine
ecosystems
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
Marine aquaculture technologies can be developed to produce a variety of organisms that could help
preserve endangered aquatic species and re-store damaged marine ecosystems. Bottlenecks exist in closing the
life cycle of many species of interest, for example, a food small enough for first feeding of some marine fish, but research is underway on a few
species, largely at public and private aquariums. Many of the larger aquariums, for example, the Georgia Aquarium, have breeding programs for
the rarer aquatic species they have on display so that they do not have to continuously capture wild specimens. In this context, some
aquaria are also working with threatened and endangered organisms to develop propagation
technology that could be used to restock and re-build populations that are or could be in crisis and view
this as an important role in the 21st century (Garibaldi, 2001). For example, the Seattle Aquar-ium (2010) carries out genetics
research on the leafy seadragon, an endemicspe-cies ofAustralia that is endangered. The Waikiki Aquarium (WA) was the first facility to culture
the Chambered Nau-tilus, considered a living fossil and threatened by overfishing for its beauti-ful shell (WA, 2010). Cultured organisms
could also be used to restore ecosystems damaged by natural and man-made disasters. For example, the WA
currently has the oldest and largest collection of liv-ing corals in the United States. The aquarium has regularly been asked to use its Hawaiian
coral stock to help the State in reestablishing coral colonies damaged by ship groundings (WA, 2010).
Aquaculture restore ecosystems
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
Clearly, releasing aquaculture produced stock to enhance wild populations of fish and shellfish and
restore distressed ecosystems or habitats could be a valuable tool to incorporate into existing fishery
and habitat management approaches. Moreover, the United States has a growing cadre of capable
researchers and research institutions that are developing mass rearing hatchery technologies for species
of economic and ecological importance. A few state stocking programs using the responsible approach are demonstrating the
positive influences of wild stock enhancement today.
AT: Aquacultures unhealthy/chemicals
Imported fish are full of chemicals—only a chance the aff provides safer meat
Nixon 14 (Ron; US catfish program could stymie pacific trade pact, 10 nations say; Jun 27;
www.nytimes.com/2014/06/28/us/catfish-inspection-trans-pacific-partnership.html; kdf)
The inspection program was inserted into the 2008 farm bill at the urging of catfish farmers, who have
been hurt by competition from both Vietnam and China and by the rising cost of catfish feed. The
domestic catfish industry has shrunk by about 60 percent since its peak about a decade ago, and in the
past few years about 20 percent of American catfish farming operations have closed. The catfish
industry and lawmakers led by Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, fought for the new
office, saying it was needed to protect Americans from eating fish raised in unsanitary conditions or
contaminated with drugs. The Food and Drug Administration has a similar program, but it inspects less
than 2 percent of food imports, and advocates of the Agriculture Department program said that was not
good enough. The Agriculture Department has traditionally inspected meat and poultry, while the F.D.A.
has been responsible for all other foods, including seafood.
Poverty Ext- Fish k2 solve
Aquaculture accounts for nearly half of global fish supply
Tiller et al. ‘13
(Rachel, Rebecca Gentry, Russell Richards, (1) a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Sociology and Political
Science (2) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB (3) Centre for Coastal Management, Griffith University; “Stakeholder
driven future scenarios as an element of interdisciplinary management tools; the case of future offshore aquaculture development and the
potential effects on fishermen in Santa Barbara, California” Ocean & Coastal Management; Jan. 15, 2013; Access 6/27/14;
www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman)//ck
There has been, however, increased attention on more direct adaptation possibilities for ameliorating the juxtaposition between the
increased demand for seafood and declining wild supply, and the necessity to find more efficient means
of food production to feed a growing population. The primary method has been by aquaculture
expansion during the last few decades in the US and beyond (Abdallah and Sumaila, 2007; Olin et al., 2012). Aquaculture already accounted
for 46 percent of total global food fish supply in 2008 and is the fastest-growing animal-food-producing
sector globally, even outpacing human population growth (FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, 2010). The per capita
supply of animal protein from aquaculture has also increased, from 0.7 kg in 1970 to 7.8 kg in 2008, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 6.6 percent
although this growth rate is beginning to slow. This adaptation process, thus, has now taken a step further by moving out beyond the sheltered coves, fjords, ponds
and lakes where aquaculture has historically occur- red. Currently,
industry is looking further offshore for future
development, which is reflected in the explicit consideration of policy makers to opening up US federal
waters to offshore aqua- culture in recent years (Varmer et al., 2005; Welp et al., 2006; Abreu et al., 2011; Impson, 2011; Oosterveer and
Spaargaren, 2011; Boyd, 2012). This mitigation path by policy makers could be considered a de facto realization that
the attempts to mitigate capture fishing efforts to reduce pressure on wild stocks is failing (Kalikoski et al., 2010).
Poverty ext- Aquaculture key
Aquaculture accounts for nearly half of global fish supply
Tiller et al. ‘13
(Rachel, Rebecca Gentry, Russell Richards, (1) a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Sociology and Political
Science (2) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB (3) Centre for Coastal Management, Griffith University; “Stakeholder
driven future scenarios as an element of interdisciplinary management tools; the case of future offshore aquaculture development and the
potential effects on fishermen in Santa Barbara, California” Ocean & Coastal Management; Jan. 15, 2013; Access 6/27/14;
www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman)//ck
There has been, however, increased attention on more direct adaptation possibilities for ameliorating the juxtaposition between the
increased demand for seafood and declining wild supply, and the necessity to find more efficient means
of food production to feed a growing population. The primary method has been by aquaculture
expansion during the last few decades in the US and beyond (Abdallah and Sumaila, 2007; Olin et al., 2012). Aquaculture already accounted
for 46 percent of total global food fish supply in 2008 and is the fastest-growing animal-food-producing
sector globally, even outpacing human population growth (FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, 2010). The per capita
supply of animal protein from aquaculture has also increased, from 0.7 kg in 1970 to 7.8 kg in 2008, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 6.6 percent
although this growth rate is beginning to slow. This adaptation process, thus, has now taken a step further by moving out beyond the sheltered coves, fjords, ponds
and lakes where aquaculture has historically occur- red. Currently,
industry is looking further offshore for future
development, which is reflected in the explicit consideration of policy makers to opening up US federal
waters to offshore aqua- culture in recent years (Varmer et al., 2005; Welp et al., 2006; Abreu et al., 2011; Impson, 2011; Oosterveer and
Spaargaren, 2011; Boyd, 2012). This mitigation path by policy makers could be considered a de facto realization that
the attempts to mitigate capture fishing efforts to reduce pressure on wild stocks is failing (Kalikoski et al., 2010).
US dependency on imported seafood has a trade deficit of over $9 billion
Tiller et al. ‘13
(Rachel, Rebecca Gentry, Russell Richards, (1) a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Sociology and Political
Science (2) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB (3) Centre for Coastal Management, Griffith University; “Stakeholder
driven future scenarios as an element of interdisciplinary management tools; the case of future offshore aquaculture development and the
potential effects on fishermen in Santa Barbara, California” Ocean & Coastal Management; Jan. 15, 2013; Access 6/27/14;
www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman)//ck
The United States is a major consumer of seafood, including aquaculture products. In 2010, however, 86% of seafood
consumed in the US was imported with half of this produced through aqua- culture. This import of 5.5 billion pounds per year was valued at $14.8 billion in 2009
(Abdallah and Sumaila, 2007). The
necessity for import stems from the US aquaculture production, both fresh and
marine, accounting for only 5% of US seafood supply, with marine-based aquaculture supplying less than
1.5%. Furthermore, US aquaculture production is ranked 13th globally after countries such as China, Canada,
Norway and Chile. Indeed, the US imports about 300 million pounds of farmed salmon every year,
primarily from Canada, Norway, and Chile. This dependency on imported seafood leads to an annual
seafood trade deficit of over $9 billion (Antunes Zappes et al.; U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004; Santa Barbara Mariculture, 2011).
Food Security ext- Aff -> Security
Aquaculture improves food security
Soto, D., Subasinghe, R., & Jia, J. (2009).correspondence for Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service, Fisheries
and Aquaculture Department, Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations. “Global aquaculture and its role in sustainable development.” Reviews in Aquaculture, 1(1), 2-9.
Aquaculture plays an important role in global efforts to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by supplying
fish and other aquatic products rich in protein, essential fatty adds, vitamins and minerals. Aquaculture
can also make significant contributions to development by improving incomes, providing employment
opportunities and increasing the returns on resource use. According to FAO figures, aquaculture directly
created 12 million full-time employment positions in Asial in 2004 (FAO 2006b). It significantly
contributes to the national gross domestic product in many developing countries in Asia and Latin
America (FAO 2006c). With appropriate management, the sector appears ready to meet the expected
shortfalls in fish supplies for the coming decades and to improve global food security.
Aquaculture has health benefits
Soto, D., Subasinghe, R., & Jia, J. (2009).correspondence for Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service, Fisheries
and Aquaculture Department, Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations. “Global aquaculture and its role in sustainable development.” Reviews in Aquaculture, 1(1), 2-9.
The availability of sufficient and good-quality food, access to this food by households and individuals,
and its utilization for nutritious diets and good health are inter-dependent dimensions of food security.
With respect to food availability, aquaculture contributes to the quantity of food through the supply of
aquatic products from domestic farming and through the supply of food purchased using foreign
exchanges. Aquaculture contributes to food quality by providing nutritious and energetic aquatic food
products that are high in protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. The health benefits
associated with the consumption of fish products are particularly important for the prevention of heartrelated diseases and for many vulnerable groups, such as pregnant and lactating women, infants and
pre-school children. In this respect, aquaculture contributes to nutritional well-being. Understanding the
benefits of fish products has triggered a substantial increase in consumption, particularly in developed
nations, but not so much in developing countries. By 2002 fish (fisheries and aquaculture) products
contributed 12% of the total protein for human consumption (FAO 2006g), although there are no
detailed global statistics on the provision of other essential miner-als and components.
Aquaculture gives people access to food
Soto, D., Subasinghe, R., & Jia, J. (2009).correspondence for Aquaculture Management and Conservation Service, Fisheries
and Aquaculture Department, Food and Agriculture Organization
of the United Nations. “Global aquaculture and its role in sustainable development.” Reviews in Aquaculture, 1(1), 2-9.
The availability of food is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for food security. Affordability is a
major aspect of food access. By providing farmers with revenues obtained through the sale of their
produce and by creating employment, aquaculture enhances a household's disposable income and its
ability to purchase food. Increasing the availability of aquatic products to domestic markets can lower
the price of these products, thereby making them affordable and more accessible to local consumers.
Beyond individuals and households, at a macro-economic level, aquaculture can also contribute to a
country's economic performance and growth by generating profits and producing tax and export
revenues. Good infrastructure and investments in human capital will improve the productivity of labour
and capital, benefiting local businesses and enhancing the development of rural communities.
Biodiversity is key to food security
Sachs, N. M. (2012). is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Robert R. Merhige, Jr., Center for Environmental
Studies at the University of Richmond School of Law. He specializes in environmental law, climate change, hazardous waste
regulation, and tort law.
“Reclaiming Global Environmental Leadership: Why the United States Should Ratify Ten Pending Environmental Treaties.”
http://www.progressivereform.org/articles/International_Environmental_Treaties_1201.pdf
Biological diversity (or biodiversity) is “the variability among living organisms from all sources including,
inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they
are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and ecosystems.”38 Biodiversity sustains
all life processes on the planet— the “evolutionary variation of life, built up over the several billion years
of the planet’s existence—at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels.”39 Biodiversity has intrinsic as
well as aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual values.40 The economic benefits of biodiversity are significant as
well. Economists estimate that humans derive trillions of dollars’ worth of ecosystem services from
viable populations of plant and animal species, clean water and air, productive soils, functioning
wetlands, and recreational opportunities.41 The loss of biodiversity has disastrous consequences.
Famine is one of the most immediate: farmers lose their pastures and croplands to invasive plant
species; fruit and nut orchards lose their harvests due to a lack of wild pollinators; and game species and
fisheries collapse from overharvesting or pollution. Famine not only leads to death and disease, it also
contributes to unrest and political instability. According to U.S. military experts, “Anthropogenically
generated changes to the Earth’s climate and natural environment pose a ‘serious threat to America’s
national security.’”42 Existing biodiversity conservation strategies are becoming less effective under the
mounting pressure of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found
that, in the foreseeable future, many types of ecosystems are likely to be significantly altered or
destroyed by the combination of global warming and conventional threats such as habitat destruction
and pollution.43 In the past 50 years, humans have altered ecosystems more quickly and more
extensively than in any comparable period in history.44 These physical changes have dire consequences
for plant and animal species. According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, “we are losing wild
species . . . faster than in any geologic period since the dinosaur die-off 65 million years ago.”45
Food Security Ext- War Impact
specter of massive human destruction.
Food shortages lead to World War III
Calvin 98
William Calvin, theoretical neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, Atlantic Monthly, January,
The Great Climate Flip-Flop, Vol 281, No. 1, 1998, p. 47-64)
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause
some powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands -- if only because their
armies, unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the borders. The
better-organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they fell apart entirely, to take
over countries with significant remaining resources, driving out or starving their inhabitants if not
using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating competitors for the remaining
food. This would be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third World War -- but Europe's
vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas, drastically
altered Europe's climate as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million
people. It has excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the
extra warming from the North Atlantic.
Food shortage escalates to war
CBS, 08
CBS. "IMF Head: Food Shortages Can Spark War." CBSNews. 18 Apr. 2008.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/imf-head-food-shortages-can-spark-war/ cm
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Friday that soaring world food prices can have
dire consequences, such as toppling governments and even triggering wars. Dominique Strauss-Kahn
told France's Europe-1 radio that the price rises that set off rioting in Haiti, Egypt and elsewhere were an
"extremely serious" problem. "The planet must tackle it," he said. The IMF chief said the problem could
also threaten democracies, even in countries where governments have done all they could to help the
local population. Asked whether the crisis could lead to wars, Strauss-Kahn responded that it was
possible. "When the tension goes above and beyond putting democracy into question, there are risks of
war," he said. "History is full of wars that started because of this kind of problem." Strauss-Kahn was
appointed last year to head the IMF. He was a finance minister in the late 1990s in France. Also on
Friday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested a global partnership among financial institutions,
governments and the private sector to tackle the reasons for rising food prices. He also said France is
doubling its food aid budget this year to about $95 million because 37 countries are experiencing
"serious food crises." Globally, food prices have risen 40 percent since mid-2007. The increases hit poor
people hardest, as food represents as much as 60-80 percent of consumer spending in developing
nations, compared to about 10-20 percent in industrialized countries, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture
Organization has said. The World Food Program blames soaring food prices on a convergence of rising
energy costs, natural disasters linked to climate change, and competition for grain used to make biofuels like ethanol. Program spokesperson Benita Luescher told CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller,
"What we're seeing is a perfect storm." Meanwhile, officials said Thursday that United Nations programs
will distribute 8,000 tons of food and other help for Haitians in coming days as part of efforts to confront
unrest over rising prices that set off recent rioting. U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said food
provided by the World Food Program will focus on children, pregnant women and nursing mothers in
the north, west and central regions of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Anger over
surging food prices has threatened stability in the Caribbean nation, which has long been haunted by
chronic hunger. Haitian lawmakers fired Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis over the rioting.
Food Security Ext- Resource wars
Resource wars cause extinction
Klare 6
Klare 06 Professor of peace and world security studies @ Hampshire College[Michael Klare, “The Coming
Resource Wars,” TomPaine.com, Date: March 11, 2006, pg.
http://www.waterconserve.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=53710&keybold=water%20land%2
0conflict.
"As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to abrupt climate change," the
Pentagon report notes, "many countries' needs will exceed their carrying capacity" -- that is, their
ability to provide the minimum requirements for human survival. This "will create a sense of
desperation, which is likely to lead to offensive aggression" against countries with a greater stock
of vital resources. "Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed their populations with a
falling supply of food, water, and energy, eyeing Russia, whose population is already in decline,
for access to its grain, minerals, and energy supply."
Similar scenarios will be replicated all
across the planet, as those without the means to survival invade or migrate to those with greater
abundance -- producing endless struggles between resource "haves" and "have-nots."
It is this
prospect, more than anything, that worries John Reid. In particular, he expressed concern over the
inadequate capacity of poor and unstable countries to cope with the effects of climate change, and
the resulting risk of state collapse, civil war and mass migration. "More than 300 million people in
Africa currently lack access to safe water," he observed, and "climate change will worsen this dire
situation" -- provoking more wars like Darfur. And even if these social disasters will occur
primarily in the developing world, the wealthier countries will also be caught up in them, whether
by participating in peacekeeping and humanitarian aid operations, by fending off unwanted
migrants or by fighting for access to overseas supplies of food, oil, and minerals.
When reading
of these nightmarish scenarios, it is easy to conjure up images of desperate, starving people killing
one another with knives, staves and clubs -- as was certainly often the case in the past, and could
easily prove to be so again. But these scenarios also envision the use of more deadly weapons. "In
this world of warring states," the 2003 Pentagon report predicted, "nuclear arms proliferation is
inevitable." As oil and natural gas disappears, more and more countries will rely on nuclear power
to meet their energy needs -- and this "will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop
enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security."
Although speculative,
these reports make one thing clear: when thinking about the calamitous effects of global climate
change, we must emphasize its social and political consequences as much as its purely
environmental effects. Drought, flooding and storms can kill us, and surely will -- but so will wars
among the survivors of these catastrophes over what remains of food, water and shelter. As Reid's
comments indicate, no society, however affluent, will escape involvement in these forms of
conflict.
Food Security- Fisheries Needed
Lack of marine resources contributes to global food shortage
Montaigne, 07
Senior editor of Yale Environment 360. Montaigne, Fen. "Fisheries, Fishing, Bluefin Tuna, OceansNational Geographic."National Geographic. Apr. 2007.
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/global-fish-crisis-article/#page=1 cm
The decimation of giant bluefin is emblematic of everything wrong with global fisheries today: the vastly
increased killing power of new fishing technology, the shadowy network of international companies
making huge profits from the trade, negligent fisheries management and enforcement, and consumers'
indifference to the fate of the fish they choose to buy.
The world's oceans are a shadow of what they once were. With a few notable exceptions, such as wellmanaged fisheries in Alaska, Iceland, and New Zealand, the number of fish swimming the seas is a
fraction of what it was a century ago. Marine biologists differ on the extent of the decline. Some argue
that stocks of many large oceangoing fish have fallen by 80 to 90 percent, while others say the declines
have been less steep. But all agree that, in most places, too many boats are chasing too few fish.
Popular species such as cod have plummeted from the North Sea to Georges Bank off New England. In
the Mediterranean, 12 species of shark are commercially extinct, and swordfish there, which should
grow as thick as a telephone pole, are now caught as juveniles and eaten when no bigger than a baseball
bat. With many Northern Hemisphere waters fished out, commercial fleets have steamed south,
overexploiting once teeming fishing grounds. Off West Africa, poorly regulated fleets, both local and
foreign, are wiping out fish stocks from the productive waters of the continental shelf, depriving
subsistence fishermen in Senegal, Ghana, Angola, and other countries of their families' main source of
protein. In Asia, so many boats have fished the waters of the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea that
stocks are close to exhaustion. "The oceans are suffering from a lot of things, but the one that
overshadows everything else is fishing," said Joshua S. Reichert of the Pew Charitable Trusts. "And
unless we get a handle on the extraction of fish and marine resources, we will lose much of the list that
remains in the seas.
Food Security ext- conflict impx
Food shortage leads to conflict
Brinkman & Hendrix, 11
Henk-Jan Brinkman is Chief, Policy, Planning and Application in the Peacebuilding Support Of ice of the
United Nations. Cullen S. Hendrix is Assistant Professor, The College of William & Mary, and Fellow,
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Brinkman,
Henk-Jan & Hendrix, Cullen S. "Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences, and
Addressing the Challenges." World Food Programme. July 2011.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/food2025/blogfiles/14415.pdf cm
Rising food prices contribute to food insecurity, which is a clear and serious threat to human security.
Interest in food security as a catalyst for political instability and conflict has grown rapidly since 2007–
2008, when food protests and riots broke out in 48 countries as a result of record world prices. In
February 2011, the food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
(FAO) reached a new historic peak, and the rise in food prices contributed to the wave of protests across
North Africa and the Middle East that toppled Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian
president Hosni Mubarak. Among major development organizations, the unchallenged consensus is that
war and conflict are development issues: conflict ravages local economies, often leading to forced
migration, refugee populations, disease, a collapse of social trust, and acute food insecurity. But is food
insecurity itself a cause of conflict? Based on a review of recent research, the answer is a highly qualified
yes. Food insecurity, especially when caused by higher food prices, heightens the risk of democratic
breakdown, civil conflict, protest, rioting, and communal conflict. The evidence linking food insecurity to
interstate conflict is less strong, though there is some historical evidence linking declining agricultural
yields to periods of regional conflict in Europe and Asia.
Food shortage leads to civil conflict
Brinkman & Hendrix, 11
Henk-Jan Brinkman is Chief, Policy, Planning and Application in the Peacebuilding Support Of ice of the
United Nations. Cullen S. Hendrix is Assistant Professor, The College of William & Mary, and Fellow,
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Brinkman,
Henk-Jan & Hendrix, Cullen S. "Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences, and
Addressing the Challenges." World Food Programme. July 2011.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/food2025/blogfiles/14415.pdf cm
Civil conflict is the prevalent type of armed conflict in the world today (Harbom and Wallersteen, 2010).
It is almost exclusively a phenomenon of countries with low levels of economic development and high
levels of food insecurity. Sixty-five percent of the world’s food-insecure people live in seven countries:
India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia
(FAO, 2010), of which all but China have experienced civil conflict in the past decade, with DRC, Ethiopia,
India and Pakistan currently embroiled in civil conflicts. Pinstrup-Andersen and Shimokawa (2008) find
that poor health and nutrition are associated with greater probability of civil conflict, though their
findings are based on small sample sizes. Countries with lower per capita caloric intake are more prone
to experience civil conflict, even accounting for their levels of economic development (Sobek and
Boehmer, 2009). This relationship is stronger in those states where primary commodities make up a
large proportion of their export profile. Some of the countries most plagued by conflict in the past 20
years are commodity-rich countries characterized by widespread hunger, such as Angola, DRC, Papua
New Guinea and Sierra Leone. The mixture of hunger – which creates grievances – and the availability of
valuable commodities – which can provide opportunities for rebel funding – is a volatile combination.
Food security ext- interstate conflict impx
Food shortage leads to interstate conflict
Brinkman & Hendrix, 11
Henk-Jan Brinkman is Chief, Policy, Planning and Application in the Peacebuilding Support Of ice of the
United Nations. Cullen S. Hendrix is Assistant Professor, The College of William & Mary, and Fellow,
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Brinkman,
Henk-Jan & Hendrix, Cullen S. "Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences, and
Addressing the Challenges." World Food Programme. July 2011.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/food2025/blogfiles/14415.pdf cm
While countries often go to war over territory, previous research has not focused directly on access to
food or productive agricultural land as a major driver of conflict (Hensel, 2000). However, wars have
been waged to reduce demographic pressures arising from the scarcity of arable land, the clearest
examples being the move to acquire Lebensraum (“living space”) that motivated Nazi Germany’s
aggression toward Poland and Eastern Europe (Hillgruber, 1981) and Japan’s invasion of China and
Indochina (Natsios and Doley, 2009). Water, for drinking and for agriculture, is also a cause of conflict
(Klare, 2002). Countries that share river basins are more likely to go to war than are other countries that
border one another (Toset et al., 2000; Gleditsch et al., 2006). This relationship is strongest in countries
with low levels of economic development. Institutions that manage conflicts over water and monitor
and enforce agreements can significantly reduce the risk of war (Postel and Wolf, 2001). Jared Diamond
(1997) has argued that for centuries military power was built on agricultural production. Zhang et al.
(2007) show that long-term fluctuations in the prevalence of war followed cycles of temperature change
over the period 1400–1900 CE, with more war during periods of relatively cooler temperatures and thus
lower agricultural productivity and greater competition for resources. Similar findings linking cooler
periods with more war have been established for Europe between 1000 and 1750 CE (Tol and Wagner,
2008).
Food security ext- Demo breakdown impx
Food shortage leads to democratic breakdown
Brinkman & Hendrix, 11
Henk-Jan Brinkman is Chief, Policy, Planning and Application in the Peacebuilding Support Of ice of the
United Nations. Cullen S. Hendrix is Assistant Professor, The College of William & Mary, and Fellow,
Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, University of Texas at Austin. Brinkman,
Henk-Jan & Hendrix, Cullen S. "Food Insecurity and Violent Conflict: Causes, Consequences, and
Addressing the Challenges." World Food Programme. July 2011.
http://ucanr.edu/blogs/food2025/blogfiles/14415.pdf cm
Democratic breakdowns occur when leaders are deposed and replaced by officials who come to power
without regard for elections, legal rules, and institutions. Not all breakdowns are violent – “bloodless”
coups account for 67 percent of all coups and coup attempts – but many have been very bloody, and the
autocratic regimes and instability that follow democratic breakdowns are more likely to lead to the
abuse of human rights, in some cases leading to mass state killing (Poe and Tate, 1994; Harff, 2003).
Food insecurity, proxied by low availability of calories for consumption per capita, makes democratic
breakdown more likely, especially in higher-income countries, where people expect there to be larger
social surpluses that could be invested to reduce food insecurity (Reenock, Bernhard and Sobek, 2007).
Though statistical evidence is lacking, rising food prices have been implicated in the wave of
demonstrations and transitions from authoritarian rule to fledgling democracy in some countries across
North Africa and the Middle East in 2011. There are some historical precedents for this: a bad harvest in
1788 led to high food prices in France, which caused rioting and contributed to the French revolution in
1789; and the wave of political upheaval that swept Europe in 1848 was at least in part a response to
food scarcity, coming after three below-average harvests across the continent (Berger and Spoerer
2001).
Solvency
Solvency Ext- Fish management key
Only fishery management and policy changes can solve overfishing
Plumer 2013 (Brad; Just how badly are we overfishing the oceans?; Oct 29;
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/29/just-how-badly-are-we-overfishing-theocean/0/; kdf)
Humans now have the technology to find and catch every last fish on the planet. Trawl nets, drift nets, longlines, GPS,
sonar... As a result, fishing operations have expanded to virtually all corners of the ocean over the past
century. That, in turn, has put a strain on fish populations. The world's marine fisheries peaked in the 1990s, when the global
catch was higher than it is today.* And the populations of key commercial species like bluefin tuna and cod have
dwindled, in some cases falling more than 90 percent. So just how badly are we overfishing the oceans? Are fish
populations going to keep shrinking each year — or could they recover? Those are surprisingly contentious questions, and there seem to be a
couple of schools of thought here. The pessimistic view, famously expressed by fisheries expert Daniel Pauly, is that we may be facing "The End
of Fish." One especially dire 2006 study in Science warned that many
commercial ocean fish stocks were on pace to
“collapse” by mid-century — at which point they would produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch.
Then it's time to eat jellyfish. Other experts have countered that this view is far too alarmist.** A number of countries have worked hard to
improve their fisheries management over the years, including Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. "The U.S. is actually a big
success story in rebuilding fish stocks," Ray Hilborn, a marine biologist at the University of Washington, told me last year. Overfishing isn't
inevitable. We can fix it. Both sides make valid points — but the gloomy view is hard to dismiss. That's the argument of a new paper in Marine
Pollution Bulletin by Tony Pitcher and William Cheung of the University of British Columbia that weighs in on this broader debate. They
conclude that some fisheries around the world are indeed improving, though these appear to be a minority for now. "Several deeper analyses
of the status of the majority of world fisheries confirm the previous dismal picture," they conclude. "Serious depletions are the norm worldwide, management quality is poor, catch per effort is still declining." The decline of fisheries One reason
the debate about
overfishing is so contentious is that it's hard to get a precise read on the state of the world's marine
fisheries. (The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization tries its best in this annual report.) Ideally, we'd have in-depth stock assessments for
the entire world, but those are difficult, expensive, and fairly rare. So, in their paper, Pitcher and Cheung review a number of recent studies that
use indirect measurements instead. For example, they note that recent analyses of fish catches suggest that about 58
percent of the
world's fish stocks have now collapsed or are overexploited: It's important to note that this is only one estimate — and a
disputed one at that. A 2011 study in Conservation Biology by Trevor Branch et. al., by contrast, estimated that only 7 to 13 percent of stocks
were collapsed and 28 to 33 percent "overexploited."*** Focusing on catches can be a tricky metric for judging the state of fisheries (it can be
hard, for instance, to track changes in fishing practices over time that might bias the results). So the authors consider a variety of other metrics,
too. One example: The amount of effort that fishermen have put into catching fish has increased significantly in the past three decades, as
measured by engine power and days that fishermen spend at sea. But the amount of fish actually caught has nevertheless stagnated since the
1990s: "Given the increase in global fishing effort, the lack of increase in global fisheries catch in the last decade and the fact that most
productive areas have now been exploited by fisheries," Pitcher and Cheung note, it's quite possible that "global exploited fish stocks are likely
to be in a decreasing trend." Could fisheries recover? That all said, there are also some reasons for optimism. In 2009, ecologist Boris Worm and
his colleagues took a look at more than 350 detailed fish stock assessments and found that many fisheries in North America and Europe were
actually recovering. In the United States, annual catch limits and market-based permit programs have helped some fish populations rebound.
The real question is whether these success stories are the exception rather than the rule. Pitcher and Cheung argue that the fish stocks
analyzed in that 2009 paper make up just 16 percent of the global catch — and are mostly confined to well-managed fisheries in richer
countries. By contrast, more than 80 percent of the world's fish are caught in the rest of the world, in places like Asia and Africa. While data
here is patchier, many of the nations in these regions are far less likely to follow the U.N.'s Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and
evidence suggests that "serious depletions are the norm" here: "It all depends where you look," Pitcher said in an interview. "There are a few
places where fisheries are doing better: The U.S., Australia, Canada, Norway. But those are relatively rare. In most places, the evidence suggests
that things are getting worse." Given
that the United States imports 91 percent of its seafood, that's an
important caveat. In theory, the rest of the world could adopt stricter measures to make their fisheries more sustainable, such as catch
limits, careful marine planning, and a crackdown on illicit fishing. Boris Worm and Trevor Branch have suggested that particular attention
should be paid to "fishing-conservation hotspots" around the world — regions that depend heavily on fishing livelihoods and have lots of
biodiversity but are nonetheless badly managed. Yet many low-income countries still lack the resources to monitor their fisheries. And even
richer nations struggle to enforce the laws they have: In Europe, regulators have consistently set lax fishing quotas — in part due to lobbying
from the fishing industry. ("Europe is not one of the places that's doing well," says Pitcher, "with a few exceptions like Norway.") Meanwhile,
as climate change and ocean acidification disrupt ecosystems in unpredictable ways, regulating fisheries
properly may become even more difficult. "Attempts to remedy the situation need to be urgent,
focused, innovative, and global," the paper concludes. But that's harder than it sounds.
US Key
The US must take the lead on aquacultures
Strasser 2014 (Annie-Rose [Senior Editor of ThinkProgress]; The new, innovative and more efficient
way of feeding people; Apr 21; thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/21/3422486/big-ag-takes-to-theocean/; kdf)
Models are all that researchers have to go off when assessing the potential impact of increased fish farming, though. That’s because the
United States is far from a leader in the industry — we’re way behind. Commercial fishing has remained
stagnant while aquaculture is on the rise worldwide, but here in the U.S. we’re still importing farm-raised
fish from other countries — places including China and Chile — instead of growing it ourselves. About 91 percent of our seafood
originates abroad, and half of it comes from aquaculture. Kent says that system won’t last too long. “What’s happening on
a global level is that the cost of seafood, because we keep seeing a need for more and more of it — populations are growing,
people are eating more and more of it because it’s healthier for them — what’s happening is the economies in the world that are growing right
now, like China, Brazil, where economies are starting to grow, their middle class is growing and their ability to buy seafood is increasing,” he
explained. “And
so the very countries like China that’s producing the majority of the seafood is keeping it
now. So it’s becoming more and more expensive now for us to source the product here.” Kent also argues that
we should actually want to produce our own seafood here. From a regulatory standpoint, Americans can have more faith in the
quality of fish produced under regulations from our own government. “We are importing all of this seafood but it’s
impossible for us to check it all for all of these chemicals,” he said, “so who knows how it was really grown? But if it’s grown here, unless the
farmer is being illegal in his operation, it’d be illegal to do it. ” There’s
plenty of opportunity for growing more protein
from the sea here in the United States. Exclusive Economic Zones, EEZs, are the area of ocean over which a
country has exclusive access to natural resources. The U.S. has the largest EEZ of any country on Earth. But we’re outsourcing
our fish production instead of doing it ourselves. In 2010, the tiny country of Bangladesh — with an EEZ of a little over 78,000 square kilometers
— produced 1,308,515 tons of aquaculture. The United States — whose EEZ is nearly twelve times the size — produced 495,499 tons.
U.S. funding is key to Aquaculture
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
The United States should take full advantage of its leadership position in this emerging, modernized field
and the active collaboration of federal, state, university, and private research organizations pursuing responsible marine stock enhancement.
The potential as a useful management tool is evident and the scientific literature is growing (Bell et al., 2008).
