Notes
Inherency Frontline
International bans only apply to commercial iron fertilization, research projects still allowed and the
ban is described as a policy role model by the same author in the same article Stallmann ’13 (Martin, Umwelt Bundesamt Press Staff, “Geo-Engineering: Commercial fertilization of
oceans finally banned,” 30.12.2013, http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en/press/pressinformation/geoengineering-commercial-fertilization-of-oceans)
The lengthy international negotiations were triggered by a Planktos corporation proposal submitted in
2007 to carry out commercial fertilization activities off the Galapagos Islands to curb climate change,
even though the effectiveness of such interventions has not been proven. The Contracting Parties to the
London Protocol had agreed until 2010 upon non-binding control mechanisms. Then, in 2012, another
highly controversial fertilization project was carried out off the west coast of Canada. However, previous
agreements were completely ignored, thus constituting a major reason for the Contracting Parties to
agree on binding regulations. UBA's Vice-President Thomas Holzmann remarked, "The international ban
on commercial climate and geoengineering activities and the effective monitoring of research projects
are exactly what is needed. We simply know too little about their effects on man and the environment.
For the sake of precaution we should only allow experiments with our planet to be carried out under
strict control, for research purposes and in small steps. The new regulations of the London Protocol take
account of this and thus serve as a role model for international environmental law in general." One
significant amendment to the regulations is that ocean fertilization as well as other marine
geoengineering measures will become easier to monitor in future. The regulations also establish criteria
which must be applied when reviewing the environmental impact of activities. Lastly, the first-ever
binding criteria were defined by which to distinguish research from commercial activities. "These criteria
can also help to reduce the negative effects of dubious scientific activity on the environment in other
areas of resource protection – for example, whale catching by Japan for supposedly scientific purposes,"
said Thomas Holzmann.
Warming Frontline
CFC’S responsible for global warming, not CO2-disregard iron fertilization because
they focus on CO2
Bastasch 13 (Michael Bastach, quoting studies “REPORT: CO2 IS NOT RESPOSNIBLE FOR GLOBAL
WARMING” May 30, 2013 http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/30/report-co2-not-responsible-for-globalwarming/2/”, HG)
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — not carbon emissions — are the real culprit behind global warming,
claims a new study out of the University of Waterloo.¶ “Conventional thinking says that the emission of
human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we
have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional
understanding is wrong,” said Qing-Bin Lu, a science professor at the University of Waterloo and author
of the study.¶ “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar
ozone hole and global warming,” Lu said.¶ Ads by Google¶ Ads by CouponDropDown ¶ Lu’s findings
were published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B and analyzed data from 1850 to the
present.¶ Lu’s study runs counter to the long-standing argument that carbon dioxide emissions were the
driving force behind global warming. Recently scientists warned that carbon concentrations were
nearing the 400 parts per million level. Scientists say that carbon dioxide levels must be lowered to 350
ppm to avoid the severe impacts of global warming.¶ “The 400-ppm threshold is a sobering milestone
and should serve as a wake-up call for all of us to support clean-energy technology and reduce emissions
of greenhouse gases before it’s too late for our children and grandchildren,” said Tim Lueker, an
oceanographer and carbon cycle researcher who is a member of the Scripps CO2 Group.¶ Lu notes that
data from 1850 to 1970 show carbon emissions increasing due to the Industrial Revolution. However,
global temperatures stayed constant.¶ “The conventional warming model of CO2, suggests the
temperatures should have risen by 0.6°C over the same period, similar to the period of 1970-2002,”
reads the study’s press release.¶ Ads by Google¶ CFCs “are nontoxic, nonflammable chemicals
containing atoms of carbon, chlorine, and fluorine” that are used to make “aerosol sprays, blowing
agents for foams and packing materials, as solvents, and as refrigerants” according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Montreal Protocol phased out the production of CFCs as
they were believed to be linked to ozone depletion. According to the National Institutes of Health, CFCs
are considered a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, because they absorb heat in the atmosphere and
send some of it back to the earth’s surface, which contributes to global warming.¶ “From the University
of Waterloo, an extraordinary claim,’ writes global warming blogger Anthony Watt. “While plausible,
due to the fact that CFC’s have very high [Global Warming Potential] numbers, their atmospheric
concentrations compared to CO2 are quite low, and the radiative forcings they add are small by
comparison to CO2.”¶ “This may be nothing more than coincidental correlation,” Watt added. “But, I
have to admit, the graph is visually compelling. But to determine if his proposed cosmic-ray-driven
electron-reaction mechanism is valid, I’d say it is a case of ‘further study is needed’, and worth funding.”
¶ When Barack Obama promised to slow the earth’s rising sea levels and heal the planet during the 2008
campaign, he probably had no idea that curbing carbon dioxide emissions might not lower the sea
levels.¶ A study published in the Journal of Geodesy found that the sea level has only risen by 1.7
millimeters per year over the last 110 years — about 6.7 inches per century — all while carbon dioxide
concentrations in the air have risen by a third, suggesting that rising carbon concentrations have not
impacted the rate at which sea levels are rising.¶ The study used data from the Gravity Recovery And
Climate Experiment satellite mission and analyzed “continental mass variations on a global scale,
including both land-ice and land-water contributions, for 19 continental areas that exhibited significant
signals” over a nine-year period from 2002 to 2011.¶ The results echoed a study conducted last year,
which also found that sea level has been rising on average by 1.7 mm/year over the last 110 years. This
was also suggested by two other studies conducted in the last decade.¶ “The latest results show once
again that sea levels are not accelerating after all, and are merely continuing their modest rise at an
unchanged rate,” said Pierre Gosselin, who runs the climate skeptic blog NoTricksZone. “The more
alarmist sea level rise rates some have claimed recently stem from the use of statistical tricks and the
very selective use of data. Fortunately, these fudged alarmist rates do not agree with real-life
observations. Overall the latest computed rates show that there is absolutely nothing to be alarmed
about.”¶ Other experts agree, citing data regarding the Earth’s rate of rotation.¶ “For the last 40-50
years strong observational facts indicate virtually stable sea level conditions,” writes Nils-Axel Mörner,
former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University , in the
Journal Energy and Environment. ”The Earth’s rate of rotation records a mean acceleration from 1972 to
2012, contradicting all claims of a rapid global sea level rise, and instead suggests stable, to slightly
falling, sea levels.Ӧ But in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, U.S. coastal states have been more concerned
about the possible effects of global warming on rising sea levels.¶ A report by 21 U.S. scientists,
commissioned by Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, found that the sea levels are rising faster
than they predicted five years ago. Florida Keys residents are also concerned about sea levels by the
island that have risen 9 inches in the past decade, according to a tidal gauge that has operated since preCivil War days.¶ “It doesn’t need a lot of rocket science,” said Donald Boesch, president of the University
of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “We’ve got tide gauges that show us sea level is
increasing. This is a real phenomenon. We should take it seriously and have to plan for it.Ӧ The
Maryland report found that ocean waters and the Chesapeake Bay might only rise about one foot by
2050, but the study’s authors said that it would be prudent to plan for a two-foot rise in sea levels to
account for the risks of flooding caused by storms. The state has already seen sea levels rise by about a
foot in the past century — half coming from the natural sinking of the land and the other half coming
from rising seas from a warming ocean.¶ New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also announced a
$20 billion plan to adapt to global warming to prepare the city for rising sea levels and hotter
summers.¶ A report commissioned by New York City found that the number of sweltering summer days
could double, maybe even triple, and that waters surrounding the city could rise by 2 feet or more¶ New
York City can “do nothing and expose ourselves to an increasing frequency of Sandy-like storms that do
more and more damage,” Bloomberg remarked. “Or we can make the investments necessary to build a
stronger, more resilient New York — investments that will pay for themselves many times over in the
years go to come.Ӧ
CFC’s are the root cause- science proves- the Montreal accords are the key not the aff
Lu 13 (QB, Department of Physics and Astronomy and Departments of Biology and Chemistry, “COSMIC-RAY-DRIVEN REACTION AND
GREENHOUSE EFFECT OF HALOGENATED MOLECULES: CULPRITS FOR ATMOSPHERIC OZONE DEPLETION AND GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE”,
5/30/13, https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/global-warming-caused-cfcs-not-carbon-dioxide-study-says, HG)
Furthermore, the substantial combined data of total solar irradiance, the sunspot number and cosmic rays from multiple measurements
have unambiguously demonstrated that the natural factors have played a negligible effect on Earth’s climate since 1970. Moreover, in-depth
analyses of time-series data of CO2, halogen-containing molecules and global surface temperature have shown solid evidence that the GH
effect of increasing concentrations of non-halogen gases has been saturated (zero) in the observed data recorded since 1850. In particular, a
statistical analysis gives a nearly zero correlation coefficient (R=-0.05) between CO2 concentration and the
observed global surface temperature corrected by the removal of the solar effect during 1850-1970. In
contrast, a nearly perfect linear correlation with coefficients of 0.96-0.97 is obtained between corrected or
uncorrected global surface temperature and total level of stratospheric halogenated molecules from the
start of considerable atmospheric CFCs in 1970 up to the present. These results strongly show that the recent global
warming observed in the late 20th century was mainly due to the GH effect of human-made halogen-containing molecules (mainly CFCs).
Moreover, a refined calculation of the GH effect of halogenated molecules has convincingly demonstrated that they (mainly CFCs) alone
the
globally mean level of halogen-containing molecules in the stratosphere has entered a very slow
decreasing trend since 2002. Correspondingly, a very slow declining trend in the global surface
temperature has been observed. It is predicted that the success of the Montreal Protocol will lead to a long-term slow return of
acco
-2002. Owing to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol,
the global surface temperature to its value in 1950-1970 for coming 50-70 years if there is no significant emission of new GH species into the
atmosphere. In
summary, the observed data have convincingly shown that CFCs are the major culprit not
only for O3 depletion via conspiring with cosmic rays but also for global warming
during
1970~2002. The successful execution of the Montreal Protocol has shown its fast effectiveness in
controlling the O3 hole in the polar region and a slow cooling down of the global surface temperature.
The O3 loss in the polar region is estimated to recover to its 1980 value by 2058, faster than recently
expected from photochemical model simulations,68,69 while the return (lowering) of global surface
temperature will be much slower due to the slow decline of the stratospheric halogenated molecules in
low and mid latitudes. This leads to an interesting prediction that global sea level will continue to rise in
coming 1~2 decades until the global temperature recovery dominates over the O3 hole recovery. After
that, both global surface temperature and sea level will drop concurrently. It should also be noted that
the mean global surface temperature in the next decade will keep nearly the same value as in the past
decade, i.e., “the hottest decade” over the past 150 years. This, however, does not agree with the
warming theory of CO2. If the latter were correct, the current global temperature would be at least
a slow cooling trend has begun. This study also
shows that correct understandings of the basic physics of cosmic ray radiation and the Earth blackbody
radiation as well as their interactions with human-made molecules are required for revealing the
fundamental mechanisms underlying the ozone hole and global climate change. When these
understandings are presented with observations objectively, it is feasible to reach consensuses on these
scientific issues of global concern. Finally, this study points out that humans are mainly responsible for
the ozone hole and global climate change, but international efforts such as the Montreal Protocol and
the Kyoto Protocol must be placed on firmer scientific grounds. This information is of particular
importance not only to the research community, but to the general public and the policy makers.
Solvency Frontline
Scientific understanding too low to issue carbon credits – doesn’t effectively solve for
impacts
Vaughan et Lenton 11
Naomi E. Vaughan,Ph.D. in Climate Change Mitigation and Geoengineering from UEA, Timothy M.
Lenton Ph.D. UEA. “A Review of Climate Geoengineering Proposals” March 22, 2011 Online:
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/609/art%253A10.1007%252Fs10584-011-00277.pdf?auth66=1406420597_973b3a1df4f85b77d214aca1fb1f9ed8&ext=.pdf
Iron fertilisation has for many years now attracted a strong commercial interest grounded on emerging
carbon markets and carbon offsetting (Chisholm et al. 2001; Cullen and Boyd 2008). The first commercial
fertilisation experiments were due to begin in 2008, but Californian based Planktos Inc. halted
operations (Courtland 2008). Currently active commercial ventures include Climos (www.climos.com)
and Planktos Science (www.planktos-science.com). There are a plethora of challenges, contentions and
potential synergies between scientific and commercially funded ocean iron fertilisation (Leinen 2008).
However, the current level of scientific understanding regarding the efficacy of iron fertilization to
sequester carbon, as well as concerns regarding ecological and biogeochemical impacts, provides no
basis to issue carbon credits (Buesseler et al. 2008).
Nelson 13
Gabriel Nelson, Climate and Agriculture Policy Specialist, Masters from John Hopkins SAIS, “Ocean
Carbon Sequestration: Solution to Climate Change or Policy Distraction?” Online:
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1465556420 Summer/Fall 2013
The main body of literature focuses on fertilization, particularly iron fertilization. Iron fertilization is
controversial not only for its potentially detrimental effects on marine ecology, but also for its perceived
lack of over- all benefit. A 2013 Georgia Tech study demonstrated that individual phyto- plankton will
frequently "eat" far more of the iron fertilizer than they each need, which would significantly limit the
reduction of atmospheric carbon.18 For these reasons, it is unlikely that ocean carbon sequestration will
be- come widely used in the near future. If scientists can hone their techniques and overcome the
signifi- cant engineering chal- lenges of implementing a global enhanced weath- ering program, it seems
conceivable that ocean car- bon sequestration could eventually become a useful tool for climate change
abatement. But as Profes- sor David Keith, a Harvard climate scientist, notes, "I don't think it makes any
sense to put significant effort into ocean sequestra- tion absent a big effort to cut emissions... [For
sequestration to be viable] it would take a significantly higher price on carbon, new governance, and
new technology."19 Ultimately, there will come a point where even large-scale carbon sequestration
will not be enough to avert climate change. Even if ocean sequestration of any kind proves viable in the
future, large-scale emissions reduction should remain the top priority.
Oskin 14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/21/iron-fertilization-global-warming-fossils_n_5006300.html
The dust level in the drill core suggests that about four to fives times more sediment fell across the
Southern Ocean between South America and Africa during the ice age than the amount that falls there
today, Martínez-García said. "The magnitude of the area we are talking about is equivalent to three
times the areas of the entire United States, and is maintained for several thousand years," he told Live
Science. "This helps put into perspective what we can do in terms of the modern ocean." The new study
supported the argument that the amount of iron needed for geoengineering is untenable in the long
term, said Gabriel Filippelli, a biogeochemist at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. "It
is difficult to imagine even a decade-long international effort of iron fertilization, sustained by continual
ship runs dumping iron in a weather-hostile and isolated region of the world, let alone an effort that
lasts a millennium," Filippelli said. But Filippelli also said he thinks the ice-age iron story is more
complicated than just dust blowing in the wind. "The authors note only one source of iron — from
above," he said. There is also evidence that the oceans were richer in iron because of more river input
during the ice ages, he said. Thus, the ice-age ocean had extra iron from above and from below.
Geoengineering an add on, but not alternative to emissions mitigation
Vaughan et Lenton 11
Naomi E. Vaughan,Ph.D. in Climate Change Mitigation and Geoengineering from UEA, Timothy M.
Lenton Ph.D. UEA. “A Review of Climate Geoengineering Proposals” March 22, 2011 Online:
http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/609/art%253A10.1007%252Fs10584-011-00277.pdf?auth66=1406420597_973b3a1df4f85b77d214aca1fb1f9ed8&ext=.pdf
Geoengineering is best considered as a potential addition to strong mitigation of CO2 emissions, rather
than as an alternative to it. Shortwave geoengineering can rectify a global radiative imbalance, and can
do so on a decadal timescale. However, ocean acidification and residual regional climate changes would
still occur and the intervention could bring about unforeseen Earth system responses that may in turn
increase the radiative imbalance. Solar radiation management is not an alternative to mitigation, and
would have to be deployed in conjunction with carbon dioxide removal geoengineering or maintained
on timescales >10,000 years in order to avoid extremely abrupt warming if they failed, or when the
intervention stopped. Carbon dioxide removal involves less risk than solar radiation management
geoengineering, as it acts upon the primary cause of the radiative imbalance (atmospheric CO2) and has
limited capacity for ‘failure’. However, these measures are only really effective in the longer term. It will
not be possible to return to a pre-industrial climate on a millennial timescale without the creation of
engineered carbon sinks, e.g. carbon storage with CO2 captured from the atmosphere, either by bioenergy or chemical processes. However, air capture and storage is potentially limited by the capacity of
geological reservoirs. Geoengineering could be conducted by one nation or individual and would incur
global (and regionally variable) impacts. The geopolitical implications of this are poorly understood. It is
foreseeable that global consensus would have to be attained before any large scale geoengineering
were undertaken. The majority of geoengineering options require significant amounts of research,
particularly into effectiveness and side effects. However, much of this research is hampered by the
global scale nature of the geoengineering proposals. The difficulties of verifying effects, coupled with
inevitable acceptance issues amongst the global population, could impose a significant (if not terminal)
constraint on the possible role of geoengineering in avoiding dangerous climate change.
