Environmental Securitization
1NC Shells
Environmental Securitization 1NC
Security is a speech act-the affirmatives framing of environmental threats locks in a
larger process of securitization.
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Whilst ‘security’ is a concept imbued with the performative power to alter social relations, there is no
guarantee that simply referring to an issue as a security issue will key into this performative capacity .
The process of mobilization along security lines follows more complex dynamics which have received
scant consideration in the environment-security literature to date. To elaborate on this point it is
necessary to delve a little deeper into the realm of security as a speech act . John Austin has split the
speech act into three components: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary (Austin, 1975: 12-14).
Jurgen Habermas has in turn claimed that “the three acts Austin distinguishes can be characterised in
the following catchphrases: to say something, to act in saying something, to bring about something
through saying something” (1986: 288-289, emphasis in original). Where mobilization is what one seeks
we are in the realm of the perlocutionary component of the speech act, because the speaker is
attempting to alter social relations, to bring about a change in the world. Until all three components
have been completed a speech act remains incomplete and the performative capacity of language to
alter reality will not be realised.¶ By merely labelling the environment as a security threat the speaker is
only fulfilling the locutionary component of the speech act, that is saying something. In order to
complete the perlocutionary component, complete the speech act and key in to security’s performative
capacity to alter social relations the speaker must engage with and convince his audience that his or her
truth claims are valid and warrant action. As Habermas has noted, “through perlocutionary acts the
speaker produces an effect upon the hearer” (1986: 289). Therefore when casting an issue in security
terms in order to achieve mobilization “what is essential is the designation of an existential threat
requiring emergency action or special measures and the acceptance of that designation by a significant
audience” (Buzan et al., 1998: 27, my emphasis). The logic behind this stance stands to reason. Until the
target audience has accepted the validity of the securitizing actor’s truth claims no mobilization will
follow from labelling the issue as security. Therefore, when properly understood “securitization is
audience-centred” (Balzaqc, 1998: 25; see also Williams, 2003: 526), because unless the audience
accepts the validity of, and acts upon, the labelling of an issue with the ‘security’ tag the mobilization
function which forms the very purpose of security linkages will remain absent .
Environmental securitization perpetuates a logic of exceptionalism that makes global
violence inevitable
Brzoska 9(Michael, March, The Securitization of Climate Change and the power conceptions of security, Michael Brzoska is
the Scientific Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy and Professor of Political Science at the University
of Hamburg, Themenschwerpunkt 137-208, p. 137-145)
l.n the literature on securitization it is implied that when a¶ problem is securitized it is difficult to limit
this to an increase¶ in attention and resources devoted to mitigating the problem¶ (Brock 1997, Waever
1995). Securitization regularly leads to all-¶ round 'exceptionalism' in dealing with the issue as well
as to¶ a shift in institutional localization towards ‘security experts’ ¶ (Bigot 2006), such as the military
and police. Methods and in-¶ struments associated with these security organizations - such¶ as more
use of arms, force and violence - will gain in impor-¶ tance in the discourse on ‘what to do’. A good
example of se-¶ curitization was the period leading to the Cold War (Guzzini¶ 2004 ]. Originally a political
conflict over the organization of¶ societies, in the late 1940s, the East-West confrontation became¶ an
existential conflict that was overwhelmingly addressed¶ with military means, including the potential
annihilation¶ of humankind. Efforts to alleviate the political conflict were,¶ throughout most of the Cold
War, secondary to improving¶ milita.ry capabilities.¶ Climate change could meet a similar fate. An
essentially politi-¶ cal problem concerning the distribution of the costs of preven-¶ tion and adaptation
and the losses and gains in income arising¶ from change in the human environment might be perceived¶
as intractable, thus necessitating the build-up of military and¶ police forces to prevent it from becoming
a major security¶ problem. The portrayal of climate change as a security prob-¶ lem could, in
particular, cause the richer countries in the glob-¶ al North, which are less affected by it, to strengthen
measures aimed at protecting them from the spillover of violent conflict¶ from the poorer countries in
the global South that will be most¶ affected by climate change. It could also be used by major pow-¶ ers
as a iustification for improving their military preparedness¶ against the other major powers, thus
leading to arms races.¶ This kind of reaction to climate change would be counterpro-¶ ductive in various
ways. Firstly, since more border protection,¶ as well as more soldiers and arms, is expensive, the
financial¶ means to compensate for the negative economic effects of¶ reducing greenhouse gas emission
and adapting to climate¶ change will be reduced. Global military expenditure is again¶ at the levelof the
height of the Cold War in realten-ns, reaching¶ more than US $1,200 billion in 2006 or 3.5 percent of
global¶ income. While any estimate of the costs of mitigation (e.g. of¶ restricting global warrning to 2°C
by 205 0] and adaptation are¶ speculative at the moment,‘ they are likely to be substantial.¶ While there
is no necessary link between higher military ex-¶ penditures and a lower willingness to spend on
preventing and¶ preparing for climate change, both policy areas are in competi-¶ tion for scarce
resources.¶ Secondly, the acceptance of the security consequences of cli-¶ mate changeasan intractable
problem could well reduce efforts¶ to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that will inevitably¶
come with climate change. Climate change will have major¶ consequences, particularly in countries
where living condi-¶ tions are already precarious (IPCC 2007, WBGU 2007). The con-¶ sequences of
climate change on some basic fou.ndations of life,¶ such as fresh water supplies, arable land and
agricultural pro-¶ ductivity in various parts of the world can already be roughly¶ estimated for various
global-wan-ning scenarios. There are also¶ more or less well founded predictions of the consequences
of¶ reduced availability of natural resources such asarable land and¶ water on hunger and disease, even
though such consequences¶ are highly dependent on counter-measures and adaptation ef-¶ forts in
affected regions. There is no inevitability about these¶ consequences.
The alternative is to refuse the affirmatives act of environmental securitzation-This
opens up new possibilities of participatory politics that are a prerequisite to ecological
survival
Dalby 92 (Simon- CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, “Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse,”
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1992, pp 95-134, JSTOR)
Rethinking security along these lines requires a refusal of the metaphysics of domination and control.
Even more than in the case of military matters, neither economic or ecological security can ultimately
be ensured by violence, nor can they be ensured by the unilateral actions of a single state. Instead,
they require international cooperation and a participatory politics. "Security is increasingly attained
through the difficult process of global cooperation to create mechanisms for non-violent dispute
settlement and establish environmental alliances."131 In the longer term, what all this suggests is the
possibility of a drastic rethinking of political structures. Transforming states, hard though it probably
will be in the face of the resistance of powerful vested interests, must be an important part of
reformulating security.152 The military understanding of security is one of force and imposed
solutions, secrecy, power, and surveillance. It is a logocentric metaphysical model that privileges
certainty and stability over the possibilities of change, and political order over the messy uncertainties of
democratic practice. Conventional security discourse is trapped within the metaphysics and structures
of Western philosophy and the will to dominate and control. A politics, and the related technology, that
asserts ever greater power over things, tends to undermine the basis of that power by generating
indirect responses, usually in terms of single states attempting to maximize security by increasing
power, and so triggering arms race phenomena— the so-called security dilemma phenomenon. A
similar dynamic works in ecological matters. The metaphysics of domination is linked in
environmentalist discourse to the theme of the domination of nature.133 Technology and industry
exploit nature and remake it according to their demands. Ecology is reduced to matters of natural
resources management, the administration of nature by a technologically sophisticated state system.
The diversity of species and the complex interconnections of ecosystems are here reduced to matters
of either commodities or worthless extraneous materials. In the case of so-called renewable resources,
the crucial conception is one of sustainable yield, as though forest or fish stocks were cultivated
fields.134 As the case of the Amazon so clearly reveals, development projects that attempt to force ever
larger production from sensitive environments by the use of technological power usually lead to
ecological disruption.135 Insofar as states premise their security policies on these projects leading to
societal development, then insecurity returns to haunt the search for security in terms of certainty,
control, and order. This suggests that the masculine and Western metaphysical understandings of
power in terms of domination of nature, which environmentalist discourse criticizes, and control over
territorial states, which antigeopolitical thinking challenges, are not the appropriate ones for rethinking
security. Much more needed are approaches that focus on caring and cooperation, recognition of
mutual vulnerabilities, and the necessity to forge consensus and agreement in the face of mutual
insecurity.136 But these approaches involve political input by grassroots groups and a democratization
of both development and security that flies in the face of conventional state-organized versions of
both.137 Needed, too, are ecological metaphors of security—seeing strength in diversity,
conservation, interdependence, interconnectedness, and adaptation rather than imposed physical
power. Likewise, the gender dimension of security and ecology need to be taken seriously in attempts to
reform states and shift from "resourcism" to ecological modes of society.138 Further still may be the
necessity to distance philosophical understanding of natural phenomena from purely instrumentalist
perspectives, recognizing that ecological relationships are better grounded in a metaphysics of a "reenchanted" nature.139 Ken Booth's ambitious attempt to rethink security for the 1990s reverses the
theme of security as domination and force. He reinterprets security in terms of emancipation, meaning
both political liberty and the economic capacity to render that liberty meaningful.140 He also distances
security from the monopoly of states. Security is here understood as security primarily for citizens; in
doing this, Booth strips away the central assumption that states do necessarily provide security. This
point is crucial. Radically rethinking security inevitably has to deal with the role of states, because the
conventional discourse of security is all about states as the providers of security. So long as security
discourse remains intimately and uncritically entangled with state politics, the more innovative
possibilities for rethinking human community in the aftermath of the Cold War and in the face of
global ecological peril will be unnecessarily limited. Booth's suggestion for rethinking security in terms
of emancipation is an interesting possibility precisely because it directly links a reformulated security
with challenges to imposed and authoritarian power. To rethink security, then, is to insist on exposing
the power relations involved, both in the practical operations of politics and the metaphysical
underpinnings of modernist ontology. It involves challenging the use of security as ideology by asking,
"security specifically for whom?" in the face of assurances of security for everyone. It must insist that
ecological security is not about arranging resources to maintain the existing state system, a form of
natural resources management writ large.141 Rather, alternative conceptions of security must focus
on reforming the state system to ensure the survival of planetary ecology. International equity and the
consequent reformulation of international economic arrange- ments are an essential part of a common
security that can sustain the ecosystem.
Warming 1NC
(link) The affirmative focuses on the endpoint- the “telos”-of global warming- this
reinforces “the natural world” as the scapegoat for Global Warming and instills
overwhelming apathy in the population who perceive that any policy to prevent
climate change is too little too late
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Such distinctions between localized and globalized representations are important to their qualitative
conveyance of the apocalyptic frame. Global representations free room to create more horrific
metaphorical images of the apocalypse. These macro images tap into the audience’s deep-seated fears
of the final days and more traditional understandings of the apocalypse. While localized representations
require more specific images, they may still access a sense of impending doom for the reader, but more
in individualistic terms . In either case, the articles emphasize the end-point of global warming, the
potential effects of climate change rather than the steps leading to those effects. Emphasizing the
telos of climate change is enhanced by the narrative temporality of the apocalyptic frame. Articles
suggest that the telos of global climate change is the result of the unfolding of natural events. Because
the narrative emphasizes a cosmic unfolding of events, the telos of global warming exists outside the
confines of human agency. To put it simply, humans cannot forestall the inevitable conclusions of global
climate change because it is a natural process outside of human agency. A piece from Struck (2007)
helps illuminate this point: Most scientists say the changes anticipated at the poles in the next 30 to 40
years are inevitable, and averting more severe effects will take a drastic reduction in emissions of
greenhouse gases. Some have advanced controversial ideas to exploit the polar systems. At least three
companies have plans to “fertilize” the Southern Ocean with iron try to soak more carbon dioxide out of
the air. “We are just leveraging a natural process,” said Dan Whaley, founder of Climos, a San Francisco
company. Other scientists gathered recently at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were skeptical
of the idea. “There will be scientific consequences we cannot predict,” warned John Cullen, an
oceanographer at Dalhousie University in Halifax. (p. A10) In this instance, global warming is a “natural
process” that can be leveraged by scientists. However, the effectiveness of this leveraging cannot be
determined because nature is ultimately unpredictable. Climate change will progress regardless of
whether humans attempt to abate it or not. Averting even the worst consequences requires dramatic
human intervention because of the inevitability of the process, as Clynes (2007) demonstrates: In a 2005
article in the scientific journal Climate Change, [James Hansen of NASA] wrote that the current pace of
melting, driven by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, could lead to a self-reinforcing
and perhaps unstoppable cycle of feedback that could result in the total disintegration of the Greenland
ice sheet. Hansen and many other climatologists believe that it is likely that the ice sheet will begin
melting uncontrollably if global temperatures climb more than 3.6°F. A rapid meltdown in Greenland
would quickly raise sea levels around the world and flood coastal cities and farms. As well as sending
large icebergs down the coast, the infusion of cold, fresh water could disrupt ocean currents such as the
Gulf Stream, which help to keep the weather in the Northern Hemisphere regulated. “If that feedback
kicks in,” says Steffen, “then the average person will worry.” (p. 52) Here, the end-point of global climate
change is perpetuated through a “self-reinforcing” cycle. This cycle builds momentum toward the
narrative’s conclusion, to the point that there is little or no space for human agency in forestalling the
anticipated telos. Even more disturbing, the average person does not begin to worry until after the selfreinforcing feedback kicks in, suggesting that human involvement in changing the narrative will not
come until it is too late. While the articles do not all suggest that human agency or adaptation is
impossible, the narrative temporality limits the will of people to tackle the underlying cause of global
warming— increased greenhouse gas emission
Framing the climate change as an “existential risk” locks in narrow technical focusundermines holistic approach to environmental crisis-turns the case
Crist 7 (Eileen- Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University,
““Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume 141, Winter,
http://www.umweltethik.at/download.php?id=389//AJB)
While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in
representing it as the most urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves
to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the restriction of proposed solutions to the technical
realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly address the
problem; and it detracts attention from the planet's ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of
claiming the lime- light for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest
threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the
proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out
what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve "the problem." Whether the call is for reviving nuclear
power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources,
increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing
mirrors in space to deflect the sun's rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront the
problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them, capturing
them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example. Lovelock briefly
mentions the need to face climate change by "changing our whole style of living."16 But the thrust of
this work, what readers and policy-makers come away with, is his repeated and strident call for investing
in nuclear energy as, in his words, "the one lifeline we can use immediately."17 In the policy realm, the
first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with implementing the Kyoto
protocol. Biologist Tim Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for its successful
endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozone-depleting CFCs. "The Montreal
protocol," he submits, "marks a signal moment in human societal development, representing the first
ever victory by humanity over a global pollution problem."18 He hopes for a similar victory for the global
climate-change problem. Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the
wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty
is no solution to the planet's predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been
followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be naive not to anticipate
another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of
the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological
shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The
destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consump- tion,
coupled with population growth, would go unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty,
and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that
admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to. the entire planet.19
But questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its singleminded quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization
that are causing the climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climate-change literature
often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological
means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels
cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of
equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda
today mat it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of
species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil
losses and desertification, endocrine dis- ruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to
appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with "dangerous anthropogenic inter- ference"
with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse
encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly
described as a holocaust," and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a
virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several
works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global
warming for biodiversity,21 but rarely is it mentioned that bio depletion predates dangerous
greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological
resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—
indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may
temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the cli- mate quandary will not put an end
to—will barely address—the ongoing destruction of life on Earth.
(alt) The alternative is too reject the 1AC’s apocalyptic framing of Climate Changeonly then can we productively solve for climate change
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
In conclusion, we hope to inspire more scholarship in the spirit of Moser and Dilling’s (2007) call for a
greater inter-disciplinary conversation on climate change. The methodological tool of frame analysis can
help foster common ground between humanities scholars, social scientists, and climate scientists,
concerned about global warming. Frame analysis can also be a valuable tool in identifying the troubling
aspects of how a discourse evolves and is communicated—and in so doing, it can lead to more effective
communication. Deconstructing the harmful effects of an apocalyptic frame, we feel some responsibility
to try to offer alternative frames which might balance the need to communicate the urgency of climate
change, without moving people to denial and despair. We would like to see the press inspire more of a
public dialogue on how we can mitigate climate change, rather than encouraging readers to continue to
be resigned to the catastrophic telos. This does not mean that we should ignore the potentially
devastating consequences of global warming (now and in the future); but it does mean that we must
begin a conversation about how to change our daily routines to make things better. We believe that the
press could promote greater human agency in the issue of climate change, so that people do not
become resigned to the telos of global warming. This includes encouraging more personal and civic
responsibility, rather than suggesting that experts will take care of it (or that we can do nothing to
mitigate the impacts of climate change). Journalists could acknowledge the expertise of scientists,
balanced with an acknowledgement of the power of common sense and morality— such a move may
help avoid casting scientists as prophets. Through a less tragic, more productive framing of the issues of
climate change, we may expand the common ground needed to build a political will for dealing with
climate change.
Top Shelf
2NC Framework
C/I-The plan and rationale are intrinsically linked-Discourse matters—it is the first step
that is required to securitize the environment
Trombetta 07 (MJ, The Securitization of the Environment and the Transformation of Security, Maria Julia
Trombetta -- Delft University of Technology, September 2007, http://www.eisanet.org/bebruga/eisa/files/events/turin/Trombettathe_securitization_of_the_environment_and_the_transformati
on_of_security.pdf)
To clarify the point it is necessary to explore the last characteristic of securitization: security¶ is a
specific kind of speech act; it has a specific rhetoric structure and brings into existence a¶ specific set of
practices. The appeal to security casts an issue as a.n “existential threat."(Bu2an,¶ Waever and Wilde
1998: 21-2) Security is about “the staging of existential issues in politics to lift¶ them above politics. In
security discourse, an issue is dramatized and presented as a.n issue of¶ supreme priority; Thus, by
labelling it as securig/, an agent claims a need for and a right to treat it¶ by extraordinary
mea.ns."(Buza.n, Waever and Wilde 1998: 26, emphasis in the original) For the¶ CopS this appeal to
survival carries with it a set of connotations that invokes the logic of “threat-¶ defence,” the
identification of a.n enemy and eventually the logic of war. (Waever 1995: 54)9[9] This¶ aspect is rooted
in the classical realist tradition. '°[“'] The mechanism that identifies the “securityness¶ of security”, the
“quality that makes something a security issue in international relations”(Bu2an¶ 1997: 13) recalls the
understanding of the political provided by Schmitt for whom “the political is the most intense a.nd
extreme antagonism,. ..that of the friend-enemy grouping.” (Schmitt, 1996: 29)¶ Securitization is
identified with the exceptional decision that constitutes enemies and brings into¶ existence the logic of
war. The School does not share this vision of the political but suggests that¶ this logic characterizes the
security mindset. The liberal project, for the School, has narrowed down¶ this logic a.nd the practices
associated with it, limiting them to the military sector a.nd the national¶ security discourse, where the
use of force and the logic of war are legitimated.(Buzan and Waever¶ 1998) Thus, the problem with the
broadening of the security agenda is that this mindset is spread to¶ issues from which it had been
banned. In this way the problems with securitization, when the¶ environment is involved, start to
appear.
Our interpretation is also theoretically superior-It solves decision-making and predictability – forces debaters to reflect on
assumptions they make when researching and ask questions about the framing used
in their evidence – that promotes deliberation and internal link turns strategic
thinking arguments – if they can’t justify the 1AC that proves our argument and vote
neg on presumption
Debate cannot produce immediate, real world policies – this means that this debate
should be about the scholarship of the AFF
2NC Discourse Key
Environmental securitization is a speech act-It is intrinsically tied to a particular logic that
organizes life and promotes state of exceptionpolitics
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
By the early 1990s this began to change, as a number of scholars expressed unease at the connection
between the two concepts. One line of objection came from those who wished to retain the focus of
security on the intentional use of military force by states. Stephen Walt expressed a desire to retain “the
phenomenon of war” as the focus of security studies in order to ensure the retention of conceptual
clarity (1991: 212). Daniel Deudney showed sympathy with Walt’s concerns, warning that should all
large-scale threats to human life be incorporated under the security rubric “we shall soon drain the term
of any meaning…” (1990: 465). Whilst such anxieties are not entirely invalid they are stained by an air of
greater concern for the security of concepts than that of people. Far more serious, was the contention
that the environment-security link may be counterproductive in the quest to conceive of and implement
effective solutions to environmental problems. Deudney was amongst the first to express these
sentiments, claiming that “[e]nhanced concern for the environment because it is perceived as a security
problem may alter environmental politics in negative ways” (1995: 195). This belief rests on the vision
that the policies and strategies invoked by framing an issue in security terms are unsuitable for
addressing environmental problems. To understand the nature of these concerns it is necessary to say
some more about the concept of security.¶ Securitization: Security As A Performative Act¶ In order to
comprehend how the seemingly intuitive strategy of linking the environment to security might be
counterproductive it is instructive to recall Michael Dillon’s words on what ‘security’ is: “it is not a noun
that names things, it is a principle of formulation that does things” (Dillon, 1996: 19). The implication
here is that ‘security’ goes beyond a mere nametag to be attached to anything that might render human
beings insecure and becomes a category that “articulates a particular way of organizing forms of life”
(Huysmans, 1998: 231). This understanding of security has been developed at the greatest length by the
Copenhagen School (CS), the collective of scholars amongst whom Barry Buzan, Ole Waever and Jaap de
Wilde are the most prominent. Their jointly authored text Security: A New Framework For Analysis
(1998) builds on the earlier work of Ole Waever to forward the notion of security as a speech act. Under
this conception ‘security’ is understood as a performative utterance, following John Austin’s distinction
between descriptive speech acts, which merely label objects, and performative speech acts, which by
being said do something to change reality (Buzan et al., 1998 26; Austin, 1975: 98ff). Security can be
seen as having a performative function because “[r]ather than describing or picturing a condition it
orders social relations into security relations” (Huysmans, 1998: 232). ¶ Therefore, by presenting an issue
in terms of security, it is possible initiate a certain set of social conditions that would not be introduced
if the issue were conceived of as other than a security issue. These social relations typically involve a
state of exception, a stepping outside of normal political procedures whereby exceptional measures are
legitimised due to the pressing need to address the pending threat. For the CS security “is the move that
takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue as either a special kind of
politics or above politics” (Buzan et al., 1998: 23). The textbook case here is the mobilization of a
populace against an external enemy during in wartime, whereby citizens accept enforced hardships –
rationing, relocation, conscription – as a necessary component of the response to the threat.
‘Securitization’, as such, can be understood to refer to the casting of an issue as an existential threat
with the intention of generating an extraordinary response to the problem . Recognition of the power of
the security tag to generate an extraordinary response is fundamental in understanding the desire to
locate the environment within the security framework.¶ With the understanding of security as a
performative rather than descriptive act in place the debate over environmental security takes on a new
character. As Ole Waever has detailed, under the speech act conception of security, the “use of the
security label does not merely reflect whether a problem is a security problem, it is also a political
choice, that is a decision for conceptualization a special way. When an issue is ‘securitized’ the act itself
tends to lead to certain ways of addressing it” (Waever, 1995: 65). Therefore, the focus shifts from the
question of whether the environment is in reality a threat to human well being – the question which
underpinned the early work on the topic by those such as Mathews and Ullman – and onto the issue of
whether the conditions invoked by applying the security tag are desirable for addressing the issue at
hand. As Huysmans has said “One has to decide…if one wants to approach a problem in security terms
or not…the is-question automatically turns into a should-question” (1998: 234, 249). The response to
the should-question of environmental security is dependent on whether or not the way in which
security organizes social relations can be seen as beneficial to the attempt to develop effective
environmental policy. A concern that the social relations invoked by posing environmental issues as
security issues would not lead to the most effective environmental policy motivated the initial
objections to the notion of ‘environmental security’. Whilst the securitization of the environment
represents a seemingly attractive proposition due to security’s assumed ability to deliver a swift
response, there is cause to doubt whether the conditions invoked by applying the security label
correlate with the demands of present environmental problems. Ole Waever has warned that whilst the
speech act approach opens up the possibility that almost any issue could be securitized in theory, this
may be dangerous in practice because “[s]ecurity, as with any other concept, comes with a history and a
set of connotations that it cannot escape” (Waever, 1995; 47). The contention is that the historical
associations of security may lead to the importation of a logic unfit for dealing with the problem at
hand, especially given that the environmental issue differs greatly from conventional notions of threat
and vulnerability. When one scratches the surface it becomes clear that there are a number of
mismatches between the conditions invoked by a securitization along conventional lines and the
response required to meet the environmental challenge. These concerns can be expressed through
three related categories: statism, militarization and status quo mindset.
