1NC
Military Counter Plan
Counter Plan Text: The Department of Defense should substantially increase
incentives for algae biofuel production.
DOD is key for a complete transition—they have the commitment, funding, and
technology
Woody 12 Todd Woody, Forbes writer for environmental issues and green technology and
previous writer for the New York Times, “The U.S.’s military great green gamble spurs biofuels
startup”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2012/09/06/the-u-s-militarys-great-greengamble-spurs-biofuel-startups/2/
Funded with $85 million from Bill Gates and other investors – plus $104 million in government cash and
loan guarantees – the world’s only commercial outdoor algal biorefinery went online this summer and will
eventually expand to 300 acres. The plan: extract 1.5 million gallons of green crude oil a year from
patented pond scum fed a diet of carbon dioxide and sunlight . Even before San Diego-based Sapphire broke
ground on the demonstration plant last year, the U.S. Navy’s green energy warrior, Vice Admiral Philip Cullom, descended on the
desert site to grill Sapphire execs on their technology and its potential to fuel battleships and jet fighters. “No question, the military
has focused the company and given us a great challenge to meet,” says Sapphire executive Tim Zenk, standing on the catwalk of a
tank where a mechanical arm is harvesting thick green goo pumped in from the algae ponds. Scum ponds in the desert? The very
idea conjures memories of the federal government’s decidedly mixed record at promoting alt-energy projects: Solyndra, FutureGen,
A123′s electric-car batteries, synfuels in the 1980s, jojoba in the 1970s. Add to that all the many military boondoggles – Star Wars
missile defense, for one – born of best intentions and bloated budgets. Sapphire
has yet to earn a dime from the
Pentagon; the company’s government funding comes from the Departments of Energy and
Agriculture. But since the days when the startup’s scientists were still tinkering in the lab, they’ve been sending
their biofuel for evaluation to the Defense Department, the deepest-pocketed client of them all.
“There’s no other entity that has the capacity, the planning, the commitment and the policy
drivers to make technologies real and create a market,” says Zenk. The U.S. military, the nation’s single largest
oil consumer, wants to wean itself from petroleum, and is deploying its immense buying power and authority to commercialize
nascent technologies deemed to be in the national interest. The
Navy, which aims to get half of its energy from
renewable sources by 2020, has been buying biofuels in small but expensive quantities, as in four times the cost of
conventional fuels. Earlier this year the Pentagon invoked the Defense Production Act to solicit proposals to build at least one
integrated biorefinery with $210 million in government funding. The biofuel buy has outraged some congressional Republicans, who
are attempting to bar the military from purchasing any fuel that costs more than petroleum. It will be years before we know if the
military’s biofuels bet is a multibillion-dollar folly – or if the armed forces have planted the seeds of another global industry, as it did
with nuclear power, semiconductors and the Internet. This much is certain: The
Pentagon’s largesse is already
spurring the entrepreneurial zeal of startups like Sapphire that seek potential riches in shaping
green technology to meet military needs.
Total transfer to algae power key to military readiness—solves oil dependence
Alexander et al. 12 (U.S. Navy moves ahead on biofuels despite congressional ire. David
Alexander—a journalist for over 30 years, with experience in covering politics in the White
House, Susan Cornwell—foreign policy correspondent and Roberta Rampton—U.S. Energy and
Environmental Policy Correspondent, July 5, 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/05/usa-navy-greenfleet-idUSL2E8I57HE20120705) asp
The Pentagon is pushing ahead with a $420 million effort to build refineries to make
competitively priced biofuels, despite anger in Congress over the price the Navy paid for alternative fuel to test a carrier
strike group this month.¶ The Pentagon plans provide $210 million in matching funds to help private
firms build three refineries, each able to produce at least 10 million gallons of biofuel a year for
military jets or ships, according to documents released this week.¶ The military's spending on alternative fuels has drawn
criticism from Republican lawmakers, with Senator Jim Inhofe charging that President Barack Obama's priorities are "completely
skewed" and Representative Mike Conaway accusing Navy Secretary Ray Mabus of "squandering precious dollars."¶ But Mabus
warns that U.S. dependence on foreign oil is a strategic vulnerability that can only be addressed
by reducing the military's reliance on petroleum as the sole source of fuel to power its jets, ships
and tanks.¶ The Navy initiative announced on Monday to help private firms build biofuel
refineries "will enhance our national security," Mabus said in discussing the $30 million first
phase of the project.¶ "It's going to help support the creation and commercial viability of a
defense critical industry, and that's in domestic biofuels," he said.¶ The announcement came as the Navy is
preparing to test a carrier strike force using alternative fuels on July 18 during the six-week, 22nation Rim of the Pacific exercises, the largest annual global naval maneuvers.¶ The Navy
purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuels for $12 million, or nearly $27 a gallon for the exercises.
The fuel was then mixed with 450,000 gallons of petroleum to achieve a 50-50 blend that cost
about $15 a gallon. The Navy expected the jet and marine biofuels to last about a day during the exercises.¶
DoD energy programs don’t link to politics—Congress supports national security
Kaplan 10 –Fred Kaplan Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation 10/6/2010, Slate Magazine, “The Marines Go Green,”
http://www.slate.com/id/2270165/pagenum/all/#p2
Two other factors increase the chances that the military's renewable-energy projects might have commercial spinoffs. First, as
with the microchip and the computer, these projects are adapting products that private companies have already developed and
built. In other words, the military is bypassing its normal procurement process, with its bureaucratic
hassles and excessive "requirements," which have resulted in the unwieldy designs and exorbitant
costs of so many U.S. weapons systems. Second, Congress is more likely to fund these projects precisely
because they're related to the national defense. The United States has an elaborate nationwide highway system
today because, back in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower sold the program to Congress by calling it the National Interstate and
Defense Highway Act (italics added). The Army, Eisenhower said, would need solid highways to move troops or evacuate citizens
in the event of a foreign invasion or a nuclear war. Similarly, after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite
in 1957, state governments across the United States spent scads of money to create, or improve, highschool science and math programs in order to "catch up" with the Russians. (This impulse wasn't limited to
science and math. At the high school I attended in Kansas, money was even appropriated to buy books for a course on the
modern novel. The course was still around in the early 1970s, and thus was I exposed at an early age to Conrad, Crane,
Hawthorne, and Hemingway.)
Congress today has little appetite for spending billions of dollars on solar
power generators or biofuel labs under the rubric of energy independence or "going green." But to
serve the war mission, and especially to protect the troops, no sum is too lavish—and that's why the
road to going green, and to achieving energy independence, might very well be paved through the
fighting fields and villages of Afghanistan.
Navy readiness DA
Despite budget cuts, naval readiness is still high
Fabrizio ’14 (Elliot Fabrizio, Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class, “CNP Testifies on Sailor and Family Readiness” 25
March 2014. (http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=79887)LP)
CNP reminded the subcommittee that the capabilities of the
men and women serving in the U.S. Navy are in high demand around the world, citing the Navy's
In his opening statement provided for the record,
recent contributions to the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, two forward-deployed strike groups, and ongoing partnership
"Every day our Sailors are involved in essential missions around the globe involving
power projection, deterrence, warfighting, antipiracy, humanitarian aid and disaster relief
(HADR) and peacekeeping," said Moran. "As our presence in the Asia-Pacific Theater expands, we will fill an increasingly
operations in the Black Sea.
vital role in this important region of the world." He cautioned that if sequestration continued, the Navy would face long-term
consequences to combat readiness. The Navy's budget submission prioritizes funding for forward presence and continues to make
critical investments in people and future capabilities. "As we took on this budget, certainly we understood the imperative of
reducing national debt in order to increase national security," said Moran in his opening statement. "But, many of the levers we
pulled last year to mitigate operational impacts were simply no longer available." The proposed $148 billion budget is a $15 billion
decrease from the level forecast in last year's budget submission and is a $38 billion reduction over the Future Year Defense Plan
from the FY14 Presidential Budget. The tough choices made in the FY 15 budget maintain quality of service for Sailors, Moran said,
adding that the
focus is improving manning at sea, retaining the Navy's best and brightest and
increasing the readiness of Sailors and their families. "All of what American sea power means
today, and what it might become, lies squarely upon the shoulders of the people who make it
so," said Moran. "And those people stand directly at the center of the budget now before you."
Ocean training space 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.
Energy production and offshore construction interfere with naval training and
testing sties
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-sustainability-imperative/)//MW
While supporting the nation’s need to develop new energy sources as a means of improving its energy
and economic security, in some instances these priorities have 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 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 forwardleaning approach to its own energy requirements, will help ensure a sustainable future for the Navy and the nation.
Naval readiness deters South China Sea war.
The China Post 14 (The China Post. "US Must Back up the Words in Its South China Sea
Remark."Www.ChinaPost.com.tw. N.p., 15 July 2014. Web. 16 July 2014. <http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/worldissues/2014/07/15/412330/p2/US-must.htm>. XM)
On Saturday, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael Fuchs called on the parties in South China Sea
territorial disputes to agree to a 'voluntary freeze' on provocative behavior. Fuchs appealed for a concrete development of principles laid out in the
2002 Declaration of Conduct (DoC) signed between China and ASEAN. Couched in diplomatic pleasantries, the DoC affirms universal principles of noninterference, peaceful resolution to conflicts and “promotion of economic prosperity.” The beautiful-sounding points require parties to operate on the
basis of existing international laws governing operations on the seas and diplomacy, and also affirm the right to free navigation as well as overflight. It is
evident to all, though, that those principles have been violated repeatedly since then. In the area that China claims 90 percent of, we have seen in the
past three years the country blockading Second Thomas Shoal, setting up a municipal government on the island of Sansha, and recently constructing oil
rigs in areas disputed by Vietnam. The Philippines released evidence of what it calls China reclaiming the Johnson Reef. While Fuchs says that no single
party is wholly responsible for tensions, he explicitly points out that the U.S. considers China to be provocative. And he is right. In the context of
geopolitical strategic balance, China is clearly acting to take advantage of its resources, from population to economic wealth to military might. Words
that look pretty on paper have no meaning unless they can be translated into genuine improvement for
the region at stake. For now, the lofty Holy Grail of “harmony” is clearly out of reach. Defining the more
immediate goal in terms of establishing an environment where the propensity for military exchanges is
lower may be more realistic for defusing conflicts. The U.S. needs to back up its most recent call to the
region with concrete steps that would help enforce the peace. It is counterproductive to throw out
admonitions or appeals without making one's presence felt, and Washington does have to meet a degree
of participation in the Asia-Pacific if it wants to promote the regional peace that is conducive to the
overall interest. Over the past few years the U.S. has increased its military presence in the region. U.S.
President Obama established a small garrison in Darwin, Australia and in April the U.S. signed a 10-year
agreement with the Philippines over the expanded usage of bases in the country. As China beefs up the
scale and pace of its forward deployments, as a result coming into conflict or near-conflict with its
neighbors, Washington should step up its presence in the region. In demonstrating its stake in the region,
a restrained but conscious deployment of vessels passing nearby hotspots could be a powerful gesture. The
Diplomat periodical, in an article titled 'The Limits of Pacific Maritime Law,' noted the fact that many of the agreements that have been established
regarding conventions of the sea are redundant. For example, the signs that were agreed upon in April between China and two dozen nations, in a nonbinding agreement called the Code For Unplanned Encounters at Sea, have been established parts of the maritime lexicon for generations. The
principles of mutual respect, non-violence and non-interference are present in China's own Five Principles for Peaceful Co-existence. The problem lies
in the actions of current players not living up to those standards and hence the need for constant reaffirmations. Taking a more conciliatory and
forward-looking perspective, the U.S. can serve as a lubricating partner between China and the various parties involved by sending diplomatic staff at
all levels to monitor and actively join in defusing bilateral disputes. On Saturday, the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry in charging into Kabul to
negotiate a way out of the election dispute there resulted in an agreement between parties for a full audit of the presidential vote. That
case
illustrates that U.S. attention and efforts do count. In the South China Sea and East China Sea, Washington
can also help reduce the propensity toward devastating conflict.
US-China war goes nuclear
Johnson 1
Chalmers, The Nation, May 14, Wilson OmniFile: Full Text Select
China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China, and all
serious US militarists know that China's minuscule nuclear capacity is not offensive but a deterrent
against the overwhelming US power arrayed against it (twenty archaic Chinese warheads versus
more than 7,000 US warheads). Taiwan, whose status constitutes the still incomplete last act
of the Chinese civil war, remains the most dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914
assassination of the Austrian crown prince in Sarajevo led to a war that no one wanted, a misstep in
Taiwan by any side could bring the United States and China into a conflict that neither wants. Such a
war would bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a Chinese victory ,
given that China is the world's most populous country and would be defending itself against
a foreign aggressor. More seriously, it could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. However,
given the nationalistic challenge to China's sovereignty of any Taiwanese attempt to declare
its independence formally, forward-deployed US forces on China's borders have virtually no
deterrent effect.
T- incentives are not topical
A. Incentives violate several terms
1. Not increase – increase requires an actual increase, but incentives
depend on effects
HEFC 4 (Higher Education Funding Council for England, “Joint Committee on the Draft Charities
Bill Written Evidence”, June,
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200304/jtselect/jtchar/167/167we98.htm)
9.1 The Draft Bill creates an obligation on the principal regulator to do all that it "reasonably can to
meet the compliance objective in relation to the charity".[45] The Draft Bill defines the compliance
objective as "to increase compliance by the charity trustees with their legal obligations in exercising
control and management of the administration of the charity".[46] 9.2 Although the word "increase"
is used in relation to the functions of a number of statutory bodies,[47] such examples demonstrate
that "increase" is used in relation to considerations to be taken into account in the exercise of a
function, rather than an objective in itself. 9.3 HEFCE is concerned that an obligation on principal
regulators to "increase" compliance per se is unworkable, in so far as it does not adequately define the
limits or nature of the statutory duty. Indeed, the obligation could be considered to be everincreasing.
2. Not its -- Its means the increase must be done by the USFG, but under
the plan others take the action to increase
Words and Phrases ‘6 vol 22B p 524
C.C.A.5 (Tex.) 1935. Where corporation transferred all its assets, including large profits, to newly
organized corporation in exchange for capital stock, and transfer was treated as reorganization under
which no gain or loss was to be recognized, profits in hands of newly organized corporation held
taxable as "its earnings or profits," within revenue act providing that term "dividend" means any
distribution made by corporation to its shareholders whether in money or other property out of "its
earnings or profits" accumulated after February 28, 1913; word "its" being possessive pronoun
indicating that earnings and profits belong to corporation. Revenue Act 1926, § 201(a), 26 U.S.C.A.
(I.R.C.1939) § 115.—Murchison's Estate v. C.I.R., 76 F.2d 641.—Int Rev 3747.
B. The affirmative interpretation is bad for debate
Limits are necessary for negative preparation and clash. They unlimit by
depending on effects. Everything affects the ocean development / exploration
Timmons 12 Bob Timmons, Artist - Author – Speaker, the Artist for the Ocean October 21,
2012 Ocean Guardians
http://oceanguardians.com.au/artist-for-the-ocean-bob-timmons/
Everything is connected and everything affects the ocean in the end since its majority of the planet’s
surface and subsurface.
They also unlimit by multiplying the topic by the huge number of private
entities and by the different kinds of incentives.
Moran, 86 (Theodore, Investing in Development: New Roles for Private Capital?, p. 28)
Guisinger finds that if “incentives”are broadly defined to include tariffs and trade controls along with
tax holidays, subsidized loans, cash grants, and other fiscal measures, they comprise more than forty
separate kinds of measures. Moreover, the author emphasizes, the value of an incentive package is
just one of several means that governments use to lure foreign investors. Other methods—for
example, promotional activities (advertising, representative offices) and subsidized government
services—also influence investors’ location decisions. The author points out that empirical research so
far has been unable to distinguish the relative importance of fundamental economic factors and of
government policies in decisions concerning the location of foreign investment—let alone to
determine the effectiveness of individual government instrucments.
C. T is a voter because it's necessary for good, well-prepared debating
Neoliberalism Kritik
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.
The aff’s development/exploration project reproduces neoliberalism in oceanic
space – they commodify ocean ecology and frame human interaction with the
sea as self-interested utility maximization
Mansfield 3
Professor of Geography at OSU http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0016718503001155/1-s2.0-S0016718503001155-main.pdf?_tid=466f9680-feea-11e3-923900000aab0f26&acdnat=1403976970_0c59874c8e1a5e3d758a032a84310f4fv
To the extent that neoliberalism, with its calls for letting ‘‘the market’’ address myriad social and
economic woes, has become the dominant model for political economic practice today, it
should be expected that environmental governance, too, would be shaped by the neoliberal
imperative to deregulate, liberalize trade and investment, marketize, and privatize (see Agnew
and Corbridge, 1995; Overbeek, 1993; Peck, 2001), and evidence of neoliberal approaches to the
environment is easily found (e.g. Anderson and Leal, 2001). On the one hand, primary sector
industries such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries are increasingly shaped by efforts to
liberalize international trade through reducing tariffs and non-tariff ‘‘trade barriers’’ such as
domestic subsidies. On the other hand, environmental governance itself is increasingly oriented
toward market-based, rather than state-led, approaches: a prime example are emissions trading
schemes as solutions to pollution, such as those proposed for reducing greenhouse gases that
contribute to global warming. The rationale for this neoliberal turn in environmental governance
is that market mechanisms will harness the profit motive to more innovative and efficient
environmental solutions than those devised, implemented, and enforced by states. In what
ways, then, is neoliberalism and the environment any different from neoliberalism more
generally? Are market-based approaches to the natural environment simply spillover from the
larger trends of deregulation, reductions in social services, free trade, and structural
adjustment? Or does the history of environmental regulation, both in general and in specific
arenas, affect the development of neoliberal environmental governance? In this paper, I address
these questions by analyzing the development of neoliberalism in the oceans, and in particular
in ocean fisheries. Examining the ways that past policy orientations toward fisheries have
influenced the development of neoliberal approaches to ocean governance, I contend that
neoliberalism in the oceans centers specifically around concerns about property and the use of
privatization to create markets for governing access to and use of ocean resources. Within the
Euro – American tradition that has shaped international law of the sea, the oceans (including the
water column, seabed, and living and mineral resources) were long treated as common
property––the “common heritage of mankind” (Pardo, 1967)––open to all comers with the
means to create and exploit oceanic opportunities. Although historically there has also been
continual tension between this openness of access and desire for territorialization (especially of
coastal waters), treating the oceans as a commons is consistent with the idea that oceans are
spaces of movement and transportation, which have facilitated mercantilism, exploration,
colonial expansion, and cold war military maneuvering (Steinberg, 2001).1 Oceans have also
long been sites for resource extraction, yet it has not been until recent decades that new
economic desires and environmental contradictions have contributed to a pronounced move
away from open access and freedom of the seas. New technologies for resource extraction
combined with regional overexploitation have contributed to conflicts over resources, to which
representatives from academia, politics, and business have responded by calling for enclosing
the oceans within carefully delimited regimes of property rights, be those regimes of state,
individual, or collective control.At the center of this new political economy of oceans, as it has
evolved over the past 50 years, has been concern about “the commons,” and the extent to
which common and open access property regimes contribute to economic and environmental
crises, which include overfishing and overcapitalization. As such, the question of the commons
has been at the center of numerous, seemingly contradictory approaches to ocean governance
and fisheries regulation. Thus, the first argument of the paper is that neoliberal approaches in
fisheries cannot be treated simply as derivative of a larger neoliberal movement that became
entrenched starting in the 1980s. Instead, examining trajectories of neoliberalism in fisheries
over the past half century reveals that the emphasis on property and the commons has
contributed to a more specific dynamic of neoliberalism operating in ocean fisheries and,
therefore, to distinctive forms of neoliberalism. To be clear, it is not the emphasis on property in
itself that ties this history into neoliberalism, but rather the particular perspective that links
property specifically to market rationality. The underlying assumption of all the approaches to
property discussed in this paper is that market rationality (i.e. profit maximization) is natural.