Their solvency evidence repeatedly stresses that international regulation is key
Victor et al. 9 (David Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katharine Ricke, March/April 2009,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64829/david-g-victor-m-granger-morgan-jay-apt-john-steinbruner-and-kat/the-geoengineering-option,
The Geoengineering Option A Last Resort Against Global Warming?, SRB)
Serious research on geoengineering is still in its infancy, and it has not received the attention it deserves
from politicians. The time has come to take it seriously. Geoengineering could provide a useful defense
for the planet -- an emergency shield that could be deployed if surprisingly nasty climatic shifts put vital
ecosystems and billions of people at risk. Actually raising the shield, however, would be a political
choice. One nation's emergency can be another's opportunity, and it is unlikely that all countries will
have similar assessments of how to balance the ills of unchecked climate change with the risk that
geoengineering could do more harm than good. Governments should immediately begin to undertake
serious research on geoengineering and help create international norms governing its use.
And again
Victor et al. 9 (David Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katharine Ricke, March/April 2009,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64829/david-g-victor-m-granger-morgan-jay-apt-john-steinbruner-and-kat/the-geoengineering-option,
The Geoengineering Option A Last Resort Against Global Warming?, SRB)
The highly uncertain but possibly disastrous side effects of geoengineering interventions are difficult to
compare to the dangers of unchecked global climate change. Chances are that if countries begin
deploying geoengineering systems, it will be because calamitous climate change is near at hand. Yet the
assignment of blame after a geoengineering disaster would be very different from the current debates
over who is responsible for climate change, which is the result of centuries of accumulated emissions
from activities across the world. By contrast, the side effects of geoengineering projects could be readily
pinned on the geoengineers themselves. That is one reason why nations must begin building useful
international norms to govern geoengineering in order to assess its dangers and decide when to act in
the event of an impending climatic disaster.
And again
Victor et al. 9 (David Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katharine Ricke, March/April 2009,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64829/david-g-victor-m-granger-morgan-jay-apt-john-steinbruner-and-kat/the-geoengineering-option,
The Geoengineering Option A Last Resort Against Global Warming?, SRB)
Although governments are the most likely actors, some geoengineering options are cheap enough to be
deployed by wealthy and capable individuals or corporations. Although it may sound like the stuff of a
future James Bond movie, private-sector geoengineers might very well attempt to deploy affordable
geoengineering schemes on their own. And even if governments manage to keep freelance
geoengineers in check, the private sector could emerge as a potent force by becoming an interest group
that pushes for deployment or drives the direction of geoengineering research and assessment. Already,
private companies are running experiments on ocean fertilization in the hope of sequestering carbon
dioxide and earning credits that they could trade in carbon markets. Private developers of technology
for albedo modification could obstruct an open and transparent research environment as they jockey for
position in the potentially lucrative market for testing and deploying geoengineering systems. To
prevent such scenarios and to establish the rules that should govern the use of geoengineering
technology for the good of the entire planet, a cooperative, international research agenda is vital.
And again
Victor et al. 9 (David Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katharine Ricke, March/April 2009,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64829/david-g-victor-m-granger-morgan-jay-apt-john-steinbruner-and-kat/the-geoengineering-option,
The Geoengineering Option A Last Resort Against Global Warming?, SRB)
The scientific academies in the leading industrialized and emerging countries -- which often control the
purse strings for major research grants -- must orchestrate a serious and transparent international
research effort funded by their governments. Although some work is already under way, a more
comprehensive understanding of geoengineering options and of risk-assessment procedures would
make countries less trigger-happy and more inclined to consider deploying geoengineering systems in
concert rather than on their own. (The International Council for Science, which has a long and successful
history of coordinating scientific assessments of technical topics, could also lend a helping hand.)
Eventually, a dedicated international entity overseen by the leading academies, provided with a large
budget, and suffused with the norms of transparency and peer review will be necessary.
And again
Victor et al. 9 (David Victor, M. Granger Morgan, Jay Apt, John Steinbruner, and Katharine Ricke, March/April 2009,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64829/david-g-victor-m-granger-morgan-jay-apt-john-steinbruner-and-kat/the-geoengineering-option,
The Geoengineering Option A Last Resort Against Global Warming?, SRB)
Although the international scientific community should take the lead in developing a research agenda,
social scientists, international lawyers, and foreign policy experts will also have to play a role. Eventually,
there will have to be international laws to ensure that globally credible and legitimate rules govern the
deployment of geoengineering systems. But effective legal norms cannot be imperiously declared. They
must be carefully developed by informed consensus in order to avoid encouraging the rogue forms of
geoengineering they are intended to prevent
Analysis:
Their plan brings regulatory uncertainty into questions and could encourage other countries to begin
their own geoengineering projects – which could come with unintentional consequences.
Counterplans
DoD CP
***1NC***
Counterplan Text: The Department of Defense should significantly increase its iron
fertilization of the earth’s oceans.
DOD development leads to better investment and tech
Sarewitz et al. 12 (Daniel—Co-Director, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes
Associate Director, Center for Nanotechnology in Society Professor of Science and Society @ ASU, Samuel Thernstrom--As codirector of the AEI
Geoengineering Project, Mr. Thernstrom studied the policy implications of geoengineering, or climate engineering, John Alic--Alic is the author
or co-author of several books and over 100 papers, articles, case studies and book chapters. A graduate of Cornell, Stanford, and the University
of Maryland, he has taught at several universities, Travis Doom—program coordinator for the Consortium for Science, Policy &Outcomes.
ENERGY INNOVATION at the DEPARTMENT of DEFENSE: ASSESSING the OPPORTUNITIES--CONSORTIUM FOR SCIENCE, POLICY AND OUTCOMES
at Arizona State University) AP
DoD integrates into the pursuit of its mission the full panoply of R&D functions found in the private sector (box
1.1). Other agencies such as the Department of Energy aim to catalyze private sector innovation, but since the
accomplishment of their mission does not usually require them to purchase the products of the research they
support, they often must make decisions without benefit of the guidance that DoD managers take from
planning and foresight exercises that go on constantly within the services. DoD is also unique among agencies in
the degree to which its technology spending flows to private firms rather than to its own laboratories or to
universities and other nonprofits. The sums are large—some $235 billion for R&D and procurement in fiscal
2011—and by other measures, too, DoD commands greater innovative capacity than the rest of government.
The Army, Navy, and Air Force, for example, employ nearly 100,000 engineers and scientists between
them. Most of the people, and most of the money, support acquisition of systems and equipment from
firms in the extended defense industry (which is perhaps best thought of as a virtual industry). Eugene Gholz’s white paper, “The
Dynamics of Military Innovation and the Prospects for Defense- Led Energy Innovation,” discusses the relationships between DoD and its
contractors.
The political process discourages program efficiency, innovation
Adler 11 Jonathan H. Adler Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation, Case
Western Reserve University School of Law, “EYES ON A CLIMATE PRIZE: REWARDING ENERGY INNOVATION TO
ACHIEVE CLIMATE STABILIZATION” 2011
While innovation requires risk taking,
politically controlled agencies have a difficult time accepting failure and
terminating programs. n221 Once grants have been allocated, the recipient has an interest in keeping the
money flowing, even if it will not produce positive returns. As Linda Cohen and Roger Noll found, substantial political
pressure to continue R&D programs remains long after it is clear they have failed. n222 At the same time, the political process has a
preference for large, visible projects to the detriment of those that are less conspicuous, but more likely
to produce results. n223 Encouraging needed innovation is not simply a matter of dedicating resources to
those endeavors favored by scientists and technologists. Even the most educated and well-intentioned
experts may focus their energies in the wrong direction. Indeed, as noted above, it is the unexpected nature of
many innovations that makes them so valuable. n224
DoD > DoE Solvnecy
DOD development leads to better investment and tech
Sarewitz et al. 12 (Daniel—Co-Director, Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes
Associate Director, Center for Nanotechnology in Society Professor of Science and Society @ ASU, Samuel Thernstrom--As codirector of the AEI
Geoengineering Project, Mr. Thernstrom studied the policy implications of geoengineering, or climate engineering, John Alic--Alic is the author
or co-author of several books and over 100 papers, articles, case studies and book chapters. A graduate of Cornell, Stanford, and the University
of Maryland, he has taught at several universities, Travis Doom—program coordinator for the Consortium for Science, Policy &Outcomes.
ENERGY INNOVATION at the DEPARTMENT of DEFENSE: ASSESSING the OPPORTUNITIES--CONSORTIUM FOR SCIENCE, POLICY AND OUTCOMES
at Arizona State University) AP
DoD integrates into the pursuit of its mission the full panoply of R&D functions found in the private sector (box
1.1). Other agencies such as the Department of Energy aim to catalyze private sector innovation, but since the
accomplishment of their mission does not usually require them to purchase the products of the research they
support, they often must make decisions without benefit of the guidance that DoD managers take from
planning and foresight exercises that go on constantly within the services. DoD is also unique among agencies in
the degree to which its technology spending flows to private firms rather than to its own laboratories or to
universities and other nonprofits. The sums are large—some $235 billion for R&D and procurement in fiscal
2011—and by other measures, too, DoD commands greater innovative capacity than the rest of government.
The Army, Navy, and Air Force, for example, employ nearly 100,000 engineers and scientists between
them. Most of the people, and most of the money, support acquisition of systems and equipment from
firms in the extended defense industry (which is perhaps best thought of as a virtual industry). Eugene Gholz’s white paper, “The
Dynamics of Military Innovation and the Prospects for Defense- Led Energy Innovation,” discusses the relationships between DoD and its
contractors.
DOD better with R and D than DOE due to process
Adler 11 Jonathan H. Adler Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation, Case
Western Reserve University School of Law, “EYES ON A CLIMATE PRIZE: REWARDING ENERGY INNOVATION TO
ACHIEVE CLIMATE STABILIZATION” 2011
Federal funding of science is worthwhile, particularly for basic scientific research. n209 Yet federal R&D money rarely produces commercially
viable technologies or dramatic technological innovation. n210 This is particularly true for agencies that are not themselves consumers of the
innovations they are trying to stimulate. The
Department of Defense's procurement process may stimulate a
significant degree of innovation because those defense contractors that develop technological
breakthroughs may be rewarded with sizable contracts. There is competition for the contracts and
innovation is rewarded. The Department of Energy, on the other hand, is not a significant consumer of
the technology it funds. n211 Indeed, the Department of Defense [*31] may be better positioned to
encourage energy innovation through its procurement process than is the DOE with traditional R&D
grants. n212 Insofar as this is so, it is because a competitive procurement process can induce innovation by
offering a substantial financial reward for significant breakthroughs.
DOD key to implementing tech– empirics prove
Hayward et al 10 (Steven F. Hayward, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Mark Muro, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan
Policy Program, Brookings Institution, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Cofounders, Breakthrough Institute, October 2010, PostPartisan Power, “How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation can Deliver Clean, Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity and National
Prosperity”, http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/Post-Partisan%20Power.pdf, LM)
The government has a long history of successfully driving innovation and price declines in emerging
technologies by acting directly as a demanding customer to spur the early commercialization and
largescale deployment of cutting-edge technologies. From radios and microchips to lasers and camera lenses, the federal
government, in particular the DOD, has helped catalyze the improvement of countless innovative
technologies and supported the emergence of vibrant American industries in the process.67 Yet today’s
mess of open-ended energy subsidies reward production of more of the same product, not innovation.
The federal government showers subsidies across many energy options, from oil and coal to ethanol and wind power. None of these
efforts, however, are designed or optimized to drive and reward innovation and ensure the prices of
these technologies fall over time, making the subsidies effectively permanent. This must change.
DOD solves better than DOE – tech production proves
Hayward et al 10 (Steven F. Hayward, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Mark Muro, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan
Policy Program, Brookings Institution, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Cofounders, Breakthrough Institute, October 2010, PostPartisan Power, “How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation can Deliver Clean, Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity and National
Prosperity”, http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/Post-Partisan%20Power.pdf, LM)
In addition to reforming energy deployment subsidies and launching a new competitive deployment
strategy, the nation should once again leverage the power of federal procurement to establish
demanding requirements to drive innovation and improvement in new energy technologies. The DOD
has a long track record of using the power of procurement to successfully drive the commercialization
and improvement of new technologies, many of which later spun off into broader commercial adoption.
In contrast, the DOE has no way to either procure or use energy technologies at commercial scale. The
DOD should help fill this void, once again using procurement to advance a range of potential dual-use energy innovations. The Pentagon’s
2010 “Quadrennial Defense Review” prioritizes expanded DOD involvement in energy innovation—and
with good reason.69 The U.S. military today uses more oil than Sweden and more electricity than Denmark. Every $10 increase in the price of oil costs the
DOD more than $1 billion dollars, sapping money that should be used to equip our troops for critical missions at home and abroad.70 With fuel convoys
costing both lives and money every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, questions of energy are understandably
high on the list of Pentagon priorities, and a growing community of national security experts, including both
active and retired generals and flag officers, has identified the development of new energy alternatives that can both
reduce America’s exposure to volatile oil markets and enhance military operational capabilities as key to
securing the nation’s defense.71 Congress should provide new funds necessary to secure America’s
energy future and national defense, providing up to $5 billion annually (as needed) to support DOD efforts to
procure, demonstrate, test, validate, and improve a suite of cutting-edge energy technologies with
potential to enhance American energy security or improve the strategic and tactical capabilities of the
American armed forces. Energy technologies with clear dual-use commercial and military potential well suited to DOD procurement could include:
advanced biofuels, including aviation fuels; advanced solar thermal and photovoltaic power technologies; improved batteries; electric vehicles; and new, modular
nuclear reactors (discussed in greater detail below).
DoD grants spur innovation for renewable energy
Serbu 11 (Jared Serbu covers the Defense Department, including contracting and legislative issues affecting the Pentagon, “DoD almost
ready to hand out $30M in clean energy grants”, November 19, 2011, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/430/2598642/DoD-almost-ready-tohand-out-30M-in-clean-energy-grants)//MW
The Pentagon is a couple weeks away from announcing the winners of tens of millions of dollars in
grants that aim to use military bases as a test bed for new energy technologies.¶ The Defense Department first
released the presolicitation notice for the installation energy test bed effort in February. DoD leaders at the time planned to
make grants to companies and other federal agencies of $20 million to test new energy concepts on
military bases, including smart microgrids and energy storage technology, renewable energy generation and advanced technologies to
improve building energy efficiency.¶ But Dorothy Robyn, the department's deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment,
said DoD
is ready to make awards worth $30 million within the coming weeks. She said the department
was "overwhelmed" by 600 high-quality proposals.¶ "This test bed program is my highest priority," she
said. "I think it's so fundamental to what we should be doing and what DoD uniquely can do. We've
done this on the environmental technology side by changing the face of environmental cleanup in just
this way. I think we'll do the same in the energy area."¶ DoD already is testing several technologies at U.S. bases, including
everything from new implementations of wind and solar power generation to generating electricity from landfill gas.¶ Robyn spoke Tuesday at
a Pentagon forum set up to mark National Energy Awareness Month, as did Gen. Martin Dempsey, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff. He threw his considerable clout behind the department's renewable energy and efficiency efforts. Not just on bases, but on battlefields.¶
"Without
improving our energy security, we are not merely standing still on energy security, we're falling
behind," he said. "The department's energy culture has changed dramatically since I was a young Army armor officer, and that's a very good
thing. But we can and must do better, particularly in pushing progress out to the field, to the flight line and into the fleet."
DoD has the current capabilities and funding to do renewable energy
Serbu 11 (Jared Serbu covers the Defense Department, including contracting and legislative issues affecting the Pentagon, “DoD almost
ready to hand out $30M in clean energy grants”, November 19, 2011, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/430/2598642/DoD-almost-ready-tohand-out-30M-in-clean-energy-grants)//MW
But with generators and fuel, too, the
military is making progress.¶ The Army has begun linking up the generators
on its forward-operating bases into smart microgrid systems. This approach automatically turns on or off
generators as they're needed, and the electrical load is balanced between them. And, Newell said, they're also
coming up with ways to keep leaders from bringing along more fuel and generators than they actually need.¶ "We have even gone to the point
of developing smartphone apps that allow a commander to look at what he's got to power — say, four computers, two flat screens and a coffee
pot — and it'll spit out a solution that says you need 1.2 kilowatts," he said. "He can then look at his logistics guys and tell them not to bring
along that five kilowatt generator. I just need this little one, and a small can of gas. I think culturally, it's been a huge change for us."¶ The
Pentagon has taken on several new efforts to tackle its energy use lately, driven in part by the $15 billion fuel bill it paid last year. DoD's fuel bill
was even higher in 2008 — $20 billion — when global energy prices spiked.¶ DoD
published its first operational energy plan
this year. It also signed a memorandum of understanding last year with the Energy Department to share
resources and research toward energy security.¶ And the individual military services are taking on their own efforts. The
Navy, for example, released a request for information to industry this summer that contemplates
spending $500 million on research and development for a new generation of biofuels to replace jet fuel
and diesel.
AT: Perm
Perm links to the Navy DA - It’s a question of priority sequencing – the navy must take
the lead on marine energy development to ensure access to proper training.
