Free Trade Bad
Agriculture
1NC Agriculture
Free trade hurts small farms and agriculture—displaces domestic products
Steve Suppan NO DATE CITED, works at Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, “ Analysis of the Central American Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) Concerning Agriculture”
[http://www.mofga.org/Default.aspx?tabid=441]
To date, trade
liberalization policies have led to declining farm prices and income for small-scale farmers
both in the United States and abroad. Liberalized trade policies are also linked to increased scale in
farm production, increased competition and displacement of small-scale farmers in developing
countries. These trends negatively impact sustainable farming practices. Regulations and standards concerning
organic labeling, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and environmental protection may be overruled by international tribunals created
through trade agreements such as CAFTA, the FTAA, bilateral trade and WTO agreements. MOFGA supports the goal of standing in solidarity
with farmers and farm organizations across the United States and around the world in calling for a more democratic process to determine the
parameters governing both international trade and the domestic policies that promote international trade in agriculture. To that end, we
support: ¶ trade policies that enhance the ability of small-scale and sustainable farmers to make a living wage;¶ diversity in farm production and
in local cultures as well as the right and ability of local communities to set standards for the products they produce and consume; ¶ socially and
economically responsible trade in agriculture, including Fair Trade that ensures farmers living wages for the fruits of their labor;¶ the efforts of
the Commission established by the Maine Trade, Jobs and Democracy Act (LD1815) in the last legislative session. This Commission, composed
of our legislators and citizens, is examining the impacts of "Free Trade" Agreements to our economy, jobs, and democracy and will specifically
examine the impacts to farms in Maine.¶ Further we: ¶ will empower one of our members, if one so chooses, to be an official representative to
the newly forming Maine Fair Trade Coalition as an advocate for the interests of small-scale, organic, and sustainable farmers in international
trade issues;¶ stand in Solidarity with farmers in El Salvador and in other parts of the developing world to reject the FTAA and CAFTA in their
current forms as destructive to the lives and livelihoods of family farmers world-wide;¶ seek to provide education to the public about trade
issues and their impact to small-scale farmers world-wide in order to empower thedemocratic process.¶ *. CCR (Association of Communities for
the Development of Chalatenango) is the organizing arm of its parent organization, CRIPTES, and its mission is: "to promote and consolidate the
organization, education, and mobilization of rural communities, and to stimulate and strengthen participation of women, men, and youth in
community organizing and local government which ultimately contributes to social, political, economic, and cultural transformation." CCR
works in partnership with CORDES (Foundation for the Communal Cooperation and Development of El Salvador) whose mission is: "to promote
and strengthen sustainable economic development with equity in rural and sub-urban areas which socially, economically, and politically have
been neglected." Why should MOFGA object to CAFTA, the FTAA, NAFTA, and similar international trade agreements? What happens to smallscale farmers when barriers to international trade are eliminated? ¶ Overall, international trade agreements benefit agribusiness to the
detriment of small-scale farmers. According to the National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC): "Current US agriculture policy allows agriculture
products to be sold on the international market far below their cost of production which benefits mainly agribusiness corporations and very
large farming operations. These policies allow these large players to buy cheap and sell across international borders wherever they can make
the most profit, while underselling local farmers both in the U.S. and abroad, and intensifying rates of poverty since family farmers worldwide
are unable to compete."¶ Small-scale farmers in the U.S. do not benefit from gaining access to other countries' markets. Trade agreements are
written for business interests, and put the primary focus of discussions on increasing PROFITS for US corporations, and decreasing PRICES for
consumers. Agribusinesses can increase profits even while commodity prices decline by dumping cheap products in other countries while
continuing to profit from subsidies. This hurts small-scale farmers in other countries, and does not benefit small-scale farmers in the U.S.¶
Small-scale farmers in the U.S. and around the world are hurt by downward price pressures when transnational agribusiness corporations move
products freely across countries' borders. How many times have you heard that local, organic food is "expensive"? Probably many. But are
small-scale organic farmers making living wages? No. American consumers and our society are trained by artificially low food prices, set by
subsidized agribusiness. According to the NFFC, "more
than 40% of net income of agriculture in the U.S. comes from
the federal government in the form of direct subsidies, an attempt to make up for low commodity
prices." These artificially low prices make it impossible for small-scale American farmers to compete with
agribusiness in terms of price - even when food comes long distances from factory farms to
supermarkets, with many middlemen taking a cut.¶ International trade agreements exacerbate this
problem worldwide by creating incentives for agribusiness to buy commodities cheaply from farmers in
one country and sell them at prices lower than local farmers can afford in another country. U.S.
agribusiness can also "dump" cheap products (like soybeans) on other countries. A farmer from Thailand
who visited Maine last year asked "How can the U.S. grow soybeans, send them half-way around the world to Thailand, and still
sell them in our markets for prices too low for us to compete?"
Small farms prevent extinction
Altieri 8 [Professor of agroecology @ University of California, Berkeley. [Miguel Altieri (President, Sociedad Cientifica LatinoAmericana de
Agroecologia (SOCLA), “Small farms as a planetary ecological asset: Five key reasons why we should support the revitalization of small farms in
the Global South,” Food First, Posted May 9th, 2008, pg. http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2115]
The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this
reason has advocated for genuine agrarian reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are
of central
importance for communities to be able to meet growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order
to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well as the environment, food production has
to remain in the hands of small- scale sustainable farmers and cannot be left under the control of large
agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing the export-led, free-trade based, industrial agriculture
model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger and
environmental degradation be halted. Social rural movements embrace the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative to the
neo-liberal approach that puts its faith in inequitable international trade to solve the world’s food problem. Instead, food sovereignty
focuses on local autonomy, local markets, local production-consumption cycles, energy and technological sovereignty and farmer to
farmer networks.¶ This global movement, the Via Campesina, has recently brought their message to the North,
partly to gain the support of foundations and consumers, as political pressure from a wealthier public that increasingly
depends on unique food products from the South marketed via organic, fair trade, or slow food channels could marshal the sufficient political
will to curb the expansion of biofuels, transgenic crops and agro-exports, and put an end to subsidies to industrial farming and dumping
practices that hurt small farmers in the South. But can these arguments really captivate the attention and support of northern consumers and
philanthropists? Or is there a need for a different argument—one that emphasizes that the very quality of life and food security of the
populations in the North depends not only on the food products, but in the ecological services provided by small farms of the South. In fact, it is
herein argued that the functions performed by small
farming systems still prevalent in Africa, Asia and Latin America—in the post-peak
oil era that humanity is entering—comprise an ecological asset for humankind and planetary survival. In fact, in an
era of escalating fuel and food costs, climate change, environmental degradation, GMO pollution and
corporate- dominated food systems, small, biodiverse, agroecologically managed farms in the Global South
are the only viable form of agriculture that will feed the world under the new ecological and economic
scenario.¶ There are at last five reasons why it is in the interest of Northern consumers to support the cause and struggle of small farmers in
the South:¶ 1. Small farmers are key for the world’s food security¶ While 91% of the planet’s 1.5 billion hectares of
agricultural land are increasingly being devoted to agro-export crops, biofuels and transgenic soybean to feed cars and cattle, millions of
small farmers in the Global South still produce the majority of staple crops needed to feed the planet’s rural and urban
populations. In Latin America, about 17 million peasant production units occupying close to 60.5 million hectares, or 34.5% of the total
cultivated land with average farm sizes of about 1.8 hectares, produce 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of the potatoes for
domestic consumption. Africa has approximately 33 million small farms, representing 80 percent of all farms in the region. Despite the fact that
Africa now imports huge amounts of cereals, the majority of African farmers (many of them women) who are smallholders with farms below 2
hectares, produce a significant amount of basic food crops with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed. In Asia, the majority of
more than 200 million rice farmers, few farm more than 2 hectares of rice make up the bulk of the rice produced by Asian small farmers. Small
increases in yields on these small farms that produce most of the world´s staple crops will have far more impact on food availability at the local
and regional levels, than the doubtful increases predicted for distant and corporate-controlled large monocultures managed with such high
tech solutions as genetically modified seeds.¶ 2.Small
farms are more productive and resource conserving than
large-scale monocultures¶ Although the conventional wisdom is that small family farms are backward and unproductive, research
shows that small farms are much more productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than yield from a single crop.
Integrated farming systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains, fruits, vegetables, fodder, and animal products out-produce yield
per unit of single crops such as corn (monocultures) on large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small farm in
which the corn is grown as part of a polyculture that also includes beans, squash, potato, and fodder. In polycultures developed by
smallholders, productivity, in terms of harvestable products, per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the same level of
management. Yield advantages range from 20 percent to 60 percent, because polycultures reduce losses due to weeds, insects and diseases,
and make more efficient use of the available resources of water, light and nutrients. In overall output, the diversified farm produces much more
food, even if measured in dollars. In the USA, data shows that the smallest two hectare farms produced $15,104 per hectare and netted about
$2,902 per acre. The largest farms, averaging 15,581 hectares, yielded $249 per hectare and netted about $52 per hectare. Not only do small to
medium sized farms exhibit higher yields than conventional farms, but do so with much lower negative impact on the environment. Small farms
are ‘multi-functional’– more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than do large farms. Communities
surrounded by many small farms have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated, large
mechanized farms. Small farmers also take better care of natural resources, including reducing soil erosion
and conserving biodiversity.¶ The inverse relationship between farm size and output can be attributed
to the more efficient use of land, water, biodiversity and other agricultural resources by small farmers. So in
terms of converting inputs into outputs, society would be better off with small-scale farmers. Building strong rural economies in the Global
South based on productive small-scale farming will allow the people of the South to remain with their families and will help to stem the tide of
migration. And as population continues to grow and the amount of farmland and water available to each person continues to shrink, a small
farm structure may become central to feeding the planet, especially when large- scale agriculture devotes itself to feeding car tanks.¶ 3.
Small traditional and biodiverse farms are models of sustainability¶ Despite the onslaught of industrial farming, the
persistence of thousands of hectares under traditional agricultural management documents a successful indigenous agricultural strategy of
adaptability and resiliency. These microcosms of traditional agriculture that have stood the test of time, and that can still be found almost
untouched since 4 thousand years in the Andes, MesoAmerica, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, offer promising models of sustainability as
they promote biodiversity, thrive without agrochemicals, and sustain year-round yields even under marginal environmental conditions. The
local knowledge accumulated during millennia and the forms of agriculture and agrobiodiversity that this
wisdom has nurtured, comprise a Neolithic legacy embedded with ecological and cultural resources of
fundamental value for the future of humankind.¶ Recent research suggests that many small farmers
cope and even prepare for climate change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of drought tolerant local
varieties, water harvesting, mixed cropping, opportunistic weeding, agroforestry and a series of other traditional techniques. Surveys
conducted in hillsides after Hurricane Mitch in Central America showed that farmers using sustainable practices such as “mucuna” cover crops,
intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less “damage” than their conventional neighbors. The study spanning 360 communities and 24
departments in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala showed that diversified plots had 20% to 40% more topsoil, greater soil moisture, less
erosion, and experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbors.¶ This demonstrates that a re-evaluation of indigenous
technology can serve as a key source of information on adaptive capacity and resilient capabilities exhibited by small farms—features of
strategic importance for world farmers to cope with climatic change. In addition, indigenous technologies often reflect a worldview and an
understanding of our relationship to the natural world that is more realistic and more sustainable that those of our Western European
heritage.¶ 4. Small farms represent a sanctuary of GMO-free agrobiodiversity¶ In general, traditional small scale farmers grow a wide variety of
cultivars . Many of these plants are landraces grown from seed passed down from generation to generation, more genetically heterogeneous
than modern cultivars, and thus offering greater defenses against vulnerability and enhancing harvest security in the midst of diseases, pests,
droughts and other stresses. In a worldwide survey of crop varietal diversity on farms involving 27 crops, scientists found that considerable crop
genetic diversity continues to be maintained on farms in the form of traditional crop varieties, especially of major staple crops. In most cases,
farmers maintain diversity as an insurance to meet future environmental change or social and economic needs. Many researchers have
concluded that this varietal richness enhances productivity and reduces yield variability. For example, studies by plant pathologists provide
evidence that mixing of crop species and or varieties can delay the onset of diseases by reducing the spread of disease carrying spores, and by
modifying environmental conditions so that they are less favorable to the spread of certain pathogens. Recent research in China, where four
different mixtures of rice varieties grown by farmers from fifteen different townships over 3000 hectares, suffered 44% less blast incidence and
exhibited 89% greater yield than homogeneous fields without the need to use chemicals.¶ It is possible that traits important to indigenous
farmers (resistance to drought, competitive ability, performance on intercrops, storage quality, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities
which may not be important to farmers (Jordan, 2001). Under this scenario, risk could increase and farmers would lose their ability to adapt to
changing biophysical environments and increase their success with relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs while supporting
their communities’ food security.¶ Although there is a high probability that the introduction of transgenic crops will enter centers of genetic
diversity, it is crucial to protect areas of peasant agriculture free of contamination from GMO crops, as traits important to indigenous farmers
(resistance to drought, food or fodder quality, maturity, competitive ability, performance on intercrops, storage quality, taste or cooking
properties, compatibility with household labor conditions, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities (i.e. herbicide resistance) which are of
no importance to farmers who don’t use agrochemicals . Under this scenario risk will increase and farmers will lose their ability to produce
relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs under changing biophysical environments. The social impacts of local crop shortfalls,
resulting from changes in the genetic integrity of local varieties due to genetic pollution, can be considerable in the margins of the Global
South.¶ Maintaining
pools of genetic diversity, geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilization or genetic
pollution from uniform transgenic crops will create “islands” of intact germplasm which will act as extant safeguards against
potential ecological failure derived from the second green revolution increasingly being imposed with programs such as the GatesRockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary islands will serve as the only source of GMO-free seeds that will be needed to repopulate
the organic farms in the North inevitably contaminated by the advance of transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and indigenous
communities of the Global South, with the help of scientists and NGOs, can continue to create and guard biological and genetic diversity that
has enriched the food culture of the whole planet.¶ 5. Small
farms cool the climate¶ While industrial agriculture
contributes directly to climate change through no less than one third of total emissions of the major greenhouse
gases — Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), small, biodiverse organic farms have the opposite
effect by sequestering more carbon in soils. Small farmers usually treat their soils with organic compost materials that absorb
and sequester carbon better than soils that are farmed with conventional fertilizers. Researchers have suggested that the conversion of 10,000
small- to medium-sized farms to organic production would store carbon in the soil equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road.¶ Further
climate amelioration contributions by small farms accrue from the fact that most use significantly less
fossil fuel in comparison to conventional agriculture mainly due to a reduction of chemical fertilizer
and pesticide use, relying instead on organic manures, legume-based rotations, and diversity schemes to enhance
beneficial insects. Farmers who live in rural communities near cities and towns and are linked to local markets, avoid the energy wasted and the
gas emissions associated with transporting food hundreds and even thousands of miles.¶ Conclusions¶ The
great advantage of
small farming systems is their high levels of agrobidoversity arranged in the form of variety mixtures, polycultures,
crop-livestock combinations and/or agroforestry patterns. Modeling new agroecosystems using such diversified designs are extremely valuable
to farmers whose systems are collapsing due to debt, pesticide use, transgenic treadmills, or climate change. Such diverse systems buffer
against natural or human-induced variations in production conditions. There is much to learn from indigenous modes of production, as these
systems have a strong ecological basis, maintain valuable genetic diversity, and lead to regeneration and preservation of biodiversity and
natural resources. Traditional
methods are particularly instructive because they provide a long-term perspective on
successful agricultural management under conditions of climatic variability.¶ Organized social rural movements
in the Global South oppose industrial agriculture in all its manifestations, and increasingly their territories constitute isolated areas rich in
unique agrobiodiversity, including genetically diverse material, therefore acting as extant safeguards against the potential ecological failure
derived from inappropriate agricultural modernization schemes. It is precisely the ability to generate and maintain diverse crop genetic
resources that offer “unique” niche possibilities to small farmers that cannot be replicated by farmers in the North who are condemned to
uniform cultivars and to co-exist with GMOs. The “ cibo pulito, justo e buono” that Slow Food promotes, the Fair Trade coffee, bananas, and the
organic products so much in demand by northern consumers can only be produced in the agroecological islands of the South. This “difference”
inherent to traditional systems, can be strategically utilized to revitalize small farming communities by exploiting opportunities that exist for
linking traditional agrobiodiversity with local/national/international markets, as long as these activities are justly compensated by the North
and all the segments of the market remain under grassroots control.¶ Consumers
of the North can play a major role by
supporting these more equitable markets which do not perpetuate the colonial model of “agriculture of the poor for the rich,” but rather a
model that promotes small biodiverse farms as the basis for strong rural economies in the Global
South. Such economies will not only provide sustainable production of healthy, agroecologicallyproduced, accessible food for all, but will allow indigenous peoples and small farmers to continue their millennial
work of building and conserving the agricultural and natural biodiversity on which we all depend now
and even more so in the future.
Ext-trade kills Ag
Trade displaces domestic agricultural products
Phyllis Robinson 2/7/8, “How free trade destroys local economies, hurts small farmers and causes massive waves of migration”
http://smallfarmersbigchange.coop/2008/02/07/part-2-how-free-trade-destroys-local-economies-hurts-small-farmers-and-causes-massivewaves-of-migration/
If you take 1,000
U.S. corn farmers, you can imagine that they probably have 1,500 tractors amongst them. Now take
1,000 Mexican corn farmers – maybe they have 10, possibly 15 tractors. How can they compete?” Not only do U.S.
producers have technological superiority but they are heavily subsidized by the U.S. government – at
around $50 billion annually, while their Mexican counterparts receive approximately $5 billion annually.¶ Fourteen years after NAFTA went
into effect, the critics have unfortunately been proven right. Small-scale corn farmers, unable to compete with
subsidized U.S. corn entering the country have indeed been losing their businesses. According to the Interhemispheric Resource Center, from 1994 – 2004, 1.3 million small farmers went bankrupt. And Mexico went from a
country producing almost all its own corn (in 1993), to one which was 42% dependent on foreign corn
(2004).¶ Even more sadly, while corn producers are losing their businesses, Mexican consumers are paying
even higher prices for corn products such as tortillas – an important staple of the Mexican diet. This is
because the corn manufacturing sector is becoming increasingly concentrated by a few transnational
corporations that are strong enough to control prices. When I visited Mexico in January 2007, the newspapers were full of
stories about riots and demonstrations following yet another rise in tortilla prices. The price of tortillas had climbed 60% since January of the
previous year. Altogether, from 2000 to 2006, prices rose somewhere between 180% and 200%.