Discourse matters—it is the key element to securitizing the environment
Scott 12(Shirley V., The Securitization of Climate Change in World¶ Politics: How Close have We Come and would
Full¶ Securitization Enhance the Efficacy of Global ¶ Climate Change Policy?, Review of European Community and
Environmental Law, Associate Professor¶ School of Social Sciences UNSW Austrailia,RECIEL 21 (3) 2012)
The first step in the process of securitization is referred¶ to as a ‘securitizing move‘i In the case of
climate change,¶ this means climate security being introduced into the¶ discourse of international
policy making and the¶ framing of climate change as a threat to human,¶ national and international
security. This move can be¶ dated from 2006 when British Foreign Secretary Mar-¶ garet Beckett
assumed a leadership role in promoting¶ the association of climate change with international¶ security in
global policy discourse. During the United¶ Kingdom Presidency, the G8 in 2006 accepted the fun-¶
damental links between energy, security, climate¶ change and sustainable development, and in October¶
2006 Beckett emphasized the importance of ‘climate¶ security‘ in a major foreign policy speech in
Berlin.“¶ After considerable lobbying, the United Kingdom¶ chaired the first UN Security Council debate
on climate¶ change on 17 April 2007. A common theme in the¶ debate was that of climate change as a
‘threat multi-¶ plier‘i" It is not that increasing temperatures as such¶ threaten human security, although
they may well do so¶ in certain situations, but rather that the physical effects triggered by the increased
temperatures could be¶ expected in many instances to exacerbate existing¶ tensions.
2NC AT Perm
The permutation fails-1. The Permutation is severance- the link is based off of the discourse and rhetoric of
the 1AC- they can’t sever that- makes being neg impossible because it allows the aff to
abandon it in the 2AC which kills all preparation also kills ground because they can
spike out of links-that’s a voter
2. The alt is a rejection of the discursive framing of the 1AC—not a course of action—
that means that it can’t be permuted
3. <INSERT LINK EXPLANATION HERE>
4.The perm fails—allows the military to hijack the issue—results in militarization of
the environment
Trenell 6 (Paul- Master of Science in Security Studies from University of Wales, “The (Im)possibilty of
‘Environmental Security’,” Dissertation for Master of Science in Security Studies, September 2006,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410//AJB)
A further association of conventional security practices that could be misguidedly imported into the
environmental realm is the use of military force to attain security. Security has for centuries been the
preserve of the military, and the provision of security remains highly entangled with military institutions.
As such concern has been expressed that casting the environment in security terms may lead to greater
military involvement in addressing environmental problems. For their part the military have been keen
to involve themselves in environmental matters due to the fact that, in the aftermath of the Cold War,
this represents a good way to ensure continued status and funding (Conca, 1994: 16). Yet further
military involvement in the environmental sector would be unwelcome and counterproductive in
numerous ways, not least because “ there are of course, no military solutions to environmental
insecurity” (WCED, 1987: 301). One cannot bomb the environment back into good health, and the
secretive and hierarchical structures that dominate military organisations are fundamentally unsuited to
environmental challenges which demand cooperative and innovative solutions (Deudney, 1991: 24).
More than just hinder the search for solutions, military organisations actively exacerbate environmental
problems. Jon Barnett has claimed that “militarization is arguably the single biggest risk to human
beings” (2001: 19). There is the obvious point that military conflict rarely passes without high numbers
of fatalities. However, the preparations and conduct of military conflict also have hugely detrimental
environmental impacts. For example it is estimated that the burning of oil fields during the 1991 Gulf
War produced one hundred times the carbon dioxide emissions emitted by an entire year of global
economic trading (Brock, 1991: 411). Similarly devastating environmental damage is sustained via
nuclear testing and military preparations. Legitimising a military role in addressing environmental
problems by framing environmental concerns in terms of security may serve only to enshrine the
military’s status as “protected polluters” (Dalby, 1992b: 512) and thereby create further environmental
damage. Moreover, should the military succeed in hijacking a role in addressing environmental issues,
the funding that it would receive for this function would represent serious “opportunity costs” to
environmental initiatives by siphoning off funds that could be spent on more environmentally oriented
solutions (Stern, 1995: 222) . In sum, in the quest to address environmental vulnerability it would seem
counterproductive to follow any strategy that may give further justification to the existence and
dominance of an industry that does so much to harm the environment.
Links
Link—Emissions—2NC
Reducing emissions securitizes the environment and fails to address the root causes of
environmental problems
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
As demonstrated hitherto, the identification of threats reveals not only the¶ identities, interests and
values that are supposed to be protected, but also the¶ practices and logics associated with security.
Hence, it is relevant to explore which¶ specific aspects are identified in the climate security discourse, in
order to assess¶ its potential and limits in a process of transformation. The list of threats provided¶ by
Margaret Beckett is illustrative. She focused on food security, water issues,¶ security of energy supply,
immigration, conflicts and failing states, arguing that ‘a¶ failing climate means more failing states’
(Beckett 2006). In this way, she outlined¶ the complexity of climate change and the variety of people and
vulnerabilities¶ involved, and called for a wider and deeper security discourse, which is more¶ attentive
to human needs. This approach resonates with the human security¶ discourse and its associated
practices. However, what has emerged as the¶ ‘threat’—since it is represented as the root cause—in
the recent development of the climate security discourse is the emission of greenhouse gases, mainly
carbon¶ dioxide. This is evident in the British statement about 2006 strategic priorities, one¶ of which
includes ‘achieving climate security by promoting a faster transition to a¶ sustainable, low-carbon
economy’ (Foreign and Commonwealth Office 2007, 70).¶ A focus on emissions has the merit of involving
industrialized countries and¶ avoiding the removal of their responsibility suggested by the discourse
on¶ environmental conflicts, which focused on the global south, its inadequacy and¶ responsibility.
Moreover, it links the discourse on climate security with that on¶ energy security, suggesting that the
two issues are interconnected.¶ This focus however has two problematic implications. First it tends to
reduce¶ the problem of sustainability to one of emissions, creating the illusion that it is¶ enough to
simply focus on cutting emissions or switching toward nongreenhouse¶ gas energy, such as nuclear or
bio-fuel to solve the environmental crisis. This¶ approach downplays the complexity of environmental
problems and the impact¶ of the overuse of limited resources. Instead, climate change is only one
aspect¶ of a larger human-made environmental change. As humankind pushes the¶ boundaries of the
carrying capacity of the planet, the impact of climate change is¶ going to increase especially on those
who live in marginal, vulnerable areas.¶ Reducing emissions will not solve all the other environmental
problems or¶ increase the resilience of vulnerable population. Returning to the previous¶ example of
hurricane Katrina: even though it has been associated with global¶ warming, its devastating impact was
also a result of other local problems, such as¶ the draining of the wetlands or the extraction of
groundwater; problems of levee¶ design and maintenance standards; the failure of emergency services
which had¶ been focused on other security priorities. There is a trade-off between the focus on¶
reducing emissions and that on improving resilience and adaptability. In this¶ sense, the focus on
emissions tends to limit the holistic perspective suggested by¶ environmental security.
Link—Generic—1NC
State led attempts to prevent environmental degradation result in securitization-empirics
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
Evolving perspectives on environmental and climate security¶ The emergence of global environmental
problems, such as global warming and¶ ozone depletion, resulted in one of the first attempts to
securitize the environment¶ on a global scale. The Brandt Report (1980) suggested that ‘few threats to
peace¶ and survival of the human community are greater than those posed by the¶ prospects of
cumulative and irreversible degradation of the biosphere on which¶ human life depends’ (quoted in
Brauch 2003, 81). These new threats suggested the¶ need to redefine the nature of security in an
interdependent world facing new¶ challenges.¶ In the post-Cold War era, the environmental security
discourse opened the¶ window for debating a common approach to security affairs. For instance, at¶ the
United Nations General Assembly in December 1988, Gorbachev stressed:¶ ‘The relationship between
man and the environment has become menacing ...¶ [t]he threat from the sky is no longer missiles but
global warming’ (quoted in¶ Norman Myers 1993, 11). He also promoted the creation of an Ecological
Security¶ Council.6As a result of these appeals to security, several initiatives were launched¶ during the
early post-Cold War era. Alarming concerns for the hole in the ozone¶ layer transformed the problem
into a threat to human health and promoted fairly¶ successful agreements to deal with the issue at an
international level. Concerns for¶ climate change not only led to the creation of the Intergovernmental
Panel¶ on Climate Change (IPCC)7 to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic¶ aspects of human
impact on climate change but also to the signing of the UN¶ Framework Convention on Climate Change
in Rio in 1992 (United Nations 1992). However, negotiations on climate change proved to be more
problematic than¶ those on the ozone because acting on climate change would require the¶
transformation of much of the existing economic structure and way of life. Hence¶ climate change was
marginalized in the environmental security discourse. Despite the initial momentum and the broad
scope of environmental security¶ discourses, the debate was captured by discussions about
environmentally induced¶ conflicts. This helped both to frame environmental threats in more familiar
terms to¶ national security experts and to consider the environment as a legitimate threat.
Link—Overview—2NC
Discourse—the discourse of the 1AC frames environmental threats in terms of
conflict—diverts attention from true action to prevent climate change—
securitization is dependent on discourse—people have to be persuaded that
something is a threat
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
The theory of securitization argues that there are no objective threats, waiting¶ to be discovered.
Instead, various issues can be transformed into security issues¶ if a political community constructs them
as such through a successful speech act¶ that transforms the way of dealing with them. Security in this
perspective is not a¶ value or a condition but a form of social practice. That is to say, if an issue¶ succeeds
in being labelled as a security issue, the method of handling it will be¶ transformed.¶ The consideration of
the discursive formation of security issues provides a¶ new perspective to analyse the environmental
security discourse. First, it allows¶ an investigation of the political process behind the selections of
threats, exploring¶ why some of them are considered more relevant and urgent than others. Second, it¶
suggests that the awareness of environmental issues can have a relevant role in¶ defining and
transforming political communities and their identities, since the¶ process creates new ideas about who
deserves to be protected and by whom.¶ Finally, as Behnke (2000, 91) points out, securitization can
open the space for a¶ ‘genuinely political’ constitutive and formative struggle through which political¶
structures (including the practices associated with security) are contested and¶ re-established.¶
However, for the Copenhagen School, securitization has problematic¶ consequences. The label security
brings with it a set of practices and a way of¶ dealing with a problem that characterizes an issue as a
security issue. The word¶ security entails a specific logic or rationality, independent of the context or the¶
intentions of the speakers. Security is about survival, urgency and emergency. It¶ allows for exceptional
measures, the breaking of otherwise binding rules and¶ governance by decrees rather than by
democratic decisions. Moreover security¶ implies a ‘decisionist’ attitude which emphasizes the
importance of reactive,¶ emergency measures. This set of practices is not necessarily codified nor can it
be¶ identified by specific rules. Instead it is more a form of rationality, a way of¶ framing and dealing with
an issue, or ‘a generic structure of meaning which¶ organizes dispositions, social relations, and politics
according to a rationality of¶ security’ (Huysmans 2006, 24–25). This mindset, once activated, is not open
to¶ negotiation. Although it is possible to decide whether or not to securitize an¶ issue—and
securitization, as a social process, is determined by a political¶ community rather than by individuals—
once an issue is securitized the logic of¶ security necessarily follows.
Link—Generic—2NC
The affirmative securitizes the environment—presents the environment as a threat to
human survival
Biswas 11(Niloy R., Winter, IS THE ENVIRONMENT A SECURITY THREAT? ¶ Environmental Security beyond Securitization,
Niloy R. Biswas City University London (Department of International Politics), INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS REVIEW¶ Vol. XX, No. 1:
Winter 2011)
From the securitization perspective, one can also relate environment and security ¶ through this
framework. Numbers of securitization actors are increasing from the vulnerable ¶ population group to
more active agencies like NGOs and international donor communities ¶ (e.g. donor countries, the UN,
international NGOs). These actors formulate policies that are ¶ foremost concerns of the national
strategy of a country. ―Speech act‖ (i.e., the politicization ¶ factor of securitizing the environment) is
significantly present when these actors are involved ¶ to create a framework of environmental security
and influence this framework to be ¶ incorporated to the national security strategy. Therefore, both
national and international ¶ responses to negate environmental risk factors are significant to justify
environmental change ¶ as a prominent security threat.
State led attempts to prevent environmental degredation result in securitization-empirics
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
Evolving perspectives on environmental and climate security¶ The emergence of global environmental
problems, such as global warming and¶ ozone depletion, resulted in one of the first attempts to
securitize the environment¶ on a global scale. The Brandt Report (1980) suggested that ‘few threats to
peace¶ and survival of the human community are greater than those posed by the¶ prospects of
cumulative and irreversible degradation of the biosphere on which¶ human life depends’ (quoted in
Brauch 2003, 81). These new threats suggested the¶ need to redefine the nature of security in an
interdependent world facing new¶ challenges.¶ In the post-Cold War era, the environmental security
discourse opened the¶ window for debating a common approach to security affairs. For instance, at¶ the
United Nations General Assembly in December 1988, Gorbachev stressed:¶ ‘The relationship between
man and the environment has become menacing ...¶ [t]he threat from the sky is no longer missiles but
global warming’ (quoted in¶ Norman Myers 1993, 11). He also promoted the creation of an Ecological
Security¶ Council.6As a result of these appeals to security, several initiatives were launched¶ during the
early post-Cold War era. Alarming concerns for the hole in the ozone¶ layer transformed the problem
into a threat to human health and promoted fairly¶ successful agreements to deal with the issue at an
international level. Concerns for¶ climate change not only led to the creation of the Intergovernmental
Panel¶ on Climate Change (IPCC)7 to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic¶ aspects of human
impact on climate change but also to the signing of the UN¶ Framework Convention on Climate Change
in Rio in 1992 (United Nations 1992). However, negotiations on climate change proved to be more
problematic than¶ those on the ozone because acting on climate change would require the¶
transformation of much of the existing economic structure and way of life. Hence¶ climate change was
marginalized in the environmental security discourse. Despite the initial momentum and the broad
scope of environmental security¶ discourses, the debate was captured by discussions about
environmentally induced¶ conflicts. This helped both to frame environmental threats in more familiar
terms to¶ national security experts and to consider the environment as a legitimate threat.
Link—Resource Wars—2NC
Framing environmental issues in terms of resource conflicts creates counterproductive
linkages between environmental and security paradigms
Deudney 99 (Daniel-Hewlett fellow in Science, Technology, and Politics at the Center for Energy and
Environmental Studies at Princeton University, “The Case Against Linking Environmental Degradation
and National Security,” Millennium-Journal of International Studies, Volume 19, No. 3, Winter
1999,//AJB
The degradation of the natural environment upon which human well-being depends is a challenge of
far-reaching significance for human societies everywhere. But this challenge has little to do with the
national-security-front- violence problem that continues to plague human political life. Not only is there
little in common between the causes and solutions of these two problems, but the nationalist and
militarist mindsets closely associated with 'national security' thinking directly conflict with the core of
the environmentalist world view. Harnessing these sentiments for a 'war on pollution' is a dangerous
and probably self-defeating enterprise. And fortunately, the prospects for resource and pollution wars
are not as great as often conjured by environmentalists. The pervasive recourse to national security
paradigms to conceptualize the environmental problem represents a profound and disturbing failure of
imagination and political awareness. If the nation-slate enjoys a more prominent status in world politics
than its competence and accomplishments warrant, then it makes little sense to emphasize the links
between it and the emerging problem of the global habitability." Nationalist .sentiment and the war
system have a long-established logic and staying power that arc likely to defy any rhetorically conjured
're-direction' toward benign ends. The movement to preserve the habitability of the planet for future
generations must directly challenge the tribal power of nationalism and the chronic militarization of
public discourse. Environmental degradation is not a threat to national security. Rather,
environmentalism is a threat to 'national security' mindsets and institutions. For environmentalists to
dress their programmes in the blood- soaked garments of the war system betrays their core values and
creates confusion about the real tasks at hand.
Link—Warming—1NC
The affirmative focuses on the endpoint- the “telos”-of global warming- this reinforces
“the natural world” as the scapegoat for Global Warming and instills overwhelming
apathy in the population who perceive that any policy to prevent climate change is
too little too late
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Such distinctions between localized and globalized representations are important to their qualitative
conveyance of the apocalyptic frame. Global representations free room to create more horrific
metaphorical images of the apocalypse. These macro images tap into the audience’s deep-seated fears
of the final days and more traditional understandings of the apocalypse. While localized representations
require more specific images, they may still access a sense of impending doom for the reader, but more
in individualistic terms . In either case, the articles emphasize the end-point of global warming, the
potential effects of climate change rather than the steps leading to those effects. Emphasizing the
telos of climate change is enhanced by the narrative temporality of the apocalyptic frame. Articles
suggest that the telos of global climate change is the result of the unfolding of natural events. Because
the narrative emphasizes a cosmic unfolding of events, the telos of global warming exists outside the
confines of human agency. To put it simply, humans cannot forestall the inevitable conclusions of global
climate change because it is a natural process outside of human agency. A piece from Struck (2007)
helps illuminate this point: Most scientists say the changes anticipated at the poles in the next 30 to 40
years are inevitable, and averting more severe effects will take a drastic reduction in emissions of
greenhouse gases. Some have advanced controversial ideas to exploit the polar systems. At least three
companies have plans to “fertilize” the Southern Ocean with iron try to soak more carbon dioxide out of
the air. “We are just leveraging a natural process,” said Dan Whaley, founder of Climos, a San Francisco
company. Other scientists gathered recently at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute were skeptical
of the idea. “There will be scientific consequences we cannot predict,” warned John Cullen, an
oceanographer at Dalhousie University in Halifax. (p. A10) In this instance, global warming is a “natural
process” that can be leveraged by scientists. However, the effectiveness of this leveraging cannot be
determined because nature is ultimately unpredictable. Climate change will progress regardless of
whether humans attempt to abate it or not. Averting even the worst consequences requires dramatic
human intervention because of the inevitability of the process, as Clynes (2007) demonstrates: In a 2005
article in the scientific journal Climate Change, [James Hansen of NASA] wrote that the current pace of
melting, driven by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, could lead to a self-reinforcing
and perhaps unstoppable cycle of feedback that could result in the total disintegration of the Greenland
ice sheet. Hansen and many other climatologists believe that it is likely that the ice sheet will begin
melting uncontrollably if global temperatures climb more than 3.6°F. A rapid meltdown in Greenland
would quickly raise sea levels around the world and flood coastal cities and farms. As well as sending
large icebergs down the coast, the infusion of cold, fresh water could disrupt ocean currents such as the
Gulf Stream, which help to keep the weather in the Northern Hemisphere regulated. “If that feedback
kicks in,” says Steffen, “then the average person will worry.” (p. 52) Here, the end-point of global climate
change is perpetuated through a “self-reinforcing” cycle. This cycle builds momentum toward the
narrative’s conclusion, to the point that there is little or no space for human agency in forestalling the
anticipated telos. Even more disturbing, the average person does not begin to worry until after the selfreinforcing feedback kicks in, suggesting that human involvement in changing the narrative will not
come until it is too late. While the articles do not all suggest that human agency or adaptation is
impossible, the narrative temporality limits the will of people to tackle the underlying cause of global
warming— increased greenhouse gas emission
Link—Overview (Warming)—2NC
The aff securitizes the environment—that turns the case
a.
The aff engages in an apocalyptic framing of climate change-use of
phrases such as “only existential risk” and painting huge doomsday
scenarios only serve to focus on the endpoint of global warming and
not the steps leading up to that point.- That’s Foust
b. Discourse—the discourse of the 1AC frames environmental threats in
terms of conflict—diverts attention from true action to prevent climate
change—securitization is dependent on discourse—people have to be persuaded that
something is a threat
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
The theory of securitization argues that there are no objective threats, waiting¶ to be discovered.
Instead, various issues can be transformed into security issues¶ if a political community constructs them
as such through a successful speech act¶ that transforms the way of dealing with them. Security in this
perspective is not a¶ value or a condition but a form of social practice. That is to say, if an issue¶ succeeds
in being labelled as a security issue, the method of handling it will be¶ transformed.¶ The consideration of
the discursive formation of security issues provides a¶ new perspective to analyse the environmental
security discourse. First, it allows¶ an investigation of the political process behind the selections of
threats, exploring¶ why some of them are considered more relevant and urgent than others. Second, it¶
suggests that the awareness of environmental issues can have a relevant role in¶ defining and
transforming political communities and their identities, since the¶ process creates new ideas about who
deserves to be protected and by whom.¶ Finally, as Behnke (2000, 91) points out, securitization can
open the space for a¶ ‘genuinely political’ constitutive and formative struggle through which political¶
structures (including the practices associated with security) are contested and¶ re-established.¶
However, for the Copenhagen School, securitization has problematic¶ consequences. The label security
brings with it a set of practices and a way of¶ dealing with a problem that characterizes an issue as a
security issue. The word¶ security entails a specific logic or rationality, independent of the context or the¶
intentions of the speakers. Security is about survival, urgency and emergency. It¶ allows for exceptional
measures, the breaking of otherwise binding rules and¶ governance by decrees rather than by
democratic decisions. Moreover security¶ implies a ‘decisionist’ attitude which emphasizes the
importance of reactive,¶ emergency measures. This set of practices is not necessarily codified nor can it
be¶ identified by specific rules. Instead it is more a form of rationality, a way of¶ framing and dealing with
an issue, or ‘a generic structure of meaning which¶ organizes dispositions, social relations, and politics
according to a rationality of¶ security’ (Huysmans 2006, 24–25). This mindset, once activated, is not open
to¶ negotiation. Although it is possible to decide whether or not to securitize an¶ issue—and
securitization, as a social process, is determined by a political¶ community rather than by individuals—
once an issue is securitized the logic of¶ security necessarily follows.