Quinn 11 (John P. Quinn leads three diverse programs essential to Navy sustainability initiatives, a B.A. in political science and economic,
from Duke University; a J.D. from Georgetown Law Center; and a LL.M (environmental), with highest honors, from The George Washington
University, “The U.S. Navy’s Sustainability Imperative”, November 26, 2011, http://livebettermagazine.com/article/the-u-s-navys-sustainabilityimperative/)//MW
While supporting the
nation’s need to develop new energy sources as a means of improving its energy and economic
created tension between renewable energy development and robust
military testing and training. Offshore oil and gas development, and future wind energy projects, could
potentially obstruct existing military training areas and/or create interference with radar systems used for
testing and training as well as homeland defense. Ashore, solar towers constructed in proximity to air corridors could create
security, in some instances these priorities have
obstructions and/or reflection issues, which could degrade air navigation. Additionally, new wind turbines – some reaching 600 or more feet
into the air – could create obstruction and interference challenges for military training and testing at existing bases and range areas.¶ The
challenge is to find solutions that will enable the nation’s development of needed energy and other
infrastructure while enabling the Navy to carry out its national defense mission through continuous
training and testing at sea, ashore and in the air. Towards these objectives, as discussed below, a number of initiatives are
underway at the national level within the Department of Defense (DoD) and within the Department of the Navy (DON). The Navy’s active
participation in these initiatives, and forward-leaning approach to its own energy requirements, will help
ensure a sustainable future for the Navy and the nation.
** this is the same card but with different highlighting as one of the DA Offshore Energy links and that is in the AT:Perm in generic renewables
as well
AT: DoD Hurts Environment
The Department of defense ensures environmentally responsible action
NOAA’05 (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Protected Areas Center, “Federal Agency Progress Report
Under Executive Order 13158” September 2005, (http://marineprotectedareas.noaa.gov/pdf/helpful-resources/fed-agency-prog-rpt.pdf) LP)
Executive Order 13158 enhances the level of protection of significant natural and cultural resources within the marine environment and
coordinates the development of an effective national system of marine protected areas in the United States. The
Department of
Defense is committed to marine resources protection through various programs and policies. All of the military
services have active programs to comply with environmental and natural resources protection laws.
Although most environmental legislation was not passed specifically for the protection of marine protected areas, the Department of Defense’s
compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, Executive Order 12114, “Environmental Effects Abroad of Major Federal Actions”, Clean
Water Act, Ocean Dumping Act, Oil Pollution Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, Magnuson –Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management
Act Sikes Act, Executive Order. 13112, “Coral Reef Protection, Endangered Species Act, and other statutes directly benefits marine resources. As
with all Department of Defense natural resources stewardship, it is and will continue to be our policy to ensure safe and environmentally
responsible action in and around marine protected areas. Department of Defense is not an implementing agency of Executive Order 13158, but
conducts at sea training and testing operations with an awareness of and sensitivity to the resources within MPAs and other sensitive marine
resource management areas. In planning for needed harbor and anchorage maintenance and improvements, the Navy surveys the marine
resources around its Atlantic and Pacific installations in Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, and Japan. As a result of these surveys, the
Department of Defense has documented repeated instances where marine resources near military
facilities are in significantly better condition (health, size, diversity, etc.) than those outside the area of
military influence. Data from the Department of Defense marine surveys is captured for future use. In
addition, the planning process for Department of Defense actions that could affect sensitive marine resources includes informing agencies
concerned with natural resources management related to Essential Fish Habitat and other land and water management issues.
Training occurs only when necessary – majority of environmental impacts minimal
and temporary
McAvoy 13 , Audrey McAvoy newsperson, covers the military and general news at the Honolulu bureau of The Associated Press, “Navy
studies: Training, testing may kill whales, dolphins”, Navy Times, Aug 30 2013 Online:
http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130830/NEWS04/308300011/Navy-studies-Training-testing-may-kill-whales-dolphins
Most of the deaths would come from explosives, though some might come from testing sonar or animals being hit by ships.
Rear Adm.
Kevin Slates, the Navy’s energy and environmental readiness division director, told reporters this week
the Navy uses simulators where possible, but sailors must test and train in real-life conditions. According
to the reports, computer models show training and testing may kill 186 whales and dolphins off the East
Coast and 155 off Hawaii and Southern California. Off the East Coast, there could be 11,267 serious
injuries and 1.89 million minor injuries such as temporary hearing loss. The reports also said the testing and training
might cause marine mammals to change their behavior — such as swimming in a different direction — in 20 million instances. Off Hawaii and
Southern California, the reports said the naval activities may cause 2,039 serious injuries, 1.86 million temporary injuries and 7.7 million
instances of behavioral change.
Disadvantages
Midterm
Links
Section: Ocean policy unpopular
Changes in ocean policy are slow and controversial b/c polarized congress
Helvarg, ’14, (David, “The oceans demand our attention,” The Hill, February 14, 2014,
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/198361-the-oceans-demand-ourattention)//erg
The latest battle over the future of America’s ocean frontier is being fought out in a seemingly unrelated bill in
Congress. Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) recently introduced his National Endowment for the Oceans rider to the Senate
version of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), which funds the Army Corps of Engineers to work on dams, dredging and flood
control. The Endowment would establish a permanent fund – based on offshore energy revenue – for scientific research and coastal
restoration. On
the House side Tea Party Republican Rep. Bill Flores (Texas) has a rider to cancel out any
funding that might allow the Army Corps to participate in the Obama administration’s National Ocean
Policy, which he claims would empower the EPA to control the property of his drought-plagued
constituents should any rain (generated by the ocean) land on their rooftops. One rider represents a
constructive addition and the other a paranoid partisan impediment to an ocean policy aimed at
coordinating federal agencies in ways that could reduce conflict, redundancy and government waste,
“putting urban planning in the water column,” in the words of former Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. Allen, who
coordinated federal disaster response to Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil blow out understands the importance of working together when
responding to a disaster. And like it or not, overfishing, pollution, coastal sprawl and climate change have created an ongoing disaster in our
public seas. Unfortunately progress towards a major reorganization of how we as a nation manage and benefit from our ocean continues to
advance with all the deliberate speed of a sea hare (large marine snail). In 2004 ocean conservationists held their first ‘Blue Vision Summit’ in
Washington D.C.
It was there Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) called for a “Big Ocean Bill,” to incorporate many of the
recommendations of the 2003 Pew Oceans Commission and 2004 U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, the first blue ribbon
panels to examine the state of America’s blue frontier in over three decades. During his presidency, George W. Bush
established major marine reserves in the Pacific, but otherwise ignored his own federal commission’s recommendations along with those of the
Pew group headed by future Secretary of Defense (now retired), Leon Panetta. As a result America’s
seas continue to be poorly
managed by 24 different federal agencies taking a piecemeal approach to their oversight under 144
separate laws. In the fall of 2008, Oregon State marine ecologist Dr. Jane Lubchenco met with then President-elect Obama in Chicago.
There, he offered her the job of running The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and she suggested he promote an
ocean policy based on the two commissions’ recommendations that he agreed to do. By the time of the 2009 Blue Vision Summit it was clear
Congress had become too polarized to pass major ocean reform legislation at the level of the Clean Air and Clean
Water Acts of the last century. Still, activists gathered there were thrilled to hear the new White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair,
Nancy Sutley, announce plans for a new National Ocean Policy initiative by the Obama administration. This was followed by a series of six public
hearings over the next year held in different parts of the country. Ocean conservationists were able to mobilize thousands of people and 80
percent of public comments favored moving forward with a policy of ecosystem-based regional planning for ocean uses. In July 2010, in the
wake of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, President Obama finally signed the National Ocean Policy as an administrative directive. NOAA
then held a series of additional hearings to engage stakeholders during which the oil and gas industry tried to apply the brakes (why support a
level playing field when you already own the field). In 2012, CEQ finally announced that nine regional planning bodies would be established to
get the ocean policy implemented. In 2013, during the 4th Blue Vision Summit activists held the largest Ocean Hill Day in history, a citizens
lobby from 21 states that included over 100 meetings with Senators, House members and their staffs to advocate for getting the National
Ocean Policy underway. Still, today in early 2014, only four of the nine regional bodies have held meetings. In New
England, participation by the states, tribal governments, fishermen, environmentalists and others have seen a strong launch. In the midAtlantic, it’s
been more a case of different federal agencies talking to each other without much
transparency or citizen participation. Initial meetings have also been held in the Caribbean and the Western Pacific, including
Hawaii.
Ocean policy changes disrupt the fragile partisan alliance
Allen, ’13, (Tom, “Challenges of a Changing Ocean: Can Congress Act in Time?” Roll Call, Dec. 4, 2013,
http://www.rollcall.com/news/challenges_of_a_changing_ocean_can_congress_act_in_time_comment
ary-229390-1.html)//erg
In a Congress marred by gridlock and partisan brinkmanship, a surprising opportunity has emerged to
strengthen our nation’s ocean and coastal communities, businesses and environment. Congress should
seize the moment and establish the long-recommended National Endowment for the Oceans, Coasts and
Great Lakes. Unless Congress acts now, the opportunity will slip away. The House and Senate Water Resource
Development Act (WRDA) bills currently in conference contain competing provisions — with competing visions — for
the future of ocean and coastal management in America. This legislative conflict is part of our country’s
broader ideological struggle, but with this difference: On the ocean, no state government, chamber of commerce or environmental
group can exercise coordinated and effective leadership alone. The Senate-passed WRDA bill includes an amendment from Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse, D-R.I., that provides for a National Endowment for the Oceans that passed with strong bipartisan support. The endowment would
authorize grants to universities, states and local organizations for ocean research, mapping, monitoring, conservation and restoration projects
— work that is critical to coastal economies that rely on a healthy ocean with well-managed resources. It reflects the belief that the federal
government has an important role to play in strengthening coastal communities, helping ocean-dependent businesses and improving the health
of our ocean environment.
Section: Ocean policy popular
Ocean policy changes are popular and key
Allen, ’13, (Tom, “Challenges of a Changing Ocean: Can Congress Act in Time?” Roll Call, Dec. 4, 2013,
http://www.rollcall.com/news/challenges_of_a_changing_ocean_can_congress_act_in_time_comment
ary-229390-1.html)//erg
By contrast, the WRDA bill passed by the House of Representatives includes an amendment from Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, that would
undermine our National Ocean Policy, smart ocean planning and ecosystem approaches to ocean resource management. In an era when we
need government to work better, smarter, and more effectively, the National Ocean Policy and smart ocean planning
are just common sense. They allow the local, state, tribal and federal entities responsible for ocean management to work across jurisdictional
boundaries and proactively tackle challenges in a forward-looking way. To take those tools away would be bad for ocean health, bad for the
ocean economy and bad for coastal communities. This legislative head-to-head dispute reflects the broader ideological struggle that haunts the
halls of Congress today. It’s between those who believe that the government can be a vehicle to serve the common good and those who
believe that nearly all government action restricts personal freedom. We have for too long taken the ocean for granted. Its
immense size and apparent resilience fooled us into thinking that humans could draw on it for limitless protein and use it as a garbage dump.
But now
the ocean and our coastal communities face serious challenges. Coral reefs are in steep decline.
Many fisheries continue to struggle. Water quality problems and toxic algae blooms threaten beaches
and clam diggers. Ocean acidification is worsening each year, threatening multigeneration family-owned
shellfish farms. Trash litters the open ocean, occasionally exacerbated by tragic events such as the Japanese tsunami. And sea level
rise is just over the horizon. The WRDA conferees and Congress should choose thoughtful long-term
engagement to protect and enhance ocean quality over the all-too-common knee-jerk hostility toward any new government
initiative.
Ocean environmental policies empirically appease democrats
Rast 12
Rebekah Rast, 31 October 2012, Obama’s environmental policies extend to America’s oceans—and into
the upcoming elections, http://waily.com/2012/10/obamas-environmental-policies-extend-to-americasoceans-and-into-the-upcoming-elections/
You can definitely see a partisan line when it comes to environmental policies in this country. One side
thinks many related laws and regulations go too far; the other side thinks many of these laws don’t go
far enough. However, it seems this partisan line also stretches past the land of the U.S. and deep into its
oceans. In 2010, when President Obama passed his executive order “Stewardship of the Ocean, Our
Coasts, and the Great Lakes,” he claimed it “strengthens ocean governance and coordination, establishes guiding principles for ocean
management, and adopts a flexible framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning to address conservation, economic activity,
user conflict, and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes.” Not everyone agrees with his claim and now this oceans
and lakes power play has sparked quite a partisan fight going into this election year. Many Republicans see this
Executive Order as nothing more than an absurd power grab by the Obama administration. To control the
country’s lakes, oceans and coastlands by issuing strict usage regulations and restrictions will only hurt such livelihoods as farming, fishing and
logging. Many
Democrats and environmental allies see this as a positive step forward that will protect the
nation’s oceans and also limit the number of conflicts over how the waters are used.
Ocean regulation is empirically popular with the democratic base
Hotakainen 11
ROB HOTAKAINEN, 4 October 2011, Congress spars over 'ocean zoning',
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/04/126154/congress-spars-over-ocean-zoning.html
WASHINGTON — House members clashed Tuesday over a White House plan that essentially calls for zoning
the oceans, with Republicans charging that it already has created more job-killing bureaucracy and
Democrats saying it could give Americans more certainty on how they can use busy public waters. "It has
the potential to stunt economic growth and the jobs associated with that growth," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the House
Natural Resources Committee. Rep.
Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the top-ranked Democrat on the panel, likened
the idea — formally known as marine spatial planning — to making plans for air space. "Opposing ocean
planning is like opposing air-traffic control," he said.
Section: Environment unpopular
Congress hates environmental movements
Valentine, 7/15, (Katie, reporter for Climate Progress, “Congressional Candidate: Most Energy
Problems ‘Are Caused By Environmentalists’,” Climate Progress, JULY 15, 2014,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/15/3460398/congressional-candidate-environment/)//erg
In the eyes of one candidate running for office in Washington, environmentalists aren’t the ones looking to
solve the country’s energy problems — they’re the ones at fault for them. George Cicotte, a Republican candidate
for Washington’s fourth congressional district, said at a candidate forum Saturday that if environmentalists hadn’t “stopped
nuclear in its tracks” in the 1970s, there would be a lot less greenhouse gas pollution today. “Really, when we
talk about energy problems, most of the energy problems are caused by environmentalists,” he said. Cicotte’s
comments came as part of a longer statement on his views on environment and energy issues, during which he
spoke of his “all of the above” energy preferences but made comments that were dismissive of wind
energy — a resource he claims to support on his campaign website. “Wind energy? I’ll be honest — give me a break,” he said. “There
would not be a single windmill in this entire state were it not for tons of irrational federal government
spending. They’re trying to light a brush fire for wind and it ain’t working.”
Republicans hate pro-environmental policies
COCKERHAM, 2014
SEAN; MCCLATCHY WASHINGTON BUREAU; July 17, 2014; “Opponents say Alaska mine would devastate
salmon, Washington state fishing industry”;
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2014/07/17/3755000/opponents-say-alaska-mine-would.html
WASHINGTON — Supporters of the embattled Pebble Mine project in Alaska are making a desperate
effort in Congress and the courts to keep it alive in the face of warnings from the Environmental
Protection Agency that it could devastate the finest run of wild salmon left on the globe.¶ Members of
the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing a bill to keep the EPA from blocking the mine, despite
opposition from Washington state lawmakers who say the project could be devastating to the fishing
industry in their state.¶ The mine developer, Northern Dynasty Minerals, is suing the EPA, seeking an
injunction to prevent the agency from moving to stop the project.¶ The developer is in trouble. Mining
giants Anglo American and Rio Tinto pulled out of the project in the midst of the controversy, leaving
Northern Dynasty scrambling for another partner to provide financial support for the mine. Getting the
EPA to back off would help.¶ After a long series of setbacks, the mine won a small victory Wednesday
when the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the bill for a vote in the full
House.¶ EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the Pebble Mine would "likely have significant and
irreversible negative impacts on the salmon of Bristol Bay."¶ Washington state lawmakers are leading the
fight in Congress against the mine. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asked the White House to stop the
mine and participated in a rally earlier this year on the Seattle waterfront that included 250 chefs and
other food workers protesting the project.¶ Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, attempted to stop the bill
Wednesday in the committee. He said thousands of fishermen and processors from Washington state
depended on the Bristol Bay fishery in Alaska. The EPA's decision to consider vetoing the mine followed
three years of study of the damage that North America's largest open-pit mine could do to the salmon,
he said.¶ "If this bill goes forward it could lead to the construction of a mine that would have devastating
economic impacts for many people in Washington state," Larsen said.¶ Sue Aspelund, the executive
director of the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, complained that fishermen
weren't given a chance to testify.¶ "It's incredibly unfortunate that Congress is debating legislation that
would directly impact Bristol Bay's commercial fishermen while thousands of them are currently
contributing to yet another historic sockeye salmon season in southwest Alaska," Aspelund said.¶ The
measure would have scant chance of making it through the Democratic-controlled Senate and surviving
a likely presidential veto. But mine opponents fear it might become a platform to revive the project's
fortunes, particularly if Republicans take control of the Senate after the November midterm elections.¶
The fishing and conservation group Trout Unlimited said it planned to launch a social media campaign to
rally fishermen to campaign against the bill.¶ The mine developer "has lost most of its financial backing
because of the inherent risks of the proposed mine, and its many failures to produce a viable mining
plan. But now the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is rushing to take up the
beleaguered cause," Trout Unlimited said in an email.¶ McCarthy said the EPA would take action to
protect the salmon under the Clean Water Act. That could lead to a veto of the project prior to its
permit applications.¶ Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, sponsor of the bill, said the mine should be allowed a
chance. His measure would forbid the EPA from halting a project before the permit process.¶ "It's unAmerican to tell a private company or anybody that you can't even apply for a permit, cannot even
consider doing any operations on this land because the government has blocked it out," he said.¶ The
National Mining Association also criticized the EPA, with its president, Hal Quinn, saying investors need
confidence that the agency won't pre-emptively block a project.¶ "EPA's actions trampled the authority
of the state of Alaska, pre-empted the role of other federal and state agencies and potentially stranded
the mining company's $700 million in capital investment," Quinn said.¶ The EPA said it began studying
the mine at the request of Alaska tribes and others concerned about the salmon. Mine advocates assert
the agency was biased and that agency staffers themselves initiated the effort to block the project. The
EPA's inspector general is investigating those allegations.¶ While the Pebble Mine project may appear
near death, tensions still run high.¶ Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, lashed out at a hearing Wednesday when
a Maryland congresswoman charged that the bill is nothing but a giveaway to the mine developer.¶
Young said his state should get to decide whether to build the massive open-pit copper mine, not the
EPA or members of Congress from outside Alaska.¶ "Now we have somebody from Maryland telling me
how we should represent that state. Disgusting," said Young, who started shouting and pointing his
finger.¶ "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and watch somebody from Maryland or any other state
start telling me or anybody in Alaska how we should be running our state."