Given this, property rights harness this rationality to the greater good, while a lack of property
rights inevitably leads to economic and environmental problems. It is this set of assumptions
that underlies the neoliberal emphasis on privatization and marketization. But this assumption
of market rationality is not necessarily a dimension of property in general; property can involve
multiple types of arrangements, with different goals and outcomes (Rose, 1994). For example,
to the extent that control over access to resources and places can be about protecting
traditional livelihoods, assigning property rights can actually challenge purely market-based
approaches to resource use. One example relevant to the case study in this paper is the
“Community Development Quota” program for communities of Native Alaskans in the Bering
Sea region of the North Pacific (Holland and Ginter, 2001; Tryon, 1993). This program
guarantees these communities a set percentage of the annual fish catch, with the goal of
providing economic and social benefits. These community development quotas are not divorced
from markets––and native communities do lease these quotas on the open market––yet
property in this context is about providing economic protection for a marginalized group of
people. This contrasts to neoliberal approaches, in which property is the basis for rational
decision making and market efficiency, not economic protection. My claim here, however, is
that fisheries scholars and managers have focused on using property rights specifically to
harness supposedly natural market-oriented behavior; in this sense, the development of
property rights in fisheries is tied into the neoliberal focus on markets as the central form of
governance. Thus, privatization and marketization are not the same thing, yet in neoliberal
approaches they are tied together through the presumption that private property rights are
necessary for markets to work, and that markets are necessary for optimal economic and
environmental behavior (see Section 2.1). At the same time, the difficulty of defining property
rights in fisheries has contributed to unique forms of neoliberal privatization and marketization.
The impact is extinction – neoliberalism drives collapse of ocean ecosystems –
only alternative framings of social relations can solve
Clark and Clausen 8
(teaches sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh; teaches sociology at Fort Lewis
College)
(Brett and Rebecca, The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,
2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August)
The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under
global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance
are being decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations. At the same
time that scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we
are witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles
are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The
expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have
intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both
target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species
deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the
ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture enhances capital’s control over production without
resolving ecological contradictions. It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that “short
of human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently
‘break down’ under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.”44 Capital is
driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the
immediate pulse of capitalism. It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in
the reproduction of nature, which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years. Such
requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. The qualitative relation
between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an everlarger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the
most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.”45
Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of
capital—not the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and
processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The
maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted
and appropriated as a free gift. As a result, the system is inherently caught in a fundamental
crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature. István Mészáros elaborates this
point, stating: For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the elementary
conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in which
capital relates to them—the only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanity’s energy
requirements, or of the management of the planet’s mineral resources and chemical potentials,
but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale deforestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no
human being can survive: water itself….In the absence of miraculous solutions, capital’s
arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end
inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].46 An analysis of
the oceanic crisis confirms the destructive qualities of private for-profit operations. Dire
conditions are being generated as the resiliency of marine ecosystems in general is being
undermined. To make matters worse, sewage from feedlots and fertilizer runoff from farms are
transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading marine ecosystems with excess nutrients,
which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This leads to oxygen-poor water and the
formation of hypoxic zones—otherwise known as “dead zones” because crabs and fishes
suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that remove nutrients from
the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around the world. A dead zone is
the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same time, it
contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological crisis of the world
ocean. Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and aquaculture, the oceans are
experiencing ecological degradation and constant pressures of extraction that are severely
depleting the populations of fishes and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if
current practices and rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around the
world could collapse by the year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what is
needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of global
society itself.
Alternative text: the judge should vote negative to endorse an ethic of social
flesh
An ethic of social flesh foregrounds embodied interdependence, substituting an
ecological view of relationships for the aff’s commodity thinking – only the
alternative can produce ethical institutional decisionmaking
Beasley & Bacchi 7
(Chris, Prof. of Politics @ University of Adelaide, Carol, Prof. Emeritus @ University of Adelaide,
“Envisaging a new politics for an ethical future: Beyond trust, care and generosity -- towards an
ethic of `social flesh'”, Feminist Theory, 2007 8: 279)
The political vocabulary of social flesh has significant implications for democratic visions.
Because it conceptualizes citizens as socially embodied – as interconnected mutually reliant
flesh – in a more thoroughgoing sense than the languages of trust, care, responsibility and
generosity, it resists accounts of political change as making transactions between the ‘less
fortunate’ and ‘more privileged’, more trusting, more caring, more responsible or more
generous. Social flesh is political metaphor in which fleshly sociality is profoundly levelling. As a
result, it challenges meliorist reforms that aim to protect the ‘vulnerable’ from the worst effects
of social inequality, including the current distribution of wealth. A political ethic of embodied
intersubjectivity requires us to consider fleshly interconnection as the basis of a democratic
sociality, demanding a rather more far-reaching reassessment of national and international
institutional arrangements than political vocabularies that rest upon extending altruism.
Relatedly, it provides a new basis for thinking about the sorts of institutional arrangements
necessary to acknowledge social fleshly existence, opening up ‘the scope of what counts as
relevant’ (Shildrick, 2001: 238). For example, it allows a challenge to current conceptualizations
that construct attention to the ‘private sphere’ as compensatory rather than as necessary
(Beasley and Bacchi, 2000: 350). We intend to pursue the relationship between social flesh and
democratic governance in future papers. Conclusion In this paper we focus on various
vocabularies of social interconnection intended to offer a challenge to the ethos of atomistic
individualism associated with neo-liberalism and develop a new ethical ideal called ‘social flesh’.
Despite significant differences in the several vocabularies canvassed in this paper, we note that
most of the trust and care writers conceive the social reform of atomistic individualism they
claim to address in terms of a presumed moral or ethical deficiency within the disposition of
individuals. Hence, they reinstate the conception of the independent active self in certain ways.
Moreover, there is a disturbing commonality within all these accounts: an ongoing conception of
asymmetrical power relations between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, ‘carers’ and ‘cared for’, ‘altruistic’
and ‘needy’. While widely used terms like trust and care clearly remain vocabularies around
which social debate may be mobilized, and hence are not to be dismissed (see Pocock, 2006),
we suggest that there are important reasons for questioning their limits and their claims to offer
progressive alternative understandings of social life. In this setting, we offer the concept of
social flesh as a way forward in rethinking the complex nature of the interaction between
subjectivity, embodiment, intimacy, social institutions and social interconnection. Social flesh
generalizes the insight that trusting/caring/ altruistic practices already take place on an ongoing
basis to insist that the broad, complex sustenance of life that characterizes embodied
subjectivity and intersubjective existence be acknowledged. As an ethico-political starting point,
‘social flesh’ highlights human embodied interdependence. By drawing attention to shared
embodied reliance, mutual reliance, of people across the globe on social space, infrastructure
and resources, it offers a decided challenge to neo-liberal conceptions of the autonomous self
and removes the social distance and always already given distinction between ‘strong’ and
‘weak’. There is no sense here of ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’; rather we are all recognized as
receivers of socially generated goods and services. Social flesh also marks our diversity,
challenging the privileging of normative over ‘other’ bodies. Finally, because social flesh
necessarily inhabits a specific geographical space, environmentalist efforts to preserve that
space take on increased salience (Macken, 2004: 25). By these means, the grounds are created
for defending a politics beyond assisting the ‘less fortunate’. Social flesh, therefore, refuses the
residues of ‘noblesse oblige’ that still appear to linger in emphasis upon vulnerability and
altruism within the apparently reformist ethical ideals of trust/respect, care, responsibility and
even generosity. In so doing it puts into question the social privilege that produces inequitable
vulnerability and the associated need for ‘altruism’. Vital debates about appropriate
distribution of social goods, environmental politics, professional and institutional power and
democratic processes are reopened.
Algae Blooms Case
1NC Warming Frontline
Warming is irreversible regardless of CO2 emissions- even complete cessation
does not solve.
Solomon 08 – Susan Solomon, Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“Irreversible climate change due to carbon
dioxide emissions”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, Dec 16, 2008, Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.long, Accessed
on: 7/17/2014, IJ)
Over the 20th century, the atmospheric concentrations of key greenhouse gases increased due
to human activities. The stated objective (Article 2) of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas
concentrations in the atmosphere at a low enough level to prevent “dangerous anthropogenic
interference with the climate system.” Many studies have focused on projections of possible
21st century dangers (1–3). However, the principles (Article 3) of the UNFCCC specifically
emphasize “threats of serious or irreversible damage,” underscoring the importance of the
longer term. While some irreversible climate changes such as ice sheet collapse are possible but
highly uncertain (1, 4), others can now be identified with greater confidence, and examples
among the latter are presented in this paper. It is not generally appreciated that the
atmospheric temperature increases caused by rising carbon dioxide concentrations are not
expected to decrease significantly even if carbon emissions were to completely cease (5–7)
(see Fig. 1). Future carbon dioxide emissions in the 21st century will hence lead to adverse
climate changes on both short and long time scales that would be essentially irreversible
(where irreversible is defined here as a time scale exceeding the end of the millennium in year
3000; note that we do not consider geo-engineering measures that might be able to remove
gases already in the atmosphere or to introduce active cooling to counteract warming). For the
same reason, the physical climate changes that are due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide already
in the atmosphere today are expected to be largely irreversible. Such climate changes will lead
to a range of damaging impacts in different regions and sectors, some of which occur promptly
in association with warming, while others build up under sustained warming because of the time
lags of the processes involved. Here we illustrate 2 such aspects of the irreversibly altered world
that should be expected. These aspects are among reasons for concern but are not
comprehensive; other possible climate impacts include Arctic sea ice retreat, increases in heavy
rainfall and flooding, permafrost melt, loss of glaciers and snowpack with attendant changes in
water supply, increased intensity of hurricanes, etc. A complete climate impacts review is
presented elsewhere (8) and is beyond the scope of this paper. We focus on illustrative adverse
and irreversible climate impacts for which 3 criteria are met: (i) observed changes are already
occurring and there is evidence for anthropogenic contributions to these changes, (ii) the
phenomenon is based upon physical principles thought to be well understood, and (iii)
projections are available and are broadly robust across models.
Plan fails- China has to curb emissions
Atkin 14 (Emily, reporter for climate progress and has a degree in journalism,
“Stopping Climate Change ‘Almost Impossible’ If China Can’t Quit Coal, Report
Says”, 5/12/14, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/12/3436673/coal-dependentchina/, HG)
If China doesn’t begin to limit its coal consumption by 2030, it will be “almost impossible” for
the world avoid a situation where global warming stays below 2°C, a new study released
Monday found. The study, led by the U.K.’s Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy and
the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, recommends China
put a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from coal by 2020, and then swiftly reduce its
dependency on the fossil fuel. The reductions would not only increase public health and
wellness and decrease climate change, but could also “have a major positive effect on the global
dynamics of climate cooperation,” the report said. “The actions China takes in the next decade
will be critical for the future of China and the world,” the study said. “Whether China moves
onto an innovative, sustainable and low-carbon growth path this decade will more or less
determine both China’s longer-term economic prospects in a natural resource-constrained
world, … and the world’s prospects of cutting greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to manage
the grave risks of climate change.” The general question surrounding the prevention of climate
change is whether the earth can avoid a 2°C situation — that is, whether we can reduce
greenhouse gas emissions swiftly enough to keep global average surface temperatures from
rising to 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels. World leaders, including China, agreed to avoid
that 2°C situation in 2009 by signing the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, a three-page nonbinding
pledge to fight climate change. In 2011, one-fifth of the world’s total fossil fuel carbon dioxide
emissions came solely from China’s coal, and coal was responsible for more than 80 percent of
the country’s 8 gigatons of fossil fuel emissions that year. But despite increasing calls for China
to reduce its coal-burning — not only because of climate impacts but because of infamous,
choking air pollution — it has been unclear whether the country has made enough effort to
actually make a dent in its consumption. The country has taken steps to replace thousands of
small-scale coal mines with large ones, and its largest cities have pledged to make drastic
reductions in emissions. However, a Chinese government report recently found that only a tiny
fraction of Chinese cities fully complied with pollution standards in 2013, while approving the
construction of more than 100 million tonnes of new coal production capacity in 2013,
according to a Reuters report. “Coal, in absolute terms, is growing in China,” Fergus Green, one
of the authors of the study, told ThinkProgress. “But its share of electricity is declining as other
sources of electricity take up additional shares of capacity. So we see absolute growth, but signs
of serious moderation.” Green, who co-authored the study along with London School of
Economics scholar Nicholas Stern, said the effort was less of an empirical game to try to predict
what would happen in China, and more of a recommendation for how the country could
realistically reduce its emissions and how those reductions would benefit the country and the
world. The paper, he said, was a response to indications from China’s leadership that it is
looking to transform growth models to be more efficient over the coming years. “One doesn’t
just go to China and tell them what they should do, but there are serious discussions that are
happening in China about when their coal consumption will peak,” he said. “Really what we’re
saying is that there are strong benefits for China and for the world in terms of greenhouse gas
mitigation if China were to peak at the early end of 2020.” Green noted that one of the less
obvious benefits of China peaking its coal production would be the catalyzing effect it would
have on other countries’ efforts to combat climate change. With China as the world’s largest
emitter of greenhouse gases, politicians in other countries — including the United States —
have made the argument that nothing they do can actually stop climate change from happening.
“If other countries, particularly the United States, can see that China is serious about declining
its consumption, it could be potentially a tipping point that does stimulate more ambitious
action from other countries,” Green said. “We could actually get an international agreement.”
However, if China does not become serious about reducing its coal consumption soon, the
chances of climate change mitigation become lower and lower. “If China goes beyond 15
gigatons of carbon emissions by 2030, then [mitigation] would be almost impossible,” Green
said. “The longer you delay, the more faster the decline has to be, and the more implausible
that becomes.”
Adaptation key—warming irreversible, emissions inevitable, adaptation more
realistic
Roach 13 (Roach, contributing writer for NBC News, “It's time to adapt to unstoppable global
warming, scientists say,” NBC, November 7, 2013, accessed July 25, 2014,
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/its-time-adapt-unstoppable-global-warmingscientists-say-f8C11554338)
Even if the world's 7 billion people magically stop burning fossil fuels and chopping down
forests today, the greenhouse gases already emitted to the atmosphere will warm the planet
by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century, according to scientists who are
urging a focused scientific effort to help humanity adapt to the changing climate. And reality
shows no sign of such a magic reduction in emissions. The amount of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere reached another new high in 2012, the World Meteorological Association
announced Wednesday. In fact, concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most abundant planet
warming gas, grew faster last year than its average growth rate of the past decade. "The fact is,
we are not making a lot of progress in reducing emissions," Richard Moss, a senior scientist
with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Joint Global Change Research Institute at the
University of Maryland, told NBC News. "So it seems like we really do need to face up to the
fact that there is change that we can no longer avoid and we have to figure out how to
manage." Moss is the lead author of an article in Thursday's issue of Science calling for the
development of a field of climate science that provides relevant, tangible information to
decision makers who are tasked to protect people and cities increasingly battered by extreme
weather, flooded by rising seas, and nourished with food grown on drought-prone lands.
Science which focuses on adapting to climate change — rather than just preventing it — is
nothing new. It's the need for more information that field of science can yield that's increasingly
vital. Superstorm Sandy and the onslaught of similar catastrophic events bear the fingerprint
of climate change. Growing evidence that more of the same is on the way brings a new
urgency for information that people can actually use to prepare, survive, and even thrive on a
changing planet, Moss explained. Hope lost? The push for adaptation science also represents a
shift in climate policy circles away from an agenda focused solely on cutting greenhouse gas
emissions to reduce the impact of climate change, according to Adam Fenech, a climate
scientist at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada who has studied adaptation
science for about 15 years. He did not contribute to the article in Science. For most of this time,
"people wouldn't even consider adaptation. It was a bad word. You couldn't bring it up," he told
NBC News. "But now it has been accepted probably because people have either abandoned
completely or abandoned faith in the international climate change negotiations." In addition,
Fenech said, people are coming to grips with the fact that the world is committed to a certain
degree of climate change no matter what is done to cut emissions. The thinking goes "we're
going to have to live with it anyway," he explained. "And that's adaptation." The Science article
does not advocate abandoning mitigation efforts, but rather elucidates the need for adaptation,
noted Joe Casola, director of the science and impacts program at the Center for Climate and
Energy Solutions, an environmental think tank in Arlington, Va. "I think that both of them are
going to be required," he told NBC News. "The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation we'll
need," added Casola, who was not involved with the Science article. "If we were to do no
mitigation, then our adaptation investments now are probably going to be made worthless or
very, very limited as we have a lot of changes to deal with in the climate system." Institute of
adaptation Key to making adaptation work is an acknowledgement that climate is just one factor
planners are forced to wrestle with as they make decisions, noted Moss, whose lab is funded by
the Department of Energy. For example, planners who are considering where to build and how
to fund a storm water management system that can handle deluges unlike any of the past 100
years, "are going to be concerned that their taxpayers don't want to pay too much money for
it (and) their city council wants to make sure that certain economic interests are protected. …
You need to put this in the context of that decision." Time scales are another thing the field
needs to consider, noted Casola. An electric utility, for example, may understand that coastal
flooding could affect its power lines but "it is probably not feasible for them to rip up all their
infrastructure tomorrow and try to replace it," he said. Rather the utility needs a plan of things
it can do now to improve resilience and improvements to phase in over the next few decades.