Link—Warming—2NC
Framing “Global Warming” as the “end of the world” reinforces fatalism among the
public and reinforces skeptic’s beliefs- we need alternative framing methods in order
to spur action
Leiserowitz 5 (Anthony- Director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication,
“Communicating the Risks of Global Warming: American Risk Perceptions, Affective Images and
Interpretive Communities,” Part of Moser/Diller’s “CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE:
COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE – FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE,” 2005,
http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/files/ClimateRiskCommunication.pdf//AJB)
Some may argue that engaging professional climate change naysayers only lends them credibility and
gives their views more weight than they deserve; thus climate change scientists, activists and educators
should ignore them. This is a mistake. While a small, but vocal minority of the public (that is also more
likely to vote), this interpretive community includes leading politicians, contrarian scientists, political
pundits, Washington think tanks and major corporations that have already greatly influenced public
opinion and government policy. Left unchallenged, they will continue to cast doubt on climate science
and scientists and impede public policies to mitigate or adapt to climate change. Further, the research
reported here suggests that some naysayers could yet be convinced to support policies to reduce fossil
fuel use, in some cases with more scientific evidence, in others with framings that resonate with
strongly held values, or with messengers that they already trust. For example, some naysayers may
respond favorably to a focus on the economic opportunities presented by the global effort to shift
energy production toward renewable energy. Entrepreneurial innovation will be critical to this effort
and the global marketplace will amply reward those individuals and companies that are best positioned
to provide the energy and jobs of the future. Other naysayers may be more persuaded by the national
security implications and consequences of continued fossil fuel dependency, which range from the
economic, political and military resources devoted to acquiring and protecting American access to oil in
the Middle East (and the geopolitical consequences) to the potentially destabilizing consequences of
climate change on governments, economies and societies around the world. Columnist Thomas
Friedman of the New York Times has recently argued for a “geo-green” strategy to end American and
world dependence on fossil fuels by developing alternative sources of energy, which will both reduce
future climate change and further neo-conservative goals to undermine totalitarian regimes and
promote freedom and democracy in the Middle East by cutting off the oil revenues that support them
(Friedman, 2005a; 2005b). Likewise, Set America Free is an organization that proposes a large-scale
investment in alternative energies to reduce American dependence on fossil fuels, and to thus “deny
adversaries the wherewithal they use to harm us; protect our quality of life and economy against the
effects of cuts in foreign energy supplies and rising costs; and reduce by as much a 50% emissions of
undesirable pollutants” (Set America Free, 2005). The organization includes prominent members such as
Gary Bauer (conservative evangelical leader and 2000 Republican candidate for president), Robert
McFarlane (former National Security Advisor under President Reagan), and James Woolsey (former
director of the CIA under President Clinton). A parallel movement advocating for action on climate
change is also emerging from the religious community, including evangelical Christians. Religious groups,
including the National Association of Evangelicals, “argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a
cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God’s creation”
(Goodstein, 2005). Some religious leaders argue that “climate change would have disproportionate
effects on the poorest regions of the world,” and “caring for the poor by reducing the threat of global
warming is caring for Jesus Christ,” thus addressing climate change is a moral and ethical requirement
(The Rev. Jim Ball quoted in Goodstein, 2005; see also Bingham, this volume). All of these are examples
of organizations, messages and messengers that are more likely to reach and persuade climate change
naysayers than traditional scientific or environmental arguments. Alarmists, however, already exhibit
grave concern regarding the issue. They strongly support policies to mitigate climate change and are
already predisposed to be attentive to and believe scientist, government and environmentalist
messages regarding climate change risks. On the other hand, some of these respondents hold extremely
negative images that go well beyond scientific assessments of climate change risks. These extreme
responses are often apocalyptic, predicting “the end of the world” or the “death of the planet.” These
are overreactions to an otherwise very serious problem and may lead some to a sense of resigned
fatalism. Further, these dystopic visions provide ammunition to naysayers who in turn claim that global
warming is a hoax perpetrated by “doomsayers” and “Chicken Littles” (Moser and Dilling, 2004; and
Moser, this volume).
The affirmative engages in the same hype as the media- furthering a profit driven
message
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Interrogating journalistic practices and portrayals of climate change is important, for a substantial
portion of the general public’s knowledge about science comes from media sources (Antilla, 2005;
Corbett & Durfee, 2004). Furthermore, the “prestige-press coverage of global warming is not just a
collection of news articles; it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by [the] news”
(Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004, p. 126). So long as there continues to be a division between popular and
scientific discourses on global warming, it will be difficult to build a collective will for curbing greenhouse
gas emissions. The force of hegemonic ideologies, the values of a profit-driven media, and the
professional practices and codes of journalism impact the way the press frames important public issues
(Iyengar, 1991): And as a growing body of scholarship suggests , global warming is not immune from
such forces . Journalists’ general lack of science education and editors’ reliance on public relations news
releases lead Jones (2006) to conclude that: The complexities of global warming are not conveyed by
news media. Instead, audiences seeking information are presented with dichotomous propositions such
as whether global warming is taking place, whether human activity is contributing to the phenomenon,
and whether anything should be done to address [global warming] as a social/environmental problem.
(p. 177) There is a growing concern that reporting on climate change does more harm than good, for it
presents disinformation, sometimes intentionally; and does not adequately engage the public’s
attention on this important issue. That the American public does not view climate change with the same
urgency as scientists is “perfectly logical” (Boykoff & Boykoff, 2004, p. 134) when considering whose
interests are at stake in reporting the issue. Citing the example of ExxonMobil, Antilla (2005) notes that
certain business and political sectors benefit from misinforming the public, so they present industry-
funded experts as sources for journalists: These individuals are “willing to back up a profitably mistaken
viewpoint” in interviews, joining “efforts to cover [climate change] in a thick fog of sophistry and
uncertainty and to unearth yet one more reason why the status quo is best for us”
(link) The affirmative presents the impacts of warming in a way that securitizes the
environment
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
Appeals to ‘climate security’ represent a recent and fairly successful attempt to¶ introduce
environmental concerns into the security agenda. Despite this¶ momentum, the link between
environmental change and security remains a¶ contested topic: not only are environmental problems
often silenced by more¶ urgent threats but the very opportunity of considering the environment as a¶
security issue is also challenged.¶ Since environmental problems began to gain relevance in political
discourse in¶ the 1970s, there have been a number of suggestions to consider their security¶ implications
(Falk 1971; Brown 1977). However, it was only in the 1980s—with the¶ emergence of global
environmental problems such as the depletion of¶ stratospheric ozone or global warming—that the
debate on environmental¶ security gained momentum. The publication of Our common future by the
World¶ Commission on Environment and Development (1987) marked the entry of the¶ phrase
‘environmental security’ into international debates; the merits of the¶ concept were considered on
analytical and normative grounds (Soroos 1994). Environmental security initially appeared to be a good
idea, as it was ‘meant to¶ alarm traditional security analysts about the issues that “really” matter’ (de
Wilde¶ 2001, 2) and to increase the relevance of environmental problems in the political¶ agenda. Buzan
emphasized that ‘[e]nvironmental security concerns the¶ maintenance of the local and the planetary
biosphere as the essential support¶ system on which all other human enterprises depend’ (1991, 19–20).
Others¶ welcomed the concept since it ‘plays down the values traditionally associated¶ with the nationstate—identity, territoriality, sovereignty—and implies a different¶ set of values associated with
environmental change—ecology, globality, and¶ governance’ (Dyer 2001, 68). Yet others argued that
‘environmental security ... is¶ all about solidarity’ (Thompson 1999, 137). On analytical grounds, it
seemed a way¶ to provide a better account of new typologies of vulnerability as well as the¶ potential for
conflict and violence with which these vulnerabilities could be¶ associated.¶ Opponents were quick to
warn that the term ‘security’ evokes a set of¶ confrontational practices associated with the state and the
military which should¶ be kept apart from the environmental debate (Deudney 1990). Concerns
included¶ the possibilities of creating new competencies for the military—militarizing¶ the environment
rather than greening security (Ka¨ko¨nen 1994)—or the rise of¶ nationalistic attitudes in order to protect
the national environment (Deudney¶ 1999, 466–468). Deudney argued that not only are practices and
institutions¶ associated with national security inadequate to deal with environmental¶ problems, but
security can also introduce a zero-sum rationality to the¶ environmental debate that can create winners
and losers, and undermine the¶ cooperative efforts required by environmental problems. Similar
objections¶ came from a southern perspective: environmental security was perceived as a¶ discourse
about the security of northern countries, their access to resources¶ and the protection of their patterns
of consumption (Shiva 1994; Dalby 1999;¶ Barnett 2001).
Impacts
Impact—Warming—1NC
Framing the climate change as an “existential risk” locks in narrow technical focusundermines holistic approach to environmental crisis-turns the case
Crist 7 (Eileen- Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University,
““Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume 141, Winter,
http://www.umweltethik.at/download.php?id=389//AJB)
While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in
representing it as the most urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves
to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the restriction of proposed solutions to the technical
realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly address the
problem; and it detracts attention from the planet's ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of
claiming the lime- light for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest
threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the
proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out
what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve "the problem." Whether the call is for reviving nuclear
power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources,
increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing
mirrors in space to deflect the sun's rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront the
problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them, capturing
them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example. Lovelock briefly
mentions the need to face climate change by "changing our whole style of living."16 But the thrust of
this work, what readers and policy-makers come away with, is his repeated and strident call for investing
in nuclear energy as, in his words, "the one lifeline we can use immediately."17 In the policy realm, the
first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with implementing the Kyoto
protocol. Biologist Tim Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for its successful
endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozone-depleting CFCs. "The Montreal
protocol," he submits, "marks a signal moment in human societal development, representing the first
ever victory by humanity over a global pollution problem."18 He hopes for a similar victory for the global
climate-change problem. Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the
wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty
is no solution to the planet's predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been
followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be naive not to anticipate
another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of
the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological
shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The
destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consump- tion,
coupled with population growth, would go unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty,
and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that
admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to. the entire planet.19
But questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its singleminded quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization
that are causing the climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climate-change literature
often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological
means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels
cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of
equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda
today mat it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of
species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil
losses and desertification, endocrine dis- ruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to
appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with "dangerous anthropogenic inter- ference"
with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse
encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly
described as a holocaust," and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a
virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several
works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global
warming for biodiversity,21 but rarely is it mentioned that bio depletion predates dangerous
greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological
resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—
indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may
temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the cli- mate quandary will not put an end
to—will barely address—the ongoing destruction of life on Earth.
Impact—Warming—2NC
The affirmative’s representation of climate change as “the end of the world” causes
there solution to ultimately fail- 2 reasons
apocalyptic framing of climate change focuses only on the endpoint or “telos”- this
prevents effective change because the public and policy makers believe that any
attempt to prevent climate change will be too little too late- that’s Foust
Any attempt to solve global warming because it is the only “existential risk” ignores
destruction of the biosphere- it locks in a narrow technical focus that undermines any
attempt to holistically solve for climate change-that’s Crist
This turns the case-The aff will inevitably result in extinction-Even if the affirmative
can prevent climate change- it comes at the cost of destruction of the biosphere
Crist 7 (Eileen- Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University,
““Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume 141, Winter,
http://www.umweltethik.at/download.php?id=389//AJB)
The diminishment of life's richness began with the exodus of hunters and gatherers from Africa
thousands of years ago, and deepened with the invention of agriculture and cities, the development of
warfare, and the advent of the European voyages.24 But biodepletion accelerated enormously after the
emergence of industrial civilization, and particularly since the mid-twentieth century, with billions of
people not only doubling every few decades, but inclining—by force, choice, or delusion—toward a
consumer culture founded on overproduction and global trade. Overproduction and global trade, in
turn, require the ceaseless conversion of living beings and natural systems into dead objects,
"resources," and humanized landscapes and seascapes.25 The significance of human-driven extinction
can never be overstated, because it means not only the death of species but the end of their
evolutionary destinies as well—of the life-forms they would or might have eventually originated.
Present-day extinction is not about species blinking out sporadically; it is a global and escalating spasm
of en masse losses that, the geological record reveals, is an infrequent event in Earth's natural history.
Notwithstanding circulating shallow sophistry that proclaims extinction to be "natural" or "normal,"
anthropogenic extinction is neither natural (for countless species are disappearing from targeted
onslaught or pressures far exceeding their capacity to adapt) nor normal (for this level of losses occurs
rarely as a consequence of a catastrophic event). Yet, as tragic as extinction is, species are also being
devastated without being annihilated: losses of distinct populations and plunges in population numbers
are a blow to the vigor, ecological contributions and connectedness, and evolutionary potential of
species. Today, drops of 70, 80, 90 percent, or more, of wild plants and animals, on land and in oceans,
are common. Such declines mean that species hang on as relics, with shortened lifespans or committed
to extinction, no longer able to play significant ecological and evolutionary roles. The nosedive of wildanimal and plant abundance foregrounds yet another facet of biodepletion: the simplification of
ecosystems. From a landscape perspective, the decline of numbers and geographic races of wild
organisms signifies constrictions of their former ranges. As popula- tions blink out from diverse places,
their place-bound contributions are lost; the losses cascade through the communities of organisms to
which the extinguished populations belonged, leaving behind degraded ecosys- tems. While the
simplification of ecosystems is often dramatically visible, it can also unfold as an incremental, barely
noticeable process. And it is not that ecosystems, here and there, are occasionally suffering simplifi-
cation by losing constituent locals. The biosphere is experiencing gross decline or elimination of areas
that are, in certain cases, centers of diversi- fication—most notably, tropical forests, wetlands,
mangrove forests, and coral reefs everywhere. The whittling down of ecological complexity has been a
global trend proceeding from the conversion of ecosystems for intensive human uses, the
aforementioned population depletions, and the invasion of nonna- tive species. Nonnative species are
the generalists hitching rides in the bustle of globalization—from the climate-change-favored fungus
that is killing frogs, to millions of domestic cats preying on birds, to innumer- able more."'' Humanfacilitated invasions, coupled with the disappearance of natives, lead to places losing the constellation of
life-forms that once uniquely constituted them. The inevitable outcome of extinction, plummet- ing
populations, lost and simplified ecosystems, and a bio-homogenized world is not only the global
demolition of wild nature, but also the halting of speciation of much complex life. The conditions for the
birth of new species within a wide band of life, especially of large-bodied species that reproduce slowly,
are being suspended.27 All ihese interconnected dimensions constitute what conservation biologists call
the biodiversity crisis—a term that to the postmodernist rings of rhetoric, while to the broad public
(insofar as it has heard anything about it) involves a largely illiterate and vague understanding of "extinction.'0*' Academic frivolity and public ignorance aside, the biodiversity crisis heralds a biospheric
impoverishment that will be the condition and experience of all future human generations: it requires 5
to 10 million years for biodiversity to recover after a mass extinction of the current scope. In light of this
fact. I submit that unless global warming unleashes appalling penalties—in which case, the climate crisis
and biodepletion will merge into one devastating event for virtually all life29—the implications of
humanity's impact on biodiversity are so far-reaching that they may, in reality, dwarf the repercussions
of climate change. And yet, the current framing of climate change as the urgent issue encourages
regarding the unwinding of biodiversity as a less critical mat- ter than the forthcoming repercussions of
global warming. Attention to the long-standing ruination of biodiversity underway is subverted in two
ways in climate-change discourse: either it gets elided through a focus on anthropocentric anxieties
about how climate change will specifically affect people and nations; or biodepletion is presented as a
corollary of climate change in writings that closely consider how global warming will cause biodiversity
losses. Climate change is undoubtedly speeding up the unraveling of life's interconnectedness and
variety. But if global warming has such potential to afflict the natural world, it is because the latter's
"immunity" has been severely compromised. It is on an already profoundly wounded natural world that
global warming is delivering its blow. Focusing on the added blow of climate change is important, but
this focus should not come at the expense of erasing from view the prior, ongo- ing, and climate-changeindependent wounding of life on Earth.
Securitizing the environment fails and replicates the problems that it tries to solve
for—doesn’t prompt long term preventative action, just short term reactions
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs,¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
The debate about environmental security has been marginalized in the shadow of¶ the war on terror.
The latter has made other threats appear more urgent and¶ serious than the environmental ones.
However, over the last few years, concerns¶ over climate changes have gained momentum. Several
factors have contributed to¶ this new development: on one hand, there has been a growing consensus
on the¶ dimensions of the anthropogenic impact on climate; on the other hand, since the¶ withdrawal of
the US from the Kyoto protocol, there have been several¶ ‘securitizing moves’ aimed at promoting
action to counter climate change and its¶ consequences, on both sides of the Atlantic.¶ In 2004 David
King, then UK government’s chief scientific adviser, claimed¶ that climate change was a far more serious
threat than international terrorism¶ (BBC News Online 2004). This was not only a European move. The
same year an¶ internal report of the US Department of Defense on the impact of ‘an abrupt¶ climate
change’ was leaked to the press. Drawing a comparison with paleoclimatic¶ events, the report forecasted
a rapid climate change: after a decade of slow¶ warming, characterized by severe storms, typhoons and
floods—bringing¶ destruction in coastal cities and low-lying islands—the alteration of the Gulf¶ Stream
would plunge Northern Europe into a Siberian-like climate and transform¶ key areas in Africa, Asia and
Australia into deserts by 2020 (Schwartz and Randall¶ 2003). This report seemed to anticipate the
destruction caused by hurricanes Rita¶ and Katrina, which struck the US in autumn 2005. Events that had
traditionally been considered as natural disasters were increasingly associated with the¶ growing
instability of climate. Moreover they outlined how even the US was not¶ able to protect its own citizens
and provide effective disaster relief. Movies like¶ The day after tomorrow and An inconvenient truth
further reinforced the¶ representation of climate change as a threat and a security issue.¶ These
developments followed a typical securitization move by delineating¶ climate change as an urgent,
existential threat which demands immediate action.¶ When Margaret Beckett was the UK Foreign
Secretary, she promoted an active¶ campaign to prioritize climate change in the international agenda.
She was one of¶ the first to employ the term ‘climate security’ (Beckett 2006). Thus Beckett¶
transformed the debate over climate change into a more dramatic one on climate¶ security,
contributing to its securitization, thereby prompting several questions¶ about this securitization and its
impact on security practices. Who or what is the¶ object of security in the climate security discourse?
Who is supposed to provide¶ security and by what means? What are the implications of the process of¶
securitization of the climate? These questions need to be addressed to analyse the¶ meaning and
function of climate security.¶ Climate security suggests a concern for the security of the climate which
is¶ understood as the maintenance of stable climatic conditions as a prerequisite of all¶ human
enterprises, rather than the security of the climate itself. Climate security is¶ evoked to secure people
and societies that depend on it. As in the case of¶ environmental security, climate security is about ‘the
maintenance of achieved¶ levels of civilization’ (Buzan et al 1998, 76). In this sense, as de Wilde (2008)¶
highlights, climate security captures a paradox because it is the contemporary¶ way of life that is
causing environmental problems. Yet to maintain the existing¶ way of life, it is necessary to change
many present global structures. The dilemma¶ then becomes one of whether the existing structures
should be changed¶ voluntarily or whether it is preferable to wait until ‘structural change will be¶
enforced violently and randomly by environmental crises’ (595). The problem is¶ even more pressing
because action on climate change requires long-term¶ measures: power plants that are built today
would last for decades and innovation¶ in the transport system takes time.
Apocalyptic rhetoric culminates in the destruction of those deemed scapegoatsreligious fanatics takeover
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Brummett (1984) identifies the most important features of apocalyptic rhetoric, which we take as
features of an apocalyptic frame, for the purpose of analyzing press coverage of climate change.
According to Brummett (1984), apocalyptic rhetoric appears in narrative form emphasizing a
catastrophic telos (end-point) somewhere in the future. The linear temporality of apocalyptic rhetoric
assumes that a cosmic purpose guides historical events, or that a natural force will lead to the end of the
world. Apocalyptic rhetoric typically appears as a prophesy for a new world order, often accompanied by
spectacular, (melo)dramatic, or fantastical images of the destruction of the flawed current order.
Brummett suggests that dramatic prophesies best fulfill the primary function of apocalyptic rhetoric,
and restore a sense of control to the community of believers in the face of “enemies” who threaten
them. Finally, apocalyptic rhetoric is recognizable through its polarizing of the community. It constructs
“true believers” (the audience for an apocalyptic prophet) as “sufferers,” while scapegoating others as
the cause of the believers’ distress. As Brummett (1984) describes, an apocalyptic frame is often used to
re-establish a sense of control when old systems of meaning become illogical or valueless. For instance,
readers may recall Reverend Jerry Falwell’s declaration that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
signaled God’s judgment against the secularization of America (by “abortionists,” “feminists,” and “gays
and lesbians”). Falwell took the horrific events as an ambiguous sign of the coming telos, an opportunity
to reassert control in the face of advancements in women’s and gay rights. However, Brummett argues
that such apocalyptic rhetoric only gives symbolic or interpretive control to the “true believers.” Falwell
may have validated his audience’s concerns about changes in American culture, confirmed his ability to
interpret “signs of impending doom,” and empowered his audience by encouraging them to see their
beliefs as correct, but Falwell offers no recourse for audiences to act upon those changes. To
summarize, apocalyptic rhetoric resigns its audience to “the end” of the prophecy; when that end
arrives, their belief in the prophecy will be validated.
Impact—Violence—1NC
Environmental securitization descends into global chaos and violence—it causes arms
races and prevents long peace
Brzoska 9(Michael, March, The Securitization of Climate Change and the power conceptions of security, Michael Brzoska is
the Scientific Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy and Professor of Political Science at the University
of Hamburg, Themenschwerpunkt 137-208, p. 137-145)
l.n the literature on securitization it is implied that when a¶ problem is securitized it is difficult to limit
this to an increase¶ in attention and resources devoted to mitigating the problem¶ (Brock 1997, Waever
1995). Securitization regularly leads to all-¶ round 'exceptionalism' in dealing with the issue as well as
to¶ a shift in institutional localization towards ‘security experts’¶ (Bigot 2006), such as the military and
police. Methods and in-¶ struments associated with these security organizations - such¶ as more use of
arms, force and violence - will gain in impor-¶ tance in the discourse on ‘what to do’. A good example of
se-¶ curitization was the period leading to the Cold War (Guzzini¶ 2004 ]. Originally a political conflict over
the organization of¶ societies, in the late 1940s, the East-West confrontation became¶ an existential
conflict that was overwhelmingly addressed¶ with military means, including the potential annihilation¶ of
humankind. Efforts to alleviate the political conflict were,¶ throughout most of the Cold War, secondary
to improving¶ milita.ry capabilities.¶ Climate change could meet a similar fate. An essentially politi-¶ cal
problem concerning the distribution of the costs of preven-¶ tion and adaptation and the losses and
gains in income arising¶ from change in the human environment might be perceived¶ as intractable, thus
necessitating the build-up of military and¶ police forces to prevent it from becoming a major security¶
problem. The portrayal of climate change as a security prob-¶ lem could, in particular, cause the richer
countries in the glob-¶ al North, which are less affected by it, to strengthen measures aimed at
protecting them from the spillover of violent conflict¶ from the poorer countries in the global South that
will be most¶ affected by climate change. It could also be used by major pow-¶ ers as a iustification for
improving their military preparedness¶ against the other major powers, thus leading to arms races.¶
This kind of reaction to climate change would be counterpro-¶ ductive in various ways. Firstly, since
more border protection,¶ as well as more soldiers and arms, is expensive, the financial¶ means to
compensate for the negative economic effects of¶ reducing greenhouse gas emission and adapting to
climate¶ change will be reduced. Global military expenditure is again¶ at the levelof the height of the Cold
War in realten-ns, reaching¶ more than US $1,200 billion in 2006 or 3.5 percent of global¶ income. While
any estimate of the costs of mitigation (e.g. of¶ restricting global warrning to 2°C by 205 0] and
adaptation are¶ speculative at the moment,‘ they are likely to be substantial.¶ While there is no
necessary link between higher military ex-¶ penditures and a lower willingness to spend on preventing
and¶ preparing for climate change, both policy areas are in competi-¶ tion for scarce resources.¶ Secondly,
the acceptance of the security consequences of cli-¶ mate changeasan intractable problem could well
reduce efforts¶ to find peaceful solutions to the conflicts that will inevitably¶ come with climate
change. Climate change will have major¶ consequences, particularly in countries where living condi-¶
tions are already precarious (IPCC 2007, WBGU 2007). The con-¶ sequences of climate change on some
basic fou.ndations of life,¶ such as fresh water supplies, arable land and agricultural pro-¶ ductivity in
various parts of the world can already be roughly¶ estimated for various global-wan-ning scenarios.
There are also¶ more or less well founded predictions of the consequences of¶ reduced availability of
natural resources such asarable land and¶ water on hunger and disease, even though such
consequences¶ are highly dependent on counter-measures and adaptation ef-¶ forts in affected
regions. There is no inevitability about these¶ consequences.
Impact—Violence—2NC
Environmental securitization causes conflict
a. Arms Race—securitization of the environment creates an infinite
amount of new threats—justifies expansion of competing militaries to
protect each individual nation—that’s Brzoska
b. Conflict Resolution—causes us to believe that the effects of climate
change are unavoidable—causes us to ignore potential solutions to
things like conflicts because it would be perceived as being a useless
struggle when really it’s not—that’s Brzoska
c. Environmental securitization creates us-them dichotomies that entrench
national identity and the power of the state
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
The most immediately striking mismatch between the security framework and environmental needs is
the fact that the notion of security is so closely entangled with the territorially bound nation state.
