Neg
*AUTHORITARIANISM*
-Coming Now
Authoritarianism is on the rise around the world. However, democratic agendas would
delay the transition.
Weeks 2014 (John Weeks is Professor Emeritus, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of
London “A rising authoritarian wave” February 2014 Published on OpenDemocracy
https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/john-weeks/rising-authoritarian-wave .nt)
The de-regulation of financial capital threatens to bring us back to capitalist authoritarianism that
flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. But this time it gathers strength with no strong popular movement
in the United States or any European country to challenge it. As the one hundredth anniversary of the
beginning of World War I approaches, one may encounter some rather strained attempts to compare
the current global balance of forces to that in Europe in 1914. I recently visited several countries in
south east Asia and a different comparison struck me, the similarities between now and the 1930s, weak
democracies and strong dictatorships. This comparison “jumped off the page” after a week in Bangkok,
followed by several days in Hanoi - a journey from a country with weak and faltering formal democratic
institutions to an apparently stable one with an authoritarian regime (bordering on a country with a
considerably more brutal dictatorship, China). In The Age of Extremes, Eric Hobsbawm argued that the
conflict between capitalism and communism determined the course of the twentieth century. This
confrontation of socio-economic ideologies without doubt dominated European and global history,
especially after 1945. But another, inter-related confrontation that determined the course of the
century was authoritarianism versus democracy. The capitalism-communism conflict seems but a
moment of history for people in their forties and younger. However, the danger of a rising authoritarian
wave is as imminent in the twenty-first century as it was in the twentieth. In most countries of Europe in
the 1930s the contest between authoritarian and democratic visions of society dominated the political
struggle. The exceptions were Italy where the fascists had already established an extreme version of
authoritarian rule, and Britain where a rigid class structure gave stability to superficially democratic
institutions. By the middle of the decade, capitalist authoritarian regimes were clearly on the rise in
Germany and much of central and eastern Europe (e.g., Hungary and Poland), as well as Portugal, with
Spain soon to join the anti-democratic camp. Indeed, in very few of the industrialised countries in the
late 1930s did democracy seem the stronger trend. Among the large countries only in the United States
was there an unambiguous shift towards strengthening popular participation. Ironically enough it was
during the presidency of patrician Franklin D Roosevelt that trade unions asserted themselves as a major
political force (which would not survive much past mid-century). Now, well into the twenty-first
century it is even more difficult to find a major country with vigorous and democratic institutions,
certainly not in the United States nor in Europe. In the United States the confrontation between a
well-funded right wing Republican Party and the middle-of-the road Democrat Party dominates politics,
one doctrinaire and aggressive, the other muddled and vascillating. The anti-democratic trend is
demonstrated by passage of laws restricting the right to vote in Republican controlled states, linked
to the racist xenophobia of the Tea Party. In the White House sits a Democrat apparently
unconcerned by a massively intrusive national security complex. In Europe anti-democratic trends are
if anything stronger. Britain probably has the most extensive video surveillance network in Europe
(see recent articles in the Guardian), as well as legal restrictions on the right of assembly, designed to
reduce public protests (as we find in Spain). In addition, the Conservative-dominated coalition
government’s brutal attack on poor households receiving social support in effect legalises civil rights
violations. Surveillance, attacks on the poor and the government fanning fears of immigrants combine
to make a potent anti-democratic package. On the continent pre-existing authoritarian tendencies
enjoyed a quantum leap under the EU-wide austerity regime fostered by the German government
under the cover of the European Commission. The unelected governments in Greece (2011-12) and
Italy (2011-13) represent the most obvious and shocking examples of the authoritarian trend. Much
more serious in the long term is the EU fiscal compact (officially named the Treaty on Stability,
Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union). This treaty, which came into effect
at the beginning of 2013, severely limits the authority of national parliaments to set fiscal policy. The
treaty and additional measures demanded by the German government remove fiscal policy from public
control (with monetary policy in the hands of the European Central Bank and beyond national
accountability). This process in which major decisions are taken away from the electorate fundamentally
undermines public faith in the democratic process. The rise of neo-fascist groups with an extraparliamentary agenda, such as the New Dawn in Greece, comes as no surprise. Almost exactly a year
ago, Peer Steinbrueck, then the German Social Democratic Party's candidate for chancellor, spoke at the
German embassy in London. In his speech he proposed that the European Commission should have the
power to veto national budgets if they exceed the guidelines of the fiscal pack. I suggested during
questions that such a veto would violate the principle that the governed should be able to hold their
governments accountable. He replied that fiscal stability required countries to surrender some of their
sovereignty. In other words, the goal of “fiscal stability” requires the citizens of Europe to surrender
their basic democratic right to hold a government responsible for its economic policies. The
authoritarian trend in the United States and Europe is obvious. What is its source in these countries?
In the 1920s and 1930s the rise of authoritarian regimes followed the widespread public perception
that unregulated capitalism resulted in spectacular disasters. These disasters included the most
catastrophic war in human history, soon followed by the most devastating economic crisis the world
had ever known. Many on both the left and the right judged “bourgeois democracy” as degenerate and
dysfunctional. In Russia the rejection of capitalism took the form of an attempt to create a governance
system in the interests of the working class and peasantry. The hope for popular democracy quickly
collapsed as the putative workers’ state transformed into thinly disguised authoritarian rule.
Autocracy’s rising now:
A. India
TOI 6/25 – Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Authoritarianism-threatening-democratic-system-warnsCPM-mouthpiece/articleshow/47808938.cms, 7/4/15 BRoche
NEW DELHI: On the 40th anniversary of Emergency, CPM said though "using emergency powers to usher
in an authoritarian regime is not likely to happen" it is likely that "authoritarianism in other forms can
threaten the democratic system." In an editorial, CPM weekly People's Democracy said all the
ingredients for the rise of authoritarianism are present currently. The party listed them as crisis of the
political system, problems of stability and economic discontent which it says has matured now. In
addition, party said, the consequences of neo-liberalism, the rise of Hindutva communal forces, the
degeneration of political parties and the corrosion of the institutions of the state have all combined to
presage a creeping authoritarianism. In the present context, CPM said, ruling party, BJP, is run and
controlled by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. "This has opened the way for the introduction of the
agenda and personnel of the RSS into the institutions of the State. This provides an opportunity for an
organization with a semi-fascist ideology and goals which are inimical to the secular democratic
principles proclaimed in the Constitution to work from within to undermine it," editorial said. "This
mix of neo-liberal market fundamentalism and Hindutva is a dangerous recipe for authoritarianism. On
the one hand, the government moves to weaken the trade unions by changes in the labour laws, on the
other, it seeks to accomplish market-friendly laws by relying on ordinances and bypassing Parliament, as
illustrated by the land acquisition act changes," it said. The party said, if the Indira regime conceived of
a "committed bureaucracy", "today this instrument of the State stands further corroded by the
invasion of neo-liberal market values which has spawned gigantic corruption and a willingness to
undertake illegal and self-serving acts at the behest of a big-business-ruling politician-bureaucrat
nexus."
b. Police Militarization
Giroux 6/21 - Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship
at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a
Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His most recent books
include: On Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent
Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized
Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a
Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013), and The Educational Deficit and the War on Youth
(Monthly Review Press, 2013), America's Disimagination Machine (City Lights) and
Higher Education After Neoliberalism (Haymarket) will be published in 2014). Giroux is
also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/orwell_huxley_and_americas_plunge_into_authoritarianisn_20150621, 7/4/15 BRoche
The increasing militarization of local police forces who are now armed with weapons from the
battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan has transformed how the police respond to dealing with the
public. Cops have been transformed into soldiers just as dialogue and community policing have been
replaced by military-style practices that are way out of proportion to the crimes the police are trained
to address. For instance, The Economist reported that “”SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year. Some cities use them
for routine patrols in high-crime areas. Baltimore and Dallas have used them to break up poker games. In 2010 New
Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same
year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting
for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a license”. Maricopa
County, Arizona sent a SWAT team into the living room of Jesus Llovera, who was suspected of
organizing cockfights.” In the advent of the recent display of police force in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland it is unfair to view the impact of the rapid
militarization of local police on poor black communities as nothing short of terrifying and symptomatic of the violence that takes place in authoritarian societies. For instance, according to a
recent report produced by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement entitled Operation Ghetto Storm, ‘police officers, security guards, or self-appointed vigilantes extra judicially killed at least 313
African-Americans in 2012…
This means a black person was killed by a security officer every 28 hours’. Michelle
Alexander adds to the racist nature of the punishing state by pointing out that “There are more
African American adults under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole —
than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.” Meanwhile the real violence used by the state against poor
minorities of color, women, immigrants, and low income adults barely gets mentioned, except when it is so spectacularly visible that it cannot be ignored as in the cases of Eric Garner who was
Or the case of Freddie Gray who had his
spine severed and voice box crushed for making eye contact with a cop. These cases are not
exceptional. For too many blacks, the police have turned their neighborhoods into war zones where
cops parading as soldiers act with impunity.
choked to death by a New York City policeman after he was confronted for illegally selling untaxed cigarettes.
Support for authoritarianism is on the rise – submission is key.
Robinson ’15 (William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and international studies, and Latin
American studies, at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting
Polyarchy (1996), Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism (2004), Latin America
and Global Capitalism (2008), and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014). “Crisis of
Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism” April 23, 2015
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41650.htm nt)
Yet another response is that I term 21st century fascism.5 The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many
countries. In broad strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational
capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global working class –
such as white workers in the North and middle layers in the South – that are now experiencing
heightened insecurity and the specter of downward mobility. It involves militarism, extreme
masculinisation, homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats,
such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century fascism evokes mystifying
ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy and xenophobia, embracing an idealised and
mythical past. Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed,
generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed even as heroic. The need for dominant groups
around the world to secure widespread, organised mass social control of the world’s surplus population
and rebellious forces from below gives a powerful impulse to projects of 21st century fascism. Simply
put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy cannot easily be contained
through consensual mechanisms of social control. We have been witnessing transitions from social
welfare to social control states around the world. We have entered a period of great upheavals,
momentous changes and uncertainties. The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a
massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along
the lines of a 21st century democratic socialism, in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and
with nature.
Authoritarian transition now – discount empirics, new capitalist regimes enable global
authoritarian leadership
Gat 7 – Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University [Azar, former Chair of the Department of
Political Science, at Tel Aviv University, former Fulbright Fellow at Yale University, former Goldman
Visiting Israeli Professor at Georgetown University, “The Return of Authoritarian Great Powers,” Foreign
Affairs, July/August 2007, ProQuest, Accessed 7/13/15]//schnall
Today's global liberal democratic order faces two challenges. The first is radical Islam -- and it is the lesser of the two
challenges. Although the proponents of radical Islam find liberal democracy repugnant, and the movement is often described as the new fascist
threat, the societies from which it arises are generally poor and stagnant. They represent no viable alternative to modernity and pose no
significant military threat to the developed world. It is mainly the potential use of weapons of mass destruction -- particularly by nonstate
actors -- that makes militant Islam a menace. The second, and more significant, challenge emanates from the
rise of nondemocratic
great powers: the West's old Cold War rivals China and Russia, now operating under authoritarian capitalist,
rather than communist, regimes. Authoritarian capitalist great powers played a leading role in the
international system up until 1945. They have been absent since then. But today, they seem poised
for a comeback. Capitalism's ascendancy appears to be deeply entrenched, but the current predominance of
democracy could be far less secure. Capitalism has expanded relentlessly since early modernity, its lower-priced goods and
superior economic power eroding and transforming all other socioeconomic regimes, a process most memorably described by Karl Marx in The
Communist Manifesto. Contrary to Marx's expectations, capitalism had the same effect on communism, eventually "burying" it without the
proverbial shot being fired. The
triumph of the market, precipitating and reinforced by the industrial-technological revolution, led
to the rise of the middle class, intensive urbanization, the spread of education, the emergence of mass
society, and ever greater affluence. In the post-Cold War era (just as in the nineteenth century and the 1950s and
1960s), it is widely believed that liberal democracy naturally emerged from these developments , a view
famously espoused by Francis Fukuyama. Today, more than half of the world's states have elected governments, and close to half have
sufficiently entrenched liberal rights to be considered fully free. But
the reasons for the triumph of democracy, especially
contingent than is usually
assumed. Authoritarian capitalist states, today exemplified by China and Russia, may represent a viable alternative
path to modernity, which in turn suggests that there is nothing inevitable about liberal democracy's
over its nondemocratic capitalist rivals of the two world wars, Germany and Japan, were more
ultimate victory
-- or future dominance. CHRONICLE OF A DEFEAT NOT FORETOLD The liberal democratic camp defeated its
authoritarian, fascist, and communist rivals alike in all of the three major great-power struggles of the twentieth century -- the two world wars
and the Cold War. In trying to determine exactly what accounted for this decisive outcome, it is tempting to trace it to the special traits and
intrinsic advantages of liberal democracy. One
possible advantage is democracies' international conduct. Perhaps
they more than compensate for carrying a lighter stick abroad with a greater ability to elicit international
cooperation through the bonds and discipline of the global market system. This explanation is probably correct for the Cold War,
when a greatly expanded global economy was dominated by the democratic powers, but it does not apply to the two world
wars. Nor is it true that liberal democracies succeed because they always cling together. Again, this was
true, at least as a contributing factor, during the Cold War, when the democratic capitalist camp kept its unity, whereas growing antagonism
between the Soviet Union and China pulled the communist bloc apart. During
World War I, however, the ideological divide
between the two sides was much less clear. The Anglo-French alliance was far from preordained; it was above
all a function of balance-of-power calculations rather than liberal cooperation. At the close of the nineteenth
century, power politics had brought the United Kingdom and France, bitterly antagonistic countries, to the brink of war and prompted the
United Kingdom to actively seek an alliance with Germany. Liberal Italy's break from the Triple Alliance and joining of the Entente, despite its
rivalry with France, was a function of the Anglo-French alliance, as Italy's peninsular location made it hazardous for the country to be on a side
opposed to the leading maritime power of the time, the United Kingdom. Similarly, during World War II, France was quickly defeated and taken
out of the Allies' side (which was to include nondemocratic Soviet Russia), whereas the right-wing totalitarian powers fought on the same side.
Studies of democracies' alliance behavior suggest that democratic regimes show no greater tendency
to stick together than other types of regimes. Nor did the totalitarian capitalist regimes lose World
War II because their democratic opponents held a moral high ground that inspired greater exertion from their
people, as the historian Richard Overy and others have claimed. During the 1930s and early 1940s, fascism and Nazism
were exciting new ideologies that generated massive popular enthusiasm, whereas democracy stood
on the ideological defensive, appearing old and dispirited. If anything, the fascist regimes proved more inspiring in
wartime than their democratic adversaries, and the battlefield performance of their militaries is widely judged to
have been superior. Liberal democracy's supposedly inherent economic advantage is also far less clear
than is often assumed. All of the belligerents in the twentieth century's great struggles proved highly effective in producing for war. During
World War I, semiautocratic Germany committed its resources as effectively as its democratic rivals
did. After early victories in World War II, Nazi Germany's economic mobilization and military production proved lax during the critical years
1940-42. Well positioned at the time to fundamentally alter the global balance of power by destroying the Soviet Union and straddling all of
continental Europe, Germany failed because its armed forces were meagerly supplied for the task. The reasons for this deficiency remain a
matter of historical debate, but one of the problems was the existence of competing centers of authority in the Nazi system, in which Hitler's
"divide and rule" tactics and party functionaries' jealous guarding of their assigned domains had a chaotic effect. Furthermore, from the fall of
France in June 1940 to the German setback before Moscow in December 1941, there was a widespread feeling in Germany that the war had
practically been won. All the same, from
1942 onward (by which time it was too late), Germany greatly intensified its
economic mobilization and caught up with and even surpassed the liberal democracies in terms of the
share of GDP devoted to the war (although its production volume remained much lower than that of the massive U.S. economy).
Likewise, levels of economic mobilization in imperial Japan and the Soviet Union exceeded those of
the United States and the United Kingdom thanks to ruthless efforts. Only during the Cold War did the Soviet
command economy exhibit deepening structural weaknesses -- weaknesses that were directly responsible for the Soviet Union's downfall. The
Soviet system had successfully generated the early and intermediate stages of industrialization (albeit at a frightful human cost) and excelled at
the regimentalized techniques of mass production during World War II. It also kept abreast militarily during the Cold War. But because of the
system's rigidity and lack of incentives, it proved ill equipped to cope with the advanced stages of development and the demands of the
information age and globalization. There
is no reason, however, to suppose that the totalitarian capitalist regimes
of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan would have proved inferior economically to the democracies had
they survived. The inefficiencies that favoritism and unaccountability typically create in such regimes
might have been offset by higher levels of social discipline. Because of their more efficient capitalist economies, the
right-wing totalitarian powers could have constituted a more viable challenge to the liberal democracies than the Soviet Union did; Nazi
Germany was judged to be such a challenge by the Allied powers before and during World War II. The liberal democracies did not possess an
inherent advantage over Germany in terms of economic and technological development, as they did in relation to their other great-power
rivals. So why
did the democracies win the great struggles of the twentieth century? The reasons are different for
each type of adversary. They defeated their nondemocratic capitalist adversaries, Germany and Japan, in war
because Germany and Japan were medium-sized countries with limited resource bases and they came up
against the far superior -- but hardly preordained -- economic and military coalition of the democratic powers and Russia or the Soviet Union.
The defeat of communism, however, had much more to do with structural factors. The capitalist camp -which after 1945 expanded to include most of the developed world -- possessed much greater economic power than the communist bloc, and
the inherent inefficiency of the communist economies prevented them from fully exploiting their vast resources and catching up to the West.
Together, the
Soviet Union and China were larger and thus had the potential to be more powerful than the
democratic capitalist camp. Ultimately, they failed because their economic systems limited them,
whereas the nondemocratic capitalist powers, Germany and Japan, were defeated because they were
too small. Contingency played a decisive role in tipping the balance against the nondemocratic capitalist powers and
in favor of the democracies. AMERICAN EXCEPTION The most decisive element of contingency was the United States. After all, it
was little more than a chance of history that the scion of Anglo-Saxon liberalism would sprout on the
other side of the Atlantic, institutionalize its heritage with independence, expand across one of the
most habitable and thinly populated territories in the world, feed off of massive immigration from
Europe, and so create on a continental scale what was -- and still is -- by far the world's largest
concentration of economic and military might. A liberal regime and other structural traits had a lot to do with the United
States' economic success, and even with its size, because of its attractiveness to immigrants. But the United States would scarcely
have achieved such greatness had it not been located in a particularly advantageous and vast
ecological-geographic niche, as the counterexamples of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
demonstrate. And location, of course, although crucial, was but one necessary condition among many for bringing about the giant and,
indeed, "United" States as the paramount political fact of the twentieth century. Contingency
was at least as responsible as
liberalism for the United States' emergence in the New World and, hence, for its later ability to rescue the Old World.
Throughout the twentieth century, the United States' power consistently surpassed that of the next two strongest states combined, and this
decisively tilted the global balance of power in favor of whichever side Washington was on. If
any factor gave the liberal
democracies their edge, it was above all the existence of the United States rather than any inherent
advantage. In fact, had it not been for the United States, liberal democracy may well have lost the great
struggles of the twentieth century. This is a sobering thought that is often overlooked in studies of the spread of democracy in
the twentieth century, and it makes the world today appear much more contingent and tenuous than linear theories of
development suggest. If it were not for the U.S. factor, the judgment of later generations on liberal democracy would probably have echoed the
negative verdict on democracy's performance, issued by the fourth-century-BC Greeks, in the wake of Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War.
THE NEW SECOND WORLD But the audit of war is, of course, not the only one that societies -- democratic and nondemocratic -- undergo. One
must ask how the totalitarian capitalist powers would have developed had they not been defeated by war. Would they, with time and further
development, have shed their former identity and embraced liberal democracy, as the former communist regimes of eastern Europe eventually
did? Was
the capitalist industrial state of imperial Germany before World War I ultimately moving toward
increasing parliamentary control and democratization? Or would it have developed into an authoritarian
oligarchic regime, dominated by an alliance between the officialdom, the armed forces, and industry, as imperial Japan did (in spite of
the latter's liberal interlude in the 1920s)? Liberalization seems even more doubtful in the case of Nazi Germany
had it survived, let alone triumphed. Because all these major historical experiments were cut short by war, the answers to these
questions remain a matter of speculation. But perhaps the peacetime record of other authoritarian capitalist regimes since 1945 can offer a
clue. Studies that cover this period show that democracies generally outdo other systems economically. Authoritarian capitalist regimes are at
least as successful -- if not more so -- in the early stages of development, but they tend to democratize after crossing a certain threshold of
economic and social development. This seems to have been a recurring pattern in East Asia, southern Europe, and Latin America. The attempt
to draw conclusions about development patterns from these findings, however, may be misleading, because the sample set itself may be
polluted. Since 1945, the
enormous gravitational pull exerted by the United States and the liberal hegemony
has bent patterns of development worldwide. Because the totalitarian capitalist great powers, Germany and Japan, were
crushed in war, and these countries were subsequently threatened by Soviet power, they lent themselves to a sweeping restructuring and
democratization. Consequently, smaller
countries that chose capitalism over communism had no rival political
and economic model to emulate and no powerful international players to turn to other than the
liberal democratic camp. These small and medium-sized countries' eventual democratization probably had as much to do with the
overwhelming influence of the Western liberal hegemony as with internal processes. Presently, Singapore is the only example
of a country with a truly developed economy that still maintains a semiauthoritarian regime, and even it is
likely to change under the influence of the liberal order within which it operates. But are Singapore-like great powers that prove resistant to the
influence of this order possible? The question is made relevant by the recent emergence of nondemocratic giants, above all
formerly communist and booming authoritarian capitalist China. Russia, too, is retreating from its postcommunist liberalism and assuming an
increasingly authoritarian character as its economic clout grows. Some believe that these countries could ultimately become liberal
democracies through a combination of internal development, increasing affluence, and outside influence. Alternatively, they may
have
enough weight to create a new nondemocratic but economically advanced Second World. They could
establish a powerful authoritarian capitalist order that allies political elites, industrialists, and the
military; that is nationalist in orientation; and that participates in the global economy on its own terms, as
imperial Germany and imperial Japan did. It is widely contended that economic and social development create pressures for
democratization that an authoritarian state structure cannot contain. There is also the view that "closed societies" may be able to excel in mass
manufacturing but not in the advanced stages of the information economy. The jury on these issues is still out, because the data set is
incomplete. Imperial and Nazi Germany stood at the forefront of the advanced scientific and manufacturing economies of their times, but some
would argue that their success no longer applies because the information economy is much more diversified. Nondemocratic Singapore has a
highly successful information economy, but Singapore is a city-state, not a big country. It will take a long time before China reaches the stage
when the possibility of an authoritarian state with an advanced capitalist economy can be tested. All that can be said at the moment is that
there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that a transition to democracy by today's
authoritarian capitalist powers is inevitable, whereas there is a great deal to suggest that such powers
have far greater economic and military potential than their communist predecessors did. China and Russia
represent a return of economically successful authoritarian capitalist powers, which have been absent since the defeat of Germany and Japan
in 1945, but they are much larger than the latter two countries ever were. Although Germany was only a medium-sized country uncomfortably
squeezed at the center of Europe, it twice nearly broke out of its confines to become a true world power on account of its economic and
military might. In 1941, Japan was still behind the leading great powers in terms of economic development, but its growth rate since 1913 had
been the highest in the world. Ultimately, however, both
Germany and Japan were too small -- in terms of population,
resources, and potential -- to take on the United States. Present-day China, on the other hand, is the largest
player in the international system in terms of population and is experiencing spectacular economic
growth. By shifting from communism to capitalism, China has switched to a far more efficient brand of
authoritarianism. As China rapidly narrows the economic gap with the developed world, the
possibility looms that it will become a true authoritarian superpower. Even in its current bastions in the West,
the liberal political and economic consensus is vulnerable to unforeseen developments , such as a crushing
economic crisis that could disrupt the global trading system or a resurgence of ethnic strife in a Europe increasingly troubled by immigration
and ethnic minorities. Were
the West to be hit by such upheavals, support for liberal democracy in Asia,
Latin America, and Africa -- where adherence to that model is more recent, incomplete, and insecure - could be shaken. A successful nondemocratic Second World could then be regarded by many as an
attractive alternative to liberal democracy.
Democratic backsliding now across Europe – spills over
Habdank-Kolaczkowska 13 – Director for Nations in Transit, Freedom House [Sylvana, “Democratic
Backsliding in Hungary: Implications of Recent Legislation,” Freedom House, March 19, 2013,
https://freedomhouse.org/article/democratic-backsliding-hungary-implications-recentlegislation#.VaA3j0YbYjU, Accessed 7/14/15]//schnall
*before the U.S. Helsinki Commission
Senator Cardin and Congressman Smith, thank you for this opportunity to appear before the commission and discuss recent
developments affecting civil society in Hungary. The topic is one of pressing importance , not only for democracy
in Europe, but for the fate of similar young democracies around the world. Freedom House’s annual Nations in Transit
report, which focuses specifically on democratic governance in the postcommunist world, and our global surveys
Freedom in the World and Freedom of the Press have all drawn attention to the vulnerabilities and potential threats
to democracy created by legislative changes affecting Hungary’s media sector, data protection authority, and judicial
system. We remain deeply concerned by the restructuring and restaffing of Hungarian public institutions
in a way that appears to decrease their independence from the political leadership. The ongoing use of
Fidesz’s parliamentary supermajority to insert these and a surprising array of other legislative changes into Hungary’s two-year-old constitution
is also extremely troubling, particularly because some of the measures had already been struck down by the Constitutional Court. I was asked
to comment specifically on recent Hungarian media regulation and the law on churches, which I will do briefly now. Changes introduced in 2010
consolidated media regulation under the supervision of a single entity, the National Media and Infocommunications Authority, whose members
are elected by a two-thirds majority in parliament. A subordinate body, the five-person Media Council, is responsible for content regulation.
Both the Media Authority and the Media Council currently consist entirely of Fidesz nominees, and they are headed by a single official who has
the authority to nominate the executive directors of all public media. The head of the Media Authority and Media Council is appointed by the
president for a nine-year term. This year, the government responded to criticism of the appointment process by introducing term limits and
minimum background qualifications, but those will only take effect when the current officeholder’s term expires, six years from now. The
particular issues of concern to us are the broad scope of regulatory control and content requirements
(for example, the definition of “balanced” reporting) and the lack of safeguards for the independence of the Media Authority and Media
Council. Under the revised version of the so-called Hungarian Media Law, the
Media Council is officially responsible for
interpreting and enforcing numerous vaguely worded provisions affecting all print, broadcast, and
online media, including service providers and publishers. The council can fine the media for “inciting hatred” against
individuals, nations, communities, or minorities. It can initiate a regulatory procedure in response to “unbalanced” reporting in broadcast
media. If found to be in violation of the law, radio and television stations with a market share of 15 percent or higher may receive fines
proportional to their “level of influence.” These fines must then be paid before an appeals process can be initiated. Under the Media Law, the
Media Authority can also suspend the right to broadcast. The Media Council is also responsible for evaluating bids for broadcast frequencies.
Freedom House applauds the council’s recent decision to grant a license to the opposition-oriented talk radio station Klubradio for its main
frequency, in line with a recent court ruling. However, we regret that it took nearly two years and four court decisions for the council to reverse
its original decision, during which time the radio station operated under temporary, 60-day licenses and struggled to attract advertisers. The
episode has cast a shadow on public perceptions of the Media Council, even among those who were previously prepared to believe that a oneparty council could function as a politically neutral body. In
2011, the Hungarian National News Agency, MTI, became
the official source for all public media news content. The government-funded agency publishes nearly all of its news and
photos online for free, and allows media service providers to download and republish them. News services that rely on paid
subscriptions cannot compete with MTI, and the incentive to practice “copy-and-paste journalism” is high, particularly among
smaller outlets with limited resources. The accuracy and objectivity of MTI’s reporting has come under criticism since the Orbán government
came to power in 2010. Under the Media Law, the funding for all public media is centralized under one body, the Media Service Support and
Asset Management Fund, supervised by the Media Council. Hungary’s Constitutional Court has attempted to push back against some of the
more problematic legal changes introduced since 2010. At the end of 2011, it annulled several pieces of legislation affecting the media. For
example, it excluded print and online media from the scope of the sanctioning powers of the Media Authority; revoked the media authority’s
right to demand data from media service providers; deleted a provision limiting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources; and eliminated the
position of media commissioner, an appointee of the Media Authority president with the power to initiate proceedings that do not involve
violations of the law but can nevertheless be enforced by fines and sanctions. These revisions, most of which were confirmed by the parliament
in May 2012, represent only a small fraction of those recommended by the Council of Europe. Moreover, they may not even prove permanent,
given the government’s recent habit of ignoring or overruling Constitutional Court decisions by inserting voided legislation into the constitution.
This seems likely to be the fate of the law on churches, which the court struck down last month, but which has already made a reappearance in
a proposed constitutional amendment that is currently under consideration. The law essentially strips all but 32 religious groups of their legal
status and accompanying financial and tax privileges. The over 300 other previously recognized groups are allowed to apply for official
recognition by the parliament, which must approve them with a two-thirds majority. It should be noted that the previous regulations were
quite liberal, with associated financial benefits fueling an often opportunistic proliferation of religious groups over the last two decades.
However, the new law has the potential to deprive numerous well-established and legitimate congregations of their official status and
privileges. More fundamentally, the law represents another instance in which the parliamentary supermajority has given itself new power over
independent civil society activity. The fact that the parliament will have the right to decide what is and is not a legitimate religious organization
is without precedent in postcommunist Hungary. Many of the areas targeted for reform by the Orbán government, including public media,
health care, the education system, and even electoral legislation, were in need of reform long before the April 2010 elections brought Fidesz to
power. No government until now has felt emboldened or compelled to address so many of these problem areas simultaneously. However,
speed and volume in lawmaking cannot come at the expense of quality, which only broad consultation and proper judicial review can ensure.
Nor should reforms create hierarchical structures whose top tier, again and again, is the dominant party in parliament. Voters can still change
the ruling party through elections, providing some opportunity for corrective measures, but the
ubiquitous two-thirds majority
thresholds in recent legislation make it extremely difficult for any future government to tamper with
the legacy of the current administration. Ongoing economic crisis and political frustration in Europe
are likely to yield other governments that feel empowered to reject international advice, make sweeping
changes that entrench their influence, and weaken checks and balances, damaging democratic development for
many years to come. But such behavior can be deterred if early examples like the situation in Hungary are resolved in a positive
manner. The threats to democracy that Freedom House has observed in Hungary are troubling in their
own right, but they are particularly disturbing in the sense that the U nited S tates has come to rely on
the countries of Central Europe to help propel democratization further east, and indeed in the rest of the
world. The idea that these partners could themselves require closer monitoring and encouragement
bodes ill for the more difficult cases in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. It is therefore essential that the United
States and its European counterparts closely coordinate their efforts to address backsliding in countries like Hungary and support them on their
way back to a democratic path.
-Ecocentrism
Society is morally bankrupt – reject a human-centric ethic. Plus, all their defense is
wrong.
Elliot 97 (Herschel Elliott, Emeritus Philosophy, University of Florida “A General Statement of the
Tragedy of the Commons” February 26, 1997 http://www.dieoff.org/page121.htm .nt)
Part V: Deliberate Restraint as a Moral Necessity However, avoiding the cruel coercion of nature
cannot be achieved as if by miracle or accident. Admittedly, the tendencies which support unlimited
growth and which are built into the patterns of human behavior do not inevitably produce growth. But
they will do so unless opposing causes can be made to predominate. By analogy, the tendencies to
growth are like a window opened on a cold winter's day. A comfortable room temperature cannot be
maintained by opening more windows and doors to the cold air outside. Unless more fuel is added to
the fire or unless glass traps the sun's heat inside, the room will cool down. Similarly steady growth
cannot be countered by doing more of what has caused the growth in the first place. To avoid the cruel
coercion of nature, society must discover controls which are warranted empirically by their ability to
prevent growth in population and to stop the destruction of the Earth's biosystem by steady
increases in the exploitation of biological resources. Learning the effective means for controlling
growth requires the repudiation of important causal misconceptions. (1) People must reject the
doctrine that moral behavior can be justified by a priori thought which requires no knowledge of the
causes of growth and no knowledge of its ecological consequences. (2) People must discard the
misconception that yet more economic growth and still greater consumption will cause a
demographic transition in which the human population will become stable at ecologically sustainable
levels automatically and painlessly. (3) They must recognize that the moral obligations to fill all vital
human needs can never cause those needs to diminish and can never cause people to stop their
destructive exploitation of the environment. (4) They must reject the notion that exhorting people
voluntarily to protect the environment and to reduce their fertility is not an empirically effective
means for accomplishing these morally necessary goals. (5) They must disabuse themselves of the
conviction that, under the conditions of a steadily increasing population, the enforcement of the
presently accepted moral system -- defined by its human-centered ideals, its unconditional principles
and its egalitarian definition of justice and human rights -- can ever reduce human suffering or prevent
environmental disaster. (6) Finally, the belief must be discarded that an ethics of good intentions,
especially those intentions directed to filling individual or human needs, will automatically produce the
good of the whole.
Prefer ecocentrism – it’s the only ethical standpoint.
Elliot 97 (Herschel Elliott, Emeritus Philosophy, University of Florida “A General Statement of the
Tragedy of the Commons” February 26, 1997 http://www.dieoff.org/page121.htm .nt)
Summary and Overview Now for the first time in history, t he cumulative effect of human activity has
become a major and perhaps the dominant force affecting the Earth's ecosystems. Under these novel
conditions, a drastic change is necessary in the way in which ethics itself is conceived and moral
practices are justified. Just as Einstein's thought experiment called for a revolution in physical theory, so
the general statement of the tragedy of the commons proves that a revolution in moral theory is
necessary. Both require the rejection of established belief systems. Einstein's experiment proved that
the coordinates of space, time, and mass cannot be simple and unchanging throughout the universe.