However, uncertainties with large-scale application remain and increased federal research funding is needed (Mote, 2010; SCORE,
2010). importantly, research dollars spent on closing the life cycles and creation of mass production
hatchery technologies for economically significant marine species will have a twofold benefit. Hatchery
technologies can be applied by the private sector for commercial farming, such as sea cage culture in the
EEZ, and by public purpose government and private agencies to produce fish and shellfish for stock
enhancement of recreational and commercial fisheries.
U.S. must take the lead to gain the credibility to force other countries to follow.
Pew Oceans Commission 3 [State of the Oceans, June 4 2003]
The commission believes, however, that this nation must get its own house in order to first provide a
solid foundation upon which to lead internationally. By establishing appropriate standards for
sustaining marine species and ecosystems, the U.S. will be in a better position to use trade pressures – as
it did successfully to protect sea turtles from unsustainable shrimp fisheries – or participate credibly in
negotiations of ocean resource treaties. For example, only by adopting strong conservation standards
for its domestic aquaculture industry can the U.S. establish the moral and legal authority to demand
protective practices in other countries.
US fishing policy is critical to our overall leadership on global issues
U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy 4 (9-20, http://www.oceancommission.gov/documents/full_color_rpt/000_ocean_full_report.pdf)
Many nations border on, or have direct access to, the sea. All are affected by it . People everywhere have a
stake in how well the oceans are managed, how wisely they are used, and how extensively they are explored and understood. For the
United States, this means the oceans provide an ideal vehicle for global leadership. From international
security to ocean resource management, education, scientific research, and the development of oceanrelated technology, the United States can gain respect by demonstrating exemplary policies and
achievements at home and seeking to spread positive results through collaborative efforts around the
world.
US fishing policy gets modeled-empirics
NOAA 2013 (Improving international fishery management; report to congress; Jan; kdf)
With active involvement of the United States, the FAO has promoted actions to address IUU fishing
activities by conducting studies, disseminating information, offering capacity building and institutional
strengthening, and providing a global forum for States to formulate appropriate instruments. Since the
2011 Report to Congress, the FAO Secretariat presented to the 30th Session of COFI a paper on progress in combating IUU fishing through a
number of initiatives discussed in this Part: adoption of the FAO Agreement on Port State Measures; training workshops to assist developing
nations in implementing that Agreement; compiling a global record of fishing vessels; and developing criteria for evaluating flag State
performance.
Modeling
Extend Cates- commercialization is necessary for the development of aquacultures-the
aff guarantees its economic
Leschin-Hoar 2012 (Clare; The big blue: can deep-water fish farming be susatainable; MAr 23;
grist.org/food/the-big-blue-can-deep-water-fish-farming-be-sustainable/; kdf)
He’s recently applied for permits for the next step, Velella Gamma, which will involve mooring the pod
to a single point on the ocean floor and may require less staff monitoring. This stage will also involve
placing the pod closer, into water depths of 6,000 feet. And the goal will be to move toward more
automation. “Machines can work better in rough sea than people,” he adds. In the end, economics will
likely dictate whether or not offshore aquaculture truly takes off in the next decade. “The great promise
of aquaculture – the ‘Blue Revolution’ – is that it can produce a healthy and abundant supply of protein
for a world that’s going to need a lot more of it, but you can only do that if you make the right choices of
species,” says Mann. He worries that producers of larger fish are more motivated by the marketplace,
than by a drive to feed the world sustainably. “You feed the world with shellfish and tilapia,” he says.
“Not salmon or shrimp for $15 a pound.” Either way, Sims will continue to push the envelope. As he sees
it, there’s been a lot of fear-mongering about aquaculture. And, like all food production, he stresses the
how in the equation. “There’s a ground swell of recognition that this is a direction we have to go,” he
says. “Let’s just do it right.”
Plan is modeled globally
Browdy and Hargreaves ‘08 [Craig L. Browdy, PhD, Senior Marine Scientist at the Waddell Mariculture
Center, and John A. Hargreaves, PhD focus in Aquaculture from Louisiana State University, aquaculture
expert with more than 30 years of experience in research, teaching, and development, “Overcoming
Technical Barriers to the Sustainable Development of Competitive Marine Aquaculture in the United
States,”
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/docs/aquaculture_docs/noaanist_techbarriers_final.pdf]
In order to meet increasing demand for seafood and reduce rising trade deficits, the
U.S. needs to enhance aquaculture
production in land-based, nearshore and offshore sectors. Technologies and production methods for nearshore sea cage
culture of a few species of finfish (e.g., salmon, trout) are well developed, however, suitable sites in protected waters are
limited, and further ¶ development has been impeded by environmental concerns, disease and parasites, containment ¶ breaches, and
multiple use conflicts. Technologies to improve environmental performance, create more secure containment barriers,
manage fish health (diseases and parasites), reduce production costs (feed, labor) and produce new species for culture
may result in expansion of nearshore cage culture. There is tremendous opportunity for expansion of cage culture in open ¶ ocean
waters, however, the technology suitable for high energy ocean environments is in an early ¶ stage of development, and farms operating in
exposed waters are small, production costs are ¶ high, and economic risk is not well known. Development and integration of technologies to a ¶
high level of automation for conducting routine operations is needed for offshore farming to ¶ expand. In addition, additional data on
environmental effects of ocean farming at a commercial ¶ scale (e.g., 2-5,000 MT annual production) are needed in order to overcome
impediments due to ¶ environmental concerns, and to inform the policy and regulatory framework for domestic ¶ offshore farming. ¶ Economic
Significance of Innovation ¶ Restoring U.S. nearshore cage production to its 2001 peak would add approximately ¶ $80,000,000 in farm gate
value to the existing sector. Additional production beyond that amount ¶ may or may not be possible due to space constraints. If
technology
for large scale offshore production could be achieved, (e.g., 50 U.S. farms each producing 5,000 MT) the farm gate
value would be in the $1.5-2 billion by 2025, and perhaps double or triple that mount by 2050. In addition,
technologies for offshore farming developed in the U.S, would be highly sought after internationally.
The US is a unique sustainability leader- NOAA leads global efforts and checks illegal
practices
Smith 2-12-14 [Russell Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Fisheries, NOAA,
“Commerce’s Smith on Support of International Fisheries Agreements,”
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2014/02/20140214293095.html?CP.rss=true#axzz3
1L5oOxrk]
The United States is also one of the world’s largest importers and consumers of seafood. In 2011, seafood imports contributed 176,000 jobs, $48.4 billion in sales impacts, and $14.8 billion in
the United States is in a unique position to support sustainable fisheries around the world
NOAA engages in
international fisheries fora, such as Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs), to ensure that global fish stocks are
sustainably managed, including by ensuring that management is based on the best available science. As the United States is a leader in
sustainably managing fisheries, often we seek to draw from our experience and convince RFMOs to apply, in the waters under their
value added impacts.3 As such,
while providing a level playing field for our domestic fishermen. Working in collaboration with the Department of State and the U.S. Coast Guard,
jurisdiction, management measures comparable to those applied in U.S. waters.¶ One of the greatest challenges to our international efforts to ensure the sustainable management of global
illegal, unreported, or unregulated (IUU) fishing. IUU fishing is a global problem that threatens ocean ecosystems and
impacts fisheries, food security, and coastal communities around the world. Experts estimate the global value of
economic losses from IUU fishing range between $10 and $23.5 billion.4 By circumventing conservation and management measures, companies
fisheries is combating
and individuals engaging in IUU fishing cut corners and lower their operating costs. As a result, their illegally caught products provide unfair competition for law-abiding fishermen and seafood
industries in the marketplace, and can undercut the sustainability of international and U.S. fisheries.5¶ U.S. accession to the four agreements before you today would greatly strengthen our
ability to sustainably manage fisheries resources globally and combat IUU fishing. The agreements are: the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fisheries Resources
in the North Pacific Ocean (or North Pacific Convention); the Convention on the Conservation and Management of High Seas Fishery Resources in the South Pacific Ocean (or South Pacific
Convention); the Amendment to the Convention on Future Multilateral Cooperation in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (or NAFO Convention Amendment); and the Agreement on Port State
Measures to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (or Port States Agreement).¶ These four treaties will directly benefit U.S. interests. The new RFMOs in
the North and South Pacific and the existing RFMO in the Northwest Atlantic (NAFO) will have management authority for target stocks and bycatch species that straddle U.S. waters. By joining
these organizations and strengthening their management regimes, the United States can promote the use of our strong fishery management principles internationally so that foreign fishing
fleets abide by the same standards as our industry. In joining the new North and South Pacific RFMOs, we are also ensuring future economic opportunities for our domestic fishing interests.
Although there is currently no U.S. industry operating within the North or South Pacific RFMOs, our membership will allow for the possibility of future engagement and provide the opportunity
for the U.S. to influence the management and compliance monitoring measures adopted by these organizations.¶ The treaties also support the U.S. seafood industry and consumers by
keeping illegal fisheries product out of U.S. and global markets. The North and South Pacific RFMOs and NAFO will implement new and strengthen existing management tools to combat IUU
fishing within their areas. Moreover, the Port States Agreement will help to keep IUU fishing products from entering the market, and keep them from competing with U.S. caught, sustainably
harvested, legal seafood -. Denying port entry and access to port services, and consequently preventing illegal seafood from entering trade, increases the costs associated with IUU fishing
operations and removes the financial incentives for engaging in IUU fishing.¶ Lastly, these treaties will support international sustainable fisheries management and thereby improve food
security globally. Seafood is a significant source of protein for nearly 3 billion people and is the planet's most highly traded food commodity, contributing to the livelihoods of more than 560
million people.6 IUU fishing threatens food security and socio-economic stability in many parts of the world by reducing the productivity and profitability of legitimate fisheries, including
artisanal fisheries in coastal areas. By improving the management of fisheries through these new or updated RFMOs, coupled with the IUU fishing-combating Port States Agreement, the four
treaties address food security in developing coastal states, in the United States and globally; and thereby support the political stability of U.S. interests worldwide.¶ I now will describe each of
the four agreements and the benefits they would provide in more detail.¶ North Pacific and South Pacific Fisheries Conventions¶ The United States has worked for many years with other
nations to improve the management of fisheries at the international level and to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems from the impacts of certain fishing practices on the high seas. The
North¶ Pacific and South Pacific Conventions will advance U.S. interests in the effective management of high seas fisheries. U.S. participation in the Commissions established under the North
Pacific and South Pacific Conventions will facilitate development of measures adopted for fisheries on the high seas of the Pacific Ocean that are compatible with measures adopted by the
United States with respect to fisheries in adjacent waters under the fisheries jurisdiction of the United States. In addition, U.S. participation will ensure that future U.S. fishing interests subject
to the North Pacific and South Pacific Conventions can be factored into allocation decisions. Furthermore, as both the South Pacific Convention area and the North Pacific Convention areas
overlap with that of other Pacific RFMOs in which the United States is a party, U.S. participation will help to ensure a consistent approach to conservation and management among these
RFMOs and across the Pacific.¶ North Pacific Convention¶ The North Pacific Convention establishes a new regional fisheries management organization, the North Pacific Fisheries Commission
(NPFC), through which Parties will cooperate to ensure the long-term conservation and sustainable use of fisheries resources in the Convention Area while protecting the marine ecosystems of
the North Pacific Ocean in which these resources occur. The North Pacific Convention Area is the high seas area (i.e., outside of 200-mile EEZs) roughly north of 20-degrees North latitude and
south of the Aleutians. The specific geographic coordinates of the North Pacific Convention Area are delineated in Article 4 of the Convention. Cooperation under the North Pacific Convention
will address fisheries resources not covered under pre-existing international fisheries management instruments and will help to prevent significant adverse impacts on vulnerable marine
ecosystems on the high seas that may have impacts on fisheries resources in areas subject to U.S. jurisdiction. One of the general principles of the North Pacific Convention is that conservation
and management measures established for straddling fish stocks on the high seas and those adopted for areas under national jurisdiction should be compatible to ensure conservation and
management of these fisheries resources in their entirety.¶ The North Pacific Convention calls for a science-based and precautionary approach to the management of fisheries resources and a
strong monitoring, control, and surveillance regime. It also will establish two committees, a Scientific Committee and a Technical and Compliance Committee, to carry out its functions. The
North Pacific Convention will also allow for the meaningful participation of Taiwan as a fishing entity in the NPFC.¶ Of particular concern to the NPFC are bottom fisheries over seamounts that
could have significant adverse impacts on vulnerable marine ecosystems. The participants to the negotiations of the North Pacific Convention have already agreed to interim measures to
protect vulnerable marine ecosystems and the sustainable management of high seas bottom fisheries in the North Pacific Convention Area. The interim measures include requiring
assessments prior to any fishing that demonstrate that contemplated fishing activities would not have significant adverse impacts on vulnerable marine ecosystems and sustainability of the
fishery resources.¶ While there are presently no U.S. vessels fishing whose activities would be covered by the North Pacific Convention, there have been in the past and may be in the future.
The United States is a coastal State with fisheries and marine habitats adjacent to the North Pacific Convention Area. Those fisheries can be impacted by management measures adopted by
the North Pacific Commission.¶ For example, since 1986, NMFS has prohibited fishing in the U.S. EEZ for Pacific armorhead, one of the groundfish species that will be managed in the
Convention area. Armorhead are overfished as a result of past over-exploitation by foreign vessels in international waters dating back to the 1970s or earlier. NMFS believes that continued
exploitation outside our EEZ by foreign fleets has kept the stock in an overfished condition. The Hancock Seamounts are the only known armorhead habitat within our EEZ. These seamounts lie
west of 180° W. and north of 28° N., to the northwest of Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council and NMFS have responded to the
overfished condition of armorhead by implementing a moratorium on catching armorhead and related seamount groundfish. The Council and NMFS recognize that, because less than five
percent of the armorhead habitat lies within U.S. jurisdiction,
rebuilding of the stock must be accomplished through coordinated
international management. The North Pacific Convention is an important vehicle to achieve such coordinated international management.¶ The United States also has
fleets operating in the North Pacific Convention Area that are fishing for tunas, swordfish and other species that are subject to the jurisdiction of other RFMOs which could cooperate with the
NPFC.¶ South Pacific Convention¶ The South Pacific Convention establishes a new regional fisheries management organization, the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organization
(SPRFMO) through which Parties will cooperate in the conservation and sustainable use of the high seas fishery resources in the South Pacific Ocean and safeguard the marine ecosystems in
which these resources occur.¶ The South Pacific Convention applies to areas of the South Pacific outside national jurisdiction from Australia to South America. Some of these areas abut the
U.S. EEZ. The initial objectives of the negotiators were to develop a management framework to control bottom fishing in the western Pacific, primarily by New Zealand, Australia, and Taiwan,
and the jack mackerel fishery in the eastern Pacific, primarily by Chile, Peru, and the European Union. The United States was a primary participant in the negotiation of the South Pacific
Convention. SPRFMO will address fisheries resources not currently under management by pre-existing agreements, such as new pelagic fisheries or expanded fisheries for stocks that straddle
one or more exclusive economic zones and high seas areas beyond them.¶ The South Pacific Convention requires Parties to apply specific conservation and management principles and
approaches in giving effect to the objective of the South Pacific Convention. These principles and approaches are enshrined in existing international instruments to which the United States is a
party, such as the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement. These standards highlight the importance of using the best-available science and applying an ecosystem approach to fisheries management. In
addition, the South Pacific Convention requires that Parties design and adopt specific conservation and management measures such as limitations on catch or effort, time or area closures, and
gear restrictions.¶ While there are presently no U.S. vessels fishing in the high seas areas of the South Pacific whose activities would be covered by the South Pacific Convention, U.S.
membership within the Commission would allow for the potential participation of future fishing interests and enable the U.S. to influence the development of new and amended conservation
and management measures.¶ NAFO Convention Amendment¶ The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) is charged with coordinating scientific study and cooperative
management of the fisheries resources of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, excluding salmon, tuna, and sedentary species of the Continental Shelf. It was established in 1979 by the Convention
on Future Multilateral Cooperation in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries (the “Convention”). The United States acceded to the Convention in 1995 and has participated actively in NAFO since
that time, often assuming leadership positions and working to advance key principles of sustainable fisheries management.¶ In 2005, NAFO launched a reform effort designed to streamline
the Organization and bring it more in line with the principles of modern fisheries management. In 2007, NAFO members adopted the NAFO Convention Amendment, which is comprehensive,
touching on every element of the Convention. It addresses specific U.S. concerns and incorporates key international fisheries governance approaches, as found in the 1995 Fish Stocks
Agreement, the 1993 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Compliance Agreement, and more recent regional fisheries management agreements. The NAFO
Convention Amendment vastly improves the ability of NAFO and its membership to effectively manage the resources under its purview and the ecosystems associated with those resources.¶
Key elements of the NAFO Convention Amendment include provisions that detail NAFO’s objectives, including long-term conservation and sustainable use of fishery resources and
safeguarding of marine ecosystems in the convention area. The agreement also outlines general principles that include (among many others) promoting optimum use and long-term
sustainability of fishery resources, adopting management measures based on the best scientific advice available, applying the precautionary approach when there is scientific uncertainty,
taking into account the effect of fishing on the marine ecosystem, and highlighting the need to preserve biodiversity. This language reflects a modernized approach to fisheries management.¶
Furthermore, the Amendment simplifies the structure of NAFO, which will now consist of a Commission, a Scientific Council, and a Secretariat. This new structure combines the current General
Council and Fisheries Commission into a single Commission and reorganizes a number of the sub-bodies. These changes will streamline NAFO considerably and result in increased efficiency,
more effective conservation and management, and reduced costs. The NAFO Convention Amendment enables the Commission to take action, including non-discriminatory trade-related
measures, against any State or fishing entity whose fishing vessels undermine the effectiveness of NAFO measures. It also requires the Scientific Council to advise the Commission on the
impacts of fishing on the marine ecosystem as a whole within the Convention Area. Finally, the Amendment describes the formulation of the Organization’s budget and the calculation of the
contributions due by each Contracting Party. One important result of changes to the Amendment is that U.S. costs associated with membership in NAFO will be considerably reduced.¶ The
NAFO Convention Amendment also describes Contracting Party duties, flag State duties, and port State duties, respectively. These provisions are noteworthy because they draw on
international fisheries governance approaches found in the most important and innovative international agreements on fisheries management including the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement, the
1993 FAO Compliance Agreement, and more recent regional fisheries management agreements. The language primarily focuses on effective implementation of measures adopted by NAFO,
reporting requirements, inspections, and compliance and enforcement obligations.¶ The NAFO Convention Amendment rewrites the old provisions for decision making, implementation, and
settlement of disputes. It modifies the current general rule for decision-making within the Commission from a simple majority to consensus and outlines voting rules to be applied, namely a
two-thirds majority, if consensus is not possible. The process for implementation of Commission decisions is also substantially modified, and the NAFO Convention Amendment details how and
when decisions become binding and introduces changes to the existing objection procedure. The revised objection procedure is an improvement as it, among other things, requires a detailed
explanation from the objecting Contracting Party and a declaration of the actions (including alternative measures) to be taken. Objecting Parties or the Commission may also now submit
matters to an ad hoc panel and/or invoke the new dispute settlement procedures, which provide the choice of a number of fora in which to seek resolutions through peaceful means. The
process also requires Contracting Parties to submit disputes to compulsory proceedings pursuant to the 1995 Fish Stocks Agreement.¶ The NAFO Convention Amendment addresses
cooperation with non-Contracting Parties and with other organizations. These new provisions are designed to ensure that non-Contracting flag State vessels abide by NAFO measures when
fishing in the NAFO Regulatory Area. They call for exchange of information on fishing activities of non-Contracting Parties and measures to deter activities (such as IUU fishing) that may
undermine the measures adopted by the Commission. The new text further calls on NAFO to cooperate with the FAO and other relevant organizations, including RFMOs. This is particularly
important with respect to the success of regional and global efforts relating to IUU fishing, trade tracking, and even for implementing the ecosystem management of fisheries.¶ Other
Amendment provisions are administrative in nature (e.g., establishing procedures for review and amendment of the Convention and its Annexes). Annex I to the Convention, “Scientific and
Statistical Subareas, Divisions and Subdivisions,” provides the coordinates of the scientific and statistical subareas, divisions and subdivisions of the Convention Area. Annex II to the
Convention, “Rules Concerning the Ad Hoc Panel Procedure pursuant to Article XV,” is a new Annex describing the procedure for the ad hoc panels, one method available to settle disputes
between Contracting Parties.¶ Port States Agreement¶ The Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter, and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing is the first binding
global instrument focused specifically to combat IUU fishing. It recognizes that all fish must pass through a port to get to market and that port States can take cost-effective measures to
combat IUU fishing. IUU fishing deprives law-abiding fishermen and coastal communities around the world of up to an estimated $23.5 billion of seafood and seafood products every year7,
and undermines efforts to monitor and sustainably manage fisheries. It also threatens the food security in some of the poorest countries in the world as well as in the United States and
interferes with the livelihood of legitimate fishers around the world. Seafood caught through IUU fishing enters the global marketplace through ports all around the world. Preventing that fish
from entering the global market requires an international solution and the cooperation of countries throughout the world.¶ The Port States Agreement is recognized within the international
community as a landmark in the effort to combat IUU fishing. The United States was a primary participant in its negotiation and was one of the first countries to sign it. We took a leadership
role because we recognized how important taking these measures is for nations that want to ensure that product entering their ports has been legally harvested and is safe for consumers. We
have had experience with the implementation of most of the substantive measures in the agreement as most of these measures are already contained in U.S. law.¶ The Agreement has already
had significant impact on efforts to combat IUU fishing, influencing the adoption of similar measures by various RFMOs and providing a model for nations, developing nations in particular, to
follow in establishing or strengthening dockside inspection programs. However, the full effect of the Port States Agreement as a tool to combat IUU fishing will not be realized until its entry
into force, which requires ratification by 25 nations or regional economic integration organizations. So far, nine have done so. Ratification of the Port States Agreement by the United States
will demonstrate strong leadership in the global battle against IUU fishing and will position the United States to encourage ratification by other countries.¶ The Agreement sets forth minimum
standards for the conduct of dockside inspections and training of inspectors and, most significantly, requires parties to restrict port entry and port services for foreign vessels known or
suspected of having been involved in IUU fishing, particularly those on a RFMO IUU fishing vessel list. These minimum standards would increase the risks and costs associated with IUU fishing
activities and help to ensure that IUU fish and fish products do not enter into global trade. Senate advice and consent to ratification of the Port States Agreement will ultimately benefit U.S.
fishermen, seafood buyers, and consumers by preventing IUU vessels from entering our ports and diluting the market with illegal product.¶ The Port States Agreement has four primary sets of
obligations that Parties are required to apply vis-a-vis foreign flagged fishing vessels (including support vessels) seeking entry to a Party’s port:¶ ● Parties are required to designate ports to
which foreign flagged vessels may seek entry, to require that certain information be collected and considered, and to establish a process for granting or denying port entry and/or the use of
port services to foreign flagged fishing vessels;¶ ● Parties must maintain the capacity to conduct dockside vessel inspections in the designated ports and adhere to minimum standards for the
conduct of inspections and the training of inspectors. A sufficient number of inspections must be conducted to satisfy the objective of the Agreement;¶ ● Subject to certain limited exceptions,
Parties must deny port entry and the use of port services to vessels that have been engaged in IUU fishing, including as indicated by inclusion of the vessel on an RFMO IUU Vessel list.
Importantly, the limited exceptions include allowing port entry exclusively for enforcement purposes or in the event of force majeure; and,¶ ● Parties are required to share information,
including inspection results, with the flag States and, as appropriate, other relevant Parties and entities, as well as to take follow-up actions as requested by the flag State when evidence of
IUU fishing is found during the course of an inspection.¶ NOAA would be the lead agency for U.S. implementation of the Port States Agreement. Primary responsibility to carry out its
obligations, particularly those related to vessel inspections, will fall on NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Office of Law Enforcement, in collaboration with the U.S. Coast Guard,
which has Captain of the Port authority for the United States. Importantly, the minimum standards set by the Port States Agreement track closely to what the United States already does.
Under the Port States Agreement, these best practices would become common practice around the world, thereby effectively closing the so-called ports of convenience that IUU fishing
As a global leader in sustainable fishing practices, and the third largest importer of seafood in the
world, the United States has a responsibility to ensure the fish we import is caught legally. The United States also has a responsibility
to protect our domestic fishermen from unfair competition and ensure consumer confidence in the seafood supply by keeping illegal product out
of the market. The Port State Measures Agreement marks a significant step forward on both of these counts. The United States, with our strong legal
frameworks, experience in effective port management and robust fisheries law enforcement, has been
assisting developing nations in their preparations for implementation of the Agreement. NOAA has most recently assisted Indonesia
in its development of training curriculum for fisheries inspectors who will carry out inspections under the Agreement. Additionally, the
operators use to land their fish and support their activities.
United States has strongly promoted the adoption of measures in RFMOs that strengthen port related measures, in accordance with the Agreement. These efforts promote the success of the
Agreement and thereby reduce the amount of IUU product entering our domestic markets.
The plan sets the US as the global sustainability model- key to solve environmental
destruction
Naylor ’13 [Rosamond L. Naylor, the Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Center for Environmental Science
and Policy, Stanford University, “Environmental Safeguards for Open-Ocean Aquaculture,” 11-27-13,
http://issues.org/22-3/naylor/]
The main problem with the proposed legislation is the broad discretion given to the secretary of Commerce to promote offshore aquaculture without clear legal standards for environmental
protection. The authority is intended to facilitate a streamlining of regulations, yet it provides minimal checks and balances within the system. The bill states that the secretary “shall consult as
appropriate with other federal agencies, the coastal states, and regional fishery councils . . . to identify the environmental requirements applicable to offshore aquaculture under existing laws
and regulations.” An implicit assumption of the bill is that most of the needed environmental safeguards are already in place. Additional environmental regulations targeted specifically for
offshore aquaculture are to be established in the future “as deemed necessary or prudent by the secretary” in consultation with other groups. Yet timing is everything. If the law is passed
marine species and the environment— and the requirement that these
guidelines be implemented— such protection may never happen, or it may happen after irreversible damages have
occurred. Are current federal laws sufficient to protect the environment in the EEZ? The answer is no. As a framework,
they leave major gaps in environmental protection. The Rivers and Harbors Act gives the Army Corps of Engineers the authority to issue permits for
without the establishment of comprehensive national guidelines for the protection of
any obstruction in federal waters (including fish cages) but does not provide clear environmental mandates. The Corps has the broad discretion to ensure environmental quality but is not
required to do so. The Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act extends this authority farther offshore beyond the territorial waters of the EEZ and applies to any offshore facilities that are anchored
on or up to 1 mile from offshore oil rigs; in this case, further permit approval is required from the Department of Interior. The Clean Water Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
the authority to regulate waste discharges from aquaculture facilities, but the agency’s recent effluent guidelines for aquaculture net pens, which presumably would be applied to offshore
cages, focus simply on the use of best management practices. Aquaculture discharge is not currently regulated through the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), the
permitting system used for municipal and industrial point-source discharge to U.S. waters. The Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act both are applicable in the EEZ
and can be used to limit offshore aquaculture operations if they are proven to threaten any listed threatened or endangered species, or if they unlawfully kill marine mammals. In addition, the
Lacey Act gives the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the authority to regulate the introduction of exotic species in federal waters if they have been listed specifically as “injurious” to other species.
The Lacey Act applies to any species that are transported or traded across borders, but not to species that already exist within borders. Finally, all international treaties and protocols would
apply to offshore aquaculture in the EEZ.¶ The only federal law that the proposed bill would explicitly supersede is the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) of 1976, which stipulates a balance
between fishing and conservation. S. 1195 does not include any specific balancing requirements between ecosystems and industry. Regional fishery management councils established under
the MSA as well as the public would be consulted in the process of environmental rulemaking but would not have a determining effect on the outcome.¶ Although S. 1195 supersedes only one
federal law, existing legislation does not adequately address the major risks of farmed fish escapes and genetic dilution of wild stocks, pathogen transmission from farms to wild organisms, and
cumulative effluent discharge. Most existing laws and regulations for marine aquaculture are found at the state level, where current near-shore systems operate. Few states have
comprehensive regulatory plans for marine aquaculture, and there are no regional plans that address the risks of biological, chemical, or nutrient pollution that spreads from one coastal state
to the next.¶ The proposed bill gives coastal states an important role in influencing the future development of offshore aquaculture. Indeed, coastal states would be permitted to opt out of
offshore aquaculture activities. The bill states that offshore aquaculture permits will not be granted or will be terminated within 30 days if the secretary of Commerce receives written notice
from the governor of a coastal state that the state does not wish to have the provisions of the act apply to its seaward portion of the EEZ. The governor can revoke the opt-out provision at any
time, thus reinstating NOAA’s authority to issue permits and oversee aquaculture operations in that portion of the EEZ. Although the bill does not grant coastal states any jurisdiction over that
part of the EEZ, it does provide them with potential exclusion from offshore aquaculture activities.¶ This amendment ensures a role for coastal states that is stronger than that which would
apply through the Consistency Provision (section 307) of the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA). Section 307 of the CZMA requires that federally permitted projects be consistent with
select state laws that safeguard coastal ecosystems, fisheries, and people dependent on those fisheries (collectively called the state’s “coastal zone management program”). To complete the
permitting process for an offshore aquaculture project, the project applicant must certify the project’s consistency with the state’s coastal zone management program to NOAA. Even if the
state objects to the applicant’s consistency certification, the secretary of Commerce can override the state’s objection and issue the permit simply by determining that the project is consistent
with the objectives or purposes of the Federal Coastal Management Act or that the project is necessary in the interest of national security. Thus, the Department of Commerce retains ultimate
authority over whether state laws apply to the EEZ.¶ Although the decision by different coastal states to opt out of the proposed offshore aquaculture bill is yet to be determined, some states
have already adopted policies related to aquaculture development within state waters. In Alaska, state law prohibits finfish farming within the 3-mile state zone. In Washington, House Bill
1499 allows the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to have more control over environmental damages caused by near-shore salmon farming. In California, salmon farming and the
use of genetically modified fish are prohibited by law in marine waters, and a new bill currently being reviewed in the state assembly (SB. 210) requires strict environmental standards for all
other forms of marine aquaculture introduced into state waters. The California legislation, in particular, provides an excellent model for a redrafting of the National Offshore Aquaculture Act.¶
marine aquaculture is here to stay and will inevitably
expand into new environments as global population and incomes grow. Although the United States is in a position to make itself a
The need for national environmental standards¶ Whether environmentalists like it or not,
global model for sustainable fish production in the open ocean, the proposed bill unfortunately falls far short of this vision. Pursuant to
the recommendations of the Pew Commission, an aggressive marine aquaculture policy is needed at the national level to
protect ocean resources and ecosystems. Within this policy framework, several specific features are needed:¶ The establishment of national environmental
standards for siting and operation that minimize adverse effects on marine resources and ecosystems and that set clear limits on allowable ecological damage.¶ The establishment of national
effluent guidelines through the EPA for biological, nutrient, and chemical pollution from coastal and offshore fish farms, using NPDES permits to minimize cumulative effluent impacts.¶ The
establishment of substantive liability criteria for firms violating environmental standards, including liability for escaped fish and poorly controlled pathogen outbreaks.¶ The establishment of
rules for identifying escaped farm fish by their source and prohibiting the use of genetically modified fish in ocean cages.¶ The establishment of a transparent process that provides meaningful
public participation in decisions on leasing and permitting of offshore aquaculture facilities and by which marine aquaculture operations can be monitored and potentially closed if violations
occur.¶ The establishment of royalty payments process for offshore aquaculture leases that would compensate society for the use of public federal waters.¶ At the same time, firms exceeding
the minimum standards should be rewarded, for example, through tax breaks or reductions in royalty fees, in order to encourage environmental entrepreneurship and international
leadership. By articulating a comprehensive set of environmental standards and incentives within the draft of the law, the bill would gain acceptance by a broad constituency interested in the
standards
are high, but also essential. There is now a widespread realization that the ability of the oceans to supply fish,
assimilate pollution, and maintain ecosystem integrity is constrained by the proliferation of human activities on land
and at sea. Offshore aquaculture could help to alleviate these constraints, but only if it develops under clear and
enforceable environmental mandates.
sustainable use of ocean resources.¶ Proponents of offshore aquaculture might argue that these recommendations hold the industry to exceedingly high standards. Yes, the
US Key- try or die
Aquaculture should be prioritized by the U.S. for its ability to stimulate the economy,
restore ecosystems, and mitigate global warming.
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
the new administration in Washington, DC, policies and plans are currently being developed for broader
ocean management and use as well as specifically for commercial aquaculture in the EEZ (Council on Environmental Quality, 2009a,
2009b; NOAA, 2009). These efforts should include priority consideration of investing in greater U.S.
understanding and use of marine aqua- culture as a tool for responsible fisheries and ecosystem
management. The United States should plan for and en- courage greater infrastructure capabilities to
mass produce marine fish, shellfish, and other species (e.g., blue crab, Caflinectes sapialus) to help address America’s
growing demand for seafood and the potential requirements to re- build and restore critical marine
habitat impacted by continued coastal development and global climate change. Valuable impacts on
society extend beyond fostering healthy and productive marine ecosystems and reducing America’s
increasing reliance on sea-food imports to fill demand. They can include greater development and
diversification of the commercial fishing, recreation, and tourism-based economies of coastal
communities as well as expanding the important social and cultural benefits to the public at- large of
preserving America’s marine fishing heritage.