Section: Environment unpopular – unions
Ecological regulations for oceans greatly upset unions
Phuong Le, 16 June 2014, Unions join fight over Washington fish consumption,
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2014-06-16/unions-join-fight-over-washington-fish-consumption
SEATTLE (AP) — Unions representing Boeing machinists and mill workers are siding with businesses in a bitter fight over how
much fish people eat, and thus how clean Washington state waters should be. The Machinists union and
others are worried a new water quality standard being developed by the state would hurt jobs and
economic development — concerns that Boeing Co. and other industry groups have also raised. The
unlikely allies have found common ground, uniting over the topic of environmental regulations. "We
have some common interests
because we want to save jobs. I think we have the same goal," said Tanya Hutchins, a spokeswoman for the Machinists union, which
represents more than 32,000 workers in the Puget Sound region. She added, "We just want to make sure it's a proposal that works for
everyone." Officials from the Machinists union, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, and others held a news conference
Monday in Olympia to urge Gov. Jay Inslee to take a balanced approach. The
state Department of Ecology appears ready to
sharply increase Washington's fish consumption rate, an obscure number that has huge implications
because it helps set water quality standards. A higher number means fewer toxic pollutants would be
permitted in waters.
Unions will affect the fate of the democrats
Enten 7/1
Harry Enten, 1 July 2014, How Much Do Democrats Depend on the Union Vote,
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/supreme-court-ruling-wounds-both-democrats-and-unions-neitherfatally/ [Harry Enten is a senior political writer and analyst for FiveThirtyEight]
Toward the middle of the list is the effect of union membership and living with a union member. The effect is not as large as most demographic
variables. But it’s not nothing; being
a member of a union or living with a union member did make a person
more likely to vote Democratic. At least according to the 2012 ANES, the effects of the two different union variables were pretty
much identical. And the impact was about the same as the 1.7 percentage points it was in 2008. In the ANES data set, 58 percent of union
members or those living with a union member voted for Obama. If every union member or member of a union household voted as if they were
not one and every other characteristic was kept constant, 51.1 percent of them still would have voted Democratic. Obama
would have
lost 1.4 percentage points off his vote share in 2012 without unions. Instead of his margin of victory over
Romney being 3.9 percentage points, it would have been 1.1 points. Obviously, this sort of analysis doesn’t take into
account what would really happen without the union vote. The two parties would go about courting voters differently. And unions also play a
big role in fundraising and organizing for Democratic candidates. But the
2.8 percentage-point difference in the presidential
vote margin is nothing to sneeze at either. It’s larger than the margin in two of the past four elections, and
it’s about the same as it was in 2008. Even if unions make up a lower percentage of voters than at any point in the past 60 years, they are a
player in presidential elections. And if
a future Supreme Court decision suppresses union power further, it would not
be good news for Democrats.
Union support key for democrats – Obama’s actions swing vote
Jordan M. Grossman, 30 April 2014, Trends and Surprises in Union Political Spending on the 2014
Elections, http://onlabor.org/2014/04/30/trends-and-surprises-in-union-political-spending-on-the-2014elections/
The 2014 congressional elections do not take place until November, but unions have already provided millions of dollars in
campaign contributions to candidates, political parties, and outside groups – including to some surprising
recipients. According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which counts all donations from political action committees (PACs),
individual contributions of more than $200 to federal candidates and parties, and “donations from individuals, PACs and other organizations . . .
to outside interest groups that report to the Federal Election Commission,” five
of the top ten overall donors in the 2014
election cycle have been labor groups, edging out even some of America’s largest corporations like
AT&T, Lockheed Martin, and Comcast. Which unions are the biggest donors? The National Education Association (NEA), the
fourth biggest overall contributor, leads the way for labor with $6,877,977 in contributions. They are followed by the Carpenters and Joiners
Union at $4,981,217, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) at $3,130,875, the AFL-CIO at $2,543,200,
and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) at $2,004,185. Two other unions are also in the top twenty: the Operating
Engineers Union comes in at number 13, with $1,617,983 in donations, and the Laborers Unions is ranked 20th, with $1,431,600. Even in the
post-Citizens United environment – in which presidential and congressional campaigns, political parties, and PACs spent $7 billion in the 2012
election cycle - over $22
million from top labor organizations is significant, particularly in a midterm election
that does not feature a presidential race. For context, according to data compiled by experts at the Brookings Institution and the
American Enterprise Institute, the average winning congressional candidate in 2012 spent approximately $1.6 million - “a 344% increase since
1986″ – with incumbents typically outspending their challengers $1.7 million to $587,000. Put
simply, despite the conventional
wisdom that the political power of unions is dwindling due to declining membership, this level of
political giving ensures that they still remain a major force in electoral politics. In fact, the data on labor
donations challenges another piece of conventional wisdom: that unions solely support Democrats,
especially at the national level. The numbers from the Center for Responsive Politics illustrate that unions direct a notable amount of donations
to congressional Republicans. For example, the largest union giver, the NEA, donated $15,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee
and another $15,000 to the National Republican Campaign Committee - the official Republican Party entities charged with winning seats in
Congress. The NEA has also donated $1,000 each to Senators Lindsey Graham and Jerry Moran, both Republicans, and between $500 and
$4,000 to 19 House Republicans. This support may seem surprising considering the hostility toward unions, particularly public sector unions,
expressed by leading Republicans in recent years. As one article put it, “House Republicans are ready for war against public sector unions,” and
Senator Graham himself has called the NLRB, typically seen as an ally of labor, “the Grim Reaper of job creation.” The NRCC itself has criticized
the NEA as a “well-funded liberal special interest[]” that is part of a Democratic establishment that has spent millions to “save their pawn[s]” in
congressional races, and the NEA has given Senator Graham grades of D, F, and F in the past three congresses, respectively. Interestingly, it is
difficult to find any public materials from the NEA explaining their support of the Republican campaign committees or officeholders like Graham
(while
both the NEA and some Republicans have recently criticized the Obama Administration’s
approach to Common Core education standards, the NEA has been donating to Republicans for the past
several election cycles, before Common Core emerged as such a polarizing issue).
Section: Environment popular – single women
Single women have the power to swing the vote – pushing environmental policies
means a win for the democrats
Shepeard 6/11
Crystal Shepeard, 11 June 2014, Single Women Will Make the Difference in the Midterm Elections,
http://www.care2.com/causes/single-women-will-make-the-difference-in-the-midterm-elections.html
Statistics show that an increase in women representatives shows a greater focus on policies that affect
everyone. Inevitably, “women” issues such as reproductive rights and child care are put to the forefront when more women are elected.
However, more legislation is introduced regarding economic policy, education, civil rights and the environment when
women have a larger presence. There is also a substantial improvement in economic performance in countries where women hold
key national leadership positions. The number of women in local, state and national government in the U.S. is at an all time high. While
impressive, we are still far behind other countries that have a much higher representation of women. Even though more organizations are
focused on increasing the number of women in office, the barriers to get there are daunting. The financial costs for campaigning deter many
women due to fewer avenues for funding. There are also the structural issue of electoral politics that limit how and which candidates get
elected, or even get on the ballot. However, the
greatest power the majority of women have is their vote. The
Democratic contingent of congresswomen and one congressman weren’t spreading the message that women should
vote for women (though they did highlight how it would make a difference). They wanted them to understand the importance
of voting, especially in the upcoming midterm elections. Women, particularly unmarried women and
working moms, aren’t just a statistic – they are a viable and powerful demographic. The Voter Participation
Center (VPC) is a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to amplifying the voices of unmarried women (this includes divorced, widowed,
separated, and single). There
are 55 million voting eligible unmarried women in the United States,
representing more than 25 percent of the voting population. However, they have consistently been underrepresented in
elections. Married women are virtually equal in eligible voting population at nearly 57 million, but vote at a higher rate than unmarried women.
In the 2012 election, nearly 6 percent more married women voted in the election than unmarried, even though they only outnumber them by a
little over one percent of the electorate. President Barack Obama won by 3 percent. The reasons that nearly a third of unmarried
women are not registered to vote, and those that are don’t vote, have a lot to do with the policies that affect them. The wage gap in the
industries that many women work, especially younger women, makes it difficult to find affordable housing, which can result in frequent
changes in address. This is made more difficult for women with children – both married and not. The high cost of day care makes it difficult to
find work that can cover all costs, not to mention the lack of paid time off for family and sick leave further strains the needed stability. It is no
surprise that these women are most vulnerable to voter ID and registration requirements which require large windows for registration. Strict
guidelines for name changes also make it more cumbersome for recently divorced or recently married women to have their IDs accepted at the
polling booth. The
voting patterns for single and married women have less to do with party affiliation and
more to do with the issues they have to face. This is why women with children, many of them married,
were also the target for the Democrats’ message of the importance of voting in the midterm elections.
They share many of the needs that single women carry. The Democratic party has put forth a great deal of legislation that
has focused on equal pay, paid family and medical leave, expanding affordable childcare, expanding funding for Head Start programs, and
raising the minimum wage. These are all policies that have been repeatedly blocked by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Section: Climate action unpopular
Climate change action is controversial—lack on consensus splits the party
Sheppard, 6/18, (Kate, “Republican Former EPA Chiefs Try To Convince Senate GOP That Climate
Change Is Real,” Huffington Post, 06/18/2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/18/eparepublicans-climate_n_5509048.html)//erg
WASHINGTON -– Four Republican former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency had a message for the
Senate on
Wednesday on climate change: It's real, it's bad and the United States should do something about it. But
their fellow Republicans at the hearing largely ignored that position, instead repeating a variety of
arguments about why the U.S. should not address the greenhouse gas emissions causing the planet to
warm up. The hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety focused on new
EPA standards for reducing emissions from power plants. The standards, released on June 2, have been a major point of
contention for congressional Republicans. "We believe there is legitimate scientific debate over the pace and effects of climate
change, but no legitimate debate over the facts of the earth's warming or over man's contribution," said
William Ruckelshaus, who served as the EPA administrator under both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Christine Todd Whitman, who served
as the agency's administrator during the first years of George W. Bush's presidency, expressed frustration at critics who argue the EPA
doesn't have authority to act on greenhouse gas emissions.
No global consensus on how to act on climate change makes it controversial
Phillips, 7/13, (Ari, Reporter for climate progress, “Rupert Murdoch Says Climate Change Should Be
Approached With Great Skepticism,” Climate Progress, JULY 13, 2014,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/13/3459584/rupert-murdoch-climate-change-rubbish/)//erg
Rupert Murdoch is chairman and CEO of News Corporation, one of the world’s largest media
conglomerates, which includes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal. Since launching The Australian newspaper 50
years ago he has also become one of the richest people in the world. In a wide-ranging interview aired Sunday in Australia to mark this 50-year
anniversary, Murdoch reflected
candidly on climate change, saying he thought it should be approached with
great skepticism. “At the moment the north pole is melting but the south pole is getting bigger,” he said. “Things are
happening. How much of it are we doing, with emissions and so on? As far as Australia goes? Nothing in the overall picture.” While Antarctica
has been losing ice more slowly than the Arctic, and the
geopolitical implications are less salient, studies show that
parts of the massive continent’s ice sheet have entered irreversible decline and that melting is likely to
accelerate. Australia is one of the most greenhouse gas intense economies in the world, relying heavily on coal exports. The country passed
a carbon price in 2011 but since last year the conservative government led by Murdoch-supported prime minister Tony Abbott has been trying
to repeal it. The
latest attempt ended in disarray last week after several senators rebelled at the last
minute. Murdoch said that if temperatures rose under the worst case scenario 3C (5.4F) over the next 100 years ”at the very most one of
those [degrees] would be manmade.”
Climate Change issues are controversial in Congress
Atkin, 7/9, (Emily, “Kentucky Senator: Climate Change Is Fake Because ‘We All Agree’ Mars Is Warming
Too,” Climate Progress, JULY 9, 2014, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/09/3458131/smithmars-climate-change/)//erg
A prominent Kentucky state Senator on Thursday gave a glimpse of detail on why he doesn’t accept that
global warming exists and is caused by humans, and his argument is a bit out of this world. At a hearing to discuss
how the state could deal with the Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed greenhouse gas
regulations for coal plants, Majority Whip Brandon Smith (R-Hazard) argued that carbon emissions from coal
plants can’t be causing climate change because Mars is also experiencing a global temperature rise — and
there are no coal plants emitting carbon on Mars. “I think that in academia, we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here.
Nobody will dispute that,” Smith said. “Yet there are no coal mines on Mars, there’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of. So I think what
we’re looking at is something much greater than what we’re going to do.” Watch it here: At first glance, it seems as
though Smith was saying that the temperature on Mars is exactly the same as it is on Earth, an argument that is both incorrect and makes no
sense, as many other news outlets have already pointed out. Smith clarified his comments on Twitter on Thursday, however, saying he meant
not to imply that temperatures were the same, but that climate shifts on Earth and Mars have been the same. His implication, really, is that
climate change is a solar system-wide phenomena, and can’t be caused by humans on Earth.
Section: Climate policy popular
Plan popular-Washington wants to stop climate change (especially because of ocean
acidification)
Valentine, 7/15, (Katie, reporter for Climate Progress, “Congressional Candidate: Most Energy
Problems ‘Are Caused By Environmentalists’,” Climate Progress, JULY 15, 2014,
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/07/15/3460398/congressional-candidate-environment/)//erg
But though Cicotte drew on what he thinks of as Biblical principles to back up his environmental views, not
all Christians think the
planet was created for humans to use however they wish. The Evangelical Environmental Network has pushed climate
change as an issue conservatives should care about, especially conservative Christians. And in 2013, 200 self-identified evangelical scientists
sent a letter that urged Congress to reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment, using Biblical
references to back up their argument. “Our changing climate threatens the health, security, and wellbeing of millions of people who are made in God’s image,” the letter read. “The threat to future generations
and global prosperity means we can no longer afford complacency and endless debate. We as a society risk
being counted among ‘those who destroy the earth’ (Revelation 11:18).” Cicotte’s statements on Earth’s purpose also ignore the threat
climate change poses to Washington, a state that’s battled numerous wildfires in the past few weeks. Ocean
acidification has taken its toll on Washington’s oyster industry, with one oyster company in the state sending their
oyster larvae growing operations to Hawaii due to water in Willapa Bay, WA becoming too acidic. Sea level rise, beetle
infestations, and water shortages due to decreased snowpack also pose a threat to the state in coming
years, according to the National Climate Assessment
Section: Climate policy key
Obamas stance on climate change influences voter turnout
DOVERE 6/26 [EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, senior White House reporter, “Barack Obama becomes
mocker-in-chief on climate change skeptics”, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/barack-obamaclimate-change-108338.html, 6/26/14]
For the White House it’s about getting the liberal base excited for the midterms. It’s a confidence that
climate change has shifted in voters’ minds. It’s a broader play against congressional Republicans as
obstructionists. And for Obama, it’s a good time. Wednesday night, Obama ripped into his opponents in
front of a League of Conservation Voters crowd so friendly that some were pumping their arms in the air
as he spoke. “It’s pretty rare that you encounter people who say that the problem of carbon pollution is
not a problem,” Obama said. “In most communities and workplaces, they may not know how big a
problem it is, they may not know exactly how it works, they may doubt they can do something about it.
