SPATIAL PLANNING NEG
Ks
Environmental Justice
Energy Advantage links
“Green” industries are the new form of imperialism—they reinforce power structures
and ensure the most toxic projects happen on the land of the disposable
Ray 9 (Sarah Jaquette Ray, Professor of Social Science and Humboldt State University, Ph.D from the University of Arizona, The Ecological
Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture. Dissertation University of Arizona Press, Publication Year: 2013
http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780816599813)
Just as mainstream environmentalism emphasizes the domination and exploitation ofthe 'natural world' over that of many human
communities, it also ignoresthe environments in which underprivileged communities live. One of EJ's primary contributions, then, is to insist
that what contaminates nature also contaminates its inhabitants. And environmental degradation is often a function of access and power. The
industries that degrade the environment of inner cities and reservations undermine the bodily health and quality of life of their laborers and
inhabitants, who routinely are denied access to the spaces where decisions are made. Another critique is that mainstream environmentalism
constructs environmental problems "as ifthe human community were uniform, without great differences in culture and experience, without
differences in power or accessto material influence" (Anthony qtd. in Chase, 352). By including all communities under the category of "human
species," deep ecology, for instance, ignores the uneven racial, gendered, and other power structures that shape the relations of different
groups to the environment. The universal category "human" creates an "indifference to difference" and makes "multinational corporations and
American Indians, members ofwealthy countries and those from less powerful groups" (Kollin, 139) all equally responsible for the globe's
environmental problems. One effect ofthis''whitewashing'' isthat differences are overlooked in the name ofa universal good, which is protected
by an elite class of eco-managers authorized to make environmental decisionsfor all ofus(di Chiro "Beyond," 205). This "new 'green imperialism'
thus finds moral coverfor itself," such that "whale campaigns" can become "forces contributing to Alaska Native dispossession and
displacement" (Kollin 139), for instance. implicates issues ofidentity (see Environmentalism andEconomic Justice). Isee my project as more in
line with environmentaljustice because it is less monolithic than either ecofeminism orthe notion ofa "subaltern" identity assume. I prefer
"environmentaljustice" also because it includes concerns ofgender and the postcolonial subject, but offers a more structural critique without
assuming any particular identity, place, nation, class, or gender (although the term "subaltern" may be useful for describing certain resistance
communities, such as Native Americans, who arguably exist in a colonial relation to the U.S.).17 A related criticism isthat mainstream
environmentalism privileges a view ofnature conceived ofas "outside" the realm ofeveryday human activity. It values pristine nature, often
seeking to identify and preserve "biodiversity hotspots" on a global scale, such asthe Amazon rainforest. The attempt to "save" natural
wondersfollows the wilderness preservation model that has been dominant in the United States. Mainstream environmental groups often
advocate preserving lands it deems valuable at the expense of"sacrifice zones," such asreservations and inner cities where Native Americans
and poor, often black residents are unable to fight displacement. What distinguishesthese two kinds of"environments" is a question ofsocial
justice: whose environment is "preserved," and for what purposes? EJtherefore includes environmentsthat are not "pristine," such as city
centers and abandoned factory sites. As Lawrence Buell argues, the influence ofenvironmentaljustice on the field ofecocriticism suggests: All
'environments' in practice involve[e] fusions of'natural' and 'constructed' elements. This is evident in the field's increasingly heterogeneous foci,
especially its increasing engagements with metropolitan and/ortoxified landscapes and with issues of environmental equity. (Buell, Future, viii).
EJ has thus drawn attention to "not-in-my-backyard" ideology (known as NIMBY-ism) and environmental racism, which ensure that the most
toxic environments are those in which the residents cannot defend their interests. EJ rejects the notion that the inner city is a frightening, toxic
"wilderness" whose inhabitants do not care about nature or their own environments(and can therefore be understood as ecologically otherto
the mainstream).4 Thus, EJinsiststhat any descriptions, analyses, and solutionsto environmental crises be examined in terms oftheir 4See
Giovanna di Chiro's "Sustainingthe 'Urban Forest' and CreatingLandscapes ofHope" and Michael Bennett and David Teague's The Nature
ofCities: Ecocriticism and Urban Environments.18 "heroes" and "villains," and the powerstructuresthat inform theirrelationship to their
environments.
Planning for renewables doesn’t provide genuine analysis of justice
Phil Hubbard January 06 (“NIMBY by Another Name? A Reply to Wolsink” http://www.jstor.org/stable/3804422)
The conclusion to my paper on the racist roots of opposition to a planned asylum centre states that it should not be read as any sort of
definitive statement on NIMBYism, and merely marks out a possible trajectory for future explorations of community mobilization against
unwanted local facilities. In that sense, I fully welcome Maarten Wolsink's critical commentary, and am gratified that he agrees that moving
beyond conventional explanations of NIMBY is vital if we are to perform a 'genuine analysis' of
'environmental injustice and its racist, socio-economic and gender-related characteristics'. I am
also pleased he draws attention to a range of locational conflicts - involving, for instance, mobile phone masts, wind farms,
landfill sites and nuclear establishments - where questions of social Othemess are often
assumed to be irrelevant but are actual highly revealing of the underpinnings of local
opposition. Yet I am simultaneously puzzled by Wolsink's insistence on dispensing with the concept of NIMBYism on the basis that it lacks
explanatory power, is empirically unverifiable and is highly pejorative towards pro- testors. While I am aware others have suggested that we
need to be wary when using the language of NIMBY (Burningham 2000; Gibson 2005), Wolsink goes somewhat further, and implies that we
should not refer to instances where communities oppose local developments as examples of NIMBYism lest it leads us to draw erroneous
conclusions.
Green energy like wind and solar energy increases prices harming poor communities
immensely and hardly affecting the elite rich communities
Lomborg 14 (Lomborg March 28, 2014 Dr. Bjørn Lomborg is the Director of Copenhagen Consensus Center and Adjunct Professor at
Copenhagen Business School and conducts research into the smartest ways to improve the environment and the world.
http://stopthesethings.com/2014/03/28/bjorn-lomborg-wind-power-is-the-path-to-poverty/)
According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, “Climate change harms the poor first and worst.” This is true, because the poor are the most
vulnerable and have the least resources with which to adapt. But we often forget that current policies to address global warming make energy
much more costly, and that this harms the world’s poor much more. Solar and wind power was subsidized by $60 billion in 2012. This means
that the world spent $60 billion more on energy than was needed. And, because the total climate benefit was a paltry $1.4 billion, the subsidies
essentially wasted $58.6 billion. Biofuels were subsidized by another $19 billion, with essentially no climate benefit. All of that money could
have been used to improve health care, hire more teachers, build better roads, or lower taxes. Forcing everyone to buy more expensive, less
reliable energy pushes up costs throughout the economy, leaving less for other public goods. The average of macroeconomic models indicates
that the total cost of the EU’s climate policy will be €209 billion ($280 billion) per year from 2020 until the end of the century. The burden of
these policies falls overwhelmingly on the world’s poor, because the rich can easily pay more for their energy. I am often taken aback by wellmeaning and economically comfortable environmentalists who cavalierly suggest that gasoline prices should be doubled or electricity
exclusively sourced from high-cost green sources. That may go over well in affluent Hunterdon County, New Jersey, where residents
reportedly spend just 2% of their income on gasoline. But the poorest 30% of the US population spend almost 17% of their after-tax income
on gasoline. Similarly, environmentalists boast that households in the United Kingdom have reduced their electricity consumption by almost
10% since 2005. But they neglect to mention that this reflects a 50% increase in electricity prices, mostly to pay for an increase in the share of
renewables from 1.8% to 4.6%. The poor, no surprise, have reduced their consumption by much more than 10%, whereas the rich have not
reduced theirs at all. Over the past five years, heating a UK home has become 63% more expensive, while real wages have declined. Some 17%
of households are now energy poor – that is, they have to spend more than 10% of their income on energy; and, because elderly people are
typically poorer, about a quarter of their households are energy poor. Deprived pensioners burn old books to keep warm, because they are
cheaper than coal, they ride on heated buses all day, and a third leave part of their homes cold.
Poor communities of color are being systematically excluded from this new wave of
renewable energy perpetuating oppressive disparities
Anderson 12 (Elsie Harper-Anderson, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University,
“Exploring What Greening the Economy Means for African American Workers, Entrepreneurs, and Communities”, May 2012,
http://edq.sagepub.com/content/26/2/162)
Unfortunately, many
of the neediest people and communities (particularly African Americans) are not receiving
their proportional share of the green recovery resources and are not benefiting at the same
rate as others. The first two stated purposes of ARRA are (a) to preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery and (b) to
assist those most affected by the recession (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). Gimpel, Lee, and Thorpe (2010, p. 9) analyze
ARRA spending data and argue that “Clearly, the
ARRA did target federal resources to particular locations,
just the wrong ones from a need perspective.” Their regression analysis results show that the counties most negatively
affected by the recession (as measured by job loss and foreclosure) did not receive anymore ARRA funds than others, and in fact, counties
with greater increases in unemployment between 2007 and 2009 on average, received fewer stimulus dollars. Both
AfricanAmerican workers and Black-owned businesses have benefited less from current economic
and environmental policy interventions than their White counterparts despite being
disproportionately affected by both the economic recession and environmental injustices. To start,
African Americans and Latinos account for less than 30% of workers employed in the green
economy (Liu & Keleher, 2009). In addition, the persistent and increasing gap between Black and White
unemployment rates suggests that Black workers may not be benefiting from the new jobs
created by the ARRA stimulus at the same rate as Whites. Figure 1 uses BLS data to trace quarterly
unemployment rates by race from 2007 to 2010. Although the unemployment rate for all groups has followed similar increasing trends, the
Black unemployment rate has remained well above other groups. In fact, the Black to White unemployment ratio has hovered consistently
between 1.75 and 2.12. In the third quarter of 2010, although the White unemployment rate stood at 8.5%, the Black rate was 16.3%, 92%
higher. Some argue that in cities such as Milwaukee and Detroit, the actual joblessness rate 3 for Black men is as high as 53% and 59%,
respectively (Levine, 2010). Similar
impact disparities can be found among Black owned businesses. Data
from the Federal Procurement Data System confirm that as of September 2010, Black-owned firms represented 7.1% of
all business in the United States but had only been awarded 3.5% of the ARRA total
procurement contracts (which amounted to 2.6% of funds), whereas White firms that make up 83% of all firms had been
awarded nearly 83% of all contracts (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2010a). The same patterns can be
seen at the state level as well. In the state of New York, for example, as of June 2010, Black-owned firms comprised 10.4% of
all businesses but had only received 3.1% of all ARRA-awarded contracts, which were worth 1.4% of the state’s ARRA awarded funds. Whiteowned firms, on the other hand, comprised 76% of the state’s firms but were awarded 85% of government contracts (Kirwan Institute for
the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2010b). Trends in employment and among firms are intricately linked as several studies have shown that
Black firms are more likely to hire Black workers than firms owned by Whites (Bates, 1994; Boston, 2005; Boston & Ross, 1997). Hence,
the lack of benefit that Black owned businesses reap from ARRA and other green-related
funds also lessens the likelihood that Black workers will be hired in green jobs.
Native tribes are empirically disenfranchised for renewable energy development
Dearen and Schwartz 11 (Jason Dearen; Journalist. AP's environment and breaking news correspondent in North Fla. Noaki
Schwartz is an environment reporter for the Los Angeles bureau of the Associated Press (AP). She focuses on pollution. “Native American
groups sue to stop solar projects” http://www.reznetnews.org/node/103 Mar 1 2011)
Native Americans are clashing with the federal government over plans to fast-track approval and construction of massive solar energy projects
that the Indians fear will harm sacred and culturally significant sites in Western deserts. Recent lawsuits by two native groups pose a threat to
half dozen proposed solar developments that the Obama administration has identified as a high priority in its quest for more clean energy
production. One suit already has halted work on a major solar farm in Southern California. Land use and legal experts say the lawsuits mark a
new phase in a historically troubled relationship between the federal Bureau of Land Management and American Indians, who in the past have
gone to court to block oil, gas, mining and other energy projects on public lands managed by the agency. "There is this sense that there is this
rush to renewable energy that's politically motivated and when tribes are consulted their concerns aren't being taken seriously," said Michelle
Raheja, interim director of the California Center for Native Nations. "There's no guarantee that once the project starts that they won't harm
something." President Barack Obama's goal of generating 80 percent of the nation's electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 has led to
numerous projects proposed on millions of acres of federally owned lands, most in Western states. The administration has put some of the
most promising, shovel-ready projects on the fast track for BLM permitting, although the process still could take years of environmental studies
and public scrutiny. Federal officials say they have consulted with multiple tribes and have either made sure the massive solar projects will not
harm any historic works or have determined that certain sites are not worthy of protecting. "The BLM takes very seriously its responsibilities to
ensure that these projects are sited and developed in the right way and in the right places, and that we honor our responsibilities to Indian
nations and the law," said Kendra Barkoff, a Department of the Interior spokeswoman, who could not comment specifically on the suits
because they are active litigation. Dave Singleton with the California Native American Heritage Commission, which advises local, state and
federal agencies on issues involving indigenous communities, said he's heard from at least 10 tribes in the Colorado River area concerned about
various renewable projects. The problem is in part cultural: while a site may not be registered as historic, some tribal leaders say they know it's
sacred because of oral history accounts. "The tribes are saying you've consulted us, we've identified sites and you're saying it doesn't matter,"
Singleton said. "There's a rising anger that they're being treated with disrespect." While the concept of using renewable sources of energy such
as sunshine aligns with nature-based principles that have historically guided Native communities, members say the projects are simply in the
wrong place. Some of 56,000 acres proposed for fast track solar projects in California are near abandoned villages, Native drawings and other
cultural landmarks. Southern California, for example, has one of the most significant collections of geoglyphs in the world. In order to
communicate with their ancestors, certain tribes created drawings, some as big as football fields, by scraping the dark gravel back to reveal pale
dirt below. The wide lines of the drawings were often used for ceremonial dancing. "There's plenty of desert out there to build solar panels,"
said Boma Johnson, a former archaeologist who worked for the BLM in Yuma for 25 years studying the drawings. "We have something in the
Southwestern desert not matched almost anywhere in the world except southern Peru and northern Chile. We really have a national treasure
here in this lost area." Alfredo Figueroa, whose group La Cuna de Aztlan Sacred Sites Protection Circle filed three lawsuits last month against
five fast-tracked projects including a 1,000 megawatt project in Blythe, said the government is not giving their concerns as much weight as is
given to federal archeologists. Where Figueroa sees an ancient throne in a pile of rocks and a thousand-year-old flute player carved into the
desert floor, for example, federal experts see something less profound. BLM archeologists believe the flute player and so-called Throne of
Quetsequatle are less than 50 years old, with modern concrete used in the throne's construction. Despite the suit to stop Solar Millennium's
proposed 7,000 acre project in Blythe, the plan is moving forward, said Andrea Elliott, a company spokeswoman. She said the footprint of the
solar farm had been shifted many times to address tribal and environmental concerns, and note she noted that no federally recognized tribes
have joined La Cuna's suit. "Native American representatives from area tribes have been, and will continue to be, present on site to monitor
activities involving cultural resources during project construction," Solar Millennium said in a statement. About 100 miles to the southwest, the
Quechan tribe got an injunction in December against the Imperial Valley Solar project planned on 6,000 acres of public land near the Mexican
border. Preston J. Arrow-weed, a tribal leader, said that despite this victory the fast-track projects are advancing so quickly they are "hitting us
from everywhere. "They seem to want to do it at the price of destroying our history," said Arrow-weed. "It's an assault. They've already wiped
out a lot of things and now they want to wipe out the desert and any evidence of our past." Tribes seeking injunctions against projects on
federal lands often do not get far, so when a judge does issue an injunction it is indicative of a serious issue, said Patrick Parenteau, an
environmental law professor at Vermont Law School's Natural Resources Law Clinic. "BLM should be doing more to reach out to the tribes and
understand the areas they're permitting these projects in and what artifacts might be there and what oral traditions exist," said Parenteau, who
tracks the lawsuits filed by tribes. "There is some value to be gained from this."
Environmental Security
Energy links
Securitizing against oil dependence is the product of hegemonic knowledge
production and constructs the ocean space only in the terms of resource
Martens 11 (Emily - MA in Geography and Regional Studies – University of Miami, “The Discourses of Energy and Environmental Security
in the Debate Over Offshore Oil Drilling Policy in Florida,” Open Access Theses, 5-10,
http://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1253&context=oa_theses)
I begin by looking at how ocean space is constructed as a result of perceptions about its utility to society. Social constructions of the
ocean’s position in relation to the ¶ social sphere, as well as its perceived utility, serve as a prominent point of departure for ¶ the
security discourses analyzed later on. The dominant energy security discourse seeks to maintain the ocean as a source of resources and
wealth accumulation external and resistant to socialization, while simultaneously promoting a sense of national security through attempts to
reduce dependence on oil imports by increasing domestic production. ¶ On the other hand, offshore oil drilling opponents, who have
adopted an environmental security discourse, have a negative reaction to expanded offshore oil drilling as it signifies a threat to the long-term
environmental sustainability and commercial interests that depend on an ocean free of dangerous pollutants. The opposition attempts to
reconstruct the ocean as a pristine environment, an essential element in the Earth’s ¶ ecosystem as well as coastal tourism and
fishing industries, while simultaneously ¶ promoting a counter-hegemonic energy security by advocating for alternative fuels.
The ¶ discussion regarding the construction of the ocean in Chapter 2 uses a historical optic ¶ through which one can view the
evolution of ocean space in its relationship with human ¶ society. More importantly it looks at how perceptions and representations
of ocean space inform how policy is made and how States, as the sources of legitimate territorial jurisdiction, manage to acquire and secure
ocean territory in order to utilize it for exclusive resource exploitation. ¶ Chapter 3 and 4 look at the historical evolution of energy
security and ¶ environmental security in relation to offshore oil drilling first at the level of the federal ¶ state (chapter 3) and then
at the level of the state of Florida (chapter 4), with the aim of ¶ deconstructing the discourses in the historical contexts from
which they emanate. The ¶ 1970s mark a key turning point for, if not the initial emergence in the United States of ¶ concerns
about environmental sustainability as well as concerns about the foreign oil ¶ supplies. The analysis focuses on the articulation of
concerns about oil dependence and environmental protection in the speeches of United States Presidents as a representation of hegemonic
policy discourse. This is important beyond the discursive level, at the level of policy making, because US presidents have the power to directly
appoint key decision-makers, such as the Secretary of the Interior – the department which then appoints the ¶ head of the Minerals
Management Service which is in charge of leasing, overseeing and ¶ collecting revenues from the oil industry – the Secretary of
Energy, and the Director of ¶ the Environmental Protection Agency. These appointed officials are in charge of the agencies that
implement policy and oversee compliance with regulations in the area of ¶ offshore oil drilling. Therefore, the sentiments
towards offshore oil drilling that are held ¶ by the president tend to reflect those held by these appointed leaders and dictate ¶
regulations and how strictly they will be enforced. The discourses of US presidents on energy and environmental security are what
Wolford (2010: 8) calls “strategic essentialisms”, “intentional simplifications of an otherwise complex subject for the purposes of democratic
engagement.” Engagement in what? Thus, the primary question ¶ behind the discursive analysis I exercise in chapters 3 and 4 is: in
the discourse on energy ¶ and environmental security, what is it that needs to be made secure, why does it need to ¶ be secured,
and what are the potential threats to its security?
Energy has developed into a security threat - it is no longer a question of the
resources but instead a question of existentiality
Ozcan 13 (Sezer Ozcan is a PhD candidate in Political Science, Bielefeld University. He has finished his B.A. at International¶ Relations,
Uludag University (2007). He has obtained his MA degree in the field of Political Science/Security-¶ Defense, Catholic University of Portugal
(2010). His main interest areas are Security Studies, Theory of¶ Securitization, Copenhagen School, Energy Security, the EU, and Foreign Policies
of Turkey.)
Energy has been a very essential dimension for the survival of the states since the end of the Cold War, used in ¶ almost every sector and thus
having become the most important element influencing global politics and economics in ¶ our current international system. As highlighted by
Roberts: “we live today in a world completely dominated by ¶ energy.”56 It is predominantly believed that sufficient energy resources translate
into economic and political strength ¶ in the international arena. Therefore, their absence (particularly oil and gas) causes an existential threat
for the ¶ survival of the global actors in terms of their economy, transport and military needs. Besides, the issue of energy ¶ represents a highly
significant tool in states maintaining their sustainable economic development and using it as ¶ political influence towards other states.
Furthermore, energy issues have gained particular importance due to the ¶ various difficulties occurring within the energy market, including
limited sources of supply, high energy demand ¶ among global actors (China, India and the US), energy dependency of the states (the EU),
increasing energy prices, ¶ instability of energy-producing regions (the Middle East), and using energy as a political tool against the consumer ¶
countries (Russia). Accordingly, the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook of 2007 highlights ¶ that: “the current trends in
the world energy system, with increasing global demand especially in developing ¶ countries, underinvestment in the energy industry, and
instability in oil and gas producing regions, are unsustainable ¶ if one is to avoid an energy gap.”57 For that reason, increasing attention is being
paid to the issue of energy security ¶ within the agendas of national governments and international organizations, and thus policy-makers and
scholars ¶ have predominantly ascribed that the issue of energy has been taken out of the agenda of normal politics. ¶ Moreover, given that
gaining control over energy reserves is very challenging, the rate of dependency on such ¶ resources is very high. Energy has increasingly gained
the status of major concern at the global level, gradually ¶ viewed as a threat to security. Owing to increasing conflict within energy regions,
limited sources of supply, and the ¶ large degree of state intervention into energy markets, the issue of energy has become gradually connected
to ¶ security considerations and considered as an existential threat to the state sovereignty. As highlighted by Barroso: “Energy is not an issue in
itself; it has impact on other sectors: If I am asked today what is the most important issue ¶ for global security and development, the issue with
the highest potential for solutions but also for serious problems if ¶ we do not act in the right way, it is energy and climate change. Energy today
is not only considered as a major ¶ challenge from an economic point of view but precisely for its implications for environment and climate.
Because of ¶ increased competition for scarce resources, it poses serious concerns for global security… It is the great challenge of ¶ our
generation.”58 For instance, discourse from the EU institutions and member states (securitizing actors) has ¶ transformed the issue of energy
security into the form of existential threat towards European people’s standards of ¶ living and the EU’s stability. As a non-traditional security
issue and one of the most vital contemporary security ¶ problems, the issue of energy security has emerged in the international system, thus
reflecting a significant effort in ¶ deepening and broadening security studies. In terms of the emergence of energy security, Walt underscores
that: “the ¶ ‘60s was the ‘golden age’ of security studies, and it gained its resurgence during the 1970s. Initially, a change ¶ occurred in the label,
from ‘strategic studies’ to ‘security studies’. The concept of security was broadened in the ¶ 1970s to include economic concerns, while a
further redefinition in the 1990s included the issue of environment. ¶ Moreover, it can be argued that the issue of energy has started to be
regarded in this realm since the turn of the new ¶ millennium.”59 However, the issue of energy security is not an entirely new phenomenon,
rather it is largely believed ¶ that the issue started with the 1973 Oil Crisis. Following the energy crisis, the link between energy and security has
¶ been progressively explored, and thus the concept of energy security entered the political agenda of international ¶ actors in the 21st century,
become in parallel a fundamental aspect of security studies. Considering the existing ¶ literature on energy security, it stands as very confusing
due to the various definitions of the concept. In its most ¶ fundamental sense, energy security relates to how one can be secure in energy
issues, and it is sometimes connected ¶ to the concept of security of supply, which involves providing the safe and secure transfer of energy
from producer ¶ to consumer countries. However, energy security is no longer merely a question of protecting existing energy ¶ supplies; it is
largely defined as the guarantee of the ability to access the needed energy resources, with most energy ¶ security definitions commonly based
on this definition. Furthermore, the European Commission has defined energy ¶ security as ensuring that future essential energy needs are
satisfied by means of sharing internal energy resources and ¶ strategic reserves under acceptable economic conditions and making use of
diversified and stable, externally ¶ accessible sources.60 The most significant challenge here is that if one comes from the energy sector, energy
security ¶ can be understood as security of supply, which is essentially linked with the technical questions. It doesn’t ¶ necessarily imply high
politics for a state, but also relates to security of demand, and this is where the ¶ interdependence with suppliers is at stake. Moreover, there is
another way of linking energy and security in which ¶ energy becomes a security issue.
Economy links
The quest for economic security is an excuse for individuals to securitize the state
Neocleous 6 (Mark. "From social to national security: On the fabrication of economic order." Security Dialogue 37.3 (2006): 363-384.
Professor of the Critique of Political Economy ¶
Sociology (City)¶
PhD Philosophy (Middlesex) ¶
MSc Politics and Sociology (Birkbeck)¶
BSc Philosophy and
I have been arguing, then, that a commitment to understanding security and¶ the process through which the world has become
increasingly securitized¶ requires us to focus some attention on the history of ‘economic security’. To¶ say this is not just to argue for
a more sustained cross-referencing, overlap or¶ even a reuniting of international political economy and
security studies.¶ Much as there is of value in recent innovations along these lines (for example,¶ Ripsman,
2000; Kirshner, 1998; Mastanduno, 1998; Dombrowski, 2005), such¶ developments have all too often omitted
the domestic links between political¶ economy and security. As I have tried to show, in the space of 15 years the¶
concept ‘economic security’ moved from being a key ideological trope for¶ reorienting individuals, classes and corporations around a new form
of capitalist¶ order, under the rubric of ‘social security’, to being a key factor in the¶ US attempt to shape the world in an anti-communist
fashion, under the¶ rubric of ‘national security’. It has constantly shifted between these two¶ registers ever
since, being
a crucial tool for fabricating a particular vision of¶ economic order. On the one hand, the power politics of both
domestic and¶ international life became securitized, and the common thread underpinning¶ such securitization was a vision of a certain kind of
To¶ achieve such an order, the concept of ‘economic security’ was of paramount¶ importance.
On the other hand, we might also say that it has been through¶ the combined effect of social and national
security that security per se has come to be one of the major mechanisms for the fabrication of the political¶
order of capitalist modernity. ‘Economic security’, in this sense, has been far¶ more than a question of politicians trying to be
electorally persuasive. And its¶ importance requires us to go beyond even the conjunction between international¶
political economy and security studies. Rather, economic security¶ has been integral to the theory and practice of both social and
economic order.
national security,¶ uniting the domestic and international, the inside and the outside: it has¶ been the foundation stone of the project of
security.