Hardin's experiment proved that moral principles (such as equal justice, human rights, and moral
obligations) cannot be universal and unconditional in all social and environmental contexts. Henceforth,
in both disciplines the basic concepts and principles must be recognized to be system-dependent,
system-relative. It should be noted, however, that system-relativity is not the same as skeptical
relativism. System-relativity allows unequivocal truth claims to be made, but they must change so as to
be appropriate for the context in which they occur. Thus as human activity comes to dominate the
Earth's ecosystems, the nature of ethics must be differently conceived. Correct ethical behavior can no
longer be deduced from a set of principles, rights, and obligations which are invariant in time and
universal in application. Instead, ethical behavior must be relative to its most important goal -- to
protect and sustain the Earth's diverse yet mutually supporting system of living things. Thereafter the
secondary goal of ethics may be addressed, namely, to maximize the quality of human life. The
system-dependent nature of moral behavior entails decisive changes in ethical theory or in the
decisions that affect the do's and don't's of daily life. Five are worthy of emphasizing.
Hardin argues environment is a prerequisite to morality
Vanderheiden 7 – Associate Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at University of
Colorado Boulder [Steve, “Two Conceptions of Sustainability,” Political Studies Association, pp. 439-440,
2007, Wiley, Accessed 7/4/15]//schnall
Garrett Hardin, who is best known for diagnosing overpopulation as a collective action problem of an unregulated commons, has
traced
out what he calls the ‘ethical implications’ of carrying capacity, and these provide an instructive
comparison with the norms implied by the ecological footprint. Morality itself , Hardin argues, is
contingent upon environmental conditions, as the niceties binding human action under conditions of
limited scarcity cannot continue to apply as scarcity increases. Even the quintessential moral prohibition against killing
the innocent cannot apply absolutely, but depends upon carrying capacity. He asks: is killing wrong? In reference to deer populations (though
equally applicable to human populations under the same conditions), Hardin’s answer is that ‘ it depends . If the herd size is less than the
carrying capacity we might insist on this rule; but if the herd has grown beyond carrying capacity we should deliberately kill animals, until the
size of the herd is brought to a safe level’ (Hardin, 1977, p. 133, emphasis in original). Hardin’s well-known prescription for the deliberate
withholding of food aid from famine victims (Hardin, 1974) follows from this analysis, which relies upon a version of holism 6 that logically
a moral duty to cull human ‘herds’ when carrying capacity is exceeded. Hardin’s version of holism is unique in
that it operates as an environmental constraint upon conventional human ethics, rather than (as elsewhere in
implies
environmental ethics) 7 as a value theory that weighs the respective claims of whole non-human species or ecosystems against those of their
constituent members. Remaining
within one’s carrying capacity is taken by Hardin to be a precondition for
any other limits on action prescribed by ethical or political theory, making carrying capacity a kind of
master principle with the power to override competing moral principles or social norms. Hardin
applies this carrying capacity trump to all other morally protected human liberties as well , claiming (in
response to the objection that the demands of holism limit individual freedom) that ‘individualism is cherished because it
produces freedom, but the gift is conditional: the more the population exceeds the carrying capacity
of the environment, the more freedoms must be given up’ (Hardin, 1998, p. 683). In effect, he transforms
sustainability into a form of ethical monism capable of subordinating all other moral imperatives
(calling it the ‘prime commandment’) – leaving room for other ethical judgements to be made, but only after this
lexically prior condition is met – with highly disturbing implications that cannot be justified by the ecological facts alone. For
carrying capacity to yield such normative prescriptions, however, it requires a further premise, which Hardin never explicitly acknowledges but
reveals in his argument against feeding the world’s poor based upon the consequences for the world’s affluent: But does
everyone on
earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources? The spaceship metaphor can be
dangerous when used by misguided idealists to justify suicidal policies for sharing our resources through uncontrolled
immigration and foreign aid. In their enthusiastic but unrealistic generosity, they confuse the ethics of a spaceship with
those of a lifeboat (Hardin, 1974, emphasis added). What makes famine relief ‘suicidal’ is that the relevant agents in this case are
limited to those residents of wealthy nations that are in a position to opt either for or against such aid (denied agency, the world’s poor are
reduced to the status of moral patients, which can only be acted upon), and the decision to send food aid (or to open borders in order to allow
immigration by environmental refugees) would ultimately (or so Hardin asserts) speed population growth, exceeding carrying capacity and thus
causing further famine. Hardin
rejects those calls for famine relief based in charity, utility (Singer, 1972) or egalitarian justice
(O’Neill, 1993) in favor of an entitlement theory in which the world’s poor and hungry have no claim upon
‘our’ resources, and we have no duty to share them.
-Solves
Authoritarianism’s key to solve warming
Westing 10 – forest ecologist and former director of UNEP,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/opinion/18iht-edwesting.html, 7/14/15 BRoche
With the continuing failure of governments to reach agreements on combating climate change, the
outlook for both humans and nature remains bleak. And nowhere is the failure more conspicuous
than in the avoidance of the subject of population growth. Population is a double-barreled
environmental problem — not only is population increasing; so are emissions per capita. In 1970, when
worldwide greenhouse gas emissions had just begun to transgress the sustainable capacity of the atmosphere, the world population was about
3.7 billion; today it’s about 6.9 billion — an increase of 86 percent. In that same period, worldwide emissions from fossil fuels rose from about
14 billion tons to an estimated 29 billion tons — an increase of 107 percent. In other words, in 1970, such emissions were about 3.8 tons per
The growing
fraction of energy produced by low-emission means (solar, nuclear, wind, etc.) seems merely to be slowing
down the rapidly growing dependence on fossil fuels in response to ever increasing energy demand.
Yet inexplicably and inexcusably, recommendations by the United States, the United Nations and independent
research groups essentially never include — and certainly never stress — population as a contribution
to global warming. No rapid solution to the population problem is in sight, so we must continue to promote
emission-control measures ever more vigorously. And nothing is more important than persistent education and
publicity. In the matter of global warming, no idea is more critical than the notion that the
atmosphere must come to be regarded as a global commons, a common heritage of mankind. A principle
of fairness follows from this. The time has come to apportion an overall, safely sustainable level of emissions
into the atmosphere to all the countries of the world in an equitable fashion. Such apportioning cannot be based
capita; today, despite the growing awareness of climate change, they have actually risen to about 4.2 tons per capita.
on amounts currently being discharged by various industrialized or rapidly industrializing countries. Neither can it be based on population, for
this would reward over-populated countries and encourage further population growth.Approaches to achieving reductions include frugality;
greater use of energy-efficient devices; carbon capture and sequestration; emission-neutral means of generation; rainforest protection; a levy
on emissions (“carbon tax”); and the lease or purchase of emission rights by over-emitters from under-emitters (“cap-and-trade”).If appropriate
international agreements could be forged (clearly no easy feat), cap-and-trade schemes in principle would be an excellent approach as long as
the worldwide level of emissions being sought is a safe and sustainable one; a country’s contribution to a safe level is equitably determined;
and inefficiency and corruption in its administration, monitoring and international verification are eliminated or at least kept to an acceptable
limit.One environmentally and socially equitable approach to cap-and-trade would be to base the discharge allocations on that fraction of the
atmosphere that a country’s land mass supports. In such a scheme, many rich countries would currently be discharging more than their fair
allotment; most of the poor countries probably less so.The under-discharging countries would then be able to lease (not sell) some portion of
their discharge rights until such time as they are able, with the help of this income, to develop their own discharging infrastructure. The leasing
countries, for their part, would have time to institute changes to stay within their fair allotment, which might well include retrenchment of
individual energy consumption or, barring that, even reduced population numbers, difficult as that might be.In the end, we
must all
recognize that we have an obligation to share this earth with the other living things, an obligation that
requires a reduction, by one means or another, in our population-driven demands on its natural
resources. Bringing about this recognition is the task of civic education in the broadest sense .
Eco-authoritarianism is best solution to green democracy
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 9-10, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
First Possibility: Eco-authoritarianism. Eco-authoritarianism prescribes
and imposes a green alternative as the
collective outcome, overruling any non-green alternatives supported by individuals. Robert Heilbroner
(1974, p. 175) suggests that humans, when faced with environmental crises, must ‘enforce whatever
adaptational or transformational changes ... for survival’. Enforcing these changes ‘requires action on the grand scale’
and ‘this will necessitate central authority’ (Heilbroner, 1974, p. 176). In particular, a monastic organisation of society with ‘a
“religious” orientation with a “military” discipline ... offers the greatest promise of making those enormous transformations needed to reach a
new stable socio-economic basis’ (Heilbroner, 1974, pp. 176–7). This
implies that, in the context of decision making, some
decision alternatives that are contrary to the goal of human survival, such as a non-green alternative
forbidding adaptational or transformational changes, will be ruled out by the central authority. Similarly, William Ophuls
(1977) argues that there is no other (non-authoritarian) way to check the over-exploitation of resources,
or to ensure the competent direction of a complex society’s affairs according to steady-state imperatives that balance consumption and
provision of environmental resources. Over-exploitation of resources is possible when individuals are free to consume scarce resources in such
a way that they benefit individually from consumption without bearing the cost of the depletion of resources. This is Garret Hardin’s (1968)
celebrated notion of the ‘tragedy of the commons’. He argues that over-exploitation of resources can be tackled by ‘mutual coercion, mutually
agreed upon’, which comprises the restriction of the freedom of all individuals to consume scarce resources in the commons. This implies that,
in the context of decision making, certain decision alternatives that are contrary to the restriction of
freedom, such as a non-green alternative permitting unlimited consumption of resources, will be
ruled out by an authoritarian political system. An example of eco-authoritarianism is the ‘one-child policy’ implemented
since 1979 in China (Roberts, 2011, pp. 168–70). This policy is aimed at stabilising population growth in the country so as to relieve the
economic, social and environmental problems associated with overpopulation. Families subject to this policy are not allowed to have more than
one child unless granted special permission. The policy has been implemented coercively in some regions, including by means such as raising
the minimum age for marriage, fines for those having a larger number of children and even forced abortion. Mainstream
criticisms of
eco-authoritarianism focus on its failure, as compared to democracy, to accommodate the plurality of
environmental values and opinions as well as the interests of future humans and non-human entities. Terence Ball (2006, p. 145)
argues that an authoritarian system cannot ‘represent and take into account the interests of ... animals and eco-systems’, partly because
‘authoritarian rule is, politically speaking, a monoculture’, which, as ‘a multiculture consisting of diverse and sometimes cacophonous voices,
interests, and agendas’, is different from democracy. Other challenges are raised regarding the impracticability of eco-authoritarianism in the
current economic and political context. As Neil Carter (2007, p. 43) observes, ‘the draconian prescriptions of survivalism seem impractical in a
modern world dominated economically by global capitalism and politically by liberal democracy’.
Any sustainable system inevitably evolves to eco-authoritarianism
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 17-18, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Concluding Remarks Of course, there is a sense in which what I am discussing here is simply a version of a well-recognised problem – namely
the impact of the tension between procedural and substantive desiderata on democracy. Ultimately, we are
faced with a
perennial question in the study of democracy in terms of whether a decision mechanism can be good
in terms of both procedure and outcome. If there is no way that both of these can go hand-in- hand,
which should prevail, and why? The controversies over green democracy concern a similar question. As I have pointed out, the
uneasy relationship between democracy and environmental sustainability is not entirely new; this has been
framed, in green political theory, as a ‘means-ends’ problem between democratic agency and environmental values. On this issue, Goodin
(1992) recommends prioritising environmental values in such a way that environmental outcomes can
in the end be guaranteed. His position, however, assumes that we take for granted the logical primitive in the moral system of green
political theory – i.e. right things being done rather than right things being done in the right way. It
makes green democracy, as
argued, vulnerable to degenerating into an authoritarian procedure, such as eco-authoritarianism, as
long as environmental outcomes can be better secured by authoritarianism than by democracy. This
conclusion is, arguably, far from appealing from a democratic point of view. It is, therefore, worth reframing the ‘means-ends’ problem in such
a way that we can come up with possible solutions that are more than simply a hard choice between democratic agency and environmental
values. I hope to have shown that recognising the dilemma of green democracy provides a useful perspective for understanding the relationship between democracy and environmental sustainability. I also hope to have demonstrated how different
escape routes from
the dilemma of green democracy (Table 1) can serve as a theoretical basis for designing democratic
institutions for environmental decision making.
Current system unsustainable – the state is key to address sustainability
Melo-Escrihuela 15 – Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea [Carme, “Should
ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state?,” Environmental Values, pp. 1-4, June 2015,
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/papers/Melo-Escrihuela.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
The state and citizenship in green political theory: a brief story The idea of an environmental account of citizenship emerged within the policy
discourse before it entered the academic field of green political theory (Bell, 2005 ). In fact the term “environmental citizenship” was first used
in 1990 by a state body, Environment Canada (Szerszynski, 2006). The
literature on ecological citizenship often presumes
that states are, to a certain extent, responsible for creating the conditions and implementing the
mechanisms for its practice (MacGregor and Pardoe, 2005; Dobson and Valencia Sáiz, 2005 ). Partly because most green theorists of
citizenship live in liberal democratic states, partly because it is thought that any transformation of the political order shall emerge from existing
institutions, attempts
have been made to demonstrate that current neoliberal states can and should
encourage more sustainable forms of citizenship ( Bell, 2005; Hailwood, 2005; Valencia Sáiz, 2005 ; Dobson, 2003 ). There is
a tendency to argue that states’ resources and steering capacity can be used to promote green behaviors as a route to extend ecological
citizenship, for instance, using tools like legal and monetary incentives (Connelly, 2006; Barry , 2006), substantive and procedural rights (Bell,
2005; Hailwood , 2005) or school education ( Barry, 2006 ; Hailwood, 2005; Dobson, 2003 ). Despite the
potential that state
bodies have for the promotion of green views of citizenship, actually existing states are still far from
endorsing a politics of environmental protection. State organisations are implicated in different ways
in the process of ecological destruction. Political centralisation, bureaucracy, poverty, militarisation and the pursuit of economic
growth, all have devastating consequences for the natural world (Hailwood, 2004). This scenario makes it difficult for citizens
to assume responsibility for their environments and constitutes an obstacle to ecological citizenship. In
the face of this, it has been argued that the promotion of ecological citizenship should be approached together with the ecological
transformation of the state (Barry, 2006 , 1999; Eckersley, 2004; Christoff, 1996 , 2005 ) . This position is consistent with the evolution in
attitudes towards the state that has taken place within green political theory over the past twenty years. Although
greens long held
a conception of the state as being inherently authoritarian and responsible for the unsustainable
socio-political reality, today there is wide consensus that rejecting the state would limit the options
available in the quest for the environment (Paterson et . a l . , 2006; Barry and Eckersley, 2005 c ; Eckersley, 2004; Hailwood,
2004; Barry, 1999). As a consequence, anti-statist ideas have been diluted inside less radical approaches 1 .
The result has been a clear concern of green political theorists in establishing the concept of the green state. The statist turn has had some
implications for ecological citizenship and its promotion. Sherilyn MacGregor notes that it is within the anarchist and anti - authoritarian
traditions of green political thought that one finds “the longest - standing approaches to green citizenship, which favour political
decentralisation and direct face - to - face democracy at the local or community level” (2006 a : 86). This view is exemplified by Murr ay Bookch
in (1982, 1980 ) who, o pposing the state, defends a citizen politi cs based on a direct democracy in self - managed, co - operative communities.
From the 1990s and throughout the 2000s, g reen writings on citizenship give more importance to the issue of institutionalisation. Attention
has shifted towards the formal rights of the ecological citizen and the mechanisms for citizen participation in environmental deliberation and
policy-making processes. In this picture, ecological citizenship is specifically tied to the reform of the state along green lines . The early writings
of John Barry (1999) and Peter Christoff (1996) serve well to illustrate the transition towards a trend that has its mos t clear expression in the
work of Robyn Eckersley (2004). The notion of the ecological state is grounded on new values, functions, decision rules
, and forms of participation and representation . Ecological citizenship would be one of its core institutions. Just as a liberal state promotes libe
ral citizenship, green theorists of the state contend that an eco - state would use its resources to encourage ecological citizenship as one of the
essential components of the sustainable society ( Barry , 20 06 , 1999 ; E ckersley, 2004; Christoff, 1996). From this angle , the
underlying
assumption is that ecological citizens need ecological states. Yet, at the same time, ecological citizens are regarded the
main actors in the process of greening state institutions. For environmental statists, the move towards ecological states requires the active
involvement of green movement s and ecological citizens acting together to trigger changes within state institutions, societies and the economy
( Barry, 20 06; Eckersley, 2004; Dryzek et. al., 2003 ). Political innovation in the history of We stern modern states begins with social movements
and the fact that they could attach their respective defining interests to an incipient state i m p e r a t i v e 2 . If environmental values were to
be linked with both legitimation and economic imperatives, a green state with an enviro nmental conservation imperative could be established
( Hunold and Dryzek, 2005; Dryzek et. al., 2003) . These idea s highlight that ecological citizens and groups are the architects of the reforms that
will culminate in green states. A ccording to environmenta l state theorists and some ecological citizenship commentators, i t appears then that
ecological citizenship is both a precondition for the rise of green states and a key element to sustain them.
The alternative to authoritarianism now is extinction in the crunch – try or die for the
negative
Hanson ‘7
[Jay. Systems Analyst. “Shortage of Energy or Longage of People?” August 2007,
www.warsocialism.com ]
A specter is haunting developed countries, the specter of “peak
oil.” If you were born after 1960,¶ you will probably die
of violence, starvation or contagious disease. This is because our¶ genetic demand for more-and-more
resources, within a physical environment of less-and-less “net¶ energy”[1] available for those
resources, will inevitably lead to widespread violence and global¶ nuclear war.¶ Geologists have calculated that
global oil production [2] and North American natural gas production [3] are¶ peaking about now.
American coal is expected to peak about 2035.[4] No alternative – even nuclear¶ [5] – has the
potential to replace more than a tiny fraction of the power presently generated by fossil ¶ fuels.¶
America was specifically designed by special interests (e.g., General Motors, Firestone and Standard
Oil) to¶ require fossil fuel and automobiles [6] to be viable. The exhaustion of fossil fuel will leave
many¶ millions of Americans with no access to food or water and facing certain death. For example, ten or
more¶ millions of people in Southern California alone will die within a couple of days after drinking their toilet tanks and swimming pools¶ dry.¶
Since it’s literally impossible to increase global net energy production, the only approaches which can mitigate¶ this
problem are national – to either increase national net energy, or reduce national energy demand, or both. The primary goal¶ of
American public policy should be to minimize the suffering [7] of as many American citizens as¶
possible by delivering basic “needs”[8] gratis. Unfortunately, our democratic [9] form of¶ government
can not direct us to any specific goal because it is “process politics” instead of ¶ “systems politics”:¶ “As
the name implies, process politics emphasizes the adequacy and fairness of the rules governing the process of politics. If the¶ process is fair,
then, as in a trial conducted according to due process, the outcome is assumed to be just – or at least the best the¶ system can achieve. By
contrast, systems politics is concerned primarily with desired outcomes; means are subordinated to¶ predetermined ends.”[10]¶ Indeed, all
measures that our present government takes to mitigate our problems will make¶ them even worse!
[11] Since our present government can not direct us to any specific goal, the¶ first step in mitigation
must be to invent a new systems politics. In other words, dump our present “special¶ interest” government in favor of a new
“common interest” government based on a new set of values:¶ “In brief, liberal democracy as we know it – that is, our
theory or ‘paradigm’ of politics – is doomed by ecological¶ scarcity; we need a completely new political
philosophy and set of political institutions. Moreover, it¶ appears that the basic principles of modern industrial civilization are
also incompatible with ecological scarcity and that the
whole¶ ideology of modernity growing out of the
Enlightenment, especially such central tenets as¶ individualism, may no longer be viable.”[12]
ONLY coercion solves
Ophuls ‘77
[William. Prof Poli Sci NU. The Politics of Scarcity, 1977. Pg 151-2]
It therefore appears that if
under conditions of ecological scarcity,¶ individuals rationally pursue their
material self-interest unrestrained by a¶ common authority that upholds the common interest, the eventual
result is¶ bound to be common environmental ruin. In that case, we must have¶ political institutions that
preserve the ecological common good from¶ destruction by unrestrained human acts. The problem that the
environmental crisis forces us to confront is, in fact, at the core of political philosophy:¶ how to protect
or advance the interests of the collectivity when the¶ individuals who make it up (or enough of them to create
a problem) behave¶ (or are impelled to behave) in a selfish, greedy, and quarrelsome fashion. The¶ only solution is a
sufficient measure of coercion
(see Box 20). According to¶ Hobbes, a certain minimum level of ecological order or peace must be¶
established; according to Rousseau, a certain minimum level of ecological¶ virtue must be imposed by our political institutions.¶ It
hardly
need be said that these conclusions about the tragedy of the¶ conimons radically challenge
fundamental American and Western values.¶ Under conditions of ecological scarcity, the individuals,
possessing an¶ inalienable right to pursue happiness as they define it and exercising their ¶ liberty in a
basically laissez-faire system, will inevitably produce the ruin¶ of the commons. Thus the individualistic
basis of society, the concept of¶ inalienable rights, the purely self-defined pursuit of happiness, liberty
as ¶ maximum freedom of action, and the laissez-faire principle itself all¶ become problematic. All
require major modification or perhaps even¶ abandonment if we wish to avert inexorable environmental
degradation¶ and eventual extinction as a civilization. Certainly, democracy as we know it cannot
conceivably survive . ¶ This is an extreme conclusion, but it seems to follow from the¶ extremity of the ecological
predicament that industrial humanity has¶ created for itself. Even Hobbes’s severest critics concede that he is 111051;¶
Cogent when stark political choices are faced, for self—interest moderated¶ by self-restraint may not be workable when extreme conditions
prevail,¶ Thus theorists have long analyzed international relations in Hobbesian¶ Terms, because the
state’ of nature mirrors the
state of armed peace¶ existing between competing nation-states that are obedient to no higher¶
power A150, when social or natural disaster leads to a breakdown in the¶ patterns of society that ordinarily restrain people, even the most
libertarian governments have never hesitated to impose martial law as the only¶ alternative to anarchy. Therefore, if nuclear holocaust
rather than mere¶ war, or anarchy rather than a moderate level of disorder, or destruction of the
biosphere rather than mere loss of amenity is the issue, the extremity¶ of Hobbes‘s analysis fits
reality, and it becomes difficult to avoid his¶ conclusions. Similarly, although Rousscau’s ultimate aim was the creation¶
of a democratic polity, he recognized that strong sovereign power (a¶ “Legislator,” in Rousseau’s language) may be necessary
in certain circumstances, especially if the bad habits of a politically “corrupt” people¶ must be
fundamentally reformed.
EIARTR proves environmental authoritarianism is effective
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 106, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
4.2. Environmental effectiveness Legitimacy of EIARTR can
be enhanced when these measures are Environmentally
effective. While it is impossible to execute a sound and causal environmental effectiveness analysis of the EIA restriction measures,
anecdotal evidence – based on interviews, media reports and (in) formal documents up till now – does point to several
(indirect) environmental effects of these measures. Six arguments for environmental effectiveness of
EIARTR will be assessed here. First, EIARTR has forced local leaders to attach importance to
environmental protection and has changed their behavior with respect to implementation of
environmental measures. EIARTR has touched on the core interest of these local leaders (that is: economic development in their
region) and this has enhanced priority given to environmental targets and standards. This measure often
also came with changed power balances between the different local governmental agencies, often in favor of
environmental protection bureaus. For instance, after EIA approval was restricted by Sichuan provincial EPB in 2006, Luzhou
municipal government established an environmental targets-based assessment system to hold administrative and party leaders responsible for
not meeting environmental targets (Luzhou EPB document no. 177, 2006). This enhanced the power of the local EPB vis- a-vis their economic
counterparts. According to Pan Yue, the then deputy director- general of SEPA, “the
three-month EIARTR in 2007 achieved
much more than any previous enforcement campaign of EIA. It not only solved some serious
environmental problems left over by history, but also forced local governments to change the track of
development and accelerated the industrial transformation towards sustainable development”. 13
Second, in the regions affected by EIA restriction the capacity of local environmental (or rather: EIA) law enforcement
staff was strengthened and enhanced, and the environmental budget of the local EPB was increased
(both for staff and monitoring equipment). For instance, in the case of Luzhou the municipal government immediately approved the additional
employment of 4 EPB staff and planned to appoint an additional 10 staff members to enhance environmental
investigation and
supervision, which did materialize. At the same time, budgets for both operation and equipment were increased (Luzhou EPB
document no. 177, 2006). Third, EIARTR did temporarily stop industrial investment in polluting industries and
projects, but it is unclear what the longer term environmental effects have been. After lifting the restrictions industrial
investment and output often increased more than before, but it is unclear whether this industrial output was
of a different, less polluting, nature. For instance, the EIA restrictions in Luzhou lasted for two months (26 December 2006 to 26
February 2007), and came together with a major set-back in industrial investments, and even a small set back in industrial output growth during
these months. But during the two months after that period, industrial investment was higher than before the restrictions, as was industrial
output growth. 14 However, it is not possible to relate these changes in industrial investment and output causally to changes in environmental
performance. Fourth, some environmental
targets were achieved to a certain extent through applying
EIARTR, especially when the EIA restriction aimed at major environmental accidents in the region. For
instance, MEP imposed the EIA restriction to Huzhou municipality in 2011 following a major lead pollution accident. MEP required Zhejiang
provincial EPB to ensure that Huzhou government investigated and punished the responsible enterprises and scrutinized all enterprises
involved in heavy metals. Enterprises
that did not have an EIA or did not implement the EIA adequately had
to stop operations. And the most severe environmental pollution problems with most complaints had to be
addressed before the set deadline and the responsible persons had to be punished (MEP document no.584, 2011). In
MEP's notice to Zhejiang provincial EPB on lifting the restriction, MEP argued that based on the on-site investigations and checks by both of
them, MEP trusted that Huzhou had met the required conditions for lifting the restriction. Hence, this would indeed point at a significant
environmental improvement and an effective instrument to obtain such improvements (MEP document no. 1267, 2011). Fifth, one could also
imagine that frequent
application of EIARTR may result in a preventive effect towards local and provincial
governments. The possibility of being targeted for EIA restrictions in their jurisdiction might lead local leaders to take action to prevent a
condition where EIA restriction could be enforced upon them. It is rather difficult to prove such a preventive effect and no such indications
have been found yet. A
sound legal basis of these measures, implementation of transparency, apply a longer time period and
such preventive behavior of local environmental authorities more likely.
more experience with EIARTR makes
Finally, up
till now application and thus environmental effectiveness of such EIA restriction measures
obviously has been limited. There exist numerous situations in China where ambient environmental
standards or total emissions in a region have been exceeded, but where EIA restrictions were not applied. A
most notable and well-known case would be Beijing air pollution by for instance power companies and Beijing ambient air quality. For political
reasons it is highly unlikely that EIA restrictions will be easily applied in such a situation/region, which severely limits the environmental
effectiveness of the measure.
Effectiveness solves legitimacy
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 102, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
The debate on environmental authoritarianism versus environmental democracy has mostly taken
place at the level of political systems. However, here it will be used at a much more tangible level of a
concrete policy instrument recently developed and applied in China, the so-called EIARTR. As will be illustrated and argued below,
China's EIARTR can be interpreted as an environmental policy modification that moves away from the
long- time structural affinity within EIA between environmental interest representation and democracy, and towards the affinity
between environmental interest representation and authoritarian rule. 2.2. Assessing environmental authoritarianism in EIA As can be
distilled from the literature, authoritarian forms of environmental governance are often challenged against two
sets of, partly interdependent, criteria. First, authoritarianism is challenged against criteria of legitimacy, especially because the
alternative model – environmental democracy – is often considered to have high levels of legitimacy. Second, and equal to environmental
democracy, environmental authoritarianism is challenged against criteria of environmental effectiveness: does it effectively
contribute to mitigation of environmental problems? The two criteria are not independent as high levels of environmental
effectiveness might result in more legitimacy. In contrast to environmental democracy,
environmental authoritarianism derives its legitimacy mainly from its effectiveness in protecting the
environment, and less so from procedural forms of public involvement, participation and transparency in
environmental governance. Moreover, environmental authoritarianism doesn't always come with the rule of law, as the implementation and
enforcement of stringent environmental measures can follow from political decisions by elites. Hence, in assessing China's EIARTR a broad
definition of legitimacy will be applied, where legitimacy is understood as the product of legality of the measure, the environmental
effectiveness of the measure, and transparency and public participation and involvement in designing and operating the measure.
Legal basis solves legitimacy and effectiveness
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 107, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
5. Conclusion The
current form in which the measure of EIA restrictions has been established in China can
be interpreted as a typical example of environmental authoritarianism , with its strengths and flaws. The
measure can be considered environmental [sic] effective to a certain extent (as far as it can be assessed),
although not always for the purpose it was designed: improving total regional environmental quality up to standard. But more importantly
EIARTR lacks legitimacy with respect to a sound legal basis, transparency and possibilities for third party involvement.
While overall China's environmental policy shows an increase in the rule of law , experiments with third party
involvement and the furthering of transparency (Kostka and Mol, 2013), with respect to EIARTR this is not (yet) the case. On
the short term this might not endanger environmental effectiveness of EIA restrictions, but on the longer term this lack of
legitimacy might very well undermine the environmental effectiveness of this measure, and can even fire back to
the wider legitimacy, credibility and trust in China's environmental policies and institutions, including its MEP ( He et al., 2012 ). Hence, several
recommendations can be formulated to revise EIARTR in order to make it fit for the long term. First,
a sound legal basis should be
formulated for this measure , with better and more detailed procedures on its application and on lifting of the restrictions. If this
does not take place the EIA restrictions deprive the rights of projects that behave according to all rules and regulations. Second, transparency
and information disclosure should be enhanced regarding the basis of setting restrictions as well as lifting restrictions, so that
those affected by the measures (companies) and those potentially affected by the lifting of the restrictions (local communities, environmental
NGOs) can be informed and involved. Third, a possibility should be created for third parties to ask for EIA restrictions or ask for the lifting of
restrictions, empowering and involving those living in polluted regions with better possibilities to improve their quality of life. Fourth,
regional restrictions in EIA approval should be applied only and consistently for those situations it was meant to be
(as formulated in the draft legal basis): regions where total emission and ambient environmental quality requirements are not met. Applying
such a measure for all kinds of other environmental misbehavior enhances the arbitrariness of and objections against its use. Only with
these changes EIARTR can function not only as an innovative, but also as a legitimate, environmental
policy instrument in China, and can thus serve as a best practice to be transferred to other countries.
Legal foundations make authoritarianism sustainable
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 100, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
The poor
enforcement and effectiveness of environmental impact assessment (EIA) on construction and
investment projects in China has long been blamed for not preventing environmental pollution and
degradation. At the same time, freezing EIA approval of all new projects in an administrative region, introduced in 2006 as a punishment
for failing to meet regional environmental quality targets, has been regarded as an innovative administrative instrument used by higher level
environmental authorities on local governments. But it also raised controversies. Applying
an environmental authoritarianism
perspective, this study analyzed the legitimacy and environmental effectiveness of freezing EIA approval procedures by reviewing all 25
national cases and 12 provincial cases of so-called EIA Restrictions Tar- geting Regions between 1 December 2006 and 31 December 2013. The
results show that such
an environmental authoritarian measure is to some extent environmentally
effective but lacks legality and transparency towards and participation of third parties, and hence falls
short in legitimacy. Legal foundations and wider third party participation are essential for the long term
effectiveness of this policy and its transfer to other countries.
Surveillance is Key
Restricting freedom of geographical movement is necessary – surveillance is key.
Hardin 06 (Garrett Hardin, Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA Commentaries:
Rights and Liberties, Society, 17 (4):5-8. May/June 1980 “Limited World, Limited Rights”
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_limited_world_limited_rights.html .nt)
What about the movements of citizens within a nation? Should they be free to travel from one part to
another and change their place of residence? The largest nation in the world, China, with its
approximately one thousand million people, denies this right to its citizens. To most Westerners,
China's policy seems a retrogression to the days of serfdom; but before we condemn it we should
look for the positive benefits of a policy of restricted internal migration. One of the problems
resulting from free internal migration is excessive urbanization. The concept of urbanization is not
precise, but in round numbers it can be said that seventy-five percent of Americans live in urban
centers, as compared with only twenty percent of the Chinese. Excessive is also not a precise concept,
but attests to the evils associated with heavy urbanization-crowding, crime, pollution of many sorts, and
anomie. If a policy of restricted freedom of movement can diminish "natural" excessive migration to
urban centers, it is conceivable that a just accounting of the benefits and costs of the right to move
freely might work out to the disadvantage of the claimed right. At any rate, the governing powers of
China seem to think so; other countries should seriously examine the issue. What happens to the beauty
of an exceptionally favored locale when people are free to move into it if they want? Hawaii is an
example in point. Many of the people long resident in Hawaii feel their state long ago grew beyond
the optimum population level; they would like to restrict further entry into it from the other fortynine. Any such restriction would appear to be unconstitutional, but Hawaiians are desperately seeking
an argument to compel a re-examination of this point. To the biologist, the theoretical issue underlying
such a situation is clear: the argument for restriction should be based on the "carrying capacity" of the
environment. "Carrying capacity" is not a figure that is uniquely determined: it depends on the quality
of life presupposed. In the case of Hawaii, the very peculiar merit of the environment is its beauty.
Beauty is a complex concept, difficult to pin down in law, but clearly crowding has an effect on beauty.
The present state of Waikiki Beach compared with its condition in 1930 indicates a marked depreciation
in esthetic values. Further population growth can only make the beach worse. Ultimately, Waikiki may
be Coney Island West. In the allocation of natural beauty we face a problem in the diseconomies of
scale. Hawaiians have no argument with New Yorkers about the desirability of Coney Island for the East
Coast-they merely do not want to see their state turned into a western version. Is the Constitution of
the United States incapable of supporting the desire of a state to control the number of its entrants in
the name of quality of life? It is not easy to see how such control could be exercised without a
fundamental change in the Constitution, but this question will be raised increasingly in time to come.
