Offshore Wind Affirmativ
1ac ................................................................................................................................................................. 4
Plan ....................................................................................................................................................... 6
1ac – Warming Advantage .................................................................................................................... 7
1ac – Oceans Advantage ..................................................................................................................... 14
1ac – Solvency .................................................................................................................................... 18
Inherency & T ............................................................................................................................................. 22
Wind Growing Now ................................................................................................................................ 23
OSW Growing – Need More .............................................................................................................. 24
Developing elsewhere now ................................................................................................................. 25
Grants Now ......................................................................................................................................... 26
Solvency...................................................................................................................................................... 27
Solvency Extensions ............................................................................................................................... 28
Authority Consolidation Solves .......................................................................................................... 29
Preemption key to industry ................................................................................................................. 31
Preemption key to Investment............................................................................................................. 32
Restrictions Key .................................................................................................................................. 33
Investment Coming ............................................................................................................................. 34
A2 Cape Wind solves.......................................................................................................................... 35
Agent Stuff .............................................................................................................................................. 36
Individual Agencies can Pre-Empt ..................................................................................................... 37
FERC can do it .................................................................................................................................... 38
Warming Advantage Extensions ................................................................................................................. 39
Warming Impact Stuff ............................................................................................................................ 40
Yes, Anthro, Stoppable, Plan Key ...................................................................................................... 41
Anthropogenic..................................................................................................................................... 42
Extinction ............................................................................................................................................ 46
A2 too late ........................................................................................................................................... 47
Solves Warming ...................................................................................................................................... 49
Specific Solvency Ev .......................................................................................................................... 50
Solves Emissions ................................................................................................................................ 52
Offshore Wind Sufficient .................................................................................................................... 53
Wind Sufficient ................................................................................................................................... 55
Enough Wind Available ...................................................................................................................... 57
Replaces US need ............................................................................................................................... 60
DOE already Planning ........................................................................................................................ 61
Oceans Advantage ...................................................................................................................................... 62
Offshore Helps Oceans ........................................................................................................................... 63
Great for Oceans ................................................................................................................................. 64
Stops Trawling .................................................................................................................................... 66
Marine Protection Key ........................................................................................................................ 68
A2 bad for Env’t ................................................................................................................................. 69
Trawling Bad .......................................................................................................................................... 70
Trawling Bad – Oceans ....................................................................................................................... 71
Trawling Bad – Turtles & Reefs IL .................................................................................................... 72
Reefs Impact ....................................................................................................................................... 73
Turtles Impact ..................................................................................................................................... 74
Trawling Bad – Corals IL ................................................................................................................... 75
Trawling Bad – Sharks IL ................................................................................................................... 76
A2 Trawling key to Fish Industry ....................................................................................................... 77
Biotech Add-On .................................................................................................................................. 78
Biotech Impact Wall ........................................................................................................................... 79
Oceans Impacts ....................................................................................................................................... 85
Err Aff ................................................................................................................................................. 86
Extinction ............................................................................................................................................ 88
Sponges Module.................................................................................................................................. 89
Add Ons ...................................................................................................................................................... 91
Hurricanes ............................................................................................................................................... 92
2ac Hurricanes .................................................................................................................................... 93
Replaces Sea Wall Need ..................................................................................................................... 95
Escalation ............................................................................................................................................ 96
Hurricanes Impact ............................................................................................................................... 97
2ac Cards..................................................................................................................................................... 98
Disad Answers ........................................................................................................................................ 99
Spending/Econ .................................................................................................................................. 100
Environment/Species ........................................................................................................................ 101
Econ & Energy...................................................................................................................................... 103
Electricity Needs ............................................................................................................................... 104
Economy ........................................................................................................................................... 105
Politics .................................................................................................................................................. 106
Agencies Don’t Link ......................................................................................................................... 107
Snowe & Collins Turn ...................................................................................................................... 108
Preemption no Link........................................................................................................................... 109
States CP ............................................................................................................................................... 110
Theory ............................................................................................................................................... 111
Fed Leadership Key .......................................................................................................................... 112
National Modeled.............................................................................................................................. 113
Warming Deficit ............................................................................................................................... 114
Industry Perception ........................................................................................................................... 115
A2 States Control the Process ........................................................................................................... 116
States Perm Shields Politics .............................................................................................................. 117
A2 Wind Bad Disads ............................................................................................................................ 118
A2 Industrial Wind Action Group .................................................................................................... 119
A2 Intermittency ............................................................................................................................... 120
A2 transmission ................................................................................................................................ 121
A2 Needs more $$ ............................................................................................................................ 122
A2 Birds DA ..................................................................................................................................... 123
1ac
1ac
Plan
The United States federal government should insure the availability of permits for
the development of ocean based Offshore Wind Energy including the preemption of
state and local rules against development. All permit applications for offshore wind
development should be prioritized by the relevant federal agencies.
1ac – Warming Advantage
Advantage One is Global Climate Change
It is coming – reduction in magnitude is possible – must change calculations to
support offshore wind – worth short term risks to avoid extinction
ALLISON, ROOT, & FRUMHOFF 14 a. American Wind Wildlife Institute b. Prof
at Stanford c. Union of Concerned Scientists [Taber D. Allison, Terry L. Root, and Peter C.
Frumhoff, An Interdisciplinary, International Journal Devoted to the Description, Causes and Implications
of Climatic Change, Thinking globally and siting locally – renewable energy and biodiversity in a rapidly
warming world, Climatic Change, 10.1007/s10584-014-1127-y]
Rapid, large-scale expansion of low- and zero-carbon renewable energy sources is essential for limiting
the magnitude of global warming and its impacts on wildlife (Clemmer et al. 2013). Expansion of renewable energy leads
to concerns in the conservation community over harm to wildlife populations from injury and death of individual birds and bats or from
fragmentation of species’ habitat (e.g., Arnett & Baerwald 2013; Kiesecker et al. 2011).
Threats to wildlife can be reduced by strategic siting and operation, yet
the threat of global extinctions rises the longer it
takes to reduce carbon emissions (e.g., Warren et al. 2013). Consequently, efforts to expand renewable energy
at the needed scale should factor in both (a) the potential for direct harm to species’ local populations and (b) the reduction
in global biodiversity loss from limiting global warming.
Here we present core issues of this challenge in order to motivate a needed dialogue across conservation and renewable energy communities
about determining the acceptable level of uncertainty in the impacts of renewable energy development on wildlife in a world facing highmagnitude warming. We focus on wind energy, but our broader argument applies to other sources of renewable energy. Difficult choices need to
be made, and time is of the essence for a dialogue that addresses how to ensure the conservation of wildlife with the need for rapid and deep cuts
in greenhouse gas emissions.
2 Threat of climate change
Even if we stabilized atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases at today’s levels through
immediate and deep reductions in emissions, surface temperatures would continue to rise for decades as excess
heat now contained in the deep ocean is released to the atmosphere. Adapting to further climate change is unavoidable, but the
risks of potentially catastrophic warming can be reduced through deep and sustained cuts in
emissions .
The U.S. and other nations agreed to take actions to limit warming below a 2 °C increase in global average surface temperature
above pre-industrial levels (Copenhagen Accord 2009), but actions and pledges by major emitters have fallen far short of what is needed to
achieve this goal (World Bank 2012). Future warming most likely will exceed the 2 °C target (Sanford et al. 2014).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that a “large fraction” of species around the globe
“face increased extinction risk under projected climate change during and beyond the 21st Century”
particularly when the synergistic effects of climate change with other anthropogenic impacts such as habitat
loss and fragmentation and invasive species are taken into account. (Scholes et al. 2014). According to the IPCC, the risk
of extinction owing to climate change is projected to increase regardless of the scenario used to
project future climate change, but the fraction of species at risk will be greater as the magnitude of
temperature change increases. For example, most of the world’s biodiversity is concentrated in the tropics.
Under medium to high magnitude warming, tropical species (characteristically, with quite limited physiological tolerance
to changes in climate) will experience monthly average temperatures that exceed historic bounds before 2100
(Mora et al. 2013).
3 Need for significant renewable energy expansion
Limiting the magnitude of warming to ~2 °C will require swift and deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions. Assuming
comparable actions by other nations, the U.S. would have a carbon budget equivalent to emitting no more than
~170-200 Gigatons of carbon dioxide between 2012 and 2050, a level consistent with the goal of reducing
U. S. emissions by 83 % below 2005 levels by mid-century (NRC, 2010 ). A large proportion of these
reductions will come from the power sector , and meeting this emissions goal will require extensive
expansion of renewable energy (Fawcett et al. 2009; Clemmer et al. 2013). Staying within the U.S. carbon budget, for
example, will require expansion of land-based wind energy from 60 GW in 2012 to 330–440 GW in 2050, and offshore wind
expansion from zero currently to 25–100 GW; estimates for solar energy in 2050 range from 160–260 GW for photovoltaic and 20–80 GW
for concentrated solar (Clemmer et al. 2013).
4 Potential wildlife impacts of renewable energy expansion
All forms of low-carbon electricity production have environmental impacts, and the potential impacts of wind energy and solar energy
development on wildlife have been the subject of multiple reviews (e.g., NRC, 2007; Arnett et al. 2008; Strickland et al. 2011; Lovich & Ennen
2013). Collision fatalities of birds and bats have been reported at all wind energy facilities where data are publicly available (Strickland et al.
2011); raptors and bats appear to be relatively more vulnerable to collision. Projections of fatality levels under aggressive build-out scenarios
raise the concern that reported fatality levels are not sustainable for some of these species (e.g., Johnson & Erickson 2011; Arnett & Baerwald
2013). Concern has been expressed about the large land area needed to achieve emissions reduction targets described above (McDonald et al.
2009). Disturbances associated with renewable energy development may cause displacement of sensitive species from otherwise suitable habitat
or lead to demographic decline due to effects on breeding success or survival, but the few studies evaluating these effects have not produced
definitive or consistent results either within or among species (e.g., Pearce–Higgins et al. 2012; Lovich & Ennen 2013; Sandercock et al. 2013).
Uncertainty regarding the magnitude of impacts to wildlife from renewable energy development have been influential in siting decisions to date
(e.g. BLM 2013) and growing concerns about this potential but unknown risk threaten to undermine the pace and scale of renewable energy
development needed to achieve emissions reduction targets.
5 Proposed framework
We opened this paper with a simple proposition: efforts to expedite renewable energy expansion while protecting biodiversity need to factor in
both (a) the potential adverse impacts of renewable energy siting and operation and related transmission on wildlife and (b) the reduction in
extinction risk from avoided emissions and high-magnitude warming. A framework to achieve these objectives includes
1. Continuing efforts to strategically locate and operate renewable energy projects to minimize impacts to wildlife from such development
2. Understanding the potentially far greater risks to global biodiversity from increased extinction owing to unlimited climate change, and
3. Acknowledging that research will not eliminate uncertainty regarding wildlife impacts in advance of the scale of development needed to limit
global warming.
Several initiatives are underway to avoid and minimize wildlife impacts of wind energy development, which may constitute up to 50 % of the
total renewable energy development by 2050 (e.g., Mai et al. 2012). The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service released voluntary guidelines for siting
land-based wind energy and for developing eagle conservation plans, thus, providing a legal framework for companies to avoid and minimize
impacts to species vulnerable to wind energy development (USFWS 2012; USFWS 2013b).
In 2008 the American Wind Wildlife Institute (www.awwi.org), a partnership among the wind industry, scientific community, and conservation
organizations, was formed to foster research and develop tools to promote timely and responsible wind energy development that minimizes
impacts to wildlife and wildlife habitat. To address specific concerns about bats, the Bat Wind Energy Cooperative (http://www.batsandwind.org/
), a collaboration of the wind industry, Bat Conservation International, and the Department of Energy, was formed in 2003 and has tested
mitigation strategies that may reduce bat fatalities by 50 % or more (e.g., Arnett et al. 2013). The multi-partner Sage Grouse Collaborative was
established in 2010 and implemented a research framework to determine the impact of wind energy development on this species at multiple sites
(National Wind Coordinating Collaborative NWCC 2010).
Incorporating the risks of climate change into siting decisions could lead to decisions that do not appear to be precautionary with respect to
biodiversity impacts when only the first of our propositions, avoidance and minimization of local impacts, is considered. For example, in
December 2013 the Service finalized an amendment to the 2009 Eagle Rule that extended the duration of programmatic take permits up to 30
years (USFWS 2013a). By allowing a 30-year permit length under certain conditions, the Service made the Eagle Rule more compatible with the
long-term assurances requested by the wind industry because of the need to secure funding and lease agreements for developing projects. This
revision has been opposed by some in the conservation community because of concerns that longer permit lengths are not compatible with our
level of knowledge about eagles or the threat of wind energy development to eagle populations (e.g. American Bird Conservancy 2013).
The predicted and devastating impacts of climate change on biodiversity need to be incorporated into the
risk calculus of renewable energy development in ways that they are not today. Even as the conservation community partners
with the wind industry to minimize impacts of siting renewable energy, it will be necessary to accept some , and perhaps
substantial uncertainty about the risk to wildlife populations if we are to limit the greater risks of
global extinctions from unlimited climate change.
Aggressive renewable energy development is essential to both limiting climate change and protecting
wildlife. Achieving the needed expansion of renewable energy in the face of concerns about wildlife risks will require (1) a
shared understanding among key stakeholders of the scale and pace of renewable energy siting needed to help limit
the wildlife impacts of climate change, (2) application of the best available science to renewable energy siting – science that
informs an understanding of both the local near-term wildlife risks of siting and the longer-term, global extinction risks of climate change, and
(3) a policy framework and timely process for siting decisions that supports renewable energy expansion while taking
the full suite of risks and uncertainties into account. We intend this paper to catalyze a series of structured dialogues among
industry, wildlife conservation advocates and policymakers in support of this goal.
Fixing the regulatory framework to incentivize offshore wind would offset enough
emissions to slow catastrophic warming - extinction, methane release, diseases, crop
yields, conflict multiplier
THALER 12 Visiting Professor of Energy Policy, Law & Ethics, University of
Maine School of Law and School of Economics [Jeff Thaler, FIDDLING AS THE WORLD
BURNS: HOW CLIMATE CHANGE URGENTLY REQUIRES A PARADIGM SHIFT IN THE
PERMITTING OF RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECTS, Jeff Thaler University of Maine School of
Law September 17, 2012 Environmental Law, Volume 42, Issue 4,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2148122]
This is not an Article debating whether twenty first century climate change is likely, very likely, or primarily caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases; how
much global temperatures will rise by various dates; or whether to choose a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system. This Article also will not debate whether and how
much to decrease subsidies of fossil fuel energy sources or increase those for renewable energy sources. This Article instead will start with the oft-stated goal of
increasing domestic and international reliance upon carbon-emission-free renewable energy sources3 while decreasing use of fossil fuel energy sources,4 and ask the
question few have addressed concretely: how
can we more quickly achieve that goal to slow the devastating effects of
increasing greenhouse gases, if we do not first tackle the significant barriers posed by the outdated and
often self-defeating maze of regulatory requirements? The need to act is urgent if we are to make sufficient and timely
progress toward reduced fossil fuel reliance.
To best understand the urgency, Part II begins with a look at our
current fossil and renewable energy mix in the generation of electricity,5
and then reviews the current and predicted climate change impacts on our energy choices. At stake are several hundred billion dollars of
climate change–related damages each year just in the United States—from farming, fishing, and forestry industries
increasingly harmed by changing temperature and precipitation patterns,6 to coastlines and cities progressively more threatened by rising sea levels.7 The business
and insurance sectors have been hit by a growing number of extreme weather events (most recently Hurricane Sandy),8 public health is increasingly
threatened by disease and mortality from our over-reliance on fossil fuels and from their resulting emissions,9 and U.S.
national security is increasingly at risk from having to protect more foreign sources of fossil fuels and from resource-related conflicts resulting in more violence and
displaced persons.10
Unfortunately, as the economic and health costs from fossil fuel emissions have
grown, so too has the byzantine labyrinth of laws
and regulations to be navigated before a renewable energy project can be approved, let alone financed and developed.11 The root cause goes
back to the 1970s when some of our fundamental environmental laws were enacted—before we were aware of climate
change threats—so as to slow down the review of proposed projects by requiring more studies of potential project impacts before approval.12 But in our
increasingly carbon-based tweny first century, we need a paradigm shift. While achieving important goals, those federal
laws and regulations , and similar ones at the state and local levels, have become so unduly burdensome ,
slow, and expensive that they will chill investment in—and kill any significant growth of—renewable carbonfree energy sources and projects, thereby imposing huge economic, environmental, and social costs upon both our country and the world unless they are
substantially changed.13 Indeed, by 2050 the U.S. must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% to even stabilize
atmospheric levels of carbon, and can do so by increasing generated electricity from renewable sources from the
current 13% up to 80%,14 but only if there are new targeted policy efforts to accelerate—fifty times faster than since 1990— implementation of clean,
renewable energy sources.15
Thus, Part III focuses on one promising technology to demonstrate the flaws in current licensing permitting regimes, and makes concrete recommendations for
reform.16 Wind power generation from onshore installations is proven technology, generates no greenhouse gases, consumes no water,17 is
increasingly cost-competitive with most fossil fuel sources,18 and can be deployed relatively quickly in many parts of the United States and the world.19
Offshore wind power is a relatively newer technology, especially deep-water floating projects, and is presently less cost-competitive than
onshore wind.20 However, because wind speeds are on average about 90% stronger and more consistent over water
than over land, with higher power densities and lower shear and turbulence ,21 America’s offshore resources
can provide more than its current electricity use .22 Moreover, since these resources are near many major
population centers that drive electricity demand, their exploitation would “reduc[e] the need for new high-voltage
transmission from the Midwest and Great Plains to serve coastal lands.”23 Therefore, in light of Part III’s spotlight on literally dozens of different federal (let
alone state and local) statutes and their hundreds of regulations standing between an offshore wind project applicant and construction, Part IV makes concrete
statutory and regulatory recommendations to more quickly enable the full potential of offshore wind energy to become a reality before it is too late.
II. OUR ENERGY USE AND ITS RESULTANT CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS
A. Overview
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) trap heat in the atmosphere.24 The
primary GHG emitted by human activities is carbon dioxide (CO2),
which in 2010 represented 84% of all human-sourced GHG emissions in the U.S.25 “The combustion of fossil fuels to generate
electricity is the largest single source of CO2 emissions in the nation, accounting for about 40% of total U.S. CO2 emissions and 33% of total U.S. greenhouse gas
emissions in 2009.”26 Beginning with the 1750 Industrial Revolution, atmospheric concentrations of GHGs have significantly increased with greater use of fossil
fuels—which has in turn caused our world to warm and the climate to change.27 In fact,
climate change may be the single greatest threat
to human society and wildlife, as well as to the ecosystems upon which each depends for survival.28
In 1992, the U.S. signed and ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the stated objective of which was:
[To achieve] stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate
system. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not
threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.29
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
concluded that it is “very likely”—at least 90% certain—
that humans are responsible for most of the “unequivocal” increases in globally averaged temperatures of the previous
fifty years.30
Yet in the twenty years since the UNFCCC, it also is unequivocal that GHG levels have not stabilized but continue to grow, ecosystems and food
production have not been able to adapt, and our heavy reliance on fossil fuels perpetuates “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”31 Equally
unequivocal is that 2011 global temperatures were “the tenth highest on record and [were] higher than any previous year with a La Nina event, which [normally] has a
relative cooling influence.”32 The warmest thirteen years of average global temperatures also “have all occurred in the [fifteen] years since 1997.”33 Global
emissions of carbon dioxide also jumped 5.9% in 2010—500 million extra tons of carbon was pumped into the air—“the largest absolute jump in any year since the
Industrial Revolution [began in 1750], and the largest percentage increase since 2003.”34
In order to even
have a fifty-fifty chance that the average global temperature will not rise more than 2°C 35 beyond the
temperature of 1750,36 our cumulative emissions of CO2 after 1750 must not exceed one trillion tons. However, by mid-October
2012 we had already emitted over 561 billion tons, and at current rates, we will emit the trillionth ton in June 2043.37 The
consequence is that members of “the current generation are uniquely placed in human history: the choices we make now—in the next 10–20 years—
will alter the destiny of our species (let alone every other species) unalterably, and forever.”38 Unfortunately by the end of 2011, the
more than 10,000 government and U.N. officials from all over the world attending the Durban climate change conference39 agreed that there is a “significant gap
between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways
consistent with having a likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2°C or 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”40
What are some
of the growing economic, public health, and environmental costs to our country proximately caused41 by our daily burning of fossil fuels?
The National Research Council (NRC) recently analyzed the “hidden” costs of energy production and use not reflected in market
prices of coal, oil, and other energy sources, or in the prices of electricity and gasoline produced from them.42 For the year 2005 alone, the NRC estimated
$120 billion of damages to the U.S. from fossil fuel energy production and use, reflecting primarily health damages from air pollution associated with
electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation.43 Of that total, $62 billion was due to coal-fired electricity generation;44 $56 billion from ground
transportation (oil-petroleum);45 and over $2.1 billion from electricity generation and heating with natural gas.46 The $120 billion figure did not include damages
from climate change, harm to ecosystems and infrastructure, insurance costs, effects of some air pollutants, and risks to national security, which the NRC examined
but did not specifically monetize.47 The NRC did, however, suggest that under some scenarios, climate damages from energy use could equal $120 billion.48 Thus,
adding infrastructure and ecosystem damages, insurance costs, air pollutant costs, and fossil-fueled national security costs to reach a total of $240 billion, it becomes
clear that fossil
future.
consumption costs Americans almost $300 billion each year49—a “hidden” number likely to be larger in the
What does the future hold for a carbon-stressed world? Most
scientific analyses presently predict that by 2050 the Earth will
warm by 2–2.5°C due to the rising level of GHGs in the atmosphere; at the high-end of projections, the 2050 warming could exceed 4.5°C.50 But those increases
are not consistent globally; rather, “[i]n all possible [predicted] outcomes, the warming over land would be roughly twice the global average, and the warming in the
Arctic greater still.”51
For example, the NRC expects that each
degree Celsius increase will produce double to quadruple the area burned by wildfires in the western
5%–15% reduction in crop yields, more destructive power from hurricanes, greater risk of very hot
summers, and more changes in precipitation frequency and amounts.52 Globally, a summary of studies predicts that at a 1°C
global average temperature rise would reduce Arctic sea ice by an annual average of 15% and by 25% in the month of September;53
at 2°C Europe suffers greater heat waves, the Greenland Ice Sheet significantly melts, and many land and marine species are driven to extinction;54 at 3°C the
Amazon suffers severe drought and resultant firestorms that will release significantly more carbon into the atmosphere;55 at 4°C
hundreds of billions of tons of carbon in permafrost melts, releasing methane in immense quantities, while the Arctic Ocean ice cap disappears
United States, a
and Europe suffers greater droughts.56
To presently assess what a 5°C rise will mean, we must look back into geological time ,
55 million years ago, when the Earth abruptly
experienced dramatic global warming due to the release of methane hydrates—a substance presently found on subsea
continental shelves.57 Fossils demonstrate that crocodiles were in the Canadian high Arctic along with rain forests of dawn redwood, and the Arctic Ocean saw water
temperatures of 20°C within 200 km of the North Pole itself.58 And a
6°C average rise takes us even further back—to the end of the Permian period, 251
up to 95% of species relatively abruptly became extinct.59 This may sound extreme, but the
International Energy Agency warned this year that the 6°C mark is in reach by 2050 at current rates of fossil fuel usage.60
million years ago—when
However, even given the severity of these forecasts, many still question the extent to which our climate is changing,61 and thus reject moving away from our largely
fossil-fueled electricity, transportation, and heating sources. Therefore, in this next subsection I provide the latest scientific data documenting specific climate impacts
to multiple parts of the U.S. and global daily lives, and the costly consequences that establish the urgency for undertaking the major regulatory reforms I recommend
in Part IV of this Article.
B. Specific Climate Threats and Consequences
1. When Weather Extremes Increase
A 2011 IPCC Special Report predicted that:
It is virtually certain [99–100% probability] that increases in the frequency of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases
in cold extremes will occur throughout the 21st century on a global scale . It is very likely [90–100% probability] that heat waves will
increase in length, frequency, and/or intensity over most land areas. . . . It is very likely that average sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme sea
levels in extreme coastal high water levels.62
Similarly, a House of Representatives committee report (ACESA Report) found that “[t]here is a broad scientific consensus that the United States is vulnerable to
weather hazards that will be exacerbated by climate change.”63 It also found that the “cost of damages from weather disasters has increased markedly from the 1980s,
rising to more than 100 billion dollars in 2007. In addition to a rise in total cost, the frequency of weather disasters costing more than one billion dollars has
increased.”64 In 2011, the U.S. faced the most billion-dollar climate disasters ever, with fourteen distinct disasters alone costing at least $54 billion to our economy.65
In the first six months of 2012 in the U.S., there were more than 40,000 hot temperature records, horrendous wildfires, major droughts, oppressive heat waves, major
flooding, and a powerful derecho wind storm, followed in August by Hurricane Isaac ($2 billion damages), and in October by Hurricane Sandy ($50 billion
damages).66
The IPCC Synthesis identified impacts from growing weather hazards upon public health to include: more frequent
and more intense heat waves; more people suffering death, disease, and injury from floods, storms, fires, and droughts ; increased
cardio-respiratory morbidity and mortality associated with ground-level ozone pollution; changes in the range of some infectious disease
carriers spreading, for example, malaria and the West Nile virus; and increased malnutrition and consequent disorders.67 The NRC Hidden Costs of Energy
report’s damage assessment concluded that the vast majority of the $120 billion per year were based on health damages,68 including an additional 10,000–20,000
deaths per year.69 By 2050, cumulative additional heat-related deaths from unabated climate change are predicted to be roughly 33,000 in the forty largest U.S. cities,
with more than 150,000 additional deaths by 2100.70
Weather extremes also threaten our national
security, which is premised on stability. In 2007, the CNA Corporation’s report National
climate change as a “threat multiplier for instability” and warned that:
Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s national security. The predicted effects of climate change over the coming decades include
Security and the Threat of Climate Change described
extreme weather events, drought, flooding, sea level rise, retreating glaciers, habitat shifts, and the increased spread of life-threatening diseases. These conditions
have the potential to disrupt our way of life and to force changes in the way we keep ourselves safe and
secure.71
The following year, in the first ever U.S. government analysis of climate change security threats, the National Intelligence Council issued an
assessment warning, in part, that climate change could threaten U.S. security by leading to political instability, mass movements of
refugees, terrorism, and conflicts over water and other resources.72
2. When Frozen Water Melts
In 2007, the IPCC predicted that sea levels would rise by eight to twenty-four inches above current levels by 2100;73 since then, however, numerous
scientists and studies have suggested that the 2007 prediction is already out-of-date and that sea levels will likely rise up to
1.4 meters (m), or 55 inches, given upwardly trending CO2 emissions.74 The 2009 ACESA Report found that rising sea levels are:
[A]lready causing inundation of low-lying lands, corrosion of wetlands and beaches, exacerbation of storm surges and flooding, and increases in the salinity of coastal
estuaries and aquifers. . . . Further, about one billion people live in areas within 75 feet elevation of today’s sea level, including many US cities on the East Coast and
Gulf of Mexico, almost all of Bangladesh, and areas occupied by more than 250 million people in China.75
This year NASA’s Chief Scientist testified to Congress that two-thirds of sea level rise from the last three decades is derived from the Greenland and Antarctic ice
sheets and the melting Arctic region; he then warned:
[T]he West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), an area about the size of the states of Texas and Oklahoma combined . . . contains the equivalent of 3.3 m of sea level, and all
that ice rests on a soft-bed that lies below sea level. In this configuration, as warm seawater melts the floating ice shelves, causing them to retreat and the glaciers that
feed them to speed up, there is no mechanism to stop the retreat and associated discharge, if warming continues. Thus the WAIS exhibits great potential for substantial
and relatively rapid contributions to sea level rise.
In Greenland, the situation is not as dramatic, since the bed that underlies most of the ice is not below sea level, and the potential for unabated retreat is limited to a
few outlet glaciers. In Greenland, however, summer air temperatures are warmer and closer to ice’s melting point, and we have observed widespread accumulation of
meltwater in melt ponds on the ice sheet surface.76
In the West Antarctic ice sheet region, glacier retreat appears to be widespread, as the air has “warmed by nearly 6°F since 1950.”77 As for Greenland’s ice sheet, it
also is at greater risk than the IPCC had thought.