Rhetoric of economic collapse fosters a self-fulfilling prophecy
McKendrick 12 (Joe - An independent analyst who tracks the impact of information technology on management and markets, “Are
economic downturns self-fulfilling prophecies?”, Smart Planet, 18 September 2012, http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/areeconomic-downturns-self-fulfilling-prophecies/, JS)
There are tangible, and often painful, fundamentals that determine the course of the economy -- unemployment, interest rates,
housing prices, inflation, industrial production, government debt. But more than anything else, markets are psychology, and an
atmosphere of fear and panic among producers and consumers leads to scaling back of purchases, which further exacerbates a downturn.¶
Over the past few years in particular, there have been plenty of messages of impending doom circulating through the mass
media. Like Eeyore, the miserable mule from Winnie-the-Pooh, many pundits ignore any bright spots and flood the airwaves
with grim predictions of imminent collapse and despair just around the corner. In an economy heavily tied to consumer confidence,
such talk could have far-reaching consequences. Such downbeat messages may eventually result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, actually
translating into job losses. A new analysis by Sylvain Leduc and Zheng Liu, analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Fransisco,
says there is a statistically measurable impact from "talking down" the economy. The economists say that the atmosphere of uncertainty in
the recent downturn of 2008-2009 added at least one to two percentage points to the unemployment rate:¶ "During the Great Recession,
the increase in uncertainty appears to have been much greater in magnitude.... Our model estimates that uncertainty has
pushed up the U.S. unemployment rate by between one and two percentage points since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.
To put this in perspective, had there been no increase in uncertainty in the past four years, the unemployment rate would have been closer to
6% or 7% than to the 8% to 9% actually registered."¶ Policymakers and pundits can't be pollyanish in the face of economic troubles, of
course. But the Fed authors suggest that as media channels fill up with dire and downbeat talk, fear levels go up, and people start to lose
their jobs. "Heightened uncertainty acts like a decline in aggregate demand because it depresses economic activity and holds down inflation,"
the Fed economists observe.¶ Another thing is clear as well: when analysts and pundits put their Eeyore faces on, it doesn't help
anybody. What is needed is more discussion and ideas about solutions and disruptive innovation that create opportunities,
improve our world, and provide people more control over their economic destiny.
Mapping links
Mapping destroys intimacy with the ocean and turns renders it as a mere conceptual
device for human purposes.
Anderson and Peters 14 (Dr Kimberley Peters Lecturer in Human Geography BSc (hons) Human Geography and Planning (Cardiff
University) MA Cultural Geography (Royal Holloway, University of London) PhD (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Filling the Watery Void The second key aim of this volume is to continue challenging the aforementioned and long standing configuration of the
ocean as an empty space, established through processes of industrial and postindustrial capitalism. Moreover this book seeks to address the
use of the sea as a mere conceptual device for understanding alternative socio-cultural and political phenomena, instead positioning the sea
as a ‘an element of nature itself’ (Steinberg 2001: 167). As such, the chapters which follow each demonstrate the ways in which ocean is
‘filled’: through its own elemental composition, with more-thanhuman life, with floating and sunken materialities, and with a range of human
significance. Such an approach takes inspiration from non-Western perspectives of the water world. If we turn away from our modern,
terrestro-centric view, we can begin to see how ‘other’ cultures conceive of the seas and oceans as practiced, embodied and lived spaces. For
example, anthroplogist Bronislaw Malinowski demonstrates the importance of rituals at sea for societies on the Trobriand Islands in the
Western Pacific region (1922). Here the land functions as a connection point whilst the ocean is encultured as a significant ritualized space,
made meaningful through the ‘Kula’ system of gift-giving. Kula exchanges involve the sea-based exchange of two types of item (armshells and
necklaces) between ‘Kula partners’ (Young 1979: 163). Articles are moved from island to island by sea-going canoes, and as such, seafaring has
been integral to the custom, culture, and ceremony of the Trobriand people (Young 1979: 172-3). Thus despite Western culture’s willingness to
reduce the water world to an empty space, many ‘indigenous’ cultures refute this essentialism. As Raban notes, drawing on David Lewis’
discussion of Polynesian mariners, We, the Navigators (1994): the open sea could be as intimately known and as friendly to human habitation
as a familiar stretch of land to those seamen who lived on its surface, as gulls do, wave by wave.... the stars supplied a grand chain of paths
across the known ocean, but there was often little need of these since the water itself was as legible as acreage farmed for generations. Colour,
wind, the flight of birds, and telltale variations of swell gave the sea direction, shape, character. (Raban 1999: 94) According to Raban, this
intimate knowing of water worlds was supplanted in the West by the advent of modern technology, starting with the use of a compass and
sextant and extending through to twenty-first century exploitation of satellite telemetry and geographical positioning systems. For Raban,
‘the arrival of the magnetic compass caused a fundamental rift in the relationship between man [sic] and sea’ (1999: 95). Possession of a
compass, rendered obsolete a great body of inherited, instinctual knowledge, and rendered the sea itself - in fair weather, at least - as a void,
an empty______ rendered obsolete a great body of inherited, instinctual knowledge, and rendered the sea itself - in fair weather, at least - as a
void, an empty space to be traversed by a numbered thumb line. (1999: 97)
Naval Readiness links
Calls for an expanded naval presence are calls for more elite control and power of the
maritime space – reducing environmental issues to a logic of war
Oliveira 12 (Gilberto Carvalho de - PhD candidate in international politics and conflict resolution at the School of Economics/Centre for
Social Studies for the University of Coimbra in Portugal, “Naval Peacekeeping and Piracy: Time for a Critical Turn in the Debate”, International
Peacekeeping, 17 Feb 2012, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13533312.2012.642154#tabModule)
Through a securitization theory lens, something becomes a maritime security problem ‘when the elites declare it to be so’, which means that
‘power holders can always try to use the instrument of securitization’ of a maritime issue ‘to gain control over it’.53 Within this process,
some aspects are relevant concerning security at sea. First, those who govern the order at sea ‘can easily use it for specific, self-serving
purposes’, which means that this order is ‘clearly, systematically and institutionally linked to the survival of the system and its elites’.54
Second, to ensure the maintenance of this order, elites demand more security, exceptional measures aimed at defending objects whose
survival is being threatened. From this perspective, to talk about security is to claim the defence of an object menaced in its
existence, which means that security, by definition, preserves the traditional ‘threat-defence’ logic of war.55¶ The move towards
securitization of maritime issues can be clearly observed in doctrinal developments made by Western naval powers and regional
organizations, as in the ‘Naval Operations Concept 2010’ of the US Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard:¶ Maritime security is a
non-doctrinal term defined as those tasks and operations conducted to protect sovereignty and maritime resources, support
free and open seaborne commerce, and to counter maritime related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime,
piracy, environmental destruction, and illegal seaborne immigration.56¶ Other doctrines and military forums have replicated this
attempt at defining maritime security as an umbrella concept to accommodate ‘new threats’ and justify the use of naval forces in ‘operations
aimed at enhancing and enforcing security at sea’.57 In general, these ‘new threats’ have been defined around the following main topics:
terrorism at sea; transport of weapons of mass destruction; illegal movement of drugs, human beings and arms; flow of illegal immigrants;
piracy; dangers to the oceanic environment (marine pollution, illegal fishing and overfishing); and global warming. These doctrines'
movements to incorporate new threats and to justify new roles for navies within a broader concept of maritime security, if integrated within
a multilateral framework, do not differ significantly from the constabulary roles defended in the early debates on naval
peacekeeping. Thus, the key point distinguishing both naval peacekeeping and maritime security operations lies, ultimately, in
the multilateral character generally defended in the former and the national interest or collective defence implicated in the
latter. Even if one recognizes the importance of this distinction and its implications in conceptualizing naval peacekeeping, this
does not significantly change the ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying both conceptions: it is the classical
vision of ‘good order at sea’ and the traditional problem-solving perspective that guide the way both naval peacekeeping and maritime security
debates regard problems at sea.¶ The critical point is that attempts at widening maritime security and the proposal of an autonomous
concept of peacekeeping at sea do not reflect an innocent position. Securitization processes at sea ultimately reduce to a logic of war such
issues as criminality, piracy, maritime pollution, trade circulation, climate change, fisheries and so on, which could be approached in more
comprehensive, creative, peaceful and sustainable ways within de-securitized agendas.58 In other words, a maritime agenda
committed to technical, scientific, legal, normative, social, cultural, economic and political aspects of the sea would be more
effective in handling maritime problems in a transformative and self-sustainable way than a securitized agenda whose
exceptionality and urgency tends to reduce and simplify those problems in order to manage them through exceptional
measures in a problem-solving framework.
Hydrorelationality
Energy links
Offshore wind farming and marine spatial planning overlay watery materiality with
the aesthetic of terrestrial industry – their framing reduces the ocean to a dead,
empty space for insertion of human agency
Kannen et al. 13 (Andreas Kannen, is scientist in the department ‘Human Dimension of Coastal Areas’ in the Institute for Coastal
Research at Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Germany “Renewable Energy and Marine Spatial Planning: Scientific and Legal Implications” The
Regulation of Continental Shelf Development: Rethinking International Standards. COLP Series, 2013)
Aside from conflicts with other demands for using sea space, the main consequence of offshore wind farming is that it creates large-scale fixed
structures in an environment that has so far been largely devoid of such structures. it also creates demand for marine spatial planning, which is
increasingly called upon I to allocate sea uses to maximize spatial efficiency, reduce conflicts between sea uses and maintain the ecological
integrity of the environment, which is discussed in the next section of this paper. One of the underexposed consequences of offshore wind
farming is that it is changing the way of thinking about sea space altogether.35 Industrial uses such as offshore wind farming essentially regard
the sea as an extension of the main-land, as free space that is available for development as long as the technology to do so is available and
affordable. This is in line with the marine spatial planning perspective, which also regards the sea as space to be allocated and used, This
“industrialization of the sea", however, marks an inescapable turning point in that the formerly ‘empty’ sea is now visibly built on. This
fundamental re-casting of the sea as just another available space forces humans to re-evaluate some of the more traditional images we hold of
the sea such as that of the sea as a largely natural place.“ An important question is how compatible an industrial perspective such as offshore
wind is with these other views of the sea, and how compatible the rational spatial perspective is with more emotional views of the sea as a
place. A recent study from Scotland has shown that fishermen’s perspective on the sea is distinctly not spatial, but place-based as they report a
particular sense of belonging to the sea and responsibility for it.” A study on the German West coast of Schleswig-Holstein has also shown tht
place-based perspectives play an important role in generating sense of place. Asked about their spontaneous associations with the sea, local
residents name aspects as diverse as the physical environment, wildlife, nature, fishing, recreation, summer sun, sea food, land reclamation,
storm surges, pollution, vastness or a sense of freedom. Aesthetic perspectives, informal recreational benefits derived from being by the sea
and symbolic meanings associated with the sea were found to be particularly important in generating a sense of well-being.
Mapping
The process of mapping destroys intimacy with the ocean and turns render it as a
mere conceptual device for human purposes.
Anderson and Peters 14 (Water Worlds: Human Geographies of the Ocean, ed, Peters and Anderson Dr Kimberley Peters
Lecturer in Human Geography BSc (hons) Human Geography and Planning (Cardiff University) MA Cultural Geography (Royal Holloway,
University of London) PhD (Royal Holloway, University of London) Dr Jon Anderson, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Cardiff University)
The second key aim of this volume is to continue challenging the aforementioned and long standing configuration of the ocean as an empty
space, established through processes of industrial and postindustrial capitalism. Moreover this book seeks to address the use of the sea as a
mere conceptual device for understanding alternative socio-cultural and political phenomena, instead positioning the sea as a ‘an element
of nature itself’ (Steinberg 2001: 167). As such, the chapters which follow each demonstrate the ways in which ocean is ‘filled’: through its own
elemental composition, with more-thanhuman life, with floating and sunken materialities, and with a range of human significance. Such an
approach takes inspiration from non-Western perspectives of the water world. If we turn away from our modern, terrestro-centric view, we can
begin to see how ‘other’ cultures conceive of the seas and oceans as practiced, embodied and lived spaces. For example, anthroplogist
Bronislaw Malinowski demonstrates the importance of rituals at sea for societies on the Trobriand Islands in the Western Pacific region (1922).
Here the land functions as a connection point whilst the ocean is encultured as a significant ritualized space, made meaningful through the
‘Kula’ system of gift-giving. Kula exchanges involve the sea-based exchange of two types of item (armshells and necklaces) between ‘Kula
partners’ (Young 1979: 163). Articles are moved from island to island by sea-going canoes, and as such, seafaring has been integral to the
custom, culture, and ceremony of the Trobriand people (Young 1979: 172-3). Thus despite Western culture’s willingness to reduce the water
world to an empty space, many ‘indigenous’ cultures refute this essentialism. As Raban notes, drawing on David Lewis’ discussion of Polynesian
mariners, We, the Navigators (1994): the open sea could be as intimately known and as friendly to human habitation as a familiar stretch of
land to those seamen who lived on its surface, as gulls do, wave by wave.... the stars supplied a grand chain of paths across the known ocean,
but there was often little need of these since the water itself was as legible as acreage farmed for generations. Colour, wind, the flight of birds,
and telltale variations of swell gave the sea direction, shape, character. (Raban 1999: 94) According to Raban, this intimate knowing of water
worlds was supplanted in the West by the advent of modern technology, starting with the use of a compass and sextant and extending
through to twenty-first century exploitation of satellite telemetry and geographical positioning systems. For Raban, ‘the arrival of the
magnetic compass caused a fundamental rift in the relationship between man [sic] and sea’ (1999: 95). Possession of a compass, rendered
obsolete a great body of inherited, instinctual knowledge, and rendered the sea itself - in fair weather, at least - as a void, an empty______
rendered obsolete a great body of inherited, instinctual knowledge, and rendered the sea itself - in fair weather, at least - as a void, an empty
space to be traversed by a numbered thumb line. (1999: 97)
Maps reduce the ocean to resource, disallow situated hydrorelationality
Chen 13 (Thinking with Water edited by Cecilia Chen, Janine MacLeod, Astrida Neimanis “Mapping Waters: Thinking with Watery Places”
Cecilia Chen is an architect and a doctoral candidate in communications at Concordia University Faculty of Environmental Studies, York
University, Faculté des études environnementales Co-organiser, Thinking With Water Project (with Chen and Neimanis) / Coorganisatrice,
Projet penser avec l’eau (avec Chen et Neimanis)
Finally, I suggest that the mapping process most appropriate to the watery places in which so many of us dwell is a process that is multivocal,
responsive, and heuristic. Mapping involves a set of actions that gather, present, and articulate imagined understandings of place. To change
these understandings - the perceived and practised relations of dwelling with many others in evolving ecosystems of matter and meaning - we
may need to examine and alter the practices with which we articulate place. In this regard, it may be radically informative to move mapping
processes toward a critical and generative inclusion of the communities convened by waters. We may begin by learning how to think with
water and with our watery* places. Consider, for instance, how the Iohna:wate' rapids have repeatedly brought various peoples together in
exchange and conflict over time. The Iroquois, St Lawrence Iroquoian, Algonquin, and Huron-Wendat nations likely* met in, on, and near these
river waters.2 Certainly, in North America, the waterways navigable by nimble canoe were often the site of early contacts between Indigenous
peoples and foreigners, w*ho arrived with strange languages and technologies, new bacteria, and goods. These encounters catalyzed new sets
of relations, encompassing trade, disease, war, and subsequent settlement patterns among both Indigenous peoples and newcomers. Among
the technologies employed to support often violent colonial relations were the imported European cartographic practices that imposed an
instrumental understanding of waters, lands, and peoples. Unfortunately, similar inventory-like mappings continue to be used in our time to
appropriate and to narrowly constitute landed territories and watery resources. What we understand about the communications of different
waters is necessarily limited by our use of languages and concepts -the apparatuses with which we, in effect, constitute knowledge. As has been
diversely argued in this volume as a whole, we need to move away from narrow representations of water as a seemingly tractable resource
toward an understanding that waters are situated, lively, and shared.
Neolib
Energy links
Renewables production reproduces a neoliberal approach to ecology – energy
efficiency savings ensure excess consumption and are re-invested to expand
production
Foster et al 10 (John Bellamy, prof of sociology @ U of Oregon, Brett Clark, asst prof of sociology @ NC-State, Richard York, associate
prof of sociology @ U of Oregon, The Ecological Rift, pgs. 183-191)
Eco-Efficiency of National Economies Stephen Bunker, an environmental sociologist, found that over a long stretch of recent history, the world
economy as a whole showed substantial improvements in resource efficiency (economic output per unit of natural resource), but that the total
resource consumption of the global economy continually escalated. Similarly, recent research has shown that at the national level, high levels
of affluence are, counter intuitively, associated with both greater eco-efficiency—GDP output per unit of ecological footprint—of the economy
as a whole and with a higher per capita ecological footprint, suggesting that empirical conditions characteristic of the Jevons Paradox often may
be applicable to the generalized aggregate level. Indeed, this type of pattern appears to be quite common. Statistical analyses using elasticity
models of the effect of economic development (GDP per capita) on environmental impacts, such as carbon dioxide emissions, have shed light
on the relationship between efficiency and total environmental impact. With such a model, an elasticity coefficient for GDP per capita (which
indicates the percentage increase in the environmental impact of nations for a 1 percent increase in GDP per capita) of between 0 and 1
(indicating a positive inelastic relationship) implies a condition where the aggregate eco-efficiency of the economy improves with development
but the expansion of the economy exceeds improvements in efficiency, leading to a net increase in environmental impact. This type of research
does not establish a causal link between efficiency and total environmental impact or resource consumption, but it does empirically
demonstrate that an association between rising efficiency and rising environmental impacts may be common, at least at the national level.
These findings also suggest that improving eco-efficiency in a nation is not necessarily, or even typically, indicative of a decline in resource
consumption. Fuel Efficiency of Automobiles The fuel efficiency of automobiles is obviously an issue of substantial importance, since motor
vehicles consume a large share of the world’s oil. It would seem reasonable to expect that improvements in the efficiency of engines and
refinements in the aerodynamics of automobiles would help to curb motor fuel consumption. However, and examination of recent trends in
the fuel consumption of motor vehicles suggests a paradoxical situation where improvements in efficiency are associated with increases in fuel
consumption. For example, in the United States an examination of a reasonable indicator of fuel efficiency of automobiles stemming from
overall engineering techniques, pound-miles per gallon (or kilogram-kilometers per liter) of fuel, supports the contention that the efficiency of
the light-duty fleet (which includes passenger cars and light trucks) improved substantially between 1984 and 2001, whereas the total and
average fuel consumption of the fleet increased. For the purposes of calculating CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) performance of the
nation’s automobile fleet, the light-duty fleet is divided into two categories, passenger cars and light trucks (which includes sports utility
vehicles), each of which has a different legally enforced CAFE standard. In 1984 the total light-truck fleet CAFÉ miles per gallon (MPG) was 20.6
(~8.8 kilometers per liter; KPL) and the average equivalent test weight was 3,804 pounds (~1,725 kilograms), indicating that the average poundmiles per gallon was 78,362 (20.6 x 3,804) (~15,100 kilogram-KPL). By 2001, the total light truck fleet CAFÉ MPG had improved slightly to 21.0
(~8.9 KPL), while the average vehicle weight had increased substantially, to 4,501 pounds (~2,040 kilograms). Therefore the pound-miles per
gallon had increased to 94,521 (21.0 x 4,501) (~18,200 kilogram-KPL), a 20.6 percent improvement in efficiency from 1984. A similar trend
happened in passenger cars over this same period . In 1984 the total passenger car fleet CAFÉ was 29.6 MPG (~11.4 KPL) and the average
equivalent test weight was 3,170 pounds (~1,440 kilograms), indicating that the pound-miles per gallon was 85,273 (26.9 x 3,170)(~16,400
kilogram-KPL). By 2001, the total passenger car fleet CAFÉ MPG had improved to 28.7 (~12.2 KPL) while the average vehicle weight had
increased to 3,446 pounds (~1,560 kilograms), making the average fleet pound-miles per gallon 98,900 (28.7 x 2,446) (~19,070 kilogram-KPL)—a
16 percent improvement since 1984. Clearly engineering advances had substantially improved the efficiency of both light trucks and passenger
cars in terms of pound-MPG (or kilogram-KPL) between 1984 and 2001. The observation of this fact in isolation might lead tone to expect that
these improvements in efficiency were associated with a reduction in the fuel consumption of the total light-duty fleet. However, this is not
what happened. Over this period, light; trucks, which on average are heavier and consume more fuel than passenger cars, grew from 24.4
percent of the light truck duty fleet to 46.6 percent. Because of this shift in composition, the CAFÉ MPG for the combined light-duty fleet
declined from 25.0 to 24.5 (~10.6 to ~10.4 KPL), a 2 percent decrease. Clearly, engineering advances had improved the efficiency of engines and
other aspects of automobiles, but this did not lead to a less-fuel thirsty fleet since the size of vehicles increased substantially, particularly due to
a shift from passenger cars to light trucks among a large segment of drivers. It is worth noting that even if the total fleet MPG had improved, a
reduction in fuel consumption would have been unlikely to follow, since over this period the distance traveled by drivers per year increased
from little more than 15,000 km (~9,300 miles) per car, on average, to over 19,000 km (~11,800 miles). And, finally, an increase in the number
of drivers and cars on the road drove up fuel consumption even further. For example, between 1990 and 1999, the number of motor vehicles in
the United States increased from 189 million to 217 million due to both population growth and a 2.8 percent increase in the number of motor
vehicles per 1,000 people (from 758 to 779). It appears that technological advances that improved the engineering of cars were in large part
implemented, at least in the United States, in expanding the size of vehicles, rather than reducing the fuel the average vehicle consumed. The
causal explanations for this are likely complex, but the fact that, despite engineering improvements, the U.S. light-duty fleet increased its total
and average fuel consumption over the past two decades does suggest that technological refinements are unlikely in and of themselves to
lead to the conservation of natural resources. Furthermore, it is possible that improvements in efficiency may actually contribute to the
expansion of resource consumption, since it is at least plausible that success at improving the MPG/KPL of a nation’s automobile fleet may
encourage drivers to travel more frequently by car, due to the reduction in fuel consumption per mile/kilometer—a situation directly analogous
to the one Jevons observed regarding coal use by industry. The Paperless Office Paradox Paper is typically made from wood fiber, so paper
consumption puts substantial pressure on the world’s forest ecosystems. It would seem on the face of it that the rise of the computer and the
capacity for the storage of documents in electronic form would lead to a decline in paper consumption, and eventually, the emergence of the
“paperless office”—which would be decidedly good news for forests. This, however, has not been the case, as Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H.R.
Harper clearly document in their aptly titled book The Myth of the Paperless Office. Contrary to the expectations of some, computers, email,
and the World Wide Web are associated with an increase in paper consumption. For example consumption of the most common type of office
paper (uncoated free-sheet) increased by 14.7 percent in the United States between the years 1995 and 2000, embarrassing those who
predicted the emergence of the paperless office. Sellen and Harper also point to research indicating that “the introduction of e-mail into an
organization caused, on average, a 40% increase in paper consumption.” This observation suggests that there may be a direct causal link
between the rise of electronic mediums of data storage and paper consumption, although further research is necessary to firmly establish the
validity of this causal link. The failure of computers and electronic storage mediums to bring about the paperless office points to an interesting
paradox, which we label the Paperless Office Paradox: the development of a substitute for a natural resource is sometimes associated with an
increase in consumption of that resource. This paradox has potentially profound implications for efforts to conserve natural resources. One
prominent method advocated for reducing consumption of a particular resource is to develop substitutes for it. For example, the development
of renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar power, are commonly identified as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, based
on the assumption that the development of alternative sources of energy will displace, at least to some extent, fossil fuel consumption.
However, just as the Jevons Paradox points to the fact that efficiency not lead to a reduction in resource consumption, the Paperless Office
Paradox points to the fact that the development of substitutes may not lead to a reduction in resource consumption. The reasons that
computers led to a rise in paper consumption are not particularly surprising. Although computers allow for the electronic storage of documents,
they also allow for ready access to innumerable documents that can be easily printed using increasingly ubiquitous printers, which explains in
large part the reason for escalating office paper consumption. Due to the particularistic reasons for the association between electronic storage
mediums and paper consumption, the Paperless Office Paradox may not represent a generality about the development of substitutes and
resource consumption. However, this paradox does emphasize the point that one should not assume that the development of substitutes for a
natural resource will lead to a reduction in consumption of that resource. For example, over the past two centuries we have seen the rise of
fossil fuel technologies and the development of nuclear power, so that whereas in the eighteenth century biomass was the principal source of
energy in the world, biomass now only provides a small proportion of global energy production. However, it is worth noting that even though
substitutes for biomass—such as fossil fuel and nuclear power—have expanded dramatically, the absolute quantity of biomass consumed for
energy in the world has increased since the nineteenth century. This is likely due, at least in part, to the fact that new energy sources fostered
economic and population growth, which in turn expanded the demand for energy sources of all types, including biomass. This observation
raises the prospect that the expansion of renewable energy production technologies, such as wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, may not
displace fossil fuel or other energy sources, but merely add a new source on top of them, and potentially foster conditions that expand the
demand for energy. Clearly, further theoretical development and empirical research aimed at assessing the extent to which substitutes actually
lead to reductions in resource consumption is called for, and faith that technological developments will solve our natural resource challenges
should at least be called into question. Coda Here, we have drawn attention to two ecological paradoxes in economics, the Jevons Paradox and
the Paperless Office Paradox. The Jevons Paradox is a classical one, based on the Jevons observation that rising efficiency in the utilization of
coal led to an escalation of coal consumption. We presented two examples, which suggest that the Jevons Paradox may have general
applicability to a variety of circumstances. The Paperless Office Paradox is a new one, and draws attention to the fact that the development of
computers and electronic storage mediums has not led to a decline in paper consumption, as some predicted, but rather to more paper
consumption. It is important to note that these are empirically established paradoxes—they point to the correlation between efficiency or
substitutes and resource consumption. Each paradox may actually house phenomenon that have a diversity of theoretical explanations.