Generally they don’t just say, ‘No I don’t believe anything scientists say.’ Except, where?” he said,
waiting for the more than accommodating crowd to call back, “Congress!” Obama smiled — not his big
toothy self-satisfied grin, but his stick-it-in-the-ribs smirk. “In Congress,” he said. “Folks will tell you
climate change is hoax or a fad or a plot. A liberal plot.” Then, Obama said, there are the people who
duck the question. “They say, hey, I’m not a scientist, which really translates into, I accept that manmade climate change is real, but if I say so out loud, I will be run out of town by a bunch of fringe
elements that thinks climate science is a liberal plot so I’m going to just pretend like, I don’t know, I can’t
read,” Obama said. “I mean, I’m not a scientist either, but I’ve got this guy, John Holdren, he’s a
scientist,” Obama added to laughter. “I’ve got a bunch of scientists at NASA and I’ve got a bunch of
scientists at EPA.” “I’m not a doctor either, but if a bunch of doctors tell me that tobacco can cause lung
cancer, then I’ll say, okay. Right? I mean, it’s not that hard,” Obama said, managing not to mention that
he kept smoking himself at least through his first term. If Obama’s talking about regulations, he’s losing.
If he’s talking about carbon caps for power plants or energy emissions for air conditioners, no one cares.
But if he’s talking about crazy Republicans who don’t make any sense — and by the way, are putting
children at risk, he charges — well, that’s an argument he can wrap his arms around.
Supporting climate change will help midterms
WASHINGTON 14; May 22; “Billionaire U.S. environmentalist to target seven midterm races”;
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-usa-elections-steyer-idUSKBN0E21KA20140522
(Reuters) - Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer will give a boost to 2014
political candidates from seven U.S. states who work to combat climate change,
countering political support from fossil fuel interests.
NextGen said it would use climate change as a "wedge issue" to drum up voter turnout
and to show that taking an anti-science position can hurt rather than help political
candidates.
Export / Import
Links
The Tea Party is fundamentally at odds with environmental sustainability in every
instance
Merchant 11 (Brian, environmental blogger, “You Can't be Both a Tea Partier and an
Environmentalist. Sorry.”, Published August 1, 2011, Treehugger,
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/you-cant-be-both-a-tea-partier-and-anenvironmentalist-sorry.html)
The line gets drawn somewhere, folks. Lately, I've been receiving a bunch of comments asking me to lay off the Tea Party. One
quipped
that "it's not like every person who believes in personal accountability and smaller government wants to
strangle penguins and club pandas." He's right -- it's not like that. If you support the Tea Party, then
what you're doing to the environment is much, much worse. And it's not because the Tea Party is made up of a bunch of
terrible, malevolent people -- far from it. It's just that the ideology espoused by the group is fundamentally at
odds with conservationism and environmental responsibility in the modern world. The Tea Party's Assault on
the Environment The Tea Party-led Congress has so far this term led an assault on just about every corner of
the environment imaginable: They've worked to gut the Clean Air Act. Tried to slash the EPA's budget.
Sought to prevent the government from ever tackling climate change. And these are just the more
outwardly controversial ones -- the laws that Tea Partiers can bogusly claim they can support while still
caring about the environment. They do so by arguing things like: Climate change is a hoax, so we don't need to regulate the things
that are causing it. The EPA is a bureaucratic monstrosity, and must be cut like all other branches of government. Making companies upgrade
their pollution-reducing equipment would slow the economy during a recovery, and nobody wants that! Okay, fine -- let's say we leave those
"controversial" items alone (though they are in reality anything but). But we also have these: The Tea Party-lead GOP is also working to allow
mountaintop removal mining to become more widespread and less regulated. They're fighting to help open a giant uranium mine next to the
Grand Canyon. They want to block or overturn rules that allow companies to spew ginormous amounts of toxic pollution into the air. They want
less regulation on oil drilling and pipeline-building, despite the onslaught of recent accidents (Gulf Spill much?) that prove just how badly
regulation is needed. In states across the country, they're working to overturn conservation measures that protect land and wildlife preserves.
They've gone so far that the nation's traditionally Republican-leaning hunters and fishers are supremely fed up. In the budget appropriation bill
heading to Congress this week, there are no less than 39 different measures that would in one way or another dissolve or weaken
environmental protections. One lawmaker called it the most "anti-environmental piece of legislation" ever to be considered by Congress. So
Individual Tea Party members may not harbor the instinct to murder wildlife or dump oil into pristine
lakes -- the vast, vast majority certainly does not! But the policies they are advocating for -- relentlessly
and vociferously -- will have the same effect. And again, it's not out of malice. It arises from the very
ideology they prescribe to. The Tea Party, in its purest form, is fighting for a world with very little
government -- where only the barest of civil services (law enforcement) and national defense are
provided by the state, and the free market takes care of the rest. But consider, Tea Partiers -- in that
world, what happens to the environment? Who protects it? Businesses? Concerned citizens? Please. In the modern world, with
yes.
our advanced capacity to extract and harvest resources, to pollute on an industrial scale, and the vast monetary incentives to do so, no private
entity would stand in the way. And concerned citizens would be squashed over like a steamroller, given the resources modern corporations can
muster with ease. In
a market economy, natural resources and pristine wildlife are victims in the tragedy of
the commons. I have not yet heard a libertarian or a Tea Partier come forward with a plausible way that the environment would be
protected in such a world -- there would simply be insignificant motivation to do so. And it's nice that most individual Tea Partiers say they care
at least a little bit about the environment. I wouldn't kill a baby seal or release toxic sludge into pristine forest, they tell me. That's great! I'm
glad to hear it. But honestly, I'm not so worried about you, personally. It would be nice if every American pledged to be good conservationists in
their private lives -- but these days, that really doesn't get us anywhere. It's
the corporations that do the industrial-scale
damage, and they're not guided by a moral compass but the need to turn a profit (again, this isn't monstrous, it's
simply a structural reality). We need laws to protect stuff like this. That's what doesn't register amongst the Tea
Party, and where much of its magical thinking about the environment falls apart -- you can't protect the
nation's air, water, and wildlife just by being a determined, individual citizen and guiding your personal
choice towards the morally correct end. It's not enough. Part of protecting the environment in the modern era means
recognizing the scope of the challenges that currently face it. Which is why we need the government to set and enforce
environmental rules. Government agencies like the EPA may be bulky, slow-moving, even a bit bloated -- but those agencies, along with
the advocacy groups that push them to act, are the only true guards we've got against industrial polluters. Against a dirtier, unhealthier, less
beautiful nation. So, needless to say, until the Tea Party stops calling for the abolishment of the EPA, ceases trying to halt all-important
regulations that preserve the quality of our air and water, and quits working to roll back every
imaginable environmental protection on the books, I will continue to be critical of the group's aims. And
one last word to anyone who still thinks that they can be both a "small government" Tea Partier and an
environmentalist. Just consider again: How will you protect the nation for industrial pollution? From
mountaintop removal mining? From deforestation, from the exploitation of endangered species? From
toxic air pollution? How?
Fossil fuel money powers the Tea Party (Note: the aff represents an admission of
emissions being bad)
Schenkel 10 (Andrew, environmental blogger, “How the Tea Party is bad for the environment,”
Published in Mother Nature Network August 25, 2010, http://www.mnn.com/earthmatters/politics/stories/how-the-tea-party-is-bad-for-the-environment)
Nothing goes with a little tea like some Big Oil. In the most recent issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer connects one
of America’s wealthiest oil families, the Koch family, to the Tea Party movement. Is anyone surprised?
The super wealthy and their entanglement in politics is as American as saying whatever you need to say
to get elected. In terms of wealthy political families, the Rockefellers and Kennedys come to mind. But let’s not overlook the behind-thescenes pawn-pushers like George Soros on the left, and now perhaps, David Koch on the right. The Tea Party movement and Koch
make perfect sense as a team. Forget that Koch has been both a vice presidential nominee and then
presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, and focus on how he got to be worth an estimated $17
billion by Forbes magazine — dirty businesses. Government regulation is bad for the Koch family
business, which is a conglomeration of pipeline, fertilizer, oil refining and chemical businesses. So, when
an anti-government group like the Tea Party movement comes along, Koch takes out the checkbook.
This should concern those who vote pro-environment each November, assuming these people actually exist. Executive
branch power, like an EPA ruling, looks to be one of the few avenues left remaining for a legitimate climate policy. If anything can be learned
from the Lisa Murkowski resolution, it’s that the Senate is just a few votes shy of being able to veto anything the EPA does. This sounds like
exactly what David Koch wants. It sounds exactly like what the Tea Party wants. Is anyone surprised?
Tea party people hate global warming, but not for the reason you think
Eilperin and Clement 14 (Juliet and Scott, Washington Post reporters, “Tea party Republicans are
biggest climate change deniers, new Pew poll finds,” Published November 1, 2013, the Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/11/01/only-tea-party-members-believeclimate-change-is-not-happening-new-pew-poll-finds/)
Tea party Republicans are now the only group of Americans who think the Earth is not warming,
according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center, with just 25 percent of tea party Republicans
saying global warming is happening. By contrast, 67 percent of all Americans say there is evidence
climate change is underway, including 61 percent of non-tea party Republicans. Democrats and independents are
more confident about global warming: 88 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents say there is solid evidence climate change has
taken place over the past few decades. Despite broad belief in warming overall, fewer than half the public believes human activity is to blame
(44 percent), a number hardly changed from last year (42 percent). That's despite a significant rise in the share of Americans who believe
scientists generally agree the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, from 45 percent last year to 54 percent now. Partisans have
sharply differing perceptions of the level of scientific consensus that mirror splits in their own beliefs -- seven in 10 Democrats, but just over
four in 10 Republicans say scientists “generally agree” humans are causing a rise in the Earth’s temperature. In 2009, more than nine in 10
scientists said the Earth has gotten warmer, according to a separate Pew Research survey conducted among members of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. The
survey is the latest evidence that the tea party has split Republican
loyalists, not just over the recent government shutdown and the budget but on lower-profile issues such
as immigration and the environment. Fully 70 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning
independents who agree with the tea party movement said there’s no solid evidence the Earth has
gotten warmer in the past few decades. That compares to 61 percent of non-tea party Republicans who
believe warming is happening, along with majorities in over 60 demographic and political groups that
believe global warming is happening, according to the poll. Several environmental and liberal groups, including the
League of Conservation Voters and Organizing for Action, have sought to make climate change denial a liability in recent elections. In the
Virginia governor's race, LCV, the biggest outside spender, has targeted GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli for suggesting that global warming is not
linked to human activity, and Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe has run ads on the issue.
Tea Party hates the environment
Blodget 13 (Henry, co-founder and editor in chief of Business Insider, “I've Finally Figured Out Why
Some Crazy Republicans Want To Shut The Government Down!,” Published September 30, 2013, in
Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-republicans-want-to-shut-government-2013-9)
For the past few weeks, I've been scratching my head about why a minority faction of one of our two political parties seems so determined to
shut the government down. This
group of extremists, known as "Tea Party Republicans," doesn't seem to care
about the damage a shutdown will do to our fragile economy or confidence in our government. They also
don't seem to care that the larger party they are members of, the once-admired Republican Party, will be tarnished by their selfish,
Instead, the Tea Party extremists just say that, because they don't like a particular
piece of legislation, they are justified in shutting the whole government down. Grandstanding and brinksmanship
irresponsible behavior.
are one thing, but the extremists who now control the Republican Party don't seem to be engaging in grandstanding and brinksmanship.
they appear to be arguing that, any time a minority faction of our government is not given
everything it wants by the rest of the government, it is acceptable to shut the government down. If this
Rather,
view of our government becomes accepted as non-crazy behavior, life in this country is going to get interesting in the next few years. Anyway,
this position and attitude has been mystifying to me: Why engage in selfish, irresponsible behavior, hurt America and Americans, and destroy
your political party's brand when you don't have to? Especially when even the Tea Party admits that the shutdown threat no longer has
anything to do with the national debt! My colleagues have explained two of the reasons, namely that 1) Voting districts have been so
successfully gerrymandered that Tea Party extremists are assured of being reelected even if they behave like selfish, irresponsible lunatics, and
2) the country has become more conservative in recent years. That helped me understand. But now, on the eve of the shutdown, the "giddy"
behavior the Tea Party extremists are displaying is becoming even more comprehensible. Why? Because the first parts of the government that
will be shut down are the parts of the government that the Tea Party extremists say they hate! Specifically: The Environmental Protection
Agency. The Tea Party
extremists don't care about the environment and hate the organization dedicated
to protecting it.
Tea party wants gridlock
Kesselman 13 (Mark, professor emeritus of political science, Columbia University and editor of the
international political science review, “Why gridlock in Washington?”, Published January 17, 2013, Al
Jazeera, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/01/2013114143133822657.html)
In fact, polarisation is not symmetrical: The
Republican Party (GOP) is much further to the right than the
Democratic Party is to the left; and it is far less willing to compromise. Therefore, explaining gridlock
requires understanding what has produced the Republican Party's rightward ideological shift and
intransigence. The answer can be provided in one - or rather, three - words: The Tea Party! Gridlock,
partisan polarisation, and the rightward thrust in contemporary American politics derive from the Tea
Party's takeover of the Republican Party, which in turn has enabled the Tea Party to paralyse Congress
and the entire American government. The Tea Party movement erupted in 2009, soon after the election of the first African
American president in American history, a Democrat who was markedly more liberal than his Republican predecessor. The
Tea Party is
an ideological outlier within American politics, given its fierce opposition to tax increases; strong support for a minimal federal
government achieved by substantial cuts in federal spending on social programmes (or, preferably, their privatisation); and harsh immigration
The Tea Party's refusal to bargain and compromise also contrasts with what has often been
described as typical American pragmatism. Their influence is disproportionate to the number of its
supporters or elected officials. Its major source of power is the Republican-controlled House of
policies.
Representatives. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has observed that because the Republican Party controls the House of
Representatives, it "has much more power in Washington than it has support in the nation as a whole". While only about one quarter of House
Republicans belong to the Tea Party Congressional Caucus, the
Tea Party's ideological influence in the House Republican
caucus, coupled with Republican control of the House of Representatives, have gridlocked the American
political system since 2010. The Tea Party's direct influence can be measured by the number of Republican officials in Congress and at
state and local levels who owe their election to its support. However, the movement's indirect influence within the Republican Party reaches far
beyond its officeholders. The
Tea Party has reshaped the orientation of the entire Republican Party toward the
hard-edged right; it has been remarkably successful in intimidating Republican officeholders, including
those who may not share its extreme positions.
Tea party unwilling to compromise
Gage 14 (Patrick, heir to Carlson hotel empire, Georgetown University undergrad, editor of the
republican publication The Right Way, “Lose the Tea Party,” Published March 21, 2014, the Right Way,
http://therightwaygu.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/lose-the-tea-party/)
The Right Way recently published several articles discussing the future of the Republican Party. A number of them, like Alex Robledo’s “The
GOP Must Be More Libertarian,” suggest success lies further to the right, that ‘becoming’ more conservative — or libertarian — is the key to a
Republican resurgence. I could not disagree more. In my humble opinion, the
Tea Party and its far-right companions are the
bane of the conservative movement, no-nonsense, uncompromising organizations that care more about
ideology than governing. To ensure long-term ‘winnability’, the GOP must cut the Tea Party loose. The
Tea Party, which emerged in the wake of President Obama’s disastrous first year, has consistently
dogged Republicans and done everything it can to ruin our chances of electoral victory. In 2010, the GOP was
poised to seize both the Senate and the House. Well-known establishment figures, such as Mike Castle (Delaware) and Sue Lowden (Nevada),
were polling exceptionally well against their Democratic counterparts; Harry Reid was all but gone. Enter the Tea Party. Polarizing fringe
candidates like Sharron Angle (Nevada), Ken Buck (Colorado), and Christine O’Donnell (Delaware), who admitted to having “dabbled” in
witchcraft, destroyed any possibility of taking the Senate. Galvanized by a wave of grassroots support, all three lost races that were winnable
just months before. This unfortunate situation produced a gain of 6 Republican seats when 10 were needed for a majority. The three seats I
mentioned, plus one toss-up, could have given us the Senate. By nominating some of the worst political candidates in recent history, the Tea
Party made sure that didn’t happen. I share these examples because they prove the point I’m trying to make: for
the past 4 years, the
Tea Party has used its influence to force Republicans to the far-right. If a candidate refuses to change,
activists simply endorse the most conservative, least electable alternative they can find. In doing so, the
Tea Party has made the GOP an incredibly toxic brand in the political arena. Voters looking for
candidates who want to work with the other side and get things done won’t find them in the Tea Party;
there is little, if any, compromise to be had. Unfortunately, because Tea Party candidates track ‘right’
and are often elected as Republicans, their views are conflated with those of the establishment. In fact, the
two parties — Republican and Tea — could not be more different. The Tea Party, broadly speaking, cares most about taxes and spending. In
general, I agree with its politics — taxes are too high and Congress spends like a drunken sailor (or worse). At that point, our similarities
disappear. I am willing to compromise on these issues in order to achieve a greater good: perhaps we raise taxes a bit to decrease spending, or
maybe increase spending when a sound investment opportunity comes our way. Unlike the fringe, I understand that Congress is no place for
ideologues. Government requires
compromise, a fact the Tea Party seems loath to accept. This headline
from the Tea Party Tribune says it all: “Our Moment: No Compromise. No Surrender. Total Victory.” The
Tea Party and its rigid, ideological obsession with cutting taxes and reducing spending, though laudable
goals in and of themselves, flies in the face of common sense. The term RINO (Republican in Name Only), used
frequently during the 2010 midterms, ridiculed Republicans who had the gall to “reach across the aisle.” It
clearly has not occurred
to the far-right fringe that RINOs make government run. While the Tea Party pledges “total victory” and
“no surrender,” real leaders sit down and try to find viable solutions. Screaming may feel good, but it
doesn’t get us anywhere. The Tea Party’s attitude can be summed up in a warning activists sent to
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN): “…our great nation can no longer afford compromise and
bipartisanship.” They’re wrong. Our nation can afford compromise; in fact, we need it. It’s high-time the
establishment told the Tea Party to go away; it doesn’t belong in a movement that wishes to govern.