Finally, with
AT: Case Turns
AT: Waste
Open oceans solve waste concerns
Strasser 2014 (Annie-Rose [Senior Editor of ThinkProgress]; The new, innovative and more efficient
way of feeding people; Apr 21; thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/21/3422486/big-ag-takes-to-theocean/; kdf)
Permitting challenges is just one of the reasons Belle would like to take more aquaculture offshore. Going further out, he explained, also helps
to stabilize temperatures. And experts say that the open ocean can have other environmental benefits, too; one
of the big criticisms
of the industry is that plopping a bunch of fish out in the ocean means increasing the amount of waste
being put into the seas. Open ocean environments can help deal with this concern by creating freeflowing water to distribute that waste evenly. “If I go five miles out to sea, I’m in 300 feet of water that
has a quarter to a half-knot current that’s consistently moving clean water across it,” explains Hubbs-Sea
World’s Don Kent. “So, the water itself doesn’t accumulate the materials that the fish are producing — the metabolites, the nitrogen, the
phosphorous, that they’re putting out. And
it disperses the carbon waste that they’ve got coming out of them in
such a manner that it feeds bottom fauna on the bottom, but it doesn’t accumulate so densely that it overpowers them.
This has all been demonstrated in models, computer simulations that allow us to say, ‘if I want to grow
this many fish in this location with this current, what impact do we think we can predict on the
bottom?’”
Fish Waste From Aquaculture Does Not Harm the Ecosystem
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
Nutrient discharge from fish farming operations is organic and comes from two sources – uneaten feed
and fish poop! Both of these are biodegradable and readily used by most aquatic ecosystems. In the
U.S., decades of experience have led to net-pen aquaculture in balance with the ecosystem. This comes
from effective management plans, proper siting, and regulatory regimes that ensure minimum impacts
to the environment.
AT: Offshore Aquacultures Bad
The plan provides a comprehensive federal framework allows for a sustainable and
safe transition to offshore aquacultures
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
I propose that a comprehensive and centralized framework for the offshore aquaculture industry be
developed, and the roles of the relevant federal agencies and regulatory bodies be clarified. Without such
a framework, U.S. aquaculturists are discouraged from moving their operations offshore due to the lack of
any regulatory consistency or predictability, which not only makes it difficult to obtain sufficient
investment capital, but also leaves anyoffshore operation vulnerable to legal challenge. In fact, the very first
commercial offshore aquaculture project to be issued a fishing permit to operate in federal waters was challenged in federal court. n12 At the
same time, regulations
are essential to ensuring that the environmental effects of offshore aquaculture including biological, organic, and chemical pollution, the impact of escaped farmed fish on native
populations and marine ecosystems, and habitat modification - are minimized. This Note first explains why the
offshore aquaculture industry needs to be regulated and why it is imperative that such regulations be
put in place now. Specifically, Part II will explain why the ever-increasing demand for seafood will lead to a rise in
aquaculture production. As the industry moves offshore into the federal waters of the open ocean (known
as the exclusive economic zone, or "EEZ"), explicit regulations are needed to promote the offshoreindustry's
development as well as to address its environmental effects. Part III highlights the deficiencies of the current regulatory
system - namely, the problems of administrative overlap and ambiguous statutory bases for each agency's regulatory authority. Finally, Part IV
recommends that Congress create, through new legislation, a comprehensive regulatory framework that identifies one federal agency as [*686]
having primary regulatory authority over offshore aquaculture practices. Specifically, the proposed National Sustainable Offshore Act of 2011,
which identifies the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ("NOAA") as the lead agency to regulateoffshore aquaculture, is the
ideal legislation for such a task. Part V concludes.
AT: Biological pollution
The plan puts offshore farms under regulation, solves biological pollution
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Biological pollution may be caused by the unintentional release of farmed fish into the ocean, which can
harm native fish populations in a number of ways. Nonnative farmed fish can compete with native fish for food,
habitat, or spawning grounds. In the Pacific Northwest, escaped fish from salmon farms have threatened or
displaced native salmon populations for years, n66 while many scientists believe nonnative escaped fish
contributed to the extinction and endangerment of several native fish species, such as the bonytail and humpback
chubs, the desert pupfish, the Gulf sturgeon, and the June and razorback suckers. n67 Because farmed fish are either selectively bred or
artificially engineered to mature faster and [*695] grow larger, they can also alter the genetic makeup of wild populations by interbreeding,
which can decrease that population's fitness. n68 Scientists and policymakers alike are already calling for regulation of genetically modified or
"transgenic" fish. n69 Finally, escaped
fish can create biological pollution by introducing parasites and pathogens
to native stock, the incidences of which are increased by aquaculture's practice of raising large densities
of fish in small areas. One deadly pathogen, infectious salmon anemia ("ISA"), was first detected in the United States in Maine in 2001,
n70 and by 2011 had made its way to the West Coast. n71 The virus, highly contagious, can kill up to 70 percent of fish on infected farms and
could "devastate" Pacific salmon stocks if left unchecked. n72 In fact, a 2007 outbreak of the virus was responsible for decimating the Chilean
salmon aquaculture industry, reducing production by half and resulting in more than $ 2 billion in losses. n73 Notably, the
risk of
escaped fish may be higher in offshore aquaculture facilities since they are often more susceptible to
damage by storms and are more likely to experience accidental releases of fish and their pathogens. In
fact, net pens - the kind currently used in most offshore [*696] facilities - are "extremely prone to fish escapes" because of their vulnerability to
storm damage, accidents during transfers, and damage from boats or other marine life. n74 Indeed, nearly one hundred thousand Atlantic
salmon escaped from net pens in Washington in 1996, with another three hundred thousand escaping from a single farm in 1997. n75 Any
potential offshore facility, therefore, must be regulated and managed to avoid this risk.
AT: Deadzones
80 percent of the chemicals that contribute to dead zones come from unregulated
aquacultures
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Aquaculture systems can contribute to organic pollution and eutrophication of aquatic environments by
discharging fish wastes and uneaten fish feed into the water column. n76 Eutrophication, or nutrient loading,
occurs when a body of water becomes enriched with organic material, which stimulates nutrient
concentrations to harmful levels. n77 High levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, the main nutrients in fish food, are
considered to be the primary causes of environmental degradation in marine waters - contributing to low
dissolved oxygen levels ("dead zones"), murky water, seagrass and coral death, fish kills, and possibly harmful algal
blooms. n78 These nutrients are deposited from marine aquaculture systems directly into the water and are free to escape into the marine
environment: as much as 70 percent of total phosphorus and 80 percent of total nitrogen found in the feed added to marine fish farms may be
discharged. n79 Although
offshore facilities may decrease the instances of eutrophication because strong
currents in the open ocean can dilute or disperse these organic wastes and nutrients, the risk of
environmental degradation is serious for facilities that are located in shallow waters or in weak current
systems. Indeed, one study found that 80 percent of the nitrogen and phosphorous added to marine
fish farms contribute to eutrophication. n80
The plan solves for chemical pollution, which causes disease amongst humans and fish
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Chemical pollution is caused by the extensive use of antibiotics, pesticides, herbicides, hormones,
parasiticides, and fertilizers in [*697] aquaculture operations. Once these chemicals are added to marine farms, they
readily disperse into the environment and can impact nontarget species. n81 For example, one parasiticide used in
marine aquaculture systems to kill sea lice - but which is toxic to marine invertebrates - can remain in the water
column for up to five hours and travel up to a half mile from the application site. n82 Furthermore, overuse of
antibiotics in fish farms may pose a health risk to farmed fish, native fish, and even humans. n83 One
recent study found that excessive use of antibiotics in fish farms in Chile and Norway has led to an antibiotic
resistance in several of the aquatic bacteria causing infection and disease. n84 Because many of the bacteria found
in the aquatic environment belong to the same group as human pathogens, scientists are now worried that "resistant genes
from bacteria in aquaculture have spread to human pathogens." n85 This threat is taken seriously by the U.S.
government: the Fish and Wildlife Service is required to recommend to the Food and Drug Administration which drugs should or should not be
allowed for use in private aquaculture projects. n86
The plan provides the regulatory framework to allow for sustainable development
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Offshore aquaculture has the potential to become a significant aspect of U.S. seafood production. Yet,
without an effective regulatory framework in place, incentives to participate in offshore activities are
few and the industry will flounder. At the same time, an ineffective regulatory scheme will allow the
environmental risks of offshore aquaculture to go unchecked, which could have serious consequences
for both marine and human environments. For these reasons, it is imperative that a precautionary national
framework be in place in advance of industry development. Part III below will examine whether an effective framework
does in fact already exist.
AT: Overfishing
, Peter F 2011. is a marine ecologist with over 40 years experience in tropical coastal ecosystems, particularly coral reefs.Our
Dying Planet: An Ecologist's View of the Crisis We Face. Berkeley: U of California,. Print.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZRQTYRA3OI4C&pg=PA48&lpg=PA48&dq=aquaculture+replaces+overfished+stock&source=bl&ots=OLLHP3
M7mP&sig=8gylmWjAeP3IMIDFzSTJeM_mzLo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nbyxU8eiMIjl8AHl4DgAg&ved=0CCQQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=aquaculture%20replaces%20overfished%20stock&f=false
Aquaculture is an enormous and growing industry around the world. In practice and effect, it is very different from
fishing, although many of the fish, crustaceans, and shellfish we consume today are aquaculture products, and it is often difficult to tell the
difference. Extensive areas of freshwater ponds and lakes and coastal wetlands are employed to raise aquaculture species, and pen culture
that just as
agriculture replaced hunting and gathering as a much more efficient way of acquiring terrestrial food
products, aquaculture will eventually replace fishing of wild stocks. It is quite true that aquaculture has become
(also termed sea ranching) is extending aquaculture out across the continental shelves. A logical and commonly held view is
important and will continue to grow in importance, and it is probably also true that our seafood diet will become predominantly based on
aquaculture species over the next few years. Indeed, the
only way of further increasing our global consumption of
seafood is through increased aquaculture. But it would be unwise to anticipate that a shift to aquaculture will permit us to
market ever-greater quantities of seafood while permitting natural marine systems to recover from the present state of overfishing.
Aquaculture will crowdout overfishing
Naylor, R. L. et.all (2000). Standford Professor, Environmental Earth System Science; Associate Professor of Economics, by
courtesy and William Wrigley Senior Fellow; FSI and Woods Institute Senior FellowEffect of aquaculture on world fish supplies. Nature,
405(6790), 1017-1024. “Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v405/n6790/full/4051017a0.html#B4
Market dynamics affecting both the supply and demand for aquaculture products differ sharply among
types of fish. Expanding aquaculture production can alleviate pressure on wild fisheries stocks; for example,
increasing the production of farmed fish that compete directly with wild fish (such as shrimp, salmon and molluscs)
reduces prices and creates conditions that can lower investments in fishing fleets and fishing effort over
time. Other farmed fish, such as tilapia, milkfish and channel catfish, provide alternatives to ocean fish such as cod, hake, haddock and
pollock. Because niche markets have started to develop for several types of wild-caught fish, however, capture rates have remained high even
as the production of viable substitutes has increased4. The
ability of the aquaculture sector to replace or provide
market alternatives for ocean catches depends significantly on the economics and policies of fisheries.
Aquacultures can preserve endangered aquatic species and re-store damaged marine
ecosystems damaged by overfishing
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
Marine aquaculture technologies can be developed to produce a variety of organisms that could help
preserve endangered aquatic species and re-store damaged marine ecosystems. Bottlenecks exist in closing the
life cycle of many species of interest, for example, a food small enough for first feeding of some marine fish, but research is underway on a few
species, largely at public and private aquariums. Many of the larger aquariums, for example, the Georgia Aquarium, have breeding programs for
the rarer aquatic species they have on display so that they do not have to continuously capture wild specimens. In this context, some
aquaria are also working with threatened and endangered organisms to develop propagation
technology that could be used to restock and re-build populations that are or could be in crisis and view
this as an important role in the 21st century (Garibaldi, 2001). For example, the Seattle Aquar-ium (2010) carries out genetics
research on the leafy seadragon, an endemicspe-cies ofAustralia that is endangered. The Waikiki Aquarium (WA) was the first facility to culture
the Chambered Nau-tilus, considered a living fossil and threatened by overfishing for its beauti-ful shell (WA, 2010). Cultured organisms
could also be used to restore ecosystems damaged by natural and man-made disasters. For example, the WA
currently has the oldest and largest collection of liv-ing corals in the United States. The aquarium has regularly been asked to use its Hawaiian
coral stock to help the State in reestablishing coral colonies damaged by ship groundings (WA, 2010).
Aquaculture restores ecosystems damaged by overfishing
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
Clearly, releasing aquaculture produced stock to enhance wild populations of fish and shellfish and
restore distressed ecosystems or habitats could be a valuable tool to incorporate into existing fishery
and habitat management approaches. Moreover, the United States has a growing cadre of capable
researchers and research institutions that are developing mass rearing hatchery technologies for species
of economic and ecological importance. A few state stocking programs using the responsible approach are demonstrating the
positive influences of wild stock enhancement today.
AT: Contaminated
Farmed Fish Are Not contaminated
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
No farmed fish are on any “avoid” list due to mercury or other pollutants. These harmful compounds
enter and concentrate in organisms largely through what they eat. The FDA and state Departments of
Agriculture conduct inspections as well as collect and analyze feed and fish samples to ensure that feeds
and the fish that consume them meet strict requirements. Formulated feed ingredients used in
aquaculture are regularly monitored to avoid possible contamination.
AT: Antibiotics
Farmed Fish No Longer Contain Antibiotics In US
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
Antibiotic use in aquaculture has all but disappeared for species like salmon in most countries and is rare
in others due to better husbandry and vaccines that have been developed for the major bacterial
diseases. While good management practices and vaccines alone are usually enough to prevent or
control disease, a farmer may, in consultation with a licensed veterinarian, use a limited number of
aquatic animal drugs including antibiotics, in the case where they have been approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat specific conditions. The use of antibiotics for non-therapeutic
purposes in aquaculture is prohibited by law.
AT: Disease
Aquaculture Don’t Causes Diseases in Wild Fish
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
Pathogens and disease are a fact of life with all forms of animal production, but the mere presence of a
pathogen does not necessarily result in a disease event. The animal host needs to be in a
distressed/immunosuppressed condition for disease to take hold. In the wild, disease outbreaks are
controlled/prevented by predators picking off sick individuals within the population, movement of the
fish to better environmental conditions (better oxygen, optimum temperatures), and other ecological
interactions.¶ On fish farms, disease is kept at bay by vaccination, good nutrition, using specific
pathogen-free fingerlings, biosecurity, and husbandry practices that minimize stress. The use of
theraputants is a last resort. Pathogen transfer, particularly bacteria and virus, from cultured finfish to
wild finfish that results in clinical disease and mortality is a rare event; however, there are examples of
this phenomenon with parasites. Aquatic animal health practices include measures to reduce risks of
disease in both cultured and wild fish.
AT: Sea Lice
Farmed salmon Don’t Contain Sea Lice
NOAA 12 (NOAA -National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- a federal agency focused on the
condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. “10 Myths about U.S. Marine Aquaculture.” NOAA.gov.
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/homepage_stories/10myths.html. May, 2012)
The parasite of greatest concern to salmon farmers is sea lice. Historically, sea lice occasionally have
been a problem for farmed salmon in the State of Maine – where they exist naturally in the wild. In
contrast, sea lice are not a problem for Washington State, where the water is less saline. Maine has
made great strides in minimizing the incidence of sea lice by adopting an integrated pest management
strategy similar to that used by organic farmers. This strategy includes reducing stocking density, baywide coordination among farms, early and coordinated treatments, and letting sites lie fallow between
harvests.
No War
Environment first
The environment outweighs nuclear war
Caldwell 3 (Joseph, Ph.D., The End of the World, www.foundation.bw.com, March 6)
It should be recognized that the significant catastrophe that is happening now is not the imminent
collapse of human population from many billion to a few hundred million or less. The significant
catastrophe that is happening now is the sudden mass species extinction that is taking place. A
big change in the human population is of no long-term significance, as long as the biosphere
remains intact, i.e., the balance of nature remains essentially the same as that in which the human
species evolved. Under these conditions, future generations of mankind can continue to live meaningful
lives, for millions of years, in the rich environment in which it evolved. As long as the biosphere is
essentially intact, mankind as a species continues to thrive, and all options remain open. But the mass
species extinction can render [hu]mankind extinct, or, what is infinitely worse, make his planet-home
a much less interesting and desirable place to live, for millions of future generations. As long as the
biosphere is preserved intact, [hu]mankind may continue to experience and enjoy life on a
marvelous planet for a very long time. If the biosphere is substantially damaged, some doors,
some varieties of experience, some alternative futures, will have been closed forever.
Nuclear war doesn’t turn case
IHT 8
(International Herald Tribune, http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/15/asia/bikini.php)
CANBERRA: Coral is again flourishing in the crater left by the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated by
the United States, 54 years after the blast on Bikini Atoll, marine scientists said Tuesday. A team of research
divers visited Bravo crater, ground zero for the test of a thermonuclear weapon in the Marshall Islands on March
1, 1954, and found large numbers of fish and coral growing, although some species appeared to be locally
extinct. "I didn't know what to expect, some kind of moonscape perhaps, but it was incredible," Zoe Richards,
from Australia's James Cook University, said about the team's trip to the atoll in the South Pacific. "We saw
communities not too far from any coral reef, with plenty of fish, corals and action going on, some really
striking individual colonies," she said. The 15-megaton hydrogen bomb was 1,000 times more powerful
than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, and it vaporized islands with temperatures hitting
55,000 degrees Celsius, or about 99,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Bikini blast shook islands as far away as 200
kilometers, or 125 miles.
No Nuke War- Deterence
No nuclear war – deterrence
Tepperman 2009 [Deputy Editor at Newsweek. Frmr Deputy Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs. LLM, ilaw, NYU. MA, jurisprudence, Oxford. (Jonathan, Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb,
http://jonathantepperman.com/Welcome_files/nukes_Final.pdf, CMR]
The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations. First, nuclear
weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there’s never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess
them. Just stop for a second and think about that: it’s hard to overstate how remarkable it is, especially given the singular viciousness of the
20th century. As Kenneth Waltz, the leading “nuclear optimist” and a professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley puts it, “We now
have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It’s striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been
any war among nuclear states.” To understand why—and why the next 64 years are likely to play out the same way—you need to start by
recognizing that all
states are rational on some basic level. Their leaders may be stupid, petty, venal, even evil, but they tend to
do things only when they’re pretty sure they can get away with them. Take war: a country will start a fight only when it’s
almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price. Not even Hitler or Saddam waged wars they didn’t think they could win. The
problem historically has been that leaders often make the wrong gamble and underestimate the other side—and millions of innocents pay the
price. Nuclear
weapons change all that by making the costs of war obvious, inevitable, and unacceptable. Suddenly, when
the
craziest tin-pot dictator is forced to accept that war with a nuclear state is unwinnable and thus not worth the effort. As Waltz puts
both sides have the ability to turn the other to ashes with the push of a button— and everybody knows it—the basic math shifts. Even
it, “Why fight if you can’t win and might lose everything?” Why indeed? The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so
compelling, it’s led to what’s known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end of World War II in which all the
world’s major powers have avoided coming to blows. They did fight proxy
wars, ranging from Korea to Vietnam to Angola to Latin America.
But these never matched the furious destruction of full-on, great-power war (World War II alone was responsible for some 50
million to 70 million deaths). And since the end of the Cold War, such bloodshed has declined precipitously. Meanwhile, the nuclear powers
have scrupulously avoided direct combat, and there’s very good reason to think they always will. There have been some near misses, but a
close look at these cases is fundamentally reassuring—because in each instance, very different leaders all came to the same safe conclusion.
Take the mother of all nuclear standoffs: the Cuban missile crisis. For 13 days in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union each
threatened the other with destruction. But both countries soon stepped
back from the brink when they recognized that a
war would have meant curtains for everyone. As important as the fact that they did is the reason why: Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev’s aide Fyodor Burlatsky said later on, “It is impossible to win a nuclear war, and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time.”
The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back,
always for the same reasons. The best recent example is India and Pakistan, which fought three bloody wars after independence before
acquiring their own nukes in 1998. Getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction didn’t do anything to lessen their animosity. But it did
dramatically mellow their behavior. Since acquiring atomic weapons, the two sides have never fought another war, despite severe provocations
(like Pakistani-based terrorist attacks on India in 2001 and 2008). They have skirmished once. But during that flare-up, in Kashmir in 1999, both
countries were careful to keep the fighting limited and to avoid threatening the other’s vital interests. Sumit Ganguly, an Indiana University
professor and coauthor of the forthcoming India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, has found that on both sides, officials’ thinking was strikingly similar
to that of the Russians and Americans in 1962. The prospect of war brought Delhi and Islamabad face to face with a nuclear holocaust, and
leaders in each country did what they had to do to avoid it.
No Miscalc
Miscalc is impossible
Quinlan 2009 (Sir Michael, visiting professor at King's College London, Permanent Under-Secretary at
the Ministry of Defence and former senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies,
“Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects,” Oxford University Press, CMR)
One special form of miscalculation appeared sporadically in the speculations of academic commentators, though it was scarcely ever to be
encountered—at least so far as my own observation went—in the utterances of practical planners within government. This is the idea that
nuclear war might be erroneously triggered, or erroneously widened, through a state under attack misreading either what sort of attack it was
being subjected to, or where the attack came from. The postulated misreading of the nature of the attack referred in particular to the hypothesis
that if a delivery system—normally a missile—that was known to be capable of carrying either a nuclear or a conventional warhead was launched
in a conventional role, the target country might, on detecting the launch through its early warning systems, misconstrue the mission as an
imminent nuclear strike and immediately unleash a nuclear counter-strike of its own. This conjecture was voiced, for example, as a criticism of
the proposals for giving the US Trident SLBM, long associated with nuclear missions, a capability to deliver conventional warheads. Whatever
the merit of those proposals (it is not explored here), it is hard to regard this particular apprehension as having any real-life credibility. The flight
time of a ballistic missile would not exceed about thirty minutes, and that of a cruise missile a few hours, before arrival on target made its
character—conventional or nuclear—unmistakable. No
government will need, and no nonlunatic government could wish, to
take within so short a span of time a step as enormous and irrevocable as the execution of a nuclear strike on the basis
of early-warning information alone without knowing the true nature of the incoming attack. The speculation tends moreover to be
expressed without reference either to any realistic political or conflict-related context thought to render the episode
plausible, or to the manifest interest of the launching country, should there be any risk of doubt, in ensuring—by explicit communication if
necessary—that there was no misinterpretation of its conventionally armed launch.
Interdependence checks- (Don’t read if you want to dedev)
Interdependence checks
Deudney 2009 (Daniel Prof of Pol Sci, and Ikenberry, Prof of International Affairs, and John, Prof of
Pol Sci at John Hopkins and Prof of International Affairs at Princeton, “Why Liberal Democracy Will
Prevail” http://www.nwc.navy.mil/events/csf/readings/AutocraticRevival.aspx, CMR)
This bleak
outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and
forces. Indeed, contrary to what the revivalists describe, the most striking features of the contemporary international
landscape are the intensification of economic globalization, thickening institutions, and shared problems of
interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth century. Compared to
older orders, the contemporary liberal-centered international order provides a set of constraints and opportunities — of pushes
and pulls — that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while creating strong imperatives for cooperative problem
solving. Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also fail to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to
conflict resolution and great-power expansion has become largely obsolete. Most important, nuclear weapons have transformed great-power
war from a routine feature of international politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers possessing nuclear weapons
and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among these states has truly become an
option of last
resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in the great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes major
revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have severely limited the ability of great
powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated).
Unlike during the days of empire building in the nineteenth century, states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective
territorial control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the
nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, and production networks across international borders raises even more the costs of
war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the most plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist
regime daunting economic costs, both domestic and international. Taken together, these
changes in the economy of violence mean that
the international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists acknowledge.
Nuclear war =/= extinction
Nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction
Socol 2011 Yehoshua (Ph.D.), an inter-disciplinary physicist, is an expert in electro-optics, high-energy
physics and applications, and material science and Moshe Yanovskiy, Jan 2, “Nuclear Proliferation and
Democracy”, http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/nuclear_proliferation_and_demo.html, CMR
Nuclear proliferation should no longer be treated as an unthinkable nightmare; it is likely to be the future reality. Nuclear weapons have been
acquired not only by an extremely poor per capita but large country such as India, but also by even poorer and medium-sized nations such as
Pakistan and North Korea. One could also mention South Africa, which successfully acquired a nuclear arsenal despite economic sanctions (the
likes of which have not yet been imposed on Iran). It is widely believed that sanctions and rhetoric will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear
weapons and that many countries, in the Middle East and beyond, will act accordingly (see, e.g., recent Heritage report). Nuclear Warfare --
consequences of the limited use of nuclear weapons -- especially low-yield devices most likely to be
be great enough to bring about significant
geopolitical upheavals. Casualties from a single 20-KT nuclear device are estimated [1] at about 25,000 fatalities with a similar
Myths And Facts The direct
in the hands of non-state actors or irresponsible governments -- would probably not
number of injured, assuming a rather unfortunate scenario (the center of a large city, with minimal warning). Scaling the above toll to larger
devices or to a larger number of devices is less than linear. For example, it has been estimated that it would take as many as eighty devices of
20-KT yield each to cause 300,000 civilian fatalities in German cities (a result actually achieved by Allied area attacks, or carpet-bombings,
during the Second World War). A single 1-MT device used against Detroit has been estimated by U.S. Congress OTA to result in about 220,000
civil defense measures, based on rather simple presently known techniques, would
decrease these numbers by maybe an order of magnitude (as will be discussed later). There is little doubt that a
nation determined to survive and with a strong sense of its own destiny would not succumb to such losses. It is often
argued that the fallout effects of even the limited use of nuclear weapons would be worldwide and would last for generations. This is
an exaggeration. The following facts speak for themselves. -- In Japan, as assessed by REFR, less than 1,000 excess cancer
cases (i.e., above the natural occurrence) were recorded in over 100,000 survivors over the past sixty years -- compared with
fatalities. It is anticipated that well-prepared
about 110,000 immediate fatalities in the two atomic bombings. No clinical or even sub-clinical effects were discovered in the survivors'
offspring. -- In the Chernobyl area, as assessed by IAEA, only fifteen cancer deaths can be directly attributed to fallout radiation. No radiationrelated increase in congenital formations was recorded. Nuclear Conflict -- Possible Scenarios With reference to a possible regional nuclear
conflict between a rogue state and a democratic one, the no-winner (mutual assured destruction) scenario is probably false. An analysis by
Anthony Cordesman, et al. regarding a possible Israel-Iran nuclear conflict estimated that while Israel might survive an Iranian nuclear blow,
Iran would certainly not survive as an organized society. Even though the projected casualties cited in that study seem to us overstated,
especially as regards Israel, the conclusion rings true. Due
to the extreme high intensity ("above-conventional") of nuclear
conflict, it is nearly certain that such a war, no matter its outcome, would not last for years, as we have become accustomed to in
current low-intensity conflicts. Rather, we should anticipate a new geo-political reality: the emergence of clear winners and losers
within several days, or at most weeks after the initial outbreak of hostilities. This latter reality will most probably contain fewer nuclearpossessing states than the former.
No nuke winter – studies
Seitz 2011 (Russell, Harvard University Center for International Affairs visiting scholar, “Nuclear winter
was and is debatable,” Nature, 7-7-11, Vol 475, pg37, accessed 9-27-11, CMR)
Alan Robock's contention that there has been no real scientific debate about the 'nuclear winter' concept is itself debatable (Nature 473,
potential climate disaster, popularized in Science in 1983, rested on the output of a onedimensional model that was later shown to overestimate the smoke a nuclear holocaust might engender. More refined
275–276; 2011). This
estimates, combined with advanced three-dimensional models (see http://go.nature.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/kss8te), have dramatically
reduced the extent and severity of the projected cooling. Despite this, Carl Sagan, who co-authored the 1983 Science paper, went so far as to
posit “the extinction of Homo sapiens” (C. Sagan Foreign Affairs 63, 75–77; 1984). Some
regarded this apocalyptic prediction as an
mythology. George Rathjens of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology protested: “Nuclear winter is the
worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory,” (see
http://go.nature.com.libproxy.utdallas.edu/yujz84) and climatologist Kerry Emanuel observed that the subject had “become
exercise in
notorious for its lack of scientific integrity” (Nature 319, 259; 1986). Robock's single-digit fall in temperature is at odds with the
subzero (about −25 °C) continental cooling originally projected for a wide spectrum of nuclear wars. Whereas Sagan predicted darkness at noon
from a US–Soviet nuclear conflict, Robock projects global sunlight that is several orders of magnitude brighter for a Pakistan–India conflict —
literally the difference between night and day. Since 1983,
the projected worst-case cooling has fallen from a Siberian deep freeze
spanning 11,000 degree-days Celsius (a measure of the severity of winters) to numbers so unseasonably small as to call the very term
'nuclear winter' into question.
Counterforce targeting solves war
Counterforce targeting checks
Mueller 2009 (John, Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies and Professor of Political Science
at Ohio State University. “Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda” p. 8)
applying such extreme characterizations as societal annihilation, a full-out
attack with hundreds, probably thousands, of thermonuclear bombs would be required. Even in such extreme
cases, the area actually devastated by the bombs' blast and thermal pulse effects would be limited: 2,000 I-MT explosions with
To begin to approach a condition that can credibly justify
a destructive radius of 5 miles each would directly demolish less than 5 percent of the territory of the United States, for example. Obviously, if
major population centers were targeted, this sort of attack could inflict massive casualties. Back in cold war days, when such devastating events
sometimes seemed uncomfortably likely, a number of studies were conducted to estimate the consequences of massive thermonuclear attacks.
One of the most prominent of these considered several possibilities. The
most likely scenario--one that could be perhaps be
a "counterforce" strike in which well over 1,000 thermo nuclear
weapons would be targeted at America's ballistic missile silos, strategic airfields, and nuclear submarine bases in an effort to
destroy the country's strategic ability to retaliate. Since the attack would not directly target population centers, most of the
ensuing deaths would be from radioactive fallout, and the study estimates that from 2 to 20 million, depending mostly on wind,
weather, and sheltering, would perish during the first month.
considered at least to begin to approach the rational-was
No escalation- Intervening actors
Intervening actions check escalation
Trachtenberg 2000 (Prof of History, Pennsylvania (Marc, The "Accidental War" Question,
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/trachtenberg/cv/inadv(1).pdf, CMR)
The second point has to do with how much risk there really is in situations of this sort. It should not be assumed too readily that states
underestimate the degree to which they lose control of the situation when they engage in a crisis. States
can generally pull back
from the brink if they really want to; prestige will be sacrificed, but often states are willing to pay that price. The history of
international politics in the century that just ended is full of crises that were liquidated by one side accepting what
amounted to defeat, sometimes even humiliating defeat; and in the July Crisis in 1914, the German government chose at the most critical
moment to let the war come rather than press for a compromise solution.9 The key thing here is that in 1914 and 1939 political leaders had not
totally lost control, but had chosen to accept war rather than back off in a crisis. Their aversion to war was not overwhelming. But when both
sides very much want to avoid a full-scale armed conflict, the story is very different. This was the case during the Cold War. People sometimes
seem to assume that peace was hanging by a thread during that conflict, and that we were lucky to make our way through it without a
thermonuclear holocaust. But I don't think this is true at all: and in general I think it
is very unlikely that a great war would
break out if both sides are determined to avoid it. These arguments about how war could break out almost by accident were frequently
made during the Cold War itself--and indeed were made by responsible and experie nced officials. A British document from March 1946, for
example, argued that the Soviets did not want war, but the kind of tactics they used with the West might lead to a war that neither side
wanted: "although the intention may be defensive, the tactics will be offensive, and the danger always exists that Russian leaders may misjudge
how far they can go without provoking war with American or ourselves."10 A year later, a British Foreign Office official warned that the fact
that the Soviets had military superiority in Europe might make them careless, and that they might "misjudge what measures can safely be taken
without producing a serious crisis." Events might get out of control and a situation might develop that could "lead to disaster."11 What is wrong
with this point of view? It assumes that the Soviets would not be cautious, that they would not frame their actions very carefully with an eye to
the American reaction, that in deciding how far to go they would not gauge very closely how the Americans reacted to the measures they had
taken up to that point. This point of view assumes also that the Soviets would find it very hard to draw back if it became clear that they had
overstepped the bounds and had thought the American reaction would not be as vigorous as it in fact was--or indeed that they had not made
the mental reservation that they could draw back, in necessary, when they decided to embark on a provocative course of action. Basically the
assumption is that the Soviets did not care enough about what a war would entail to take these rather elementary and normal precautions. This
point of view also assumes that the American response would be very rigid and "spring-loaded": a slight Soviet infringement, and the Americans
immediately take the plunge into general war--as though there are no intermediate measures of a political or military nature that would be
taken, no process that would unfold within which the two sides would test each other out before resorting to extreme measures. To my mind,
things would never move directly and mechanically from initial
provocation to full-scale war, that things would unfold almost inevitably in a more complex way--or, in short, that
enough "cushioning" exists in the system to keep relatively minor provocations from leading directly to
general war.
anyone with any sense should know that
AT: War
There is only a 7% chance of a large war in the next decade
Pinker 2011(Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.361-2; kdf)
The New Peace is the quantitative decline in war, genocide, and terrorism that has proceeded in fits
and starts since the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago. It has not been around for as long as the
Long Peace, is not as revolutionary as the Humanitarian Revolution, and has not swept a civilization in the manner
of the Civilizing Process. An obvious question is whether it will last. Though I am reasonably confident that
during my lifetime France and Germany will not go to war, that cat-burning and the breaking wheel
will not make a comeback, and that diners will not routinely stab each other with steak knives or cut
off each other's noses, no prudent person could express a similar confidence when it comes to armed conflict in
the world as a whole. I am sometimes asked, uHow do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or
an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not
that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that
substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines
in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular
cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up. Also, the world contains a
lot of people. The statistics of power-law distributions and the events of the past two centuries agree in telling us
that a small number of perpetrators can cause a great deal of damage.lf somewhere among the world's six billion
people there is a zealot who gets his hands on a stray nuclear bomb, he could single-handedly send the statistics
through the roof. But even if he did, we would still need an explanation of why homicide rates fell a hundredfold,
why slave markets and debtors' prisons have vanished, and why the Soviets and Americans did not go to war over
Cuba, to say nothing of Canada and Spain over flatfish. The goal of this book is to explain the facts of the past and
present, not to augur the hypotheticals of the future. Still, you might ask, isn't it the essence of science to make
falsifiable predictions? Shouldn't any claim to understanding the past be evaluated by its ability to extrapolate into
the future? Oh, all right. I predict that the chance that a major episode of violence will break out in the
next decade-a conflict with 1oo,ooo deaths in a year, or a million deaths overall-is 7 percent. How did
I come up with that number? Well, it's small enough to capture the intuition "probably not," but not
so small that if such an event did occur I would be shown to be flat-out wrong. My point, of course, is
that the concept of scientific prediction is meaningless when it comes to a single event-in this case, the eruption of
mass violence in the next decade. It would be another thing if we could watch many worlds unfold and tot up the
number in which an event happened or did not, but this is the only world we've got. The truth is, I don't know
what will happen across the entire World in the coming decades, and neither does anyone else. Not everyone,
though, shares my reticence. A Web search for the text string "the coming war" returns two million hits, with
completions like "with Islam," "with Iran/ "with China/ "with Russia," "in Pakistan," "between Iran and Israel,"
"between India and Pakistan," "against Saudi Arabia," "on Venezuela," "in America," "within the West," "for Earth's
resources," "over climate," "for water," and "with Japan" (the last dating from 1991, which you would think would
make everyone a bit more humble about this kind of thing). Books with titles like The Clash of Civilizations, World
on Fire, World War IV, and (my favorite) We Are Doomed boast a similar confidence. Who knows? Maybe they're
right. My aim in the rest of this chapter is to point out that maybe they're wrong. This isn't the first time we've
been warned of certain ruin. The experts have predicted civilization-ending aerial gas attacks, global
thermonuclear war, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, a Chinese razing of half of humanity, nuclear
powers by the dozen, a revanchist Germany, a rising sun in Japan, cities overrun by teenage
superpredators, a world war fought over diminishing oil, nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and
weekly 9/11-scale attacks.''" In this section I'll look at four threats to the New Peace-a civilizational clash with
Islam, nuclear terrorism, a nuclear Iran, and climate change-and for each one make the case for "maybe, but
maybe not."