Therefore, underlying these two paradoxes may be many forces that need to be theorized. Together, these paradoxes suggest that
improvements in the efficiency of use of a natural resource may not lead to reductions in consumption of that resource—in some
circumstances they may even lead to an escalation of consumption of that resource. Although improvements in efficiency and utilization of
substitutes will reduce consumption of a resource all else being equal (if the scale of production remains constant), economies are complex
and dynamic systems with innumerable interactions among factors. Changes in the type and efficiency of resource utilization will likely
influence many other conditions, thus ensuring that all else will rarely be equal. Relying on technological advances alone to solve our
environmental problems may have disastrous consequences. The two paradoxes we present here suggest that social and economic systems
need to be modified if technological advances are to be translated into natural resource conservation.
Only abandoning capitalism can solve the environment – Even a total and immediate
switch to clean energy would only accelerate numerous trends towards ecological
collapse and extinction.
Smith 14 (Richard, an economic historian. He wrote his UCLA history Ph.D. thesis on the transition to capitalism
in China and held post-docs at the East-West Center in Honolulu and Rutgers University, “Green Capitalism: The
God That Failed”, Thursday, 09 January 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21060)
Stern asserted that "the world does not have to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and
development."(40) But if the science is right that we need to keep emissions below 400 ppm, or even get them back
below 350 ppm, then more growth is out of the question. Indeed, we would have to make radically deeper cuts in GDP
than even the 7 percent reduction per year that Stern calculates would be necessary just to get us down to 450 ppm.
Because, under capitalism, a contraction of economic output on anything like that scale would mean economic collapse
and depression, it
is difficult to see how we can make the reductions in greenhouse gases we
have to make to avoid climate catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism. This is the dilemma. So
far most scientists have tended to avoid getting into the contentious economic side of the question. But with respect to
the issue of growth, the science is unequivocal: Never-ending growth means the end of civilization, if not humanity itself and in the not-so-distant future. For a summary of the peer-reviewed science on this subject, read a few chapters of Mark
Lynas' harrowing Six Degrees.(41) Global warming is surely the most urgent threat we face, but it is far from
the only driver of global ecological collapse. For even if we switched to clean renewable
electric power tomorrow, this would not stop the overconsumption of forests, fish,
minerals, fresh water. It would not stop pollution or solve the garbage crisis or stop the
changes in ocean chemistry. Indeed, the advent of cheap, clean energy could even
accelerate these trends.(42) Numerous credible scientific and environmental researchers back up what the
climate scientists have been telling us, to demonstrate why perpetual growth is the road to collective social suicide. For
example: In 2005 the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment team of 1,300 scientists from 95 countries issued
a landmark report on humanity's overconsumption of "nature's services." The scientists reported that 60 percent (15 of
24) of the ecosystems examined that are critical for human survival are being "degraded or used
unsustainably," including fresh water, capture fisheries, coral reefs, wetlands, drylands and forests. Around the world,
many of these are deteriorating or on the verge of collapse. Thus nature's ability to provide the resources for
growing future populations is very much in doubt unless radical steps are taken soon.
Mapping links
Spatial planning reproduces neoliberalism – the aff’s mapping imposes neoliberal
subjectivity on oceanic actors, reducing them to rational utility-maximizers – that
erases recognition of existing oceanic inequality and prioritizes the zoning priorities of
the socially privileged
Olson 10 (Julia Olson, department member of Northeast Fisheries Science Center, “Seeding nature, ceding culture: Redefining the
boundaries of the marine commons through spatial management and GIS,” Geoforum, 2010)
These mappings and transformations happen within broader spatial imperatives that are fundamentally reshaping the ocean. The majority of
the world’s fisheries are estimated to be fully exploited, overexploited or depleted (FAO, 2007). Political conflict over fisheries pit the many
fishermen arguing that fisheries are rebounding against the many fisheries scientists and environmentalists arguing otherwise; many resourceusers have demanded a greater voice in the very process of knowledge production, and efforts at co-management, cooperative research, and
traditional ecological knowledge point to potential directions such involvement may produce. Yet conventional arguments about the tragedy of
the commons finger the rational, self-interested resource user—economic man of neoclassical economic theory—operating in a socioecological environment of incorrect institutional norms and economic incentives. With too many fishermen chasing too few fish in an open sea,
such understandings seek privatizing, neoliberal solutions to fisheries dilemmas—solutions many advocates fear destroy fishing communities
and cultures. While this hegemony of bio-economics in fisheries management has been maintained, as St. Martin (2001) argues, through a
geographic imagination that places the rationalist and self-interested “economic man” in a spatially homogenous commons,2 the increasing
efforts to use area-specific forms of fisheries management signal the potential for a “paradigm shift” from individuals to communities and
ecosystems, in which the “promise of GIS” hinges especially on the integration of social and biological data ( St. Martin, 2004). Though the
actual practice of ecosystem-based management is still taking shape, its recognition of connections and multiple spatial scales, as well as its use
for local knowledge in time and space, may be a way to involve people as members of social groups (rather than simply individuals) more
integrally in the management process ( St. Martin et al., 2007 and Clay and Olson, 2008). The actual implementation of ecosystem-based
fisheries management, some argue, should happen through a planned system of “ocean zoning” that replaces the patchwork of ad hoc,
uncoordinated regulations whose goals have been decoupled from a broader notion of the ecosystem that concerns itself as much with
sustaining fisheries as “the non-fisheries benefits of marine ecosystems to society” (Babcock et al., 2005, p. 469). As marine biologist Elliot
Norse has written, because the ocean has many competing users—“shipping, defense, energy production, telecommunications, commercial
fishing, sportfishing, recreational diving, whale watching, pleasure boating, tourism and coastal real estate development”—whose conflicts can
lead to resource degradation, zoning provides a solution for it “is a place-based ecosystem management system that reduces conflict,
uncertainty and costs by separating incompatible uses and specifying how particular areas may be used” (2002, pp. 53–54). Such a
comprehensive system of zoning is envisioned as a more rational “system of finely specified spatial and temporal property rights” (Wilen,
2004). The 2003 Pew Report also mentions “implement[ing] ecosystem-based planning” in the same breath as zoning, for fisheries
management, it argues, should more fully consider context: “incompatible” user conflicts that affect target species (2003, p. 47). Economists
who promote zoning as a way to “account for spatial and intertemporal externalities” picture it reaching its rational equilibrium through the
market, rationing numbers of users in search of a “rent-maximizing equilibrium” (Sanchirico and Wilen, 2005, p. 25), and ultimately creating
property rights (Holland, 2004) and stewardship (US Commission on Ocean Policy, 2004, p. 64). Yet while ocean zoning is seen as something of a
new solution for marine conflicts, the model of terrestrial zoning upon which it is based is hardly without its critics. Proponents of smart
growth, new urbanism, and mixed-use communities have pointed to the myriad problems—including sprawl, traffic, pollution, loss of farmland,
and so on—created by separating the activities of daily life. The view that zoning will end conflict assumes that such conflicts center only on
doing different things in the same place, while creating zones of “use-priority” areas begs the question of whose values will dictate a given
zone’s “most important” activities. As such, conflict may simply be displaced from the ocean to places where policies are crafted or where their
impacts are lived. Indeed scholars have long noted how zoning laws are colored by cultural ideas (for example, public versus private/domestic
space) that are distinctly bourgeois, raced and gendered and thus favor certain groups of people (Ritzdorf, 1994, Perin, 1977 and LiPuma and
Meltzoff, 1997). Some economists have also been critical of marine zoning’s creation of “divided” property rights that do not fully consider “the
opportunity costs of foregone production” that might otherwise “maximize joint wealth” ( Edwards, 2000, p. 4). In other words, the “economic
benefits” of zoning cannot be assumed for “it is an empirical question whether ocean wealth would be improved” (ibid, p. 7). A focus on
aggregate wealth though leaves unanswered the effect of an initially unequal distribution of wealth on the prices and outcomes in a marketbased economy, as well as the changes in subjectivity and practices that the neoliberalization of resource economies and identities can
engender.
The impact is massive environmental destruction and social inequality – imposition of
neoliberal landscapes on local landscapes produces fast capitalist extraction and
causes displacement and dehumanization
Nixon 11 (Rob, Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor,
pgs. 17-18)
In the global resource wars, the environmentalism of the poor is frequently triggered when an official landscape is forcibly imposed on a
vernacular one." A vernacular landscape is shaped by the affective, historically textured maps that communities have devised over
generations, maps replete with names and routes, maps alive to significant ecological and surface geological features. A vernacular
landscape, although neither monolithic nor undisputed, is integral to the socioenvironmental dynamics of community rather than being
wholly externalized-treated as out there, as a separate nonrenewable resource. By contrast, an official landscape-whether governmental,
NGO, corporate, or some combination of those-is typically oblivious to such earlier maps; instead, it writes the land in a bureaucratic,
externalizing, and extraction-driven manner that is often pitilessly instrumental. Lawrence Summers' scheme to export rich-nation
garbage and toxicity to Africa, for example, stands as a grandiose (though hardly exceptional) instance of a highly rationalized official
landscape that, whether in terms of elite capture of resources or toxic disposal, has often been projected onto ecosystems inhabited by
those whom Annu Jalais, in an Indian context, calls "dispensable citizens.'?" I would argue, then, that the exponential upsurge in indigenous
resource rebellions across the globe during the high age of neoliberalism has resulted largely from a clash of temporal perspectives
between the short-termers who arrive (with their official landscape maps) to extract, despoil, and depart and the long-termers who must
live inside the ecological aftermath and must therefore weigh wealth differently in time's scales. In the pages that follow, I will highlight
and explore resource rebellions against developer-dispossessors who descend from other time zones to impose on habitable environments
unsustainable calculations about what constitutes the duration of human gain. Change is a cultural constant but the pace of change is not.
Hence the temporal contests over how to sustain, regenerate, exhaust, or obliterate the landscape as resource become critical. More than
material wealth is here at stake: imposed official landscapes typically discount spiritualized vernacular landscapes, severing webs of
accumulated cultural meaning and treating the landscape as if it were uninhabited by the living, the unborn, and the animate deceased.
The ensuing losses are consistent with John Berger's lament over capitalism's disdain for interdependencies by foreshortening our sense
of time, thereby rendering the deceased immaterial: The living reduce the dead to those who have lived; yet the dead already include the
living in their own great collective. Until the dehumanization of society by capitalism, all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It
was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete. Thus living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely
modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the
eliminated.40 Hence, one should add, our perspective on environmental asset stripping should include among assets stripped the mingled
presence in the landscape of multiple generations, with all the hindsight and foresight that entails. Against this backdrop, I consider in this
book what can be called the temporalities of place. Place is a temporal attainment that must be constantly renegotiated in the face of
changes that arrive from without and within, some benign, others potentially ruinous. To engage the temporal displacements involved in
slow violence against the poor thus requires that we rethink questions of physical displacement as well. In the chapters that follow, I track
the socioenvironmental fallout from developmental agendas whose primary beneficiaries live elsewhere; as when, for example, oasis
dwellers in the Persian Gulf get trucked off to unknown destinations so that American petroleum engineers and their sheik collaborators
can develop their "finds." Or when a megadam arises and (whether erected in the name of Some dictatorial edict, the free market,
structural adjustment, national development, or far-off urban or industrial need) displaces and disperses those who had developed
through their vernacular landscapes their own adaptable, if always imperfect and vulnerable, relation to riverine possibility. Paradoxically,
those forcibly removed by development include conservation refugees. Too often in the global South, conservation, driven by powerful
transnational nature NGOs, combines an antidevelopmental rhetoric with the development of finite resources for the touristic few, thereby
depleting vital resources for long-term residents. (I explore this paradox more fully in Chapter 6: Stranger in the Eco-village: Race, Tourism,
and Environmental Time.) In much of what follows, I address the resistance mounted by impoverished communities who have been
involuntarily moved out of their knowledge; I address as well the powers transnational, national, and local-behind such forced removals.
My angle of vision is largely through writers who have affiliated themselves with social movements that seek to stave off one of two
ruinous prospects: either the threatened community capitulates and is scattered (across refugee camps, placeless "relocation" sites,
desperate favelas, and unwelcoming foreign lands), or the community refuses to move but, as its world is undermined, effectively becomes
a community of refugees in place. What I wish to stress here, then, are not just those communities that are involuntarily (and often
militarily) relocated to less hospitable environs, but also those affected by what I call displacement without moving. In other words, I want
to propose a more radical notion of displacement, one that, instead of referring solely to the movement of people from their places of
belonging, refers rather to the loss of the land and resources beneath them, a loss that leaves communities stranded in a place stripped of
the very characteristics that made it inhabitable.
MSPs use stakeholders to reinforce corporate control as a model-also, the idea that
individuals can hold stakes in the ocean treats the ocean as flat space for human
profitability and also there is inevitable conflict over who gets what stake (retag)
Douvere and Pomeroy 2008 (Fanny, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and Man and the Biosphere Programme
and
Robert, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics/CT Sea Grant, University of Connecticut-Avery Point, “The engagement of
stakeholders in the marine spatial planning process”, http://www.unesco-iocmarinesp.be/uploads/documentenbank/a7c08c25e6fcea567c27ca564135f65a.pdf, AX)
Stakeholder analysis seeks to differentiate and study stakeholders. Stakeholder groups can be divided into smaller and smaller sub-groups
depending upon the particular purpose of stakeholder analysis. The identification of key stakeholders should be inclusive and detailed. More
groups may mean more problems and discussion, but excluding certain groups could lead to problems in the long run. Ultimately, every
individual is a stakeholder, but that level of detail is rarely required. A
key question to be answered in the MSP process
is: who are the stakeholders that are entitled to take part in discussions and in management? Seven
major attributes are important for stakeholder analysis in natural resource management [6]: 1. the various stakeholders
related to the natural resource; 2. the group/coalition and to which they belong and can reasonably be associated with; 3.
the kind and level of interest (and concerns) they have in the natural resource; 4. the importance and influence that each
stakeholder has; 5. the stakeholders’ position toward the use or conservation of natural resource; 6. the multiple ‘hats’ they wear; 7.
the networks to which they belong. Once key stakeholder groups are identified, it is important
to find out what their interests and concerns are and how they are positioned toward the area
and its resources. The interests, concerns and positions of the various stakeholders will differ as a result of factors including tenure,
ownership, history of use, social organization, values and perceptions, and pattern or type of use [17]. For example, the creation of the ‘W’
Biosphere Reserve, located at the intersection of three countries—Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger—addressed a biodiversity conservation goal
at both the national and regional levels. Earlier attempts to conserve certain natural resources in a unilateral way failed and forced the
government to establish compatibility between the conservation of spaces in the reserve and the practices and demands of the community that
uses the area. The
approach used to identify the stakeholders started with a global analysis of the
communities (villages) and focused on physical and socio-economic determinants and the flow of
exchanges, both internal and external, among the communities. The analysis made it possible to identify the
basic territorial organization structures, which explained the strategies for the spatial occupation in the conservation area, the dynamics with
the communities, and the relationships (functional or hierarchical) between them. The eco-functional network (a group of communities whose
relationship is conditioned by common natural resources) resulting from this analysis leads to the identification of ‘homogeneous zones,’ where
use and management rules could become established on a consensus basis [8]. Although stakeholders must be defined broadly in order to
capture a wide range of groups and individuals [11], it is important to note they are also often dangerously simplified, suggesting that interests,
experiences, needs and expectations are homogenous among a given group of people. The reality is far more complex, and methods used in
stakeholder identification and analysis must accept and reveal this complexity, by describing and interpreting the many differences that exist
among certain groups of stakeholders [14]. Moreover, due to the complexity of the ecosystem, some stakeholders can also easily be missed, as
for example illegal harvesters [17]. After
key stakeholders with interests in the proposed ecosystem are
identified, they should be weighted as stakeholders with a primary, secondary or tertiary
interest or stake in the area or its resources [18]. Different stakeholders may be distinguished using some considerations
and criteria, including [13]: 1. existing rights to marine and coastal resources; 2. continuity of relationship to resource (for example: resident
fisher versus migratory fisher); 3. unique knowledge and skills for the management of the resources at stake; 4. losses and damage incurred in
the management process; 5. historical and cultural relations to the resources; 6. degree of economic and social reliance on the resources; 7.
degree of effort and interest in management; 8. equity in the access to the resources and the distribution of benefits from their use; 9.
compatibility of the interests and activities of the stakeholders; 10. present or potential impact of the activities of the stakeholders on the
resource base. Those who score high on several of these considerations and criteria may be considered ‘primary’ stakeholders. Secondary and
tertiary stakeholders may score on only one or two and be involved in a less important way [13]. Shepherd describes primary stakeholders as
‘those who are most dependent upon the resource, and most likely to take an active part in managing it’, while secondary and tertiary
stakeholders are over-powerful voices that may include local government officials and those
who live near the resource but do not greatly depend on it (secondary); and national level
government officials and international conservation organizations (tertiary) [18]. While it is important to have a
well-represented MSP process, it is important to determine if all stakeholder sub-groups are entitled to be involved in the process. Too many
stakeholders can create administrative and resource allocation problems. It is important that the final stakeholders involved be well-balanced;
not too many so as to complicate and slow down the process and not too few so as to leave out some key stakeholders. As such, the issue
of entitlement becomes a central question: ‘Who is entitled to participate in the MSP process?’
It is difficult and is often only accomplished through participation from and negotiation with
groups and individuals to ensure equitable representation in the MSP process. All who believe
themselves stakeholders should be allowed to argue their case for entitlement. The stakeholders with
recognized entitlements may be subdivided between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’, and accorded with different roles, rights and responsibilities.
For example, full-time fishers may be recognized as primary stakeholders and seasonal fishers may be recognized as secondary stakeholders.
Cap
Energy
Only abandoning capitalism can solve the environment – Even a total and immediate
switch to clean energy would only accelerate numerous trends towards ecological
collapse and extinction.
Smith 14 (Richard, an economic historian. He wrote his UCLA history Ph.D. thesis on the transition to capitalism in China and held postdocs at the East-West Center in Honolulu and Rutgers University, Green Capitalism: The God That Failed, Thursday, 09 January 2014,
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21060)
Stern asserted that "the world does not have to choose between averting climate change and promoting growth and development."(40)
But if the science is right that we need to keep emissions below 400 ppm, or even get them back below 350 ppm, then more growth is
out of the question. Indeed, we would have to make radically deeper cuts in GDP than even the 7 percent reduction per year that Stern
calculates would be necessary just to get us down to 450 ppm. Because, under capitalism, a contraction of economic output on anything
like that scale would mean economic collapse and depression, it
is difficult to see how we can make the
reductions in greenhouse gases we have to make to avoid climate catastrophe unless we
abandon capitalism. This is the dilemma. So far most scientists have tended to avoid getting into the contentious economic
side of the question. But with respect to the issue of growth, the science is unequivocal: Never-ending growth means the end of
civilization, if not humanity itself - and in the not-so-distant future. For a summary of the peer-reviewed science on this subject, read a
few chapters of Mark Lynas' harrowing Six Degrees.(41) Global warming is surely the most urgent threat we face, but it is
far
from the only driver of global ecological collapse. For even if we switched to clean renewable
electric power tomorrow, this would not stop the overconsumption of forests, fish,
minerals, fresh water. It would not stop pollution or solve the garbage crisis or stop the
changes in ocean chemistry. Indeed, the advent of cheap, clean energy could even accelerate
these trends.(42) Numerous credible scientific and environmental researchers back up what the climate scientists have been
telling us, to demonstrate why perpetual growth is the road to collective social suicide. For example: In 2005 the United Nations
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment team of 1,300 scientists from 95 countries issued a landmark report on humanity's overconsumption
of "nature's services." The scientists reported that 60 percent (15 of 24) of the ecosystems examined that
are critical for
human survival are being "degraded or used unsustainably," including fresh water, capture fisheries, coral reefs, wetlands,
drylands and forests. Around the world, many of these are deteriorating or on the verge of collapse. Thus nature's ability
to provide the resources for growing future populations is very much in doubt unless radical steps are taken soon.
Econ
Attempting to resolve short term economic crisis papers over massive ongoing
structural violence of capitalism
Shannon and Volcano 12 (Deric and Abby, editor of the Routledge journal Contemporary Anarchist Studies; member of the
Workers Solidarity Alliance and Queers without Borders, “Capitalism in the 2000s in The Accumulation of Freedom”, pg. 87-88)
As Asimakopoulos explains in this collection, capitalism
is prone to periodic "crises." This isn't necessarily a new
insight-a. system based on capital investments creates "bubbles" in expanding industries (i.e., housing, the "dot corn boom," etc.) that
cannot last, but that investors want to make a quick buck off (or a few million, for that matter). When these bubbles "burst" (when they
are no longer profitable), investors stop raking in profits and this can lead to economic downturns-to recessions or, in the case of the
current crisis, depressions. But what do we mean with this discourse of"crisis?" A quick look at the ultra-rich doesn't show a drastic
reduction in comfort and lifestyle. And while unemployment, poverty; precarity, and privation are affecting larger sections of the world's
population, those problems are business as usual for a significant portion of the world. And yet
we declare capitalism in
"crisis" now, For children working in sweatshops, for entire countries struggling with food
insecurity and hunger, for continents grappling with an AIDS crisis that disproportionately
affects our most marginalized populations, for trafficked women and children, for queer
youth struggling to obtain basic resources and kicked out of their homes by fundamentalist
parents, for those people living with the legacy of colonization and slavery-for the majority
of the world's inhabitants capitalism IS the crisis. But the discourse of "crisis" isn't employed until it starts
hurting the collective bottom line of the wealthy. 'This, in and of itself, can be used as an opportunity to discuss the need for socialist
alternatives. And the truth is that capitalism requires these "crises" to function. People talk about events like the 1987 stock market
crash, the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and the dot-corn and housing bubbles and bursts as though they are anomalies. These things are
regular features of capitalism. And those not at the top tiers of our global class system (about 95 percent of the world) are experiencing
crisis every single day-a constant crisis of sorts. So the
discourse surrounding crises themselves seem to
uphold that capitalism is more or less functioning the rest of the time. More and more people are
coming to the realization that this is not the case-and we need to be pressing this point as we battle against austerity. If we want
to avoid "austerity," we need to smash capitalism to pieces. No amount of good-hearted
reform or Keynesian policy is going to substantively address the social crisis that is
capitalism.
MSPs
MSPs use stakeholders to reinforce corporate control as a model-also, the idea that
individuals can hold stakes in the ocean treats the ocean as flat space for human
profitability and also there is inevitable conflict over who gets what stake (retag)
Douvere and Pomeroy 2008 (Fanny, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and Man and the Biosphere Programme
and
Robert, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics/CT Sea Grant, University of Connecticut-Avery Point, “The engagement of
stakeholders in the marine spatial planning process”, http://www.unesco-iocmarinesp.be/uploads/documentenbank/a7c08c25e6fcea567c27ca564135f65a.pdf, AX)
Stakeholder analysis seeks to differentiate and study stakeholders. Stakeholder groups can be divided into smaller and smaller sub-groups
depending upon the particular purpose of stakeholder analysis. The identification of key stakeholders should be inclusive and detailed. More
groups may mean more problems and discussion, but excluding certain groups could lead to problems in the long run. Ultimately, every
individual is a stakeholder, but that level of detail is rarely required. A
key question to be answered in the MSP process
is: who are the stakeholders that are entitled to take part in discussions and in management? Seven
major attributes are important for stakeholder analysis in natural resource management [6]: 1. the various stakeholders
related to the natural resource; 2. the group/coalition and to which they belong and can reasonably be associated with; 3.
the kind and level of interest (and concerns) they have in the natural resource; 4. the importance and influence that each
stakeholder has; 5. the stakeholders’ position toward the use or conservation of natural resource; 6. the multiple ‘hats’ they wear; 7.
the networks to which they belong. Once key stakeholder groups are identified, it is important
to find out what their interests and concerns are and how they are positioned toward the area
and its resources. The interests, concerns and positions of the various stakeholders will differ as a result of factors including tenure,
ownership, history of use, social organization, values and perceptions, and pattern or type of use [17]. For example, the creation of the ‘W’
Biosphere Reserve, located at the intersection of three countries—Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger—addressed a biodiversity conservation goal
at both the national and regional levels. Earlier attempts to conserve certain natural resources in a unilateral way failed and forced the
government to establish compatibility between the conservation of spaces in the reserve and the practices and demands of the community that
uses the area. The
approach used to identify the stakeholders started with a global analysis of the
communities (villages) and focused on physical and socio-economic determinants and the flow of
exchanges, both internal and external, among the communities. The analysis made it possible to identify the
basic territorial organization structures, which explained the strategies for the spatial occupation in the conservation area, the dynamics with
the communities, and the relationships (functional or hierarchical) between them. The eco-functional network (a group of communities whose
relationship is conditioned by common natural resources) resulting from this analysis leads to the identification of ‘homogeneous zones,’ where
use and management rules could become established on a consensus basis [8]. Although stakeholders must be defined broadly in order to
capture a wide range of groups and individuals [11], it is important to note they are also often dangerously simplified, suggesting that interests,
experiences, needs and expectations are homogenous among a given group of people. The reality is far more complex, and methods used in
stakeholder identification and analysis must accept and reveal this complexity, by describing and interpreting the many differences that exist
among certain groups of stakeholders [14]. Moreover, due to the complexity of the ecosystem, some stakeholders can also easily be missed, as
for example illegal harvesters [17]. After
key stakeholders with interests in the proposed ecosystem are
identified, they should be weighted as stakeholders with a primary, secondary or tertiary
interest or stake in the area or its resources [18]. Different stakeholders may be distinguished using some considerations
and criteria, including [13]: 1. existing rights to marine and coastal resources; 2. continuity of relationship to resource (for example: resident
fisher versus migratory fisher); 3. unique knowledge and skills for the management of the resources at stake; 4. losses and damage incurred in
the management process; 5. historical and cultural relations to the resources; 6. degree of economic and social reliance on the resources; 7.
degree of effort and interest in management; 8. equity in the access to the resources and the distribution of benefits from their use; 9.
compatibility of the interests and activities of the stakeholders; 10. present or potential impact of the activities of the stakeholders on the
resource base. Those who score high on several of these considerations and criteria may be considered ‘primary’ stakeholders. Secondary and
tertiary stakeholders may score on only one or two and be involved in a less important way [13]. Shepherd describes primary stakeholders as
‘those who are most dependent upon the resource, and most likely to take an active part in managing it’, while secondary and tertiary
stakeholders are over-powerful voices that may include local government officials and those
who live near the resource but do not greatly depend on it (secondary); and national level
government officials and international conservation organizations (tertiary) [18]. While it is important to have a
well-represented MSP process, it is important to determine if all stakeholder sub-groups are entitled to be involved in the process. Too many
stakeholders can create administrative and resource allocation problems. It is important that the final stakeholders involved be well-balanced;
not too many so as to complicate and slow down the process and not too few so as to leave out some key stakeholders. As such, the issue
of entitlement becomes a central question: ‘Who is entitled to participate in the MSP process?’