There is another reason for suggesting that we may some day restrict movement in a country like the
United States. All travel requires energy. As the energy budget of the average citizen becomes
increasingly restricted, this reason alone may force us to accept restrictions on travel and on change of
residence. This possibility is only one among many raised by the contraction of the energy budget. The
diminution of per capita energy supplies is moving us into a world that will be categorically different
from the one we have known for the past century. Only dimly can we see the psychological adjustments
we must make if we are to live with a reasonable degree of happiness in this new world.
*COLLAPSE*
-Coming Now
Environmental collapse coming – we’re on the brink – laundry list.
Wilkinson ‘7 (Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor, Fairfax times, “Population pressure takes Earth to
its limits” October 26, 2007 http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/population-pressure-takesearth-to-its-limits/2007/10/25/1192941241428.html?page=fullpage .nt)
THE most authoritative scientific report on the planet's health has found water, land, air, plants,
animals and fish stocks are all in "inexorable decline" as 2007 became the first year in human history
when most of the world's population lived in cities. The United Nations' Global Environment
Outlook-4 report, released in New York, reveals a scale of unprecedented ecological damage, with
more than 2 million people possibly dying prematurely of air pollution and close to 2 billion likely to
suffer absolute water scarcity by 2025. Put bluntly, the report warns that the 6.75 billion world
population, "has reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is
available". And it says climate change, the collapse of fish stocks and the extinction of species "may
threaten humanity's very survival". Launching the report, the head of the UN's Environment Program,
Achim Steiner, warned that, "without an accelerated effort to reform the way we collectively do
business on planet earth, we will shortly be in trouble, if indeed we are not already". One of the most
disturbing findings is that environmental exposures are now causing almost one quarter of all diseases
including respiratory disease, cancers, and emerging animal-to-human disease transfer. Pressure on the
global water supply has also become a serious threat to human development as the demand for
irrigated crops soars. The report estimates that only one in 10 of the world's major rivers reaches the
sea all year round because of upstream irrigation demands. Each person's "environmental footprint"
has on average grown to 22 hectares of the planet but the report estimates the "biological carrying
capacity" is somewhere between 15 and 16 hectares per person. Critically, fish stocks, a key protein
source for several billion people, are in crisis. About 30 per cent of global fish stocks are classed as
"collapsed" and 40 per cent are described as "over-exploited". The exploitation of land for agriculture
has hugely increased as populations increase and living standards rise. A hectare of land that once
produced 1.8 tonnes of crops in 1987 now produces 2.5 tonnes. But that rise in productivity has been
made possible by a greater use of fertilisers and water leading to land degradation and pollution. "The
food security of two-thirds of the world's people depends on fertilisers, especially nitrogen," the
report says. In turn, the nutrients running off farmland are increasingly causing algal blooms. In the
Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea these have created huge "dead zones" without oxygen. The report
estimates that all species, including animals and plants, are becoming extinct at rates 100 times faster
than those shown from the past in fossil records. The main causes include land clearing for agriculture,
over-exploitation and pollution. Of the major species assessed, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent
of birds are threatened with extinction. Genetic diversity is also shrinking as just 14 animal species
account for 90 per cent of all livestock production and 30 crops dominate global agriculture. But
overwhelmingly, the report finds that climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions poses the
gravest danger to the future of the planet. The authors note "a remarkable lack of urgency" in
tackling human-induced global warming and, in a criticism of the Australia and the US, it notes that
"several highly-emitting countries have refused to ratify the global climate change treaty, the Kyoto
Protocol". Significantly, Mr Steiner said last night be believed the governments were "finally turning the
corner" on dealing with climate change. "The momentum on climate change in 2007 is nothing short of
breathtaking", he said. "It is time to find the same sense of urgency on biodiversity and degradation, on
fisheries and freshwater". Mr Steiner noted important progress in some areas, cuts in air pollution in
Europe and cuts to overfishing in the Pacific. And he stressed that the authors of the report insist that its
objective "is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario but an urgent call for action".
Economic growth is unsustainable, and piecemeal reforms can’t solve.
Hanson ’99 (Jay Hanson has been a member of his local utility' Integrated Resource Planning advisory
committee. He owns a computer business that designs and manufactures software and hardware and
also runs the Internet Website: www.dieoff.org. “ENERGETIC LIMITS TO GROWTH”
http://dieoff.com/page175.htm Appeared in ENERGY Magazine, Spring, 1999 .nt)
In 1972, the Club of Rome (COR) shocked the world with a study titled The Limits To Growth. Two main
conclusions were reached by this study. The first suggests that if economic-development-as-we-knowit continues, society will run out of nonrenewable resources before the year 2072 with the most
probable result being "a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial
capacity." [[1]] The second conclusion of the study is that piecemeal approaches to solving individual
problems will not be successful. For example, the COR authors arbitrarily double their estimates of
the resource base and allow their model to project a new scenario based on this new higher level of
resources. Collapse occurs in the new scenario because of pollution instead of resource depletion. The
bottom line is traditional forms of economic development will end in less than 100 years one way or
another. The COR study has been much belittled but proof of the COR's thesis can readily be found in
the real-world concept of "net energy" and that is the focus of this article.
Corporate freedom must be restricted – drive for profit makes resource and
environmental collapse inevitable, as well as inter-human exploitation.
Hanson 93 (Jay, Civil Engineer, creator of dieoff.org, “Economic Cyborgs” from the Winter 1995, EARTH
ISLAND JOURNAL which is published quarterly by Earth Island Institute
http://www.warsocialism.com/economicCyborgs.htm .nt)
The corporation is not as subject to human control as most people believe it is; rather, it is an
autonomous technical structure that behaves by a system of logic uniquely well suited to its primary
function: to give birth and impetus to profitable new technological forms, and to spread techno-logic
around the globe. We usually become aware of corporate behavior only when a flagrant transgression is
reported in the news: the dumping of toxic wastes, the releasing of pollutants, the suppression of
research regarding health effects of various products, the tragic mechanical breakdowns such as at
Three Mile Island, in Bhopal, or in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Sometimes we become concerned
about a large corporation closing a factory, putting 5,000 people out of work, and moving to another
country. Even when we hear such news, our tendency is to respond as if the behaviors described stem
from the people within the corporate structure – people who are irresponsible, dishonest, greedy, or
overly ambitious. Or else we attribute the problem to the moral decline of the times we live in, or to the
failure of the regulatory process. Seeing corporate behavior as rooted in the people who work within
them is like believing that the problems of television are attributable solely to its program content. With
corporations, as with television, the basic problems are actually structural. They are problems
inherent in the forms and rules by which these entities are compelled to operate. If the problems
could be traced to the personnel involved, they could be solved by changing the personnel.
Unfortunately, however, all employees are obligated to act in concert, to behave in accordance with
corporate form and corporate law. If someone attempted to revolt against these tenets, it would only
result in the corporation throwing the person out, and replacing that person with another who would
act according to the rules. Form determines content. Corporations are machines. Corporations – by
their very structure – are forced to exhibit Mander’s eleven inherent rules of behavior: The Profit
Imperative, The Growth Imperative, Competition and Aggression, Amorality, Hierarchy,
Quantification, Linearity and Segmentation, Dehumanization, Exploitation, Ephemerality, Opposition
to Nature, and Homogenization. Form determines content. Corporations are machines. Corporations
do not “need” such things as clean air, justice, truth, beauty or love to survive. The only thing that large
for-profit corporations “need” to survive is PROFIT. It is impossible for these corporations to forego
significant monetary profits for moral reasons. If managers sacrifice significant profits to save important
natural ecosystems or a community’s quality of life, they may be fired and/or subject to stockholder
litigation. Management must bend itself to the corporate will and that will is to enrich the rich. Today,
the richest 1 percent of America’s families controls 28 percent of the nation’s wealth and 60 percent of
the nation’s corporate stock. (one-dollar, one-vote) Thus, a large corporation may be seen as a manmade life form, a beast with a will of its own: an “economic cyborg.” Visualize a powerful creature that
has humans for talons, a bank vault for a heart, computers for eyes and an insatiable need for PROFIT.
The economic cyborg – a “terminator” – a machine in human disguise! Economic cyborgs ingest natural
materials (including people) in one end, and excrete un-natural products and waste (including worn-out
people) out the other. Cyborgs have no innate morals to keep them from seducing our politicians,
subverting our democratic processes or lying in order to achieve their own selfish objectives.
Moreover, cyborgs are only nominally controlled by laws, because the people who make our laws are
in turn controlled by these same cyborgs. Today in America, we live under the de facto plutocracy of
the economic cyborgs. (one-dollar, one-vote) ELEVEN INHERENT RULES OF CORPORATE BEHAVIOR by
Jerry Mander The following list is an attempt to articulate the obligatory rules by which corporations
operate. Some of the rules overlap, but taken together they help reveal why corporations behave as
they do and how they have come to dominate their environment and the human beings within it. xThe
Profit Imperative: Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over
community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national
security. Corporations will even find ways to trade with national "enemies"—Libya, Iran, the former
Soviet Union, Cuba—when public policy abhors it. The profit imperative and the growth imperative are
the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation's instinct to "live."
xThe Growth Imperative: Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. On this
depends relationships to investors, to the stock market, to banks and to public perception. The growth
imperative also fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of
the world. This effect is now clearly visible, as the world's few remaining pristine places are sacrificed to
corporate production. The peoples who inhabit these resource-rich regions are similarly pressured to
give up their traditional ways and climb on the wheel of production-consumption. Corporate planners
consciously attempt to bring "less developed societies into the modem world" to create infrastructures
for development, as well as new workers and new consumers. Corporations claim that they do this for
altruistic reasons to raise the living standard—but corporations have no altruism. Theoretically, privately
held corporations—those owned by individuals or families—do not have the imperative to expand. In
practice, however, their behavior is the same. Such privately held giants as Bechtel Corporation have
shown no propensity to moderate growth. xCompetition and Aggression: Corporations place every
person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career
must hone his or her ability to seize the moment. This applies to gaining an edge over another company
or over a colleague within the company. As an employee, you are expected to be part of the "team," but
you also must be ready to climb over your own colleagues. Corporate ideology holds that competition
improves worker incentive and corporate performances and therefore benefits society. Our society has
accepted this premise utterly. Unfortunately, however, it also surfaces in personal relationships. Living
by standards of competition and aggression on the job, human beings have few avenues to express
softer, more personal feelings. (In politics, non-aggressive behavior is interpreted as weakness.)
xAmorality: Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that
maybe antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. In fact,
corporate executives praise "non-emotionality" as a basis for "objective" decision-making. Corporations,
however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Lately, there has been
a concerted effort by American industry to appear concerned with environmental cleanup, community
arts or drug programs. Corporate efforts that seem altruistic are really Public relations ploys or
directly self-serving projects. There has recently been a spurt of corporate advertising about how
corporations work to clean the environment. A company that installs offshore oil rigs will run ads about
how fish are thriving under the rigs. Logging companies known for their clearcutting practices will run
millions of dollars' worth of ads about their "tree farms." It is a fair rule of thumb that corporations tend
to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When
corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do
not have feelings or morals. If the benefits do not accrue, the altruistic pose is dropped. When Exxon
realized that its cleanup of Alaskan shores was not easing the public rage about the oil spill, it simply
dropped all pretense of altruism and ceased working. xHierarchy: Corporate laws require that
corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinated within a centralized pyramidal
structure: chairman, directors, chief executive officer, vice presidents, division managers and so on. The
efficiency of this hierarchical form (which also characterizes the military, the government and most
institutions in our society) is rarely questioned. The effect on society from adopting the hierarchical
form is to make it seem natural that we have all been placed within a national pecking order. Some jobs
are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others, some neighborhoods, some races, some
kinds of knowledge. Men over women. Westerners over non-Westerners. Humans over nature. That
effective, non-hierarchical modes of organization exist on the planet, and have been successful for
millennia, is barely known by most Americans. xQuantification, Linearity, Segmentation: Corporations
require that subjective information be translated into objective form, i.e. numbers. The subjective or
spiritual aspects of forests, for example, cannot be translated, and so do not enter corporate equations.
Forests are evaluated only as "board feet." When corporations are asked to clean up their smokestack
emissions, they lobby to relax the new standards in order to contain costs. The result is that a
predictable number of people are expected to become sick and die. The operative corporate standard is
not "as safe as humanly possible," but rather, "as safe as possible commensurate with maintaining
acceptable profit." xDehumanization: In the great majority of corporations, employees are viewed as
ciphers, as non-managerial cogs in the wheel, replaceable by others or by machines. As for management
employees, not subject to quite the same indignities, they nonetheless must practice a style of decision
making that "does not let feelings get in the way." This applies as much to firing employees as it does to
dealing with the consequences of corporate behavior in the environment or the community.
xExploitation: All corporate profit is obtained by a simple formula: Profit equals the difference between
the amount paid to an employee and the economic value of the employee's output, and/or the
difference between the amount paid for raw materials used in production (including costs of
processing), and the ultimate sales price of processed raw materials. Karl Marx was right: a worker is not
compensated for full value of his or her labor—neither is the raw material supplier. The owners of
capital skim off part of the value as profit. Profit is based on underpayment. Capitalists argue that this is
a fair deal, since both workers and the people who mine or farm the resources (usually in Third World
environments) get paid. But this arrangement is inherently imbalanced. The owner of the capital—the
corporation or the bank always obtains additional benefit. While the worker makes a wage, the owner
of capital gets the benefit of the worker's labor, plus the surplus profit the worker produces, which is
then reinvested to produce yet more surplus. xEphemerality: Corporations exist beyond time and space:
they are legal creations that only exist on paper. They do not die a natural death; they outlive their own
creators. They have no commitment to locale, employees or neighbors. Having no morality, no
commitment to place and no physical nature (a factory, while being a physical entity, is not the
corporation). A corporation can relocate all of its operations at the first sign of inconvenience—
demanding employees, high taxes and restrictive environmental laws. The traditional ideal of
community engagement is antithetical to corporation behavior. xOpposition to Nature: Though
individuals who work for corporations may personally love nature, corporations themselves, and
corporate societies, are intrinsically committed to intervening in, altering and transforming nature.
For corporations engaged in commodity manufacturing, profit comes from transmogrifying raw
materials into saleable forms. Metals from the ground are converted into cars. Trees are converted into
boards, houses, furniture and paper products. Oil is converted into energy. In all such energy, a piece of
nature is taken from where it belongs and processed into a new form. All manufacturing depends upon
intervention and reorganization of nature. After natural resources are used up in one part of the globe,
the corporation moves on to another part. This transformation of nature occurs in all societies where
manufacturing takes place. But in capitalist, corporate societies, the process is accelerated because
capitalist societies and corporations must grow by extracting resources from nature and reprocessing
them at an ever-quickening pace. Meanwhile, the consumption end of the cycle is also accelerated by
corporations that have an interest in convincing people that commodities bring material satisfaction.
Inner satisfaction, self-sufficiency, contentment in nature or a lack of a desire to acquire wealth are
subversive to corporate goals. Banks finance the conversion of nature insurance companies help reduce
the financial risks involved. On a finite planet, the process cannot continue indefinitely.
xHomogenization: American rhetoric claims that commodity society delivers greater choice and diversity
than other societies. "Choice" in this context means product choice in the marketplace: many brands to
choose from and diverse features on otherwise identical products. Actually, corporations have a stake in
all of us living our lives in a similar manner, achieving our pleasures from things that we buy in a world
where each family lives isolated in a single family home and has the same machines as every other
family on the block. The "singles" phenomenon has proved even more productive than the nuclear
family, since each person duplicates the consumption patterns of every other person. Lifestyles and
economic systems that emphasize sharing commodities and work, that do not encourage commodity
accumulation or that celebrate non-material values, are not good for business. People living collectively,
sharing such "hard" goods as washing machines, cars and appliances (or worse, getting along without
them) are outrageous to corporate commodity society.
No chance of squo solving – our consumption-oriented lifestyles make the impact
inevitable absent a transition.
Hanson 93 (Jay, Civil Engineer, creator of dieoff.org, “Economic Cyborgs” from the Winter 1995, EARTH
ISLAND JOURNAL which is published quarterly by Earth Island Institute
http://www.warsocialism.com/economicCyborgs.htm .nt)
The ultimate goal of corporate multinationals was expressed in a revealing quote by the president of
Nabisco Corporation: "One world of homogeneous consumption. . . [I am] looking forward to the day
when Arabs and Americans, Latinos and Scandinavians, will be munching Ritz crackers as enthusiastically
as they already drink Coke or brush their teeth with Colgate." Page 31 In the book, Trilateralism, editor
Holly Sklar wrote: "Corporations not only advertise products, they promote lifestyles rooted in
consumption, patterned largely after the United States.... [They] look forward to a post-national age in
which [Western] social, economic and political values are transformed into universal values... a world
economy in which all national economies beat to the rhythm of transnational corporate capitalism....
The Western way is the good way; national culture is inferior." Form Is Content Corporations are
inherently bold, aggressive and competitive. Though they exist in a society that claims to operate by
moral principles, they are structurally amoral. It is inevitable that they will dehumanize people who work
for them and the overall society as well. They are disloyal to workers, including their own managers.
Corporations can be disloyal to the communities they have been part of for many years. Corporations do
not care about nations; they live beyond boundaries. They are intrinsically committed to destroying
nature. And they have an inexorable, unabatable, voracious need to grow and to expand. In dominating
other cultures, in digging up the Earth, corporations blindly follow the codes that have been built into
them as if they were genes. We must abandon the idea that corporations can reform themselves. To
ask corporate executives to behave in a morally defensible manner is absurd. Corporations, and the
people within them, are following a system of logic that leads inexorably toward dominant behaviors.
To ask corporations to behave otherwise is like asking an army to adopt pacifism.
Status quo consumption locks in unsustainable environmental devastation –
irreversible
Munasinghe 12 – Vice Chair of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Mohan, founder
chairman of the Munasinghe Institute of Development, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Senior Advisor
to Sri Lanka, “Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs) for Rio+20 and beyond: A practical step towards
global sustainability,” National Resources Forum, United Nations, pp. 202-203, 2012, Wiley, Accessed
7/4/15]//schnall
Why we need to make consumption and production more sustainable The Millennium Consumption Goals
(MCGs) proposal was made as a novel method of correcting the unsustainable patterns of consumption, production and
resource exploitation that have led to multiple problems threatening the future of humanity — like
poverty, unequal consumption, resource scarcities, hunger, disease, environmental harm, conflict and
climate change — which exacerbate all the preceding issues (Munasinghe, 2009; Eurostep, 2011). The global
economy driven by consumption already uses natural resources equivalent to over 1.5 planets earth
(also called the global ecological footprint of humanity) (Global Footprint Network, n.d.) 1 . The 1.4 billion people in the richest
20th percentile of the world’s population consume almost 85% of global output — 60 times more than those in
the poorest 20th percentile (Munasinghe, 2009). Clearly, the consumption of the rich is not only ecologically
unsustainable, but also “crowding out” the prospects of the poor. Overconsumption puts stress on the
world’s resources. Current strategies for economic development and growth focus on rapid accumulation of physical,
financial and human capital, while excessively depleting and degrading natural capital (including natural resources,
ecosystems and biodiversity). This pattern of development and growth that is depleting the world’s stock of
natural wealth (often irreversibly ), has not only had detrimental impacts on the well-being of current generations, but also poses
great risks and challenges for the future.
1.
Our system in unsustainable – governmental response is key
Zehr 15 – professor of sociology and interim director of the Master of Liberal Studies program at the
University of Southern Indiana [Stephen, “The sociology of global climate change,” Wiley
Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, pp. 131-132, March/April 2015, Wiley, Accessed
7/6/15]//schnall
Affluence : The
affluence variable in the IPAT model has received much attention, perhaps because of its
centrality to political economy theory in sociology of the environment (often referred to as ‘treadmill of
production’). Working from a Marxist framework, Allen Schnaiberg shows how profitability motives in capitalism not only lead to
labor but also environmental exploitation. 38 , 39 Each economic decision in capitalist organizations has
implications for the environment, yet they remain secondary in the decision making process due to
profitability requirements. Only external forces such as state regulation place environmental checks
on these decisions. However, regulation occurs sporadically at best because the state also has an interest in promoting economic
growth. The result is called a ‘treadmill of production’ where perpetual increases in production and its
environmental fallout are required to maintain capitalist growth and political stability. 38 , 39 To keep
the treadmill moving, a complementary ‘treadmill of consumption’ is necessary, which is generated
and nurtured through advancements in advertising, improvements in the means of consumption,
spread of conspicuous consumption across social classes, expansion of the sign value of products,
rationalizing consumption (e.g. ‘McDonaldizing’ society 40 ) and so on. Both capitalists and labor, who become
dependent upon expanding production through a work-and-spend cycle, 41 are caught in these treadmills, yielding
escalating fallout in the form of environmental extractions and waste. A sizeable body of sociological work applies
this theory to the rise of greenhouse gases. At a general level, John Bellamy Foster applies Marx’s concept of metabolic rift. 42 For Marx, a
metabolic rift occurs when capitalist agriculture depletes rural soils of nutrients by transferring them from rural lands to the city to feed a
growing army of urban industrial workers. Food is produced in rural lands, but consumed in urban areas where organic wastes are disposed of
locally. Attempts to solve the rift through artificial fertilizers deplete other resources. For Marx, a
solution to this rift emerges
under communism with redistribution of industry and population to rural areas. Foster finds this concept
relevant to GCC because capitalism enables and demands the extraction and burning of stored carbon from fossil fuels. 43 This process releases
CO 2 , upsetting the carbon cycle due to increased demand to metabolize emissions. The
capacity for absorption and
sequestration of CO2 in oceans and forests is limited because the former eventually become saturated
and the latter depleted through resource extraction for profit. 43 Although advanced capitalism might
generate energy efficient technologies, political economy theorists argue that they are inevitably
outstripped by expanded production. 43 The treadmill metaphor is apt here with its determinate
logic—production is perpetually sped up fed by environmental extraction with its accompanying
waste. Political economy theory also can be easily adapted to economic globalization, either by build- ing it into world systems theory or
simply recog- nizing globally based treadmills of production and consumption. 44 – 46 In contrast, Gert Spaargaren and Arthur Mol propose
ecological modernization theory which argues that in advanced modernity, organizations become restructured to take into account environmental as well as economic rationality. 47 ‘Superindus- trialization’ leads to more environmentally efficient production systems, more
environmentally benign products and services, and reorganized societies that center environmentally based criteria into everyday decisions
both in the private and public sector. 47 , 48 In applying this theory to GCC, an inverted U-shaped curve is predicted where industrialization
increases emissions of greenhouse gases up to a point followed by decreases in advanced industrial societies (reviewed by Fred Buttel 49 and
Tom Dietz et al. 18 ). Empirical research can be found to support each theory, depending upon the industrial sector, scale, and socio-historical
context. There also is potential for the- oretical integration in ways that draw attention to historical context 50 (see also Maurie Cohen’s unified
framework for ecological modernization and risk soci- ety theories 51 ). At a macro-level, political economy theory seems to best fit current
conditions and evi- dence. Cross-national analyses by Andrew Jorgenson, for example, reveal that intensity and social organi- zation of
production across several sectors have sig- nificantly increased methane emissions. 52 Increases
in beef and veal production,
oil and natural gas extraction, biomass energy production and, more generally, the level of economic
investment in manufacturing are all positively correlated with methane emissions. These macro-level
indicators seem to point to a tread- mill of production phenomenon and are interpreted by Jorgenson
to indicate flaws in ecological modernization theory. Similarly, Richard York correlates cross-national CO 2 intensity with
overall CO 2 emissions to find out whether reduced intensity (less CO 2 per unit output) leads to lower emissions 53 —a trend that would be
consistent with ecological modernization. Comparing China, the United States, Russia, India, and Japan from 1980 to 2006, York finds
no
evidence to support the notion that reductions in carbon intensity lowered overall CO 2 emissions. In
fact, the opposite is found, which is interpreted to mean that savings in energy efficiency generate
new forms of consumption (a phenomenon called ‘Jevons Paradox’). The finding also supports treadmill of production theory and
implies that technological efficiencies alone will not ease the GCC crisis.53
Malthusian collapse coming soon
Monbiot 04 (George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer, known for his environmental and
political activism, “Just Fade Away” 15th May 2004 http://www.monbiot.com/2004/05/15/just-fadeaway/ .nt)
And we know too that the planet can indefinitely support only a limited number of people. Already
certain resources – paradoxically the renewable ones such as freshwater, soil, fisheries and forests –
are running out; others will soon follow. Some oil geologists are predicting that global demand will
exceed supply within the next ten or fifteen years. The consequences of consuming fossil fuels can no
longer be denied, even by the Spectator. As the government’s chief scientist observed in March, “the
scientific community has reached a consensus”: climate change is real and man-made.(1) Ecologists
estimate the earth’s carrying capacity – the number of people it can sustain without ecological collapse
– at between two and four billion.
Food collapse coming by mid-century – climate scientists agree.
Kelly ’10 (Tara Kelly, Journalist and consultant for Time Maganize, ‘Impending Crisis: Earth to Run Out of
Food by 2050?’ Dec. 07, 2010 http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/07/impending-crisis-earth-to-runout-of-food-by-2050/ .nt)
Is the earth running out of food? That’s what scientists warned if the world leaders don’t act now and
negotiate food security policies at this week’s Climate Change talks in Cancun, reports the New Zealand
Herald. In a new book, The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It,
Professor Julian Cribb argues a catastrophic global food shortage will hit by mid-century. His
predictions paint a glum picture of the perfect storm that could threaten the lives of hundreds of
millions of people: Populations will grow to 9.2 billion by 2050 and in turn double today’s global food
requirement and outstrip growth in food output. Combined with unpredictable extreme weather
patterns, droughts will haunt those most vulnerable and lead to crop failures, food riots and war.
Food prices will inevitably spike with a rising demand for protein foods such as meat, milk, fish and
eggs. Growing shortages of water and less productive land to yield crops will further hinder the
world’s future food production.
Mass extinction and climate shifts coming soon.
Kelly ’10 (Tara Kelly, Journalist and consultant for Time Maganize, ‘Impending Crisis: Earth to Run Out of
Food by 2050?’ Dec. 07, 2010 http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/07/impending-crisis-earth-to-runout-of-food-by-2050/ .nt)
“The world has ignored the ominous constellation of factors that now make feeding humanity
sustainably our most pressing task – even in times of economic and climatic crisis,” writes Professor
Cribb. But Professor Cribb isn’t the only scientist clamoring for politicians to take climate change
seriously. In a recent study by the ARC Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, it warned of a
potential mass extinction as the number of ocean dead zones – waters starved of oxygen – increase at
an accelerating pace. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research also put out a study that
shows the increasing likelihood of frightening changes to rainfall, water supplies, weather systems,
sea levels and crop harvests by the end of the century.
Once 50% of the landscape is converted the ecosystem will collapse
Merchant ’12 (Brian Merchant is a freelance writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY. He covers politics
for TreeHugger, with a focus on climate and energy issues. Brian has written for Slate, Paste, Salon,
GOOD, and the Huffington Post “Scientists Fear Global Ecological Collapse Once 50% of the Natural
Landscape is Gone” June 6, 2012 http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/scientists-fear-globalecological-collapse-once-50-natural-landscape-gone.html .nt)
I love me some solid, science-backed doom and gloom—and good thing! It's in such ample supply. A
new study from 22 respected biologists and ecologists says that the world may be about to undergo a
"state shift" that will trigger huge environmental transformations, mass extinctions, and ecological
collapse. Oh, it will probably be an existential threat to humanity too. So, New York Times, riddle me
this: Humans have already converted about 43 percent of the ice-free land surface of the planet to
uses like raising crops and livestock and building cities, the scientists said. Studies on a smaller scale
have suggested that when more than 50 percent of a natural landscape is lost, the ecological web can
collapse. The new paper essentially asks, what are the chances that will prove true for the planet as a
whole? And the answer is ... scientists don't really know for sure, but they're scared shitless. James H.
Brown, a macroecologist at the University of New Mexico, said in an interview that this “scares the hell
out of me. We’ve created this enormous bubble of population and economy. If you try to get the good
data and do the arithmetic, it’s just unsustainable. It’s either got to be deflated gently, or it’s going to
burst.”
Drastic shifts are needed to sustain civilization.
Barry ’14 (Dr. Glen Barry is an internationally recognized environmental advocate, scientist, writer and
technology expert, “Planet Earth and the Collapse of the Global Biosphere: The Loss of Terrestrial
Ecosystems” Global Research, August 05, 2014 EcoInternet.org/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/planetearth-and-the-collapse-of-the-global-biosphere-the-loss-of-terrestrial-ecosystems/5394870 .nt)
New science finds that two-thirds of Earth’s land-based ecosystems must be protected to sustain the
biosphere long-term. Yet about one-half of Earth’s natural ecosystems have already been lost. The
scientific review article by Dr. Glen Barry – entitled “Terrestrial ecosystem loss and biosphere collapse” –
was published today in the international journal “Management of Environmental Quality”. The paper
proposes terrestrial ecosystem loss as the tenth ecological planetary boundary (along with climate
change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen deposition which have already been exceeded, and six others
nearing the limit). It is proposed that 66% of Earth’s land – 44% as intact natural ecosystems and 22%
as agro-ecological buffers – must remain intact to sustain the biosphere. This would require ending
industrial primary forest logging and restoring old-growth forests to reconnect fragmented
landscapes and bioregions. It is necessary to remain within planetary boundaries to ensure humanity
continues to be surrounded by a healthy natural environment adequate to sustain the biosphere as well
as local livelihoods and well-being. “The emerging Ebola epidemic, California drought, and Middle East
civil strife are all indicative of what occurs when planetary ecological boundaries remain
unrecognized and are surpassed. It is my hope this paper illustrates the absolute necessity of protecting
and restoring large, connected old-growth forests and other natural ecosystems, buffered by agroecological ecosystems, to ensure Earth remains habitable,” states Dr. Barry.
Environmental collapse coming this century
France Press ’12 (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE “Environmental collapse now a serious threat: scientists” 06
JUN 2012 AT 17:03 ET http://www.rawstory.com/2012/06/environmental-collapse-now-a-seriousthreat-scientists/ .nt)
PARIS — Climate change, population growth and environmental destruction could cause a collapse of
the ecosystem just a few generations from now, scientists warned on Wednesday in the journal
Nature. The paper by 22 top researchers said a “tipping point” by which the biosphere goes into swift
and irreversible change, with potentially cataclysmic impacts for humans, could occur as early as this
century.
2025 brings us close to the tipping point – food supply collapses first.
France Press ’12 (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE “Environmental collapse now a serious threat: scientists” 06
JUN 2012 AT 17:03 ET http://www.rawstory.com/2012/06/environmental-collapse-now-a-seriousthreat-scientists/ .nt)
The Nature paper, written by biologists, ecologists, geologists and palaeontologists from three
continents, compared the biological impact of past episodes of global change with what is happening
today. The factors in today’s equation include a world population that is set to rise from seven billion to
around 9.3 billion by mid-century and global warming that will outstrip the UN target of two degrees
Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The team determined that once 50-90 percent of small-scale
ecosystems become altered, the entire eco-web tips over into a new state, characterised especially
by species extinctions. Once the shift happens, it cannot be reversed. To support today’s population,
about 43 percent of Earth’s ice-free land surface is being used for farming or habitation, according to
the study. On current trends, the 50 percent mark will be reached by 2025, a point the scientists said is
worryingly close to the tipping point. If that happened, collapse would entail a shocking disruption for
the world’s food supply, with bread-basket regions curtailed in their ability to grow corn, wheat, rice,
fodder and other essential crops. “It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” said lead
author Anthony Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California in Berkeley.
“The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what
we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest
products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”
Collapse isn’t inevitable, but social structures need to change. Otherwise, collapse will
accelerate exponentially
France Press ’12 (AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE “Environmental collapse now a serious threat: scientists” 06
JUN 2012 AT 17:03 ET http://www.rawstory.com/2012/06/environmental-collapse-now-a-seriousthreat-scientists/ .nt)
And they said there were plenty of solutions — such as ending unsustainable patterns of growth and
resource waste — that mean it is not inevitable. “In a nutshell, humans have not done anything really
important to stave off the worst because the social structures for doing something just aren’t there,”
said Arne Mooers, a professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University in Canada’s British Columbia.
“My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the Earth’s history are more than pretty
worried,” he said in a press release. “In fact, some are terrified.” Past shifts examined in the study
included the end of the last Ice Age, between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, and five species mass
extinctions which occurred around 443 million, 359 million, 251 million, 200 million and 65 million years
ago. Earth today is vulnerable to fast change because of the growing connectedness between
ecosystems, voracious use of resources and an unprecedented surge in greenhouse gases, the authors
concluded. In a report on Wednesday issued ahead of the “Rio+20″ summit, the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP) warned that burgeoning populations and unsustainable patterns of growth were
driving Earth towards “unprecedented” eco-damage.
Irreversible collapse coming – destroys society.
Pappas ’12 (Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor “Tipping Point? Earth Headed for Catastrophic
Collapse, Researchers Warn” June 06, 2012 12:59pm ET http://www.livescience.com/20778-earthheaded-environmental-collapse.html .nt)
Earth is rapidly headed toward a catastrophic breakdown if humans don't get their act together,
according to an international group of scientists. Writing Wednesday (June 6) in the journal Nature, the
researchers warn that the world is headed toward a tipping point marked by extinctions and
unpredictable changes on a scale not seen since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago. "There is a
very high possibility that by the end of the century, the Earth is going to be a very different place," study
researcher Anthony Barnosky told LiveScience. Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology from the
University of California, Berkeley, joined a group of 17 other scientists to warn that this new planet
might not be a pleasant place to live. "You can envision these state changes as a fast period of
adjustment where we get pushed through the eye of the needle," Barnosky said. " As we're going
through the eye of the needle, that's when we see political strife, economic strife, war and famine."
[Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth]
It’s a question of tipping points
Pappas ’12 (Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor “Tipping Point? Earth Headed for Catastrophic
Collapse, Researchers Warn” June 06, 2012 12:59pm ET http://www.livescience.com/20778-earthheaded-environmental-collapse.html .nt)
The danger of tipping Barnosky and his colleagues reviewed research on climate change, ecology and
Earth's tipping points that break the camel's back, so to speak. At certain thresholds, putting more
pressure on the environment leads to a point of no return, Barnosky said. Suddenly, the planet
responds in unpredictable ways, triggering major global transitions. The most recent example of one
of these transitions is the end of the last glacial period. Within not much more than 3,000 years, the
Earth went from being 30 percent covered in ice to its present, nearly ice-free condition. Most
extinctions and ecological changes (goodbye, woolly mammoths) occurred in just 1,600 years. Earth's
biodiversity still has not recovered to what it was. Today, Barnosky said, humans are causing changes
even faster than the natural ones that pushed back the glaciers — and the changes are bigger. Driven
by a 35 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution,
global temperatures are rising faster than they did back then, Barnosky said. Likewise, humans have
completely transformed 43 percent of Earth's land surface for cities and agriculture, compared with the
30 percent land surface transition that occurred at the end of the last glacial period. Meanwhile, the
human population has exploded, putting ever more pressure on existing resources. [7 Billion Population
Milestones]
Warming is faster than expected
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
Scientists generally agree that, as climate change accelerates throughout this century (and no matter
what happens from here on in, nothing will evidently stop some form of acceleration), extreme weather
of every sort, including drought, will become ever more the planetary norm. In fact, experts are
suggesting that, as the Washington Post reported recently, "The pace of global warming is likely to be
much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased
more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback
mechanisms in global ecosystems."
*IMPACT*
-Economy
Peak oil is here – turns all their impacts. Effective resource management is key.
Ahmed 13 (Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development
and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It “Former BP geologist: peak
oil is here and it will 'break economies'” Published in The Guardian 2013/dec/23
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologistpeak-oil-break-economy-recession .nt)
A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing
with it the danger of "continuous recession" and increased risk of conflict and hunger. At a lecture on
'Geohazards' earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at
University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in
2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information
Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that
conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008. Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that
global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that "peaking is the result
of declining production rates, not declining reserves." Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance
on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is
declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year: "We need new production
equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply... New discoveries have not
matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are
apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the
amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum]." Dr. Miller, who
prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the
"ATM problem" – "more money, but still limited daily withdrawals." As a consequence: "Production of
conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008. Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of
natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane - and oil-sand bitumen." Dr. Miller is coeditor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A,
published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R.
Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that
among oil industry experts "there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that
we are entering a new and very different phase." They endorse the conservative conclusions of an
extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC): "... a sustained
decline in global conventional production appears probable before 2030 and there is significant risk of
this beginning before 2020... on current evidence the inclusion of tight oil [shale oil] resources appears
unlikely to significantly affect this conclusion, partly because the resource base appears relatively
modest." In fact, increasing dependence on shale could worsen decline rates in the long run: "Greater
reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing will exacerbate any rising trend in
global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and decline extremely fast - for
example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years." Tar sands will fare similarly, they conclude, noting that
"the Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA
projection of all-liquids production by that date." Despite the cautious projection of global peak oil
"before 2020", they also point out that: "Crude oil production grew at approximately 1.5% per year
between 1995 and 2005, but then plateaued with more recent increases in liquids supply largely
deriving from NGLs, oil sands and tight oil. These trends are expected to continue... Crude oil production
is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries and a small number of giant fields, with
approximately 100 fields producing one half of global supply, 25 producing one quarter and a single field
(Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) producing approximately 7%. Most of these giant fields are relatively old, many
are well past their peak of production, most of the rest seem likely to enter decline within the next
decade or so and few new giant fields are expected to be found." "The final peak is going to be decided
by the price - how much can we afford to pay?", Dr. Miller told me in an interview about his work. "If we
can afford to pay $150 per barrel, we could certainly produce more given a few years of lead time for
new developments, but it would break economies again." Miller argues that for all intents and
purposes, peak oil has arrived as conditions are such that despite volatility, prices can never return to
pre-2004 levels: "The oil price has risen almost continuously since 2004 to date, starting at $30. There
was a great spike to $150 and then a collapse in 2008/2009, but it has since climbed to $110 and held
there. The price rise brought a lot of new exploration and development, but these new fields have not
actually increased production by very much, due to the decline of older fields. This is compatible with
the idea that we are pretty much at peak today. This recession is what peak feels like." Although he is
dismissive of shale oil and gas' capacity to prevent a peak and subsequent long decline in global oil
production, Miller recognises that there is still some leeway that could bring significant, if temporary
dividends for US economic growth - though only as "a relatively short-lived phenomenon": "We're like a
cage of lab rats that have eaten all the cornflakes and discovered that you can eat the cardboard packets
too. Yes, we can, but... Tight oil may reach 5 or even 6 million b/d in the US, which will hugely help the
US economy, along with shale gas. Shale resources, though, are inappropriate for more densely
populated countries like the UK, because the industrialisation of the countryside affects far more people
(with far less access to alternative natural space), and the economic benefits are spread more thinly
across more people. Tight oil production in the US is likely to peak before 2020. There absolutely will not
be enough tight oil production to replace the US' current 9 million b/d of imports." In turn, by
prolonging global economic recession, high oil prices may reduce demand. Peak demand in turn may
maintain a longer undulating oil production plateau: "We are probably in peak oil today, or at least in
the foot-hills. Production could rise a little for a few years yet, but not sufficiently to bring the price
down; alternatively, continuous recession in much of the world may keep demand essentially flat for
years at the $110/bbl price we have today. But we can't grow the supply at average past rates of about
1.5% per year at today's prices." The fundamental dependence of global economic growth on cheap oil
supplies suggests that as we continue into the age of expensive oil and gas, without appropriate
efforts to mitigate the impacts and transition to a new energy system, the world faces a future of
economic and geopolitical turbulence: "In the US, high oil prices correlate with recessions, although
not all recessions correlate with high oil prices. It does not prove causation, but it is highly likely that
when the US pays more than 4% of its GDP for oil, or more than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the
economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead of other goods and services... A shortage
of oil will affect everything in the economy. I expect more famine, more drought, more resource wars
and a steady inflation in the energy cost of all commodities."
-Resource Wars
Economic conflict over oil makes resource wars inevitable.
Pagett 7/2 (Norman Pagett is a UK-based professional technical writer and communicator, working in
the engineering, building, transport, environmental, health, and food industries, “The End of The Oil
Age” Published in The Collapse of Industrial Civilization July 2, 2015
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/ .nt)
Our oil age will not end through lack of it, but by fighting over what’s left. So choose your luck‐factor
and take that thought where you will, you are on your own with it. Many reasons are given for starting
wars, but ultimately there is only one: the pursuit of (energy) resources. Human greed drove
improvements in weaponry, and the means of destruction and acquisition became more deadly over
thousands of years even though there was more than enough for everyone. The input of oil was the
game changer of warfare; history over the last century has shown that conflict was not diminished, but
amplified, by the prosperity and technology created by oil. Since the 1860s when black gold gushed
from the earth, the economic and political thinking of the pre‐oil era was seamlessly grafted onto the
industrial potential of the 19th century, thereby enabling Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Vanderbilt and
many others to accumulate fabulous wealth. Their business acumen was undeniable, but none of it
could have been brought into existence without energy-rich oil. The use of fossil fuels in our military
machines industrialised our methods of killing while at the same time becoming synonymous with
progress and commerce. War became a business, the purpose of which was the acquisition of more
energy in the pursuit of profit. Battlefield deaths on an industrial scale were an unlisted debit on balance
sheets.
History proves the need for resources is the root cause of all conflict – only
authoritarianism solves.
Pagett 7/2 (Norman Pagett is a UK-based professional technical writer and communicator, working in
the engineering, building, transport, environmental, health, and food industries, “The End of The Oil
Age” Published in The Collapse of Industrial Civilization July 2, 2015
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/ .nt)
The critical nature of oil made WWII inevitable. To sustain their empires, the Germans and Japanese
slaughtered their way across Europe and Asia in a grab for resources, primarily oil. They promised
infinite prosperity and their peoples cheered them on while deaths elsewhere were being counted in
millions. With most of the world’s known oil supplies in the hands of his enemies, Adolf Hitler knew he
had to have the oilfields of southern Russia and the Middle East to sustain his war machine. He failed,
and his dream of a ‘Greater Germany’ collapsed not because of inferior soldiers but because there was
insufficient energy input to sustain his plan for world domination. Hitler’s perception of infinite growth
in his ‘thousand year Reich’ mirrors our present-day view of ‘permanent affluence’: vast quantities of
oil had to be burned to sustain his fantasy. In our desperate scramble for ever-diminishing energy
resources, we are in the same mad race to perpetuate the delusion of infinite economic growth. The oil
pendulum has swung the other way with roughly 85% of world oil now outside the borders of the USA
and Canada in countries not always of a friendly disposition. And just like the Fuhrer, political leaders
of today are promising that which is beyond their means to provide. To mask this reality, they have
invaded oil-producing nations in the name of ‘freedom’, claiming ‘victories’ which have left only
wreckage and simmering animosity behind. So too did Hitler spread a similar line of propaganda that he
was liberating other nations from the threat of communism. The second world war that left Europe and
Japan flattened in 1945 might be seen as history, but it was just the first of many oil wars, and the
politics of it were a side issue. WWII serves as a grim reminder of how violent and destructive humans
can be in their ruthless pursuit of energy resources. Hitler’s own ‘oil age’ lasted just twelve years, and it
set the pattern for the world oil age that is now in terminal decline.
-Agriculture
Climate Change destroys ag
A. Australia
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia
has been burning up. It's already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. "The great drying,"
Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest
day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the
surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on
record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of
stored carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the
atmosphere. In fact, everything's been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted
by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180 people are dead and thousands homeless.
Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:
"It was as if a great cremation had taken place… I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've
watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a
boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself… I had
not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a
fire. This fire was different from anything seen before." Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing
breadbasket for the world and its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought.
B. China
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
Meanwhile, central China is experiencing the worst drought in half a century. Temperatures have been
unseasonably high and rainfall, in some areas, 80% below normal; more than half the country's
provinces have been affected by drought, leaving millions of Chinese and their livestock without
adequate access to water. In the region which raises 95% of the country's winter wheat, crop
production has already been impaired and is in further danger without imminent rain. All of this
represents a potential financial catastrophe for Chinese farmers at a moment when about 20 million
migrant workers are estimated to have lost their jobs in the global economic meltdown. Many of those
workers, who left the countryside for China's booming cities (and remitted parts of their paychecks to
rural areas), may now be headed home jobless to potential disaster. A Wall Street Journal report
concludes, "Some scientists warn China could face more frequent droughts as a result of global warming
and changes in farming patterns."
C. Middle East
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
Globe-jumping to the Middle East, Iraq, which makes the news these days mainly for spectacular suicide
bombings or the politics of American withdrawal, turns out to be another country in severe drought.
Americans may think of Iraq as largely desert, but (as we were all taught in high school) the lands
between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the "fertile crescent," are considered the homeland of
agriculture, not to speak of human civilization. Well, not so fertile these days, it seems. The worst
drought in at least a decade and possibly a farming lifetime is expected to reduce wheat production
by at least half; while the country's vast marshlands, once believed to be the location of the Garden of
Eden, have been turned into endless expanses of baked mud. That region, purposely drained by dictator
Saddam Hussein to tame rebellious "Marsh Arabs," is now experiencing the draining power of nature.
Nor is Iraq's drought a localized event. Serious drought conditions extend across the Middle East,
threatening to exacerbate local conflicts from Cyprus and Lebanon to Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel
where this January was reported to have been the hottest and driest in 60 years. "With less than 2
months of winter left," Daniel Pedersen has written at the environmental website Green Prophet, "the
region has received only 6%-50% of the annual average rainfall, with the desert areas getting 30% or
less." Leaping continents, in Latin America, Argentina is experiencing "the most intense, prolonged and
expensive drought in the past 50 years," according to Hugo Luis Biolcati, the president of the Argentine
Rural Society. One of the world's largest grain exporters, it has already lost five billion dollars to the
drought. Its soybeans -- the country is the third largest producer of them -- are wilting in the fields; its
corn -- Argentina is the world's second largest producer -- and wheat crops are in trouble; and its famed
grass-fed herds of cattle are dying -- 1.5 million head of them since October with no end in sight.
D. The U.S.
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
In our own backyard, much of the state of Texas -- 97.4% to be exact -- is now gripped by drought, and
parts of it by the worst drought in almost a century. According to the New York Times, "Winter wheat
crops have failed. Ponds have dried up. Ranchers are spending heavily on hay and feed pellets to get
their cattle through the winter. Some wonder if they will have to slaughter their herds come summer.
Farmers say the soil is too dry for seeds to germinate and are considering not planting." Since 2004, in
fact, the state has yoyo-ed between the extremities of flood and drought. Meanwhile, scientists predict
that, as global warming strengthens, the American southwest, parts of which have struggled with
varying levels of drought conditions for years, could fall into "a possibly permanent state of drought."
We're talking potential future "dust bowl" here. A December 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report warns:
"In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that
reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this
level of aridity much earlier." And talking about drought gripping breadbasket regions, don't forget
northern California which "produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, and a
majority of [U.S.] salad, strawberries and premium wine grapes." Its agriculturally vital Central Valley, in
particular, is in the third year of an already monumental drought in which the state has been forced to
cut water deliveries to farms by up to 85%. " California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end
of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of
global warming... In a worst case... up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating
a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture. 'I don't think the American public has gripped in
its gut what could happen,' [Chu] said. 'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture
in California.' And, he added, 'I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going' either."
E. Africa
Engelhardt 09 (Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The
American Way of War “Is Economic Recovery Even Possible on a Planet Headed for Environmental
Collapse?” February 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/127625/is_economic_recovery_even_possible_on_a_planet_headed_for
_environmental_collapse .nt)
As for East Africa and the Horn of Africa, under the pressure of rising temperatures, drought has
become a tenacious long-term visitor. For East Africa, the drought years of 2005-2006 were particularly
horrific and now Kenya, with the region's biggest economy, a country recently wracked by political
disorder and ethnic violence, is experiencing crop failures. An estimated 10 million Kenyans may face
hunger, even starvation, this year in the wake of a poor harvest, lack of rainfall, and rising food prices;
if you include the drought-plagued Horn of Africa, 20 million people may be endangered, according to
the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
-Biodiversity
The crunch devastates biodiversity
Pimentel et al 94 - David, Rebecca Harman, Matthew Pacenza, Jason Pecarsky and Marcia
Pimentel, “Natural Resources and an Optimum Human Population”, Minnesotans For
Sustainability, http://www.mnforsustain.org/pimentel_d_natural_resources_and_optimum_population.htm, 7/14/15
BRoche
the world's human population, currently more than 5.5 billion, is projected to reach
nearly 8.4 billion by the year 2025 and may reach a disastrous 15 billion by 2100. There are now 1.2-2 billion people
living in poverty —malnourished, diseased and experiencing short life spans. The Population Reference Bureau estimates that the average American consumes
about 23 times more goods and services than the average world citizen. Americans also bum 10,000
liters (2600 gallons) of oil-equivalents per year —seven times the world average. Clearly, achieving a US standard of
living is impossible for the rest of the world, based both on projections of future resource availability
and on population growth. The affluent standard of living now enjoyed by Americans (made possible by our abundant
supplies of fertile cropland, water and fossil energy) is projected to decline if the US population doubles during the next 63 years . If
the US were to move quickly to a renewable energy economy, with sustainable use of energy, land,
water and biodiversity, and a relatively high standard of living, our research indicates that the
optimum US population would be about 200 million, significantly less than the current population of 256
million. Math for a Small Planet Approximately 0.5 hectares (1.25 acres) of cropland is needed to provide one person with a diverse,
nutritious diet of plant and animal products. The US supply of crop-land is at this level now, but the world average is
only 0.28hectares (.69 acres). Each year, more than ten million hectares (24.7 million acres) of once-productive land are
degraded and abandoned. Simultaneously, an additional 5 million hectares (12.3 million acres) of new land must
be put into production to feed the 92 million humans added yearly to the world population. Most of
this 15 million hectares needed for expansion comes from the destruction of the world's forests. The urgent need for agricultural land accounts for 80 percent of
the deforestation now occurring worldwide. Humans do not have any technologies that can substitute for the services
provided by wild biota. In the US, there are approximately 500,000 species of plants, animals and
microbes that provide essential functions (pollinating crops, recycling manure, purifying water and soil) and serve as a vital reservoir of
genetic material. Yet the world is losing roughly 150 species per day from such human activities as
deforestation, pollution, pesticide application and urbanization. In his book, Fundamentals of Ecology, E. P. Odum reports that, if
sufficient natural biological diversity is to be maintained to ensure a quality environment, about onethird of the terrestrial ecosystem should be preserved as natural vegetation.’
According to the Washington, DC-based Population Crisis Committee,
-Pakistan
Overpopulation causes Pakistan instability
Munir 12 – Salman, http://www.dawn.com/news/747161/overpopulation-a-ticking-bomb, 7/14/15 BRoche
THE media and politicians always talk about corruption, terrorism, militancy, economy, employment,
inflation, loadshedding, education, law and order, etc. Sadly, no one talks about our biggest problem —
overpopulation. We have one of the highest birth rates in the world, but we do not care about it. And this is
the only problem for which we cannot blame the Indians and Americans. It is not on the agenda of any of
the big parties while they are waiting to take over the reins of the country. Just imagine, if we were today just 100 million
instead of 180 million people, I am sure that the problems I have mentioned above would have been of minor
concern. Overpopulation is the actual reason of all problems in Pakistan . The next government must
develop a strategy to bring the birthrate down to one per cent during its tenure. No matter how much
progress and development takes place in the country, overpopulation will never let us prosper.
Pakistan has wavered off the road so much that any normal or palliative measures cannot bring us
back on track. We need drastic changes. The next government must change the law of evidence for corruption, murder, acid
attacks, terrorism, militancy, abduction, rape, kidnapping and attacks on life and property of all citizens and state. Presumed innocent
until proven guilty should become ‘guilty until he proves his or her innocence’.
( ) Nuclear war
Pitt ‘9
[a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq:
What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence."
5/8/09, William, “Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World,”
http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=commentary
&article=2183]
But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep filled with troops today, killing five and wounding as many as
21, including several children who were waiting for a ride to school. Residents of the region where the attack took place are fleeing in terror as
gunfire rings out around them, and government forces have been unable to quell the violence. Two regional government officials were
beheaded by militants in retaliation for the killing of other militants by government forces. As familiar as this sounds, it did not take place
where we have come to expect such terrible events. This, unfortunately, is a whole new ballgame. It is part of another conflict that is brewing,
Pakistan
is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the
middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a
one which puts what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in deep shade, and which represents a grave and growing threat to us all.
nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and
threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff
The fact that Pakistan,
and India, and Russia, and China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any
ongoing or escalating violence over there has the real potential to crack open the very gates of Hell
itself.¶ Recently, the Taliban made a military push into the northwest Pakistani region around the Swat
Valley. According to a recent Reuters report: The (Pakistani) army deployed troops in Swat in October 2007 and used artillery and gunship
with neighboring India that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century.
helicopters to reassert control. But insecurity mounted after a civilian government came to power last year and tried to reach a negotiated
settlement. A peace accord fell apart in May 2008. After that, hundreds — including soldiers, militants and civilians — died in battles. Militants
unleashed a reign of terror, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents. They banned female education and destroyed
nearly 200 girls' schools. About 1,200 people were killed since late 2007 and 250,000 to 500,000 fled, leaving the militants in virtual control.
Pakistan offered on February 16 to introduce Islamic law in the Swat valley and neighboring areas in a bid to take the steam out of the
insurgency. The militants announced an indefinite cease-fire after the army said it was halting operations in the region. President Asif Ali Zardari
signed a regulation imposing sharia in the area last month. But the Taliban refused to give up their guns and pushed into Buner and another
district adjacent to Swat, intent on spreading their rule. The
United States, already embroiled in a war against Taliban
forces in Afghanistan, must now face the possibility that Pakistan could collapse under the mounting
threat of Taliban forces there. Military and diplomatic advisers to President Obama, uncertain how best to proceed, now face one of
the great nightmare scenarios of our time. "Recent militant gains in Pakistan," reported The New York Times on Monday, "have so alarmed the
White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most serious problems we
face.'" "Security was deteriorating rapidly," reported The Washington Post on Monday, "particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border
that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous
extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland. The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its
historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat
the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat
presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in
alliance with a government in which it has little confidence." It is believed Pakistan
is currently in possession of between 60
and 100 nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan's stability is threatened by the wide swath of its population that shares ethnic, cultural
and religious connections to the fundamentalist Islamic populace of Afghanistan, fears over what could happen to those nuclear weapons if the
Pakistani government collapses are very real. "As
the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan,"
reported the Times last week, "senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new
vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in
transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. In public, the administration has
only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army. But that
cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between
Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure."
"The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons,"
reported Time Magazine last month. "Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of
them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to
U.S. officials. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say." In
other words, a shaky Pakistan spells trouble for everyone, especially if America loses the footrace to secure those weapons in the event of the
If Pakistani militants ever succeed in toppling the government, several very dangerous events could
India could be galvanized into military action of some kind, as could nuclear-armed
China or nuclear-armed Russia. If the Pakistani government does fall, and all those Pakistani nukes are not immediately accounted for
and secured, the specter (or reality) of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorist organizations could place the
entire world on a collision course with unimaginable disaster. We have all been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq
worst-case scenario.
happen at once. Nuclear-armed
and Afghanistan, and rightly so. The developing situation in Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. The Obama
administration appears to be gravely serious about addressing the situation. So should we all.
-Structural Violence
Minorities and the poor will be the most affected
Goldenberg ’14 (Suzanne Goldenberg is the US environment correspondent of the Guardian “Climate
change: the poor will suffer most” Sunday 30 March 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-poor-suffer-most-un-report
.nt)
Pensioners left on their own during a heatwave in industrialised countries. Single mothers in rural
areas. Workers who spend most of their days outdoors. Slum dwellers in the megacities of the
developing world. These are some of the vulnerable groups who will feel the brunt of climate change
as its effects become more pronounced in the coming decades, according to a game-changing report
from the UN's climate panel released on Monday. Climate change is occurring on all continents and in
the oceans, the authors say, driving heatwaves and other weather-related disasters. And the changes to
the Earth's climate are fuelling violent conflicts. The UN for the first time in this report has designated
climate change a threat to human security. The overriding lesson of this report, the scientists said, was
that unless governments acted now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adopt measures to protect
their people, nobody would be immune to climate change. "There isn't a single region that thinks we can
avoid all the impacts of even 2 degrees of warming by adaptation – let alone 4 degrees," said Dr Rachel
Warren of the Tyndall centre for climate change research at the University of East Anglia. "I think you
can say that in order to keep global temperature rises at 2 degrees we need to reduce emissions greatly
and rapidly, but even at 2 degrees there are still impacts that we can't adapt to." "We live in an era of
manmade climate change," said Dr Vicente Barros, who chaired the report. "In many cases, we are not
prepared for the climate-related risks that we already face. Investments in better preparation can pay
dividends both for the present and for the future." But those who did the least to cause climate change
would be the first in the line of fire: the poor and the weak, and communities that were subjected to
discrimination, the report found. Scientists went to great lengths in the report to single out people and
communities who would be most at risk of climate change, with detailed descriptions of locations and
demographics. "People who are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or
otherwise marginalised are especially vulnerable to climate change," it said.
Women will be far worse off than men.
Milner-Barry 4/22 (Sarah Milner-Barry Environmental Policy Student and correspondent for Quartz
Online, “Women will suffer the worst effects of climate change” April 22, 2015
http://qz.com/388852/women-will-suffer-the-worst-affects-of-climate-change/ .nt)
What is often missed in these analyses and forecasts however, is the fact that women make up more
than half of the world’s impoverished population. Which means, generally speaking, that women will
be more affected by climate change than men in coming decades. The majority of these women work
on the land, and are providers of food and water for their families. These practices are disrupted by
obstructed access to natural resources caused by climatic changes—leaving women more susceptible
to food insecurity than men, who are more able to work, and eat, outside the home. It’s also worth
noting the distinct vulnerability of women with respect to natural disasters, the regularity of which
climate change is predicted to exacerbate. A particularly sobering model for this was the Indian Ocean
tsunami of 2004, after which an average of 77% of the fatalities recorded were women, some of
whom drowned as a result of not being taught how to swim. In addition, studies have shown that
women are at increasingly greater risk of gender-based violence due to higher temperatures, and
shortages of natural resources. When women are less able to fulfill their duties as managers of the
household, they are more vulnerable to domestic violence, and in the aftermath of disasters there has
been a marked increase in the rates of sexual and domestic abuse towards women.
*LINK*
-Oppression
Support for authoritarianism is on the rise – submission is key.
Robinson ’15 (William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global and international studies, and Latin
American studies, at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Among his many books are Promoting
Polyarchy (1996), Transnational Conflicts (2003), A Theory of Global Capitalism (2004), Latin America
and Global Capitalism (2008), and Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity (2014). “Crisis of
Humanity and the Specter of 21st Century Fascism” April 23, 2015
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41650.htm nt)
Yet another response is that I term 21st century fascism.5 The ultra-right is an insurgent force in many
countries. In broad strokes, this project seeks to fuse reactionary political power with transnational
capital and to organise a mass base among historically privileged sectors of the global working class –
such as white workers in the North and middle layers in the South – that are now experiencing
heightened insecurity and the specter of downward mobility. It involves militarism, extreme
masculinisation, homophobia, racism and racist mobilisations, including the search for scapegoats,
such as immigrant workers and, in the West, Muslims. Twenty-first century fascism evokes mystifying
ideologies, often involving race/culture supremacy and xenophobia, embracing an idealised and
mythical past. Neo-fascist culture normalises and glamorises warfare and social violence, indeed,
generates a fascination with domination that is portrayed even as heroic. The need for dominant groups
around the world to secure widespread, organised mass social control of the world’s surplus population
and rebellious forces from below gives a powerful impulse to projects of 21st century fascism. Simply
put, the immense structural inequalities of the global political economy cannot easily be contained
through consensual mechanisms of social control. We have been witnessing transitions from social
welfare to social control states around the world. We have entered a period of great upheavals,
momentous changes and uncertainties. The only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism is a
massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity along
the lines of a 21st century democratic socialism, in which humanity is no longer at war with itself and
with nature.
-Drones
General public support for drones now – allows expanded government use of drones.
The plan uniquely decreases government legitimacy. – public opinion can be easily
swayed to be anti-drone.
Kreps and Wallace 7/2 (Sarah E. Kreps is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University
Press. She is the author of Coalitions of Convenience: United States Military Interventions after the Cold
War, Geoffrey P.R. Wallace is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, New
Brunswick. He is the author of Life and Death in Captivity: The Abuse of Prisoners during War,
“International law and US public support for drone strikes” July 2, 2015, OpenDemocracy.net
https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/sarah-kreps-geoffrey-wallace/international-lawand-us-public-support-for-drone-stri .nt)
Despite this vibrant debate, little is known about which voices or arguments resonate most with the US
public. Do appeals to international law change citizens’ opinions toward drones, or is the public more
persuaded by claims about their effectiveness? Despite its central importance in helping to understand
the roots of domestic attitudes toward the use of force in the United States (and potentially beyond to
other frequent drone users, like Israel), answers to this question are far from obvious. On its face,
opponents of US drone strikes should face an uphill battle, especially when pushing criticisms
grounded in international law. Across various countries, the threat of terrorism tends to generate fear,
anxiety and a thirst for security, reactions that should make citizens suspicious of upholding legal
commitments. Given the secrecy often surrounding drone strikes, the US government also enjoys an
immense informational advantage over the program’s details. Moreover, the largely bipartisan
agreement amongst Republican and Democratic politicians behind drone policies (a rarity in the
current polarized US landscape) presents formidable obstacles for any contrary positions put forward
by critics. In line with this political consensus, available polling data in recent years points to
consistently favorable US public support for drone strikes, views that are seemingly impervious to
outside critiques (legal or otherwise). To investigate the basis of public support for drone strikes—
whether focused primarily on concerns of military effectiveness or international law—we conducted
a survey experiment in September 2013 with a national sample of around 2,000 US adults, with
assistance from Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) and the survey research firm
GfK. Before being asked about their support or opposition toward drone strikes, respondents were
randomly given additional information about the drones debate that differed on two main
dimensions. First was the type of actor making the argument—the US Government (specifically the Joint
Chiefs of Staff given their stature on the use of force), the United Nations, or a human rights
nongovernmental organization (NGO) like Human Rights Watch (HRW); and second, the line of
argumentation for or against drone strikes—that is, was it based on military effectiveness, the violation
of national sovereignty, or the violation of civilian protection. To remain consistent with the existing
drones debate in America, the US government position was in favor of the effectiveness and
international arguments, while the UN and NGO sides took a more critical stance. By comparing the
answers of respondents in each of these groups to a separate baseline group that received no additional
prompting, we could help to isolate the relative effect of arguments rooted in international law versus
military effectiveness on support for drone strikes (for a full summary of the survey, see here). Despite
reasons to expect that drone strikes would pose a difficult case for the arguments put forward by the
UN and NGOs, we find that these critics actually possess a concrete ability to sway public opinion,
though with important caveats. Compared to their UN and NGO opponents, government claims actually
have little additional impact on how its citizens think about drones. By contrast, when evaluating the
various arguments concerning the merits of drone strikes, citizens appear particularly moved by
criticisms rooted in international law. Pronouncements by either the UN or Human Rights Watch
(HRW) that drone strikes violate the sovereignty of targeted states, or do not take sufficient measures to
prevent civilian deaths, were associated with a drop of 6-8% in public approval for drones. Although
modest, the available polling data suggest this would translate into a much more even split between US
citizens for or against the use of drone strikes by their government. The relative impact of international
legal appeals is also of similar size to that found in other studies on public opinion in related issue areas.
-Democracy/Human Rights
Human rights claims do not accomplish human liberation and only serve to sow the
seeds of disunity within power structures, preventing authoritarian consolidation.
Pruce 6/23 (Joel R. Pruce is an Assistant Professor of human rights studies at the University of Dayton.”
“Human rights are revolutionary—in principle not practice” 23 June 2015
https://www.opendemocracy.net/openglobalrights/joel-r-pruce/human-rights-arerevolutionary%E2%80%94in-principle-not-practice .nt)
In her compelling article, Doutje Lettinga prompts us to critically consider the relationship between
transnational NGO advocacy and revolutionary grassroots activism, and the contrast is indeed stark.
When activists Nadia Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina departed from the band Pussy Riot and later
appeared at the 2014 Amnesty International benefit concert, “Bringing Human Rights Home,” it was a
far cry from their radical origins with the art collective, Voina. Attending an event hosted at a probasketball arena, sponsored by multinational corporations, and accessible only to those who could
afford the costly price of admission was not exactly an act of resistance. Indeed, the remaining
members of Pussy Riot called out their comrades for joining the mainstream, pointing out that
“institutionalized advocacy” clashed strongly with radical movements for emancipation. But one
initial, knee-jerk response to Lettinga’s probing question of “How revolutionary are global human
rights?” may be “Very revolutionary!” After all, human rights demand a confrontation between citizens
and the state. Human rights check the arbitrary exercise of power and correct market excess. To
claim that the dignity of individuals should be prioritized in political and social decision-making is a
subversive act. Only true radicals would even attempt to require the powerful to be transparent and
accountable. And human rights seek to do precisely that by undermining traditional hierarchies and
remaking society in line with their lofty aspirations. Human rights marshal resources and legal reform to
better respect physical integrity, protect vulnerability and administer justice equitably. Constructing an
ideal-type rights-bound political order would entail a fundamental transformation of any state that has
ever existed. If human rights express a utopian vision, then they must be profoundly revolutionary. If
these principles capture the essential nature of human rights, then why would radical activists like the
remaining members of Pussy Riot distance themselves from such a noble enterprise? What explains this
tension and how do we understand its origins and impact? Stephen Hopgood describes Amnesty
International as having “no building blocks”: no prerequisite for membership, no philosophical litmus
test, no audition, no faith commitment, no blood oath, no party affiliation and no barrier to entry. From
the ideological perspective of the Cold War, this was seen as an attractive feature. Human rights were a
catchall for disaffected liberal classes drawn to moral crusades and the pursuit of justice. Human
rights advocacy groups positioned themselves as an alternative, as a palatable, least-commondenominator approach to politics. This, in a sense, is the force and meaning of universal human rights. It
fits into whatever worldview you have without any anchors or attachments. Human rights can be
personalized and can accommodate multiple functions. Into this ideological vacuum steps an odd cast of
characters. As a source of norms and ideas about the world, human rights have come to mean anything
to anyone. Conservative advocates champion free speech and expression, while ignoring threats
against workers. Trade unions utilize human rights discourse, but have opposed the extension of rights
to immigrant laborers. Catholic opponents of women’s access to health care frame their agenda in
terms of human rights and religious freedom. Human rights are appropriated and selectively applied
across the political spectrum, from BDS to men’s rights with no checks, no permissions and no propriety.