Waever has noted that “[t]here is no literature, no philosophy, no tradition of “security” in non-state
terms; it exists only as a critical idea” (1995: 48-9). Since its inception security has been the business of
the state, for it is at the heart of the social contract which brought the state into existence that citizens
sacrifice freedoms and liberties to the sovereign in order that security be provided in return (Hobbes,
1651: 91ff). As such, at the mention of security one’s focus is invariably turned towards the state as the
great protector. As far as the environmental sector is concerned the focus on the state is detrimental in
a number of ways. ¶ Firstly, for many years the security of states has been achieved at the expense of
other states. Security is innately linked with the “identification of others which threaten the purpose
and cohesion of the state” (Barnett, 2001: 30). This stems from the project of nation building, for which
security proved to be an important tool. By focussing attention on the threats posed by outsiders,
national elites found that the domestic populace could be more easily homogenized and managed. As
Huysmans has detailed “fear-of-the-power-of-the-other to kill me splits the human species, or better,
unites atomic individuals in communities” (1998: 235). Therefore, states in the process of providing
security have a tendency to focus on external enemies in order to unite the internal population. There is
a danger that a security framework could import this type of ‘us versus them’ thinking into the
environmental realm to detrimental effect. By searching only the external realm for the causes of
insecurity “our complicity in evil is erased” (Campbell, 1993: 3) and the faults in our own actions are
overlooked. This aspect of security logic would be unwelcome in the environmental sector, for as Ulrich
Beck has emphasised in his analysis of the present ecological threat “[t]his threat to all life does not
come from outside… It emerges within, enduringly as the reverse side of progress peace and normality”
(Beck, 1995: 163). Put simply “society today is confronted by itself” (Beck, 1992a: 183). Any discursive
association which obscures this fact is likely to prove counterproductive in the quest to address
environmental issues.¶
Security is based on a desire to control and manage---its ontological precepts attempt
to render everything knowable and hence predictable---means that random variation
in IR ensures aggression and enemy creation---the impact is mass war and violence--vote neg to reprogram our ontological presuppositions
Burke 7 (Anthony, New South Wales IR professor, “Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason”,
Theory and Event, 10.2, project muse,)
I see such a drive for ontological certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it
takes the form of the existential and rationalist ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony
and closure that limits
debate and questioning, that confines it within the boundaries of a particular, closed
system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in the truth of truth as such. The second is its intimate relation
with violence: the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and conceptual structure that generates violence. Here we are
witness to an epistemology of violence (strategy) joined to an ontology of violence (the national security state).
When we consider their relation to war, the
two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone (and doubly in combination)
the resort to war and to lead to its escalation either in scale and duration, or in unintended
effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked up and used on occasion, at limited cost and with limited impact
tends both to quicken
-- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political philosophy of Thomas
Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry
Kissinger), showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz.
This creates both a profound ethical and pragmatic problem. The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and
reinforce a norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image of technology and being in which humans
are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be
thought of as a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the linear system of effects imagined
in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In
the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt (that violence
collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added
significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in
war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21
What I am trying to describe in this essay is a complex relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view
that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security, statecraft and violence they are
made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of
knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity. Positivistic or scientific
claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and political action, which in turn support larger
ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of pastCartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and epistemology as
more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being)
has analytical value, it tends to break down in action. The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy
doctrine) claims positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a desired end,
an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes into
ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence
which itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict, and the resort to violence
becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a
calculability of effects (power) for an ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not merely
becomes an instrument of state power but ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and user of things, including other
humans, which have no essence or integrity outside their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes
being; epistemology immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006
Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the
resignation of the IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized
manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli commentators
explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power" that was lost on the
battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural phenomenon, like tomorrow's
sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that these dual ontologies of war link being, means, events and decisions into a single,
unbroken chain whose very process of construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action
that is war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S. neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in his 2002 West Point speech, that
'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be detached from strong
ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush administration's 'war
on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that obsessive ontological commitments have led to especially
disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to
disentangle strategic from existential reason, and to open up choice in that way. However without interrogating more deeply how they form a
conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will
continue to be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the
national security state and the violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out
every other possibility of revealing being', how can they be escaped?26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is
there any scope for agency and resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of
the political -- needs to be respected and understood. However, we are far from powerless in the face of them. The need is to critique
dominant images of political being and dominant ways of securing that being at the same time, and to act and
choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global rule of the political. Friend and Enemy: Violent
Ontologies of the Nation-State In his Politics Among Nations Hans Morgenthau stated that 'the national interest of a peace-loving nation can
only be defined in terms of national security, which is the irreducible minimum that diplomacy must defend with adequate power and without
compromise'. While Morgenthau defined security relatively narrowly -- as the 'integrity of the national territory and its institutions' -- in a
context where security was in practice defined expansively, as synonymous with a state's broadest geopolitical and economic 'interests', what
was revealing about his formulation was not merely the ontological centrality it had, but the sense of urgency and priority he accorded to it: it
must be defended 'without compromise'.27 Morgenthau was a thoughtful and complex thinker, and understood well the complexities and
dangers of using armed force. However his formulation reflected an influential view about the significance of the political good termed
'security'. When this is combined with the way in which security was conceived
in modern political thought as an
existential condition -- a sine qua non of life and sovereign political existence -- and then married to war
and instrumental action, it provides a basic underpinning for either the limitless resort to strategic
violence without effective constraint, or the perseverance of limited war (with its inherent tendencies to
escalation) as a permanent feature of politics. While he was no militarist, Morgenthau did say elsewhere (in, of all places, a farreaching critique of nuclear strategy) that the 'quantitative and qualitative competition for conventional weapons is a rational instrument of
international politics'.28 The conceptual template for such an image of national security state can be found in the work of Thomas Hobbes, with
his influential conception of the political community as a tight unity of sovereign and people in which their bodies meld with his own to form a
'Leviathan', and which must be defended from enemies within and without. His image of effective security and sovereignty was one that was
intolerant of internal difference and dissent, legitimating a strong state with coercive and exceptional powers to preserve order and sameness.
This was a vision not merely of political order but of existential identity, set off against a range of existential others who were sources of threat,
backwardness, instability or incongruity.29 It also, in a way set out with frightening clarity by the theorist Carl Schmitt and the philosopher
Georg Hegel, exchanged internal unity, identity and harmony for permanent alienation from other such communities (states). Hegel presaged
Schmitt's thought with his argument that individuality and the state are single moments of 'mind in its freedom' which 'has an infinitely
negative relation to itself, and hence its essential character from its own point of view is its singleness': Individuality is awareness of one's
existence as a unit in sharp distinction from others. It manifests itself here in the state as a relation to other states, each of which is
autonomous vis-a-vis the others...this negative relation of the state to itself is embodied in the world as the relation of one state to another and
as if the negative were something external.30 Schmitt is important both for understanding the way in which such alienation is seen as a
definitive way of imagining and limiting political communities, and for understanding how such a rigid delineation is linked to the inevitability
and perpetuation of war. Schmitt argued that the existence of a state 'presupposes the political', which must be understood through 'the
specific political distinction...between friend and enemy'. The enemy is 'the other, the stranger; and it sufficient for his nature that he is, in a
specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in an extreme case conflicts with him are possible'.31 The figure of the
enemy is constitutive of the state as 'the specific entity of a people'.32 Without it society is not political and a people cannot be said to exist:
Only the actual participants can correctly recognise, understand and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict...to
judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's
own form of existence.33 Schmitt links this stark ontology to war when he states that the political is only authentic 'when a fighting collectivity
of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity
of men, particularly to the whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship...in its entirety the state as an organised political entity
decides for itself the friend-enemy distinction'.34 War, in short, is an existential condition: the entire life of a human being is a struggle and
every human being is symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they
refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.35 Schmitt claims that his
theory is not biased towards war as a choice ('It is by no means as though the political signifies nothing but devastating war and every political
deed a military action...it neither favours war nor militarism, neither imperialism nor pacifism') but it is hard to accept his caveat at face
value.36 When such a theory takes the form of a social discourse (which it does in a general form) such an ontology can only support, as a kind
of originary ground, the basic Clausewitzian assumption that war can be a rational way of resolving political conflicts -- because the import of
Schmitt's argument is that such 'political' conflicts are ultimately expressed through the possibility of war. As he says: 'to the enemy concept
belongs the ever-present possibility of combat'.37 Where Schmitt meets Clausewitz, as I explain further below, the existential and rationalistic
ontologies of war join into a closed circle of mutual support and justification. This
closed circle of existential and strategic
reason generates a number of dangers. Firstly, the emergence of conflict can generate military action
almost automatically simply because the world is conceived in terms of the distinction between friend
and enemy; because the very existence of the other constitutes an unacceptable threat, rather than a chain
of actions, judgements and decisions. (As the Israelis insisted of Hezbollah, they 'deny our right to exist'.) This effaces agency,
causality and responsibility from policy and political discourse: our actions can be conceived as
independent of the conflict or quarantined from critical enquiry, as necessities that achieve an instrumental purpose
but do not contribute to a new and unpredictable causal chain. Similarly the Clausewitzian idea of force -- which, by transporting a Newtonian
category from the natural into the social sciences, assumes the very effect it seeks -- further encourages the resort to military violence. We
ignore the complex history of a conflict, and thus the alternative paths to its resolution that such historical analysis might provide, by portraying
conflict as fundamental and existential in nature; as possibly containable or exploitable, but always irresolvable. Dominant portrayals of the war
on terror, and the Israeli-Arab conflict, are arguably examples of such ontologies in action. Secondly, the militaristic force of such an ontology is
visible, in Schmitt, in the absolute sense of vulnerability whereby a people can judge whether their 'adversary intends to negate his opponent's
way of life'.38 Evoking the kind of thinking that would become controversial in the Bush doctrine, Hegel similarly argues that: ...a state may
regard its infinity and honour as at stake in each of its concerns, however minute, and it is all the more inclined to susceptibility to injury the
more its strong individuality is impelled as a result of long domestic peace to seek and create a sphere of activity abroad. ....the state is in
essence mind and therefore cannot be prepared to stop at just taking notice of an injury after it has actually occurred. On the contrary, there
arises in addition as a cause of strife the idea of such an injury...39 Identity, even more than physical security or autonomy, is put at stake in
such thinking and can be defended and redeemed through warfare (or, when taken to a further extreme of an absolute demonisation and
dehumanisation of the other, by mass killing, 'ethnic cleansing' or genocide). However anathema to a classical realist like Morgenthau, for
whom prudence was a core political virtue, these have been influential ways of defining national security and defence during the twentieth
century and persists into the twenty-first. They infused Cold War strategy in the United States (with the key policy document NSC68 stating that
'the Soviet-led assault on free institutions is worldwide now, and ... a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere')40 and
frames dominant Western responses to the threat posed by Al Qaeda and like groups (as Tony Blair admitted in 2006, 'We could have chosen
security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values.')41 It has also become influential, in a particularly tragic and destructive way, in
Israel, where memories of the Holocaust and (all too common) statements by Muslim and Arab leaders rejecting Israel's existence are mobilised
by conservatives to justify military adventurism and a rejectionist policy towards the Palestinians. On the reverse side of such ontologies of
national insecurity we find pride and hubris, the belief that martial preparedness and action are vital or healthy for the existence of a people.
Clausewitz's thought is thoroughly imbued with this conviction. For example, his definition of war as an act of policy does not refer merely to
the policy of cabinets, but expresses the objectives and will of peoples: When whole communities go to war -- whole peoples, and especially
civilized peoples -- the reason always lies in some political situation and the occasion is always due to some political object. War, therefore, is
an act of policy.42 Such a perspective prefigures Schmitt's definition of the 'political' (an earlier translation reads 'war, therefore, is a political
act'), and thus creates an inherent tension between its tendency to fuel the escalation of conflict and Clausewitz's declared aim, in defining war
as policy, to prevent war becoming 'a complete, untrammelled, absolute manifestation of violence'.43 Likewise his argument that war is a
'trinity' of people (the source of 'primordial violence, hatred and enmity'), the military (who manage the 'play of chance and probability') and
government (which achieve war's 'subordination as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone') merges the existential and
rationalistic conceptions of war into a theoretical unity.44 The idea that national identities could be built and redeemed through war derived
from the 'romantic counter-revolution' in philosophy which opposed the cosmopolitanism of Kant with an emphasis on the absolute state -- as
expressed by Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Bismarkian Realpolitik and politicians like Wilhelm Von Humbolt. Humbolt, a Prussian minister of
Education, wrote that war 'is one of the most wholesome manifestations that plays a role in the education of the human race', and urged the
formation of a national army 'to inspire the citizen with the spirit of true war'. He stated that war 'alone gives the total structure the strength
and the diversity without which facility would be weakness and unity would be void'.45 In the Phenomenology of Mind Hegel made similar
arguments that to for individuals to find their essence 'Government has from time to time to shake them to the very centre by war'.46 The
historian Azar Gat points to the similarity of Clausewitz's arguments that 'a people and a nation can hope for a strong position in the world only
if national character and familiarity with war fortify each other by continual interaction' to Hegel's vision of the ethical good of war in his
Philosophy of Right.47 Likewise Michael Shapiro sees Clausewitz and Hegel as alike in seeing war 'as an ontological investment in both
individual and national completion...Clausewitz figures war as passionate ontological commitment rather than cool political reason...war is a
major aspect of being.'48 Hegel's text argues that war is 'a work of freedom' in which 'the individual's substantive duty' merges with the
'independence and sovereignty of the state'.49 Through war, he argues, the ethical health of peoples is preserved in their indifference to the
stabilization of finite institutions; just as the blowing of the winds preserves the sea from the foulness which would be the result of a prolonged
calm, so the corruption in nations would be the product of a prolonged, let alone 'perpetual' peace.50 Hegel indeed argues that 'sacrifice on
behalf of the individuality of the state is a substantial tie between the state and all its members and so is a universal duty...if the state as such, if
its autonomy, is in jeopardy, all its citizens are duty bound to answer the summons to its defence'.51 Furthermore, this is not simply a duty, but
a form of self-realisation in which the individual dissolves into the higher unity of the state: The intrinsic worth of courage as a disposition of
mind is to be found in the genuine, absolute, final end, the sovereignty of the state. The work of courage is to actualise this end, and the means
to this end is the sacrifice of personal actuality. This form of experience thus contains the harshness of extreme contradictions: a self-sacrifice
which yet is the real existence of one's freedom; the maximum self-subsistence of individuality, yet only a cog playing its part in the mechanism
of an external organisation; absolute obedience, renunciation of personal opinions and reasonings, in fact complete absence of mind, coupled
with the most intense and comprehensive presence of mind and decision in the moment of acting; the most hostile and so most personal
action against individuals, coupled with an attitude of complete indifference or even liking towards them as individuals.52 A more frank
statement of the potentially lethal consequences of patriotism -- and its simultaneously physical and conceptual annihilation of the individual
human being -- is rarely to be found, one that is repeated today in countless national discourses and the strategic world-view in general. (In
contrast, one of Kant's fundamental objections to war was that it involved using men 'as mere machines or instruments'.53) Yet however
bizarre and contradictory Hegel's argument, it constitutes a powerful social ontology: an apparently irrefutable discourse of being. It actualises
the convergence of war and the social contract in the form of the national security state. Strategic Reason and Scientific Truth By itself, such an
account of the nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core
element of politics. It does not explain why so many policymakers think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married
to a more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link violent means to political ends predictably and controllably, and which, by
doing so, combines military action and national purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire
to decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to focus on the modernity of this ontology -- one that
is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of
scientific truth from the physical sciences (such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the
military theorist and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that one of the reasons Clausewitz was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed
to have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54 Set into this
epistemological matrix, modern politics and government engages in a sweeping project of mastery and control in which
all of the world's
resources -- mineral, animal, physical, human -- are made part of a machinic process of which war and
violence are viewed as normal features. These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of
the most revealing contemporary examples comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor and later U.S.
National Security Adviser and Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945 U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the
assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international system and to bring about domestic
transformations in emerging countries'. This 'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of
power in foreign policy'.55 Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the United
States, but in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge). Kissinger asserted that the West is 'deeply committed to the notion that the real
world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and classifying data -- the more accurately the better'. This, he claimed,
has since the Renaissance set the West apart from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real world is almost entirely internal to the
observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for control was beset by a corrosive anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons
proliferation and constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and militancy of new post-colonial
states, order and mastery were harder to define and impose. He worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had
'encouraged political multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is difficult to
achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He mourned that 'the
greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept of order'.57 Here were the driving obsessions of the modern
rational statesman based around a hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our
international activities were based on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the international
system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of international order has
proved too simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest challenge will be to evoke the
creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming military strength will remain with the two
superpowers.58 Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for order and certainty continually confront chaos, resistance and
uncertainty: clay that won't be worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons of
the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words. Yet as his
sinister, Orwellian exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world' demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This
is a
vicious, historic irony: a desire to control nature, technology, society and human beings that is
continually frustrated, but never abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the
rationalist policymaker par excellence, had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not prevail in
Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to
condemn hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of Cambodia to two more decades of horror and
misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another Republican Administration crowned more than decade of failed and
destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons
of Vietnam, revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical transformation, we are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a
craving for order, control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that Kissinger's thinking - and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was embedded in instrumental images of
technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of power and an image of social and political order. In his essay 'The Government of
Subject Races' Cromer envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a central
authority working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine'.60 Kissinger analogously invoked the virtues of
'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that technological progress no longer brought
untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of technology and its associated rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of
reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a machine, ordered by a form of power and
governmental reason which deploys machines and whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine.
Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the West and radiating out
from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed
into it from the East -- human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you -- is processed by the machine, then converted into more
power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance.62 This desire for order in the shadow of chaos and
uncertainty -- the constant war with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern thought, and was a major impetus to the
development of technological reason and its supporting theories of knowledge. As Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the
'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern strategy, foreign policy and Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the
apparently stable soil of natural science, in the hope of finding immovable and unchallengeable roots there. While this process has origins in
ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the Renaissance. The key figures in this
process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a hunger for political and ontological certainty, a
positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order, and with it a new human
power over the world, through a new empirical methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the senses and the
understanding. With this method, he argued, we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has
yet been attempted'.63 In a similar move, Descartes sought to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that
moved progressively out from a few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted
faculty of judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its
quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that scientists should
privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative analysis could
science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65 Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth were to have powerful echoes in the 20th
Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis, game theory, cybernetics and computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the
awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of matter and energy and applied the most
advanced applications of mathematics and computing to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony:
as even Morgenthau understood, the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the control of the weapons
themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method not merely as way of achieving a purer
access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new power that would enable the creation of a new kind of Man. He opened
the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a
firmer foundation, and extend to a greater distance the boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative
comparison between 'men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies' -- one that
echoes in advance Kissinger's distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of
empirical science: anyone making this comparison, he remarked, 'will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man'.68 We may
be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man' was indeed in the process of stealing a new fire from the heavens and seizing God's power
over the world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power
over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the Fall of Adam: For man, by the fall, lost at once his state of innocence, and his
empire over creation, both of which can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and
sciences. For creation did not become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy
brow thou shalt eat bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford
mankind in some degree his bread...69 There is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement -- one that, in many ways, came to
characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily recognisable in a generation of modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam
was the Judeo-Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship
and ambivalence. Bacon forecast here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making. This truly was the death of God, of putting man into
God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence which now
subordinated creation to man. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is nothing
but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most distinguished of human actions...inventions are a blessing and a benefit
without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And what
would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over creation'?
If the
new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation, communications, education and comfort, it
the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the
hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and military strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching
also enabled
inventions -- radar, television, rocketry, computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national
security and militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass -brought in their wake upheaval and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery; navigation,
slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new empirical science would be ambivalence as much as certainty;
degradation as much as enlightenment; the destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon
could not reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that scientific and technological progress could be
destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts and sciences
becoming depraved to malevolent or luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good; talent, courage, strength,
beauty, riches, light itself...Only let mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift of God, and obtain that power, whose
exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century, after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
such fears could no longer be so easily wished away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer
recognised. He said in a 1947 lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and in the end in large
measure achieving the realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite
extinguish, the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which
refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man's empire over creation -- his discovery of the innermost secrets of
matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars -- had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead brought
Scientific powers that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the
hope of its betterment now threatened its total and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of
destruction and horror.
scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in mathematics to
make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb -- understood what the
strategists could not: that the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with the release of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had
occurred in the techniques of warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are
'perfectly identical'.74 In 1947 Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking
it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror attaches to new
knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin Heidegger questioned this mapping of natural
science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine', has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical
thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology
'employs exact physical science...the deceptive illusion arises that modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and
speeches of Oppenheimer attest, technology and its relation to science, society and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations
of science for politics, knowledge for force, or force for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by
irony; in his view there was no smooth, unproblematic translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was not its vehicle. Rather
his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet this has not prevented technology
becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too
many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth of its enabling science and spreads it over the world. It
turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it turns control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this
phenomena I find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline the ontological force of the instrumental view of politics. In The
Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the modernising West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to
an end'. Rather technology has become a governing image of the modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define human
existence as a 'calculable coherence of forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy. Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man does not come in the first
instance from the potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected man in his essence.'77 This
process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in some way or other that is
identifiable through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man is not a being who makes and uses machines as means,
choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends; rather man has imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere
becomes trapped within its logic. Man, he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself will have to be taken as
standing-reserve. Meanwhile Man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man
not only becomes the name for a project of lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates humanity within this project as a calculable
resource. In strategy, warfare and geopolitics human bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and perverted by such calculating,
enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or obstinate matter. This tells us much about the enduring power of
crude instrumental versions of strategic thought, which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that
see, as limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this strategic ontology
that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and coercive diplomacy, and spoke
of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can see such thinking in the remark of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to
Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed 'to create enough pain on the ground so there would
be a local political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is
attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut. The
message is: If you want your air conditioning to work and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the
sand and take action toward shutting down Hezbollah-land.'81 Conclusion: Violent Ontologies or Peaceful Choices? I was motivated to begin
the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that the available critical, interpretive or performative languages
of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us,
because they either perform or refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought and remain embedded
within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war doctrines seek mainly to improve the
accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart from the more radical
versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case of a theorist
like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's
Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is the way
human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat and espouses a
moral community that stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his claustrophobic
distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires the resort to war as the only
existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a
fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle
security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I
suspect that even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the is. The
problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of 'human beings as we know them' -- which ultimately
fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates (indeed reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know
from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an ontology of being for one of becoming,
where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new possibilities through agonistic relation to
others, provides a less destructive and violent way of acknowledging and dealing with conflict and
difference.85 My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates
against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational
instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and
community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow
of history nor the pacific tendencies of an international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in
fact dominate the conceptual and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything Kant hoped for, to stand
in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is that the enframing world view has come
to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that
is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to
enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one
that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that the
challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government, technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and
understanding that lays claim to our entire space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity --
militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive
not merely from particular choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from
calculative, 'empirical' discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment images of
being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers' choices become necessities,
their actions become inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die. Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the
chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It
creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may
simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually
reinforcing cascade of discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary
policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does,
admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh
on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are utterly
trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology of the friend and
enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a way out? Is there
no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface
agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making decisions, with
exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that, even in the face of the anonymous power of
discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities.88) There seems no point in following
Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences
from critique. However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the
modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that would not be immediately
recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek
attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the
problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes
quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy
choices could aim to bring into being a
be done without seizing
alternatives from outside the space of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its
presence and weight and activating a very different concept of existence, security and action.90 This
would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the questions we put to the real and our efforts to create and act into
more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot
it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human
dignity and autonomy? Do they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo (as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with
others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human, economic, and environmental price? Do we see our actions within
an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of causes and effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into
a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and consequences which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally:
Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and more sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the
global rule of insecurity and violence? Will our thought?