Fellow Republicans, heed my words: the Tea Party will be the end of us if we do not act. I urge the establishment to disown this movement, as I
have here. Ideology is fruitless if it cannot be implemented; the Tea Party’s polarizing, unpopular message will ensure we never win another
general election. It’s time to tell the Tea Party enough is enough. My way or the highway, they ask? I choose the highway, and so should you.
Tensions are high – every new policy will be scrutinized for conservative purity
Wall Street Journal, 6-18-14, (Kristina Peterson and Michael R. Crittenden, “House GOP Leadership
Vote Could Be a Dress Rehearsal” Published 6-18-14, http://online.wsj.com/articles/house-gopmembers-want-bigger-role-in-legislation-decisions-1403116336)
The tension is likely to escalate if Republicans vote to replace Mr. McCarthy with his current top deputy, Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, locked in
the tight whip race with Republican Study Committee Chairman Steve Scalise of Louisiana. A third candidate, Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana,
is trailing. "If
we preserve the status quo by just moving everybody up a seat, I think there will be a push internally and
externally like you saw in Virginia," said Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), referring to Mr. Cantor's defeat. "If we refuse to listen to that
message, we do so at our own peril." Conservative lawmakers, bristling from what they see as a domineering
approach from the current leadership, said they would be scrutinizing the winners of Thursday's contest closely in
the brief months before the next round of elections. Between now and November, Congress will have to
address a looming shortfall in the highway trust fund, the expiration of the Export-Import Bank—which many conservatives want to
eliminate—and funding of the government beyond the end of the fiscal year in September. "If we see them not govern the way
we hope they will, I guarantee there will be conversations about making changes," said Rep. Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.).
The Tea Party hates policy per se – any new agenda item will infuriate them
Dr. Wumi Akintide, 7-15-14, http://saharareporters.com/2014/07/15/obstruct-or-impeach-obamarallying-point-republicans-2014-their-waterloo-2016-dr-wumi
Even though they are currently in the minority in the US Senate they have effectively used the Senate
rule that requires a majority of 60 out of 100 members to pass any motion just to frustrate Obama to a
point that that Obama became so unpopular with his Democratic base for trying to appease the
Republicans too much because he wanted to be seen as a consensus builder. The Republicans wanted
him to lose support from his base in addition to their refusal to support him. That was their formula for
frustrating or distracting him every step of the way. Once that became clear to Obama, he decided to
reverse course. Once he managed to win a second term on his own merit, and since he was no longer
going to run for a third term, he knew it was time to call off the bluff of the Republicans if they were not
ready to meet him half way. He therefore resorted to using executive orders to carry out some of the
policies he knew were going to be in the best interest of the silent majority of Americans and that are
likely to remain part of his legacies as President. The Republicans knew any attempt to impeach the
President as advised by Sarah Palin and her cohorts would fail because the President was
constitutionally empowered to do all of what he has done and he was quick to point out to them he had
used executive orders far less frequently than all of his predecessors. He further argued that he was
forced to do it because the non-performing Congress has refused to do their own job. The Republicans
don’t want his presidency remembered for anything good. They have hoped he was only going to be a
one term President but Obama completely surprised them when he won a landslide victory against their
best candidate, Mitt Romney. Obama has managed to push the Republicans to the extreme right which
put the Republicans at logger head with the Independent voters who constitute the swing vote in
American Politics. The advent of the Tea Party has further boxed the Republicans into a corner from
which they cannot escape. Individuals like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin with their extreme views have
further dug the Republicans into a deeper hole. They now talk of taking Obama to Court and threatening
him with a Law suit forgetting that the President and his first lady are top notch Harvard lawyers who
could not be intimidated at all by any frivolous law suit. They are just hoping to distract him and to delay
the implementation of some of his sound policies.
NSA Reform
Link
Need specific link, just use other da. May not have had time to cut this. Iron fertilization kills Obama’s pc
needs to be put here.
Naval Readiness
Links
Ocean space is narrowing and conflicts are inevitable – it is required for readiness
Colleen M. Sullivan, http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/y-12-014, ‘14
Oregon’s ocean waters are a potential source of wind, wave, and tidal energy; of interest to renewable energy
entrepreneurs and to the U.S. government as it seeks to bolster energy security. In order to install technology to
capture this energy, however, it may be necessary to mitigate conflict with existing ocean space users. The objective
of this research was to construct a conflict analysis model in a GIS to answer the following research questions: (1) Within the study area off the
coast of Oregon, where are stakeholders currently using ocean space and how many uses overlap? (2) To what extent
might existing ocean space use present potential for conflict with renewable energy development? (3) How do various
types of uncertainty affect analysis results? (4) What are the implications of these findings for ecosystem based management of the ocean? All
available spatial information on ocean space usage by commercial fishing, commercial non-fishing, recreational,
Native American, and scientific communities was gathered. Stakeholder outreach with these communities was
used to vet the collected data and allow each to contribute knowledge not previously available through GIS data
clearinghouses maintained by government or interest groups. The resulting data were used as inputs to a conflict
visualization model written in Python and imported to an ArcGIS tool. Results showed extensive coverage and
overlap of existing ocean space uses; specifically that 99.7% of the 1-nm2 grid cells of the study area are occupied
by at least 6 different categories of ocean space use. The six uses with the greatest coverage were: Fishing –
Trolling, Habitat, Military, Fishing - Closure Areas, Protected, and Marine Transportation - Low Intensity. An
uncertainty analysis was also completed to illustrate the margin for error and therefore the necessity of appropriate stakeholder outreach
during the renewable energy siting process, as opposed to relying only on a GIS. Ranking of each category by its potential for conflict with
renewable energy development demonstrated which areas of the ocean may be particularly contentious. Because rankings are subjective, a
tool was created to allow users to input their own rankings. For the purpose of this report, default rankings were assigned to each as justified
by the literature. Results under these assumptions showed that space use and potential for conflict were highest between the coast and
approximately 30 nm at sea. This is likely because certain space use is limited by depth (e.g., recreational use); there is
increased shipping density as vessels approach and depart major ports; and increased fuel costs associated with
traveling further from shore. Two potential applications of model results were demonstrated. First, comparison with existing wave
energy permit sites highlighted relative potential for conflict among the sites and the input data detailed the specific uses present. Second,
comparison with areas determined most suitable for development by the wave energy industry illustrated that areas of high suitability often
also had high rankings for potential for conflict. It appeared that the factors that determined development suitability were often the same
factors that drew current ocean space users to those locations. Current support at the state, regional and federal level under the National
Ocean Policy for the use of marine spatial planning as a tool to implement ecosystem based management of the oceans requires that tools such
as the one developed in this research are used, to ensure that all components of the marine ecosystem are considered prior to implementation
of a management plan. The addition of renewable energy to the current social landscape of the ocean will reduce the resource base for many
categories of ocean space use. Model results demonstrated that mitigation of conflict between development and
existing space use is not merely a best practice supported by current policy, but a necessity. Results presented a
visualization of the social landscape of the ocean that could help managers determine which stakeholders to
engage during the initial stage of choosing a site for development.
The ocean is key to military readiness
Medina et. al. 14 (Medina, Monica, Joel Smith, and Linda Sturgis. "National Coastal Mapping Advancing National Defense and Ocean
Conservation." National Coastal Ocean Mapping (2014): n. pag. Center for a New American Security. Jan. 2014. Web. 15 July 2014.
<http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/OceanMapping_MedinaSmithSturgis.pdf>. XM)
The ocean functions as a geographic barrier for the United States, as well as a highway for U.S.
military forces to deploy around the world. In order to be prepared for national defense, the Navy,
Coast Guard and Marine Corps require large areas of the coastal ocean for training and long-range
weapons testing. To maximize situational awareness and ensure safety and operational
effectiveness, the military places significant value on the collection and analysis of data.8 To operate
in the coastal ocean, federal agencies – including the military – must undergo an expansive permitting process to comply with the
National Environmental Protection Act. The law requires federal agencies to “make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by
identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health of its programs, policies, and activities.”9
Military users must also comply with a host of other marine-based environmental protection laws,
such as the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Coastal Zone
Management Act and the Clean Water Act, as well as state environmental protection laws.
The Navy’s use of ocean training is key to naval readiness
Guerrero ’13 (Jesse Leon Guerrero, Joint regions marianas public affairs, “Tsunami Exercise strengthens navy’s readiness on Guam” 12
December 2013. (http://www.pacom.mil/Media/News/NewsArticleView/tabid/7464/Article/7786/tsunami-exercise-strengthens-navysreadiness-on-guam.aspx) LP)
The benefit of an exercise like this is that we're not caught off guard and that we know what to
do when the time to do it occurs, rather than trying to figure it out on the day of," he said. "It's improving us with
material and force readiness." U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam (USCG) Chief Operations Specialist Brian Koji said in a reallife situation the command might only have two hours to respond and go through all of their
emergency checklists and notification procedures. Koji and other Coast Guardsmen set up a portable high-frequency
communications system at the Joint Region Marianas headquarters, which allowed USCG to maintain their communications with the
emergency management office in Saipan and vessels around Guam. "It is important for us to practice our skills because it has to be automatic
when we're going through everything," he said.
"If we don't practice, we're not as proficient with setting up our
gear." Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Distribution Guam Marianas Director Joe Pirman said it only took between three to five minutes for
about 60 DLA employees to evacuate from their offices near Tango Wharf to Ebbett Field. "Take it seriously because you
never know when it's really going to happen," he said. "This is something that we can do for a
typhoon, earthquake or tsunami. When a real world thing happens, if it happens, we will know
what to do.
Training imperative to military readiness – [adjacent development OR ocean
observation systems OR economic expansion] can compromise
Cullom 13 STATEMENT OF VADM PHILIP HART CULLOM, USN, DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR FLEET READINESS AND
LOGISTICS (N4), U.S. NAVY THE READINESS POSTURE OF THE U.S. NAVY AND THE U.S. MARINE CORPS” APRIL 26, 2013 Online
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113hhrg80770/html/CHRG-113hhrg80770.htm
To support a ready Navy, it is imperative we provide our warfighters with robust quality training before
they serve at the tip of the spear. The budget includes sustained investments in key training capabilities, including fleet synthetic
training. To further improve undersea warfare readiness, it also increases funding for the diesel electric submarine initiative and continues
development of the shallow water training range. Continued procurement of high-speed maneuverable surface targets provides realistic live
fire training at sea for operator proficiency.
We must ensure our training investments are not compromised to the
detriment of our warfighters. Encroachment to key training sites, both physical and electromagnetic,
can occur both ashore and at sea. If not controlled, it threatens our ability to train and operate and can
adversely impact our national security. Over the course of the past year, we have learned that
encroachment can include adjacent development, ocean observing systems, or economic expansion.
Increased awareness and continued interagency cooperation are central to maintaining our national
security.
Ocean drills key to Naval Maritime Readiness
U.S Fleet Forces Command N.D. (U.S. Fleet Forces Command—Under the control of the Secretary of the Navy. “Why the
Navy Trains and Tests” No Date. http://aftteis.com/NavyTrainingandTesting/WhytheNavyTrainsandTests.aspx//AP)
Naval forces must be ready for a variety of military operations—from large-scale conflict to maritime
security and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief—to deal with the dynamic, social, political,
economic, and environmental issues that occur in today’s world. The Navy supports these military
operations through its continuous presence on the world’s oceans. The Navy can respond to a wide
range of issues because, on any given day, over one-third of its ships, submarines, and aircraft are
deployed overseas. Naval forces must be prepared for a broad range of capabilities—from full-scale armed
conflict in a variety of different geographic areas to disaster relief efforts—prior to deployment on the world's oceans. To
learn these capabilities, personnel must train with the equipment and systems that will achieve
military objectives. The training process provides personnel with an in-depth understanding of their
individual limits and capabilities; the training process also helps the testing community improve new weapon
systems.
Modern weapons training requires space – key to readiness
U.S Fleet Forces Command N.D. (U.S. Fleet Forces Command—Under the control of the Secretary of the Navy. “Why the
Navy Trains and Tests” No Date. http://aftteis.com/NavyTrainingandTesting/WhytheNavyTrainsandTests.aspx//AP)
Modern weapons bring both unprecedented opportunity and innumerable challenges to the Navy. For example,
modern (or smart) weapons are very accurate and help the Navy accomplish its mission with greater precision
and far less collateral damage than in past conflicts; however, modern weapons are very complex to use.
Military personnel must train regularly with these weapons to understand the capabilities,
limitations, and operations of the platform or system. Modern military actions require teamwork—
teamwork that includes the use of various equipment, vehicles, ships, and aircraft—between
hundreds or thousands of people to achieve success.¶ Military readiness training and preparation for deployment include
everything from teaching basic and specialized individual military skills to intermediate skills or small unit training. As personnel increase
in skill level and complete the basic training, they advance to intermediate and larger exercise training events, which culminate in
advanced, integrated training events composed of large groups of personnel and, in some instances, joint service exercises.
Realistic Environment key to Naval Readiness
U.S Fleet Forces Command N.D. (U.S. Fleet Forces Command—Under the control of the Secretary of the Navy. “Why the
Navy Trains and Tests” No Date. http://aftteis.com/NavyTrainingandTesting/WhytheNavyTrainsandTests.aspx//AP)
Military readiness training must be as realistic as possible to provide the experiences so important to
success and survival. While simulators and synthetic training are critical elements of training—to provide
early skill repetition and enhance teamwork—there is no substitute for live training in a realistic environment. The
range complexes and operating areas have these realistic environments, with sufficient sea and airspace vital for safety and mission success.
Just as a pilot would not be ready to fly solo after simulator training, a Navy commander cannot allow
military personnel to engage in real combat activities based merely on simulator training.
Military Exercises key to development of new naval technology
U.S Fleet Forces Command N.D. (U.S. Fleet Forces Command—Under the control of the Secretary of the Navy. “Why the
Navy Trains and Tests” No Date. http://aftteis.com/NavyTrainingandTesting/WhytheNavyTrainsandTests.aspx//AP)
The Navy uses a number of different testing methods, including computer simulation and analysis, throughout the development of platforms
and systems. Although
simulation is a key component in the development of platforms and systems, it
cannot provide information on how a platform or system will perform or whether it will be able to meet
performance and other specification requirements in the environment in which it is intended to operate
without comparison to actual performance data. For this reason, platforms and systems must undergo at-sea
testing at some point in the development process. Thus, like the fleet, the research and acquisition community requires access
to large, relatively unrestricted ocean operating areas, multiple strike targets, and unique range
attributes to support its testing requirements. Navy platforms and systems must be tested and
evaluated within the broadest range of operating conditions available (e.g., bathymetry, topography, geography)
because Navy personnel must be capable of performing missions within the wide range of conditions
that exist worldwide. Furthermore, Navy personnel must be assured that platforms and systems will
meet performance specifications in the real-world environment in which they will be operated.
Kritiks
Environmental Security
Links
Geoengineering puts the jumper cables on the motor of biopolitics that makes bare
life, genocide and nuclear war inevitable—we’re not kidding
Bruyère 13 (Vincent, assistant prof of French @ Emory Univ., Paroles En L’air: Climate Change and the
Science of Fables, diacritics Vol 41.3, 2013, pgs 60-79)//mm
The controversial human engineering proposal signed by Matthew Liao, Anders Sand berg, and Rebecca
Roache is equally demanding in that respect. In their paper “Human Engineering and Climate Change”
they explore biotechnological alternatives to programs that seek market-regulated behavioral change to
address global warming, and to equally controversial geoengineering programs that seek to cool the
planet through Solar Radiation Management. The suggestions range from the distribution of
pharmaceutical patches to induce a meat intolerance that enables individuals to become vegetarians
and thus participate actively in the reduction of livestock farming, and oxytocin treatment to enhance
altruism and empathy—precious qualities in times of scarcity—to more radical genetic modifications.