To implement this new breed of what the authors call "relevant adaptation science," the article
proposes a formalized "national institute on climate preparedness" loosely modeled on the
National Institutes of Health with basic research carried out largely at universities around the
country that is driven by a mandate to address a list of adaptation priorities. For the NIH this has
led, for example, to the establishment of the National Cancer Institute. The climate side could,
for example, see a special institute emerge on adapting transportation and infrastructure given
the hit these services take from extreme weather events such as supercharged hurricanes. "But
at some point there may well be some kind of problem that crops up related to agriculture or
extended drought," Moss said. "As these things come up and as people mobilize to address
them, it seems like it might be possible at that point you'd add an institute that would combine
basic science and application to try to address it."
Solvency
Algae Biofuels can’t be modeled- lack of tech and legal framework prove
Winston 13 ( Joel Winston is a freelance Journalist at SciDev.Net, “Algae biofuels deemed
unsuitable for developing nations”, 5/7/13, Accessed 7/25/14,
http://www.scidev.net/global/biofuels/news/algae-biofuels-unsuitable-developingnations.html)
Adenle argues that several technical and institutional challenges must also be overcome before
the algae biofuel industry can take off in developing countries.¶ He says that developing
countries need to develop research capacity and legal frameworks to support the introduction
of patented technology, following the approach of emerging economies such as Brazil, China
and India.¶ While emerging nations such as China and India still produced a fairly low proportion
of global publications related to algae biofuels considering their population size — at three and
five per cent respectively — they did better than countries in Africa.¶ Adenle says these
emerging economies at least have some sort of capacity and institutions in place to build their
R&D in this area.¶ "We can't compare African countries with emerging economies such as India,
Brazil and China that are more advanced, because their regulatory frameworks are equivalent to
those of developed countries," he says.¶ The main challenge for African countries is to improve
their institutions, Adenle says. "For any developing country to develop their own algae biofuel,
they have to take a similar approach to that of Brazil, India and China, by investing in
institutional capacity such as training and education," he says.¶ "Having a proper policy to
support the introduction of new technologies is fundamental to the development of the
industry. If developing countries don't prioritise this, then it makes it very difficult for the
country, international organisations and companies to harmonise their agendas and work
together."
Algae production inevitably can’t produce enough—the biology is impossible—
scientist concedes
Waltz 09 (Emily, journalist who specializes in green technology, “Biotech’s Green Gold?”
Nature Biotechnology, 2009, accessed July 17, 2014,
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-15.html)
Faced with stresses such as nutrient deprivation, algae put their energy into storage—often in
the form of natural oils such as neutral lipids or triglycerides—and growth slows. Similar to the
oils from crops such as soybeans, jatropha and oil palm, algal oil can be extracted from the
organisms and refined into biodiesel (methyl (ethyl) esters) by transesterification with shortchain alcohols (e.g., methanol) or by esterification of fatty acids. Algae also synthesize other fuel
products, such as hydrogen, ethanol and long-chain hydrocarbons that resemble a crude-like oil.
But when algae divert energy into accumulating oil, they don't grow very fast, if at all, and
when they devote energy to growing, they don't make much oil—a trade-off that can result in
little increase in overall production of oil. “It's simply a law of thermodynamics. You can't get
around that,” says Steve Mayfield, a biologist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,
California. This trade-off has stumped scientists for decades. Companies are still trying to
improve on concepts and cultivation systems developed in the 1980s. “I worked on biofuels 20
years ago and nobody gave a damn,” says Keith Cooksey, a semi-retired microbiologist at
Montana State University in Bozeman. “Then about a year ago I started getting phone calls and
requests for papers I had published in the 1980s. That doesn't usually happen. Either you've
contradicted what you published 20 years ago or the field has moved on and it's irrelevant. But
these companies and programs are basically picking up where I left off.”
Algae biofuel tech is expensive – we are nowhere near having good enough
tech for it to remain competitive
Kanellos 9 (Michael, writes about energy, transportation, food and data for Forbes, 2/3/2009,
Green Tech Media, “Algae Biodiesel: It's $33 a Gallon,”
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652, ND)
You can grow algae with carbon dioxide and sunlight, but that doesn't mean it's free. Although
many believe that algae will become one of the chief feedstocks for diesel and even
hydrocarbon-like fuels, growing large amounts of algae and then converting the single-celled
creatures remains expensive, said experts at the National Biodiesel Conference taking place in
San Francisco on Tuesday. Algae biofuel startup Solix, for instance, can produce biofuel from
algae right now, but it costs about $32.81 a gallon, said Bryan Wilson, a co-founder of the
company and a professor at Colorado State University. The production cost is high because of
the energy required to circulate gases and other materials inside the photo bioreactors where
the algae grow. It also takes energy to dry out the biomass, and Solix uses far less water than
other companies (see Cutting the Cost of Making Algae by 90%). By exploiting waste heat at
adjacent utilities (one of our favorite forms of energy around here), the price can probably be
brought down to $5.50 a gallon (see Will Waste Heat Be Bigger Than Solar?). By selling the
proteins and other byproducts from the algae for pet food, the price can be brought to $3.50 a
gallon in the near term. But that's still the equivalent of $150 a barrel of oil. "We we're excited
in July [when oil was approaching that level]," he joked. "But we knew it wasn't sustainable." It's
only in phase II of Solix's business plan that it will be able to drop production costs to $3.30 to
$1.57 a gallon, or around $60 to $80 a barrel. Solix has set a goal of cutting the cost of making
algae by 90 percent. Is algae a good feedstock? Yes, he insisted. Ultimately, algae could yield
5,000 to 10,000 gallons an acre, far higher than other feedstocks. Soy is only good for around 40
to 50 gallons an acre. Touted plants like jatropha might only produce 175 gallons an acre, he
said. But algae comes with trade-offs. Wild algae grows fast, but it doesn't yield tremendous
amounts of oil naturally – two thirds or more of the body weight of wild algae will be proteins
and carbohydrates instead of oil. Genetically modified algae can boost the oil content, but that
slows the growth process. Closed bioreactors – i.e., sealed plastic bags placed in the sun -- cost
more than open ponds, but it's tough to keep invasive species from taking over open ponds and
out-competing algae optimized to produce oil. "There's a dance between the growth rate and
lipid content," Wilson said. Much of the cost reduction for Solix will be accomplished through
extraction techniques the company hasn't discussed yet. And algae companies will have to
harvest everything their microorganisms produce. "We don't have the solutions that are publicly
discussed that give us the costs that we need," he said, adding, "The value of the co-products
have to be captured and the value of the co-products could exceed the value of the oil." Some
companies, like Solazyme, are exploiting genetic science and fermenting techniques to
accomplish the task. In fermentation, specific species of algae are locked into brewing kettles
with sugars derived from old plant matter. When the time is right, Solazyme takes out the
microbes and squeezes out the oil. It's cheaper to get large volumes of feedstock oil through
fermentation than growing algae in ponds or bioreactors, said CEO Jonathan Wolfson.
Genetically modifying the algae can boost the lipid, or oil, content to 70 percent of the
organism's weight. In a sense, Solazyme practices indirect photosynthesis: the algae doesn't
grow by having sunlight shone upon it but by eating sugars that were grown in the sun. "Algae is
by far the best organism on the planet for converting fixed carbon into oil," he said. "But
economically, others are more efficient at taking sunlight and carbon dioxide and turning it into
oil."
Off-shore algae biofuel won’t spread across the world—can’t access regions far
from sea
Ext. Solvency Defense
Algae tech inefficient for commercialization—corporations exaggerate
production
Waltz 09 (Emily, journalist who specializes in green technology, “Biotech’s Green Gold?”
Nature Biotechnology, 2009, accessed July 17, 2014,
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-15.html)
Near-term technologies may allow algae to produce up to 6,000 gallons of oil per acre per year
(gal/ac/yr). “If you really push the limits, then maybe 10,000 gallons per acre,” says Ron Pate, a
researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This figure could
improve with advances in cultivation, species selection, breeding and genetic modification,
but only to a certain extent. The laws of thermodynamics and the limits of photosynthetic
efficiencies just won't allow it. “When you see 20,000 or beyond—that's total bologna,” says
Pate. “It isn't going to happen.” Yet there are companies claiming they can make up to 100,000
gal/ac/yr, and raking in tens of millions in investment based on those promises. “The moment
their production goes over a certain prediction of gallons per acre, you know they are not
serious,” says Polle, who has supplied algal strains to startups. “Only a handful of companies
are really serious.” Valcent Products, a public company located in Vancouver, is experimenting
with a range of algal species in enclosed bioreactors. Valcent CEO Glen Kertz says he can sell a
barrel of algal oil for less than a barrel of crude oil and that his system has the potential to
produce 100,000 gal/ac/yr. “I said to him [Kertz], 'You are not doing anyone any favors by
making absurd claims',” says Scripps' Mayfield. “That is five times the theoretical maximum
energy from sunlight landing on an acre. It's physically impossible to do that.” No outside
experts have been allowed to validate the system yet, according to Kertz. In Valcent's 200square-foot test facility in El Paso, Texas, algae flow through 30 clear plastic panels hung
vertically inside a greenhouse. The algae are exposed to light for a few minutes and then
pumped into dark, underground tanks. Kertz theorizes that algae can absorb more light if they
are repeatedly exposed to it for short periods, rather than if they are left in the sun all day.
“Ridiculous nonsense,” says John Benemann, an algae-to-fuels consultant and a former
researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Benemann says that the technique may
have some effect on productivity, but not enough to support the company's claims. Valcent
plans to build a 100-panel demonstration system, and will then seek to license its technology,
says Kertz. The company does not plan to build full-scale facilities or sell oil. Such small-scale
facilities are typical among algal biofuels companies, which may be a driver behind some
inflated claims. “People are extrapolating inappropriately from lab data,” says Robert Trezona,
head of R&D at the Carbon Trust in London.
R&D funding won’t produce better technology—projects already have sufficient
funding from the DOE
Eco-seed 13 (magazine, “U.S. Energy Department investing $22 million on algae fuel,
advanced biofuels,” Eco-seed, August 8, 2013, accessed July 24, 2014,
http://www.ecoseed.org/politics/funding-incentives/16879-u-s-energy-department-investing22-million-on-algae-fuel-advanced-biofuels)
The United States Department of Energy has awarded more than $22 million in investments
for projects to help develop cost-competitive algae fuel and other advanced biofuels. Four
projects in California, Hawaii, and New Mexico were awarded a total of $16.5 million to
accelerate the development of sustainable and affordable algae biofuels while an Ohio-based
project will receive $6 million to develop a better biomass feedstock supply chain. These
investments are part of the Energy Department’s broader efforts to bring next generation
biofuels online, with the goal of producing cost-competitive drop-in biofuels by 2017 and
algae biofuels by 2022. “By partnering with industry and universities, we can help make clean,
renewable biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline, give drivers more options at the pump and
cut harmful carbon pollution,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The investments for the
projects in California, Hawaii and New Mexico are intended to help them develop measures to
boost the productivity of sustainable algae while cutting capital and operating costs of
commercial-scale production. Hawaii Bioenergy, based in Lihue, Kauai will get $5 million to
develop a cost-effective photosynthetic open pond system to produce algal oil. The project will
also demonstrate preprocessing technologies to reduce the energy use and overall cost of
extracting algal oil and producing fuel intermediates. San Diego’s Sapphire Energy will get $5
million for a new process to produce algae-based fuel that is compatible with existing
refineries. They will also work on improving algae strains and increasing yield through
cultivation improvements. New Mexico State University will get $5 million for a project seeking
to increase the yield of microalgae, while developing a harvesting and cultivation process that
will lower costs and support year-round production. Meanwhile, the California Polytechnic
State University will get $1.5 million to conduct research and development work to increase
the productivity of algae strains and compare two separate processing technologies. The last
investment was announced for the Columbus, Ohio-based FDC Enterprises and will focus on
reduce harvesting, handling, and preprocessing costs across the entire biomass feedstock supply
chain. FDC Enterprises will get $6 million to develop new field equipment, biorefinery
conveyor designs and improved preprocessing technologies. The project will also develop and
deploy feedstock quality-monitoring tools to reduce sampling and analysis costs, and conduct
real-time analysis of feedstock characteristics such as moisture content and particle size.
Algae commercialization fails—corn ethanol transition empirically proves
Bell 12 (Larry, environmental writer, “Obama's Algae Energy Euphoria: Is Pond Scum A Green
Scam?”, Forbes, May 6, 2012, accessed July 26, 2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/06/obamas-algae-energy-euphoria-is-pondscum-a-green-scam/)
Is there something fishy about algae? Is it the revolutionary new fuel source opportunity the
Obama administration represents it to be? Last February, in a University of Miami campaign
speech intended to pacify prospective pump price-panicked patrons, the president said: “We’re
making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually
made from a plant-like substance, algae…You’ve got a lot of algae out there, right? If we can
figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right. Believe it or not, we could
replace up to 17% of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel we can grow right here in
America. Like all other “revolutionary” green energy schemes, there’s little that is really new
in this idea. The first electric car in the U.S. was built by Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith in
1835; the first electricity-generating wind turbine was invented by Scottish academic James
Blythe in 1887; Bell Labs created the photovoltaic solar cell in 1954; and the dream of producing
fuels from algae dates back to the Carter administration in the late 1970s. Remember how
ethanol was going to save us from dependence on foreign oil imports? After four decades,
huge mandates to force it on gasoline consumers, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, and
huge impacts upon food prices, it only represented about five percent of automotive fuel (by
volume) in 2008. Biodiesel accounted for less than one percent of the diesel market that year.
But algae will be different…right? After all, doesn’t it require lots less space than all those
cornfields do…just some stagnant, shallow scummy ponds where it pretty much grows all by
itself? Well, maybe not exactly. Yes, the basic science and principles involved in making fuels
from algae are pretty simple. In theory, all you need is some dirty water ponds, sunlight,
nutrients, and large amounts of carbon dioxide, the EPA’s favorite pollutant. (We can burn a
bunch of coal and oil to get the latter…but then again, that might defeat the whole purpose of
growing the stuff.) Under the right conditions the volume of algae can double over night. But
that’s only if you need to produce just a little bit, and you don’t mind the mosquitoes.
Algae biofuel uses too much energy to be commercialized—can supply less than
5 % of U.S. transportation
Rampton and Deborah 12 (Roberta and Deborah, writers for Reuters, “Algae biofuel not
sustainable now-U.S. research council,” Reuters, Oct 24, 2012, accessed July 25, 2014,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-biofuels-algae-idUKBRE89N1Q820121024)
(Reuters) - Biofuels made from algae, promoted by President Barack Obama as a possible way
to help wean Americans off foreign oil, cannot be made now on a large scale without using
unsustainable amounts of energy, water and fertilizer, the U.S. National Research Council
reported on Wednesday. "Faced with today's technology, to scale up any more is going to put
really big demands on ... not only energy input, but water, land and the nutrients you need,
like carbon dioxide, nitrate and phosphate," said Jennie Hunter-Cevera, a microbial
physiologist who headed the committee that wrote the report. Hunter-Cevera stressed that this
is not a definitive rejection of algal biofuels, but a recognition that they may not be ready to
supply even 5 percent, or approximately 10.3 billion gallons (39 billion liters), of U.S.
transportation fuel needs. "Algal biofuels is still a teenager that needs to be developed and
nurtured," she said by telephone. The National Research Council is part of the National
Academies, a group of private nonprofit institutions that advise government on science,
technology and health policy. Its sustainability assessment was requested by the Department of
Energy, which has invested heavily in projects to develop the alternative fuel. In 2009, the
Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture awarded San Diego-based Sapphire
Energy Inc more than $100 million in grants and loan guarantees to help build a plant in New
Mexico that will produce commercial quantities of algal biofuel. Two other companies received
smaller amounts of federal assistance. In February, as gasoline prices spiraled, Obama said algal
biofuels had the potential to cut U.S. foreign oil dependence. He estimated that U.S. oil imports
used for transportation could be cut substantially. The National Research Council report shows
that the government should continue research on algal biofuel as well as other technologies
that reduce oil use, an Energy Department spokeswoman said. "Today's report outlines the
need for continued research and development to make algal biofuel sustainable and costcompetitive, but it also highlights the long-term potential of this technology and why it is worth
pursuing," Jen Stutsman said in a statement.
or
ABB Case
1NC Oil Shocks Frontline
U.S. economic decline inevitable—alt causes, such as a slowing population
growth
Brown 14 (Floyd, Chief Political Analyst, “New Proof that America is Dying,” Wall St. Daily,
March 26, 2014, accessed July 24, 2014, http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2014/03/26/americapopulation-decline/)
Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “The most decisive mark of the prosperity of any
country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants.” And if this statement is true, then
America is headed for more economic problems. You see, the population increase in America
has come to a screeching halt. According to figures recently released by the U.S. Census
Bureau, population growth is crashing. During the last year, it was a depressed 0.71%, or
barely 2.3 million people. This is the slowest growth since the Great Depression. Two factors are
slowing our population growth. One is that the baby boom population bubble is starting to
deflate. The oldest baby boomers are now approaching 70 and, in the next decade, will see
their mortality explode higher. The other is that immigration is slowing because immigrants
can’t find the economic opportunity in the United States that they once did. This was
hammered home to me recently when I learned the story of an enterprising towel boy in Cabo
San Lucas. As he presents a towel to his guests, he greets them in flawless English, which he
perfected growing up in Los Angeles. Yet he makes more money and tips around the pool in
Cabo San Lucas, Mexico than he could from any of a series of jobs he held in his hometown in
California. The Problem With Population Decline At this point, you may be asking yourself, why
should I care when a population decrease will result in less traffic, lower competition for scarce
resources, housing, food, etc.? Well, the reason you should care was summed up by Simon
Smith Kuznets, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his theory of “tested
knowledge.” As Kuznets explained, “More population means more creators and producers,
both of goods along established production patterns and of new knowledge and inventions.”