AT: War with Islam
There will never be a war with Islam
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.368; kdf)
In early 2011, as this book was going to press, a swelling protest movement deposed the leaders of
Tunisia and Egypt and was threatening the regimes in Jordan, Bahrain, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The
outcome is unpredictable, but the protesters have been almost entirely nonviolent and non-Islamist,
and are animated by a desire for democracy, good governance, and economic vitality rather than global
jihad, the restoration of the caliphate, or death to infidels. Even with all these winds of change, it is
conceivable that an Islamist tyrant or radical revolutionary group could drag an unwilling populace into a
cataclysmic war. But it seems more probable that "the coming war with Islam" will never come.
Islamic nations are unlikely to unite and challenge the West: they are too diverse, and they have no
civilization-wide animus against us. Some Muslim countries, like Turkey, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are
well on the way to becoming fairly liberal democracies. Some will continue to be ruled by SOBs, but
they'll be our SOBs. Some will try to muddle through the oxymoron of a Sharia democracy. None is likely
to be governed by the ideology of Al Qaeda. This leaves three reasonably foreseeable dangers to the
New Peace: nuclear terrorism, the regime in Iran, and climate change.
AT: Nuclear Terror
There is a one in a million chance of nuclear terrorism
Pinker 2011(Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.370-3; kdf)
You can see where I'm going. The mental movie of an Islamist terrorist group buying a bomb on the black market or obtaining it from a rogue
state and then detonating it in a populated area is all too easy to play in our mind's eye. Even if it weren't, the entertainment industry has
played it for us in nuclear terrorist dramas like True Lies, The Sum of All Fears, and 24- The narrative is so riveting that we are apt to give it a
higher probability than we would if we thought through all the steps that would have to go right for the disaster to happen and multiplied their
probabilities. That's why so many of my survey respondents judged an Iran-sponsored nuclear terrorist attack to be more probable than a
nuclear attack. The
point is not that nuclear terrorism is impossible or even astronomically unlikely. It is just
that the probability assigned to it by anyone but a methodical risk analyst is likely to be too high. What do I
mean by "too high"? "With certainty" and "more probable than not" strike me as too high. The physicist Theodore
Taylor declared in 1974 that by 1990 it would be too late to prevent terrorists from carrying out a nuclear attack.266 In 1995 the world's
foremost activist on the risks of nuclear terrorism, Graham Allison, wrote that under prevailing circumstances, a nuclear attack on American
targets was likely before the decade was out."6' In 1998 the counterterrorism expert Richard Falkenrath wrote that "it is certain that more and
more non-state actors will become capable of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons acquisition and use."268 In 2003 UN ambassador John
Negroponte judged that there was a "high probability" of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction within two years. And in 2007 the
physicist Richard Garwin estimated that the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack was 20 percent per year, or about 50 percent by 2010 and
almost go percent within a decade.''' Like
television weather forecasters, the pundits, politicians, and terrorism
specialists have every incentive to emphasize the worst-case scenario. It is undoubtedly wise to scare governments
into taking extra measures to lock down weapons and fissile material and to monitor and infiltrate groups that might be tempted to acquire
them. Overestimating
the risk, then, is safer than underestimating it-though only up to a point, as the costly
invasion of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction proves. The professional reputations of
experts have proven to be immune to predictions of disasters that never happen, while almost no one wants to take a chance at giving the allclear and ending up with radioactive egg on his face.'7" A few brave analysts, such as Mueller, John Parachini, and Michael Levi, have taken the
chance by examining the disaster scenarios component by component.271 For starters, of the four so-called weapons of mass destruction,
three are far less massively destructive than good old-fashioned explosives.''" Radiological or "dirty" bombs, which are conventional explosives
wrapped in radioactive material (obtained, for example, from medical waste), would yield only minor and short-lived elevations of radiation,
comparable to moving to a city at a higher altitude. Chemical weapons, unless they are released in an enclosed space like a subway (where they
would still not do as much damage as conventional explosives), dissipate quickly, drift in the wind, and are broken down by sunlight. (Recall
that poison gas was responsible for a tiny fraction of the casualties in World War I.) Biological weapons capable of causing epidemics would be
prohibitively expensive to develop and deploy, as well as dangerous to the typically bungling amateur labs that would develop them. It's no
wonder that biological and chemical weapons, though far more accessible than nuclear ones, have been used in only three terrorist attacks in
thirty years.'?J In 1984 the Rajneeshee religious cult contaminated salad in the restaurants of an Oregon town with salmonella, sickening 751
people and killing none. In 1990 the Tamil Tigers were running low on ammunition while attacking a fort and opened up some chlorine cylinders
they found in a nearby paper mill, injuring 6o and killing none before the gas wafted back over them and convinced them never to try it again.
The Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo failed in ten attempts to use biological weapons before releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subways,
killing 12. A fourth attack, the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed 5 Americans in media and government offices, turned out to be a spree killing
rather than an act of terrorism. It's really only nuclear weapons that deserve the WMD acronym. Mueller and Parachini have fact-checked the
various reports that terrorists got "just this close" to obtaining a nuclear bomb and found that all were apocryphal. Reports of "interest" in
procuring weapons on a black market grew into accounts of actual negotiations, generic sketches morphed into detailed blueprints, and flimsy
clues (like the aluminum tubes purchased in 2001 by !rag) were overinterpreted as signs of a development program. Each of the pathways to
nuclear terrorism, when examined carefully, turns out to have gantlets of improbabilities. There
may have been a window of
vulnerability in the safekeeping of nuclear weapons in Russia, but today most experts agree it has been
closed, and that no loose nukes are being peddled in a nuclear bazaar. Stephen Younger, the former director of
nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has said, "Regardless of what is reported in the news, all nuclear nations
take the security of their weapons very seriously."274 Russia has an intense interest in keeping its
weapons out of the hands of Chechen and other ethnic separatist groups, and Pakistan is just as worried about its
archenemy Al Qaeda. And contrary to rumor, security experts consider the chance that Pakistan's government and
military command will fall under the control of lslamist extremists to be essentially nil.'75 Nuclear weapons
have complex interlocks designed to prevent unauthorized deployment, and most of them become "radioactive scrap metal" if they are not
maintained.2 7 6 For these reasons, the forty-seven-nation Nuclear Security Summit convened by Barack Obama in 2010 to prevent nuclear
terrorism concentrated on the security of fissile material, such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium, rather than on finished weapons. The
dangers of filched fissile material are real, and the measures recommended at the summit are patently wise, responsible, and overdue. Still,
one shouldn't get so carried away by the image of garage nukes as to think they are inevitable or even
extremely probable. The safeguards that are in place or will be soon will make fissile materials hard to
steal or smuggle, and if they went missing, it would trigger an international manhunt. Fashioning a workable
nuclear weapon requires precision engineering and fabrication techniques well beyond the capabilities of amateurs. The Gilmore commission,
which advises the president and Congress on WMD terrorism, called the challenge "Herculean," and Allison has described the weapons as
"large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient." 277 Moreover, the path to getting the materials, experts, and facilities
in place is mined with hazards of detection, betrayal, stings, blunders, and bad luck. In his book On Nuclear Terrorism, Levi laid out all the things
that would have to go right for a terrorist nuclear attack to succeed, noting, "Murphy's Law of Nuclear Terrorism: What can go wrong might go
wrong.""'' Mueller counts
twenty obstacles on the path and notes that even if a terrorist group had a fiftyfifty chance of clearing every one, the aggregate odds of its success would be one in a million. Levi brackets
the range from the other end by estimating that even if the path were strewn with only ten obstacles, and the probability that each would be
cleared was Bo percent, the aggregate odds of success facing a nuclear terrorist group would be one in ten. Those are not our odds of becoming
victims. A terrorist group weighing its options, even with these overly optimistic guesstimates, might well conclude from the long odds that it
would better off devoting its resources to projects with a higher chance of success. None of this, to repeat means that nuclear terrorism is
impossible, only that it is not, as so many people insist, imminent, inevitable, or highly probable.
AT: War with Iran
A war with Iran is not coming, nor will they give weapons to terrorists—their rhetoric
only serves to motivate people though fear, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.374-5; kdf)
If Iran does become a confirmed or suspected nuclear power, the history of the nuclear age suggests that the most likely outcome would be
nothing. As we have seen, nuclear weapons have
turned out to be useless for anything but deterrence against
annihilation, which is why the nuclear powers have repeatedly been defied by their nonnuclear adversaries. The most recent episode of
proliferation bears this out. In 2004 it was commonly predicted that if North Korea acquired a nuclear capability,
then by the end of the decade it would share it with terrorists and set off a nuclear arms race with South
Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.''' In fact, North Korea did acquire a nuclear capability, the end of the decade has come and gone, and nothing
has happened. It's also unlikely that any nation would furnish nuclear ammunition to the loose cannons of a terrorist band, thereby giving up
control over how they would be used while being on the hook for the consequences. '86 In the case of lran, before it decided to bomb Israel (or
license Hezbollah to do so in an incriminating coincidence), with no conceivable benefit to itself, its leaders would have to anticipate a nuclear
reprisal by Israeli commanders, who could match them hothead for hothead, together with an invasion by a coalition of powers enraged by the
violation of the nuclear taboo.
Though the regime is detestable and in many ways irrational, one wonders
whether its principals are so indifferent to continuing their hold on power as to choose to annihilate
themselves in pursuit of perfect justice in a radioactive Palestine or the arrival of the Twelfth Imam, with
or without Jesus at his side. As Thomas Schelling asked in his 2005 Nobel Prize lecture, "What else can Iran accomplish, except possibly the
destruction of its own system, with a few nuclear warheads? Nuclear weapons should be too precious to give away or to sell, too precious to
waste killing people when they could, held in reserve, make the United States, or Russia, or any other nation, hesitant to consider military
action."287 Though it may seem dangerous to consider alternatives to the worst-case scenario, the dangers go both ways. In the fall of 2002
George W. Bush warned the nation, "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for
the final proof-the smoking gunthat could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." The "clear evidence" led to a war that has cost more than a
hundred thousand lives and almost a trillion dollars and has left the world no safer. A
cocksure certainty that Iran will use
nuclear weapons, in defiance of sixty-five years of history in which authoritative predictions of inevitable
catastrophes were repeatedly proven wrong, could lead to adventures with even greater costs.
AT: Climate change -> war (Don’t read with warming add-on)
Climate change will not cause resource wars, terrorism, or genocide
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.376-7; kdf)
Once again it seems to me that the appropriate response is "maybe, but maybe not." Though
climate change can cause plenty
of misery and deserves to be mitigated for that reason alone, it will not necessarily lead to armed
conflict. The political scientists who track war and peace, such as Halvard Buhaug, !dean Salehyan, Ole Theisen, and Nils
Gleditsch, are skeptical of the popular idea that people fight wars over scarce resources!"' Hunger and resource
shortages are tragically common in sub-Saharan countries such as Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, but wars involving them are not.
Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and tsunamis (such as the disastrous one in the Indian Ocean in 2004) do not generally
lead to armed conflict. The American dust bowl in the 1930s, to take another example, caused plenty of
deprivation but no civil war. And while temperatures have been rising steadily in Africa during the past fifteen years, civil wars and
war deaths have been falling. Pressures on access to land and water can certainly cause local skirmishes, but a genuine war requires that hostile
forces be organized and armed, and that depends more on the influence of bad governments, closed economies, and militant ideologies than
on the sheer availability of land and water. Certainly
any connection to terrorism is in the imagination of the terror
warriors: terrorists tend to be underemployed lower-middle-class men, not subsistence farmers.291 As for genocide, the
Sudanese government finds it convenient to blame violence in Darfur on desertification, distracting the
world from its own role in tolerating or encouraging the ethnic cleansing. In a regression analysis on
armed conflicts from 1980 to 1992, Theisen found that conflict was more likely if a country was poor,
populous, politically unstable, and abundant in oil, but not if it had suffered from droughts, water
shortages, or mild land degradation. (Severe land degradation did have a small effect.) Reviewing analyses that examined a large
number (N) of countries rather than cherry-picking one or two, he concluded, "Those who foresee doom, because of the relationship between
resource scarcity and violent internal conflict, have very little support in the Iarge-N literature." Salehyan adds that relatively inexpensive
advances in water use and agricultural practices in the developing world can yield massive increases in productivity with a constant or even
shrinking amount of land, and that better governance can mitigate the human costs of environmental damage, as it does in developed
democracies. Since
the state of the environment is at most one ingredient in a mixture that depends far
more on political and social organization, resource wars are far from inevitable, even in a climatechanged world.
AT: Terrorism
The threat of terrorism is mere-rhetoric—you are more likely to die from a deer than a
terrorist
Pinker 2011(Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp 344-5.; kdf)
Terrorism is a peculiar category of violence, because it has a cockeyed ratio of fear to harm. Compared
to the number of deaths from homicide, war, and genocide, the worldwide toll from terrorism is in the
noise: fewer than 400 deaths a year since 1968 from international terrorism (where perpetrators from one country cause damage in
another), and about 2,500 a year since 1998 from domestic terrorism.1 7 8 The numbers we have been dealing with in this chapter have been
at least two orders of magnitude higher. But after the September 11, 2001, attacks, terrorism became an obsession. Pundits and
politicians turned up the rhetoric to eleven, and the word existential (generally modifying threat or crisis) had not seen as much use since the
heyday of Sartre and Camus. Experts
proclaimed that terrorism made the United States "vulnerable" and
"fragile," and that it threatened to do away with the "ascendancy of the modern state," "our way of
life," or "civilization itself."'" In a 2005 essay in The Atlantic, for example, a former White House counterterrorism official confidently
prophesied that by the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks the American economy would be shut down by chronic bombings of casinos,
subways, and shopping malls, the regular downing of commercial airliners by shoulder-launched missiles, and acts of cataclysmic sabotage at
chemical plants.''" The massive bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security was created overnight to reassure the nation with such
security theater as color-coded terrorist alerts, advisories to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape, obsessive checking of identification
cards (despite fakes being so plentiful that George W. Bush's own daughter was arrested for using one to order a margarita), the confiscation of
nail clippers at airports, the girding of rural post offices with concrete barriers, and the designation of eighty thousand locations as "potential
terrorist targets," including Weeki Wachee Springs, a Florida tourist trap in which comely women dressed as mermaids swim around in large
glass tanks. All this was in response to a threat that has killed a trifling number of Americans. The nearly 3,ooo deaths from the 9/11 attacks
were literally off the chart-way down in the tail of the power-law distribution into which terrorist attacks fall.''' According to the Global
Terrorism Database of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (the major publicly available dataset on
terrorist attacks), between
1970 and 2007 only one other terrorist attack in the entire world has killed as
many as 500 people. '8 ' In the United States, Timothy McVeigh's bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killed
165, a shooting spree by two teenagers at Columbine High School in 1999 killed 17, and no other attack has killed as many as a dozen. Other
than 9/11, the number of people killed by terrorists on American soil during these thirty-eight years was
340, and the number killed after 9/11-the date that inaugurated the so-called Age of Terror-was 11. While some additional plots were foiled
by the Department of Homeland Security, many of their claims have turned out to be the proverbial elephant repellent, with every elephantfree day serving as proof of its effectiveness.''' Compare the American death toll, with or without 9/11, to other preventable causes of death.
Every year more than 40,000 Americans are killed in traffic accidents, 20,000 in falls, 18,ooo in homicides, 3,000 by drowning (including 300 in
bathtubs), 3,ooo in fires, 24,000 from accidental poisoning, 2,500 from complications of surgery, 300 from suffocation in bed, 300 from
inhalation of gastric contents, and 17,000 by "other and unspecified nontransport accidents and their sequelae."18 4 In fact, in
every
year but 1995 and 2001, more Americans were killed by lightning, deer, peanut allergies, bee stings, and
"ignition or melting of nightwear" than by terrorist attacks.''' The number of deaths from terrorist attacks is so small that
even minor measures to avoid them can increase the risk of dying. The cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has estimated that in the year
after the 9/11 attacks, 1,500 Americans died in car accidents because they chose to drive rather than fly to their destinations out of fear of
dying in a hijacked or sabotaged plane, unaware that the risk of death in a plane flight from Boston to Los Angeles is the same as the risk of
death in a car trip of twelve miles. In other words the number of people who died by avoiding air travel was six times the number of people
who died in the airplanes on September 11.'80 And of course the 9/11 attacks sentthe United States into two wars that have taken far more
American and British lives than the hijackers did, to say nothing of the lives of Afghans and Iraqis.
AT: Nuclear Terror
There is a one in a million chance of nuclear terrorism
Pinker 2011(Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.370-3; kdf)
You can see where I'm going. The mental movie of an Islamist terrorist group buying a bomb on the black market or obtaining it from a rogue
state and then detonating it in a populated area is all too easy to play in our mind's eye. Even if it weren't, the entertainment industry has
played it for us in nuclear terrorist dramas like True Lies, The Sum of All Fears, and 24- The narrative is so riveting that we are apt to give it a
higher probability than we would if we thought through all the steps that would have to go right for the disaster to happen and multiplied their
probabilities. That's why so many of my survey respondents judged an Iran-sponsored nuclear terrorist attack to be more probable than a
nuclear attack. The
point is not that nuclear terrorism is impossible or even astronomically unlikely. It is just
that the probability assigned to it by anyone but a methodical risk analyst is likely to be too high. What do I
mean by "too high"? "With certainty" and "more probable than not" strike me as too high. The physicist Theodore
Taylor declared in 1974 that by 1990 it would be too late to prevent terrorists from carrying out a nuclear attack.266 In 1995 the world's
foremost activist on the risks of nuclear terrorism, Graham Allison, wrote that under prevailing circumstances, a nuclear attack on American
targets was likely before the decade was out."6' In 1998 the counterterrorism expert Richard Falkenrath wrote that "it is certain that more and
more non-state actors will become capable of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons acquisition and use."268 In 2003 UN ambassador John
Negroponte judged that there was a "high probability" of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction within two years. And in 2007 the
physicist Richard Garwin estimated that the chance of a nuclear terrorist attack was 20 percent per year, or about 50 percent by 2010 and
almost go percent within a decade.''' Like
television weather forecasters, the pundits, politicians, and terrorism
specialists have every incentive to emphasize the worst-case scenario. It is undoubtedly wise to scare governments
into taking extra measures to lock down weapons and fissile material and to monitor and infiltrate groups that might be tempted to acquire
them. Overestimating
the risk, then, is safer than underestimating it-though only up to a point, as the costly
invasion of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction proves. The professional reputations of
experts have proven to be immune to predictions of disasters that never happen, while almost no one wants to take a chance at giving the allclear and ending up with radioactive egg on his face.'7" A few brave analysts, such as Mueller, John Parachini, and Michael Levi, have taken the
chance by examining the disaster scenarios component by component.271 For starters, of the four so-called weapons of mass destruction,
three are far less massively destructive than good old-fashioned explosives.''" Radiological or "dirty" bombs, which are conventional explosives
wrapped in radioactive material (obtained, for example, from medical waste), would yield only minor and short-lived elevations of radiation,
comparable to moving to a city at a higher altitude. Chemical weapons, unless they are released in an enclosed space like a subway (where they
would still not do as much damage as conventional explosives), dissipate quickly, drift in the wind, and are broken down by sunlight. (Recall
that poison gas was responsible for a tiny fraction of the casualties in World War I.) Biological weapons capable of causing epidemics would be
prohibitively expensive to develop and deploy, as well as dangerous to the typically bungling amateur labs that would develop them. It's no
wonder that biological and chemical weapons, though far more accessible than nuclear ones, have been used in only three terrorist attacks in
thirty years.'?J In 1984 the Rajneeshee religious cult contaminated salad in the restaurants of an Oregon town with salmonella, sickening 751
people and killing none. In 1990 the Tamil Tigers were running low on ammunition while attacking a fort and opened up some chlorine cylinders
they found in a nearby paper mill, injuring 6o and killing none before the gas wafted back over them and convinced them never to try it again.
The Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo failed in ten attempts to use biological weapons before releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subways,
killing 12. A fourth attack, the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed 5 Americans in media and government offices, turned out to be a spree killing
rather than an act of terrorism. It's really only nuclear weapons that deserve the WMD acronym. Mueller and Parachini have fact-checked the
various reports that terrorists got "just this close" to obtaining a nuclear bomb and found that all were apocryphal. Reports of "interest" in
procuring weapons on a black market grew into accounts of actual negotiations, generic sketches morphed into detailed blueprints, and flimsy
clues (like the aluminum tubes purchased in 2001 by !rag) were overinterpreted as signs of a development program. Each of the pathways to
nuclear terrorism, when examined carefully, turns out to have gantlets of improbabilities. There
may have been a window of
vulnerability in the safekeeping of nuclear weapons in Russia, but today most experts agree it has been
closed, and that no loose nukes are being peddled in a nuclear bazaar. Stephen Younger, the former director of
nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has said, "Regardless of what is reported in the news, all nuclear nations
take the security of their weapons very seriously."274 Russia has an intense interest in keeping its
weapons out of the hands of Chechen and other ethnic separatist groups, and Pakistan is just as worried about its
archenemy Al Qaeda. And contrary to rumor, security experts consider the chance that Pakistan's government and
military command will fall under the control of lslamist extremists to be essentially nil.'75 Nuclear weapons
have complex interlocks designed to prevent unauthorized deployment, and most of them become "radioactive scrap metal" if they are not
maintained.2 7 6 For these reasons, the forty-seven-nation Nuclear Security Summit convened by Barack Obama in 2010 to prevent nuclear
terrorism concentrated on the security of fissile material, such as plutonium and highly enriched uranium, rather than on finished weapons. The
dangers of filched fissile material are real, and the measures recommended at the summit are patently wise, responsible, and overdue. Still,
one shouldn't get so carried away by the image of garage nukes as to think they are inevitable or even
extremely probable. The safeguards that are in place or will be soon will make fissile materials hard to
steal or smuggle, and if they went missing, it would trigger an international manhunt. Fashioning a workable
nuclear weapon requires precision engineering and fabrication techniques well beyond the capabilities of amateurs. The Gilmore commission,
which advises the president and Congress on WMD terrorism, called the challenge "Herculean," and Allison has described the weapons as
"large, cumbersome, unsafe, unreliable, unpredictable, and inefficient." 277 Moreover, the path to getting the materials, experts, and facilities
in place is mined with hazards of detection, betrayal, stings, blunders, and bad luck. In his book On Nuclear Terrorism, Levi laid out all the things
that would have to go right for a terrorist nuclear attack to succeed, noting, "Murphy's Law of Nuclear Terrorism: What can go wrong might go
wrong.""'' Mueller counts
twenty obstacles on the path and notes that even if a terrorist group had a fiftyfifty chance of clearing every one, the aggregate odds of its success would be one in a million. Levi brackets
the range from the other end by estimating that even if the path were strewn with only ten obstacles, and the probability that each would be
cleared was Bo percent, the aggregate odds of success facing a nuclear terrorist group would be one in ten. Those are not our odds of becoming
victims. A terrorist group weighing its options, even with these overly optimistic guesstimates, might well conclude from the long odds that it
would better off devoting its resources to projects with a higher chance of success. None of this, to repeat means that nuclear terrorism is
impossible, only that it is not, as so many people insist, imminent, inevitable, or highly probable.
AT: Impacts
Don’t preference war impacts- it is a poor form of scholarship—such sloppy
intellectualism drives a false sense of insecurity
Pinker 2011 (Steven [Professor of Psychology @ Harvard; two time Pulitzer finalist]; The Better angels of our
nature: why violence has declined; pp.295-6; kdf)
You would think that the disappearance of the gravest threat in the history of humanity would bring a
sigh of relief among commentators on world affairs. Contrary to expert predictions, there was no
invasion of Western Europe by Soviet tanks, no escalation of a crisis in Cuba or Berlin or the Middle East to a
nuclear holocaust! The cities of the world were not vaporized; the atmosphere was not poisoned by
radioactive fallout or choked with debris that blacked out the sun and sent Homo sapiens the way of the
dinosaurs. Not only that, but a reunified Germany did not turn into a fourth reich, democracy did not go the way of
monarchy, and the great powers and developed nations did not fall into a third world war but rather a long peace,
which keeps getting longer. Surely the experts have been acknowledging the improvements in the world's fortunes
from a few decades ago. But no-the pundits are glummer than ever! In 1989 John Gray foresaw "a return to
the classical terrain of history, a terrain of great power rivalries ... and irredentist claims and wars."2 A New York
Times editor wrote in 2007 that this return had already taken place: "It did not take long [after 1989] for the gyre
to wobble back onto its dependably blood-soaked course, pushed along by fresh gusts of ideological violence and
absolutism."' The political scientist Stanley Hoffman said that he has been discouraged from teaching his course on
international relations because after the end of the Cold War, one heard "about nothing but terrorism, suicide
bombings, displaced people, and genocides." 4 The pessimism is bipartisan: in 2007 the conservative writer
Norman Podhoretz published a book called World War IV (on "the long struggle against Islamofascism"), while the
liberal columnist Frank Rich wrote that the world was a more dangerous place than ever."5 If Rich is correct, then
the world was more dangerous in 2007 than it was during the two world wars, the Berlin crises of 1949 and 1961,
the Cuban Missile Crisis, and all the wars in the Middle East. That's pretty dangerous. Why the gloom? Partly it's
the result of market forces in the punditry business, which favor the Cassandras over the Pollyannas. Partly
it arises from human temperament: as David Hume observed, "The humour of blaming the present, and
admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endowed with the
profoundest judgment and most extensive learning." But mainly, I think, it comes fron1 the innumeracy of
our journalistic and intellectual culture. The journalist Michael Kinsley recently wrote, "It is a crushing
disappointment that Boomers entered adulthood with Americans killing and dying halfway around the world, and
now, as Boomers reach retirement and beyond, our country is doing the same damned thing."6 This assumes that
5,ooo Americans dying is the same damned thing as 58,ooo Americans dying, and that a hundred thousand Iraqis
being killed is the same damned thing as several million Vietnamese being killed.lf we don't keep an eye on the
numbers, the programming policy "If it bleeds it leads" will feed the cognitive shortcut "The more
memorable, the more frequent," and we will end up with what has been called a false sense of
insecurity.'
U.S. – China
The United States and China won’t go to war
Keck, 13
Managing Editor of The Diplomat, former Deputy Editor of e-International Relations and has interned at
the Center for a New American Security and in the U.S. Congress, where he worked on defense issues.
Keck, Zachary. "Why China and the US Probably Won't Go to War." The Diplomat. 12 July 2013.
http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/why-china-and-the-us-probably-wont-go-to-war/ cm
A U.S.-China war is virtually unthinkable because of two other factors: nuclear weapons and geography.
The fact that both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons is the most obvious reasons why they won’t
clash, even if they remain fiercely competitive. This is because war is the continuation of politics by
other means, and nuclear weapons make war extremely bad politics. Put differently, war is fought in
pursuit of policy ends, which cannot be achieved through a total war between nuclear-armed states.
This is not only because of nuclear weapons destructive power. As Thomas Schelling outlined brilliantly,
nuclear weapons have not actually increased humans destructive capabilities. In fact, there is evidence
to suggest that wars between nomads usually ended with the victors slaughtering all of the individuals
on the losing side, because of the economics of holding slaves in nomadic “societies.” What makes
nuclear weapons different, then, is not just their destructive power but also the certainty and
immediacy of it. While extremely ambitious or desperate leaders can delude themselves into believing
they can prevail in a conventional conflict with a stronger adversary because of any number of factors—
superior will, superior doctrine, the weather etc.— none of this matters in nuclear war. With nuclear
weapons, countries don’t have to prevail on the battlefield or defeat an opposing army to destroy an
entire country, and since there are no adequate defenses for a large-scale nuclear attack, every leader
can be absolute certain that most of their country can be destroyed in short-order in the event of a total
conflict. Since no policy goal is worth this level of sacrifice, the only possible way for an all-out conflict to
ensue is for a miscalculation of some sort to occur. Most of these can and should be dealt by Chinese
and the U.S. leaders holding regularly senior level dialogues like the ones of the past month, in which
frank and direct talk about redlines are discussed. These can and should be supplemented with clear and
open communication channels, which can be especially useful when unexpected crises arise, like an
exchange of fire between low-level naval officers in the increasingly crowded waters in the region. While
this possibility is real and frightening, it’s hard to imagine a plausible scenario where it leads to a nuclear
exchange between China and the United States. After all, at each stage of the crisis leaders know that if
it is not properly contained, a nuclear war could ensue, and the complete destruction of a leader’s
country is a more frightening possibility than losing credibility among hawkish elements of society. In
any case, measured means of retaliation would be available to the party wronged, and behind-thescenes diplomacy could help facilitate the process of finding mutually acceptable retaliatory measures.
Geography is the less appreciated factor that will mitigate the chances of a U.S.-China war, but it could
be nearly as important as nuclear weapons. Indeed, geography has a history of allowing countries to
avoid the Thucydides Trap, and works against a U.S.-China war in a couple of ways. First, both the United
States and China are immensely large countries—according to the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S.
and China are the third and fourth largest countries in the world by area, at 9,826,675 and 9,596,961
square km respectively. They also have difficult topographical features and complex populations. As
such, they are virtually unconquerable by another power. This is an important point and differentiates
the current strategic environment from historical cases where power transitions led to war. For
example, in Europe where many of the historical cases derive from, each state genuinely had to worry
that the other side could increase their power capabilities to such a degree that they could credibly
threaten the other side’s national survival. Neither China nor the U.S. has to realistically entertain such
fears, and this will lessen their insecurity and therefore the security dilemma they operate within.
Besides being immensely large countries, China and the U.S. are also separated by the Pacific Ocean,
which will also weaken their sense of insecurity and threat perception towards one another. In many of
the violent power transitions of the past, starting with Sparta and Athens but also including the
European ones, the rival states were located in close proximity to one another. By contrast, when great
power conflict has been avoided, the states have often had considerable distance between them, as was
the case for the U.S. and British power transition and the peaceful end to the Cold War. The reason is
simple and similar to the one above: the difficulty of projecting power across large distances—
particularly bodies of waters— reduces each side’s concern that the other will threaten its national
survival and most important strategic interests.