Ext-Famine = War
Famine causes resource wars—leads to extinction
Lugar 2k Chairman of the Senator Foreign Relations Committee and Member/Former Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee (Richard,
a US Senator from Indiana, is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a member and former chairman of the Senate
Agriculture Committee. “calls for a new green revolution to combat global warming and reduce world instability,” pg online @
http://www.unep.org/OurPlanet/imgversn/143/lugar.html)
In a world confronted by global terrorism, turmoil in the Middle East, burgeoning nuclear threats and other crises, it is easy to lose
sight of the long-range challenges. But we do so at our peril. One of the most daunting of them is meeting the
world’s need for food and energy in this century. At stake is not only preventing starvation and saving
the environment, but also world peace and security. History tells us that states may go to war over access to
resources, and that poverty and famine have often bred fanaticism and terrorism. Working to feed the
world will minimize factors that contribute to global instability and the proliferation of [WMDs] weapons of mass
destruction. With the world population expected to grow from 6 billion people today to 9 billion by
mid-century, the demand for affordable food will increase well beyond current international production
levels. People in rapidly developing nations will have the means greatly to improve their standard of living and caloric intake. Inevitably, that means eating more meat. This will raise demand for feed grain at the same time
that the growing world population will need vastly more basic food to eat. Complicating a solution to this problem is a dynamic that must be better understood in the West: developing countries
often use limited arable land to expand cities to house their growing populations. As good land disappears, people destroy timber
resources and even rainforests as they try to create more arable land to feed themselves. The longterm environmental consequences could be disastrous for the entire globe. Productivity revolution To meet the
expected demand for food over the next 50 years, we in the United States will have to grow roughly
three times more food on the land we have. That’s a tall order. My farm in Marion County, Indiana, for example, yields on average 8.3 to 8.6 tonnes of corn per hectare –
typical for a farm in central Indiana. To triple our production by 2050, we will have to produce an annual average of 25 tonnes per hectare. Can we possibly boost output that
much? Well, it’s been done before. Advances in the use of fertilizer and water, improved machinery
and better tilling techniques combined to generate a threefold increase in yields since 1935 – on our farm back then, my dad
produced 2.8 to 3 tonnes per hectare. Much US agriculture has seen similar increases. But of course there is no guarantee that we can achieve those results again. Given the urgency of expanding food production to meet world
demand, we must invest much more in scientific research and target that money toward projects that promise to have significant national and global impact. For the United States, that will mean a major shift in the way we
The United States can take a leading
position in a productivity revolution. And our success at increasing food production may play a
decisive humanitarian role in the survival of billions of people and the health of our planet.
conduct and fund agricultural science. Fundamental research will generate the innovations that will be necessary to feed the world.
Poverty
1NC Poverty
Trade destroys quality of goods and leads to poverty
Charles J.
Armentrout 10/21/11, writer for The Last Tech Age, “Free Trade is Bad for US”
Last night, the magazine The Hill posts current notes on items of immediate concern. Today, sometime, Pres Obama is to sign the Free
Trade bill and send more factories, more jobs overseas.¶ This agreement is with S. Korea, Panama, and Columbia. The idea
has a lofty sound, but has been a disaster. I believe there are major omissions in all our “free trade” agreements¶ None of the Free
Trade Acts, starting with Clinton’s NAFTA, have had any clause requiring the features that make U.S. goods specially safe. No OSHA
requirements, no EPA, no FDA, no real quality assurance, no minimum wage. The items we get back are as
cheap as physically possible to make, and may be just short of outright murder weapons in consumer
danger.¶ America has moved toward a boss’s heaven. Think. We can shift our factories to one of these countries and close down our U.S.
versions. Then ship in items produced by near serf labor. So what if field hands work in insecticide plumes from the planes buzzing overhead?
Not our problem! So what if cheaper pharmaceuticals and processes are substituted for the original items? The origin country does not care
about such issues; we have no say in the matter.¶ This
median income) to
is a travesty, likely to reduce most of our population (below
poverty. The U.S. median family income (the income where 50% of the U.S. families earn below this value)
dropped
Solving poverty is a moral obligation
Andre and Velasquez 92 (Claire Andre, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Associate Director; and Manuel
Velasquez, Charles J. Dirksen Professor of Business Ethics, “World Hunger: A Moral Response”
<http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v5n1/hunger.html> Spring 1992)
Finally, it is argued, all
human beings have dignity deserving of respect and are entitled to what is necessary to live
needs. This right to satisfy basic over the
rights of others to accumulate wealth and property. When needs takes precedence people are without
the resources needed to survive, those with surplus resources are obligated to come to their aid.¶ In the
coming decade, the gap between rich nations and poor nations will grow and appeals for assistance will multiply. How peoples of rich
nations respond to the plight of those in poor nations will depend, in part, on how they come to view their
duty to poor nations--taking into account justice and fairness, the benefits and harms of aid, and moral rights, including the right to
in dignity, including a right to life and a right to the goods necessary to satisfy one's basic
accumulate surplus and the right to resources to meet basic human needs.
Ext
Trade harms the impoverished—any claims otherwise are because of mercantilism
and industrial policy
Ian Fletcher 3/18/11, Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to
fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the
U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank founded in 1933 and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly
hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author
of Free Trade Doesn't Work: What Should Replace It and Why, “Free Trade Isn't Helping World Poverty”
Like it or not, this
is perfectly logical, as increased access to the ruthlessly competitive global marketplace
(which is all free trade provides) benefits only nations whose industries have something to sell which
foreign trade barriers are currently keeping out. Their industries must both be strong enough to be
globally competitive and have pent-up potential due to trade barriers abroad, a fairly rare
combination.¶ As a result, the most desperately impoverished nations, which have few or no
internationally competitive industries, have basically nothing to gain from freer trade.¶ What progress
against poverty has occurred in the world in recent decades has not been due to free trade, but due to
the embrace of mercantilism and industrial policy by some poor nations. (This is, of course, the same way nations
like the U.S. and England became prosperous hundreds of years ago.) According to the World Bank, the entire net global
decline in the number of people living in poverty since 1981 has been in mercantilist China, where free
trade is spurned. ["2008 World Development Indicators: Poverty Data Supplement," The World Bank, 2008, p. 10.] Elsewhere, their
numbers have grown.
Alt Cause
Alt causes to solving—financial sector, education, governance
Raju Jan Singh 2/19/13, Raju Jan Singh is the Lead Economist for Central Africa, based in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Prior to joining the World
Bank, Mr. Singh held positions at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC, at the Swiss Ministry of Finance in Bern, and at Lombard
Odier & Cie (private banking) in Geneva. He was also a consultant for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, working with the
central banks of Rwanda and Tanzania, and taught at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, “Evidence That Trade Does
Reduce Poverty, But Only If the Conditions Are Right”
So does
trade reduce poverty? In a recent World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, my colleague Maëlan Le
this question, looking at the connection between poverty and trade liberalization in 30
African countries between 1981 and 2000. Our results suggest that trade does tend to reduce poverty, but only in
specific settings: in countries where financial sectors are deep, education levels high, and governance
strong.¶ This result corresponds to a certain logic. These three dimensions (finance, education, and governance) capture an
economy’s ability to reallocate resources – to move them away from the less productive sectors to the
more productive ones. This, in turn, allows countries to better take advantage of the opportunities
offered by trade.¶ A more developed financial sector allows banks and investors to more quickly
identify new and promising sectors and redirect credit to them. A more educated population is more
able to acquire the new skills sought by growing sectors and adjust more rapidly to the changing
conditions of the labor market. Finally, better governance allows contracts to be made and conflicts to
be resolved more easily.¶ It’s easy to imagine how any of these factors could help pull people out of poverty. An easy-to-get
business loan could help a new grocery store open and create new jobs, for example. A literate worker
would be more able to transition from low-paying agricultural work to a job in a new factory. And foreign
investors, observing that a country’s government enforces contracts, might be more willing to invest in a
new plant, hiring local workers. If these conditions are not met, however, greater openness to trade could be
associated with higher levels of poverty.
Goff and I examine
Prolif
1NC Prolif
Trade increases prolif—dual use tech-- empirics
Togzhan Kassenova 1/25/12, associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment and a Stanton Nuclear Security
Fellow. She specializes in weapons of mass destruction nonproliferation issues, with a regional focus on Central Asia and Southeast Asia;
nuclear security; strategic trade management; and civilian nuclear energy programs, “Preventing WMD Proliferation Myths and Realities of
Strategic Trade Controls”, [http://carnegieendowment.org/files/wmd_proliferation_Togzhan_Jan_25_2012.pdf]
WMD-relevant technology and materials are all around us. Semiconductors, for instance, are indispensable in the advanced
electronics we use every day (including computers), but they can also be utilized in a variety of military equipment, such as satellites, infrared
imaging products, and transistors. Freezedrying technology used to make instant coffee or instant noodles can also be used in biologicalwarfare research. Encryption technology has many civilian applications—for instance, in train-signaling systems—but malicious actors can also
use it to communicate without being detected by law enforcement agencies. Similarly, satellite technology may have civilian applications,
weather monitoring for example, or military ones, such as missile guidance. The
broad applications for dual-use goods and
technology in everyday life result in constant flows of proliferation-sensitive items across borders. And
this poses a real danger. Gradual acquisition of components and technology from various sources that
can enable a nonstate or state actor to build a WMD program is a more likely proliferation threat than
an actor acquiring an already-built weapon from an external source. The best illustration of how real
this threat is in the nuclear realm is the story of the A. Q. Khan network. Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan and
his associates successfully exploited gaps in controls of nuclear exports in Pakistan and beyond during the
1980s and 1990s. The network assisted Iran, North Korea, and Libya in acquiring a whole range of nuclear
weapons–relevant items. 1 According to a recent report by nonproliferation expert Joshua Pollack, India, surprisingly, was the fourth
customer of the Khan network, procuring uraniumenrichment technology. 2 Unfortunately for the proliferation outlook,
progress in high-tech industries, especially in the fields of electronics and biotechnology, as well as the
expansion of nuclear power and the globalization of trade, further exacerbate the challenge of
firewalling international trade from WMD proliferation.
The impact is extinction
Mathew Kroenig 5/26/12, Assistant Professor of Government, Georgetown University and Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, Council on
Foreign Relations, The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future? Prepared for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center,
[http://www.npolicy.org/article.php?aid=1182&tid=30]
Proliferation Optimism: Proliferation optimism was revived in the academy in Kenneth Waltz’s 1979 book, Theory of
International Politics.1[29] In this, and subsequent works, Waltz argued that the spread of nuclear weapons has beneficial effects on
international politics. He maintained that states, fearing a catastrophic nuclear war, will be deterred from going to war with other nucleararmed states. As more and more states acquire nuclear weapons, therefore, there are fewer states against which other states will be willing to
wage war. The
spread of nuclear weapons, according to Waltz, leads to greater levels of international
stability. Looking to the empirical record, he argued that the introduction of nuclear weapons in 1945 coincided with an unprecedented
period of peace among the great powers. While the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in many proxy wars in peripheral geographic
regions during the Cold War, they never engaged in direct combat. And, despite regional scuffles involving nuclear-armed states in the Middle
East, South Asia, and East Asia, none of these conflicts resulted in a major theater war. This lid on the intensity of conflict, according to Waltz,
was the direct result of the stabilizing effect of nuclear weapons. Following in the path blazed by the strategic thinkers reviewed above, Waltz
argued that the requirements for deterrence are not high. He argued that, contrary to the behavior of the Cold War superpowers, a state need
not build a large arsenal with multiple survivable delivery vehicles in order to deter its adversaries. Rather, he claimed that a few nuclear
weapons are sufficient for deterrence. Indeed, he even went further, asserting that any state will be deterred even if it merely suspects its
opponent might have a few nuclear weapons because the costs of getting it wrong are simply too high. Not even nuclear accident is a concern
according to Waltz because leaders in nuclear-armed states understand that if they ever lost control of nuclear weapons, resulting in an
accidental nuclear exchange, the nuclear retaliation they would suffer in response would be catastrophic. Nuclear-armed states, therefore,
have strong incentives to maintain control of their nuclear weapons. Not even new nuclear states, without experience in managing nuclear
arsenals, would ever allow nuclear weapons to be used or let them fall in the wrong hands. Following Waltz, many other scholars have
advanced arguments in the proliferation optimist school. For example, Bruce Bueno de Mesquite and William Riker explore the “merits of
selective nuclear proliferation.”2[30] John Mearsheimer made the case for a “Ukrainian nuclear deterrent,” following the collapse of the Soviet
Union.3[31] In the run up to the 2003 Gulf War, John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt argued that we should not worry about a nuclear-armed
Iraq because a nuclear-armed Iraq can be deterred.4[32] And, in recent years, Barry Posen and many other realists have argued that nuclear
proliferation in Iran does not pose a threat, again arguing that a nuclear-armed Iran can be deterred.5[33] What’s Wrong with Proliferation
Optimism? The proliferation optimist position, while having a distinguished pedigree, has several major problems.
Many of these weaknesses have been chronicled in brilliant detail by Scott Sagan and other contemporary proliferation pessimists.6[34] Rather
than repeat these substantial efforts, I will use this section to offer some original critiques of the recent incarnations of proliferation optimism.
First and foremost, proliferation optimists do not appear to understand contemporary deterrence theory. I do not say
this lightly in an effort to marginalize or discredit my intellectual opponents. Rather, I make this claim with all due caution and with complete
sincerity. A careful review of the contemporary proliferation optimism literature does not reflect an understanding of, or engagement with, the
developments in academic deterrence theory in top scholarly journals such as the American Political Science Review and International
Organization over the past few decades.7[35] While early optimists like Viner and Brodie can be excused for not knowing better, the
writings of contemporary proliferation optimists ignore the past fifty years of academic research on
nuclear deterrence theory. In the 1940s, Viner, Brodie, and others argued that the advent of Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD) rendered war among major powers obsolete, but nuclear deterrence theory soon advanced
beyond that simple understanding.8[36] After all, great power political competition does not end with nuclear weapons. And
nuclear-armed states still seek to threaten nuclear-armed adversaries. States cannot credibly threaten to launch a suicidal nuclear war, but they
still want to coerce their adversaries. This leads to a credibility problem: how can states credibly threaten a nuclear-armed opponent? Since the
1960s academic nuclear deterrence theory has been devoted almost exclusively to answering this question.9[37] And, unfortunately for
proliferation optimists, the answers do not give us reasons to be optimistic. Thomas Schelling was the first to devise a rational means by which
states can threaten nuclear-armed opponents.10[38] He argued that leaders cannot credibly threaten to intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear
war, but they can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”11[39] They can engage in a process, the nuclear crisis, which increases the
risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. As
states escalate a nuclear crisis there is an
increasing probability that the conflict will spiral out of control and result in an inadvertent or
accidental nuclear exchange. As long as the benefit of winning the crisis is greater than the incremental increase in the risk of
nuclear war, threats to escalate nuclear crises are inherently credible. In these games of nuclear brinkmanship, the state that is willing to run
the greatest risk of nuclear war before back down will win the crisis as long as it does not end in catastrophe. It is for this reason that Thomas
Schelling called great power politics in the nuclear era a “competition in risk taking.”12[40] This does not mean that states eagerly bid up the
risk of nuclear war. Rather, they face gut-wrenching decisions at each stage of the crisis. They can quit the crisis to avoid nuclear war, but only
by ceding an important geopolitical issue to an opponent. Or they can the escalate the crisis in an attempt to prevail, but only at the risk of
suffering a possible nuclear exchange. Since 1945 there were have been many high stakes nuclear crises (by my
count, there have been twenty) in which “rational” states like the United States run a risk of nuclear war and inch very close to the brink of
nuclear war.13[41] By
asking whether states can be deterred or not, therefore, proliferation optimists are asking the
wrong question. The right question to ask is: what risk of nuclear war is a specific state willing to run against a particular opponent in a
given crisis? Optimists are likely correct when they assert that Iran will not intentionally commit national
suicide by launching a bolt-from-the-blue nuclear attack on the United States or Israel. This does not mean that Iran will
never use nuclear weapons, however. Indeed, it is almost inconceivable to think that a nuclear-armed Iran would not, at some point,
find itself in a crisis with another nuclear-armed power and that it would not be willing to run any risk of nuclear war in order to achieve its
objectives. If a nuclear-armed Iran and the United States or Israel have a geopolitical conflict in the future, over say the internal politics of Syria,
an Israeli conflict with Iran’s client Hezbollah, the U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf, passage through the Strait of Hormuz, or some other issue,
do we believe that Iran would immediately capitulate? Or is it possible that Iran would push back, possibly even brandishing nuclear weapons in
an attempt to deter its adversaries? If the latter, there is a real risk that proliferation to Iran could result in nuclear war. An
optimist
might counter that nuclear weapons will never be used, even in a crisis situation, because states have such a
strong incentive, namely national survival, to ensure that nuclear weapons are not used. But, this
objection ignores the fact that leaders operate under competing pressures. Leaders in nuclear-armed
states also have very strong incentives to convince their adversaries that nuclear weapons could very
well be used. Historically we have seen that in crises, leaders purposely do things like put nuclear
weapons on high alert and delegate nuclear launch authority to low level commanders, purposely
increasing the risk of accidental nuclear war in an attempt to force less-resolved opponents to back down. Moreover, not
even the optimists’ first principles about the irrelevance of nuclear posture stand up to scrutiny. Not all nuclear wars would be equally
devastating.14[42] Any nuclear exchange would have devastating consequences no doubt, but, if a crisis were to spiral out of control and result
in nuclear war, any sane leader would rather be facing a country with five nuclear weapons than one with thirty-five thousand. Similarly, any
sane leader would be willing to run a greater risk of nuclear war against the former state than against the latter. Indeed, systematic research
has demonstrated that states are willing to run greater risks and, therefore, more likely to win nuclear crises when they enjoy nuclear
superiority over their opponent.15[43] Proliferation
optimists miss this point, however, because they are still mired in 1940s
deterrence theory. It is true that no rational leader would choose to launch a nuclear war, but,
depending on the context, she would almost certainly be willing to risk one. Nuclear deterrence theorists have
proposed a second scenario under which rational leaders could instigate a nuclear exchange: a limited nuclear war.16[44] By launching a single
nuclear weapon against a small city, for example, it was thought that a nuclear-armed state could signal its willingness to escalate the crisis,
while leaving its adversary with enough left to lose to deter the adversary from launching a full-scale nuclear response. In a future crisis
between a nuclear-armed China and the United States over Taiwan, for example, China could choose to launch a nuclear attack on Honolulu to
demonstrate its seriousness. In that situation, with the continental United States intact, would Washington choose to launch a full-scale nuclear
war on China that could result in the destruction of many more American cities? Or would it back down? China might decide to strike hoping
that Washington will choose a humiliating retreat over a full-scale nuclear war. If launching
a limited nuclear war could be
rational, it follows that the spread of nuclear weapons increases the risk of nuclear use. Again, by
ignoring contemporary developments in scholarly discourse and relying exclusively on understandings
of nuclear deterrence theory that became obsolete decades ago, optimists reveal the shortcomings of
their analysis and fail to make a compelling case. The optimists also error by confusing stability for the
national interest. Even if the spread of nuclear weapons contributes to greater levels of international
stability (which discussions above and below suggest it might not) it does not necessarily follow that the spread of
nuclear weapons is in the U.S. interest. There might be other national goals that trump stability, such
as reducing to zero the risk of nuclear war in an important geopolitical region. Optimists might argue that South Asia is
more stable when India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons, but certainly the risk of nuclear war is higher than if there
were no nuclear weapons on the subcontinent. In addition, it is wrong to assume that stability is always in the national
interest. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it is not. If stability is obtained because Washington is deterred from using force against a nucleararmed adversary in a situation where using force could have advanced national goals, stability harms, rather than advances, U.S. national
interests. The final gaping weakness in the
proliferation optimist argument, however, is that it rests on a logical
contradiction. This is particularly ironic, given that many optimists like to portray themselves as hard-headed thinkers, following their
premises to their logical conclusions. But, the contradiction at the heart of the optimist argument is glaring and
simple to understand: either the probability of nuclear war is zero, or it is nonzero, but it cannot be
both. If the probability of nuclear war is zero, then nuclear weapons should have no deterrent effect.