Environmental securitization is bad—it causes unbridled nationalism and violence and
leads to state centric approaches that can never address the root causes of
environmental degradation—turns the case
Waever 2(Ole, August 12, Securitization and Desecuritization, Ole Wæver is a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.,
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz12.html)
Environmental Security ¶ In recent years, presentation of environmental degradation as a security
problem has become increasingly¶ common. Environmental activists are not the only ones to use this
slogan; the security establishment¶ seems to have become more receptive to the idea, as well. But does
it make sense? I would argue "no," if¶ we follow the logic laid out above.¶ During the 1980s, any idea
about "nonmilitary aspects of security" was guaranteed to generate¶ establishment suspicions. The
following sequence of reasoning seemed, with some justification,¶ threatening to security elites: (1)
security is a broad concept and, therefore, many things are threatening¶ in security terms; (2) in the
light of a broader perspective, there exists a biased distribution of resources¶ toward military concerns;
and (3) this bias is relevant only for a limited portion of security threats as¶ On Security: Chapter 3¶
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz13.html (11 of 31) [8/11/2002 7:46:36 PM]defined in
this broader sense.38 Acquiescing to such a broadening, and admitting the biased allocation of¶
resources, would quite obviously be seen by elites as a threat to their prerogatives in the security
realm.¶ Following the events of 1989, however, security establishments began to embrace the idea of
such¶ alternatives as a means of maintaining their own societal relevance, as well as providing jobs to
"security¶ studies" and "strategic studies" analysts. For example, in late 1989, a special issue of Survival ,
the¶ journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which has always been a good indicator
of¶ mainstream, Western security thinking, addressed "Nonmilitary Aspects of Strategy." Articles in
the¶ journal addressed the panoply or possibilities of threats--economy, environment, migration, and¶
drugs39--in a search for new security problems to replace the old ones. Notions about environmental¶
security also emerged at the political level, as when James Baker, Secretary of State in the Bush¶
Administration, named environmental problems as "threats to the security of our citizens,"40 and in
the¶ Brundtland Commission's report, Our Common Future , which used explicitly the concept of¶
"environmental security."¶ Central to the arguments for the conceptual innovation of environmental or
ecological security41 is its¶ mobilization potential. As Buzan points out, the concept of national security
"has an enormous power as¶ an instrument of social and political mobilization" and, therefore, "the
obvious reason for putting¶ environmental issues into the security agenda is the possible magnitude of
the threats posed, and the need¶ to mobilize urgent and unprecedented responses to them. The
security label is a useful way both of¶ signalling bias idanger and setting priority, and for this reason
alone it is likely to persist in the¶ environmental debates."42 Several analysts have, however, warned
against securitization of the¶ environmental issue for some of these very reasons, and some of the
arguments I present here fit into the¶ principled issue of securitization/desecuritization as discussed
earlier in this chapter. A first argument¶ against the environment as a security issue, mentioned, for
example, by Buzan, is that environmental¶ threats are generally unintentional.43 This, by itself, does
not make the threats any less serious , although¶ it does take them out of the realm of will . As I pointed
out earlier, the field of security is constituted¶ around relationships between wills: It has been,
conventionally, about the efforts of one will to¶ (allegedly) override the sovereignty of another, forcing
or tempting the latter not to assert its will in¶ defense of its sovereignty. The contest of concern, in
other words, is among strategic actors imbued with¶ intentionality, and this has been the logic around
which the whole issue of security has been framed. In¶ light of my earlier discussion, in which I stressed
that "security" is not a reflection of our everyday sense¶ of the word but, rather, a specific field with
traditions, the jump to environmental security becomes much¶ larger than might appear at first to be
the case. I do not present this as an argument against the concept¶ but, rather, as a way of illuminating
or even explaining the debate over it.¶ Second in his critique of the notion of environmental security,
Richard Moss points out that the concept¶ of "security" tends to imply that defense from the problem is
to be provided by the state:¶ The most serious consequence of thinking of global change and other
environmental problems as threats to¶ security is that the sorts of centralized governmental responses
by powerful and autonomous state¶ organizations that are appropriate for security threats are
inappropriate for addressing most environmental¶ problems. When one is reacting to the threat of
organized external violence, military and intelligence¶ institutions are empowered to take the measures
required to repel the threat. By this same logic, when¶ responding to environmental threats, response
by centralized regulatory agencies would seem to be logical.¶ Unfortunately, in most cases this sort of
response is not the most efficient or effective way of addressing¶ environmental problems, particularly
those that have a global character.44¶ On Security: Chapter 3¶
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz13.html (12 of 31) [8/11/2002 7:46:36 PM]Moss goes
on to warn that "the instinct for centralized state responses to security threats is highly¶ inappropriate
for responding effectively to global environmental problems."45 It might, he points out,¶ even lead to
militarization of environmental problems.46¶ A third warning, not unrelated to the previous two, is the
tendency for the concept of security to produce¶ thinking in terms of us-them , which could then be
captured by the logic of nationalism. Dan Deudney¶ writes that "the `nation' is not an empty vessel or
blank slate waiting to be filled or scripted, but is instead¶ profoundly linked to war and `us vs . them'
thinking ( . . . ) Of course, taking the war and `us vs . them'¶ thinking out of nationalism is a noble goal.
But this may be like taking sex out of `rock and roll,' a project¶ whose feasibility declines when one
remembers that `rock and roll' was originally coined as a euphemism¶ for sex."47 The tendency toward
"us vs . them" thinking, and the general tradition of viewing threats as¶ coming from outside a state's
own borders, are, in this instance, also likely to direct attention away from¶ one's own contributions to
environmental problems.48¶ Finally, there is the more political warning that the concept of security is
basically defensive in nature, a¶ status quo concept defending that which is , even though it does not
necessarily deserve to be protected.¶ In a paradoxical way, this politically conservative bias has also led
to warnings by some that the concept¶ of environmental security could become a dangerous tool of the
"totalitarian left," which might attempt¶ to relaunch itself on the basis of environmental collectivism.49
Certainly, there is some risk that the logic ¶ of ecology, with its religious potentials and references to
holistic categories, survival and the linked¶ significance of everything, might easily lend itself to
totalitarian projects, where also the science of¶ ecology has focused largely on how to constrain, limit,
and control activities in the name of the¶ environment.50¶
Turns Case
Securitization Fails—2NC
(impact/link) The aff will inevitably result in extinction-Even if the affirmative can
prevent climate change- it comes at the cost of destruction of the biosphere
Crist 7 (Eileen- Associate Professor of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University,
““Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse,” Telos, Volume 141, Winter,
http://www.umweltethik.at/download.php?id=389//AJB)
The diminishment of life's richness began with the exodus of hunters and gatherers from Africa
thousands of years ago, and deepened with the invention of agriculture and cities, the development of
warfare, and the advent of the European voyages.24 But biodepletion accelerated enormously after the
emergence of industrial civilization, and particularly since the mid-twentieth century, with billions of
people not only doubling every few decades, but inclining—by force, choice, or delusion—toward a
consumer culture founded on overproduction and global trade. Overproduction and global trade, in
turn, require the ceaseless conversion of living beings and natural systems into dead objects,
"resources," and humanized landscapes and seascapes.25 The significance of human-driven extinction
can never be overstated, because it means not only the death of species but the end of their
evolutionary destinies as well—of the life-forms they would or might have eventually originated.
Present-day extinction is not about species blinking out sporadically; it is a global and escalating spasm
of en masse losses that, the geological record reveals, is an infrequent event in Earth's natural history.
Notwithstanding circulating shallow sophistry that proclaims extinction to be "natural" or "normal,"
anthropogenic extinction is neither natural (for countless species are disappearing from targeted
onslaught or pressures far exceeding their capacity to adapt) nor normal (for this level of losses occurs
rarely as a consequence of a catastrophic event). Yet, as tragic as extinction is, species are also being
devastated without being annihilated: losses of distinct populations and plunges in population numbers
are a blow to the vigor, ecological contributions and connectedness, and evolutionary potential of
species. Today, drops of 70, 80, 90 percent, or more, of wild plants and animals, on land and in oceans,
are common. Such declines mean that species hang on as relics, with shortened lifespans or committed
to extinction, no longer able to play significant ecological and evolutionary roles. The nosedive of wildanimal and plant abundance foregrounds yet another facet of biodepletion: the simplification of
ecosystems. From a landscape perspective, the decline of numbers and geographic races of wild
organisms signifies constrictions of their former ranges. As popula- tions blink out from diverse places,
their place-bound contributions are lost; the losses cascade through the communities of organisms to
which the extinguished populations belonged, leaving behind degraded ecosys- tems. While the
simplification of ecosystems is often dramatically visible, it can also unfold as an incremental, barely
noticeable process. And it is not that ecosystems, here and there, are occasionally suffering simplification by losing constituent locals. The biosphere is experiencing gross decline or elimination of areas
that are, in certain cases, centers of diversi- fication—most notably, tropical forests, wetlands,
mangrove forests, and coral reefs everywhere. The whittling down of ecological complexity has been a
global trend proceeding from the conversion of ecosystems for intensive human uses, the
aforementioned population depletions, and the invasion of nonna- tive species. Nonnative species are
the generalists hitching rides in the bustle of globalization—from the climate-change-favored fungus
that is killing frogs, to millions of domestic cats preying on birds, to innumer- able more."'' Humanfacilitated invasions, coupled with the disappearance of natives, lead to places losing the constellation of
life-forms that once uniquely constituted them. The inevitable outcome of extinction, plummet- ing
populations, lost and simplified ecosystems, and a bio-homogenized world is not only the global
demolition of wild nature, but also the halting of speciation of much complex life. The conditions for the
birth of new species within a wide band of life, especially of large-bodied species that reproduce slowly,
are being suspended.27 All ihese interconnected dimensions constitute what conservation biologists call
the biodiversity crisis—a term that to the postmodernist rings of rhetoric, while to the broad public
(insofar as it has heard anything about it) involves a largely illiterate and vague understanding of "extinction.'0*' Academic frivolity and public ignorance aside, the biodiversity crisis heralds a biospheric
impoverishment that will be the condition and experience of all future human generations: it requires 5
to 10 million years for biodiversity to recover after a mass extinction of the current scope. In light of this
fact. I submit that unless global warming unleashes appalling penalties—in which case, the climate crisis
and biodepletion will merge into one devastating event for virtually all life29—the implications of
humanity's impact on biodiversity are so far-reaching that they may, in reality, dwarf the repercussions
of climate change. And yet, the current framing of climate change as the urgent issue encourages
regarding the unwinding of biodiversity as a less critical mat- ter than the forthcoming repercussions of
global warming. Attention to the long-standing ruination of biodiversity underway is subverted in two
ways in climate-change discourse: either it gets elided through a focus on anthropocentric anxieties
about how climate change will specifically affect people and nations; or biodepletion is presented as a
corollary of climate change in writings that closely consider how global warming will cause biodiversity
losses. Climate change is undoubtedly speeding up the unraveling of life's interconnectedness and
variety. But if global warming has such potential to afflict the natural world, it is because the latter's
"immunity" has been severely compromised. It is on an already profoundly wounded natural world that
global warming is delivering its blow. Focusing on the added blow of climate change is important, but
this focus should not come at the expense of erasing from view the prior, ongo- ing, and climate-changeindependent wounding of life on Earth.
Apocalyptic framing of climate change causes despair and denial- policy change is
hindered because it is viewed as a vain attempt to delay the inevitable
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Elements of an apocalyptic frame could be said to exist in most of the articles we read, though all
elements were not present in each article. Nonetheless, apocalyptic framing should give us pause, for it
threatens to hinder progress in forming a political will to change the carbon- based energy economy
(and thus mitigate the consequences of global warming). To announce the coming of the apocalypse
creates despair as people feel they cannot stop such an event, but can only hope that they are among
the chosen few to be saved (if they believe in the immanence of the end). Apocalyptic framing also
creates denial, as when people fail to exit the movie theater because they have heard fire yelled once
too often. There may also be a sense of denial in terms of the effectiveness of solutions: Why make
changes to our lifestyle, if the world is going to end quickly and our actions don’t make a difference
anyway? If the end is, indeed, the total destruction of earth, won’t our efforts to make change now be in
vain? As Brummett suggests of pre-millennial apocalyptic rhetoric (which assumes that the world will be
destroyed after a judgment day), the cosmically mandated telos of catastrophe overshadows any efforts
to change the trajectory of the narrative. The only place for human agency within such rhetoric is the
capacity to agree with prophesies, against the polarized opposition of non-believers. By agreeing with
the prophesies, “believers” feel a sense of control over the situation because they are “right,” not
necessarily because they are taking collective and personal steps to resolve the issue Granted, one’s
worldview may spur action, as when a “conservative Christian” outlook motivates someone to learn
more about how better to be a “steward of the Earth.” But when that worldview is structured in
apocalyptic terms, it seems more likely to resign us to a telos which lacks human agency. The
apocalyptic frame of climate change may offer “believers” a sense of control over events like Hurricane
Katrina and the Indonesian tsunami, or the elections of anti- or non-environmental officials. But it also
assuages “believers” of responsibility to make active changes in the here-and-now. While we await the
flooded coastlines and mass extinctions; the famines, plagues, and rivers red with the blood of nonbelievers; we do nothing to prevent their arrival or impact—save trying to get others to see the world as
we do. The apocalyptic frame promotes people who are “right” about the forthcoming environmental
and climatological collapse, rather than people who are actively preventing it.
There apocalyptic framing distorts and exaggerates the problem with climate changeguts solvency
Skidelsky 8 (Robert-professor of political economy at Warwick University, “The apocalyptic mind,” The
Guardian.com, 5/20/08,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/may/20/theapocalypticmind
Apocalyptic beliefs have always been part of the Christian tradition. They express the yearning for
heaven on earth, when evil is destroyed and the good are saved. In their classical religious form, such
beliefs rely on signs and omens, like earthquakes and sunspots, which can be interpreted, by reference
to biblical passages, as portending a great cataclysm and cleansing. Thus, apocalyptic moments are
products of a sense of crisis: they can be triggered by wars and natural disasters. Classical apocalyptic
thinking is certainly alive and well, especially in America, where it feeds on Protestant fundamentalism,
and is mass-marketed with all the resources of modern media. Circles close to the Bush administration,
it is rumoured, take current distempers like terrorism as confirmation of biblical prophecies. In
secularised, pseudo-scientific form, apocalyptic thinking has also been at the core of revolutionary
politics. In his latest book, Black Mass, the philosopher John Gray discusses how political doctrines like
Marxism colonised the apocalyptic vision in prophesying the destruction of capitalism as the prelude to
the socialist utopia. But political messianism was an offshoot of 19th-century optimism. With the
collapse of optimism, contemporary apocalyptic belief lays more stress on catastrophe and less on
utopia. For example, in his book Flat Earth News, the investigative journalist Nick Davies reminds us of
the millennium bug panic. Newspapers everywhere carried stories predicting that computer systems
would crash on January 1, 2000, causing much of the world to shut down. The subtext was familiar:
those who live by technology will die by it. Misreporting of science is now so routine that we hardly
notice it. Much more serious is when science itself becomes infected by the apocalyptic spirit. Faithbased science seems a contradiction in terms, because the scientific worldview emerged as a challenge
to religious superstition. But important scientific beliefs can now be said to be held religiously, rather
than scientifically. This brings us back to Al Gore and climate change. There is no doubt that the earth
became warmer over the 20th century (by about 0.7 deg C), which most climate scientists attribute
largely to human carbon dioxide emissions. If nothing is done to restrict such emissions, global
temperature will rise between 1.8 and 4 deg over the next century. At some "tipping point", the world
will be subject to floods and pestilence in classic apocalyptic fashion. This is the second doomsday
scenario of recent decades, the first being the Club of Rome's prediction in 1972 that the world would
soon run out of natural resources. Both are "scientific," but their structure is the same as that of the
Biblical story of the flood: human wickedness (in today's case, unbridled materialism) triggers the
disastrous sequence, which it may already be too late to avert. Like Biblical prophecy, scientific
doomsday stories seem impervious to refutation, and are constantly repackaged to feed the hunger for
catastrophe. Scientists argue that the media and politicians are responsible for exaggerating their
findings as promises of salvation or warnings of retribution. But scientists themselves are partly
responsible, because they have hardened uncertainties into probabilities, treated disputable
propositions as matters of fact, and attacked dissent as heresy. Scientists are notoriously loath to
jettison conclusions reached by approved scientific methods, however faulty. But their intolerance of
dissent is hugely magnified when they see themselves as captains in the salvationist army, dedicated to
purging the world of evil habits
Environmental security causes the problems that it tries to avoid—creates a
dichotomy where the environment is not respected
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Before tracing the response to the emergence of environmental hazards it is necessary to say a word
about the causes of environmental degradation. By this I refer not to the scientific explanations of the
process, but the deeply rooted societal and philosophical developments that have allowed the process
to continue. As Simon Dalby has detailed, environmental threats “are the result of the kind of society
that the current global political economy produces. Industrial activity, agricultural monocultures, and
rampant individual consumption of “disposable items” (all of which are efforts to enhance some forms
of human welfare through domination and control of facets of nature) produce other forms of
insecurity” (1992a: 113). A large hand in the development of contemporary environmental problems
must be attributed to the enlightenment faith in human ability to know and conquer all. In the quest for
superiority and security, an erroneous division between humanity and nature emerged whereby the
natural world came to be seen as something to be tamed and conquered rather than something to be
respected (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1973). Over time, this false dichotomy has become accepted as given,
and as a result humankind has lost sight of its own dependence on nature. It is this separation which
allows the continued abuse of planetary resources with such disregard for the long-term implications.
What is at stake in how we respond to environmental insecurity is the healing of this rift and, in turn,
the preservation of human life into the future. Any suggested solutions to environmental vulnerability
must account for these concerns and provide a sound basis for redressing the imbalance in the
humanity-nature relationship.
Securitization props up bad practices that harm the environment—doesn’t address the
root causes of environmental degradation—turns the case
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
The final mismatch between the conditions invoked by security and the demands of environmental
degradation is one of the mindset induced. As Brock notes “[s]ecurity policies are essentially status quo
oriented” (1991: 418, see also Dalby, 1992: 98). The conventional metaphor for tackling a security issue
may be said to be that of a ship battening down the hatches and sailing through a storm in order to
return to its normal, pre-storm course. The environment demands a different approach, a permanent
changing of course in order to avoid the coming storm. Security may be unable to provide the backbone
for such a shift because as a concept it is “basically defensive in nature, a status quo concept defending
that which is” (Waever, 1995: 64). Securing the existing order, ‘that which is’, would be a self-defeating
enterprise in the environmental realm. Simon Dalby expresses this point in noting that “in so far as
security is premised on maintaining the status quo it runs counter to the challenges needed to alleviate
many environmental and ecological problems because it is precisely the status quo that has produced
the problems” (1994: 33). Security does not convey the necessity for society to alter in order to prosper,
and therefore the wisdom of framing the environment in security terms is ultimately questionable.
Environmental securitization fails—it prompts a reactive action when there needs to
be preventative action
Trombetta 8(Maria Julia, December, Environmental security and climate change: analysing the¶ discourse,
Maria Julia Trombetta--¶ Delft University of Technology, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, ¶ Volume 21,
Number 4)
And yet, when applied to environmental issues, the process of securitization¶ does not seem to be
analytically accurate. The Copenhagen School, in its¶ empirically driven analysis of various sectors in
Security: a new framework for¶ analysis, has identified several peculiarities in the environmental sector
(Buzan¶ et al 1998, 71–94). Amongst these peculiarities the most noticeable is that few¶ appeals to
environmental security have mobilized exceptional measures or¶ inscribed enemies in any context. The
Copenhagen School has suggested that¶ when the environment is involved, ‘“emergency measures” are
still designed and¶ developed in the realm of ordinary policy debates’ (83). This suggests that issues¶ can
be politicized through an appeal to security, a problematic development for¶ the Copenhagen School,
which argues that ‘transcending a security problem by¶ politicising it cannot happen through
thematization in security terms, only away¶ from such terms’ (Waever 1995, 56). Even if the School
tends to dismiss these as¶ failed securitizations, this seems to show that the transformation of an issue
into a¶ security issue can follow different modalities and different logics, which eschew¶ the
confrontational logic of the national security model suggested by the School.¶ Through the appeal to
security, other logics, which characterize different contexts,¶ can be brought into existence and new
actors can gain relevance in security policies.¶ Securitization, as de Wilde has argued, ‘triggers two
debates: one about the¶ underlying risk assessment, one about the strategic answer to it’ (2008, 596).¶
Successful appeals to security require developing security policies, identifying¶ appropriate strategies
and means to deal with the problem. These developments¶ are largely sector dependent and reflect
different values, priorities and practices.¶ As Williams has noted, ‘[s]peech-act theory entails the
possibility of argument, of¶ dialogue, and thereby holds out the potential for the transformation of
security¶ perceptions both within and between states’ (2003, 523).¶ The emergence of new threats such
as environmental problems has suggested¶ that reactive measures and an antagonist understanding of
security are not the¶ best ways to deal with these issues. Instead preventive measures appear to be¶
more effective and new means are required. In this context, the growing¶ awareness of the complexity
and uncertainty of contemporary threats has suggested to some scholars and policy makers the use of
the concept of risk to¶ conceptualize contemporary security dynamics. Themes like risk management¶
and preventive approaches have become more relevant in security discussions.
(solvency turn) Using a “Pandora’s Box” approach to climate change is easily dismissed
as liberal alarmism or results in fatalism among the public
Nisbet 9 (Matthew C-assistant professor at American University’s School of Communication, a research
fellow at AU’s Center for Social Media, and an affiliated researcher at the Center for Climate Change
Communication at George Mason University, “Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for
Public Engagement,” Environment Magazine, March-April 2009,
http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/March-April%202009/Nisbetfull.html//AJB)
In contrast, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, many environmentalists, and even some scientists have
attempted to counter the scientific uncertainty and economic consequences frames by emphasizing a
Pandora’s Box of looming “climate crisis.” To instantly translate their preferred interpretation, these
advocates have relied on depictions of specific climate impacts, including hurricane devastation, polar
bears perched precariously on shrinking ice floes, scorched, drought-stricken earth, blazing wild fires, or
famous cities or landmarks under water due to future sea-level rise. Publicity for Gore’s documentary on
climate change’s effects, An Inconvenient Truth, dramatized climate change as an environmental
Frankenstein’s monster, including a hurricane-shaped plume spewing from a smoke stack on its movie
poster and a trailer telling audiences to expect “the most terrifying film you will ever see.” With an
accent on visual and dramatic effects, the catastrophe strategy triggered similarly framed news
coverage. For example, a 2006 Time magazine cover featured a polar bear on melting ice with the
headline, “Global Warming: Be Worried, Be VERY Worried.”31 One of the unintended consequences of
this line of communication is that it plays into the hands of climate skeptics and further reinforces the
partisan divide in climate change perceptions. Andrew Revkin, who has covered climate change for
nearly 20 years for the New York Times, argues these claims are effectively countered by critics, such as
Inhofe, as liberal “alarmism,” since the error bars of uncertainty for each of the climate impacts are
much wider than the general link between human activities and global warming.32 These challenges,
which are easier when the target of ridicule is a former political figure such as Gore, quickly reactivate a
focus on scientific uncertainty and the heuristic of partisanship. In addition, the public is likely to
translate these appeals to fear into a sense of fatalism, especially if this information is not accompanied
by specific recommendations about how they can respond to the threats.33
Turn—Militarization—2NC
Environmental securitization fails—causes military responses to issues that require
non-military action
Trenell 6 (Paul- Master of Science in Security Studies from University of Wales, “The (Im)possibilty of
‘Environmental Security’,” Dissertation for Master of Science in Security Studies, September 2006,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410//AJB)
A further association of conventional security practices that could be misguidedly imported into the
environmental realm is the use of military force to attain security. Security has for centuries been the
preserve of the military, and the provision of security remains highly entangled with military institutions.
As such concern has been expressed that casting the environment in security terms may lead to greater
military involvement in addressing environmental problems. For their part the military have been keen
to involve themselves in environmental matters due to the fact that, in the aftermath of the Cold War,
this represents a good way to ensure continued status and funding (Conca, 1994: 16). Yet further
military involvement in the environmental sector would be unwelcome and counterproductive in
numerous ways, not least because “ there are of course, no military solutions to environmental
insecurity” (WCED, 1987: 301). One cannot bomb the environment back into good health, and the
secretive and hierarchical structures that dominate military organisations are fundamentally unsuited to
environmental challenges which demand cooperative and innovative solutions (Deudney, 1991: 24).