At times “human rights” seems to stand for nothing in particular at all. Human rights are political
claims without politics. In the world of human rights advocacy, anything goes—and that’s exactly the
problem. That human rights assume this role in 21st century global affairs is a product of the
mainstreaming of human rights values undertaken by the major transnational NGOs over the past fifty
years. The desire to build a broad constituent base compels organizations to conduct outreach and
mobilization campaigns with mass appeal. In a strong sense, transnational human rights NGOs run away
from anything resembling ideational foundations so as to coax the most diverse audience. Cobbling
together opportunistic coalitions may win advocates short-term victories, but it will also hollow out the
core of a nascent movement. Many major organizations want elected officials and corporate CEOs to
see them as partners to court, not as challengers to fear. Lettinga is absolutely correct to point to
impartiality as a tactic that serves this goal as well: to bolster credibility, even as it diminishes the
prowess to pressure for structural change. Resolving the debate over the revolutionary nature of human
rights rests on a paradox of form and content. Global human rights advocacy is housed in professional
institutions, which are seen as bureaucratic, detached and alien. But the form of human rights is also
expressed in the media, marketing and communication strategies that filter out radicalism in order to
foster mass appeal. The insurgent qualities of human rights claims become diluted when processed
through branding strategies and affixed to bumper stickers. Human rights discourse is weakened when it
graces the lips of vapid celebrities who seek only to grow their own status. Outreach efforts that hinge
on cheap emotional pleas and simplified narratives do damage to the radical content of human rights by
assuming so little of potential supporters—meeting them where they are, rather than getting them
where they need to be. Human rights, like art, “should elevate, not pander,” and when commercialism
and consumerism become key platforms for human rights struggle, we must not be surprised when our
demands are met with derision.
Support of curbing democratic rights now indicates a shift to authoritarianism.
Chou ’14 (Dr Mark Chou, ACU's Lecturer in Politics, is an interdisciplinary political scientist who draws his
inspiration from international relations, cultural studies and political philosophy, focus on democracy,
“Democracy Against Itself: Sustaining an Unsustainable Idea” pg. 116 https://books.google.com/books
id=kpClBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=coming+authoritarianism&source=bl&ots=kd1NxKfcQ0&
sig=fC6F5PKUSd7bPUjKbLzmlJvWc1k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=evXVYeWMYLnyQO97rrQAw&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=coming%20authoritarianism&f=false
.nt)
For those willing to reflect critically on what is taking place in Washington, as the previous chapter has
attempted to do, we may come to the conclusion that there has been a similar shift, where what we
think we know is no longer completely accurate. America's democracy and democratic landscape is
changing. For those not above examining the ailments and hypocrisies besetting our own democratic
traditions, we may even see this happening before our eyes. We will see the increased union that
thrives between state and corporate power. We will see inherent anti-democratic outcomes being
produced by democrats using what are ostensibly democratic mechanisms. And we will see a political
culture where popularly elected leaders are unrepentant about curtailing the democratic rights and
freedoms of citizens in an effort to stamp out dissent, terror and other threats to the state. Brought
about by the citizens themselves, these are the traits of inverted totalitarianism smouldering in a
political system and culture that, like modern-day China's, is neither truly-democratic nor completely
totalitarian. And that is what this chapter will attempt to bring to the foreground: the prospect that
China's new authoritarianism is a phenomenon not altogether distinct from the inverted totalitarianism
that is consuming contemporary American democracy. This is another way of saying that in China we
may be getting a glimpse at what America's post-democratic future might look like if it continues to
manage and incorporate democracy the way it has been doing for decades.
*MISC*
-Green democracy = authoritarianism
The only green democracy is authoritarianism in a mask
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 3-6, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
The Means-Ends Debate The
idea of green democracy is not without controversy. Robert Goodin (1992) offers a
classic critique of the connection between the means of (grassroots) democracy and the ends of
environmentalism. He contrasts two strands of green political theory – i.e. the green theory of value and the
green theory of agency. The former represents a unified moral position of the greens, which ‘tells us what
things are of value and why’, whereas the latter ‘advises on how to go about pursuing those [green]
values’ (Goodin, 1992, p. 15). Broadly conceived, environmentalism and democracy are examples of,
respectively, a green theory of value and a green theory of agency. More generally, while theories of value focus on
the values themselves as well as on the outcomes, theories of agency concern actions, choices and the mechanisms
that produce these actions and choices (Goodin, 1992, p. 115). Goodin (1992, p. 119) contends that the two
theories should be regarded as separate since they are not only logically separable, but also
supported by genuinely different arguments. If two theories are independent in this manner, it is hard
to ensure that the means based on one would in fact serve the ends specified by the other (Goodin, 1992,
p. 168). By the same token, the relationship between democracy and environmentalism is problematic because: To advocate
democracy is to advocate procedures, to advocate environmentalism is to advocate substantive
outcomes: what guarantee can we have that the former procedures will yield the latter sorts of
outcomes? (Goodin, 1992, p. 168) Michael Saward (1993, p. 93) highlights a similar tension, when he asserts that: ‘If governments,
to be democratic, must respond to the felt wishes of a majority of citizens, then greens have little
comeback if a majority does not want green outcomes .’ If such a view is correct, then there is a tension
between democratic means and environmental ends. How could we resolve such a tension between means and ends?
Goodin suggests that we should prioritise environmental ends over democratic means. Because of the
logical primitive in the moral system of green thinking, ‘it is more important that the right things be
done than that they be done in any particular way or through any particular agency’ (Goodin, 1992, p. 120). In
other words, it matters more that the designated environmental ends can be achieved than that they are
achieved through democratic means. Environmental ends, therefore, justify whatever means are
necessary, be these democratic or not, as long as the means in question bring about the environmental ends. If it so
happens that only non-democratic means can produce environmental ends, then, according to Goodin,
democracy may be sacrificed to pro-environmental outcomes. This argument appears vulnerable to
the risk of green democracy degenerating into some kind of authoritarian procedure (Saward, 1993). Is the
means-ends tension as simple as an ‘either-or’ constraint, in which, as Goodin insists, one can be entirely sacrificed to the other? Robyn
Eckersley argues against Goodin that democratic means are at least as important as environmental ends. This is because democracy
and environmental sustainability are both necessary conditions for humans to exercise their
autonomy and to flourish. If moral priority is given to autonomy as such, then democratic means should not be traded for
environmental ends since a non-democratic or authoritarian procedure would ‘fundamentally [infringe] the rights of humans to choose their
own destiny’ (Eckersley, 1996, p. 223). Saward (1996), for his part, acknowledges
the possibility of building
environmental considerations into democratic procedures through the stipulation of environmental
rights. He contends that: ‘Consistent democrats will want to prevent environmental harm to citizens, and will recognise a green democratic
right to that effect’ (Saward, 1996, p. 88). In this way, ‘[t]he idea that democracy is a means, and environmentalism an end, breaks down;
environmental goals become an integral part of democratic means to democratic ends’ (Saward, 1996, p. 88). If Saward
and Eckersley
are both correct, then environmental ends and democratic means need to be made compatible with
each other. This is all the more pressing since a tension does exist between democracy and
environmental outcomes and this threatens the very foundation of green democracy. To achieve
reconciliation, one starting point is to map out the ‘logical space’ of green democracy and to identify the minimal conditions necessary for
democracy and environmental sustainability to coexist. A Conceptual Dilemma A group of individuals (e.g. citizens) is faced with a collective
choice between certain alternatives. Call the set of alternatives X . To keep things simple, I assume that only some (not all) of the alternatives,
say those in a proper subset Y of X , are environ- mentally sustainable, or ‘green’. Each individual has an opinion as to which alternative should
be chosen. We are looking for a decision procedure that assigns to each combination of individual opinions a resulting collective choice. Notice
that this is a very broad notion: It may include, but need not be restricted to, a voting procedure. Even an extensive deliberative process can
count as a decision procedure in the present sense, insofar as it eventually generates a collective choice on the basis of individual inputs. Can
we find a decision procedure that would satisfy a green democrat? At first sight, the
following might seem to be the minimal
requirements for green democracy: • Robustness to pluralism : The decision procedure is able to cope with conditions
of pluralism: it accepts as input any logically possible combination of individual opinions on the alternatives in X. 4 • Consensus
preservation : The decision procedure exhibits at least a minimal level of democratic responsiveness, in that, if all individuals support the
same alternative, this alternative is collectively chosen. 5 • Green outcomes : The decision procedure always generates a green outcome
in that the chosen alternative is in Y. 6 • The dilemma of green democracy : There exists no decision procedure
that meets the three requirements at once. This result mirrors the ‘democratic trilemma’ introduced
by List (2011 ) – a related conflict between the requirements of robustness to pluralism, basic
majoritarianism and collective rationality. 7 Why does the present dilemma arise? The mechanism behind the conflict
between the three requirements is extremely simple. Assume, for a contradiction, that there is some decision procedure that meets the three
requirements together. What follows from this? Because the procedure is robust to pluralism, it will produce a well-defined outcome for any
combination of individual opinions. Now consider
a situation in which all individuals unanimously support one of
the non-green alternatives (i.e. an alternative outside the ‘green’ set Y ). For consensus preservation, this
unanimously supported alternative must be collectively chosen. But this violates the requirement for
green outcomes, which is a contradiction. The three requirements specified above are far from trivial
for green democracy. Given the empirical fact of value pluralism in today’s liberal democracies, it is
reasonable to expect that a democratic decision procedure should reflect the normative principle of
pluralism – i.e. to accept as many types of opinions as possible. Likewise, for green democracy , there should be
minimal restrictions on the types of opinions admissible to the decision procedure. In other words, unless an opinion is logically
impossible, there is little reason for green democracy to exclude that opinion from consideration in
the first place. The condition of robustness to pluralism is, therefore, justified for green democracy. For
any democratic decision procedure, the decision outcomes it generates should be in line with the opinions of the group of individuals.
‘Majority rules’ is a widely accepted principle for democratic decision making, although it is sometimes criticised
for its possible oppression of the minority voice. On the other hand, the condition of consensus preservation is a more lenient demand that
does not result in ‘tyranny of the minority’. This is because, according to consensus preservation, an alternative becomes the decision outcome
if and only if it is supported by all (instead of only some) of the individuals. Arguably, this responsiveness requirement is reasonable for any kind
of democracy, including green democracy. Finally, the requirement of green outcomes is sensible for green democracy. One
of the chief
motivations behind green political theory is to bring about green social change. As an idea from such theory,
green democracy is supposed to achieve the goal of green social change. For this purpose, it is necessary that green
democracy be, on the basis of certain green imperatives, discriminatory towards different kinds of
decision outcomes. In other words, for green democracy, only outcomes that are consistent with the
green imperatives should be considered valid. It is hard to imagine how green democracy could ever
be green if there is no such bottom-line constraint on the decision outcomes. We must conclude that,
at least in strictly logical terms, at most two of the three requirements can be met simultaneously. This
raises the obvious question of which requirement to relax, and how exactly to relax it. I suggest that the present
problem allows us to map out, and critically assess, different approaches to green democracy. This dilemma also generalises the
previous observations about the
debate.
tension between democracy and environmental sustainability, as in the means-ends
Eco-filtering is undemocratic
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 6-7, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
How to Avoid the Dilemma I: Relaxing Robustness to Pluralism I
have, so far, demanded that green democracy operate
under conditions of pluralism with potentially diverse and conflicting individual opinions. This condition is
not only a normative desideratum (as pointed out) but also responds to an important empirical fact – i.e. the fact of pluralism. After all, people
disagree about the world as a result of having different desires and beliefs that shape their opinions. There
is no reason for
environmental problems to be immune to pluralism. At first sight, the condition of robustness to pluralism seems hard to
relax. However, under different circumstances there may be different levels of pluralism. For example, for groups
or societies that are internally cohesive, individual opinions may be more or less homogeneous; or, even if there are divergent opinions, there
may be democratic mechanisms that reduce the scope and level of disagreement. In these cases, the decision procedure may only need to cope
with a restricted level of pluralism or, more technically, with a restricted domain of inputs. Below
I discuss two major
approaches to domain restrictions, following List (2011) in distinguishing between exogenous and endogenous approaches.
Proposal 1: Exogenous Domain Restrictions This approach rejects any inputs that fail to meet certain conditions,
such as being sufficiently green-minded, from inclusion in the democratic process. More formally, any
individual opinions in support of alternatives that do not fall into the subset of green outcomes, Y, are exogenously barred from admission to
the decision procedure. In other words, green
democracy does not consider any inputs that are, or can be read as,
contrary to or inconsistent with environmental sustainability. One justification for exogenous domain
restrictions, or ‘eco-filtering’, is that green opinions should in principle be prioritised, based on certain normative
theories in environmental ethics such as eco-centrism (e.g. Leopold, 1949; Naess, 1989) and ethical extensionism (e.g. Norton, 1991; Singer,
1976). Eco-centrism, where humans are subject to part of the eco-system, argues
that the environment is intrinsically
valuable. Ethical extensionism argues that non-human entities should be regarded, alongside humans,
as moral beings. On the basis of these normative theories, eco-filtering may be introduced in order to
rule out any inputs which are contrary to the relevant normative requirements. It is easy to see how ecofiltering circumvents the dilemma of green democracy. Suppose there is a mixture of individual opinions, green and non-green. On adopting
eco-filtering, only the green opinions are accepted as admissible inputs into the decision procedure, whereas
the non-green ones are set aside. Thus all inputs that the decision procedure has to cope with are green. As long as the procedure picks one of
these options (such as the majority or plurality winner among the green options) as the collective choice, the condition for green outcomes will
be satisfied. While
eco-filtering can effectively bring about green outcomes without compromising on consensus
preservation, this approach is vulnerable to two criticisms. First, it is possible for the decision procedure so formulated to
degenerate into a virtually undemocratic procedure. Consider a situation in which there is a strict
majority of individuals in the group (e.g. 80 per cent) who personally prefer the non-green alternative, compared
to the minority (e.g. 20 per cent) who prefer the green. The procedure we have constructed would either need to
disenfranchise the 80 per cent non-green-minded individuals here, or somehow (coercively) require them
to change their votes, contrary to their underlying preference. This, in effect, ensures a minority choice prevails,
which is a seemingly undemocratic outcome. Second, eco-filtering reduces green democracy from a decisionmaking procedure to a purely ethical position of the green-minded. Given consensus preservation, in order for green
democracy to work, the domains have to be restricted in such a way that the admissible inputs are identical to the green outcomes. This
renders green democracy a trivial idea since collective decisions are always a corollary of the
condition of green outcomes instead of depending on the contingent combination of individual
opinions. Green democracy is hence reducible to the condition that collective decisions should be green under all circumstances, which is
virtually an ethical position of the green- minded. Although, in this sense, green democracy may be morally justifiable, the decision procedure is
no longer sensitive to the plurality of relevant values (Smith, 2003).
Procedural rights undermine democracy
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 12-14, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Proposal 2: Restricting Permissible Decisions In
addition to restricting the decision power of individuals, the
condition of consensus preservation may also be relaxed by restricting permissible decisions in such a
way that only certain types of collective outputs are produced as valid collective decisions. Instead of
shrinking the influence of individuals’ opinions across the board regardless of what their opinions are, this approach allows
individuals’ opinions to determine collective outcomes if, and only if, the aggregate result of these
opinions is consistent with the condition of green outcomes. In other words, any putative democratic
decisions that are non-green will be overruled. This can take the form of introducing certain rights provisions in constitutions
that are consistent with environmental sustainability. These rights provisions deal with substantive and/or procedural environmental issues.
Such constitutional provisions are at least compatible with some forms of liberal or limited democracy. This is because liberal democracy, in
principle, recognises the need for guaranteeing and recognising certain rights to individuals on an equal basis (Saward, 1996). If a democratic
decision is found inconsistent with any of these rights, the decision will be overruled. These rights, which usually include basic civil rights, are
considered essential (and normatively justified) for the proper functioning of democracy. For this reason, they are not subject to
the control of and may not be removed by the simple majority (Harrison, 1993). These constitu- tional rights can be
amended or removed only by a super majority (e.g. two-thirds) of the group. 8 As a result, these constitutional provisions will remain in place
unless they are rejected by a ‘sufficiently large’ number of individuals. It
is within such a context of liberal or limited
democracy that environmental rights are proposed to resolve the dilemma of green democracy. First
Possibility: Substantive Environmental Rights. One interpretation of substantive environmental rights is as a set of human
rights to an adequate environment for health and well-being. Tim Hayward (2005, pp. 47–8), for example, claims that these environmental
human rights are morally paramount because ‘environmental harms can threaten vital human interests’, and that the lack of rights which stand
substantively against these environmental harms ‘would be a detriment to humans comparable to that protected against by many established
human rights’. In
practice, the link between human rights and the environment was established in some
environmental declarations and agreements. Environmental human rights were broadly conceived in the draft declaration of
27 principles of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights and the Environment of 1994, which states that ‘all persons have the right to a
secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment’ (UNESC, 1994; cited in Elliott, 2004, p. 148). Examples of these principles include ‘rights of
all persons to freedom from pollution and environmental degradation’, ‘the highest attainable standard of health free from environmental
harm’ and ‘safe and healthy food and water adequate to their well- being’ (cited in Hayward, 2005, pp. 29–30). The principles spelled
out in declarations and agreements like the one above are, in turn, incorporated as constitutional
environmental provisions in a number of countries, such as Brazil, Norway, Russia, South Africa and Spain (Birnie et al ., 2009; Ekeli,
2007). These constitutional rights to an adequate environment have also been endorsed in several works on environmental protection and
intergenerational justice (Brandl and Bungert, 1992; Doeleman and Sandler, 1998; Wood, 2004). The rights
in question may be
exercised through judicial review to overrule laws or policies that are in conflict with the stipulations
as in these rights (May, 2006). Second Possibility: Procedural Environmental Rights. Contrary to their substantive
counterparts, procedural environmental rights concern the rights to information, rights of legal redress and rights of participation (Hayward,
2000). These procedural
rights are based on the view that civil participation in public affairs is necessary
for environmental protection and sustainable development (Birnie et al ., 2009). They were conceived in Principle 10 of
the 1992 Rio Declaration: Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level. ... States
shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available (cited in Birnie et al ., 2009, pp. 289–
90). Subsequently, the 1998 Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in
Environmental Matters gave effect to Prin- ciple 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration by establishing rights ‘to information, to participation in
decision-making, and to access to justice in environmental matters’ (Hayward, 2005, p. 57). For exercising procedural environmental rights,
Eckersley (1996) supports an environmental bill of rights that provides citizens with a right to make sure that environmental quality is
maintained up to the standards set by existing environmental laws and regulations. An empirical example of this is the Environmental Bill of
Rights Act enacted by the parliament of Ontario, Canada, in February 1994. This declares that ‘the people of Ontario recognize the inherent
value of the national environment’ and ‘have a right to a healthful environment’ (Environmental Bill of Rights Act, Bill 26, 1993; cited in
Eckersley, 1996, pp. 230–1), which constitutes the substantive aspect of environmental rights. The remain- ing part of the Act focuses on
procedural environmental rights granting to citizens in its province formal rights to: 9 • participate in ministry decisions about the environment
and hold government account- able for these decisions; • access the registry for information; and • appeal against a ministry decision and
review a law or investigate harm to the environment. The institutions of substantive/procedural
environmental rights,
inflexible. They are also vulnerable to the
objection that they compromise democracy by hindering or even precluding democratic majorities
from amending these provisions of rights in the future (Beckman, 2008). This raises the question of
whether these provisions of rights can always accurately reflect varying environmental concerns
across time. Having said that, as long as these constitutional provisions rule out all the possible decision alternatives that are non-green
particularly the constitutional provisions, are, nevertheless, rigid and
(and potentially non-green), by substantive environmental rights, we would be able to achieve green decision outcomes.
*A/T*
-A/T Tech Solves
New tech won’t save us.
Pagett 7/2 (Norman Pagett is a UK-based professional technical writer and communicator, working in
the engineering, building, transport, environmental, health, and food industries, “The End of The Oil
Age” Published in The Collapse of Industrial Civilization July 2, 2015
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/ .nt)
But how can we define an oil age? It has been about 150 years since the first deep oilwells were sunk,
and just over 200 years since the viable steam engine was developed. The two are linked, because the
steam engine made deep drilling of oilwells possible and gave us access to a hundred million years
worth of fossilized sunlight. Perhaps we have not strictly had an oil age, but rather the first and only age
where we enjoy vast amounts of surplus energy that we have extracted from hydrocarbon fuels, of
which oil is the most energy dense. It has brought us material wealth, and the means to indulge in
wholesale killing of each other and all other species. It gave excesses of food and a population that
consumed that food and grew to five or six times the sustainable level of the planet. In the timespan of
human existence, the ascendance of modern industrialised man has been a short flash of light and
heat that has briefly lifted us out of the mire of the middle ages, but at a considerable cost to the
environment. Our mistake has been to think of that elevation as both divine and permanent. That
certainty of permanence explains the mad scramble to come up with ‘alternatives’ and ‘renewables’
in the last decade or two. Something to keep current politicians in office and the masses pacified. It is
important that we accept the seductive indoctrination that prayers will be answered and technology
will continue to deliver all that can be imagined. The majority have come to believe in the economics
of cornucopianism, where wishing for something will make it happen, while ignoring the reality that
everything we have is derived from finite hydrocarbon fuels. If we spend enough money, alternatives
will always be found to sustain our lifestyle. They won’t of course, and the conflicts that have been
fought over oil are proof that they won’t. The pivot of world oil economy is Saudi Arabia, (the concept
of ‘Saudi America’ is too ludicrous for discussion here), but that fantasy land of sand dunes and tall
towers is being encircled by fanatics who know that when the jugular of global oil is cut, the industrial
complexity of the developed west will die.
-A/T Individuals Solve
Individual rights narrow the carrying capacity through the tragedy of the commons
Hardin 98 – author of “The Tragedy of the Commons” [Garrett, Professor of Human Ecology at UC
Santa Barbara, visiting professor at UC Berkeley and University of Chicago, Ph.D. in microbiology from
Stanford, “Extension of The Tragedy of the Commons,” The American Association for the Advancement
of Science, 1998, http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_extension_tragedy_commons.html,
Accessed 7/4/15]//schnall
With Adam Smith's work as a model, I had assumed that the sum of separate ego-serving decisions
would be the best possible one for the population as a whole. But presently I discovered that I agreed
much more with William Forster Lloyd's conclusions, as given in his Oxford lectures of 1833. Citing what happened to
pasturelands left open to many herds of cattle, Lloyd pointed out that, with a resource available to all, the greediest herdsmen would gain--for
a while. But mutual ruin was just around the corner. As
demand grew in step with population (while supply remained fixed), a
time would come when the herdsmen, acting as Smithian individuals, would be trapped by their own
competitive impulses. The unmanaged commons would be ruined by overgrazing; competitive
individualism would be helpless to prevent the social disaster. So must it also be, I realized, with growing human
populations when there is a limit to available resources. The direct psychic gains of parenthood are offset by economic losses channeled
through the whole population. It was so in Lloyd's day; it is even more so today. I rewrote the essay for what I thought would be the last time.
But in a final reading to my family and friends at a stopover on our way to the meeting in Utah, I was encouraged to modify it again. I scribbled
in the changes, most notably the suggestion that the
way to avoid disaster in our global world is through a frank
policy of "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon." Under conditions of scarcity, ego-centered
impulses naturally impose costs on the group, and hence on all its members. A crude example makes the point: I
might like to rob banks, but I am unwilling to allow other citizens to do so. So most of us, acting
together, pass laws that infringe on the individual's freedom to rob banks. For an example closer to home,
think of what is happening to the freedom to make withdrawals from the oceanic bank of fishes. In
1625, the Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius said, "The extent of the ocean is in fact so great that it suffices for any possible use on the part of all
peoples for drawing water, for fishing, for sailing." Now the
once unlimited resources of marine fishes have become
scarce and nations are coming to limit the freedom of their fishers in the commons. From here
onward, complete freedom leads to tragedy. (And still the shibboleth, "the freedom of the seas," interferes with rational
judgment.) My address was a success, and the essay was printed 6 months later, trimmed by half and, presumably, more appealing in its brevity
to a wider audience. The 600 reprints were exhausted in a matter of weeks. Its message is, I think, still true today. Individualism
is
cherished because it produces freedom, but the gift is conditional: The more the population exceeds
the carrying capacity of the environment, the more freedoms must be given up. As cities grow, the freedom to
park is restricted by the number of parking meters or fee-charging garages. Traffic is rigidly controlled. On the global scale, nations are
abandoning not only the freedom of the seas, but the freedom of the atmosphere, which acts as a common sink for aerial garbage. Yet to come
are many other restrictions as the world's population continues to grow. The reality that underlies all the necessary curtailments is always the
same--population growth. Yet the
slightest attempt to limit this freedom is promptly denounced with cries of
Elitism! Big-Brotherism! Despotism! Fascism! and the like. We are slow to mend our ways because ethicists
and philosophers of the past generally did not see that numbers matter. In the language of 20th-century
commentators, traditional thinking was magnificently verbal and deplorably nonnumerate. One of today's cardinal tasks is to marry the
philosopher's literate ethics with the scientist's commitment to numerate analysis. Words are important, but they often require a numerate
cast. What I have realized from reading numerous criticisms of the theory of the commons is that both Lloyd and I were analyzing a subset of
commons--those where "help yourself" or "feel free" attitudes prevail. This was the message European pioneers in North America thought they
had been given by the land they chose to perceive as unpeopled. Even today, laws encouraging private access to public lands for mining,
pasturing, and forestry perpetuate subsidies that support malfunctioning commons. Numeracy
demands that we take account
of the exponential growth of living systems, while acknowledging that resources, when thoroughly understood,
will prove to be definable by numbers that are relatively constant. Of course, under the impact of new science, the
apparent limits of resources may be pushed back for a while; but finally what E. T. Whittaker called "impotence
principles"*--for example, the laws of thermodynamics--will exert their influence on policy. To judge from the critical
literature, the weightiest mistake in my synthesizing paper was the omission of the modifying adjective "unmanaged." In correcting this
omission, one can generalize the practical conclusion in this way: "A 'managed commons' describes either socialism or the privatism of free
enterprise. Either one may work; either one may fail: 'The devil is in the details.' But with an unmanaged commons, you can forget about the
devil:
As overuse of resources reduces carrying capacity, ruin is inevitable. " With this modification firmly in place,
"The Tragedy of the Commons" is well tailored for further interdisciplinary syntheses.
Individuals aren’t enough – we need the government
Lorenzen 14 – Assistant Professor in Department of Sociology, Willamette University [Janet, “Green
Consumption and Social Change: Debates over Responsibility, Private Action, and Access,” Sociology
Compass, August 2014, Wiley, Accessed 7/4/15]//schnall
Conclusion At
the heart of it, each of these debates is exploring the difference between incremental
reform within the current capitalist system versus more systemic changes that fundamentally alter the status
quo. Despite the lure of the consumer economy, select individuals and social groups are able to forge new routines that reduce consumption.
An individual “doing their part” to reduce consumption is an admirable project and tends to include other
forms of political participation. The behavioral wedge argument echoes the sentiments communicated in a study I recently conducted – many
of my informants would prefer large-scale government action on climate change, but while they work toward
achieving that, they are also changing their lifestyles and trying to convince other people to do the same (Lorenzen 2014). At the level of
everyday life, the data suggest that there is no trade-off between pursuing social change through
market mechanisms or support for government policies. However, policies which sidestep
environmental regulation because it is controversial and support consumer incentives instead place a great deal of
responsibility on individuals, responsibility that they cannot possibly fulfill . The benefits of green consumption,
even in the aggregate, have limitations of scale. Systemic change is the only way to engage with issues of production and
social justice like reducing subsidies for oil companies or ensuring collective bargaining rights. And while purchasing
green products may be “voting with your dollars,” there are some changes that individuals simply
cannot purchase in the marketplace.
Individual responses to consumption exacerbate inequality and fail to create change –
consumer lock-in
Lorenzen 14 – Assistant Professor in Department of Sociology, Willamette University [Janet, “Green
Consumption and Social Change: Debates over Responsibility, Private Action, and Access,” Sociology
Compass, August 2014, Wiley, Accessed 7/4/15]//schnall
Debate 3: access versus social justice The
third debate is over how to approach issues of inequality: by increasing
access to green consumption or by addressing fundamental issues of inequality evident in, for example,
agricultural labor laws (Gray 2014) or gentrification (Allen 2011)? The definition of equal access includes government
support for high-quality, greener products, services for consumers, and the infrastructure that
supports them. For example, the city of Portland supports public transportation, tool lending libraries, bike and shoe repair classes,
sewing classes, thrift stores and swap shops, and architectural salvage (Allaway et al. 2012). The conversation about access, however, is
relatively narrow and tends to focus on green technology (Schmidt 2008; Unruh 2002) and fresh, nutritious food (Leete et al. 2012) – these are
discussed in more detail below. This is problematic for a couple of reasons. First, even with government support, access may not significantly
increase. And second, preoccupation with access obscures a more inclusive definition of social justice. Skyrocketing
economic
inequality between the 1970s and today calls into question the feasibility for most Americans to even
participate in market mechanisms like boycotts and buycotts (Friedland et al. 2012). By attempting to consume
our way to change, are we simply reinforcing and reproducing inequalities – creating a kind of green
inequality? For example, “food deserts” are urban neighborhoods or communities where residents lack access to retail outlets with
affordable, nutritious food (Short et al. 2007). Food deserts are part of obesogenic environments – places that
systematically support a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle – which are synonymous with poor neighborhoods where fast
food is prevalent and full-sized grocery stores with affordable produce are rare (Darmon and Drewnowski
2008). In response, trends like urban gardening, roof-top gardening, and urban farming attempt to improve access
to fresh food (Broadway 2009). However, the scholarly focus on food deserts tends to moralize about what poor people should eat
and eclipses: contextual explanations for obesity, lack of access to additional products and services (i.e. hardware stores in urban areas), and
reform of the food system more generally which would also address food insecurity outside of food deserts (Chin 2001; Guthman 2011; Lee
2011; Leete et al. 2012). In addition, local
farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture are typically
located in wealthier areas and “disproportionately serve white and middle to upper income
populations” (Guthman 2008, 392; see also Onyango et al. 2007; Pilgeram 2012; Thompson and Coskuner-Balli 2007). When managers of
these local food outlets were interviewed, they suggested that low-income and/or people of color were less likely to be customers because
they were under-informed about the food system and less likely to value fresh, local food (Guthman 2008). Guthman (2008) concludes
that farmer's markets are “white spaces” that hide racial and economic privilege through discourses
of color blindness (i.e. ignoring differences and thus privilege), universalism (i.e. everyone should want local food; therefore, no
special overtures to low-income or ethnic communities are necessary), and romanticizing an agrarian past (388). In addition,
improving consumer access to organic food does not change the laws under which farm workers are
exploited. Gray (2014) argues that a “comprehensive food ethic” requires reform in labor laws and the right to
collective bargaining for agricultural workers. Future research should be aware that local, organic food is neither politically, nor morally, neutral
(DeLind 2011). When
it comes to green technologies, the goal of increasing diffusion tends to overshadow
a lack of access – often referred to as “consumer lock-in.” The green technology literature focuses on technology
adoption, as well as intrinsic (e.g. social status) and extrinsic (e.g. saving money) rewards for consumers (Coad et al. 2009; Griskevicius et al.
2010; Heffner et al. 2007; Prothero et al. 2010; Sexton and Sexton 2011).13 In the interest of environmentalism, households with limited
financial resources tend to reduce overall consumption, whereas those with financial resources tend to reduce consumption through
purchasing efficient technology (Laidley 2013b; Lorenzen 2012b). The success of incentives to increase the adoption of green technology, like
solar panels, differs by state but primarily benefits homeowners with annual household incomes around $100,000 (Schelly 2014). Those
with the resources to be early adopters of green technology also have the power to influence the
definition of sustainability and frame it as energy and water efficiency (i.e. consuming less through technology) rather than
sufficiency (i.e. reconsidering what people need to live a good life). Yet, studies show that making consumption more
efficient is not adequate for sustainability; consumption as a whole must be reduced (Brannlund et al. 2007;
Dimitropoulos 2007; Greening et al. 2000). In contrast, consumer lock-in happens when consumers must resort to less
sustainable choices, like driving a car, because they lack access to more sustainable choices, like public
transportation (Briceno and Stagl 2006; Jackson and Papathanasopoulou 2008; Mont 2004; Ropke 1999; Sanne 2002; Unruh 2002; see
Holt 2012 on ideological lock-in; for reviews, see Kennedy and Krogman 2008; Shwom and Lorenzen 2012). The literature on sociotechnical
lock-in focuses on how consumers
have little control over the infrastructure in their communities (roads versus
rapid transit) or local technological systems (coal-fired power plants) which limit the widespread use of alternatives (Unruh
2002). Consumers with limited resources are even more likely to be locked into particular consumption
patterns. From this perspective, improving access to green consumption is not enough to address structural
inequalities. Expanding public transportation, improving the efficiency of large-scale energy systems, reforming labor
laws and the industrial food system, and supporting the involvement of local communities in making these changes
requires more than voting with our dollars. Any approach to environmental sustainability which does not include justice as a
central tenet is bound to reinforce inequalities which already exist (Allen 2008; Rees and Westra 2003).