We directly benefit from the products and services created by people, and especially from the
energy they direct toward solving the problems of life. On the other hand, a declining
population will exacerbate the problems America already faces. For example, we’re nearing a
point where Social Security insolvency becomes intractable. A declining population compounds
this problem. If we need 10 workers to reasonably fund one retirement, what do you do when
the number of retired workers grows and the number of new workers is in decline? Our
modern welfare state is predicated on a growing population paying the government’s everexpanding bills. If you don’t grow the population, the growth of government becomes
increasingly difficult. And with a declining population, the welfare state becomes unaffordable.
Oil dependence is fading—it’s beginning to be replaced by natural gas or
electricity—garbage and mail trucks already switched
Dlouhy 13 (Jennifer, covers energy policy, politics, legal reports, “Companies leading US move
away from oil-based vehicle fuels,” Fuel Fix, October 16, 2013, accessed July 24, 2014,
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2013/10/16/business-leaders-say-commercial-fleets-will-lead-fueltransition/)
WASHINGTON — Commercial vehicle fleets will lead the United States’ transition away from
oil-based fuels to power cars and trucks, leading business executives predicted Wednesday.
The transformation has already started, with Waste Management adopting garbage trucks
powered by compressed natural gas and FedEx partnering in research on electric and hybrid
alternatives. FedEx CEO Fred Smith said he believes electric vehicles will increasingly be used
for short-haul, light-duty commercial vehicles, particularly those using next-generation
batteries that can store more power. In the meantime, he predicted that natural gas will be the
fuel of choice for heavy-duty trucks. In particular, Smith said, cities are excited about the clean
profile of electric vehicles. “Light-duty electric vehicles will take off,” he said, “These city
governments love them for their zero emissions.” Smith and other business leaders were
speaking at an energy summit organized by Securing America’s Future Energy, a group focused
on curbing U.S. oil dependence. Treasure: Stations pump fuel from landfill methane GE CEO
Jeffrey Immelt noted that his company expects to have 15,000 salespeople driving electric
vehicles. What is happening at the corporate level may trickle down to average Joe motorists.
Repowering and refueling infrastructure that builds up to support corporate fleets later can be
tapped by other consumers. Beyond infrastructure development, corporate America’s turn to
alternative vehicles can propel new technology. Houston-based Waste Management is
harnessing gas from its landfills to power more of its fleet, said CEO David Steiner. “We have
a…heavy-duty fleet we’re going to make dependent on natural gas,” Steiner said, noting that
while the fuel is “cleaner,” it brings plenty of other benefits too. “When you run a (compressed
natural gas) truck, you have fewer moving parts, so maintenance actually comes down,” Steiner
said. The trucks also run quieter, meaning the rumble of garbage trucks passing through
residential neighborhoods at dawn could be a thing of the past. Steiner joked that he’s only
heard one consumer complaint about the company’s shift to CNG trucks, and it was from a
customer who depended on the sound of those vehicles as a reminder to get his trash cans out
to the curb. Steiner said another benefit has been capturing previously lost time spent refueling.
Vehicles can be powered overnight with a “slow fuel” like natural gas, replacing potentially 20
minutes of lost worker time refueling with traditional diesel each morning. Daniel Akerson,
chairman of General Motors Co., used the energy forum to announce the company will begin
selling a duel-fuel sedan next year that can “seamlessly” switch from gasoline and compressed
natural gas. The two-fuel-tank 2015 Chevrolet Impala would be able to drive up to 500 miles.
Expanding network: Natural gas fueling stations in Texas set to double The existing Chevrolet
Volt already effectively has two fuels, in the form of electric propulsion and a backup
combustion engine that kicks in whenever power drops below a certain level. Akerson said the
approach ensures the Volt navigates around a major concern for motorists: whether they have
the juice to get from one place to another. “Range anxiety . . . is the biggest setback to the
electric vehicle,” he said. The executives speaking in the nation’s capital on Wednesday
emphasized the promise of natural gas — both on the roadways and in factories producing
chemicals and consumer goods. We’re in a natural gas and renewables age, observed GE’s
Immelt. Immelt said he was confident “we have enough natural gas” in the United States that
we can export the fossil fuel to other countries and support a resurgence in domestic
manufacturing
Oil Prices Stable- Malaysian Air example proves
Martin 7/18 (Richard Martin is the editorial director of Navigant Research, “Amid Global Turmoil, Oil
Prices Surprisingly Stable”, 7/18/14, Accessed 7/25/14,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2014/07/18/amid-global-turmoil-oil-prices-surprisinglystable/))
So why aren’t oil prices higher?¶ Prices spiked briefly after the news on July 17 that Malaysian Air
flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile
fired from eastern Ukraine. U.S. oil futures rose $1.99 a barrel, up 2% on the New York
Mercantile Exchange, to reach nearly $104. That was the largest one-day jump since June 12,
when ISIS launched its offensive in Iraq, according to The Wall Street Journal. But markets
quickly calmed: the next day, benchmark crude had retreated below $103 a barrel on the NYME.
The shocks of recent days had caused a tremor across world petroleum markets,¶ An oil rig
offshore Vungtau¶ No Lost Sleep¶ “At any given point of time, global financial markets are always
at risk from geopolitical disturbances, but this time around nobody’s losing sleep over it,” wrote
Malini Bhupta in the Business Standard, India’s leading economic newspaper, in a column
headlined “Markets shrug off geopolitical risks as oil prices remain stable.”¶ Before the latest
outrage in Ukraine, oil prices had actually been easing: in mid-July U.S. crude fell below $100 a
barrel for the first time since May. That’s not to say that prices aren’t high; as Steve LeVine, of
Quartz, points out, geopolitical disturbances have removed around 3.5 million barrels of oil a
day from world markets since last fall, and if the world were a more stable and peaceful place,
oil prices would likely be well below $100 a barrel. But given the current unrest, a price per
barrel of $125, or higher, would not be startling.¶ The ability of the market to absorb multiple
shocks and keep prices relatively stable is an indication of structural changes that have taken
place in recent years.
1NC Food Trade- Off Frontline
Algae can’t displace oil- it’s unsustainable compared to oil and corn.
Service 12 – Robert F. Service, writes about chemistry and materials science, delving into
topics ranging from solar energy and fuel cells to proteomics and artificial bone, majored in
psychology and international studies at the University of Oregon, from there he moved on to
work on a research project at Oregon Health Sciences University, masters degree in journalism
at the school’s Science and Environmental Reporting Program, covers scientific institutions in
the western United States, (“Large-Scale Algae Biofuels Currently Unsustainable, New Report
Concludes”, Science Insider, Oct 24, 2012, Available at:
http://news.sciencemag.org/2012/10/large-scale-algae-biofuels-currently-unsustainable-newreport-concludes, Accessed on: 7/26/2014, IJ)
A report out today from the National Research Council (NRC) of the U.S. National Academies
says that large-scale production of biofuels from algae is untenable with existing technology, as
it would require the use of too much water, energy, and fertilizer. To improve matters, the
report's authors suggest that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which supports much of the
research in the field, should conduct assessments of proposed technologies that examine
sustainability at all stages of fuel production, including growing or collecting algae and
harvesting their oil and converting it into transportation fuels. Efforts to make biofuel from algae
have been under way for more than 3 decades, and have picked up considerable steam in recent
years. Algae's big advantage is that unlike traditional biofuels, such as ethanol made from corn
kernels or sugar, algae wouldn't compete for agricultural land with food crops. It also has the
potential to produce as much as 10 times more fuel per hectare, according to the DOE's
2010 National Algal Biofuels Technology Roadmap. But there are many different approaches to
growing algae, such as growing the microscopic plants in shallow outdoor ponds, or in enclosed
plastic tubes called bioreactors. And the industry is far from settled on a single approach. No
matter what the strategy, however, the NRC committee concluded that current technology
scaled up to produce 39 billion liters a year—approximately 5% of U.S. transportation fuel
needs—would require an unsustainable level of inputs. Current technologies, for example,
need between 3.15 liters and 3650 liters of water to produce the amount of algal biofuel
equivalent to 1 liter of gasoline, the panel concluded. (That's potentially less than the estimated
5 liters to 2140 liters of water required to produce a liter of ethanol from corn, but more than
the 1.9 liters to 6.6 liters of water needed to produce a liter of petroleum-based gasoline.)
Growers would also have to add between 6 million and 15 million metric tons of nitrogen and
between 1 million and 2 million metric tons of phosphorus to produce 39 billion liters of algal
biofuels. That's between 44% and 107% of the total use of nitrogen in the United States, and
between 20% and 51% of the nation's phosphorus use for agriculture.
Food price conflicts are non-unique because of natural causes and rising
inflation
James C. Cooper BusinessWeek's senior editor and senior economist and wrote the influential
Business Outlook column, 2/14/11 (“Global Economic Recovery Sparks Inflation Fears,”
available online at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2011/02/14/Global-EconomicRecovery-Sparks-Inflation-Fears.aspx, accessed 2/15/11)
Clearly, prices of food and energy matter, but they are often subject to temporary volatility from
seasonal spikes and supply issues, which have been a major factor in the recent surge in food prices.
Last year, drought and wildfires in Russia destroyed crops and led to a ban on grain exports. Historic
flooding in Australia, a major commodities producer and supplier to China, disrupted shipments of
coal, wheat and sugar. This mix of supply shocks is unlikely to happen two years in a row, and many
economists believe food inflation will subside, perhaps substantially, over the coming year. For now,
the two-tier nature of the inflation outlook puts the onus on the central banks of emerging-market
nations to assure that their economies do not overheat. But even in advanced economies, which are
still running policies involving ultra-low interest rates and heavy government borrowing, there is a risk
that the costs of these policies may outweigh the benefits. In the coming year, investors will be on pins
and needles hoping the world’s central banks make the right choices.
Extinction claims overstated – species will rebound
Economist, 9 - The Economist online offers authoritative insight and opinion on international
news, politics, business, finance, science and technology (“Second life: Biologists debate the scale of extinction
in the world’s tropical forests,” The Economist, http://www.economist.com/node/12926042, January 15, 2009)
the global extinction crisis may have been
overstated. The world is unlikely to lose 100 species a day, or half of all species in the lifetime of
people now alive, as some have claimed. The bad news, though, is that the lucky survivors are tiny tropical insects
A RARE piece of good news from the world of conservation:
that few people care about. The species that are being lost rapidly are the large vertebrates that conservationists were worried
new view of the prospects for biodiversity emerged from a symposium held
this week at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, but the controversy over how bad things really
about in the first place. This
are has been brewing since 2006. That was when Joseph Wright of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and
the damage might not be as grim as some
feared. They reasoned that because population growth is slowing in many tropical countries, and people
are moving to cities, the pressure to cut down primary rainforest is falling and agriculturally
marginal land is being abandoned, allowing trees to grow. This regrown “secondary” forest is
crucial to the pair's analysis. Within a few decades of land being abandoned, half of the original
biomass has returned. Depending on what else is nearby, these new forests may then be colonised by animals and
Helene Muller-Landau of the University of Minnesota first suggested that
additional plants, and thus support many of the species found in the original forest. Dr Wright and Dr Muller-Landau therefore
in 2030 reasonably unbroken tropical forest will still cover more than a third of its
natural range, and after that date its area—at least in Latin America and Asia—could increase.
reckon that
Much of this woodland will be secondary forest, but even so they suggest that in Africa only 16-35% of tropical-forest species will
become extinct by 2030, in Asia, 21-24% and, in Latin America, fewer still.
the rate of extinction should dwindle.
Extinct species are replaced
Thomas Palmer, The Atlantic, January, 1992, p. 83
Once forest cover does start increasing,
Students of evolution have shown that species death, or extinction,
is going on all the time, and that it is an
essential feature of life history. Species are adapted to their environments; as environments
change, some species find themselves in the position of islanders whose islands are washing away, and they go under.
Similarly, new islands (or environments) are appearing all the time, and they almost invariably
produce new species.
1NC Leadership Frontline
1. Climate leadership is not key to overall US leadership
Falkner 5 – Robert Falkner, Department of International Relations, London School of
Economics, 2005, "American Hegemony and the Global Environment," International Studies
Review, Volume 7, Issue 4, pages 585-599
Second, there is no simple and straightforward correlation between America's hegemonic
position and the type of environmental diplomacy it is likely to pursue. The fact of
hegemonyas such does not determine whether the United States will promote or oppose
the creation of international environmental governance. To some extent, a link can be
established between US predominance in the international political economy and the rise
of global environmentalism since the late 1960s, analogous to the way in which it
promoted global economic cooperation after 1945. But unlike trade and monetary policy,
environmental policy has never been central to the US effort to create international order.
At times, the US government has used its economic strength and political influence to
promote global environmental objectives. On other occasions, it has acted as a veto power,
blocking progress toward multilateral policymaking. This suggests that we have no
convincing structural theory that can explain the direction and evolution of US foreign
environmental policy.
2. No link- Algae won’t foster green tech leadership- can’t solve fossil fuels or
replace other forms of energy. And all this card says is that algae replaces Co2
and helps the environment- NOT that it solves green tech leadership.
3.Be speculative of their evidence- their first two cards are from the Algae
Industry magazine – they have an incentive to lie about their product.
4.No job creation- algae biofuels have long a timeframe for creation – jobs will
be few and specialized- can’t solve.
5. No relationship between US capabilities and peace
Fettweis 10 – Professor of national security affairs @ U.S. Naval War College. [Christopher J.
Fettweis, “Threat and Anxiety in US Foreign Policy,” Survival, Volume 52,
Issue 2 April 2010 , pages 59 – 82//informaworld]
One potential explanation for the growth of global peace can be dismissed fairly quickly: US
actions do not seem to have contributed much. The limited evidence suggests that there is little
reason to believe in the stabilising power of the US hegemon, and that there is no relation
between the relative level of American activism and international stability. During the 1990s,
the United States cut back on its defence spending fairly substantially. By 1998, the United
States was spending $100 billion less on defence in real terms than it had in 1990, a 25%
reduction.29 To internationalists, defence hawks and other believers in hegemonic stability, this
irresponsible 'peace dividend' endangered both national and global security. 'No serious analyst
of American military capabilities', argued neo-conservatives William Kristol and Robert Kagan in
1996, 'doubts that the defense budget has been cut much too far to meet America's
responsibilities to itself and to world peace'.30 And yet the verdict from the 1990s is fairly plain:
the world grew more peaceful while the United States cut its forces. No state seemed to
believe that its security was endangered by a less-capable US military, or at least none took any
action that would suggest such a belief. No militaries were enhanced to address power
vacuums; no security dilemmas drove insecurity or arms races; noregional balancing occurred
once the stabilis-ing presence of the US military was diminished. The rest of the world acted as if
the threat of international war was not a pressing concern, despite the reduction in US military
capabilities. Most of all, the United States was no less safe. The incidence and magnitude of
global conflict declined while the UnitedStatescut its military spendingunder President Bill
Clinton, and kept declining as the George W. Bush administration ramped the spending back up.
Complex statistical analysis is unnecessary to reach the conclusion that world peace and US
military expenditure are unrelated.
6. Alt causes to solving hegemony- defense industry and economic growth –
green tech alone can’t solve
7. Algae can’t replace oil – too dependent on oil and fossil fuels – even if it
could replace it – it would take years to develop the tech.
8.Heg is unsustainable – rising powers, overstretch and loss of economic power
Layne 11 [Christopher Layne is the Associate Professor in the Bush School of Government and Public
Service at Texas A&M University and Research Fellow with the Center on Peace and Liberty at The
Independent Institute. “The unipolar exit: beyond the Pax Americana”, Cambridge Review of International
Affairs, 24:2, 149-164, Chetan]
In this article I challenge Brooks and Wohlforth. I show that the unipolar era already is visibly
drawing to a close. Three main drivers explain the impending end of the Pax Americana.
First, the rise of new great powers—especially China—is transforming the international
system from unipolarity to multipolarity. Second, the United States is becoming the poster
child for strategic over-extension, or as Paul Kennedy (1987) dubbed it, imperial overstretch.
Third, the United States’ relative economic power is declining. In particular, mounting US
fiscal problems and the dollar’s increasingly problematic role as the international financial
system’s reserve currency are undermining US hegemony. To comprehend why the Pax
Americana is ending we need to understand the linkages among these trends, and how each
has feedback effects on the others. After examining how these trends undermine the Brooks
and Wohlforth argument for unipolar stability and the durability of US hegemony, I conclude
by arguing that over the next two decades the Pax Americana’s end presages dramatic
changes in international politics—the outlines of which already are visible.
9.US hegemony decline inevitable—assumes all warrants—poor nationalism
Hunt 13 (Michael, political historian at University of North Carolina, "Nationalism and the
Debate Over U.S. Hegemony," Michael H. Hunt Site, May 17, 2013, accessed May 27, 2014,
http://michaelhunt.web.unc.edu/2013/03/17/nationalism-and-the-debate-over-u-shegemony/)
International relations realists seem to maintain a guarded optimism about U.S. prospects
grounded in a conviction that policymakers in Washington can preserve U.S. dominance if
they correctly read and adjust to the current configuration of interstate power, the rise of new
non-state actors, and the challenge of acute trans-national problems. Steven Weber and Bruce
W. Jentleson in The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas (2010), for
example, think a salvage operation possible. U.S. leaders have only to bring their policy in line
with the world as it is today rather than with a world nostalgically remembered. To take
another example, G. John Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation
of the American World Order (2011) contends that the liberal global order that the U.S. put in
place is still basically intact and amenable to U.S. leadership. This realist tendency to make
continued U.S. influence dependent on reading international developments aright is also
evident in the U.S. government’s recent forecast, the National Intelligence Council’s Global
Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (2012).¶ In reviewing these divergent pessimistic and optimistic
approaches, I am struck by the absence of attention to U.S. nationalism as an element in the
decline equation. The Tea Party revolt and the seemingly eternal presidential election
campaign have provided forceful reminders of how badly frayed the national consensus has
become and how important national consensus is as the basis for politics and policymaking.