States will not be deterred by a nuclear war that could never occur and states should be willing to
intentionally launch large-scale wars against nuclear-armed states. In this case, proliferation optimists
cannot conclude that the spread of nuclear weapons is stabilizing. If, on the other hand, the probability of
nuclear war is nonzero, then there is a real danger that the spread of nuclear weapons increases the
probability of a catastrophic nuclear war. If this is true, then proliferation optimists cannot be certain
that nuclear weapons will never be used. In sum, the spread of nuclear weapons can either raise the
risk of nuclear war and in so doing, deter large-scale conventional conflict. Or there is no danger that
nuclear weapons will be used and the spread of nuclear weapons does not increase international
instability. But, despite the claims of the proliferation optimists, it is nonsensical to argue that nuclear
weapons will never be used and to simultaneously claim that their spread contributes to international
stability. Proliferation Anti-obsessionists: Other scholars, who I label “anti-obsessionists” argue that the spread of nuclear weapons has
neither been good nor bad for international politics, but rather irrelevant. They argue that academics and policymakers concerned about
nuclear proliferation spend too much time and energy obsessing over something, nuclear weapons, that, at the end of the day, are not all that
important. In Atomic Obsession, John Mueller
argues that widespread fears about the threat of nuclear weapons
are overblown.17[45] He acknowledges that policymakers and experts have often worried that the spread of nuclear weapons could lead
to nuclear war, nuclear terrorism and cascades of nuclear proliferation, but he then sets about systematically dismantling each of these fears.
Rather, he contends that nuclear weapons have had little effect on the conduct of international diplomacy and that world history would have
been roughly the same had nuclear weapons never been invented. Finally, Mueller concludes by arguing that the real problem is not nuclear
proliferation, but nuclear nonproliferation policy because states do harmful things in the name of nonproliferation, like take military action and
deny countries access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Similarly, Ward Wilson argues that, despite the belief held by optimists and
pessimists alike, nuclear weapons are not useful tools of deterrence.18[46] In his study of the end of World War II, for example, Wilson argues
that it was not the U.S. use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that forced Japanese surrender, but a variety of other factors,
including the Soviet Union’s decision to enter the war. If the actual use of nuclear weapons was not enough to convince a country to capitulate
to its opponent he argues, then there is little reason to think that the mere threat of nuclear use has been important to keeping the peace over
the past half century. Leaders of nuclear-armed states justify nuclear possession by touting their deterrent benefits, but if nuclear weapons
have no deterrent value, there is no reason, Ward claims, not to simply get rid of them. Finally, Anne Harrington de Santana argues that
nuclear experts “fetishize” nuclear weapons.19[47] Just like capitalists, according to Karl Marx, bestow magical qualities on money, thus
fetishizing it, she argues that leaders and national security experts do the same thing to nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence as a critical
component of national security strategy, according to Harrington de Santana, is not inherent in the technology of nuclear weapons themselves,
but is rather the result of how leaders in countries around the world think about them. In short, she argues, “Nuclear weapons are powerful
because we treat them as powerful.”20[48] But, she maintains, we could just as easily “defetish” them, treating them as unimportant and,
therefore, rendering them obsolete. She concludes that “Perhaps some day, the deactivated nuclear weapons on display in museums across the
United States will be nothing more than a reminder of how powerful nuclear weapons used to be.”21[49] The anti-obsessionists make some
thought-provoking points and may help to reign in some of the most hyperbolic accounts of the effect of nuclear proliferation. They remind us,
for example, that our worst fears have not been realized, at least not yet. Yet, by
taking the next step and arguing that
nuclear weapons have been, and will continue to be, irrelevant, they go too far. Their arguments call
to mind the story about the man who jumps to his death from the top of a New York City skyscraper
and, when asked how things are going as he passes the 15th story window, replies, “so far so good.”
The idea that world history would have been largely unchanged had nuclear weapons not been
invented is a provocative one, but it is also unfalsifiable. There is good reason to believe that world
history would have been different, and in many ways better, had certain countries not acquired nuclear
weapons. Let’s take Pakistan as an example. Pakistan officially joined the ranks of the nuclear powers in May 1998 when it followed India in
conducting a series of nuclear tests. Since then, Pakistan has been a poster child for the possible negative
consequences of nuclear proliferation. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have led to further nuclear
proliferation as Pakistan, with the help of rogue scientist A.Q. Khan, transferred uranium enrichment technology to
Iran, Libya, and North Korea.22[50] Indeed, part of the reason that North Korea and Iran are so far along with their uranium
enrichment programs is because they got help from Pakistan. Pakistan has also become more aggressive since acquiring
nuclear weapons, displaying an increased willingness to sponsor cross-border incursions into India
with terrorists and irregular forces.23[51] In a number of high-stakes nuclear crises between India and
Pakistan, U.S. officials worried that the conflicts could escalate to a nuclear exchange and intervened
diplomatically to prevent Armageddon on the subcontinent. The U.S. government also worries about the safety and security of Pakistan’s
nuclear arsenal, fearing that Pakistan’s nukes could fall into the hands of terrorists in the event of a state collapse or a
break down in nuclear security. And we still have not witnessed the full range of consequences arising from Pakistani nuclear proliferation.
Islamabad has only possessed the bomb for a little over a decade, but they are likely to keep it for decades to come, meaning that we could still
have a nuclear war involving Pakistan. In short, Pakistan’s nuclear capability has already had deleterious effects on U.S. national security and
these threats are only likely to grow over time. In addition, the anti-obsessionists are incorrect to argue that the cure of U.S. nuclear
nonproliferation policy is worse than the disease of proliferation. Many observers would agree with Mueller that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in
2003 was a disaster, costing much in the way of blood and treasure and offering little strategic benefit. But the Iraq War is hardly
representative of U.S. nonproliferation policy. For the most part, nonproliferation policy operates in the mundane realm of legal frameworks,
negotiations, inspections, sanctions, and a variety of other tools. Even occasional preventive military strikes on nuclear facilities have been far
less calamitous than the Iraq War. Indeed, the Israeli strikes on nuclear reactors in Iraq and Syria in 1981 and 2007, respectively, produced no
meaningful military retaliation and a muted international response. Moreover, the idea that the Iraq War was primarily about nuclear
nonproliferation is a contestable one, with Saddam Hussein’s history of aggression, the unsustainability of maintaining the pre-war
containment regime indefinitely, Saddam’s ties to terrorist groups, his past possession and use of chemical and biological weapons, and the
window of opportunity created by September 11th, all serving as possible prompts for U.S. military action in the Spring of 2003. The claim that
nonproliferation policy is dangerous because it denies developing countries access to nuclear energy also rests on shaky ground. If anything, the
global nonproliferation regime has, on balance, increased access to nuclear technology. Does anyone really believe that countries like Algeria,
Congo, and Vietnam would have nuclear reactors today were it not for Atoms for Peace, Article IV of the NPT, and other appendages of the
nonproliferation regime that have provided developing states with nuclear technology in exchange for promises to forgo nuclear weapons
development? Moreover, the sensitive fuel-cycle technology denied by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and other supply control regimes is
not even necessary to the development of a vibrant nuclear energy program as the many countries that have fuel-cycle services provided by
foreign nuclear suppliers clearly demonstrate. Finally, the notion that nuclear energy is somehow the key to lifting developing countries from
third to first world status does not pass the laugh test. Given the large upfront investments, the cost of back-end fuel management and storage,
and the ever-present danger of environmental catastrophe exemplified most recently by the Fukushima disaster in Japan, many argue that
nuclear energy is not a cost-effective source of energy (if all the externalities are taken into account) for any country, not to mention those
developing states least able to manage these myriad challenges. Taken together, therefore, the argument that nuclear nonproliferation policy is
more dangerous than the consequences of nuclear proliferation, including possible nuclear war, is untenable. Indeed, it would certainly come
as a surprise to the mild mannered diplomats and scientists who staff the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global focal point of the
nuclear nonproliferation regime, located in Vienna, Austria. The anti-obsessionsists, like the optimists, also walk themselves into logical
contradictions. In this case, their policy recommendations do not necessarily follow from their analyses. Ward argues that nuclear weapons are
irrelevant and, therefore, we should eliminate them.24[52] But, if nuclear weapons are really so irrelevant, why not just keep them lying
around? They will not cause any problems if they are as meaningless as anti-obsessionists claim and it is certainly more cost effective to do
nothing than to negotiate complicated international treaties and dismantle thousands of warheads, delivery vehicles, and their associated
facilities. Finally, the
idea that nuclear weapons are only important because we think they are powerful is
arresting, but false. There are properties inherent in nuclear weapons that can be used to create
military effects that simply cannot, at least not yet, be replicated with conventional munitions. If a military
planner wants to quickly destroy a city on the other side of the planet, his only option today is a
nuclear weapon mounted on an ICBM. Therefore, if the collective “we” suddenly decided to “defetishize”
nuclear weapons by treating them as unimportant, it is implausible that some leader somewhere would not independently
come to the idea that nuclear weapons could advance his or her country’s national security and thereby re-fetishize them. In short, the
optimists and anti-obsessionists have brought an important perspective to the nonproliferation debate. Their arguments are provocative and
they raise the bar for those who wish to argue that the spread of nuclear weapons is indeed a problem. Nevertheless, their counterintuitive
arguments are not enough to wish away the enormous security challenges posed by the spread of the world’s most dangerous weapons. These
myriad threats will be considered in the next section. Why Nuclear Proliferation Is a Problem The
spread of nuclear weapons
poses a number of severe threats to international peace and U.S. national security including: nuclear
war, nuclear terrorism, emboldened nuclear powers, constrained freedom of action, weakened alliances,
and further nuclear proliferation. This section explores each of these threats in turn. Nuclear War. The greatest threat posed by
the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the
probability that somewhere, someday, there is a catastrophic nuclear war. A nuclear exchange between the two
superpowers during the Cold War could have arguably resulted in human extinction and a nuclear exchange between states with smaller
nuclear arsenals, such as India and Pakistan, could still result in millions of deaths and casualties, billions of dollars of economic devastation,
environmental degradation, and a parade of other horrors. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United
States used one nuclear weapon each on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close. Many analysts point to sixty-five-plus-year
tradition of nuclear non-use as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons will never be
used again. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns like the great depression were a thing of the past, only
to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting in the later 1990s and the Great Recession of the late Naughts.25[53] This author, for one,
would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used in my lifetime. Before
reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go
through a transition period in which they lack a secure-second strike capability. In this context, one or
both states might believe that it has an incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran
acquires nuclear weapons neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, secondstrike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be
confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a
large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but, when it first crosses the nuclear threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In
these pre-MAD situations, there are at least three ways that nuclear war could occur. First, the state
with the nuclear advantage might believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might,
therefore, decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities and eliminate the threat of nuclear war against
Israel. Indeed, this incentive might be further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second,
the state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use ‘em or loose ‘em
pressures. That is, if Tehran believes that Israel might launch a preemptive strike, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its
entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as Thomas Schelling has argued, nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal
fear of surprise attack.26[54] If there are advantages to striking first, one state might start a nuclear war
in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. In a future
Israeli-Iranian crisis, for example, Israel and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a
Even in a world of MAD, there is a risk of nuclear war. Rational
deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders that would not
intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and
current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to hold in the future. For example,
Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it
contains leaders who genuinely hold millenarian religious worldviews who could one day ascend to
power and have their finger on the nuclear trigger. We cannot rule out the possibility that, as nuclear
devastating first attack from an opponent.
weapons continue to spread, one leader will choose to launch a nuclear war, knowing full well that it
could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine a
nuclear war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale
wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above, nuclear-armed states
still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. This leads to
the credibility problem that is at the heart of modern deterrence theory: how can you threaten to
launch a suicidal nuclear war? Deterrence theorists have devised at least two answers to this question. First,
as stated above, leaders can choose to launch a limited nuclear war.27[55] This strategy might be especially attractive to
states in a position of conventional military inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly. During the Cold War, the United
States was willing to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority in continental
Europe. As
Russia’s conventional military power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War,
Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear use in its strategic doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy
calls for the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be
escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for nuclear use in the event of
an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the
possibility of nuclear use against a U.S. superpower in a possible East Asia contingency. Second, as was
also discussed above leaders can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”28[56] They can
initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of nuclear brinkmanship, states can increases the
risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have
not resulted in nuclear war, but many of them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come
close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents could have led to war.29[57]
When we think about future nuclear crisis dyads, such as India and Pakistan and Iran and Israel, there
are fewer sources of stability that existed during the Cold War, meaning that there is a very real risk
that a future Middle East crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange.
Disease
1NC Disease
Trade spreads disease—conclusive evidence
Sciencedaily 11 Sciencedaly.com, cites study done by researchers at the UK research councils’ Rural Economy and Land use
programme, June 9, “Is Free Global Trade Too Great a Threat to Food Supplies, Natural Heritage and Health?”,
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110609083226.html]
Researchers from the UK Research Councils' Rural Economy and Land Use Programme say that we face
a future of uncertainty, and possible new threats to our food supplies, natural heritage, and even human
health, from animal and plant pathogens. Human behaviour, travel and trade exacerbates the
problem and we may need to reconsider our approach to free trade. We face a future of uncertainty, and possible
new threats to our food supplies, natural heritage, and even human health, from animal and plant pathogens, according to researchers from
the UK Research Councils' Rural Economy and Land Use Programme. In a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the
academics take a fresh look at infectious diseases of animals and plants, from an interdisciplinary
perspective. They conclude that increasing global trade may put us at greater risk from pathogens in
the future, as more exotic diseases enter the country. This process is already happening, particularly in plant disease.
Climate change is driving shifts in cropping patterns across the world and they may take pests and
diseases with them. We are also seeing completely new pathogens evolve, while existing ones
develop the ability to infect new hosts. During the 20th century the number of new fungal, bacterial
and viral diseases in plants appearing in Europe rose from less than five per decade to over 20. But these
problems are exacerbated by human behaviour, and understanding this could be key to helping policymakers deal with risk and uncertainty. In
many cases the spread of disease is caused by increased trade, transport and travel. Trends in the international
horticultural industry have been towards fewer, larger producers, supplying vast numbers of retailers. Thus, disease which begins in
one location may be spread far and wide. Changes in the livestock trade have similar effects at national level. Reduction in
income per animal, and the introduction of mechanisation, means that fewer farmers manage more animals per farm, and animals are moved
around more frequently. They may be born in one location but sold on and reared elsewhere. Government
policy and the
classification of diseases may even increase the risks. Farmers restocking to combat one disease may,
unwittingly, introduce another.
Spread of disease causes extinction
Butler 6
Rhett
-- BS from UCSD, founder of Mongabay.com, speaker at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UCSC, participant in the US State
Department Speakers Program in Indonesia, “LOSS OF SPECIES FOR FOREST REGENERATION,” [rainforests.mongabay.com/0904.htm]
Disease can break out among humans. Although not unleashed yet, someday one of these microscopic killers
could lead to a massive human die-off as deadly for our species as we have been for the species of the
rainforest. Until then, local populations will continue to be menaced by mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever,
Rift Valley fever, and malaria, and water-borne diseases like cholera. Many emergent and resurgent diseases are directly linked to land
alterations which bring humans in closer contact with such pathogens. For example, malaria and snailborne schistosomiasis have escalated
because of the creation of artificial pools of water like dams, rice paddies, drainage ditches, irrigation canals, and puddles created by tractor
treads. Malaria is a particular problem in deforested and degraded areas, though not in forested zones where there are few stagnant ground
pools for mosquito breeding. These pools are most abundant in cleared regions and areas where tractors tear gashes in the earth. Malaria is
already a major threat to indigenous peoples who have developed no resistance to the disease nor any access to antimalarial drugs. Malaria
alone is cited as being responsible for killing an estimated 20 percent of the Yanomani in Brazil and Venezuela. Malaria—caused by unicelluar
parasites transferred in the saliva of mosquitoes when they bite—is an especially frightening disease for its drug-resistant forms. Thanks to poor
prescribing techniques on the part of doctors, there are now strains in Southeast Asia reputed to be resistant to more than 20 anti-malarial
drugs. There is serious concern that global climate change will affect the distribution of malaria, which currently infects roughly 270 million
people worldwide and kills 1-2 million a year— 430,000-680,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa alone.¶ The outbreak of disease in the tropics
does not affect only the people of those countries, since virtually
any disease can be incubated for enough time to
allow penetration into the temperate developed countries. For example, any Central African doctor infected
with the ebola virus from a patient can board a plane and land in London within 10 hours. The virus could
quickly spread, especially if airborne, among the city's population of 8 million. Additionally, every person
at the airport who is exposed can unknowingly carry the pathogen home to their native countries around
the world.
Ext
Trade rapidly spreads diseases
Tatem
Rogers , and Hay
11
1, DJ
1
1&2 7/28/
AJ
SI
, 1TALA Research Group, Tinbergen Building, Department of Zoology, University of
Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
2Malaria Public Health & Epidemiology Group, Centre for Geographic Medicine, KEMRI, PO Box 43640, 00100 Nairobi GPO, Kenya, “Global
Transport Networks and Infectious Disease Spread”
Increases in global travel are occuring simultaneously with many other processes that favour the
emergence of disease (Wilson, 1995). Travel is a potent force in disease emergence and spread, whether it is
aircraft moving human-incubated pathogens, or insect vectors, great distances in short times, or ships transporting used tyres containing
The speed and complexity of modern transport make both geographical space and the
traditional ‘drawbridge’ strategy of disease control and quarantine increasingly irrelevant (Haggett, 2000).