Recent studies with more complete modeling suggest that the warming threshold leading to an essentially ice-free state is not the previous estimate of an additional
3.1°C, but only 1.6°C. Thus, the 2°C target may be insufficient to prevent loss of much of the ice sheet and resultant significant sea level rise.78
The ACESA Report also identified the Arctic as “one of the hotspots of global warming”79 because “[o]ver the past 50 years average temperatures in the Arctic have
increased as much as 7°F, five times the global average.”80 Moreover, in “2007, a record 386,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice melted away, an area larger than
Texas and Arizona combined and as big a decline in one year as has occurred over the last decade.”81 “Arctic sea ice is melting faster than climate models [had]
predict[ed,] and is about [thirty] years ahead” of the 2007 IPCC predictions, thus indicating that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in the late summer beginning
sometime between 2020 and 2037.82
How is the Arctic’s plight linked to non-Arctic impacts? “The Arctic region arguably has the greatest concentration of potential tipping elements in the Earth system,
including Arctic sea ice, the Greenland ice sheet, North Atlantic deep-water formation regions, boreal forests, permafrost and marine methane hydrates.”83
Additionally:
Warming of the Arctic region is proceeding at three times the global average . . . . Loss of Arctic sea ice has been tentatively linked to extreme cold winters in Europe
. . . . Near complete loss of the summer sea ice, as forecast for the middle of this century, if not before, will probably have knock-on effects for the northern midlatitudes, shifting the jet streams and storm tracks.84
Since 1980, sea levels have been rising three to four times faster than the global average between Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and Boston, Massachusetts.85 “[P]ast
and future global warming more than doubles the estimated odds of ‘century’ or worse floods occurring within the next 18 years” for most coastal U.S. locations.86
Although land-based glacier melts are not major contributors to sea level rise, they do impact peoples’ food and water supplies. Virtually all of the world’s glaciers,
which store 75% of the world’s freshwater, are receding in direct response to global warming, aggravating already severe water scarcity—both in the United States
and abroad.87 While over 15% of the world’s population currently relies on glacial melt and snow cover for drinking water and irrigation for agriculture, the IPCC
projects a 60% volume loss in glaciers in various regions and widespread reductions in snow cover throughout the twenty-first century.88 Likewise, snowpack has
been decreasing, and it is expected that snow cover duration will significantly decrease in eastern and western North America and Scandinavia by 2020 and globally
by 2080.89
Climate change thus increases food insecurity by reducing yields of grains, such as corn and wheat, through
increased water scarcity and intensification of severe hot conditions, thereby causing corn price volatility to sharply increase.90
Globally, the number of people living in “severely stressed” river basins will increase “by one to two billion people in the 2050s. About two-thirds of global land area
is expected to experience increased water stress.”91
3. When Liquid Water Warms
Over the past century, oceans, which cover 70% of the Earth’s surface, have been warming. Global sea-surface temperatures have increased about 1.3°F and the heat
has penetrated almost two miles into the deep ocean.92 This increased warming is contributing to the destruction of seagrass meadows, causing an annual release back
into the environment of 299 million tons of carbon.93 Elevated
atmospheric CO2 concentrations also are leading to higher
absorption of CO2 into the upper ocean, making the surface waters more acidic (lower pH).94 “[O]cean
chemistry currently is changing at least 100 times more rapidly than it has changed during the 650,000 years preceding
our [fossil-fueled] industrial era.”95 This acidification has serious implications for the calcification rates of organisms
and plants living at all levels within the global ocean. Coral reefs—habitat for over a million marine species—are
collapsing, endangering more than a third of all coral species.96 Indeed, temperature thresholds for the majority of coral reefs
worldwide are expected to be exceeded, causing mass bleaching and complete coral mortality.97 “[ T]he productivity of plankton, krill, and marine
snails, which compose the base of the ocean food-chain, [also] declines as the ocean acidifies,”98 adversely impacting
populations of “everything from whales to salmon”99—species that are also are being harmed by the oceans’ warming.100
Extinctions from climate change also are expected to be significant and widespread. The IPCC Fourth Assessment found that
“approximately 20– 30% of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed
1.5– 2.5°C”101—a range likely to be exceeded in the coming decades. “[R]ecent studies have linked global warming to declines in such [] species as [] blue crabs,
penguins, gray whales, salmon, walruses, and ringed seals[; b]ird extinction rates are predicted to be as high as 38[%] in Europe and 72[%] in northeastern Australia,
if global warming exceeds 2°C above pre-industrial levels.”102 Between now and 2050, Conservation International estimates that one species will face extinction
every twenty minutes;103 the current extinction rate is one thousand times faster than the average during Earth’s history,104 in part because the climate is changing
more than 100 times faster than the rate at which many species can adapt.105
4. When Land Dries Out
The warming trends toward the Earth’s poles and higher latitudes are threatening people not just from melting ice and sea level rise, but also from the predicted
thawing of 30%–50% of permafrost by 2050, and again as much or more of it by 2100.106 “The term permafrost refers to soil or rock that has been below 0°C (32°F)
and frozen for at least two years.”107 Permafrost underlies about 25% of the land area in the northern hemisphere, and is “estimated to hold 30[%] or more of all
carbon stored in soils worldwide”— which equates to four times more than all the carbon humans have emitted in modern times.108 Given the increasing average air
temperatures in eastern Siberia, Alaska, and northwestern Canada, thawing of the Northern permafrost would release massive amounts of carbon dioxide (doubling
current atmospheric levels) and methane into the atmosphere.109 Indeed, there are about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in northern soils (roughly twice the amount in the
atmosphere), about 88% of it in thawing permafrost.110 Permafrost thus may become an annual source of carbon equal to 15%–35% of today’s annual human
emissions.111 But like seagrass meadows and unlike power plant emissions, we cannot trap or prevent permafrost carbon emissions at the source.
Similarly, forests, which “cover about 30[%] of the Earth’s land surface and hold almost half of the world’s terrestrial carbon . . . act both as a source of carbon
emissions to the atmosphere when cut, burned, or otherwise degraded and as a sink when they grow.”112 A combination of droughts, fires, and spreading pests,
though, are causing economic and environmental havoc: “In 2003 . . . forest fires in Europe, the United States, Australia, and Canada accounted for more global
[carbon] emissions than any other source.”113 There have been significant increases in both the number of major wildfires and the area of forests burned in the U.S.
and Canada.114 Fires fed by hot, dry weather have killed enormous stretches of forest in Siberia and in the Amazon, which “recently suffered two ‘once a century’
droughts just five years apart.”115
Climate change also is exacerbating the geographic spread and intensity of insect infestations. For example:
[I]n British Columbia . . . the mountain pine beetle extended its range north and has destroyed an area of soft-wood forest three times the size of Maryland, killing 411
million cubic feet of trees—double the annual take by all the loggers in Canada. Alaska has also lost up to three million acres of old growth forest to the pine
beetle.116
Over the past fifteen years the spruce bark beetle extended its range into Alaska, where it has killed about 40 million trees more “than any other insect in North
America’s recorded history.”117 The drying and burning forests, and other increasingly dry landscapes, also are causing “flora and fauna [to move] to higher latitudes
or to higher altitudes in the mountains.”118
The human and environmental costs
from failing to promptly reduce dependence on carbon-dioxide emitting sources for electricity, heating,
and transportation are dire and indisputable . Rather than being the leader among major countries in per capita GHG emissions, our country
urgently needs to lead the world in cutting 80% of our emissions by 2050 and using our renewable energy resources and technological advances to help
other major emitting countries do the same. However, significantly increasing our use of carbon-free renewable sources to protect
current and future generations of all species—human and non-human—requires concrete changes in how our legal system regulates
and permits renewable energy sources. One source with the potential for significant energy production and
comparable elimination of fossil fueled GHGs near
major American and
global population centers is
offshore wind .
III. THE OFFSHORE WIND POWER PERMITTING AND LEASING OBSTACLE COURSE
A. Overview of Technology and Attributes
As noted in Part I, offshore wind energy projects have the potential to generate large quantities of pollutant-free electricity near many of the world’s major population
centers, and thus to help reduce the ongoing and projected economic, health, and environmental damages from climate change. Wind speeds over water are stronger
and more consistent than over land, and “have a gross potential generating capacity four times greater than the nation’s present electric capacity.”119 The net capacity
factor120 for offshore turbines is greater than standard land-based turbines, and their blade-tip speeds are higher than their land-based counterparts.121 Offshore wind
turbine substructure designs mainly fall into three depth categories: shallow (30 m or less), transitional (30 m to 60 m), and deep water ( greater than 60 m).122 Most
of the grid-scale offshore wind farms in Europe have monopole foundations embedded into the seabed in water depths ranging from 5 m to 30 m;123 the proposed
American projects such as Cape Wind in Massachusetts and Block Island in Rhode Island would likewise be shallowwater installations.124
In deeper water, it is not economically feasible to affix a rigid structure to the sea floor, and floating platforms are envisioned. The three concepts shown below have
been developed for floating platform designs, each of which is tethered but not built into the seabed.125
Each design uses a different method for achieving static stability, and some small pilot efforts are underway to demonstrate the performance of different turbines.126
Greater wind speeds and thus available
energy capture are found further from shore, particularly at ocean depths greater than 60 m.127
These attributes, combined with their proximity to major coastal cities and energy consumers, 128 are why,
in our carbon-stressed world, offshore wind requires serious consideration and prompt implementation. As demonstrated in
the following pages, however, the maze of federal and state regulatory requirements facing renewable energy projects in
general and offshore wind in particular, is especially burdensome.129 These requirements undermine the fundamental goal of
significantly increasing reliance on emission-free renewable energy sources130 and, unless substantially revised, will effectively
preclude any meaningful efforts to mitigate the many damaging human and economic impacts of climate change.
B. Federal and State Jurisdiction
U.S. jurisdiction over the ocean and seafloor extends from the coast 200 nautical miles seaward.131 Within the umbrella of U.S. jurisdiction, ocean
governance is divided between the federal government and individual states.132 Individual state governments retain title to submerged
land within three nautical miles of shore,133 and may regulate activities within that area, subject to federal law.134 The federal government retains title and authority
over all remaining waters out to 200 nautical miles from shore—the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).135
1ac – Oceans Advantage
Advantage Two is Earth’s Oceans
Multiple recent studies confirm – offshore wind benefits marine ecology – trawling,
reefs, shelter
CASEY 12 – 4 – 12 EWEA Staff Writer, Citing International and Swedish funded
studies [Zoë Casey, Offshore wind farms benefit sealife, says study,
http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/offshore-wind-farms-benefit-sealife-says-study/]
Offshore wind farms can create a host of benefits for the local marine environment, as well as combatting climate change, a
new study by the Marine Institute at Plymouth University has found.
The Marine Institute found that wind farms provide shelter
to fish species since sea bottom trawling is often forbidden
inside a wind farm, and it found that turbine support structures can create artificial reefs for some species.
A separate study at the Nysted offshore wind farm in Denmark confirmed this finding by saying that artificial reefs
provided favourable growth conditions for blue mussels and crab species. A study on the Thanet offshore wind farm in the UK found
that some species like cod shelter inside the wind farm.
One high-profile issue covered by the Marine Institute study was that of organisms colliding with offshore wind turbines. The study, backedup by a number of previous studies, found that many bird species fly low over the water, avoiding collision with wind turbine
blades. It also found that some species, such as Eider ducks, do modify their courses slightly to avoid offshore turbines.
When it comes to noise, the study found “no significant impact on behaviour or populations.” It noted that a separate study in the Netherlands
found more porpoise clicks inside a Dutch wind farm than outside it “perhaps exploiting the higher fish densities found”.
The study also said that offshore wind power and other marine renewable energies should be rolled out rapidly in order to combat the threats to
marine biodiversity, food production and economies posed by climate change.
“It is necessary to rapidly deploy large quantities of marine renewable energy to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning which are
leading to ocean acidification, global warming and climatic changes,” the study published said.
EWEA forecasts that 40 GW of offshore wind capacity will be online in European seas by 2020 which will offset 102 million tonnes of CO2
every year. By 2030, the expected 150 GW of offshore capacity will offset 315 million tonnes of CO2 annually – that’s a significant contribution
to the effort to cut carbon.
“It is clear that the marine environment is already being damaged by the increasingly apparent impacts of climate change; however it is not too
late to make a difference to avoid more extreme impacts,” the study said.
“If you bring all these studies together they all point to a similar conclusion: offshore wind farms have a positive
impact on the marine environment in several ways,” said Angeliki Koulouri, Research Officer at EWEA. “First they
contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions, the major threat to biodiversity, second, they provide regeneration areas for fish and
benthic populations,” she added.
Creates areas that resurrect damage done to the ocean – artificial reefs, checks bad
practices
MUSIAL & BUTTERFIELD 06 National Renewable Energy Laboratory [W. Musial and S.
Butterfield, Energy from Offshore Wind, May 1–4, 2006, http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/39450.pdf]
Potential Environmental and Socio-Economic Issues. The full range of potential environmental impacts from offshore wind is unknown today in
the United States, since no projects have yet been installed. The only project evaluation thus far is the 3800-page Cape Wind draft environmental
impact statement (DEIS) prepared by Cape Wind Associates, under the leadership of the ACE New England District. The document, released in
November 2004, did not identify any significant impacts, but a range of specific mitigation measures and monitoring studies are proposed. The
ACE held several public hearings, coordinated with 17 public agencies, and received over 5000 public comments. The extensive public
involvement requirements along with the transfer of jurisdiction to MMS have slowed the permitting process significantly. Recently, MMS
required that the Cape Wind DEIS be expanded to include construction and operational procedures, personnel safety, and decommissioning that
fit a broader “cradle-to-grave” approach -- reflecting the new MMS program authority.
The only peer-reviewed information on potential environmental impacts from offshore wind is based
upon lessons learned from land-based projects and European before-and-after-control-impact (BACI)
studies for installed projects. Though there is over 15 years experience with offshore wind facilities in Europe, most of the projects were quite
small (less than 10 turbines) and there were not scientifically credible siting criteria, study methodologies, and mitigation strategies established.
Given the higher growth rate in Europe and significant deployment plans for the next 10 years, there is now a proliferation of
studies and standards.
The most credible and broad-based environmental studies in Europe for commercial facilities are based
upon the Horns Rev and Nysted projects in Denmark. These 2 sites have 80 and 72 turbines, respectively. Both sites
have government-sponsored BACI studies with oversight from an international scientific panel reviewing the methods, design
plans, and findings from three-year post-construction evaluations. The Danish studies did identify several significant temporal impacts during the
construction phase. The pile driving and increased transportation requirements, for example, created noise and disturbance to the marine
environment. Consequently, they documented short-term impacts to marine mammals as they dispersed away from the area
when noise levels increased. In
order to mitigate these temporal impacts, pingers were used before construction
began to scare away any mammals in the area to reduce the impacts of the construction noise. Satellite tracking devices and porpoise
detectors were attached to the seals and porpoises to verify their movements. Since the mammals returned to the area during the
operational phase, these impacts were considered “insignificant.” The actual impact to the mammals for feeding and
molting is considered unknown since it is very difficult to ascertain the physical impacts on mammals in the wild and the subjects would have to
be tracked for several seasons for a more definitive survey5.
There are now thousands of pages of scientific material relating to the ecological effects of offshore wind sites in Europe and
the United States. A discussion of the range of environmental effects and findings along with issues related to the competing uses of the ocean is
beyond the scope of this paper. To give the reader a sense of community priorities, public opinion may shed some light. A recent survey of
residents of Cape Cod, MA near the proposed Cape Wind project conducted by the University of Delaware identified the following as the most
important concerns [33]: Impacts on marine life, aesthetics, fishing impacts, boating and yachting safety. Unfortunately, some of these public
concerns have been heightened by poorly researched media anecdotes rather than documented factual information.
The installation of wind turbines also provides some beneficial effects to the local community and ecosystem. The turbine foundations
placed onto or buried into the seabed create artificial reefs or breeding grounds that have a beneficial effect on
local fish populations and benthic communities. Danish studies indicate that socio-economic impacts may be positive. Over
80% of the respondents in a recent Danish study have a “positive attitude towards the establishment of new offshore wind farms.” There were,
however, some concerns about the visual externalities of turbines when they can be seen from the shore (generally, less than 10 km). In the case
of the Horns Rev wind site, over 1700 man-years of local jobs were created during the construction period and 2000 man-years created over the
20-year life of the projects. Approximately, one fourth of these jobs were locally based. The multiplier effects are associated with the construction
activities and the manufacturing of materials as well as indirect effects from demands of inputs from goods and services.
Realistically, there is no form of electric generation that can claim to be completely benign with respect to the environment. To provide a fair
assessment of the alternatives, the environmental impact of a generating facility should be compared to the impact
of an equivalent power plant using a competing fuel source with the same capacity. When this
comparison is conducted, the potential impacts of offshore wind to the environment appear to very benign
[34].
Trawling independently destroys the oceans
VINSON 06 JD Candidate, Georgetown University [Anna, “Deep Sea Bottom Trawling
and the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape: A Test Case for Global Action,” Georgetown International
Environmental Law Review, Winter, 18 Geo. Int'l Envtl. L. Rev. 355]
Every year an area of the ocean floor twice the size of the United States is decimated by trawling, a
fishing practice whereby powerful vessels drag enormous nets on heavy metal frames. Modern
technology has enabled trawlers to operate in the deep sea where bottom trawling has become the greatest
threat to deep sea ecology. Covering more than half of the earth's surface, the deep sea supports millions of terrestrial and
aquatic organisms. As a result, it assists breeding and feeding of organisms in shallower waters that
support marine fisheries worldwide. The deep sea also contains biologically rich submerged mountains
called seamounts that serve as an oasis of biological productivity in the open ocean. Bottom trawling
scrapes these seamounts and other deep sea structures clean, easily devastating entire ecosystems.
,
Recently the United Nations declined to adopt a global moratorium to prohibit deep sea bottom trawling. Though
advocates for the moratorium still urge the United Nations to consider the proposed resolution, they also seek alternate methods to terminate the bottom trawl fishery.
One option is to restrict fishing methods through cooperative management agreements among neighboring countries. Though the effectiveness of such agreements is
limited by the jurisdiction of the individual signatories, a cooperative management agreement, such as the emerging regional marine reserve in the tropical Pacific,
could serve as a good trial ground for a moratorium on deep sea bottom trawling. The Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape, a product of the cooperation and combined
oceanic jurisdictions of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador, encompasses an atypically large and biodiverse area of the deep sea. Banning deep sea bottom
trawling in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape will protect the vital environment and resources of that region while providing an unparalleled opportunity to
illustrate the benefits of a moratorium for the global community. Accordingly, this note argues that such a ban in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape should be
adopted.
II. DEEP SEA BOTTOM TRAWLING
The unique characteristics of the deep sea, including remarkable habitats such as seamounts, make the deep sea ecologically
invaluable. Unfortunately, anthropogenic activities threaten the health of the deep sea. One of the greatest threats is deep sea
bottom trawling, the global significance of which is tremendous. The ecological impact of deep sea bottom trawling is so grave
that the minimal economic benefit in no way justifies the practice.
Offshore Wind helps solve overfishing & trawling
EBERHARDT 06 B.A., 1998, Swarthmore (Biology); M.F.S., 2001, Harvard; J.D. Candidate, 2006,
New York University School of Law. Senior Notes Editor, 2005-2006, New York University
Environmental Law Journal [Robert W. Eberhardt, FEDERALISM AND THE SITING OF OFFSHORE
WIND ENERGY FACILITIES, New York University Environmental Law Journal, 14 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J.
374]
Commercial fisheries are common-pool resources with government regulation justified to avoid
overexploitation, and increasingly regulation has been extended to influence impacts on fisheries that result
from activities other than direct capture. n124 In addition to general wildlife, habitat, and use value impacts described above, the
development of an offshore wind farm could impact commercial fishing by limiting the waters open for
fishing or by influencing commercial fish stocks. Depending on the spacing between turbines, it may or may not be possible for
commercial boats employing particular types of fishing tackle to operate within the boundaries of the facility. Submarine cables also
may prevent continued trawling operations in both the vicinity of the turbines and in areas around cables connecting the
project to [*401] the grid. n125 Fish stocks may be affected by disruptions of bottom habitat during construction and habitat creation on the
marine foundations of the turbines. n126 The invertebrate reef communities that develop on marine foundations may
serve as habitat for particular fish species, which may benefit fishing industries if these species are exploited for
commercial purposes but could hurt commercial fisheries if the artificial reefs support non-commercial competitors. n127
Commercial fishery impacts have the potential for horizontal spillovers primarily when facilities are
located near state borders or in interstate water bodies or when effects influence wide-ranging or highly migratory species. Impacts
resulting from facility components on the outer continental shelf may represent vertical spillovers of significance to
coastal states, because commercial fisheries can represent an important part of local economies . The extent to
which fisheries impacts represent vertical spillovers would depend on whether facility components have the potential to influence commercial
fishing activity or particular fisheries exploited by coastal residents.
Extinction
CRAIG 03 - Associate Dean for Environmental Programs @ Florida State
University [Robin Kundis Craig, “ARTICLE: Taking Steps Toward Marine Wilderness Protection? Fishing and Coral Reef Marine
Reserves in Florida and Hawaii,” McGeorge Law Review, Winter 2003, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these
arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable
ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services
worth more than ten times the reefs' value for food production. n856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function
that intact
coral reef ecosystems
provide. n857 More generally, "ocean ecosystems
play a major role in the global
geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic building blocks of living organisms,
carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but necessary elements."
n858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planet's ability
to support life .
Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current
evidence shows that, in general,
an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its
biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable." n859 Coral reef ecosystems are particularly
dependent on their biodiversity. [*265]
Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component species is higher on coral reefs than in
any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and
that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. n860
Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the
ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated in the wake of
marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness.
However, economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean
ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit." n862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how
little we know about the sea - and about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to
protect marine ecosystems because it was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI
coral reef
ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not
know what we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can especially when the United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may
be unique in the world.
1ac – Solvency
Current framework dooms offshore wind – even while onshore wind blows up.
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
In spite of the impressive growth in the U.S. wind industry, the United States has not kept pace with other countries in developing
offshore wind facilities. Though offshore wind has been used in other countries for nearly twenty years, n11 none of the United States'
current wind capacity comes from offshore wind. n12 An estimated 900,000 MW of potential wind energy capacity exists off
the coasts of the United States n13 - an estimated 98,000 MW of it in [*1633] shallow waters. n14 This shallow-water capacity could power
between 22 and 29 million homes, n15 or between 20 and 26 percent of all U.S. homes. n16 The nation has failed to take advantage of this
promising resource.
This failure can be ascribed in part to the unevenly balanced distribution of the costs and benefits of offshore wind technology, as
well as to
the incoherent regulatory framework in the United States for managing coastal resources. n17 While the most
compelling benefits of offshore wind are frequently regional, national, or even global, the costs are almost exclusively
local. The U.S. regulatory framework is not set up to handle this cost-benefit gap. As a result, local
opposition has stalled offshore wind power development, and inadequate attention has been paid to its wide-ranging benefits.
The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts is a stark example of how local forces have hindered offshore wind power development. The project is
expected to have a maximum production of 450 MW and an average daily production of 170 MW, or 75 percent of the 230-MW average demand
of Cape Cod and neighboring islands. n18 In addition to this electricity boon to energy-constrained Massachusetts, n19 Cape Wind will reduce
regional air pollution and global carbon dioxide emissions. n20 Nonetheless, local opponents to Cape Wind protest its effect on the surrounding
environment, including its aesthetic impacts. n21 Without an effective way to champion the regional, national, and [*1634] global
benefits of offshore wind, policymakers have been unable to keep local interests from controlling the process
through protest and litigation. After about ten years of waiting and fighting, Cape Wind developers have still not begun construction. Although
the failure of offshore wind power in the United States is discouraging, the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) offers a potential solution.
With specific revisions, the CZMA could serve as the impetus that offshore wind power needs for success in the United States.
Solving regulatory confusion is necessary and sufficient
POWELL 12 J.D. Candidate, Boston University School of Law, 2013; B.A.
Environmental Economics, Colgate University, 2007 [Timothy H. Powell, REVISITING
FEDERALISM CONCERNS IN THE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY INDUSTRY IN LIGHT OF
CONTINUED LOCAL OPPOSITION TO THE CAPE WIND PROJECT, Boston University Law
Review, December, 2012, 92 B.U.L. Rev. 2023]
IV. The Problem and a Proposed Solution
A. The Problem: Failure in the Current Federal-State Balance of Powers
Interest in developing offshore wind energy projects in the United States has
increased dramatically in the last few years.
the complex and changing regulatory scheme, coupled with the high cost and delay associated with
private litigation from citizen groups challenging every step of the approval process, will likely discourage
future development of wind energy projects in the United States without reform. The problem can be traced to a
failure in the current federal-state balance of powers: a disconnect between the federal approval process and the inherently
n150 Yet
local nature of offshore wind energy.
Both the opposition by the Wampanoag Tribe and the overruling of the FAA's approval further illustrate this disconnect between the interests of
the [*2046] federal government on the one hand, and state and local interests on the other hand. In both instances the federal government has
pursued a hard line in favor of the Cape Wind project. The DOI fully approved the project despite a warning from the Advisory Council on
Historic Preservation that the project would have significant adverse effects on historic properties. The FAA similarly issued a Determination of
No Hazard presumably based only on a cursory application of its regulations, and possibly under political pressure from the Obama
Administration. In both instances more localized entities - Native American tribes, local citizen groups, towns, and even state agencies - have
expended considerable resources to express their various views in opposition to the Cape Wind project. n151
To date, the overruling of the FAA's approval is the only legal victory on the part of the project's opposition. n152 But whatever the
merits of the opposition's legal claims, the process has demonstrated the inefficiency of the current
regulatory scheme. The decision of whether the Cape Wind project should go forward has now dragged on more than a
decade. The saga has been an incredible waste of resources and time, as the federal government attempts to fit a square peg in a round hole,
with local opposition mounting complaints with all levels federal and state agencies and courts to confuse and delay the process. There must
be a more effective way to efficiently and optimally allocate the harvesting of coastal wind energy
throughout the United States.
DOI can do it – congress said so. Removing state and local restrictions for offshore
wind solves.
EBERHARDT 06 B.A., 1998, Swarthmore (Biology); M.F.S., 2001, Harvard; J.D. Candidate, 2006,
New York University School of Law. Senior Notes Editor, 2005-2006, New York University
Environmental Law Journal [Robert W. Eberhardt, FEDERALISM AND THE SITING OF OFFSHORE
WIND ENERGY FACILITIES, New York University Environmental Law Journal, 14 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J.
374]
Changes to regulatory regimes that govern the use of submerged lands likely will play a central role in state policy development on offshore wind
energy. Apart from withholding approval of proposed amendments to a state's coastal management program, the federal government
has limited recourse under current law to prevent states from adopting overly-restrictive siting policies
that provide for inadequate consideration of positive interstate spillovers such as air quality improvements or greenhouse gas emissions
reductions. The coordination problems and international dimensions of climate change present particularly acute theoretical concerns about the
ability of states to implement welfare-maximizing policies. n185 Accordingly, federal legislation may be required to insure
full consideration of the environmental benefits promised by would-be developers of offshore wind
energy facilities.
States generally have demonstrated an ability to consider horizontal spillovers in their policies towards offshore wind energy that cuts against
calls for federal legislative action at this time. New York has taken the particularly aggressive step of actively participating in the development
process of the Long Island Offshore Wind Farm, and notwithstanding the controversy surrounding Cape Wind, legislative proposals in
Massachusetts leave open the possibility of development of offshore wind energy [*418] facilities in state waters. n186 New Jersey's approach,
which has included a temporary moratorium on development, raises concerns, but final judgment must be reserved until the state's Blue Ribbon
Panel on Development of Wind Turbine Facilities in Coastal Waters has issued its final recommendations and the political branches have
responded. n187 Furthermore, the general posture of state and federal climate change policies does not indicate that coordination problems
dissuade state action on climate change generally. n188 On the contrary, if anything the states poised to host offshore wind energy facilities in the
near future have been more aggressive than the federal government in attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. n189
In the future, if states definitively show inattention to positive horizontal spillovers, then Congress should consider legislation on
offshore wind energy facilities that preempts state regulation of submerged lands. Section 311 of the
EPAct of 2005, which addresses siting of liquefied natural gas ("LNG") terminals, represents one model for future
legislation that has garnered recent congressional support. Section 311 provides that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
("FERC") "shall have the exclusive authority to approve or deny an application for the siting, construction,
expansion, or operation of an LNG terminal." n190 This language likely preempts more restrictive state health,
safety, or welfare laws that regulate siting or construction of LNG facilities, although Section 311 explicitly reserves the rights
afforded to states under several federal environmental laws (including the CZMA) and provides states with opportunities to consult with FERC
on safety concerns related to pending applications. n191
Section 311 clearly illustrates the ability for federal legislation to strip states of regulatory authority given
sufficient political support at the national level. The
uniform regulatory regimes that result from such federal action provide
variation in environmental preferences, but they have a theoretical basis if they address failures
by states to consider positive horizontal spillovers. If states fail to adequately consider positive spillovers that
potentially result from offshore wind energy facilities, federal legislation akin to Section 311 would be
justified.
Conclusion
for less geographic
[*419]
The growing general interest in wind energy development and the dispute surrounding Cape Wind has spurred considerable commentary and
legislative activity that stands to shape the extent and direction of offshore wind energy development in the United States. There will be
additional opportunities to evaluate theoretical assumptions underlying the environmental regulation of this promising clean energy technology as
policies continue to mature through future legislative and administrative activity and as sponsors seek approval to develop additional projects. In
this dynamic context, this Note attempts to begin a discussion about how issues of federalism will influence and should
inform the environmental regulation of offshore wind energy development. As a descriptive matter, states in the short term
will continue to play a central role in determining which projects ultimately obtain the necessary regulatory approvals. As a normative matter, a
prominent state role is theoretically justified (at least for near-shore projects), on the basis of a generalized analysis of the environmental impacts
expected to result from offshore wind energy projects. However, important environmental impacts - reductions in air pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions, in particular - that
may result from offshore wind energy projects provide strong
justifications for federal oversight, particularly in the event that states fail to consider out-of-state environmental
benefits as they design regulatory regimes and make siting decisions. In light of these claims, the federal government
should adopt policies that encourage siting decisions that consider interstate spillovers while at the same time reflect
individual coastal states' particular environmental priorities. Federal agencies can implement such policies in the
context of the Department of the Interior's imminent rulemaking pursuant to Section 388 of the
EPAct of 2005 , although future federal legislation with preemptive effects ultimately may be necessary in the event that the state
regulatory regimes develop that fail to consider positive interstate spillovers.
AND offshore wind investment is there – just need to insure regulatory space.
POWELL 12 J.D. Candidate, Boston University School of Law, 2013; B.A.
Environmental Economics, Colgate University, 2007 [Timothy H. Powell, REVISITING
FEDERALISM CONCERNS IN THE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY INDUSTRY IN LIGHT OF
CONTINUED LOCAL OPPOSITION TO THE CAPE WIND PROJECT, Boston University Law
Review, December, 2012, 92 B.U.L. Rev. 2023]
There is great potential for offshore wind energy throughout the coastal United States. In 2009, the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory conducted [*2052] an assessment of offshore wind energy resources throughout the country. n174 The
group concluded that "offshore wind resources have the potential to be a significant domestic renewable
energy source for coastal electricity loads." n175 In addition, the data demonstrated that all coastal states
possess large areas of ocean off their coasts with the wind speed, ocean depth, and distance from the shore ideal
for offshore wind energy collection. n176 Moreover, there is demonstrated interest from the states themselves.
Katherine Roek, in her article, Offshore Wind Energy in the United States: A Legal and Policy Patchwork, provides a list of state-by-state efforts
to promote wind energy, through legislation or otherwise. n177 Proposals for projects are currently being explored in many states, including
Rhode Island, n178 South Carolina, n179 New York, n180 New Jersey, n181 and even another project in Massachusetts. n182
[*2053] Surely the organizations behind these proposals, and their investors, have followed the saga of Cape Wind
closely, and are likely discouraged
by the prospect of their own ten-year battle up and down the state and
federal regulatory processes and court systems in the face of local opposition. Under the proposal here, offshore wind energy
developers would likely face less uncertainty and lower costs as they navigate the permitting process. Local concerns are
more likely to be incorporated at the legislative level into the states' CZMPs. Potential developers would then be able to review
these plans and choose proposed locations based on the lowest expected costs of regulatory compliance and local
opposition. Thus, allowing states to compete for offshore wind development through their own state policies would lead to a
more efficient allocation of offshore wind energy facilities.
Conclusion
The experience of Cape Wind has demonstrated that the current regulatory scheme for offshore wind energy
is flawed. The policy of the federal government is to promote wind energy, and there is great potential for offshore wind energy
development throughout the United States. Yet the test case for U.S. offshore wind energy, to which the eyes of all potential
developers are fixed, remains stuck in regulatory limbo. The federal government, perhaps overeager in its approval of the
Cape Wind project at every turn, has found its decisions challenged aggressively by local opposition groups and even in one instance overruled
by the judiciary.
Inherency & T
Wind Growing Now
OSW Growing – Need More
OSW growing globally – but not enough
KALDELLIS & KAPSALI 13 both work at the Lab of Soft Energy Applications &
Environmental Protection, TEI of Piraeus – Greece [J.K. Kaldellis, M. Kapsali, Shifting
towards offshore wind energy—Recent activity and future development, Energy Policy, Volume 53,
February 2013, Pages 136–148
5. Future expectations
Offshore wind energy development has shown a quite unsteady progress since the beginning of its appearance but is
foreseen to expand significantly in the years to come and move from the pioneering phase to a large-scale
global deployment.