The Chinese government has too many domestic issues to risk a U.S. war
MacDonald, 11
Senior Director, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Program, U.S. Institute of Peace. MacDonald, Bruce
W. 11 May 2011. Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on The
Implications of China’s Military and Civil Space Programs.
http://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/5.11.11MacDonald.pdf cm
In the face of this growing Chinese military space challenge, it is easy to assume the worst about Chinese
intentions. China seeks to be able to prevail militarily at some point in the future should conflict come,
but they see the United States as militarily superior to them and thus would be unlikely to consciously
provoke any military conflict. While we should guard against a worst case, we should not treat it as a
given. I do not believe China or the PLA is spoiling for a fight with the United States – China has come
too far to want to place their substantial economic achievements at risk unless they faced an
extraordinary threat to their national security. In addition, China faces serious demographic realities
over the next couple of decades, where their ratio of workers to retirees will shrink substantially (the
result of their one- child policy), which further underscores China’s need for stability and continued
economic growth for years to come. China also has additional needs, and vulnerabilities: • Growing
environmental problems and water shortages with no obvious solutions that are growing irritants to the
public; • A relentless search for new sources of manufacturing inputs; • An increasingly restive working
class that is making new demands for higher wages and political freedoms; • A non-democratic oneparty system that leaves its senior leadership constantly looking over its shoulder at possible challenges
to its authority, especially in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”; • Growing citizen anger against
corruption and cronyism that seems impossible for the CCP to root out; and many more. These factors
are reasons why China is probably not looking for war with the United States, though they also could
inadvertently become factors in China’s stumbling into a conflict they would ordinarily not want,
through miscalculation or distraction.
No SCS
No U.S. – China war over the South China Sea
Thayer, 13
Emeritus Prof. M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale and a PhD in International Relations from The
Australian National University.Thayer, Carlyle. "Why China and the US Won’t Go to War over the South
China Sea." East Asia Forum. 13 May 2013. http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2013/05/13/why-china-andthe-us-wont-go-to-war-over-the-south-china-sea/ cm
China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea is challenging US primacy in the Asia Pacific. Even
before Washington announced its official policy of rebalancing its force posture to the Asia Pacific, the
United States had undertaken steps to strengthen its military posture by deploying more nuclear attack
submarines to the region and negotiating arrangements with Australia to rotate Marines through
Darwin. Since then, the United States has deployed Combat Littoral Ships to Singapore and is negotiating
new arrangements for greater military access to the Philippines. But these developments do not presage
armed conflict between China and the United States. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has been
circumspect in its involvement in South China Sea territorial disputes, and the United States has been
careful to avoid being entrapped by regional allies in their territorial disputes with China. Armed conflict
between China and the United States in the South China Sea appears unlikely. Another, more probable,
scenario is that both countries will find a modus vivendi enabling them to collaborate to maintain
security in the South China Sea. The Obama administration has repeatedly emphasized that its policy of
rebalancing to Asia is not directed at containing China. For example, Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III,
Commander of the US Pacific Command, recently stated, ‘there has also been criticism that the
Rebalance is a strategy of containment. This is not the case … it is a strategy of collaboration and
cooperation’. However, a review of past US–China military-to-military interaction indicates that an
agreement to jointly manage security in the South China Sea is unlikely because of continuing strategic
mistrust between the two countries. This is also because the currents of regionalism are growing
stronger. As such, a third scenario is more likely than the previous two: that China and the United States
will maintain a relationship of cooperation and friction. In this scenario, both countries work separately
to secure their interests through multilateral institutions such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN
Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus and the Enlarged ASEAN Maritime Forum. But they also continue to
engage each other on points of mutual interest. The Pentagon has consistently sought to keep channels
of communication open with China through three established bilateral mechanisms: Defense
Consultative Talks, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA), and the Defense Policy
Coordination Talks. On the one hand, these multilateral mechanisms reveal very little about US–China
military relations. Military-to-military contacts between the two countries have gone through repeated
cycles of cooperation and suspension, meaning that it has not been possible to isolate purely military-tomilitary contacts from their political and strategic settings. On the other hand, the channels have
accomplished the following: continuing exchange visits by high-level defense officials; regular Defense
Consultation Talks; continuing working-level discussions under the MMCA; agreement on the ‘7-point
consensus’; and no serious naval incidents since the 2009 USNS Impeccable affair. They have also helped
to ensure continuing exchange visits by senior military officers; the initiation of a Strategic Security
Dialogue as part of the ministerial-level Strategic & Economic Dialogue process; agreement to hold
meetings between coast guards; and agreement on a new working group to draft principles to establish
a framework for military-to-military cooperation. So the bottom line is that, despite ongoing frictions in
their relationship, the United States and China will continue engaging with each other. Both sides
understand that military-to-military contacts are a critical component of bilateral engagement. Without
such interaction there is a risk that mistrust between the two militaries could spill over and have a major
negative impact on bilateral relations in general. But strategic mistrust will probably persist in the
absence of greater transparency in military-to-military relations. In sum, Sino-American relations in the
South China Sea are more likely to be characterized by cooperation and friction than a modus vivendi of
collaboration or, a worst-case scenario, armed conflict.
No risk of U.S. – China war
Feng, 12
Professor in the School of International Studies and the deputy director of the Center for International
and Strategic Studies at Beijing University. Feng, Zhu. May 3, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/02/are-we-headed-for-a-cold-war-with-china/noone-wants-a-cold-war-between-the-us-and-china cm
However there is little worry that the two powers will collide into a “new cold war.” First of all, China’s
authoritarian system has been tremendously mobilized for international integration. Beijing has been
pretty conservative and doesn’t welcome democratization. But it does not strictly adhere to traditional
communism either. Any new confrontation like the cold war would risk a huge backlash in China by
greatly damaging the better-off Chinese people. Such a conflict could ultimately undermine the
Communist Party’s ruling legitimacy. Second, the power disparity between Washington and China hasn’t
significantly narrowed, regardless of Chinese achievements in the past decades. My view is that Beijing
remains an adolescent power, and should learn how to be a great power rather than unwisely rushing to
any confrontation. Though some Chinese want the nation to assert itself more forcefully, the huge
disparity in power should keep China in place. China is in no position to challenge the U.S. But China will
be more enthusiastic and straightfoward about addressing and safeguarding its legal interests.
Competition between Washington and Beijing will intensify, but that does not automatically mean that
the relationship will be unmanageable. Lastly, the cycle of action and reaction has mostly turned out to
be fruitful for the U.S. and China. Further competition is promising. The U.S. doesn’t want to put China
in a corner, or force Beijing to stand up desperately. The dealings over many thorny issues have proved
that each side wants to handle the conflict, not escalate it. Chen Guangcheng’s departure from the U.S.
Embassy is telling evidence. Neither side wants diplomatic confrontation. Rather, it seems that both
sides are struggling to react constructively. In the years to come, China-U.S. relations will continue to be
very complicated, but also very important. The glue to keep these two nations together is not
pragmatism only, but mutual interest — especially in trade.
Korean Peninsula
No Korean war
Fisher, 13
Washington Post foreign affairs writer, master's degree in security studies from Johns Hopkins
University. Fisher, Max. "Why North Korea Loves to Threaten World War III (but Probably Won’t Follow
Through).The Washington Post, 13 Mar. 2013.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/03/12/why-north-korea-loves-tothreaten-world-war-iii-but-probably-wont-follow-through/ cm
Is North Korea really an irrational nation on the brink of launching "all-out war," a mad dog of East Asia?
Is Pyongyang ready to sacrifice it all? Probably not. The North Korean regime, for all its cruelty, has also
shown itself to be shrewd, calculating, and single-mindedly obsessed with its own self-preservation. The
regime's past behavior suggests pretty strongly that these threats are empty. But they still matter. For
years, North Korea has threatened the worst and, despite all of its apparent readiness, never gone
through with it. So why does it keep going through these macabre performances? We can't read Kim
Jong Eun's mind, but the most plausible explanation has to do with internal North Korean politics, with
trying to set the tone for regional politics, and with forcing other countries (including the United States)
to bear the costs of preventing its outbursts from sparking an unwanted war. Starting World War III or a
second Korean War would not serve any of Pyongyang's interests. Whether or not it deploys its small
but legitimately scary nuclear arsenal, North Korea could indeed cause substantial mayhem in the South,
whose capital is mere miles from the border. But the North Korean military is antiquated and inferior; it
wouldn't last long against a U.S.-led counterattack. No matter how badly such a war would go for South
Korea or the United States, it would almost certainly end with the regime's total destruction.
Korea won’t go to war with the U.S. – 4 reasons
Wagstaff, 13
Staff writer at The Week covering politics and current events. Wagstaff, Keith. "4 Reasons Why North
Korea Won't Start a War." The Week. 10 Apr. 2013. http://theweek.com/article/index/242528/4reasons-why-north-korea-wont-start-a-war cm
North Korea is not likely to start a war. A look at why: 1. Kim Jong Un isn't a madman North Korea likes
to paint its "supreme leader" as something of a super-villain — a powerful, unpredictable man with his
finger always on the button. The truth is Pyongyang has always been more pragmatic than it lets on. As
Lankov points out, Kim Jong Un isn't Osama Bin Laden, planning a holy war from a cave: North Korea is
not a theocracy led by zealots who preach the rewards of the afterlife. In fact, there are no good reasons
to think that Kim Jong-un, North Korea's young dictator, would want to commit suicide; he is known for
his love of basketball, pizza and other pleasures of being alive. The same logic applies to his advisers, old
survivors in the byzantine world of North Korean politics who love expensive cars and good brandy.
[New York Times] It would be pretty hard to hang with Dennis Rodman if your country were hit by
missiles. 2. The whole thing is just an international shakedown Why act like you might start World War
III at any minute? Because it gets results. Kim Jong Il played the same game and, as Howard French of
The Atlantic notes, "steadily won concessions: fuel oil deliveries, food aid, nuclear reactor construction,
hard cash-earning tourist enclaves and investment zones." Max Fisher of The Washington Post likens
Kim Jong Un to a kid with a temper tantrum who you give "the attention he craves and maybe even a
toy, not because you think the threats are real or because he deserves it, but because you want the
tantrum to stop." North Korea's economy is in a "dire state," says BBC News, with an estimated per
capita income of $1,000 to $2,000 per year. With few natural resources and only one (legal) trade
partner, winning some foreign aid in exchange for toning down the rhetoric would be a big win for
Pyongyang. 3. China doesn't exactly have North Korea's back Susan Shirk of ChinaFile calls China the "the
economic lifeline of North Korea," essentially propping up the regime with trade and some aid in times
of crisis. China has every reason to want peace, mostly because the consequences of war would be
disastrous, writes Steven Metz in World Politics Review: Thousands, perhaps millions, of North Korean
refugees would seek sanctuary in China. A nuclear exchange could poison the region. The global
economy would be thrown into turmoil, hindering China's exports and increasing the cost of imported
energy. And, worst of all, the ultimate outcome would be a North Korea less beholden to China and
possibly occupied by the United States. [World Politics Review] Despite its strong incentive to keep the
current North Korean regime in place, China has been showing signs that its getting tired of its ally.
Beijing partnered with the United States to draft tough sanctions against North Korea after it conducted
a third nuclear test. On Tuesday, it announced it was shutting down tourism into North Korea, striking a
blow to its neighbor's economy. To top it off, Chinese President Xi Jinping publicly acknowledged his
frustrations with Pyongyang Sunday when, according to The Washington Post, he told an economic
forum, "No one should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish
gains." Those are not the words of a country ready to storm into war alongside North Korea. 4. North
Korea would lose North Korea, with a collection of 1.1 million soldiers, actually has the fourth largest
standing army in the world, according to NBCNews.com. The problem is that its "equipment is seriously
outdated, going back to its alliance with the former Soviet Union during the Cold War." South Korea, on
the other hand, has been armed by the United States, which has also promised to defend South Korea
militarily if necessary. North Korea could hold out for a few bloody days or weeks, but ultimately it
would lose. "This is a military that if you ran them against the Iraqi military in 1991, North Korea would
lose," Jennifer Lind, a professor at Dartmouth College, told USA Today. Kim Jong Un couldn't possibly
like those odds.
U.S. – Russia
Russia has no motivation to go to war
Margossian, 14
Contributing columnist, Massachusetts Collegian. Margossian, Maral. "The Daily Collegian." 27 Mar.
2014. http://dailycollegian.com/2014/03/27/five-reasons-why-russia-wont-start-world-war-iii/ cm
The recent events in Eastern Europe involving Russia and Ukraine have spawned, at their most extreme,
apocalyptic claims. Here are five reasons why Russia won’t start World War III, or any other war for that
matter: 1. The world is MAD. The end of World War II ushered the world into a precarious atomic age
that characterized the international atmosphere during the Cold War. Luckily, the Cold War never
escalated to nuclear war. Why? Because of mutually assured destruction (or MAD). Russia knows that if
it pushes that big red button, we have our own even bigger, redder button to push in retaliation. The
odds of a nuclear war with Russia are extremely unlikely. 2. The impact of economic sanctions on the
Russian economy is far too crippling for Russia to fund a war. As a part of a globalized world, economic
sanctions are more than mere slaps on the wrist. Already the sanctions imposed on Russia have begun
to take their toll. The West has yet to attack Russia’s strongest economic assets, but the declining
strength of the Russian economy puts Putin far from a position to wage a world war. 3. Putin’s actions
demonstrate his longing for Russia’s glory days before the fall of the Soviet Union. His annexation of
Crimea is more out of fear than strength. Putin feels threatened by Russia’s changing role in world
affairs and is using Crimea to tell the world that Russia still matters. 4. Russia is already seen as the “big
bad wolf” of Europe. Though Putin may have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his
involvement in the Syrian chemical weapons deal, Russia’s popularity among many Western countries is
not very high. The recent suspension of Russia from the G8 group is a symbolic action that demonstrates
that Russia will have to face a united front of world powers if it chooses to start a war. 5. There is just
too much at stake. War between Ukraine and Russia is one thing; Russia’s military is large enough and
strong enough to easily defeat Ukraine. However, if Russia decides to take further aggressive action, it
must also contend with surrounding European Union member nations and their potential involvement in
the war. Moreover, Russia’s involvement in other international affairs will be affected. For example, the
ongoing effort to normalize relations between Iran and the rest of the world will be jeopardized,
considering Russia is involved in those efforts. Crimea may have symbolic meaning close to the hearts of
Russians, but it isn’t worth risking the domino effect of events that can potentially occur. So, those of
you who feel abnormally unsettled by the recent turn of events can rest easy. While Russia’s actions
can’t be brushed aside and should be taken seriously, the chances of this confrontation escalating to a
great war are slim — assuming these countries act rationally.
Zero probability of Russia war
Graham, 07
Senior advisor on Russia on the U.S. National Security Council staff 2002-2007. 8 August 2007. Graham,
Thomas. Russia in Global Affairs, "The dialectics of strength and weakness".
http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/20/1129.html cm
An astute historian of Russia, Martin Malia, wrote several years ago that “Russia has at different times
been demonized or divinized by Western opinion less because of her real role in Europe than because of
the fears and frustrations, or hopes and aspirations, generated within European society by its own
domestic problems.” Such is the case today. To be sure, mounting Western concerns about Russia are a
consequence of Russian policies that appear to undermine Western interests, but they are also a
reflection of declining confidence in our own abilities and the efficacy of our own policies. Ironically, this
growing fear and distrust of Russia come at a time when Russia is arguably less threatening to the West,
and the United States in particular, than it has been at any time since the end of the Second World War.
Russia does not champion a totalitarian ideology intent on our destruction, its military poses no threat
to sweep across Europe, its economic growth depends on constructive commercial relations with
Europe, and its strategic arsenal – while still capable of annihilating the United States – is under more
reliable control than it has been in the past fifteen years and the threat of a strategic strike approaches
zero probability. Political gridlock in key Western countries, however, precludes the creativity, risktaking, and subtlety needed to advance our interests on issues over which we are at odds with Russia
while laying the basis for more constructive long-term relations with Russia.
No US Russia War
Hoffman, 12
White House correspondent, covered foreign affairs, national politics, economics, and served as an
editor at the Washington Post for 27 years. Hoffman, David E. "Hey, Big Spender." Foreign Policy 22 Oct.
2012. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/22/hey_big_spender?page=full cm
Despite tensions that flare up, the United States and Russia are no longer enemies; the chance of
nuclear war or surprise attack is nearly zero. We trade in each other's equity markets. Russia has the
largest audience of Facebook users in Europe, and is open to the world in a way the Soviet Union never
was.
AT: Topicality
T- Its
We meet – aquaculture falls under federal government authority
Leung, et al '07. PingSun Leung has served as consultant to UN Food and Agricultural Organization, Network
for Aquaculture Centers in Asia-Pacific, Asian Development Bank, Mekong River Commission, WorldFish Center, and
UN Development Program. “Species and System Selection for Sustainable Aquaculture" Blackwell
Publishing 2007, pg. 204-205.
United States aquaculture is well positioned with its diverse federal and state research and development
portfolio, science and technology enterprise, and rich natural resources. Ultimately, however, the future
and direction of aquaculture development and the role of the federal government will depend on the
diversified industry in terms of its economic viability and effective advocacy for needed policies,
programs, and services. The other influential factor is the market. Consumers are confronted with a
myriad of food choices and frequent confusion with the acquired preferences and dietary behaviors. The
aquaculture industry today cannot be compared with that of the past, because new regulations, market
demands, and industry initiatives have combined to create an increasingly environmentally sound
aquatic food production system. More changes are inevitable, along with new opportunities for
preferred sources of diversified farmed aquatic products that meet high consumer expectations. United
States farmed aquaculture products need to be recognized as a premium delicacy in domestic and
export markets. The role of the federal government can be expected to continue into future years,
preferably in a position of effectiveness to advance industry development and help navigate successfully
new crossroads and challenges.
Government involvement is key to the success of aquacultures
John Forster ‘10 (John Forster specializes in application of experience to new aquaculture species, is a
director of four aquaculture companies and serves on NOAA’s Marine Fishery Advisory Committee.)
“What Can U.S. Open Ocean Aquaculture Learn From Salmon Farming?” from “Marine Technology
Society Journal” Volume 44, Number 3, May/June 2010 titled “Sustainable U.S. Marine Aquaculture
Expansion in the 21st Century” pages 68-79
Finally, governments in the countries where salmon farming succeeded encouraged development of the
new industry. The most commonly cited examples are assistance with investment, marketing, and
funding for research in Norway (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1988) and capitalgrants to European
salmon farmers by the European Commission (MacAlister Elliot and Partners, 1999). However, even
more important, perhaps, was that this assistance signified the willingness of governments to make
space available in their coastal waters for this new industry to begin. Throughout the world, coastal
waters are a public resource used for navigation, commercial fishing, and recreation, and the idea of
private use of this space is not welcomed by existing users. However, commercial marine aquaculture
must have private access to coastal waters if it is to flourish, and the countries that led the development
of salmon farming, in addition to having favorable topography, accepted this idea and put in place
policies to enable the industry to grow.
T- Development
Fish enterprises are development
Gramling 10 (Carolyn Gramling, doctor of marine geochemistry and mass media fellow at AAAS, “Sea
sprawl: Into the blue frontier of ocean development,” March 1, 2010
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/sea-sprawl-blue-frontier-ocean-development)
In 2003, the
Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, one of the eight regional councils established by the Magnusonits own plan to lease parcels of federal waters in the Gulf to large-scale commercial fish
farms.¶ “The general consensus of the Council was that this was an important area for development for the United States,
Stevens Act, developed
from the standpoint of seafood supply,” says Joe Hendrix, a member of the Gulf Council and a mariculture consultant in Houston, Texas.
Furthermore, he says, it makes sense for the regional councils to manage the industry. “This process will not be the same in the Northwest as
the Gulf or New England. Most of the fish species we’re working with are subtropical — salmon farming is not the same as farming red drum.”
AT: Counterplans
AT: States CP
States do not have the infrastructure of funds to do Aquaculture- Fed Key
John Corbin 2010, President at Aquaculture Planning and Advocacy LLC and advises the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, U.S.
Department of Commerce on the management of the living marine resources and fisheries and aquaculture development."Marine
Stock Enhancement, a Valuable Extension of Expanded U.S. Marine Aquaculture." Marine Technology Society Journal 44.3 (2010): 113-18.
A cursory look at federal facilities reveals the NFHS in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is focused on and
fully engaged in producing fresh- water and anadromous species. NOAA is primarily engaged in research
and not mass production of marine stock. Further, only a few coastal states have any significant
infrastructure for mass production of marine fish and shellfish species (e.g., Texas and Connecticut) and most
with enhancement programs currently focus on biological and ecological research (Leber, 2004). Given this
sobering assessment, what options do governments and the commercial and recreational fishing public,
which they serve, have to implement increased wild stock enhancement efforts? At least three options could be
considered- (1) build a totally new nationwide federal hatchery system for marine species, (2) partner with interested states to
build a significant number of state-run marine hatcheries, and (3) incentivize the business environment to encourage
private for-profit and nonprofit companies to build ma- rine hatcheries to produce stock for sale to the government and the public. It is not
possible to elaborate on these policy options in this brief commentary but to state that applicable model programs (though some not in
fisheries) For all these approaches are available for study, for example, Alaska’s nonprofit private hatchery pro- gram for salmon.
AT: Land Based Aquacultures
Turn- Disease/chemical pollution
Land bad: disease spread, habitat destruction, chemical pollution
Wheeler ’13. Garret Wheeler is a Doctor of Jurisprudence Candidate 2013, Golden Gate
University School of Law. “A feasible alternative: the legal implications of aquaculture in
the United States and the promise of sustainable urban aquaculture systems”, Golden Gate
University Environmental Law Journal. 6 Golden Gate U. Envtl. L.J. 295
Despite these benefits, land-based facilities are not without their own environmental concerns.
Potential impacts of conventional land-based aquaculture facilities include the introduction of
freshwater fish into natural ecosystems, n50 which can occur through either purposeful release or
accidental escape. n51 These introductions adversely impact local resources through hybridization, loss
of native stocks, predation, disease transmission, and changes in habitat. n52 Additionally, interactions
between aquaculture farms can result in self-pollution and disease transmission in areas where highdensity farms may use water [*302] contaminated by neighboring installations. n53 Effluent discharge
can also be a problem for land-based facilities. For example, raceway systems used to cultivate
salmonids typically produce high total daily loads of effluent discharge, which are extremely difficult to
treat. n54 Large concentrated aquatic animal production (CAAP) facilities also produce a variety of waste
products. These byproducts add nutrients and solid n55 loadings to receiving waters such as rivers or
streams that can, in the absence of proper treatment, result in the discharge of thousands of pounds of
nitrogen and phosphorus per year and up to several million pounds of total suspended solids per year.
n56 Several chemicals and therapeutic drugs are also used by the CAAP industry and may be released
into receiving waters. n57 Finally, traditional land-based facilities are associated with the introduction of
pathogens into receiving waters, with potential negative impacts on native ecosystems. n58 In addition
to problems stemming from the discharge of hazardous material, the growth of conventional land-based
aquaculture may also be limited by dwindling water supplies. For example, the productivity of the
domestic catfish industry is currently threatened by decreasing groundwater resources in the Mississippi
Delta. n59
Turn- RAS Bad for Environment
RAS results in excess CO2—acidifies the ocean and devastates fish population
ASA 9 [Alliance For Sustainable Aquaculture; Joint Non-Profit Organization with Food and Water Watch
Organization and Research; “Land-Based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems”; September 2009;
http://www.recirculatingfarms.org/downloads/RAS.pdf; JW]
Dissolved carbon dioxide is another product that can accumulate in high-density RAS. Large-scale RAS
systems must supplement their tanks with pure oxygen for a greater quantity of fish to be bred, but this
results in insufficient natural removal of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that is then produced.49 (In lower-density
systems, oxygenation is generally unnecessary, as sufficient water exchange and aeration occurs to naturally balance levels of both oxygen and
CO2.)¶ Excessive
levels of CO2 can result in changes in pH towards acidification, which can be
detrimental to fish if the pH level drops too low. Various technologies have been tested to reduce the amount of carbon
dioxide in the water of these high-density systems. One method of addressing excessive carbon dioxide is the use of chemi- cals, which can
balance pH levels and thereby eliminate the CO2 in RAS.50 Sodium
hydroxide and sodium bicar- bonate are two
chemicals commonly used in aquaculture for this purpose. Both function by increasing alkalinity in the water, resulting in
a series of chemical reactions which break down carbon dioxide and reformulate it into lesser molecules.
RAS threatens water supplies and makes them pathogenic
ASA 9 [Alliance For Sustainable Aquaculture; Joint Non-Profit Organization with Food and Water Watch
Organization and Research; “Land-Based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems”; September 2009;
http://www.recirculatingfarms.org/downloads/RAS.pdf; JW]
RAS is not yet perfect, but the benefits of a controlled, closed system with waste management should not be overlooked. Additional
research is being done to devel- op new techniques and methods to continually improve RAS.¶ Chemical Usage¶ Water supply is a
common means of pathogen entry. Water for RAS is often disinfected, or obtained from a source that
does not contain fish or invertebrates that could be pathogen carriers (rain, spring or well water are common
sources). Biosecurity in RAS requires that the systems be designed to be cleaned easily, completely and
frequently to reduce pathogens.¶ When diseases do appear, a veterinarian and diagnos- tic laboratory should be involved in
determining the specific disease and treatment, using chemicals that are approved for use in food fish production.64
AT: Other types of aquacultures
Offshore is comparatively the best
Benneti et al ’10. Daniel D. Benetti, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University
of Miami. Gabriel I. Benetti School of Business Administration, University of Miami. José A. Rivera HC-02,
Box 1736, Boquerón, Puerto Rico. Bruno Sardenberg, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric
Science, University of Miami. Brian O’Hanlon
Open Blue Sea Farms LLC. “Site selection for open ocean
aquaculture”, Marine Society Journal, Vol 44, No 3. May/June 2010
Many existing open ocean aqua- culture operations are currently located within 3 miles from shore and
thus shoreward from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). EEZ is defined as the area extending from 3 to
200 nautical miles of coastal states in most countries (with the exceptions of Texas, Puerto Rico, and
Gulf Coast of Florida in the United States) (U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). However, there are
plans for expanding these activities to the EEZ’s offshore areas in several countries, including the United
States. Nonetheless, because of greater depth, stronger currents, and distance from shore,
environmental impacts potentially associated with aquaculture in coastal areas are expected to be
considerably lower in the open ocean, suggesting that offshore cage systems are among the most
environmentally friendly meth- ods for commercial marine fish culture.
Costs too much
RAS can’t compete – high production cost
Badiola, Mendiola, Bostock '12. Maddi Badiola is MEng in Agronomy (Univ. Lleida, Spain) and
MSc in Aquaculture Systems by the University of Stirling. Diego Mendiola (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Senior
Research Scientist at the Marine Technology Department of AZTI-Tecnalia. John Bostock (BSc, MSc) is
Senior Consultant and Manager of Stirling Aquaculture. "Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS)
analysis: Main issues on management and future challenges" Aquaculture engineering, Vol 51,
November 2012, pages 26-35. http://www.interfishexpert.com/recirculating-aquaculture-systems-rasanalysis-main-issues-on-management-and-future-challenges/
RAS systems were developed as a technology for intensive fish farming, used mainly when water
availability is restricted: they enable up to 90–99% of the water to be recycled, through the utilization of
many different components. These systems allow the operator greater control over the environmental
and water quality parameters, thus enabling optimal conditions for fish culture (Heinen et al., 1996). In
contrast, high capital and operational costs as well as the requirement for a very careful management
and difficulties in treating the diseases (e.g. Schneider et al., 2006), are the main limitations. Moreover,
having water in continuous reuse, constant pumping of new intake water is needed, leading with
elevated electricity costs i.e. the higher the water reuse, the more elevated will be the costs (Shepherd
and Bromage, 1988). Thereafter, RAS systems are not simple systems; they are technology–biology
interaction systems, requiring performance monitoring (Lekang, 2007). They have benefited from
continuous development (from the simplest path of water treatment until the most sophisticated
process) (Muir, 1982 and Rosenthal, 1993); nowadays, they are considered “high-tech” methods.
No Solvo
Lack of experienced managers impede solvency
Badiola, Mendiola, Bostock '12. Maddi Badiola is MEng in Agronomy (Univ. Lleida, Spain) and
MSc in Aquaculture Systems by the University of Stirling. Diego Mendiola (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Senior
Research Scientist at the Marine Technology Department of AZTI-Tecnalia. John Bostock (BSc, MSc) is
Senior Consultant and Manager of Stirling Aquaculture. "Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS)
analysis: Main issues on management and future challenges" Aquaculture engineering, Vol 51,
November 2012, pages 26-35. http://www.interfishexpert.com/recirculating-aquaculture-systems-rasanalysis-main-issues-on-management-and-future-challenges/
Water-quality issues sources are difficult to assess, as they are produced by different causes: e.g. poor
approach of the overall system and production quantities (e.g. lower stocking densities than the real
ones used for the calculations); equipment failure (in most of the cases due to bad designs); or poor
maintenance of the system. Among all the water parameters, ammonia (appearance in 49.06% of the
answers), carbon dioxide (25.67%) and oxygen (31.25%) are, for the managers, the most difficult ones to
control (results obtained from word frequency query, whilst examining which parameters are
monitorized and which of them are the most difficult to control). These are all caused by: (I) a
considerable lack of knowledge (followed by complex designs, which is inversely related) and (II)
deficient or poor training of the managers; not being able to maintain water quality parameters (with an
influence in the performing of both biofilter and solid removal device) (Fig. 5). Fig. 5 presents the
answers obtained from researchers and consultants (based upon their experiences). Managers of the
farms attribute these problems to incorrect specifications in the case of the solids removal devices,
together with undersized biofilters that rapidly clog. Adding the difficulties of managing certain devices,
to the inadequate knowledge and skills of the managers, the final result is an imbalance of water
parameters, damaging both cultured fish and the water’s treatment components.
11 out of 17 RAS companies have failed – faulty equipment and production
Badiola, Mendiola, Bostock '12. Maddi Badiola is MEng in Agronomy (Univ. Lleida, Spain) and MSc
in Aquaculture Systems by the University of Stirling. Diego Mendiola (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Senior Research
Scientist at the Marine Technology Department of AZTI-Tecnalia. John Bostock (BSc, MSc) is Senior
Consultant and Manager of Stirling Aquaculture. "Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) analysis: Main
issues on management and future challenges" Aquaculture engineering, Vol 51, November 2012, pages
26-35. http://www.interfishexpert.com/recirculating-aquaculture-systems-ras-analysis-main-issues-onmanagement-and-future-challenges/
Mechanical problems are also common in hatcheries and on-growing systems, derived, in the first place,
from bad design or bad management (i.e. resulting from unexpected conditions). This pattern is created
because consultants and suppliers specify that the cheapest equipments are used to meet the demands
of the producers for low capital investments. The solutions given for this problems are quick repairs and
in last resort replacements. Indeed, this extra capital expenditure due to rapid repairs and replacement
were the reason that leaded to some farms to close the business operation. Typically, the most replaced
devices, due to a RAS failure, are disinfection devices (i.e. ozone and UV), pumps and biofilters (e.g. 50%
of the times when a biofilter or a pump has been replaced, it was for a RAS deficiency, 75% for O3 and
66% for UV devices). Moreover the connecting pipework and drainage pipes had also been reported as
being problematic, undersized and not effectively designed (e.g. slope), respectively. Issues included
here directly affect the oxygen amount in the tanks. Another effect is that lower water velocities cause
the settlement of solids and/or growth of weed, i.e. compromising the water quality. As an outcome,
eleven out of seventeen companies were rebuilt or redesigned completely, following their initial
installation; 50% of them due to deficiencies in RAS, whilst the other 50% mainly to extend the
production capacity.
Lack of industry coordination ensures failure – only governance can solve
Badiola, Mendiola, Bostock '12. Maddi Badiola is MEng in Agronomy (Univ. Lleida, Spain) and
MSc in Aquaculture Systems by the University of Stirling. Diego Mendiola (BSc, MSc, PhD) is Senior
Research Scientist at the Marine Technology Department of AZTI-Tecnalia. John Bostock (BSc, MSc) is
Senior Consultant and Manager of Stirling Aquaculture. "Recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS)
analysis: Main issues on management and future challenges" Aquaculture engineering, Vol 51,
November 2012, pages 26-35. http://www.interfishexpert.com/recirculating-aquaculture-systems-rasanalysis-main-issues-on-management-and-future-challenges/
Fish farming is necessary and more will be needed in the future. Hence, RAS systems will continue to
develop, but their improvement cannot be achieved if there is no communication within the industry
(involving producers, suppliers, researchers and consultants). Furthermore, it is well known that the
lack of information is due to a lack of governance (e.g. APROMAR, 2010 and Scottish Executive, 2003),
together with and insufficient collaboration within different work areas in aquaculture. Thus, as
concluded for this study there is a disincentive for communication at a commercial level, as well as a
fear of reporting “bad news of failures” to the public. Nonetheless, knowledge of RAS control and
management techniques are gained with experience and, as has been demonstrated, a knowledge of
the technical or engineering part of the system does not always lead to success. Moreover, this study
has shown that suppliers and producers do not agree, when requesting industry’s point of view,
revealing evidence of individualism. It is considered (and confirmed herein) that sharing experiences and
issues (without compromising on confidential data), can be beneficial for all parties. This study has
confirmed also that social networks are useful communication channels and they are nowadays the best
way to bring the people studying on RAS together.