With no apparent end in sight to the continued growth in global air travel and shipborne trade, we
must expect the continued appearance of communicable disease pandemics, disease vector invasions
and vector-borne disease movement
mosquito eggs.
Trade makes even small risks of disease global threats
Ann Marie Kimball and Jill Hodges 10, Professor Emeritus in Epidemiology at the University of Washington’s School of Public Health,
and Masters in Public Health, “Risky Trade and Emerging Infections”, Infectious Disease Movement in a Borderless World: Workshop Summary,
Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Microbial Threats
our increasingly global economy, with growing international travel
and trade (including trade in services such as transplantation), has ultimately made virtually any emerging microbial
risk global in nature. In the examples of foodborne E. coli and BSE, we see the globalization of direct
infectious risk. In the instance of the overuse of antimicrobials in food animals, we see the globalization of antimicrobial
resistance. With medical travel for organ transplants, we see traveling patients become potential vectors for the spread of disease.
While microbial risks have been globalized along with commerce, the corresponding health and
protective measures for the most part have not. The second edition of the IHR (2005), which took effect in 2007, provides
The foregoing cases have demonstrated how
some important safeguards to help limit the international spread of infectious disease. The IHR require countries to conduct surveillance for
and report to the WHO a “public health emergency of international concern,” that is, an event “that may cause international disease spread.” If
WHO determines such a threat exists, as it did with the recent H1N1 outbreak, it may issue recommendations to curb the spread of disease,
such as quarantine or travel restrictions for affected or potentially affected individuals. As the experience with H1N1 demonstrated, WHO
must carefully balance the threat of disease spread with the potential economic consequences of any
travel or trade restrictions in order to minimize disincentives for countries to report potential threats .
While WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan raised the “Pandemic Alert” level to 6 (the highest), WHO actively discouraged trade and travel
restrictions after determining that they would not be effective in curbing the spread of the influenza virus and could needlessly result in
significant economic repercussions. Instead, WHO focused on identifying and treating individuals with infection and urged those individuals
with illness or symptoms to avoid travel and contact with others. This did not stop some countries from instituting their own travel restrictions.
Several nations banned flights to Mexico, and China quarantined more than 70 travelers from Mexico (Browne, 2009). Despite the moderated
response, Mexican authorities estimated $2.2 billion losses to the nation’s economy as a result of the outbreak, including more than a 40
percent drop in tourism revenue (Llana, 2009).
Globalization risks disease spread
Labonte et al 11
Ronald
, Institute of Population Health at the University of Ottawa, Mohindra, Katia, Institute of Population Health at
the University of Ottawa, Lencucha, Raphael, University of Lethbridge, “Framing International Trade and Disease”, Globalization and Health,
’Chronicity’ has been proposed as an appropriate lens to address the complexities associated with
rising burden of chronic diseases [18] and has been identified as the theme for this special issue. The concept of chronicity
has conventionally been applied to understanding the nature of care of chronic diseases [19]. However, the
term is also applicable to the causes of chronic diseases. Specifically, we view chronicity in two ways: first, as the post1980s reconfiguration of globalization (particularly economic aspects of trade and investment liberalization following what has
been characterized as neo-liberal economic principles)[20], which has led to the international transmission of risk
factors for non-communicable disease; and second, as the durability of this model even in the face of
multiple, and more recently global, financial crises. Trade-related global market integration has
essentially made such disease risk factors ‘communicable’ (with food, tobacco and alcohol consumption serving as
‘vectors’), blurring the conventional distinction between communicable and chronic diseases.
Enviroment
1NC Environment
Trade destroys the environment—transports harmful goods—China proves
Korves
12
Nicolas
6/29/
, Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso and Anca Monika Voicu, University of Goettingen, University Jaume, Rollins College
Florida, “Is Free Trade Good or Bad ¶ for the Environment? ¶ New Empirical Evidence”
“Increased trade liberalization, increased ¶ trade, increased production, increased energy use and climate change,”
while treated as ¶ separate issues until the early nineties, have become the focus of scholars researching trade ¶ and the environment
(Stoessel, 2001). In particular, the
debate originated in the early 1990s, ¶ following negotiations over the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the ¶ Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), both of which ¶
emerged during a time of rising environmental awareness. Environmentalists argued that ¶ the creation of NAFTA would
result in an environmental disaster for Mexico and pointed to ¶ the Maquiladora zone, where trade with the United States
caused a concentration of ¶ industry that had detrimental effects on the local environment. ¶ Moreover, trade
is related to numerous environmental problems. The Handbook on Trade ¶ and Environment emphasizes that trade acts
as facilitator of the “international movement of ¶ goods that, from an environmental perspective,
would best never be traded. With ¶ hazardous wastes and toxic materials, the environmental risks
increase the further the goods ¶ are transported, since spillage is always possible. Equally, such ‘goods’
may end up being ¶ dumped in countries without the technical or administrative capacity to properly
dispose of ¶ them, or even assess whether they should be accepted. Trade also makes possible the
overexploitation of species to the point of extinction—there is rarely enough domestic demand to ¶
create such pressure.“ Examples include the threats to species such as elephants, due to ¶ trade in ivory, the deterioration of
air quality in parts of China attributed to export-led ¶ growth, and unsustainable harvest rates in
tropical rainforests due to trade in timber ¶ (Copeland and Taylor, 2003).
Rapid decline in biodiversity now—plan pushes it over the brink---tanks
agriculture, causes famine, and leads to extinction
Alister Doyle 5/27/13, Environment Corresponder, “Biodiversity Loss Becoming Major Threat For Farmed Plants And Livestock Breeds”
A decline in the diversity of farmed plants and livestock breeds is gathering pace, threatening future
food supplies for the world's growing population, the head of a new United Nations panel on
biodiversity said on Monday. Preserving neglected animal breeds and plants was necessary as they could
have genes resistant to future diseases or to shifts in the climate to warmer temperatures, more
droughts or downpours, Zakri Abdul Hamid said. "The loss of biodiversity is happening faster and everywhere,
even among farm animals," Zakri told a conference of 450 experts in Trondheim, central Norway, in his first speech as founding chair of the
U.N. biodiversity panel. Many traditional breeds of cows, sheep or goats have fallen out of favour, often because they yield less meat or milk
than new breeds. Globalisation also means that people's food preferences narrow down to fewer plants.
Zakri said there were 30,000 edible plants but that just 30 crops accounted for 95 percent of the energy in human food that is dominated by
rice, wheat, maize, millet and sorghum. He said
it was "more important than ever to have a large genetic pool to
enable organisms to withstand and adapt to new conditions." That would help to ensure food for a
global population set to reach 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion now. Zakri noted that the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture
Organization estimated last year that 22 percent of the world's livestock breeds were at risk of extinction. That means there are fewer than
1,000 animals in each breed. The
extinctions of some domesticated animals and plants was happening in
tandem with accelerating losses of wild species caused by factors such as deforestation, expansion of
cities, pollution and climate change, he said. Irene Hoffmann, chief of the FAO's animal genetic resources branch, told Reuters
that eight percent of livestock breeds had already become extinct.
Loss of biodiversity leads to extinction
Jim Chen 2k, Professor of Law at University of Minnesota and Dean of Law School at Louisville, “Globalization and Its Losers”:, 9 Minn. J.
Global Trade 157’ LexisNexis Legal
Conscious decisions
to allow the extinction of a species or the destruction of an entire ecosystem epitomize the
"irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources" that NEPA is designed to retard. 312 The original Endangered Species
Act gave such decisions no quarter whatsoever; 313 since 1979, such decisions have rested in the hands of a solemnly convened "God Squad."
314 In its permanence and gravity, natural
extinction provides the baseline by which all other types of extinction
should be judged. The Endangered Species Act explicitly acknowledges the "esthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and
scientific value" of endangered species and the biodiversity they represent. 315 Allied bodies of international law confirm this view: 316 global
biological diversity is part of the commonly owned heritage of all humanity and deserves full legal protection. 317 Rather remarkably, these
broad assertions understate the value of biodiversity and the urgency of its protection. A Sand County Almanac, the eloquent bible of the
modern environmental movement, contains only two demonstrable biological errors. It opens with one and closes with another. We can
forgive Aldo Leopold's decision to close with that elegant but erroneous epigram, "ontogeny repeats phylogeny." 318 What concerns [*208] us
is his opening gambit: "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot." 319 Not quite. None
of us can live
without wild things. Insects are so essential to life as we know it that if they "and other land-dwelling anthropods ... were to
disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months." 320 "Most of the amphibians, reptiles, birds,
and mammals," along with "the bulk of the flowering plants and ... the physical structure of most forests and other terrestrial habitats" would
disappear in turn. 321 "The land would return to" something resembling its Cambrian condition, "covered by mats of recumbent windpollinated vegetation, sprinkled with clumps of small trees and bushes here and there, largely devoid of animal life." 322 From this perspective,
the mere thought of valuing biodiversity is absurd, much as any attempt to quantify all of earth's planetary amenities as some trillions of dollars
per year is absurd. But the frustration inherent in enforcing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has shown
that conservation cannot work without appeasing Homo economicus, the profit-seeking ape. Efforts to ban the international ivory trade
through CITES have failed to stem the slaughter of African elephants. 323 The preservation of biodiversity must therefore begin with a cold,
calculating inventory of its benefits. Fortunately, defending biodiversity preservation in humanity's self-interest is an easy task. As yet
unexploited species might give a hungry world a larger larder than the storehouse of twenty plant species that provide nine-tenths of
humanity's current food supply. 324 "Waiting in the wings are tens of thousands of unused plant species, many demonstrably superior to those
in favor." 325 As genetic warehouses, many plants enhance the productivity of crops already in use. In the United States alone, the [*209]
genes of wild plants have accounted for much of "the explosive growth in farm production since the 1930s." 326 The contribution is worth $ 1
billion each year. 327 Nature's pharmacy demonstrates even more dramatic gains than nature's farm. 328 Aspirin and penicillin, our star
analgesic and antibiotic, had humble origins in the meadowsweet plant and in cheese mold. 329 Leeches, vampire bats, and pit vipers all
contribute anticoagulant drugs that reduce blood pressure, prevent heart attacks, and facilitate skin transplants. 330 Merck & Co., the
multinational pharmaceutical company, is helping Costa Rica assay its rich biota. 331 A single commercially viable product derived "from, say,
any one species among ... 12,000 plants and 300,000 insects ... could handsomely repay Merck's entire investment" of $ 1 million in 1991
dollars. 332 Wild animals,
plants, and microorganisms also provide ecological services. 333 The Supreme Court has lauded the
pesticidal talents of migratory birds. 334 Numerous organisms process the air we breathe, the water we drink, the
ground we stroll. 335 Other species serve as sentries. Just as canaries warned coal miners of lethal gases, the decline or disappearance of
indicator species provides advance warning against deeper [*210] environmental threats. 336 Species conservation yields the greatest
environmental amenity of all: ecosystem protection. Saving
discrete species indirectly protects the ecosystems in which
they live. 337 Some larger animals may not carry great utilitarian value in themselves, but the human urge to protect these charismatic
"flagship species" helps protect their ecosystems. 338 Indeed, to save any species, we must protect their ecosystems. 339 Defenders of
biodiversity can measure the "tangible economic value" of the pleasure derived from "visiting, photographing, painting, and just looking at
wildlife." 340 In the United States alone, wildlife observation and feeding in 1991 generated $ 18.1 billion in consumer spending, $ 3 billion in
tax revenues, and 766,000 jobs. 341 Ecotourism gives tropical countries, home to most of the world's species, a valuable alternative to
subsistence agriculture. Costa Rican rainforests preserved for ecotourism "have become many times more profitable per hectare than land
cleared for pastures and fields," while the endangered gorilla has turned ecotourism into "the third most important source of income in
Rwanda." 342 In a globalized
economy where commodities can be cultivated almost anywhere, environmentally [*211] sensitive locales can maximize their wealth by
exploiting the
"boutique" uses of their natural bounty. The
value of endangered species and the biodiversity they embody is "literally
... incalculable." 343 What, if anything, should the law do to preserve it? There are those that invoke the story of Noah's Ark as a moral
basis for biodiversity preservation. 344 Others regard the entire Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the biblical stories of Creation and the
Flood, as the root of the West's deplorable environmental record. 345 To avoid getting bogged down in an environmental exegesis of JudeoChristian "myth and legend," we should let Charles Darwin and evolutionary biology determine the imperatives of our moment in natural
"history." 346 The
loss of biological diversity is quite arguably the gravest problem facing humanity. If we cast the
descendants [will] most regret," the "loss of genetic and species
diversity by the destruction of natural habitats" is worse than even "energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear
war, or conquest by a totalitarian government." 347 Natural evolution may in due course renew the earth with a diversity of species
question as the contemporary phenomenon that "our
approximating that of a world unspoiled by Homo sapiens -- in ten million years, perhaps a hundred million. 348
Ext
Data collection indicate trade destroys biodiversity
Chirgwin
12
Robert
6/12/
, writer for the register, cites study done by the Sydney University Integrated Sustainability Analysis group,
2012, “Western consumption helping to kill off species”
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/12/syd_uni_extinction_mapping/]
A school of physics may not be where you expect someone to analyze endangered species, but that’s the source of research from Sydney
University, showing the link between the gadget, food and resources supply chains and global
extinctions. In an extraordinary feat of data collection spanning years, the researchers from the University’s Integrated
Sustainability Analysis group in its School of Physics gathered data
on five billion supply chains, and 15,000 commodities in 187 countries, and compared all this to a
register of 25,000 endangered species. As much as a third of global species threats are due to global trade,
the research finds. This is a huge shift, the researchers say, compared to a pre-globalised world, where many
species threats were localized (due, for example, to local demands for food, fuel and living space). In essence, the research finds
that advanced economies – the places that try and police their own backyards, once our middle classes
start noticing that such things matter – have mostly exported environmental destruction to countries
that supply them with agricultural products, resource commodities, or manufactured goods. Australia is a
notable and not-honourable exception to this: our enthusiasm for mining makes us a net exporter of goods that endanger species through
pollution and habitat loss (not that this is likely to give pause to people like Titanic-replica-builder and CIA conspiracy theorist Clive Palmer). It’s
across the board, the researchers say: developed
countries’ demand for sugar, coffee, tea, timber, textiles, and
raw materials for manufactured goods (read: blood minerals for electronics) all export environmental
destruction to the supplier and cause “a biodiversity footprint that is larger than at home”.
A2: Trade boost environment
Trade and growth have no effect on the environment—this evidence is conclusive
National Bureau of Economic Research 11/17/11, private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to
promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic
research in a scientific manner, and without policy recommendations, among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic
community, “Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment?”; Frankel and Rose: NBER Research Associates
In sum, Frankel
and Rose find that after an initial adverse effect in the relationship between growth and
environmental damage at low levels of income, a pattern emerges showing that growth eventually has a beneficial effect on
air pollution. Still, the researchers caution that the results are less consistently positive in regard to broader measures of environmental quality.
Some environmental problems such as emission of greenhouse gases are truly global and not local, they
point out. A "free rider" problem prevents national governments from translating the demand for
environmental improvement into reality, even when they collectively have the economic means to do
so. Thus the authors are not surprised to find statistically that trade and growth do not seem to have beneficial
effects on emissions of these gases. In such cases, say Frankel and Rose, international cooperation and not just local regulation is
needed.
Democracy
1NC Democracy
Trade kills democracy—democracy is a competitive disadvantage
Johnson
12,
Dave
3/3/
Fellow at Campaign for America's Future, writing about American manufacturing, trade and economic/industrial
policy. He is also a Senior Fellow with Renew California., “Free Trade or Democracy, Can't Have Both”, [http://truthout.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7051:free-trade-or-democracy-cant-have-both]
Efficiency vs. Humanity Yes, countries where people do not have a say are more "efficient" and "business friendly." Countries where people do
not have a say can make things at a much lower cost than workers where people have rights. But when
we let exploitation of
human beings be a competitive advantage it undermines our own democracy. It means that democracy is
a competitive disadvantage in world markets. We Can't "Compete" With This, We Have To Fight It Let's get right to the core
of this. Suppose the South actually did rise again, and they reimposed all-out slavery. Would it be "trade" to close factories here and move them
south, so the companies would have lower costs? When
we allow companies to just import stuff that is made by
exploited workers in countries where people do not have a say, we are granting not-having-a-say an
advantage over having a say. We make democracy a competitive disadvantage. This Is About Preserving Democracy, Not About
"Trade" How often do you come across arguments that "globalization" and "free trade" mean that America's workers have to accept that the
days of good-paying jobs and US-based manufacturing are over? We hear that countries like China are more "competitive." We hear that
"trade" means that because it's cheaper to make things over there we all benefit from lower-cost goods that we import. How
often do
you hear that we need to cut wages and benefits, work longer hours, get rid of overtime and sick pay?
They say we should shed unions, get rid of environmental and safety regulations, gut government services, and especially, especially, especially
we should cut taxes. What
they are saying is that we need to shed our democracy, to be more competitive.
The impact is extinction
Diamond 95 - Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, December 1995, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s,
http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through
increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear,
chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The
very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new
and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence
of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly
democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize
themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations,
and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build
weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and
enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more
environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the
destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their
openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition,
civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international
security and prosperity can be built.
Ext
Trade kills democracy---increases privatization of social services--undermines nation-states ability to meet citizen needs
Alexander 6
Robin
- UE director of international labor affairs, “FTAA Spells Seriously
Bad News For Jobs
And Democracy”, US
International
[http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_ftaa.html)]
The United States and other governments in the Americas are currently negotiating a trade deal to cover the entire Western Hemisphere
(except Cuba). Scheduled to take effect in 2005, the Free
Trade Area of the Americas would be like NAFTA — but
even more of a threat to jobs, living standards and democracy. Impetus for an ever-expanding trade
bloc based on the U.S. economy has come in large part from corporate fears here about the
emergence of a powerful European single market (see timeline, at left). Hemispheric trade agreements on this
side of the Atlantic are U.S. capital’s response to this perceived competitive threat. First came the Canada-U.S.
free trade agreement in 1989, followed by NAFTA in 1994. Governments throughout the Americas agreed to the concept of a hemispheric trade
deal at the first Summit of the Americas in 1994. The second Summit in 1998 established a trade negotiating committee and working groups on
topics including agriculture, services, investment, dispute resolution, intellectual property rights, market access and government procurement.