Offshore wind power experienced a record growth in 2010. Total installed global offshore wind capacity, at the end of the
year, amounted to approximately 3 GW, out of which more than a half was added in 2010 leading to an average growth rate which is by far
higher than the respective of the onshore wind energy sector (WWEA, 2010). Currently (end of 2011), the total offshore capacity
is
nearly 4 GW. As for the future expectations, despite the world economic and financial crisis which definitely may have an impact
on the financing options available to investors, the European Wind Energy Association has increased its 2020 target to
the challenging amount of 230 GW wind power capacity, including 40 GW offshore wind. As for 2030, the wind industry has also
set the ambitious target of 400 GW of wind power installations in Europe, out of which 150 GW to be located offshore and produce more than
550 TWhe of electricity (EWEA, 2008 and EWEA, 2009c). In fact, according to EWEA targets (EWEA, 2009c), for the forecasted annual wind
power installations up to the year 2030 as well as for capacity prices equal to 1250 €/kW for onshore and 2400 €/kW for offshore (in 2005
constant prices), investment in wind energy (both onshore and offshore) should reach €23.5 billion in 2020 and €25 billion in 2030 (Fig. 13).
The decade up to 2030 is projected to be almost stable, almost €25 billion annually, with a gradually increasing share of
investments however going offshore.
Nevertheless, apart from the aforementioned ambitious targets and the undeniable progress met in the field of offshore wind
during the recent years, one
should not disregard the fact that at the moment, offshore wind farms represent only
a very small percentage of the global wind power capacity, in the order of 2%. Despite the fact that the first project was
built twenty years ago, the offshore wind energy sector still remains under development and thus exploration of
prospects and technological trends is of primary importance for determining its ability to compete with onshore wind
farms and more importantly with conventional electricity generation.
Developing elsewhere now
OSW developing globally – just not in the US
KALDELLIS & KAPSALI 13 both work at the Lab of Soft Energy Applications &
Environmental Protection, TEI of Piraeus – Greece [J.K. Kaldellis, M. Kapsali, Shifting
towards offshore wind energy—Recent activity and future development, Energy Policy, Volume 53,
February 2013, Pages 136–148
The year 2010 was a record-breaking year for the European offshore wind energy market. New
installations accounted for about 900 MW (Fig. 1) (which was about 10% of all new wind power
installations) (EWEA, 2011). As for the end of 2011, 235 new offshore wind turbines, with a total capacity of about 870 MW, were fully
connected to the power grids of the UK, Germany, Denmark and Portugal. In total, as for the end of 2011, there were almost 1400 offshore wind
turbines fully grid connected with a total capacity of about 3.8 GW (Fig. 1) comprising 53 wind farms spread over ten European countries.
As of February 2012, the Walney wind farm in the United Kingdom is the largest offshore wind farm in the
world (367 MW), followed by the Thanet offshore wind project (300 MW), in the UK. The London Array (630 MW) is the largest project
currently under construction which is also located in the UK. In total, 18 new wind farms, totalling 5.3 GW are currently under construction and
18 GW are fully-consented in twelve European countries with Germany possessing almost 50% of the total consented installations (EWEA,
2012). Once completed, Europe's offshore wind power capacity will reach 27 GW.
Up till now vast deployment has taken place in Northern Europe, a situation expected to continue for the next few years as
well. Actually, more than 90% of the global offshore wind farms are located in European waters . The leading
markets are currently the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands with cumulative capacity ratings of 2094 MW, 857 MW and 247 MW respectively
(as for the end of 2011), see Fig. 2. By 2020, offshore wind power scenarios entail a quite ambitious development path with 75 GW installations
worldwide, with significant contribution expected from the United States and China (EWEA, 2007).
China, the world's largest onshore wind power developer, with a total of about 62 GW by the end of 2011, erected the first
large-scale commercial offshore wind farm (Donghai Bridge) outside Europe in 2009, adding 63 MW by year-end for a project that reached 102
MW upon completion in the early 2010. Thus, although offshore wind power development in China has much
delayed, the year 2010 marked the start of transition for the local offshore wind power sector from research and pilot projects
to operational wind farms. Today, China has about 230 MW (including an intertidal project) of offshore wind power installations. According to
the Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association (CREIA) (CREIA, 2011), China is planning to exploit its vast offshore
wind resources (Da et al., 2011) by greatly expanding its offshore capacity to 5 GW by 2015 and 30 GW by 2020, as a result of the
country's commitment for 40–45% (from the base year 2005) (Zhang et al., 2010) carbon emission reduction until 2020.
On the other hand, as for the end of 2011, there are no offshore wind power projects operating off the
United States,
which is the second world leader in land-based wind energy. The
only approved project, after a decade-long
process, is to be located off the coast of Massachusetts and is expected to comprise 130 3.6 MW wind turbines that will be
operational in 2012. However, U.S. offshore wind energy plans call for the deployment of 10 GW of offshore wind generating capacity by 2020
and 54 GW by 2030 (U.S. Department of Energy, 2011).
Offshore wind power market is currently dominated by few companies. On the demand side about ten companies or
consortia account for all the offshore capacity presently in operation. Dong Energy (Denmark), Vattenfall (Sweden) and E.on (Germany) are the
leading operators, all being giant European utilities. On the supply side, Siemens (formerly Bonus Energy A/S) and Vestas are by far the leading
wind turbine manufacturers worldwide in terms of installed capacity. In Europe, their cumulative share reaches 90% (Fig. 3). However, there are
several other manufacturers that are now developing new offshore wind turbines' types which are close to commercial viability. For instance, both
Repower Systems and AREVA Multibrid installed commercial turbines of 5 MW under a pilot project (comprising the deepest large-scale
operational offshore wind power project at that time, with an average distance from the shore of about 53 km) named “Alpha Ventus” in
Germany in 2009. Sinovel also entered the market in 2009 with the SL3000/90, the first offshore wind turbine manufactured in China and
installed in the “Donghai Bridge” project. More recently, General Electric re-entered the offshore wind market with the
announcement of its 4.1 MW direct drive wind turbine, which is still under development (GE Energy, 2011).
Grants Now
Millions in grants for offshore wind now – will require continual congressional
appropriations
Del FRANCO 12 National Wind Power Staff [Mark Del Franco, DOE Offshore Wind Grants
Provide Impetus To Get 'Steel In The Water',
http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.10818#.UTebP6V2H04]
The DOE provided a major boost for the fledgling offshore wind industry by announcing grants for seven U.S.
offshore wind projects to ensure commercial operation in state and federal waters by 2017.
The projects will receive up to $4 million to complete the engineering, design and permitting phase of this award. The DOE
will select up to three of these projects for follow-on phases that focus on siting, construction and installation and aim to
achieve commercial operation by 2017. These projects will receive up to $47 million over four years, subject to
Congressional appropriations , according to the DOE.
Solvency
Solvency Extensions
Authority Consolidation Solves
Federal permitting consolidation is critical to circumvent opposition & create the
certainty necessary- state action is insufficient
KIMMELL & STALENHOEF 11 general counsel to the Massachusetts Executive
Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs & environmental law attorney and
Counsel for the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities [Kenneth Kimmell & Dawn
Stalenhoef, Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal, “The Cape Wind Offshore Wind Energy
Project: A Case Study of the Difficult Transition to Renewable Energy”]
The Cape Wind saga reveals that the
current permitting process for offshore wind energy projects is broken. If the
nation is serious about developing offshore wind energy projects along its coasts, Congress must advance reform.
One place to look for inspiration, ironically, is Massachusetts. Despite its reputation for long and protracted siting battles, Massachusetts
has instituted two major reforms that could serve as models for federal reform of offshore wind-project
permitting. The first model reform is a “one-stop permitting” law that enables the State Energy Facilities Siting Board to issue a
single permit and eliminates the need for any additional state or local permits.85 Enacted during the energy crisis of the early 1970’s, this law
ensures that state and local agencies do not block power plants and infrastructure needed for a reliable energy supply. The law allows the Siting
Board to step in when an energy project proponent is denied a necessary permit or experiences significant delays, including those caused by
litigation.86 The Siting Board has broad representation: it is composed of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the
Department of Environmental Protection, the Department of Energy Resources, the Department of Public Utilities, and three citizen members
representing labor, environmental, and consumer interests.87 It has wide jurisdiction and can review all of the various impacts of energy facilities
that would be examined by state or local permitting agencies. It may also receive the input of all state and local agencies that would otherwise be
called upon to grant permits.88 This authority ensures that all issues and all possible objections are heard once, rather than multiple times by
multiple agencies. And unlike with most permits issued by state agencies, the appeals process is streamlined. Indeed, there is but one appeal of a
Siting Board approval, which goes directly to the state Supreme Judicial Court.89 As noted above, this law was crucial to the success
of Cape Wind’s permitting on the state level, because it ensured that the permitting of the electric cables
would not get bogged down in other state and local level permitting, or be delayed by judicial appeals of such
permit decisions. Had this law not been in place, it is likely that Cape Wind would still be in litigation with the Cape Cod Commission over its
denial of the electric cables and would be defending the license issued by the Department of Environmental Protection allowing the cables to be
placed in Massachusetts’ tidelands. There is no comparable “one-stop permitting” option for offshore wind projects
available at the federal level. While the EPACT established that the MMS (now referred to as the Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, or BOEMRE) plays the leading-agency role for issuance of an offshore
lease, numerous other federal agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers, E nvironmental P rotection A gency,
F ederal A viation A dministration, and the Coast Guard will still need to issue separate approvals for the project.
Federal agencies, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, will
also play significant “consultative” roles. Rather than having the appeals of the permits lodged in one court, federal
law provides for multiple appeals in various federal courts that will have to be resolved before the project
can finally proceed. This multiplicity of permitting and consultative agencies, and numerous potential
judicial appeals, is a formula for delay, confusion, redundancy, and inconsistency. In short, it is a boon for
the forces of inertia.
Need one stop permitting framework
WEBER 07 North American Offshore Wind Power Information Project [Lucas Weber, “Offshore
Wind Energy Permitting”, May 10]
As the above description of the various permitting authorities illustrates, the
regulatory process for offshore wind energy
development can be overwhelming. In order to combat this problem, there must be some form of
centralized management. In Europe, the common practice is to use a “one-stop shop office” approach.136
Under this approach, the developers communicate with one official contact office to handle everything from
administrative to legal matters. A recent study by the International Energy Agency concluded that the use of “one stop shop
offices” has been a success from the point of view of both agencies and developers.137 The MMS, as the
lead agency, would be perfect for this “one-stop shop” position. As the one-stop shop agency for wind energy permitting
on the OCS, the MMS could streamline the approval process by coordinating with all of the other relevant
agencies. In fact, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates such coordination.138 Therefore, the MMS should coordinate efforts with the
other relevant agencies to form a one-stop shop permitting office for wind energy development on the OCS. IV.
CONCLUSION In sum, developing the United States’ potential for using offshore wind energy will contribute
to security of energy supply, reduce dependency on fuel imports, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and
improve environmental protection. Despite a vast potential for offshore wind energy along the OCS, the MMS is
holding potential development hostage through regulatory delay and time-consuming replications of
environmental reviews. It is vital that the MMS reduce the regulatory confusion and establish a unified
coordinated approach to ensure the expeditious, yet responsible, development of offshore wind energy.
Preemption key to industry
Federal preemption allows targeting and benefits the industry directly.
BUZBEE 07 Professor of Law Emory Law School [William W. Buzbee, Asymmetrical
Regulation: Risk, Preemption, and the Floor/Ceiling Distinction, Public Law & Legal Theory Research
Paper Series Research Paper No. 07-9]
Unitary federal choice ceiling preemption does not leave room for deviation and tailoring. Instead, if a statute or
regulatory action precludes different state choices and also eliminates the risk of common law liabilities, it constitutes a
unitary federal choice. The very unitariness and finality of this choice leaves little or no opportunity for further regulatory interaction, as
in the agency preemption claims or LNG siting provisions.178 Such a unitary federal choice will undoubtedly benefit the
targeted industry , and perhaps for a time even those protected by a regulatory act. That final choice creates complete
regulatory stability, eliminating the risk of other institutions modifying that choice or common law liability prompting reexamination . It
reduces costs associated with battling over regulation in numerous venues. As surely intended, it will reduce costs
faced by risk producers, and may ultimately result in more goods in the marketplace, possibly at lower prices. It may
also, as in the LNG siting setting, overcome free rider temptations, where all jurisdictions hope others will provide an industry or
product that many desire or need. A single federal decisionmaker can overcome such parochialism.179
Such a unitary federal choice also will likely create benefits for federal actors. If Congress or an agency becomes
the only game in town , it will undoubtedly attract greater attention from affected industry, as well as other
may be able to
secure expanded budgets or even engage in outright favoritism to affected industry in exchange for the usual
rewards of regulatory capture-- electoral support for the administration in power, revolving door movement from agencies to industry,
and reduced risk of embarrassment that might otherwise result from more adversarial modes of regulatory exchange.182 A stringent
unitary federal choice could also engender political support from sympathetic public interest groups. All of
these political benefits for regulators and legislators, however, may not be in the public’s interest.
supporting or opposed stakeholders.180 Legislators may benefit from electoral or monetary support.181 Agencies
Preemption key to Investment
Preemption key to overcome “dual regulation” that chills investment
SALCIDO 08 Associate Professor of Law, University of the Pacific, McGeorge
School of Law [Rachael E. Salcido, Offshore Federalism and Ocean Industrialization, March, 2008,
Tulane Law Review, 82 Tul. L. Rev. 1355]
Two onshore mining cases also shed light on a related problem: the unpredictability of dual regulation for
private developers and state or local governing agencies. Ventura County v. Gulf Oil Corp. involved mining operations on federal lands
within the State of California. n296 Pursuant to the Minerals Leasing Act of 1920, the DOI, acting through the Bureau of Land Management,
leased 120 acres in the Los Padres National Forest to Gulf Oil Corporation for oil exploration and development purposes. n297 The leased area,
within Ventura County, had previously been zoned Open Space (O-S) by Ventura County, and thus pursuant to county law, oil exploration and
extraction were allowed only by a county conditional use permit. n298 Mineral developers wanted to be subjected solely to federal control, rather
than also have to meet state and local permit requirements. n299 [*1403] Thus, Gulf Oil refused to comply with the county use permit
requirement, and Ventura County sought declaratory relief to confirm that Gulf Oil was subject to Ventura County's zoning ordinance. n300
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Ventura County's zoning provisions requiring a permit were preempted. n301 In so holding, it concluded that "the local
ordinances impermissibly conflict with the Mineral Lands Leasing Act of 1920 and on this basis alone they cannot be applied to Gulf." n302 Notably, this was a facial challenge to the ordinance
itself: the use permit had not been denied (Gulf Oil had refused to apply for one), so no particular requirements had been imposed. n303 However, the Ninth Circuit noted that the County
conditional use permits "are granted for such time and upon such conditions as the Planning Commission considers in the public interest. The permits contain 11 mandatory conditions and
additional conditions are committed to the Planning Board's discretion." n304 Instead of allowing the Planning Commission to consider whether the use permit was indeed "in the public interest"
and whether to impose conditions required for environmental protection, the Ninth Circuit relied on Kleppe to reject Ventura County's argument that congressional enactments under the Property
Clause "generally possess no preemptive capability." n305 The court stated that the conflict was just as direct as that considered in Kleppe. n306 It expressly rejected the fact that Ventura County
wished to regulate an activity that Congress had approved, whereas in Kleppe the state pursued an activity that Congress prohibited - calling it "a distinction without a legal difference." n307
The most important public lands case for offshore federalism insights is California Coastal Commission v. Granite Rock Co. n308 The Supreme Court held that state regulation of minerals
development was not preempted merely because the federal government also regulated minerals development pursuant to its Property Clause power. n309 The California Coastal Act prohibits
development in the state's coastal zone [*1404] without a California Coastal Commission permit. n310 Granite Rock Company, a mining company, entered federal public lands in the coastal
zone open to prospecting pursuant to the Mining Act of 1872 and obtained unpatented mining claims in the Los Padres National Forest. n311 Granite Rock sought an injunction and declaratory
relief exempting it from the Coastal Commission permit requirement. n312 The Court found that state regulation was not expressly preempted. n313 Moreover, after conducting the preemption
analysis employed by modern courts - where the court examines whether the provision is either expressly or impliedly preempted - the Supreme Court determined that neither the National Forest
Management Act, the FLPMA, nor the CZMA (which defined "coastal zone" to exclude federal public lands) preempts state environmental regulations. n314 The majority decision embraced the
Coastal Commission's assertion that it would impose environmental regulations, not land-use controls, through its permitting requirements. n315 The decision was viewed as a significant CZMA
victory for states n316 and has been severely criticized by those favoring federal supremacy. n317
Some question the continuing validity of Ventura County following the Supreme Court's decision in Granite Rock, which did not rely on the rationale in Ventura County. n318 One can also make
a [*1405] distinction between the government actually expressing desire that a particular activity occur on the public lands and the holding of lands open for particular uses, none of which are
specifically encouraged or endorsed by the government.
Several lessons for offshore federalism can be taken from Ventura County and Granite Rock. By
seeking preemption of state or local
provisions protecting environmental resources, project applicants may be able to circumvent locally important
concerns that do not resonate as much with federal governing agencies that might be more attuned to national goals. The question is whether
national objectives - here production of minerals - may still be accomplished notwithstanding additional state requirements. If the environmental
protection measures in Granite Rock were too onerous for the developers to undertake and still profit from the mining operation, then arguably
federal interests could have been thwarted. n319 This leaves open the possibility that unless environmental protection measures
are expressly preempted or result in conflict preemption - where the state and federal measures cannot both be undertaken - states
may try to impose additional environmental protection goals onto certain federal or federally approved
development projects. n320 As a practical matter, the environmental impacts of development on public lands are not necessarily limited
to the precise geographic area where they are conducted. n321 This is true also in ocean waters. n322 Thus, without closely aligned
state and federal development objectives or express preemption, developers may face dual regulation to
appease both state and federal interests.
Restrictions Key
Regulatory hold up is the major impediment
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Despite the aforementioned challenges, offshore wind remains important to the United States' energy future. Its many benefits make it an ideal
choice to meet some of the country's growing electricity demand, especially as the United States begins to realize the severity of the threats from
both climate change and its dependence on foreign fuels. n89 In addition to the environmental and economic benefits that offshore and onshore
wind power provides, the proximity of offshore wind to U.S. electricity demand and the resulting lower transmission costs are crucial. n90 The
many benefits of offshore wind outweigh its primarily local environmental and aesthetic costs, most of which can be minimized with careful
planning and community relations.
In spite of these compelling drivers, a primary obstacle to offshore wind power development is the lack of a regulatory
framework with which to reconcile the local costs with the regional and national benefits. n91 The current
regulatory framework is described in the next Part. Until the federal government puts a revised framework in place, such as the revised CZMA
proposed in Part V, states and local groups fixated on immediate, local costs will retain the ability to stall and even block offshore wind power
development. Without federal regulatory revision, offshore wind will not realize its full promise.
Investment Coming
Offshore projects coming now – plan makes sure they work
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Conclusion
A revised CZMA would provide a promising solution to the problems that offshore wind energy and other offshore
renewable energy sources have faced in the United States. Specifically, offshore wind power development has faced repeated
failures due to the mismatch between local costs and national benefits, and the absence of a regulatory framework to
reconcile them. While it may come too late to make a difference for Cape Wind, a new CZMA could still ensure success for
offshore wind power in other locations around the United States.
Still, to be truly effective, revising the CZMA needs to be just one step in a broader offshore wind or renewable energy program. While a new
CZMA would address problems related to offshore wind farm siting, this is just one barrier that offshore wind power development needs to
overcome. For example, as with all renewable energy sources, the importance of positive federal government policies and incentives, such as the
production tax credits mentioned previously, are key to offshore wind power's success.
Under the Obama administration, which seems especially receptive to renewable energy promotion, the United States has the exciting opportunity
to make great strides with offshore wind power development and renewable energy overall. Indeed, although Congress has struggled, it continues
to debate various climate change legislative proposals, many of which relate closely to renewable energy promotion. n290 President Obama also
continues to stress the importance of renewable energy to the future of the United States. n291 Denmark exemplifies how successful offshore
wind power development can be under the influence of a government with a positive outlook on renewable energy production that pervades
multiple agencies and programs in the government. n292 Indeed, President Obama has acknowledged Denmark and its successes in his efforts to
promote offshore wind power. n293 Furthermore, an overarching pro-renewable policy could instigate the development of various renewable
technologies - including offshore wind power, which has seen substantial success in not only Denmark, but in other EU countries. n294
Even without firm policies in place and no projects yet built, offshore wind project proposals are sprouting up across
the United States. As of the end [*1667] of 2008, eleven projects had been proposed in New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, New
York, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, and Maine; combined, these projects represent a total of 2,075 MW of capacity. n295 MMS has granted or is
expected to grant federal approval to most of these projects. n296 Eleven more projects were in earlier stages of development at the end of 2008.
n297 Despite these promising signs, all these projects stand to face the same obstacles as the Cape Wind project as
long as the current regulatory framework remains in effect. With revisions to the CZMA, Congress can help
make sure these projects move forward, and pave the way for more in the future.
A2 Cape Wind solves
Cape Wind doesn’t solve – too many regulatory hurdles
ROEK 11 Partner at Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP, Minneapolis [Offshore Wind Energy
in the United States: A Legal and Policy Patchwork. By: Roek, Katherine A., Natural Resources &
Environment, 08823812, Spring2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4]
Interest developing offshore wind in the United States has increased dramatically over the past few years. The "Cape
Wind" project off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, often regarded as the "poster child" of domestic offshore wind, has now, after ten years,
received all federal, state, and local regulatory and development approvals and, in August 2010, the dismissal of the remaining legal challenges to
the state permitting process by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The publicity over Cape Wind has showcased a number of advantages
of offshore wind generation in the U.S.: it enables coastal states to supply electricity needs from sources off their own coasts and allows utilities
to meet their obligations under increasingly stringent state renewable portfolio standards from a consistent, superior resource. And it offers the
economic development opportunity of a new high-technology industry.
But Cape Wind has also highlighted the complexity of the development, permitting, and operating regimes
confronting any offshore wind project. While the project development process that the Cape Wind developer and the state of
Massachusetts have gone through is instructive for other projects and states, it is by no means the template for a successful,
streamlined offshore wind project. Project sponsors and permitting agencies alike will need to "tailor" each
proposal within a patchwork of local or state property or development constraints, federal or state
jurisdictional boundaries, and an array of policies or incentives reflecting the particular states individual
resources and needs.
Agent Stuff
Individual Agencies can Pre-Empt
Individual agencies can pre-empt state law
YOUNG 08 Professor of Law, Duke Law School [Ernest A. Young, SYMPOSIUM:
ORDERING STATE-FEDERAL RELATIONS THROUGH FEDERAL PREEMPTION DOCTRINE:
EXECUTIVE PREEMPTION, Special Issue 2008, Northwestern University Law Review, 102 Nw. U.L.
Rev. 869]
It is probably too late in the day to insist that federal agency action cannot create supreme federal law. n144 But that concession simply
strengthens the need to look closely at the way that preemptive actions by agencies fit into the structure of contemporary federalism. When
the agency has independent preemptive authority, the preemption decision is made outside the political and
procedural constraints in which modern federalism doctrine places its primary hope. Moreover, as I suggest above, we
can expect agencies to have strong incentives to maximize their own power by supplanting state autonomy more often than not. n145
The Supreme Court has nonetheless upheld these independent exercises of preemptive power, stating that
"a
federal agency acting within the scope of its congressionally delegated authority may pre-empt state
regulation." n146 Statements like this could be read to permit preemption by agencies on their own initiative only where Congress has
explicitly delegated preemptive authority. Yet the Court has recognized a far broader power to preempt state law
wherever the subject matter of the agency's action (considered apart from its impact on state law) is within the scope of
the agency's delegated power. n147 In other words, if the Communications Act authorizes the FCC to
regulate cable television, then it also presumptively authorizes a corollary preemptive power . Agency
action will thus be held to preempt state law if (1) the agency intended it to do so, and (2) the agency's
preemptive action is within the scope of its delegated authority. n148 Given the broad scope of delegations, such as that in
the Communications Act, the external constraints on agency preemptive action appear to be minimal indeed.
FERC can do it
FERC has exclusive jurisdiction to issue licenses
ROEK 11 Partner at Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP, Minneapolis [Offshore Wind Energy
in the United States: A Legal and Policy Patchwork. By: Roek, Katherine A., Natural Resources &
Environment, 08823812, Spring2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4]
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
has exclusive jurisdiction under the Federal Power Act to issue facility
operating licenses for hydrokinetic projects on the OCS, see 16 U.S.C. § 817, which historically overlapped with BOE jurisdiction
over the same physical area on the OCS. An April 2009 Memorandum of Understanding between BOE and FERC clarifies that BOE has
submerged lands leasing and siting authority for hydrokinetic and nonhydrokinetic projects on the OCS, while FERC maintains facility licensing
authority for hydrokinetic projects; FERC will not issue a license until BOE has issued a lease, ROW, or RUE. Each agency
will conduct its own environmental analysis and is expected to confer with the other in such analysis.
Warming Advantage Extensions
Warming Impact Stuff
Yes, Anthro, Stoppable, Plan Key
Warming is real, provable, but not too late. Offshore resources are necessary
ATTRILL 12 Director, Plymouth University Marine Institute [Martin Attrill, Marine
Renewable Energy: necessary for safeguarding the marine environment?. November 2012,
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/marine_renewable_energy.pdf]
Introduction & Context
It is necessary to rapidly deploy large quantities of marine renewable energy to reduce the carbon
emissions from fossil fuel burning which are leading to ocean acidification, global warming and climatic changes.
Done well and sensitively its deployment could be beneficial to marine wildlife compared to the alternative scenario of
greater levels of climate change. This briefing outlines current evidence.
According to new research by the Met Office in the UK, global
emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) need to peak
in 2016, with annual declines of 3.5% every year afterwards, in order to provide even a 50:50 chance of avoiding a 2
degree rise in global average temperatures.
Yet despite major international meetings and agreements focused on reducing the output of GHGs, global emissions have
continued to rise, indeed accelerate, over the last 10 years. Consequently, recent predictions of future global warming are now at
the top end of models produced a decade ago or so and suggest that, without rapid action, temperatures may increase
by 4 degrees or more above pre-industrial temperatures.
Climate change is now a visible reality. Each of the last 11 years is in the top 12 warmest years on record,
the only other year in this top 12 being in 1998, which was an exceptional global El Niño year and saw unprecedented bleaching of the world’s
coral reefs. Notable warming of the seas around NW Europe has been recorded over the last 30 years, with extensive spatial changes to
plankton and fish assemblages ii,iii that have subsequently impacted top predators such as cod and seabirds iv,v . 2012 has also seen the lowest
ever cover of summer Arctic Sea ice.
Sea level rise is now measurable, due to both thermal expansion and ice melt, with a global average rise of 3.3 mm/year between
1993-2009 vi . This
rate is accelerating: a 1m sea level rise by the end of the century in some areas is an increasing possibility, with
major consequences for the integrity of low-lying coastal and wetland ecosystems. Finally, ocean
acidification is becoming measurable vii , heading us on the predicted locked-in path to lower pH seas with
severe consequences for organisms using CaCO in their biology, such as reefs, molluscs and some key planktonic producers. It is
thought that the current rate of acidification is 10-100 times faster than any time in the past 50 million years.
Today's change may be unlike any previous ocean pH change in Earth's history.
It is therefore clear that the marine environment is already being
damaged by the
increasingly apparent impacts of climate change; however it is not too late to make a
difference to avoid more extreme impacts (including, obviously more extreme impacts on
global societies and economies).
To do so requires a major decarbonisation in the UK and other countries. The Committee on Climate Change has recommended
that the UK decarbonise electricity to 50g/KWhr of CO2 by 2030. This will require at least a ten-fold expansion of Marine Renewable Energy
(MRE) even if carbon capture and storage technology or nuclear power is deployed (both of which seem unlikely at significant scale by 2030).
It is a truth that to prevent extremely negative impacts on marine biodiversity – and society -
it will be necessary to intrude into the marine environment by building large amounts of
MRE. Done well – in consultation with marine ecologists and conservation groups, within the
spirit and letter of the Habitats Directive - MRE could hold benefits for the marine environment.
Anthropogenic
its real and anthropogenic
Prothero 12 [Donald R. Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lecturer in
Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, 3-1-2012, "How We Know Global Warming is Real
and Human Caused," Skeptic, 17.2, EBSCO]
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of
evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an
unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al.
(1999) compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct
measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a
sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the
end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the
past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years
ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Litde Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the
warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this
warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an
alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just
the entire ice sheet is
breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer.[ 5] As one can see from watching the
open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer),[ 4] but now
news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million
people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf -- over
3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick -- broke up in just a few months, a story -typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica.
The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and
even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years -- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are
vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever
documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the
populations below the mountains depend upon -- yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia
(especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in
the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not
only for life on the permafrost, but as
it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the
have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing
thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the
major contributors to global warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we
previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their
environments change.[ 6] Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about diseasebearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean,
the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more than ten times
the rate of 0.1-0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past
causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present,
10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most
scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities,
such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives,
which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else.[ 7] Even a
small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina),
which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the
Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal cities such as New
York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a sea level
rise. If all the
glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level
sea level rise would
drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would
would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a
remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these
drowned cities would lie deep underwater. Climate Change Critic's Arguments and Scientists' Rebuttals Despite
the overwhelming evidence there
are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is that they have been fed distortions and misstatements by the global
warming denialists who cloud or confuse the issue. Let's examine some of these claims in detail: * "It's just natural climatic variability." No, it
is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past
greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice
sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and interglacial episodes of the "Ice Ages" that
have occurred since then. We
know how variations in the earth's orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls the amount of solar
radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000 years, the
duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our
pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth's crust has pushed the planet into a "superinterglacial," already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the "big picture" of climate variability most
clearly in ice cores from the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-inters
glacial cycles (Fig. 2). At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even
at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if
we stopped releasing greenhouse gases immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of "climatic variability," but
clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who says this is "normal variability" has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise. *
"It's just another warming episode, like the Medieval Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum or the end of the Little Ice Age."
Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in
the case of the Medieval Warm Period (about 950-1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of
global warming (Fig. 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not
warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum ( 5,000-9,000 B.C.E.)
when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia contributed to the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was
largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2-3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and
cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere.[ 8] From a Eurocentric viewpoint, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect was
negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the
Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal -but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous
episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due
to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate remaining for the post-1940
warming is carbon dioxide.[ 9] "It's
just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane." Nope, sorry. The amount
of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 1940,[ 10] just the opposite of the critics' claims (Fig. 3). There is no
evidence of an increase in cosmic ray particles during the past century.[ 11] Nor is there any clear evidence that
large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any longterm effects that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but
humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year,[ 12] roughly 100 times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas,
but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent.[ 13] Every other
alternative has been looked at and can be ruled out. The only clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and
global warming. * "The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling." That's simply untrue. The only way to support this
argument is to cherry-pick the data.[ 14] Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend from 1998-2000, but only because 1998 was a
record-breaking El Nino year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison (Fig. 4). But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is
unequivocal. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years. They are (in order
of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000.[ 15] In other words, every year since 2000 has
been on the Top Ten hottest years list. The rest of the top 16 include 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term
cooling mentioned already). * "We had record snows in the winter of 2009-2010, and also in 2010-2011." So what? This is nothing more than the difference between
weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about
another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceano-graphic conditions.[ 16] In fact, warmer global
temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate change critics
forget that the early winter of November-December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow
heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the
snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. Also, the summer of
2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009. * "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think
they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations[ 17]) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads
concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross
inaccuracies in this ad.[ 18] True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming
evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in
excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming[ 19, 20] and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic.
Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing.
Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash
and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help
agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are
expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research[ 21] actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen
into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public
otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous. * "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm
skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the
reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human
caused global warming.[ 22] We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in
atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through
carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the
increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet
and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer. The most crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate
models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10
km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6 miles), and that's exactly what our space
probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no
measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem. Why Do People Continue to Question the
Reality of Climate Change? Thanks to all the noise and confusion over climate change, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and
the scientific community
is virtually unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When
science historian Naomi Oreskes[ 24] surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in
the world's leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing
it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman[ 25] surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95-99%
agreed that global warming is real and human caused. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study
that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement over anthropogenic
global warming.[ 26] Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate
change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world's top scientists. This is
the same degree of scientific consensus that scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and
relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world's leading scientists, especially among
only about half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame.[ 23] As in the evolution/creationism debate,
everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in
debating it since the evidence is so clear-cut. If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC report, and every report since then), why
is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by diligent reporters who got past the PR
machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there were no real "dissenters" to the idea of global warming by scientists
who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy
companies, and the "free-market" advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a
smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo[ 27] from the tobacco
lobbyists said "Doubt is our product." The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The
evidence for this PR conspiracy has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in
April 1998 the right-wing Marshall
Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz's lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at
a $20 million campaign to get "respected scientists" to
cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn't real and is not a threat. The right-wing institutes
and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists -- any scientists -- who might disagree with the scientific consensus.
As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again,[ 28] the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the
testimony of anyone who could be useful to them. The day that the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper
The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by oil companies and conservative think tanks) had
offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report.[ 29] In February
2012, leaks of documents from the denialist Heartland Institute revealed that they were trying to influence science education,
suppress the work of scientists, and had paid off many prominent climate deniers, such as Anthony Watts, all in an effort to
circumvent the scientific consensus by doing an "end run" of PR and political pressure. Other leaks have shown 9 out of 10 major climate deniers are
paid by ExxonMobil.[ 30] We are accustomed to hired-gun "experts" paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but this is
extraordinary -- buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however,
you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they're paid to do. Fishing
the American Petroleum Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned
around to find anyone with some science background who will agree with you and dispute a scientific consensus is a tactic employed by the creationists to sound
"scientific". The NCSE created a satirical "Project Steve,"[ 31] which demonstrated that there were more scientists who accept evolution named "Steve" than the total
scientists
who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most
scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false. The
number of "scientists who dispute evolution". It may generate lots of PR and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn't change the fact that
climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context ("quote
mining"), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that
they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The "Climategate scandal" is a classic case of this. It
started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails[ 32] and
comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great "conspiracy" or that they were faking
data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy.[ 33] Even
there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science
community is secretly working together to generate false information and mislead the public. If there's one thing
if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists,
that is clear about science, it's about competition and criticism, not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing
with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will
quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote: Scientists…show no evidence of being more interested in politics
or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down
capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master's and Ph.D. degrees, then go to
work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have
made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why
you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of
scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting.[ 34] There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and
Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can't get their story straight, when in reality
there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that
when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion.
The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that
scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with
consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific
debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping
audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the "intelligent-design" cre-ationism website for the
Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes.[ 35]
If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and see if the prevailing scientific
Muller re-examined all the
temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller
started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he
carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology
Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by
demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the
interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard
climate is changing are right (Fig. 5). In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing
skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and
preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it -- even if you've been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a
scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder.[ 36] * Science and Anti-Science The conclusion is clear: there's science, and
then there's the anti-science of global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global
warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt so that only half of the
American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in questioning its scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000
people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem[ 37] and 80% realize that humans are the cause of
it.[ 38] Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality. It is not just the liberals and
environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as
insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts
by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that cheap oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their
business less popular. BP officially stands for "British Petroleum," but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for "Beyond Petroleum."[ 39] Although
they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual
exhaustion of oil -- and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying. The Pentagon (normally not a
left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and analyzing what kinds of strategic threats might
occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported[ 40] that in
December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the
potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must "prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change -- which will likely come [the only question is when]
regardless of human activity." Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the
business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing
heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, "Climate change will
significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences."[ 41] Some people may still try to deny scientific
reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance and conservative institutions like the military cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for
the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their
survival. Neither can we as a society.
Extinction
Extinction
Bushnell 10 - Chief scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center [Dennis Bushnell (MS in
mechanical engineering. He won the Lawrence A. Sperry Award, AIAA Fluid and Plasma Dynamics Award, the AIAA Dryden Lectureship, and
is the recipient of many NASA Medals for outstanding Scientific Achievement and Leadership.) “Conquering Climate Change,” The Futurist,
May-June, 2010
During the Permian extinction, a number of chain reaction events, or “positive feedbacks,” resulted in oxygendepleted oceans, enabling overgrowth of certain bacteria, producing copious amounts of hydrogen sulfide, making
the atmosphere toxic, and decimating the ozone layer, all producing species die-off. The positive
feedbacks not yet fully included in the IPCC projections include the release of the massive amounts of
fossil methane, some 20 times worse than CO2 as an accelerator of warming, fossil CO2 from the tundra and oceans, reduced
oceanic CO2 uptake due to higher temperatures, acidification and algae changes, changes in the earth’s ability to reflect the
sun’s light back into space due to loss of glacier ice, changes in land use, and extensive water evaporation (a greenhouse gas) from temperature
increases. The additional effects of these feedbacks increase the projections from a 4°C–6°C temperature rise by 2100 to
a 10°C–12°C rise , according to some estimates. At those temperatures, beyond 2100, essentially all the ice would
melt and the ocean would rise by as much as 75 meters, flooding the homes of one-third of the global
population. Between now and then, ocean methane hydrate release could cause major tidal waves, and glacier
melting could affect major rivers upon which a large percentage of the population depends. We’ll see increases
in flooding, storms, disease, droughts, species extinctions, ocean acidification, and a litany of other impacts, all as a
consequence of man-made climate change. Arctic ice melting, CO2 increases, and ocean warming are all occurring
much faster than previous IPCC forecasts, so, as dire as the forecasts sound, they’re actually
conservative . Pg. 7-8 //1ac
A2 too late
Action now is enough.
WARREN et al 13 Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of
Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia [R. Warren, J. VanDerWal, J. Price, J. A.
Welbergen, I. Atkinson, J. Ramirez-Villegas, T. J. Osborn,
A. Jarvis,L. P. Shoo, S. E. Williams &
J. Lowe, Quantifying the benefit of early climate change mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss, Nature
Climate Change 3, 678–682 (2013)]
Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels,
including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. However, little is
known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could reduce biodiversity impacts, particularly
amongst common and widespread species. Our global analysis of future climatic range change of common and
widespread species shows that without mitigation, 57±6% of plants and 34±7% of animals are likely to lose
≥50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s. With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if
emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. Thus , our analyses indicate that without
mitigation, large range contractions can be expected even amongst common and widespread species,
amounting to a substantial global reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services by the end of this century.
Prompt and stringent mitigation , on the other hand, could substantially reduce range losses and buy up to
four decades for climate change adaptation.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change3 (IPCC) estimates that 20–30% of species would be at increasingly
high risk of extinction if global temperature rise exceeds 2–3 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, as
quantitative assessments of the benefits of mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss are lacking, we know little about how much of the impacts can
be offset by reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, despite the large number of studies addressing extinction risks in particular
species groups, we know little about the broader issue of potential range loss in common and widespread species, which is of serious concern as
even small declines in such species can significantly disrupt ecosystem structure, function and services7.
Here we quantify the benefits of mitigation in terms of reduced climatic range losses in common and
widespread species, and determine the time early mitigation action can buy for adaptation. In particular, we
provide a comprehensive analysis of potential climatic range changes for 48,786 animal and plant species across the globe, using the same set of
global climate change scenarios for all species; and a direct comparison of projected levels of potential climate change impacts on the climatic
ranges of species in six twenty-first-century mitigation scenarios, including a no-policy baseline scenario in which emissions continue to rise
unabated (Fig. 1, Table 1). To calculate the climatic range changes, we employed MaxEnt, one of the most robust
bioclimatic modelling approaches especially for cases where only presence data (as opposed to presence–absence) are available8.
MaxEnt models the probability of a species’ presence, conditioned on environment8 so that in this paper climatic range
change specifically refers to the change in the modelled probability of a species’ occurrence, conditioned on climatic variables. Eighty per cent of
the species studied have climatic ranges in excess of 30,000 km2, which is the range size used by Bird Life International to delineate restrictedrange species, whereas less than 7% have ranges occupying less than 20,000 km2 (Supplementary Fig. S1). Our study therefore focuses on
quantifying the effects on widespread species, which are in general more common and less likely to become extinct than restricted-range
species9, in contrast to previous studies that have only speculated that there may be effects on such species1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In projecting
future distributions, we use three class-specific long-term average dispersal scenarios (zero, realistic and
optimistic). These scenarios are based on the available literature and specifically refer to the rates at which
species’ ranges, through an average of individual dispersal events (colonization and extirpation), shift over time (Supplementary Table
S1 and Supplementary Methods).
With no mitigation, the median global annual mean temperature change reaches 4 °C above pre-industrial
levels by 2100 (Fig. 1, Table 1, A1B baseline scenario). Even with realistic dispersal rates, 34±7% of the animals, and 57±6%
of the plants, lose 50% or more of their climatic range by the 2080s (Table 1, Fig. 2). Here, the standard deviation arises from the use of different
general circulation model (GCM) patterns for downscaling (see Methods). With no long-term dispersal (also reflecting the potential for barriers to
inhibit realistic dispersal), 42±7% of the animals lose 50% or more of their climatic range, whereas the figures for plants remain unchanged
owing to their lower dispersal rates (Table 1). The projected climatic range losses under these realistic long-term
dispersal assumptions demonstrate clearly that climate change would have an impact even on more
widespread species in addition to the species with restricted ranges that have been the main focus of previous studies3,
10. These projected losses are not offset by the very small percentage of species projected to gain more
than 50% of their climatic range with realistic dispersal rates (4% of the animals and none of the plants; Supplementary Table S3),
indicating that on balance the projected impacts of climate change overwhelmingly result in a sizable
reduction of climatically suitable ranges for a large number of species.
Solves Warming
Specific Solvency Ev
Federal preemption of states restrictions on offshore wind establishes a federal
commitment to solve warming, spills over, generates expertise. The framework
alone solves.
EBERHARDT 06 B.A., 1998, Swarthmore (Biology); M.F.S., 2001, Harvard; J.D. Candidate, 2006,
New York University School of Law. Senior Notes Editor, 2005-2006, New York University
Environmental Law Journal [Robert W. Eberhardt, FEDERALISM AND THE SITING OF OFFSHORE
WIND ENERGY FACILITIES, New York University Environmental Law Journal, 14 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J.
374]
Since the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ("UNFCCC") in 1992, the international community has
committed itself to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" resulting from emissions of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere. n138 The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005, starting the latest chapter in international climate change
mitigation efforts, with most industrialized countries (with the notable exception of the United States) committing to binding net emissions
reduction targets during the first commitment period of 2008-2012. n139 Major challenges loom ahead, including - given the sheer scale of the
efforts required to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at safe levels - the need to adopt comprehensive, large-scale mitigation strategies quickly.
n140 The decarbonization of electricity generation, including the large-scale adoption of renewable technologies like offshore
wind energy, represents
one central climate change mitigation strategy. n141
Greenhouse gas emissions reductions thus represent one of the principle environmental benefits associated with the
development of an offshore wind energy facility. As with conventional air pollutants, actual greenhouse gas emissions reductions that would
result from the development of a facility would depend on the identity of the displaced existing or alternative competitors, which in turn would
depend on the geographic scope of a facility's wholesale electricity market, the terms of the power purchase agreement for the facility and
competing generators, and overall electricity demand. n142 As an example, a study conducted as part of the environmental review [*407]
process for Cape Wind notes
that, had the facility been in operation during 2000, regional carbon dioxide
emissions would have been reduced by 949,000 tons. n143 Beyond actual emissions reductions, the
development of individual facilities would build expertise in the energy industry, which potentially would
reduce the costs associated with the development of additional facilities that in turn could generate future
emissions reductions. n144
The potential environmental benefits associated with climate change mitigation raise somewhat distinct questions about the theoretical
justifications for state environmental regulation of offshore wind energy facilities. First, because greenhouse gases disperse evenly in the
atmosphere and climate change stands to affect local environments in locations across the country, climate change clearly is an environmental
concern of national dimensions. Emissions reductions resulting from the development of a facility have the
potential to generate positive horizontal spillovers, and thus a state-based siting regime could lead to the construction of fewer
facilities than justified by efficiency criteria. n145 This could justify national regulations with a preemptive effect over restrictive state siting
standards.
Second, the sheer scale of the mitigation effort required to stabilize ambient greenhouse gas concentrations
requires the implementation of multiple mitigation measures at a large scale. This sets up a classic prisoner's
dilemma among the states, and the resulting coordination problem provides a theoretical justification for
national regulation. One offshore wind energy facility (even if it completely displaced electricity generated by an inefficient
conventional coal-fired power plant) would result in emissions reductions dwarfed by total regional emissions and the
scale of reductions required to stabilize ambient concentrations. n146 As a result, an effective climate change strategy likely
would require the [*408] development of multiple facilities under the regulation of multiple states and, without
assurances that other states will follow suit, a state may rationally conclude that climate change mitigation benefits
do not justify the acceptance of scenic or aesthetic impacts or other environmental costs. Furthermore, coordination problems
are intensified by the fact that offshore wind energy is only one of many potential climate change
mitigation measures, and an effective climate change strategy undoubtedly will require other measures in other sectors and in other states
lacking offshore wind resources. n147 General inattention or hostility by other states to climate change mitigation could offset
any reductions resulting even from the large-scale development of offshore wind energy facilities, further intensifying coordination
problems. n148 The need to coordinate activities among states, and to prevent states from making collectively irrational
regulatory decisions, provides a theoretical justification for federal regulation addressing climate change mitigation
measures that would have a preemptive effect over more restrictive state siting criteria. n149
Third, climate change is a problem of international dimensions; emissions from
all sources contribute to
climate change, and climate change stands to affect local environmental conditions across the globe. In the U.S. federal system, the national
government, through the Senate's power to ratify treaties and the President's inherent powers over foreign affairs, has the power to negotiate and
enter into agreements with co-equal sovereign governments to address issues of international dimensions. n150 Given the national
government's role in international affairs, federal regulation of climate change mitigation measures may
be theoretically justified by the potential for state actions to affect the ability of the national government [*409] to meet treaty
obligations or secure commitments from other countries favorable to the nation as a whole. n151 Depending on the relative positions on climate
change taken by the state and national governments, preemptive effects prohibiting more restrictive or more permissive
state regulation may be justified.
Solves Emissions
Wind energy rocks – solves emissions – best available source
SHAFIULLAH et al 13 All are Academics at the School of Engineering and Technology, Higher
Education Division, Central Queensland University, Australia [G.M. Shafiullah, Amanullah M.T. Oo,
A.B.M. Shawkat Ali, Peter Wolfs, Potential challenges of integrating large-scale wind energy into the
power grid–A review, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 20, April 2013, Pages 306–
321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2012.11.057]
8. Conclusion
Wind energy harvesting is of prime interest today as it is the most promising RE source due to its clean,
environment-friendly attributes. However, along with the positive environmental impacts, it has some negative environmental impacts
as well that include: social environmental impacts such as visual, noise and death of birds; economic impacts as it has high upfront costs due to
capital and variable costs; environmental impacts due to emissions during installation and future dismantling of wind farms, and technical
impacts that affect the power quality of the network. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review to explore
these potential impacts and their available mitigation techniques.
From this comprehensive literature review, it can be concluded that wind energy is not only climatefriendly and free from GHG emission but also has cost-effective and less negative social and
environmental impacts compared to other sources of energy as technology is getting more efficient and cost effective. It
has the potential to reduce the energy-crisis worldwide and create employment opportunities. Wind
energy is now a mature technology and there is enough evidence in favour of large-scale wind energy
firm. Research has been undertaken to minimise potential negative impacts of integrating large-scale wind energy into
the grid for a sustainable power system for the future. Findings of this study are expected to be used as guidelines by the
policy makers, manufacturers, industrialists and utilities for deployment of large-scale wind energy into
the energy mix.
Offshore Wind Sufficient
OSW can meet energy needs – overcome cost concerns
KALDELLIS & KAPSALI 13 both work at the Lab of Soft Energy Applications &
Environmental Protection, TEI of Piraeus – Greece [J.K. Kaldellis, M. Kapsali, Shifting
towards offshore wind energy—Recent activity and future development, Energy Policy, Volume 53,
February 2013, Pages 136–148
6. Conclusions
In the present work, a short overview of the activity noted in the field of offshore wind energy is provided, highlighting worldwide technology
developments and trends, installed capacities and market issues, while emphasis is given on the most important factors (costs
and availability issues) which have so far delayed
wind power.
Indeed, offshore wind turbine technology has
the establishment of offshore wind farms as the next generation of
been evolving at a fast pace and a considerable number of
projects has already taken place, especially over the last few years, although there is clear evidence that additional
efforts are required. The opportunities for exploitation of offshore wind resources are generally found
abundant; however, the barriers and challenges are also significant. Among the main reasons which drive this
growth are that the opportunities for wind development on-land become increasingly limited, the
existence of more consistent and higher winds in offshore sites, the absence of obstacles such as mountains, buildings and
trees in marine environments, the low or even null impact on humans, the pressure to achieve renewable energy
targets and finally the enabling of building offshore wind farms in coastal areas close to many population
centres.
On the other hand, the most important drawback of offshore wind energy is the high costs associated with its
development. In fact, costs are still much higher from onshore counterparts but some recent technological
progress in terms of more efficient production patterns (increase of the size of wind turbines, improvements in the design of the projects,
increase of availability, incorporation of innovative O&M strategies etc.) may have the potential to narrow this gap in the
future . With stronger winds and fewer conflicting issues than on-land, multi-MW turbines in deeper water
depths are likely to dominate the offshore sector in the long run in order to maximise energy production, capturing also
economies of scale. In this context, the considerably higher cost for deploying wind farms at offshore sites is expected to change as more and
more projects come online and targeted R&D efforts continue to take place.
OSW capability is sufficient
KALDELLIS & KAPSALI 13 both work at the Lab of Soft Energy Applications &
Environmental Protection, TEI of Piraeus – Greece [J.K. Kaldellis, M. Kapsali, Shifting
towards offshore wind energy—Recent activity and future development, Energy Policy, Volume 53,
February 2013, Pages 136–148
1. Introduction
During the last 20 years,
many countries all over the world have invested in the wind power sector in view of facing the
rapidly increasing population and the limited fossil fuel resources along with the adverse impacts of
conventional power generation on climate and human health. Wind energy is currently considered as an
indigenous, competitive and sustainable way to achieve future carbon reductions and renewable energy targets but
issues such as the scarcity of appropriate on-land installation sites or public concerns related to noise, visual impact, impact
on birdlife and land use conflicts often block its future development (Esteban et al., 2011 and KaldellisPlease complete and
update the reference given here (preferably with a DOI if the publication data are not known): Kaldellis, in press. For references to articles that
are to be included in the same (special) issue, please add the words ‘this issue’ wherever this occurs in the list and, if appropriate, in the text. et
al.,). As a result, a substantial shift towards the vast offshore wind resources has been made and an
incipient market has emerged, i.e. offshore wind power.
Up to now, wind energy development has mainly taken place onshore. Offshore wind power technology
comprises a relatively new challenge for the international wind industry with a demonstration history of around
twenty years and about a ten-year commercial history for large, utility-scale projects. In the end of 2011, worldwide wind
power capacity reached 240 GW (WWEA, 2012), from which, 2% comprised offshore installations. The main motivation for moving
offshore, despite the low or even null impact on humans and the opportunity of building wind farms in coastal areas close to many population
centres, stemmed from the considerably higher and steadier wind speeds met in the open sea, even exceeding 8 m/s at
heights of 50 m. Compared to the onshore counterpart, offshore wind energy has greater resource potential, which generally
increases with distance from the shore. This fact results to considerably higher energy yield (Pryor and Barthelmie, 2001), as the power output is
theoretically a function of the cube of the wind speed. However, the net gains due to the higher specific offshore energy production are
counterbalanced by the higher capital, installation and maintenance costs and so the economic prospects of offshore wind energy
utilisation are not necessarily better than the onshore ones.
As far as the technology employed is concerned, it should
be noted that the design of offshore wind power projects has
been based considerably on the long-term experience gained from on-shore wind farms and from the oil and gas
industry, while the commercial wind turbines used, currently having capacity ratings up to 5 MW, comprise adaptations from land-based
counterparts. However, offshore wind turbine technology is evolving at a fast pace and thus much larger
machines are expected in the foreseeable future, specifically constructed for offshore use, which will likely benefit from
economies of scale resulting in significant cost reduction.
All the above issues are analysed in this work. More precisely, the objective of the present study is to provide a short review of the activity noted
in the field of the offshore wind energy at a global level, emphasising on global market issues, current status and future trends of the technology
employed, examining at the same time energy production and availability issues as well as economic considerations such as investment and
associated costs of electricity generation.
Offshore Wind is sufficient
ROEK 11 Partner at Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP, Minneapolis [Offshore Wind Energy
in the United States: A Legal and Policy Patchwork. By: Roek, Katherine A., Natural Resources &
Environment, 08823812, Spring2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4]
Given the relatively high development cost of offshore wind in comparison to land-based alternative energy sources, a
logical threshold
question is why pursue offshore wind in the first place? Part of the answer may be long-term energy
policy. A 2008 study by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), "20% Wind Energy by 2030," concluded that a national
goal of deriving 20 percent of U.S. electrical supply from wind energy is possible, even economically
feasible, and that offshore wind could play a large role in that supply, possibly more than 50 gigawatts. DOE, 20%
WIND ENERGY BY 2030: INCREASING WIND ENERGY'S CONTRIBUTION TO U.S. ELECTRICITY SUPPLY. § 1.2.1 (July 2008). The
National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated that several states, including Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, both Carolinas, Maine, and
Massachusetts, may
be able to supply more than 100 percent of their 2004 state electricity consumption through
offshore wind facilities sited in water less than 30 meters deep at locations within 50 nautical miles of shore. Id. § 2.5 (citations omitted).
Some of these states lack significant onshore wind resources, making offshore wind an alternative means by which these states' utilities may
satisfy their obligation to purchase electricity from renewable resources. Offshore wind resources are also frequently located
close to large load centers, e.g., the New York City metropolitan area and the state of New Jersey, among the most
densely populated U.S. cities and states. DOE's Energy Information Administration also notes that of the contiguous forty-eight states twentyeight have a coastal boundary and that coastal states consume approximately 78 percent of the nation's
electricity. Id. (citations omitted). Building offshore wind resources close to these load centers may mitigate the
need for long and costly transmission lines . (This article does not discuss issues related to siting and permitting of
transmission lines for offshore wind projects.)
Wind Sufficient
Wind solves Warming – reduce and replace GHG emissions – globally available
SHAFIULLAH et al 13 All are Academics at the School of Engineering and Technology, Higher
Education Division, Central Queensland University, Australia [G.M. Shafiullah, Amanullah M.T. Oo,
A.B.M. Shawkat Ali, Peter Wolfs, Potential challenges of integrating large-scale wind energy into the
power grid–A review, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 20, April 2013, Pages 306–
321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2012.11.057]
1. Introduction
Current power systems create environmental impacts and are a leading cause of current greenhouse gas
(GHG) or global warming effects due to burning of fossil fuels, especially coal, as carbon dioxide is
emitted into the atmosphere [1] and [2]. According to the report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the
world's total net electricity consumption as well as electricity generation is increasing day by day. The
world electricity generation was 14,781 billion kWh in 2003 and is projected to be 21,699 and 30,116 billion kWh in 2015 and 2030
respectively, an average increase rate of 2.7% annually [3] and [6]. GHG emissions from electricity generation
are approximately 40% of total emissions as most of that industry uses fossil fuels, particularly coal and
oil, hence are a leading contributor to global energy-related CO2 emissions [3]. Australia's abundance of coal
imposes environmental costs in the form of GHGs, including 200 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-e) released from the energy
sector in 2008, more than a third of Australia's total CO2-e emissions [4]. The CO2 emissions around the world are given in Fig. 1[5].
A recent burning issue is to achieve environment-friendly, economical and sustainable power
transmission and distribution systems that are intelligent, reliable and green. Therefore, policy makers, power
system planners, researchers, and power utilities are working together worldwide to reduce GHG emissions
and hence, in 1997, a treaty was formulated called the Kyoto Protocol [6]. The objective of the Kyoto Protocol is to reduce GHG emissions
into the atmosphere to a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system [6]. Renewable energy
(RE), in particular wind energy is the most promising of the RE sources which are free from GHG
emissions, and it has potential to meet the energy demand due to its availability which encourages interest
worldwide. It is one of the fastest growing and cost-effective resources among the different RE sources that
have begun to be used worldwide for sustainable climate-friendly power systems [7] and [8]. Over recent years there have been dramatic
improvements in wind energy technologies, and wind is increasingly becoming an important energy source. Wind energy can be
exploited in many parts of the world, but the determination of wind energy potential depends on the meteorological dimensions of
the wind direction, velocity and solar irradiation [9].
Winds are caused due to the absorption of solar energy on the earth's surface and in the atmosphere, and the rotation of the earth about its axis and
its motion around the Sun. A windmill converts the kinetic energy of moving air into mechanical energy that can be either used directly to run a
machine or to run a generator to produce electricity [10] and [11]. Wind energy plays an active role in developing a climate-
friendly environment and makes the world more livable for humans as well as for all living creatures. Both
large-scale and small-scale energy can be produced from wind turbines for utilities, industries, home owners and remote villages [12].
Since the beginning of the development of the wind power industry in the 1980 s, the rated capacity of wind turbines has increased from some
tens of kW to today's MW turbines. At the same time, the trend has moved from installations including a single or a few wind turbines to
planning of large wind farms ranging from some tens of megawatts to over 100 MW. At the beginning, wind energy was introduced and its use
expanded in some European countries including Germany, Denmark and Spain. However, its energy-efficiency, clean, pollution free and costeffective attributes drew the attention of politicians, industrialists and individuals, and hence wind energy generation has been greatly encouraged
worldwide [9].
Wind energy is the fastest emerging energy technology, and total cumulative installed capacity of wind energy in the world
by 2000 was 17,400 MW, while in 2011 the cumulative installed capacity is 237,669 MW as shown in Fig. 2. Annual
installed wind
capacity in 2000 was only 3,760 MW; with rapid growth, annual installed capacity in 2011 was 40,564
MW. In 2010, the rate of increase of wind energy generation globally was 24.1%, though there had been a
slight decrease in the growth rate than earlier due to the worldwide financial crisis [13]. By the end of 2011, 26.7%
of worldwide wind energy capacity was installed in China, 19.7% in the USA, 12.2% in Germany, 9.3% in Spain and 6.8% in India. Worldwide
wind energy installed capacities from these five countries totaled 74%, and the remaining 26% was installed throughout the rest of the world
including Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. The rise in the Chinese wind sector has constantly
outperformed other countries, and in 2011 they added 18 GW of new wind power, which was half of the total wind power installed
worldwide in 2011 [13]. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the growth rate of wind energy will
increase rapidly and, over the five years to 2016, global wind capacity will rise to 493 GW from the 237 GW available at the
end of 2011 as shown in Fig. 2. While the capacity installed in 2011 was 40.6 GW, the capacity predicted to be installed in 2016 is 59.24 GW;
hence the projected annual growth rates during this period will average 13.65% [13].
Australia has been slow to adopt wind energy to the extent that Europe has; however, in Australia there are several large wind farms that have
been commissioned or are in advanced stages of planning. In particular, after implementation of the national Renewable Energy Target (RET) in
January 2010 with the mandate of generating 20% or 45 TWh of Australia's electricity supply from renewable energy sources by 2020, Australia
has taken a wide range of initiatives to install large-scale wind energy plants around the country. South Australia is the most promising State for
wind energy generation considering wind speed, generation and transportation costs. Northern Queensland has good wind resources, especially
during the winter “south-east trade wind” season [11]. Victoria and the west coast of Tasmania also have wind energy potentialities. In 2010,
Australia's total installed capacity of wind energy was 1880 MW, this being an increase of 167 MW from 2009. Currently there are 52 wind
farms, mostly located in South Australia (907 MW) and Victoria (428 MW). In the last decade, the growth rate of wind energy production was
30% annually on average [13]. State-wise wind energy installed capacity is given in Fig. 3.
Large-scale generation of wind energy reduces the energy crisis and releases the pressure on other
sources. However, there are number of potential challenges that need to be considered when installing large-scale wind energy plants for a
sustainable power system. There are negative environmental impacts due to installation and operation of the wind farms that affect the living
practices of the local population, i.e., visual impacts, noise and death of wildlife due to the presence and operation of the wind turbines. These
effects may be minor but need to be considered as they persist for a long time and directly affect the nearby locality. One of the negative impacts
of wind energy generation is its high costs due to the installation and operation costs. The major costs involved in wind energy generation
are: capital costs including wind turbines, foundations, transportation, road construction and grid connexion; and variable costs
including operation and maintenance, land acquisition, insurance and taxes, management and administration. It is well known that
wind energy is free from GHG emissions; however, there are minor emissions during the manufacturing and future dismantling of wind farms
which create environmental impacts and need to be considered when constructing a wind energy farm. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) process
is widely used to investigate environmental impacts [14], [15], [16] and [17]. The negative impacts on the environment and cost-economic
analysis of wind energy generation are essential to be further studied for a sustainable power system for the future. Research communities are
investigating the environmental impacts from different points of view, and their findings are available for the power utilities and manufacturers to
take into account in their decision making before constructing a wind farm. Researchers have also evaluated the economic cost
of wind energy generation and concluded that the wind energy price is comparable with other energy
sources, and better than other options after considering emission costs. This study further explores the available
research on these areas and makes a concrete conclusion which is available to utilities for further action to develop wind
energy plants for the future.
Integration of wind energy into the grid also creates potential technical challenges that affect power quality (PQ) of the systems due to the
intermittent nature of wind energy. With the increased penetration of renewable energy into the grid, the key technical potential challenges that
affect quality of power include: voltage fluctuation, power system transients and harmonics, reactive power, electromagnetic interference,
switching actions, synchronisation, long transmission lines, low power factor, storage system, load management, and forecasting and scheduling
[18], [19] and [20]. Therefore, there is a prime need today to reduce these potential technical challenges for a successful integration of large-scale
wind energy into the grid, though it is not an easy task. Researchers are working to explore these problems with potential mitigation techniques.