Nationalism’s conceptual utility is precisely its capacity to get us to reflect on what collective
views Americans have embraced and how those views with both domestic and international
ramifications have changed.¶ Bringing nationalism into the picture is strikingly easy to do. The
ground has been prepared by a large, sophisticated collection of theoretical writings going
back to the 1980s, and on that ground has arisen a considerable body of historical scholarship
on various facets and phases of U.S. nationalism. This rich literature can help us think about
the currently troubled U.S. position in three basic ways:¶ –First, U.S. nationalism is important
today as earlier because it provides indispensable framing for policymakers by addressing the
three preoccupations central to most nationalisms. It tells us who qualifies as a full citizen and
thus has a genuine voice in national affairs, what kind of role the state should play as the
embodiment and proponent of nationalist values, and what foreign forces pose a threat to the
nation’s survival and values so serious that they require a collective response.
Solvency
Algae Biofuels can’t be modeled- lack of tech and legal framework prove
Winston 13 ( Joel Winston is a freelance Journalist at SciDev.Net, “Algae biofuels deemed
unsuitable for developing nations”, 5/7/13, Accessed 7/25/14,
http://www.scidev.net/global/biofuels/news/algae-biofuels-unsuitable-developingnations.html)
Adenle argues that several technical and institutional challenges must also be overcome before
the algae biofuel industry can take off in developing countries.¶ He says that developing
countries need to develop research capacity and legal frameworks to support the introduction
of patented technology, following the approach of emerging economies such as Brazil, China
and India.¶ While emerging nations such as China and India still produced a fairly low proportion
of global publications related to algae biofuels considering their population size — at three and
five per cent respectively — they did better than countries in Africa.¶ Adenle says these
emerging economies at least have some sort of capacity and institutions in place to build their
R&D in this area.¶ "We can't compare African countries with emerging economies such as India,
Brazil and China that are more advanced, because their regulatory frameworks are equivalent to
those of developed countries," he says.¶ The main challenge for African countries is to improve
their institutions, Adenle says. "For any developing country to develop their own algae biofuel,
they have to take a similar approach to that of Brazil, India and China, by investing in
institutional capacity such as training and education," he says.¶ "Having a proper policy to
support the introduction of new technologies is fundamental to the development of the
industry. If developing countries don't prioritise this, then it makes it very difficult for the
country, international organisations and companies to harmonise their agendas and work
together."
Algae production inevitably can’t produce enough—the biology is impossible—
scientist concedes
Waltz 09 (Emily, journalist who specializes in green technology, “Biotech’s Green Gold?”
Nature Biotechnology, 2009, accessed July 17, 2014,
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-15.html)
Faced with stresses such as nutrient deprivation, algae put their energy into storage—often in
the form of natural oils such as neutral lipids or triglycerides—and growth slows. Similar to the
oils from crops such as soybeans, jatropha and oil palm, algal oil can be extracted from the
organisms and refined into biodiesel (methyl (ethyl) esters) by transesterification with shortchain alcohols (e.g., methanol) or by esterification of fatty acids. Algae also synthesize other fuel
products, such as hydrogen, ethanol and long-chain hydrocarbons that resemble a crude-like oil.
But when algae divert energy into accumulating oil, they don't grow very fast, if at all, and
when they devote energy to growing, they don't make much oil—a trade-off that can result in
little increase in overall production of oil. “It's simply a law of thermodynamics. You can't get
around that,” says Steve Mayfield, a biologist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla,
California. This trade-off has stumped scientists for decades. Companies are still trying to
improve on concepts and cultivation systems developed in the 1980s. “I worked on biofuels 20
years ago and nobody gave a damn,” says Keith Cooksey, a semi-retired microbiologist at
Montana State University in Bozeman. “Then about a year ago I started getting phone calls and
requests for papers I had published in the 1980s. That doesn't usually happen. Either you've
contradicted what you published 20 years ago or the field has moved on and it's irrelevant. But
these companies and programs are basically picking up where I left off.”
Algae biofuel tech is expensive – we are nowhere near having good enough
tech for it to remain competitive
Kanellos 9 (Michael, writes about energy, transportation, food and data for Forbes, 2/3/2009,
Green Tech Media, “Algae Biodiesel: It's $33 a Gallon,”
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/algae-biodiesel-its-33-a-gallon-5652, ND)
You can grow algae with carbon dioxide and sunlight, but that doesn't mean it's free. Although
many believe that algae will become one of the chief feedstocks for diesel and even
hydrocarbon-like fuels, growing large amounts of algae and then converting the single-celled
creatures remains expensive, said experts at the National Biodiesel Conference taking place in
San Francisco on Tuesday. Algae biofuel startup Solix, for instance, can produce biofuel from
algae right now, but it costs about $32.81 a gallon, said Bryan Wilson, a co-founder of the
company and a professor at Colorado State University. The production cost is high because of
the energy required to circulate gases and other materials inside the photo bioreactors where
the algae grow. It also takes energy to dry out the biomass, and Solix uses far less water than
other companies (see Cutting the Cost of Making Algae by 90%). By exploiting waste heat at
adjacent utilities (one of our favorite forms of energy around here), the price can probably be
brought down to $5.50 a gallon (see Will Waste Heat Be Bigger Than Solar?). By selling the
proteins and other byproducts from the algae for pet food, the price can be brought to $3.50 a
gallon in the near term. But that's still the equivalent of $150 a barrel of oil. "We we're excited
in July [when oil was approaching that level]," he joked. "But we knew it wasn't sustainable." It's
only in phase II of Solix's business plan that it will be able to drop production costs to $3.30 to
$1.57 a gallon, or around $60 to $80 a barrel. Solix has set a goal of cutting the cost of making
algae by 90 percent. Is algae a good feedstock? Yes, he insisted. Ultimately, algae could yield
5,000 to 10,000 gallons an acre, far higher than other feedstocks. Soy is only good for around 40
to 50 gallons an acre. Touted plants like jatropha might only produce 175 gallons an acre, he
said. But algae comes with trade-offs. Wild algae grows fast, but it doesn't yield tremendous
amounts of oil naturally – two thirds or more of the body weight of wild algae will be proteins
and carbohydrates instead of oil. Genetically modified algae can boost the oil content, but that
slows the growth process. Closed bioreactors – i.e., sealed plastic bags placed in the sun -- cost
more than open ponds, but it's tough to keep invasive species from taking over open ponds and
out-competing algae optimized to produce oil. "There's a dance between the growth rate and
lipid content," Wilson said. Much of the cost reduction for Solix will be accomplished through
extraction techniques the company hasn't discussed yet. And algae companies will have to
harvest everything their microorganisms produce. "We don't have the solutions that are publicly
discussed that give us the costs that we need," he said, adding, "The value of the co-products
have to be captured and the value of the co-products could exceed the value of the oil." Some
companies, like Solazyme, are exploiting genetic science and fermenting techniques to
accomplish the task. In fermentation, specific species of algae are locked into brewing kettles
with sugars derived from old plant matter. When the time is right, Solazyme takes out the
microbes and squeezes out the oil. It's cheaper to get large volumes of feedstock oil through
fermentation than growing algae in ponds or bioreactors, said CEO Jonathan Wolfson.
Genetically modifying the algae can boost the lipid, or oil, content to 70 percent of the
organism's weight. In a sense, Solazyme practices indirect photosynthesis: the algae doesn't
grow by having sunlight shone upon it but by eating sugars that were grown in the sun. "Algae is
by far the best organism on the planet for converting fixed carbon into oil," he said. "But
economically, others are more efficient at taking sunlight and carbon dioxide and turning it into
oil."
Algae tech inefficient for commercialization—corporations exaggerate
production
Waltz 09 (Emily, journalist who specializes in green technology, “Biotech’s Green Gold?”
Nature Biotechnology, 2009, accessed July 17, 2014,
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v27/n1/full/nbt0109-15.html)
Near-term technologies may allow algae to produce up to 6,000 gallons of oil per acre per year
(gal/ac/yr). “If you really push the limits, then maybe 10,000 gallons per acre,” says Ron Pate, a
researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This figure could
improve with advances in cultivation, species selection, breeding and genetic modification,
but only to a certain extent. The laws of thermodynamics and the limits of photosynthetic
efficiencies just won't allow it. “When you see 20,000 or beyond—that's total bologna,” says
Pate. “It isn't going to happen.” Yet there are companies claiming they can make up to 100,000
gal/ac/yr, and raking in tens of millions in investment based on those promises. “The moment
their production goes over a certain prediction of gallons per acre, you know they are not
serious,” says Polle, who has supplied algal strains to startups. “Only a handful of companies
are really serious.” Valcent Products, a public company located in Vancouver, is experimenting
with a range of algal species in enclosed bioreactors. Valcent CEO Glen Kertz says he can sell a
barrel of algal oil for less than a barrel of crude oil and that his system has the potential to
produce 100,000 gal/ac/yr. “I said to him [Kertz], 'You are not doing anyone any favors by
making absurd claims',” says Scripps' Mayfield. “That is five times the theoretical maximum
energy from sunlight landing on an acre. It's physically impossible to do that.” No outside
experts have been allowed to validate the system yet, according to Kertz. In Valcent's 200-
square-foot test facility in El Paso, Texas, algae flow through 30 clear plastic panels hung
vertically inside a greenhouse. The algae are exposed to light for a few minutes and then
pumped into dark, underground tanks. Kertz theorizes that algae can absorb more light if they
are repeatedly exposed to it for short periods, rather than if they are left in the sun all day.
“Ridiculous nonsense,” says John Benemann, an algae-to-fuels consultant and a former
researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Benemann says that the technique may
have some effect on productivity, but not enough to support the company's claims. Valcent
plans to build a 100-panel demonstration system, and will then seek to license its technology,
says Kertz. The company does not plan to build full-scale facilities or sell oil. Such small-scale
facilities are typical among algal biofuels companies, which may be a driver behind some
inflated claims. “People are extrapolating inappropriately from lab data,” says Robert Trezona,
head of R&D at the Carbon Trust in London.
R&D funding won’t produce better technology—projects already have sufficient
funding from the DOE
Eco-seed 13 (magazine, “U.S. Energy Department investing $22 million on algae fuel,
advanced biofuels,” Eco-seed, August 8, 2013, accessed July 24, 2014,
http://www.ecoseed.org/politics/funding-incentives/16879-u-s-energy-department-investing22-million-on-algae-fuel-advanced-biofuels)
The United States Department of Energy has awarded more than $22 million in investments
for projects to help develop cost-competitive algae fuel and other advanced biofuels. Four
projects in California, Hawaii, and New Mexico were awarded a total of $16.5 million to
accelerate the development of sustainable and affordable algae biofuels while an Ohio-based
project will receive $6 million to develop a better biomass feedstock supply chain. These
investments are part of the Energy Department’s broader efforts to bring next generation
biofuels online, with the goal of producing cost-competitive drop-in biofuels by 2017 and
algae biofuels by 2022. “By partnering with industry and universities, we can help make clean,
renewable biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline, give drivers more options at the pump and
cut harmful carbon pollution,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The investments for the
projects in California, Hawaii and New Mexico are intended to help them develop measures to
boost the productivity of sustainable algae while cutting capital and operating costs of
commercial-scale production. Hawaii Bioenergy, based in Lihue, Kauai will get $5 million to
develop a cost-effective photosynthetic open pond system to produce algal oil. The project will
also demonstrate preprocessing technologies to reduce the energy use and overall cost of
extracting algal oil and producing fuel intermediates. San Diego’s Sapphire Energy will get $5
million for a new process to produce algae-based fuel that is compatible with existing
refineries. They will also work on improving algae strains and increasing yield through
cultivation improvements. New Mexico State University will get $5 million for a project seeking
to increase the yield of microalgae, while developing a harvesting and cultivation process that
will lower costs and support year-round production. Meanwhile, the California Polytechnic
State University will get $1.5 million to conduct research and development work to increase
the productivity of algae strains and compare two separate processing technologies. The last
investment was announced for the Columbus, Ohio-based FDC Enterprises and will focus on
reduce harvesting, handling, and preprocessing costs across the entire biomass feedstock supply
chain. FDC Enterprises will get $6 million to develop new field equipment, biorefinery
conveyor designs and improved preprocessing technologies. The project will also develop and
deploy feedstock quality-monitoring tools to reduce sampling and analysis costs, and conduct
real-time analysis of feedstock characteristics such as moisture content and particle size.
Algae biofuel uses too much energy to be commercialized—can supply less than
5 % of U.S. transportation
Rampton and Deborah 12 (Roberta and Deborah, writers for Reuters, “Algae biofuel not
sustainable now-U.S. research council,” Reuters, Oct 24, 2012, accessed July 25, 2014,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-biofuels-algae-idUKBRE89N1Q820121024)
(Reuters) - Biofuels made from algae, promoted by President Barack Obama as a possible way
to help wean Americans off foreign oil, cannot be made now on a large scale without using
unsustainable amounts of energy, water and fertilizer, the U.S. National Research Council
reported on Wednesday. "Faced with today's technology, to scale up any more is going to put
really big demands on ... not only energy input, but water, land and the nutrients you need,
like carbon dioxide, nitrate and phosphate," said Jennie Hunter-Cevera, a microbial
physiologist who headed the committee that wrote the report. Hunter-Cevera stressed that this
is not a definitive rejection of algal biofuels, but a recognition that they may not be ready to
supply even 5 percent, or approximately 10.3 billion gallons (39 billion liters), of U.S.
transportation fuel needs. "Algal biofuels is still a teenager that needs to be developed and
nurtured," she said by telephone. The National Research Council is part of the National
Academies, a group of private nonprofit institutions that advise government on science,
technology and health policy. Its sustainability assessment was requested by the Department of
Energy, which has invested heavily in projects to develop the alternative fuel. In 2009, the
Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture awarded San Diego-based Sapphire
Energy Inc more than $100 million in grants and loan guarantees to help build a plant in New
Mexico that will produce commercial quantities of algal biofuel. Two other companies received
smaller amounts of federal assistance. In February, as gasoline prices spiraled, Obama said algal
biofuels had the potential to cut U.S. foreign oil dependence. He estimated that U.S. oil imports
used for transportation could be cut substantially. The National Research Council report shows
that the government should continue research on algal biofuel as well as other technologies
that reduce oil use, an Energy Department spokeswoman said. "Today's report outlines the
need for continued research and development to make algal biofuel sustainable and costcompetitive, but it also highlights the long-term potential of this technology and why it is worth
pursuing," Jen Stutsman said in a statement.
Algae commercialization fails—corn ethanol transition empirically proves
Bell 12 (Larry, environmental writer, “Obama's Algae Energy Euphoria: Is Pond Scum A Green
Scam?”, Forbes, May 6, 2012, accessed July 26, 2014,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/05/06/obamas-algae-energy-euphoria-is-pondscum-a-green-scam/)
Is there something fishy about algae? Is it the revolutionary new fuel source opportunity the
Obama administration represents it to be? Last February, in a University of Miami campaign
speech intended to pacify prospective pump price-panicked patrons, the president said: “We’re
making new investments in the development of gasoline and diesel and jet fuel that’s actually
made from a plant-like substance, algae…You’ve got a lot of algae out there, right? If we can
figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right. Believe it or not, we could
replace up to 17% of the oil we import for transportation with this fuel we can grow right here in
America. Like all other “revolutionary” green energy schemes, there’s little that is really new
in this idea. The first electric car in the U.S. was built by Thomas Davenport, a blacksmith in
1835; the first electricity-generating wind turbine was invented by Scottish academic James
Blythe in 1887; Bell Labs created the photovoltaic solar cell in 1954; and the dream of producing
fuels from algae dates back to the Carter administration in the late 1970s. Remember how
ethanol was going to save us from dependence on foreign oil imports? After four decades,
huge mandates to force it on gasoline consumers, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, and
huge impacts upon food prices, it only represented about five percent of automotive fuel (by
volume) in 2008. Biodiesel accounted for less than one percent of the diesel market that year.
But algae will be different…right? After all, doesn’t it require lots less space than all those
cornfields do…just some stagnant, shallow scummy ponds where it pretty much grows all by
itself? Well, maybe not exactly. Yes, the basic science and principles involved in making fuels
from algae are pretty simple. In theory, all you need is some dirty water ponds, sunlight,
nutrients, and large amounts of carbon dioxide, the EPA’s favorite pollutant. (We can burn a
bunch of coal and oil to get the latter…but then again, that might defeat the whole purpose of
growing the stuff.) Under the right conditions the volume of algae can double over night. But
that’s only if you need to produce just a little bit, and you don’t mind the mosquitoes.
ANALYTIC:
Off-shore algae biofuel won’t spread across the world—can’t access regions far
from sea
Impact Defense
Coral Reefs
No coral reefs or acidification impact – warming triggers adaptive responses
and Co2 isn’t responsible.