Negotiating groups met in 2000. The negotiations have taken place in secret, off limits to the public and news media — but not to big business.
More than 500 corporate representatives have security clearance and access to FTAA draft documents. In addition, corporate committees
advise U.S. negotiators. In January, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative responded to demands for disclosure by releasing copies of
summaries of U.S. positions on FTAA. While vague, these summaries indicate that FTAA proposals incorporate the strongest provisions from
NAFTA, MAI and WTO. (Copies of FTAA drafts have not been given directly to members of the U.S. Congress — but our representatives are
allowed to view them in the U.S. State Dept. reading room.) The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was another secret scheme
designed to give capital the upper hand in the global economy. World-wide in scope, MAI was kept closely under wraps — few members of
Congress had any idea of its existence. Citizens’ groups got hold of a copy, however. Public Citizen (founded by Ralph Nader) posted the text on
its website. Once exposed, MAI was doomed — its provisions were that outrageous. Unfortunately for the peoples of the Americas, many of
FTAA’s provisions are likely to copy those of MAI. Like the global plan,
a hemispheric trade agreement would force
signatory nations to: Treat foreign corporations no less favorably than domestic corporations. Access
granted to corporations from any one FTAA country must be granted to corporations from all FTAA
countries. Remove performance requirements — rules established by local government to protect the local economy. For example, a living
wage, using local suppliers or minority businesses, or reinvesting in the local economy. Allow corporations to sue governments
directly for alleged restrictions on profit-taking. Submit to a dispute-resolution process involving
international panels, not domestic courts. And MAI’s not the only model. The services agreement of the WTO (the General
Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS) seeks to open the service sector of each nation to transnational corporate penetration. According to
trade specialist Maude Barlow, FTAA negotiators are combining the most extreme features of NAFTA and GATS. "Services is the fastest growing
sector in international trade, and of all services, health, education and water are shaping up to be the most potentially lucrative of all," writes
Barlow. The goal is the dismantling of public services. "The FTAA negotiating services agreement is even more sweeping than the GATS," she
says. "It
calls for ‘universal coverage of all service sectors’ at every level of government and gives
sweeping new powers to the service corporations of the hemisphere to move wherever they want
and demand equal access to government funding now reserved for domestic public programs." That
could remove basic services — everything from education to water supply — from local control. Leaked
documents indicate that FTAA will copy NAFTA’s Chapter 11, which gives corporations the right to sue governments for
the loss of profits — including the anticipated loss of profits. "The real goal of GATS and the FTAA is to
dramatically reduce or completely destroy the ability of governments anywhere to legislate or
regulate on behalf of their citizens," says Barlow. FTAA would bar any government (local, state or
national) from giving preference in services as varied as health care, child care, education, municipal
services, libraries, culture and sewer and water services. Among the possible effects of FTAA on services are
removal of national licensing standards for medical, legal and other professions, allowing doctors
licensed in one country to practice in any country, regardless of the level of training; and privatization
of public schools, and postal services. No government could enforce a requirement that the goods and
services it purchases come from its own country.FTAA negotiators seek to eliminate all tariffs and "non-tariff" barriers.
Tariffs are border taxes on goods, largely eliminated already under NAFTA and WTO. Non-tariff barriers are the rules, policies and practices of
governments that can impact on trade. "By choosing the stronger provisions of the WTO, FTAA negotiators have
introduced
tougher restrictions on the governments of the Americas and their right to regulate in the best
interests of their citizens," says Barlow. That could include food safety regulations, warns Barlow, national chairperson of the Council
of Canadians and author of several books on globalization. After examining WTO and NAFTA language, she concludes, "the drafters of the FTAA
are moving to totally remove the right of individual governments of the Americas to set standards in the crucial areas of health, food safety and
the environment.
Economy
1NC Economy
Trade harms US jobs—outsourcing
Alexia Cameron 8/26/12, professor of strategic management at Northeastern University’s College of Business Administration, “Free
trade: Bad for Us, Good for Them”
What does moving production overseas and offshoring jobs have to do with comparative
advantage? Or is this really labor arbitrage? Arbitrage is about pursuing absolute economies; it has
been around since the time of the Phoenicians. In this case, firms are taking advantage of cross-country
differences in labor costs. Thus, U.S. brand names sold in America are produced in China. American employees who lose
their jobs are becoming less rich so people in foreign countries can be less poor. In the global
aggregate, people are better off, but American workers bear the loss. The gains in trade are often
widely dispersed, while the losses are concentrated. The extent to which labor arbitrage or offshore
outsourcing is responsible for some of our current labor market woes has become highly contentious in recent
years.
Jobs dictate the direction of the economy
Parasnand Madho 6/4/12 ,“Weekly Economic Indicators: Jobs Data Key For US Economy”, [http://exchanges.nyx.com/node/3372]. FYI Steve Grasso, Director of Institutional Sales at Stuart Frankel & Co., and frequent commentator on CNBC
Grasso expects the jobless
claims data to come in below the 400K mark, around the forecast, although he has been hearing rumblings
about a jump back up over the mental 400K number. This is crucial because he believes the jobs data will continue to
dictate where the economy goes. With so many people out of work, he is starting to see a rekindling
of the American entrepreneurial spirit, as more and more young people are starting their own
businesses. This is very important to the economy, as the unemployment rate among blue collar
workers is much higher than in the white collar sector.
Failure to resolve unemployment guarantees collapse
Jonathon Spicer 4/8/12, Reuters correspondent, “High unemployment may dog the US for years”,
[http://economywatch.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/08/11085339-high-unemployment-may-dog-the-us-for-years?]
"We're
living through a juncture in U.S. policy history in which we're making major decisions about
what type of society we're likely to be," said Steven Davis, an economist at the University of Chicago. "Those decisions will
affect things for a generation." Some 40 percent of the nation's unemployed have been out of work
for more than six months. That's over twice the rate of long-term unemployment just before the
2007-2009 recession. Bernanke mostly pins long-term joblessness on weak demand from American consumers and companies. In late March, he
pointed to data showing that, compared to before the recession, the short-term unemployed also are taking much longer to
find work. This, he argued, justifies the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates low to help the economy. Persistent long-term
unemployment is a risk because it might someday make people unemployable, he said. "If progress in
reducing unemployment is too slow, the long-term unemployed will see their skills and labor force
attachment atrophy further, possibly converting a cyclical problem into a structural one,
Economic collapse causes competition for resources and instability that escalates and
goes nuclear
Harris and Burrows 9 Mathew, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and
Jennifer is a member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis”
http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf Increased Potential for Global Conflict
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting
and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended
consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history
may be more instructive than ever. While we continue
Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the
harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and
1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is
no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century.
For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a
constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report
to believe that the
stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda.
Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth
unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and
scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be
a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training
procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that
become
self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an
economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S.
military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable,
worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements
with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear
ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War
would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear
umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved
are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance
capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications
and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile
flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense,
potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources,
could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices.
Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst
case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy
resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short
of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and
modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If
the fiscal stimulus focus for
these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military.
Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing
moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming
scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be
increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
Ext
Trade tanks the economy—inflates drug prices
Michael
Kling, 6/14/13, writer for Money News, “Economist Dean Baker: Trade Deals Are 'Bad News'
The two major trade
deals in the works would most likely be "bad news" for most Americans, argues Dean Baker, cocountries are likely to be
director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "Most of the people living in our partner
losers too," Baker writes in an article for Truthout. One deal in the works is the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan, Australia and several
other East Asia and Latin American countries. The other is with the European Union. ¶ Importantly, the deals are mainly about regulations —
not trade topics like cutting tariffs, Baker, an assistant professor at Bucknell University, points out. The trade pacts would most likely limit
national and local powers by restricting health, safety and environmental rules that nations can enact. That's unwarranted, he argues. For
instance, suppose a country decided to ban a particular pesticide, believing it poses a health risk. If its risks were negligible, the country banning
it would be the one suffering from less productive agriculture and higher food prices. "Is it necessary to have an international agreement to
prevent this sort of 'mistake?'" The trade
deals will probably strengthen copyright and patent protection, especially
the urging of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. That would mean much higher drug
prices for our trading partners. "The difference in prices can be quite large," Baker notes. "Generic drugs,
for prescription drugs at
with few exceptions, are cheap to produce. When drugs sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars per prescription it is because patent
That would mean less revenue for other U.S. industries and fewer
job opportunities for everyone from manufacturing workers to workers in the tourism business , he
warns. "The public may not have the power to stop the high-powered lobbyists from getting their way
on these trade pacts, but it should at least know what is going on," he states. "These trade deals are
about pulling more money out of their pockets in order to make the rich even richer." Not knowing
what's going on in thenegotiations is an issue for others.
monopolies allow them to be sold for high prices."
Canada proves
Larry Brown NO DATE CITED, the National Secretary-Treasurer of the 340,000-member National Union of Public and General
Employees, “If free trade is so good, why are things so bad?”
Since Canada signed on to NAFTA, Ontario has lost hundreds of thousands of good manufacturing jobs.
Those jobs went to States in the U.S. where unions are made weak by legislation, and to Mexico where
unions are made weak by free trade zones where union rights are virtually nonexistent.¶ Formerly Canadian
products can now be made in low wage states, where unions are virtually banned, and there are no inconvenient
social protections like occupational health and safety rules, or public health care, quality education, or
decent social assistance rates; and then these products can be sold back into Canada without tariffs or any kind of
barriers.¶ We used to have a healthier automotive sector, but the Auto Pact which protected Canadian
jobs was ruled invalid under the World Trade Organization (WTO), another free trade deal.¶ If the right wing pundits are
pressed, they will say that Ontario has lost its manufacturing base because of "international competition," or
some such euphemism.
Trade kills jobs and links to politics
Dave Bowman 3/28/12, Entrepreneur, Educator, Lecturer, “FREE TRADE - GOOD OR BAD FOR U.S. WORKERS?”
"It's shipping jobs out of the country!" "No, it's creating jobs in the U.S.!" "It's the reason we have a trade deficit with Mexico!" "No, the deficit
is plunging because of our exports there!" And so go the arguments about continuing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and
extending it to include Latin America and the Caribbean in a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).¶ We all have a stake in this issue, whether
we're involved with a manufacturing or service industry. If jobs
are moving out of the country, traditional thinking is
that unemployment should increase and fewer people will buy goods or services, which will eliminate
even more jobs in an ever-increasing downward spiral. But are jobs really being eliminated, or are they actually
increasing because of NAFTA?¶ Organized labor, some environmental groups and many politicians are very
much opposed to NAFTA and any extension of it. They say that global trade shifts manufacturing jobs out of the
U.S. to lower wage countries. They have a point.¶ However, with NAFTA or without it, low wage jobs are going to migrate to
the place of least cost, and for many industries that may not be in the U.S. The fact is, labor in the U.S. is significantly more costly than in most
third world countries -- especially low-end labor for manufacturing. Companies that don't understand this and act accordingly, won't be in
business long. For many, there are two choices: move low wage jobs to least cost countries, or find ways to automate. Either way, these jobs
will be eliminated.
XT-War
Global nuclear war—strong statistical basis
Royal 10 – Jedediah Royal, Director of Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, “Economic Integration,
Economic Signaling and the Problem of Economic Crises,” in Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, ed.
Goldsmith and Brauer, p. 213-214
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 defence behaviour 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 and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that 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 as economic 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 (Feaver,
1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power could lead to a permissive environment
for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows
that 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 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 trade expectations
either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others have considered the link between
economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong
correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic
downturn. They write: The 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 conflicts self-reinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic
decline has also been linked with an increase in the likelihood of terrorism (Blomberg, 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 economic decline and use of
force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest 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 domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods of weak
economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically
linked to an increase in the use of force.
S02
1NC S02
Trade increases S02
Jean-Marie
2000”
Grether 1/29/7, University of Neuchâte, “Is trade bad for the environment? Decomposing world-wide SO2 emissions 1990-
This paper proposes three simple exercises
to estimate the impact of trade on worldwide SO2 emissions over
the 1990-2000 period. Combining three emission data sources (IPPS, EDGAR and Stern, (2006)) with sectoral
output and employment data, we construct
a database with time, country and sector-specific emission coefficients. A first growth decomposition
exercise shows that the scale and technique effects are the main driving force behind global changes
in SO2 emissions.
SO2 causes more warming specifically in the Arctic which is key – also causes acid rain
Gosselin, 5/4/12 - Associate Degree in Civil Engineering at Vermont Technical College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical
Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson “ Russian Sulfur Dioxide May Be The Cause Of Arctic Warming,” NoTricksZone,
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/04/russian-sulfur-dioxide-may-be-the-cause-of-arctic-warming/, //JPL)
We know that SO2 from industry and fossil fueled power plants form smogs and low clouds that produce
acid rain down wind from the sources. We know what damage acid rain can do when the acid content
is high enough to harm plant life. But little attention has been paid to the climate effects of the smogs
themselves. We know that low clouds and fogs keep surface temperatures from falling at night, as well as
keeping surface temperatures from rising during daylight. We know that in the polar regions in winter it is night all the
time. Now put those things together. In the Arctic, in winter, smogs and low clouds caused by SO2 will
trap heat below them 24 hours a day, and in the spring will prevent sunlight from reaching and warming the surface. On the
Arctic Ocean, this will delay both freezing in the winter and melting in the spring. We can see clearly that the freeze-up in the Arctic has been
delayed in recent years compared to the 1979 to 2006 average. Because the freeze-up is delayed, there is less ice to thaw in the spring, so that
delay is less obvious, except that the ice minimum is also delayed compared to the average. Now we get to why? First, we look at two
temperature anomaly maps of the Arctic. Norilsk is the location of the world’s largest nickel mine. They also recover copper, cobalt, platinum,
and palladium. Nearby, coal is mined to support the power needs of the city (130,000 population), the mine, and the smelter operations. SO2
emissions are about one million metric tons per year. This one location is responsible for 1% of all the SO2 emissions in the world, 10% of all of
Europe’s emissions. CNN reports that there is not a single living tree within 48 kilometers (30 miles) of the nickel smelter. 2,832
square
kilometers (1093 square miles) of forest have been killed, and another 5371 square kilometers (2073 square
miles) have been damaged. For a full report on the damage read this pdf document. Norilsk Mining has other smelters on the Kola
Peninsula very close to the Norwegian border. They also emit large amounts of SO2. Both locations are well above the Arctic Circle. All these
emissions are within a very sensitive part of the Earth: the Arctic. During the winter, the winds in the Arctic are
variable, depending on the position of the Arctic front. The winds alternate between blowing to and from the land, moving any pollution over
the Arctic Ocean or inland. In Figure 2b, in March, the pollution from Norilsk was moving over the ocean much of the time. You can see the ebb
and flow of the winds as they moved the sea ice in an animation of the last year here (from NRL). Normally,
SO2 is not a
greenhouse gas, but it is in the dark of winter in the Arctic. In combination with water vapor, which is a greenhouse
gas, it produces smog and low clouds that reflect heat back to the surface when it is dark, and upward into space
when the sun shines. This distorts the melting and freezing patterns resulting in less ice in the Arctic Ocean.
Yes, the reduction in ice in the Arctic is anthropogenic, with a Russian accent. One thing people don’t know is that the platinum/palladium used
in in automotive catalytic converters comes from Norilsk. We are simply moving the pollution from a distributed source, automobiles, to a
concentrated source in Siberia. We are all responsible for Arctic warming.
It’s try or die—warming releases methane from the tundra causing extinction
John Atcheson 12/15/, former Department of Energy senior policy analyst and geologist, has held a variety of policy positions in several
federal government agencies “Ticking Time Bomb,”
The Arctic Council's recent report on the effects of global warming in the far north paints a grim
picture: global floods, extinction of polar bears and other marine mammals, collapsed fisheries. But it
ignored a ticking time bomb buried in the Arctic tundra. There are enormous quantities of naturally
occurring greenhouse gasses trapped in ice-like structures in the cold northern muds and at the
bottom of the seas. These ices, called clathrates, contain 3,000 times as much methane as is in the
atmosphere. Methane is more than 20 times as strong a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. Now
here's the scary part. A temperature increase of merely a few degrees would cause these gases to
volatilize and "burp" into the atmosphere, which would further raise temperatures, which would
release yet more methane, heating the Earth and seas further, and so on. There's 400 gigatons of
methane locked in the frozen arctic tundra - enough to start this chain reaction - and the kind of
warming the Arctic Council predicts is sufficient to melt the clathrates and release these greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere. Once triggered, this cycle could result in runaway global warming the likes
of which even the most pessimistic doomsayers aren't talking about. An apocalyptic fantasy concocted by hysterical
environmentalists? Unfortunately, no. Strong geologic evidence suggests something similar has happened at least twice before. The most
recent of these catastrophes occurred about 55 million years ago in what geologists call the
Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when methane burps caused rapid warming and
massive die-offs, disrupting the climate for more than 100,000 years. The granddaddy of these
catastrophes occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when a series of
methane burps came close to wiping out all life on Earth. More than 94 percent of the marine species
present in the fossil record disappeared suddenly as oxygen levels plummeted and life teetered on the
verge of extinction. Over the ensuing 500,000 years, a few species struggled to gain a foothold in the
hostile environment. It took 20 million to 30 million years for even rudimentary coral reefs to reestablish themselves and for forests to regrow. In some areas, it took more than 100 million years for
ecosystems to reach their former healthy diversity. Geologist Michael J. Benton lays out the scientific evidence for this
epochal tragedy in a recent book, When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time. As with the PETM, greenhouse gases, mostly
carbon dioxide from increased volcanic activity, warmed the earth and seas enough to release massive amounts of methane from these
sensitive clathrates, setting off a runaway greenhouse effect. The cause of all this havoc? In both cases, a temperature increase of about
10.8 degrees Fahrenheit, about the upper range for the average global increase today's models predict can be expected from burning fossil
fuels by 2100. But these models could be the tail wagging the dog since they don't add in the effect of burps from warming gas hydrates.
Worse, as the Arctic Council found, the highest temperature increases from human greenhouse gas emissions will occur in the arctic regions an area rich in these unstable clathrates. If
we trigger this runaway release of methane, there's no turning back.
No do-overs. Once it starts, it's likely to play out all the way.