It is difficult and is often only accomplished through participation from and negotiation with
groups and individuals to ensure equitable representation in the MSP process. All who believe
themselves stakeholders should be allowed to argue their case for entitlement. The stakeholders with
recognized entitlements may be subdivided between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’, and accorded with different roles, rights and responsibilities.
For example, full-time fishers may be recognized as primary stakeholders and seasonal fishers may be recognized as secondary stakeholders.
Military CP
1NC
Counterplan Text: The Department of Defense should establish a
national coordinated coastal and marine spatial planning system for
the ocean.
Only the Navy’s participation in CMSP will be able to solve for conflict
Schregardus 14 (Donald R. Schregardus, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, winter 2014, Currents, “Ocean Stewardship through
Marine Spatial Planning”, http://greenfleet.dodlive.mil/files/2014/03/Win14_DASNE_Outlook.pdf, LM)
Marine Spatial Planning represents a new and unique opportunity for the Navy to engage with
our communities, states, and regions and other ocean stakeholders early in this voluntary planning process. By
increasing communications and focusing on identifying complementary and sustainable uses for
these areas, we avoid conflicts, improve regulatory efficiencies, and increase ocean
productivity/ benefits. While there have been effective programs addressing these activities in some parts of the country, the
National Ocean Policy represents a first attempt to conduct comprehensive, integrated
planning that includes the federal family, states, tribes, and other stakeholders. Our country is struggling with escalating
costs, duplicative activities, and conflicting priorities on ocean use. A comprehensive planning process, working with all
stakeholders, provides an important venue for the Navy to protect national security equities while
jointly working with of our federal, tribal, state, municipal, and neighborhood partners to responsibly utilize,
manage and protect our ocean and Great Lakes resources. 4 DON represents the Department of Defense (DoD) on the
National Ocean Council. We have established a formal executive steering group within DoD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) comprised of
senior executives and flag officers to ensure that DoD leadership is kept abreast of developments and contributes to national ocean policy
implementation. Our
primary objective is to ensure that operational, training, research and
development, test and evaluation, environmental compliance, and homeland/national security
equities are considered in developing national ocean policy and throughout the marine spatial
planning process. The DoD, with special emphasis on the Navy and the unique role of the Army Corps of Engineers within the DoD, has
interests in each of the nine Regional Planning Bodies (RPB). Accordingly, we have formally designated representatives for both
the DoD and Joint Chiefs for each of the RPBs. These RPB representatives participate in planning activities
and.coordinate activities internally to ensure consistency throughout the DoD. DoD and Navy
leadership strongly support regional planning in the coastal and marine systems to both reduce
spatial and temporal conflicts and to promote healthier and more resilient coasts and oceans.
Additionally, the Navy has offered to serve as the federal co-lead for both the South Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico RPBs given the level of
Navy and other military service activities in the region. Together, these two RPBs largely coincide with the Area of Responsibility for our
Southeast Regional Commander.
The military is key to a successful MSP process
The Maritime Alliance Foundation 14 (The Maritime Alliance Foundation, March 2014, “Marine Spatial Planning in San
Diego & Stakeholder Overview”, http://themaritimealliance.org/pdf/SanDiegoMSP_StakeholderReport_FINAL_March2014.pdf, LM)
MSP is inclusive in its nature and stakeholders should be encouraged to participate in a
comprehensive planning process. Nevertheless, it is possible that some ocean users may feel marginalized during the process
for various reasons ranging from lack of communication, to changing micro-economic factors or mistrust of the process. Some of the
key stakeholder groups that should be involved early in the MSP process include environmental
and conservation groups, local fishermen associations, the military, and tribal organizations.
2NC
First is the overview.
The counter plan is the only way to solve for the plan because the use of the
military is the only way to solve for the links to the disad
A2 “they say”
Perm do both
1. The perm still links to the disad.
2. Their evidence makes no indication that the navy and civilian units can work
together. In fact, it says that the navy is a prerequisite to decision making.
3. The link isn’t shielded because our evidence is pretty good as to say why
Republicans uniquely love the military.
Perm do the plan then the CP
1. Intrinsic perm b/c of the addition of timeframe <add your own voters>
2. Still links to the DA
3. Our Maritime Alliance Foundation indicates that only successful marine solvency
solves
The Military must lead the coastal mapping effort to solve for readiness
Means EITHER the perm links to the Navy DA OR the CP is the only way to solve for the Navy adv.
CNAS 14 (Center for a New American Security, CNAS board members, founders, leaders, scholars, and interns have held or gone on to
prominent positions in the U.S. government, at the departments of Defense and State; the White House; the Central Intelligence Agency;
Congress; and the private sector. CNAS enjoys a strong network of supporters in all corners of the policymaking community as a result, “The
U.S. Military Should Lead A New National Coastal Ocean Mapping Effort Says CNAS Scholars in New Report”, January 30, 2014,
http://www.cnas.org/content/us-military-should-lead-new-national-coastal-ocean-mapping-effort-says-cnas-scholars-new#.U8Z-7Y1dWLq)
Washington, January 30, 2014 -- The
Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has released a new report
calling for the development of a comprehensive coastal ocean mapping system that would
compile, integrate and analyze available data on the coastal ocean to foster information sharing, improve cooperation and
conflict avoidance among the nation's coastal ocean users.¶ ¶ Due to increases in the diversity and
volume of coastal ocean activity, and as numerous users vie for improved access, the potential for conflict rises. The authors
believe this is “highly problematic for the U.S. military, for whom operating in this coastal
environment is critical to maintaining operational readiness.” Monica Medina, Joel Smith and CDR Linda Sturgis,
USCG propose that, "the development of a national coastal ocean mapping system with integrated geospatial data from all coastal ocean users
would be an integral step towards balancing the offshore training needs of the military with the needs of conservation groups and the private
sector."
Among their specific recommendations, Ms. Medina, Mr. Smith and CDR Sturgis, USCG propose that
the U.S. military should lead the coastal ocean mapping effort, with input from public and
private stakeholders. Furthermore, they propose that the nine regional marine planning bodies, created by the national ocean policy,
be empowered to address the competing uses of coastal ocean waters in their respective regions, and that there be a national-level
coordination mechanism to ensure consistency across these bodies.
The military should LEAD the effort
Medina, Smith, and Sturgis 14 (Monica Medina, previously served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and a
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere at NOAA, Joel Smith, Research Associate for the Energy, Environment and
Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, Commander Linda Sturgis, the United States Coast Guard Senior Military Fellow at
the Center for a New American Security, January 2014, Center for a New American Security, “National Costal Ocean Mapping”,
http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/OceanMapping_MedinaSmithSturgis.pdf, LM)
Given the U.S. military’s history of researching and acquiring technology to advance coastal
ocean awareness, we recommend that it lead the mapping effort, with input from public and
private stakeholders. The military should invest in the development of a national coastal ocean
mapping system that would provide regional planning bodies with a unified tool for ocean
planning. Conclusion The development of a national coastal ocean mapping system would benefit
all coastal ocean users and is an integral step toward more effective and thorough ocean
planning. Through comprehensive awareness of major offshore activity, the United States
would simultaneously advance national security, economic development and ocean
conservation.
Perm do the CP
1. Severs from the resolution b/c it says non-military
Military weakens the environment
1. Their cards are talking about an increase in military infrastructure, we use existing
naval infrastructure in a new way
2. Military mapping is key to environmental protection
Medina, Smith, and Sturgis 14 (Monica Medina, previously served as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense and a
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere at NOAA, Joel Smith, Research Associate for the Energy, Environment and
Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, Commander Linda Sturgis, the United States Coast Guard Senior Military Fellow at
the Center for a New American Security, January 2014, Center for a New American Security, “National Costal Ocean Mapping”,
http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/OceanMapping_MedinaSmithSturgis.pdf, LM)
Expanded use of the ocean also has an adverse impact on fisheries and marine mammals, and
some populations are already at risk. For instance, North Atlantic right whales are highly endangered, with a
population of fewer than 450.19 They migrate the length of the east coast twice a year, feeding in heavily fished areas off New England in
summer and calving off the ports of Savannah and Charleston in winter. Measures
have already been implemented to
reduce the likelihood of vessels colliding with the whales, including the establishment of areas
to avoid, traffic separation schemes, recommended routes, mandatory ship reporting areas,
seasonal management areas and dynamic management areas.20 Still, NOAA and others highlight
the potential risk for extinction if shipping lanes are rerouted, underwater fixed structures are
constructed and the Navy continues to use sonar in or along the whales’ migration route .21 Fish
stocks and other living marine resources move freely though the coastal ocean and high seas and are managed through scientific study,
prescriptive fisheries regulations and fisheries management councils. In addition to federal regulations for commercial fisheries management,
certain species can only be recreationally fished during specific time frames. Incorporating
publically available data layers
into a national coastal ocean map would promote sustainable fisheries, annotate marine
protected areas for all coastal ocean users and aid in ocean conservation to protect living
marine resources.
Links to Politics
The public loves the US Military
Pew Research Center ’13 (Pew Research Center, religion and public life project, This report is based on telephone interviews
conducted March 21-April 8, 2013, among a national sample of 4,006 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District
of Columbia. “Public Esteem for Military still high.” 11 July 2013. (http://www.pewforum.org/2013/07/11/public-esteem-for-military-still-high/)
LP)
Americans continue to hold the military in high regard, with more than three-quarters of U.S.
adults (78%) saying that members of the armed services contribute “a lot” to society’s well-being.
That’s a modest decline from 84% four years ago, the last time the Pew Research Center asked the public to rate various professions. But the
military still tops the list of 10 occupational groups, followed closely by teachers, medical doctors, scientists and
engineers. A solid majority of the public says each of those occupations contributes a lot to society.
Military projects align Republican support – especially when plans are distinct from
values.
Feaver et al. 14 Jim Golby and Kyle Dropp and Peter Feaver, Golby holds a ph.d in political science from Standford University and is an
instructor in the department of American Politics, Policy and Strategy at the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, Dropp is a Visiting
Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Democratic Politics, Peter Feaver is an American Professor of
political science and public policy at Duke University and worked at the National Security Council during both Bush and Clinton’s term, "How the
Military Can Influence American Public Opinion",
http://www.gspia.pitt.edu/Portals/26/PDF/How%20the%20Military%20Can%20Influence%20American%20Public%20Opinion%20Golby%20Dro
pp%20Feaver%202014-2-01.pdf, AP
It seems plausible that senior military officers are potential cue-givers that could function in the foreign policy-public opinion space. Military
officers spend long careers developing expert knowledge regarding military strategy and have direct access to classified information concerning
the military capabilities of American forces and potential threats. Average Americans
might view military opinions as
relevant when choosing who will be the next Commander-in-Chief. And they might likewise factor in military
opinion when trying to determine whether to support proposed military missions such as airstrikes against an enemy threatening U.S. interests.
Military cue-givers could operate according to any or all of these three causal mechanisms. For instance, individuals
could believe
that the military share their values - perhaps because they think the military is like-minded in a partisan fashion or
because they think the military viewpoint on foreign policy matches theirs – and credit the military
viewpoint accordingly. Despite high confidence ratings in the military nationally, there are significant differences across political parties -- 92
percent of Republicans have confidence in the military, compared with 64 percent of
Democrats (Golby 2011). Senior military officers overwhelmingly identify as Republicans and
conservatives (Holsti 1998, Feaver 2001, Urben 2010, Dempsey 2009) and evidence suggests that the mass public still views
the military primarily as conservative and Republican.2 For example, four times as many Americans
said that most members of the military are Republicans than said that most members are
Democrats (39 percent to 9 percent).3 Such like-mindedness could extend to foreign policy views. Conservatives and
Republicans are more likely to support missions involving `militant internationalist' or
`realpolitik' goals, but less likely to support `cooperative internationalist' or `humanitarian goals'; in contrast, liberals and Democrats
are likely to support interventions with `humanitarian' goals (Wittkopf 1990, Feaver 2004, Golby 2011). Likewise, the military would
seem to be logical candidates to offer a “second opinion” on a risky course of action such as proposed use of
force. The military have professional expertise directly relevant to determining the prospects of success for any use of force and so a public
skeptical about a President might welcome the additional information that the military endorsement would provide.
CPs
CP Ideas
Norway’s MSP is empirically successful (prob need to retag)
Ehler 11 (Charles N. Ehler, consultant to UNESCO, senior executive in NOAA and EPA, “MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING IN THE ARCTIC: A first step
toward ecosystem-based management,” Aspen Institute, 1/26/11,
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/ee/Aspen_MSP_Report_II.pdf)
Marine spatial planning would be a new approach in most areas of the Arctic. However, in Norway, an ecosystem-based, integrated marine
management plan, including a marine spatial plan, has been developed for the Barents Sea and the ¶ Sea Areas off the Lofoten Islands. It covers
all areas offshore of one nautical mile of the coast within the Norwegian EEZ, as ¶ well as the fishery protection zone around the Svalbard
archipelago—a marine area covering 1.4 million km2. Norway is one ¶ of the few countries that have successfully integrated all major economic
activities—oil and gas development, fisheries, and ¶ marine transport—together with nature conservation in its marine spatial planning
activities. The plan for the Barents Sea ¶ was initiated in 2002 and completed in 2006; the initial plan is now being revised. An integrated
management plan for the ¶ Norwegian Sea (1.17 million km2) has also been developed recently. One of the major issues in the Barents Sea was
the potential expansion of oil and gas activities into areas of the Barents Sea ¶ used by fisheries and living marine resources. MSP is at the core
of the plan, identifying particularly valuable and vulnerable ¶ areas, either from ecological and/or human perspectives. Within the plan access
to specific areas for human activities is ¶ carefully managed, for example, by moving shipping lanes outside Norwegian territorial waters (12
nautical miles), limiting ¶ trawling in sensitive areas, not opening most particularly valuable and vulnerable areas to petroleum activities,
including the ¶ ice edge, and extending marine protected areas and fishery closure areas to protect spawning aggregations, fish eggs and larvae,
¶ and juvenile fish and shellfish.
Monitoring tech (vessel monitoring?)
Abate 2009 (RANDALL S., “Marine Protected Areas as a Mechanism to Promote Marine Mammal Conservation: International and
Comparative Law Lessons for the United States,” Oregon Law Review, Vol. 88, 255, http://law.famu.edu/download/file/Abate%20%20Oregon%20Law%20Review%20Article.pdf, AX)
Monitoring and enforcement are also essential components of properly managed MPAs.
“Monitoring . . . refers to repeated measurements taken at the same site, on the same subjects,
over a specified period of time . . . .”84 It is difficult to determine how effective MPAs are at protecting biodiversity as the
monitoring of a single species in an MPA has proven to be insufficient to assess an MPA’s performance in protecting that species.85 It is
essential, nonetheless, for biodiversity to be monitored since marine mammals and all other marine life depend on a balanced ecosystem for
their survival.86 Factors that make monitoring biodiversity challenging include: (1) the costs and time that biodiversity studies require; (2) the
difficulty of measuring biodiversity, unless all species are “known and can be assessed by those conducting the study”; and (3) the shortcomings
of “traditional numerical measures of species diversity[, which are] often unreliable . . . and prone to spatial error.”87 Due in part to these
challenges, the United States does not yet fully understand “(1) what marine resources the nation protects, (2) how well these resources are
protected, and (3) what, if any, further management may be required to make [the nation’s MPAs] more effective.”88 An
essential step
in promoting marine mammal conservation is monitoring target populations to ensure that the
MPAs appropriately reflect the status and trends of the species.89 Once the MPAs have been established,
further monitoring provides results that are used to assess whether the measures implemented within the MPAs— “maintenance of habitat
quality, species replenishment, and biodiversity conservation”—are working as expected to achieve effective marine mammal conservation.90
Such monitoring feedback not only provides information as to any threat that does, or may, interfere with the effectiveness of MPAs, but it also
ensures that the changes occurring over time within MPAs are documented.91 MPA monitoring should stimulate new research of the marine
environment that could lead to the development of new techniques for assessing marine mammal populations.92 “[M]onitoring
and
enforcement will remain an important tool for the success of MPAs[, which] should be
facilitated by the increasingly affordable use of transponders . . . and other vessel monitoring
systems.”93 Even though MPA designations are on the rise,94 this trend should also raise concerns.95 Even when MPAs have effective
objectives and monitoring in place to promote marine mammal protection, enforcement measures are often lacking.96 Therefore, MPAs are
often perceived as meaningless “paper parks,” and such a stigma will remain accurate without appropriate measures to enforce management
plans.97 Enforcement
measures will also be ineffective in implementing management plans unless
a director is empowered to undertake the task.98 The director will need “the necessary legal
authority, . . . financial resources, and . . . staff” for enforcement measures to be effective in
protecting marine mammals.
Catch Shares Adv CP to Overfishing
This solves competition (so the impact to overfishing) while also solving biod
Rand 2013 (Matt, senior director of campaigns for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Program, “A better way to prevent
overfishing”, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2013/0325/A-better-way-to-prevent-overfishing, AX)
One of those approaches, called “catch shares,” uses a total allowable catch for a species based on
numbers that scientists believe allow the fishery to recover. Fishermen are allotted a share of that
catch, and they can harvest their share whenever they want. There’s no rush to fish in an attempt
to outcompete and no need to go fishing in dangerous weather. Constantly changing fishing
seasons are replaced by a predictability that encourages fishermen to commit to sustainability.
Compliance with fishing limits increases significantly, and there’s a dramatic drop in the amount
of unwanted fish that is tossed overboard. This approach has helped spark a turnaround for many
kinds of fish: red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, Virginia striped bass, mid-Atlantic golden
tilefish, Pacific pollock, whiting and petrale sole, Alaska king crab, and Alaskan pollock – the fish of
choice for McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich. More and more fisheries in US and international waters are managed
with this approach. Today, more than half of all seafood caught in US waters is in catch-share management. That’s good for
fisheries and good for fishermen.
Benton 2008 (David, Executive Director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, “How Alaska keeps its seas from being overfished”,
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/1110/p09s01-coop.html, AX)
Juneau, Alaska — Apocalyptic
predictions have not been entirely relegated to Wall Street these days. We've become quite
used to them when it comes to our seas. In 2006, a major report warned that the world's fisheries
would completely collapse by 2048 if current fishing (and polluting) practices continue. Like the panic on Wall Street,
such predictions cause great anxiety about the state of our world's oceans. I've frankly been
skeptical of alarmist predictions of a worldwide fishery collapse, mainly because here in Alaska, where
more than half of America's fish are caught, we've applied a rigorous science-based system that balances
the interests of both industry and conservation. As a result, we have no overfished stocks, and we've
protected the marine habitat. If we can do it, surely others can as well. But our model of self-policing – which involves
setting strict quotas and sticking to them, as well as including all stakeholders at the decisionmaking table – isn't
applied everywhere, and currently far too many of our world's fisheries are nearing collapse due to
fundamental mismanagement. A new study published recently in the journal Science suggested that a fishery can be
saved by giving those who harvest the sea a guaranteed share of its bounty, rather than having
them compete to see who can extract the most the fastest. The authors surveyed 121 fisheries worldwide
where individuals receive a predetermined portion of a fishery's catch limit and found that they were
half as likely to have collapsed as those without a "catch share" system. In addition, the researchers
found that when a fishery that had relied on traditional methods – such as seasonal limits or overall
catch restrictions – was converted to using catch shares, the change did not just slow the
fishery's decline; it stopped it. Quota share systems are an important tool to conserve fish stocks.
But other steps are equally important – steps such as following scientific recommendations for catch limits, catch monitoring, setting aside fish
habitat, and protecting forage fish. In Alaska, where more than half the nation's seafood is landed – over 5 billion pounds annually – we
incorporate all of these steps into management plans, and as a result none of our groundfish stocks are considered overfished. Due to a unique,
disciplined system of science-based
catch limits and enforcement by forward-looking fishermen, Alaska/North Pacific fisheries
have an astounding 30-year record for sustainable fishing, and were recently cited by National Geographic as being
one of only three well-managed fisheries in the world (Iceland and New Zealand were the other two). All our major salmon,
halibut, and pollock fisheries are certified as sustainable and operate under a quota share system or
other form of access limitation. Catch limits are set by scientists, harvests are closely monitored, and
quotas adhered to. Wide swaths of undersea areas have been set aside to protect needed habitat. Fishery managers incorporate
broader ecosystem concerns into their plans such as protection for forage fish.
DAs
Politics
Plan Unpopular Links
MSP efforts spark backlash from the GOP in Congress
Gaines 13 (Richard, staff writer at Gloucester Times, “GOP bills aid NOAA, not fishing”, Gloucester Times, January 10,
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1746076512/GOP-bills-aid-NOAA-not-fishing)
The National Ocean Policy and marine spatial planning efforts — described by critics as “ocean zoning” — were created in 2010 by an executive
order signed by President Obama; the policy has been bitterly criticized as executive overreach by Rep. Doc Hastings, the Republican chairman
of the House Natural Resources Committee, which has held a series of hearings on the policy. The hearings emphasized that Congress
repeatedly rejected legislation to apply marine spatial planning before it was initiated unilaterally by the White House.
Ocean planning has substantial opposition from Congress and the private sector
Gardner 12 (Lauren, energy and environment policy writer at CQ, “Oceans Plan Meets Wave of GOP Resistance”, CQ Weekly, June 2,
http://public.cq.com/docs/weeklyreport/weeklyreport-000004098268.html)
But President Obama’s critics in Congress are suspicious about the plan — and are aggressively moving to block it. House Natural Resources
Chairman Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican, fears the blueprint will usher in ocean “zoning.” Texas Republican Bill Flores succeeded in
attaching a rider to the fiscal 2013 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill that would bar any expenditures to implement the ocean
policy, and Hastings vows to press for similar language in every spending bill that comes to the House floor. The opposition reflects concerns by
many of the industries that make a living in the coastal waters — including oil and natural gas producers, commercial fishermen and seafood
processors, boat owners and operators, shippers, and sports fishermen. An industry-backed group called the National Ocean Policy Coalition
backs efforts to delay the policy through appropriations riders, saying that “further policy development and implementation should be
suspended until Congress, user groups, and the public have been fully engaged and all potential impacts have been assessed and are
understood.” Critics worry that the administration will pay for its initiative by siphoning money from programs that lawmakers intended to
fund, and they complain that the White House is moving forward without congressional authorization. Some lawmakers predict the plan, which
is expected to be put in final form this summer, will inevitably lead to new regulations that further burden business activities including offshore
drilling, wind power, commercial and recreational fishing, deep-sea fish farming, and boating.
Republicans and other industries hate the plan
Hotakainen 11 (Rob, National correspondent for McClatchy Washington Bureau, “Congress spars over 'ocean zoning'”, McClatchy
Newspapers, October 4, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/04/126154/congress-spars-over-ocean-zoning.html)
WASHINGTON — House members clashed Tuesday over a White House plan that essentially calls for zoning the oceans, with Republicans
charging that it already has created more job-killing bureaucracy and Democrats saying it could give Americans more certainty on how they can
use busy public waters. "It has the potential to stunt economic growth and the jobs associated with that growth," said Rep. Doc Hastings, RWash., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Hastings, who represents an agricultural district, said he feared that the oceanplanning process ultimately could
Marine spatial planning causes massive controversy – GOP fear regulations and future
spending
Rob Hotakainen, Washington Correspondent at McClatchy Newspapers 10-4-2011
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/04/126154/congress-spars-over-ocean-zoning.html DA: 6/4/14
House members clashed Tuesday over a White House plan that essentially calls for zoning the oceans, with Republicans charging that it
already has created more job-killing bureaucracy and Democrats saying it could give Americans more certainty on how they can use busy public waters. "It has the potential to stunt
economic growth and the jobs associated with that growth," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the top-ranked Democrat on the panel,
Hastings, who represents an agricultural district,
said he feared that the ocean-planning process ultimately could lead to new regulations on lands
adjacent to rivers and watersheds that drain into the ocean. "For example," he said, "a farmer working hundreds of miles from the coastline could
be at risk of a new layer of regulatory review based on the ocean." At a committee hearing Tuesday called by Hastings, business groups assailed the proposal , and an
official with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce accused the White House of trying to promote the plan with little fanfare, even though it could have a big impact. "From my vantage point, the
national ocean policy is the most significant issue affecting energy security, job creation and economic growth that no one has heard about," said Christopher Guith, the chamber's vice president for policy. Urging the
White House to back away from the plan, Guith said the proposal would have a "plethora of impacts on the country" and add "yet another maze of real or de facto
likened the idea — formally known as marine spatial planning — to making plans for air space. "Opposing ocean planning is like opposing air-traffic control," he said.
regulation for businesses to attempt to navigate." "At a time of anemic economic growth and persistently high unemployment, the country is looking to its leaders to reverse these trends," Guith said. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., said
the U.S. must do better planning for its waters to reverse its "current destructive path." He called the current situation "a bureaucratic mess," noting that more than 140 federal laws and dozens of agencies have jurisdiction over
ocean space. "The terrifying fact is ... that our ocean economy is at risk," Farr said. "Just this summer, a growing 83-mile dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay was described by scientists as the worst in history." Hastings said he called
he said
the president's new "tangled web of bureaucracy" is sure to lead to White House requests for
more federal spending. "With the stroke of the pen, President Obama created a new, huge, top-down bureaucracy that could override states and local authorities and change the way activities on
the oversight hearing because President Barack Obama acted without congressional approval when he created a task force to come up with new policies to manage the oceans and the nation's coastlines. And
the oceans, coasts and far inland will be managed," Hastings said. "The executive order creates 10 national policies, a 27-member national ocean council, an 18-member governance coordinating committee and nine regional
planning bodies." But most alarming, Hastings said, is "the mandatory ocean zoning ordered to be imposed." "Disguised with the label of coastal marine spatial planning, ocean zoning could place huge sections of the ocean offlimits to activities not zoned as government-approved," Hastings said. He added that the scope of the president's plan "goes well beyond the oceans and includes the federalization of the Great Lakes, where states could be
dictated to by a regional planning body on where certain economic activities are allowed." Barry Rutenberg, chairman-elect of the National Association of Home Builders, said homebuilders already compete in one of the most
He expressed concern that ocean planning
would focus too heavily on climate change. Markey accused opponents of using "scare tactics" by
highly regulated industries and that the already-battered industry cannot be "weighed down by additional regulatory burdens."
suggesting the plan would lead to fewer jobs. He said the word "plan" is not a dirty word and that making plans on how to best use ocean space would promote both commerce and comity, in some cases even allowing
development to move more quickly because rules would already be in place.