More than just hinder the search for solutions, military organisations actively exacerbate environmental
problems. Jon Barnett has claimed that “militarization is arguably the single biggest risk to human
beings” (2001: 19). There is the obvious point that military conflict rarely passes without high numbers
of fatalities. However, the preparations and conduct of military conflict also have hugely detrimental
environmental impacts. For example it is estimated that the burning of oil fields during the 1991 Gulf
War produced one hundred times the carbon dioxide emissions emitted by an entire year of global
economic trading (Brock, 1991: 411). Similarly devastating environmental damage is sustained via
nuclear testing and military preparations. Legitimising a military role in addressing environmental
problems by framing environmental concerns in terms of security may serve only to enshrine the
military’s status as “protected polluters” (Dalby, 1992b: 512) and thereby create further environmental
damage.
Turn—Cooperation—2NC
(turn) Environmental Securitization undermines international cooperation-turns the case
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Secondly, the zero-sum mindset of conventional security may hinder the development of effective
solutions by preventing transnational cooperation. Ken Conca has suggested “the concept of security
invokes images of insulation” (1994: 18) whereby one takes care of one’s own land and people by any
means necessary, and generally disregards the impact of this on other countries. This may lead to a
response whereby states attempt to forestall environmental damage by ‘target hardening’; protecting
their own territory rather than confronting the root of the problem. For example, it is not inconceivable
that developed nations could protect against the threat of rising sea levels by utilising their
technological and engineering expertise to construct offshore dams to divert water away from major
cities (Myers, 1993: 196). This is an expensive but real possibility, and such action would fulfil the
obligation of the state to provide security for its citizens. The problem lies with the fact that “as far as
we try to find national solutions for environmental problems we do not really solve them but manage
them instead” (Kakonen, 1994: 3). Environmental problems are international in terms of both scope and
impact, and therefore only truly international solutions are likely to prove true solutions.¶
Turn—State-Centric—2NC
Environmental securitization locks in state centric approaches that undermine public action over
environmental issues-guts solvency
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Thirdly, it can be claimed that the security mindset channels the obligation to address environmental
issues in an unwelcome direction. Due to terms laid out by the social contract “security is essentially
something done by states…there is no obligation or moral duty on citizens to provide security…In this
sense security is essentially empty…it is not a sign of positive political initiative” (Dalby, 1992a: 97-8).
Therefore, casting an issue in security terms puts the onus of action onto governments, creating a docile
citizenry who await instructions from their leaders as to the next step rather than taking it on their own
backs to do something about pressing concerns. This is unwelcome because governments have limited
incentives to act on environmental issues, as their collectively poor track record to date reveals. Paul
Brown notes that “at present in all the large democracies the short-term politics of winning the next
election and the need to increase the annual profits of industry rule over the long term interests of the
human race” (1996: 10; see also Booth 1991: 348). There is no clearer evidence for this than the grounds
on which George W. Bush explained his decision to opt out of the Kyoto Protocol: “I told the world I
thought that Kyoto was a lousy deal for America…It meant that we had to cut emissions below 1990
levels, which would have meant I would have presided over massive layoffs and economic destruction”
(BBC: 2006). The short-term focus of government elites and the long-term nature of the environmental
threat means that any policy which puts the burden of responsibility on the shoulders of governments
should be viewed with scepticism as this may have the effect of breeding inaction on environmental
issues.
Individual responses to environmental problems are key—state led responses can’t
produce long term change
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Moreover, governmental legislation may not be the most appropriate route to solving the problem at
hand. If environmental vulnerabilities are to be effectively addressed “[t]he routine behaviour of
practically everyone must be altered” (Deudney, 1990: 465). In the case of the environmental sector it
is not large scale and intentional assaults but the cumulative effect of small and seemingly innocent acts
such as driving a car or taking a flight that do the damage. Exactly how a legislative response could serve
to alter “non-criminal apolitical acts by individuals” (Prins, 1993: 176- 177) which lie beyond established
categories of the political is unclear. Andrew Dobson has covered this ground in claiming that the
solution to environmental hazards lies not in piecemeal legislation but in the fostering of a culture of
‘ecological citizenship’. His call is made on the grounds that legislating on the environment, forcing
people to adapt, does not reach the necessary depth to produce long-lasting change, but merely plugs
the problem temporarily. He cites Italian ‘car-free city’ days as evidence of this, noting that whilst
selected cities may be free of automobiles on a single predetermined day, numbers return to previous
levels immediately thereafter (2003: 3). This indicates that the deeper message underlying the policy is
not being successfully conveyed. Enduring environmental solutions are likely to emerge only when
citizens choose to change their ways because they understand that there exists a pressing need to do so.
Such a realisation is unlikely to be prompted by the top-down, state oriented focus supplied by a
security framework.
Alternative
Alternative—Warming—1NC
(alt) The alternative is too reject the 1AC’s apocalyptic framing of Climate Changeonly then can we productively solve for climate change
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
In conclusion, we hope to inspire more scholarship in the spirit of Moser and Dilling’s (2007) call for a
greater inter-disciplinary conversation on climate change. The methodological tool of frame analysis can
help foster common ground between humanities scholars, social scientists, and climate scientists,
concerned about global warming. Frame analysis can also be a valuable tool in identifying the troubling
aspects of how a discourse evolves and is communicated—and in so doing, it can lead to more effective
communication. Deconstructing the harmful effects of an apocalyptic frame, we feel some responsibility
to try to offer alternative frames which might balance the need to communicate the urgency of climate
change, without moving people to denial and despair. We would like to see the press inspire more of a
public dialogue on how we can mitigate climate change, rather than encouraging readers to continue to
be resigned to the catastrophic telos. This does not mean that we should ignore the potentially
devastating consequences of global warming (now and in the future); but it does mean that we must
begin a conversation about how to change our daily routines to make things better. We believe that the
press could promote greater human agency in the issue of climate change, so that people do not
become resigned to the telos of global warming. This includes encouraging more personal and civic
responsibility, rather than suggesting that experts will take care of it (or that we can do nothing to
mitigate the impacts of climate change). Journalists could acknowledge the expertise of scientists,
balanced with an acknowledgement of the power of common sense and morality— such a move may
help avoid casting scientists as prophets. Through a less tragic, more productive framing of the issues of
climate change, we may expand the common ground needed to build a political will for dealing with
climate change.
Alternative—Overview (Warming)—2NC
Rejection of the framing of the 1AC is key—that’s Foust
a. Apathy—framing warming in terms of human agency instead of an
apocholypse ensures that there will be less apathy—people won’t feel
as if warming is a problem that has no solution—that encourages
bottom up approaches
b. Interdisciplinary conversation—framing warming differently fosters
common ground between different types of scientists—they have
more to relate to when warming is framed in more relatable terms
than in terms of an apocalypse
Framework means that the alt doesn’t have to make the world perfect—we just
have to win that the alternative is a good idea and that the assumptions of the
1AC are unproductive
Before action we must look at the way we frame climate change- only way to
implement effective policy change—that means that the alt is a prerequisite to the aff
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Along with critiquing the misinformation created through poorly educated reporters, “balance-as-bias,”
and media-corporate ties; and parsing out the complexities which render climate change so difficult to
sustain on the public agenda; communication scholars have employed frame analysis to identify the
peculiar constructions of climate change in the press. Following Entman (1993), Jones (2006) defines
frames as “clusters of messages” which draw “attention on some aspects of reality while ignoring
others” (pp. 14-15). As such, frames can create “subtle alterations” in the way that readers judge an
event or issue (Iyengar, 1991, p. 11). Frames structure an event’s or issue’s meaning through partial and
selective views, with consequences that stretch beyond readers’ interpretations. For example, the
persistent tragic framing of the Matthew Shepard murder case relieved the public from a sense of
responsibility, which in turn stalled the passage of hate crime prevention legislation (Ott & Aioki, 2002).
Frame analysis proves important for the present analysis of global warming discourse, permitting us not
only to consider the appearance of an underlying structure, but also to interrogate its possible impacts
in terms of public agency, public opinion, policy, and democratic discourse. Though the general framing
of climate change in American, European, and global news outlets has been explored, the apocalyptic
frame remains underrepresented in the conversation. As noted in the introduction, Killingsworth and
Palmer (1996) associate global warming with apocalyptic narratives, but do not fully consider the
consequences of this frame on environmental issues. Likewise, Leiserowitz mentions a link between
climate change and apocalypse without fully developing how this link is created, or what the full extent
of its consequences might be. Leiserowitz (2007) concludes his analysis of the public’s affective images
of climate change by cautioning us against taking an “alarmist” stance, as apocalyptic responses (such as
“predicting ‘the end of the world’ or ‘the death of the planet’”) could “lead some to a sense of resigned
fatalism” (p. 60). Because of its potential to stifle agency, as we elaborate below, a full exploration of
apocalyptic frame in elite and popular press accounts of global warming is warranted.
Empirics prove—alternatives to environmental security can suceed
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
From one perspective the contention that environmental concerns will fail to mobilize swift action could
be considered as an unwelcome setback for the project to develop immediate environmental solutions.
However, viewed differently this contention represents an opportunity to move beyond the academic
stalemate and begin developing effective environmental solutions which eschew the security framework
altogether. This needn’t be a setback, but may form the foundation of a more long-term and
environmentally responsive set of policies. As Levy has claimed “there is no evidence that labelling [a]
problem as a security threat adds any value to our ability as a society to respond effectively” (1995: 47).
In this vein he considers the global response to ozone depletion, which was handled not as a security
issue but “a more mundane public health and chemical hazard problem” (1995: 47). In order to meet
the challenge of reducing the atmospheric concentration of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) which were
depleting the ozone layer, and thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer at an alarming rate, a program
of international diplomacy was undertaken. The ensuing Montreal Protocol in 1987 achieved a
commitment to halve CFC emissions from all major producers, and 1990 amendments virtually
eliminated CFC emissions from all major and potential producers. CFC levels are now at a stable level
and replacements for their function have been found. As such, the management of ozone depletion
under a public health and chemical hazard framework “is widely considered a success story” and it is not
clear what “would have [been] gained by considering the ozone depletion problem as a security
problem” (Levy, 1995: 50). This example shows that there are alternatives to casting the environment in
security terms, and, more importantly, that these alternatives can be successful. In light of my
contentions I would argue that academic attention should turn to developing similar solutions for other
aspects of environmental vulnerability rather than attempting to squeeze the environment into a
security framework to which its nature and needs are ill fit.
Alternative—Generic—1NC
(alt) The alternative is to reject and rethink security- this is key to avert an ecological
collapse
Dalby 92 (Simon- CIGI Chair in the Political Economy of Climate Change at the Balsillie School of
International Affairs, “Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse,”
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1992, pp 95-134, JSTOR)
Rethinking security along these lines requires a refusal of the metaphysics of domination and control.
Even more than in the case of military matters, neither economic or ecological security can ultimately
be ensured by violence, nor can they be ensured by the unilateral actions of a single state. Instead,
they require international cooperation and a participatory politics. "Security is increasingly attained
through the difficult process of global cooperation to create mechanisms for non-violent dispute
settlement and establish environmental alliances."131 In the longer term, what all this suggests is the
possibility of a drastic rethinking of political structures. Transforming states, hard though it probably
will be in the face of the resistance of powerful vested interests, must be an important part of
reformulating security.152 The military understanding of security is one of force and imposed
solutions, secrecy, power, and surveillance. It is a logocentric metaphysical model that privileges
certainty and stability over the possibilities of change, and political order over the messy uncertainties of
democratic practice. Conventional security discourse is trapped within the metaphysics and structures
of Western philosophy and the will to dominate and control. A politics, and the related technology, that
asserts ever greater power over things, tends to undermine the basis of that power by generating
indirect responses, usually in terms of single states attempting to maximize security by increasing
power, and so triggering arms race phenomena— the so-called security dilemma phenomenon. A
similar dynamic works in ecological matters. The metaphysics of domination is linked in
environmentalist discourse to the theme of the domination of nature.133 Technology and industry
exploit nature and remake it according to their demands. Ecology is reduced to matters of natural
resources management, the administration of nature by a technologically sophisticated state system.
The diversity of species and the complex interconnections of ecosystems are here reduced to matters
of either commodities or worthless extraneous materials. In the case of so-called renewable resources,
the crucial conception is one of sustainable yield, as though forest or fish stocks were cultivated
fields.134 As the case of the Amazon so clearly reveals, development projects that attempt to force ever
larger production from sensitive environments by the use of technological power usually lead to
ecological disruption.135 Insofar as states premise their security policies on these projects leading to
societal development, then insecurity returns to haunt the search for security in terms of certainty,
control, and order. This suggests that the masculine and Western metaphysical understandings of
power in terms of domination of nature, which environmentalist discourse criticizes, and control over
territorial states, which antigeopolitical thinking challenges, are not the appropriate ones for rethinking
security. Much more needed are approaches that focus on caring and cooperation, recognition of
mutual vulnerabilities, and the necessity to forge consensus and agreement in the face of mutual
insecurity.136 But these approaches involve political input by grassroots groups and a democratization
of both development and security that flies in the face of conventional state-organized versions of
both.137 Needed, too, are ecological metaphors of security—seeing strength in diversity,
conservation, interdependence, interconnectedness, and adaptation rather than imposed physical
power. Likewise, the gender dimension of security and ecology need to be taken seriously in attempts to
reform states and shift from "resourcism" to ecological modes of society.138 Further still may be the
necessity to distance philosophical understanding of natural phenomena from purely instrumentalist
perspectives, recognizing that ecological relationships are better grounded in a metaphysics of a "re-
enchanted" nature.139 Ken Booth's ambitious attempt to rethink security for the 1990s reverses the
theme of security as domination and force. He reinterprets security in terms of emancipation, meaning
both political liberty and the economic capacity to render that liberty meaningful.140 He also distances
security from the monopoly of states. Security is here understood as security primarily for citizens; in
doing this, Booth strips away the central assumption that states do necessarily provide security. This
point is crucial. Radically rethinking security inevitably has to deal with the role of states, because the
conventional discourse of security is all about states as the providers of security. So long as security
discourse remains intimately and uncritically entangled with state politics, the more innovative
possibilities for rethinking human community in the aftermath of the Cold War and in the face of
global ecological peril will be unnecessarily limited. Booth's suggestion for rethinking security in terms
of emancipation is an interesting possibility precisely because it directly links a reformulated security
with challenges to imposed and authoritarian power. To rethink security, then, is to insist on exposing
the power relations involved, both in the practical operations of politics and the metaphysical
underpinnings of modernist ontology. It involves challenging the use of security as ideology by asking,
"security specifically for whom?" in the face of assurances of security for everyone. It must insist that
ecological security is not about arranging resources to maintain the existing state system, a form of
natural resources management writ large.141 Rather, alternative conceptions of security must focus
on reforming the state system to ensure the survival of planetary ecology. International equity and the
consequent reformulation of international economic arrange- ments are an essential part of a common
security that can sustain the ecosystem.
Alternative—Overview—2NC
The alternative is to reject the securitization of the 1AC—this is key
a. Root Cause—securitization of the environment always follows a
cosmetic approach—that prevents it from effectively solving because it
causes responses like militarization—the only way to effectively
address the root causes of environmental degredation is through
cooperation, which securitization pushes out
b. Specifically, rejecting the discourse of the 1AC is key—only through the
process of the kritik can we mitigate the negative effects of environmental
degradation
Waever 2(Ole, August 12, Securitization and Desecuritization, Ole Wæver is a professor of International
Relations at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.,
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/lipschutz12.html)
These observations point back toward a more general question: Is it a good idea to frame as many¶
problems as possible in terms of security? Does not such a strategy present the negative prospect of, in
a¶ metaphorical sense, militarizing our thinking and seeing problems in terms of¶ threat-vulnerabilitydefense, when there are good reasons for not treating them according to this¶ formula?51 Use of the
slogan "environmental security" is tempting, because it is an effective way of¶ dramatizing
environmental problems. In the longer run, however, the practices resulting from the slogan¶ might
lead to an inappropriate social construction of the environment, as a threat/defense problem. We¶
might find it more constructive, instead, to thematize the problem in terms of an economy-ecology
nexus,¶ where decisions are actually interlinked.52¶ Use of the security label does not merely reflect
whether a problem is a security problem, it is also a¶ political choice, that is, a decision for
conceptualization in a special way. When a problem is¶ "securitized," the act tends to lead to specific
ways of addressing it: Threat, defense, and often¶ state-centered solutions. This, of course, leaves the
environmental agenda, with its labelling problem,¶ unresolved. One alternative is to view the
emerging values of environmentalism as establishing their own¶ moral basis. As his basis for optimism,
for example, Buzan suggests that such values are already¶ emerging as new norms of international
society.53 Deudney, more lyrically, talks about ecological¶ awareness being linked to "a powerful set of
values and symbols" that "draw upon basic human desires¶ and aspirations," and argues that this, and
not regressive security logic, should be the basis for¶ mobilization.54¶ Buzan, Moss and others who
have analyzed the concept "environmental security," and its use,¶ recommend that environmental
problems be treated as part of the economic field. "The security label is¶ one solution," according to
Buzan, but he tends to prefer the other path: To "identify environmental¶ issues as part of the
economic agenda," which has¶ the advantage of setting the issue at the heart of the action that is most
relevant to it. There might, in the¶ long run, be more advantage to making producers, consumers,
taxmen and economists factor environmental¶ costs into their accounting activities, than to arming the
state with emergency powers derived from an¶ analogy with war. It might be argued that process-type
threats are better met by the process-type remedies¶ of economics, than by the statist solutions of
security logic.55
Framework means that the alt doesn’t have to make the world perfect—we just
have to win that the alternative is a good idea and that the assumptions of the
1AC are unproductive
Before action we must look at the way we frame climate change- only way to
implement effective policy change—that means that the alt is a prerequisite to the aff
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Along with critiquing the misinformation created through poorly educated reporters, “balance-as-bias,”
and media-corporate ties; and parsing out the complexities which render climate change so difficult to
sustain on the public agenda; communication scholars have employed frame analysis to identify the
peculiar constructions of climate change in the press. Following Entman (1993), Jones (2006) defines
frames as “clusters of messages” which draw “attention on some aspects of reality while ignoring
others” (pp. 14-15). As such, frames can create “subtle alterations” in the way that readers judge an
event or issue (Iyengar, 1991, p. 11). Frames structure an event’s or issue’s meaning through partial and
selective views, with consequences that stretch beyond readers’ interpretations. For example, the
persistent tragic framing of the Matthew Shepard murder case relieved the public from a sense of
responsibility, which in turn stalled the passage of hate crime prevention legislation (Ott & Aioki, 2002).
Frame analysis proves important for the present analysis of global warming discourse, permitting us not
only to consider the appearance of an underlying structure, but also to interrogate its possible impacts
in terms of public agency, public opinion, policy, and democratic discourse. Though the general framing
of climate change in American, European, and global news outlets has been explored, the apocalyptic
frame remains underrepresented in the conversation. As noted in the introduction, Killingsworth and
Palmer (1996) associate global warming with apocalyptic narratives, but do not fully consider the
consequences of this frame on environmental issues. Likewise, Leiserowitz mentions a link between
climate change and apocalypse without fully developing how this link is created, or what the full extent
of its consequences might be. Leiserowitz (2007) concludes his analysis of the public’s affective images
of climate change by cautioning us against taking an “alarmist” stance, as apocalyptic responses (such as
“predicting ‘the end of the world’ or ‘the death of the planet’”) could “lead some to a sense of resigned
fatalism” (p. 60). Because of its potential to stifle agency, as we elaborate below, a full exploration of
apocalyptic frame in elite and popular press accounts of global warming is warranted.
Empirics prove—alternatives to environmental security can suceed
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
From one perspective the contention that environmental concerns will fail to mobilize swift action could
be considered as an unwelcome setback for the project to develop immediate environmental solutions.
However, viewed differently this contention represents an opportunity to move beyond the academic
stalemate and begin developing effective environmental solutions which eschew the security framework
altogether. This needn’t be a setback, but may form the foundation of a more long-term and
environmentally responsive set of policies. As Levy has claimed “there is no evidence that labelling [a]
problem as a security threat adds any value to our ability as a society to respond effectively” (1995: 47).
In this vein he considers the global response to ozone depletion, which was handled not as a security
issue but “a more mundane public health and chemical hazard problem” (1995: 47). In order to meet
the challenge of reducing the atmospheric concentration of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) which were
depleting the ozone layer, and thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer at an alarming rate, a program
of international diplomacy was undertaken. The ensuing Montreal Protocol in 1987 achieved a
commitment to halve CFC emissions from all major producers, and 1990 amendments virtually
eliminated CFC emissions from all major and potential producers. CFC levels are now at a stable level
and replacements for their function have been found. As such, the management of ozone depletion
under a public health and chemical hazard framework “is widely considered a success story” and it is not
clear what “would have [been] gained by considering the ozone depletion problem as a security
problem” (Levy, 1995: 50). This example shows that there are alternatives to casting the environment in
security terms, and, more importantly, that these alternatives can be successful. In light of my
contentions I would argue that academic attention should turn to developing similar solutions for other
aspects of environmental vulnerability rather than attempting to squeeze the environment into a
security framework to which its nature and needs are ill fit.
Alternative Booster—2NC
Empirics prove—alternatives to environmental security can suceed
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
From one perspective the contention that environmental concerns will fail to mobilize swift action could
be considered as an unwelcome setback for the project to develop immediate environmental solutions.
However, viewed differently this contention represents an opportunity to move beyond the academic
stalemate and begin developing effective environmental solutions which eschew the security framework
altogether. This needn’t be a setback, but may form the foundation of a more long-term and
environmentally responsive set of policies. As Levy has claimed “there is no evidence that labelling [a]
problem as a security threat adds any value to our ability as a society to respond effectively” (1995: 47).
In this vein he considers the global response to ozone depletion, which was handled not as a security
issue but “a more mundane public health and chemical hazard problem” (1995: 47). In order to meet
the challenge of reducing the atmospheric concentration of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) which were
depleting the ozone layer, and thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer at an alarming rate, a program
of international diplomacy was undertaken. The ensuing Montreal Protocol in 1987 achieved a
commitment to halve CFC emissions from all major producers, and 1990 amendments virtually
eliminated CFC emissions from all major and potential producers. CFC levels are now at a stable level
and replacements for their function have been found. As such, the management of ozone depletion
under a public health and chemical hazard framework “is widely considered a success story” and it is not
clear what “would have [been] gained by considering the ozone depletion problem as a security
problem” (Levy, 1995: 50). This example shows that there are alternatives to casting the environment in
security terms, and, more importantly, that these alternatives can be successful. In light of my
contentions I would argue that academic attention should turn to developing similar solutions for other
aspects of environmental vulnerability rather than attempting to squeeze the environment into a
security framework to which its nature and needs are ill fit.
(Prerequisite) Before action we must look at the way we frame climate change- only
way to implement effective policy change
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Along with critiquing the misinformation created through poorly educated reporters, “balance-as-bias,”
and media-corporate ties; and parsing out the complexities which render climate change so difficult to
sustain on the public agenda; communication scholars have employed frame analysis to identify the
peculiar constructions of climate change in the press. Following Entman (1993), Jones (2006) defines
frames as “clusters of messages” which draw “attention on some aspects of reality while ignoring
others” (pp. 14-15). As such, frames can create “subtle alterations” in the way that readers judge an
event or issue (Iyengar, 1991, p. 11). Frames structure an event’s or issue’s meaning through partial and
selective views, with consequences that stretch beyond readers’ interpretations. For example, the
persistent tragic framing of the Matthew Shepard murder case relieved the public from a sense of
responsibility, which in turn stalled the passage of hate crime prevention legislation (Ott & Aioki, 2002).
Frame analysis proves important for the present analysis of global warming discourse, permitting us not
only to consider the appearance of an underlying structure, but also to interrogate its possible impacts
in terms of public agency, public opinion, policy, and democratic discourse. Though the general framing
of climate change in American, European, and global news outlets has been explored, the apocalyptic
frame remains underrepresented in the conversation. As noted in the introduction, Killingsworth and
Palmer (1996) associate global warming with apocalyptic narratives, but do not fully consider the
consequences of this frame on environmental issues. Likewise, Leiserowitz mentions a link between
climate change and apocalypse without fully developing how this link is created, or what the full extent
of its consequences might be. Leiserowitz (2007) concludes his analysis of the public’s affective images
of climate change by cautioning us against taking an “alarmist” stance, as apocalyptic responses (such as
“predicting ‘the end of the world’ or ‘the death of the planet’”) could “lead some to a sense of resigned
fatalism” (p. 60). Because of its potential to stifle agency, as we elaborate below, a full exploration of
apocalyptic frame in elite and popular press accounts of global warming is warranted.