There are many studies available today that elaborate on the problems individually with appropriate alleviation techniques using both simulation
and experimental analysis. However, there is no precise study that explores or reviews all of the problems with their mitigation techniques.
Therefore, this study has presented a comprehensive and useful survey on the technical challenges and their associated alleviation techniques that
researchers, utilities and industries are expected to use for further integration of large-scale wind energy integration into the energy mix.
2. Social Impacts
Wind energy is the most environment-friendly, energy-efficient, cost-efficient and 100% clean energy
resource, and hence wind energy has begun to be used as the panacea for solving global warming. There is an
increasing interest worldwide for the introduction of large-scale wind energy into the energy mix for a sustainable environment-friendly power
system for the future. However, along with the positive impacts, it also has some negative impacts on the environment as well as human life. The
most substantial negative impacts that affect human living culture are visual impacts, noise and killing of wildlife. Among these, visual impacts
and noise are a direct disturbance for the local community, and hence the acceptance/attitude of the nearby community is an important factor.
Another problem is interference of turbine equipment with radar or television that disturbs the signal strength. With time, public attitude
towards wind energy generation is improving while manufacturers are also improving their technologies
to reduce noise levels and improve aesthetic views [14] and [15]. The most common environmental impacts that affect social
life are presented in Fig. 4.
Enough Wind Available
Enough wind to power energy globally - Most comprehensive wind study proves
CHONG & JING 14 a. College of Meteorology and Oceanography, People’s
Liberation Army University of Science & Technology b. National Key Laboratory of
Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
(LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Chong wei
Zhenga & Jing Panb, Assessment of the global ocean wind energy resource, Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews, Volume 33, May 2014, Pages 382–391]
Against a background of an environmental and resources crisis, the ongoing development of clean energy
sources seems increasingly inevitable if we are to deal with climate change and the energy crisis [1] and [2].
Currently, the utilization of solar and on-land wind energy is trending towards industrialization, although both
are restricted by geographical factors. Despite nuclear power generation being an effective energy source, it is also vulnerable to
natural disasters and human error. For example, both the nuclear leakage caused by the tsunami in January 2011 in Japan, and the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster caused by operator errors in 1986, resulted in extremely serious consequences. Offshore wind energy offers
substantial advantages over land-based turbines, including resource storage and greater stability [3], [4], [5] and [6].
Electivity generation by wind power is the principal mode of wind energy resource development, but
wind power also has wide applications within navigation, water pumping, wind-heating, etc. However,
offshore wind power generation can provide the solutions of most practical value and so meet
urgent demands associated with problems such as coastal cities with a high demand for electricity ,
thereby closing the huge energy gap, and can serve remote islands, lighthouses at sea, marine weather
buoys, and other power supply scenarios in marine areas. This largely impeded the economic leap of the coastal
city and rural island, meanwhile this predicament promises offshore wind power with broad prospects. Consequently,
the promise of abundant wind energy has become a particular area of interest for developed countries [7] and [8].
The distribution of wind energy resource shows significant regional and seasonal differences, and in the largescale development of wind power, the basic principle is one of ‘resource evaluation and planning ahead’. Blanco [9] calculated the onshore and
offshore wind energy cost in Europe and pointed out that the local wind resource is by far the most important factor affecting the profitability of
wind energy investments. An on-land wind energy distribution map of the United State was drawn up in 1986 using observations from 1000
weather stations [10]. The Risoe National Laboratory in Denmark collected observational data from 220 stations in 12 European countries, and
then developed an on-land wind-energy distribution map for Europe [11]. Previous researchers have made great contributions
to the assessment of the potential of wind energy, but due to the lack of offshore wind data, most previous studies
have focused on land, coastal, or local sea sites, rather than the global ocean wind-energy resource. In 1994, Gaudiosi [12]
presented the characteristics of offshore wind-energy activity for the Mediterranean and other European seas. Emphasis
was given to wind resource assessment, technical development, applications, economics, and environment. To promote wind energy in Senegal,
Youm et al. [13] analyzed the wind energy potential along its northern coast, using wind data collected over a period of 2 years at five different
locations. With an annual mean wind speed of 3.8 m/s, an annual energy of 158 kWh/m2 could be extracted. Results show that a potential use of
wind energy in these locations is water pumping in rural areas. Karamanis [14] analyzed the wind energy resources on the Ionian–Adriatic coast
of southeast Europe and showed that the mean wind-power densities were less than 200 W/m2 at 10 m height, suggesting the limited suitability of
these sites for the usual wind-energy applications. However, these results indicate that wind power plants, even in lower-resource areas, can be
competitive in terms of the energy payback period and reducing greenhouse emissions. With the rapid development of ocean observation
technology, increasing amounts of satellite wind data have been used to analyze wind-energy resources. In 2008, NASA [15] and Liu et al.
[16] contoured
global wind-power density in JJA (June, July, and August) and DJF (December, January, and February), using
QuikSCAT wind data. They found that the wind power density in the winter hemisphere is significantly higher
than that in the summer hemisphere. During JJA, the regions of highest wind power density are located mainly around the Southern
Hemisphere westerlies (ca. 1000–1400 W/m2) and the waters surrounding Somalia (ca. 1200 W/m2). During DJF, the areas of highest wind
power density are located mainly around the Northern Hemisphere westerlies (ca. 1000–1400 W/m2). Obviously, the wind power around the
Southern Hemisphere westerlies during DJF is less than that during JJA.
However,
until now, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the distribution of the grade (see Table 1)
of global ocean wind energy resources. This study presents a grade classification map of the global ocean wind
energy resource based on CCMP (cross-calibrated, multi-platform) wind field data for the period 1988–2011, and also calculates, for
the first time, the total storage and effective storage of wind energy across the global ocean (on a 0.25°×0.25° grid).
Synthetically considering the wind power density, the distribution of wind energy levels and effective
wind speeds, the stability and long-term trend of wind power density, and wind energy storage, we were able
to analyze and regionalize the global ocean wind energy resource. The aim of this research is to fill the gap in our understanding in this field and
provide guidance for future scientific research and development into wind energy resources such as electricity generation, water pumping, and
wind-heating. We also hope to make a contribution towards alleviating the energy crisis and promoting sustainable development.
Enough wind to power global energy
CHONG & JING 14 a. College of Meteorology and Oceanography, People’s
Liberation Army University of Science & Technology b. National Key Laboratory of
Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
(LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Chong wei
Zhenga & Jing Panb, Assessment of the global ocean wind energy resource, Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews, Volume 33, May 2014, Pages 382–391]
While the
global oceans are rich in wind energy resource, the difficulties associated with electrical power
generation and transmission, including shortages of conventional energy, are increasing. The vigorous development of
wind energy may offer one approach to tackling these problems.
Conclusions
1. The wind power density in the winter hemisphere is significantly larger than that in the summer hemisphere. Large areas of high wind-power
density are concentrated around the Southern Hemisphere westerlies (800–1600 W/m2) and Northern Hemisphere westerlies (600–1000 W/m2),
followed by the coast of Somalia and the waters surrounding Taiwan (>400 W/m2). Wind power density in mid- to low-latitude waters is 200–
400 W/m2, while in most of the equatorial waters it is less than 200 W/m2.
2. A wind power density greater than 50 W/m2 is available in most of the global oceans for more than
80% of the year. Areas where wind power density commonly exceeds 200 W/m2 are located around the Northern and Southern Hemisphere
westerlies, the Northern Hemisphere near 10°N, and around 20°S in the Southern Hemisphere. Areas of persistently low wind-power density
occur around the poles, the central and eastern equatorial Indian Ocean, the western equatorial Pacific, nearshore areas in the eastern equatorial
Pacific, and the eastern equatorial Atlantic.
3. The occurrence of effective wind speed is high across the global ocean, above 60% year-round, except
for some small areas near the equator and some coastal waters. This phenomenon is of benefit for the
development of wind energy resource. Areas of high effective wind speed are found around the Southern Hemisphere westerlies
(>80%), the Northern Hemisphere westerlies (>70%), the Northern Hemisphere near 10°N (ca. 80%), and around 20°S in the Southern
Hemisphere (ca. 80% to 90%).
4. The stability of wind power density in the Southern Ocean is better than that in the Northern Ocean, it is also better in offshore than nearshore
areas, in mid- to low-latitude waters than in high-latitude waters, and on eastern coasts than western coasts. The lowest stability occurs at the
poles, as demonstrated by the distributions of the coefficient of variation, monthly variability index, and seasonal variability index.
5. The total storage of wind energy resources across most of the global oceans is above 2×103 kWh/m2, although it is less near the equator (but
still above 1×103 kWh/m2). Large areas of high storage are found mainly around the Northern and Southern Hemisphere westerlies, and storage
gradually decreases towards low latitudes. The distributions of effective storage and exploitable storage of wind
energy resources are consistent with total storage.
6. An increasing long-term trend in wind energy was found. For the past 24 years, wind power density has followed a
significant increasing trend in most of the global ocean, which should benefit the development of wind energy
resource. Areas with a strong increasing trend are mainly located around the Northern Hemisphere westerlies (>4 W/m2/year) and Southern
Hemisphere westerlies (>8 W/m2/year).
7. In summary, the global ocean is rich in wind energy resource, especially the westerly belts in the Northern and Southern
Hemispheres. Indigent areas are mainly found scattered near the equator and poles, while available and subrich areas are located in low latitudes,
the coastal waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean at mid to low latitudes, and in most of the polar waters.
Wind energy assessment suggests the availability of ocean wind to reduce emissions
CHONG & JING 14 a. College of Meteorology and Oceanography, People’s
Liberation Army University of Science & Technology b. National Key Laboratory of
Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
(LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences [Chong wei
Zhenga & Jing Panb, Assessment of the global ocean wind energy resource, Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews, Volume 33, May 2014, Pages 382–391]
Abstract
Against a background of an environmental and resources crisis, the
exploitation of renewable and clean energy can
effectively alleviate the energy crisis and contribute to emission reduction and environmental protection,
thus promoting sustainable development. This study aims to develop a grade classification map of the global ocean wind energy
resource based on CCMP (cross-calibrated, multi-platform) wind field data for the period 1988–2011. We also calculate, for the first time,
the total storage and effective storage of wind energy across the global ocean on a 0.25°×0.25° grid. An
optimistic increasing long-term trend in wind power density was found. In addition, the global ocean wind
energy resource was analyzed and regionalized by considering the temporal and spatial distributions of
wind power density, wind energy levels, and effective wind speed, as well as through a consideration of wind energy
storage and the stability and long-term trends of wind power density. This research fills a gap in our knowledge in this field,
and provides a reference point for future scientific research and development into wind energy resources
such as wind power generation, water pumping, and wind-heating.
Replaces US need
Works better, fulfills areas of the most need
MUSIAL & BUTTERFIELD 06 National Renewable Energy Laboratory [W. Musial and S.
Butterfield, Energy from Offshore Wind, May 1–4, 2006, http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/39450.pdf]
Offshore wind generated electricity in the United States has the potential to become a major contributor to the
domestic energy supply, on par with onshore wind, because it can compete in highly populated coastal energy
markets where onshore wind energy is generally not available. Preliminary studies performed by the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) estimate the offshore resource to be greater than 1000 GW for the United States [6]. The wind
blows faster and more uniformly at sea than on land. A faster, steadier wind means less wear on the turbine
components and more electricity generated per turbine. The winds increase rapidly with distance from the coast, so excellent wind
sites exist within reasonable distances from major urban load centers reducing the onshore concern of long distance power
transmission. Figure 1 shows that in addition to the proximity to the load, the offshore resource tends to be geographically located
nearest the states that already pay the highest electric utility rates in the United States.1
DOE already Planning
DOE measuring wind now – getting data for quick movement
SHAW 13 American Geophysical Union [W.J. Shaw, The U.S. Department of Energy's
Reference Facility for Offshore Renewable Energy (RFORE): A New Platform for Research and
Development, Fall Meeting 2013, abstract #A11L-08,
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013AGUFM.A11L..08S]
Offshore renewable energy represents a significant but essentially untapped electricity resource for the
U.S. Offshore wind energy is attractive for a number of reasons, including the feasibility of using much larger and
more efficient wind turbines than is possible on land. In many offshore regions near large population centers, the diurnal
maximum in wind energy production is also closely matched to the diurnal maximum in electricity demand, easing
the balancing of generation and load. Currently, however, the cost of offshore wind energy is not competitive with other energy
sources, including terrestrial wind. Two significant contributing reasons for this are the cost of offshore wind resource
assessment and fundamental gaps in knowledge of the behavior of winds and turbulence in the layer of the
atmosphere spanned by the sweep of the turbine rotor. Resource assessment, a necessary step in securing financing for a wind project, is
conventionally carried out on land using meteorological towers erected for a year or more. Comparable towers offshore are an order of magnitude
more expensive to install. New technologies that promise to reduce these costs, such as Doppler lidars mounted on buoys,
are being developed, but these need to be validated in the environment in which they will be used. There
is currently no facility in the U.S. that can carry out such validations offshore. Research needs include evaluation
and improvement of hub-height wind forecasts from regional forecast models in the marine boundary layer, understanding of turbulence
characteristics that affect turbine loads and wind plant efficiency, and development of accurate representations of sea surface roughness and
atmospheric thermodynamic stability on hub height winds. In response to these needs for validation and research, the U.S. Department
of
Energy is developing the Reference Facility for Offshore Renewable Energy (RFORE). The RFORE will feature a
meteorological tower with wind, temperature, humidity, and turbulence sensors at nominally eight levels to a maximum measurement
height of at least 100 m. In addition, remote sensing systems for atmospheric dynamic and thermodynamic profiles, sea state measurements
including wave spectra, and subsurface measurements of current, temperature, and salinity profiles will be measured. Eventually,
measurements from the platform are anticipated to include monitoring of marine and avian life as well as
bats. All data collected at the RFORE will be archived and made available to all interested users. The RFORE
is currently planned to be built on the structure of the Chesapeake Light Tower, approximately 25 km east of Virginia Beach, Virginia. This
development is an active collaboration among U.S. DOE headquarters staff, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). NREL will design, construct, and operate the facility. PNNL will develop the research agenda, including
the data archive. This presentation emphasizes the measurement capabilities of the facility in the context of research applications, user access to
the data through the archive, and plans for user engagement and research management of the facility.
Oceans Advantage
Offshore Helps Oceans
Great for Oceans
Offshore Wind Farms boost the ocean ecosystem – create artificial reefs and marine
protected areas – comprehensive study proves
Climate Consortium Denmark 12 [Offshore Wind Farms Can Benefit the Ecosystem, July 18,
2012, http://www.stateofgreen.com/en/Newsroom/Offshore-Wind-Farms-%E2%80%93-in-harmonywith-fish]
The construction of offshore wind farms is rapidly expanding across Europe as a consequence of the increasing
demand for renewable energy, but how does it affect life in the sea?
Denmark has constructed several offshore wind farms to address and meet this demand. In order to investigate what effects
wind farms have on fish life, a study program was established in 2009 by means of a collaboration between
Orbicon and DTU Aqua.
Read more about Orbicon and DTU on www.stateofgreen.com
The study program concluded that offshore wind farms have a positive effect on local ecosystems, and
that they are beneficial for fish communities because they create new ecological niches and exclude
commercial fishing from the area by them becoming marine protected areas (MPAs).
Read about offshore wind farms in the future on the Danish Energy Agency webpage
One of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms
In Denmark there are 12 completed offshore wind farms, including one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms - Horns
Rev 1. Horns Rev 1 is located in the North Sea, 14-20 km off the western cost of Denmark at Blaavands Huk, and comprises 80 windmills built to
a depth of 20 meters. The Horns Rev 1 project was completed in 2002, and the study program was carried out in 2009 by Orbicon and DTU.
The study showed that offshore wind farms have a positive effect on the fish community structure and
many species of fish. The analysis also shows that offshore wind farms may increase the number and
diversity of fish in the North Sea by creating new habitats.
Stone constructions - Artificial reefs
The study program undertook an analysis of changes in the fish community structure, spatial distribution and changes in sand eel assemblages,
resulting from the establishment of the wind farm. The stone constructions function as artificial reefs, which provide
good opportunities for the fish to thrive. Additionally, the reef attracts fish which would normally live near
the sea bed.
The positive effects of the stone foundations at Horns Rev 1 show that the fish population has increased. The effects of
projecting more wind farms in the area of Horns Rev 1 may increase the recruitment of reef habitat fish.
OSW “re-wilds” the oceans by protecting species
CHILDS 13 head of science, policy and research at environmental organisation
Friends of the Earth [Mike Childs, On Reflection: How offshore wind can help marine wildlife,
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1222618/reflection-offshore-wind-help-marine-wildlife]
WORLDWIDE: Developers
of marine renewables can help "rewild" our seas through intelligent siting and
working with ecologists. The offshore wind sector should make increasing biodiversity part of its strategy
to mitigate impacts on wildlife.
Environmental polemicist George Monbiot has called for a mass culling of sheep in the uplands of Britain to allow nature to return. "Rewilding"
he calls it in his latest book, Feral. Monbiot wants to see the return of wolves and beavers, and maybe even hippos and elephants.
But what about our marine environment? Much of this is now devoid of wildlife too, due to the activities of the
fishing industry over the past 100 years. We should be aiming to rewild the seas around the UK as well. This is
not a call to hold back the development of marine renewable energy. Quite the reverse , it is a call
to embrace offshore wind, wave and tidal power. To develop it in a way that facilitates the return of biodiversity.
Let's be absolutely clear, we
must develop marine renewable energy. The latest report by leading climate-change scientists says
significant and rapid cuts in carbon pollution our oceans will become more acidic, posing
"potentially serious threats to the health of the world's oceans ecosystems". Without deep cuts in carbon pollution we
that without
will see much more extreme weather across the globe, with the dreadful scenes we recently witnessed in the Philippines repeated more
frequently. Yes, we need energy efficiency, solar power and onshore wind. But we cannot make the necessary
emissions reductions in the UK without the large-scale deployment of offshore renewable energy.
But is it really possible to develop marine renewables and help nature? I chaired a session at RenewablesUK's recent annual conference that
addressed this question. Emma Sheehan from the Plymouth University Marine Institute presented findings from the Marine
Renewables, Biodiversity and Fisheries report produced for Friends of the Earth. The report summarises research
into marine renewables and marine biodiversity. It concluded that, when done well, marine renewables could indeed
help wildlife. It also found that offshore wind farms can significantly help populations of commercial fish
species.
Angela de Burgh, a consultant at Marine Ecological Surveys, told us of soon-to-be-published research on the 300MW Thanet offshore wind farm
off the Kent coast. Prior to its construction, the company's survey found that much of the sea floor was degraded due to trawling. But some
colonies of ross worm that had escaped the damage. Through its burrowing activities this worm creates a reef structure that other sea creatures
colonise. By using this survey information the firm could locate the turbines in such a way that no further damage to this important reef-forming
species was caused. Because of the wind farm there has been a reduction in damaging trawling activities. The ross
worm is now flourishing and marine wildlife such as the pink shrimp, hermit crab and anemone are returning. This
action.
is rewilding in
Stops Trawling
Stops trawling, creates marine protected areas & artificial reefs
ATTRILL 12 Director, Plymouth University Marine Institute [Martin Attrill, Marine
Renewable Energy: necessary for safeguarding the marine environment?. November 2012,
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/marine_renewable_energy.pdf]
Also it has to be recognised that benefits
may accrue from adding physical structure to the environment in some
it provides a new, albeit artificial, reef habitat for organisms to settle on (such as filter feeders). Such
structure tends to attract and concentrate fish. Monitoring of the Horns Rev wind farm demonstrated a 60-fold increase in
locations, as
available food biomass for fishxxxviii, whilst Reubens et al.xxxix found large aggregations of pouting and cod within a Belgian wind farm, a
result confirmed by Lindeboom et al.xl in Dutch waters, who also recorded higher numbers of porpoise clicks within the wind farm and the
varied responses of bird species. Higher benthic biomasses were recorded on turbines off Sweden , but with lower
diversity compared with control reef structuresxli, explained by the lack of complexity on the monopiles. Fish
abundance was greater
in the vicinity of the turbines than surrounding areas, however, with similar diversity levels xlii. Langhamer and Wilhel mssonxliii
demonstrated that populations of edible crab could be boosted within foundations for wave energy devices by enhanced engineering adding holes
to the design. Provision of physical structure therefore results in increased benthic and fish biomass, though
whether this is a concentration effect of fish or is a true boost to local populations is as yet unsure, in parallel with other artificial reef structures.
Another impact of introducing extensive new hard structures across parts of the seabed is to reduce the level of
current destructive fishing activity within the area xliv, particularly restricting the use of towed fishing
gear. Although this may have socio-economic impacts, particularly if coupled with displacement of fishermen from Marine Protected Areas,
this may be offset through the use of static gear and increases in populations of commercial fish and shellfish. In addition, there is also much
scope for looking at co-locating aquaculture, algal biomass production, etc. within a wind farm to maximise use of the marine space.
MRE areas could function as de facto Marine Protected Areas, as long as they were additional to, not instead of, MPAs
designated specifically to preserve biodiversity. As Wilson and Elliottxlv state, such
potential to protect or enhance biodiversity
raises important issues for marine nature conservation managers and, if marine spatial planning is done carefully, the
environment can benefit from offshore renewable energy developments xlvi.
Stops trawling
RICHARDSON 12 Clean Technica Staff [Jake Richardson, Offshore Wind Benefits Sea Life,
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/12/10/offshore-wind-benefits-sea-life/]
Sometimes there’s mention in the press that wind farms harm wildlife. Typically, though these articles reference the damage done to bird and bats
on land. What seems to get less mention in mass media is the potential benefit for sea creatures provided by offshore wind farms.
A research study conducted by the Marine Institute at Plymouth University found that offshore wind farms
can provide benefits to fish, namely because they can function as shelters (since sea bottom trawling is not allowed
inside wind farms). It seems a little ironic that one human-made technology can protect fish from the very invasive
and destructive practice of using technology for sea-bottom trawling.
Key to combat trawling
CASEY 10 EWEA Staff Writer, Citing International and Swedish funded studies
[Zoë Casey, Offshore wind farms protect fish from trawlers, study finds,
http://www.ewea.org/blog/2010/07/offshore-wind-farms-protect-fish-from-trawlers-study-finds/]
As the stories previously reported on this blog will tell you, the world is beginning to make changes towards a low carbon economy, and, the
potential of offshore wind power in driving this change in the energy sector is now being realised.
Offshore wind, key in fighting climate change, does have an impact on marine environments – something which researchers and offshore wind
developers are aware of and are developing their knowledge.
A new study, ‘Greening Blue Energy’, published by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and
written in collaboration with E.ON and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, discusses
offshore wind farms
and their effects on marine biodiversity.
In the long term, offshore wind farms can be beneficial to the local ecosystems, the study finds. One of the
biggest ways wind farms achieve this is in protecting marine species from trawling – among the most
severe threat to the marine environment.
Environmentalists criticise trawling for its lack of selectivity – sweeping up both desired and non-desired fish of legal and
illegal size. Tons of unwanted fish are discarded each year, dying needlessly.
“Long term trawling exclusion enhances abundance of several
species of fish within the whole wind farm
area and the effects can be considered large,” states the study.
Boulders that are used to protect the foundations of wind turbines can also offer shelter to marine species by acting as a
kind of artificial reef. “It is certain that the wind turbines and scour protections will function as artificial reefs for several species of fish,”
the study says.
Marine Protection Key
Protecting marine areas prevents global extinction
KUNICH 05 Associate Professor of Law, Roger Williams University School of
Law [John Charles, “Losing Nemo: The Mass Extinction Now Threatening the World's Ocean
Hotspots,” Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 30 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 1]
VI. CONCLUSION
Life in the Earth's oceans can no longer be entrusted to a yawningly porous safety net. This tattered safety netthe illusion of protection conjured up by the patchwork combination of international and national laws-is no match for
the real commercial fishing nets that are all too often inescapable and indiscriminate.
In this Article I have shown that the oceans are home to a stunning array of life forms, including species, phyla, and
even an entire kingdom adapted to some of the most extreme conditions on the planet. Marine biodiversity
extends from sunlit, nearby coral reefs to the deepest, most impenetrably dark abyss, and from hyper-heated hydrothermal vents to the most frigid
waters. The amazing spectrum of evolutionary adaptations represented by life in these conditions is without
parallel on land.
But the vastness of the oceans is both their greatest strength and their most acute weakness. It has for many centuries
caused people to think of the oceans as inexhaustible resources and bottomless garbage dumps, immune to anything we do to them. This is
exacerbated by the fact that so large a share of the oceans' expanse is legally international territory, not within the jurisdiction of any nation. As a
global common, the oceans at once seem to belong to everyone and no one. We have treated them accordingly for too long.
Modern technologically sophisticated commercial fishing has inflicted tremendous damage on some
portions of marine biodiversity. We have become much more effective at locating and catching the seafood species we want. Through
the widespread and strategically targeted employment of trawls, dredges, immense nylon nets, and other methods, we have also become
far more effective at catching and killing huge numbers of unwanted species, resulting in appalling losses
from bycatch. The combined effect is [*131] to eviscerate large segments of the once-teeming marine food
web in key regions.
Land-based activities have also caused enormous harm to vital marine habitats such as coral reefs and other parts of the continental shelf.
Pollution run-off from agricultural, silvicultural, mining, industrial, and developmental activities, as well as sedimentation, have profoundly
altered these sensitive ecosystems, with devastating effects on the biodiversity endemic to them.
Marine pollution farther from shore has been another destructive factor. Both deliberate dumping from ships and accidental discharges/leaks have
introduced large amounts of oil, organic waste, and chemicals into the oceans. Noise pollution, and the effects of climate change, add to the
habitat-altering crisis.
As on land, marine biodiversity is most definitely not uniformly distributed throughout the expanse and
depth of the oceans. There are areas of concentrated biodiversity, where a disproportionate number of
species and higher taxa are endemic to a relatively small geographic region. These marine hotspots are epicenters of
biodiversity, with incalculable significance for the planet as a whole. Yet, just as on land, the legal regime does not
explicitly recognize the marine hotspots, and in no way focuses legal protection or conservation resources on what should be high-priority areas.
There is an ongoing crisis in marine biodiversity, amounting to a mass extinction of historic proportions,
and the law has neither prevented nor halted it.
A2 bad for Env’t
Tech for environmental protection
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Although technologically similar to onshore turbines, offshore turbines have some unique features, in addition to generally being larger and
capable of producing more energy. n51 Offshore-turbine structure is driven by the conditions they will face, including water depth, wind and
wave conditions, and seabed geology. n52 In shallow water, the offshore turbine is rooted into the seabed, though engineers are
developing floating turbines for deeper water. n53 An offshore turbine has undersea electrical collection
and transmission cables, along with an offshore substation, though the substation may also be sited onshore. In addition,
offshore wind turbines include undersea corrosion [*1638] protection, and lights and signals to facilitate
the safety of aircraft and ships at sea. n54 The current offshore turbine technology is only commercially feasible in shallow waters
that range from about fifteen to sixty feet deep. n55 However, researchers and companies are exploring new offshore wind technology that will
allow developers to move the turbines into deeper water - up to 2,000 feet deep - making them more likely to be barely visible, or even
imperceptible, from shore. n56
Trawling Bad
Trawling Bad – Oceans
Trawling destroys deep sea ecosystems and leads to species extinction.
Gianna 4 [Matthew, The World Conservation Union Advisor, World Wildlife Fund, 2004]
The development of new fishing technologies and markets for deep-sea fish products have enabled fishing
vessels to begin exploiting these diverse but poorly understood deep sea ecosystems. By far the most widespread
activity affecting the biodiversity of the deep-sea is bottom trawl fishing. A number of surveys and studies have
shown bottom trawl fishing to be highly destructive to the biodiversity associated with deep-sea ecosystems and
concluded that it is likely to pose significant risks to this biodiversity, including species extinction. The
conservation and management of fisheries and the protection of biodiversity within Exclusive Economic Zones
is largely a matter of coastal state responsibility. However, the international community as a whole has a
collective responsibility to ensure the conservation of fish stocks and the protection of biodiversity on the high
seas.
Trawling Bad – Turtles & Reefs IL
Specifically, US trawling undermines critical coral reefs and kills unique sea turtle
Oceana 7 (http://www.oceana.org/north-america/what-we-do/stop-dirty-fishing/about/)
Trawls are large, cone-shaped nets that are towed along the bottom of the ocean, sweeping up just about
anything in their path. Through their actions, they clearcut the sea floor, which destroys ecosystems that may
have taken centuries to form (i.e. coral and rocky reefs, seagrass beds, etc.) and eliminates hiding places that
many marine species depend on for protection. It is estimated that trawlers annually scrape close to 6 million square miles of ocean floor.
Globally, shrimp trawlers catch and throw back between five and 10 pounds of dead marine life for every pound of shrimp landed. In all, shrimp fishing accounts
Annually, in the U.S. South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, shrimping operations
reportedly discard as much as 2.5 billion pounds of fish while drowning thousands of endangered and threatened
sea turtles. Each year as the shrimp fishery season opens off the coast of Texas, hundreds of sea turtles killed by
shrimp trawl nets wash up on south Texas beaches.
for 35 percent of the world's unwanted catch.
Reefs Impact
Coral reefs are critical to human survival.
McMichael 3 (Anthony J, National Centre of Epidemiology and Population Health Director,
http://books.google.com/books?id=tQFYJjDEwhIC&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=coral+reefs+critical+h
uman+survival&source=web&ots=PpvyXNZ_Ve&sig=HuTi0RaOUUfhEhs1_zYoDQhJFz0&hl=en&sa=
X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result#PPP1,M1)
Coral reefs are one of the most threatened global ecosystems and also one of the most vital. They offer
critical support to human survival, especially in developing countries, serving as barriers for coastal
protection; major tourist attractions; and especially as a productive source of food for a large portion of
the population (39, 40). Coral reefs supply a wide variety of valuable fisheries, including both fish and
invertebrate species (41). Some fisheries are harvested for food, others are collected for the curio and
aquarium trades.
Turtles Impact
Sea turtles are keystone species – They perform unique ecosystem services
Sea Turtle Survival League 2k [December 22 Sea Turtle Survival League is a conservation group of marine biologists.]
Why should humans care if sea turtles go extinct? There are two major ecological effects of sea turtle extinction.
1. Sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are one of the very few animals to eat sea grass. Like normal lawn
grass, sea grass needs to be constantly cut short to be healthy and help it grow across the sea floor rather than just
getting longer grass blades. Sea turtles and manatees act as grazing animals that cut the grass short and help
maintain the health of the sea grass beds. Over the past decades, there has been a decline in sea grass beds. This
decline may be linked to the lower numbers of sea turtles. Sea grass beds are important because they provide
breeding and developmental grounds for many species of fish, shellfish and crustaceans. Without sea grass beds,
many marine species humans harvest would be lost, as would the lower levels of the food chain. The reactions
could result in many more marine species being lost and eventually impacting humans. So if sea turtles go
extinct, there would be a serious decline in sea grass beds and a decline in all the other species dependant upon
the grass beds for survival. All parts of an ecosystem are important, if you lose one, the rest will eventually
follow. 2. Beaches and dune systems do not get very many nutrients during the year, so very little vegetation
grows on the dunes and no vegetation grows on the beach itself. This is because sand does not hold nutrients
very well. Sea turtles use beaches and the lower dunes to nest and lay their eggs. Sea turtles lay around 100 eggs
in a nest and lay between 3 and 7 nests during the summer nesting season. Along a 20 mile stretch of beach on
the east coast of Florida sea turtles lay over 150,000 lbs of eggs in the sand. Not every nest will hatch, not every
egg in a nest will hatch, and not all of the hatchlings in a nest will make it out of the nest. All the unhatched
nests, eggs and trapped hatchlings are very good sources of nutrients for the dune vegetation, even the left over
egg shells from hatched eggs provide some nutrients. Dune vegetation is able to grow and become stronger with
the presence of nutrients from turtle eggs. As the dune vegetation grows stronger and healthier, the health of the
entire beach/dune ecosystem becomes better. Stronger vegetation and root systems helps to hold the sand in the
dunes and helps protect the beach from erosion. As the number of turtles declines, fewer eggs are laid in the
beaches, providing less nutrients. If sea turtles went extinct, dune vegetation would lose a major source of
nutrients and would not be as healthy and would not be strong enough to maintain the dunes, resulting in
increased erosion. Once again, all parts of an ecosystem are important, if you lose one, the rest will eventually
follow. Sea turtles are part of two ecosystems, the beach/dune system and the marine system. If sea turtles went
extinct, both the marine and beach/dune ecosystems would be negatively affected. And since humans utilize the
marine ecosystem as a natural resource for food and since humans utilize the beach/dune system for a wide
variety of activities, a negative impact to these ecosystems would negatively affect humans.
Trawling Bad – Corals IL
Trawling in the U.S. is destroying coral on almost every coast
Oceana 7
(http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/reports/NewEnglandTrawlReport_low.p
df)
Deep sea corals are extremely sensitive to destructive fishing practices because of their fragile branches and
extremely slow growth. Fishing gear that disturbs the seafloor can be fatal to these corals, and is especially
harmful to deep coral ecosystems, sponges, and sea whips when conducted on a large scale. In the Northeast
United States and around the world, bottom trawl and dredge fisheries have wreaked havoc wherever they
overlap with deep sea corals [ Figure 1 ]. Bottom trawling is a method of fishing that involves dragging weighted
nets and trawl doors - large, flat metal panels weighing several hundred pounds - across the ocean floor. The fish
are captured in the back of the net which is held open by the two trawl doors several yards apart from each other.
When the trawl doors are dragged along the seafloor, everything in their path is disturbed or damaged if not
completely destroyed. Fragile and slow-growing deep sea corals are extremely sensitive to this physical
disturbance. In addition to the trawl doors, weighted metal balls called bobbins or hard rubber wheels called
rollers are often attached to the foot rope of the net, to plow through any obstacles in their path.64 This heavy
trawl gear will reduce most coral to rubble, with little chance of recovery. The effect of trawling on all seafloor
habitats is homogenization of the physical environment,55 destruction of any attached living coral, and
disturbance of associated fish and marine life. Dragging bottom trawl gear reduces the complexity and upright
structure of the seafloor and limits the possibilities for regrowth. One of the most notorious examples of adverse
impacts of bottom trawling is on the Oculina Banks of Florida, the only known location of extensive reefbuilding by the ivory tree coral, Oculina varicosa, in the world. These reefs were explored by submarine, and
later expeditions documented destruction of the majority of the reefs. Bottom trawl tracks could be seen through
the coral in some cases.50 Trawling for undersized rock shrimp in this area is thought to be responsible for the
destruction of Oculina colonies up to ten feet in diameter50 and the majority of a unique deep sea coral reef
bank. A study of trawl impacts in the Gulf of Alaska found that seven years after a single trawl in a habitat with
deep sea coral, seven of 31 colonies in the area were missing 80-99 percent of their branches. The boulders in the
area, which had provided habitat for coral, had been detached and dragged, removing the fragile coral and
disrupting the delicate ecosystem. All damage was restricted to the path where the trawl net had been dragged.84
When the coral is destroyed, regeneration is often impossible or so slow that it is difficult to measure. Additional
research from the North Pacific found that sea whips can also be broken or uprooted by trawl gear.6
Trawling Bad – Sharks IL
Trawling and longlining threatens to push sharks to extinction.
Oceana 8 [July 2008, http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/Sharks/Predators_as_Prey_FINAL_FINAL.pdf]
Some fisheries directly target sharks as their intended catch, but other fisheries capture sharks incidentally as
“bycatch”, a term used for unintended catch. Unwanted sharks are then thrown overboard, with many of them
left dead or injured. Trawl fisheries are responsible for the largest bycatch numbers in coastal areas, while
longlines capture the majority of sharks as bycatch on the high seas. It is estimated that tens of millions of sharks
are caught as bycatch each year, which is nearly half of the total shark catch worldwide.27 These startling
numbers demonstrate the extreme threat that commercial fisheries pose to the survival of these top predators.
Remarkably, bycatch estimates fail to appear in most fishery statistics, resulting in the continued
mismanagement of shark bycatch
Sharks key to preventing ocean collapse.
Oceana 8 [July 2008, http://www.oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/Sharks/Predators_as_Prey_FINAL_FINAL.pdf]
Sharks have unfortunately fallen victim to the man-hungry stereotype society has created for them. However,
what the world should really fear is a world without sharks. Each year, humans kill more than 100 million sharks
worldwide. This includes the tens of millions of sharks that are caught annually for their fins, which are one of
the world’s most expensive seafood products. As top predators, sharks help to manage healthy ocean
ecosystems. And as the number of large sharks declines, the oceans will suffer unpredictable and devastating
consequences. Sharks help maintain the health of ocean ecosystems, including seagrass beds and coral reefs.
Healthy oceans undoubtedly depend on sharks.
A2 Trawling key to Fish Industry
Trawling has no benefit
VINSON 06 JD Candidate, Georgetown University [Anna, “Deep Sea Bottom Trawling
and the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape: A Test Case for Global Action,” Georgetown International
Environmental Law Review, Winter, 18 Geo. Int'l Envtl. L. Rev. 355]
Though deep sea bottom trawling is one of the most significant threats to the marine environment, it provides very little benefit to the world economy or to global food
security. In 2001, bottom trawling represented only 0.2-0.25% of the fish landed globally. n35 Destructive
fishing practices are often
excused because the fish collected by such methods contribute substantially to the protein supply of
developing countries or subsistence cultures. n36 This exception is inapplicable to deep sea bottom
trawling because the fishery contributes little, if anything, to the third world protein supply. The major
markets for high seas bottom catch are the United States, the European Union, and Japan. n37 In these markets the
high seas catch is a luxury good rather than a necessary protein source.
Nor is the deep sea bottom trawl fishery significant to the global fish industry. In 2001, the value of the deep sea bottom
trawl fishery amounted to, at most, [*362] 0.5% of the value of the global fish catch, n38 or 0.3% of the value of global fish production. n39 Moreover, the practice
is dominated by eleven wealthy countries: Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, and Spain. n40 Those
countries employ very few vessels in deep sea bottom trawling; though roughly 3.1 million fishing vessels operate globally each year, only several hundred operate in
the deep sea trawl fishery. n41 These statistics
show that the deep sea bottom trawl fishery is a limited access fishery
that benefits the global fishing industry only minimally.
Biotech Add-On
Trawling destroys the ocean floors – uniquely key for the biotech industry
PROWS 08 Adviser on oceans and law of the sea – Permananet Mission of Palau to
the UN since 05 – Board of Directors of the Center for International Environmental
AdvocacyJ.D. NYU School of Law [Peter, “A Mouse Can Roar: Small Island States, the United
Nations, and the End of Free-For-All Fishing on the High Seas,” Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy, Winter, 19 COLO. J. INT'L ENVTL. L. & POL'Y 1]
By contrast, the environmental and economic damage bottom trawling causes to deep sea ecosystems is
incalculable. Deep sea coral, sponges, and other organisms have recently shown promise to the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for new drugs and useful products. n85 Over the last twenty-five years,
scientists have sampled only about 250 out of an estimated 15,000 deep sea seamounts and less than 0.1
percent of the abyssal plain. n86 Yet already, dozens of patents have been issued in the United States and
the United Kingdom for products and organisms associated with deep sea hydrothermal vents and at
least half a dozen deep sea compounds are in development for medical use. n87 The biotechnology industry
is, in effect, now in a race against industrial fishing for the deep seas.
Biotech Impact Wall
US pharmaceutical industry is key to saving millions from a bioterror attack
Washington Post 1 (Justin Gillis, “Scientists Race for Vaccines,” November 8, Lexis)
U.S. scientists, spurred into action by the events of Sept. 11, have begun a concerted assault on
bioterrorism, working to produce an array of new medicines that include treatments for smallpox, a safer
smallpox vaccine and a painless anthrax vaccine. At least one major drug company, Pharmacia Corp. of
Peapack, N.J., has offered to let government scientists roam through the confidential libraries of millions
of compounds it has synthesized to look for drugs against bioterror agents. Other companies have
signaled that they will do the same if asked. These are unprecedented offers, since a drug company's
chemical library, painstakingly assembled over decades, is one of its primary assets, to which federal
scientists usually have no access."A lot of people would say we won World War II with the help of a
mighty industrial base," said Michael Friedman, a onetime administrator at the Food and Drug
Administration who was appointed days ago to coordinate the pharmaceutical industry's efforts. "In this
new war against bioterrorism, the mighty industrial power is the pharmaceutical industry."Researchers
say a generation of young scientists never called upon before to defend the nation is working overtime in
a push for rapid progress. At laboratories of the National Institutes of Health, at universities and research
institutes across the land, people are scrambling.But the campaign, for all its urgency, faces hurdles both
scientific and logistical. The kind of research now underway would normally take at least a decade before
products appeared on pharmacy shelves. Scientists are talking about getting at least some new products
out the door within two years, a daunting schedule in medical research. If that happens, it will be with
considerable assistance from the nation's drug companies. They are the only organizations in the country
with the scale to move rapidly to produce pills and vials of medicine that might be needed by the billions.
The companies and their powerful lobby in Washington have been working over the past few weeks to
seize the moment and rehabilitate their reputations, tarnished in recent years by controversy over drug
prices and the lack of access to AIDS drugs among poor countries. The companies have already made
broad commitments to aid the government in the short term, offering free pills with a wholesale value in
excess of $1 billion, as well as other help. The question now is whether that commitment will extend over
the several years it will take to build a national stockpile of next-generation medicines. A good deal of
basic research is already going on at nonprofit institutes that work for the government under contract, and
scientists there say they are newly optimistic about the prospects of commercial help. "The main issue is,
can we get the facilities?" said John Secrist III, vice president for drug discovery and development at
Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, which is looking, under federal grant, for antiviral drugs to
treat smallpox. Given the new mood in the country, he said, "if we come up with a molecule that's going
to be of help, then I have no doubt that we could very rapidly convert that into doses for humans." Many
of the projects that could lead to new drugs and vaccines were underway before Sept. 11, thanks partly to
an extensive commitment NIH made two years ago. Others, like the smallpox project Eli Lilly initiated,
have been started from scratch in recent weeks. Before Sept. 11, NIH had planned to spend $93 million
on next-generation bioterrorism research this budget year. That was nearly double the amount in the prior
year, but now the actual figure is likely to jump by tens of millions. Other parts of the government,
including the Department of Defense, are spending millions as well, often in cooperation with NIH. Much
of the immediate focus is on better defenses for smallpox and anthrax, two bioterror agents theoretically
capable of killing millions. Smallpox was eradicated from the United States in 1949 and from the rest of
the world in 1978. The last remaining stocks of virus are supposedly secure in two repositories in the
United States and Russia. Some terrorist groups are feared to have gotten their hands on virus samples
from Russia, and if that's true, they could set off a worldwide epidemic. Stopping such an outbreak would
require mass vaccinations. The government has a stockpile of old smallpox vaccine, but the supply is
limited. It is, moreover, a primitive product, not substantially different from the vaccine discovered by
English physician Edward Jenner in 1796.
And extinction – agents are easy to acquire and disperse
Matheny 7 – Research associate with the Future of Humanity Institute @ Oxford University [Jason G.
Matheny (PhD candidate in Applied Economics and Master’s in Public Health at Johns Hopkins
University), “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis. Volume 27, Number 5, 2007, pg.
http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15reducingrisk.html]
Of current extinction risks, the most severe may be bioterrorism. The knowledge needed to engineer a
virus is modest compared to that needed to build a nuclear weapon; the necessary equipment and
materials are increasingly accessible and because biological agents are self replicating, a weapon can
have an exponential effect on a population (Warrick, 2006; Williams, 2006).5 Current U.S. biodefense
efforts are funded at $5 billion per year to develop and stockpile new drugs and vaccines, monitor
biological agents and emerging diseases, and strengthen the capacities of local health systems to respond
to pandemics (Lam, Franco, & Shuler, 2006).
Independently, checking the number of casualties is essential to prevent US nuclear
retaliation
Conley 3 [Lt Col Harry W. is chief of the Systems Analysis Branch, Directorate of Requirements,
Headquarters Air Combat Command (ACC), Langley AFB, Virginia. Air & Space Power Journal –
Spring, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/spr03/conley.html]
The number of American casualties suffered due to a WMD attack may well be the most important
variable in determining the nature of the US reprisal. A key question here is how many Americans would
have to be killed to prompt a massive response by the United States. The bombing of marines in Lebanon,
the Oklahoma City bombing, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 each resulted in a casualty count of
roughly the same magnitude (150–300 deaths). Although these events caused anger and a desire for
retaliation among the American public, they prompted no serious call for massive or nuclear retaliation.
The body count from a single biological attack could easily be one or two orders of magnitude
higher than the casualties caused by these events. Using the rule of proportionality as a guide, one could
justifiably debate whether the United States should use massive force in responding to an event that
resulted in only a few thousand deaths. However, what if the casualty count was around 300,000? Such an
unthinkable result from a single CBW incident is not beyond the realm of possibility: “According to the
U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 100 kg of anthrax spores delivered by an efficient
aerosol generator on a large urban target would be between two and six times as lethal as a one megaton
thermo-nuclear bomb.”46 Would the deaths of 300,000 Americans be enough to trigger a nuclear
response? In this case, proportionality does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons. Besides simply the
total number of casualties, the types of casualties- predominantly military versus civilian- will also affect
the nature and scope of the US reprisal action. Military combat entails known risks, and the emotions
resulting from a significant number of military casualties are not likely to be as forceful as they would be
if the attack were against civilians. World War II provides perhaps the best examples for the kind of event
or circumstance that would have to take place to trigger a nuclear response. A CBW event that produced a
shock and death toll roughly equivalent to those arising from the attack on Pearl Harbor might be
sufficient to prompt a nuclear retaliation. President Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki- based upon a calculation that up to one million casualties might be incurred in
an invasion of the Japanese homeland47- is an example of the kind of thought process that would have to
occur prior to a nuclear response to a CBW event. Victor Utgoff suggests that “if nuclear retaliation is
seen at the time to offer the best prospects for suppressing further CB attacks and speeding the defeat of
the aggressor, and if the original attacks had caused severe damage that had outraged American or allied
publics, nuclear retaliation would be more than just a possibility, whatever promises had been made.”48
Causes extinction
Ayson 10 Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at
the Victoria University of Wellington, 2010 (Robert, “After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging
Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to
Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld)
But these two nuclear worlds—a non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear
exchange—are not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some sort of terrorist attack, and
especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange
of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, today’s and
tomorrow’s terrorist groups might assume the place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state
possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war
between the superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and
early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a
considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear
terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist
nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could
plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most
obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be
involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some
possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it
was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from
Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The
correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction
given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion
would be “spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and
collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion,
the materials used and, most important … some indication of where the nuclear material came from.”41
Alternatively, if the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused
to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift
immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France,
and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list
consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues, and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage
would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular,
if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washington’s relations
with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major
powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances
of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of
limited armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in
a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well
apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension
or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might
rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack?
Washington’s early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility of
an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and
confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be
expected to place the country’s armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In
such a tense environment, when careful planning runs up against the friction of reality, it is just possible
that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and
possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might
grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating
response.
Plus, biotech is key to increasing yields and resistance—solves hunger
Reuters 8 [Alister Doyle, Environmental Correspondent, “Biotechnology a key to solving food crisis—
US says”, 6/3/08, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L03566931.htm]
Biotechnology can help solve the world's food crisis with benefits such as flood-resistant rice in
Bangladesh or higher cotton yields in Burkina Faso, a senior U.S. official said at a U.N. food summit on
Tuesday. "Biotechnology is one of the most promising tools for improving the productivity of agriculture
and increasing the incomes of the rural poor," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "We are
convinced of the benefits it offers to developing countries and small farmers," he told a U.S.-led briefing
on the sidelines of the June 3-5 summit seeking ways to combat high food prices when climate change
may aggravate shortages. Some green groups say genetically-engineered crops threaten biodiversity
while many European consumers are wary of eating products dubbed by critics as "Frankenfoods".
Schafer said biotechnology, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), could help produce more
food by raising yields and producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease and pests.
"Genetic engineering offers long-term solutions to some of our major crop production problems," said
Philippine Agriculture Minister Arthur Yap.
The impact is WWIII.
Calvin ’98 (William, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at University of Washington, The
Atlantic Monthly, “The Great Climate Flip-Flop”, January, 281:1, Proquest)
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.
Comparatively worse than nuclear war
Trudell J.D. Candidate 5 [Robert H., Fall, Food Security Emergencies And The Power Of Eminent
Domain: A Domestic Legal Tool To Treat A Global Problem, 33 Syracuse J. Int'l L. & Com. 277, Lexis]
2. But, Is It Really an Emergency? In his study on environmental change and security, J.R. McNeill
dismisses the scenario where environmental degradation destabilizes an area so much that "security
problems and ... resource scarcity may lead to war." 101 McNeill finds such a proposition to be a weak
one, largely because history has shown society is always able to stay ahead of widespread calamity due,
in part, to the slow pace of any major environmental change. 102 This may be so. However, as the events
in Rwanda illustrated, the environment can breakdown quite rapidly - almost before one's eyes - when
food insecurity drives people to overextend their cropland and to use outmoded agricultural practices. 103
Furthermore, as Andre and Platteau documented in their study of Rwandan society, overpopulation and
land scarcity can contribute to a breakdown of society itself. 104 Mr. McNeill's assertion closely
resembles those of many critics of Malthus. 105 The general argument is: whatever issue we face (e.g.,
environmental change or overpopulation), it will be introduced at such a pace that we can face the
problem long before any calamity sets in. 106 This wait-and-see view relies on many factors, not least of
which are a functioning society and innovations in agricultural productivity. But, today, with up to
300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts or wars, and perpetrating terrorist acts, the very fabric of
society is under increasing world-wide pressure. 107 Genocide, anarchy, dictatorships, and war are
endemic throughout Africa; it is a troubled continent whose problems threaten global security and
challenge all of humanity. 108 As [*292] Juan Somavia, secretary general of the World Social Summit,
said: "We've replaced the threat of the nuclear bomb with the threat of a social bomb." 109 Food
insecurity is part of the fuse burning to set that bomb off. It is an emergency and we must put that fuse out
before it is too late.
It’s a moral obligation to ensure access to food – no matter the cost
Watson 77 [Richard, Phil Professor at WashU, “World Hunger and Moral Obligation,” p. 118-119]
Given that the human species has rights as a fictional person on the analogy of corporate rights, it would
seem to be rational to place the right of survival of the species above that of individuals. Unless the
species survives, no individual will survive, and thus an individual’s right to life is subordinate to the
species’ right to survival. If species survival depends on the unequal distribution of food to maintain a
healthy breeding stock, then it is morally right for some people to have plenty while others starve. Only if
there is enough food to nourish everyone well does it follow that food should be shared equally. This
might be true if corporate entities actually do have moral status and moral rights. But obviously, the legal
status of corporate entities as fictional persons does not make them moral equals or superiors of actual
human persons. Legislators might profess astonishment that anyone would think that a corporate person
is a person as people are, let alone a moral person. However, because the legal rights of corporate entities
are based on individual rights, and because corporate entities are treated so much like persons, the
transition is often made. Few theorists today would argue that the state of the human species is a personal
agent. But all this means is that idealism is dead in theory. Unfortunately, its influence lives, so it is
worth giving an argument to show that corporate entities are not real persons. Corporate entities are not
persons as you and I are in the explicit sense that we are self-conscious agents and they are not.
Corporate entities are not agents at all, let alone moral agents. This is a good reason for not treating
corporate entities even as fictional persons. The distinction between people and other things, to
generalize, is that people are self-conscious agents, whereas things are not. The possession of rights
essentially depends on an entity’s being self-conscious, i.e., on its actually being a person. If it is selfconscious, then it has a right to life. Self-consciousness is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for an
entity’s being a moral equal of human beings; moral equality depends on the entity’s also being a
responsible moral agent as most human beings are. A moral agent must have the capacity to be
responsible, i.e., the capacity to choose and to act freely with respect to consequences that the agent does
or can recognize and accept as its own choice and doing. Only a being who knows himself as a person,
and who can effect choices and accept consequences, is a responsible moral agent. On these grounds,
moral equality rests on the actuality of moral agency based on reciprocal rights and responsibilities. One
is responsible to something only if it can be responsible in return. Thus, we have responsibilities to other
people, and they have reciprocal rights. If we care for things, it is because people have interests in them,
not because things in themselves impose responsibilities on us. That is, as stated early in this essay,
morality essentially has to do with relations among people, among persons. It is nonsense to talk of
things that cannot be moral agents as having responsibilities; consequently, it is nonsense to talk of
whatever is not actually a person as having rights. It is deceptive even to talk of legal rights of a
corporate entity. Those rights (and reciprocal responsibilities) actually pertain to individual human beings
who have an interest in the corporate entity. The State or the human species have no rights at all, let
alone rights superior to those of individuals. The basic reason given for preserving a nation or the human
species is that otherwise the milieu of morality would not exist. This is false so far as specific nations are
concerned, but it is true that the existence of individuals depends on the existence of the species.
However, although moral behavior is required of each individual, no principle requires that the realm of
morality itself be preserved. Thus, we are reduced to the position that people’s interest in preserving the
human species is based primarily on the interest of each in individual survival. Having shown above that
the principle of equity is morally superior to the principle of survival, we can conclude again that food
should be shared equally even if this means the extinction of the human race. Is there no way to produce
enough food to nourish everyone well? Besides cutting down to the minimum, people in the West might
quit feeding such nonhuman animals as cats and dogs. However, some people (e.g., Peter Singer) argue
that mere sentience—the capacity to suffer pain—means that an animal is the moral equal of human
beings. I argue that because nonhuman animals are not moral agents, they do not share the rights of selfconscious responsible persons. And considering the profligacy of nature, it is rational to argue that if
nonhuman animals have any rights at all, they include not the right to life, but merely the right to fight for
life. In fact, if people in the West did not feed grain to cattle, sheep, and hogs, a considerable amount of
food would be freed for human consumption. Even then, there might not be enough to nourish everyone.
Let me remark that Stone and Singer attempt to break down the distinction between people on the one
hand, and certain things (corporate entities) and nonhuman animals on the other, out of moral concern.
However,, there is another, profoundly antihumanitarian movement also attempting to break down the
distinction. All over the world, heirs of Gobineau, Goebbels, and Hitler practice genocide and otherwise
treat people as non-human animals and things in the name of the State. I am afraid that the consequences
of treating entities such as corporations and nonhuman animals—that are not moral agents—as persons
with rights will not be that we will treat national parks and chickens the way we treat people, but that we
will have provided support for those who would treat people the way we now treat nonhuman animals and
things. The benefits of modern society depend in no small part on the institution of corporate law. Even if
the majority of these benefits are to the good—of which I am by no means sure—the legal fiction of
corporate personhood still elevates corporate needs above the needs of people. In the present context,
reverence for corporate entities leads to the spurious argument that the present world imbalance of food
and resources is morally justified in the name of the higher rights of sovereign nations, or even of the
human species, the survival of which is said to be more important than the right of any individual to life.
This conclusion is morally absurd. This is not, however, the fault of morality. We should share all food
equally, at least until everyone is well-nourished. Besides food, all the necessities of life should be
shared, at least until everyone is adequately supplied with a humane minimum. The hard conclusion
remains that we should share all food equally even if this means that everyone starves and the human
species becomes extinct. But, of course, the human race would survive even equal sharing, for after
enough people died, the remained could be well-nourished on the food that remained. But this grisly
prospect does not show that anything is wrong with the principle of equity. Instead, it shows that
something is profoundly wrong with the social institutions in which sharing the necessities of life equally
is “impractical” and “irrational.”
Oceans Impacts
Err Aff
Err aff —the consequences are too dire.
Kunich 5—Professor of Law @ Roger Williams University School of Law [John Charles Kunich,
“ARTICLE: Losing Nemo: The Mass Extinction Now Threatening the World's Ocean Hotspots,”
Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 2005, 30 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 1]
On the other hand, there
is an unimaginable cost from failing to preserve the marine hotspots if they contain
numerous species of high value at great risk of extinction. We could cost ourselves and our posterity untold advancements in
medicine, therapies, genetic resources, nutrients, ecosystem services, and other areas, including perhaps a cure to a
global health threat that might not materialize until centuries from now... truly a "grave error" of the first order . [*128]
But if we sit on the sidelines and fail to invest in hotspots preservation, and we "get lucky" (few species, low value, small extinction
risk), our only gain is in the form of saving the money and effort we could have spent on the hotspots. Even if this amounts to several billion
dollars a year, it is a small benefit compared to the incalculably catastrophic losses we could suffer if we guess
wrong in betting on the inaction option.
The Decision Matrix actually under-represents the extent to which the rational decision is to invest in hotspots preservation. Because the Decision
Matrix, in tabular form, devotes equal space to each of the sixteen possible combinations of extreme variable values, it can mislead readers into
thinking that each of the sixteen outcomes is equally probable. This is most emphatically not the case. Some of these results are far more probable
than others. This problem of apparent equality of disparate results is of the same type as a chart that depicts a person's chances of being fatally
injured by a plummeting comet on the way home from work on any given day. There are only two possible results in such a table (survives
another day, or killed by meteor), and they would occupy an equal amount of tabular space on the printed page, but the probability of the former
outcome is, thankfully, much higher than the likelihood of the latter tragic event.
As explained in this Article, it is much more likely that there are numerous, even millions, of unidentified species currently living in the marine
hotspots than that these hotspots are really not centers of profuse biodiversity.
It is also very probable that the extinction threat
in our oceans is real, and significant , given what we know about the horrific effects wrought on coral
reefs and other known marine population centers by overfishing, pollution, sedimentation, and other human-made stressors. n525 Recent
discoveries have revealed very high rates of endemism in small areas such as seamounts, which are extremely
vulnerable to trawl damage. n526 Even in the deep ocean areas, there is evidence that new technologies are making it both a possibility
and a reality to exploit the previously unexploitable biodiversity in these waters via [*129] demersal fishing/trawling, to devastating effect. n527
Only a truly Orwellian brand of doublethink could label as progress the development of fishing methods that do to the benthic habitats what
modern clearcutting has done to so many forests, only on a scale 150 times as severe, but it is this "progress" that has brought mass extinction to
the seas. n528 However, there is also the positive side, in light of the large numbers of marine species and habitat types, including life forms
adapted to extraordinary niches such as hydrothermal vents and the abyss. That is, it would be surprising if there were not highly valuable genetic
resources, natural medicines, potential sources of food, and other boons waiting to be discovered there.
Therefore, the results that are linked to high, rather than low, values of each of the three variables are far more probable than the converse
outcomes. In
terms of probabilities , it is much more likely that either a "first order grave error" or "first order
jackpot" will occur than a "lucky wager" or an "unused insurance" result. In fact, all of the combinations with either two or three
"high" values of the variables are significantly more probable that any of the combinations with two or three "low" variable values. This
means that the tilt in favor of betting on the hotspots is much more pronounced than is apparent from a cursory glance at
the Decision Matrix. The extreme results are far likelier to fall in favor of hotspots preservation than the
opposite.
We will control the impact framing debate—You must focus on preserving
biological hotspots
Kunich 1—Professor of Law @ Roger Williams University School of Law [John Charles Kunich, “ARTICLE: Fiddling Around While
the Hotspots Burn Out,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review Winter, 2001 14 Geo. Int'l Envtl. L. Rev. 179]
Thus, this author has called the hotspots the " womb of the unknown species ." n15 The intention is to draw a parallel
between the phrase "womb of the unknown species" and the well-known "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." Just as the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier contains the remains of unidentified American soldiers who died in various wars, the hotspots and the unidentified species
they harbor are both the womb and, potentially, the tomb for species we cannot call by name. And if the
hotspots are home to millions of unknown species, with potentially immense utilitarian worth for
humankind, it is of the utmost importance that effective conservation measures be implemented to
prevent their degradation and destruction. It makes sense, from an efficiency standpoint, to focus the
effort to preserve biodiversity on the hotspots, at least initially. The number of different species, and the number of individuals
from each species, would be much higher than in most other eco-regions. Given limited conservation resources, both financial
and political, it is prudent and rational to devote these resources to the places where they will do the
greatest good for the greatest number.
Extinction
Oceans are unique—existential risk
Coyne and Hoekstra 7—*professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at University of
Chicago, AND **Hoekstra, John L. Loeb Associate Professor in the Department of Organismic and
Evolutionary Biology @atHarvard,( Jerry Coyne, and Hopi E, 9/24 “The Greatest Dying”)
Aside from the Great Dying, there have been four other mass extinctions, all of which severely pruned life's diversity. Scientists agree that we're now in the midst of a
sixth such episode. This new one, however, is different - and, in many ways, much worse. For, unlike earlier extinctions, this one results from the work of a single
species, Homo sapiens. We
are relentlessly taking over the planet, laying it to waste and eliminating most of our
fellow species. Moreover, we're doing it much faster than the mass extinctions that came before. Every year, up
to 30,000 species disappear due to human activity alone. At this rate, we could lose half of Earth's species in this century. And, unlike with previous
extinctions, there's no hope that biodiversity will ever recover, since the cause of the decimation - us - is here to stay. To
scientists, this is an unparalleled calamity, far more severe than global warming, which is, after all, only one of many threats to biodiversity. Yet global warming gets
far more press. Why? One reason is that, while the increase in temperature is easy to document, the decrease of species is not. Biologists don't know, for example,
exactly how many species exist on Earth. Estimates range widely, from three million to more than 50 million, and that doesn't count microbes, critical (albeit
invisible) components of ecosystems. We're
not certain about the rate of extinction, either; how could we be, since the
vast majority of species have yet to be described? We're even less sure how the loss of some species will affect the ecosystems in which
they're embedded, since the intricate connection between organisms means that the loss of a single species can ramify unpredictably. But we do know some things.