Biodiversity
Acid rain causes destruction in multiple areas of the environment; all marine life will
die
Mathew Lindstrom, 11 - Professor of Political Science with Saint John's University/College of Saint Benedict since 2005, Ph.D from
North Arizona University (Matthew, Encyclopedia of the U.S. Government and the Environment, 2011
Acid rain has been a fully realized ecological problem for only a few decades. The effects of acid rain have been recorded
in the eastern United States, Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere. More recently, acid rain is becoming a significant
problem in China, Japan, and other rapidly industrializing nations like India and Taiwan. Scientists fear the negative effects
will continue to worsen unless governments and industries work together. Acid rain can affect bodies
of water by increasing the acidity until fish and marine vegetation can no longer survive . As acidity rises,
forms of aquatic life struggle to survive. At pH 5.5, bottom-dwelling bacterial decomposers start to disappear, leaving organic
debris to collect. In such cases, plankton, the base of the aquatic system, lack its food source, negatively
affecting all marine life. Further, if the composed leaf litter problem persists, toxic metals such as aluminum and
mercury can be released and seep into the groundwater. At pH levels of 4.5 and below, nearly all
aquatic life will die. Acid rain also greatly affects forests and soil by washing away vital nutrients and
replacing them with harmful toxins. Some of the great forests in Germany and western Europe are
believed to be dying from acid deposition, which is a result of a combination of wet and dry acid pollution. Scientists believe
essential nutrients for plant life are washed away by acid rain, which can also affect crop yields. During
this process, toxic metals are transferred from the atmosphere to forests. These deposits of lead, zinc, copper,
chromium, and aluminum, among others, retard growth of local plant life, as well as mosses, algae, nitrogen-fixing bacteria, and
fungi, all of which contribute to the health of forests.
Loss of biodiversity leads to extinction
Chen 2k (Jim, Professor of Law at University of Minnesota and Dean of Law School at Louisville, “Globalization and Its Losers”:, 9 Minn. J.
Global Trade 157’ LexisNexis Legal)
Conscious decisions to allow the extinction of a species or the destruction of an entire ecosystem
epitomize the "irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources" that NEPA is designed to
retard.312 The original Endangered Species Act gave such decisions no quarter whatsoever;313 since 1979, such decisions have rested in
the hands of a solemnly convened "God Squad."314 In its permanence and gravity, natural extinction provides the baseline by which all other
types of extinction should be judged.
The Endangered Species Act explicitly acknowledges the "esthetic, ecological, educational, historical,
recreational, and scientific value" of endangered species and the biodiversity they represent.315 Allied bodies of international law confirm this
view:316 global biological diversity is part of the commonly owned heritage of all humanity and deserves full legal protec- tion.317 Rather
remarkably, these broad assertions understate the value of biodiversity and the urgency of its protection. A Sand County Almanac, the
eloquent bible of the modern environmental movement, contains only two demonstrable bio- logical errors. It opens with one and closes with
another. We can forgive Aldo Leopold's decision to close with that elegant but erroneous epigram, "ontogeny repeats phylogeny."318 What
concerns erns us is his opening gambit: "There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot."319 Not quite. None
of
us can live without wild things. Insects are so essential to life as we know it that if they "and other
land-dwelling anthropods ... were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few
months."320 "Most of the amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals," along with "the bulk of the flowering plants and ... the physical
structure of most forests and other terrestrial habitats" would disappear in turn.321 "The land would return to" something resembling its
Cambrian condition, "covered by mats of recumbent wind-pollinated vegetation, sprinkled with clumps of small trees and bushes here and
there, largely devoid of animal life."322 From this perspective, the mere thought of valuing biodiver- sity is absurd, much as any attempt to
quantify all of earth's planetary amenities as some trillions of dollars per year is ab- surd. But the frustration inherent in enforcing the
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has shown that conservation cannot work without appeasing Homo
economicus, the profit-seeking ape. Efforts to ban the interna- tional ivory trade through CITES have failed to stem the slaugh- ter of African
elephants.323 The preservation of biodiversity must therefore begin with a cold, calculating inventory of its benefits. Fortunately,
defending biodiversity preservation in human- ity's self-interest is an easy task. As yet unexploited species might give a hungry world a larger
larder than the storehouse of twenty plant species that provide nine-tenths of humanity's cur- rent food supply.324 "Waiting in the wings are
tens of thousands of unused plant species, many demonstrably superior to those in favor."325 As genetic warehouses, many plants enhance
the pro- ductivity of crops already in use. In the United States alone, the lates phylogeny" means that the life history of any individual
organism replays the entire evolutionary history of that organism's species. genes of wild plants have accounted for much of "the explosive
growth in farm production since the 1930s."326 The contribution is worth $1 billion each year.327 Nature's pharmacy demonstrates even
more dramatic gains than nature's farm.328 Aspirin and penicillin, our star analgesic and antibiotic, had humble origins in the meadowsweet
plant and in cheese mold.329 Leeches, vampire bats, and pit vipers all contribute anticoagulant drugs that reduce blood pressure, pre- vent
heart attacks, and facilitate skin transplants.330 Merck & Co., the multinational pharmaceutical company, is helping Costa Rica assay its rich
biota.33' A single commercially viable product derived "from, say, any one species among... 12,000 plants and 300,000 insects ... could
handsomely repay Merck's entire investment" of $1 million in 1991 dollars.332 Wild animals, plants, and microorganisms also provide ecological services.333 The Supreme Court has lauded the pes- ticidal talents of migratory birds.334 Numerous organisms process the air we
breathe, the water we drink, the ground we stroll.335 Other species serve as sentries. Just as canaries warned coal miners of lethal gases, the
decline or disappearance of indicator species provides advance warning against deeper environmental threats.336 Species conservation yields
the great- est environmental amenity of all: ecosystem protection. Saving discrete species indirectly protects the ecosystems in which they
live.337 Some larger animals may not carry great utilitarian value in themselves, but the human urge to protect these charis- matic "flagship
species" helps protect their ecosystems.338 In- deed, to save any species, we must protect their ecosystems.339
Defenders of biodiversity
can measure the "tangible eco- nomic value" of the pleasure derived from "visiting, photograph- ing, painting, and just looking at wildlife."340
In the United States alone, wildlife observation and feeding in 1991 generated $18.1 billion in consumer spending, $3 billion in tax revenues,
and 766,000 jobs.341 Ecotourism gives tropical countries, home to most of the world's species, a valuable alternative to subsis- tence
agriculture. Costa Rican rainforests preserved for ecotour- ism "have become many times more profitable per hectare than land cleared for
pastures and fields," while the endangered go- rilla has turned ecotourism into "the third most important source of income in Rwanda."342 In
a globalized economy where commodities can be cultivated almost anywhere, environmen- tally sensitive locales can maximize their wealth
by exploiting the "boutique" uses of their natural bounty. The
value of endangered species and the biodiversity they
embody is "literally . . . incalculable."343 What, if anything,
should the law do to preserve it? There are those that invoke the
story of Noah's Ark as a moral basis for biodiversity preser- vation.344 Others regard the entire Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the biblical
stories of Creation and the Flood, as the root of the West's deplorable environmental record.345 To avoid getting bogged down in an
environmental exegesis of Judeo- Christian "myth and legend," we should let Charles Darwin and evolutionary biology determine the
imperatives of our moment in natural "history."346 The
loss of biological diversity is quite arguably the gravest
problem facing humanity. If we cast the question as the contemporary phenomenon that "our
descend- ants [will] most regret," the "loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of
natural habitats" is worse than even "energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or
con- quest by a totalitarian government."347 Natural evolution may in due course renew the earth
with a diversity of species approximating that of a world unspoiled by Homo sapiens - in ten mil- lion
years, perhaps a hundred million.
Specifically, coral loss means extinction
John Kunich 5, Professor of Law at Roger Williams University School of Law, ARTICLE: Losing Nemo: The Mass Extinction Now Threatening
the World's Ocean Hotspots,” Columbia Journal of Environmental Law
On the other hand, there
is an unimaginable cost from failing to preserve the marine hotspots if they contain
could cost ourselves and our posterity untold advancements in
medicine, therapies, genetic resources, nutrients, ecosystem services, and other areas, including perhaps a cure
to a global health threat that might not materialize until centuries from now...truly a "grave error" of the first order.
[*128] But if we sit on the sidelines and fail to invest in hotspots preservation, and we "get lucky" (few species, low value, small
extinction risk), our only gain is in the form of saving the money and effort we could have spent on the hotspots. Even if this amounts to
several billion dollars a year, it is a small benefit compared to the incalculably catastrophic losses we could
suffer if we guess wrong in betting on the inaction option.¶ The Decision Matrix actually under-represents the extent to
numerous species of high value at great risk of extinction. We
which the rational decision is to invest in hotspots preservation. Because the Decision Matrix, in tabular form, devotes equal space to each of
the sixteen possible combinations of extreme variable values, it can mislead readers into thinking that each of the sixteen outcomes is equally
probable. This is most emphatically not the case. Some of these results are far more probable than others. This problem of apparent equality of
disparate results is of the same type as a chart that depicts a person's chances of being fatally injured by a plummeting comet on the way home
from work on any given day. There are only two possible results in such a table (survives another day, or killed by meteor), and they would
occupy an equal amount of tabular space on the printed page, but the probability of the former outcome is, thankfully, much higher than the
likelihood of the latter tragic event.¶ As explained in this Article, it is much more likely that there are numerous, even millions, of unidentified
species currently living in the marine hotspots than that these hotspots are really not centers of profuse biodiversity. It
is also very
probable that the extinction threat in our oceans is real, and significant, given what we know about
the horrific effects wrought on coral reefs and other known marine population centers by overfishing, pollution,
sedimentation, and other human-made stressors. n525 Recent discoveries have revealed very high rates of endemism
in small areas such as seamounts, which are extremely vulnerable to trawl damage. n526 Even in the deep ocean areas,
there is evidence that new technologies are making it both a possibility and a reality to exploit the previously unexploitable biodiversity in these
waters via [*129] demersal fishing/trawling, to devastating effect. n527 Only a truly Orwellian brand of doublethink could label as progress the
development of fishing methods that do to the benthic habitats what modern clearcutting has done to so many forests, only on a scale 150
times as severe, but it is this "progress" that has brought mass extinction to the seas. n528 However, there is also the positive side, in light of
the large numbers of marine species and habitat types, including life forms adapted to extraordinary niches such as hydrothermal vents and the
abyss. That is, it would be surprising if there were not highly valuable genetic resources, natural medicines, potential sources of food, and other
boons waiting to be discovered there.¶ Therefore, the results that are linked to high, rather than low, values of each of the three variables are
far more probable than the converse outcomes. In
terms of probabilities, it is much more likely that either a "first
order grave error" or "first order jackpot" will occur than a "lucky wager" or an "unused insurance" result. In fact, all of the
combinations with either two or three "high" values of the variables are significantly more probable that any of the combinations with two or
three "low" variable values. This
means that the tilt in favor of betting on the hotspots is much more pronounced
extreme results are far likelier to fall in favor of
hotspots preservation than the opposite.
than is apparent from a cursory glance at the Decision Matrix. The
Defense
Trade Resilient
Trade is strong and resilient
Daniel Ikenson, 3/5/12,Daniel Ikenson is director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
[http://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-policy-priority-one-averting-uschina-trade-war]
Although some governments will dabble in some degree of protectionism, the combination of a sturdy
rules-based system of trade and the economic self interest in being open to participation in the global
economy will limit the risk of a protectionist pandemic. According to recent estimates from the International Food Policy
Research Institute, if all WTO members were to raise all of their applied tariffs to the maximum bound
rates, the average global rate of duty would double and the value of global trade would decline by 7.7
percent over five years.8 That would be a substantial decline relative to the 5.5 percent annual rate of trade growth experienced this
decade.9 But, to put that 7.7 percent decline in historical perspective, the value of global trade declined by
66 percent between 1929 and 1934, a period mostly in the wake of Smoot Hawley's passage in 1930.10 So the
potential downside today from what Bergsten calls "legal protectionism" is actually not that "massive," even
if all WTO members raised all of their tariffs to the highest permissible rates . If most developing countries raised
their tariffs to their bound rates, there would be an adverse impact on the countries that raise barriers and on their most important trade
partners. But most developing countries that have room to backslide (i.e., not China) are not major importers,
and thus the impact on global trade flows would not be that significant. OECD countries and China account for the top twothirds of global
import value.11
Backsliding from India, Indonesia, and Argentina (who collectively account for 2.4 percent of global
is not going to be the spark that ignites a global trade war. Nevertheless, governments are keenly
aware of the events that transpired in the 1930s, and have made various pledges to avoid
protectionist measures in combating the current economic situation. In the United States, after President Obama publicly
registered his concern that the "Buy American" provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act might be perceived as protectionist or could incite a trade war, Congress agreed to revise the legislation to
imports)
stipulate that the Buy American provision "be applied in a manner consistent with United States obligations under international agreements."
In early February, China's vice commerce minister, Jiang Zengwei, announced that China would not include "Buy China" provisions in its own
$586 billion stimulus bill.12 But even
more promising than pledges to avoid trade provocations are actions
taken to reduce existing trade barriers. In an effort to "reduce business operating costs, attract and retain foreign investment,
raise business productivity, and provide consumers a greater variety and better quality of goods and services at competitive prices," the
Mexican government initiated a plan in January to unilaterally reduce tariffs on about 70 percent of
the items on its tariff schedule. Those 8,000 items, comprising 20 different industrial sectors, accounted for about half of all Mexican
import value in 2007. When the final phase of the plan is implemented on January 1, 2013, the average industrial tariff rate in Mexico will have
fallen from 10.4 percent to 4.3 percent.13v And Mexico is not alone. In February, the
Brazilian government suspended tariffs
entirely on some capital goods imports and reduced to 2 percent duties on a wide variety of machinery and other capital
equipment, and on communications and information technology products.14 That decision came on the heels of late-January decision in Brazil
to scrap plans for an import licensing program that would have affected 60 percent of the county's imports.15 Meanwhile, on
February
27, a new free trade agreement was signed between Australia, New Zealand, and the 10 member
countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to reduce and ultimately eliminate tariffs on 96 percent of all goods by 2020.
While the media and members of the trade policy community fixate on how various protectionist
measures around the world might foreshadow a plunge into the abyss, there is plenty of evidence
that governments remain interested in removing barriers to trade. Despite the occasional temptation
to indulge discredited policies, there is a growing body of institutional knowledge that when people are free to
engage in commerce with one another as they choose, regardless of the nationality or location of the other parties, they can leverage that
freedom to accomplish economic outcomes far more impressive than when governments attempt to limit choices through policy constraints.
Ext
More ev—it’s resilient
Carlo Perroni and John Whally 5/x/96, University of Warwick and University of Western Ontario, American Economic Review, p.
60
Furthermore, trade
performance in the period since the late 1940’s also clearly stands in sharp contrast to the events
of the 1930’s. The largest players, the United States and the EU have consistently displayed a
determination to mediate their trade disputes in the 1980’s, triggered by EU enlargement. And today’s global
economy is much more interdependent than it was in the 1930’s. Firms and industries have become more reliant on
export markets, and there is more interindustry trade. There is also the major difference of the presence of the
GATT/WTO, accompanied by bindings on tariffs achieved in eight rounds of negotiations; and, despite its weaknesses, a GATT/WTO disputesettlement procedure has continued to function.
Trade/Peace
A2: Trade solve war
No correlation between trade and peace
Phillipe Martin, et al 8, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, and Centre for Economic Policy Research;
Thierry MAYER, University of Paris 1 Pantheon—Sorbonne, Paris School of Economics, CEPII, and Centre for Economic Policy Research, Mathias
THOENIG, University of Geneva and Paris School of Economics, The Review of Economic Studies 75
Does globalization pacify international relations? The “liberal” view in political science argues that increasing trade flows
and the spread of free markets and democracy should limit the incentive to use military force in interstate relations. This vision, which can
partly be traced back to Kant’s Essay on Perpetual Peace (1795), has been very influential: The main objective of the European trade integration
process was to prevent the killing and destruction of the two World Wars from ever happening again.1 Figure 1 suggests2 however, that
during the 1870–2001 period, the correlation between trade openness and military conflicts is not a
clear cut one. The first era of globalization, at the end of the 19th century, was a period of rising trade openness
and multiple military conflicts, culminating with World War I. Then, the interwar period was
characterized by a simultaneous collapse of world trade and conflicts. After World War II, world trade
increased rapidly, while the number of conflicts decreased (although the risk of a global conflict was obviously
high). There is no clear evidence that the 1990s, during which trade flows increased dramatically, was
a period of lower prevalence of military conflicts, even taking into account the increase in the number of sovereign states.
There’s no correlation between trade and peace-- both World Wars prove
Dale Copeland 99, Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, International
Security,
Liberals argue that economic interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing the value of trading over the alternative of
aggression: interdependent states would rather trade than invade. As long as high levels of interdependence can be
maintained, liberals assert, we have reason for optimism. Realists dismiss the liberal argument, arguing that high interdependence increases
rather than decreases the probability of war. In anarchy, states must constantly worry about their security. Accordingly, interdependence meaning mutual dependence and thus vulnerability - gives states an incentive to initiate war, if only to ensure continued access to necessary
materials and goods. The unsatisfactory nature of both liberal and realist theories is shown by their difficulties in explaining the run-ups to the
two World Wars. The
period up to World War I exposes a glaring anomaly for liberal theory: the European
powers had reached unprecedented levels of trade, yet that did not prevent them from going to war.
Realists certainly have the correlation right - the war was preceded by high interdependence - but trade levels had been high for the previous
thirty years; hence, even if interdependence was a necessary condition for the war, it was not sufficient.
At first glance, the period
from 1920 to 1940 seems to support liberalism over realism. In the 1920s, interdependence was high, and the world was
essentially peaceful; in the 1930s, as entrenched protectionism caused interdependence to fall, international tension rose to the point of world
war. Yet
the two most aggressive states in the system during the 1930s, Germany and Japan, were also the
most highly dependent despite their efforts towards autarchy, relying on other states, including other great powers, for
critical raw materials. Realism thus seems correct in arguing that high dependence may lead to conflict, as states use war to ensure
access to vital goods. Realism's problem with the interwar era, however, is that Germany and Japan had been even more dependent in the
1920s, yet they sought war only in the late 1930s when their dependence, although still significant, had fallen.
No correlations between trade and war
William Hawkins 4/23/3, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, “Successfully Rebuilding
Iraq Requires Rejection of 'Globalization,’” American Economic Alert, [http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=807]
The descendants of Manchester Liberalism, the alliance of left-wing ideology and multinational corporate greed united by their opposition to
the nation-state and great power politics, have been arguing that the Iraq War is a threat to the "globalization"
which they airily proclaim is the pillar of world progress. In the April 22 Financial Times, former director-general of the World Trade
Organization Peter Sutherland
wrote, "Right now the great powers are juggling not only with the credibility
and integrity of the Security Council or the United Nations itself. They are putting at stake a system of
international interdependence and decision-making through painstaking consensus building that has, for the most part, stood the
test of time." He then went on to claim that the WTO has "quietly demoted commercial conflict as a cause of war. Now there is an alternative
to bearing arms and raising navies in the pursuit of economic interest."