Marine spatial planning links – federalism issues and environmental concerns
Carolyn Gramling, staff writer for Science and is the editor of the News of the Week section. She has a doctoral degree in marine
geochemistry from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program for Oceanography, as well
as bachelor’s degrees in geology and history 3-1-
2010 http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/sea-sprawl-blue-frontier-ocean-development
DA: 6/4/14
regulatory “fragmentation” when it comes to many ocean issues makes the oceans a “regulatory
orphan,” as Florida State University law professor Robin Kundis Craig wrote in the University of Colorado Law Review in 2008. Throughout the past decade, stakeholders and policymakers alike have increasingly called for
more streamlined government plans for managing ocean-based industries, including offshore aquaculture. The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, convened in 2000 by Congress to
assess the health of the oceans, published a report in 2004 that called for the establishment of a national council on ocean policy to coordinate the various agencies’ work. A similar
U.S.
report published in 2003 by the Pew Oceans Commission also called for a national oceans council, finding that the confusion over conflicting mandates between agencies made it difficult to regulate environmental concerns such as
non-point-source pollution. Shortly after the U.S. Commission’s report, an interdisciplinary group of scientists focused on offshore aquaculture, outlining a policy framework on the subject for NOAA. The group also recommended
But none of this has happened yet. A
pair of 2007 House and Senate bills to provide authority to the Department of Commerce (the department that includes NOAA) to establish a regulatory
system for offshore aquaculture in the Exclusive Economic Zone didn’t even make it out of committee, in part because they lacked sufficient environmental
safeguards, Leonard says. “They were widely criticized as fundamentally flawed ,” he adds. For example, the bills left many environmental mitigation
the creation of a new NOAA Office of Offshore Aquaculture to oversee leasing, environmental review and monitoring of the fledgling industry.
measures up to the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce, rather than establishing legally binding national standards. “Many of us were concerned that that kind of discretion opens the door for putting ocean ecosystems at
As with questions of marine spatial planning in general, different interests still debate whether
there should be a national aquaculture policy and regulation or regional policies. When it comes to fisheries in state waters, regional
risk,” Leonard says.
management has long taken precedence over national policy. NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (first enacted in 1976 and later amended in 1996
and 2007), is responsible for managing commercial fishing operations, including regulatory requirements on permits and size limits. But most of the management decisions and fishing regulations are determined regionally by eight
regional fishery management councils, each consisting of various stakeholders related to the fishing industry, as well as state and federal representatives.
Ocean zoning cause controversy – GOP House opposition
Zeke Grader is Executive Director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, December 2010 “What Fisheries Might
Expect in the New Congress” http://www.pcffa.org/fn-dec10.htm DA: 6/6/14
Marine Protected Areas/Marine Zoning. Here there is good news. Keep in mind, marine protected areas can be a useful tool where there's a
demonstrated need and good science is applied. Likewise, marine spatial planning could be helpful in the future to resolve space use conflicts between competing ocean uses. However, our
concern has been with the misuse of the former and the unknown application of the latter. It
has been extremely difficult to bring any
rationality into the debate on the application and siting of marine protected areas. Instead they've become a cash cow for environmental groups, pocketing massive
amounts of foundation grants to fund their campaigns, whether or not there is any need or the science to justify such closures. Some green groups have begun sounding like salesmen for
monster pick-ups or Internet shills for male enhancement pills -- "bigger is better." Then there have been the academics sniffing-out grants from writing or testifying about the benefits of
marine reserves -- whether or not the science is credible. Follow that up with politicians and bureaucrats falling in line to promote marine reserves to get their League of Conservation Voters
new
national monuments would be carefully scrutinized by the new Congress is welcome. This should help to
slow the process down. The one downside is that the new House is less likely to want to tackle pollution and water quality issues that have to be addressed -- not just fishing green points -- either trying for a perfect score or to avoid a goose egg -- and you can kiss off any kind of measured, rational discussion. The announcement then (see below) that
- to make an effective marine protected area. Indeed, many of the already designated areas protect little, they're merely no fishing zones, sort of like Maginot Lines in the sea readily
penetrated by pollution and oil spills. But then we haven't seen much from politicians or bureaucrats, to date, at either the federal or state level with the backbone to address water quality
issues affecting MPAs. So what's the difference here?
The new House leadership will also likely slow down the rush to
"marine spatial planning." A two-year slow down to allow for a more thoughtful, consensus driven, marine zoning policy to evolve would be welcome. The way we'd
envision this happening is that implementation of spatial planning getting held up in the House Resources Committee could then lead
to off-the-Hill discussions among the various interest groups (fishing, conservation, maritime) to forge an acceptable policy. In the House there is, or should be, concern
from the fishing industry about the leadership's closeness with Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Development, Big Pharma and
Big Insurance. On the other hand, they don't owe Big Green anything.
On-Case
EMBs Bad
Overfishing?
Fishing limits as a result of “sustainable” environmental policies like EBMs often lead
to error resulting in depletion of marine populations
Ainley et al. 14 (David, Peter Adams, and Jaime Jahncke, H.T. Harvey & Assoc., Adams Fisheries Consulting, Pointe Blue Conservation
Science, “Towards Ecosystem-Based Fishery Management in the California Current System – Predators and the Preyscape: A Workshop”, H.T.
Harvey & Assoc., Adams Fisheries, and Pointe Blue Conservation Science, March 2014,
http://www.pointblue.org/uploads/assets/calcurrent/REPORT_Forage_Fish_Workshop_FINAL.pdf)
Policy application: The length and overall impact of the swings in abundance exhibited by forage species are a necessary challenge to assess in
real time, as indicated by anchovies and sardines, but miscalculation can lead to severe depletion and/or delay of recovery until environmental
conditions improve. Because of this uncertainty and realizing that we lack all that we’d like to know about what affects abundance, no fishery
on such forage species can be classed as “sustainable” in the conventional sense of being able to support some level of harvest indefinitely.
Ultimately, the sustainability of fisheries on forage species will require increasing accuracy in real time assessments, an improved
understanding of the mechanisms that lead to variable productivity in such populations over time and space, and an overall precautionary and
adaptive approach to setting harvest quotas.
MSPs Bad
MSPs sound good in theory but fail in practice- multiple stakeholders ensures
complicated negotiations and new boundaries trigger conflict
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1,
Sea?http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
MSP is applied to social and ecological systems (SESs) that are inherently diverse, complex and
dynamic, and work at multiple scales. Accordingly, MSP deals with problems that Rittel and Webber (1973) termed “wicked”
(cf. also Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009). In such situations, one should not expect quick fixes; the problems are not
expected to go away anytime soon. As wicked problems they are not solved once and for all but need constant attention, and
it is hard to determine if and when they are solved, and for how long. They can at best be “tamed.” Solutions are less than ideal
and never given. Instead they are negotiated among stakeholders who tend to have different
ideas about what the problem is. Decisions would therefore require compromise if agreement
cannot be made. In fact, the latter makes MSP a wicked problem in itself. As such it makes sense in
theory, but is onerous in practice. As marine space gets more and more congested by the day,
users find themselves in a situation where more space for one means less for others. Agreeing
on how to allocate space among different user groups requires negotiation and cooperation. A
complicating factor is that cross-border interaction in these spaces is unavoidable. For instance, fishing
fleets are mobile and cannot easily be fenced in. While the fishing grounds may be stationary, the fishers
themselves must move between varying areas depending on the fishing season and the species
targeted. Likewise, oilrigs and marine aquaculture installations situated on fishing grounds or near
shipping lanes may interfere with each other trigger conflict. This also frequently happens when
marine protected areas (MPAs) interfere with fishing patterns.
Social Justice Turn
MSP generates conflict and inequality- a stakeholder approach ensures that fishers are
given less input than more wealthy shareholders- leads to commercial development in
favor of local fishers
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, “Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North”, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1, Sea?,
http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
Marine legislation and management traditionally follow a sectoral approach, such as for fisheries
specifically. They are not designed to fit the whole system, nor do they always facilitate cross-sector interactions.
As a consequence, when aggregated to a regional level, i.e. the North Sea, the entire governance system
may be less than optimal and prone to create conflict. With such fragmentation, fishers being a weaker
party relative to other stakeholders may easily be unable to influence the process and protect
themselves from being pushed aside. MSP is no guarantee of a fair and just process unless it is
able to break this pattern and create avenues for a more holistic and equitable approach. For
instance, with the “spatial turn” (St. Martin and Hall-Arbor 2008) in marine governance, fishers find themselves in situations
where they need to negotiate spatial claims with other user-groups, many of whom only recently arrived in
their traditional area. Sometimes fishers are forced to yield, simply because they do not have the clout they
need to set the stage. In other case, diplomacy may work. Interestingly, fishers from Urk, a community in the Netherlands, who were
cited by Toonen and Mol (2013: 298), expressed: “Of course, closing fishing grounds is hurtful. We are fishermen! For generations, our family
has been fishing at the North Sea. But today’s world is different, fishermen are no longer kings in a sole domain. We have to deal with all kinds
of other marine activities demanding space. And we have to face that eNGOs, consumers and the whole public is watching us. Collaboration
and finding compromises are the only way forward.”
MSP destroys social justice- fisher communities are displaced by wealthy stakeholders
and large corporations who encroach on territorially defined boundaries
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, “Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North”, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1, Sea?,
http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
Still there
is a need to be cautious. MSP may not appear to be a win-win. On the contrary, for the least
powerful stakeholders, those who are poorly represented and who have few resources to back
up their claims, they risk being ignored in the planning process. For them MSP may add further
pressure and result in a loss. As illustrated in this paper, there is reason to assume that fishers and their
communities may be within this group of stakeholders. MSP is a governance mechanism that
may provide a more secure tenure but it also involves the risk of losing it, for instance as a result of
spatial mapping. They have therefore reason to be ambivalent regarding this new tool and how it
works from a fisheries governance perspective. Leaving stakeholders to fight for space on their
own is a recipe for social and ecological failure. It would also have implications regarding social
justice as some user-groups do not only have more urgent needs and stakes than others, but
their powers to protect their interests, define the problems, and shape the planning process are
not equally distributed. Fisheries have large stakes but relative to other users such as the oil or
shipping industry, they are a small player risking to be displaced. Therefore, spatial ordering
through zoning is necessary also as a protective measure, but territorial boundaries cannot
always be impenetrable, especially for fishers who need to remain mobile.
MPAs Bad
MPAs fail- they’re unpopular and provoke conflict
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, “Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North”, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1, Sea?,
http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
User-conflicts are likely to magnify and intensify as more and more MPAs are created. Uses for
the same space are often incompatible and, if ways for different uses to co-exist cannot be
found, it remains logical they must be kept apart. No wonder therefore that MPAs have received mixed
support by fishers who find them as an intrusion into their freedom of access and movement
(Jentoft et al. 2007). Fishers have their own precautionary principle in place (Degnbol and Wilson 2008). In the face of uncertainty, they do
not easily put their livelihood or community at risk. That is also one reason why MPAs globally have
received less support in the fishing population than many would have expected, and why they
have been much slower in their implementation than originally anticipated (Chuenpagdee et al. 2013).
Biodiversity
1nc biodiversity advantage frontline
1. Marine protected areas can’t solve- even future efforts fail due to international
backlash
Valentine 14 – Katie Valentine, reporter for Climate Progress, interned with American Progress in the Energy department, doing
research on international climate policy and contributing to Climate Progress, graduated from the University of Georgia in 2012 with a bachelor
of arts in journalism and a minor in ecology. (“Most Marine Protected Areas Don’t Successfully Protect Marine Life, Study Says”, Climate
Progress, February 7 2014, Available at: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/02/07/3260781/marine-protected-areas-working/, Accessed
on: 7/31/2014, IJ)
Most marine protected areas aren’t doing their jobs to project fish and other aquatic life,
according to new research from the University of Tasmania.
The study, published this week in Nature, found that 59 percent of the marine protected areas (MPAs) looked at
by researchers were “not ecologically distinguishable from fished sites.” MPAs are set up to protect marine life and
habitat but operate under vastly different rules and regulations from region to region — some even allow seabed mining, and
most allow some level of fishing. The study looked at five markers that determine the success of
an MPA: how much fishing is allowed in the MPA, how well enforced that fishing rule is, the age and size of the MPA, and whether the MPA
is an isolated environment or surrounded by habitat that was desirable to aquatic life but isn’t in the protected zone. The researchers found
that a successful MPA had at least four out of five of these markers — it prohibited fishing, was well enforced, had been protected for longer
than 10 years, was larger than 100 square km (about 38.6 square miles) and was isolated by deep water or sand, so that fish wouldn’t pass
easily between protected and unprotected areas. The MPAs that had four out of five of the parameters had twice as many large fish species
and 14 times more shark biomass per transect as regular fished areas. This increase in species richness and abundance has been documented in
regions that have closed parts of their waters to fishing — when a town on Mexico’s Gulf of California banned fishing, it saw its marine biomass
increase by
463 percent from 1995 to 2009.
The study’s results highlight the fact that, while the number MPAs are “increasing rapidly”
around the world, these MPAs need to be better managed if they are to successfully protect
marine life.
“Our
results show that global conservation targets based on area alone will not optimise
protection of marine biodiversity,” Graham Edgar, lead author of the report, told the Guardian. “More emphasis is
needed on better MPA design, durable management and compliance to ensure that MPAs achieve their desired conservation value .”
Globally, just 2.8 percent of the oceans are protected by some sort of MPA, and less than half
of this protected ocean area is closed completely to fishing. Last year, there were international
talks on a proposal to create what would have been one of the world’s largest marine reserves
off the coast of Antarctica, but they failed after resistance from fishing interests in Russia, Ukraine and
China. The lack of MPAs and the fact that many MPAs aren’t effective puts additional strain on an ocean ecosystem that’s stretched thin
from overfishing and that’s gravely threatened from the effects of ocean acidification.
2. Ocean and ecosystem collapse is hype
Delingpole 4/4 (James Delingpole, English columnist and novelist for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator, “World
Doing Just Fine; Global Warming Is Good; CO2 Is Our Friend Say Scientists,” Breitbart, 4/4/14, http://www.breitbart.com/BreitbartLondon/2014/04/04/World-doing-just-fine-Global-Warming-is-Good-CO2-is-our-friend-say-Scientists)
The latest verdict is in on 'climate change' - and the news is good. The planet is greening, the oceans are blooming, food production is up,
animals are thriving and humans are doing better than ever: and all thanks to CO2 and global warming. So say the authors of the latest Climate
Change Reconsidered report by the NIPCC - that's the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change, an independent research
body funded by the Heartland Institute. The scientific team, led by atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, geographer and agronomist Craig Idso,
research physicist Sherwood B. Idso and marine geologist Bob Carter, has assessed the peer-reviewed evidence and reached a conclusion
somewhat different from the scaremongering narrative which has been promoted in the last week by the IPCC and its amen corner in the
mainstream media: reports
of the planet's imminent demise have been somewhat exaggerated ; in fact
we're doing just fine. Here are their latest report's key findings. Biological Impacts Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant and is
greening the planet. Far from damaging food production it is helping to increase it, as are rising
temperatures. Ecosystems are thriving and rising CO2 levels and temperatures pose no
significant threat to aquatic life. Global warming will have a negligible effect on human morbidity and the spread of infectious
diseases but will, on balance, be beneficial because cold is a deadlier threat to the human species than warmth .
CO2, Plants And Soil Numerous studies show that CO2 is good for plants, increasing their growth-rate,
reducing their reliance on water and making them less vulnerable to stress. Increased CO2 has resulted in
reduced topsoil erosion, has encouraged beneficial bacteria, and improved aerial fertilization - creating more plantlife which will help sequester
the carbon apparently of so much concern to environmentalists. Plant Characteristics Rising CO2 will improve plant growth, development and
yield. It
enables plants to produce more - and larger - flowers, thus increasing productivity. It also
helps plants grow more disease-resistant. Earth's Vegetative Future Rising CO2 has led to a greening of the planet. Agricultural production has
increased dramatically across the globe in the last three decades, partly because of new technologies but partly also because of the beneficial
warmth and increased CO2. Terrestrial Animals There
is little if any evidence to support the IPCC's predictions
of species extinction which are based mainly on computer models rather than hard data.
Amphibian populations will suffer little, if any, harm. Bird populations may have been affected by habitat loss - but not by "climate change" to
which they are more than capable of adapting. Polar bears have survived periods climatic change considerably more extreme than the ones
currently being experienced. Butterflies, insects, reptiles and mammals tend on balance to proliferate rather than be harmed by "climate
change." Aquatic Life Multiple studies from multiple oceanic regions confirm that productivity - from phytoplankton and microalgae to corals,
crustaceans and fish - tends to increase with temperature. Some experts predict coral calcification will increase by about 35 per cent beyond
pre-industrial levels by 2100, with no extinction of coral reefs. Laboratory
studies predicting lower PH levels - "ocean
acidification" - fail to capture the complexities of the real world and often contradict
observations in nature. Human Health Warmer temperatures result in fewer deaths associated with cardiovascular disease,
respiratory illness and strokes. In the US a person who dies of cold loses on average in excess of ten years of life, whereas someone who dies
from heat loses likely no more than a few days or weeks of life. Between 3 and 7 per cent of the gains in longevity in the US in the last three
decades are the result of people moving to warmer states. There is a large body of evidence to suggest that the spread of malaria will NOT
increase as a result of global warming. Rising CO2 is increasing the nutritional value of food with consequent health benefits for humans. The
report concludes: The
impact of rising temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 levels in the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has not been anything like what IPCC would have us
believe and its forecasts differ wildly from those sound science would suggest . Either IPCC's authors
purposely ignore this research because it runs counter to their thesis that any human impact on climate must be bad and therefore stopped at
any cost or they are inept and have failed to conduct a proper and full scientific investigation of the pertinent literature. Either way, IPCC is
misleading the scientific community, policymakers and the general public. Because the stakes are high this is a grave disservice.
3. Scientific study says climate change solves ecosystem biodiversity
Bastasch 5/15 (Michael Bastasch, “Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World,” Daily Caller, 05/15/2014,
http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasing-biodiversity-around-the-world/#ixzz37jn1MRk6)
A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not
harming biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various ecosystems. Environmentalists have long
warned that global warming could lead to mass extinctions as fragile ecosystems around the world are made unlivable as temperatures
a team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan found that
global warming has not led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity has increased in
many areas on land and in the ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased markedly as a result of human
activity across the biosphere, conservation has focused on endangered species rather than on shifts in
assemblages,” reads the editor’s abstract of the report. The study says “species turnover” was
increase. But
“above expected but do not find evidence of systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract
adds that the result “could be caused by homogenization of species assemblages by invasive
species, shifting distributions induced by climate change, and asynchronous change across the planet.”
Researchers reviewed 100 long-term species monitoring studies from around the world and found increasing biodiversity
in 59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies. The rate of change in biodiversity was
modest in all of the studies, biologists said. But one thing in particular that shocked the study’s authors was that there were major
shifts in the types of species living in ecosystems. About 80 percent of the ecosystems analyzed showed species
changes of an average of 10 percent per decade — much greater than anyone has previously predicted. This,
however, doesn’t mean that individual species aren’t being harmed by changing climates. The
study noted that, for example, coral reefs in many areas of the world are being replaced by a type of algae. “In the oceans we no longer have
many anchovies, but we seem to have an awful lot of jellyfish,” Nick Gotelli, a biologist at the University of Vermont and one of the study’s
authors, told RedOrbit.com. “Those kinds of changes are not going to be seen by just counting the number of species that are present.” “We
move species around,” Gotelli added. “There is a huge ant diversity in Florida, and about 30 percent of the ant species are non-natives. They
have been accidentally introduced, mostly from the Old World tropics, and they are now a part of the local assemblage. So you
can have
increased diversity in local communities because of global homogenization.” The study comes with huge
implications for current species preservation strategies, as most operate under the assumption that biodiversity will decrease in a warming
world. But if biodiversity is increasing, then conservationists may need a new way to monitor the effects of global warming on ecosystems.
4. MSPs sound good in theory but fail in practice- multiple stakeholders ensures
complicated negotiations and new boundaries trigger conflict
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1,
Sea?http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
MSP is applied to social and ecological systems (SESs) that are inherently diverse, complex and
dynamic, and work at multiple scales. Accordingly, MSP deals with problems that Rittel and Webber (1973) termed “wicked”
(cf. also Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009). In such situations, one should not expect quick fixes; the problems are not
expected to go away anytime soon. As wicked problems they are not solved once and for all but need constant attention, and
it is hard to determine if and when they are solved, and for how long. They can at best be “tamed.” Solutions are less than ideal
and never given. Instead they are negotiated among stakeholders who tend to have different
ideas about what the problem is. Decisions would therefore require compromise if agreement
cannot be made. In fact, the latter makes MSP a wicked problem in itself. As such it makes sense in
theory, but is onerous in practice. As marine space gets more and more congested by the day,
users find themselves in a situation where more space for one means less for others. Agreeing
on how to allocate space among different user groups requires negotiation and cooperation. A
complicating factor is that cross-border interaction in these spaces is unavoidable. For instance, fishing
fleets are mobile and cannot easily be fenced in. While the fishing grounds may be stationary, the fishers
themselves must move between varying areas depending on the fishing season and the species
targeted. Likewise, oilrigs and marine aquaculture installations situated on fishing grounds or near
shipping lanes may interfere with each other trigger conflict. This also frequently happens when
marine protected areas (MPAs) interfere with fishing patterns.
5. No impact to biodiversity loss – species and environments are adaptive
Times 09
“Experts say that Fears Surrounding Climate Change are overblown”, 6 November 2009,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6905082.ece, [Zheng]
Alarming predictions that climate change will lead to the extinction of hundreds of species may
be exaggerated, according to Oxford scientists. They say that many biodiversity forecasts have
not taken into account the complexities of the landscape and frequently underestimate the
ability of plants and animals to adapt to changes in their environment. “The evidence of climate
change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed,” said Professor Kathy Willis, a long-term
ecologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the article. Professor Willis warned that alarmist
reports were leading to ill-founded biodiversity policies in government and some major
conservation groups. She said that climate change has become a “buzz word” that is taking priority while, in practice, changes in
human use of land have a greater impact on the survival of species. “I’m certainly not a climate change denier, far from it, but we have to have
sound policies for managing our ecosystems,” she said. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature backed the article, saying that
climate change is “far from the number-one threat” to the survival of most species. “There are so many other immediate threats that, by the
time climate change really kicks in, many species will not exist anymore,” said Jean Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN species program,
which is responsible for compiling the international Redlist of endangered species. He listed hunting, overfishing, and destruction of habitat by
humans as more critical for the majority of species. However, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds disagreed, saying that climate change
was the single biggest threat to biodiversity on the planet. “There’s an absolutely undeniable affect that’s happening now,” said John Clare, an
RSPB spokesman. “There have been huge declines in British sea birds.” The
article, published today in the journal
Science, reviews recent research on climate change and biodiversity, arguing that many
simulations are not sufficiently detailed to give accurate predictions. In particular, the
landscape is often described at very low resolution, not taking into account finer variations in
vegetation and altitude that are vital predictors for biodiversity. In one analysis of the likelihood of survival of
alpine plant species in the Swiss Alps, the landscape was depicted with a 16km by 16km (10 miles by 10 miles) grid scale. This model predicted
that all suitable habitats for alpine plants would have disappeared by the end of the century. When the simulation was repeated with a 25m by
25m (82ft by 82ft) scale, the model predicted that areas of suitable habitat would remain for all plant species. The
article suggests
that migration to new regions and changes in living patterns of species would take place but
that actual extinction would be rare. Other studies comparing predictions of extinction rates
with actual extinction rates have come to similar conclusions. According to a high-profile paper
published in the journal Nature in 2004, up to 35 per cent of bird species would be extinct by
2050 due to changes in climate. To be on track to meet this figure, Professor Keith Bennett,
head of geography at Queen’s University Belfast, calculated that about 36 species would have
to have become extinct each year between 2004 and 2008. In reality, three species of bird
became extinct. He said that many species are far more versatile than some prediction models
give them credit for. “If it gets a couple of degrees warmer than they’re comfortable with, they don’t just die, they move,” he said.
Squo Solves
Scientific study says climate change solves ecosystem biodiversity
Bastasch 5/15 (Michael Bastasch, “Global Warming Is Increasing Biodiversity Around The World,” Daily Caller, 05/15/2014,
http://dailycaller.com/2014/05/15/global-warming-is-increasing-biodiversity-around-the-world/#ixzz37jn1MRk6)
A new study published in the journal Science has astounded biologists: global warming is not
harming biodiversity, but instead is increasing the range and diversity of species in various ecosystems. Environmentalists have long
warned that global warming could lead to mass extinctions as fragile ecosystems around the world are made unlivable as temperatures
a team of biologists from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan found that
global warming has not led to a decrease in biodiversity. Instead, biodiversity has increased in
many areas on land and in the ocean. “Although the rate of species extinction has increased markedly as a result of human
activity across the biosphere, conservation has focused on endangered species rather than on shifts in
assemblages,” reads the editor’s abstract of the report. The study says “species turnover” was
“above expected but do not find evidence of systematic biodiversity loss.” The editor’s abstract
adds that the result “could be caused by homogenization of species assemblages by invasive
species, shifting distributions induced by climate change, and asynchronous change across the planet.”