Carter et al, 11 (Robert M. Carter, Craig D. Idso, S. Fred Singer, 2011,
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC,”
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf, AS)
While some corals exhibit a propensity to bleach ¶ and die when sea temperatures rise, others
exhibit a ¶ positive relationship between calcification, or ¶ growth, and temperature. ―Such
variable bleaching ¶ susceptibility implies that there is a considerable ¶ variation in the extent to
which coral species are ¶ adapted to local environmental conditions‖ ¶ (Maynard et al., 2008). ¶ ¶
The latest research suggests corals have effective ¶ adaptive responses to climate change, such
as ¶ symbiont shuffling, that allow reefs in some areas ¶ to flourish despite or even because of
rising ¶ temperatures. Coral reefs have been able to recover ¶ quickly from bleaching events as
well as damage ¶ from cyclones. ¶ ¶ Bleaching and other signs of coral distress ¶ attributed to
global warming are often due to other ¶ things, including rising levels of nutrients and ¶ toxins in
coastal waters caused by runoff from ¶ agricultural activities on land and associated ¶ increases in
sediment delivery. ¶ ¶
¶ atmospheric CO2 concentrations
are lowering the ¶ pH values of oceans and seas, a process called ¶ acidification, and that this
could harm aquatic life. ¶ But the drop in pH values that could be attributed ¶ to CO2 is tiny
compared to natural variations ¶ occurring in some ocean basins as a result of ¶ seasonal
variability, and even day-to-day variations ¶ in many areas. Recent estimates also cut in half the
¶ projected pH reduction of ocean waters by the year ¶ 2100 (Tans, 2009). ¶ ¶
-world data
contradict predictions about the ¶ negative effects of rising temperatures, rising CO2 ¶
concentrations, and falling pH on aquatic life. ¶ Studies of algae, jellyfish, echinoids, abalone,
sea ¶ urchins, and coral all find no harmful effects ¶ attributable to CO2 or acidification.
Sea Level Rise
Economic decline does not cause war
Barnett ‘9 (Thomas P.M. Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC, “The New
Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” 8/25/2009)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all
sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of
the Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens
and recovery -- surprisingly led by China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's
interesting to look back over the past year and realize how globalization's first truly worldwide
recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the international security landscape. None
of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly
attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict between Hamas and
Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic
struggles began in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia
(where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war" begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia
conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony of the
Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential
campaign) for that sudden spike in an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its
two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we see a most familiar
picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist
movements. Besides the recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state
wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one side acquiring a nuclear weapon
capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with the United States
effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleedinginto-Pakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both
leading up to and following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts
in Latin America, the usual military exercises with allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off
Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn,
occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa
Command, for example, hasn't led us to anything beyond advising and training local forces. So,
to sum up: * No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the smattering of urban
riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in
civil conflicts (in all the usual places); * Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no
great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); * No great improvement or disruption in
great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that
diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's
acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any
rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things we can cite
are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its
weak efforts to outbid the United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include
China and India stepping up their aid and investments in Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've
finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world record set in the late 1980s, but
even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created by all this unprecedented
"stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such stimulus packaging was the
most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that the world has suffered
a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's
major economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain
decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the
board to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as
allowed under current trade rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the
World Trade Organization is functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts
toward free-trade agreements have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by
the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing
disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as al-Qaida. And
looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as
disconnecting fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be
sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies into establishing global regulatory schemes,
even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion of the
continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty
of experts and pundits have attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning
of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America and "rising" China. And yet, in a
world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected financial markets, such
"diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly, I don't welcome a
world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up
and it's fair to say that this global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's
post-World War II international liberal trade order.
Their internal link to economic decline should have been triggered- the aff
indicates rising sea levels will cost $30 billion – Katrina cost $125 billion and
didn’t lead to global conflict.
Food Security
Corn ethanol not key to rising food prices—alt international causes
Odland 12 (Steve, commenting on Business and economy, “Why are Food Prices so High?,”
Forbes, March 15, 2012, http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveodland/2012/03/15/why-are-foodprices-so-high/)
Food prices have skyrocketed over the past couple years. While overall U.S. food prices rose
about 5% last year, earlier in the year food inflation was the highest recorded in 36 years. The
USDA sees food prices rising 2.5%-3.5% in 2012 but many believe that inflation could be much
higher. This is concerning since the economy is not rocketing and interest rates are near zero.
Why are food prices so high? Historically, food was a local issue as supply chains were short.
Food supply and demand were largely functions of local crop conditions impacted by weather,
growing conditions, pests, etc. Over the past century, supply chains and preservation have
improved so that the food trade has become international. Commodities, crops, and finished
goods are traded globally. This trade has stabilized prices when local weather or growing
conditions are impacted. But rising populations, largely in Asia, have created demand for crops
and finished good from other parts of the world, and have impacted prices. As every student
of economics knows, price is a function of supply and demand. When demand for a commodity
rises on constant supply, prices usually rise. Conversely, when demand falls at constant supply,
prices usually fall. The same thing works with supply. Rising supply on constant demand causes a
fall in prices while falling supply on constant demand causes prices to increase. So one could
conclude that rising food prices have been caused by falling supply or increased demand. This is
true, but there is a lot going on behind the scenes causing this. What’s going on? 1) China and
India have the largest and fastest growing populations creating demand for food from around
the world. So one impact on prices has been rising demand from these countries, especially
China. 2) The Japanese tsunami and earthquake last year drove up seafood prices by nearly 6%.
3) Vegetable prices rose 50% in the past month. Crop damage in Australia, Russia, and South
America are to blame. 4) Government subsidized and mandated ethanol use has increased the
demand for corn and reduced acreage dedicated to food thereby pushing food prices up. A
Congressional Budget Office report concluded that the increased use of ethanol accounts for 1015% of the increase in food prices. 5) Changes in government subsidies for crops other than corn
for ethanol impact food prices. 6) Regulations restricting use of herbicides, pesticides,
fertilizers, etc., while positive on some fronts, may result in poorer crop yields. 7) Increased oil
prices drive up costs for transportation, fertilizer, plastic packaging and inks used to print
packaging. 8) In some areas of the U.S., the government is paying farmers not to plant to save
water. This reduces food supply. 9) Drier and hotter weather trends in farming areas generally
reduce crop yield and drive prices higher. 10) Import tariffs and export taxes distort supply and
demand, and hence food prices around the world.
Economic decline does not cause war
Barnett ‘9 (Thomas P.M. Barnett, senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC, “The New
Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” 8/25/2009)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze with all
sorts of scary predictions of, and commentary regarding, ensuing conflict and wars -- a rerun of the
Great Depression leading to world war, as it were. Now, as global economic news brightens and recovery -- surprisingly led by
China and emerging markets -- is the talk of the day, it's interesting to look back over the past year and realize how
globalization's first truly worldwide recession has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the
international security landscape. None of the more than three-dozen ongoing conflicts listed by
GlobalSecurity.org can be clearly attributed to the global recession. Indeed, the last new entry (civil conflict
between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestine) predates the economic crisis by a year, and three quarters of the chronic struggles began
in the last century. Ditto for the 15 low-intensity conflicts listed by Wikipedia (where the latest entry is the Mexican "drug war"
begun in 2006). Certainly, the Russia-Georgia conflict last August was specifically timed, but by most accounts the opening ceremony
of the Beijing Olympics was the most important external trigger (followed by the U.S. presidential campaign) for that sudden spike in
an almost two-decade long struggle between Georgia and its two breakaway regions. Looking over the various databases, then, we
see a most familiar picture: the usual mix of civil conflicts, insurgencies, and liberation-themed terrorist movements. Besides the
recent Russia-Georgia dust-up, the only two potential state-on-state wars (North v. South Korea, Israel v. Iran) are both tied to one
side acquiring a nuclear weapon capacity -- a process wholly unrelated to global economic trends. And with
the United
States effectively tied down by its two ongoing major interventions (Iraq and Afghanistan-bleeding-intoPakistan), our involvement elsewhere around the planet has been quite modest, both leading up to and
following the onset of the economic crisis: e.g., the usual counter-drug efforts in Latin America, the usual military exercises with
allies across Asia, mixing it up with pirates off Somalia's coast). Everywhere else we find serious instability we pretty much let it burn,
occasionally pressing the Chinese -- unsuccessfully -- to do something. Our new Africa Command, for example, hasn't led us to
anything beyond advising and training local forces. So, to sum up: * No significant uptick in mass violence or unrest (remember the
smattering of urban riots last year in places like Greece, Moldova and Latvia?); * The usual frequency maintained in civil conflicts (in
all the usual places); * Not a single state-on-state war directly caused (and no great-power-on-great-power crises even triggered); *
No great improvement or disruption in great-power cooperation regarding the emergence of new nuclear powers (despite all that
diplomacy); * A modest scaling back of international policing efforts by the system's acknowledged Leviathan power (inevitable
given the strain); and * No serious efforts by any rising great power to challenge that Leviathan or supplant its role. (The worst things
we can cite are Moscow's occasional deployments of strategic assets to the Western hemisphere and its weak efforts to outbid the
United States on basing rights in Kyrgyzstan; but the best include China and India stepping up their aid and investments in
Afghanistan and Iraq.) Sure, we've
finally seen global defense spending surpass the previous world
record set in the late 1980s, but even that's likely to wane given the stress on public budgets created
by all this unprecedented "stimulus" spending. If anything, the friendly cooperation on such
stimulus packaging was the most notable great-power dynamic caused by the crisis. Can we say that
the world has suffered a distinct shift to political radicalism as a result of the economic crisis? Indeed, no. The world's major
economies remain governed by center-left or center-right political factions that remain
decidedly friendly to both markets and trade. In the short run, there were attempts across the board
to insulate economies from immediate damage (in effect, as much protectionism as allowed under current trade
rules), but there was no great slide into "trade wars." Instead, the World Trade Organization is
functioning as it was designed to function, and regional efforts toward free-trade agreements
have not slowed. Can we say Islamic radicalism was inflamed by the economic crisis? If it was, that shift was clearly
overwhelmed by the Islamic world's growing disenchantment with the brutality displayed by violent extremist groups such as alQaida. And looking forward, austere economic times are just as likely to breed connecting evangelicalism as disconnecting
fundamentalism. At the end of the day, the economic crisis did not prove to be sufficiently frightening to provoke major economies
into establishing global regulatory schemes, even as it has sparked a spirited -- and much needed, as I argued last week -- discussion
of the continuing viability of the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency. Naturally, plenty of experts and pundits have
attached great significance to this debate, seeing in it the beginning of "economic warfare" and the like between "fading" America
and "rising" China. And yet, in
a world of globally integrated production chains and interconnected
financial markets, such "diverging interests" hardly constitute signposts for wars up ahead. Frankly,
I don't welcome a world in which America's fiscal profligacy goes undisciplined, so bring it on -- please! Add it all up and it's fair to
say that this
global financial crisis has proven the great resilience of America's post-World War II
international liberal trade order.
Turn
Algae Biofuels are Harmful to Environment
Howell 10
(Katie Howell, freelance writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in the New
York Times, USA Today, Scientific American,National Geographic Traveler, Kiplinger’s Personal
Finance, Greenwire, Nationalgeographic.com and Knitty.com. Washington and Lee University and a
master’s degree in geology from Louisiana State University. June 22, 2010, “Is Algae Worse than Corn for
Biofuels?” Online: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/algae-biofuel-growth-environmentalimpact/)
Growing algae for use in biofuels has a greater environmental impact than sources such as corn, switch grass and
canola, researchers found in the first life-cycle assessment of algae growth. Interest in algae-based biofuels has blossomed
in the past year, sparking major investments fromExxon Mobil Corp. and Dow Chemical Co., and it has gained steam on
Capitol Hill, as well. But the nascent industry has major environmental hurdles to overcome before ramping up production,
according to research published this week in Environmental Science and Technology. "What we found was sort of
surprising," said Andres Clarens, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Virginia and lead author
of the paper. "We started doing this with as much optimism as everybody else." Algae production consumes more energy,
has higher greenhouse gas emissions and uses more water than other biofuel sources, like corn, switch grass and canola,
Clarens and his colleagues found by using a statistical model to compare growth data of algae with conventional crops.
"From a life-cycle standpoint, algae are not nearly as desirable as you would think they are," Clarens said. "And that was
surprising to us." The culprit, the researchers say, is fertilizer. Growing algae in open ponds is akin to producing them in a
shallow swimming pool, Clarens said, so all of the nutrients -- nitrogen and phosphorus -- needed to keep them alive and
boost their production come from outside sources. And that fertilizer has an environmental impact because it's often made
from petroleum feedstocks, Clarens said. "If you grow corn, you rotate the field with soybeans so you get nitrogen fixation,"
Clarens said. "You still have to fertilize a lot, but if you're growing algae ... all that fertilizer has to come from you, and the
fertilizing demands are much higher." Carbon dioxide also contributes to algae's environmental footprint. Algae use
sunlight and water to convert carbon dioxide into materials that can be easily converted into fuel. But that CO2 has to
come from somewhere, Clarens said. And until it's economical to pull it out of coal-fired power plant smokestacks or
other industrial sources, it comes from petroleum-based sources, as well. Algae production has some other negative
environmental impacts, Clarens said. For one, to convert algae into fuel, producers centrifuge the algae-laden water to
separate the two, and that takes "a fair amount of energy," Clarens said. But Clarens and his colleagues aren't writing off
algae as a potential future energy source "We wanted to point to areas where algae performs poorly so we'll have a bit of
a road map if we do decide to go down the algae road," Clarens said. The algae industry has called for life-cycle
assessments and is working on its own complete analysis, Mary Rosenthal, executive director of the Algal Biomass
Organization, said in an e-mailed statement. She said her organization had not had time to fully review the paper and could
not comment on it specifically. "
1NC Peak Oil Frontline
Algae biofuels fails – prevent sunlight, difficult to bioengineer, take energy from
other organisms
Voosen 11 (Paul Voosen, a reporter and writer based in Washington DC covering science for
Greenwire, “As Algae Bloom Fades, Photosynthesis Hopes Still Shine”, March 29th, 2011,
Accessed 7/25/14)
That was the idea, anyway, of a host of startups that launched into algae fuels over the past half
decade. Often ignorant of algae's biology, these companies stumbled into major physical and
engineering hurdles that can derail most of their lofty goals, industry and government experts
say.¶ Even the most promising approaches are a decade or more away, experts say. By then,
many firms will have failed.¶ Most of these problems were predicted -- and ignored. Algae are
speedy growers, but they are also greedy, preventing sunlight from penetrating even
moderately dense concentrations. The most popular algae varieties, which resemble singlecelled plants, remain difficult to bioengineer. Water requirements are vast. And while pond
scum are prolific in building up oily fats, they surrender their dearly built energy stores only if
they are killed and broken apart.
Resource wars don’t happen – other variables at play
Victor, professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Program
on Energy and Sustainable Development, 2007
(David, “What Resource Wars?,” November 12, Online:
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16020)
RISING ENERGY prices and mounting concerns about environmental depletion have animated
fears that the world may be headed for a spate of "resource wars"-hot conflicts triggered by a
struggle to grab valuable resources. Such fears come in many stripes, but the threat industry has sounded the alarm
bells especially loudly in three areas. First is the rise of China, which is poorly endowed with many of the resources it needs-such as
oil, gas, timber and most minerals-and has already "gone out" to the world with the goal of securing what it wants. Violent conflicts
may follow as the country shunts others aside. A second potential path down the road to resource wars starts with all the money
now flowing into poorly governed but resource-rich countries. Money can fund civil wars and other hostilities, even leaking into the
hands of terrorists. And third is global climate change, which could multiply stresses on natural resources and trigger water wars,
catalyze the spread of disease or bring about mass migrations.¶ Most of this is bunk, and nearly
all of it has focused on
the wrong lessons for policy. Classic resource wars are good material for Hollywood
screenwriters. They rarely occur in the real world. To be sure, resource money can magnify and
prolong some conflicts, but the root causes of those hostilities usually lie elsewhere. Fixing them
requires focusing on the underlying institutions that govern how resources are used and largely
determine whether stress explodes into violence. When conflicts do arise, the weak link isn't a dearth in resources
but a dearth in governance.
Oil dependence is inevitable – we have become too reliant
New York Times, 2008
(“Gusher of Lies”, New York Times, 3-7-08, Online:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/books/chapters/first-chapter-gusher-oflies.html?pagewanted=all)
This book focuses on the need to acknowledge, and deal with, the difference between rhetoric
and reality. The reality is that the world — and the energy business in particular — is becoming
ever more interdependent. And this interdependence will likely only accelerate in the years to
come as new supplies of fossil fuel become more difficult to find and more expensive to
produce. While alternative and renewable forms of energy will make minor contributions to
America’s overall energy mix, they cannot provide enough new supplies to supplant the new
global energy paradigm, one in which every type of fossil fuel — crude oil, natural gas, diesel
fuel, gasoline, coal, and uranium — gets traded and shipped in an ever more sophisticated
global market. Regardless of the ongoing fears about oil shortages, global warming, conflict in
the Persian Gulf, and terrorism, the plain, unavoidable truth is that the U.S., along with nearly
every other country on the planet is married to fossil fuels. And that fact will not change in the
foreseeable future, meaning the next 30 to 50 years. That means that the U.S. and the other
countries of the world will continue to need oil and gas from the Persian Gulf and other regions.
Given those facts, the U.S. needs to accept the reality of energy interdependence. The
integration and interdependence of the global energy market can be seen by looking at Saudi
Arabia, the biggest oil producer on the planet. In 2005, the Saudis imported 83,000 barrels of
gasoline and other refined oil products per day. It can also be seen by looking at Iran, which
imports 40 percent of its gasoline needs. Iran also imports large quantities of natural gas from
Turkmenistan. If the Saudis, with their 260 billion barrels of oil reserves, and the Iranians, with
their 132 billion barrels of oil and 970 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves, can’t be energyindependent, why should the U.S. even try? An October 2006 report by the Council on Foreign
Relations put it succinctly: “The voices that espouse ‘energy independence’ are doing the nation
a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future and that
encourages the adoption of inefficient and counterproductive policies.” America’s future when
it comes to energy — as well its future in politics, trade, and the environment — lies in accepting
the reality of an increasingly interdependent world. Obtaining the energy that the U.S. will need
in future decades requires American politicians, diplomats, and businesspeople to be actively
engaged with the energy-producing countries of the world, particularly the Arab and Islamic
producers. Obtaining the country’s future energy supplies means that the U.S. must embrace
the global market while also acknowledging the practical limits on the ability of wind power and
solar power to displace large amounts of the electricity that’s now generated by fossil fuels and
nuclear reactors. The rhetoric about the need for energy independence continues largely
because the American public is woefully ignorant about the fundamentals of energy and the
energy business. It appears that voters respond to the phrase, in part, because it has become a
type of code that stands for foreign policy isolationism — the idea being that if only the U.S.
didn’t buy oil from the Arab and Islamic countries, then all would be better. The rhetoric of
energy independence provides political cover for protectionist trade policies, which have
inevitably led to ever larger subsidies for politically connected domestic energy producers, the
corn ethanol industry being the most obvious example.