Water Turn
RAS degrades water quality, lowering production
Thorarensen '07. Helgi Thorarensen has done research and teaching in fish physiology and
aqauculture, her core education expertise is in MSc and PhD in BIology. "Water quality in recirculating
aquaculture systems for arctic charr culture" The United Nations University, 2007.
http://www.unuftp.is/static/fellows/document/mercedes07prf.pdf
However, the RAS also have disadvantages. The most important is the deterioration of the water quality
if the water treatment process within the system is not controlled properly. This can cause negative
effects on fish growth, increase the risk of infectious disease, increase fish stress, and other problems
associated with water quality that result in the deterioration of fish health and consequently loss of
production (Timmons et al. 2002). The water quality in RAS depends on different factors most
importantly the source, the level of recirculation, the species being cultured and the waste water
treatment process within the system (Sanni and Forsberg 1996, Losordo et al. 1999). Most water quality
problems experienced in RAS were associated with low dissolved oxygen and high fish waste metabolite
concentrations in the culture water (Sanni and Forsberg 1996). Waste metabolites production of
concern include total ammonia nitrogen (TAN), unionised ammonia (NH3-N), nitrite (NO2-N), nitrate
(NO3-N) (to a lesser extent), dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2), suspended solids (SS), and nonbiodegradable organic matter. Of these waste metabolites, fish produce roughly 1.0- 1.4 mg L-1 TAN,
13-14 mg L-1 CO2, and 10-20 mg L-1 TSS for every 10 mg L-1 of DO that they consume (Hagopian and
Riley 1998). However, maintaining good water quality conditions is of primary importance in any type of
aquaculture system, especially in RAS.
AT: UN High Seas CP
K2 econ
High seas fishing key to the economy
Economist 14
[Economist; World News about Politics, Economics; “The Tragedy of the High ¶ Seas”; February 22, 2014;
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21596942-new-management-needed-planets-mostimportant-common-resource-tragedy-high; JW]
The high seas—the bit of the oceans that lies beyond coastal states’ 200-mile exclusive economic
zones—are a commons. Fishing there is open to all. Countries have declared minerals on the seabed “the common heritage of
mankind”. The high seas are of great economic importance to everyone—fish is a more important source
of protein than beef—and getting more so. The number of patents using DNA from sea-creatures is rocketing, and one study
suggests that marine life is a hundred times more likely to contain material useful for anti-cancer drugs than is terrestrial life.
AT: WTO CP
The WTO has no authority to force policy decisions
WTO ’99. “The WTO is not a world government and no one has any intention of making it one, Moore
tells NGOs” World Trade Organization, November 29, 1999.
http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres99_e/pr155_e.htm
First let's be clear about what the WTO does not do. The WTO is not a world government, a global
policeman, or an agent for corporate interests. It has no authority to tell countries what trade policies or any other policies - they should adopt. It does not overrule national laws. It does not force countries
to kill turtles or lower wages or employ children in factories. Put simply, the WTO is not a supranational
government - and no one has any intention of making it one.
WTO involvement leads to trade restrictions and instability
James '08. Deborah James is the Director of International Programs for the Center for Economic and
Policy Research, and a Board member of Global Exchange. "Impasse: are we nearing the end of the
corporate globalization era?" AlterNet, 8-20-14.
http://www.alternet.org/story/95799/impasse%3A_are_we_nearing_the_end_of_the_corporate_global
ization_era
Agriculture and jobs-and-development are not the only arenas in which it is becoming increasingly
evident that the WTO is a contributor to, rather than a solution to, present global crises. The global
climate crisis will also require new, innovative solutions. Unfortunately many of those ideas will clash
with WTO prohibitions on regulatory policies that could, in some way, unintentionally restrict trade. We
already know that shipping products tens of thousands of miles across the world so that corporations
can take advantage of cheap labor in some countries, weak environmental standards in others, and
developed consumer markets in yet a third, contributes significantly to global warming. Do we really
want our ability to preserve life on our planet to be constrained by the WTO? No issue has dominated
headlines this year more than the global financial crisis, now widely agreed to have been facilitated by a
lack of adequate regulation in the financial markets. Yet in the WTO negotiations on services, further
deregulation and liberalization of the financial markets are sought by rich countries, representing the
interest of their financial industries. It is without logic that the WTO Director General, Pascal Lamy, has
called for a conclusion to the WTO expansion agenda as a solution to the global financial crisis, when its
actual policies would, by any sensible estimation, contribute to further instability.
WTO can’t speak for all countries and can’t force cooperation
Daemmrich '11. Arthur Daemmrich is a Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology and Public
Policy Program, 1998–2000 Current Affiliation: Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts "The
evolving basis for legitimacy of the world trade organization: dispute settlement and the rebalancing of
global interests", Harvard Business School. December 8, 2011.
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-041.pdf
But the grand bargain also reinforced divisions between developed and developing nations. Developing
countries argued the WTO negotiating process was biased in favor of rich countries and resented
pressure brought to bear to sign the Uruguay deal. Subsequent WTO meetings grew acrimonious. The
1999 Seattle meeting featured thousands of protesters on the streets, violent clashes with police, and
vociferous disputes in meeting rooms. It ended with a walkout by delegates from most developing
countries.24 In a stinging rebuke of the view that WTO agreements allowed a managed transition to free
trade and would promote general prosperity, protesters characterized the WTO as “the most effective
anti-democratic institution on earth”25 While adopting a more moderate tone, representatives from
developing countries – comprising the majority of new WTO membership – found that the institution
operated with tacit rules. Negotiating rounds involved large sessions, but key decisions were made in
smaller working groups dominated by the largest economies. Expecting a more open and democratic
process, numerous countries raised the issue of how the WTO could claim to speak for all members
when many felt coerced into participating by the necessity of belonging to the international trading
system.
WTO bias means no cooperation
Daemmrich '11. Arthur Daemmrich is a Former Research Fellow, Science, Technology and Public
Policy Program, 1998–2000 Current Affiliation: Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts "The
evolving basis for legitimacy of the world trade organization: dispute settlement and the rebalancing of
global interests", Harvard Business School. December 8, 2011.
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/12-041.pdf
Analysts of international governance often ignore the WTO dispute process, or mention it only in
passing in contrast to higher-profile and more visibly contentious negotiating rounds. Scholars who
examined dispute settlement under GATT and the DSB in its early years, whether considering individual
cases or analyzing cumulative data, found that both negotiated settlements and final rulings were
largely to the benefit of developed country complainants. Developing countries settled early and for less
advantageous outcomes than were possible.106 Critics picked up on the issue to argue that the DSB was
biased against developing countries. However, it was unclear whether bias stemmed from an explicit
preference for rich country interests; unequal access to the financial, econometric, and legal resources
necessary to bring and sustain a dispute; or peculiarities of the cases brought in the late 1990s and early
2000s. For the WTO, a perception of bias posed the threat that countries would not enforce decisions
seen to lack legitimacy or that suits would be brought by only a few participants in the international
system.
AT: Disads
AT: Politics
Plan popular- GAO will support it
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; JW)
The National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act is the ideal legislation for creating a federal
regulatory framework. The bill contains every aspect the GAO recommended that an effective
framework must include. First, it creates a comprehensive framework that integrates the relevant
national and state laws and regional ocean planning and management efforts. n206 This eliminates the
patchwork way in which environmental laws are currently applied to offshore aquaculture, providing
regulatory certainty and legitimacy to the industry while also encouraging collaboration between
federal, state, and regional agencies. Second, the Act identifies one federal agency as having primary
regulatory authority over offshore aquaculture, and properly designates NOAA as the lead agency to ensure environmental protection.
n207 The Act also satisfies the third aspect of an effective regulatory system: a process for environmental
review and monitoring. It establishes rigorous environmental standards to guide federal rulemaking and industry performances. n208 These
standards address some of the major environmental concerns associated with offshore aquaculture,
including fish escapes, disease, pollution, chemicals, and impacts on wildlife and predators. For instance, the Act
allows fish to be cultured only if they are native to the local ecosystem and prohibits the culture of genetically modified species, decreasing the risk of harm to
native fish populations in the event of escape. n209 To prevent the incidence of escape, the Act requires that all facilities "be designed, operated, and shown to be
effective at preventing the escape of cultured fish into the marine environment and withstanding severe weather conditions and marine accidents." n210
Additionally, a permittee must tag or mark all cultured fish, and in the event of an escape, report the number of escaped fish and circumstances surrounding the
incident to NOAA. n211 To minimize the impact of disease and pathogens on wild fish stock, the Act requires that all facilities be designed, located, and [*720]
operated to prevent the incubation and spread of disease and pathogens. n212 It also prohibits the use of antibiotics, pesticides, drugs, and other chemical
treatments except where necessary to treat a diagnosed disease, and in such case only where its use is minimized to the maximum extent practicable and is
approved by the Commissioner of the FDA. n213 The Act requires that NOAA consult with the EPA and other local and regional agencies to establish appropriate
numerical limitations of nutrient inputs into the marine environment and that each permittee prevent discharges of pollutants into ocean waters to the maximum
event practicable. n214 Finally, the Act requires NOAA to consult with other federal agencies, coastal states, Regional Fishery Management Councils, academic
institutions, and other interested stakeholders to establish and conduct a research program for sustainable offshore aquaculture. n215 The program would inform
NOAA "how offshore aquaculture permitting and regulation can adopt a precautionary approach to industry expansion to ensure ecological sustainability" and help
it "develop cost-effective solutions to the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of offshore aquaculture." n216 This
requirement is consistent
with the GAO's recommendation that a framework include a research component. n217 Despite being endorsed by
many environmental organizations, the National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture bill died in the 112th Congress and was referred to the House Committee on
Natural Resources, having received zero cosponsors. n218 The bill's failure may be due in part to the actions of the usual aquaculture opponents. Indeed, after the
bill was first introduced in 2009, an organization of commercial fishermen sent a letter to the House of Representatives voicing its opposition, criticizing the bill for
allowing "offshore aquaculture to be permitted in federal waters with limited safeguards and little or no accountability," n219 and urging the House to "develop
legislation to stop federal efforts to rush growth of the offshore aquaculture industry." n220 Furthermore, NOAA has yet to publicly endorse [*721] or even issue a
position on the bill. Agencies
such as NOAA and other environmental organizations must soon come forward in
loud support of the bill to see that it is reintroduced and successful in Congress.
The plan is popular- scientists and environmentalists will push it
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
Her prediction may not prove far off. Interestingly, the same group of environmentalists and fishing interests that had opposed the National
Offshore Aquaculture bill voiced support for the National Sustainable OffshoreAquaculture bill. Arguing that the National Offshore Aquaculture
Act was defective for not including statutory criteria or legally binding environmental standards, the opponents nonetheless agreed that "some
of these issues have been addressed in legislation enacted in California in 2006 (the Sustainable Oceans Act)." n203 Although
the
National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act failed to pass in 2009, it was reintroduced in 2011 n204
just a month after NOAA issued the nation's first commercial fishing permit to Kona Blue. After its June
2011 reintroduction, the bill gained support from scientists and environmentalists: the Ocean Conservancy noted
that the Act "is an opportunity to protect the U.S. from the risks of poorly regulated open ocean
aquaculture." n205
Plan popular- WGRF will support it
Cross 6/27 [Brian Cross; Political Staff Writer for The Western Producer; "Partners pool $90M to fund
food, fish research"; June 27, 2014; http://www.producer.com/2014/06/partners-pool-90m-to-fundfood-fish-research/; JW]
The organization, in partnership with the Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF), announced June 16 that it
would entertain
requests for funding to support research projects that “create new knowledge, … inform public policy for agri-food
and fisheries and aquaculture sectors and (lead to) solutions that can help feed the world’s growing
population.” WGRF’s contribution will be used to support projects that are specifically aimed at
enhancing crop production and benefitting western Canadian farmers.¶ “That’s one of the main criteria that our board uses is, ‘will this research
benefit western Canadian farmers,’ ” said executive director Garth Patterson. ¶ He said board members saw the opportunity to collaborate with Genome Canada as
a key partnership that has the potential to benefit prairie farmers in many ways. ¶
Plan popular- empirics prove the NOAA will back it
Wise 9 [Aaron Wise; Environmental Writer for Benzinga; "Ocean Conservancy: NSOAA Will protect
ocean health from risks of open ocean aquaculture"; December 17, 2014;
http://www.benzinga.com/press-releases/b66932/ocean-conservancy-national-sustainable-offshoreaquaculture-act-will-protect-o; JW]
In January of 2009, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council developed the first federal permitting program
for open ocean aquaculture, setting a dangerous precedent. The plan was later approved by NOAA.¶ “The
National Sustainable Offshore Aquaculture Act of 2009 is just the type of legislation our country needs
to prevent the patchwork of regulation that went into effect when the Gulf aquaculture plan was
approved. The health of the ocean and the coastal economy is critical and the dangerous precedent set by the Gulf Council’s aquaculture
plan is a threat to all coastlines, from New England to the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific coast,” concluded Leonard.¶ Ocean Conservancy
has been working on strong environmental standards for aquaculture during the past two Congresses
and through state legislatures. California’s state guidelines, adopted in 2006, serve as a model for the kind of national legislation
that Ocean Conservancy envisions. California’s bill and the federal legislation introduced today will ensure that
offshore aquaculture develops in an orderly manner, incorporates appropriate public input, protects the long-term public
interest in healthy marine ecosystems, and poses minimal risks to fisheries, marine wildlife, and the ecosystems on which they depend.
AT: Critiques
Eco Ped
Voting for the affirmative causes a shift towards a sustainable ecopedagogy—this
unique educational opportunity should not be passed on
Costa-Pierce 2010 (Barry A. [Professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture and Director Rhode Island Sea
Grant College]; Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Systems: The Need for a New Social Contract for
Aquaculture Development; Marine Technology Society Journal; Vol 44, No 3; kdf)
The main points of this paper are that the blue revolution is nothing new, that aquaculture
is one of the planet’s best choices
for expanding new protein production, but that the wildly optimistic scenarios for aquaculture’s expansion
will not occur unless alternative ecological approaches and ecological intensification of aquaculture are
widely adopted. Aquaculture needs to be better integrated into overall fishery societal plans for securing sustainable seafood supplies
and restoring damaged, supporting fisheries ecosystems. An ecological aquaculture approach can insure aquaculture is
a net gain to humanity, and it could be the key organizing paradigm to form a new social contract for aquaculture worldwide. The
overuse and degraded state of nearly all of the world’s aquatic ecosystems combined with public concerns about adding any “new” uses or
sources of aquatic pollution to already overburdened natural
and human systems requires aquaculture to develop
ecosystems approaches and sustainable operating procedures and to articulate a sustainable, ecological
pedagogy. For aquaculture development to proceed to the point where it will provide 50% of human
protein food in nations outside of China, clear, unambiguous linkages between aquaculture, society, and
the environment must be created and fostered, and the complementary roles of aquaculture in
contributing to social and environmental sustainability, rehabilitation, and enhancement must be
developed and clearly articulated to a highly concerned, increasingly educated, and involved public.
The most sustainable growth trajectories for aquaculture are to change dramatically the prevailing
aquaculture development model and move rapidly toward more sustainable, social–ecological
approaches to development; to shift patterns of production and consumption patterns from global to
bioregional food production and job creation; and to develop the indigenous human and institutional
capacities that clearly demonstrate to society that “aquaculture is culture.” The massive globalization of seafood
trade has meant less dependence on local natural and social ecosystems and has resulted in some wellorganized and funded opposition to
aquaculture development, albeit small and localized, but opposed especially to large-scale aquaculture. This opposition has grown as local
sources of food production, markets, and jobs have been exported and externalized. One major consequence of this globalization has been the
increased dependence of industrial, “fed” aquaculture on the southeastern Pacific Ocean marine ecosystem for fish meals and oils. The
global implications for the Humboldt ecosystem, for local poverty, and the scoping of this unsustainable
situation to the entire global protein food infrastructure are profound and are still largely unrealized.
Aquaculture sites are not only economic engines of primary production that meet the regulations of a
society but can be sites of innovation and pride if they can be well designed as community-based,
aquaculture farming ecosystems. A review of the progress toward such an EAA is necessary to inspire planners and environmental
decision makers at many societal scales (national, regional, local) to make use of such innovative approaches. Sophisticated site
planning of aquaculture can occur so that farms “fit with nature” and do not displace or disrupt
invaluable natural, aquatic ecosystems or conservation areas but contribute to the local economy and
society.
Eco Pragmatism
No mutually exclusivity-we must combine methods to find solutions
Farber 99 (Daniel [the Sho Sato Professor of Law and chair of the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California, Berkeley]; EcoPragmatism; p 70-1; kdf)
Economic and environmental values both¶ have roles to play in the analysis. But what method should we¶ use to
factor them together? Much energy has been expended¶ in a battle between advocates of two different methods, roughly¶ corresponding to
the tree huggers and bean counters of the preceding¶ chapter.¶ To see how these methods might work, consider the problem¶ of regulating
kryptonite, a fictional pollutant. One regulatory¶ method focuses on achieving the maximum feasible level of environmental¶ quality. Once we
determine that kryptonite poses¶ an environmental threat, we would want to eliminate the threat¶ to the extent possible. We might do this by
requiring all polluters¶ to use the best available technology (often called BAT) for controlling¶ kryptonite emissions, or we might direct them to
take all¶ feasible steps to lower emissions to a safe level. I will refer to thiS¶ as the feasibility approach. The
other regulatory method
is cost benefit¶ analysis, under which regulatory decisions are made by¶ balancing the costs and benefits
of regulation. The struggle between¶ advocates of these two methods has consumed many a¶ tree.¶ In my
opinion, this debate has suffered from a certain unreality.¶ Ultimately, the most important practical question
is not the¶ choice of one exclusive methodology. Rather, it is how best to¶ use whatever tools are available
to make intelligent judgments in hard cases. Regarding these issues, close attention to a concrete¶ example can do a great deal
to advance the analysis. Reserve Mining¶ provides an excellent case study in the uses and shortcomings¶ of both methodologies.
Ecopragmatism guarantees the best outcomes
Farber 99 (Daniel [the Sho Sato Professor of Law and chair of the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California, Berkeley]; EcoPragmatism; p 9-10; kdf)
In this book, I argue for a pragmatic approach to environmental¶ problems, in which economic analysis is useful, but not controlling.¶ Critics of
cost-benefit analysis are right that economic¶ efficiency is an inadequate basis for environmental policy. Indeed,¶ the "state of the art" of costbenefit analysis would limit¶ its ability to generate firm answers to environmental questions¶ even if we did want to make it our sole basis for
decision malting.¶ But the
critics are wrong to build a wall between economics and¶ ethics. In practice) the costbenefit analyst needs to make numerous¶ technical decisions that turn out to also involve ethical¶ issues.
Moreover, many economic insights turn out to be relevant¶ to a broader policy analysis. Properly understood, then, the¶ dichotomy
between economics and value judgments turns out to¶ be a false one.¶ The approach that I take in this book is part of
a broader¶ movement in legal scholarship, which is sometimes called practical¶ reasoning or legal pragmatism. 22 Legal pragmatists are, in part,
reacting against the increased obsession of some other legal¶ scholars with grand theories such as economic reductionism. A¶ convincing
analysis should be like a web, drawing on the coherence¶ of many sources, rather than a tower, built in a single unified¶ foundation.
Intelligent analysis requires the use of theories,¶ but as tools, not as ends in themselves.
Environmental decisions¶ involve a complex network of scientific, economic, and normative¶ judgments. It
is unlikely that we can construct a structure in¶ which all of these considerations will point to a single conclusion.¶ We can have better
hopes of building an interlocking web¶ of arguments that will support a decision based on diverse,
overlapping¶ considerations.¶ Being pragmatic does not mean the rejection of rules or principles¶ in favor
of ad hoc decision making or raw intuition.¶ Rather, it means a rejection of the view that rules, in and of¶
themselves, dictate outcomes. Thus, we shouldn't expect some¶ mechanical technique to give cut-and-dried answers to hard
policy¶ questions. Hard policy decisions can't be programmed into a¶ spreadsheet. To the extent that cost-benefit analysts
purport to¶ provide such techniques, they are doomed by their inability to¶ capture the richness of actual
policy decisions.
We should be allowed to weigh our impacts/ don’t discount our evidence just because it
isn’t from philosophers
Farber 99 (Daniel [the Sho Sato Professor of Law and chair of the Energy and Resources Group at the
University of California, Berkeley]; EcoPragmatism; p 68-9; kdf)
If we imagine a decision maker holding a hearing about the¶ correct course of action, this chapter has in a sense
concerned¶ the rules of evidence that should apply at this hearing. The conclusion¶ is that both consumer
preferences and political choices¶ are relevant evidence. This is not an insignificant point, since¶ such strong
arguments have been made to exclude one or the¶ other form of evidence altogether. But once the
evidence is admitted,¶ the decision maker still faces the hard problem of how¶ much weight to give each
item in drawing a conclusion. So far,¶ we have established only something that may seem obvious to¶ some readers: that
environmentalism (as expressed in a series of environmental statutes) and economics (as expressed in the¶ market) both have
something to tell us about public policy. In the next chapter, we will examine how the decision-making techniques¶ associated
with each view operate and what role each¶ should play. Once again, the context will be the Reserve Mining¶ case.
Framework
Debates about ocean policy have the unique chance of sparking the advocacy
necessary to save the oceans
Greely 2008 (Teresa [University of South Florida]; Ocean literacy and reasoning about ocean issues:
The influence of content, experience and morality; Graduate Theses and Dissertations;
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/271; kdf)
Ocean issues with conceptual ties to science and a global society have captured the attention,
imagination, and concern of an international audience. Global climate change, natural disasters, over fishing,
marine pollution, freshwater shortages, groundwater contamination, economic trade and commerce, marine mammal stranding, and
decreased biodiversity are just a few of the ocean issues highlighted in our media and conversations. The
ocean shapes our weather, links us to other nations, and is crucial to our national security. From the lifegiving rain that nourishes crops and our bodies, to life-saving medicines; from the fish that come from the ocean, to the goods that are
transported on the sea’s surface--- the ocean plays a role in our lives in some way everyday (NOAA, 1998). The
American public
values the ocean and considers protecting it to be a fundamental responsibility, but its understanding of
why we need the ocean is superficial (Belden, Russonello & Stewart, 1999). However, a broad disconnect exists
between what scientist know and the public understands about the ocean. The ocean, more than any other
single ecosystem, has social and personal relevance to all persons. In the 21st century we will look increasingly to the ocean
to meet our everyday needs and future sustainability. Thus, there is a critical need to advance ocean literacy within our
nation, especially among youth and young adults. It has been estimated that less than 2% of all American
adults are environmentally literate (NEETF, 2005). Results from a series of ocean and coastal literacy surveys (AAAS, 2004;
Belden, et al., 1999; Steel, Smith, Opsommer, Curiel & Warner-Steel, 2005) of American adults reveal similar findings. Surveys demonstrated
that in the 1990’s the public valued the ocean and expressed emotional and recreational connections, however, awareness about ocean health
was low. A decade later Americans had an increased sense of urgency about ocean issues and were willing to support actions to protect the
oceans even when the tradeoffs of higher prices at the supermarket, fewer recreational choices, and increased government spending were
presented (AAAS, 2004). While most Americans surveyed agree that humans are impacting the health of the ocean more than one-third felt
that they cannot make a difference. In contrast, a survey of youth reveals strong feelings about environmental issues and the confidence that
they can make a difference (AZA, 2003). Collectively, these studies reveal that the public is not well equipped with knowledge about ocean
issues. This implies that the public needs access to better ocean information delivered in the most effective manner. The component lacking for
both adults and youth is a baseline of ocean knowledge--- literacy about the oceans to balance the emotive factors exhibited through care,
concern and connection with the ocean. The interdependence between humans and the ocean is at the heart of ocean literacy. Cudaback
(2006) believes that given the declining quality of the marine environment (Pew Ocean Commission, 2003), ocean educators have the
responsibility to teach not only the science of the ocean, but also the interdependence with humans. Ocean literacy is especially significant, as
we implement a first-ever national ocean policy to halt the steady decline of our nation’s ocean and coasts via the Ocean Blueprint for the 21st
Century (U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). The need for ocean education and literacy that goes beyond emotive factors is critical and
relevant towards preparing our students, teachers, and citizens to regularly contribute to ocean decisions and socioscientific issues that impact
their health and well being on Earth. “The biggest barriers to increasing commitment to ocean protection are Americans’ lack of awareness of
the condition of the oceans and of their own role in damaging the oceans,” (Belden, et al., 1999).
The challenge for ocean
educators is to explicitly state the connections between the ocean and daily decisions and actions of
people. People enjoy the beauty of the ocean and the bounty of its waters, but may not understand that
their everyday actions such as boating, construction, improper waste disposal, or ignoring protected areas, can impact the
ocean and its resources. More than one-half of the US population lives within 200 miles of the ocean. Long-term planning for growth,
development and use of coastal areas is key to the continued productivity of the ocean (NOAA, 1998). Because the ocean is
inextricably interconnected to students’ lives it provides a significant context for socioscientific issues
that foster decision making, human interactions, and environmental stewardship. Ocean literacy encompasses
the tenets of scientific literacy which is defined by national standards, as the ability to make informed decisions regarding scientific issues of
particular social importance (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996, 2000). As such, scientific literacy encompasses both cognitive (e.g. knowledge skills) and
affective (e.g., emotions, values, morals, culture) processes. Science standards were designed to guide our nation toward a scientifically literate
society and provide criteria to judge progress toward a national vision of science literacy (NRC, 1996). Although
standards for
science teaching andliteracy are established, the fundamental and critical role of the ocean is not
emphasized.
High school students should seize every opportunity to discuss ocean policy- it’s the
only way to stave off extinction
Greely 2008 (Teresa [University of South Florida]; Ocean literacy and reasoning about ocean issues:
The influence of content, experience and morality; Graduate Theses and Dissertations;
http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/271; kdf)
This research emerged from a wave of recent interest in promoting ocean literacy on a national level (AAAS, 2004; COSEE, 2005; National
Geographic Society, 2006; Pew Ocean Commission, 2003; Schroedinger et al., 2006; US Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004). I constructed an
operational meaning of the term ocean literacy. Currently, K-12
students and our citizenry at large are under-prepared
to contribute individual or societal decisions about our oceans, due to limited ocean knowledge from
which to make socioscientific decisions. Any conversation about scientific literacy for our citizenry that
does not include ocean literacy as a pivotal focus will fall short of literacy goals for all students by
neglecting the planet’s largest environment. The ocean environment is bountiful with opportunities to engage in ocean-related
socioscientific issues (OSSI) meaningful to the life experiences of most citizens. By providing ocean content, learning experiences, and
socioscientific case studies students and citizens can contribute to the social, economic, and cultural development of an ocean literate society
permeated with global implications. The
ocean sustains life on Earth and everyone is responsible for caring for the
ocean. Individual and collective actions are needed to effectively manage ocean resources for all (National
Geographic Society, 2006). I examined the influence of an informal learning experience to advance ocean literacy and reasoning about ocean
socioscientific issues. Specifically, my
research described what understanding youth currently hold about the
ocean (content), how they 31 feel toward the ocean environment (environmental attitudes), and how these feelings
and understanding are organized when reasoning about ocean issues (environmental morality). It is hoped that this
baseline study will provide standardized measures where possible that can be replicated by other researchers. As others conduct similar ocean
literacy empirical research, a set of studies that build on each other will be established. This investigation adopts the following position on ocean
literacy. An ocean literate person is an individual equipped to use ocean knowledge, to engage in oral or written discussion about the oceans
(e.g., support a position), to understand the changes made to the ocean through human activity, and to apply ocean knowledge through actions as
citizen, steward or consumer. In
as much as educational research supports one’s knowledge as a significant
component of scientific literacy and reasoning, the significance as relates to ocean literacy is not known.
On a theoretical level it is reasonable to propose that acquisition of content knowledge and social considerations will contribute to ocean literacy
and reasoning about ocean socioscientific issues. I propose that
the development of ocean literacy may advance
functional scientific literacy through an integrated knowledge base, practice doing and reasoning about
science, and opportunities for social action. Ocean socioscientific issues (OSSI) may have relevance to a broader audience of
learners than current socioscientific issues reported in the literature. Finally, ocean literacy may advance science literacy by
lessening the gap between public knowledge and the frontiers of scientific inquiry. While there is a paucity of
educational research regarding ocean literacy and reasoning, my findings contribute more generally to the pedagogy of classroom practice 32 and
curriculum. Specifically, my research identified current ocean content that advances ocean literacy based on the formal and informal ocean
learning experiences examined. In addition, a preliminary metric to evaluate conceptual understanding was developed. Classroom practice and
curriculum will be further enriched with the addition of developmentally appropriate ocean socioscientific issues via case studies implemented
during my study. Ultimately, ocean literacy
research provides (a) ocean science content and experiences as part
of a 21st century integrated science curriculum, and (b) opportunities to engage in ocean socioscientific
issues (OSSI) meaningful to the life experiences of most citizens.
Luke 97
Responsible Management key to prevent extiniction
Luke in 97 (Timothy, EcoCritique, University of Minnesota Press, p. 80, kdf)
Although resource managerialism can be criticized on many levels, it has provisionally guaranteed some
measure of limited protection to wilderness areas, animal species, and watercourses in the United States.
13 And, whatever its flaws, the attempt to extend the scope of its oversight to other regions of the world
probably could have a similar impact. Resource managerialism directly confronts the existing
cultural, economic, and social regime of transnational corporate capitalism with the fact that
millions of Americans, as well as billions of other human beings, must be provisioned from
the living things populating Earth's biosphere (the situation of all these other living things, of course,
is usually ignored or reduced to an aesthetic question). And, if they are left unregulated, as
history has shown, the existing corporate circuits of commodity production will degrade the
biosphere to the point that all living things will not be able to renew themselves. Other
ecological activists can fault resource managerialism, but few, if any, of them face these
present-day realities as forthrightly in actual practice, largely because the prevailing regimes of
state and corporate power, now assuming the forms of the "wise use" movement, often regard
even this limited challenge as far too radical. Still, this record of "success" is not a license to ignore
the flawed workings of resource managerialism. In fact, this forthright engagement with resource realities
raises very serious questions, as the global tactics of such agencies as the Worldwatch Institute
reveal.
Add-ons
Economy Add-on
2AC
The seafood industry is key to the economy
Viklas 2014 (Steve; Quick facts about the seafood industry; saveseafoodjobs.com/the-issues/quickfacts-about-the-u-s-seafood-industry/; kdf)
The U.S. seafood industry is a significant element of the U.S. economy, responsible for $116 billion in
sales and $31 billion in income impacts, which support over a million jobs. This includes almost 184,000 people
employed in seafood processing, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. The U.S. produced 8.2 billion pounds of seafood in 2010.
Of that, 6.1 billion pounds was exported and 2.1 billion pounds was used domestically. That same year, America imported 11.5 billion pounds of
seafood – about 85 percent of overall domestic consumption. Seafood is particularly important in Alaska, comprising the state’s largest private
sector industry and providing one-fifth of all employment – pumping more than $3 billion annually into Alaska’s economy. America’s
seafood industry – comprised largely of small, locally-owned businesses – is as old as the nation itself. Many of America’s
earliest citizens worked to harvest and market seafood and the industry became part of their communities’ fabric of life. Much of the
seafood industry is based in rural areas facing formidable economic changes, and where other
opportunities are scarce. Domestic seafood processing is challenged in the best of times by artificially
low prices for imported frozen seafood—often as much as 60 percent lower than U.S. seafood due to the lack of comparable
wage rates and regulations. The American fresh seafood industry relies heavily on employees with H-2B visas due to its short-term, seasonal
nature and the fact that few American citizens are willing to do the temporary, seasonal tasks. Although jobs are advertised and available to
American citizens, less than 5 percent of the personnel needed for the surge of activity during the fishing season are Americans. Seafood
processing accounts for only 12,000 of the 66,000 H-2B visas issued annually in the U.S., but small processing companies dependent on the
visas almost exclusively process fresh-caught American seafood. Larger companies often process and package imported seafood and can
support a year-around workforce – but smaller processors are the dominant market for most U.S. fishermen.
Growth prevents conflicts that lead to nuclear war
Friedberg and Schoenfeld 8 - *Professor of IR @ Princeton, **Visiting Scholar @ Witherspoon
Aaron, professor of politics and international relations at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson
School, Gabriel, Visiting Scholar @ Witherspoon Institute, The Dangers of a Diminished America, WSJ,
10/21, Proquest
Pressures to cut defense spending, and to dodge the cost of waging two wars, already intense before this
crisis, are likely to mount. Despite the success of the surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular.
Precipitous withdrawal -- attractive to a sizable swath of the electorate before the financial implosion -might well become even more popular with annual war bills running in the hundreds of billions.
Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even before
our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support among many
Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of protectionism will blow.
Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For
decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide
use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge
budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe
haven. Will this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying.
The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are
continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to
chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America
now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects
of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for
Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such a scenario there are shades
of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to
cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic
disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more
reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the
financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock
us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose
economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps
even more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign
markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a
country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good
news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external
adventures.