Researchers reviewed 100 long-term species monitoring studies from around the world and found increasing biodiversity
in 59 out of 100 studies and decreasing biodiversity in 41 studies. The rate of change in biodiversity was
modest in all of the studies, biologists said. But one thing in particular that shocked the study’s authors was that there were major
shifts in the types of species living in ecosystems. About 80 percent of the ecosystems analyzed showed species
changes of an average of 10 percent per decade — much greater than anyone has previously predicted. This,
however, doesn’t mean that individual species aren’t being harmed by changing climates. The
increase. But
study noted that, for example, coral reefs in many areas of the world are being replaced by a type of algae. “In the oceans we no longer have
many anchovies, but we seem to have an awful lot of jellyfish,” Nick Gotelli, a biologist at the University of Vermont and one of the study’s
authors, told RedOrbit.com. “Those kinds of changes are not going to be seen by just counting the number of species that are present.” “We
move species around,” Gotelli added. “There is a huge ant diversity in Florida, and about 30 percent of the ant species are non-natives. They
have been accidentally introduced, mostly from the Old World tropics, and they are now a part of the local assemblage. So you
can have
increased diversity in local communities because of global homogenization.” The study comes with huge
implications for current species preservation strategies, as most operate under the assumption that biodiversity will decrease in a warming
world. But if biodiversity is increasing, then conservationists may need a new way to monitor the effects of global warming on ecosystems.
No Impact
Ocean and ecosystem collapse is hype
Delingpole 4/4 (James Delingpole, English columnist and novelist for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator, “World
Doing Just Fine; Global Warming Is Good; CO2 Is Our Friend Say Scientists,” Breitbart, 4/4/14, http://www.breitbart.com/BreitbartLondon/2014/04/04/World-doing-just-fine-Global-Warming-is-Good-CO2-is-our-friend-say-Scientists)
The latest verdict is in on 'climate change' - and the news is good. The planet is greening, the oceans are blooming, food production is up,
animals are thriving and humans are doing better than ever: and all thanks to CO2 and global warming. So say the authors of the latest Climate
Change Reconsidered report by the NIPCC - that's the Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change, an independent research
body funded by the Heartland Institute. The scientific team, led by atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, geographer and agronomist Craig Idso,
research physicist Sherwood B. Idso and marine geologist Bob Carter, has assessed the peer-reviewed evidence and reached a conclusion
somewhat different from the scaremongering narrative which has been promoted in the last week by the IPCC and its amen corner in the
mainstream media: reports
of the planet's imminent demise have been somewhat exaggerated ; in fact
we're doing just fine. Here are their latest report's key findings. Biological Impacts Atmospheric CO2 is not a pollutant and is
greening the planet. Far from damaging food production it is helping to increase it, as are rising
temperatures. Ecosystems are thriving and rising CO2 levels and temperatures pose no
significant threat to aquatic life. Global warming will have a negligible effect on human morbidity and the spread of infectious
diseases but will, on balance, be beneficial because cold is a deadlier threat to the human species than warmth .
CO2, Plants And Soil Numerous studies show that CO2 is good for plants, increasing their growth-rate,
reducing their reliance on water and making them less vulnerable to stress. Increased CO2 has resulted in
reduced topsoil erosion, has encouraged beneficial bacteria, and improved aerial fertilization - creating more plantlife which will help sequester
the carbon apparently of so much concern to environmentalists. Plant Characteristics Rising CO2 will improve plant growth, development and
yield. It enables plants to produce more - and larger - flowers, thus increasing productivity. It also
helps plants grow more disease-resistant. Earth's Vegetative Future Rising CO2 has led to a greening of the planet. Agricultural production has
increased dramatically across the globe in the last three decades, partly because of new technologies but partly also because of the beneficial
warmth and increased CO2. Terrestrial Animals There
is little if any evidence to support the IPCC's predictions
of species extinction which are based mainly on computer models rather than hard data .
Amphibian populations will suffer little, if any, harm. Bird populations may have been affected by habitat loss - but not by "climate change" to
which they are more than capable of adapting. Polar bears have survived periods climatic change considerably more extreme than the ones
currently being experienced. Butterflies, insects, reptiles and mammals tend on balance to proliferate rather than be harmed by "climate
change." Aquatic Life Multiple studies from multiple oceanic regions confirm that productivity - from phytoplankton and microalgae to corals,
crustaceans and fish - tends to increase with temperature. Some experts predict coral calcification will increase by about 35 per cent beyond
pre-industrial levels by 2100, with no extinction of coral reefs. Laboratory
studies predicting lower PH levels - "ocean
acidification" - fail to capture the complexities of the real world and often contradict
observations in nature. Human Health Warmer temperatures result in fewer deaths associated with cardiovascular disease,
respiratory illness and strokes. In the US a person who dies of cold loses on average in excess of ten years of life, whereas someone who dies
from heat loses likely no more than a few days or weeks of life. Between 3 and 7 per cent of the gains in longevity in the US in the last three
decades are the result of people moving to warmer states. There is a large body of evidence to suggest that the spread of malaria will NOT
increase as a result of global warming. Rising CO2 is increasing the nutritional value of food with consequent health benefits for humans. The
report concludes: The
impact of rising temperatures and higher atmospheric CO2 levels in the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has not been anything like what IPCC would have us
believe and its forecasts differ wildly from those sound science would suggest. Either IPCC's authors
purposely ignore this research because it runs counter to their thesis that any human impact on climate must be bad and therefore stopped at
any cost or they are inept and have failed to conduct a proper and full scientific investigation of the pertinent literature. Either way, IPCC is
misleading the scientific community, policymakers and the general public. Because the stakes are high this is a grave disservice.
No coral reefs impact –Co2 isn’t responsible.
Carter et al, 11 (Robert M. Carter, Craig D. Idso, S. Fred Singer, 2011,
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC,”
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf, AS)
Howell 10 (Katie Howell, freelance writer and editor for New York Times, USA Today, Scientific American, “Is Algae Worse than Corn for
Biofuels?,” Scientific American, 1/22/10, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/algae-biofuel-growth-environmental-impact/)
While some corals exhibit a propensity to bleach ¶ and die when sea temperatures rise, others exhibit a ¶ positive
relationship between calcification, or ¶ growth, and temperature. ―Such variable bleaching ¶
susceptibility implies that there is a considerable ¶ variation in the extent to which coral species
are ¶ adapted to local environmental conditions‖ ¶ (Maynard et al., 2008). ¶ ¶
suggests corals have effective ¶ adaptive responses to climate change, such as ¶ symbiont
shuffling, that allow reefs in some areas ¶ to flourish despite or even because of rising ¶
temperatures. Coral reefs have been able to recover ¶ quickly from bleaching events as well as
damage ¶ from cyclones. ¶ ¶
¶ attributed to global
warming are often due to other ¶ things, including rising levels of nutrients and ¶ toxins in coastal
waters caused by runoff from ¶ agricultural activities on land and associated ¶ increases in
sediment delivery. ¶ ¶
¶ atmospheric CO2 concentrations
are lowering the ¶ pH values of oceans and seas, a process called ¶ acidification, and that this
could harm aquatic life. ¶ But the drop in pH values that could be attributed ¶ to CO2 is tiny
compared to natural variations ¶ occurring in some ocean basins as a result of ¶ seasonal
variability, and even day-to-day variations ¶ in many areas. Recent estimates also cut in half the
¶ projected pH reduction of ocean waters by the year ¶ 2100 (Tans, 2009). ¶ ¶
-world data
contradict predictions about the ¶ negative effects of rising temperatures, rising CO2 ¶
concentrations, and falling pH on aquatic life. ¶ Studies of algae, jellyfish, echinoids, abalone,
sea ¶ urchins, and coral all find no harmful effects ¶ attributable to CO2 or acidification.
Increase in CO2 cannot increase ocean acidification
SPPI & Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change 10 (A New Propaganda Film by
Natl. Resources Defense Council Fails the Acid Test of Real World Data Written by SPPI & Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
Change Tuesday, 05 January 2010 14:00)
Why can’t rising atmospheric CO2 acidify the oceans? First, because it has not done so before. During the Cambrian era, 550 million years ago,
there was 20 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today: yet that is when the calcite corals first achieved algal symbiosis. During
the Jurassic era, 175 million years ago, there was again 20 times as much CO2 as there is today: yet that is when the delicate aragonite corals
first came into being. Secondly, ocean acidification, as a notion, suffers from the same problem of scale as “global warming”. Just as the
doubling of CO2 concentration expected this century will scarcely change global mean surface
temperature because there is so little CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place, so it will scarcely change
the acid-base balance of the ocean, because there is already 70 times as much CO2 in solution in the oceans as
there is in the atmosphere. Even if all of the additional CO2 we emit were to end up not in the
atmosphere (where it might in theory cause a 4 very little warming) but in the ocean (where it would cause none), the
quantity of CO2 in the oceans would rise by little more than 1%, a trivial and entirely harmless
change. Thirdly, to imagine that CO2 causes “ocean acidification” is to ignore the elementary chemistry of bicarbonate ions. Quantitatively,
CO2 is only the seventh-largest of the substances in the oceans that could in theory alter the acid-
base balance, so that in any event its effect on that balance would be minuscule. Qualitatively, however, CO2 is different from
all the other substances in that it acts as the buffering mechanism for all of them, so that it
does not itself alter the acid-base balance of the oceans at all. Fourthly, as Professor Ian Plimer points out in his
excellent book Heaven and Earth (Quartet, London, 2009), the oceans slosh around over vast acreages of rock, and rocks are pronouncedly
alkaline. Seen in a geological perspective, therefore, acidification
of the oceans is impossible. For these and many other
powerful scientific reasons, compellingly explained in great detail in Craig Idso’s masterly review of the scientific literature in this field, the acidbase balance of the oceans will remain in the future much as it has been in the past and, even if it were to change by the maximum quantity
imagined by the most lurid of the scientists who have tried to foster this particular scare, the sea creatures that it is supposed to damage would
either be unaffected by it or thrive on it.
Empirics disprove – corals have faced much worse.
Carter et al, 11 (Robert M. Carter, Craig D. Idso, S. Fred Singer, 2011,
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change
Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report of the NIPCC,”
http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2011/pdf/2011NIPCCinterimreport.pdf, AS)
The Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change ¶ (NIPCC) disagreed with the IPCC in 2009, presenting ¶ a review of
the extensive literature on coral reefs ¶ showing, inter alia, that there was no simple linkage ¶ between high
temperatures and coral bleaching, that ¶ coral reefs have persisted through geologic time when ¶
temperatures were as much as 10° – 15°C warmer ¶ than at present and when CO2 concentrations
were ¶ two to seven times higher than they are currently, and ¶ that coral readily adapts to rising sea levels
(Idso and ¶ Singer, 2009).
Coral is incredibly resilient. If it survived 300 million years of badness it can survive
anything we throw at it.
Ridd ‘7 (Peter, Reader in Physics – James Cook U. Specializing in Marine Physics and Scientific Advisor – Australian Environment Foundation, “The
Great Great Barrier Reef Swindle”, 7-19, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6134)
In biological circles, it is common to compare coral reefs to canaries, i.e. beautiful and delicate
organisms that are easily killed. The analogy is pushed further by claiming that, just as canaries were
used to detect gas in coal mines, coral reefs are the canaries of the world and their death is a first
indication of our apocalyptic greenhouse future. The bleaching events of 1998 and 2002 were our warning. Heed them now or
retribution will be visited upon us. In fact a more appropriate creature with which to compare corals would
be cockroaches - at least for their ability to survive. If our future brings us total self-annihilation
by nuclear war, pollution or global warming, my bet is that both cockroaches and corals will
survive. Their track-record is impressive. Corals have survived 300 million years of massively
varying climate both much warmer and much cooler than today, far higher CO2 levels than we
see today, and enormous sea level changes. Corals saw the dinosaurs come and go, and cruised
through mass extinction events that left so many other organisms as no more than a part of the
fossil record. Corals are particularly well adapted to temperature changes and in general, the
warmer the better. It seems odd that coral scientists are worrying about global warming
because this is one group of organisms that like it hot . Corals are most abundant in the tropics and you certainly do
not find fewer corals closer to the equator. Quite the opposite, the further you get away from the heat, the worse
the corals. A cooling climate is a far greater threat. The scientific evidence about the effect of rising water temperatures on corals is very
encouraging. In the GBR, growth rates of corals have been shown to be increasing over the last 100 years, at a time when water temperatures
have risen. This is not surprising as the highest growth rates for corals are found in warmer waters. Further, all the species of corals we have in
the GBR are also found in the islands, such as PNG, to our north where the water temperatures are considerably hotter than in the GBR. Despite
the bleaching events of 1998 and 2002, most of the corals of the GBR did not bleach and of those that did, most have fully recovered.
Biodiversity has no correlation with ecosystem stability
Calgary Herald, August 30, 1997
Ecologists have long maintained that diversity is one of nature's greatest strengths, but new research suggests that diversity alone does not
guarantee strong ecosystems. In findings that could intensify the debate over endangered species and habitat conservation, three new studies
suggest a greater abundance of plant and animal varieties doesn't always translate to better ecological health. At least equally important, the
research found, are the types of species and how they function together. "Having a long list of Latin names isn't always better than a shorter list
of Latin names," said Stanford University biologist Peter Vitousek, co-author of one of the studies published in the journal Science. Separate
experiments in California, Minnesota and Sweden, found that diversity often had little bearing on the performance of ecosystems -- at least as
measured by the growth and health of native plants. In fact, the communities with the greatest biological richness were often the poorest when
it came to productivity and the cycling of nutrients. One study compared plant life on 50 remote islands in northern Sweden that are prone to
frequent wildfires from lightning strikes. Scientist David Wardle of Landcare Research in Lincoln, New Zealand, and colleagues at the Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences, found that islands dominated by a few species of plants recovered more quickly than nearby islands with
greater biological diversity. Similar findings were reported by University of Minnesota researchers who studied savannah grasses, and by
Stanford's Vitousek and colleague David Hooper, who concluded that functional characteristics of plant species were more important than the
number of varieties in determining how ecosystems performed. British plant ecologist J.P. Grime, in a commentary summarizing the research,
said there is as yet no "convincing evidence that species diversity and ecosystem function are consistently and causally related." "It could be
argued," he added, "that the tide is turning against the notion of high biodiversity as a controller of ecosystem function and insurance against
ecological collapse.
No impact to biodiversity loss – species and environments are adaptive
Times 09
“Experts say that Fears Surrounding Climate Change are overblown”, 6 November 2009,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6905082.ece, [Zheng]
Alarming predictions that climate change will lead to the extinction of hundreds of species may
be exaggerated, according to Oxford scientists. They say that many biodiversity forecasts have
not taken into account the complexities of the landscape and frequently underestimate the
ability of plants and animals to adapt to changes in their environment. “The evidence of climate
change-driven extinctions have really been overplayed,” said Professor Kathy Willis, a long-term
ecologist at the University of Oxford and lead author of the article. Professor Willis warned that alarmist
reports were leading to ill-founded biodiversity policies in government and some major
conservation groups. She said that climate change has become a “buzz word” that is taking priority while, in practice, changes in
human use of land have a greater impact on the survival of species. “I’m certainly not a climate change denier, far from it, but we have to have
sound policies for managing our ecosystems,” she said. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature backed the article, saying that
climate change is “far from the number-one threat” to the survival of most species. “There are so many other immediate threats that, by the
time climate change really kicks in, many species will not exist anymore,” said Jean Christophe Vie, deputy head of the IUCN species program,
which is responsible for compiling the international Redlist of endangered species. He listed hunting, overfishing, and destruction of habitat by
humans as more critical for the majority of species. However, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds disagreed, saying that climate change
was the single biggest threat to biodiversity on the planet. “There’s an absolutely undeniable affect that’s happening now,” said John Clare, an
RSPB spokesman. “There have been huge declines in British sea birds.” The
article, published today in the journal
Science, reviews recent research on climate change and biodiversity, arguing that many
simulations are not sufficiently detailed to give accurate predictions. In particular, the
landscape is often described at very low resolution, not taking into account finer variations in
vegetation and altitude that are vital predictors for biodiversity. In one analysis of the likelihood of survival of
alpine plant species in the Swiss Alps, the landscape was depicted with a 16km by 16km (10 miles by 10 miles) grid scale. This model predicted
that all suitable habitats for alpine plants would have disappeared by the end of the century. When the simulation was repeated with a 25m by
25m (82ft by 82ft) scale, the model predicted that areas of suitable habitat would remain for all plant species. The
article suggests
that migration to new regions and changes in living patterns of species would take place but
that actual extinction would be rare. Other studies comparing predictions of extinction rates
with actual extinction rates have come to similar conclusions. According to a high-profile paper
published in the journal Nature in 2004, up to 35 per cent of bird species would be extinct by
2050 due to changes in climate. To be on track to meet this figure, Professor Keith Bennett,
head of geography at Queen’s University Belfast, calculated that about 36 species would have
to have become extinct each year between 2004 and 2008. In reality, three species of bird
became extinct. He said that many species are far more versatile than some prediction models
give them credit for. “If it gets a couple of degrees warmer than they’re comfortable with, they don’t just die, they move,” he said.
Overfishing
1nc overfishing advantage frontline
Resource War Defense
Pomeroy 7 is power tagged- the conflicts mentioned in the text have low magnitudeit says that sometimes farmers attack each other with weapons- this doesn’t come
close to escalating to global war
Their impact evidence uses empirical examples of resource wars over water to prove
their claim- but,
Environmental resource conflicts are settled by negotiation and compromise, not war
Goldstone 2, professor of public policy at George Mason, 2002 (Jack, “Population and Security: How Demographic Change Can Lead to
Violent Conflict,” JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Fall, Vol. 56, p. 123)
Should we therefore dismiss the environment as a cause of conflict? No, although I believe we can be free of the fear that environmental decay
will unleash wars and revolutions across the globe. Rather, what research
has shown is that although environmental
issues do cause international and domestic conflicts, they are of the kind that are generally
settled by negotiation and compromise and do not lead to taking up arms. The reason for that
is straightforward. Where the problem faced by two groups, or two nations, is over the
degradation or depletion of an environmental resource, war neither solves the problem (it
cannot make more of the resource) nor is it an economically efficient way to redistribute the
resource (the costs of war almost invariably far outweigh the cost of gaining alternative
resources or paying more for a share of the resource). For example, if two nations have a conflict over sharing river
water—such as India and Bangladesh over the Ganges, Israel and Jordan over the river Jordan or Hungary and Slovakia over the Danube they
may threaten violence but in fact are most likely to produce non-violent resolution through negotiation or arbitration rather than war (and
indeed all of these conflicts led to treaties or international arbitration. The reason is that for one party to insist on all the water would in fact be
a casus belli; and to risk a war to simply increase one's access to water is economically foolhardy. Throughout the world, the main use of
freshwater (over three-quarters) is for irrigation to produce food. A reduction in water can be compensated either by adopting more efficient
means of irrigation (drip rather than ditch); by switching to less water-intensive crops (dry grains rather than rice; tree crops rather than grains);
or by importing food rather than producing it. All of these steps, though costly, are far, far, less costly than armed conflict. Thus for
both
the country with the ability to take more water and the country dependent on downstream
flows, the issue will be how to use and negotiate use of the resource most efficiently; resort to
war would inevitably be more costly than any gains that could be made from increased access
to the resource. No nations have ever gone to war strictly over access to water; nor are any
likely to do so in the future.
Navy
1nc frontline navy readiness advantage
Naval Readiness Sustainable?
Naval Power is unchallenged today—innovation decreased units but increased force
PolitiFact 12 (Pulitzer Prize winning site, “Mitt Romney says U.S. Navy is smallest since 1917, Air Force is smallest since 1947”, Tampa
Bay Times, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jan/18/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-us-navy-smallest-1917-air-forces/)
We’ll look at both the numbers as well as the larger context. But as you'll see below, using the number of military ships and airplanes is an
outdated practice that one expert says "doesn't pass 'the giggle test.' " In recent years, the number of active ships has fallen low enough to
approach its 1916 level. In both 2009 (the most recent year of the Heritage report) and 2011, the number was 285. So Romney has a point.
However, even using this metric -- which, as we’ll argue later, is an imperfect one for measuring military strength -- this is not the lowest level
since 1916. But what
do those numbers mean? Not much, a variety of experts told us. Counting the
number of ships or aircraft is not a good measurement of defense strength because their capabilities
have increased dramatically in recent decades. Romney’s comparison "doesn’t pass ‘the giggle test,’ " said William W.
Stueck, a historian at the University of Georgia. However, a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that
a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military. Quite the
contrary: The United States is the world’s unquestioned military leader today, not just because of the
number of ships and aircraft in its arsenal but also because each is stocked with top-of-the-line technology and highly
trained personnel.
US Naval Readiness is sustainable now and no military can catch up—size isn’t
everything
Mataconis 12 (Doug, “Mitt Romney’s Misleading Claims About The United States Navy”, January 24,
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/mitt-romneys-misleading-claims-about-the-united-states-navy/)
Last night, amid a question regarding what the appropriate response might be to aggressive Iranian action in the Straits of Hormuz, Mitt
Romney made this claim: Under this president and under prior presidents, we keep on shrinking our Navy. Our
Navy is now smaller than any time since 1917. And — and — and the president is building roughly nine ships a year. We ought to raise that to
15 ships a year, not because we want to go to war with anyone, but because we don’t want anyone to take the — the — the hazard of going
against us. We want them to see that we’re so strong they couldn’t possibly defeat us. As Jason Linkins notes, neither
the moderator
nor the questioners at the January 16th debate followed up with Romney about what sounds like a rather
extraordinary and alarming claim about the state of our defense, and Brian Williams similarly failed to follow-up
on Romney’s claim regarding Naval readiness last night. (So much for that liberal media, huh?) It would have been helpful if
they did, though, because it turns out that Romney’s claim is, at the best, only half true and not
very relevant to an honest assessment of the readiness of the American military. It strikes me that the
answer to that question is rather obvious. The kind of mass aerial bombardments that we saw in World War II
and, to a lesser extent, Korea and Vietnam, simply aren’t necessary any more because we can accomplish far more with cruise
missiles, or a much smaller amount of Stealth bombers. The same goes for the United States Navy. We simply
aren’t likely to ever see the kind of multi-ship battles that were a crucial part of World War II’s
Pacific component. Today, our Naval resources are more about force projection to far corners of the
world and protecting one corner of the nuclear triad. More importantly, even with recent Chinese
advances there simply isn’t a Navy on the planet that can match our force today (and there barely
was even with the Soviet Union still existed). When it comes to numbers, Romney seems to be correct to a large degree but, as Politifact notes,
it’s the kind of fact that doesn’t really mean much of anything, and certainly not what Romney wants it to mean: Romney
may as well
be saying that the Army has fewer horses than it did in 1874. It’s true, but it means nothing.
Training exercises occurring now – key to information exchange and readiness
Kyodo 14 (Kyodo News International, a nonprofit cooperative news agency based in Minato, Tokyo, “Philippines, U.S. begin naval
exercises in S. China Sea”, June 6, 2014, Globalpost, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/kyodo-news-international/140626/philippinesus-begin-naval-exercises-s-china-sea)//MW
A statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Manila said the weeklong Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training exercises focus on combined
operations including live-fire drills, diving and salvage, maritime patrol and reconnaissance flights and amphibious landing.¶ U.S. Navy Rear
Adm. Stuart Munsch said an amphibious landing will be conducted off Zambales, a coastal province on the Philippine main island Luzon around
100 nautical miles from Scarborough Shoal, which China occupied in 2012.¶ The Philippines and Taiwan also claim the shoal, a ring-shaped coral
reef with rocky outcrops north of the disputed Spratly Islands.¶ Munsch said the exercises, which also include jungle warfare, will "strengthen
partnership and enhance interoperability among our forces," referring to the 1,000 U.S. navy sailors and marines and about 400 Philippine
sailors and marines participating in the naval drills.¶ "Today," he said, "there are more 100 U.S. ships and aircraft in port in the Philippines. We
share maritime priorities."¶ Philippine Rear Adm. Jaime Bernardino, who oversees the joint exercises, stressed the importance of joint drills.¶
"Today, as the Philippines faces various challenges and threats, exercises like CARAT are indeed very relevant and timely," Bernardino said.¶
"We need to train, we need to exercise to make sure that our ships are ready, to make sure that we are prepared for whatever contingency
that may arise," Bernardo said.¶ He said the CARAT exercises have been "an important venue not only for training but also in identifying" the
Philippine Navy's "capability gaps" in surface warfare and maritime domain awareness.¶ Philippine Navy spokesman Lt. Rommel Rodriguez said
the exercises include the Halsey, a guided-missile destroyer, Ashland, a landing ship dock, Safeguard, a rescue and salvage ship and
helicopters.¶ He said the Philippines' BRP Ramon Alcaraz, a former U.S. coast guard cutter, and BRP Emilio Jacinto, a former British Royal Navy
ship and helicopters will also be used in the exercises.¶ "They'll have targets at sea, called killer tomatoes," Rodriguez said, referring to the livefire exercise. "All ships will aim at the hostile objects. Then they will take turns to fire their guns."¶ The United States and the Philippines have
been holding CARAT since 1995.¶ Rodriguez said the drills are also meant to improve military information sharing between the forces.¶ CARAT
Philippines is part of a broader bilateral exercise series the U.S. Navy conducts with nine navies in South and Southeast Asia to address shared
maritime security priorities, strengthen maritime partnerships and enhance interoperability among participating navies.¶ "As a long-standing
exercise, CARAT promotes regional maritime cooperation with many participating navies; it is not in response to current events," the U.S.
Embassy statement said.