(Prerequisite to policy) The apocalyptic frame casts scientists as both prophets and
false prophets- fostering a divide between skeptics and believers- preventing policy
change
Foust et al 8 (Christina- Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Connection Studies at the
University of Denver, William Murphy-Doctoral Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the
Department of Human Communication Studies at the University of Denver, Chelsea Stow-Doctoral
Student and Graduate Teaching Instructor in the Department of Human Communication Studies at the
University of Denver, “Global Warming and Apocalyptic Rhetoric: A Critical Frame Analysis of US Popular
and Elite Press Coverage from 1997-2007,” Paper submitted to the Environmental Communication
Division of the National Communication Association convention, San Diego, California, November 2008,
http://citation.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/6/0/1/2/pages260125/p260125
-1.php//AJB)
Our analysis adds nuance to Brummett’s argument on apocalyptic rhetoric, as there is some space for
human agency in many of the apocalyptic scenarios. But the articles we analyzed continue to cast
scientists in the role of prophets, and perhaps more disturbingly, false prophets. When represented as
false prophets, scientists are not to be trusted. To cast scientists in the role of prophet generally
threatens to diminish the empirical contributions of their work. Furthermore, prophesy threatens to
further polarize the public on the issue of climate change, inhibiting consensus building. While we find
hope in the educational framework between scientists, activists and skeptics, we are chagrined when
skeptics are represented as obstacles or villains. The apocalyptic frame creates unnecessary divisiveness
within the community that can prevent effective action to minimize or prevent the impacts of global
climate change. We found a number of editorialists and reviewers (at least in the Times and Post) that
expressed skepticism about climate change because of its apocalyptic framing in broad public discourse.
This confirms Leseirowitz’s (2007) claim that apocalyptic framing encourages skeptics to discredit the
findings of scientists. The apocalyptic frame thus opens change-seekers to the charge of “crying wolf,” or
creating catastrophe to fit their political agenda. While we, too, are troubled by the apocalyptic frame,
we view the naysayers’ argument against it as motivated by a politically divisive attitude—one which is
potentially harmful for the work of forming a political will.
AT Stuff
AT Militarization Good
Militarism is the root cause of global warming
Martinot 7 (Steve- Cultural lecturer and Instructor at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at San
Francisco State University, “Militarism and Global Warming,” Synthesis/Regeneration 42, Winter 2007,
http://www.greens.org/s-r/42/42-06.html//AJB)
Here is how corporate control of the economy, a history of militarism, and corporate globalization all
come together. The US military is what facilitated the acquisition of exploitation rights in other countries
by US corporations, leaving the US economy essentially a military-oriented economy. That is, militarism
has engendered a military economy. Second, it fosters a situation in which a transnational corporate
structure becomes the predominant political force in the world; and the citizens of that structure, the
corporations themselves, have no ethical concerns toward the planet nor toward life. Its ethics are
governed by the maintenance of its stock value on the stock markets of the world. Thus, resource
exploitation is its food, and resource consumption is its metabolism . Militarism is the way corporations
maintain their access to their food supply — the planet . Because the military economy is by nature a
monopoly, owing to government control, security clearances, national security considerations, etc., all
military industries fall into a culture of corruption that is far beyond that of ordinary industries. This
corruption is a cultural phenomenon that makes health and longevity an ancillary concern. In the
interests of that corruption, beyond profit or stock price levels, the military drives the political processes
and thinking of this society to ideologically ignore or deny the problem of global warming. The profit
picture is important, of course, and it leads the oil and coal interests to buy prostituted scientists to help
them promulgate that denial. But the real opposition to recognition of global warming is more
immediately the corruption that exudes from the military and its militarism. In order to seriously
address the problem, the movements (ecology, environmentalist, anti-consumption, alternative energy)
will have to be anti-militarist. The military is key to the cycle of self-generation of global warming at the
human (initiatory) end of the spectrum of factors. The military may not be the worst offender in
producing greenhouse gases in the pragmatic sense, but it is the worst offender as an entity and an
ideology in the world. It has to be seen as lying at the heart of the offense itself. It is not possible for the
environmental movement to take a step toward preserving the environment unless two things are
brought to an end — the existence of the US military machine and the existence of the corporate
structure.
AT Mobilization
Securitization doesn’t mobilize action- special and temporal distance between environmental
impacts and target audience
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
As humanity awakes from the complacent slumber of modernity it is faced with an all-encompassing
problem of its own creation; the planet is unable to support life as we have come to know it. From this
perspective this I contend that there is a fundamental, and erroneous, assumption underlying ongoing
attempts to conceive of the environment as a security issue. I argue that this project is guilty of
assuming that the mere linguistic conjunction of ‘environment’ and ‘security’ will produce the
mobilization effect which forms the fundamental purpose of the environment-security linkage. This is
not necessarily the case. Not every issue referred to in security terms generates an extraordinary
response, and thus far the connection of the environment to security has roundly failed to generate
large-scale environmental mobilization. A deeper analysis of the dynamics of securitization reveals that
‘security’ only attains the performative capacity to mobilize through a complex political process. I argue,
following Thierry Balzaqc (2005) that successful securitization is intersubjective, meaning that in order
for mobilization to occur an audience must accept a securitizing actor’s claims and the necessity for an
extraordinary response to a problem. As such, securitizing moves must be backed with external
evidence of an imminent existential threat to affirm the urgent need for action. Whether or not the
environment provides this external dimension is a point of contention. It is my claim that the spatially
and temporally distant nature of environmental threats leads to a lack of evidence of environmental
destruction in the everyday experience of the target audience of securitizing moves . This may prevent
the environment from being seen as a pressing existential threat which merits immediate and
extraordinary corrective action. I attempt to validate this claim by comparing environmental hazards to
other examples of distant suffering such as famine and genocide in order to highlight how suffering
which is not immediately proximate and observable to individuals frequently fails to motivate remedial
action. The environment too could fall foul of the tendency to ignore suffering which is not accompanied
by a proximate physical stimulus and therefore fail to generate mobilization. If it can be shown that the
environment is unlikely to sustain large-scale mobilization on security grounds due to the very nature of
the threat it poses, then the incentive for linking the environment to security is removed. This would
serve to break the academic deadlock over whether and how to connect the environment and security
and provide the basis for the project to overcome environmental vulnerability to move beyond security.
Environmental securitization can’t mobilize action—it is perceived as being distant
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
Linking the environment to the concept of security is at first glance an appealing tactic in the attempt to
mobilize an extraordinary response to environmental vulnerabilities. However, deeper analysis reveals
this rhetorical strategy to be riddled with pitfalls. Initial concerns that the notion of security would
import unsuitable mindsets into the environmental arena were met with the proposal that the concept
of security could be fundamentally reinterpreted in order to make it more responsive to environmental
demands. I have claimed that the rationale underlying this move is fundamentally flawed. The desire to
cling to security stems from a wish to retain the mobilization potential of security, yet insufficient
consideration has been given to what it is that imbues security with the performative capacity to
mobilize extraordinary responses. I have claimed that this stems not from the mere pronunciation of
‘security’ but from a complex set of political processes which are contingent upon the ability to
demonstrate to those one seeks to mobilize that they are subject to an imminent existential threat
which warrants immediate evasive and corrective action. The environment does not provide concrete
evidence of an existential threat because the impacts of environmental degradation are spatially and
temporally distanced from the everyday experiences of citizens of industrialised nations. In light of this
fact it becomes easy for individuals to overlook factual scientific evidence of the threat posed by
environmental degradation in the same way that they are able to overlook more conventional examples
of distant suffering.¶ Norman Myers has noted, with a hint of despair, that “[w]ere environmental
problems to strike us like a heart attack, we would rush our eco-systems into intensive-care units and
have them restored. Instead they are like a cancer, quietly undercutting our foundations, unseen and
unresisted” (Myers, 1993: 28). These words adeptly capture the at once challenging and frustrating
nature of environmental hazards. Were environmental problems to strike contemporary society with
bouts of destruction on a regular basis the mobilization potential of security could be easily unlocked
because those called upon to mobilize would be in no doubt of the need to do so in order to save their
own lives. The fact that environmental problems do not strike society, but are recognisable only through
scientific formulations explains why the presentation of the environment as a security issue has failed,
and will continue to fail, to produce large-scale mobilization. The very nature of the environmental
threat – distant and diffuse – precludes successful securitization and renders the rhetorical use of the
notion of ‘environmental security’ to generate an extraordinary response a practical impossibility. Whilst
some may see this as a detrimental development in the quest to address environmental vulnerability
this may not be the case. Lothar Brock has asked the devastatingly simple question “why need we stick
to the term security at all?” (Brock, 1991: 418). Until now the answer to this question has stemmed from
the desire to cling to the mobilization potential of security. The claim that security will not import its
performative capacity into the environmental realm erases the need to cling to security and stands as a
route to unlocking the intellectual impasse surrounding the conceptual connection of environment and
security. In so doing it also serves to clear the way for the conception of effective environmental
solutions which transcend the security framework.
Securitization of the environment fails—it can’t generate the mobilization that their
authors claim
Trenell 6(Paul, September, The (Im)possibilty of ‘Environmental Security’, Paul Trenell-- Department of
International Politics, University of Wales, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/handle/2160/410)
If the claim that linking the environment to security will not generate the extraordinary response which
is sought holds firm, it has potentially large implications for the ongoing academic pursuit of developing
effective environmental policies. Up until now there has been a reluctance to abandon the ‘security’
label in the environmental field because of the belief that to do so would be to sacrifice security’s ability
to generate swift and effective environmental action. As such, Trombetta has noted that
“desecuritization in the case of the environment is problematic because it can be considered as
synonymous with depoliticization and marginalization” (2004: 122). Dalby meanwhile, has expressed a
preference for handling the environment within a security framework because of his view that
alternatives such as peace, justice, sustainability and ecology lack “a wide enough cultural resonance to
be useful mobilizing concepts” (1992a: 122). The message is clear: security must be retained because of
its power to mobilize. However, as I have attempted to show, security may not carry its mobilization
potential into the environmental realm because the environmental realm does not corroborate moves
which attempt to stage the environment as an existential threat. ¶ This undercuts that validity and worth
of the attempt to manipulate security into a more environmentally amenable concept. If security does
not offer the prospect of swift mobilization in the environmental sector then there appears to be little
logic behind the move to tie environmental concerns into the security framework at all, for the
“[l]inkage to security promises no benefits but risks” (1995: 51). The risk is that the notion of
‘environmental security’ will import the unhelpful associations outlined in chapter one remains, yet this
is not tempered by the mobilization potential that makes the move worthwhile. Ole Waever has
highlighted that “[c]entral to the arguments for the conceptual innovation of environmental or
ecological security is its mobilization potential” (1995: 63). If, as I have claimed, the notion of
‘environmental security’ will not unlock the mobilization potential of security due to the distant nature
of the environmental threat then the entire project of linking the environment to security can be
considered to be fatally flawed.
Author Indict
You should be skeptical of the aff’s evidence—they use improbable scenarios to justify
securitization
Brzoska 9(Michael, March, The Securitization of Climate Change and the power conceptions of security, Michael Brzoska is
the Scientific Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy and Professor of Political Science at the University
of Hamburg, Themenschwerpunkt 137-208, p. 137-145)
The authors of all four studies, however, are rather unhappy¶ about this state of a.ffai.rs. They do not
want to get bogged down¶ by the lack of established causal links and the weakness of sta-¶ tistical
estimations; they are keen on making predictions. So¶ they employ alternative means for predicting the
effects of cli-¶ mate change on security.¶ One way of doing this is to make predictions without stating¶
probabilities. With few exceptions, the dangers discussed are¶ treated as ‘possible outcomes’ of climate
change. They may oc-¶ cu.r, but there is no guarantee that they will. Such predictions¶ are almost
impossible to contradict - no one knows the future¶ a.nd there are few things that cannot happen.¶ Nor
are these kind of predictions very helpful when it comes¶ to fra.ming policies to address the future. The
authors of the¶ four studies employ additional means to argue that despite the¶ lack of past empirical
evidence of a strong direct connection¶ between cli.mate change and indicators of insecurity, there is a¶
high probability that climate change will affect security nega-¶ tively. The three most i.mportant means
by which they do so¶ are what I will call here ‘statehood’, ‘non-linearity’ and the¶ ‘scenario technique’.
Aff Answers
Perm
2AC Perm
An apocalypse frame of climate change is the only way to create policy changeclimate change doesn’t even qualify as news in the world of the alternative
Ignatius 6 (David- Columnist and editor at the Washington Post, “Is It Warm in Here?; We Could Be
Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History,” The Washington Post, Published 1/18/06 Page A17,
Lexis//AJB)
One of the puzzles if you're in the news business is figuring out what's "news." The fate of your local
football team certainly fits the definition. So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how about
changes in the migratory patterns of butterflies? Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are
early effects of global climate change -- but that isn't news, by most people's measure. Neither is
declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic. We can't see these changes in our personal
lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they don't grab us the way a plane crash would -- even
though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life
on the planet. And because they're not "news," the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least
not in the United States. What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not
the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads
the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly
20 years ago, he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate and
biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but he's beginning to wonder if it's too late. Lovejoy
fears that changes in the Amazon's ecosystem may be irreversible. Scientists reported last month that
there is an Amazonian drought apparently caused by new patterns in Atlantic currents that, in turn, are
similar to projected climate change. With less rainfall, the tropical forests are beginning to dry out. They
burn more easily, and, in the continuous feedback loops of their ecosystem, these drier forests return
less moisture to the atmosphere, which means even less rain. When the forest trees are deprived of
rain, their mortality can increase by a factor of six, and similar devastation affects other species, too.
"When do you wreck it as a system?" Lovejoy wonders. "It's like going up to the edge of a cliff, not really
knowing where it is. Common sense says you shouldn't discover where the edge is by passing over it, but
that's what we're doing with deforestation and climate change." Lovejoy first went to the Amazon 40
years ago as a young scientist of 23. It was a boundless wilderness, the size of the continental United
States, but at that time it had just 2 million people and one main road. He has returned more than a
hundred times, assembling over the years a mental time-lapse photograph of how this forest primeval
has been affected by man. The population has increased tenfold, and the wilderness is now laced with
roads, new settlements and economic progress. The forest itself, impossibly rich and lush when Lovejoy
first saw it, is changing. For Lovejoy, who co-edited a pioneering 1992 book, "Global Warming and
Biological Diversity," there is a deep sense of frustration. A crisis he and other scientists first sensed
more than two decades ago is drifting toward us in what seems like slow motion, but fast enough that it
may be impossible to mitigate the damage. The best reporting of the non-news of climate change has
come from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker. Her three-part series last spring lucidly explained the
harbingers of potential disaster: a shrinking of Arctic sea ice by 250 million acres since 1979; a thawing
of the permafrost for what appears to be the first time in 120,000 years; a steady warming of Earth's
surface temperature; changes in rainfall patterns that could presage severe droughts of the sort that
destroyed ancient civilizations. This month she published a new piece, "Butterfly Lessons," that looked
at how these delicate creatures are moving into new habitats as the planet warms. Her real point was
that all life, from microorganisms to human beings, will have to adapt, and in ways that could be
dangerous and destabilizing. So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate
sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the
history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: "It may seem
impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself,
but that is what we are now in the process of doing." She's right. The failure of the United States to get
serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining.
AT Discourse
2AC Discourse
Discourse doesn’t matter—policy action is the key internal link to perception
Scott 12(Shirley V., The Securitization of Climate Change in World¶ Politics: How Close have We Come and would
Full¶ Securitization Enhance the Efficacy of Global ¶ Climate Change Policy?, Review of European Community and
Environmental Law, Associate Professor¶ School of Social Sciences UNSW Austrailia,RECIEL 21 (3) 2012)
Climate change is an interesting case study for theorists¶ of securitization because, despite plenty of
climatesecurity rhetoric, the effectiveness of the global policy¶ response continues to lag well behind
the alleged seri-¶ ousness of the issue with which the world is confronted.¶ This begs the question as to
whether the theorists over-¶ estimated the potential power of security discourse or¶ whether in this
case the process is simply slower than¶ its protagonists might have hoped. All in all, the jury is¶ still out
on the ultimate effectiveness of securitizing¶ climate change. What the debates in the Security¶ Council
in particular have made clear is that, at least so¶ far as climate change is concerned, if we are to under-¶
stand why some audiences remain unconvinced by¶ securitizing moves, we need to ask what the
political¶ and legal implications of full securitization would be for¶ each actor in terms of the key
questions in dispute. For¶ most members of the climate securitization ‘audience’,¶ their degree of
acceptance of climate security has to¶ date been determined primarily by the implications in¶ respect
of institutional powers and associated scope for¶ those audience members contributing to law making
as¶ well as bearing the costs of the necessary action.¶ If the full securitization of climate change at an
inter-¶ national level is understood as meaning that the Secu-¶ rity Council becomes the ‘peak body‘
leading mitigation¶ and adaptation, then the debate to date has in fact¶ moved little closer to
widespread acceptance of that¶ proposition. If, however, institutional developments as¶ a result of the
securitizing moves are restricted to a¶ concerted response to the outcomes of climate change¶ that fall
more squarely within a traditional security framework — in particular tensions and possible armed¶
conflict as a result of those consequences — then we may¶ already have reached that stage. Climate
change is a¶ multifaceted issue, which, if disaggregated, leaves scope¶ for a wide range of institutional
actors to integrate¶ relevant considerations into the formulation and imple-¶ mentation of policy in
their respective areas of respon-¶ sibility. On current projections, it is here that we can¶ realistically
expect to see most happening.¶ No governance approaches should at this stage be ruled¶ out as beyond
the realm of possibility, however, for, as¶ the impacts of a warming climate make the world¶
increasingly desperate to find more effective policy¶ responses, so might the international community¶
accept developments that in times of ‘normal’ politics¶ would be deemed totally unacceptable. This is,
after all,¶ the message of securitization theorists. In the final¶ analysis, climate change rhetoric matters,
but what¶ matters most, is action.
Securitization Good
2AC Securitization Good-Generic
(turn/perm) Environmental securitization is good—it allows for more effective
responses to environmental problems
Scott 12(Shirley V., The Securitization of Climate Change in World¶ Politics: How Close have We Come and would
Full¶ Securitization Enhance the Efficacy of Global ¶ Climate Change Policy?, Review of European Community and
Environmental Law, Associate Professor¶ School of Social Sciences UNSW Austrailia,RECIEL 21 (3) 2012)
What, then, would a situation of less-than-complete¶ securitization of climate change be likely to
contribute¶ to the global policy response? Securitization theory¶ would suggest that in political terms
the primary way in¶ which the securitization of climate change could be¶ expected to enhance global
mitigation and adaptation¶ efforts would be by heightening the sense of urgency¶ surrounding the
issue and thereby giving impetus to¶ greater commitment and prioritization. This is in large¶ part
because of the very word ‘security‘, which denotes¶ a risk to survival; it is difficult to find a policy
category¶ that warrants higher priority. The representative of¶ Ghana in the first Security Council debate
on climate¶ change articulated this idea clearly when he referred to¶ his expectation that debate by the
Council would ‘sound¶ an alarm bell’?¶ More specifically, framing climate change as a security¶ issue
could serve to enhance and broaden the policy¶ response at various governance levels by facilitating¶
policy makers and their publics recognizing the¶ common origins of what may otherwise appear as¶
unconnected phenomenal Debate about climate change¶ is often couched in terms of a hypothetical
future: by¶ how much the temperature will rise, by how much¶ countries should reduce their emissions,
and the night-¶ mare scenarios that may come into play if they fail to do¶ sol We hear, for example, that
by 2050 fifty million¶ people may have been displaced from the coastal belts¶ of Bangladesh.-T" This
focus on what may appear a hypo-¶ thetical future renders climate change a particularly daunting and
difficult policy arena for governments¶ because, as NATO Secretary Genera] Anders Fogh Ras-¶ mussen
explained:¶ The science is not yet perfect. The effects are just starting to¶ be visible, but it's difficult to
pin down what's actually¶ changing because of climate change. The timelines are not¶ clear either. And
as a politician, I know exactly what t.hat¶ means. When we have to choose between spending money¶
now on schools or health care, or diverting funds to try to¶ prevent something that will likely only hurt
long after they¶ have left office, the choice for rnost leadels is pretty clear.¶ And, let me say, not hard to
understand."‘
Conflict
Environmental securitization is good—it prevents conflict
Talkin 12(Jared, May 17,The Securitization Approach: A Desirable Option for Future Climate Change Policies?,
Jared Talkin—Research Assistant at Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Senior Editor, Briefings Column at Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, Consilience Journals,
http://www.consiliencejournal.org/blog/2012/05/17/the-securitization-approach-a-desirable-option-for-futureclimate-change-policies/)
The thought of global security conjures up images of terrorism, inter-state conflict and weapons of mass
destruction. However, some analysts of security are increasingly concerned with a broader range of
threats to human security, including human-induced environmental pressures. It is well known that
environmental degradation coupled with increased resource scarcity can contribute to conflict, from
water disputes in the Middle East to desertification induced civil-war in Darfur. Infact, the UK
government’s former chief scientist, Sir David King, argued that climate change is a “weapon of mass
destruction” (Houghton, 2003). In response to the gradual acceptance of anthropological contributions
to global climate change (GCC), there is now a growing trend towards GCC being analyzed not just as
causing security threats, but as a security threat in itself. Securitization is a political response used to
reframe GCC from an environmental problem to an international security issue, in an attempt to
overcome some of the constraints to effective policy responses.¶ In April 2007, 55 states met at the UN
Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the security implications of climate change. Led by the then UK
Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, delegations voiced their concerns about the security implications
of GCC. Beckett referred to GCC as a “security imperative” and UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon,
broadened the concept of security by discussing resource scarcity, fragile ecosystems and severe strains
being placed on the coping mechanisms of groups and individuals that are potentially leading to “a
breakdown of established codes of conduct, transforming peaceful competition into conflict”. Matters
of national and international security are paramount on governmental and inter-governmental policy
agendas, receiving high levels of funding and the justification for using extraordinary measures. The
securitization of an existential issue renders it “above politics” (Buzan, 1998), enabling actors to address
GCC with more urgency and relevance.
(impact turn) Environmental securitization prevents conflicts—empirics
Scott 12(Shirley V., The Securitization of Climate Change in World¶ Politics: How Close have We Come and would
Full¶ Securitization Enhance the Efficacy of Global ¶ Climate Change Policy?, Review of European Community and
Environmental Law, Associate Professor¶ School of Social Sciences UNSW Austrailia,RECIEL 21 (3) 2012)
Once, however, various issues of contemporary security¶ are all seen as interrelated via climate change,
the need¶ to respond as expeditiously as possible should appear¶ even more obvious. Consider, for
example, the violence¶ between Sudan and South Sudan. South Sudan broke¶ away from Sudan in July
2011 following a decades-long¶ civil wart 'I‘he boundary was not fully demarcated at the¶ time, however;
nor was there agreement as to how to¶ share the oil wealth found in the border region. This led¶ to
violence around the border region, and in April 2012¶ Sudan claimed to have killed hundreds of South¶
Sudanese during a day-long battle for lleglig, Sudan's¶ most important oil field.""¶ At first glance, t.his
situation might seem unrelated to¶ the jockeying for positions that is taking place in rela-¶ tion to
increasingly accessible resources of the Arctic or¶ to recent extreme weather events elsewhere in the¶
world. Although the extent to which the Sudan conflict¶ has been caused by climate change is not
universally¶ agreed, it is clear that climatic changes are impacting on¶ the availability of water,
exacerbating tensions stem-¶ ming from the distribution of wealth from oil and the¶ increasing
difficulty of maintaining a pastoralist lif-¶ estyle.“ Such topics may already have been addressed¶ by the
relevant institutions but not explicitly recognized¶ as being underpinned by climate change per se. Once
all¶ are perceived in a climate change frame, the political¶ will to undertake far-reaching mitigation and
adapta-¶ tion efforts may well increase markedly‘.