-A/T Democracy Solves
There’s no correlation between democracy and sustainability
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 1-2, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black. – Henry Ford Can
democratic decision-making
secure environmental sustainability? This question matters because of the importance we attach to both democracy and
environmental protection. An influential view from green political theory holds that democracy is good for the environment. Following a
relatively brief period in the 1970s in which the opposite view was prominent (e.g. Hardin, 1968; Heilbroner, 1974; Ophuls, 1977), ‘today we
find almost no one who identifies their own [green political] theory as anti-democratic’ (Meyer, 2006, p. 783). Since
the 1980s, a new
idea, ‘green democracy’, or its variants such as ‘environmental democracy’, ‘ecological democracy’ and ‘biocracy’, has emerged to
capture the purported positive relationship between democracy and the environment (e.g. Ball, 2006;
Dobson, 1996a; Dryzek, 2000; Eckersley, 1996; Jacobs, 1997; Paehlke, 1995). Green democracy is intended to be the
marriage of democracy and environmentalism and, if successful, provides a strong justification for
relying on democratic decision making to protect the environment, and even for trying to address some of the
world’s environmental problems through democratisation. But is green democracy a plausible idea? And how exactly should we understand the
relationship between democracy and environmental sustainability? In this article, I want to draw attention to some basic, yet underappreciated conceptual difficulties in linking democratic decisions with green outcomes. I argue that, if
there is any relationship at
all between the two, it is not a logical and unconditional one, but at most a contingent and highly
conditional one, which relies on a number of additional constraints and assumptions that cannot be
supposed to apply in general. Acknowledging these difficulties, I suggest, enables us to come to a better understanding of what
green democrats must show in order to defend and substantiate their view, and more importantly, in what ways we can secure environmental
sustainability through democratic decision making. Although I use some simple axiomatic arguments to highlight a dilemma of green
democracy, the
contribution of this article lies not so much in these arguments – indeed, I have chosen the simplest
arguments in order to make my point – but rather in their use to map out, and critically review, the recent debate
on green democracy. This in turn illustrates the necessary trade-offs in designing democratic institutions for environmental decision
making more generally. The present enterprise of mapping out the logical space of possible positions on green democracy follows the template
of the ‘democratic trilemma’, as introduced by Christian List (2011). Origin of the Problem The idea of green democracy goes back to the 1970s,
when a list of environmental phenomena such as pollution, exhaustion of natural resources and overpopulation were first perceived as
problems at the collective level. A triggering point was the
‘limit to growth’ thesis introduced by the Club of Rome in 1972. This
thesis contends that the exponential growth of economic activities will, in less than a century, bring about
environmental costs that the Earth can no longer bear, and that hitting this ceiling is a recipe for global disaster. As a
response, there emerged a discourse – survivalism – which attempted to stop humans from taking the
fast track to devastation (Dryzek, 2005). It insisted that democratic decision-making systems lack the
required incentive structure for anyone to voluntarily submit to measures that will tackle the
environmental crisis (Dobson, 2007). Instead, an authoritarian system devised by experts and professionals
that imposed strong and drastic governmental control on human activities would be the only effective
way out (Heilbroner, 1974; Ophuls, 1977). Green democracy disagrees with the authoritarian position based on
survivalism. As environmental concerns became more influential in shaping the political agenda from the 1980s, there emerged a
more optimistic view of resolving the ‘tragedy’ through democracy. Various social movements on
environmental issues that began to take hold in real-world democratic states opened up an opportunity for political parties
to dedicate themselves to the environment. These green political parties developed gradually, from national to
regional and local levels (Eckersley, 2006). They upheld similar political principles, which could often be generalised within the
‘four pillars’ of green politics – namely, ecological responsibility, grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence.
Growing global consensus – democracies cannot adjust to climate change – too slow,
lack of political support, and deadlocked in international agreements doomed to fail
Stehr 13 – Karl Mannheim Professor for Cultural Studies at Zeppelin University [Nico, co-published
Climate and Society, “An Inconvenient Democracy: Knowledge and Climate Change,” Social Science and
Public Policy, February 2013, ResearchGate, Accessed 7/8/15]//schnall
*we do not endorse gendered language
The dispute about climate change, its repercussions for the world, alternative conceptions of (historical and moral)
responsibility and effective ways of responding is of course a profound and highly controversial sociopolitical issue, not in all but in some countries, in particular. The political controversies linked to the nature and the
responses of climate change are of course deeply embedded in contradictory political world views, for
example, the clash between conservative and liberal positions that advocate the withdrawal of the
state from many of the affairs of society or those who see the solution to the thorny issues of climate
change as responses that must come with more and deeper interventions of the state into the market
and social behavior generally. Throughout modern history, one encounters assertions about a withering away
of politics and the replacement of the reign of power of men over men with the authority of scientific
knowledge. Without identifying himself with the position in question, the economist Frank H. Knight (1949:271) refers to a naive
positivistic conception of the relation between scientific knowledge and societal problems that is repeated many times in the context under
discussion:
"Science has demonstrated its capacity to solve problems, and we need only understand that
those of the social order are of the same kind." With the emergence of urgent global environmental
problems a new or a recall of an old vision for the role of scientific knowledge in political governance is
becoming evident. The grand vision for the new political role of scientific knowledge is, in turn,
embedded in a broad disenchantment about the practical efficacy of democracy, the conviction that
the public is unable to comprehend the nature of the problems faced by humankind but also a misconception
about the societal role of knowledge, in particular, scientific knowledge. As a result, convictions expressed about the
fundamental deficiency of democratic governance—in light of profound problems humankind faces and must deal with—
stand in essential contradiction to another form of alarm and strong doubt expressed about threats to
democracy posed by experts, the very experts who warn humankind and policymakers about the immense dangers to modern societies by
global warming. Who and how is one able to engage the authority of experts? The historian Eric Hobsbawm, for
example, is not convinced that political systems that make use of general elections necessarily contribute to guarantee the effective freedom of
the press, or to ensure the rights of citizens and an independent judiciary. Hobsbawm's ([2007) 2008:118) skepticism
towards
democracy, however well intentioned, extends to doubts about the effectiveness of democratic states in
solving complex global problems such as global warming. He thereby joins a growing chorus of critical
voices—within the scientific community and the media—certain that democratic societies are unable
to effectively and timely attack global environmental problems. These observers thereby, implicitly at least, claim for
example that if those who disagree or are voice-less were more enlightened—that is, taking on board the "objective"
framing of options—they would pursue the same course of action. As Isaiah Berlin ([1958] 1969:134) stresses, such state
of affairs "renders it easy for me to conceive of myself as coercing others for their own sake, in their,
not my, interest. I am then claiming that I know what they truly need better than they know it themselves. I
am and all others who share my convictions are at liberty to suppress the liberties of those who are
not what they should be". There also is a parallel justification of "the power of superior (objective) knowledge" and the legitimacy of
decisions supported by and derived from such knowledge. Part of such a justification is for example a specific understanding of the function of
the institution of the state. Emile Durkheim ([1950] 1992:92) refers to this convergence of political legitimacy and knowledge when he remarks:
If the State does no more than receive individual ideas and volitions to find out which are more
widespread and 'in the majority', as it is called, it can bring no contribution truly its own to the life of
society ... The role of the State , in fact, is not to express and sum up the unreflective thoughts of the mass of
the people but to superimpose on this unreflective thought a more considered thought, which therefore
cannot be other than different. Contemporary considerations in the 1920s and 1930s about science and the
adequacy and capacity of democratic governance to cope with both the rapid advance of scientific knowledge, the
accumulation of urgent societal problems and the rapid rise of the complexity of the world, for example, as a result of the
growing size of the population, resonate with today's discussions about the global environmental problems
and the capacity of democracy to adequately respond. Some scientists , not only Marxists, were prepared to
urge a stronger regulation of society in the face of massive social and economic problems
and hence are prepared to sacrifice some democratic rights. Franz Boas (1939:1) for example in defending
science against the onslaught of totalitarianism concedes that some forms of individual liberty have to
be surrendered but liberty within science has to be defended: The restrictions which we accept as unavoidable con-sequences of the
accept, even
inventive genius of mankind and the size of our population do not extend to the domain of thought. Even if we wanted to we could not
maintain absolute individualism in social and economic life, but it is the goal to which we strive in intellectual and spiritual life. It took us a long
time to free thought from the restraints of imposed dogma. This freedom has not by any means been achieved completely. The thoughts of
many are unconsciously or consciously so restrained, and attempts at the forcible repression of thought that run counter to accepted tenets of
belief are still too frequent. A
bigoted majority may be as dangerous to free thought as the heavy hand of a
dictator. For this reason we demand fullest freedom of expression, so that our youth may be prepared for an intelligent use of the privileges
and duties of citizenship. The awkwardness of Boas' position becomes evident once we refer to an earlier manifesto, in which Boas (1938:4) still
emphasized a kind of zero-sum game in the defense of liberty: "any attack on freedom of thought in one sphere, even as non-political a sphere
as theoretical physics, is in effect an attack on democracy itself." For other scientists at the time, for example John Bernal (1939), the need to
regulate and restrict liberty has to be applied to both science and society. Activist
climate scientists, politicians and many other
that the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, the subsequent Cancun and Durban
conferences in December of 2010 and November of 2011 were failures. In its aftermath, a couple of issues both addressing the status
observers agree
of democratic governance in modern societies are intensively debated. The first issue concerns the role of climate science knowledge in
political deliberations about climate policy. Can science tell us what to do?
The strong desire to reach specific policy
outcomes , spelled out by the scientific community lead scientists to at least sympathize with the suspension of
democratic process. The second more implicit issue concerns the relationship between democracy
and time. Is democracy and are societal institutions that are governed by principles of liberty such as the market
place capable of dealing with harms and risks to society that are located in the future? Political theory has
been noticeably silent on the second theme. However, we can glean some insight into these questions via the work of the renowned American
economist and political scientist Charles E. Lindblom who examined the complex interrelations between knowledge, markets and democracy.
These interrelations are just as relevant today, not just because of the serious effects of the recent financial and economic crisis. As is well
known, the supposed
virtues of a free market can easily be questioned. Many thoughtful and informed observers are
widely
accepted solution to financial crises a couple of years ago was in their eyes, fencing in of the market by the state
and society. Policy makers and climate scientists, for example, the Fourth Carbon Budget: Reducing Emissions through the 2020s
(December 2010) of the official UK Committee on Climate Change, offering advice on how to reach ambiguous targets in reducing
emissions during the coming years and decades also express their doubt about the capacity of an "unrestrained"
market to bring about such goals and therefore advocate the return to elements of "central planning" as
skeptical toward unrestrained markets or are self-consciously opposed to the concept of a liberal market. For example, the
interpreted by at least one major newspaper in the UK. The report states with respect to the electricity market of the future in the UK that
Current market arrangements are highly unlikely to deliver required investments in low-carbon
generation. Tendering of long-term contracts (e.g. Low-Carbon Contracts for Differences or Power Purchase Agreements) would reduce
risks which energy companies are not well placed to manage (i.e. carbon price, gas price and volume risk), and would provide confidence that
required investments will be forthcoming at least cost to the consumer. Other mechanisms (e.g. reliance on a carbon price alone or extension
of the current Renewables Obligation) would not ensure the required investment, and would involve unnecessarily high costs and electricity
prices. Given
the need to decarbonise the power sector and the long lead-times for low-carbon
investments, reform of the current market arrangements to include a system of tendered long- term
contracts is an urgent priority. Much less common, however, as Lindblom also stresses, if not taboo, is an open and explicit
expression of doubt about the virtues of democracy, with the obvious exception of certain leaders of decidedly undemocratic nations. In
particular, it has traditionally been the case that scientists rarely have raised serious misgivings in public about democracy as a political system.
But the times are changing. Within the
broad field of climatology and climate policy one is able to discern
grow-ing concerns about the virtues of democracy and a mounting appeal to exceptional
circumstances. The expressed impatience with democracy goes hand-in-hand with the closure of the function IPCC (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change) is seen to serve. Increasingly IPCC no longer considers itself a scientific organization with
the mandate to offer alternative policy options for political discussion and decision but as a body demanding that options for
political action it identifies and champions are realized (cf. Pielke, 2007). It is of course the hope that an appeal to
extraordinary circumstances, that is, a threat to the very existence of humankind"alone might be able to give capacity and palpable energy back
to a failing or hampered [political] will" (Rosanvallon, 2006:191). It is not just the deep divide between knowledge and action that is at issue,
but it is an
inconvenient democracy, which is identified as the culprit holding back action on climate change. As
Mike Hulme has noted, it can be frustrating to learn that citizens have minds of their own and that climate
politics is understood to represent a political field. Leading climate scientists insist that humanity is definitely
at a crossroads. A continuation of present economic and political trends leads to disaster if not a collapse
of human civilization. To create a globally sustainable way of life, we immediately need, in the words of
German climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a "great transformation." What that statement exactly means is vague. Part, if
not at the core of the required great transformation is in the eyes of some climate scientists as well as other scientists who
are part of the great debate about climate change, a new political regime and forms of governance: For example, as
expressed by the Australian scholars David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith (2007) in their book The Climate Change Challenge
and the Failure of Democracy: "We need an authoritarian form of government in order to implement the
scientific consensus on greenhouse gas emissions." Clearly therefore as the two authors (Shearman and Smith, 2007:4)
conclude, "humanity will have to trade its liberty to live as it wishes in favor of a system where survival is paramount." Mark Beeson
(2010:289) agrees with Shearman and Smith's political conclusion and adds, forms of 'good'
authoritarianism, in which environmentally unsustainable forms of behavior are simply forbidden, may become not only
justifiable, but essential for the survival of humanity in anything approaching a civilised form. " The conclusion can only
be, present political conditions in China, especially the strong state attain global significance. The well-known climate researcher James
Hansen adds resignedly, frustrately as well as vaguely, "the democratic process does not work". In The Vanishing Face
of Gaia, James Lovelock (2009) emphasizes that we need to abandon democracy in order to meet the
challenges of climate change head on. We are in a state of war. In order to pull the world out of its
state of lethargy , the equivalent of a global warming "nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech is
urgently needed. Why is a radical political change at any price is deemed essential, and how is it feasible? On the one hand, various
national and global climate policies seem unable to reach their own modest goals, such as those of the
expiring Kyoto agreement. On the other hand, adding more and more robust findings about the causes and consequences of humaninduced climate change, it would seem to be evident that the accomplishments of political action witnessed to date are
incompatible with goals set forth by climate policy advocates, especially with respect to the regional or global
mitigation of greenhouse gases. It is important to also stress that the described diagnosis of the flaws of the failing but
dominant political approach concentrates almost to the exclusion of other forms and conditions of action, on the effect
that governance ought to achieve, namely a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. By focusing on the
effects or goals of political action rather than its conditions, the contentious issue of climate
change is reduced to technical
from a sociopolitical to a technical issue (cf. Radder, 1986). The result of these considerations is the
depoliticization of climate change (and the politicization of climate science). By concentrating on the
effects that require mitigation efforts, the impression is left that the remedies are primarily subject to technological regulation
and adjustments. These factors—including the reduction of a sociopolitical to a technical issue—have led among some prominent
voices in the community of climate scientists and the science of climate policy to a now clearly discernable skeptical
attitude towards democracy. Democracy, an emerging argument holds, is both an inappropriate and ineffective
political system to meet the challenges of the consequences of climate change in politics and society, particularly in the
area of necessary emission reductions. Democratically organized societies are too cumbersome to
avoid climate change; they act neither in a timely fashion nor are they responsive in the necessary
comprehensive manner. The "big decisions" in the case of climate change that have to be taken require a strong state. The
endless debate should end. We have to act—that is the most important message. And that is why
democracy in the eyes of these observers becomes an in-convenient democracy. In another historical context,
decades ago, Friedrich Hayek (1960:25) pointed to the paradoxical development that follows scientific advances; it tends to strengthen that
view that we should "aim at more deliberate and comprehensive control of all human activities". Hayek (1960:25) pessimistically adds, "It is for
this reason that those intoxicated by the advance of knowledge so often become the enemies of freedom". The growing doubts about the
functionality of democracy and the suspicion that human
motives and world-views are unyielding go hand in hand with a
Humanitarian
Forum warns in a 2009 report about 300,000 heat death losses a year and damages of 125 billion U.S. dollars.
further escalation of warnings about the apocalyptic consequences of global warming for humanity. The so-called Global
That these figures when they are used to justify comprehensive global policy action are nothing more than political arithmetic is often easily
overlooked. However, it is not only an
inconvenient democracy that leads civilization down an escalating path
toward a "stone age existence" (Lovelock, 2006:4) of the planet but it will be the iron grip of the climate forces
that should —within a few years or decades—according to some observers eliminate human freedom and agency
and therefore extinguish the social foundations of democracy. Combining both observations leads to the paradoxical
conclusion that it is only through the elimination of democracy that democracy can be saved. Without wanting
to follow in the footsteps of the radical skeptics and alarmist: the emerging trend of emphatic crit-icism of democratic
governance can not simply be ignored or considered as marginal voices to be neglected. In order to
understand the dissatisfaction with democracy among some scholars and experts we must understand the underlying dynamics. First, we are
informed that the
robustness and the con-sensus in the science community about human-caused cli-mate
change has in recent years not only increased in strength but that a number of recent studies point to far
more dramatic and long lasting consequences of global warming than previously thought. In such a
circumstance, how is it possible, many scientists ask, that such evidence does not motivate political action in
societies around the world? Secondly, the still dominant approach to climate policy shows little evidence of success. One result
of the current global recession may well be an unintended reduction of the increase of CO2 emissions.
The worldwide reaction to the economic crisis, however, shows very clearly that governments do not conceive
of a reduction in the growth of their wealth of their populations as a useful mechanism toward a
reduction of emissions. On the contrary, everything is set in motion worldwide aimed at a resumption of
economic growth. Jump-starting the economy means the emissions will rise. Thirdly, the discussion of
options for future climate policies supports the impression that the same failed climate policies must
remain in place and are the only correct approach; it is simply that these policies have to become more effective and "rational". It follows
that international negotiations must lead to an agreement for concrete, but much broader emission reduction targets. Only a superKyoto can still help us. But how the noble goals of a comprehensive emission reduction can be
practically and politically enforced remains in the fog of general declarations of intent and only
sharpens the political skepticism of scientists. Fourth, in the architecture of the reasoning of the impatient critics of
democracy, one notes an inappropriate fusion of nature and society. The uncertainties that the science of the natural processes (climate) claims
to have eliminated, simply transferred to the domain of societal processes. Consensus
on facts, it is argued, should motivate a
consensus on politics. The constitutive social, political and economic uncertainties are treated as minor obstacles that need to be
delimited as soon as possible - of course by a top-down approach. Fifth, the discourse of the impatient scientists privileges hegemonic players
such as world powers, states, transna-tional organizations, and multinational corporations. Participatory strategies are only rarely in evidence.
Likewise, global mitigation has precedence over local adaptation. "Global"
knowledge triumphs over "local" knowledge.
sum of these considerations is the conclusion that democracy itself is inappropriate, that the
slow procedures for implementation and management of specific, policy-relevant scientific
Finally, the
knowledge leads to massive, unknown dangers. The democratic system designed to balance divergent interests
has failed in the face of these threats. According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman all of this is about nothing less
a betrayal of the planet , and for his colleague Thomas Friedman, evidence that the authoritarian state of China presents a model
to be admired and perhaps copied. The growing impatience of prominent climate researchers and the perhaps
still implicit argument for large scale social planning constitutes an implicit embrace of now popular
social theories. We think in this context especially of Jared Diamond's theories on the fate of human societies. Diamond argues
that only those societies have a chance of survival which practice sustainable lifestyles. Climate researchers
than
have evidently been impressed by Diamond's deterministic social theory. How-ever, they have drawn the wrong conclusion, namely that only
authoritarian political states guided by scientists make effective and correct decisions on the climate issue. History teaches us that the opposite
is the case. Therefore, today's China cannot serve as a model. Climate policy must be compatible with democracy; otherwise the threat to civilization will be much more than just changes to our physical environment (cf. Baber and Barlett, 2005; Dryzek and Stevenson, 2011). In short, the
alternative to the abolition of democratic governance as the effective response to the societal threats that likely come with climate change is
more democracy and the worldwide empowerment and enhancement of knowledgeability of individuals, groups and movements that work on
environmental issues.
Democracy fails – authoritarianism is the only solution
Veith 15 – Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College and Director of the Cranach
Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary [Gene, “Totalitarianism reconsidered,” Patheos, April 17,
2015, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2015/04/totalitarianism-reconsidered, Accessed
7/7/15]//schnall
Some intellectuals are arguing that democracy cannot effectively address climate change–and, indeed,
makes it worse–and that what we need to save the planet is to eliminate political freedom and to turn
towards a totalitarian government. Others don’t go quite that far, but they hold up as the role model for effective government
the People’s Republic of China. (Never mind that China has the worst pollution on the planet!) After the jump, an excerpt that demonstrates
this from a study of the “Sustainability” ideology by the conservative academic organization the National Association of Scholars. From the
National Association of Scholars, Sustaintability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism: David Shearman
is an Australian-based
leading advocate of sustainability and an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Adelaide,
South Australia. Writing in the book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy with his colleague Joseph Wayne Smith,
Shearman comments, Ecological services have little chance of surviving without tight control by law of
human activity affecting the environment. This option would be thought of as totalitarian by today’s free societies, but this
may be the only solution for us. Self-government inevitably falls short, he claims, as men refuse to
recognize and prioritize the common good. In fact, democracy proves the worst of all possible forms
of government: The institution of liberal democracy fails to adequately address the challenges of the environmental crisis, and by giving
an even greater license to greed and individual self-satisfaction, it is potentially a more environmentally destructive social system than most
other systems under which humans have lived. Plato
and Aristotle, along with America’s founding fathers, might
share Shearman’s distaste for a pure democratic regime. Plato preferred a natural, virtuous aristocracy while Aristotle
praised a polity for its stability; the American founders aimed at a representative republic meant to “refine and
enlarge the public view,” as James Madison expressed it in “Federalist No. 10.” But the proper regime for a
“sustainable” society, Shearman and Smith argue, is a totalitarian dictatorship. A
sustainablegovernment is autocratic and clamps down on that dangerous phenomenon, human freedom, and the
opportunity for self-government. The model, Shearman suggests in a blog post, is China: The People’s Republic of China may hold the key to
innovative measures that can both arrest the expected surge in emissions from developing countries and provide developed nations with the
means to alternative energy. China curbs individual freedom in favour of communal need. The State will implement those measures seen to be
in the common good. … Crises call for fast and sure action and an educated Chinese leadership could deliver. Shearman, to be sure, is a fringe
figure. We do not know of other sustainability advocates, at least those who have advanced degrees and reside in academia, who go so far
towards explicit advocacy of totalitarian government as the solution to climate change. But Shearman
isn’t necessarily that far
from the mainstream. Consider New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas L. Friedman. In a series of
columns in 2009 and 2010, Friedman argued that the Communist Party in China really does offer an attractive model for addressing global
warming. In one column he complained that skeptics in the U.S. had demonized the issue of climate change and had caused the Senate to
“scuttle” an energy-climate bill. “While
American Republicans were turning climate change into a wedge issue,
the Chinese Communists were turning it into a work issue,” Friedman wrote. He quoted the chairwoman of the U.S.
China Collaboration on Clean Energy who proudly explained, “There is really no debate about climate change in China.” Friedman also appeared
on Meet the Press on May 23, 2010, saying that he “fantasized” about making America “China for a day,” so that we could “authorize the right
solutions” on “everything from the economy to the environment.” He then backed away, saying that “I don’t want to be China for a second.”
But, “OK, I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness.” The
think tank Reason labeled
Friedman’s view “authoritarian envy.” And that is probably what we should take away from both
Shearman’s and Friedman’s expostulations. They and many other global warming alarmists are
frustrated that the broader public and the duly elected legislatures in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and other
nations have not embraced their cause. They imagine—with rather different degrees of self-awareness—that
bypassing the structures of self-governance in favor of coercive authority would provide the
“answers” they seek.
The democratic capitalist state will never be sustainable
Melo-Escrihuela 15 – Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea [Carme, “Should
ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state?,” Environmental Values, pp. 4-5, June 2015,
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/papers/Melo-Escrihuela.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
The above arguments illustrate a common position within green political theory: that there is a
mutually reinforcing relationship between the consolidation of green states and the articulation of
ecological citizenship. Too often some environmental thinkers assume that an eco-state will implement
the conditions needed to strengthen ecological citizenship (which, in turn, will help maintain the green state itself).
This stance is premised on two ideas: first, that a more participatory and reflexive model of democracy, deliberative
democracy, will lead to sustainable outcomes, and, among these , an environmentally en lightened citizenry; second,
that ecological modernisation will tame capitalism and , with this, some obstacles to ecological
citizenship will be removed. The present contribution challenges this theoretical position (and the two premises it rests
upon) not only because it constitutes circular reasoning but mainly because it is a form of wishful thinking . My
purpose is to suggest instead that ecological citizenship and the green state do not need each other an d, what is more, that a green state
may be detrimental for the practice of ecological citizenship. With this, I also intend to question a trend
in green political theory which views the state as a solution, and no longer as a problem, and therefore as a
privileged actor in environmental politics. I find this to be a very optimistic perspective, a pragmatic posture,
grounded on the premise that states are the “basic building blocks of the global order” (Opello and Rosow, 2004 : 2 ) 3 . Yet this paper does not
dive into the reasons explaining the pragmatist - statist turn in green politics, nor does it seek to reject or counteract those arguments. Rather,
my intention is to confront the assumptions that a green state will be more conducive to ecological
citizenship and that it is possible to reform the state along green lines within a capitalist economy. The
critique of capitalism connects the two aspects of my argumentation, since my position is informed by the view that both ecological citizenship
and environmental politics require opposition to capitalist relations.
Democracy doesn’t solve – status quo proves
Melo-Escrihuela 15 – Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea [Carme, “Should
ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state?,” Environmental Values, pp. 13-15, June 2015,
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/papers/Melo-Escrihuela.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
Notwithstanding, these are contingent claims. An
open procedure such as democracy cannot guarantee any given
outcome, green or not. The thing is that contingency is common to all normative conceptions of democracy, not just environmental
ones , although green political theorists have attempted to establish a non - contingent connection
between the two. Yet as Mathew Humphrey argues “the positing on a necessary relationship between
green politics and democracy is mistaken” and implausible (2004: 116). In hi s view, “[i]f we accept that there are good
reason s to hold green values... and also good reasons to be a democrat...then the search for a non - contingent, watertight and necessary
connection between ecology and democracy becomes redundant” (2004: 125). So, according to Humphrew, all that is left for ecologists is to
embrace contingency and “continue to make the case for green values”, assuming that green arguments are good arguments and accepting the
force of the better argument (2004: 125). If we
focus more specifically on deliberative democracy, the conclusion is
similar: there is no definitive evidence that debate and participation will produce changes in values,
preferences and behaviors or bring about sustainable and risk - averse policies , as noted by many
scholars ( Backstrand et. al, 2010; Baber and Barlett, 2005 ; Smith, 2003 ; Fischer, 2000 ). Deliberation has the potential to produce the
transformation of non - ecological preferences through debate, but it cannot guarantee per se a better quality of social environmental decisions. In fact, it can also lead to unsustainable and unfair arrangements. Nevertheless a
discursive environment provides space for different conceptions of sustainable development to emerge and be compared by citizens. So even if
the assumption that deliberative democracy will deliver environmental ends is just this, an assumption, it could still be argued that the
openness and inclusiveness of the communication process would be a good platform to develop ecological citizenship. It is possible to conclude
then that in a deliberative green state , ecological citizenship is conceived as the assumption of responsibility for the impact that risk generating activities have on others. In the course of debate citizens internalise their environmental duties by considering the interests of
groups often excluded from political processes and reflecting upon their own beliefs. Hence the
privileged space for the making
of citizenship is the democratic process and a connection is made between political participation and environmental
sustainability . This view corresponds with the traditional notion of citizenship, where this is mainly exercised in the public sphere and
concerned with activities such as reporting, condemning, lobbying , claiming , debating (Phillips, 2005) . However,
although being
constitutive of ecological citizenship’s aim to exemplify sustainability and oppose injustice, this
understanding does not fully capture the nature of ecological citizenship responsibility and excludes
other domains where this can be enacted. Even a prominent scholar of environmental deliberative democracy like Graham
Smith acknowledges that “[t]he cultivation and expression of green citizenship needs to be a broader project than simply institutionalising
deliberation within the political process” (2005: 274). Ecological citizenship is undeniably related to democratic politics, but it is also a form of
lifestyle politics. I t involves personal behaviors, quotidian habits, everyday interactions with nature by means of walking, gardening,
consuming, travelling and working, through which citizenship duties are expressed. This dimension, neglected by Eckersley, embraces, but al so
transcends, democratic deliberation and the political public sphere in the strict sense. The practice of ecological citizenship seeks the reduction
of the environmental impact of daily acts. This embodies the aim of living sustainably. And despite the vagueness of this purpose , and the
many problems it raises , I believe that it
certainly would require a significant decrease in levels of production and
consumption (beyond techno-fixes) 5 . Yet we should not forget that individual acts are shaped by social organisations . When
analyzing the lives led by green activits, David Horton highlights that “green infrastructures remain insufficiently
developed to make the living out of green projects a wider goal ...The behaviors [activists] are modeling are
unattainable to the majority because the structures in which they depend are insufficiently
developed” (2006: 143 - 144). To me this means that ecological citizenship demands alternative systems of provision of goods that render
possible sustainable forms of living and give cohesion to individual ecological citizenship behaviors (Author, 2008) . Of course this implies
debates about how to create and organise different socio-natural relations, so there is a deliberative dimension in these practices too. But
beyond participation in democratic arrangements and deliberative politics, what facilitates ecological citizenship activity is the infrastructure
that enables individuals to learn about socio - environmental relations and act as ecological citizens 6 . There is some evidence that the
experience of getting involved in the creation of this infrastructure contributes to ecological citizenship learning , and not just the other way
round ( Hards, 2011; Travaline and Hunold, 2010; Horton, 2006; Seyfang, 2009 , 2005 ; Smith, 2005 ; Phillips, 2005; Reid and Taylor, 2000 ) . As
Sarah Hards writes , “[o]ften the learning of new valu es occurs not through explicit teaching, but through interaction [with others engaged in
similar practices] and contextual experience” (2011 : 34)
Capitalism precludes democratic sustainability
Melo-Escrihuela 15 – Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea [Carme, “Should
ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state?,” Environmental Values, pp. 16-19, June 2015,
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/papers/Melo-Escrihuela.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
The disturbing effects of capitalism So far we have established that the green state has a strong potential to develop ecological citizenship ,
albeit with a rather narrow focus on its deliberative dimension . However, recalling
the ideas about how a green state is to
emerge, it is my intention to argue that this potential may not be fully realised. The apparently productive
relationship between ecological citiecological democracy and the green state may be disrupted by the
entry of capitalism into the picture. A green state will emerge from a reform of liberal democratic institutions and procedures.
Such reform accepts, rather than rejects, what are considered to be the positive achievements of liberalism so that they can be shaped in an
ecological direction. Similarly, a
green state adopts ecological modernisation, which is based on the idea that
economic growth and sustainability can be made compatible, thus being a revised version of
capitalism. And this (a postliberal ecological democracy and an ecologically modernised economy) may be an obstacle for the
values and objectives of the green state - promising for the promotion of ecological citizenship - to
unfold. I. Capitalism and (post)liberal democracy In order to further elaborate these claim s , let me start with democracy (and then I wi ll
concentrate on ecological moderni sation ) . To assist me in this task, John Dryzek’s analysis of different deliberative democratic models is
insightful. Dryzek alludes to a constitutionalist trend that seeks to instantiate deliberative processes within li beral democratic institutions. T his
position manifests itself in at least three different - but com patible - approaches. The first one consists in using deliberative democracy’s
guiding principles to justify the existence of individual rights, particularly those rights needed for the exercise of democratic citizenship, and
thus required to sustain deliberative democracy itself. A second perspective seeks to use liberal constitutions to create a public space for
deliberation. In this view , constitutions shou ld prescribe that one of the new functions and goals for the state is to promote deliberative
democracy, and establish new rules and mechanisms that consolidate deliberation. Finally, the constitution itself can be made through a
deliberative process (Dryz ek, 2000: 10 - 17; Dryzek, 1994: 190). It is now appropriate to reintroduce Eckersley’s conception of deliberative
ecological democracy to make a few remarks. First, t he use of constitutional provisions to secure political communication and implement
ecolog ical democracy defines, as we have seen, Eckersley’s theory of the green state. T he constitution establishes the state’s responsibilities,
functions and objectives. And one of these objectives is precisely to facilitate ecological democracy. Second, delibe rative democracy is used to
justify rights of participation and political equality, that is, those rights conceived as a precondition to maintain deliberative democracy itself. In
other words, the rights and obligations of ecological citizens are defined i n deliberative terms: they are realised within the deliberative process
and aim at articulating ecological democracy. So the constitution (also made through a deliberative process) is used to implement deliberative
mechanisms and ecological citizenship rights that make a green and deliberative democracy possible. This approach, I suggest, shows a certain
similarity to the constitutionalist trend mentioned above. If we believe Dryzek, then attempts to implement deliberative democracy through
constituti onal means may result in the assimilation of deliberative democracy by liberalism. In
a capitalist economy, the health
of liberal democracy relies on economic growth so that social and political inequalities remain hidden.
If inequalities become more visible, social instability arises and threatens the very existence of liberal
democracy. T he fear of this scenario renders liberal democracies “ imprisoned by the market’s growth
imperative” ( Dryzek, 1994: 180). Dryzek (2000) introduces a distinction between discursive democracy and deliberative democracy,
where deliberative democracy corresponds with liberal constitutionalism – earlier defined - while discursive democracy questions liberal
democracy and the political economy of liberalism. This more oppositional tendency concentrates on spaces alternative to state institutions
where deliberative democracy can be articulated, such as civil society, the public sphere and the workplace. Yet a double focus on civil society
and the public sphere are not enough – Dryzek argues - to confront liberalism and to demarcate discursive democracy from liberal
constitutionalism. The celebration of civil society and the public sphere is common amongst liberal scholars of deliberative democracy (Dryzek,
2000: 55), and both civil society and the public sphere have a liberal reading in the history of political thought (Habermas, 1996 , 1989 ;
Calhoun, 1992; Fraser, 1992) . In fact, scholars of deliberative constitutionalism believe that one of the main purposes of the constitution is to
establish the necessary means for a public sphere for debate to be maintained (Dryzek, 2000).