UQ
The US economy is growing, but small shocks can send it tumbling
Ong 6/26 (Yunita; U.S. Economy Set To Do Better This Year Despite First Quarter GDP Contraction;
www.forbes.com/sites/yunitaong/2014/06/26/u-s-economy-set-to-do-better-this-year-despite-firstquarter-gdp-contraction/; kdf)
Despite the gloomy first quarter GDP shrinkage of 2.9% announced Wednesday morning, Bank of
America BAC +0.2% Merrill Lynch economists say the U.S. economy is emerging from the doldrums. As
head of global research Candace Browning was quick to emphasize, “The year’s only halfway over.” She
and other BofA researchers were sharing their insights on the U.S. economy at a mid-year press
conference Wednesday. Ethan Harris HRS -0.05%, co-head of Global Economics Research at Bank of
America Merrill Lynch, said there was reason to be optimistic with the improvement with the budget
deficit over the past few years and the tightening of fiscal policy. Brinkmanship in Washington is also
becoming a thing of the past, something that would improve business confidence. “It is not that there is
something great happening in the economy, but rather we are getting rid of this massive fiscal
headwind. And that’s the No. 1 reason for stronger growth,” Harris stressed. In discussing the shock
contraction in the economy’s first quarter GDP, the group attributed it to idiosyncratic factors such as
the unusually harsh winter, which battered much of the Northeast and hurt job growth early this year.
Non-Farm payrolls in December had plunged from 274,000 to just 84,000 in just a month, according to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also led to major shocks in the foreign exchange markets, noted David
Woo, head of global rates and currencies research. Still, it is hoped that the markets will be able to
shake off the winter weather as we move into the heat of summer.
Aff->Jobs
Offshore aquaculture will increase seafood production and maintenance jobs
Tiller et al. ‘13
(Rachel, Rebecca Gentry, Russell Richards, (1) a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Sociology and Political
Science (2) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB (3) Centre for Coastal Management, Griffith University; “Stakeholder
driven future scenarios as an element of interdisciplinary management tools; the case of future offshore aquaculture development and the
potential effects on fishermen in Santa Barbara, California” Ocean & Coastal Management; Jan. 15, 2013; Access 6/27/14;
www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman)//ck
Until recently, there has been no universal method of obtaining permits for aquaculture in US federal waters beyond the 3-mile state waters to the limits of the US
Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Access to sites in coastal areas under state jurisdiction face chal- lenges of their own with competing claims to coastal usage as well
as a plethora of local, state and federal permits under the existing US laws and regulations (Welp et al., 2006). The US EEZ is large however, and setting aside 500
km2, which accounts for 0.01% of the entire area under federal marine jurisdiction, would allow for an additional 600,000 metric tons of additional seafood to be
produced annually (Carr and Heyman, 2012). The lack of a regu- latory framework in US federal waters has thus effectively pro- hibited aquaculture ventures and
the expansion of the industry for domestic seafood needs to be met with national products (Edelman, 2012). In 2004, however, it was recommended by the US
Commission on Ocean Policy that there be established a regulatory framework for aquaculture licensing in federal waters. A National Offshore Aquaculture Act
would clarify federal regulatory re- quirements, allowing businesses and individuals to obtain a permit to operate in federal waters (Welp et al., 2006). In lieu of this,
however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the primary federal agency, under the Department of Commerce, charged with overseeing
and permitting aquaculture production in the US (Santa Barbara Mariculture, 2011) has taken charge. In
working toward lessening the trade
deficit in seafood commerce, the Department of Commerce and NOAA released national sustainable
marine aquaculture policies during the summer of 2011. One of the implementations toward this goal is
the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Plan for Aquaculture, which includes the required regulatory
framework for offshore aqua- culture production in the Gulf (Abreu et al., 2011). Starting up offshore
aquaculture could potentially not only increase domestic seafood production dramatically, but also
provide job opportunities among others to U.S. fishermen, in for instance jobs that involve vessel
maintenance and maintenance of offshore operations (FAO, 2005e2012).
The plan creates tens of thousands of good jobs
Strasser 2014 (Annie-Rose [Senior Editor of ThinkProgress]; The new, innovative and more efficient
way of feeding people; Apr 21; thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/21/3422486/big-ag-takes-to-theocean/; kdf)
But where the negative rhetoric around the corporatization of fish farming is true, so is the more positive. The
industry, for example, has
the potential to bring a significant number of jobs to the United States. Don Kent says he’s done the calculations
based on estimates that 1,000 tons of aquaculture produces about 40 jobs. “California has 37 million people in
it,” he said from his office in San Diego. “If we grew all the seafood we needed for those people … we’d need
something like a quarter million tons of seafood just for California. And figuring, when you filet the fish, you eat half and the other half
gets thrown away — the bones and guts and everything — you’d actually need half a million tons of seafood. That’s 500,000 tons times 40.
You’re talking about tens of thousands of jobs. Well over 20,000
jobs, just to feed our own people.”
Economy - Seafood Trade Deficit
US dependency on imported seafood has a trade deficit of over $9 billion
Tiller et al. ‘13
(Rachel, Rebecca Gentry, Russell Richards, (1) a Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Institute of Sociology and Political
Science (2) Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, UCSB (3) Centre for Coastal Management, Griffith University; “Stakeholder
driven future scenarios as an element of interdisciplinary management tools; the case of future offshore aquaculture development and the
potential effects on fishermen in Santa Barbara, California” Ocean & Coastal Management; Jan. 15, 2013; Access 6/27/14;
www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman)//ck
The United States is a major consumer of seafood, including aquaculture products. In 2010, however, 86% of seafood
consumed in the US was imported with half of this produced through aqua- culture. This import of 5.5 billion pounds per year was valued at $14.8 billion in 2009
(Abdallah and Sumaila, 2007). The
necessity for import stems from the US aquaculture production, both fresh and
marine, accounting for only 5% of US seafood supply, with marine-based aquaculture supplying less than
1.5%. Furthermore, US aquaculture production is ranked 13th globally after countries such as China, Canada,
Norway and Chile. Indeed, the US imports about 300 million pounds of farmed salmon every year,
primarily from Canada, Norway, and Chile. This dependency on imported seafood leads to an annual
seafood trade deficit of over $9 billion (Antunes Zappes et al.; U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004; Santa Barbara Mariculture, 2011).
The US runs a dangerously negative seafood trade balance
Johns 2013 (Kristen L. [USC School of Law; B.S. Environmental Systems: Ecology, Behavior and
Evolution, University of California San Diego]; Farm fishing holes: Gaps in federal regulation offshore
aquaculture; 86 S. Cal. L. Rev. 681; kdf)
A compelling case can be made for growing more seafood in the United States. America's
appetite for seafood continues to
increase n13 - yet dwindling supplies of domestic fish stocks n14 have forced the United States [*687] to import
91 percent of its seafood. n15 Domestic aquaculture can help meet the growing demand for seafood,
reduce the dependence on imports, and help rebuild wild fish stocks. Over thirty years ago, Congress recognized the
enormous potential of aquaculture for our nation's food supply. Acknowledging that traditional domestic fisheries were being harvested at
unsustainable rates, that the United States imported most of its seafood, but that aquaculture contributed very little to domestic seafood
production, Congress concluded that "domestic aquacultural production, therefore, has the potential for significant growth." n16It declared
aquaculture development to be in "the national interest" n17 and enacted the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 to
"encourage aquaculture activities and programs in both the public and private sectors of the economy." n18 The passage of the Act
undoubtedly led to an expansion of the aquaculture industry, n19 but not to the extent anticipated or hoped for. Twenty years later, when
aquaculture still had not become a major player in seafood production, the Department of Commerce called for a fivefold increase in U.S.
aquaculture production by 2025. n20 As
of 2013, aquaculture still represents only 5 percent of the domestic
seafood supply (in tons). n21 At the same time, domestic fisheries continue to be overharvested and the United
States continues to rely on foreign nations for its seafood. Like the United States, other nations have recognized the
potential of aquaculture as a major food producer. Unlike the United States, however, these nations have acted to ensure that potential is
realized. Worldwide,aquaculture
has grown at an annual rate of 8.3 percent, "making it the fastest growing
form of food production in the world." n22 Global aquaculture production is dominated by Asia, which accounts for 89 percent of
production by quantity: China alone represents 62 percent of the global industry. n23 The United States ranks thirteenth in total aquaculture
[*688] production - behind countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Chile, Egypt, Japan, and Norway - despite being one of the top
importers of these products. n24 Aquaculture accounts for 20 percent of the New Zealand seafood production and, with the support of the
New Zealand government, has become a major export industry. n25 In Chile, with the help of the government-sponsored National Aquaculture
Policy, aquaculture products represented a third of its total export volume of seafood in 2009. n26 Indeed, while
global
aquacultureproduction is valued at over $ 100 billion annually, total U.S. aquaculture production is just
under $ 1 billion. n27 Thus, while the United States remains a major consumer of aquaculture products, it is
still considered a minor producer on the global stage. Thirty years after the creation of the National Aquaculture Act, U.S.
aquaculture still has the potential for significant growth.
K2 Economy
Seafood industry is k/2 economy, single states make billions and support hundreds of
thousands of jobs in the seafood industry
Bloch 13 Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, Nola, 3/11/14, "Louisiana seafood industry's economic impact compared to other states,"
www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2013/03/louisiana_seafood_industrys_ec.html, 6/29/14, MRM
While Louisiana seafood's economic impact wasn't near the top of the national, Louisiana came in second behind Alaska in terms
local seafood poundage landed per state. Louisiana fisheries came in second by catching nearly 1.3 billion pounds of seafood in
2011; Alaska's
fisheries produced about 5.3 billion. The Louisiana seafood industry's total economic
impact was $1.8 billion, the report states. California led the way with an economic impact of about $20
billion. Meanwhile, Louisiana's seafood industry supported 32,818 people in 2011. California led the
nation with 122,074 people supported by the seafood industry.
Fishing industry supports almost $200 billion in profits and millions of jobs, continues
to grow
Matheson 13 Fionna Matheson, 3/7/13, NOAA Fisheries, "NOAA report finds commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated
$199 billion in 2011," www.nmfs.noaa.gov/mediacenter/2013/03/07_noaa_report_finds_commercial_and_recreational.html, 6/29/14, MRM
U.S. commercial and recreational saltwater fishing generated more than $199 billion in sales and supported 1.7
million jobs in the nation’s economy in 2011, according to a new economic report released by NOAA’s Fisheries Service. The
report, Fisheries Economics of the United States 2011, is published annually on a two-year lag to allow data collection, analysis, and peer
review. It provides economic statistics on U.S. commercial and recreational fisheries and marine-related businesses for each coastal state and
the nation. Key to the report are the economic effects--jobs, sales, income, and value added to Gross National Product--of the commercial and
recreational fishing industries. “Economic impact” measures how sales in each sector ripple throughout the state and national economy as each
dollar spent generates additional sales by other firms and consumers. The
seafood industry—harvesters, seafood processors and
dealers, seafood wholesalers and retailers—generated $129 billion in sales impacts, $37 billion in income impacts
and supported 1.2 million jobs in 2011, the most recent year included in the report. Recreational fishing generated $70 billion in
sales impacts, $20 billion in income impacts, and supported 455,000 jobs in 2011. Compared to 2010, the numbers are up for
all of these impacts except commercial seafood sales.
Seafood industry makes $30 billion in Washington alone, continues to grow
Economic Development Council 13 Economic Development Council, 11/19/14, "Study Reveals
$30 Billion Economic Impact of the MAritime Industry in Washington State," edcseaking.org/news/study-reveals-maritime-economic-impact-in-washington/ 6/29/14, MRM
Seattle, WA – The
maritime industry in Washington State generated a total of $30 billion in direct, indirect
and induced revenues in 2012 and is responsible for over 148,000 workers according to a comprehensive study
commissioned by the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County and the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County with
support from the Puget Sound Regional Council.
Maritime wages in general are close to or greater than the state
median wage of $51,000, averaging $70,800 per year. The industry, as a whole, paid nearly $4 billion in
wages in 2012.
The Washington State Maritime Cluster Economic Impact Study conducted by Seattle-based research firm Community Attributes, which included
interviews with more than 35 regional leaders in the maritime sector, sought to quantify the impact of the maritime industry across Washington State in
order to better understand and strengthen its contribution to the regional economy.
Industry wide, revenues have grown 6.4% per year on average with Maritime Logistics and Shipping seeing the highest
growth rate at 10.2%. The job outlook for the sector also appears rosy, with ample opportunities for job seekers.
Retaining and recruiting skilled employees is a top priority for the cluster.
Econ collapse -> War
Nuclear war, terrorism, democratic backsliding
Harris and Burrows 9 - *PhD in Euro History, **member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit
Mathew, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and
Jennifer is a member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of
the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf
Increased Potential for Global Conflict
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the
result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes,
each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of
insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great
Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects
on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the
sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to
think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the
ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly
volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the
report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues
move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the
Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025,
however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most
dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of
descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes,
and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the
angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that
would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economicallyinduced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s
acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the
region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider
pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed
between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear
Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an
unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well
established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance
capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in
achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in
neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions
may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of
conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if
protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy
scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case,
this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for
example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions
short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are
providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development
of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of
the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to
increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for
multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the
Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both
within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
Statistics prove
Royal 10 — Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense
Jedediah, “Economic Integration, Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises?”, Economics
of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed. Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-215
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political
science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the
security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at
systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level,
Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that
rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often
bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic
crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin, 1981) that leads to uncertainty about
power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain
redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to
challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic
cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and
small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and
security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade
expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic
conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific
benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the
expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the
likelihood for conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources.
Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers
protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between economic
decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation
between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They
write, The linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing.
Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence
of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts self-reinforce each
other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002, p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an increase in the
likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders
and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government.
'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting
governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the
flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995), and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting
evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997),
Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are
greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more
susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided
evidence showing that periods of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak
Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent
economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of
economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at
systemic, dyadic and national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict
has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention. This observation
is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in the
likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. Those studies
tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider
the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should be
considered ancillary to those views.
Deforestation Add-on
2AC
2AC
Deforestation of Amazon increase by one-third every year
Damian Carrington 11/23/13, the head of environment at the Guardian. “Amazon deforestation increased by one-third in past year”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/15/amazon-deforestation-increased-one-third
Destruction of the Amazon rainforest has increased by almost one-third in the past year, reversing a
decade-long trend of better protection for the world's greatest rainforest. Environmentalists blamed a controversial
weakening of legal protections passed by President Dilma Rousseff for the increase in deforestation by loggers and farmers. But the
environment minister, Izabella Teixeira, rejected this, saying the overall trend was "positive" and that eliminating illegal deforestation remained
the government's goal. The set-back in the Amazon came as the first global, high-resolution, satellite analysis of global deforestation revealed
that since 2000 an area equal to 50 football pitches has been destroyed every minute. The
total loss is 10 times the area of the
UK, with only a third being replaced by natural and planted reforestation, and the destruction is
accelerating in the tropics. The razing of forests is a major contributor to the emissions that drive
climate change. Trees provide a vital store of carbon, as well as providing livelihoods for a billion people.
But deforestation has more than doubled in Indonesia, Paraguay, Malaysia and Cambodia, largely due to illegal logging. In the Amazon, the use
of satellite data has helped the government slash deforestation by 80% since 2003-4 by allowing police to pinpoint illegal activity in the vast
forest, which is bigger than western Europe. But the 5,800km2 in 2012-13 was a 28% increase on the record-low in the previous year. Paulo
Adario, leader of Greenpeace's Amazon campaign, said the spike was scandalous: "The government can't be surprised by this increase in
deforestation, given that their own action is what's pushing it. The change in the Forest Code and the resulting amnesty for those who illegally
felled the forest sent the message that such crimes have no consequences." The revised Forest Code was passed in 2012 after more than a
decade of efforts by Brazil's powerful agricultural lobby. The changes eased restrictions for smaller landowners, allowing them to clear land
closer to riverbanks, and allowed those who had illegally felled land to not face penalties if they signed an agreement to replant trees, which
many environmentalists say is unlikely to be enforced. Adario added that the push by Rousseff government's for infrastructure projects in the
Amazon region was also a cause, noting that much of the recent destruction was along a government-improved highway running through Para
and Mato Grosso states, which eases the transport of illegal timber. Another factor is high
global food prices which drives forest
clearance for cattle and soya farming. "There are various ways to spin this figure, but there's no way it's good news," said Dr
Doug Boucher, an expert on tropical forests at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Certainly the amendments to the Forest Code were one
reason. It's a warning that although deforestation can be reduced rapidly and dramatically by strong policies, it can also increase again when
those policies are weakened." Brazil
has demanded funding from rich nation's to cut deforestation and has been
sensitive to criticism of its effort to develop and improve the living standards of its 200 million people.
Aquaculture reduces deforestation
Asche, F. (2008). is a Norwegian marine economist. Frank Asche is a professor at the University of Stavanger, president of
the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management and associate editor for Marine Resource Economics.
Farming the sea. Marine Resource Economics, 23(4), 527.
There is little doubt that aquaculture production will continue to grow substantially. As shown by Delgado et al. (2003),
demand for seafood will grow because of increased economic growth and increased global population. This provides a positive environment for
growth, provided that aquaculture products are competitive. It is clear that lower production costs due to productivity growth are the main
engine for growth in aquaculture production. Although already a success story and an important seafood source, aquaculture is still in many
ways in its infancy. For many species the production cycle is not closed; i.e., there is still dependency on the harvest of wild fingerlings rather
than producing them from a domesticated stock. Hence, there
is substantial potential for further productivity growth
and for aquaculture production to become less costly. While there has been significant technological progress in
aquaculture since the 1970s, when compared to agriculture and other industries, there is clearly a long way to go. There are too few dedicated
systematic scientific researchers, specialized suppliers, species where one conducts systematic breeding, and no futures markets, etc. Hence,
while there has been significant progress during the previous decades, there is still a long way to go until we are truly fanning the sea. With
the significant quantities of food that aquaculture is already providing, the potential for the future is
tremendous. Moreover, while there are environmental challenges, increased foods production from the sea will lead
to a reduction in deforestation and pressure on terrestrial land to produce more food. It is accordingly far from
clear, even with the aquaculture technologies used today, that the net environmental effect is negative.
Deforestation leads to extinction
Watson 6
Captain Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. 9/17/06, ìThe
Politics of Extinction.î http://www.eco-action.org/dt/beerswil.html
The destruction of forests and the proliferation of human activity will remove more than 20 percent
of all terrestrial plant species over the next fifty years. Because plants form the foundation for
entire biotic communities, their demise will carry with it the extinction of an exponentially greater
number of animal species -- perhaps ten times as many faunal species for each type of plant
eliminated. Sixty-five million years ago, a natural cataclysmic event resulted in extinction of the
dinosaurs. Even with a plant foundation intact, it took more than 100,000 years for faunal
biological diversity to re-establish itself. More importantly, the resurrection of biological diversity
assumes an intact zone of tropical forests to provide for new speciation after extinction. Today, the
tropical rain forests are disappearing more rapidly than any other bio-region, ensuring that after the
age of humans, the Earth will remain a biological, if not a literal desert for eons to come. The
present course of civilization points to ecocide -- the death of nature. Like a run-a-way train,
civilization is speeding along tracks of our own manufacture towards the stone wall of extinction.
The human passengers sitting comfortably in their seats, laughing, partying, and choosing to not
look out the window. Environmentalists are those perceptive few who have their faces pressed
against the glass, watching the hurling bodies of plants and animals go screaming by.
Environmental activists are those even fewer people who are trying desperately to break into the
fortified engine of greed that propels this destructive specicidal juggernaut. Others are desperately
throwing out anchors in an attempt to slow the monster down while all the while, the authorities,
blind to their own impending destruction, are clubbing, shooting and jailing those who would save
us all. SHORT MEMORIES Civilized humans have for ten thousand years been marching across
the face of the Earth leaving deserts in their footprints. Because we have such short memories, we
forgot the wonder and splendor of a virgin nature. We revise history and make it fit into our present
perceptions. For instance, are you aware that only two thousand years ago, the coast of North
Africa was a mighty forest? The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians built powerful ships from the
strong timbers of the region. Rome was a major exporter of timber to Europe. The temple of
Jerusalem was built with titanic cedar logs, one image of which adorns the flag of Lebanon today.
Jesus Christ did not live in a desert, he was a man of the forest. The Sumerians were renowned for
clearing the forests of Mesopotamia for agriculture. But the destruction of the coastal swath of the
North African forest stopped the rain from advancing into the interior. Without the rain, the trees
died and thus was born the mighty Sahara, sired by man and continued to grow southward at a rate
of ten miles per year, advancing down the length of the continent of Africa. And so will go Brazil.
The precipitation off the Atlantic strikes the coastal rain forest and is absorbed and sent skyward
again by the trees, falling further into the interior. Twelve times the moisture falls and twelve times
it is returned to the sky -- all the way to the Andes mountains. Destroy the coastal swath and
desertify Amazonia -- it is as simple as that. Create a swath anywhere between the coast and the
mountains and the rains will be stopped. We did it before while relatively primitive. We learned
nothing. We forgot. So too, have we forgotten that walrus once mated and bred along the coast of
Nova Scotia, that sixty million bison once roamed the North American plains. One hundred years
ago, the white bear once roamed the forests of New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces.
Now it is called the polar bear because that is where it now makes its last stand. EXTINCTION IS
DIFFICULT TO APPRECIATE Gone forever are the European elephant, lion and tiger. The
Labrador duck, giant auk, Carolina parakeet will never again grace this planet of ours. Lost for all
time are the Atlantic grey whales, the Biscayan right whales and the Stellar sea cow. Our children
will never look upon the California condor in the wild or watch the Palos Verde blue butterfly dart
from flower to flower. Extinction is a difficult concept to fully appreciate. What has been is no
more and never shall be again. It would take another creation and billions of years to recreate the
passenger pigeon. It is the loss of billions of years of evolutionary programming. It is the
destruction of beauty, the obliteration of truth, the removal of uniqueness, the scarring of the sacred
web of life To be responsible for an extinction is to commit blasphemy against the divine. It is
the greatest of all possible crimes, more evil than murder, more appalling than genocide, more
monstrous than even the apparent unlimited perversities of the human mind. To be responsible for
the complete and utter destruction of a unique and sacred life form is arrogance that seethes with
evil, for the very opposite of evil is live. It is no accident that these two words spell out each other
in reverse. And yet, a reporter in California recently told me that "all the redwoods in California
are not worth the life on one human being." What incredible arrogance. The rights a species, any
species, must take precedence over the life of an individual or another species. This is a basic
ecological law. It is not to be tampered with by primates who have molded themselves into divine
legends in their own mind. For each and every one of the thirty million plus species that grace this
beautiful planet are essential for the continued well-being of which we are all a part, the planet
Earth -- the divine entity which brought us forth from the fertility of her sacred womb. As a seacaptain I like to compare the structural integrity of the biosphere to that of a ship's hull. Each
species is a rivet that keeps the hull intact. If I were to go into my engine room and find my
engineers busily popping rivets from the hull, I would be upset and naturally I would ask them
what they were doing. If they told me that they discovered that they could make a dollar each from
the rivets, I could do one of three things. I could ignore them. I could ask them to cut me in for a
share of the profits, or I could kick their asses out of the engine room and off my ship. If I was a
responsible captain, I would do the latter. If I did not, I would soon find the ocean pouring through
the holes left by the stolen rivets and very shortly after, my ship, my crew and myself would
disappear beneath the waves. And that is the state of the world today. The political leaders, i.e., the
captains at the helms of their nation states, are ignoring the rivet poppers or they are cutting
themselves in for the profits. There are very few asses being kicked out of the engine room of
spaceship Earth. With the rivet poppers in command, it will not be long until the biospheric
integrity of the Earth collapses under the weight of ecological strain and tides of death come
pouring in. And that will be the price of progress -- ecological collapse, the death of nature, and
with it the horrendous and mind numbing specter of massive human destruction.
Solvency ext
Aquaculture decrease deforestation- empirically proven
Halpern, G. (2012). Environmental Remediation Support Specialist at The Presidio Trust
Intramural Coordinator at Pomona College, Research Analyst/Grant Writer at Nature and Culture International Aquculture and
Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=pomona_theses
The results of this study suggest that incorporating aquaculture into subsistence farmland significantly
reduces the rate of agricultural deforestation. Among other things, the analysis suggests that an extra square meter of
aquaculture reduces the area deforested to grow crops on approximately a one-for-one basis. Although this may appear to be an even land
conversion (one square meter added to aquaculture versus one square meter taken away from traditional agriculture), this study's analysis
demonstrates that substituting aquaculture for agriculture would, in fact, greatly reduce deforestation
rates in the Amazon. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that the agricultural techniques
practiced require continual deforestation of new land because they exhaust the fertility of the soil over
time. Aquaculture, on the other hand, is able to use the same plot of land with virtually no temporal
limitations. Due to the greater sustainability of aquaculture, simulations from the deforestation model
demonstrate that aquaculture would reduce the total amount of a single family's agricultural
deforestation by more than 8 hectares over an 11-year period.
Aquaculture improves the lives of native in habitants by combating deforestation
Halpern, G. (2012). Environmental Remediation Support Specialist at The Presidio Trust
Intramural Coordinator at Pomona College, Research Analyst/Grant Writer at Nature and Culture International Aquculture and
Deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon.
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=pomona_theses
These conclusions are important as they show how aquaculture
could be used as a tool to significantly reduce
deforestation rates, especially in areas where soil supports only a few years of subsistence crops. Absent
immediate conservation efforts directed at reducing deforestation in the Amazon basin, the long-term
outlook is bleak. As has been widely documented, this unique ecosystem is increasingly being degraded
through the use of slash-and-burn agriculture. If the rainforest in the Amazon is not conserved, the very
future of these people living in this area is problematic. If the findings of this study are accurate, the substitution of
aquaculture can reduce the loss of rainforest in the basin and thus benefit the economic viability, as well
as the health and safety of the inhabitants, through the preservation of vital rainforest.
Aquaculture has decreased deforestation in Brazil
Atle Mortensen,2013. Norwegian feed research institute Nofima senior scientist.”Preventing Deforestation in
Brazil” http://www.fishupdate.com/news/archivestory.php/aid/19804/Preventing_deforestation_in_Brazil_with_fish.html
The deforestation in the Amazon can be attributed to road construction and clearing of forest to obtain
grazing areas for cattle farming and soya production. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of beef and soya and
deforestation has had fluctuations in line with the economic situation for these products. “The current efforts to
go in for fish farming instead of cattle farming is reducing deforestation. There is also increased access
to fish. The collaboration agreement states that in the first phase we will contribute to developing
aquaculture of a local species in the Amazon, tambaqui, a species that has been extremely important in
the region, but stocks are now severely depleted. What we achieve with tambaqui will act as a model for
developing other species,” says Mortensen. Another farmed fish species in the Amazon is the giant fish pirarucu,
which can weigh up to 250 kg. These are both tasty white fish species. In Brazil, as is the case in many tropical
countries, tillapia is the main species, but farming of tillapia in the Amazon region is prohibited .
Brazilians
consume a lot of meat, but the politician goal is for some of the meat meals to be replaced with fish.
Warming Add-on
2AC
Aquaculture processes include photosynthetic microbes to reduce environmental
impacts
Brune et al. ‘03
(D.E., Professor, Bioprocess and Bioenergy Engineering. & State Extension Specialist at the University of Missouri; “Intensification of pond
aquaculture and high rate photosynthetic systems” Aquacultural Engineering, Vol. 28, Issues 1–2, pp. 65–86; June 2003, Access: 6/30/14)//ck
Aquaculture production systems may range from tanks and raceways, in which water quality is controlled by water dilution and
discharge to the environment to captive water systems, in which water quality is controlled by microbial reactions
within the tank or pond. Attempts at intensification of pond aquaculture beyond the commonplace practice
of supplemental aeration may be classified into categories of physical/chemical techniques and a broad range of
microbial techniques. Most of these techniques are directed at raising the ‘ceiling’ of the system ammonia detoxification rate.
Physical–chemical techniques for intensification of pond aquaculture have included use of in-pond cages and
raceways, water blending and shading of the algal community, as well as, direct flocculation and removal of
algal and bacteria biomass from ponds. A variety of microbial processes can be used to reduce ammonia levels in a conventional
pond. These processes include nitrification/denitrification, photosynthesis, and heterotrophic bacterial re-growth. In this paper,
simplified microbial growth fundamentals, and elemental mass balances are used to analyze and compare the various
aquaculture intensification techniques and, in particular, to compare conventional and heterotrophic techniques to the
use of high rate photosynthetic systems. Direct or indirect photosynthetic systems include enhanced
algal systems (with water mixing), polyculture, hydroponics, wetlands, and terrestrial irrigation/fertilization. The development of Clemson
University's Partitioned Aquaculture System (PAS) constitutes an attempt to combine a number of the various physical, chemical, and microbial
intensification techniques into a single integrated system. The PAS represents an adaptation of high rate microalgal culture to produce a
sustainable, minimal discharge, high yield, and more controllable fish production process. The PAS combines the advantages of process control
of recirculating tank aquaculture with the lower costs of earthen pond aquaculture. Central to the economic success of the PAS is the use of low
speed (1–3 r.p.m.) paddlewheels as an energy efficient means of establishing a uniform water velocity field within an aquaculture pond. The
PAS represents a redesign of the conventional aquaculture pond culture technology providing a spectrum of applications ranging from
moderate yield (6700–11 200 kg/ha) ‘engineered ecosystems’ to high yield (16 800–33 600 kg/ha) controlled ‘production processes’. This
high rate photosynthetic system offers the potential for a 90% reduction in total water usage per unit of
fish produced. The modular nature of the PAS, the increased productivity per unit area, reduced water
requirement, and reduced environmental impact offers the potential for fish culture systems to be
installed at sites not currently suitable for conventional aquaculture.
Photosynthetic microbes mitigate global warming
Huntley and Redalje ‘07
(Mark E. and Donald G., Senior Vice President of Fulton Financial Corp. and
B.A. Environmental Biology- University of California, Ph.D. Biological Oceanography- University of Hawaii, Postdoctoral Study- Scripps Institution
of Oceanography in marine phytoplankton ecology with biogeochemical cycling of organic materials in the upper layers of the ocean; “CO2
Mitigation and Renewable Oil from Photosynthetic Microbes: A New Appraisal” Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Vol.
12, Issue 4, pp. 573-608; May 2007; Access 6/30/14)//ck
The only major strategy now being seriously considered for biological mitigation of atmospheric CO2
relies entirely on terrestrial plants. Photosynthetic microbes were the focus of similar consideration in the 1990s. However, two
major government-sponsored research programs in Japan and the USA concluded that the requisite technology was not feasible, and those
programs were terminated after investing US$117 million and US$25 million, respectively. We report here on the
results of a privately
funded US$20 million program that has engineered, built, and successfully operated a commercial-scale (2 ha),
modular, production system for photosynthetic microbes. The production system couples photobioreactors with open ponds
in a two-stage process – a combination that was suggested, but never attempted – and has operated continuously for several years to produce
Haematococcus pluvialis. The annually averaged rate of achieved microbial oil production from H. pluvialis is equivalent to <420 GJ ha -1 yr-1,
which exceeds the most optimistic estimates of biofuel production from plantations of terrestrial ``energy crops.'' The maximum production
rate achieved to date is equivalent to 1014 GJ ha-1 yr-1. We present evidence to demonstrate that a rate of 3200 GJ ha-1 yr-1 is feasible using
species with known performance characteristics under conditions that prevail in the existing production system. At this rate, it
is possible
to replace reliance on current fossil fuel usage equivalent to ∼300 EJ yr-1 – and eliminate fossil fuel emissions of
CO2 of ∼6.5 GtC yr-1 – using only 7.3% of the surplus arable land projected to be available by 2050. By
comparison, most projections of biofuels production from terrestrial energy crops would require in excess of 80% of surplus arable land. Oil
production cost is estimated at $84/bbl, assuming no improvements in current technology. We suggest enhancements that could reduce cost to
$50/bbl or less.
Unless fisheries rebound, warming will cause extinction
UCL News 2014 (Climate change causes high, but predictable, extinction risks; Feb 26; www.ucl.ac.uk/news/newsarticles/0214/260214-climate-change; kdf)
Judging the effects of climate change on extinction may be easier than previously thought, according to a paper published today in the journal
Nature Climate Change. Although widely used assessments of threatened species, such as the IUCN Red List, were not developed with the
effects of climate change in mind, a study of 36 amphibian and reptile species endemic to the US has concluded that climate change may not be
fundamentally different from other extinction threats in terms of identifying species in danger of extinction. The new study, funded by
NASA and led by Richard Pearson of UCL and, formerly, the American Museum of Natural History, and by Resit Akçakaya of Stony Brook
University in New York, identified factors that predispose species to high extinction risk due to climate change.