No conflict from peak oil – reserves will last
Kaminsky, senior fellow at the Heartland Institute, 2011
(Ross, Energy Myths of the Left, The American Spectator, Online: http://spectator.org/
archives/2011/05/27/energy-myths-of-the-left)
From confused "peak oil" theorists to confused Congressmen, it's all but impossible to hear a
discussion of US energy policy without hearing the left's tired refrain: "The United States
currently uses 25% of the world oil production but has only 2% of world reserves." The left uses
this misinformation to argue against domestic oil drilling, claiming that with only two percent of the world's
¶
reserves, we can't possibly have enough oil in the ground to matter.¶ ¶ It's a line which reminds me of Mark Twain's wisdom (which
he attributed to Benjamin Disraeli) that "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics." Twain would be proud of
these haters of fossil fuels whose "statistics" fall apart upon examination of a couple of definitions and a few pieces of data.¶ ¶ First,
there are several different types of reserves,
classified based on their official discovery, as well as "concentration, quality, and accessibility." The top of the "resource
pyramid" is made of "proved" reserves, namely reserves of oil, natural gas, coal, or other fuel
"which geological and engineering data demonstrate with reasonable certainty to be
recoverable in future years from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating
conditions."¶ ¶ This is the most limiting definition of reserves, and of course it is the one which
the left relies on when saying that we have "only two percent of the world's oil reserves."
Specifically, the U.S. has 20.7 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves as of the end 2009.
(That's actually up from 2008 numbers which by itself should be a clue how meaningless the left's two-percent argument is.)¶ ¶
The problem with the use of the "proved reserves" statistic is that it ignores the many more
billions of barrels of oil which we know exist and are likely to be recoverable on American land
and just off our coasts. Since our government prevents exploration, there are massive deposits of oil (and other fuels) which
are prevented from being measured adequately to be defined as "proved." But that doesn't make them less real.¶ ¶ A broader
measure of fossil fuel deposits is UTRR, undiscovered technically recoverable resources. Marcus Koblitz, energy analyst at
the word "reserves." As the Congressional Research Service notes,
the American Petroleum Institute, sent me this "short" definition of the term: "UTRR are estimated by USGS and/or BOEMRE using
advanced modeling techniques that apply knowledge of geologic formations and technical access capabilities to currently
unexplored formations that are similar to producing formations in order to determine the amount of oil and natural gas in a specific
area or basin."¶ ¶ The UTRR numbers are remarkably high for the United States; indeed they demolish the left's anti-drilling pseudologic. Or they would if the media's talking heads would stop just accepting the 2% lie-statistic.¶ ¶ In particular, the United States'
is currently about 38 billion barrels, with the offshore technically recoverable
resources coming in at a stunning 86 billion barrels. (Of this, just over half is in the Gulf of Mexico, a third in
Alaska, and the rest off our Pacific and Atlantic coasts.) Our real but not "proved" resource of oil is thus about
125 billion barrels. Furthermore, the offshore numbers are based on a report that used data
from 2003, at which time oil discovery and drilling technology were far behind what they are
today, the BP disaster notwithstanding. It is likely that a new survey would conclude with a substantially higher UTRR number.¶ ¶
Even with the outdated offshore figures, the U.S.'s total technically recoverable oil, including current
proved reserves and 10 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, is estimated by our government at
163 billion barrels, eight times the number thrown around by the left.¶ ¶ Yes, our total
recoverable oil reserves (including proved) are at least eight times our proved reserves alone. It's
UTRR for onshore oil
just that government keeps us from proving them. And if that's not enough, our UTRR for natural gas is five times our proven
reserves of that resource.
Oil Prices Stable- Malaysian Air example proves
Martin 7/18 (Richard Martin is the editorial director of Navigant Research, “Amid Global Turmoil, Oil
Prices Surprisingly Stable”, 7/18/14, Accessed 7/25/14,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2014/07/18/amid-global-turmoil-oil-prices-surprisinglystable/))
So why aren’t oil prices higher?¶ Prices spiked briefly after the news on July 17 that Malaysian Air
flight 17, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile
fired from eastern Ukraine. U.S. oil futures rose $1.99 a barrel, up 2% on the New York
Mercantile Exchange, to reach nearly $104. That was the largest one-day jump since June 12,
when ISIS launched its offensive in Iraq, according to The Wall Street Journal. But markets
quickly calmed: the next day, benchmark crude had retreated below $103 a barrel on the NYME.
The shocks of recent days had caused a tremor across world petroleum markets,¶ An oil rig
offshore Vungtau¶ No Lost Sleep¶ “At any given point of time, global financial markets are always
at risk from geopolitical disturbances, but this time around nobody’s losing sleep over it,” wrote
Malini Bhupta in the Business Standard, India’s leading economic newspaper, in a column
headlined “Markets shrug off geopolitical risks as oil prices remain stable.”¶ Before the latest
outrage in Ukraine, oil prices had actually been easing: in mid-July U.S. crude fell below $100 a
barrel for the first time since May. That’s not to say that prices aren’t high; as Steve LeVine, of
Quartz, points out, geopolitical disturbances have removed around 3.5 million barrels of oil a
day from world markets since last fall, and if the world were a more stable and peaceful place,
oil prices would likely be well below $100 a barrel. But given the current unrest, a price per
barrel of $125, or higher, would not be startling.¶ The ability of the market to absorb multiple
shocks and keep prices relatively stable is an indication of structural changes that have taken
place in recent years.
Topicality
MS Lab
DAS
Navy Readiness DA
1NC Shell-Oil DA
Uniqueness Oil prices are rising now and will stay high for the rest of 2014assumes Middle East issues
Ligato 7/15 (Lorenzo, editor of Yale daily news, Reuters energy reporter, “Oil inches up as
signs of healthy supply tempered by Libya”, http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/14/marketsoil-idINL4N0PP1BN20140714, 7/15/2014)
LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) -
Oil prices ended slightly higher on Monday as traders weighed renewed
violence in Libya against broader signs of a global market well-supplied with crude. Last week, North
Sea benchmark Brent closed at its lowest in three months as easing tensions in Libya and Iraq mitigated fears of supply disruptions.
But oil
prices perked up a bit on Monday as violence flared anew. "More violence in Iraq and Libya raises
some questions about their ability to keep production going," said James Williams, an energy economist at
WTRG Economics in London, Arkansas. "But the fundamentals of supply and demand continue to be fairly
balanced." Fighting broke out between rival militias vying for control of the airport in Tripoli on Sunday, killing at least six people
in the worst violence the capital has seen in six months. The United Nations announced on its website on Monday that it is
temporarily withdrawing its staff from Libya. Meanwhile, protesters have shut down production at the eastern Libyan oil port of
Brega, state firm National Oil Corp (NOC) said on Saturday. No timetable was disclosed for resuming operations at the 43,000-barrelper-day facility. Brent
crude gained 32 cents to settle at $106.98 A barrel. It had dropped to $106.21 earlier in
crude futures gained 8 cents to settle at $100.91 a
barrel. The spread CL-LCO1=R between the two benchmarks closed at $6.07. Oil prices spiked to a
nine-month high last month as an Islamist insurgency swept across Iraq.
the session, the lowest intraday price since April. U.S.
Changes in alternate energy technology create shocks in oil prices.
Henriques and Sadorsky 07 — Irene Henriques, researcher at York University with bases in
microeconomics, finance, and ecology; and Perry Sardosky, researcher at York U with base in
energy usage, energy markets, trading, and risk management (“Oil prices and the stock prices of
alternative energy companies,” ScienceDirect research paper, Published November 17th, 2007,
Available at http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0140988307001399/1-s2.0-S0140988307001399main.pdf?_tid=7ba85e84-0cfc-11e4-854500000aacb360&acdnat=1405524107_86552922ccea6c909a0618035e78528c, Accessed July
16th, 2014)
Simulation results show the stock prices of alternative energy companies to be impacted by
shocks to technology stock prices but shocks to oil prices have little significant impact on the
stock prices of alternative energy companies. These results add to a small but growing literature
showing that oil price movements are not as important as once thought because investors may
view alternative energy companies as similar to other high technology companies. These results
should be of use to investors, managers and policy makers.
Internal link and impact High oil prices key to Russia economy/stability
American Enterprise Institute 13 May 29, 2013 “The political economy of Russian oil and
gas” from http://www.aei.org/outlook/foreign-and-defense-policy/regional/europe/thepolitical-economy-of-russian-oil-and-gas/
Key points in this Outlook:¶ One of the world’s two largest oil producers and the leading
provider of natural gas to Europe, Russia has increasingly used its revenues from energy exports
to strengthen the Putin regime.¶ As new, cheaper energy providers emerge and the market
becomes leaner and more competitive, Russia needs to lessen its dependence on profits from
these resources if it is to avoid stagnation and possibly an economic crisis. ¶ The regime needs to
implement deep institutional reforms to create a better investment climate and diversify the
economy, but in doing so it risks undermining the authoritarian “vertical of power.”¶ ¶ Vladimir
Putin’s commitment to oil and gas as the mainstay of Russia’s progress stems from a deep and
abiding conviction about its importance to the nation’s economy. Long before he came to
power, he had believed that “the restructuring of the national [Russian] economy on the basis of
mineral and raw material resources” was “a strategic factor of economic growth in the near
term.”[1]¶ In an article published a year before he became president, he reiterated that Russian
mineral resources would be central to the country’s economic development, security, and
modernization through “at least the first half” of the 21st century.[2] In Putin’s view, the only
way for Russia to achieve economic growth of 4 to 6 percent per year—the tempo he deemed
minimally necessary for Russia to reduce its lag behind the developed countries—was via
“extraction, processing and exploitation of mineral raw resources.” This was the key to Russia’s
becoming “a great economic power,” Putin believed.[3]¶ For Putin, oil and gas were also
paramount politically as guarantors of the security and stability of the Russian state. As he put it,
“The country’s natural resource endowment is the most important economic and political factor
in the development of social production.” Furthermore, the “raw material complex” was the
“basis for the country’s military might” and an “essential condition” for modernization of the
military-industrial complex.[4] Finally, he believed the mineral extraction sector of the economy
“diminishes social tensions” by raising the “level of well-being” of the Russian population.[5]¶
Oil, Gas, and the “Putin Doctrine”¶ State control or outright ownership of the oil and gas
industry became a central element in the “Putin Doctrine,” which postulated the recovery of the
state’s political, economic, and geostrategic assets following the antitotalitarian revolution of
late 1987–91.[6] The state was to become again the only sovereign political and economic actor
in Russia, with the private sector, civil society, and its institutions mere objects.¶ Putin saw as
nonnegotiable the state’s control of “rent flows” from the sale of mineral resources, with
nonstate property rights remaining “contingent.”[7] Almost a decade and a half later, the
authors of an influential analytical report on the composition and division of labor in the
Kremlin’s Politburo singled out “long-term natural gas contracts, and the management of the
natural gas industry in general and Gazprom in particular” as one of only two areas “under
Putin’s direct control.”[8] (The other sector was the largest banks.) ¶ In pursuit of this agenda,
the Putin regime has effected a steady accretion of the state’s sway over the oil industry. (Unlike
oil, Russia’s natural gas production escaped large-scale privatization in the 1990s. As a result,
the majority-state-owned Gazprom dominates the sector with 78 percent of the national output
and has a pipeline and export monopoly.[9]) The key to the effective state takeover of more
than half of Russian oil output was a dramatic expansion of the majority state-owned Rosneft,
headed since 2010 by Putin’s confidant and former KGB officer Igor Sechin. Starting as a minor
company that the government tried and failed to sell in 1998 because nobody wanted it,
Rosneft skyrocketed in 2004 after it took over the key assets of Russia’s formerly largest and
privately owned oil corporation, Yukos, which the Kremlin had bankrupted, broken up, and sold
at rigged auctions.[10]¶ "For Putin, oil and gas were also paramount politically as guarantors of
the security and stability of the Russian state."Since Rosneft bought Russia’s third-largest private
company, TNK-BP, for $55 billion this past March, it has become the largest publicly traded oil
company in the world by output.[11] As a result, the state share of Russia’s oil production
increased from 20 percent in the early 2000s to 56 percent today, with Rosneft accounting for
48 percent of the total.[12] The increase in the state ownership paralleled a steady rise in
overall production, which reached a post-Soviet record of 10.5 million barrels per day, or 518
million tons per year, in November 2012.[13]¶ The Rise of the Russian Petro-Gas State¶ From less
than 50 percent in the mid-1990s,[14] the share of commodities in Russian exports has grown to
70 percent today, with oil accounting for more than half of the export income.[15] Representing
up to 30 percent of the country’s GDP and half of its GDP growth since 2000,[16] hydrocarbons
provided at least half of the state’s budget revenues last year.[17] Five years ago, Russia needed
oil prices of $50 to $55 a barrel to balance its budget, but Alexei Kudrin, former first deputy
prime minister and finance minister, estimated the breakeven price at $117 per barrel last
year.[18]¶ Russia’s dependence on energy exports—and, consequently, its economy’s
vulnerability to commodity price fluctuation—was highlighted by the 2009 world financial crisis.
As oil plunged from $147 to $34 per barrel, the resource-based economy contracted by almost 8
percent—the largest drop among the G20 top industrial nations.¶ Russia has begun to exhibit
the signs of what economists call the “Dutch disease,” when overreliance on commodity exports
depresses other sectors of the economy by starving them of investments and modernization
while the increasing value of the national currency makes exports of other goods and services
more expensive and thus less competitive in world markets. Industrial stagnation has even
spread to the military-industrial complex, which, like in Soviet times, continues to be the state’s
favorite sector and enjoys its continuous and very generous support. Despite this, according to a
recent survey, only 20 percent of the Russian defense enterprise qualified as “modern.”[19]¶ As
in virtually every other petro-gas state, the rise of the Russian one has been attended by
corruption likely unprecedented even in the country’s far-from-pristine history. Venality and
extortion have come close to ¶ subverting or even paralyzing governance, social institutions,
justice, and entrepreneurial activity. In Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perception
Index, Russia was 133rd among 176 countries, worse than Belarus, Vietnam, and Sierra Leone
and on par with Honduras, Iran, and Kazakhstan.[20]¶ Yet the most dangerous political legacy of
the Russian petro-gas state is the centrality of oil and gas revenues, which amounted to $215
billion last year,[21] to the loyalty of two groups that are essential for the regime’s survival: the
lower-income and elite segments. Trillion-ruble transfers help to maintain social peace in what
is known as “Russia-2”[22]—poorer regions, especially the volatile and increasingly violent
Muslim North Caucasus, small towns and rural areas, and the rusting “monotowns” (onecompany towns) of Stalinist industrialization.[23]¶ The sporadic raising of meager pensions and
salaries for the millions of Russians on the government payroll, including doctors and teachers
(usually in the run-up to the Duma or presidential elections) is part of the same strategy. At the
same time, oil and gas rents are a vital component in elite management under Putin’s
neopatrimonial regime: a tacit but ironclad agreement between the Kremlin and the
bureaucracies from top to bottom that permits the latter to enrich themselves at the treasury’s
expense in exchange for their loyalty.¶ So long as the regime continues to regard export
revenues as a palliative, if not a panacea, for economic, social, and political problems, they will
impede or even obviate the need for economic and political modernization. “The problem of
being a petro-state is that the natural resources trend corrupts the institutions,” said Sergei
Guriev, rector of the New Economic School in Moscow and a leading expert on Russian political
economy. “This is what is called the ‘resource curse.’ This is a trap, where democratic political
and economic institutions do not develop because rents coming from natural resources provide
incentives to the elite not to develop institutions.”[24]
Oil price drop tanks Russian economy – no diversification to cushion the
economy
William T. Wilson 5/19, phD, Senior Research Fellow in the Asian Studies Center at The
Heritage Foundation. “Why the Russian Economy stares into the Abyss”. Heritage Foundation.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/05/the-russian-economy-stares-into-theabyss. 5/19/14
Without ever-rising energy prices or domestic credit, the Russian economy appears to have hit
the classic middle-income trap: protracted slow growth brought on by the government’s
complete lack of interest over the past decade in the sort of supply-side reforms that would
increase domestic investment and productivity. Despite its endowment of oil, gas, and mineral
riches, Russia has suffered for years from a dearth of private investment that could diversify its
economy and cushion it against commodity-price fluctuations. Russia’s international sales of
goods and services last year only barely edged out Belgium’s—and were positively dwarfed by
the Netherlands.[2]¶ And it is no wonder why Russia is not attracting foreign capital. In the most
recent survey from the International Finance Corporation’s and World Bank’s Doing Business
survey, Russia was ranked 115 out of 189 countries, putting it on par with an average subSaharan country.¶ And capital continues flowing out of Russia. The European Central Bank, with
confidential data, recently estimated that capital flight since the Ukrainian crisis erupted may be
as high as 160 billion euros ($222 billion), four times higher than admitted by the Kremlin. This
would be the same scale of outflows witnessed in late 2008 during the Lehman crisis. (Capital
flight was estimated at $63 billion for all of 2013.[3]) As legendary American banker Walter
Wriston once said, “Capital will go where it is welcomed and stay where it is well treated.”¶ The
state’s control of the “commanding heights” has given it enormous degrees of corporate control
in recent years. The energy sector is once again largely in state hands. Privatization plans
continue to be delayed or scaled down, meaning that Russia’s most lucrative state-owned
assets, such as oil firm Rosneft, are not on the privatization schedule and are unavailable to
foreign investors. All these factors have made the Russian stock market the cheapest (in terms
of price-earnings ratios) of any of the world’s major exchanges.¶ Not surprisingly, all of these
factors have made Russia more energy dependent. The fiscal break-even price of oil needed to
balance the Russian budget was $34 in 2007. Today it is $117. Russia gets about 70 percent of its
export revenue from oil and gas, so even a modest drop would be a significant blow for the
authorities and would force it to tap into its reserve fund. After running a budget surplus of
almost 0.8 percent of GDP in 2011, Russia ran a fiscal deficit of 0.5 percent in 2013.¶ While
Russia has one of the largest stashes of foreign exchange and gold reserves in the world—valued
at approximately $500 billion—because its budget is so dependent upon energy exports to the
West, these formidable reserves could quickly dissipate if oil fell to $80 a barrel or Europe were
to stop buying Russian gas.