Green democracy is unsustainable – ecological modernization and consumption
Melo-Escrihuela 15 – Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, South Korea [Carme, “Should
ecological citizenship advocates praise the green state?,” Environmental Values, pp. 19-25, June 2015,
http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/papers/Melo-Escrihuela.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
II.Capitalism and ecological modernisation In brief , the
green state ’ s potential to facilitate ecological citizenship is
compromised because ecological democracy shall be undermined by state imperatives, particularly by
accumulation imperative. Neo - Marxist analyses of Jürgen Habermas ( 1976 ) and Claus Offe (1975, 1984) highlight that
in advanced capitalist societies the state has to create and maintain the conditions appropriate for
capital accumulation, since the power and capabilities of the state depend upon the continuity of the
process of private capital accumulation. This is due, mainly, to state’s dependence on tax revenues. Ignoring this dependency
upon accumulation would compromise state’s capacities. But the state cannot organise the economic system as it wishes, because the state’s
decision - making competences depend upon the survival of the process of accumulation. Therefore, maintaining
the conditions
which guarantee the accumulation process becomes a state imperative. This leads us to the final aspect of
my critique of the green state : ecological modernisation. E ckersley would reply to th e sort s of argument s illustrated above by
stress ing that strong ecological modernisation allows the green state to avoid the contradictions of capitalism. This view is generally shared by
theor i s ts of the ecological state , for instance, Christoff ( 2005 ) and Meadowcroft ( 2005 a ) , who would see the kind of objections outlined in
Dryzek’s analysis of state - economy relations – earlier summaris ed – as rather anachronistic or outdated. But, can
strong ecological
modernisation help overcoming these criticisms? Is ecological moder nisation a true way out of the
contradictions of capitalism? First, it should be noted that a green state committed to strong ecological
modernisation does not avoid criticisms levied at weak ecological modernisation ’s stress on
production and techno-fixes. As Stewart Davidson (2012) explains, the difference between weak and strong ecological
modernisation has been overemphasized. Although not primarily focused on the implementation of green technologies (like weak accounts),
Davidson argues that strong
fo rms of ecological modernisation, such as that advocated by Eckersley, still depend on
technological innovation. However, if the green state is to act as an agent for environmental change,
it must be freed from the imperative of maintaining accumulation. This would require a radical
reorganisation of the economy in a way proponents of ecological modernisation are not willing to
accept. Instead, ecological modernisation theory reinforces those institutions responsible for
environmental degradation. What is more, Davidson suggests that some improvements seen as illustrations of the
decoupling theory are in fact the result of displacing polluting practices to developing countries, and
not of an overall decrease of environmentally damaging technologies. I am sympathetic to Davidson’s view that a
green state informed by reflexive or strong ecological modernisation does not guarantee a shift
towards a more ecological capitalism. If Neo - Marxist state theory is correct, any organisation declaring itself an
agent for sustainability should acknowledge that environmental goals are in contradiction with
capitalism’s requirement of economic growth. Yet it is not clear enough whether this is the case of Eckersley’s green state.
She seems to have a rather obscure view of the relationship between the green state and capitalism. On the one hand, she regards capitalism
as one of the main obstacle s to a green state. I ndeed, she suggests that “any deeper greening of states ... presupposes the allev iation of the
systemic pressures arising from the development of global capitalism” (2004: 51). On the other hand, she concedes that ecological
modernisation is a way to reconcile capitalism and the economic growth imperative with environmental protection. In fact, we
are told
that ecological modernisation is a strategy for the competition state to adapt itself to demands of
greater competitiveness by global markets and neoliberalism (Eckersley, 2004: 69). Thus, if ecological modernisation
does not replace capitalism but offers a way to accommodate the sustainable development discourse with in a capitalist system , it can be
argued that the
green state is still a capitalist state, despite Eckersley’s assertion that “a deep and lasting
resolution to ecological problems can...only be anticipated in a postcapitalist economy...” (2004: 81). This is
what Eckersley herself seems to be accepting when she holds that a green democratic state would still rely on “private capital accumulation to
fund, via taxation, its progr am s and in this sense would still be a capitalist state ” (2004: 83). T he truth is , to put it with Davidson, that
despite claims made by proponents of the “ecologically modernizing state”, “the accumulation
imperative remains insuperable from an ecological point of view” ( 2012: 48 ). There is another important point in
relation to this paper’s topic: since the green state relies on technological innovation and the production of clean
technologies that enable environmentally friendly consumer choices, it may be promoting a green form of consumerism
rather than ecological citizenship based on practices that question consumer rates. As Davidson (2012) stresses, the
ecological modernisation agenda does not include the issue of downsizing or limiting consumption.
Consequently, in the context of ecological modernisation, the socio - economic dimension of ecological citizenship may
be reduced to following the right market signals and making the right choices in the marketplace, that is, to a form of ecological
consumerism that reinforces the status quo. In my view, the duties of ecological citizens imply reducing consumption,
rejecting consumer ism and prioritising the common good over private self-interest. And these attitudes, I believe, stand in opposition to
capitalism and the mass consumption society. As Graham Smith notes, the
profit-oriented rationale of a capitalist
economy “overrides environmental considerations” and thus is in conflict with eco logical citizenship (2005: 274). The
argument I wish to advance is that a green state characterised by the implementation of an ecological democracy and
ecological modernisation cannot counterbalance the pitfalls of liberal democracy and capitalism, and thus, it is not the most
appropriate locus for the cultivation of ecological citizenship. This suggests that we should focus on other spaces such as the community, the
workplace or transnational civil society where anti - capitalistic strategies may be pursued, and where the seed for the cultivation of ecological
democracy and citizenship may better flourish. In this sense Dryzek’s ideas, once more, may be useful (although he is more welcoming of the
state and of discursive notions of citizenship and politics than the position I seek to defend in this manuscript).
A democratic system fails – no capabilities to intervene
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 100-101, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
1. Introduction In
most industrializing and industrialized countries many environmental policy and
governance instruments are aimed at emission control of individual point sources. The environmental
licenses/permits, emission standards and environmental impact assessments (EIA) of new industrial investments are some of the most
successful instruments in regulating emissions of polluting industries. Through these instruments companies that do not behave according to
the set emission requirements face sanctions, ultimately resulting in losing their license to produce.
But for a region, in the end it
is the total amount of emissions of all polluting sources and the total resulting ambient environmental
quality that counts. An increasing number of countries, including China, faces problems in protecting and
safeguarding regional environmental quality, as the sum of individual polluting companies that produce
according to emissions requirements might result in ambient environmental quality above standards. Individual
polluters can then not be held responsible for the overall deterioration of
ambient ( air
and water )
quality in a region, and governmental authorities often lack instruments to intervene. Since 2007 the
Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) has developed and implemented a new and unprecedented
strategy to cope with this problem of ambient environmental quality exceeding ambient
environmental standards in a specific region. If an administrative region (usually a county) does not fulfill environmental
quality requirements as formulated in prevailing standards or not enforce EIA law or other pollution prevention and control regulations, all new
EIA application documents (including EIA reports, statements and registration forms) on (expanding or new) economic projects with significant
environmental impacts in that region are not taken into consideration by the relevant authorities (often the MEP or a provincial Environmental
Protection Bureau (EPB)). That means that these new
investment projects will not be judged against the pertaining
emissions standards and construction of new or expanding of existing economic activities cannot start
(as no EIA will be handed out, a requirement for starting a construction project with potentially severe environmental impact). In China this
new policy is called Environmental Impact Assessment Restriction Targeting Regions (EIARTR, Quyu
Xianpi). Such a suspension of approval of EIA in a region puts significant pressure on local authorities prioritizing
local economic development. Lifting the restriction to take EIA into consideration is put conditional to
improvement of local ambient (air and/or water) quality or recovery from severe environmental damage.
Democracies fail, but authoritarianism is effective – EIARTR
Zhu et al 15 – Associate Professor at Renmin University of China Law School [Xiao, Ph.D. in Law,
Secretary-General of Environment and Resources Law Research Association, Beijing Law Society,
“Regional restrictions on environmental impact assessment approval in China: the legitimacy of
environmental authoritarianism,” Journal of Cleaner Production, pp. 101-102, January 9, 2015, Wiley,
Accessed 7/10/15]//schnall
The idea that a close correlation exists between better environmental decision-making and more
public participation and in- formation disclosure is not restricted to EIA. In comparative environmental politics a
long tradition exist of studying more generally the relation between regime type and the performance of environmental governance (e.g.
Josephson, 2004; Buitenzorgy and Mol, 2010; Gilley, 2012 ). Quite some
scholars have argued, with theoretical and empirical
democratic political systems show a better performance in environmental governance
compared to less democratic systems, due to the former's high information flow and meaningful public participation in policy
making processes ( Payne, 1995; Barrett and Graddy, 2000; Farzin and Bond, 2006; Winslow, 2005; Humphrey, 2007 ). More recently,
under conditions of a more severe environmental crisis, the better environmental performance of
liberal democracies has come under attack. Some scholars have argued that politicians in liberal
arguments, that
democracies focus on short-term developmental goals at the cost of solving long term environmental
problems such as climate change (e.g. Midlarsky, 1998; Shearman and Smith, 2007 ). Others have asserted that public
participation can endanger sound envionmental [sic] policy making when lay people lack the
capability to handle complex information and technical knowledge ( Lawrence, 2003 ), and that transparency is not
always facilitating better environmental performance ( Mol, 2010; Gupta and Mason, 2014 ). The concept of environmental
authoritarianism was recently coined to bring together these doubts on democracy as a favorable and
capable environmental decision-making and governance model ( Shearman and Smith, 2007; Beeson, 2010 ). 1
Authoritarian governance might be the result or consequence of severe environmental degradation as
‘political elites come to privilege regime maintenance and internal stability over political
liberalization.’ ( Beeson, 2010 : 276). By the same token, a central undemocratic state may prove to be essential
for major responses to the growing, complex and global environmental challenges. Especially in East and
Southeast Asia, where the authoritarian tradition is deeply embedded in the cultural, social and political systems, environmental
authoritarianism might be more likely to prevail, to form an (effective) answer to mounting
environmental challenges. Beeson (2010) uses China's birth control policy as an example how authoritarian rule has contributed to
environmental mitigation. But Eaton and Kostka (2014) found that the high turnover of Chinese local leaders, which is the authoritarian way of
China's Communist Party to reward local cadres for faithful implementation of central policies, hinders stringent environmental policy outcome
as officials with a short time horizon follow a quick and low quality implementation approach. The
debate on environmental
authoritarianism versus environmental democracy has mostly taken place at the level of political
systems. However, here it will be used at a much more tangible level of a concrete policy instrument
recently developed and applied in China, the so-called EIARTR. As will be illustrated and argued below, China's EIARTR can be
interpreted as an environmental policy modification that moves away from the long- time structural affinity
within EIA between environmental interest representation and democracy, and towards the affinity between environmental interest
representation and authoritarian rule.
-A/T Eco-Technocracy
Eco-technocracy fails – elites co-opted by money
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 10-11, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Second Possibility: Eco-technocracy. An
alternative to eco-authoritarianism is eco- technocracy. Unlike ecoauthoritarianism, eco-technocracy, instead of directly prescribing and imposing a green alternative as the
collective outcome, grants the decision power primarily to elites, experts and professionals. A green
collective decision is available if, and only if, these exclusive technocrats submit green opinions (or
judgements) as inputs to the decision procedure. William Ophuls (1977, p. 159) perceives environmental decisions as
significantly involving technology, and ‘more technology means greater complexity and greater need for knowledge and technical expertise’.
Thus, ‘the average citizen will not be able to make a constructive contribution to decision making, so that “experts” and “authorities” will
perform rule’ (Ophuls, 1977, p. 159). He goes on to assert that the ecologically complex steady-state society needs to be ruled by ‘a class of
ecological mandarins who possess the esoteric knowledge’, and ‘only those possessing the ecological and other competencies necessary to
make prudent decisions [are] allowed full participation in the political process’ (Ophuls, 1977, p. 163). He acknowledges that such a society is
less democratic and more oligarchic than today’s industrial societies. In practice, eco-technocracy can be understood as a set of institutions for
environ- mental decision making, emphasising the rational management of the environment based on the best available expertise for the sake
of the public interest. Examples of eco- technocratic institutions include resource management bureaucracies with individuals possessing
relevant scientific and professional expertise, pollution control agencies whose authority of claims rests on scientific and professional expertise,
and expert advisory commissions in which experts provide advice on environmental matters (Dryzek, 2005). Like
ecoauthoritarianism, eco-technocracy faces significant challenges regarding its insensitivity to pluralistic
environmental values and opinions, even if in principle it can produce green collective decisions. One criticism concerns
the prominent methodology used in technocratic decision making – i.e. cost-benefit analysis. In decision
making, cost-benefit analysis assesses a decision alternative by comparing its expected costs and
benefits in monetary terms; if its benefits outweigh the costs, then it should be chosen. Nevertheless, such
an analysis assumes that decision making should be based only on maximising benefits (in monetary
terms). It overlooks the importance of other values and principles in assessing decision alternatives.
Bias towards a single value as such – i.e. efficiency – is contrary to the condition of pluralism (Smith, 2003).
-A/T Eco-Libertarianism
Eco-libertarianism fails – no collective responsibility
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 11-12, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Third Possibility: Eco-libertarianism. Apart
from eco-authoritarianism, Garrett Hardin (1968) also proposes resource
privatisation as an alternative solution to the ‘tragedy of the commons’. It means that individuals are incentivised
through the assignment of clearly defined property rights to manage their privately owned resources and to prevent over-consumption. This
partly captures the idea of eco-libertarianism, understood broadly as relying on free market mechanisms for achieving environmental ends.
Eco-libertarianism does not, in the first place, recognise the need to make collective decisions on
environmental matters through democratic, authoritarian or technocratic means; such decisions
should, instead, be left to the market. For example, through resource privatisation, decision power over
the resources concerned is transferred from the people to the relevant owner(s) of the resources,
rendering collective decision making on these resources no longer necessary. Anderson and Leal (2001) argue for
‘a system of well-specified property rights to natural and environmental resources’ in which these rights can be ‘held by individuals, corporations, non-profit environmental groups, or communal groups’. By so doing, ‘a discipline is imposed on resource users because the wealth of the
property owner is at stake if bad decisions are made’ (Anderson and Leal, 2001, p. 4). They claim that ‘market processes can encourage good
resource stewardship’, and that it is only ‘when rights are unclear and not well enforced that over-exploitation occurs’ (Anderson and Leal,
2001, p. 209). This
implies that certain alternatives – namely green alternatives – will be chosen by the holder(s) of
rights to the resources when making decisions on the corresponding resources. A collection of rights-holders
making decisions in this manner can then bring about certain desirable decisions, such as green outcomes, at the aggregate level. An example
of resource privatisation is the privatisation of land by the Nature Conservancy, the largest environmental group in the US, which obtains
parcels of land and decides how the land should be used according to certain ecological evaluation standards (Anderson and Leal, 2001, pp. 4–
5). Apart from privatisation, eco-libertarianism can also take the form of government- regulated markets and economic incentives aimed at
inducing individual green behaviour. Notice that collective decision making is still not necessary ; green outcomes at the
aggregate level, if any, are possible if a collection of individuals decides to take up behaviour that is consistent with green alternatives.
Examples include pollution charging, tradable pollution permits, product charges and subsidies to reward environmental behaviour (Roberts,
2011, pp. 210–5). It remains
an open question, however, whether resource privatisation and economic
incentives are better than democratic decision making at securing green outcomes. In principle, ecolibertarianism does not rule out the possibility of environmental destruction, as long as people are
willing and able to pay for the rights and/or freedom to exercise non-green behaviour.
-A/T Pragmatism
Environmental pragmatism is bad for the environment
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 14-15, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
How to Avoid the Dilemma III: Relaxing Green Outcomes The
third approach to avoiding the dilemma of green
democracy is to relax green outcomes. This output condition is a reasonable stipulation if we demand that the outcomes from
the decision procedure fulfil the fundamental desideratum of environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, it may be unrealistic to
expect a democratic procedure to guarantee green outcomes across different circumstances. There are
broadly two ways in which we might relax green outcomes. The first would be to give up green democracy altogether,
or, slightly better, to opt for a ‘pragmatic’ form of green democracy. The second would be to weaken the ‘deterministic’ or
‘rigid’ view of green democracy presupposed by the basic definition of ‘green outcomes’. The
requirement that the decision procedure should always generate a green outcome would then be
replaced by the weaker requirement that the decision procedure should merely have a high, or sufficiently
high , probability of generating a green outcome. Both reformulated models of green democracy can be realised as different
forms of collective action in environmental politics as well as innovative mechanisms for environmental decision making. 1 First Possibility:
Pragmatic (Green) Democracy The condition of green outcomes can be relaxed by ‘simplifying’ green democracy to pragmatic (green)
democracy. In
its simplest form, pragmatic (green) democracy does not assume any particular outcome,
or truth, it seeks to pursue from democracy, for example, green outcomes. Dryzek (2005, pp. 99–100) understands this
form of democracy as ‘signifying a practical, realistic orientation to the world, the opposite of starry-eyed idealism’ and a ‘flexible process
involving many voices, and cooperation across a plurality of perspectives’. In
other words, pragmatic (green) democracy
focuses on its procedural quality (‘flexible process’) and does not specify any green decision it ought to
achieve (‘starry-eyed idealism’). In the context of environmental decision making, pragmatic (green) democracy is founded on
environmental pragmatism – a philosophical position in environmental ethics which recognises the fact of uncertainty in all environmental
decision making. Light and Katz (1996, p. 2) define ‘environmental pragmatism’ as ‘the open-ended inquiry into the specific real-life problems of
humanity’s relationship with the environ- ment’. Anthony Weston (1996, pp. 154–5) suggests an open-ended environmental prac- tice in which
‘[w]e do not know in advance what we will find’ and there is an ‘opening of “space” for interaction’, and that new environmental values can be
created and evolved. Saward (1993, p. 76) thinks that an
open-ended democratic procedure ‘can be justified
rationally precisely because of the impossibility of incontrovertible proof of anything’. He argues that,
because uncertainty is inevitable for environmental issues, even environmentalists should abandon imperatives and remain flexible and open
to constant self- interrogation. Mike Mills (1996), at the same time, acknowledges pragmatic (green) democracy as important for green political
thinking, claiming that green political theory can ensure a green political process, but not green outcomes. Pragmatic (green) democracy, in
other words, does
not assume a (non-negotiable) eco-centric position in environmental ethics that is
morally conclusive (Smith, 2003; Torgerson, 1999). Instead, it implies that democracy may produce collective
decisions that are not green. There is an empirical example that can illustrate this point – namely the
controversy, continuing year after year, over whether or not to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in
Alaska (cited in Ball, 2006, p. 134). The views in support of drilling focus mainly on the associated economic
benefits, whereas the opposing views are mainly concerned with the associated environmental
damage. Meanwhile, it has been reported that over the past 30 years every member of the democratically
elected Alaska state legislature, every Alaskan Congressional delegate and every Alaskan governor has been supportive of
drilling. 11 Imagine that the decision power in this case rested on the Alaska state legislature instead of the US Congress as it does in reality.
If it turned out that all the individuals in the legislature supported drilling, and drilling itself is nongreen, then, by adopting a pragmatic-democratic decision procedure, the collective decision would be
in favour of drilling, which is non-green. Thus, it is apparent that the condition of green outcome is violated
upon retaining the conditions of robustness to pluralism and consensus preservation in a pragmaticdemocratic procedure.
-A/T Deliberation
Deliberation fails
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 7-9, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Proposal 2: Endogenous Domain Restrictions While restricting the domain of admissible individual opinions exogenously is sufficient for
avoiding the dilemma of green democracy, it is by no means necessary. The dilemma can also be avoided through endogenous domain
restrictions. Unlike its exogenous counter- part, this approach does not bar ‘unqualified’ inputs, from the outset, from entering the decision
procedure. Instead, it ‘processes’ any
‘unqualified’ inputs in such a way that they all become admissible
inputs. In the case of green democracy, any individual opinions not falling into the subset of green
outcomes, Y, will be ‘processed’ in such a way that they are made to fall into Y. First Possibility: Ecotransformation. ‘Eco-transformation’ is a possible mechanism for ‘processing’ individual opinions in the required way. In green political
theory, in fact, green democracy is often advocated as consisting of certain deliberative arrangements (e.g. Barry, 1999; Dobson, 1996b; Dryzek,
2000; Eckersley, 2004; Goodin, 2003; Jacobs, 1997; Smith, 2003). Deliberation
enables individuals to conduct reasoned
public debate and/or discussion about their opinions, in which they can either revise or retain their original opinions.
What results from deliberation is either a universal consensus or an ongoing divergence of opinions.
The reformulation of green democracy as comprising deliberation can in principle resolve the dilemma
of green democracy. Consider, once again, a combination of green and non-green opinions. Rather than rejecting the nongreen opinions from the outset as in the case of eco-filtering, eco-transformation aims at persuading
individuals to change these non-green opinions into green ones. Eventually, if such a change is
successfully achieved with all or a sufficient number of individual opinions, then the resulting democratic outcome –
again, for example, the majority or plurality winner among the individual votes – will be green. In this way, the condition for green
outcomes will be met. Deliberation is appealing at least on the grounds of inclusion and equality. On the one
hand, a prominent view in environmental ethics holds that entities such as nature and non-human animals, as well as future generations of
humans and non-humans, are relevant stakeholders and have their own interests in issues of environmental sustainability. Deliberation allows
these interests to be unveiled and considered in decision making (e.g. Dryzek, 2000; Eckersley, 2004; Goodin, 1996). On the other hand,
deliberation satisfies democratic equality by offering all individuals an equal opportunity to articulate,
discuss and amend their opinions. This enhances democratic legitimacy (Cohen, 2003), especially for
environmental decisions which are often dominated by a certain group of people, such as experts and
professionals (e.g. Barry, 1999; Smith, 2003). Some arguments for eco-transformation make the positive claim that deliberation enhances
the likelihood of green collective decisions. This is because, in deliberation, individuals are expected to justify their opinions in a public setting.
As the reasons cited play a significant role in ‘processing’ these opinions, individuals are able to develop more ‘other-regarding’ perspectives in
formulating their opinions (Miller, 1992). Such ‘other-regarding’ perspectives have much in common with the ethical reasoning in
environmental philosophy – notably the inclusion and consideration of non-humans’ interests (e.g. Eckersley, 2004; Goodin, 1996; Smith, 2001).
It is also claimed that deliberation can foster cooperative behaviour among individuals, which then overcomes the collective action problems in
many environmental challenges. John Dryzek (1987) asserts that ‘the discursive processes central to communicative ratio- nalization are likely
to promote “cooperative” over “defecting” strategies in the prisoners’ dilemma’, and this is backed up by empirical research findings (e.g.
Dawes et al ., 1977; Jerdee and Rosen, 1974). All in all, a process of deliberation makes it easier for green values to emerge and is thus more
prone to arriving at green decisions (Arias-Maldonado, 2007; Carter, 2007). An
objection to eco-transformation, however, is
that deliberation is by no means sufficient to guarantee green decisions. The problem is that
deliberation as a procedure cannot guarantee substantive outcomes of environmental sustainability. It
is true that individuals may formulate green opinions from the ‘other-regarding’ perspective, but whether they actually do so is another
(empirical) question. This is because individuals may
still, even after a period of deliberation, prioritise some
other considerations over those of the environment, or may simply dismiss any green opinions,
however reasonable, that they dislike (Dobson, 1993). Hence, there is no way we can conclude that eco-
transformation in the form of deliberation can always circumvent the dilemma of green democracy.
Instead, this depends on empirical circumstances. Second Possibility: Contextual Congruence. While deliberation may,
depending on circumstances, produce green collective decisions, the former is not a necessary condition for the latter. It is possible,
alternatively, for unanimously green opinions to emerge spontaneously even without deliberation. In this
case, there are no ‘unqualified’ inputs that need to be ‘processed’ by any mechanism and the dilemma of green democracy is automatically
This
congruence can arise when there are positive synergies between what is good for oneself and what is
good for the environment. In other words, when both goods coincide, even if individuals formulate opinions solely based on their
resolved. This congruence between individual opinions and expected collective outcomes depends, again, on empirical circumstances.
own interests, these opinions can also be green. This can be achieved by civic education or by introducing fiscal incentives/disincentives. These
strategies do not directly act on individual opinions, but foster a favourable context for individuals to formulate their opinions accordingly.
However, whether we can generally correlate these strategies with green opinions depends crucially
on what the individuals concerned eventually come to believe and on how they act in a particular
context.
Probabilistic green democracy fails – deliberation, Alaska proves
Wong 15 – Lecturer at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology [James, Ph.D. from the London
School of Economics and Political Science, “A Dilemma of Green Democracy,” Political Studies: 2015,
Political Studies Association, pp. 16-17, February 12, 2015, Wiley, Accessed 7/6/15]//schnall
Second Possibility: Probabilistic Green Democracy Unlike
pragmatic (green) democracy, probabilistic green
democracy modifies the relationship between democracy and environmentalism, not by dropping the
condition of green outcomes altogether, but by replacing it with a weaker desideratum of likelihood of green
outcomes. For a probabilistic green democracy, it is not necessary for the decision procedure always to generate
green outcomes; there only needs to be a sufficiently high probability of achieving this. In other words, in probabilistic green
democracy, the relationship between democracy and environmental sustainability is no longer
conceptual, but merely contingent. Probabilistic green democracy is justified because the decision
outcomes that it generates, as compared to other decision procedures, track the criterion of environmentalism (i.e.
an outcome-based justification). However, whether this is true often depends on the actual circumstances to
which probabilistic green democracy is applied. Andrew Dobson (1996a, p. 139; emphasis added) endorses probabilistic
green democ- racy from a green perspective: We presume that advocates of green values believe that they are the ‘right’ values, and that
advocates of the sustainable society believe that it is the ‘right’ kind of society in which to live. Such advocates, then, should prefer the kind of
decision-making procedure which is most likely to come to these conclusions ... greens should be committed to democracy as the only form of
decision making that – for Millian reasons – will necessarily produce [these conclusions]. The ‘Millian reasons’ refers to the view of John Stuart
Mill that truths are more likely to emerge from an open-ended decision procedure, which also justifies pragmatic (green) democracy (Saward,
1993, p. 76). The only difference is that truths are still presumed as green outcomes for probabilistic green democracy, but not for its pragmatic
counterpart. Very
often, this probabilistic view of green democracy is associated with democratic
deliberation. Manuel Arias-Maldonado (2007) observes that one justification of deliberation has been based on the
claim that green values are more likely to emerge in a deliberative context. Dryzek (1987), for example, asserts
that deliberative democracy is more ‘ecologically rational’ than other decision mechanisms, in the sense that the negative feedback and
coordination in the deliberative process draws people to identify environmental quality as a generalisable interest for human survival (Smith,
2003). Other justifications, including the moralising effect of other-regarding deliberation (e.g. Miller, 1992) and the enlarged mentality effect
as a result of reflective deliberation (e.g. Eckersley, 2000; Goodin, 2003), also attract people to considering green perspectives in decision
making (see also Smith, 2003, pp. 63–5). Deliberation
as such, however, can constitute, at most, a version of
probabilistic green democracy because deliberation itself, as I have already pointed out above,
cannot guarantee that green collective decisions will eventually be generated from the decision
procedure (Dobson, 1993; Goodin, 1992; Smith, 2003). Whether probabilistic green democracy can be justified, as
claimed, from an outcome- based perspective is subject to contingency. For example, consider again the oil drilling
case in Alaska. If members in the Alaska state legislature unanimously support a decision in favour of
drilling, it will not be possible even to expect a green decision (under- stood narrowly as a decision to reject drilling)
from a democratic decision mechanism here. Another possible challenge for probabilistic green
democracy is that the chances of it generating green outcomes are not sufficiently high compared to
other decision mechanisms. For instance, consider an eco-authoritarian procedure. If the procedure is workable in
a particular context, and if there also exists a green alternative that can be prescribed and imposed on the
decision-making process with certainty, probabilistic green democracy may not outperform such an
eco-authoritarian procedure from an outcome-based perspective. Nevertheless, there is empirical evidence that may
support a case for probabilistic green democracy. For example, according to statistics from the US Energy Information
Administration (2006), among the 40 countries that are responsible for about 90 per cent of total world carbon emissions, there is a fairly
strong positive correlation between democracies and reduction of carbon emissions rate from 2000 to 2006 (cited in Held and Fane-Hervey,
2009, pp. 6–7 and Appendix). Although such evidence is inconclusive, it may be that democracies are preferable to authoritarianism
for bringing about environmental sustainability. This implies that probabilistic green democracy is, to some extent, empirically tractable.
-A/T This Oppresses Me
Emotional appeals to subvert privilege are irrational in relation to the ecological crisis.
Hardin 06 (Garrett Hardin, Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA Commentaries:
Rights and Liberties, Society, 17 (4):5-8. May/June 1980 “Limited World, Limited Rights”
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_limited_world_limited_rights.html .nt)
These chants nicely revealed two important characteristics of rights, as popularly understood. The first
is a feeling that a right is something outside of-beyond-all systems of pricing and evaluation. This view
implies that rights are immune to rational discussion. The second chant tries to shore up what is
essentially an egotistical demand with the altruistic authority of the Golden Rule. The implied argument
is this: "Wouldn't you want this privilege if you were in my shoes? Therefore must you not support me
when I claim this privilege as a right?" Logic aside, this is a powerful emotional argument.
Ethical demands to improve or elevate the recognition of one’s own position are the
root cause of the environmental crisis.
Hardin 06 (Garrett Hardin, Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA Commentaries:
Rights and Liberties, Society, 17 (4):5-8. May/June 1980 “Limited World, Limited Rights”
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_limited_world_limited_rights.html .nt)
One person's right is, then, a demand upon others. Pufendorf follows his definition with a two-word
précis: Vocabuli ambiguitas. Rights are ambiguous words, literally "words that drive both ways." This
fact is conveniently neglected by those who fight most vigorously to establish new legal rights on the
basis of supposed translegal rights. The desirability of the right to the person benefited may be
admitted by all; but before acquiescing in the establishment of a new legal right, we need to examine
its drive in the other direction, in the demands it makes on those who must pay the cost of the right.
The highly individualistic view implicit in rights as currently conceived is not adequate for a world of
more than four billion human beings. Our world is not the world of Robinson Crusoe or even of Daniel
Boone. It is preeminently a social world, and social relationships are fantastically complicated and
subtle. Whenever we contemplate intervening in an existing social system, we must be acutely aware
that we can never do merely one thing. Quantities matter. A right that may be bearable and even
beneficial at one level of population, may be unbearable or disastrous at another. Situation ethics is the
only ethics that works.
*AFF*
*AUTHORITARIANISM*
-Fails
Governments get bogged down in long-term investments that delay the shift to a
sustainable system
Munasinghe 12 – Vice Chair of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Mohan, founder
chairman of the Munasinghe Institute of Development, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Senior Advisor
to Sri Lanka, “Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs) for Rio+20 and beyond: A practical step towards
global sustainability,” National Resources Forum, United Nations, pp. 206-207, 2012, Wiley, Accessed
7/4/15]//schnall
3.2. Implementation issues The implementation of MCGs will depend critically on the progress of science in understanding the consequences of
a business-as-usual approach and convincing concerned stakeholders of potentially dangerous outcomes. Many other factors will play
important roles, including the interplay of institutions and organizations, policy instruments, financing mechanisms, rules, procedures, social
norms and values, and regulatory processes governing global environmental and social protection. Although
the traditional topdown approach of the UN and governments have achieved some success during the last few decades in
terms of new treaties, funding and institutional arrangements, the implementation of policy has not been
effective enough to address social issues like poverty and to slow down environmental degradation.
One of the main reasons for slow progress has been the lack of innovative approaches to complement
or replace traditional methods and tools. The MCGs offer a potentially different and attractive pathway
towards sustainable consumption and production. The inadequacy of public policies and laws has resulted in the growing
popularity of soft measures such as certification schemes, eco labels, and other initiatives based on voluntary participation of stakeholders.
Nevertheless, soft methods cannot single-handedly address ongoing environmental and social decline due to their inherit limitations — such
schemes are mainly based on monetary incentives to encourage environmental and socially responsibility. It is questionable whether there is
sufficient ethical and moral force in society to discourage unsustainable practices in the absence of financial incentives. MCGs therefore
could gain traction and authority through a combination of national/transnational rules and regulations, and
soft governance system that encourage participation through stakeholder (individual, company, city, community,
government) conscience. Needless to mention, the progress of MCGs depends on how well the scientific community can communicate
with stakeholders about required goals, indicators, tools and methods, and reporting of success. Enabling actions would be
necessary by authorities at national and international levels, taking full account of regional and sub-regional
conditions to support a locally driven and country-specific approach. Specific activities to implement the MCGs would
include various sectoral interventions (e.g., agriculture, industry, energy, etc.), involving a range of actors (e.g., farmers, companies,
households, NGOs, academics etc.), from local to global levels (individuals, communities, nations, etc.).
The principle of subsidiarity
is important to delegate authority, accountability and resources to the most appropriate level. In
MCG concept is both fractal and subsidiary, because the basic idea remains unchanged at
finer levels of detail, and effective implementation is possible from the global/government to
local/individual levels as described below. MCGs have the potential for quicker results, by energizing
communities (including high-consumption households and businesses) to change their behaviour more quickly, without
relying only on central government policies and long-term investments. Since the rich account for over 80% of
summary, the
consumption and pollution, even modest shifts in their consumption can effectively reduce the environmental burden and free up resources to
raise poorer peoples’ living standards. Research indicates that there is a great deal of overconsumption and waste here, so initial cuts can be
made with little pain and even an increase in well being — for example, using energy and water saving appliances and processes, washing
laundry at lower temperatures, eating less meat, planting trees or using fuel efficient cars (Visions for Change, 2011). While doing so, the
affluent could also maintain or improve their quality of life (e.g., through healthier lifestyles and diets), starting with simple measures. There is
significant scope for savings in food, given that food waste within homes is around 30% in Western Europe and closer to 50% in North America
(UNHRC, 2011). Incremental
changes in the short run will help to build the momentum to achieve more
substantial long run improvements in consumption behaviour, as explained
Reject nebulous sociological solutions to climate change.
Lewis 14 (Martin W. Lewis has taught college-level geography for 20 years, and is currently a senior
lecturer at Stanford University, “Eco-Authoritarian Catastrophism: The Dismal and Deluded Vision of
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway” October 9, 2014 http://www.geocurrents.info/physicalgeography/eco-authoritarian-catastrophism-dismal-deluded-vision-naomi-oreskes-erik-m-conway .nt)
Although many of the key scientific questions of the day do indeed demand, as Oreskes and Conway
write, an “understanding of the crucial interactions between physical, biological, and social realms,” it
is equally imperative to recognize that most do not. Most of the issues addressed by chemists,
physicists, and geologists have nothing to do with the social realm, and must be examined through a
“reductionistic” lens if they are to be approached scientifically. To insist instead that they must be
framed in a socio-biological context is to reject the methods of science at a fundamental level. Such a
tactic risks reviving the intellectual atmosphere that led the Soviet Union to the disaster of
ideologically contaminated research known as Lysenkoism. In the final analysis, the denial of science
encountered in The Collapse of Western Civilization thus runs much deeper than that found among even
the most determined climate-change skeptics, as it pivots on much more basic epistemological and
methodological issues
-No Transition
No authoritarianism coming now – predictions are based on vague unsubstantiated
political theories.