Tropical rainforests are disappearing at a rate of 2 percent per year. Populations of most large fish are down to only 10 percent of what they were in 1950. Many
primates and all the great apes - our closest relatives - are nearly gone from the wild. And we know that extinction and global warming act synergistically.
Extinction exacerbates global warming: By burning rainforests, we're not only polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide (a major greenhouse gas) but destroying
the very plants that can remove this gas from the air. Conversely, global warming increases extinction, both directly (killing corals) and indirectly (destroying the
habitats of Arctic and Antarctic animals). As extinction increases, then, so does global warming, which in turn causes more extinction - and so on, into a downward
spiral of destruction. Why, exactly, should we care? Let's start with the most celebrated case: the rainforests. Their loss will worsen global warming - raising
temperatures, melting icecaps, and flooding coastal cities. And, as the forest habitat shrinks, so begins the inevitable contact between organisms that have not evolved
together, a scenario played out many times, and one that is never good. Dreadful diseases have successfully jumped species boundaries, with humans as prime
recipients. We have gotten aids from apes, sars from civets, and Ebola from fruit bats. Additional worldwide plagues from unknown microbes are a very real
possibility. But it isn't just the destruction of the rainforests that should trouble us. Healthy ecosystems the world over provide hidden services like waste disposal,
nutrient cycling, soil formation, water purification, and oxygen production. Such services are best rendered by ecosystems that are diverse. Yet, through both intention
and accident, humans have introduced exotic species that turn biodiversity into monoculture. Fast-growing zebra mussels, for example, have outcompeted more than
15 species of native mussels in North America's Great Lakes and have damaged harbors and water-treatment plants. Native prairies are becoming dominated by single
species (often genetically homogenous) of corn or wheat. Thanks to these developments, soils will erode and become unproductive - which, along with temperature
change, will diminish agricultural yields. Meanwhile, with increased pollution and runoff, as well as reduced forest cover, ecosystems will no longer be able to purify
In many ways, oceans are the most vulnerable areas of all. As overfishing
eliminates major predators, while polluted and warming waters kill off phytoplankton, the intricate aquatic food web could
collapse from both sides. Fish, on which so many humans depend, will be a fond memory. As phytoplankton vanish, so
does the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. (Half of the oxygen we breathe is made by
phytoplankton, with the rest coming from land plants.) Species extinction is also imperiling coral reefs - a major problem
since these reefs have far more than recreational value: They provide tremendous amounts of food for
human populations and buffer coastlines against erosion.
water; and a shortage of clean water spells disaster.
Sponges Module
rare sponges are at risk – need corals and protection
Chasis 12—Senior attorney @ Natural Resources Defense Council [Sarah Chasis, “Drilling our Atlantic Coast,” Switchboard, Posted
March 28, 2012, pg. http://tinyurl.com/d65zy2o]
In the ocean, animals communicate by sound. The sound impact from seismic surveys can displace
marine mammals , including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, away from nurseries and foraging, mating,
spawning, and migratory corridors. Seismic airgun surveys also have been shown to damage or kill fish and fish
larvae and have been implicated in whale beaching and stranding incidents.
And these surveys will be occurring at and around some of the Atlantic’s most amazing submarine canyons.
(“Ocean Oases” is a short NRDC film about the urgent need to protect the Atlantic Coast’s underwater canyons and seamounts.)
Cut into the Atlantic’s continental shelf is a series of vast undersea canyons, starting just north of Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina and running up past Cape Cod. The canyons dive down thousands of feet over clay and stone cliffs before reaching the deep
ocean bottom. The canyons host an amazing variety and abundance of marine life. Their hard foundations
have allowed deep sea corals, rare sponges , and vivid anemones to grow and a bevy of fish and
shellfish find food and shelter in these complex and dynamic environments. Endangered sperm whales,
beaked whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals feed on congregating schools of squid and small
fish. Commercial and recreational fishermen enjoy fishing the waters around the canyons. The types of coral and sponge
communities in the seamounts and canyons have even yielded scientific and tech nological advances ,
including compounds for cancer treatments, models for artificial synthesis of human bone, and elements for constructing more
durable optic cables. The canyons that would be impacted by seismic surveys in the Mid and South-Atlantic
include Baltimore, Accomac, Washington, and Norfolk.
The oil and gas industry has not been allowed in these areas since drilling exploratory wells near several
of the canyons in the early 1980s; Salazar’s announcement changes this.
Sponges solve antibiotic resistance
Sanders 9 [Laura Sanders, “Sponge’s secret weapon restores antibiotics’ power,” Science News, March
14th, 2009; Vol.175 #6 (p. 16), pg.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/40894/title/Sponge%E2%80%99s_secret_weapon_restores_
antibiotics%E2%80%99_power]
A chemical from an ocean-dwelling sponge can reprogram antibiotic resistant bacteria to make
them vulnerable to medicines again, new evidence suggests.
Ineffective antibiotics become lethal once again for bacteria treated with the sponge compound, chemist
Peter Moeller reported February 13 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
“The potential is outstanding. This could revolutionize our approach to thinking about how infections are treated,”
comments Carolyn Sotka of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Oceans and Human Health
CHICAGO —
Initiative in Charleston, S.C.
Everything living in the ocean survives in a microbial soup, under constant bombardment from bacterial assaults. Researchers led by Moeller, of
Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, found a sponge thriving in the midst of dead organisms. This anomalous life amidst death raised an
obvious question, says Moeller: “How is this thing surviving when everything else is dead?”
Chemical analyses of the sponge’s chemical defense factory pointed to a compound called ageliferin.
Biofilms, communities of bacteria notoriously resistant to antibiotics, dissolved when treated with fragments of the
ageliferin molecule. And new biofilms did not form.
So far, the ageliferin offshoot has, in the lab, successfully resensitized bacteria that cause whooping cough, ear infections,
septicemia and food poisoning. The compound also works on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes horrible infections in wounded soldiers,
and MRSA infections, which wreak havoc in hospitals. “We have yet to find one that doesn’t work,” says Moeller.
The compound is able to reprogram antibiotic-resistant
bacteria that don’t form biofilms. When bacteria are treated with the compound, antibiotics that usually have no
effect are once again lethal. This substance may be the first one that can eliminate bacteria's resistance, Moeller says.
And the results may not just apply to bacteria in communities.
“This resensitization is brand new.”
And the problem of perpetuating a
bacterial-resistance arms race, in which bacteria rapidly develop countermeasures against new
antibiotics, may be avoided entirely with the new compound. “Since the substance is nontoxic to the bacterium, it’s not
throwing up any red flags,” says Moeller.
* Moeller – Chemist at the Hollings Marine Laboratory in Charleston, SC
Resistance risks extinction
Davies 8—Professor of Microbiology and Immunology @ University of British Columbia [Julian
Davies, “Resistance redux. Infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance and the future of mankind,” EMBO
reports 9, S1, S18–S21 (2008), pg.
http://www.nature.com.proxy.library.emory.edu/embor/journal/v9/n1s/full/embor200869.html]
For many years, antibiotic-resistant pathogens have been recognized as one of the main threats to
human survival , as some experts predict a return to the pre-antibiotic era . So far, national efforts to exert strict
control over the use of antibiotics have had limited success and it is not yet possible to achieve worldwide concerted action to reduce the growing
threat of multi-resistant pathogens: there are too many parties involved. Furthermore, the problem has not yet really arrived on
the radar screen of many physicians and clinicians, as antimicrobials still work most of the time —apart from
the occasional news headline that yet another nasty superbug has emerged in the local hospital. Legislating the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic applications and curtailing general public access to them is conceivable, but legislating the medical profession is an entirely different
matter.
In order to meet the growing problem of antibiotic resistance among pathogens, the discovery and development of new
antibiotics and alternative treatments for infectious diseases, together with tools for rapid diagnosis that will ensure
effective and
appropriate use of existing antibiotics, are imperative . How the health services, pharmaceutical industry and
academia
respond in the coming years will determine the future of treating infectious diseases. This
challenge is not to be underestimated : microbes are formidable adversaries and, despite our best efforts,
continue to exact a toll on the human race.
Add Ons
Hurricanes
2ac Hurricanes
OSW decreases hurricane magnitude – best studies confirm
JACOBSON, ARCHER, & KEMPTON 14 a. Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Stanford University b & c. all three are College of
Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware [Mark Z. Jacobson, Cristina L.
Archer, & Willett Kempton, Taming hurricanes with arrays of offshore wind turbines, Nature Climate
Change 4, 195–200 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2120
Hurricanes are causing increasing damage to many coastal regions worldwide1, 2. Offshore wind turbines can
provide substantial clean electricity year-round, but can they also mitigate hurricane damage while avoiding
damage to themselves? This study uses an advanced climate–weather computer model that correctly treats
the energy extraction of wind turbines3, 4 to examine this question. It finds that large turbine arrays (300+
GW installed capacity) may diminish peak near-surface hurricane wind speeds by 25–41 m s−1 (56–92 mph) and
storm surge by 6–79%. Benefits occur whether turbine arrays are placed immediately upstream of a city
or along an expanse of coastline. The reduction in wind speed due to large arrays increases the probability of
survival of even present turbine designs. The net cost of turbine arrays (capital plus operation cost less cost reduction
from electricity generation and from health, climate, and hurricane damage avoidance) is estimated to be less than today’s fossil
fuel electricity generation net cost in these regions and less than the net cost of sea walls used solely to
avoid storm surge damage.
Hurricane damage is increasing with expanding coastal development1 and rising sea levels2. Increasing temperatures may
also increase hurricane intensity, but it is uncertain whether hurricane intensity changes so far have exceeded natural variability5.
Continuing a long-term problem of hurricane damage, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 caused ~$82 billion in damage to three US states6
and 253 fatalities in seven countries. Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, Louisiana. Following Hurricane Sandy,
sea walls were proposed to protect cities from hurricane storm surge. Such walls might cost $10–$29 billion for one city7, protect the
areas only right behind the walls, and limit the access of populations to coastal zones. Large arrays of wind-wave pumps, which bring deep, cool
water to the surface have also been proposed to reduce hurricane intensity8. This technology also serves one purpose.
This study quantitatively tests whether large arrays of wind turbines installed offshore in front of major cities and along
key coastal areas can extract sufficient kinetic energy from hurricane winds to reduce wind speed and storm
surge, thus preventing damage to coastal structures as well as to the offshore turbines themselves. Unlike sea walls, offshore
wind turbines would reduce both wind speed and storm surge and would generate electricity year-round.
The hypothesis is tested here through numerical simulations with GATOR–GCMOM, a global-through-local climate–
weather–air-pollution–ocean
forecast model 3, 4 (Supplementary Information). The model extracts the correct amount of
energy from the wind at different model heights intersecting the turbine rotor3 given the instantaneous model wind speed,
which is affected by turbulence and shear due to the hurricane and turbine itself (Supplementary Section 1.H). Several three-dimensional
computer simulations without and with wind turbines were run for hurricanes Katrina and Isaac (US Gulf Coast) and Sandy (US East Coast;
Methods and Table 1).
Controlling disasters key to save millions of lives
SID-AHMED 05 Managing Editor for Al-Ahali [Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, “The post-earthquake
world”, Issue #724, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/724/op3.htm]
The year 2005 began with a calamity, resulting not from conflicts between people but from an unprecedented natural
disaster that has so far claimed over 155,000 lives, a figure that is expected to rise still more over the coming period. Is this Nature's reaction to
the abuse it is suffering at the hands of the human race, its revenge on us for challenging its laws beyond acceptable limits?
The earthquake that struck deep under the Indian Ocean was the strongest in over a century. What is still more
critical is that what we have witnessed so far is only the beginning of the catastrophe. According to a spokesman from the World Health
organisation, "there is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as
from the tsunamis". The logistics of providing the survivors with clean water, vaccines and medicines are
formidable, and, with many thousands of bodies lying unburied, epidemics spread by waterborne diseases are expected to claim many
thousands of victims. There is also the possibility of seismic activity elsewhere in the world because disturbances in the inner structure of the
earth's crust have occurred and there are no means to foresee how they will unfold. Will they build up into still broader disarray and eventually
move our planet out of its orbit around the sun? Moreover, even if we can avoid the worse possible scenario, how can we contain the earthquake's
effects ecologically, meteorologically, economically and socially?
The contradiction between Man and Nature has reached unprecedented heights, forcing us to re-examine
our understanding of the existing world system. US President George W Bush has announced the creation of an international
alliance between the US, Japan, India, Australia and any other nation wishing to join that will work to help the stricken region overcome the huge
problems it is facing in the wake of the tsunamis. Actually, the implications of the disaster are not only regional but global, not to say cosmic. Is
it possible to mobilise all the inhabitants of our planet to the extent and at the speed necessary to avert
similar disasters in future? How to engender the required state of emergency, that is, a different type of inter-human relations which rise
to the level of the challenge before contradictions between the various sections of the world community make that collective effort unrealisable?
The human species has never been exposed to a natural upheaval of this magnitude within living memory. What
happened in South Asia is the ecological equivalent of 9/11. Ecological problems like global warming and climatic
disturbances in general threaten to make our natural habitat unfit for human life. The extinction of the species has become a
very real possibility, whether by our own hand or as a result of natural disasters of a much greater magnitude than
the Indian Ocean earthquake and the killer waves it spawned. Human civilisation has developed in the hope that Man will be able to
reach welfare and prosperity on earth for everybody. But now things seem to be moving in the opposite direction, exposing planet Earth to the
end of its role as a nurturing place for human life.
Today, human conflicts have become less of a threat than the confrontation between Man and Nature. At least they are less
likely to bring about the end of the human species. The reactions of Nature as a result of its exposure to the onslaughts of human societies have
become more important in determining the fate of the human species than any harm it can inflict on itself.
Until recently, the threat Nature represented was perceived as likely to arise only in the long run, related for
instance to how global warming would affect life on our planet. Such a threat could take decades, even centuries, to reach a critical level. This
perception has changed following the devastating earthquake and tsunamis that hit the coastal regions of South Asia and, less violently,
of East Africa, on 26 December.
This cataclysmic event has underscored the vulnerability of our world before the wrath of Nature and shaken the
sanguine belief that the end of the world is a long way away. Gone are the days when we could comfort ourselves with the
notion that the extinction of the human race will not occur before a long-term future that will only materialise after millions
of years and not affect us directly in any way. We are now forced to live with the possibility of an imminent demise of
humankind.
Replaces Sea Wall Need
OSW is cost effective – supplements sea wall development – makes hurricane
protection better
JACOBSON, ARCHER, & KEMPTON 14 a. Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Stanford University b & c. all three are College of
Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware [Mark Z. Jacobson, Cristina L.
Archer, & Willett Kempton, Taming hurricanes with arrays of offshore wind turbines, Nature Climate
Change 4, 195–200 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2120
The estimated direct cost of offshore wind energy for a large future build such as that proposed here would not be the 19¢ kWh−1 historical
average cost of offshore wind. A better estimate is the ‘best recent project cost’ for better managed projects with
winds such as those off New York, but in a still-immature industry of ~9.4¢ kWh−1 (ref. 11). Costs of integrating
wind onto the grid are minimized when wind and solar, which are complementary in production times, are combined on the
grid, and stored energy in the form of hydroelectricity and hydrogen and vehicle-stored electricity are used to fill in gaps in supply. In addition,
using demand–response management; forecasting wind and solar resources; and using excess wind for district heat or hydrogen production rather
than for curtailing, facilitates matching demand with supply12, 13, 14.
Including hurricane damage avoidance, reduced pollution, health, and climate costs, but not including tax credits or subsidies, gives the net cost
of offshore wind as ~4–8.5¢ kWh−1, which compares with ~10¢ kWh−1 for new fossil fuel generation. The health and climate benefits
significantly reduce wind’s net cost, and hurricane protection adds a smaller benefit (~10% for New Orleans), but at no additional cost. In sum,
large arrays of offshore wind turbines seem to diminish hurricane risk cost-effectively while reducing air
pollution and global warming and providing energy supply at a lower net cost than conventional fuels.
Finally, what are the costs of sea walls versus offshore wind turbine arrays? Turbines pay for themselves from the sale of
electricity they produce and other non-market benefits (Table 2), but sea walls have no other function than to reduce
storm surge (they do not even reduce damaging hurricane wind speeds), so society bears their full cost. Conversely, if wind
turbines are used only for hurricane damage avoidance, an array covering 32 km of linear coastline in
front of New York City would cost ~$210 billion with no payback (Supplementary Information), higher than the cost of
proposed sea walls, $10–29 billion7. Thus, turbines cost much less than sea walls to protect a city, as turbines also
generate electricity year-round, but if turbines were used only for hurricane protection, sea walls would be
less expensive.
Escalation
Hurricanes inevitable – damage control key to prevent escalation
COMFORT 06 Prof @ University of Pittsburgh [Louise K. Comfort, Cities at Risk:
Hurricane Katrina and the Drowning of New Orleans, Urban Affairs Review March 2006 vol. 41 no. 4
501-516]
Silent Threats and Long-Term Policy Planning
The impact of Hurricane Katrina on the City of New Orleans exemplifies¶ a further problem in the process of
sustainable disaster risk reduction.¶ Although the deteriorating condition of the levees was well known, and
computer¶ models had shown that they would fail under the stress of a Category 3 ¶ hurricane, the levees posed a silent threat to the city. The
levee system was¶ taken for granted; no specific group of business people, residents, or policy¶ analysts
focused attention on the serious consequences for the city if the levees¶ failed. The cost of rebuilding was high;
there was no hurricane on the¶ immediate horizon; other issues demanded urgent attention and promised¶ quicker returns.
Given the range of problems that the City of New Orleans¶ was facing in the period from 2001 to late August 2005, the repair of the levee ¶
system fell in the “too hard” pile of problems, with little thought given to the¶ actual cost to the city, region, and nation if it failed. This
inability to recognize¶ the increasing danger from aging infrastructure to U.S. cities represents a¶ major threat
to urban regions across the nation.
Maintenance of engineered infrastructure for metropolitan regions is a¶ long-term policy problem (Lempert, Popper, and Bankes 2003), one that¶
does not fit the annual budget cycles that drive most urban agendas. It is also a¶ complex policy problem, as major engineering projects were
often financed¶ with federal funding, but once built, states and cities were expected to maintain¶ them. In uneven economic cycles and as the
industrial base for the City of¶ New Orleans and state of Louisiana declined in recent decades, infrastructuremaintenance¶ was delayed
repeatedly. Presumably delayed as a budget balancing¶ measure, infrastructure maintenance needs to be redefined as a¶ long-term policy
problem. The extraordinary costs incurred from the failure¶ of the levee system following Hurricane Katrina discredit any form of justification¶
for delaying maintenance for budgetary reasons.
New methods of computational simulation offer a promising alternative¶ for calculating potential risks, their costs and consequences, and
exploring¶ policy options (Comfort, Ko, and Zagorecki 2004; Zagorecki, Ko, and Comfort¶ 2005). Although these methods have long been used
by engineers,¶ extending their application to guide decision making in actual policy problems¶ represents a method of assessing the complexity
of urban environments¶ and developing strategies for long-term policy planning.
Cities as Investments for the Nation
Underlying this inquiry into the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New¶ Orleans is the recognition that cities
play an indispensable role in the economy¶ and society of the nation. Cities represent a major investment
of not just¶ local funds, but also substantial investments by the region, state, and nation.¶ The contribution of the
City of New Orleans in terms of the national transportation ¶ of goods from this port city as well as its distinctive culture and history¶ is
incalculable. Clearly, the startling costs and consequences of the impact of¶ Hurricane Katrina on this vulnerable
city require a different conception of¶ the city in relation to the region and the nation. The hurricanes
will return ; the¶ Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain are continuing constraints; the¶ wetlands in the region could become buffers to
damaging storms and erosion,¶ as they once were. But the vision of the city must change, if it is to become a ¶ sustainable, resilient community
(Comfort 2005).
Hurricanes Impact
Hurricane damage large & growing
DAVLASHERIDZE 12 PhD Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and
Education, Penn State [Meri Davlasheridze, The Effects of Adaptation Measures on Hurricane
Induced Property Losses, http://aese.psu.edu/directory/mzd169/job-market-paper
Hurricanes represent one of the costliest natural catastrophes in the United States. At the beginning of the 20th
century, decadal total number of hurricane fatalities was 8,734 with the corresponding damage cost of
$1.45 billion (in year 2000 dollars) (Sheets and Williams, 2001). The last decade figures show that deaths have decreased by a factor of 35
whereas costs have risen by a factor of 39 (Figures 1 and 2). Over time, hurricane fatalities have become less of a concern, partially attributed to
improved warning and weather forecasting systems in coastal counties (Sadowski and Sutter, 2005). This declining trend in loss of human life,
however, has not been accompanied by a decrease in property damage. Increased intensity and frequency of Atlantic basin
hurricanes is considered to be partially responsible for direct as well as indirect economic losses. Much
property loss has also been inflicted because of increased population, rising standards of living and the consequent accumulation of wealth in
these coastal areas (Pielke, et al., 2008). If recent socio-economic developments persist (rising coastal population and
increase in wealth level) coupled with geophysical trends of hurricane intensities, damage figures will
likely grow astronomically . Pielke et al. (2008) find that the normalized damages of hurricanes provides an
important “warning” message for policy makers: “Potential damage from storms is growing at a rate that may
place severe burdens on society. Avoiding huge losses will require either a change in the rate of population growth in
coastal areas, major improvements in construction standards, or other mitigation actions. Unless such action is taken to
address the growing concentration of people and properties in coastal areas where hurricanes strike,
damage will increase, and by a great deal, as more and wealthier people increasingly inhibit these coastal locations”. An obvious agenda
for researchers and policy makers involves decisions on loss mitigation strategies and plans to lessen these economic impacts. The domain of
potential public and private coping and adaptation options is large. It goes beyond measures designed to mandate and enforce stringent regulatory
policies such as building codes, hazard planning, land zoning and development regulation. Often, these measures are immensely costly and
involve providing public protection via implementing and investing in major retrofitting and/or structural projects such as dams, levees,
acquisition of private property, etc. In addition to these proactive measures, devastating natural disasters elicit post-disaster recovery and
assistance programs primarily aimed to provide immediate relief to impacted communities. Federal government spends millions of
dollars annually to help communities recover from severe disasters. Since 1989 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
has spent more than 13 billion dollars to help communities implement long term hazard mitigation projects. Approximately 76% of total
mitigation grant funding have been allocated for hurricane, storm and flood related disasters. Even more was spent for public assistance projects.
Around 45 billion dollars (in 2005$) was given to impacted communities, since 1999, in the form of immediate assistance to help with disaster
recovery.1 Approximately eighty percent of these funds were given in response to hurricane, flood or severe storm related events (Figures 3 and
4). Furthermore, these figures are higher when accounting for non-disaster governmental transfers, which
are likely to increase substantially after major disasters (Deryugina, 2011).2 These numbers are striking and certainly raise
public concern especially as the frequency and severity of hurricanes are projected to increase in the future.
2ac Cards
Disad Answers
Spending/Econ
Too early to know costs of OSW
KALDELLIS & KAPSALI 13 both work at the Lab of Soft Energy Applications &
Environmental Protection, TEI of Piraeus – Greece [J.K. Kaldellis, M. Kapsali, Shifting
towards offshore wind energy—Recent activity and future development, Energy Policy, Volume 53,
February 2013, Pages 136–148
Concluding, it should be noted that due
to the limited number of offshore wind power projects currently being
installed, accurate statistical trends of associated costs of development and operation, as is the case of onshore
counterparts, are difficult to be extracted yet. Water depth, distance from the shore, foundations, grid
connection issues, infrastructure required and O&M are apparently determinant factors for the total energy cost
during lifetime. Nevertheless, offshore wind energy is still under evolution and requires special R&D efforts
in terms of developing cost-efficient O&M strategies, high reliability, site access solutions, innovative components and
improved and fully integrated “wind turbine-support structure” concepts.
Environment/Species
US regulatory system means OSW development won’t hurt the environment or
species
COPPING et al 14 Pacific Northwest National Laboratory [Andrea Copping1 , Luke
Hanna1, Brie Van Cleve1, Kara Blake1 and Richard M. Anderson2, Environmental Risk Evaluation
System—an Approach to Ranking Risk of Ocean Energy Development on Coastal and Estuarine
Environments, Journal of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation, 10.1007/s12237-014-9816-3]
The US regulatory system and the environmental protections afforded to key species is a genuine hurdle
for any project developer in US waters; similar hurdles are unfolding in other nations as well. The regulatory
power of the Endangered Species Act “no take” provision, especially if combined with the Marine Mammal Protection Act
or the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, ensures that all threatened and endangered turtles, marine mammals, and
migratory birds will rank as the greatest risk from a regulatory perspective, regardless of whether they are
the most vulnerable biological receptors to each specific stressor. European habitat and species directives will similarly drive the siting
and permitting processes for tidal, wave, and offshore wind development.
The development of ocean energy has the potential to supply low carbon energy for electricity to the
national grids of many nations’ energy. Human populations tend to live in relative proximity to the coast
(NOAA 2013); harvesting energy from the oceans simplifies the transmission of power to coastal areas and provides
additional energy security to isolated coastal locations. Responsible deployment of ocean devices requires compliance
with all applicable laws and regulations; at the same time, the regulatory burden should not overwhelm the
beneficial value of providing reliable renewable energy to meet the needs of the nation. By determining
the highest-priority stressors from ocean energy devices that may affect vulnerable receptors in the marine
environment, project proponents, regulators, and stakeholders can engage in the most efficient and
effective siting and permitting pathways. By increasing the number of deployments in estuarine and coastal waters,
the research community will have increased opportunities to gather data and better inform the discussion
of potential effects. ERES can assist with setting priorities for siting and permitting of ocean energy projects and provide a structured
framework for transitioning to more standard risk assessment and risk management actions. That transition must include developing a template
for risk calculation that can be easily incorporated into future ocean energy projects as an informed point of departure for developers and
regulators. The risk calculations can also provide early feedback to developers to improve siting, engineering
design, and operational methods that minimize damage to the marine environment and inform effective
mitigation strategies.
No wildlife impact – planning & better than the alt
SHAFIULLAH et al 13 All are Academics at the School of Engineering and Technology, Higher
Education Division, Central Queensland University, Australia [G.M. Shafiullah, Amanullah M.T. Oo,
A.B.M. Shawkat Ali, Peter Wolfs, Potential challenges of integrating large-scale wind energy into the
power grid–A review, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 20, April 2013, Pages 306–
321, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2012.11.057]
Large-scale wind energy generation plants are harmful to wildlife; however the impacts are smaller
compared to other sources of energy. Sovacool estimated that fossil fuelled power stations killed twenty
times more birds than wind turbines per GWh [39]. The direct impact is the death from collision with the wind
hub and blades as well as during wind plant installation activity. Avoidance, habitat disruption and
displacement cause indirect impacts [40]. Turbines with lower hub heights and shorter rotor diameter cause the blades to spin at
high RPM, and combined with tighter turbine spacing's compared to typical newer wind turbines, have the potential to kill a larger number of
birds [40]. As birds are the largest victim groups, it is an issue of concern to many bird lovers today. However, this
effect is minor as the
local birds can easily cope with and avoid the obstacles [41]. Research shows that birds killed by wind turbines are a
negligible proportion compared to deaths of birds caused by other human activities such as urbanisation [25]. In a study, it was found that number
of birds killed in a year is 20, 1500 and 2000 respectively from wind turbines, hunters and collision with vehicles and electricity transmission
[15]. However, to increase wind energy penetration it is essential to reduce the negative impacts on wildlife
due to wind turbines. It is possible to reduce the impacts on wildlife through proper design and planning
[42]. The newly developed turbines with tubular steel towers that have smooth exteriors (rather than lattice towers) can prevent the nesting of
birds [15]. Vertical shaft turbines are safer and produce twice the energy of prop-style turbine [43]. Avian radars are used in a project
in Texas to detect birds in an area which is on their migration path. If there is any possible risk to passing
birds, the system will immediately stop the wind turbines and start again when the birds cross the wind
farm safely [44]. In order to understand the breeding and feeding behaviours of birds, professional wildlife surveys may be carried out to
identify actions that minimise the risk imposed on the birds [45].
Planning solves environmental impact - Most recent study proves
Bergström et al 14 [Bergström, Lena; Kautsky, Lena; Malm, Torleif; Rosenberg, Rutger; Wahlberg,
Magnus; Åstrand Capetillo, Nastassja; Wilhelmsson, Dan, Effects of offshore wind farms on marine
wildlife—a generalized impact assessment, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 9, Issue 3, article id.
034012 (2014).]
Marine management plans over the world express high expectations to the development of offshore wind
energy. This would obviously contribute to renewable energy production, but potential conflicts with other
usages of the marine landscape, as well as conservation interests, are evident. The present study synthesizes the
current state of understanding on the effects of offshore wind farms on marine wildlife, in order to identify general versus local
conclusions in published studies. The results were translated into a generalized impact assessment for coastal waters in
Sweden, which covers a range of salinity conditions from marine to nearly fresh waters. Hence, the conclusions are potentially
applicable to marine planning situations in various aquatic ecosystems. The assessment considered impact with
respect to temporal and spatial extent of the pressure, effect within each ecosystem component, and level of certainty. Research on the
environmental effects of offshore wind farms has gone through a rapid maturation and learning process, with the bulk of knowledge being
developed within the past ten years. The studies showed a high level of consensus with respect to the construction
phase, indicating that potential impacts on marine life should be carefully considered in marine spatial planning. Potential impacts
during the operational phase were more locally variable, and could be either negative or positive
depending on biological conditions as well as prevailing management goals. There was paucity in studies on
cumulative impacts and long-term effects on the food web, as well as on combined effects with other human activities, such as the fisheries.
These aspects remain key open issues for a sustainable marine spatial planning.