Russian economic collapse spreads globally – risks nuclear war
Filger, 09 (Sheldon, Global economic forecaster, founder of GlobalEconomicCrisis.com, named
one of the most viable websites focused on global economic crisis, writer for Huffington Post,
“Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction”, Huffington Post, 5/10/09,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/russian-economy-faces-dis_b_201147.html,
7/17/14)
In Russia, historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is
rarely encountered in other major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of
the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both
intimately acquainted with their nation's history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect
that Russia's economic crisis will endanger the nation's political stability, achieved at great cost
after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are
occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of their salaries.
Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev
are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced
to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise
cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out
of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be
for the Global Economic Crisis. There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then
the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from
superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of
sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only
President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the
prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing
social and political upheaval. It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama's national
security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown
in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates
put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic
Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating
political instability in the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces
responsible for guarding the nation's nuclear arsenal went without pay for months at a time,
leading to fears that desperate personnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist
organizations. If the current economic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate much further, how
secure would the Russian nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the
Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous consequence.
Politics DA
1nc shell politics – plan unpopular
Uniqueness and internal link - Ex-Im will pass, but barely --- coalition of Dems
and mainstream GOP’ers
Ehrlich July 13-14 (Robert L., former governor of Maryland, former US congressman, “The
GOP is divided over ‘Ex-Im’”, Published 7-13-14 in the Baltimore Sun,
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-07-13/news/bs-ed-ehrlich-0713-20140713_1_ex-im-u-sexport-import-bank-export-import)
Most people have never heard of it. Fewer still understand how it operates. But it is the focal point of a (mostly) intramural
Republican fight playing out in the halls of Congress. Its ultimate resolution will have dramatic impact on a number of high-profile
American manufacturers -- and the thousands of high-profile jobs they represent. I refer to the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank
of the United States. Its charter is to act as a lender/guarantor of last resort (where private sector
investment is not available) on behalf of foreign purchasers of U.S. produced goods -- mostly high-ticket
airplanes and state-of-the-art energy generation equipment. The heated debate over the propriety of such a
financial entity is not new. Free market conservatives have sought to terminate "Ex-Im" for years. But the push
for elimination ("de-authorization" in Congressional speak) gained momentum when newly installed House
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, indicated his opposition to reauthorization
once the bank's charter expires on Sept. 30. Predictably, the debate splits so-called "establishment"
Republicans from their more doctrinal colleagues on the right. The former view the bank as a legitimate
financier in business to help protect America's industrial base. For example, Boeing Co.'s wide-body jets are a prime
beneficiary of the bank's largesse; the aircraft giant secured approximately two-thirds of Ex-Im's fiscal year 2013 long-term loan
guarantees. Supporters point to foreign finance entities that perform similar financing arrangements on
behalf of foreign competitors. They ask why we would unilaterally disarm in the high-stakes, high-reward
world of international trade -- especially where the long-term future of the U.S. industrial base could hang
in the balance. Also on the plus side is Ex-Im's unique status, which allows it to turn a profit. In fiscal year
2013 for example, the bank returned more than $1 billion in profit to the Treasury (out of a total
authorization of $27 billion). Advocates include a murderers' row of business interests with serious
Washington push. Besides Boeing, General Electric Co., the National Association of Manufacturers and the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce are actively weighing in with Republican House members. The lobbying is
intensely personal to boot. According to recent media reports, every member of Congress will shortly
receive an index card pointing out the businesses in their districts that enjoy Ex-Im support. The card will
also reflect the jobs represented by these businesses. Detractors within the GOP conference (including
many tea party-affiliated members) view the bank's operation as classic corporate welfare-ism. This group is
particularly sensitive to "crony capitalism," whereby Uncle Sam plays Santa Claus by picking winners and
losers with taxpayer money. Recall the Obama administration's record of failed green technology startups for context. These
fiscal hawks would rather the free market determine survivors without taxpayer subsidy and without giving rival carriers overseas
(the sometimes beneficiaries of Ex-Im support) an undue advantage through lower finance costs. The most prominent domestic
critic in this regard is Delta Airlines -- a competitor that often cites Ex-Im's finance cost subsidy as an unfair advantage in a hypercompetitive marketplace. The airline has even gone to court over Ex-Im's backing of several major airplane deals alleging the bank's
failure to fully weigh adverse impact on other U.S. manufacturers. Unlike most Washington policy showdowns, the battle over ExIm's future has been confined to the GOP side of the aisle. Relatively few Democrats sought to make hay of the issue, although thenSen. Barack Obama cited Ex-Im as a prime example of corporate welfare during his presidential campaign in 2008. Now the
president supports it and wishes to expand its financing authority. The ascension of the
tea party within the
GOP has brought the debate front and center; there is little reason to believe it will subside in the short
term. Even some establishment figures such as 2012 vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, and House
Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican, are on record as opposing reauthorization. But you
can bet big business will continue to fight hard to protect this unique institution and its mission. My
prediction: A coalition of Democrats and mainstream Republicans will help Ex-Im survive this latest attempt
on its life. The argument against unilateral disarmament and the reality of subsidized foreign competitors
should carry the day. But serious reforms could be in play if the present uprising continues to gather
steam. Stay tuned on this one.
Republicans against algae-against Obama’s energy policy
McAuliff 12 (Michael, Senior Congressional Reporter at The Huffington Post, “Algae Biofuel
Proposal, Now Mocked By Republicans, Used To Have Their Support”, Huffington Post, February
28, 2012, accessed July 26, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/28/mitchmcconnell-mocks-pre_n_1307862.html)
WASHINGTON -- Capitol Hill Republicans mounted an all-out offensive against President
Obama's energy initiatives Tuesday, even mocking him for an idea many of them used to like:
using algae to create biofuel. "Over the past few weeks the American people have begun to
feel the painful effects of President Obama's energy policy," Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell declared in a Senate floor speech that ridiculed an energy plan Obama detailed last
week, which included the use of biofuel sources such as algae. "As millions of Americans
groaned at the rising cost of a gallon of gasoline, the president took algae as a substitute for gas.
Algae as a substitute for gas," McConnell said in apparent disbelief. "I think the American people
realize that a president who's out there talking about algae -- algae! -- when we're having to
choose between whether to buy groceries or fill up the tank is the one who is out of touch,"
McConnell added, arguing that the way to bring down gas prices is to drill for more oil.
"Americans get this issue," McConnell said. "They get that we need to increase oil production
right here at home, not simply rely on pipe dreams -- pipe dreams -- like algae or by wasting
billions of taxpayer dollars on more failed clean energy projects." McConnell was followed by
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who suggested Obama's plans were no plans at all. "What
the president does favor is the Saudis increasing oil production, and increased use of solar, wind
and algae here at home," she said. "Does that really substitute for an energy policy?"
Republicans used to think that all of that was at least part of an energy policy. In fact, many
were so convinced, they wrote letters to the Department of Energy asking the Obama
administration to support algae projects. In September, 2009, Nebraska Republican Sen. Mike
Johanns lobbied for funding for the San Diego Center for Algae Biotechnology, a project that
only offered the hope that such technology could be brought to his state. "The center will not
only accelerate the development of sustainable alternative transportation fuels from algae, but
will also create new jobs in the green energy industry," Johanns wrote to Energy Secretary
Steven Chu, arguing also that the technology would "reduce our dependence on imported oil."
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), now one of Obama's fiercest alternative energy critics over the failure
of solar firm Solyndra, also sought support for the project in an October 2009 letter.
"Development of algae as a viable and sustainable source of transportation fuel is critical to
decreasing America's dependence on imported oil, while creating new sources of meaningful
green collar jobs." Similarly, former House Republican Conference Chairman Rep. Mike Pence
(R-Ind.) argued that algae was a near-magic bullet to solve American energy problems in a July
2009 letter that supported a grant for a company called Stellarwind BioEnergy. "Algae
production directly addresses all the significant challenges being faced by the U.S., namely
domestic energy security, greenhouse gas emissions, scientific leadership in a variety of
industries, and broad-based green job creation," Pence wrote to the Department of Energy. The
recent attack on algae and biofuel was only part of a broader GOP message avalanche in
response to Obama's energy policy speech last week. After their morning conference meeting,
shortly after McConnell's remarks, House GOP leaders each delivered scathing broadsides at
Obama's plans.
Angering the Tea party breaks the balance. They’ll kill Ex-Im
Green, June 23-14 (Joshua Green, senior national correspondent for Bloomberg
Businessweek, “The Race to Avert the Next Government Shutdown Is Already Under Way”
Published 6-23-14, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-23/the-race-to-avert-thenext-government-shutdown-is-already-underway)
Looking ahead to what the House must tackle this summer, the astute political observer will note that it’s a
laundry list of right-wing bugaboos. There’s the revenue shortfall in the highway trust fund—the only thing less popular
than government infrastructure spending is probably the gas tax increase being floated to pay for it. There’s the need to renew the
Export-Import Bank’s charter, which expires in September—killing the Ex-Im Bank has recently become a Tea Party
cause célèbre. Biggest of all, there’s the need to extend funding for the federal government after current funding runs out on
Sept. 30, a deadline some conservatives think can be used as leverage to kill the new EPA carbon regulations. These would be
knotty issues under any circumstances, but they’ll be especially difficult in light of the orneriness of House
right-wingers and the lack of respect they’ve been accorded by the still-regnant GOP establishment (a tension that will increase
further if Tea Party insurgent Chris McDaniels beats Republican Senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s runoff primary on Tuesday).
Sure enough, they’re already issuing veiled threats. “If we
see them not govern the way we hope they
will, I guarantee there will be conversations about making changes,” Representative Jeff Duncan (RS.C.) told the Wall Street Journal. This is undoubtedly why McCarthy announced on Fox News Sunday that he
would not support reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, despite the business community’s desire that he do so. “I think Ex-Im
Bank is … something government does not have to be involved in,” he said. “The private sector can do it.” That is a marked
contrast to Cantor, a staunch supporter of the bank, and clearly
an effort by McCarthy to appease the restive
faction of right-wingers unhappy about his ascension.
Ex-Im key to US competitiveness
Milwaukee Journal, July 12-14 (Craig Gilbert and Rick Barrett, “Export-Import Bank's
reauthorization in jeopardy,” Published 7-12-14, http://www.jsonline.com/business/exportimport-banks-reauthorization-in-jeopardy-b99307866z1-266888981.html)
Because most large, developed nations have their own version of an export bank, U.S. manufacturers
would be at a serious competitive disadvantage without it, said Tim Sheehy, president of the
Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. "It would have a ripple effect throughout the
U.S. economy," Sheehy said, adding that arguing against its existence "crashes on the rocks of reality when it
comes to competing in a global market." Josh Dukelow, vice president of public policy at the Fox Cities
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, expresses a similar sentiment: There's a big, untapped market for
many manufacturers, he said, and it's called "the rest of the world."
.
Ex-Im and competitiveness key to US leadership
Schnell, July 14-14 (Frank Schell, lecturer at the Dean’s International Council of the Harris
School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, “The Case for Ex-Im Bank,” Published 7-1414, American Spectator, http://spectator.org/articles/59928/case-ex-im-bank)
Without renewal of Ex-Im Bank’s charter, there will be two negative signals to the world. First, the U.S. will not be as
competitive as many G7 and OECD countries which offer subsidized financing and guarantees to support
their exports. Second, and rightly or wrongly, the U.S. will be seen as withdrawing from world trade, and our
competitors and adversaries will be only too happy to hype that impression. With an incoherent and
supine strategy in the Middle East, a reset with Russia that failed, diluted support for Israel — and a pivot
to Asia that seems to miss the point of an emboldened Russia — the demise of Ex-Im Bank could be
perceived as yet another American abdication by the Obama Administration, already known for its
withdrawal and aloofness.
Counterplans
Military CP
2nc military cp – solvency
DOD solves—they have the commitment, funding, and technology
Woody 12 Todd Woody, Forbes writer for environmental issues and green technology and
previous writer for the New York Times, “The U.S.’s military great green gamble spurs biofuels
startup”, http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2012/09/06/the-u-s-militarys-great-greengamble-spurs-biofuel-startups/2/
Funded with $85 million from Bill Gates and other investors – plus $104 million in government cash and
loan guarantees – the world’s only commercial outdoor algal biorefinery went online this summer and will
eventually expand to 300 acres. The plan: extract 1.5 million gallons of green crude oil a year from
patented pond scum fed a diet of carbon dioxide and sunlight . Even before San Diego-based Sapphire broke
ground on the demonstration plant last year, the U.S. Navy’s green energy warrior, Vice Admiral Philip Cullom, descended on the
desert site to grill Sapphire execs on their technology and its potential to fuel battleships and jet fighters. “No question, the military
has focused the company and given us a great challenge to meet,” says Sapphire executive Tim Zenk, standing on the catwalk of a
tank where a mechanical arm is harvesting thick green goo pumped in from the algae ponds. Scum ponds in the desert? The very
idea conjures memories of the federal government’s decidedly mixed record at promoting alt-energy projects: Solyndra, FutureGen,
A123′s electric-car batteries, synfuels in the 1980s, jojoba in the 1970s. Add to that all the many military boondoggles – Star Wars
missile defense, for one – born of best intentions and bloated budgets. Sapphire
has yet to earn a dime from the
Pentagon; the company’s government funding comes from the Departments of Energy and
Agriculture. But since the days when the startup’s scientists were still tinkering in the lab, they’ve been sending
their biofuel for evaluation to the Defense Department, the deepest-pocketed client of them all.
“There’s no other entity that has the capacity, the planning, the commitment and the policy
drivers to make technologies real and create a market,” says Zenk. The U.S. military, the nation’s single largest
oil consumer, wants to wean itself from petroleum, and is deploying its immense buying power and authority to commercialize
nascent technologies deemed to be in the national interest. The
Navy, which aims to get half of its energy from
renewable sources by 2020, has been buying biofuels in small but expensive quantities, as in four times the cost of
conventional fuels. Earlier this year the Pentagon invoked the Defense Production Act to solicit proposals to build at least one
integrated biorefinery with $210 million in government funding. The biofuel buy has outraged some congressional Republicans, who
are attempting to bar the military from purchasing any fuel that costs more than petroleum. It will be years before we know if the
military’s biofuels bet is a multibillion-dollar folly – or if the armed forces have planted the seeds of another global industry, as it did
with nuclear power, semiconductors and the Internet. This much is certain: The
Pentagon’s largesse is already
spurring the entrepreneurial zeal of startups like Sapphire that seek potential riches in shaping
green technology to meet military needs.
Military CP Avoids Politics—CP popular
DoD energy programs don’t link to politics—Congress supports national security
Kaplan 10 –Fred Kaplan Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation 10/6/2010, Slate Magazine, “The Marines Go Green,”
http://www.slate.com/id/2270165/pagenum/all/#p2
Two other factors increase the chances that the military's renewable-energy projects might have commercial spinoffs. First, as with
the microchip and the computer, these projects are adapting products that private companies have already developed and built. In
other words, the military is bypassing its normal procurement process, with its bureaucratic hassles and
excessive "requirements," which have resulted in the unwieldy designs and exorbitant costs of so many
U.S. weapons systems. Second, Congress is more likely to fund these projects precisely because
they're related to the national defense. The United States has an elaborate nationwide highway system today
because, back in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower sold the program to Congress by calling it the National Interstate and Defense
Highway Act (italics added). The Army, Eisenhower said, would need solid highways to move troops or evacuate citizens in the event
of a foreign invasion or a nuclear war. Similarly, after
the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in 1957,
state governments across the United States spent scads of money to create, or improve, highschool science and math programs in order to "catch up" with the Russians. (This impulse wasn't limited
to science and math. At the high school I attended in Kansas, money was even appropriated to buy books for a course on the
modern novel. The course was still around in the early 1970s, and thus was I exposed at an early age to Conrad, Crane, Hawthorne,
Congress today has little appetite for spending billions of dollars on solar power
generators or biofuel labs under the rubric of energy independence or "going green." But to
serve the war mission, and especially to protect the troops, no sum is too lavish—and that's why
the road to going green, and to achieving energy independence, might very well be paved
through the fighting fields and villages of Afghanistan
and Hemingway.)
Military CP Extensions - Avoids Navy DA—military can
coordinate
Navy coordination of off-shore development solves training problems—they
can organize the construction and military 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-sustainability-imperative/)//MW
Long before the establishment of the DOD Siting Clearinghouse, the Navy was actively
addressing a host of compatibility issues. These include not only wind energy development, as
discussed above, but also residential and commercial development near military bases, noise
issues, apportionment of the electromagnetic spectrum for communication purposes, solar
tower development and others. The increasing importance of these issues to ensuring
sustainable military operations prompted the Navy in March 2011 to create the Navy Task
Force Compatibility and Readiness Sustainment (TFCRS). Chaired by the Deputy Chief of Naval
Operations for Readiness and Logistics, TFCRS brings together Flag and Senior Executive
Service leadership across the Navy to assess and to oversee the response to existing and
future compatibility challenges. The Task Force will also coordinate development of Navy
input to the NOC. Having a focal point for compatibility issues will improve and expedite
informed decision making by the Navy, thus enabling decisive action on short-fused
challenges while protecting key Navy training and testing equities. Conclusion Within the past
several years, a sustainable economic, environmental, energy and natural resources future has
become a principal concern of national leadership and opinion leaders in and out of
government. Within DOD and the Navy, sustainability is understood in these terms and also
with respect to sustaining readiness of military forces for employment in support of national
policy objectives. Through active cooperation with national efforts, such as the National Ocean
Council, and improved compatibility management efforts, such as the DOD Siting Clearinghouse
and the Navy’s Task Force Compatibility and Readiness Sustainment, the Navy is helping to
ensure that today’s Naval forces are combat ready while protecting the planet for future
generations.
Ks