Chou ’14 (Dr Mark Chou, ACU's Lecturer in Politics, is an interdisciplinary political scientist who draws his
inspiration from international relations, cultural studies and political philosophy, focus on democracy,
“Democracy Against Itself: Sustaining an Unsustainable Idea” pg. 110-111
https://books.google.com/books
id=kpClBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=coming+authoritarianism&source=bl&ots=kd1NxKfcQ0&
sig=fC6F5PKUSd7bPUjKbLzmlJvWc1k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=evXVYeWMYLnyQO97rrQAw&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=coming%20authoritarianism&f=false
.nt)
The word of hope on which the last chapter ended is poignant and worth repeating. Even though
democratic America is in crisis - some would say a crisis of its own making - there is no denying that
the United States remains the world's leading example of what a democracy should look like. That
aside, as Johnston reminds us toward the end of the last chapter, democracy is a resilient and resistant
species. It is important not to forget that even as political forecasters like Wolin and Giroux point to its
less sanguine future. Yet far from forgetting, it seems that many refuse to even entertain the thought
that democracy is in crisis at all. Against the type of evidence outlined in the previous chapter, many
democrats in America have habitually thought that their democracy's future is assured. They think that,
however flawed and inverted their democracy is, America will not likely follow the path of Athens or
Weimar. And they may be right. But the question we need to ask ourselves is what will a democracy
like America's become if it continues on the trajectory that a Wolin or Giroux has outlined? If not
Athens or Weimar, what will be the end product of America's coming authoritarianism? Of course, both
Wolin and Giroux have already provided answers to this question in their own ways. We have seen what
the looming authoritarianism means in their analysis. Yet as convincing as their prognoses arc, they
suffer from the defect that neither analysis is complete. Symptomatic of the fact that America's
coming authoritarianism is still in many ways yet to come - i.e. the fate of democracy has not yet been
sealed - we have no concrete example or blueprint of what inverted totalitarianism will look like
when or if it ever blossoms. Wolin's and Giroux's portrait of an America rushing headlong into
something sitting between traditional conceptions of democracy and authoritarianism is both atypical
and beyond simplistic categorisations. There is nothing that really resembles inverted totalitarianism; it
is its own unique beast. Because of this, the traits which Wolin and Giroux have documented of
America's democracy seem stuck in the world of theory or political deduction. We have no other
portrait of what inverted totalitarianism is capable of - beyond the interpretation offered by these two
thinkers, which obviously is open to dispute.
-Turn
Supporting eco-authoritarianism undermines legitimate environmental protection
moves.
Lewis 14 (Martin W. Lewis has taught college-level geography for 20 years, and is currently a senior
lecturer at Stanford University, “Eco-Authoritarian Catastrophism: The Dismal and Deluded Vision of
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway” October 9, 2014 http://www.geocurrents.info/physicalgeography/eco-authoritarian-catastrophism-dismal-deluded-vision-naomi-oreskes-erik-m-conway .nt)
This essay addresses only one side of this spectrum, that of the doomsayers who think we must forsake
democracy and throttle our freedoms if we are to avoid a planetary catastrophe. Although it may seem
paradoxical, my focus on the green extreme stems precisely from my conviction that anthropogenic
climate change is a huge problem that demands determined action. Yet a sizable contingent of ecoradicals, I am convinced, consistently discredit this cause. By insisting that devastating climate change
is only a few years away, they will probably undermine the movement’s public support, given the
vastly more likely chance that warming will be gradual and punctuated. By engaging in mendacious
reporting and misleading argumentation, they provide ample ammunition for their conspiracyminded opponents. And by championing illiberal politics, they betray the public good that they
ostensibly champion. It is a sad day indeed when an icon of liberalism such as Robert Kennedy Jr. can
plausibly be deemed an “aspiring tyrant” for wanting to punish global-warming deniers.
*COLLAPSE*
-Consumption
Individual action translates to broader governmental reform
Lorenzen 14 – Assistant Professor in Department of Sociology, Willamette University [Janet, “Green
Consumption and Social Change: Debates over Responsibility, Private Action, and Access,” Sociology
Compass, August 2014, Wiley, Accessed 7/4/15]//schnall
Before I describe the empirical research against the trade-off argument, I want to discuss the assumption that a trade-off within complex
systems can be understood in this manner. Abbott (2014) argues that “there is no reason to think that scarcity and excess are symmetrically
contrary concepts … It is only in the simplest circumstances that we are justified in simply recasting excess of one thing as scarcity of another”
(8, 11). The
trade-off argument made above argues that an investment (time, resources, or even morality) in green
consumption and sustainable practices on the part of individuals leads to a reduced investment of
time, resources, or ethical decision-making in other areas – especially in traditional political action like attending an
environmental group meeting or a town hall. Assuming a trade-off (in time, say) exists at all, why not hypothesize that
green consumers watch less television? Green consumption and political participation are pitted
against each other in a zero-sum game not due to empirical research findings, but because of the dichotomy
discussed in the first debate between political philosophies (i.e. market mechanisms vs. government intervention).
Allegiance to one political philosophy, like the use of market mechanisms to create social change, is assumed to come at
the expense of support for government intervention. In contrast, Micheletti (2003) argues that in some cases,
alternative consumption actually develops “because [the] government is seen as slow in acting on
market-based problems” (160). For example, the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty which protects the ozone layer, began as
a scientifically-informed consumer boycott against aerosol products. Empirical data against the trade-off argument, at the level of individual
action, are relatively substantial and show a decidedly different trend. Green
consumption is associated with, and in some
cases leads to, more traditional forms of political activism and support for government policies (Atkinson
2012; Gotlieb and Wells 2012; Lorenzen 2014; Micheletti and Stolle 2012; Schudson 2007; Stolle and Micheletti 201312). Stolle et al. (2005) find
that conscientious (aka green) consumers are just as, if not more, involved with political and social movement action than regular consumers
(see also Thøgersen and Crompton 2009). Literature on activism in the environmental movement finds that green consumption and lifestyle
change are part of a holistic approach to addressing environmental problems (Lichterman 1996; Passy and Giugni 2000; Pichardo Almanzar et
al. 1998). And Willis and Schor (2012) conclude that conscientious
consumption is part of a “larger repertoire of
strategies and actions oriented toward social change” in which individuals explicitly link their everyday actions with larger
political movements (161). Green consumption and lifestyle change are also associated with support for wider-reaching environmental policies
(Scerri and Magee 2012; Thøgersen and Noblet 2012). Barnett et al. (2011) go one step further and propose a more causal argument, that
ethical (including green) consumption “often serves as a pathway for enrolling resources in support
of…civic participation, associational organization, or collective action” (23). Other scholars agree with this
escalation argument – that alternative consumption is part of a broader reconsideration of consumption,
responsibility, and environmental problems which often leads to greater political participation and
collective action (Barnett et al. 2005; Lorenzen 2014; Nelson et al. 2007; Seyfang 2006, 2009; Willis and Schor 2012). What does this
mean for social change? The unforeseen consequence of support for consumer-based approaches to
addressing climate change, in some cases, is to increase participation in environmental politics and
support for large-scale government regulation. If that support can be translated into policy, then it
strengthens the behavioral wedge argument – that micro changes lead and macro changes follow –
discussed in the first debate.
MCGs solve consumption
Munasinghe 12 – Vice Chair of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Mohan, founder
chairman of the Munasinghe Institute of Development, 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Senior Advisor
to Sri Lanka, “Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs) for Rio+20 and beyond: A practical step towards
global sustainability,” National Resources Forum, United Nations, pp. 203, 2012, Wiley, Accessed
7/4/15]//schnall
*MCGs are Millennium Consumption Goals
The MCGs
rely on a unique bottom-up approach that can successfully mobilize heterogeneous stakeholders and communities to address the issue of sustainable consumption and production, which is
crucial for sustainable development . Such an initiative will complement the top-down intergovernmental
process that has made only limited progress in this area, mainly because it is so politically sensitive. The
MCGs will also complement the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and serve as one essential brick that will support any or all of the
much larger schemes at the Rio + 20 Earth Summit, including Agenda 21, the green economy, and the Sustainable Development Goals (United
Nations, 1992; 2012; UNEP, 2011; Stakeholder Forum, 2012). The MCGs
need to be pursued after Rio + 20 as well. The MCGs
would aim to reduce waste and make the consumption of the rich more sustainable, evenhandedly in all
countries, thereby freeing up resources to provide the basic needs of the poor. Instead of viewing the
affluent as a problem, the novel concept of MCGs would persuade them to contribute to the solution,
without having to reduce their quality of life — thereby offering the hope of a more manageable future, rather than an
unpredictable and potentially disastrous outcome. This will require both bottom up and top down processes (see
section below) to set global targets and then allocate consumption equitably among countries, sectors,
cities, communities and firms. A comprehensive path to sustainable development was laid out with great enthusiasm and hope in
Agenda 21, at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (UNDESA, 2009). After a period of inaction, the original goals of Agenda 21 (considered to be too
ambitious and expensive by donor nations) were replaced by the more modest Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — launched in 2000 to
raise consumption levels of billions of poor people (UNDP, 2012). Even here, the results have been mixed (UNDESA, 2010) and the current
economic crisis and emerging
problems like energy, food and water shortages, as well as climate change,
make it unlikely that many MDG targets will be met. Indeed, current efforts to solve a range of global
issues continue to be ineffective. Problems like the economic debt crisis, poverty and social inequity, and
environmental degradation are worsening, as explained in Box 1. A business-as-usual attitude will
exacerbate our problems and increase the risk of global breakdown (WEF, 2012). Ideally, the multiple global
issues (mentioned earlier) need to and can be addressed within an integrated solutions framework that
addresses many problems simultaneously. Piecemeal solutions have not been effective, and in some cases, solving one
problem has exacerbated others; for example, the blind pursuit of economic growth at any cost has often caused massive environmental
degradation and even worsened poverty. Agenda 21 was an early attempt to formulate an integrated response, the MDGs were a scaled back
compromise, and 20 years later we tried again to put a comprehensive solution together at the Rio + 20 Earth Summit — but with little success.
The MCGs provide one building block that will contribute towards any such comprehensive
framework that might emerge from Rio + 20 and enable humanity to avoid the crisis and improve overall wellbeing. The MCGs have roots in the original Agenda 21 of 1992 (UNDESA, 2009), which stressed the need for “changing unsustainable
consumption and production”, and are linked to the component on sustainable consumption and production mandated by the 2002 World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. The
MCG concept is directly based on a comprehensive and
integrated trans-disciplinary framework called Sustainomics, which was also presented at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit
(see Box 2) (Munasinghe, 2009; 2011). Sustainomics set out a step- by-step methodology to make development more
sustainable, based on balanced consideration of economic, social and environmental concerns, using
trans-disciplinary thinking and both conventional and new analytical tools. During the past two decades, the approach has
been successfully applied practically, worldwide. It is therefore fitting that the MCGs are under consideration for the Rio +
20 Earth Summit agenda (Eurostep, 2011). The MCGs generally supported the major objectives and themes of Rio + 20: securing political
commitment, assessing progress, new and emerging challenges, green economy, and institutional framework for sustainable development.
-Democracy
Democracy and environment are entirely compatible
Loftus 15 – editor of Environmental Values [Alex, Senior Lecturer in Geography at King’s College
London, “Democratic and Practical Engagements with Environmental Values,” Environmental Values, pp.
266-269, June 2015, http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/EditEV243.pdf, Accessed 7/7/15]//schnall
Dan Coby Shahar similarly questions
the role of the State in his critique of the new forms of ecoauthoritarianism. Shahar begins by outlining an earlier iteration of eco-authoritarianism provided by
Heilbronner and Ophuls in the 1970s. Whereas the centrally planned economy of the Soviet Union was an implicit reference
point within earlier works and within subsequent critiques (by the authors themselves) the new eco-authoritarians look to the
example of China. Turning to David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith’s book The Climate Challenge and the Failure of
Democracy Shahar is careful to take the authors’ arguments on their own terms. He notes how important
it is to recognise that ‘the case for eco-authoritarianism is not built on the assertion that global society
should collectively strive to be more like the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Singapore, or
any other modern authoritarian nation’ (p. 356). Instead the case ‘is built on the assertion that the
system of governance instantiated in China and Singapore has more potential to resolve the
environmental crisis than market liberal democracy’ (ibid.). Shahar then goes on to demolish this
argument by demonstrating how an eco-elite, even if ostensibly capable and benevolent, is unlikely
to be able to produce a better response to environmental crisis. Faced by the choice between independence from
citizens’ preferences and the effectiveness of their own administration, authoritarian regimes have instead become
increasingly reliant on the inclusion of citizens in the political process. The buttresses for the ecoauthoritarian argument thereby fall. Shahar in no way excuses market liberal democracies for their own failings in responding
to environmental crises, rather he seeks to demonstrate that ‘authoritarianism is still not the right response to
our ecological predicament’ (p. 363). The paper by Peeters et al. also looks at how democratic freedoms can
best be preserved in the light of environmental needs. The authors come to slightly different conclusions from Shahar
through their focus on the capabilities approach, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Emphasising the importance
of freedoms as a way of achieving human development and social justice, the capabilities approach rests on two
related concepts: functioning and capability. The focus on the latter emphasises the importance of achieving greater freedoms in the pursuit of
the good life. Although Peeters et al. acknowledge that Sen and Nussbaum, in different ways, have sought to incorporate a concern for
sustainability within their conceptual frameworks, they question the authors’ relative lack of interest in the question of restraining material
consumption. Some
form of restraint, Peeters et al. argue, will be necessary to ensuring that the conditions for
human flourishing are preserved now and in the future. In resolving the apparent tension between the need for
restraints on consumption and the need to protect the freedoms so central to the capabilities approach, Peeters et al. look towards
both ‘capabilities ceilings’ and ‘functioning constraints’. The latter approach is seen as offering the greatest hope for
inculcating an ethos of restraint within the capabilities approach. The authors argue that in deriving functionings from a
capability harmful environmental effects are found; therefore the emphasis should be placed not on
placing a ceiling on capabilities but on limiting the harmful effects of functionings. In proposing such a
perspective the authors see far greater potential for achieving inter-temporal justice at the same time
as emphasising individual agency and intrinsic freedom.
The final paper of the issue is another in which environmental
values are established in a complex set of unequal relations between the human and non-human across the global North and South. Forestry
certification schemes and the representational practices through which certified forestry products are marketed to consumers in the global
North are the focus of the paper by Nygren (for an earlier paper on the valuation of timber products see Veuthey and Gerber 2011). Through
multi-sited research in Honduras and Denmark Nygren unpicks the ways in which the Forestry Stewardship Council Scheme, which aims to
foster good forest management, has relied on practices of producing the exotic other. Certified products come to be linked to particular
lifestyles and identities that are radically divorced from the actual conditions involved in the production of timber. Frustratingly forest
certification has not really altered the unevenness of global trade. Instead, many Southern producers find themselves losing out through the
higher costs required to produce timber in more sustainable ways. Nygren therefore critiques the forms of market governance that currently
surround forestry certification, which place emphasis on the whims of individual consumption practices as opposed to a more fundamental
reordering of the social relationships that perpetuate inequality. She concludes by calling for new forms of legally binding regulation, law
enforcement and fair trade activism in the face of such failings. Nygren’s critique relies on understanding the differing ways of valuing nature
within the forestry certification schemes and the manner in which aesthetic values come into conflict with the livelihoods of producers in the
global South. Along with Arler and Melquist’s paper and Centemeri, Nygren demonstrates the environmental knowledges that emerge from
practical engagements with environments – in the latter case, through the work of timber producers. In many respects, such a claim, so central
to several of the papers, resonates with some of my own work, in which I have sought to develop an understanding of the ways that quotidian
experiences might become the basis for a politics extending across the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’: an everyday environmentalism that suggests
conditions of possibility for reworking relationships with both human and non-human (Loftus 2012). If these relationships
are to be
reworked, I am convinced it must be in a way that increases democratic participation in the
production and reproduction of specific ecologies. If one debate has really stood out in my first year
as an editor of Environmental Values it is that concerning how best to achieve environmentally
sustainable futures while, at the same time, ensuring a commitment to fuller and deeper democratisation.
Indeed, despite the range of environmental values expressed, all authors in this issue are committed to a strong set of democratic principles.
Nevertheless, the best ways of achieving these principles form the basis of significant disagreement. If Arler and Melquist’s focus is on practical
engagements with landscape, Melo-Escrihuela comes at the debate through a critique of the Green State. From yet another political
perspective, Shahar critiques the arguments that lie behind what he perceives to be a new wave of eco-authoritarianism. Clearer
conceptions of democracy and its relationship to environmental governance thereby emerge from each
of the papers. Translating such abstract debates into more concrete strategies for democratic
participation within environmental politics and policymaking is a necessary further step. I have often
argued that democratising the hydrosocial cycle is a fundamental step in achieving a more effective politics of water. Nevertheless, Erik
Swyngedouw, echoing comments made by Slavoj Zizek and others, once made the point to me that he
wants to go to a tap and find clean water: he doesn’t want to sit on endless committees to decide how
that water should flow, through what infrastructure, and at what price. It’s a fair point. However, if
we remain committed to both a deepening of democratic politics and to better governance of the
environments of which we are a part, then the papers in this issue provide a good starting point for
thinking through a form of environmental democracy that goes beyond ‘yet another committee’ while
opening up more joyful and embodied ways of experiencing those environments that we so value.
-Overpopulation
Squo solves overpopulation – education.
Last 10 (Johnathan V., Senior writer at The Weekly Standard. His writings have been featured in the Wall
Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Post
“America’s One-Child Policy” SEP 27, 2010
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy?page=3 .nt)
There is a constellation of factors tamping down fertility in America. And even with steady immigration,
they represent our own, bottom-up adoption of a One-Child regimen. At the most basic level, the
decline of infant mortality played a large part. In 1850, 2-in-10 white babies and 3.4-in-10 black babies
died during infancy. Steady improvements in medicine, sanitation, and nutrition reduced infant
mortality to asymptotic levels—today just 6.22 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Americans also began
migrating from rural areas to cities and transitioning from farm work to factories. These changes made
children both less useful and more expensive. Social changes have affected the fertility rate, too. Some
of these changes are small and simple—like the evolution of car-seat laws, which make it difficult to
transport more than two children. Some—like the rise of the educated woman—are massively
complex. One of the best predictors of fertility is education: The more educated a woman is, the fewer
children she will have. The total fertility rate for American women without a high school diploma is
2.45. With each subsequent level of educational attainment, fertility falls—it drops to 1.6 for women
with a graduate degree. One of the drivers of our fertility decline was the making of college de rigueur
for middle-class women. From 1879 to 1930, American men and women graduated from college at
roughly the same low rate. This was as much a function of the university being the preserve of the
privileged as it was of gender equality. It wasn’t until 1930 that college graduation rates between the
sexes began diverging, with men becoming markedly better educated. By 1947, 2.3 men graduated from
college for every woman. That divergence was not, as the feminist-industrial complex would have you
believe, the result of sexism. Before the two world wars, college was open only to a small pool of
wealthy elites and was partaken of by these men and women in equal measure. The G.I. Bill broadened
access to college for former soldiers, who were, naturally, men. As these middle- and lower-middle-class
men flooded the classrooms, a gender gap was created. With the class restrictions lifted, however, it
was only a matter of time before middle- and lower-middle-class women caught up with their male
counterparts. By 1980, the balance was again even. And, by 2003, women significantly outnumbered
men in college, with 1.35 women graduating for every man. But let’s wind the clock back to the period
stretching from the 1950s to the early 1970s. What’s interesting about this interregnum isn’t that men
outnumbered women, but rather what it was women graduating from college did with their degrees.
Nearly half of those female graduates were involved in a single field—education. And as it turns out,
being a teacher is highly compatible with having babies. As more women began attending college,
however, they entered a broader array of fields, many of which were less friendly to family life. For
the class of 1980, for instance, only 36 percent of female graduates became teachers and that number
has continued to drop. As women entered other careers, they postponed having babies. A teacher
can reasonably graduate from college at 22, begin working immediately, and if she so chooses, marry
and have children in short order without losing ground in her career. By comparison, consider the life of
a young woman who becomes a doctor: Graduate with a bachelor’s degree at 22; graduate from
medical school at 26; finish residency at 29. If our doctor does not pursue any specialization, she can
begin her career as she turns 30. Only then is childbearing even theoretically possible, and it will
come at some expense to her nascent career. The first effect of the broadening of women’s career
paths was to push up the average age of marriage. In 1950, the average age of first marriage for an
American woman was 20.3 years. Between 1950 and 1970—when a large percentage of women were
still entering the teaching profession—that number ticked upward only slightly, to 20.8 years. By 1980 it
had risen to 22.0 years; by 1990 it was 23.9, and off to the races. By 2007, the average American woman
did not wed until she was 26. The drop in fertility among women with college and advanced degrees,
then, is in large part due to delayed family formation. The longer a middle-class woman waits to get
married, the longer she will wait to have children. For example, in 1970, the average age of a woman in
the United States giving birth to her first child was 21.4 years. In 2000, it was 24.9 years. The American
drive for education has had other subtle effects on fertility. For instance, it’s not just the length of
education that diminishes fertility, but the debt-load incurred. In 1987, 9 percent of college graduates
said they were delaying marriage because of their student loans and 12 percent said they were delaying
children. As student debts ballooned, so did those numbers. By 2002, 14 percent said they were
pushing back marriage and 21 percent said they were postponing having children because of their
loans.
Contraceptives and abortions solve population growth.
Last 10 (Johnathan V., Senior writer at The Weekly Standard. His writings have been featured in the Wall
Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Post
“America’s One-Child Policy” SEP 27, 2010
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy?page=3 .nt)
If the G.I. Bill could wreak so much havoc on fertility rates, imagine the effects of the last century’s two
great changes in sexual life: the contraceptive pill and the legalization of on-demand abortion.
Calculating the number of babies not born because of the birth control pill is impossible. But without
confusing correlation and causation, it is worth noting that the pill became available in America and
much of the West in 1960, the precise moment when fertility rates began heading into deep decline.
On the other hand, it is quite easy to make an accounting of abortion’s effects. Before the Supreme
Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the tide of public opinion in America was against abortion.
Accordingly, there were relatively few abortions, even though most states allowed for early-term
abortions. In 1970, for example, there were 193,491 reported legal abortions. Certainly, this number
undercounts the real total because it does not include illegal abortions. But let’s take 200,000 as a
baseline. In 1973, as Roe created a universal abortion right, the number of reported abortions rose to
744,600. The next year, that number rose by 20 percent, to 898,600 abortions. By this time all
abortions were legal, and so we can be confident that this number is fairly accurate. Over the course of
the next 15 years the number of abortions rose by almost 100 percent.
Reduced living space decreases the incentive to have children.
Last 10 (Johnathan V., Senior writer at The Weekly Standard. His writings have been featured in the Wall
Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Post
“America’s One-Child Policy” SEP 27, 2010
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy?page=3 .nt)
Fertility isn’t all about sex, of course. It also involves that other great American passion: real estate.
Fertility rates vary widely across the 50 states. The states with the highest are found mostly in the West,
while the states with the lowest fertility are found mostly in the industrialized Northeast. The more
fertile states tend to be more rural; the less fertile more urban. And the more fertile states tend to
have lower land costs and, hence, costs of living. The cultural demographer Steve Sailer refers to this
phenomenon as the “dirt gap.” Beyond even the cost of real estate, housing stock influences fertility.
When dramatically falling fertility first appeared in Europe after World War I, demographers went into a
panic. In Sweden, researchers noticed that the small, modernist apartment buildings which had sprung
up across the country were pushing couples to have fewer children. Subsequent research has
demonstrated the effects of housing stock on fertility across the globe. Studies show the same results
over and over—all things being equal, women living in apartments or condominiums have fewer babies
than women living in single-family homes. This phenomenon has been demonstrated everywhere from
New Jersey to Colombia to Great Britain to Iran. How much does housing type matter? A 1988 Canadian
study showed that even when you control for education, income, and other factors, married couples
who lived in apartment-type buildings had 0.42 fewer children over their lifetimes than married
couples in single-family homes. From the 1940s until the 1960s, there was a boom in the construction
of detached, single-family homes in America. Levittowns sprang up across the country and, by 1960,
single-family homes represented their biggest share of American housing stock in modern times. This
coincides perfectly with the Baby Boom. On the other hand, large-scale apartment and condominium
complexes became more popular during the 1960s. Their percentage of the total U.S. housing stock
increased by 40 percent from 1960 to 1970 and by another 23 percent from 1970 to 1980: the precise
years during which America’s fertility numbers went into steep decline.
People don’t want to have children anymore – it’s too expensive and they’re useless.
Last 10 (Johnathan V., Senior writer at The Weekly Standard. His writings have been featured in the Wall
Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Post
“America’s One-Child Policy” SEP 27, 2010
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/america%E2%80%99s-one-child-policy?page=3 .nt)
Add that number to the others and you’re talking $1.1 million to raise a single child. That’s a lot of
money for a middle-class couple. In 2007, the median income for Americans in their prime childbearing years (ages 25 to 34) was just $30,846 (or $40,739 for those with a college degree). People like
to say that buying a house is the biggest purchase you’ll ever make. Well, the median price of a home in
2008 was $180,100. Having a baby is like buying six houses, all at once. Except that you can’t (legally)
sell them—and after 13 years they’ll tell you they hate you. T here was a time when such indignities
were worth suffering because children served a practical purpose: They cared for their parents in old
age. Oftentimes physically; always financially. Beginning with the New Deal, the logistics of this social
compact began to change. In 1935, the Social Security Act established government payouts for retirees.
These benefits were paid for by a new payroll tax on those working. Over time, Social Security payments
expanded, the taxes increased, and new benefits—such as Medicare—were added. It’s difficult to
overstate the effects of these initiatives. For starters, they created an enormous new burden for
workers. In 1955, the median American family paid 17.3 percent in income taxes. By 1998, the median
one-earner family paid 37.6 percent in income taxes; two-earner families paid 40.9 percent. Social
Security and Medicare placed an increasing burden on families at the same time that the cost of
children was also increasing.
-Inevitable
Climate change is inevitable, and eco-authoritarianism doesn’t solve anyways.
Lewis 14 (Martin W. Lewis has taught college-level geography for 20 years, and is currently a senior
lecturer at Stanford University, “Eco-Authoritarian Catastrophism: The Dismal and Deluded Vision of
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway” October 9, 2014 http://www.geocurrents.info/physicalgeography/eco-authoritarian-catastrophism-dismal-deluded-vision-naomi-oreskes-erik-m-conway .nt)
This tactic, however, is disingenuous. No evidence is provided, for example, to indicate that autocratic
governments respond more effectively to environmental crises than democratic ones. Rather, this
thesis is merely assumed, despite the large body of evidence that points in the opposite direction. It
is, moreover, an unfortunate fact that global carbon-dioxide emissions will continue to rise for some
time regardless of any minuscule effect that the publication The Collapse of Western Civilization and
similar books may have on public opinion. India, for example, has recently announced that it will
prioritize economic development over climatic stabilization. The governments of many other countries
concur, all but guaranteeing increasing emissions. As result, Oreskes and Conway may claim that they
do not personally embrace authoritarianism, but their larger arguments hold that it is nonetheless
necessary if civilization is to survive in any form. Finally, given their own predictions of shattering
disruptions across the world, China’s geographical position ensures that it would suffer vastly more than
Western Europe, the historical core of the supposedly doomed Western Civilization. In imagining China’s
unlikely survival against the thrust of their own arguments, they evidently find something deeply
compelling about its political system.
-Peak Oil
No risk of peak oil – historical trends disproves the hype.
Samuelson, 6/14 (Robert J. Samuelson writes a weekly economics column Samuelson is the author of
“The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath: The Past and Future of American Affluence” (2008) and “The
Good Life and Its Discontents” (1995). “The retreat of ‘peak oil’” 2015/06/14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-retreat-of-peak-oil/2015/06/14/76a24ae4-1124-11e59726-49d6fa26a8c6_story.html .nt)
The pattern dates to at least the 1920s, Clayton writes, when the explosion of car ownership inspired
much talk of “oil exhaustion” and “gasoline famine.” Little wonder. From 1921 to 1929, the number of
gasoline stations mushroomed from 12,000 to 143,000. In 1919, the average car traveled 4,500 miles a
year; a decade later, the distance had nearly doubled. But gasoline scarcity was prevented by
discoveries in Texas and Oklahoma, advances in drilling (deep wells went from 6,000 feet to 10,000 feet)
and improved oil refining. After World War II, the fear was that the United States, having supplied both
its own and its allies’ oil needs, might soon drain its reserves. Never happened. Whenever prices are
high, the notion that scarcity is permanent thrives. In 2008, 76 percent of Americans believed “the
world is running out of oil.” Similarly, the fear of peak oil was one reason for thinking crude prices,
until their recent collapse, would remain stuck in the $100 to $150 range. The common error, Clayton
writes, is that “no one at the time can see where more oil would come from.” There is a silent
assumption that “if it has not been found yet, or cannot be extracted with today’s technology or at
today’s prices” that it won’t ever exist. History has repeatedly refuted this premise. All this suggests a
deeper significance to the recent price collapse. Oil is not inexorably fading from the world stage. Peak
oil remains distant. This, of course, has huge implications. To the extent that oil is a source of
geopolitical and economic instability, the dangers remain. To the extent that it feeds global warming,
the dangers remain. Unless history changes — and who knows, it might — the Age of Oil endures.
-Resources General
Human ingenuity solves all Malthusian predictions
Hoffmans 13 (Lara Hoffmans has co-written 7 books on investments and personal finance with Ken
Fisher, CEO of Fisher Investments, “7 Billion Reasons Malthus Was Wrong” Jul 29, 2013
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larahoffmans/2011/10/31/7-billion-reasons-malthus-was-wrong/ .nt)
I don’t care what it’s on—economies, capital markets, wheat yields, hemline trends—long-term
forecasts are fraught with peril. And ones that underestimate humanity’s ingenuity and ability to
problem-solve are particularly faulty. Yes, pockets of the world face famine—usually in regions with
corrupt, despotic governments. But overall, the world hasn’t outgrown its ability to feed itself.
Someone invented the steel plow, the tractor, the threshing machine, better fertilizers. Handily,
someone also discovered penicillin, the pasteurization process, the Polio vaccine and DDT so we have
a better shot at getting past age 5. (And the iPhone too, so we can live, not starve and be entertained all
the while.) Malthus didn’t think about the iPhone anymore than he thought about dwarf wheat or the
MMR vaccine. That doesn’t make him a bad person, just rather unimaginative.
The government pays people to not farm – why don’t we fix that first before we worry
about a Malthusian collapse.
Morgan, Gaul, and Cohen (Washington Post Staff Writers “Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People
Who Don't Farm” Sunday, July 2, 2006 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html .nt)
EL CAMPO, Tex. -- Even though Donald R. Matthews put his sprawling new residence in the heart of rice
country, he is no farmer. He is a 67-year-old asphalt contractor who wanted to build a dream house for
his wife of 40 years. Yet under a federal agriculture program approved by Congress, his 18-acre
suburban lot receives about $1,300 in annual "direct payments," because years ago the land was used
to grow rice. Matthews is not alone. Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion
in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an
analysis of government records by The Washington Post. Some of them collect hundreds of thousands
of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in
Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the
total was $490,709.
*LINK*
-Non-Unique
The link is non-unique – gay marriage.
Last 7/1 (Jonathan V. Last Senior Writer “The Big, Fat, Gay Marriage Post-Mortem” JUL 1, 2015
http://www.weeklystandard.com/author/jonathan-v.-last .nt)
Look, it's not the end of the world. Everyone's equal, everyone's happy, love conquers all, and we are
absolutely not heading to some dark, divisive place where the fabric of our society will be torn apart
by people who, having invented "gay marriage" and imposed it on the entire country by a single
Supreme Court justice, use it as a cudgel to wreak havoc on a host of other social and legal compacts
which have ... Oh. Hold on. Couple pieces coming in over the transom ... Let's check them out. Here's
Fredrik DeBoer in Politico claiming that social justice demands we now legalize polygamy. Here are
the mouthbreathers at Gawker doing the same, using Rod Dreher's Law of Merited Impossibility.
Here's the ACLU's Louise Melling declaring that "religious freedom" is nothing more than illegal
discrimination. (Note how the Washington Post headline actually puts scare quotes around the term
"religious freedom" in the headline.) Here's Mark Oppenheimer arguing in Time that we ought to strip
all religious groups-not just adoption agencies and schools, but actual churches, too-of their tax
exempt status. Because gay marriage. (He's willing to let hospitals stay tax exempt, because
Obamacare will keep them in line. So there's that.) And here's the delightful Felix Salmon, who thinks
that Oppenheimer perhaps goes too far, because we need only target religious organizations--and again,
he means not just para-church groups, but actual churches--who aren't onboard with "gay marriage." At
the risk of belaboring the point: This isn't a radical activist-this is a mainstream (-ish) financial reporter
who now declares that individual churches not only could, but should be forced to perform same-sex
weddings. Or face the loss of their tax-exempt status. So maybe this love, pride, and unity stuff is a
little more zero-sum than gay activists have been letting on for the past few years. And maybe the gaymarriage project doesn't really intend to stop with "gay marriage." Though in fairness, I should point out
that the Politico call for legalized polygamy didn't come until nearly two hours after the Supreme Court
decision. So clearly there's no link between those two beautiful expressions of #loveislove. And anyone
who suggests that there is, is a homophobic bigot. And by next week, anyone objecting to polygamy will
be a poly-phobic bigot.