Naval training exercises now shows readiness
Williams 14 (Rear Adm. Rick Williams, Commander, Navy Region Hawaii and Naval Surface Group Middle Pacific, “Koa Kai Trains Sea
Warriors, Enhances Readiness”, January 27, 2014, US. Pacific Command,
http://www.pacom.mil/Media/News/NewsArticleView/tabid/7464/Article/7737/koa-kai-trains-sea-warriors-enhances-readiness.aspx)
KOA KAI 14-1, Hawaiian Islands (Navy Blog), January 27, 2014 — Now getting underway near the Hawaiian Islands (now through January 2014),
is an opportunity for our Sailors and their ships to participate in individual and integrated training to make them better sea warriors.¶ Koa Kai
offers skill development and assessment in key domains – surface, air and undersea – that build the capabilities of our team. Our Sailors and
other service members train in Koa Kai to be ready for any crisis, ranging from armed conflict to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.¶
Next week we will show, test and assess our capabilities in coordination with the Navy’s premier testing and training range – Pacific Missile
Range Facility.¶ Seven of our Middle Pacific ships are part of this first Koa Kai exercise for 2014. All services have representatives participating in
some capacity, and we welcome our Canadian allies, who are an important part of our team.¶ We’re fortunate to have a strike group staff and
destroyer squadron integrated for this exercise, which further strengthens command and control and provides realistic training in an
operational environment. The result is more coordination with our joint partners when it’s time to work together.¶ The positive opportunities
for our individual warfighters participating in Koa Kai cannot be overstated.¶ Navy leaders are focusing increasingly on the importance and
value of realistic and relevant training that builds capability to conduct prompt and sustained combat operations at sea.¶ New techniques and
platforms are coming on line, so we need ongoing, adaptive training.¶ Our leaders are also committed to rewarding our Sailors – individuals and
their unit commands – who demonstrate capability and adaptability. The rewards can translate to retention, promotion and more leadership
career opportunities for those who demonstrate new skills and abilities.¶ Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert is challenging all of
us to improve quality of service. We can achieve that goal by focusing on improvements in quality of life, work and training. Koa Kai does that
for sea warriors here in the middle of the Pacific.¶ This training is close to home for our Hawaii-based ships, so there is less time away from
home and more predictability for service members and their families. Preventing weeks away from home – whenever possible – directly
supports quality of life for us, and when mainland-based Sailors visit Hawaii it improves quality of life for them!¶ Koa Kai provides the type of
disciplined, relevant training we need not only to support the fleet but also to assist type commands now and over time in what is becoming a
progressively more complicated warfighting environment. That links directly to improved quality of work/service for our shipmates and our
ability to defend America at all times.¶ The bottom line: Koa Kai gives Sailors tools to help them become better sea warriors now and build their
skills over time. Our ultimate goal is to be warfighting-ready to operate forward where, history shows us, presence matters
Alt Cause to US Naval Decline
Readiness is complicated no one factor is key
Dunn 13 Richard J. Dunn III is currently a private consultant on international security affairs. He is a retired Army colonel who led soldiers
in Vietnam, Korea, and throughout the U.S. and has also worked in defense industry for 14 years. Heritage Foundation, “The Impact of a
Declining Defense Budget on Combat Readiness” July 18, 2013. Online: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/the-impact-of-adeclining-defense-budget-on-combat-readiness
Combat readiness is defined as “[t]he ability of US military forces to fight and meet the demands of the national military strategy.”[1] This is the
most important factor to our war fighters, but as basic as it is to them, it remains a complicated subject for others to understand. Due to its
multidimensional and somewhat diffuse nature, it also has few natural supporters. For a state that builds ships, it is easy to support a policy
that increases the number of ships in the Navy, but it is difficult to construct a constituency to support the complex issue of military readiness.
Therefore, readiness may suffer significant harm in the increasingly fierce competition for resources. To fight effectively, the armed forces must
be manned, equipped, and trained to operate under dangerous, complex, uncertain, and austere conditions—often with little warning. They
require the right personnel operating the right equipment with the right training to win.
Defense cuts are the biggest threat to your impacts
Dunn 13 Richard J. Dunn III is currently a private consultant on international security affairs. He is a retired Army colonel who led soldiers
in Vietnam, Korea, and throughout the U.S. and has also worked in defense industry for 14 years. Heritage Foundation, “The Impact of a
Declining Defense Budget on Combat Readiness” July 18, 2013. Online: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/the-impact-of-adeclining-defense-budget-on-combat-readiness
Answering the “what, when, and where” question is particularly challenging and complicated in the current era of strategic uncertainty. The
world is still a violent and dangerous place, and major existential threats remain vague and unfocused. In the Pacific, U.S. relationships with
emerging powers and the future threats they may pose remain unclear. In the Middle East, the political instability that accompanied the Arab
Spring may vastly alter the geopolitical landscape established in the 1920s, creating opportunities for a wide spectrum of Islamist parties to
advance their undemocratic agendas. Terrorism by non-state actors like al-Qaeda continues to metastasize. At the same time, warfare is
expanding into the economically vital cyberspace domain, and revolutionary developments in unmanned systems may be changing the very
nature of conflict. Rapid reductions in the defense budget are leading to the restructuring or elimination of many programs. This will damage
the ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat threats to vital U.S. national interests. Maintaining a military posture capable of achieving these
aims requires both sufficient forces of various types and the readiness of those forces for combat.
Empirically readiness suffers from budget cuts
Dunn 13 Richard J. Dunn III is currently a private consultant on international security affairs. He is a retired Army colonel who led soldiers
in Vietnam, Korea, and throughout the U.S. and has also worked in defense industry for 14 years. Heritage Foundation, “The Impact of a
Declining Defense Budget on Combat Readiness” July 18, 2013. Online: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/the-impact-of-adeclining-defense-budget-on-combat-readiness
In times of defense budgetary retrenchment, combat readiness of the armed forces often becomes one of the first casualties of fiscal
tightening. This was particularly true of the years between World War I and World War II, when the Great Depression and isolationism made
military preparedness a very low national priority. Despite the threatening war clouds rapidly expanding in Asia and Europe, the U.S. was
woefully unprepared for global conflict. The shock of Pearl Harbor mobilized both the industrial capability and the moral determination to
overcome the early, disastrous reversals in the Pacific and tactical defeats in North Africa. Once focused on military production, the U.S.
economy rapidly produced overwhelming quantities of ships, aircraft, tanks, ammunition, and other matériel needed for America to become
the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
Pakistan Impact Defense
SCS Impact Defense
China’s fleet is not sufficient to project power over the South China Sea—no impact
Axe 11 (David, American military correspondent, “China’s Overhyped Sub Threat”, The Diplomat, October 20,
http://thediplomat.com/2011/10/chinas-overhyped-submarine-threat/)
Of particular concern to American defence officials was the projected introduction, over the coming decade, of up
to 20 new nuclear-powered attack submarines, known as ‘SSNs,’ that are an order of magnitude more capable
than the Song class. ‘The acquisition of increasing numbers of SSNs would give it (the PLAN) the ability to contest US naval forces farther from
China’s shores,’ Thomas Mahnken wrote in China's Future Nuclear Submarine Force, edited by Naval War College professor Andrew Erickson
and published in 2007. Yet
nearly five years later, McKinney’s and Mahnken’s alarm has been proved
false. The PLAN still possesses a tiny number of nuclear-powered submarines. The Songs and other
short-range diesel boats remain the backbone of China’s undersea force. Beijing’s production of new submarines has
declined and the PLAN’s overall undersea fleet is likely to contract in coming years. ‘I don't think they know
whether they want to make the full-up commitment it would take to do this (submarine) thing right,’ Owen Cote, Jr., an analyst at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says of the Chinese. Meanwhile, the US Navy and its Pacific allies have crafted plans to stabilize or even
grow their own submarine fleets. In 2006, Western observers feared the
undersea balance of power in the Pacific would tilt. In
a sense, they were right. It has tilted – back towards the United States and its allies. Something happened between
2006 and 2011 that changed the calculus for the PLAN submarine force – and by extension for China’s regional aspirations. Actually three
things happened: China stopped importing submarines, while also putting the brakes on
domestic sub production; and the US Navy successfully doubled its submarine production. But
Russia is unlikely to resume supporting such a high rate of Chinese submarine acquisition , as Beijing
is a potential strategic rival to Moscow – and since the Russian Navy’s own sub force is steadily declining to long-term levels of just a dozen
each nuclear attack, nuclear ballistic-missile and diesel-attack boats. ‘There
are powerful incentives for Russia to keep
China just below its future submarine capabilities,’ Fisher noted. US-built submarines traditionally last up to 35 years,
versus fewer than 30 for lower-quality, Chinese-built boats. With similar pre-existing force levels and identical production rates, the US
undersea fleet will level off at a higher level than the Chinese fleet will. According to current Pentagon
projections through 2040, the US submarine fleet should never dip below 51 boats, with a peak of 73 in 2013 and 2014. And all of those boats
are nukes – a not insignificant distinction. Even under the most favourable projections, the PLAN will possess just a handful of nuclear-powered
attack submarines at a time over coming decades. China’s SSN fleet could actually decline in the short term, as the three ancient Type 091s are
likely to leave service before an equal number of Type 095s are ready. To project power beyond its own coastal waters, Beijing needs nuke
boats. The fact that China isn't building large numbers of SSNs reflects either a lack of serious interest in a true, global naval presence – or an
inability to back up grand military ambitions with working hardware. Even
if numbers really did matter, the trends
aren’t in China’s favour. Beijing might match the United States in submarine production rates,
but it can’t possibly keep up with the combined sub acquisitions of Washington and its closest
Pacific allies. Japan is in the process of adding six diesel attack boats to its current force of 16. Australia aims to double its fleet of
six diesel boats. South Korea is also doubling its six-strong undersea fleet. Two years ago, Vietnam purchased six Kilos from Russia.
New regional developments solve Asian war
Robert, 13
(Brad Roberts was a visiting fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan in spring 2013. From 2009 to
early 2013 Dr. Roberts served in the Obama administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy;
“Extended Deterrence and Strategic Stability in Northeast Asia” NIDS Visiting Scholar Paper Series, No.1, 9th August 2013)
Abstract A changed and changing security environment has created interest in Northeast Asia in the role of U.S. extended deterrence and the
requirements of strategic stability in the 21st century. North Korea’s continued progress in developing long-range missiles and nuclear weapons
brings with it new challenges, as does China’s progress in military modernization and its increasingly prominent regional military role. The
Obama administration is pursuing a three-part strategy to: (1) comprehensively strengthen the regional deterrence architecture, (2) preserve
strategic stability with China (and Russia), and (3) cooperate with allies towards these ends. In recent years, Japan and the United States have
taken significant steps to strengthen their cooperation for deterrence and stability, with positive results. The regional deterrence architecture is
strong and getting stronger, especially with the introduction of non-nuclear elements such as ballistic missile defense. Japan’s contributions to
this regional deterrence architecture are significant and increasing, and add credibility to U.S. security guarantees. As Japan and the United
States continue to work together to advance this strategy, they face a number of emerging policy questions. Four such questions are likely to
attract significant attention in both Tokyo and Washington in the coming months and years. First, on missile defense of Japan: how much is
enough? Second, on conventional strike: what should Japan contribute, if anything? Third, on the U.S. nuclear umbrella: is more tailoring of the
U.S. posture required for Northeast Asia? Fourth, on strategic stability: can China, the United States, and Japan agree on the requirements? The
analytic communities in all of the interested countries can help generate the new insights needed to advance policy objectives.
Interdependence and deterrence check
Dibb, 14
(Paul Dibb is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, The Spectator, March 15, 2014, "2014
won’t be like 1914", http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/australia-features/9158871/2014-wont-be-like-1914/)
The Jeremiah strategists are coming out of the woodwork to predict that Asia in 2014 will be a repeat of Europe in 1914. In other words, that
there will be an outbreak of war between the major powers in our region, just like in Europe 100 years ago. This line of reasoning predicts that
a rising China will inevitably go to war with the United States, either directly or through conflict with Japan.¶ Some commentators are even
suggesting that the Sarajevo incident that provoked the first world war will be replicated between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands in the East China Sea. Kevin Rudd has likened this situation to what he calls ‘a 21st-century maritime redux of the Balkans a century ago
— a tinderbox on water.’ My colleague Hugh White has proclaimed that the risk of war between China and Japan is now very real.¶ There is
undoubtedly a significant risk that China’s increasing aggressiveness in the East China Sea and the South China Sea over its territorial claims will
result in a military confrontation, either by miscalculation or design. But a warship being sunk or military aircraft colliding is a long way from allout war. These sorts of incidents have occurred in the past and have not escalated — for example, the North Korean sinking in 2010 of the
South Korean warship and the Chinese collision in 2001 by one of its fighters with a US reconnaissance aircraft. Unfortunately, however, a
military incident between China and Japan might be more serious than this.¶ The commander of US air forces in the Pacific has said in an
interview on 9 February that the recent comments by the leaders of Japan and the Philippines drawing parallels between China’s assertiveness
in the region and events in prewar Europe are ‘not helpful’. But he did caution that any move by China to extend unilaterally an air defence
identification zone over the South China Sea would be ‘very provocative’.¶ It is true that whereas a war in Europe these days has become
inconceivable that is not the case in Asia. In our region there is a potentially potent combination of rising military capabilities and ugly
nationalisms. But, unlike in Europe 100 years ago, there is no sense of the inevitability of war and, unlike in the Kaiser’s Germany in 1914, there
is no fear in Beijing that time is not on its side. The distinguished British historian Max Hastings points out in his book, Catastrophe: Europe
Goes to War 1914, that there was nothing accidental about the first world war. Germany was bent on launching a European war because of its
fears of a rising Russia in the east, a strong France and Britain on its west and unrest at home. From Beijing’s perspective today, the strategic
correlation of forces in Marxist-Leninist terms is much more favourable than this. Moreover, China continues to need to give priority to
economic development if it is to avoid domestic upheaval.¶ The current German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has recently
highlighted the diplomatic failures that led to the outbreak of the first world war when there were rash predictions of a swift, successful
military campaign that in the event lasted for four years and resulted in 17 million dead. This was a failure of political and military elites, but
also of diplomacy.¶ And this is where there is a concern about Asia. The fact is that the multilateral organisations in our region are immature
when it comes to developing arms control and disarmament agreements and concrete approaches to conflict avoidance. There is a lot of talk
and plenty of meetings and that in itself is a good thing. But we desperately need such confidence-building measures as an avoidance of naval
incidents at sea agreement — along the lines of the one that was agreed between the US and the Soviet Union in 1972.¶ Even so, the key
underpinnings for my confidence about a major power war in Asia being unlikely are twofold. First, there is the iron discipline of nuclear
deterrence. For almost 70 years now the fear of nuclear war, even at the most dangerous heights of the Cold War, has prevented a major war.
An all-out nuclear war between the US and China would involve the deaths of hundreds of millions of people on both sides in a matter of hours.
For all intents and purposes, they would cease to exist as modern functioning societies. This is an existential threat unlike any faced by
humankind previously. Once nuclear weapons are used it would be practically impossible to avoid full-blown escalation.¶ The second factor is
the unprecedented economic and technological interdependence that now intertwines all our economies with each other in a way that has
never existed before. It is simply untrue to assert that globalisation was even deeper in 1914 than it is today. Global supply chains for almost
every product we consume make every country in our region crucially vulnerable to the outbreak of war. And that includes China as much as
any other country — or even more so. China is now crucially dependent on imports for its economic security (for example, it accounts for 60
per cent of global seaborne iron ore trade and by 2030 it will have to import 80 per cent of its oil).¶ So, as the doyen of US international
relations studies Joseph Nye argues, we should be wary of analysts wielding historical analogies, particularly if they have a whiff of inevitability.
War, he observes, is never inevitable, though the belief that it is can become one of its causes.
It won’t escalate anyways
Kaplan, 14 (Robert D. Kaplan, Chief Geopolitical Analyst for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. He is a non-resident senior fellow at the
Center for a New American Security, Foreign Policy, March 17, 2014, " The Guns of August in the East China Sea",
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/17/the_guns_of_august_in_the_east_china_sea_world_war_one)
But before one buys the 1914 analogy, there are other matters to consider. While 1914 Europe was a landscape, with large armies facing one
another inside a claustrophobic terrain with few natural barriers, East Asia is a seascape, with vast maritime distances separating national
capitals. The sea impedes aggression to a degree that land does not. Naval forces can cross water and storm beachheads, though with great
difficulty, but moving inland and occupying hostile populations is nearly impossible. The Taiwan Strait is roughly four times the width of the
English Channel, a geography that continues to help preserve Taiwan's de facto independence from China.¶ Even the fastest warships travel
slowly, giving diplomats time to do their work. Incidents in the air are more likely, although Asian countries have erected strict protocols and prefer
to posture verbally so as to avoid actual combat. (That said, the new Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone is a particularly provocative
protocol.) Since any such incidents would likely occur over open water there will be few casualties, reducing the prospect that a single incident
will lead to war. And because of the speed, accuracy, and destructiveness of postmodern weaponry, any war that does break out will probably
be short -- albeit with serious economic consequences. Something equivalent to four years of trench warfare is almost impossible to imagine.
And remember that it was World War I's very grinding length that made it a history-transforming and culture-transforming event: it caused 17
million military and civilian casualties; the disputes in the Pacific Basin are certainly not going to lead to that.¶ World War I also featured
different and unwieldy alliance systems. Asia is simpler: almost everyone fears China and depends -- militarily at least -- on the United States.
This is not the Cold War where few Americans could be found in the East Bloc, a region with which we did almost no trade. Millions of
Americans and Chinese have visited each other's countries, tens of thousands of American businessmen have passed through Chinese cities,
and Chinese party elites send their children to U.S. universities. U.S. officials know they must steer between the two extremes of allowing
China's Finlandization of its Asian neighbors and allowing nationalistic governments in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan to lure the United
States into a conflict with China.¶ Nationalistic as these democracies may be, the best way to curb their excesses and make them less nervous is
to give them the assurance of a U.S. security umbrella, born of credible air and sea power. A strong U.S.-China relationship can keep the peace
in Asia. (South Korea also fears Japan, but the United States is successfully managing that tension.) Unlike empires mired in decrepitude that
characterized 1914 Europe, East Asia features robust democracies in South Korea and Japan, and strengthening democracies in Malaysia and
the Philippines. An informal alliance of democracies -- that should also include a reformist, de facto ally like Vietnam -- is the best and most
stable counter to Chinese militarism. Some of these democracies are fraught, and fascist-cum-communist North Korea could implode, but this is
not a world coming apart. Limited eruptions do not equal a global cataclysm.¶ Yet the most profound difference between August 1914 and
now is historical self-awareness. As Modris Eksteins meticulously documents in his 1989 book Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of
the Modern Age, European capitals greeted the war with outbursts of euphoria and a feeling of liberation. Because 19th century Europe had
been relatively peaceful since the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, people had lost the sense of the tragic that enables them to avoid tragedy in
the first place. Aging, one-child societies like those of China, Japan, and South Korea, with memories of war, revolution, and famine, are less
likely to greet violent struggle with joy and equanimity. And the United States, the paramount military player in Asia, by its very conscious fear
of a World War I scenario, will take every measure to avoid it.¶ A profusion of warships in the Pacific certainly suggests a more anxious,
complicated world. But U.S. generals and diplomats need not give in to fate, especially given the differences with a century ago. The United
States entered World War I too late. Projecting a strong military footprint in Asia while ceaselessly engaging the Chinese is the way that conflict
can be avoided this time around.
No impact – US and China will cooperate – no risk of militarization.
Paal ’12 [Douglas, August, Vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. e was on the National Security
Council staffs of Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush between 1986 and 1993 as director of Asian Affairs and then as senior director and
special assistant to the president.¶ , Dangerous Shoals: U.S. Policy in the South China Sea¶ http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/?fa=397]
In view of the potential disruptive effects brought about by China’s rise and its neighbors’ responses, the United States has a further interest in
a peaceful settlement. Moreover, reinforcement of the rule of international law is in America’s interest in reducing the cost of maintaining
stability and managing change going forward.¶ Today, the South China Sea is not at the “Sudetenland” moment of the twenty-first century,
which calls for standing up to aggression and the rejection of appeasement. China has not militarized its foreign policy and does not appear
equipped to do so for a long time. Its neighbors are not supine, and they show on occasion, when needed, that they are able to coalesce against
Chinese actions that they judge as going too far. At the same time, China and those neighbors have more going constructively in trade,
investment, and other relations with each other than is at risk in this dispute.¶ This suggests the makings of a manageable situation, even if it
remains impossible to resolve for years to come. Different Asian societies are quite accustomed to living with unresolved disputes, often for
centuries.¶ In light of this reality, the United States would do well to adhere to principled positions it has already articulated, and stand for a
process that is fair to all disputants and those who will be affected at the margins. To do that, Washington will need to protect its position of
impartiality and avoid repetition of the misconceived State Department press statement.
Even if there was a dispute, China and Japan won’t escalate
Sieg, 12 (Linda Sieg, 9-23-12, Reuters, “Japan, China military conflict seen unlikely despite strain”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/23/us-china-japan-confrontation-idUSBRE88M0F220120923)
(Reuters) - Hawkish Chinese commentators have urged Beijing to prepare for military conflict with Japan as tensions mount over disputed
islands in the East China Sea, but most experts say chances the Asian rivals will decide to go to war are slim.¶ A bigger risk is the possibility that
an unintended maritime clash results in deaths and boosts pressure for retaliation, but even then Tokyo and Beijing are expected to seek to
manage the row before it becomes a full-blown military confrontation.¶ "That's the real risk - a maritime incident leading to a loss of life. If a
Japanese or Chinese were killed, there would be a huge outpouring of nationalist sentiment," said Linda Jakobson, director of the East Asia
Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.¶ "But I still cannot seriously imagine it would lead to an attack on the other
country. I do think rational minds would prevail," she said, adding economic retaliation was more likely.¶ A feud over the lonely islets in the East
China Sea flared this month after Japan's government bought three of the islands from a private owner, triggering violent protests in China and
threatening business between Asia's two biggest economies.¶ Adding to the tensions, China sent more than 10 government patrol vessels to
waters near the islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan, while Japan beefed up its Coast Guard patrols. Chinese media
said 1,000 fishing boats have set sail for the area, although none has been sighted close by.¶ Despite the diplomatic standoff and rising
nationalist sentiment in China especially, experts agree neither Beijing nor Tokyo would intentionally escalate to a military confrontation what
is already the worst crisis in bilateral ties in decades.¶ U.S. PRESSURE¶ "The chances of a military conflict are very, very slim because neither
side wants to go down that path," said former People's Liberation Army officer, Xu Guangyu, now a senior consultant at a government-run think
tank in Beijing.¶ Pressure from the United States, which repeated last week that the disputed isles were covered by a 1960 treaty obliging
Washington to come to Japan's aid if it were attacked, is also working to restrain both sides, security experts said.¶ "I very seriously do not think
any of the involved parties - Japan, China and including the United States because of its defense treaty (with Japan) - want to see a military
conflict over this dispute," said the Lowy Institute's Jakobson.¶ "They don't want to risk it, they don't seek it and they do not intend to let it
happen."¶ Still, the possibility of a clash at sea remains.¶ While the presence of the Chinese surveillance ships - none of which is a naval vessel and Japan Coast Guard ships in the area might appear to set the stage for trouble, military experts said each side would try to steer clear of the
other.¶ "The bad news is that China sent ships to the area. The good news is that they are official ships controlled by the government," said
Narushige Michishita at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.¶ "This is good news because they are not likely to engage in
aggressive action because that would really exacerbate the situation and turn it into a major crisis," said Michishita.¶ The Chinese ships, he said,
had another mission besides asserting China's claims to the islands and nearby waters.¶ "My guess is that some (Chinese) official patrol boats
are there to watch out for fishing boats ... to stop them from making problems," Michishita said.¶ FISHING BOATS WILD CARD¶ Military
specialists say the Chinese patrol vessels are well disciplined as are the Japan Coast Guard ships, while the two sides have grown accustomed to
communicating.¶ "Both sides are ready, but both sides are very well under control," said a former senior Japanese military official.¶ What
worries observers most is the risk that a boat carrying Chinese fishermen slips through or activists try to land, sparking clashes with Japan's
Coast Guard that result in deaths - news of which would spread like wildfire on the Internet.¶ In 1996, a Hong Kong activist drowned in the
nearby waters.¶ Diplomatic and economic relations chilled sharply in 2010 after Japan arrested a Chinese trawler captain whose boat collided
with a Japan Coast Guard vessel. This time, tensions are already high and China is contending with a tricky once-in-a-decade leadership change
while Japan's ruling party faces a probable drubbing in an election expected in months.¶ "Two rational governments of major countries would
not intentionally decide to enter into a major war with each other over a few uninhabited rocks," said Denny Roy, an Asia security expert at the
East-West Center in Hawaii.¶ "But unfortunately, you can arrive at war in ways other than that - through unintended escalation, in which both
countries start out at a much lower level, but each of them think that they must respond to perceived provocation by the other side, both very
strongly pushed into it by domestic pressure. That seems to be where we are now and it is difficult to see how countries can get out of that
negative spiral."¶ Others, however, were more confident that an unplanned clash could be kept from escalating into military conflict.¶ "That's
not really a major possibility, because there are still broad channels of communication between the two sides, and they would help prevent
that happening. Both sides could still talk to each other," said former senior PLA officer Xu.¶ "Even before anything happened, you would also
have the U.N Secretary General and others stepping in to ensure that the situation does not get out of control."
TURN: Navy DA
Ocean training space is key to military readiness – plan creates trade off
Medina et. al. 14 (Medina, Monica, Joel Smith, and Linda Sturgis. "National Coastal Mapping Advancing National Defense and Ocean
Conservation." National Coastal Ocean Mapping (2014): n. pag. Center for a New American Security. Jan. 2014. Web. 15 July 2014.
<http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/OceanMapping_MedinaSmithSturgis.pdf>. XM)
The ocean functions as a geographic barrier for the United States, as well as a highway for U.S. military forces to deploy around the world.
In order to be prepared for national defense, the Navy, Coast Guard and Marine Corps require large areas of the coastal ocean for training
and long-range weapons testing. To maximize situational awareness and ensure safety and operational effectiveness, the military places
significant value on the collection and analysis of data.8 To operate in the coastal ocean, federal agencies – including the military – must
undergo an expansive permitting process to comply with the National Environmental Protection Act. The law requires federal agencies to
“make achieving environmental justice part of its mission by identifying and addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and
adverse human health of its programs, policies, and activities.”9 Military users must also comply with a host of other marine-based
environmental protection laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Coastal Zone Management
Act and the Clean Water Act, as well as state environmental protection laws.
Naval readiness deters South China sea war.