These measures, insist the authors, would not be forced upon a population but would be encouraged
through tax breaks or sponsored healthcare incentives.49 I am not quite sure what to say about this
text, or how to respond to it, other than with a yes, no, or perhaps, based on a review of its assessment
of risks and benefits. But this reaction would only concern the suggested measures, not the form of the
proposal itself in its inventiveness. Any answer to the question of what biotechnology can or cannot do
based on the rationale of risk assessments is already part, if not the product, of the bioethicist machine.
These measures belong to the corpus of modern panoplies accomplishing the transformability,
reformability, and reasoning of bodies through a scriptural machine. Conspicuously remodeling the
bios involved in bioethics, biopolitics, and biotechnology, the transformations Liao’s measures
promote are taking place in a time when, much like in Lyotard’s fable of biotechnological escalation,
there would be no fundamental difference between a Bildung project and a slow—too slow according to
Liao—self-formation process cultivating human potential through the arts and humanities, along with
the bio- chemical facilitation that accelerates behavioral change.50 This reformative effort, writes de
Certeau, preceded the historical form that writing has taken in modern times. It will outlive this
particular form. It is interwoven into this form and determines it like a continuing archaeology whose
name and status we are unable to determine. What is at stake is the relation between the law and the
body—a body is itself defined, delimited, and articulated by what writes it.51 In that sense, when it
comes to the bioengineering proposal, the only thing I can talk about concerns “the relation between
the delimitation of a field . . . or a system . . . and what it constitutes as its outside or its remainder” or,
in other words, the relation between human engineering as a field of operations and the desire or the
need “to make our bodies the emblems of an identifying law.”52 I cannot stop the machine but I can say
that Liao and his coauthors renew a kind of belief in the history of fables translating discursive surplus
into manageable values. They renew the form of an expertise in fiction. By doing so, they create a
system of constraints along with a domain of possibilities. They come up with a new range of answers to
Foucault’s question: “How can one reduce the great peril, the great danger with which fiction threatens
our world?”53 Almost apologetic, Liao, Sandberg, and Roache write: We are well aware that our
proposal to encourage having smaller, but environmentally- friendlier human beings is prima facie
outlandish, and we have made no attempt to avoid provoking this response. There is a good reason for
this, namely, we wish to highlight that examining intuitively absurd or apparently drastic ideas can be an
important learning experience, and that failing to do so could result in our missing out on opportunities
to address important, often urgent, issues.54 Liao’s bioengineering proposal is contained in a box made
of competing proposals and options (Solar Radiation Management, ocean fertilization, carbon pricing,
etc.). It is not yet approved, or even welcomed as the best possible, or least risky, option; and yet it has
not been rejected either. I am not in a position to open the box, in the same way that I cannot tell the
off-position from the on-position in Schrödinger’s experiment, but I can intensify the proposal by
reading for its scriptural plot while resituating it in a culture of fiction and the history of the science of
fables. The proposal itself functions as one of these theoretical fictions that “tell us that there is no entry
or exit for writing, but only the endless play of its fabrications,”55 fictions among which de Certeau
placed Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” Raymond Roussel’s Locus Solus, and Marcel Duchamp’s celibate
machines. In Kafka’s story, access is granted to an antiquated judiciary mechanism designed to
enforce/write/project/engrave/inscribe/prescribe the law directly into the flesh of those who have
been found guilty, and to write it in such a way that the body brought before the law perishes in the
process, without a trial, unaware of the charges.56 “In the Penal Colony” grants Lyotard access to a
problematization of morals and politics, and by extension to the question of the penitentiary within civil
society. I leave aside much of Lyotard’s elaboration of the innocence and infancy of this body before it
entered the (time of the) law and was reclaimed by the legal/lethal apparatus, to jump ahead to the
ending and to the return of a certain form of exacting cruelty. The old machine destroys itself before the
eyes of the visitor who had been granted access to it, thus making room for the representational
machine of politics, an enlightened machine that, unlike the previous one, would permit trials and
deliberations. But like the previous one, the new machine would convene a community around its
proceedings. The original machine was already old, and its mode of operation in question. The visitor
was preparing to report back on its cruelty and spread outrage in the nascent public space of the colony
that had sought his services and granted him access to the machine. The narrative feat that brings about
the demise of the machine only brings to the fore, and for the naked eye so to speak, what was meant
to happen, and may have in fact already happened. As Lyotard remarks at the beginning of his
“intervention,” Kafka’s text doesn’t call for any commentary, which would only diminish both its clarity
and its violent quality. One could also argue that there is nothing radically new in principle in the
bioengineering proposal, and again nothing much to say about it, nor to read into it. Liao’s proposal
restarts the old moral machine that had been stopped in Kafka’s story. In the updated version, the
judicial function is almost entirely absent but the communal spectacle that at once embodies and
engineers the obligation, responsibility, prescription, and a certain sense of Anthropocenic citizenship is
more pronounced than ever (even if it is blood- less). In a normative world that only knows procedures,
technical rationality, and values, an ethics of responsibility ends up being performed by the return of
Kafka’s machines. What is left of cruelty if sanguis is not shed to become cruor?57 With Liao, it is not
about the body anymore, nor about its indifference regarding the law and the law’s exacting timeliness,
even when one of the proposed measures exposes the unborn, through pre- implantation genetic
diagnosis (PGD), to select shorter children. That which stands before the cruel machine has been
relocated, and cruelty is thus redirected toward a timeless and unmitigated future that does not include
us—“a future beyond the grasp of historical sensibility”—to be reclaimed by a moral apparatus.58 Those
sudden shifts only happen in fiction, and particularly in fictions that write themselves as fictional
machines. The illegible praescripta to be inscribed on the body of the convict become lethal only when
the machine reads them; a button is red only if pressed. The machine targets a scriptural and legal
effort that, turning one last time to de Certeau, “preceded the historical form that writing has taken in
modern times” and that “will outlive this particular form.” This machine we call fiction stands for that
which does, operates, and intervenes without having to be observed doing, operating, and intervening.
It is its own archive even when access has been granted to it. For this reason, any machine would dream
of being a doomsday device that will keep on ticking, not necessarily indefinitely, but at least until—
doomsday or not—there is nothing left to register its movement or notice its fading rustle anymore.59
James Watt’s steam engine achieved that status in a post hoc fashion thanks to Paul Crutzen.60 Even if
all working steam engines have disappeared by the time the last observer expires, Watt’s invention will
have still been a doomsday device for those who are not there on doomsday to recall the instrument of
their demise. Having created “the future prospects of a genetic genocide,” Liao and his colleagues may
just have set such a machine in motion, for, as George Annas contends, “given the history of
humankind, it is extremely unlikely that we will see the better [or for that matter the shorter] babies . . .
as equal in rights and dignity to us, or that they will see us, the ‘naturals,’ as their equals.”61 And so it
may be with geoengineering proposals— Alan Robock confides his fears in the same issue of Ethics,
Policy and Environment where Liao published his proposal: “I can imagine worse scenarios, including
global nuclear war started in response to unilateral geoengineering implementation.”62 But it is
also in light of Liao’s device and its splicing of evolutionary, biotechnological, and historico-legal
timelines that normative differentials, such as human rights, may endure in the conjectural ecologies of
the Anthropocene.63 Policy relevance is very much a new frontier in the humanistic and social
humanistic culture of research. And it is so perhaps because of the way it adjusts forms of inquiry to
meet demands for meaning. It is new as far as “the future appears as a contingent set of possibilities
about which decisions are demanded; decisions are demanded because the future appears as
something about which we must do something.”64 As such—and because adjustments entail delays,
mishaps, and replays—the historicity of policy relevance, as an object of discourse and an object of
desire, must not be ignored by literary scholars even if they cannot decide on the definitional status of
policy relevance within relations of power. However, when it comes to policy relevance in its modalities
of existence, as well as its non-definitional dimension and exteriority relative to the reality it seeks to
transform, protocols of intervention and renunciation remain to be invented, textual competencies to
be conceived. It is less a plea to make literary criticism policy relevant, or a praise of its functional policy
irrelevance in a knowledge economy driven by risk management, and more a memorandum of
understanding for what the governance of futurity invests in—or attaches to—the cultivation of
difference in forms of inquiry, and for the kind of comparative work, notional distinctions, and forms of
life that might sanction the description of emergent orders of difference. If there is a definitional
outcome to this Anthropocenic sequencing of artifacts, it may be found in the distinction between
survival techniques and what Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents calls “techniques of living.” A
policy-relevant view of Svalbard, Liao’s proposal, and demands for sustainability would see each of these
as survival techniques necessary for the management of life after good life. Seen from the perspective of
those “systemics of development” that, according to Bill Readings commenting on “Oikos,” are now “the
general horizon under which . . . all forms of life are being subsumed,”65 Svalbard, Liao’s biotech
proposal, and their respective demands for sustainability, are all techniques of living. They “stylize [our]
capacity for sense-feeling and awareness.”66 They manner sentience—where insentience is “not
necessarily the nonawareness of a dead thing [but] also the opacity, to us, of the inhuman structures
that structure the human, and emerge in our artifacts.”67 And through this operation, they define zones
of interest in life, rather than ways “to keep death—or the wrong kind of death—at bay.”68 It is in this
manner that the Anthropocene project leaves us with something interesting to read. Policy relevance
relies on the ability to “imagine the calibration of exchange by means of abstract instruments,”69 and
on the particular regulatory, authoritative exchange of forms of expertise. But what is of interest is
precisely the relation of policy relevance “to the living, which is to say dying, beings who create
them,”70 especially as it mediates their life interests. Likewise, what systemics of development will
leave us with, “if we are sent to space after the explosion of the sun”71 in a final send-off, is less a
matter of carbon life, finitude, and survival, than of an obligation toward the philologies and those other
techniques, disciplines, institutions, architectures, proposals, policies, and narratives of the “once we
had been sent to space,” that interest us in our fables.
Capitalism
Links
A neoliberal green revolution simply shifts to domination and exploitation into other
spheres
White (post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Cultural and Innovation Studies, University of East London) 2
(Damian, A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age, Environmental
Politics, Vo1.II. No.2, Summer 2002. pp.I-26)
The first point is essentially negative. Notably, it draws attention to the fact that even if all the
obstacles to a green industrial revolution posed by the structuring of the current political
economy are addressed - ifthere are notforces to make things differently - the type of eco-technological
and ecoindustrial reorganisation that triumphs could simply serve and reinforce the patterns of
interest of dominant groups. A neo-liberal version of the 'green industrial revolution'
could simply give rise to eco-technologies and forms of industrial reorganisation that
arc perfectly compatible with extending social control, military power, worker
surveillance and the broader repressive capacities of dominant groups and institutions. It
might even be that a corporate dominated green industrial revolution would simply ensure that employers
have 'smart' buildings which not only give energy back to the national grid but allow for new 'solar
powered' employee surveillance technologies. What of a sustainable military-industrial complex
that uses green warfare technologies that kill human beings without destroying
ecosystems? To what extent might a 'nonhero' dominated green industrial revolution simply
ensure that the South receives ecotechnologies that primarily express Northern interests
(for example, embedding relations of dependency rather than of self management and autonomy?). In
short then, a green industrial revolution could simply give rise to new forms of 'green
governmentality' [Dorier et aI., 1999].
The 1AC’s call for development creates the ocean as a new space for neoliberal capitalism
Steinberg (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London) 10
(Philip E., Sekula, Allan and Noël Burch 2010 The Forgotten Space, reviewed by Philip E. Steinberg
http://societyandspace.com/reviews/film-reviews/sekula/)
In other words, in
the capitalist imagination, the sea is idealized as a flat surface in which
space is abstracted from geophysical reality. As the sea’s space is reduced to an abstract
quantity of distance, or time, it is constructed as amenable to annihilation by
technologies that enable the compression (or, better yet, the transcendence) of space-time, like the
containership. While this construction of the ocean provides rich material for geographers of capitalism
and modernity (e.g. Steinberg 2001), it provides precious little material for filmmakers. Under capitalism,
the ocean is valued only in its (idealized) absence, and absence is notoriously difficult to film. Thus, as
Brett Story, the other geographer who has commented on the film, has noted, ‘he film spends surprisingly
little time on actual water’ (Story 2012, page 1576, emphasis added). By my count, only about ten
minutes of the 110-minute film are spent at sea (all on the Hanjin Budapest) and even in this footage the
material ocean is not a force that needs to be reckoned with, except as a source of rust.
For viewers who are familiar with Sekula’s book Fish Story, as well as with his other film The Lottery of
the Sea, the relative absence of the ocean in The Forgotten Space is, as Story suggests, surprising. In
contrast with The Forgotten Space, Fish Story begins with a meditation on the ‘crude materiality’ of the
sea (Sekula 1995, page 12) and he reminds the reader throughout the book that the ocean’s
materiality persists despite the best intentions of capital to wash it away. Thus, for instance,
we learn in Fish Story that ‘large-scale material flows remain intractable. Acceleration is not
absolute: the hydrodynamics of large-capacity hulls and the power output of diesel
engines set a limit to the speed of cargo ships not far beyond that of the first quarter of [the
twentieth] century’ (Sekula 1995, page 50). In Fish Story, the ocean is a space of contradictions and a
non-human actor in its own right. However, no such references to the sea’s geophysical materiality and
the barriers that this might pose to its idealization as a friction-free surface of movement appear in The
Forgotten Space.
Human frictions on the sea likewise feature in Fish Story: militant seafarers, longshoremen, and
mutineers all make appearances in the text. In contrast, these individuals receive scant attention in The
Forgotten Space (a point noted by Story as well), and much of the attention that they do receive is about
their failings. A relatively hopeful account of union organizing in Los Angeles is paired with a story of
labour’s defeat in the face of automation in Rotterdam and that of a faded movement in Hong Kong
where the union hall has become a social club for retirees and their widows.
For Sekula, the heterotopia of the ship celebrated by Foucault has become a neoliberal
dystopia. The world of containerization is Foucault’s dreaded ‘civilization without
boats, in which dreams have dried up, espionage has taken the place of adventure, and the police have
taken the place of pirates’ (adapted from Foucault 1986, page 27). Echoing Foucault, Sekula asks near the
beginning of the film, ‘Does the anonymity of the box turn the sea of exploit and adventure into a lake of
invisible drudgery?’ Although Sekula never answers this question directly, his response would seem to be
in the affirmative: the sea is no longer a romantic space of resistance; it has been tamed.
Sekula and Burch’s failure to depict the ocean as a space of dialectical encounters (whether
between humans or among human and non-human elements) reproduces a dematerialization of the
sea that is frequently found in narratives of globalization, including critical narratives
(Steinberg 2013). This leads the filmmakers to inadvertently reaffirm the capitalist
construction of the ocean as an external space beyond politics. By turning away from the
frictions encountered at sea, Sekula and Birch end up tacitly endorsing the very
‘forgetting’ of the sea promoted by capital, as it subscribes to an ideology of limitless
mobility.
Massive change is needed to solve climate change – only an end to capitalism can solve
Foster et al (professor of sociology at the University of Oregon; assistant professor of sociology at North
Carolina State University; associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon) 9
(Foster, J. B., Clark, B. and York, R. (2009), The Midas Effect: A Critique of Climate Change Economics.
Development and Change, 40: 1085–1097)
Some argue today that the speed and intensity of the ecological threat leaves us with no
choice but to stick with the existing system and embrace its limited and myopic solutions to
environmental problems: such strategies as ‘cap and trade’ carbon markets and market-driven
technological silver bullets. The fantastic nature of these strategies reflects the fact that they conform to
the Midas Effect of mainstream economics: environmental change must conform to the ‘bottom line’ of
capital accumulation.
In fact, where adopted, carbon markets have accomplished little to reduce carbon emissions. This has to
do with numerous factors, not least of all provisions for nations to buy out of the actual reductions in
various ways. The idea that technology can solve the global environmental problem, as a
kind of deus ex machine without changes in social relations, belongs to the area of fantasy and
science fiction. Thomas Friedman (2008: 186–7) provides a vision of green industrial revolution in
hisHot, Flat, and Crowded in which he repeatedly tells his readers that if given ‘abundant, clean,
reliable, and cheap electrons’, we could move the world and end all ecological problems. Gregg
Easterbrook (1995: 687–8), in what he calls environmental ‘realism’, argues that even if we destroy this
biosphere we can ‘terraform’ Mars — so humanity's existence is not necessarily impaired by
environmental destruction.
The very desperation of such establishment arguments, which seek to address the present-day
environmental problem without confronting the reality of capitalism, highlights the need for more radical
measures in relation to climate change and the ecological crisis as a whole. Especially noteworthy in this
respect is Hansen's carbon tax proposal, and global contraction-conversion strategies. In place of carbon
markets, which invariably include various ways to buy out of emissions reductions (registering reductions
while actually increasing emissions), Hansen (2008a) proposes a carbon tax for the United States to be
imposed at well-head and point of entry, aimed at bringing carbon dioxide emissions down to near zero,
with 100 per cent of the revenue from the tax being deposited as monthly dividends directly into the bank
accounts of the public on a per person basis (with children receiving half shares). Not all carbon taxes of
course are radical measures. But Hansen's emergency strategy, with its monthly dividends, is designed to
keep carbon in the ground and at the same time to appeal to the general public. It explicitly circumvents
both the market and state power, in order to block those who desire to subvert the process. In this, the
hope is to establish a mass popular constituency for combating climate change by promoting social
redistribution of wealth toward those with smaller carbon footprints (the larger part of the population).