But what "test of time" can he really cite? The years since World War II? Most of that era was
dominated by the Cold War, during which trade and investment followed geopolitical lines. The postCold War period? The 1990s was the decade of globalization, but it was too short a time to validate
any "test." Indeed, looking back over the last 500 years, during which the commercial and industrial revolutions ushered in a period of
economic growth unimaginable in earlier centuries, the doctrines of Manchester Liberalism have been most conspicuous by their absence.
The great German-American economist Friedrich List
exposed the fatal flaw of this liberal ideology in the 19th
century, writing in 1841 that it "has assumed as being actually in existence a state of things which has
yet to come into existence. It assumes the existence of a universal union and a state of perpetual
peace." The 162 years of more nearly perpetual conflict since have not provided much support for the liberal view.
A2: Interdependence solves war
Most recent empirical data proves that interdependence increases war
Michael Antov 11, Department of Political Science at Duke University, “Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: The
Implications of Membership in International Economic, Financial, and Monetary Organizations and Multilateral Preferential Trade Agreements”,
[http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/5095/2011-12-15%20Milen%20Antov%20Senior%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=1]
In contrast to the liberal arguments, realists have argued that in an anarchic world in which states are solely concerned with preserving their
existence, the more interactions among states there are, the higher the likelihood of conflict (Mearsheimer, 1995). That is, economic
interdependence provides yet another potential interstate asymmetry and is thus a reason for conflict
initiation. Most notably in the economic interdependence – conflict debate, Katherine Barbieri’s empirical tests have shown
that bilateral trade increases the probability of MIDs (militarized interstate disputes). (1996, 2001, 2002). Her
central claim is that, “rather than inhibiting conflict, extensive economic interdependence increases the likelihood that dyads will engage in
militarized interstate disputes” (1996: 29). Barbieri recognizes that low to moderate degrees of interdependence may reduce the likelihood of
conflict, but she argues that, the more extensive the linkages become, the more likely interdependence will have the opposite effect. As Maoz
points out, another powerful realist theory is that states’
strategic interests matter more than economic
interdependence does – countries can be economically interdependent and still fight over noneconomic interests (2009). Realists have focused on the causes of war and “have emphasized the conflictual aspects of international
transactions whereas liberals clearly emphasize the beneficial aspects. From this different starting point, realists come to the conclusion that
[economic] interdependence either increases the likelihood of war or is not related to war initiation”
(McMillan, 1997: 40). Moreover, it should be noted that realists are above all concerned with war (in terms of armed conflict with at least 25
battle-related deaths or other much higher death thresholds), while liberals have considered a diversity of conflict types, primarily focusing on
MIDs.
Trade does not solve interdependence—their studies are flawed and rely on
false assumptions
Mansfield and
Pollins
12
Edward D.
Brian M.
, 11/26/
, University of Michigan, “Interdependence and Conflict:
An Introduction”
Just over a decade ago, a well-known review of the causes of war lamented the¶ dearth of research on the relationship between economic
interdependence and¶ hostilities (Levy 1989, 261). Since then, scholars of international relations have¶ addressed this issue with considerable
enthusiasm, stimulating a still modest¶ but rapidly growing literature. These recent studies
have made considerable¶
headway in assessing some key aspects of the influence of interdependence on¶ political tensions.¶
Nonetheless, this body of literature has yet to resolve many core issues. First, a stronger theoretical
foundation is needed for many of the competing claims¶ on the relationship between
interdependence and conflict. Second, too little¶ stress has been placed on whether this relationship
is stable over time—especially over periods before World War II—and across countries. More generally,¶
there is a growing indication that the strength and nature of the effects of interdependence depend
on various domestic and international factors. A better¶ understanding of these factors and how they affect the links
between economic¶ exchange and political antagonism is badly needed. Third, existing studies¶ often rely on different
definitions and measures of both interdependence and¶ conflict. While that poses no inherent problem, these
differences seem to contribute to variations in the results of empirical studies, and existing theories¶
offer no clear guidance as to which definitions and measures are most appropriate. Moreover, the most
widely used measures of interdependence are excessively narrow, focusing on trade flows. There is a
glaring need to resolve questions about the merits of relying on particular indices of interdependence
and¶ conflict, as well as to assess the sensitivity of empirical results to the use of different measures.
Trade isn’t key to interdependence
Paul Streeten 6/x/1, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Boston University and Founder and Chairman of the journal World
Development, Finance and Development, Vol 38, No 2
Trade is, of course, only one, and not the most important, of many manifestations of economic
interdependence. Others are the flow of factors of production—capital, technology, enterprise, and
various types of labor—across frontiers and the exchange of assets, the acquisition of legal rights, and
the international flows of information and knowledge. The global flow of foreign exchange has reached the
incredible figure of $2 trillion per day, 98 percent of which is speculative. The multinational corporation has become an important agent
of technological innovation and technology transfer. In 1995, the sales of multinationals amounted to $7 trillion, with these companies' sales
outside their home countries growing 20-30 percent faster than exports.
DOHA proves it’s empirically denied
Seattle Times 7/31/8, lexis
Economists disagree on the Doha round's potential benefits; estimates of economic gain that could have been reaped
through additional trade range from $4 billion to $100 billion. Set against the rapid expansion of global trade to $13.6 trillion
last year from $7.6 trillion five years ago, however, the bottom-line loss from Doha's failure is "not a market
issue," said Julian Callow, an economist at Barclays Capital in London. Nor is the world on the edge of the kind of
protectionist wave that ended the last period of globalization in the early 20th century and
contributed to two world wars, analysts say. Countries are likely to go on negotiating bilateral trade
deals with each other, such as the U.S.-South Korea free-trade deal earlier this year.
AT Trade Wars
Trade wars don’t escalate
Daniel Ikenson, 3/5/12,Daniel Ikenson is director of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute,
[http://www.cato.org/publications/free-trade-bulletin/trade-policy-priority-one-averting-uschina-trade-war]
Nature of the U.S.-China Trade War It
should not be surprising that the increasing number of commercial
exchanges between entities in the world's largest and second largest economies produce frictions on
occasion. But the U.S.-China economic relationship has not descended into an existential call to arms.
Rather, both governments have taken protectionist actions that are legally defensible or plausibly
justifiable within the rules of global trade. That is not to say that those measures have been advisable
or that they would withstand closer legal scrutiny, but to make the distinction that, unlike the freefor-all that erupted in the 1930s, these trade "skirmishes" have been prosecuted in a manner that
speaks to a mutual recognition of the primacy of — if not respect for — the rules-based system of
trade. And that suggests that the kerfuffle is containable and the recent trend reversible.
Trade conflicts won’t escalate
Joseph Nye 96, Dean of the Kennedy School of Government – Harvard University, Washington Quarterly
The low likelihood of direct great power clashes does not mean that there will be no tensions between them.
Disagreements are likely to continue over regional conflicts, like those that have arisen over how to deal with the conflict in the former
Yugoslavia. Efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction and means of their delivery are another source of friction, as is the case
over Russian and Chinese nuclear cooperation with Iran, which the United States steadfastly opposes. The sharing of burdens and
responsibilities for maintaining international security and protecting the natural environment are a further subject of debate among the great
powers. Furthermore, in contrast to the views of classical Liberals, increased
trade and economic interdependence can
increase as well as decrease conflict and competition among trading partners. The main point, however,
is that such disagreements are very unlikely to escalate to military conflicts.
No trade war impact
Ian Fletcher 8/29/11 Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, former Research Fellow at the U.S.
Business and Industry Council M.A. and B.A. from Columbia and U Chicago, "Avoid Trade War? We're Already In One!"
[www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/avoid-trade-war-were-alre_b_939967.html]
trade war is that, unlike actual shooting war, it has no historical precedent. In fact,
there has never been a significant trade war, "significant" in the sense of having done serious economic damage. All history
records are minor skirmishes at best.¶ Go ahead. Try and name a trade war. The Great Trade War of 1834? Nope. The Great Trade
War of 1921? Nope Again. There isn't one.¶ The standard example free traders give is that America's Smoot-Hawley
tariff of 1930 either caused the Great Depression or made it spread around the world. But this canard does not survive serious
examination, and has actually been denied by almost every economist who has actually researched the question in
depth -- a group ranging from Paul Krugman on the left to Milton Friedman on the right.¶ The Depression's cause was
monetary. The Fed allowed the money supply to balloon during the late 1920s, piling up in the stock market as a bubble. It then panicked,
miscalculated, and let it collapse by a third by 1933, depriving the economy of the liquidity it needed to breathe. Trade had nothing to
do with it.¶ As for the charge that Smoot caused the Depression to spread worldwide: it was too small a change to have plausibly so large
The curious thing about the concept of
an effect. For a start, it only applied to about one-third of America's trade: about 1.3 percent of our GDP. Our average tariff on dutiable goods
went from 44.6 to 53.2 percent -- not a terribly big jump. Tariffs were higher in almost every year from 1821 to 1914. Our tariff went up in
1861, 1864, 1890, and 1922 without producing global depressions, and the recessions of 1873 and 1893 managed to spread worldwide without
tariff increases.¶ As the economic historian (and free trader!) William Bernstein puts it in his book A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the
World,¶ Between 1929 and 1932, real GDP fell 17 percent worldwide, and by 26 percent in the United States, but most economic historians
now believe that only a miniscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and the United States' GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars. .. At
the time of Smoot-Hawley's passage, trade volume accounted for only about 9 percent of world economic output. Had all international trade
been eliminated, and had no domestic use for the previously exported goods been found, world GDP would have fallen by the same amount -9 percent. Between 1930 and 1933, worldwide trade volume fell off by one-third to one-half. Depending on how the falloff is measured, this
computes to 3 to 5 percent of world GDP, and these losses were partially made up by more expensive domestic goods. Thus, the damage done
could not possibly have exceeded 1 or 2 percent of world GDP -- nowhere near the 17 percent falloff seen during the Great Depression... The
inescapable conclusion: contrary to public perception, Smoot-Hawley did not cause, or even significantly deepen, the Great Depression.¶ The
oft-bandied idea that Smoot-Hawley started a global trade war of endless cycles of tit-for-tat retaliation is also
mythical. According to the official State Department report on this very question in 1931:¶ With the exception of discriminations in France,
the extent of discrimination against American commerce is very slight...By far the largest number of countries do not discriminate against the
commerce of the United States in any way.¶ That is to say, foreign nations did indeed raise their tariffs after the passage of Smoot, but this was
a broad-brush response to the Depression itself, aimed at all other foreign nations without distinction, not a retaliation against the U.S. for its
tit-for-tat retaliation between trading partners that paralyzes free traders with fear today simply
did not happen.¶ "Notorious" Smoot-Hawley is a deliberately fabricated myth, plain and simple. We should not allow this
myth to paralyze our policy-making in the present day.¶ There is a basic unresolved paradox at the bottom of the very
concept of trade war. If, as free traders insist, free trade is beneficial whether or not one's trading partners reciprocate, then why
would any rational nation start one, no matter how provoked? The only way to explain this is to assume that major national
own tariff. The doom-loop of spiraling
governments like the Chinese and the U.S. -- governments which, whatever bad things they may have done, have managed to hold nuclear
weapons for decades without nuking each other over trivial spats -- are not players of realpolitik, but schoolchildren.¶ When the
moneymen in Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, and the other nations currently running trade surpluses against the U.S. start to ponder the
financial realpolitik of exaggerated retaliation against the U.S. for any measures we may employ to bring our trade back into balance,
they will discover the advantage is with us, not them. Because they are the ones with trade surpluses to lose, not us.¶ So
our present position of weakness is, paradoxically, actually a position of strength.¶ Likewise, China can supposedly suddenly stop buying our
Treasury Debt if we rock the boat. But this would immediately reduce the value of the trillion or so they already hold -- not to mention
destroying, by making their hostility overt, the fragile (and desperately-tended) delusion in the U.S. that America and China are still benign
economic "partners" in a win-win economic relationship.¶ At the end of the day, China cannot force us to do anything
economically that we don't choose to. America is still a nuclear power. We can -- an irresponsible but not impossible scenario -- repudiate our
debt to them (or stop paying the interest) as the ultimate counter-move to anything they might contemplate. More plausibly, we might simply
restore the tax on the interest on foreign-held bonds that was repealed in 1984 thanks to Treasury Secretary Donald Regan.¶ Thus a certain
amount of back-and-forth token retaliation (and loud squealing) is indeed likely if America starts defending its interests in trade as diligently as
our trading partners have been defending theirs, but that's it. The
rest of the world engages in these struggles all the
time without doing much harm; it will be no different if we join the party.
A2: Commercial Peace
Commercial Peace Indict
Goldstone 6/25/7 P.R., PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and a member of the Security Studies Program at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown
University, AlterNet,
[http://www.alternet.org/audits/62848/?page=entire]
The analytic literature on the Commercial Peace is much less robust than scholarship on the Democratic Peace, the
latter positing the improbability of war between democracies. The Commercial Peace literature displays less consistency
and theoretical rigor, with precise causes largely untested. Statistical analyses of trade relationships generally find that
trade is conducive to peace; however, numerous case studies find that international trade either played no part
in particular leaders' decisions about war or prompted them to escalate rather than become
dependent on others.
A2: Trade/Economy
A2: Low prices
Their authors discount economic theory—trade doesn’t affect the price level
Rodrik
7
Dani
4/27/ , Albert O. Hirschman Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, also used to be Rafiq Hariri
Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, writes books about
globalization
Daniel Drezner has some nice things to say about me and my blog, but then takes me to task for understating the gains from free trade in a
recent entry. He writes:¶ In focusing strictly on the employment effects, however, Rodrik elides the biggest gain from trade -- lower prices.¶
Since Drezner’s point reflects a common misunderstanding about the effects of trade, it is worth some explication.¶ Advocates of
globalization love to argue that free trade lowers prices, and the argument seems sensible enough. Think of all the cheap
goods from China that we can buy at Wal-Mart. But anyone who understands comparative advantage knows that
free trade affects relative prices, not the price level (the latter being the province of macro and monetary factors). When
a country opens up to trade (or liberalizes its trade), it is the relative price of imports that comes down; by
necessity, the relative prices of its exports must go up! Consumers are better off to the extent that
their consumption basket is weighted towards importables, but we cannot always rely on this to be
the case.¶ Consider your typical Argentinian for example, who consumes a lot of wheat and beef. Since these are export products for
Argentina, free trade implies a rise in the relative price of the Argentine consumption basket. (The gains from trade are still there, of course, but
they derive from the usual allocative efficiency improvements, not from lower prices across the board.) And in the U.S., the Wal-Mart effect has
to be qualified to take into account the fact that the relative price of the goods that the U.S. exports (including for example agricultural
commodities) is higher than it would have been absent trade. Similarly, when the U.S. gets better market access abroad for its agricultural
exports (a key demand under the Doha round), you can be sure that this will raise domestic prices for these goods, not lower them.
Free Trade Good
War
Trade Solves War
Trade soles war—economic interdependence
Deudney et al 9 (Daniel, professor of political science at John Hopkins, and John Ikenberry, professor of international affairs at
Princeton, Foreign Affairs, “The Myth of Autocratic Revival,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63721/daniel-deudney-and-g-johnikenberry/the-myth-of-the-autocratic-revival)
This bleak outlook is based on an exaggeration of recent developments and ignores powerful countervailing factors and forces. Indeed,
contrary to what the revivalists describe, the most striking features of the contemporary international
landscape are the intensification of economic globalization, thickening institutions, and shared
problems of interdependence. The overall structure of the international system today is quite unlike that of the nineteenth century.
Compared to older orders, the contemporary liberal centered international order provides a set of constraints
and opportunities -- of pushes and pulls -- that reduce the likelihood of severe conflict while creating strong
imperatives for cooperative problem solving. Those invoking the nineteenth century as a model for the twenty-first also fail
to acknowledge the extent to which war as a path to conflict resolution and great-power expansion has become largely obsolete. Most
important, nuclear
weapons have transformed great-power war from a routine feature of international
politics into an exercise in national suicide. With all of the great powers possessing nuclear weapons
and ample means to rapidly expand their deterrent forces, warfare among these states has truly become an option of
last resort. The prospect of such great losses has instilled in the great powers a level of caution and restraint that effectively precludes
major revisionist efforts. Furthermore, the diffusion of small arms and the near universality of nationalism have
severely limited the ability of great powers to conquer and occupy territory inhabited by resisting
populations (as Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now Iraq have demonstrated). Unlike during the days of empire building in the
nineteenth century, states today cannot translate great asymmetries of power into effective territorial
control; at most, they can hope for loose hegemonic relationships that require them to give something in return. Also unlike in the
nineteenth century, today the density of trade, investment, and production networks across international borders raises even more the costs of
war. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, to take one of the most plausible cases of a future interstate war, would pose for the Chinese communist
regime daunting economic costs, both domestic and international. Taken together, these
changes in the economy of violence
mean that the international system is far more primed for peace than the autocratic revivalists
acknowledge.
Economic interdependence prevents wars
Zenko and
Cohen
12
Micah
Michael
4/x/
, Fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Fellow
at the Century Foundation, “Clear and Present Safety: The United States is More Secure Than Washington Thinks,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 91, Iss. 2
Economic bonds among states are also accelerating, even in the face of a sustained global economic
downturn. Today, 153 countries belong to the World Trade Organization and are bound by its dispute-resolution mechanisms. Thanks
to lowered trade barriers, exports now make up more than 30 percent of gross world product, a
proportion that has tripled in the past 40 years. The United States has seen its exports to the world's fastestgrowing economies increase by approximately 500 percent over the past decade. Currency flows have
exploded as well, with $4 trillion moving around the world in foreign exchange markets every day. Remittances, an essential instrument for
reducing poverty in developing countries, have more than tripled in the past decade, to more than $440 billion each year. Partly as a result of
these trends, poverty is on the decline: in 1981, half the people living in the developing world survived on less than $1.25 a day; today, that
figure is about one-sixth. Like democratization, economic development occasionally brings with it significant costs. In particular, economic
from
the perspective of the United States, increasing economic interdependence is a net positive because
trade and foreign direct investment between countries generally correlate with long-term economic
growth and a reduced likelihood of war.
liberalization can strain the social safety net that supports a society's most vulnerable populations and can exacerbate inequalities. Still,
Trade is key to peace—empirics
Daniel Grisworld 12/28/5, director of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy Studies,”Peace on Earth? Try Free Trade among Men”
Buried beneath the daily stories about car bombs and insurgents is an underappreciated but comforting fact during this Christmas season: The
world has somehow become a more peaceful place.¶ As one little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story recently
reported, “War declining worldwide, studies say.” According to the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute, the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past halfcentury. In just the past 15 years, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 18, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. As
2005 draws to an end, no two nations in the world are at war with each other.¶ The death toll from war has also
been falling. According to the AP story, “The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below
20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number.” Those estimates are down sharply
from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War.¶ Many causes lie
behind the good news — the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them — but expanding
trade and
globalization appear to be playing a major role. Far from stoking a “World on Fire,” as one misguided American author has
argued, growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and
war, for three main reasons.¶ First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward
democracy, and democracies don’t pick fights with each other. Freedom to trade nurtures democracy
by expanding the middle class in globalizing countries and equipping people with tools of
communication such as cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes more travel, more contact with
people in other countries, and more exposure to new ideas. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two
thirds of the world’s countries today are democracies — a record high.¶ Second, as national economies
become more integrated with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War
in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade
and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the
economic cost of war.¶ Third, globalization allows nations to acquire wealth through production and trade
rather than conquest of territory and resources. Increasingly, wealth is measured in terms of intellectual
property, financial assets, and human capital. Those are assets that cannot be seized by armies. If
people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them
peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home.¶
Agriculture
Trade Key Agriculture
Protectionism causes the impact—not trade—also self-sufficiency is
impossible—countries rely upon trade—makes their impact inevitable
Trebilcock
5
Michael J.