The China Post 14 (The China Post. "US Must Back up the Words in Its South China Sea Remark."Www.ChinaPost.com.tw. N.p., 15
July 2014. Web. 16 July 2014. <http://www.chinapost.com.tw/editorial/world-issues/2014/07/15/412330/p2/US-must.htm>. XM)
On Saturday, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael Fuchs called on the parties in South China Sea territorial disputes
to agree to a 'voluntary freeze' on provocative behavior. Fuchs appealed for a concrete development of principles laid out in the 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DoC)
signed between China and ASEAN. Couched in diplomatic pleasantries, the DoC affirms universal principles of non-interference, peaceful resolution to conflicts and
“promotion of economic prosperity.” The beautiful-sounding points require parties to operate on the basis of existing international laws governing operations on
the seas and diplomacy, and also affirm the right to free navigation as well as overflight. It is evident to all, though, that those principles have been violated
repeatedly since then. In the area that China claims 90 percent of, we have seen in the past three years the country blockading Second Thomas Shoal, setting up a
municipal government on the island of Sansha, and recently constructing oil rigs in areas disputed by Vietnam. The Philippines released evidence of what it calls
China reclaiming the Johnson Reef. While Fuchs says that no single party is wholly responsible for tensions, he explicitly points out that the U.S. considers China to
be provocative. And he is right. In the context of geopolitical strategic balance, China is clearly acting to take advantage of its resources, from population to
economic wealth to military might. Words that look pretty on paper have no meaning unless they can be translated into genuine improvement for
the region at stake. For now, the lofty Holy Grail of “harmony” is clearly out of reach. Defining the more immediate goal in terms of establishing
an environment where the propensity for military exchanges is lower may be more realistic for defusing conflicts. The U.S. needs to back up its
most recent call to the region with concrete steps that would help enforce the peace. It is counterproductive to throw out admonitions or
appeals without making one's presence felt, and Washington does have to meet a degree of participation in the Asia-Pacific if it wants to
promote the regional peace that is conducive to the overall interest. Over the past few years the U.S. has increased its military presence in the
region. U.S. President Obama established a small garrison in Darwin, Australia and in April the U.S. signed a 10-year agreement with the
Philippines over the expanded usage of bases in the country. As China beefs up the scale and pace of its forward deployments, as a result
coming into conflict or near-conflict with its neighbors, Washington should step up its presence in the region. In demonstrating its stake in the
region, a restrained but conscious deployment of vessels passing nearby hotspots could be a powerful gesture. The Diplomat periodical, in an article
titled 'The Limits of Pacific Maritime Law,' noted the fact that many of the agreements that have been established regarding conventions of the sea are redundant.
For example, the signs that were agreed upon in April between China and two dozen nations, in a non-binding agreement called the Code For Unplanned
Encounters at Sea, have been established parts of the maritime lexicon for generations. The principles of mutual respect, non-violence and non-interference are
present in China's own Five Principles for Peaceful Co-existence. The problem lies in the actions of current players not living up to those standards and hence the
need for constant reaffirmations. Taking a more conciliatory and forward-looking perspective, the U.S. can serve as a lubricating partner between China and the
various parties involved by sending diplomatic staff at all levels to monitor and actively join in defusing bilateral disputes. On Saturday, the efforts of Secretary of
State John Kerry in charging into Kabul to negotiate a way out of the election dispute there resulted in an agreement between parties for a full audit of the
presidential vote. That case illustrates that U.S. attention and efforts do count. In the South China Sea and East China Sea, Washington can also
help reduce the propensity toward devastating conflict.
Energy
1nc frontline energy advantage
Oil Dependence Inevitable
Oil dependence is inevitable – we have become too reliant
New York Times 8 (“Gusher of Lies”, New York Times, 3-7-08, Online:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/books/chapters/first-chapter-gusher-of-lies.html?pagewanted=all)
This book focuses on the need to acknowledge, and deal with, the difference between rhetoric and reality. The reality is that
the
world — and the energy business in particular — is becoming ever more interdependent. And this
interdependence will likely only accelerate in the years to come as new supplies of fossil fuel
become more difficult to find and more expensive to produce. While alternative and renewable
forms of energy will make minor contributions to America’s overall energy mix, they cannot provide
enough new supplies to supplant the new global energy paradigm, one in which every type of fossil fuel — crude
oil, natural gas, diesel fuel, gasoline, coal, and uranium — gets traded and shipped in an ever
more sophisticated global market. Regardless of the ongoing fears about oil shortages, global
warming, conflict in the Persian Gulf, and terrorism, the plain, unavoidable truth is that the U.S., along with nearly every other
country on the planet is married to fossil fuels. And that
fact will not change in the foreseeable future, meaning
the next 30 to 50 years. That means that the U.S. and the other countries of the world will continue to need oil
and gas from the Persian Gulf and other regions. Given those facts, the U.S. needs to accept the reality
of energy interdependence. The integration and interdependence of the global energy market
can be seen by looking at Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer on the planet. In 2005, the Saudis imported
83,000 barrels of gasoline and other refined oil products per day. It can also be seen by looking at Iran,
which imports 40 percent of its gasoline needs. Iran also imports large quantities of natural gas from Turkmenistan. If the Saudis,
with their 260 billion barrels of oil reserves, and the Iranians, with their 132 billion barrels of oil and 970 trillion cubic feet of natural
gas reserves, can’t be energy-independent, why should the U.S. even try? An October 2006 report by the Council on Foreign
Relations put it succinctly: “The voices that espouse ‘energy independence’ are doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal
that is unachievable over the foreseeable future and that encourages the adoption of inefficient and counterproductive policies.”
America’s future when it comes to energy — as well its future in politics, trade, and the environment — lies in
accepting the reality of an increasingly interdependent world. Obtaining the energy that the
U.S. will need in future decades requires American politicians, diplomats, and businesspeople
to be actively engaged with the energy-producing countries of the world, particularly the Arab
and Islamic producers. Obtaining the country’s future energy supplies means that the U.S. must embrace the
global market while also acknowledging the practical limits on the ability of wind power and
solar power to displace large amounts of the electricity that’s now generated by fossil fuels and
nuclear reactors. The rhetoric about the need for energy independence continues largely because the
American public is woefully ignorant about the fundamentals of energy and the energy
business. It appears that voters respond to the phrase, in part, because it has become a type of code that stands for foreign
policy isolationism — the idea being that if only the U.S. didn’t buy oil from the Arab and Islamic
countries, then all would be better. The rhetoric of energy independence provides political
cover for protectionist trade policies, which have inevitably led to ever larger subsidies for
politically connected domestic energy producers, the corn ethanol industry being the most
obvious example.
No Oil Shocks
Econ = Low Now
Econ Impact Defense
Fears of economic collapse are exaggerated by the public
Petruno 10 (Tom, financial columnist for the LA Times, “Still betting on economic doomsday — and still waiting”, Los Angeles Times,
November 27, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/27/business/la-fi-petruno-20101127)
What's going on in Europe this month has energized the doomsday camp yet again. Facing crushing debts,
Ireland has been forced to follow Greece and take a bailout from the European Union. On Friday, rumors swept markets that
Portugal was next in line at the bailout window. It's human nature to see our present situation, and the future,
through the prism of our recent experiences. After living through what was (or is) for many people the
worst economic nightmare of their lives, it's not surprising that we're now constantly looking
over our shoulders, fearful that another crisis is imminent. In the economy and markets, "People are
afraid that every little dip is going to be a collapse," Ritholtz said.
I/L TURN: Turbines DA
Their White 12 internal link evidence specifies offshore wind as the solution to
warming but the
Increased use of off shore wind turbines would increase demand for rare earth metals
from China.
Driessen 12 (Paul, Senior Policy Advisor for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, “Wind Power: Questionable Benefits,
Concealed Impacts”, The Epoch Times, online: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/opinion/wind-power-questionable-benefitsconcealed-impacts-52864.html)
Over 95 percent of global rare earth production occurs in China and Mongolia, using their
technology, coal-fired electricity generation facilities and environmental rules. Extracting neodymium,
praseodymium, and other rare earths for wind turbine magnets and rotors involves pumping acid down boreholes, to dissolve and
retrieve the minerals. Other acids, chemicals, and high heat further process the materials. Millions of tons of toxic waste are
generated annually and sent to enormous ponds, rimmed by earthen dams. ¶ Leaks, seepage, and noxious air emissions have killed
trees, grasses, and crops and cattle, polluted lakes and streams, and given thousands of people respiratory and intestinal problems,
osteoporosis, and cancer.¶ In
2009, China produced 150,000 tons of rare earth metals—and over
15,000,000 tons of waste. To double current global installed wind capacity, and produce rare
earths for photovoltaic solar panels and hybrid and electric cars, China will have to increase
those totals significantly—unless Molycorp and other companies can rejuvenate rare earth production in the United States
and elsewhere, using more modern methods.
Rapid increases in demand caused by the plan will cause China to cut off rare earth
mineral exports – they want to maintain supplies for Chinese manufacturers.
Moss et al. 11 (R.L.Moss1, E.Tzimas1, H.Kara2, P.Willis2 and J.Kooroshy3, Institute for Energy and the Hague Centre for Strategic
Studies, “Critical Metals in Strategic Energy Technologies”, Online: http://www.oakdenehollins.co.uk/media/242/CriticalMetalsinSET.pdf)
Such bottlenecks could disrupt a timely and affordable supply of these metals to Europe in the future
and potentially hinder the smooth deployment of SETPlan technologies and the realisation of the EU 2020 targets. In this context, it
is important to note that significant SETPlan demands for a specific metal on itself do not necessarily constitute a problem. Demand
for raw materials changes constantly as technologies and consumption patterns change over time. This creates incentives for
adapting supply, so that the market balance is restored.
However, such adaptation processes can be very time-consuming, for
If demand expands rapidly and supply is unable to
keep pace in the short to medium term, bottlenecks in the form of price rises and supply
shortages can be the consequence. In cases where only a few countries control the production of an individual metal
under tight market conditions, bottlenecks can also be exacerbated through political interventions by governments. Dominant
producers may, for example, use their market power to gain political or commercial advantages
through influencing supply and prices or imposing trade restrictions.
A good example of how
disruptive such bottlenecks can be is the case of rare earths. Given the challenging economic and technical
example, when it takes many years to open new mines.
obstacles involved in opening new rare earths mines, supply has struggled to grow considerably even though demand has been
China has been systematically tightening export quotas that
favour domestic rare earth consuming industries over competitors in the rest of the world,
resulting in 2010, in a tight market and driving up prices. China implemented strict measures to consolidate a
booming over the past decade. b In parallel,
weakly regulated industry with many small scale operations that routinely ignore safety, environmental and export regulations; and a
temporary halt of rare earth exports to Japan was imposed to exert political pressure in the context of a diplomatic dispute. Taken
together, this combination of political and market factors have resulted in considerable supply shortages and price rises for rare
earths over the course of 2010.c Indeed, even at the time of writing, there have been further substantial increases in the price of
some rare earth oxides (especially dysprosium oxide) in 2011 alone.
That undermines our military, which depends on rare earth minerals for radar,
weapons guidance, and other key capabilities.
Kennedy 10 (J. Kennedy, President of Wings Enterprises, March, “Critical and Strategic Failure of Rare Earth Resources,” Online:
http://www.smenet.org/rareEarthsProject/TMS-NMAB-paperV-3.pdf)
Rare earths are critical components for military jet
engines, guided missiles and bombs, electrical countermeasures, anti-missile systems, satellite
communication systems and armor, yet the U.S. has no domestic sources.¶ Innovation Drives Industry – Industry
The national defense issues are equally important.
Carries the Economy¶ Advances in Materials Science are a result of tireless innovation; innovation seeking improvements in the
performance and characteristics of material properties or a change in their form or function. Much of this work must eventually
translate into commercial and military applications. Today
many advances in material science are achieved
through the application of rare earth oxides, elements and alloys. This group of elements, also known as
the lanthanide series, represents the only known bridge to the next level of improved performance in the material properties for
many metallurgical alloys, electrical conductivity, and instrument sensitivity and in some cases a mechanical or physical change in
function. These
lanthanides hold unique chemical, magnetic, electrical, luminescence and
radioactive shielding characteristics. Combined with other elements they can help maintain or alter physical and
structural characteristics under changing conditions.¶ Today, these rare earth elements are essential to every
computer hard drive, cell phone, energy efficient light bulb, many automotive pollution control
devices and catalysts, hybrid automobiles and most, if not all, military guidance systems and
advanced armor.¶ Tomorrow, they will be used in ultra capacity wind turbines, magnetic refrigeration, zero emission
automobiles, superconductors, sub-light-speed computer processors, nano-particle technologies for material and metallurgical
applications, structurally amorphous metals, next generation military armor and TERFENOL-D Radar. America must lead in these
developments.¶ The
entire U.S. defense system is completely interdependent upon REO enhanced
technologies for our most advanced weapons guidance systems, advanced armor, secure
communications, radar, advanced radar systems, weapons triggering systems and un-manned
Drones. REO dependent weapons technologies are predominantly represented in our ‘first
strike’ and un-manned capabilities. This national defense issue is not a case of limited exposure for first-strike
capabilities. This first-strike vulnerability translates into risk exposure in every level of our national
defense system, as the system is built around our presumptive technological and first-strike
superiority. Yet the DoD has abandon its traditional procurement protocols for “strategic and critical” materials and components
for weapons systems in favor of “the principles of free trade.”
I/L TURN: Nuke Power DA
Nuclear power provides energy for a substantial portion of America. Giving incentives
to offshore wind gives the upper hand to an intermittent energy source, straining the
national power grid.
Goreman 14 (Steve, Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America, “US Power Grid at the Limit,” The Hill,
Online: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/204194-us-power-grid-at-the-limit)
Nuclear generating facilities are also under attack. Many of the 100 nuclear power plants that
provided 20 percent of U.S. electricity for decades can no longer be operated profitably. Exelon’s
six nuclear power plants in Illinois have operated at a loss for the last six years and are now candidates for closure.¶ What
industry pays customers to take its product? The answer is the U.S. wind industry. Windgenerated electricity is typically bid in electrical wholesale markets at negative prices. But how can
wind systems operate at negative prices?¶ The answer is that the vast majority of U.S. wind systems receive a
federal production tax credit (PTC) of up to 2.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for produced electricity.
Some states add an addition credit, such as Iowa, which provides a corporate tax credit of 1.5 cents per kw-hr. So wind
operators can supply electricity at a pre-tax price of a negative 3 or 4 cents per kw-hr and still
make an after-tax profit from subsidies, courtesy of the taxpayer.¶ As wind-generated electricity has
grown, the frequency of negative electricity pricing has grown. When demand is low, such as in the
morning, wholesale electricity prices sometimes move negative. In the past, negative market prices have provided a signal to
generating systems to reduce output.¶ But wind
systems ignore the signal and continue to generate
electricity to earn the PTC, distorting wholesale electricity markets. Negative pricing by wind
operators and low natural gas prices have pushed nuclear plants into operating losses. Yet,
Congress is currently considering whether to again extend the destructive PTC subsidy.¶
Capacity shortages are beginning to appear. A reserve margin deficit of two gigawatts is projected for the summer
of 2016 for the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), serving the Northern Plains states. Reserve shortages are also
projected for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) by as early as this summer.¶ The
United States has the
finest electricity system in the world, with prices one-half those of Europe. But this system is
under attack from foolish energy policies. Coal-fired power plants are closing, unable to meet EPA environmental
guidelines. Nuclear plants are aging and beset by mounting losses, driven by negative pricing from
subsidized wind systems. Without a return to sensible energy policies, prepare for higher prices
and electrical grid failures.
Unreliable power sources like wind cause widespread power outages, resulting in
economic shocks.
Barrett 12 (Michael, writer for the Lexington Institute, “Ensuring the Resiliance of the U.S. Electrical Grid – Part II: Managing
the Chaos – and Costs – of Shared Risks,” Lexington Institute, Online: http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/ensuring-the-resilience-ofthe-u-s-electrical-grid-part-ii-managing-the-chaos-and-costs-of-shared-risks/)
Nonetheless, reliability
is still a concern, and is intimately tied to resilience of the system. In fact, as
noted by the Galvin Electricity Initiative regarding being 99.97% reliable, “while this sounds
good in theory, in practice it translates to interruptions in the electricity supply that cost
American consumers an estimated $150 billion per year.”¶ As another source reports, “The grid is designed to
work at least 99.97 percent of the time, but just 0.03 percent still equals an average loss of 2.6 hours of power each year for
customers across the U.S.” Furthermore, as CNN has reported, “Experts
on the nation’s electricity system point
to a frighteningly steep increase in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000
consumers… During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent – up from 41
blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.” ¶ But
particularly pernicious is the shared nature of these risks. For example, too many industry players
relying on the same few equipment suppliers for critical parts can result in an acute shortage
after a large event. Potential transportation or supply chain interruptions further complicate
the shared risks – whether for transporting raw materials to power plants or the mobility of power crews repairing various
damaged infrastructure. It is from these kinds of unmanaged interdependencies resulting from today’s
complex world that the bad event can cascade into systemic collapse, as occurred following
Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Addressing such issues through strategic resilience investments presents a host of inherently
cross-sector and cross-segment challenges and requires concerted public private partnership to identify and remediate the lack of
flexibility and adaptability within certain key infrastructure nodes.
That makes economic collapse inevitable.
Jagdfeld 12 (Aaron, President and CEO of Generac Power Systems, “India-Style Blackout Could Strike The U.S.” Forbes, 8-6,
Online: http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/08/06/india-style-blackout-could-strike-the-u-s/)
what we
faced during the past year pales in comparison to the largest electrical outage in world history
that knocked out power to nearly 700 million people last week in India, crippling their economy. The U.S. is one of the most
developed nations in the world. Our day-to-day interactions are guided by technologies and
innovations that rely uponthe power grid. But as we continue to develop technological mastery, our power grid is
aging and fragile, and itssusceptibility to outages means our way of life could break down in an
instant. Unlike generations past, our lives and businesses are now connected through a vast network of
computers and data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity. Our homes are bigger,
with more luxuries and appliances than ever. We count on power in ways our parents couldn’t imagine. Power quality is the
measure of reliable power in our homes and businesses, and it has been declining steadily since
More people in the United States were affected by power outages last year than at any time in the industrial age. Yet
1990. During this time, demand for power has increased by 25%, but the infrastructure needed to transmit power to homes has
increased by a mere 7%. We
have become a digital society, but areburdened with an analog power
grid—one that is inefficient and susceptible to weather, surging demand, and even terrorist
attack. Each outage comes at a cost; the average cost of a one-second outage among industrial and digital firms is about $1,477.
That means the U.S. economy loses between $104 billion and $164 billion each year topower
outages. Losses like that affect all of us. An outage lasting days, as in India, would represent hundreds of
billions of dollars lost, taxing our already fragile economy. Fixing our power grid is no simple feat. The best
estimates put the price tag for a new grid at two trillion dollars, or about 14% of our current gross domestic product. There is no
legitimate national plan to create a new grid, nor are there public funds available to fix the grid we have. American utility companies
are as constrained as the government when it comes to meaningful investment in grid improvement. The 3,200 utility companies
that touch the power grid are regulated by an equal number of agencies, many of which exist solely to minimize cost to consumers.
This is undeniably good for consumers in most cases, but it has left us with a broken power grid that no one is responsible for (or
capable of) fixing. To address the frequent power outages we’ve been experiencing, we must secure a massive commitment of
resources from both public and private sectors. In the absence of such a commitment,
Americans must prepare for
outages, blackouts, brownouts and chaotic power reliability. We must commit ourselves to the knowledge
that long-duration power outages are not something that happens elsewhere. India is only geographically distant from us; its current
power outage is actually far closer than we might think. Preparation will take many forms. Families must have a supply of food and
water that is not dependent on electricity to store or prepare. Businesses must back-up data and maintain secure facilities that don’t
require grid-based power to remain viable. But these are the very first steps. What about the necessities of modern life, such as
lighting, heat, air conditioning, communications, or more importantly, medical devices? For those we must turn to off-grid sources of
power. There is no perfect solution to address our electrical grid’s disrepair or our nation’s increasingly poor power quality. Fixing
the grid is staggeringly expensive at a time when our nation’s budget is tight.
The cost of an Indian-sized outage isn’t
simply expensive; it’s a cost we cannot bear. Meantime, we should prepare for the next outage.
Guarantees war – prefer conclusive statistics.
Royal 10 (Jedediah, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction Program—DoD, “Economics of War & Peace: Legal and Political
Perspectives”, ed. Goldsmith &Brauer, p. 213-15)
Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict. Political science literature has contributed a moderate
degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defencebehaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been
considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First, on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski
rhythms in the global economy are associated with
the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such,
exogenous shocks such aseconomic crises could usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin,
1981) that leads to uncertainty about power balances, increasing the risk of miscalculation (Fearon, 1995).
and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that
Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to
global economic cycles combined with
parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small
powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown.
Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation
of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour
of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade
challenge a declining power (Werner, 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows the
relations. However, if the expectations of future trade decline, particularly for difficult to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for
conflict increases, as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trigger
expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between
a strong correlation between
internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The
economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find
linkages between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing. Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict,
which in turn returns the favour. Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external self-reinforce
each other. (Blomberg& Hess, 2002, p. 89). Economic
decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism
(Bloomberg, Hess, &Weerapana, 2004), which has the capacity to spill across borders and lead to external tensions. Furthermore, crises generally
reduce the popularity of a sitting government. 'Diversionary theory' suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting
governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996, DeRouen (1995),
and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting evidence showing that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic
states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of
weak economic performance in the United
States, and thus weak Presidentialpopularity,are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In
summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlateseconomic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic
crises, whereas political scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic, and
national levels.5 This implied connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security
domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of
debate and deserves more attention. This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in
the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. As such, the view presented here should be
considered ancillary to those views.
Methane Hydrates
The cards don’t say anything about mapping… it even says “the BSR may not indicate the
existence of hydrate”
Adaptation solves- new IPCC report proves it is the better solution
Rodgers 14 – Paul Rodgers, scientific journalist for Forbes magazine (“Climate Change: We can Adapt, Says IPCC”, Forbes, March 31,
2014, Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulrodgers/2014/03/31/climate-change-is-real-but-its-not-the-end-of-the-world-says-ipcc/,
Accessed on: 7/17/2014, IJ)
Yet for
the first time, the IPCC is offering a glimmer of hope. It acknowledges that some of the changes will
be beneficial – including higher crop yields in places like Canada, Europe and Central Asia – and that in others cases,
people will be able to adapt to them.“ The really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing
climate change,” said Dr Chris Field, the global ecology director at the Carnegie Institution in Washington and a co-chairman of the report. “We
have a lot of the tools for dealing effectively with it. We just need to be smart about it.
“Climate-change adaptation is not an
exotic agenda that has never been tried,” said Field. “Governments, firms, and communities around
the world are building experience with adaptation. This experience forms a starting point for
bolder, more ambitious adaptations that will be important as climate and society continue to change.”Adaptations
could include better flood defences or building houses that can withstand tropical cyclones.
Vicente Barros, another co-chairman, said: “Investments in better preparation can pay dividends both for the
present and for the future.”Despite the shift, one scientist, Professor Richard Tol, an economist at Sussex University, withdrew his
name from the report claiming that it was still too “alarmist”.
Solvency
The implementation of MSPs are infeasible due to local resistance
Jentoft and Knol 2014 (Svein and Maaike, Norwegian College of Fishery Science Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics
University of Tromsø, “Marine spatial planning: risk or opportunity for fisheries in the North”, Maritime Studies 2014, 13:1, Sea?,
http://www.maritimestudiesjournal.com/content/13/1/1#, AX)
MPAs (and MSP) are meant to be proactive mechanisms of area-based ecosystem management
(Douvere and Ehler 2008). According to the precautionary principle lack of information is no excuse for inaction. All seven
North Sea countries have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and therefore this principle governs by implication. Yet, things
are more difficult to implement in reality than they initially seem on the surface. MPAs cannot
be easily imposed from the top down. Its development requires interactive processes at the
regional scale. In Belgium this lesson was learned the hard way. As noted by Bogaert et al. (2009), the
initial MPA designation process was top-down and received local resistance, and therefore
failed. It had to be terminated, and could not be resumed before a more interactive process involving stakeholders was initiated
six years later. This would also be a lesson. There is little reason to assume that MSP would be any different.
MPAs don’t solve alone- other tools are required
Agardy et al ’11, (Tundi Agardya, Giuseppe Notarbartolo di Sciarab, Patrick Christie, “Mind the gap: Addressing the shortcomings of
marine protected areas through large scale marine spatial planning,” Marine Policy, Volume 35, Issue 2, March 2011, Pages 226–232,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X10001740)
The tendency to use MPAs as the preferred management tool may preclude consideration of
other less popular, but important, fisheries management options. Closing open access to tropical nearshore
waters is difficult and may be perceived as closing economic options for the most impoverished communities. Management
techniques such as reduction of fishing effort and control of fisher access to neighboring waters
are understandably unpopular among fishers in thirty-six communities surveyed in 2007 (Christie,
unpublished data). Project FISH in the Philippines is beginning to engage in MPA and fisheries management (through effort control, seasonal
closures) simultaneously as part of their EBM effort (Armada et al., 2009). MPAs might serve as “stepping stones” to other forms of
management. Their educational value, if diffused through society, has the potential to provide alternative examples in a context of eroding
environmental condition (Pietri et al., 2009).While ambitious
MPAs and MPA networks are essential management tools in
many contexts, they are not sufficient and will only be effective in the long term if sustainable resource
management is practiced in surrounding waters. Otherwise, they will become the last remaining
refuges in severely degraded seas (Christie et al., 2002).
MPAs fail
Abate 2009 (RANDALL S., “Marine Protected Areas as a Mechanism to Promote Marine Mammal Conservation: International and
Comparative Law Lessons for the United States,” Oregon Law Review, Vol. 88, 255, http://law.famu.edu/download/file/Abate%20%20Oregon%20Law%20Review%20Article.pdf, AX)
Wherever they are located, MPAs tend to displace some existing activities in the designated area,
which results in resistance to the implementation of the MPA’s objectives. As such, determining
where to place these sites has been, and remains, a significant challenge.67 Rarely have MPAs been
chosen strategically to meet a series of clearly defined objectives.68 Even though MPAs are
supposed to enhance protection of rare species and essential habitats, ecosystems and the
species within them continue to be significantly impaired.69 Therefore, MPAs could potentially be
more effective in conserving marine mammals if management plans were focused on
implementing more effective objectives, monitoring, and enforcement measures. Establishing a set of clearly defined
objectives will not automatically create more effective MPAs. First, objectives need to determine actual or potential
causes of harm to marine mammals before an attempt can be made to mitigate or remedy the
situation.