Hansen insists that any serious attempt to protect the climate means going against Big Coal. An important
step would be to declare a moratorium on new coal-fired power stations, which he describes as ‘death
factories’ since the carbon emissions they produce contribute to escalating extinction rates (as well as
polluting regional environments and directly impairing human health) (Hansen, 2009). He argues that we
need to leave as much coal as possible in the ground and to close existing coal-fired power stations if we
are to prevent catastrophic environmental change.
From a global standpoint, ecological degradation is influenced by the structure and dynamics of a world
system hierarchically divided into numerous nation states, competing with each other both directly and
via their corporations. In an attempt to counter carbon imperialism, Anil Agarwal and Sunita Narain
(1991) propose that carbon emissions of nations should be determined on an equal per capita basis, rooted
in what is allowable within the shared atmosphere. The global North, with its relatively smaller
population in contrast to the South, has used a disproportionate amount of the
atmospheric commons, given its immense carbon emissions. Thus Tom Athanasiou and Paul
Baer (2002) and other climate justice activists propose a process of contraction and convergence. The rich
nations of the North would be required to reduce (contract) their emissions of greenhouse gases to
appropriate levels as determined by the atmospheric carbon target. Given global inequalities, the nations
of the South would be allowed to increase their emissions gradually to a limited extent — but only if a
nation had a per capita carbon emission rate below the acceptable level established by the target. This
would create a world converging toward ‘equal and low, per capita allotments’ (Athanasiou and Baer,
2002: 84). Today contraction and convergence would necessarily aim at stabilizing atmospheric carbon
dioxide at 350 ppm, in conformity with scientific indications.
Such a proposal would mean that the rich nations would have to reduce their carbon emissions
very rapidly by levels approaching 100 per cent, while a massive global effort would be
needed to help countries in the global South move toward emissions stabilization as well,
while not jeopardizing sustainable human development. Such a process of contraction and convergence
would require that the global North pay the ecological debt that it has accrued through using up the bulk
of the atmospheric commons, by carrying the main cost of mitigation globally and aiding nations of the
South in adapting to negative climate effects.
In reality, the radical proposals discussed above, although ostensibly transition strategies, present
the issue of revolutionary change. Their implementation would require a popular revolt
against the system itself. A movement (or movements) powerful enough to implement
such changes on the necessary scale might well be powerful enough to implement a
full-scale social-ecological revolution. In fact, humanity cannot expect to reach 350 ppm
and avoid planetary climatic disaster except through a major global social
transformation, in line with the greatest social revolutions in human history. This would
require not simply a change in productive forces but also in productive relations,
necessitating a green cultural revolution. The answer to today's social and environmental crisis, as Lewis
Mumford argued inThe Condition of Man (1973: 419–23), lies in the creation of the ‘organic person’,
or a system of sustainable human development. This means the creation of cultural forms that present the
opportunity for balance in the human personality. Rather than promoting the asocial traits of humanity,
the emphasis would be on nurturing the social and collective characteristics. Each human being would be
‘in dynamic interaction with every part of his environment’.
Environmental Justice
Links
Their reductionist view of climate change reinscribes white supremacy by
marginalizing the daily struggles of people of color. However, racism is intricately
linked to environmental destruction-The link means they can’t solve
Utt 11
Jasmine, Writer for Change From Within
(“Tim Wise and White Privilege”, April 13, 2011, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/)
But as troubling as colorblindness can be when evinced by liberals, colormuteness
may be even worse. Colormuteness
comes into play in the way many on the white liberal-left fail to give voice to the connections
between a given issue about which they are passionate, and the issue of racism and racial inequity. So, for instance,
when environmental activists focus on the harms of pollution to the planet in the abstract, or to nonhuman species, but largely ignore the day-to-day environmental issues facing people of color, like
disproportionate exposure to lead paint, or municipal, medical and toxic waste, they marginalize black and brown folks within the
movement, and in so doing, reinforce racial division and inequity. Likewise, when climate change activists focus on the
ecological costs of global warming, but fail to discuss the way in which climate change
disproportionately affects people of color around the globe, they undermine the ability of the green
movement to gain strength, and they reinforce white privilege.¶ How many climate change activists,
for instance, really connect the dots between global warming and racism? Even as people of color are
twice as likely as whites to live in the congested communities that experience the most smog and
toxic concentration thanks to fossil fuel use? Even as heat waves connected to climate change kill people of color at twice the rate
of their white counterparts? Even as agricultural disruptions due to warming — caused disproportionately by the white west — cost African
nations $600 billion annually? Even as
the contribution to fossil fuel emissions by people of color is 20 percent
below that of whites, on average? Sadly, these facts are typically subordinated within climate activism to
simple “the world is ending” rhetoric, or predictions (accurate though they may be) that unless
emissions are brought under control global warming will eventually kill millions. Fact is, warming is
killing a lot of people now,and most of them are black and brown. To build a global movement to roll
back the ecological catastrophe facing us, environmentalists and clean energy advocates must
connect the dots between planetary destruction and the real lives being destroyed currently, which are
disproportionately of color. To do anything less is not only to engage in a form of racist marginalizing of
people of color and their concerns, but is to weaken the fight for survival.
Neoliberalism
Links
Centering climate change trades off with focus on the neoliberal social forces
driving it – the aff displaces non-warming environmental crises and the root
causes of warming
Crist 7
(Eileen, has been teaching at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since
1997, where she is advisor for the undergraduate program Humanities, Science, and Environment,
“Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse”, Telos, 141 (Winter 2007): 29–55.)
While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in
representing it as the most urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves
to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the restriction of proposed solutions to the technical
realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly address the
problem; and it detracts attention from the planet’s ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of
claiming the limelight for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest
threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the
proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out
what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve “the problem.” Whether the call is for reviving nuclear
power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources,
increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing
mirrors in space to deflect the sun’s rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront
the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them,
capturing them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example, Lovelock
briefly mentions the need to face climate change by “changing our whole style of living.”16 But the
thrust of this work, what readers and policy-makers come away with, is his repeated and strident call for
investing in nuclear energy as, in his words, “the one lifeline we can use immediately.”17 In the policy
realm, the first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with
implementing the Kyoto protocol. Biologist Tim Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for
its successful endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozone-depleting CFCs.
“The Montreal protocol,” he submits, “marks a signal moment in human societal development,
representing the first ever victory by humanity over a global pollution problem.”18 He hopes for a
similar victory for the global climate-change problem. Yet the deepening realization of the threat of
climate change, virtually in the wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with
global problems treaty-by-treaty is no solution to the planet’s predicament. Just as the risks of
unanticipated ozone depletion have been followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate
crisis, so it would be naïve not to anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe
arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were
restricted successfully by means of technological shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological
crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction,
land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go
unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth.
Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to its
expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But questioning this
civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded quest for a
global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization that are causing the
climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climate-change literature often focuses on how
global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological means can save it from
impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic
work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues.
Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed
to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the
oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification,
endocrine disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more
forgiving by comparison with “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. In what
follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse encourages the continued
marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22 and
which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the
mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several works on climate change (though
by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming for biodiversity, 23 but rarely
is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or
longer, and will not be stopped by a technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is
poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—indeed, is doing so already. But while
technologically preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses,
such a resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end to—will barely address—the ongoing
destruction of life on Earth
Geoenginnering leads to war, massive inequality and endless capitalism
Corner 9
(a Research Associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University)
(Dr Adam, GEO-ENGINEERING: DENIAL ON A GLOBAL SCALE, http://climatedenial.org/2009/06/02/geoengineering-denial-on-a-global-scale/)
Dr Adam Corner argues that geo-engineered solutions to climate change are ‘capitalism’s
ultimate parlour trick….an impressive leap from a desperate denial of the causes of climate change, to a
triumphant denial of the consequences’ In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein joined the dots between
the commercial manufacture of military weaponry, the marketing of anti-flu pandemic drugs and the foreign
construction firms drafted in to rebuild Iraq – three happy projects bound by the shared philosophy of ‘disaster
capitalism’. It may be time to add another enterprising scheme to this rather opportunistic programme of panicdriven profit making: Geo-engineering – the intentional, large-scale manipulation of the earth and its
ecosystems in response to human-caused climate change. In an impressive leap from a desperate denial of the
causes of climate change, to a triumphant denial of the consequences, frontier capitalism may have stumbled
across its best idea yet. The loose band of technologies that offer the mouth-watering prospect of engineering
our way out of the climate crisis are straight out of science fiction, yet are being taken seriously by scientists
and investors alike. Schemes vary from injecting the atmosphere with sulphate particles to induce cooling, to
fertilising algal blooms with iron filings to cause increased CO2 sequestration, to chemically ‘scrubbing’ CO2
out of the air. As the Royal Geographical Society event on geo-engineering last week link showed, many are
seduced by science that dangles the carrot of a technological fix to climate change in front of their noses. The
event provided a fascinating window into the way in which geo-engineering is currently perceived by the
scientific community. Professor David Keith link…, a keen advocate (although far from an evangeliser) of
geo-engineering called for a responsible, measured research programme into the possibilities of geoengineering. The problem with this proposal, however, is that even toying with the idea of geo-engineering
opens a Pandora’s Box of climatic and socio-political uncertainty. As the Greenpeace scientist Dr Paul
Johnston noted at the same event, even the most elementary research into geo-engineering will
involve real-world experiments with the global commons. Jim Thomas, campaigner with the
Canadian ETC Group has observed that if control over this global commons appears even remotely
feasible, international conflict will inevitably ensue link… . Environmental scientists like David
Keith are undoubtedly well-meaning in their pursuit of technological solutions to climate change, but their
research does not take place in a vacuum – it is conducted in a world that is defined by a deeply unsustainable
and inequitable socio-economic system. What hope is there that geo-engineering will be benignly
applied for the greater good? Will the consent of the developing world be sought when we conduct our
climatic experiments with their natural resources? Will we share our new found knowledge with everyone, or
only those who can afford to buy our patented designs? As philosophers like John Gray have repeatedly
observed, an unwavering faith in human progress often amounts to little more than a secular replacement of
religious fervour. In response to accusations that that geo-engineering research would involve taking
unprecedented risks with the planet’s fragile eco-system, Professor David Keith replied “This isn’t 1750” – the
implication being that while pre-industrial revolution scientists did not foresee the consequences of their
actions, today’s crop of experts are too wise to act so carelessly. But while few in the environmental science
community would seek to take unquantifiable risks with the climate, there is a hardy band of disaster capitalists
that would happily take the risk for them. Worryingly, several experiments with algal blooming have
been driven by commercial pressure from companies keen to sell credits into the emerging
carbon-trading market. Never mind that artificial algal blooms are yet to deliver any proven
CO2 reductions – large scale geo-engineering projects could be capitalism’s ultimate parlour
trick: The design and manufacture of machines, on which we ultimately become dependent,
to neutralise the waste produced by a society of consumption-driven economic growth. The
lure of geo-engineering – colonic irrigation for the planet – is almost irresistible. What if it worked – what if
we really could scrub the skies of carbon, and without having to reduce our carbon emissions? Unfortunately,
the question of technical proficiency is a red herring. We know we can design technologies that can
alter the climate – that’s the problem we’re trying to solve. The more important issue is whether we
can engineer our way out of trouble in a way that does not exacerbate existing inequalities.
Tackling climate change is perhaps the most critical test of our commitment to social justice we will ever
encounter – what could be more fundamental than the intentional management and division of the earth’s
natural resources? But unless significant changes in how scientific knowledge is shared and distributed are
achieved, geo-engineering simply cannot address climate change in an equitable way. To
believe that the unprecedented power of geo-engineering will not be wielded by the rich and
the powerful at the expense of the weak and the vulnerable is more than simply wide-eyed technooptimism: It amounts to a comprehensive denial of political reality.
Geoengineering makes environmental destruction beyond warming inevitable
Crist 7
(Prof in Department of Science and Technology in Society @ Virginia Tech)
(Eileen, Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse, Telos 4 (Winter 2007): 29–55)
Given the dominant framing of climate change, it is hardly surpris- ing that schemes for what is called “geoengineering” (and, in even
more Orwellian speak, “radiation management”) are increasingly aired as rea- sonable solutions to the climate crisis; it will be equally
unsurprising if they are soon promoted as inevitable. A recent article in Nature claims that given “the need for drastic approaches to stave
off the effects of rising planetary temperatures . . . curiosity about geoengineering looks likely to grow.”54 Six months earlier, an article in
Wired gushed over the prospects, assuring us that “luckily, a growing number of scientists are thinking more aggressively, developing
incredibly ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet.”55 In the wake of apocalyptic fears, geoengineering is easily pack- aged as
an idea whose time has come; physicist Paul Crutzen’s recent attentions have imbued it with even more credibility. Crutzen received the
Nobel Prize for his work on ozone depletion, and is now cautiously pro- moting “active scientific research” into the possibility of shooting
SO2 into the stratosphere, which, by converting into sulfate particles, would mask global warming by an effect known as global dimming;
Crutzen calls it “stratospheric albedo enhancement.”56 In essence, this strategy calls
for countering one form of
pollution with another. In a 1997 article in the Wall Street Journal, nuclear physicist Edward Teller beat the environmental
mainstream to a geoengineering solution for global warming by a decade. Indeed Teller’s summons to undertake, if necessary, incredibly
ambitious technical fixes to cool the planet, as a rational and economically defensible enterprise, may turn out in retrospect to have been
pioneering in the realm of policy. It even seems plausible that Teller’s self-assured and dollar-quantified message (coinciding with the year
of the Kyoto protocol) played into the current U.S. administration’s resolute defiance of calls to curb emissions, for he confidently
affirmed that should global warming turn out to be dangerous, an ingenious engi- neering mega-fix for it will be cheaper than phasing out
fossil fuels.57 If mainstream environmentalism is catching up with the solution pro- moted by Teller, and perhaps harbored all along by the
Bush administration, it would certainly be ironic. But the irony is deeper than incidental politics. The
projected rationality of
a geoengineering solution, stoked by apocalyptic fears surrounding climate change,
promises consequences (both physical and ideological) that will only quicken the real ending of wild
nature: “here we encounter,” notes Murray Bookchin, “the ironic perversity of a ‘pragmatism’ that is no
different, in principle, from the problems it hopes to resolve.”58 Even if they work exactly as
hoped, geoengineering solutions are far more similar to anthropogenic climate change than
they are a counterforce to it: their implementation constitutes an experiment with the biosphere underpinned by technological
arrogance, unwilling- ness to question or limit consumer society, and a sense of entitlement to transmogrifying the planet that boggles the
mind. It is indeed these
ele-ments of techno-arrogance, unwillingness to advocate radical change,
and unlimited entitlement, together with the profound erosion of awe toward the planet that evolved life (and birthed us),
that constitute the apocalypse underway—if that is the word of choice, though the words humanization, colonization,
or occupation of the biosphere are far more descriptively accurate. Once we grasp the ecological crisis as the escalating conver- sion of the
planet into “a shoddy way station,”59 it becomes evident that inducing “global dimming” in order to offset “global warming” is not a
corrective action but another chapter in the project of colonizing the Earth, of what critical theorists called world domination.
Domination comes at a huge cost for the human spirit, a cost that may or may not include the scale
of physical imperilment and suffering that apocalyptic fears conjure. Human beings pay for the
domination of the biosphere—a domination they are either bent upon or resigned to— with alienation from the living Earth.60 This
alienation manifests, first and foremost, in the invisibility of the biodiversity crisis: the steadfast denial and repression, in the public arena,
of the epochal event of mass extinction and accelerating depletion of the Earth’s biological treasures. It has taken the threat of climate
change (to people and civilization) to allow the tip of the biodepletion iceberg to surface into public discourse, but even that has been
woefully inadequate in failing to acknowledge two crucial facts: first, the
biodiversity crisis has been occurring
independently of climate change, and will hardly be stopped by windmills, nuclear power plants,
and carbon sequestering, in any amount or combination thereof; and sec-ond, the devastation that
species and ecosystems have already experienced is what largely will enable more climatechange-driven damage to occur. Human alienation from the biosphere further manifests in the recalcitrance of instrumental
rationality, which reduces all challenges and problems to variables that can be controlled, fixed, managed, or manip- ulated by technical
means. Instrumental rationality is rarely questioned substantively, except in the flagging of potential “unintended conse- quences” (for
example, of implementing geoengineering technologies). The idea that instrumental rationality (in the form of technological fixes for
global warming) might save the day hovers between misrepresenta- tion and delusion: firstly, because instrumental rationality has itself
been the planet’s nemesis by mediating the biosphere’s constitution as resource and by condoning the transformation of Homo sapiens into
a user spe- cies; and secondly, because instrumental rationality tends to invent, adjust, and tweak technical means to work within given
contexts—when it is the given, i.e., human civilization as presently configured economically and culturally, that needs to be changed.