Econ & Energy
Electricity Needs
OSW is uniquely key to solve electricity demand in the United States- it overcomes
issues with transmission costs, intermittency, and load capacity factors all because it
is on the water**
Schroeder 10 [Erica, J.D. from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. And Masters
in Environmental Management from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, “Turning
Offshore Wind On”, California Law Review]
Many of the most compelling benefits of offshore wind are similar to those of onshore wind, though offshore
wind has its own
unique set of benefits. To start, wind power generation can help meet the growing energy demand in the
United States. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the demand for electricity in the United States
will grow to 5.8 billion MWh in 2030, a 39 percent increase from 2005.58 The more that wind power can help to
meet this demand, the more diversified the United States’ energy portfolio will be, and the less
susceptible the nation will be to dependency on foreign fuel sources and to price fluctuations in traditional
fuels.59 In addition, wind power benefits the United States by creating a substantial number of jobs for
building and operating the domestic wind energy facilities.60 In an April 2009 speech at the Trinity Structural Towers
Manufacturing Plant in Iowa, President Obama predicted that if the United States ―fully pursue[s] our potential for wind energy on land and
offshore,‖ wind power could create 250,000 jobs by 2030.61 Once a wind project is built, it involves only minimal
environmental impacts compared to traditional electricity generation. Wind power emits negligible amounts
of traditional air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases.62 Lower emissions of traditional air pollutants means fewer air quality-related illnesses locally and regionally.63
Lower greenhouse gas emissions will help to combat climate change, effects of which will be felt locally and around the
world.64 According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the effects of climate change will include melting snow, ice, and
permafrost; significant effects on terrestrial, marine, and freshwater plant and animal species; forced changes to agricultural and forestry
management; and adverse human health impacts, including increased heat-related mortality and infectious diseases.65 The U.S. Energy
Information Administration estimates that the United States emits 6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, and it expects emissions to
increase to 7.9 billion metric tons by 2030, with 40 percent of emissions coming from the electric power sector.66 Thus, if the United States can
get more of its electricity from wind power, it will contribute less to climate change, and help to mitigate its negative impacts. Furthermore,
wind power does not involve any of the additional environmental costs associated with nuclear power or
fuel extraction for traditional electricity generation, such as coal mining and natural gas extraction.67
Wind power generation also does not require the water necessary to cool traditional coal, gas, and nuclear
generation units.68 Moreover, offshore wind power has certain attributes that give it added benefits compared
to onshore wind. Wind tends to be stronger and more consistent offshore—both benefits when it comes to wind power
generation.69 This is largely due to reduced wind shear and roughness on the open ocean.70 Wind shear and roughness
refer to effects of the landscape surrounding turbines on the quality of wind and thus the amount of electricity produced.71 While long grass,
trees, and buildings will slow wind down significantly, water is generally very smooth and has much less of an effect on
wind speeds.72 In addition, because offshore wind projects face fewer barriers—both natural and manmade—to their
expansion, offshore developers can take advantage of economies of scale and build larger wind farms that
generate more electricity.73 Importantly, offshore wind also could overcome the problems that onshore
wind faces regarding the distance between wind power generation and electricity demand. That is, although
the United States has considerable onshore wind resources in certain areas, mostly in the middle of the country,
they are frequently distant from areas with high electricity demand, mostly on the coasts, resulting in
transmission problems.74 By contrast, offshore resources are near coastal electricity demand centers .75 In fact,
twenty-eight of the contiguous forty-eight states have coastal boundaries, and these same states use 78 percent of
the United States’ electricity.76 Thus, offshore wind power generation can effectively serve major U.S.
demand centers and avoid many of the transmission costs faced by remote onshore generation.77 If shallow water
offshore potential (less than about 100 feet in depth) is met on the nation’s coasts, twenty-six of the twenty-eight
coastal states would have sufficient wind resources to meet at least 20 percent of their electricity needs,
and many states would have enough to meet their total electricity demand .78
Economy
Offshore wind insures massive growth
Sargent, 9/13/12 [Rob Sargent, U.S. Poised to Join the Race on Offshore Wind: Lawmakers Must
Commit to More Pollution-Free Energy”, http://www.environmentamerica.org/news/ame/us-poised-joinrace-offshore-wind]
The Turning Point for Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy includes details on the key milestones each Atlantic Coast state and along with the wind
potential and the economic benefits. Among the highlights of the report: Offshore wind energy will be an economic
powerhouse for America. Harnessing the 52 gigawatts of already-identified available Atlantic offshore wind energy – just 4
percent of the estimated generation potential of this massive resource – could generate $200 billion in economic
activity, create 300,000 jobs, and sustain power for about 14 million homes. (Europe already produces enough energy
from offshore wind right now to power 4 million homes.) America is closer than ever to bringing offshore wind energy
ashore. Efforts are underway in 10 Atlantic Coast states, with over 2,000 square nautical miles of federal waters already designated for wind
energy development off of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. Environmental reviews finding no
significant impacts have been completed, and leases are expected to be issued for some of these areas by the end of the year. Despite this
progress, leadership is urgently needed at both the state and federal level to ensure offshore wind
energy
becomes a reality in America: President Obama
should set a clear national goal for offshore
wind energy
development , and each Atlantic state governor should also a set goal for offshore wind development off their shores. These goals
must be supported by policies that prioritize offshore wind energy and other efforts to secure buyers for this new
source of reliable, clean energy.
Solves dependency – creates jobs
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Many of the most compelling benefits of offshore wind are similar to those of onshore wind, though offshore wind has its own unique set of
benefits. To start, wind power generation can help meet the growing energy demand in the United States. The U.S. Energy
Information Administration predicts that the demand for electricity in the United States will
grow to 5.8 billion MWh in 2030, a 39
percent increase from 2005. n58 The more that wind power can help to meet this demand, the more
diversified the United States' energy portfolio will be, and the less susceptible the nation will be to
dependency on foreign fuel sources and to price fluctuations in traditional fuels. n59 In addition, wind power
[*1639] benefits the United States by creating a substantial number of jobs for building and operating the
domestic wind energy facilities. n60 In an April 2009 speech at the Trinity Structural Towers Manufacturing Plant in Iowa, President
Obama predicted that if the United States "fully pursues our potential for wind energy on land and offshore," wind power could create
250,000 jobs by 2030. n61
Politics
Agencies Don’t Link
DOI avoids the link – won’t hold the president responsible, he can dodge.
MENDELSON 10 Professor of Law – University of Michigan Law School [Nina A.
Mendelson, “Disclosing “Political” Oversight of Agency Decision Making,” Michigan Law Review, Vol.
108, p.1127-1175, http://www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/pdfs/108/7/mendelson.pdf]
Even if presidential supervision of agency decisions is well known to the voting population, holding a
President accountable for particular agency decisions is hard enough, given the infrequency of elections, the number of
issues typically on the agenda at the time of a presidential election, presidencies that only last two terms, and presidential candidates who are
vague about how the administrative state would run. 175 It is all the more difficult if the public does not know what
influence the President may have had or may end up having on particular agency decisions. “To the extent that
presidential supervision of agencies remains hidden from public scrutiny , the President will have greater freedom
to [assist] parochial interests.” 176 Calling for greater disclosure to the electorate is not to say that majoritarian preferences should dictate agency
decision making. Increasing transparency regarding presidential influence on a particular agency decision may or may not make agency decision
making simply a “handmaiden of majoritarianism,” as Bressman suggests. 177 Instead, it could facilitate a public dialogue where citizens are
persuaded that the decision made, though not the first-cut “majoritarian preference,” is still the correct decision for the country. By comparison,
submerging presidential preferences undermines electoral accountability for agency decisions and reduces the chances of a public dialogue on
policy. One might respond that the public already knows that the President appoints agency heads and can
remove them, and that White House offices review significant agency rules before they are issued. And the public knows the
content of the agency’s decision. Shouldn’t that be sufficient to ensure democratic accountability through the electoral process? 178
That level of knowledge might suffice, but only if the public perceives federal agencies as
indistinguishable from the President. Voters are sophisticated enough to know, however, that agencies
represent large and sometimes unresponsive bureaucracies, a view sometimes promoted by Presidents themselves.
Presidents certainly do not consistently foster the view that executive branch agencies are under their
complete control. Instead, they have been known to blame the agencies for unpopular decisions and to
try to distance themselves. 179 Bressman gives the example of the second Bush Administration distancing itself from the IRS, while at
the same time quietly pressuring the agency to revise a proposed rule requiring domestic banks to reveal the identity of all depositors, including
foreign ones. 180 Administrators may also “take the fall” for an unpopular decision that is influenced by the
White House, as EPA Administrator Johnson appeared to do in denying the California greenhouse gas waiver. 181 And as mentioned earlier,
President Obama has selectively taken credit for federal agency actions relating to automotive greenhouse gas
emissions, with his OMB only grudgingly backing an EPA proposed rule in response to political controversy. 182 Similarly, President George W.
Bush distanced himself from an EPA report concluding that global warming was anthropogenic, even though that report had been reviewed by
White House offices prior to its release. In answer to questions from reporters, President Bush commented, “I read the report put out by the
bureaucracy.” 183 More recently, when news reports suggested that the White House was pressing the EPA to “edit” its climate change findings,
the White House spokesman stated that the agency alone “ ‘determines what analysis it wants to make available’ in its documents.” 184 Finally,
take the rash of resignations at the EPA in the mid-1980s, including Administrator Gorsuch and Assistant Administrator Lavelle, arising out of
allegations of serious misconduct and conflicts of interest within the agency. President Reagan succeeded in distancing himself from the agency’s
problems by presenting the agency as acting more or less independently. 185 Despite issuing directives, 186 Presidents certainly have a
significant incentive to keep influence on agency decisions low-key and to maintain “deniability”
with respect to agency actions. This minimizes the risk that influence can be characterized later as improperly motivated, that debate
within the executive branch can fuel litigation over the ultimate decision, or that the President will have a political price to pay for guessing
wrong about what option best serves the public interest. And, of course, keeping a low profile for presidential influence also allows more
successful presidential pressure that is the result of presidential capture. 187 All
this amounts to reduced electoral
accountability for actions taken by administrative agencies. 188
Snowe & Collins Turn
Snowe and Collins turn
Bowes, 11 [Offshore Wind is a Wise Investment http://blog.nwf.org/2011/07/offshore-wind-is-a-wiseinvestment/]
America’s offshore wind resources are immense, and it is time to get serious about bringing this
significant, domestic clean energy source ashore. National Wildlife Federation applauds Senators Carper (D-DE)
and Snowe (R-ME) for their leadership in building a bipartisan coalition of support for offshore wind
energy . Today’s introduction of the Incentivizing Offshore Wind Energy Act, which will provide muchneeded incentives for investments in offshore wind projects, demonstrates a bipartisan commitment to advancing job-producing clean
energy. NWF has joined over 120 organizations in calling on the Obama Administration (Letter to Obama 3.7.11, Loan Guarantee Letter 6.10.11) and Congressional
leaders to take positive steps forward to advance offshore wind development in a manner that is protective of our coastal and marine resources. Providing financial
incentives such as an investment tax credit is a critical way to support this emerging industry that has the potential to create thousands of jobs while helping revitalize
America’s manufacturing and maritime industries. The Incentivizing Offshore Wind Energy Act is an example of exactly the kind of policies we need at this moment
in time. Efforts are also underway in the House of Representatives to promote offshore wind, however two recently introduced bills – the Cutting Federal Red Tape to
Facilitate Renewable Energy Act (H.R. 2170) and the Advancing Offshore Wind Production Act (H.R. 2173) – completely miss the mark (NWF letter – HR 2170 and
2173). The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement has recently taken significant steps to improve the permitting process for offshore
wind, shortening the timeline and reducing costs for developers while still ensuring sufficient environmental review. Unlike the bipartisan bill introduced today in the
Senate, the House bills actually would slow down offshore wind development while failing to address the primary obstacle facing the offshore wind industry.
NWF is pleased to see interest by both Houses of Congress in offshore wind development, but encourages our
Congressional leaders to focus their attention on polices that can generate the critically needed financial investments to truly grow this new industry. NWF
applauds Senators Carper and Snowe , and cosponsors Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Susan Collins (R-ME), Chris Coons (D-DE), Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-RI), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), for their much-needed leadership to advance offshore wind energy.
Key to the agenda
Harris and Fried, 12 [¶ Maine’s Political Warriors: Senators Snowe and Collins, ¶ Congressional
Moderates in a Partisan Era ¶ Douglas B. Harris ¶ Loyola University Maryland ¶ Amy Fried ¶ University of
Maine, http://nepsanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Maines_Political_Warriors.pdf]
Moderates seem to be disappearing in Congress. Once a mainstay in American politics, ideological party outliers such as
conservative ―boll weevil‖ Democrats and ―gypsy moth‖ Rockefeller Republicans are declining in numbers, imperiled by an
increasingly partisan political environment. In general elections, moderate districts and states are most often the opposing party‘s prime targets
for electoral gains and it is in these districts that national vote party swings are most likely to produce partisan electoral turnover. Somewhat ironically, it is often those
officeholders least likely to support a party‘s agenda and exemplify its image who bear the brunt of voters‘ frustrations. At the same time, moderate members must
appease their parties‘ base voters, activists, and donors. An increasing worry, moderates also must fend off potential ideologically-driven primary election challenges
from the ideological base. ¶ Still, recent
parity between the parties and consequent small legislative majorities (the 111th
Congress notwithstanding) have made moderates all the more important on Capitol Hill. They often occupy
pivotal positions as ―majority makers‖ in the legislative process. But even that influence comes with a price as
congressional moderates frequently are confronted with difficult decisions and thrust into the limelight. Given
these competing pressures and vexing problems, maintaining a moderate political career in the current partisan environment is no meager accomplishment. As one
The New England Journal of Political Science 96 ¶ Republican party leadership aide put it, congressional moderates are ―warriors … they come off with a soft
veneer but they are political warriors.‖1 ¶ Two
of the most pivotal
Congress are Maine‘s Senators
Olympia
Snowe and
―
political warriors‖ in the contemporary
Susan
Collins . Maine has a tradition of sending independent types who defy
party leaders and challenge party orthodoxies to the United States Senate. Since the 1950s, Maine has had a strong orientation toward ―bipartisan politics, and the
political moderation it encouraged‖ (Palmer, Taylor and LiBrizzi 1992, 32). Furthermore, Maine‘s political culture is oriented toward civility and cooperation.
Negative advertising and any hint of corruption or dishonesty are quickly criticized in the media and citizen correspondence. With a population that displays strong
civic involvement, politicians who do well exhibit calm, rational discourse and respect for other points of view. Besides prizing a particular style and process, this
political culture incorporates certain policy tendencies: a libertarian streak when it comes to personal lives and a progressive view that government can serve the
public good.2 ―The Maine electorate tends to view itself as independent and pragmatic. They like to believe they reach decisions based on good old Yankee common
sense."3 Maine‘s political culture is moralistic (in Elazar‘s analytical scheme) and thus is ―community oriented,‖ with an orientation toward ―the idea of the state as
a commonwealth and the government as citizen-run‖ (Palmer, Taylor and LiBrizzi 1992, 9).
Preemption no Link
Preemptive action avoids politics
YOUNG 08 Professor of Law, Duke Law School [Ernest A. Young, SYMPOSIUM:
ORDERING STATE-FEDERAL RELATIONS THROUGH FEDERAL PREEMPTION DOCTRINE:
EXECUTIVE PREEMPTION, Special Issue 2008, Northwestern University Law Review, 102 Nw. U.L.
Rev. 869]
A final, minimal requirement would not limit the ability of Congress to delegate preemptive authority to agencies at all, but rather would insist
that the agency actually exercise that authority before preemption can be found. One might think such an obvious requirement would go without
saying. But in Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council, n166 the Court held (unanimously) that the mere delegation of authority to the
President to preempt state trade sanctions signaled that such sanctions were in conflict with federal policy, even though the President had not
actually exercised his preemptive [*900] authority. n167 That result has to be wrong. n168 When an executive official acts to
preempt state law, she is not accountable to the states in the same way as a senator or a representative, but
some level of political accountability remains. Indeed, the likely reason that the President had not acted to preempt
Massachusetts's sanctions on Burma in Crosby is that such an action would have been politically unpopular ,
perhaps especially with Massachusetts's own senators, who were important supporters of the President. That is
simply the political safeguards of federalism at work. To say that the mere delegation of authority to act can have
preemptive effect, without requiring a political decision to act for which the Executive may be held accountable, is to disembowel the notion of
process federalism entirely.
States CP
Theory
States Fiat is a voting issue
Illegit against this aff – the states are restricting – the federal government preempts
– makes it object fiat.
Kills topic based education – there is no literature in defense of uniform state action,
makes development of advantage areas pointless – undermines topic development &
constrains the value of debate.
Perm do the counterplan – states action moots the aff. Avoids the link to all the
disads because the perm includes a plan that does absolutely nothing
Fed Leadership Key
Federal leadership key
NREL 10 [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “Large-Scale Offshore Wind Power in the United
States ASSESSMENT OF OPPORTUNITIES AND BARRIERS September 2010
http://www.nrel.gov/wind/pdfs/40745.pdf]
In the United States, more than 2,000 MW of offshore wind projects are in the permitting process but none have yet been installed. Uncertainty
and
projections of lengthy timelines have motivated states to encourage offshore wind development in
their near-shore waters. By doing this, state governments hope to lock in early manufacturing investments, which would
strategically position them to capture the economic benefits of the future offshore wind build-out. In many instances, state-sponsored projects appear to be moving
ahead of projects under federal agency jurisdiction. Projects
in state waters face a unique set of challenges including a
patchwork of rules and permits, along with gaps in leasing, zoning, and fee structures for using the
seabed. Siting projects in state waters could accelerate the deployment of offshore wind energy, but this must be done carefully to avoid problems related to
regulatory uncertainties, aesthetic issues (arising from the close proximity to the coast),9and other public concerns about uses of the coastal waters (see Section 7). A
positive trend is the coalescence of regional entities directing efforts to assuage public and regulatory concerns and minimize siting conflicts arising from offshore
wind development. Several groups, such as the USOWC, AWEA’s OWWG, the AOWEC, OffshoreWindDC, the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA), and the
GLWC are building stakeholder relationships. Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware have also signed an MOU to collaborate on offshore wind issues. Many
groups have identified a need to coordinate offshore issues among the states, but they will need
federal leadership , technical guidance , and financial resources.
National Modeled
Only a national policy gets modeled, establishes norms for international policies
SHOBE & BURTRAW 12 Prepared for the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy
Research a. University of Virginia b. Resources for the Future [William M. Shobe Dallas
Burtraw, Rethinking Environmental Federalism in a Warming World, CEPS Working Paper: wp12-01,
January 17, 2012]
There are very good reasons why, even in a federalist state, the
national government should be the locus of decision for
establishing policies for GHG reductions for the country. Ultimately, an effective program to mitigate climate change
requires international cooperation, including entering into treaty obligations, a function that is the sole province of national
governments. National-level policy minimizes, within a country, leakages and spillovers that drive subnational
jurisdictions to choose less environmental protection than they would like since the costs are local and the benefits are not.
Uniform national price signals lower the cost of achieving a given level of reductions by expanding the scope of
activities over which costs may be minimized. Finally, national policies may be needed to safeguard nationally agreedupon standards of fairness and protection of minority and individual rights, such as those explicitly mentioned in the
constitutional charter and in international standards for the protection of human rights.
Warming Deficit
Grouped state action doesn’t fix the lack of federal commitment to warming – only
federal preemption works
GLICKSMAN & LEVY 08 Professors of Law at the University of Kansas [Robert
Glicksman and Richard Levy. “A COLLECTIVE ACTION PERSPECTIVE ON CEILING
PREEMPTION BY FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION: THE CASE OF
GLOBALCLIMATE CHANGE.” Northwestern University Law Review. Vol 102 No. 2.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v102/n2/579/LR102n2Glicksman&Levy.pdf]
We also doubt that unilateral state regulation would so undermine the international bargaining position of the United States as to warrant a
congressional decision to adopt express ceiling preemption. The United States is responsible for an estimated twenty to
twenty-five percent of the world’s GHG emissions.204 An effective global solution to the climate change problem
therefore depends on U.S. participation. As long as the United States refuses to unilaterally reduce its GHG emissions,
the federal government can hold out U.S. participation in an international climate change regime as the carrot
to induce other nations to make concessions. Theoretically, the decision by a state or group of states to require reductions before
the EPA does so weakens the impact of the President’s threat of continued noncooperation. But the
“defection” of a
group of states from the united, antiregulatory front presented
unlikely to put a significant dent in the clout that federal negotiators have in dealing
with the environmental policymakers of foreign nations. Many other factors are likely to have a far more substantial impact
state (even a large one such as Califor nia)205 or
by the federal government is
on negotiations.206
Industry Perception
Federal initiated action key to industry support – fear.
GLICKSMAN & LEVY 08 Professors of Law at the University of Kansas [Robert
Glicksman and Richard Levy. “A COLLECTIVE ACTION PERSPECTIVE ON CEILING
PREEMPTION BY FEDERAL ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION: THE CASE OF
GLOBALCLIMATE CHANGE.” Northwestern University Law Review. Vol 102 No. 2.
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawreview/v102/n2/579/LR102n2Glicksman&Levy.pdf]
Perhaps the
strongest argument for ceiling preemption based on the legislative purpose of minimizing regulatory
burdens can be derived from uniformity concerns. Even outside of the motor vehicle context, uniform federal
regulation will reduce the transaction costs for regulated entities. Indeed, it is not unusual for industries facing the
potential application of regulatory standards that differ from state to state to support the adoption of
federal regulation (sometimes even stringent regulation), provided it preempts any state regulations that deviate from the federal
program.288 Some industries that emit GHGs have expressed support for mandatory federal controls precisely
because they fear being subject to a welter of regulatory regimes that differ from state to state in the
absence of preemptive federal regulation.28
A2 States Control the Process
Wouldn’t lead to more wind – just gives the states power
POWELL 12 J.D. Candidate, Boston University School of Law, 2013; B.A.
Environmental Economics, Colgate University, 2007 [Timothy H. Powell, REVISITING
FEDERALISM CONCERNS IN THE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY INDUSTRY IN LIGHT OF
CONTINUED LOCAL OPPOSITION TO THE CAPE WIND PROJECT, Boston University Law
Review, December, 2012, 92 B.U.L. Rev. 2023]
Conclusion
The experience of Cape Wind has demonstrated that the current regulatory scheme for offshore wind energy is flawed. The policy of the federal
government is to promote wind energy, and there is great potential for offshore wind energy development throughout the United States. Yet the
test case for U.S. offshore wind energy, to which the eyes of all potential developers are fixed, remains stuck in regulatory limbo. The federal
government, perhaps overeager in its approval of the Cape Wind project at every turn, has found its decisions challenged aggressively by local
opposition groups and even in one instance overruled by the judiciary.
The proposal presented in this Note acknowledges the reality of the predominately local impact of offshore wind facilities and suggests that the
interests of potential developers and local citizens alike would be better served with permitting power in the hands of the states instead of the
federal government.
There is nothing intrinsic to this proposal that would lead to an increase in offshore
wind development. Indeed, the Cape Wind project itself may very well not be approved if Massachusetts
were to fully control the permitting process. But potential developers would face less uncertainty and fewer
wasted resources with permitting power vested in the states. State legislatures could craft their own policies reflecting their
citizens' interests in pursuing offshore wind energy, allowing for more efficient management of local opposition. Offshore wind energy
developers, in turn, could choose among the states that offer the most favorable environment for development. The result
would be more certainty surrounding the expected costs of development, and thus a more efficient allocation of the nation's
offshore wind energy resources.
States Perm Shields Politics
Perm allows blame shifting to the states
Overby 3 – A. Brooke, Professor of Law, Tulane University School of Law, “Our New Commercial
Law Federalism.” Temple University of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education Temple Law
Review, Summer, 2003 76 Temp. L. Rev. 297 Lexis
We held in New York that Congress cannot compel the States to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. Today we hold that Congress
cannot circumvent that prohibition by conscripting the States' officers directly. The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring
the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a
federal regulatory program. It matters not whether policymaking is involved, and no case-by-case weighing of the burdens or benefits is
necessary; such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty.n65 The concerns articulated in
New York and echoed again in Printz addressed the erosion of the lines of political accountability that could result from federal
commandeering.n66 Federal authority to compel implementation of a national legislative agenda through the
state legislatures or officers would blur or launder the federal provenance of the legislation and shift
political consequences and costs thereof to the state legislators. Left unchecked, Congress could foist
upon the states expensive or unpopular programs yet shield itself from accountability to citizens .
While drawing the line between constitutionally permissible optional implementation and impermissible mandatory implementation does not
erase these concerns with accountability, it does ameliorate them slightly.
A2 Wind Bad Disads
A2 Industrial Wind Action Group
Industrial Wind Action Group biased & sucks
CHECKS & BALANCES 11 [Lisa Linowes and the Disinformation of Industrial Wind Action
Group, AUGUST 12, 2011 1 COMMENT, http://checksandbalancesproject.org/2011/08/12/lisa-linowesand-the-disinformation-of-industrial-wind-action-group/]
Lisa Linowes is the Founder and Executive Director of Industrial Wind Action Group, a group dedicated to “counteract misleading
information” and provide “residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions” about wind energy projects.
However, the organization routinely promotes discredited problems and messengers instead of credible sources.
On their website, the Industrial Wind Action Group
links to articles and information from sources whose work is
unscientific or has been linked to the fossil fuel industry – rather than objective sources that could help residents
and government officials make informed decisions. According to our investigative research, the Industrial Wind Action
Group continues to hype anti-wind rhetoric above reality.
Not Fulfilling The Mission
The Industrial Wind Action Group
states its mission is to “counteract misleading information” and to “provid[e]
residents, as well as government officials, the information to make informed decisions.” Unfortunately, the sources routinely
cited on www.windaction.org spread misleading information and promote fossil fuel talking points through
purportedly neutral third party sources.
A2 Intermittency
No intermittency issues with offshore
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Moreover, offshore wind power has certain attributes that give it added benefits compared to onshore wind. Wind
tends to be stronger
and more [*1640] consistent offshore - both benefits when it comes to wind power generation. n69 This is largely due to
reduced wind shear and roughness on the open ocean. n70 Wind shear and roughness refer to effects of the landscape surrounding
turbines on the quality of wind and thus the amount of electricity produced. n71 While long grass, trees, and buildings will slow wind down
significantly, water is generally very smooth and has much less of an effect on wind speeds. n72 In addition, because offshore wind projects face
fewer barriers - both natural and manmade - to their expansion, offshore developers can take advantage of economies of
scale and build larger wind farms that generate more electricity. n73
A2 transmission
No transmission issues
SCHROEDER 10 J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. M.E.M., Yale
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 [Erica Schroeder,
COMMENT: Turning Offshore Wind On, October, 2010, California Law Review, 98 Calif. L. Rev. 1631]
Importantly, offshore
wind also could overcome the problems that onshore wind faces regarding the distance
between wind power generation and electricity demand. That is, although the United States has considerable onshore wind resources
in certain areas, mostly in the middle of the country, they are frequently distant from areas with high electricity demand, mostly on the coasts,
resulting in transmission problems. n74 By contrast, offshore resources are near coastal electricity demand centers. n75 In
fact, twenty-eight
of the contiguous forty-eight states have coastal boundaries, and these same states use 78 percent of
offshore wind power generation can effectively serve major U.S. demand centers
and avoid many of the transmission costs faced by remote onshore generation. n77 If shallow water offshore potential (less than
the United States' electricity. n76 Thus,
about 100 feet in depth) is met on the nation's coasts, twenty-six of the twenty-eight coastal states would have sufficient wind resources to meet at
least 20 percent of their electricity needs, and many states would have enough to meet their total electricity demand. n78
A2 Needs more $$
Solving regulatory hurdles makes financing easier
ROEK 11 Partner at Lindquist & Vennum, PLLP, Minneapolis [Offshore Wind Energy
in the United States: A Legal and Policy Patchwork. By: Roek, Katherine A., Natural Resources &
Environment, 08823812, Spring2011, Vol. 25, Issue 4]
The Future
Even though development of the U.S. offshore wind industry is still in its infancy, a tremendous amount of information is being generated by the
federal government, state agencies, and nongovernmental industry participants. This "study" period may be expected to take several more years
as viable project models are worked out. Nevertheless, it is already clear that the development process is overly complicated and fragmented,
particularly at th state level, where piecemeal litigation over multiple permits or approvals can be used by opponents as a delaying tactic. State
permitting processes could be expedited through "one-stop" permitting approvals that accommodate the views of all stakeholders, including local
communities, in a manner similar to the "Wind Energy Siting Reform Act" currently before the Massachusetts legislature. (Senate Bill 2260).
In addition to regulatory complexity and uncertainty, pricing is a significant obstacle to development of the U.S.
offshore wind industry, as it is to renewables generally. So long as conventional fossil-fuelled electricity is priced as it is currently and
energy markets remain largely unguided by national or state carbon and energy regulation, offshore wind projects will remain dependent on the
uncertainties of production tax credits, federal grants, state renewable portfolio standards, and other variables. While ideally, a national energy
policy would replace the current "carrot and stick" patchwork of state and federal incentives, the political reality is that no such policy is on the
near-term horizon. Offshore wind development will remain subject to significant local, regional, and state variations.
Project developers need long-term legal certainty to secure debt and equity financing. Power purchase agreements
or other financing
mechanisms depend, in the last analysis, on a precisely defined and stable regulatory regime at
seems likely to emerge from the current confusion will be a
state-by-state or regional mosaic of project regulations and incentives, overlain by a uniform federal regulatory regime. Siting will
every step of project development and operation. What
be driven by state comprehensive "ocean zoning" (or the Great Lakes equivalent) and unified state permitting procedures, with federal decision
making conformed through the CZMA. Leasing and other actions on the OCS will acquire regulatory clarity as BOE gains experience with
offshore wind. Environmental reviews, on the other hand, will remain driven procedurally by NEPA (and state equivalents) and substantively
under the Clean Water Act and the various federal wildlife and species protections under, e.g., the Marine Mammals Act or the Endangered
Species Act.
A2 Birds DA
No Birds link – displaces, doesn’t cause collisions
ATTRILL 12 Director, Plymouth University Marine Institute [Martin Attrill, Marine
Renewable Energy: necessary for safeguarding the marine environment?. November 2012,
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefing_notes/marine_renewable_energy.pdf]
Collision and displacement
The potential of organisms to collide with MRE devices, in particular wind turbines, probably has the highest
profile with the public and media of all the environmental issues associated with MRE, beyond aesthetics. Certainly birds and bats
are killed by onshore turbines where evidence is most detailed, and can include important conservation species such as raptors. The
American Bird Conservatory estimates up to 40,000 birds are killed each year in the US by wind turbines, although it is important to put this
mortality in context. Erickson et alxiii analysed unnatural bird mortality in the US, reporting that 4.5 million birds are killed by flying into
communication towers, 100 million by domestic cats and approximately 500 million from flying into buildings. Nevertheless, poor location of a
wind turbine can have an impact on the population of certain species, particularly large birds of prey of conservation value such as eagles and
vultures, which is why choosing the correct locations is important.
Offshore there is less evidence of significant levels of bird collisions, although collecting data is more difficult. Many
species fly low over the water and so would not encounter blades of large turbines; whilst certain species such as
large gulls may be more vulnerable, but data are lacking. There is some evidence that some species avoid wind
turbines, or even whole wind farms, but also that some species may be attracted. For example, Marsden et al.xiv
demonstrated that 200,000 migrating eider ducks changed course to avoid the Nysted wind farm between Denmark and Sweden, adding a
“trivial” 500 m to a 1400 km migration. However, such avoidance appears to be species specific, with some species showing no
change in abundance following wind farm construction, whilst others such as swans and some geese are displaced xv. Lindeboom et alxvi found
similar varied results in a Dutch wind farm, with bird numbers decreasing (e.g. pelagic seabirds), static or increasing (e.g. gulls and terns) within
the farm depending on species.
Overall, in general the main issue associated with birds and offshore wind farms appears to be one of
displacement rather than collision impacts at a scale that significantly affects populations, although evidence for this is sparse and a
poorly-located wind farm near colonies of species with low populations and slow breeding rates could potentially have negative impacts at a
population scale. The consequences of displacement is as yet poorly understood and needs further research ,
although over 10 years of monitoring from some European wind farms has not evidenced any major impact.