2AC Mobilization
Environmental securitization is good—it creates global cooperation by creating a
common goal for multiple authorities to strive for
D'Fahmi 10(Mu'adz, January 25, Securitization of environmental
Degradation, Mu'adz D'Fahmi--School of International Affairs, Australian National University, The Jakarta Post,
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/01/25/securitization-environmental-degradation.html)
Yet, in spite of its negative implication, environmental security may have some benefits. By applying the
concept of security, environmental degradation can be better understood. It explains danger much
better than concepts like sustainability, vulnerability or adaptation, and it offers a framework in which
danger can be recast as widespread risks to welfare and (in the case of small island states) sovereignty.¶
The other advantage is that security can also serve as an integrative concept that links local and global
levels of political response for environmental degradation. The securitization of environmental
degradation promotes understanding that environmental insecurity is a combination of local problems
that require global cooperation.¶ The problem of illegal logging in Indonesia, for example, entails
intricate relations among those who support and benefits from the activity, involving indigenous people,
regional government officers and law enforcers, local brokers and foreign traders. This case
demonstrates local as well as global problems.¶ From a local perspective, indigenous people often lack
education, the breakdown of law enforcement, corrupt practices and the wicked mindset of local
brokers are also factors. From a global perspective, foreign traders are less controlled in their trading
activities and the importing states are not strict enough or even reluctant to formulate, apply and
enforce rules on imported goods. Hence, there are local problems in the issue of deforestation in
Indonesia, but the solution cannot merely be local.¶ Indonesia may deal with the local problems by
itself.¶ Yet, it needs pressures from the international community to tackle problems such as corrupt
practices.¶ It also needs help from neighboring countries to discipline their traders, because even though
local problems can be tackled, the ongoing deforestation in Indonesia will never stop if other countries
still accept illicitly logged trees from Indonesia.¶ In brief, environmental degradation as a security threat
is a complicated problem. It draws serious awareness to world politics. There may be many proposed
connections between environmental degradation and security, but the classic approach of the
scarcity/abundance of resources is still suitable to describe the issue.¶ Environmental degradation is
regarded as a security problem since it creates unequal availability where there are scarcity of natural
resources in one place and abundance of resources in another, resulting in the social conflict to gain
control over income-generating resources.¶ Finally, in spite of its risk of being militarized, the
securitization of environmental degradation could pose benefits in international politics by promoting
the problems from local concerns to higher global political concerns.
(turn)Framing climate debate is terms of security and economics is key to building
conservative support for policy change
Schottland 10 (Taj- Member of the College of the Atlantic delegation to the Copenhagen Climate
Negotiations and Currently an Assistant Staff Scientist at Cardno ENTRIX, an environmental consulting
firm, “Climate Security: How to Frame a Winning Argument,” published on Its Getting Hot In Here- a
blog that publishes youth perspectives on Climate Change, 2/20/10,
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/02/20/climate-security-how-to-frame-a-winning-argument//AJB)
When discussing climate change, liberals love to cite facts. We believe facts can’t be argued with.
Scientific facts are neither political manipulations nor individual opinions. They are well-reasoned,
neutral statements that will convince any rational person – provided the person understands them. This
is what we believe. But have you ever tried to “lay out the facts” to a climate skeptic? You probably
didn’t get very far. Likely, regardless of what you said, they countered with some unfounded argument.
In the end they weren’t swayed and you were left frustrated because they couldn’t see the logic behind
your brilliant argument. Why did your facts fail to convince them? After much thought, I believe I have
an answer. George Lakoff, a renowned cognitive linguist and political thinker, asserts that people reject
facts that are outside the frame with which they see the world. That frame, or framework, is often
created by values that are instilled during childhood. The frame ensures that we see the world, and only
the world, that agrees with our values. In other words, we block out facts and reasonable arguments to
ensure that our core values are justified. The frame alters the reality that our senses detect. As a result,
facts that convince a liberal will not convince a conservative. To convince a conservative that climate
change is an emergency worthy of their attention, we have two options: We can either attempt to
change the conservatives’ framework or we must tailor our argument to fit within their existing
framework. Continuing to argue only from our liberal framework will not help us achieve our aims. Of
our two options, it would be a massive undertaking to change the way conservatives view the world.
While this might be an ideal goal, it is not realistic. It is not as challenging, however, to tailor our
argument so that a conservative can see our arguments as logical: we must specifically shape our
arguments to fit their framework. I developed the following suggestions on shifting climate change
discourse after reading Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant. (I highly recommend this book). In each
instance I state the current, ineffective phrase that we use now, followed by more appropriate language
for our target audience. Climate Change > Climate Security Climate change doesn’t sound bad; maybe
winters and summers will be a little warmer. Climate change means much more than slightly warming
seasons, but does the term “climate change” accurately portray the catastrophe we are heading
towards? No, not in any shape or form. Climate change and global warming are weak terms when used
on their own. We need stronger phrases. We should begin using a term such as “climate security” to
explain what we are advocating. Instead of saying “climate change is a problem that must be dealt
with,” we should say that “when we do not have climate security, we jeopardize our economy, our
safety, and the prosperity of our children’s generation.” The second sentence conjures up a more severe
picture that demands immediate action. Conservatives and climate skeptics, though not always one and
the same, are usually ardent about protecting the security of our country. We need to engage them
using appropriate language . One could also state the above sentence in the positive: “We must secure
and stabilize our climate in order to protect the safety of our nation, its economy, and its future
generations. We must allow our children to have the same rich opportunities that we currently benefit
from.” The people we want to convince generally think in terms of strength, security, and power. When
we remember this, we communicate more effectively. Emission Reduction Targets > Energy
Advancement Targets These two phrases mean the same thing yet evoke different thoughts. Emission
reduction targets sound as though they will harm our economy because companies will be forced to
lower production rates or install new costly technologies. Americans are generally proud individuals who
want their country to continue its growth as a superpower. They certainly do not want to hear about the
need for reducing our growth. Therefore we must talk in the positive. Energy advancement is not about
less of anything. It is about more. We need more energy and more production to sustain our economy;
it is, therefore, important to advance our energy technologies – our energy advancement. “Cap-andTrade” > Harnessing the Power of the Market People believe that energy costs will go up and
mechanisms, such as cap-and-trade or cap-and-dividend, will hurt our economy. The rise in energy costs
will supposedly hurt energy companies as well as consumers. Instead of discussing mechanisms, we
must talk of “new open markets that will allow us to invest wisely with the expectation of reliable
returns.” This sounds far better than creating a mechanism to offset emissions. And it appeals to free
market conservatives – a valuable target audiance. These examples show how to reword individual
phrases to make them more palatable to conservatives and independents who do not yet support
climate change initiatives. There is also the need for broader reframing. Shifting the entire debate is
substantially more difficult than revising catch phrases. However, if we begin to use different terms and
phrases that better portray our opinions, we will naturally begin to reframe the big picture. We should
no longer talk about the “environmental effects” of climate change but rather discuss “the danger to
humans if we fail to achieve climate security.” We might think it is our duty to protect the climate and
the environment, but conservatives will never buy this argument because protecting the environment
falls outside their current framework. Thus it is ineffective and a waste of time to advocate an
environmentally based argument. Human safety, on the other hand, is a value that we all share. This
value must be emphasized. All of my rephrasing is targeted at conservatives who place national security
high on their list of values. This is a generally effective value to emphasize. Undoubtedly some liberals
will cringe at my suggestion to use terms associated with war and national security. They say we must
shift away from the war paradigm that grips common day rhetoric. I disagree. Liberals generally tend
away from speech idioms of war because it goes against their values. But conservatives understand and
become energized when they hear these particular buzz words. Now is not the time to emphasize our
own values and forgo any chance of converting moderately conservative climate skeptics. It is not
wrong to exploit the terms that the Right created. It is an intelligent and effective strategy. However,
this isn’t the only way to reframe climate discussions. Many great minds puzzle over how to reframe
climate issues in order to gain even broader public support. There is no consensus yet on how to do this.
Discussing climate change in terms of security and human safety will help attract the attention of certain
people. But we must also target other audiences, always keeping in mind the values of the audience we
are targeting. My overarching suggestion is to know your audience and then use language that appeals
directly to them. Don’t use the language of a liberal when targeting a “family-values” conservative. Use
their language: discuss values, respect, and family importance. When talking with a conservative war
veteran, talk in terms of national security. But always remember, the words you would naturally choose
to talk about climate change are words that would convince you. You don’t need convincing. A
conservative will not be swayed by arguments that would sway you. Identify the values of your
audience, and target those values relentlessly. We must stop using arguments designed by and for
liberals and begin using language that fits within the framework of our target audience. Only then will
we gain broader public support. Finally, we will not develop an overall messaging campaign overnight. It
is not realistic. It will take time, but that is ok. Our messaging campaign will commence when we begin
using more effective language. Our new phrases will slowly gain popular momentum. Conservatives will
listen to us because our arguments will no longer be “liberal” arguments. We will be using language that
fits within their framework. It is time that our voices are heard by the people who need to hear them.
Securitization is a prerequisite to effective environmental policies—it adds a sense of
urgency to the issue
Talkin 12(Jared, May 17,The Securitization Approach: A Desirable Option for Future Climate Change Policies?,
Jared Talkin—Research Assistant at Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Senior Editor, Briefings Column at Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, Consilience Journals,
http://www.consiliencejournal.org/blog/2012/05/17/the-securitization-approach-a-desirable-option-for-futureclimate-change-policies/)
Security attributes a sense of urgency to issues and attracts political ¶ support. This is good news in
terms of resource allocation and policy prioritisation. ¶ ¶ As Brown et al. so eloquently put it, “a
‘securitized’ [sic] climate debate might be able ¶ to marshal sufficiently compelling arguments to
encourage the politicians to do ¶ something about reducing emissions and investing (carefully) in
adaptation. These are ¶ things the international community should be doing anyhow and, done well, are
¶ consistent with enhancing security and reducing the potential for conflict at all scales. ¶ So if
securitization speeds their implementation, it will serve a useful purpose” (Brown ¶ et al., 2007: 1154).
Policy Key
Policy Change Key-Climate
Preventing climate change is dependent on policy options
Brauch 8(Hans Günter, Febuary, Securitizing Climate Change, Adj. Professor, Free University of Berlin, Ottc>Suhr
Institute, Berlin¶ Fellow, Institute on Environment and Human Security of the¶ United Nations University (UNU-EHS)
in Bonn;¶ Chairman, Peace Research and European Seciuity Studies (AFES-PRESS)¶ Editor, Hexagon Series on
Human, Environmental Seciuity and Peace, http://www.afes-press.de/html/Brauch_ISA_NY_2.2.2009.pdf)
Since 1988, global climate change is on the agenda of international relations. With the establishment¶
of the IPCC (1988), the adoption of the UNFCCC (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997) climate change
was politicized. In 2007 it became a global security concem. This paper uses the ‘securitiza-¶ tion
approach‘ by the Copenhagen School to map the framing of climate change as an international,¶ national
and human security issue in the scientific and policy community. With the release of the¶ Fourth
Assessment Report during 2007, the IPCC has indirectly become a securitizing actor addressing its
urgency for humankind that requires extraordinary policy responses. Three EU countries put¶ climate
change as a security threat on international agendas: in April 2007 the UK introduoed it to the¶ UN
Seciuity Council, in June 2007 Germany put it on the agenda of the G-8 meeting and of the Euro¶ pean
Council requesting from the Commission and The Council a paper on climate change and inter-¶ national
security that was released in 2008. Greece put climate change on the agenda of the Human¶ Security
Network during the 10"‘ ministerial in May 2008 in Athens. This securitization move reached¶ a global
audience as has been documented in public opinion polls. The thesis of this paper is that the year 2007
has been a turning point in the process of securi-¶ tizarionz of questions of global climate change (GCC)
when several of the highest national¶ policy-makers and high-level fora (UN Security Council) and
officials of international organi-¶ zations addressed global warming (cause) and climate change (effect)
as a major objective¶ security danger and subjective security concern that may lead to internal
displacements,¶ forced distress migration, as well as crises and conflicts.¶ This emerging scientific
discourse, policy debate and political process of securitization of¶ GCC focuses on the environmental
dimension of security, especially on the complex interact-¶ tion between human beings and humankind
as causes, triggers, and victims of the societal¶ consequences of this anthropogenic change. Thus, the
securitizarion of GCC issues is also¶ closely linked to different referent objects of international, national,
and human security.¶ With the securitization of GCC the focus of analysis is on the process of scientific
and politi-¶ cal agenda-setting, and prioritization of nature/societal issues during the past 20 years.
While¶ in 1987, issues of GCC were still primarily emerging scientific problems for climate special-¶ ists,
by 2007 after intensive processes of scientization, poliricization and securitization global¶ warming and
climate change have moved to the top of the policy agenda as the most urgent¶ security dangers and
concerns that require both urgent, stringent, and long-lasting policy responses with a fundamental
transformation of the global energy system (decarbonization), but¶ also of human values and consumer
patterns.
AT Turns
Generic
Environmental Securitization does not cause state-centered approaches or
militarization—empirics
Talkin 12(Jared, May 17,The Securitization Approach: A Desirable Option for Future Climate Change Policies?,
Jared Talkin—Research Assistant at Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Senior Editor, Briefings Column at Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, Consilience Journals,
http://www.consiliencejournal.org/blog/2012/05/17/the-securitization-approach-a-desirable-option-for-futureclimate-change-policies/)
Climate change has unequivocally entered the international security agenda. However, ¶ there is
extensive debate on the advantages and disadvantages of establishing a link ¶ between climate change
and security. On the one hand, the securitisation of climate ¶ change is acknowledged a positive role,
mainly because it is seen to attribute a sense ¶ of urgency to the issue and consequently attract political
support. However, on the ¶ other hand, there is a strong concern in the literature that linking climate
change and ¶ security could represent a militarisation of the issue and lead to a state-centred ¶
approach to deal with it, hindering necessary cooperation to tackle the issue. ¶ 952 ¶ ¶ Mostly focusing on
the case of the EU, this paper has analysed the assumption of ¶ militarisation that is usually connected
to securitisation. The paper has sought to ¶ demonstrate how security is no longer seen exclusively in
military terms, as the ¶ securitisation of non-military issues, and notably climate change, is transforming
¶ security practices. In the EU, although climate change is increasingly being framed as a ¶ security
issue, both causes and effects are being dealt within the realm of normal ¶ environmental politics,
namely through adaptation and mitigation measures. What ¶ securitisation created was an increase
sense of urgency that is speeding the response ¶ to both causes and consequences of climate change.¶
The paper has also addressed the belief that handling climate change through a ¶ security framework
prevents cooperation to address the issue. As the paper has ¶ attempted to demonstrate, there is wide
agreement that the complexity of a threat ¶ such as climate change requires cooperation between
various actors to effectively ¶ tackle the issue. The EU recognizes that climate change cannot be tackled
by individual ¶ states or the EU alone and is cooperating with key global players and countries most at ¶
risk. ¶ ¶ This is the path the securitisation of climate change appears to be taking in the EU. If ¶ this path
remains unaltered, the securitisation of climate change might be a positive ¶ development.
None of their turns apply—environmental securitization doesn’t cause militarization
or state-centric aproaches
de Brito 11(Rafaela Rodrigues, August, A Climate for Conflict or Cooperation? ¶ Addressing the Securitisation of
Climate Change, Rafaela Rodrigues de Brito-- Department of Politics & International Relations ¶ University of
Southampton, United Kingdom, http://www.wiscnetwork.org/porto2011/papers/WISC_2011-724.pdf)
This paper addresses the two above mentioned concerns. The next section discusses ¶ the link between
the securitisation of climate change and its militarisation, while the ¶ following section addresses the
issue of cooperation in security matters. The focus of ¶ the paper is on the European Union, possibly the
most active actor in the securitisation ¶ of climate change at the international level. ¶ ¶ It is argued in this
paper that the securitisation of an issue does not necessarily imply ¶ its militarisation as the widening of
security, that has been taking place since the end ¶ of the Cold War, means that security can no longer
be seen exclusively in military ¶ terms. Another argument made in the paper is that security and
cooperation are not ¶ mutually exclusive. It is widely acknowledged that the complexity of threats faced
¶ today renders it impossible for a single state to tackle them. Hence, delivering security ¶ in the 21st¶
century entails a great level of cooperation. The paper concludes by arguing ¶ ¶ 2¶ One of the strongest
opponents to the links between environment and security was Daniel Deudney, ¶ who challenged its
basic assumptions. He identified a fundamental mismatch between the traditional ¶ focus of national
security – interstate violence – and environmental problems or solutions, which, he ¶ argued, are not
national in character (Deudney, 1990: 463). ¶ 6 ¶ ¶ that addressing climate change through a security
framework can be a positive ¶ development, namely in terms of resource allocation and policy
prioritization.
State-Centric
Securitization fosters international cooperation—states know that they need to work
together
de Brito 11(Rafaela Rodrigues, August, A Climate for Conflict or Cooperation? ¶ Addressing the Securitisation of
Climate Change, Rafaela Rodrigues de Brito-- Department of Politics & International Relations ¶ University of
Southampton, United Kingdom, http://www.wiscnetwork.org/porto2011/papers/WISC_2011-724.pdf)
¶ One of the problems attributed to the state-centred approach is that, by enhancing the ¶ ¶
competition between states, it hinders cooperation, when climate change is a problem ¶ ¶ that cannot be
managed by states individually. Rita Floyd, for example, argues that, ¶ ¶ from an environmentalist
perspective, climate security is not a desirable concept as it ¶ ¶ may inhibit much needed cooperation
between states (2008: 63). She makes the case ¶ ¶ against linking climate change and security, as she
believes cooperation on climate ¶ ¶ action seems much more likely in the absence of securitisation (Floyd,
2008: 62). ¶ ¶ 970 ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ However, one can find in the international arena many examples of cooperation
in ¶ ¶ security affairs. Even a traditionalist theoretical perspective on security such as the ¶ ¶ Liberal
perspective acknowledges a potential for security cooperation. ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ Looking at regional security
institutions, Louise Fawcett accounts for an increase in ¶ ¶ collaborative security ventures, typically with
the UN, but also with other regional and ¶ ¶ cross-regional institutions, and also non-governmental
organizations (2008: 308). She ¶ ¶ argues that although international security is an area in which
institutionalist theories ¶ ¶ predicted that cooperation would be hardest to achieve, security
cooperation has ¶ ¶ been achieved across a wide range of issues (Fawcett, 2008: 322). ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ In the EU,
structures of cooperation in the security field are being progressively ¶ ¶ developed. Consequently, the
inclusion of climate change in the EU security agenda is ¶ ¶ compatible with the adoption of cooperative
measures to address the issue. In fact, ¶ ¶ advocates of climate-security in the EU advocate cooperation
as a necessity in order to ¶ ¶ tackle the issue. This cooperation is not only between member-states, but
also with ¶ ¶ third parties. ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ In their joint report on CCIS, the High Representative and the European
Commission ¶ ¶ argued that “it is in Europe's self interest to address the security implications of ¶ ¶ climate
change with a series of measures: at the level of the EU, in bilateral relations ¶ ¶ and at the multilateral
level, in mutually supportive ways” (2008: 3). ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ The 2008 review of the European Security Strategy
also identifies effective ¶ ¶ multilateralism as essential to respond to the changing security
environment. In this ¶ ¶ context, it identifies climate change as a key priority in international
multilateral ¶ ¶ negotiations, with the objective of reaching a new and ambitious international ¶ ¶
agreement on climate change (European Union, 2008: 12). The EU recognizes that ¶ ¶ climate change
cannot be tackled by individual states or the EU alone and is ¶ ¶ cooperating with countries most at risk
with the goal of strengthening their capacity to ¶ ¶ cope. On this matter, the Union considers
international co-operation, with the UN and ¶ ¶ regional organizations to be essential (European Union,
2008).
Securitization is key to get all states on board—it places the problem on the
international agenda
Talkin 12(Jared, May 17,The Securitization Approach: A Desirable Option for Future Climate Change Policies?,
Jared Talkin—Research Assistant at Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Senior Editor, Briefings Column at Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, Consilience Journals,
http://www.consiliencejournal.org/blog/2012/05/17/the-securitization-approach-a-desirable-option-for-futureclimate-change-policies/)
Whilst the North was concerned with preventing conflict, Southern priorities were those of economic
development and poverty reduction. Macneill furthers this idea, stating governments in developing
countries view industrial environmental policies as a “luxury add-on dimension to regular economic
policies” (Macneill, 1991).The role of securitization in responding to the threat of GCC has had mixed
results; moves at the global level have resulted in considerable politicization but ultimately change has
been limited. Securitizing GCC can help constitute a solution to the threat of environmental degradation,
by attempting to place the problem on the international agenda. “Security is the language that states
understand” (Barry and Eckersley, 2005) and the framing of GCC as a threat to national security
indicates the imperative to action and the gravity of the issue, gaining the attention of high-level
international politics and opening the door for increased mobilization of resources.
Militarization
The military can help the environment—new technology
Talkin 12(Jared, May 17,The Securitization Approach: A Desirable Option for Future Climate Change Policies?,
Jared Talkin—Research Assistant at Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Senior Editor, Briefings Column at Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, Consilience Journals,
http://www.consiliencejournal.org/blog/2012/05/17/the-securitization-approach-a-desirable-option-for-futureclimate-change-policies/)
Securitization of GCC has expanded the conversation about the issue to include the traditional, stateentrusted security actor: the military. The role of the military in addressing GCC is highly controversial,
as the favoring of this particular actor could have unwanted environmental consequences, especially
since in many countries the military are exempt from environmental regulation (Doolittle, 2003).
Feminist geographer Joni Seager voices major reservations regarding the military’s role in environmental
governance, arguing “militaries are privileged environmental vandals, their daily operations are typically
beyond the reach of civil law” (Seager, 1999). If the state is to be seen as the protector of its citizens,
then the role of the military is shaped from being a cause of environmental degradation to that of an
environmental protector, providing the opportunity to play an important role in responding to the
threats that GCC poses. The military could utilize the technology available to them for environmental
monitoring and assessment, whilst also being on standby to provide swift intervention during disasters.
An example of this can be seen during Al Gore’s vice-presidency, where the CIA worked alongside
scientists allowing them to use data for the assessment of environmental degradation (Matthew, 2000).
Securitization doesn’t necessitate militarization—even if it does, no conflict--empirics
de Brito 11(Rafaela Rodrigues, August, A Climate for Conflict or Cooperation? ¶ Addressing the Securitisation of
Climate Change, Rafaela Rodrigues de Brito-- Department of Politics & International Relations ¶ University of
Southampton, United Kingdom, http://www.wiscnetwork.org/porto2011/papers/WISC_2011-724.pdf)
In the EU, although climate change is increasingly being framed as a security issue by ¶ key actors, both
causes and effects are being dealt within the realm of normal ¶ environmental politics: adaptation and
mitigation measures, with a commitment to ¶ climate research and international cooperation. What
securitisation created was an ¶ increase sense of urgency attributed to climate change that is speeding
the response ¶ to the issue (Brito, 2010: 48). ¶ Furthermore, there are no predictable signs that military
responses to climate change ¶ will be formulated in a near future. This is not to say, however, that there
is no role ¶ envisaged for the military in climate-security. In fact they are seen as key players in ¶ climate
related crisis management and disaster response (High Representative for ¶ CFSP and the European
Commission, 2008: 10). However, crisis response is but one ¶ component of EU action on climate
change which attempts to combine prevention, ¶ mitigation, adaptation, and response to crisis (Council
of the European Union, 2009: 3). The analysis of climate change politics in the EU suggests that Maria
Julia Trombetta is ¶ correct when she argues that the securitisation of the environment is transforming ¶
existing security practices and provisions (Trombetta, 2008: 585). As Javier Solana ¶ argues, in the case of
climate change, mitigation and adaptation should be seen as ¶ preventive security policies (Solana,
2008).