By looking at pre-existing information on species of salamanders, turtles, tortoises, snakes and lizards, the team hoped to create a blueprint for
judging extinction risk in other species around the world. Dr Richard Pearson (UCL Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research) said:
“Surprisingly, we found that most important factors – such as having a small range or low population size – are already used in conservation
assessments. These new results indicate that current systems may be better able to identify species vulnerability to climate change than
previously thought.” Through quantitative analysis the team found that across the reptiles and amphibians studied there was a 28% overall
chance of extinction by 2100. In contrast, the
risk of extinction without climate change was calculated to be less
than 1%, suggesting that climate change will cause a dramatic increase in extinction risk for these
taxonomic groups over the next century. Dr Resit Akçakaya of Stony Brook University said: "The bad news is that climate change
will cause many extinctions unless species-specific conservation actions are taken; but the good news is that the methods conservation
organisations have been using to identify which species need the most urgent help also work when climate change is the main threat." The
factors identified in this study as predisposing species to high extinction risk due to climate change
suggest that conservation actions should focus on species that occupy a small or declining area, have
small population size, or have synchronized population fluctuations. The methodology used in this study offers
great potential for adaption to additional taxonomic groups and geographical areas, helping to develop effective measures to conserve
biodiversity over the coming century. Unlike most previous studies, which predicted future extinction risks based only on projected contraction
of areas with suitable climate for each species, the present study estimated extinction risk as the probability of the population size falling to
zero by the year 2100. To do this, the authors used a new methodology that included modelling demographic processes such as reproduction,
survival, and dispersal. The approach was not designed to make specific predictions for each individual species; instead, the methods allowed
the authors to draw conclusions beyond the limited set of species for which data were available.
The result is new understanding
of the factors that make some species more at risk due to the changing temperature and rainfall
patterns that are expected over the coming century. Dr Pearson added: “Our analysis will hopefully be able to help create
better guidelines that account for the effects of climate change in assessing extinction risk.”
1ar- microbes solve
Biological CO2 mitigation via photosynthetic microbes solves best
Wang et al. ‘08
(Bei, Research Computer Scientist Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah Warnock Engineering Building; “CO2 biomitigation using microalgae” Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology, Vol. 79, Issue 5, pp. 707-718; July 2008, Access: 6/30/14)//ck
Biological C02 mitigation has attracted much attention as an alternative strategy because it loads to
production of biomass energy in the process of CO2 fixation through photosynthesis (Kondili and Kaldellis 2007;
Ragauskas et al. 2006; de Morais and Costa 2007a 2007a). Biological CO2 mitigation can be carried out by plants and
photosynthetic microorganisms. However, the potential for increased CO2 capture in agriculture by plants has been estimated to
contribute only 3-6% of fossil fuel emissions (Skjanes et al. 2007), largely due to the slow growth rates of conventional terrestrial plants. On the
other hand, microalgae, a group of fast-growing unicellular or simple multicellular microorganisms, have
the ability to fix CO2
while capturing solar energy with an efficiency 10 to 50 times greater than that of terrestrial plants (Li et
al. 2008: Usui and lkenouchi 1997). For this review, we define microalgae as all unicellular and simple multicellular photosynthetic
microorganisms, including both prokaryotic microalgae i.e., Cyanobacteria (Cyanophyceae) and eukaryotic microalgae. e.g., green algae
(Chlorophyta) and diatoms (Bacillariophyta). The
microalgae-for-CO2-mitigation strategy offers numerous
advantages. Firstly, microalgae have much higher growth rates and CO2 fixation abilities compared to
conventional forestry, agricultural, and aquatic plants (Borowitzka 1999; Chisti 2007; Li et al. 2008). Secondly, it could
completely recycle CO2 (Fig. l) because carbon dioxide is convened into the chemical energy via
photosynthesis which can be converted to fuels using existing technologies (Demirbas 2004). In comparison, the
chemical-reaction based CO2 mitigation approaches, as discussed above, have disposal problems because both the captured CO2 and the
wasted absorbents need to be disposed of (Bonenfant et al. 2003; Yeh et al. 2001). Thirdly, as discussed previously, chemical reaction-based
CO2 mitigation approaches are energy-consuming and costly processes (Lin et al. 2003; Resnik et al. 2004), and the only economical incentive
for CO2 mitigation using the chemical reaction-based approach is the CO2 credits to be generated under the Kyoto Protocol. On the other hand,
CO2 bio-mitigation using microalgae could be made profitable from the production of biofuels and other
novel bioproducts (see later discussion). Finally, the microalgal CO2 bio-mitigation could be made more
economically cost-effective and environmentally sustainable, especially when it is combined with other
processes such as wastewater treatment. The utilization of wastewater for microalga cultivation will bring about remarkable
advantages including the following: (1) Microalgae have been shown to be efficient in nitrogen and phosphorous removal (Mallick 2002), as
well as in metal ion depletion, and combination of microalga cultivation with wastewater treatment will significantly enhance the
environmental benefit of this strategy; and (2) it will lead to savings in term of minimizing the use of chemicals such as sodium nitrate and
potassium phosphorous as exogenous nutrients, and (3) it will result in savings of the precious freshwater sources. Figure 1 depicts a
conceptual flow-chart for the complete “recycling” of CO2 for solar energy capturing. This review strives to provide a systematic account of
recent developments in the field of microalgal CO2 bio-mitigation, with a focus on microalgal strains for the fixation of CO2 from different
sources, the combined CO2 mitigation and biofuel production strategy, the combines wastewater treatment and CO2 mitigation strategy,
microalgal nutrition and cultivation, and microalgal biomass harvesting.
1AR- Leadership Key
If the US doesn’t take the lead no one else will—guarantees extinction
Pascual and Zambetakis 2010 (Carlos [US Ambassador to Mexico, Served as VP of foreign policy @
Brookings] and Evie [Brookings]; The Geopolitics of Energy: From Security to Survival; Energy Security;
26-27; kdf)
Among these groups, the
United States has the capacity to play a pivotal¶ role. China and India will not move
toward more proactive domestic¶ policies if the United States does not set the example. Along with Europe¶
and Japan, the United States has the capacity to demonstrate that green ¶ technology and conservation can be compatible with growth and a foreign ¶ policy that is
more independent of energy suppliers. The
United States also stands to benefit from accelerated commercialization
of green technologies¶ and the development of global markets in energy-efficient and¶ clean energy
technologies. The ability of the United States to lead, however,¶ will depend on domestic action-on
whether it will undertake on a¶ national basis a systematic strategy to price carbon and curb
emissions. If¶ it does the scale and importance of the U.S. market can be a driver for¶ global change. If it fails to act, then the United
States will find that over¶ time the opportunity for leadership to curb climate change will be replaced¶
by the need for crisis management as localized wars, migration, poverty, ¶ and humanitarian
catastrophes increasingly absorb international attention¶ and resources. Eventually, its failure to act will
come back to U.S.¶ borders in a way that will make the Katrina disaster seem relatively tame.
1AR- Impact Extension
Climate Change is a threat magnifier—policy making must focus on finding the best
avenue to avert disaster
Pascual and Elkind 2010 (Carlos [US Ambassador to Mexico, Served as VP of foreign policy @
Brookings]; Jonathan [principal dep ass sec for policy and int energy @ DOE]; Energy Security; p 5; kdf)
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge facing the human race. ¶ It poses profound risks to
the natural systems that sustain life on Earth and¶ consequently creates great challenges for human lives, national economies,¶ nations'
security, and international governance. New scientific reports¶ emerging from one year to the next detail ever more
alarming potential¶ impacts and risks.¶ It is increasingly common for analysts and policymakers to refer to ¶ climate change as a threat
multiplier, a destructive force that will exacerbate¶ existing social, environmental, economic, and
humanitarian stresses .¶ The warming climate is predicted to bring about prolonged droughts¶ in already dry regions, flooding along coasts and even inland rivers, an¶ overall increase in severe weather
Such impacts may spark conflict in¶ weak states, lead to the
displacement of millions of people, create environmental¶ refugees, and intensify competition over
increasingly scarce¶ resources.¶ One of the great challenges of climate change is, indeed, the scope of¶ the phenomenon. The ongoing warming of the globe results chiefly from¶ one of the most
events, rising seas, and the spread of¶ disease, to cite just a few examples.
ubiquitous of human practices, the conversion of fossil fuels ¶ into energy through simple combustion. Halting and reversing climate¶ change, however, will require both unproven-perhaps even unimaginedtechnology¶ and sustained
political commitment. We must change living¶ habits in all corners of the globe over the course of the next several decades. ¶ We must resist the impulse to leave the problem for those who follow us ¶ or to relax our efforts if we
The¶ profound challenge will lie in the need for successive rounds of sustained¶
policymaking, successive waves of technological innovation, and ongoing¶ evolution of the ways in
which we live our lives.
achieve a few years of promising progress.
Impact comparison
Evaluate ocean warming first, it’s key to all life
Abraham and Nuccitelli 2014 (John and Dana; Scientists in focus-Lyman and Johnson explore the
rapidly warming oceans; www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-percent/2014/jun/11/scientists-in-focus-lyman-johnson; kdf)
I put the same questions to Greg, an oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, and an affiliate professor with the
University of Washington. He told me that he went into oceanography because he,¶ “wanted to combine my interest in physics with my love of
the sea. For the first decade or so of my career, I studied mostly ocean temperature, salinity, and currents, and their variability. However, as
time has gone on, the importance to climate variations over seasons to millennia have become increasingly apparent, and important in my
work.”¶ Johnson's research is important because,¶ "With
the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, more
energy enters the Earth environment than escapes. Over the last 4 decades, 93% of this energy imbalance has
warmed the ocean, with about 3% warming the land, 3% melting ice, and 1% warming and adding
moisture to the atmosphere. Warmed oceans also expand, raising sea level. Hence measuring how much
the oceans are warming and where is important to understanding how much and how fast the Earth will
warm and sea level will rise."¶ ¶ Greg and his team collect much of their data using Conductivity-Temperature-Depth instruments
(CTDs for short). They make accurate measurements of the ocean waters. The CTDs are positioned on autonomous floats (Argo floats), lowered
on ship-borne cables, or even attached to marine animals. He also says, ¶ ¶ “In my research, I also use data from many other sources including
sea level, sea-surface-temperature, sea-surface-salinity, winds, and even ocean mass variations from satellites. I also use current data from
drifting buoys, Argo floats, and various types of current meters including acoustic Doppler instruments.”¶ ¶ I asked Greg what his biggest
scientific contribution has been and he responded, “The data my research group and I have worked to collect over the past three decades.”
He's right; those data allow long-term assessments of the changes to the world’s waters.¶ ¶ So why write about these oceanographers in my
first SCIENTISTS IN FOCUS post? It is because, whenever someone asks me whether we can prove the world is warming, it is to the research of
Greg, John, and their colleagues that I point them. The
story of climate change is largely a story of the oceans. They
are wide, deep, and hard to measure. But the painstaking work these scientists have undertaken has provided a remarkably good
picture of the health of the oceans and a view toward the future of the planet.
Evaluate climate change through the precautionary principle
Friedman 2009 (Thomas; Going Cheney on Climate; December 8;
www.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/opinion/09friedman.html; kdf)
This is not complicated. We
know that our planet is enveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep
the Earth at a comfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from
cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped. What we don’t know, because the climate system
is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how
rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know
two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible”
in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash
“catastrophic” warming. When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and
is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all
about. If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the
result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars
and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We
would be much
less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would
improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country,
we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent. But if we don’t prepare, and
climate change turns out to be real, life on this planet could become a living hell. And that’s why I’m
for doing the Cheney-thing on climate — preparing for 1 percent.
Warming Real
The best and most recent study has found that warming is anthropogenic with
absolute certainty
Gleckler et al 2012 (P.J., B. D. Santer, C. M. Domingues, D.W. Pierce, T. P. Barnett, J. A. Church,
K. E. Taylor, K. M. AchutaRao, T. P. Boyer, M. Ishii and P. M. Caldwell [Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory; Antarctic and Climate Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre; Centre for AustralianWeather and Climate¶
Research andWealth from Oceans Flagship; Climate¶ Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Indian Institute of Technology;
National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA; Climate Research Department,¶ Meteorological Research Institute]; Human-induced global ocean
warming on multidecadal timescales; DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1553; kdf)
Large-scale increases in upper-ocean temperatures are evident¶ in observational records1. Several
studies have used¶ wellestablished detection and attribution methods to demonstrate¶ that the observed basin-scale
temperature changes¶ are consistent with model responses to anthropogenic forcing¶ and inconsistent
with model-based estimates of natural¶ variability2–5. These studies relied on a single observational¶ data set and employed
results from only one or two models.¶ Recent identification of systematic instrumental biases6¶ in expendable
bathythermograph data has led to improved¶ estimates of ocean temperature variability and trends7–
9 and¶ provide motivation to revisit earlier detection and attribution¶ studies.We examine the causes
of ocean warming using these¶ improved observational estimates, together with results from¶ a large multimodel
archive of externally forced and unforced¶ simulations. The time evolution of upper ocean temperature¶ changes in the newer observational
estimates is similar to¶ that of the multimodel average of simulations that include the¶ effects of volcanic eruptions. Our
detection and
attribution¶ analysis systematically examines the sensitivity of results to¶ a variety of model and dataprocessing choices. When global¶ mean changes are included, we consistently obtain a positive¶
identification (at the 1% significance level) of an anthropogenic¶ fingerprint in observed upper-ocean
temperature changes,¶ thereby substantially strengthening existing detection and¶ attribution
evidence.¶ We examine volume average temperature anomalies (1T) for¶ the upper 700m of the global ocean (see Methods). Figure 1a¶
compares uncorrected observational 1T estimates ISH-UNCOR¶ (ref. 10) and LEV-UNCOR (ref. 11) with improved versions,¶ ISH (ref. 8) and LEV
(ref. 9), which incorporate corrections for¶ expendable bathythermograph (XBT) biases. The bias-corrected¶ temperature analysis7 from a third
group (DOM) is also shown.¶ Bias corrections have a substantial impact on the time evolution¶ of 1T, particularly during the 1970s–1980s, when
they markedly¶ reduce spurious decadal variability. ¶ As shown below, these
bias adjustments have important¶
implications for detection and attribution (D&A) studies. Although¶ there are no significant differences between the 1T
trends (which¶ range from 0.022 to 0.028 ◦C per decade) in the three improved¶ observational data sets, Fig. 1a illustrates that substantial
structural¶ uncertainties remain. The impact of different XBT bias corrections¶ is a major source of this uncertainty12. Another important
component of observational uncertainty¶ relates to the sparseness of ocean temperature measurements and¶ to the different methods used to
objectively infill data where¶ and when measurements are not available13–15. ISH and LEV use¶ objective mapping techniques to carry out
infilling, generating¶ anomalies that are biased towards zero in data-sparse regions.¶ The infilling method of DOM employs statistics of
observed¶ ocean variability estimated from altimeter data. We compare the¶ spatially complete infilled estimates (1TIF) with subsampled 1T¶
data (1TSS) restricted to available in situ measurements (see¶ Methods). Not surprisingly, the 1TSS variability in Fig. 1b is¶ greater than that of
1TIF, particularly at the times/locations of the¶ sparsest sampling (early in the record and in the southern oceans;¶ Supplementary Fig. S1).¶ We
use results from phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercom-¶ parison Project (CMIP3; see Methods and Supplementary Informa-¶ tion) to obtain
information on the behaviour of 1T in unforced¶ (control) simulations and in externally forced twentieth-century¶ runs (20CEN). External
forcing is by a variety of anthropogenic¶ factors (primarily greenhouse gases and sulphate aerosols). In
some¶ models, the applied forcing also includes natural changes in volcanic¶ aerosols and solar
irradiance. The seven CMIP3 models (with the¶ data required for our analysis) incorporating the effects of volcanic¶ eruptions (VOL) in the
20CEN simulations uptake less heat than¶ the six that do not (NoV)16.
Ocean temperatures prove that warming is anthropogenic
Gleckler et al 2012 (P.J., B. D. Santer, C. M. Domingues, D.W. Pierce, T. P. Barnett, J. A. Church,
K. E. Taylor, K. M. AchutaRao, T. P. Boyer, M. Ishii and P. M. Caldwell [Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory; Antarctic and Climate Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre; Centre for AustralianWeather and Climate¶
Research andWealth from Oceans Flagship; Climate¶ Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Indian Institute of Technology;
National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA; Climate Research Department,¶ Meteorological Research Institute]; Human-induced global ocean
warming on multidecadal timescales; DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1553; kdf)
The choice of multimodel fingerprint (VOL or NoV) does¶ not change the overall picture of highly
significant S/N ratios¶ (Supplementary Fig. S6). However, the observations project more¶ strongly onto the VOL fingerprint than the
NoV fingerprint. The¶ inclusion of volcanic forcings may contribute to this improved¶ agreement, but it may
also be related to differences in the physics¶ and parameterizations of the models comprising the VOL
and¶ NoV subsets (as well as to differences in other, non-volcanic¶ external forcings).¶ We also repeated our D&A analysis after first
removing the¶ time-evolving global mean temperature change from all data sets.¶ This is a more stringent test of the similarity between
modelled and¶ observed temperature changes. In the mean-removed case, we still¶ obtain positive detection of the VOL and NoV model
fingerprints¶ in observations in roughly half of the D&A tests. This indicates that¶ there is useful signal information in the subglobal pattern of
1T,¶ such as the larger warming in the Atlantic than in the Pacific—a¶ feature common to models and observations (Fig. 2).¶ We
have
identified a human-induced fingerprint in observed¶ estimates of upper-ocean warming on
multidecadal timescales,¶ confirming the results of previous D&A work2–5. Our results are¶ robust to the
use of multiple bias-corrected observational data¶ sets, to use of infilled or subsampled data, to model signal and¶ noise
uncertainties and to different technical choices in simulation¶ drift removal and in the application of our D&A method. There¶ is evidence
from our variability comparisons that the models¶ used here may underestimate observed decadal
scale variability of¶ basin-average upper-ocean temperatures. However, this variability¶ underestimate
would have to be smaller than observed by a factor¶ of more than two to negate our positive
identification of an¶ anthropogenic fingerprint in the observed multidecadal warming of¶ the upper
700m of the oceans. Our analysis provides no evidence¶ of a noise error of this magnitude.
Fish=Carbon Sinks
We need fish to solve warming
Climate News Network 2014 (Stop fishing the high seas, say scientists, for climate and ecology; Jun
21;
www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2431895/stop_fishing_the_high_seas_say_scientists_for_cl
imate_and_ecology.html; kdf)
Fish from the high seas are too valuable to be eaten, as they lessen climate change through the carbon
they carry down to the ocean depths. The carbon benefits are worth $150 billion every year - almost ten times the value of high
seas fish landings. Marine biologists have delivered the most radical proposal yet to protect biodiversity and sequester carbon: stop all fishing,
they say, on the high seas. The high seas are the stretches of ocean that nobody owns and nobody claims: they are beyond the 200-mile
economic zones patrolled and sometimes disputed by national governments. They
are also what climate scientists call a
carbon sink, a natural source of carbon removal. Deep oceans deliver $148 bn carbon benefit every year Life in the
deep seas absorbs 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buries half a billion
tonnes of carbon on the sea bed every year, according to Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia in Canada and
Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford in the UK. The two researchers put the value to humanity of life in the high seas - in terms of its ability
to sequester carbon - at $148 billion a year. Only a hundredth of the fish landed in all the ports in all the world is found on the high seas alone.
And around 10 million tonnes of fish are caught by high seas fishing fleets each year, and sold for $16bn. "Countries around the world are
struggling to find cost-effective ways to reduce their carbon emissions. We've found that the high seas are a natural system that is doing a good
job of it for free", said Professor Sumaila. "Keeping
fish in the high seas gives us more value than catching them. If
we lose the life on the high seas, we'll have to find another way to reduce emissions at a much higher
cost." Staying in the depths But it isn't just the high seas that sequester carbon. In a second study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal
Society B, British and Irish researchers argue that deep sea fish remove and stow away more than a million
tonnes of carbon dioxide just from waters around the British coasts and the Irish Sea. If this volume were
valued as 'carbon credits' it would add up to £10 mn a year ($16.8 mn). The reasoning goes like this. Deep water fishes don't rise to
the surface, they depend on food that filters down to them from above. At mid water level, there is a
huge and diverse ecosystem involving many species that rise to the surface to feed during the night and then sink back down again,
and some of this reaches the depths. 'Radical steps must be taken' Clive Trueman of the University of Southampton and colleagues measured
ratios of isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the tissues of fish caught at depths between 500 and 1,800 metres to calculate the original sources
of food. They found that more than half of these fish got their energy - their food supply - from fishes that went to the surface. But deep water
fish, when they die, stay at depth. Their carbon doesn't get back into the atmospheric system. Research like this is done to solve the puzzles of
the planetary ecosystem, but also to explore the options open to politicians who will one day have to confront the mounting costs of climate
change. The declaration of the high seas as 'off limits' to all fishing sounds utopian, but fisheries scientists have repeatedly argued that present
fishing regimes are not sustainable, and that radical steps must be taken. Fish sanctuaries Callum Roberts, of the University of York, UK, has
been making the case for 'marine parks', or undisturbed ocean and shallow water wildernesses, for more than a decade. Like pristine tropical
rainforests, or protected wetlands and prairies, these would be nurseries and safe zones for rare or otherwise threatened species of plants and
animals. But they would also serve as valuable carbon sinks. Either way, humans
would benefit because the marine parks
would slow global warming and limit climate change. "The more abundant life is, and the more the seabeds are rich,
complex and dominated by filter feeders that extract organic matter from the water, and creatures that bury matter in the mud, the more
effective the seas will be as a carbon sink", said Professor Roberts. "Overfishing
has diminished that benefit wherever it
has taken place just at the time when we need it most. I think the carbon sequestration argument is a
strong one. The deep sea is probably the biggest carbon sink on the planet by virtue of its enormous size. "It is incredibly important as a
sink, because once carbon is trapped there, it is much harder for it to get re-released into the atmosphere than is the case for carbon sinks on
land, like forests or peat bogs." Planetary benefits - or a future of declining catches? Protection of fish on the high seas would also be good for
fish stocks in the exclusive economic zones nearer the shores, where the global catch is more carefully managed, and where some areas are
already protected. This would benefit all nations where people depend on fishing or fish farming. At the moment, only a small number of
nations maintain high seas fleets. The Global Ocean Commission, which commissioned the high seas study, claims that such a decision would
make economic, social and ecological sense: the oceans supply "vital services" to humanity. They provide half of the planet's oxygen, deliver
nourishment for billions of people, and regulate the climate. To protect the high seas could help offshore fish stocks, but demand for fish is
likely to grow in step with population increases, and fish produce at least one sixth of the animal protein that humans consume. The supply of
'wild' fish caught by net or line peaked nearly two decades ago. The World Resources Institute believes that production of farmed fish and
shellfish will have to increase by 133% by 2050.
AT: SO2 Screw
Most recent and comparative study found that pumping SO2 in the atmosphere won’t
solve warming, and only make the impacts of warming worse
Phys.org 2014 (Climate engineering offers little hope of mitigation; Jul 4; phys.org/news/2014-07climate-mitigation.html; kdf)
Injecting particles into the stratosphere to shade and cool the Earth will never stop climate
change. This is the shocking claim made in the July issue of Nature Climate Change by an international
group of prominent scientists, including Dutchmen Marten Scheffer from Wageningen University and Aart de Zeeuw from Tilburg
University. An international agreement was drawn up in 1992 to stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
at a level that would make it possible to limit climate change. Despite this, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and
methane have continued to increase and measures to limit emissions have had little effect. The CO2 concentration has now passed
the limit of 400 ppm (May 2014: 401.88). Solar radiation management In theory, the amount of solar radiation that falls on the
The
group of scientists investigated whether applying solar radiation management would have the
desired effect and, if so, whether such an international-level intervention was politically
achievable. They showed that although geo-engineering can reduce the average temperature of
the Earth, it cannot halt climate change. In fact, it would result in a completely new climate with
very different effects in different regions. As these effects would be negative in some areas of the world (extreme
Earth can be limited quite simply by dispersing fine sulphate particles (aerosols) high in the atmosphere (the stratosphere).
drought, for example), it is highly unlikely that political consensus would be achieved. Risks Furthermore, geo-engineering is not
without risk. For example, there is much uncertainty about the effects on the distribution of precipitation and heat around the world.
Its application to solve a regional problem (to extend the monsoon season, for example) can lead to
unpredictable, new problems for other countries. Achieving political consensus is most likely if
the world as a whole is faced with a major disaster, such as the melting of the Greenland ice
sheet. However, even then politicians will ask themselves – given the risks involved in geo-engineering – whether adaptation to
climate change is not a better solution. This is a blow to technocrats, acknowledge the researchers. 'In any
case, geo-engineering is not going to be the breakthrough that some had expected.'
AT: Ice Age
No ice age- 97% of scientists agree
News Hounds 2014 (Brian; Global warming? Fox news predicts a new ice age; Jul 6;
www.newshounds.us/global_warming_fox_news_predicts_a_new_ice_age_07062014; kdf)
Fox’s favorite climate skeptic, Joe Bastardi – a meteorologist, not a climate scientist – visited the Your
World show last week where he insisted the planet is getting colder, not warmer. Host Neil Cavuto gave
him a seal of approval by saying he’d believe Bastardi over the consensus. In a lengthy, welldocumented post, Media Matters wrote about Bastardi: Fox News and Fox Business Network frequently
host Joe Bastardi to comment on climate change. But Bastardi, who is a weather forecaster, not a
climate researcher, has made inaccurate claims about climate science on multiple occasions and is not
seen by experts as a credible source of climate information. But on Your World last week, Cavuto
introduced Bastardi by saying, “Leave it to Joe Bastardi to whip up another storm of his own. He’s
tweeting holy hell because the Antarctic is not as hot as hell as alarmists predicted.” In a lengthy
interview which unquestioningly presented Bastardi as a credible expert on climate science, Cavuto
helped validate Bastardi’s theory that the earth is now in a cooling cycle – by suggesting we’re headed
for an ice age. Cavuto said, “I can remember as a kid, …all those Time magazine cover stories,
documentaries, New York Times stories on the global cooling, the big freeze to come, Leonard Nimoy
scaring the you-know-what out of us about being ready for the great winter that was going to grip the
world. Maybe they were right, they were just 40 years early. …What’s going on?” Bastardi replied, “We
were in a cold cycle, and I said this several years ago, on this network, that we were going back to where
we were, by 2030. The global temperatures, measured objectively by satellites - remember we’ve only
been measuring temperatures objectively since 1978 - would return back to where it was in ‘78 because
we went through the cold cycles in the Pacific and on into the Atlantic. …It’s all cyclical in nature.” He
finished with a smirk on his face. Cavuto said supportively, “I think what you just said is that you can’t
buy the consensus. …Forty years ago, we were talking about great global cooling and I guess it goes back
to who do you believe?” “Twenty years from now, we’re going to be hearing about the next ice age
coming again,” Bastardi insisted. “Wow, amazing!” Cavuto said. “So what are you going to do? The
French climate commission or Joe? I’m going with Joe. That’s me, that’s just my bias. Good seeing you
my friend.” How about both men read that climate change is getting worse? The 97% of scientists who
believe we’re causing climate change would laugh Bastardi off the premises.
The claim that an ice age is pending is not rooted in science
Mooney 2014 (Chris; Why David Brat is completely wrong about climate science; Jun 11;
grist.org/climate-energy/why-david-brat-is-completely-wrong-about-climate-science/; kdf)
In a recent campaign event video (which has since been made private), Brat explains his free-marketeer perspective on environmental and
energy problems. Naturally, he believes that American ingenuity will lead the way to a cleaner environment. But he also hints at a disbelief in
the science of global warming, and alludes to a well-worn myth that has been widely used on the right to undermine trust in climate scientists –
the idea that just a few decades ago, in the 1970s, climate experts all
thought we were headed into “another Ice
Age.” Here’s how Brat put it: “If you let Americans do their thing, there is no scarcity, right? They said we’re going to run out of food 200
years ago, and then we’re going to have another ice age. Now it’s, we’re heating up … .” At this point, Brat waves his hand dismissively. I
reached out to the Brat campaign to ask if he believes in human-caused climate change; they did not immediately respond. Regardless, the
myth that climate scientists, in the 1970s, all thought a new Ice Age was coming has been widely asserted by conservative and libertarian types
ranging from George Will to Michael Crichton. And no wonder: It serves their political goals. It makes climate scientists seem quirky, wishy-
washy, leaping from one conclusion to another. But it’s highly misleading. In 2008, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
published a full article dedicated to debunking this myth. Here’s a short excerpt: … the following pervasive myth arose: there was a consensus
among climate scientists of the 1970s that either global cooling or a full-fledged ice age was imminent . …
A review of the climate
science literature from 1965 to 1979 shows this myth to be false. The myth’s basis lies in a selective
misreading of the texts both by some members of the media at the time and by some observers today . In
fact, emphasis on greenhouse warming dominated the scientific literature even then. So where did this odd idea — that within relatively recent
memory, climate scientists were all worried about cooling, not warming — come from? After all, as far back as 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s
President’s Science Advisory Committee detailed the risk of global warming due to fossil-fuel burning in an extensive appendix to a report on
the environment. Concerns about warming were prominent even then. Nonetheless, the 1970s were part of a temporary cooling trend, at least
in the northern hemisphere, and some journalists caught on. Some scientists also fanned the flames. Perhaps most notably, in 1975 Newsweek
magazine ran a story entitled “The Cooling World.” This is arguably the most frequently cited piece of evidence for those who claim that
scientists, at the time, thought global cooling was coming. That’s even though the story’s author, Peter Gwynne, has himself set the record
straight, writing, “Several atmospheric scientists did indeed believe in global cooling, as I reported in the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek. But
that was then.” And even then, this was certainly not a consensus position in the scientific community.
The American
Meteorological Society paper shows, through a scientific literature review, that from 1965 to 1979, “only 7 articles
indicated cooling compared to 44 indicating warming.” Sure enough, by 1979, a major National Academy of Sciences report could be
found highlighting the global warming threat and stating that if carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere double, we could see a
warming of between 1.5 and 4 degrees Celsius. So no, scientists didn’t unanimously say, “We’re going to have another ice age.” And getting this
right really matters. Because it shows that contrary to what Brat suggests, climate
researchers are not mercurial, and were
not all wrong just a few decades ago. And that, in turn, underscores the reality that their current conclusion — that humans
are causing global warming — is based on a long-running and extremely well-established body of research
and thinking.2
We control the internal link to ice age
Oskin 2014 (Becky; Ice age reboot: ocean current shutdown viewed as culprit; Jun 26;
https://news.yahoo.com/ice-age-reboot-ocean-current-shutdown-viewed-culprit-180323460.html; kdf)
A dramatic slowdown in deep ocean currents matches a major reset in Earth's ice ages about 1 million years ago, new evidence from the South
Atlantic seafloor suggests. The discovery doesn't mean the ocean current stall-out is the only culprit behind the change in Earth's incessant ice
ages, the study authors said. However,
the findings provide new evidence that Earth's oceans can significantly alter
its climate. "We cannot tell for sure what broke the cycle," said lead study author Leopoldo Pena of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
in New York. "Our evidence shows the oceans played a major role." [Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench] For unknown
reasons, about 950,000 years ago, Earth's ice age cycles suddenly lengthened, from 41,000 years to 100,000 years. The planet's thermostat was
tweaked at the same time, with ice ages growing colder than before. "This is the largest climatic change that has happened on our planet in the
last 2 million years," Pena said. "For many decades, scientists have been trying to understand what happened." The big switch took place
without the usual suspects, such as a drop in energy from the sun due to orbital wobbles. So scientists
turned to climate change
for a possible cause. Pena and his co-authors have now discovered that a huge ocean "conveyor belt" stalled at the same time as the ice
age switch. Their findings were published today (June 26) in the journal Science Express. The conveyor belt is a global current
system scientists call the thermohaline circulation (THC). The circulation pattern moves warm surface
water from the Southern Hemisphere toward the northern latitudes, where it grows cold and salty and
sinks. The denser water then flows back toward the south along the deep seafloor. The Gulf Stream is part of this giant conveyor belt.
Paleoclimate records show the THC currents have operated for millions of years. [Video: Animation Reveals Ocean Currents] Tracing ancient
currents To track the strength of the ancient THC currents, Pena analyzed levels of neodymium in minerals crusted onto tiny shells of dead
plankton. The minerals were encrusted after the plankton died, as the shells dropped to the seafloor. The neodymium indicates where the deep
seawater came from, Pena said. For example, waters from the North Atlantic have a distinct neodymium "flavor" versus waters from the North
Pacific. By measuring the neodymium in shells in seafloor mud deposited during the past million years, Pena
can estimate whether North Atlantic waters were flowing south, or if the current shut down. When the ice age cycle was every 41,000 years,
the THC currents were normal strength even during glacial periods, the researchers found. But 950,000 years ago, something shut down the
conveyor belt during a glacial period. The crisis lasted 100,000 years, Pena said, and then the current recovered. However, after the transition,
when Earth was in its 100,000-year ice age cycle, the ocean current grew weaker or stalled every time there was an ice age. The researchers
suspect the colder ice ages after the big flip meant large ice sheets in the North Atlantic shut down the ocean conveyor belt. But for now, Pena
says scientists aren't sure which came first — bigger ice sheets or a broken ocean conveyor belt. There was also a huge drop in carbon dioxide
950,000 years ago, which also played a role in cooling the planet. The sluggish conveyor belt could have contributed to this drop by hoarding
the greenhouse gas in the deep ocean, Pena said. "It's a chicken-and-egg question," Pena said. Christopher Charles, a climate scientist who was
not involved in the study, agrees that it's unlikely a single cause will emerge. The deep ocean could be one of many triggers for the ice age
change. "It's
extremely likely that the switch in ice age cycling was at least strongly influenced by, if not
controlled by, carbon cycling," said Charles, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "It would not
be at all surprising to me if ocean mixing somehow played a role in governing the storage of carbon in
the deep ocean."