12/3/ , Journal of International Law and International Relations, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that fosters
interdisciplinary discourse at the nexus of international law and international relations. In promoting critical, informed, and interdisciplinary
debate on international affairs, the JILIR provides a forum for the advancement of knowledge, ideas, dialogue and dialectic in both International
Law and International Relations., “Journal of International Law & International Relations”
Proponents of self-sufficiency believe in protecting local production of ¶ food staples, arguing that
local production supports jobs, builds ¶ community, and protects national food security68 and argue
that trade ¶ liberalization is putting all these at risk. ¶ There are several responses to this argument. First, what
¶ distinguishes food production from other necessities, such as clothing, ¶ footwear, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and
steel? Second, what ¶ distinguishes self-sufficiency at the national level from self-sufficiency at ¶ the
state, local, or family level? Clearly the United States ought not ¶ demand that Texas diversify to produce
wine, or that Michigan and ¶ Kansas diversify to produce citrus fruit. If each member state of the ¶ European Union aspired to
be self-sufficient in food, this would ¶ fundamentally contradict the entire European economic integration ¶
enterprise. Furthermore, few people would advocate family self -sufficiency so that each family produces
all its own food (and other ¶ requirements), returning us all to members of hunter-gatherer or peasant ¶
societies. Third, even adopting a national perspective and focusing on ¶ food, it would be surprising if
the social pathologies said to be afflicting ¶ the agricultural sector are due to international trade.
Agriculture has ¶ been and remains the most protected bastion in the international ¶ economy.
Protectionism is the problem, not trade liberalization. The ¶ empirical evidence suggests that agricultural protectionism in
the United ¶ States, Western Europe, and Japan entails average costs of over a ¶ thousand dollars per household per year for the countries
concerned—a ¶ large and regressive hidden ‘tax’ on ordinary consumers of basic ¶ staples.69 Apart from these costs to consumers, it is
agricultural ¶ protectionism, not liberalization, that has promoted environmentally ¶ damaging excessive mono-cropping and use of fertilizers
and irrigation, ¶ as most starkly exemplified by the European Union’s Common ¶ Agricultural Policy, which over the post-war years has turned
Europe ¶ from the largest importer of temperature zone agricultural products into ¶ the second largest exporter, and accounts for nearly half of
the ¶ European Union budget.70 Moreover, it is important to remember that there are communities and farming families on both sides of the
trade ¶ equation. For
developing countries with a comparative advantage in ¶ food production, developed
countries’ emphasis on self-sufficiency is ¶ viewed as an excuse for protectionism that prevents
developing ¶ countries from fully realizing their growth potential by denying them ¶ effective market
access for their exports. The case for agricultural ¶ protectionism on national security grounds—that we cannot risk being ¶ held
hostage by potential enemies in war-time for basic necessities of ¶ life—is also uncompelling. Greater economic interdependency with ¶ respect
to essential products is likely to reduce the risk of war—the ¶ primary historical rationale for the creation of the European ¶ Community. The
emphasis on self-sufficiency also fails to recognize that ¶ globalization may have the effect of
diversifying dependencies, thereby ¶ reducing them. Since no country could reasonably supply all of
its ¶ economic needs domestically, some reliance on foreigners is inevitable. ¶ Economic integration
can reduce exposure to any one foreign party by ¶ facilitating global competition, thereby allowing
great diversification in ¶ the sourcing of products.
No extinction from ag collapse
Allouche 11, research Fellow – water supply and sanitation @ Institute for Development Studies, frmr professor – MIT, ‘11
(Jeremy, “The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource
scarcity, political systems and global trade,” Food Policy, Vol. 36 Supplement 1, p. S3-S8, January)
The question of resource scarcity has led to many debates
on whether scarcity (whether of food or water) will lead to
conflict and war. The underlining reasoning behind most of these discourses over food and water wars comes from the
Malthusian belief that there is an imbalance between the economic availability of natural resources and
population growth since while food production grows linearly, population increases exponentially. Following this reasoning, neoMalthusians claim that finite natural resources place a strict limit on the growth of human population and aggregate consumption; if these
limits are exceeded, social breakdown, conflict and wars result. Nonetheless, it seems that most empirical studies
do not support
any of these neo-Malthusian arguments. Technological change and greater inputs of capital have dramatically
increased labour productivity in agriculture. More generally, the neo-Malthusian view has suffered because during
the last two centuries humankind has breached many resource barriers that seemed unchallengeable.
Lessons from history: alarmist scenarios, resource wars and international relations
In a so-called age of uncertainty, a number of alarmist
scenarios have linked the increasing use of water resources and
food insecurity with wars. The idea of water wars (perhaps more than food wars) is a dominant discourse in the media (see for
example Smith, 2009), NGOs (International Alert, 2007) and within international organizations (UNEP, 2007). In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon declared that ‘water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict’ (Lewis, 2007). Of course,
this type of discourse has an instrumental purpose; security and conflict are here used for raising water/food as key policy priorities at the
international level.
In the Middle East, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have also used this bellicose rhetoric. Boutrous
Boutros-Gali said; ‘the next war in the Middle East will be over water, not politics’ (Boutros Boutros-Gali in Butts, 1997, p. 65). The question is
not whether the sharing of transboundary water sparks political tension and alarmist declaration, but rather to what extent water has been a
principal factor in international conflicts. The
evidence seems quite weak. Whether by president Sadat in Egypt or King Hussein in
Jordan, none of these declarations have been followed up by military action.
The governance of transboundary water has gained increased attention these last decades. This has a direct impact on the global food system
as water allocation agreements determine the amount of water that can used for irrigated agriculture. The likelihood of conflicts over water is
an important parameter to consider in assessing the stability, sustainability and resilience of global food systems.
None of the various and extensive databases on the causes of war show water as a casus belli. Using the
International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and supplementary data from the University of Alabama on water conflicts, Hewitt, Wolf and
Hammer found only seven disputes where water seems to have been at least a partial cause for conflict
(Wolf, 1998, p. 251). In fact, about 80% of the incidents relating to water were limited purely to governmental
rhetoric intended for the electorate (Otchet, 2001, p. 18).
As shown in The Basins At Risk (BAR) water event database, more than two-thirds of over 1800 water-related ‘events’ fall
on the ‘cooperative’ scale (Yoffe et al., 2003). Indeed, if one takes into account a much longer period, the following figures clearly
demonstrate this argument. According to studies by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), organized political
bodies signed between the year 805 and 1984 more than 3600 water-related treaties, and approximately 300 treaties
dealing with water management or allocations in international basins have been negotiated since 1945 (FAO, 1978 and FAO, 1984).
The fear around water wars have been driven by a Malthusian outlook which equates scarcity with violence, conflict and war. There
is
however no direct correlation between water scarcity and transboundary conflict. Most specialists now tend
to agree that the major issue is not scarcity per se but rather the allocation of water resources between the different riparian states (see for
example Allouche, 2005, Allouche, 2007 and [Rouyer, 2000] ). Water
rich countries have been involved in a number of
disputes with other relatively water rich countries (see for example India/Pakistan or Brazil/Argentina). The perception of each
state’s estimated water needs really constitutes the core issue in transboundary water relations. Indeed, whether this scarcity exists or not in
reality, perceptions
of the amount of available water shapes people’s attitude towards the environment (Ohlsson, 1999). In
among riparians (Dinar and Dinar, 2005
fact, some water experts have argued that scarcity drives the process of co-operation
and Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2006).
In terms of international relations, the
threat of water wars due to increasing scarcity does not make much
sense in the light of the recent historical record. Overall, the water war rationale expects conflict to occur over water, and
appears to suggest that violence is a viable means of securing national water supplies, an argument which is highly contestable.
The debates over the likely impacts of climate change have again popularised the idea of water wars. The argument runs
that climate change will precipitate worsening ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown, institutional failure,
mass migrations and in turn cause greater political instability and conflict (Brauch, 2002 and Pervis and Busby, 2004). In a report for the US
Department of Defense, Schwartz and Randall (2003) speculate about the consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that
water shortages will lead to aggressive wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p. 15). Despite growing
concern that climate
change will lead to instability and violent conflict, the evidence base to substantiate the connections
is thin ( [Barnett and Adger, 2007] and Kevane and Gray, 2008).
Poverty
Trade Solves Poverty
Conclusive evidence indicates trade alleviates poverty
WTO 6/13/2k, “Free trade helps reduce poverty, says new WTO secretariat study”
The following
is a selection of the highlights of the study "Trade, Income Disparity and Poverty", by Dan
Ben-David of Tel Aviv University and L. Alan Winters of Sussex University.(1)¶ Extreme poverty is a huge problem.
1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. A further 1.6 billion, more than a quarter of the world's population, make do with one to
two dollars a day.¶ To
alleviate poverty, developing economies need to grow faster, and the poor need to
benefit from this growth. Trade can play an important part in reducing poverty, because it boosts
economic growth and the poor tend to benefit from that faster growth.¶ The study finds that, in general, living
standards in developing countries are not catching up with those in developed countries. But some
developing countries are catching up. What distinguishes them is their openness to trade. The
countries that are catching up with rich ones are those that are open to trade; and the more open
they are, the faster they are converging.¶ The study also finds that poor people within a country generally
gain from trade liberalization. It concludes that "trade liberalization is generally a strongly positive
contributor to poverty alleviation—it allows people to exploit their productive potential, assists
economic growth, curtails arbitrary policy interventions and helps to insulate against shocks". This
concurs with a new World Bank study (2) which, using data from 80 countries over four decades, confirms that
openness boosts economic growth and that the incomes of the poor rise one-for-one with overall
growth.
Maximizing all lives is the only way to affirm equality
David Cummiskey
96 – Professor of Philosophy, Bates Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics 100.3, p 601-2, p 606, jstor,
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals for some abstract "social entity." It
is not a
question of some persons having to bear the cost for some elusive "overall social good." Instead, the
question is whether some persons must bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a
person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has."30
Why, however, is this not equally true of all those that we do not save through our failure to act? By
emphasizing solely the one
who must bear the cost if we act, one fails to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other
separate persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation,
what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of rational beings,
choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for the existence of rational beings, but both
choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of a rational being. Since the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an
end-in-itself' (GMM, p. 429), the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can, the conditions necessary for
rational beings. If
I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I do
not deny the unconditional value of rational beings. Persons may have "dignity, an unconditional and incomparable
value" that transcends any market value (GMM, p. 436), but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental equality which
dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others. The formula of the end-in-itself thus does not
support the view that we may never force another to bear some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational
beings, then equal
consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many. [continues] According to Kant, the
that, in deciding what to
do, one give appropriate practical consideration to the unconditional value of rational beings and to the
conditional value of happiness. Since agent-centered constraints require a non-value-based rationale, the most natural interpretation of the
demand that one give equal respect to all rational beings lead to a consequentialist normative theory. We have
objective end of moral action is the existence of rational beings. Respect for rational beings requires
seen that there is no sound Kantian reason for abandoning this natural consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a consequentialist
interpretation does not require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it
does not involve doing evil so
that good may come of it. It simply requires an uncompromising commitment to the equal value and equal
claims of
all rational beings and a recognition that, in the moral consideration of conduct, one's own subjective
concerns do not have overriding importance.
Trade solves poverty—economic growth
Peter Lilley 7/24/7, chairs the Conservatives' globalisation and global poverty policy group, “Only trade can solve global poverty”
The policy
group on global poverty, which David Cameron asked me to chair, concluded that people are right to
want more aid.¶ And they are right to be concerned about making sure it is effective and gets through to the poor. Most of our report is
about how to achieve those aims.¶ But aid alone is not enough.¶ Even if the rich countries fulfil their pledges to increase aid, the
total amount will still be inadequate to finance all the health, education, nutrition, water and
sanitation that people living on the edge of survival need.¶ Above all, they need economic growth to
boost their incomes. And trade is the great dynamo of growth.¶ So we want to see a campaign to achieve for developing
countries' trade what Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History have done for debt relief and aid.¶ The aim should be to give all lowincome countries real trade opportunities with the developed world - that is why we call the campaign "Real
Trade".¶ We hope there will be popular pressure on governments in the EU and other rich countries to put a real trade package at the heart of
a revived Doha round or, if it fails, in its place.¶ In our view, Real Trade would require rich countries to do five things: open their markets
unilaterally to the products of all low-income countries; liberalise the "rules of origin" that result in 40 per cent of imports that should enter
Europe tariff-free paying duties; give incentives to reduce the high tariff barriers between developing countries; abolish export subsidies that
damage Third World agriculture; and give more Aid for Trade to help poor countries develop their exports.¶ We also want to see more
emphasis on economic growth in aid programmes. The proportion of OECD donors' aid spent on infrastructure has fallen by two thirds and that
on agriculture by even more over two decades.
Inequality is good—the rich spur innovation for the poor
Indur M. Goklany 8/22/2, science and technology policy analyst for the United States Department of the Interior, where he holds the
position of Assistant Director of Programs, Science and Technology Policy, “The Globalization of Human Well Being”
Conventional wisdom decries income¶
inequality, but there may be situations where¶ some inequality would benefit
humanity.¶ Consider, for instance, that since most of the¶ easy improvements in public health have¶ been
largely captured (except where globalization has lagged), the search for and implementation of cures and
treatments for¶ today’s unconquered diseases (such as¶ strokes, heart disease, and cancers) could¶ become
progressively more expensive. Richer¶ societies are in a better position to invest in¶ the research and
development of new or¶ improved technologies in general, and technologies for detecting, treating,
or eliminating these diseases in particular. AIDS is a case¶ in point.¶ Moreover, new technologies are often relatively costly initially.
The rich, therefore, are¶ usually the first to obtain new or innovative¶ technology. As the rich purchase this
technology, the supplier can increase production¶ and its price drops because of economies of¶ scale
and learning by doing, if nothing else.¶ Such declines allow the less wealthy to also¶ afford that
technology, which then paves the¶ way for further price drops and induces people of more modest
means to enter the market. Thus, arguably, wealth inequality spurs the invention, innovation, and diffusion of¶ new
technologies. ¶ This pattern has been repeated time and¶ again for goods and services (such as telephones, VCRs,
personal computers, and even¶ vacations to exotic places) as well as health¶ technologies (such as antibiotics, organ¶ transplants,
and, now, AIDS treatments).¶ Innovations were expensive at first but their¶ costs came down. Therefore, some inequality¶ in wealth probably
benefits humanity.¶ Presumably, for a given set of supply and¶ demand characteristics for a particular technology, there is an optimum level of
income¶ inequality that would maximize the rate of¶ adoption of that technology, as well as the¶ rate at which it improves human well-being.¶
In other words, even if one were to ignore¶ trends in inequalities in other, more significant indicators of human well-being, income¶
inequality is a poor lens for viewing the merits of globalization. ¶ Without restricting himself only to income¶
inequality, Nobel prize–winning economist¶ Amartya Sen claims that inequality is the central issue with respect to
globalization and¶ that a “crucial question concerns the sharing¶ of the potential gains from
globalization,¶ between rich and poor countries, and between¶ different groups within countries.”
Prolif
Regs Solve
Current trade regulations solve
Togzhan Kassenova 1/25/12, associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at ¶ the Carnegie Endowment and a Stanton Nuclear Security
Fellow. She specializes ¶ in weapons of mass destruction nonproliferation issues, with a regional focus on ¶ Central Asia and Southeast Asia;
nuclear security; strategic trade management; ¶ and civilian nuclear energy programs, “Preventing WMD Proliferation¶ Myths and Realities of
Strategic Trade Controls”
The establishment of national strategic trade control systems, which refers to a set of ¶ government
policies and practices designed to regulate trade in proliferation-sensitive products for the ¶ purposes of
preventing the spread of WMD and simultaneously facilitating trade in strategic goods. ¶ This relatively new
concept emerged from the practice of export controls. A few decades ago, when ¶ proliferation-sensitive trade was confined to a few key
producers, traditional export controls had ¶ political underpinnings and suppliers would choose their customers based on strategic alliances.
Today, ¶ we live in a world in which goods and technology that can be diverted for WMD programs are much ¶ more widespread than ever
before. They constitute a significant component of international trade, and ¶ the lines between the peaceful and military applications of the
same products and technologies are less ¶ clearly defined.
Prolif Good
Proliferation reduce the risk and impact of nuclear war
Victor Asal and Kyle Beardsley 7, Assistant Prof. Pol. Sci. – SUNY Albany, and, Assistant Prof. Pol. Sci. – Emory U., Journal of Peace
Research, “Proliferation and International Crisis Behavior”
Other, more optimistic,
scholars see benefits to nuclear proliferation or, perhaps not actively advocating the
presence of nuclear weapons has at least
development of more nuclear weapons and nuclear-weapon states, see that the
been stabilizing in the past. For example, some scholars are confident of the promise of the ‘nuclear peace’.4 While those who oppose
proliferation present a number of arguments, those who contend that nuclear weapons would reduce interstate
wars are fairly consistent in focusing on one key argument: nuclear weapons make the risk of war
unacceptable for states. As Waltz argues, the higher the stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them,
the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own destruction. States are not likely to run major
risks for minor gains. War between nuclear states may escalate as the loser uses larger and larger
warheads. Fearing that, states will want to draw back. Not escalation but deescalation becomes likely.
War remains possible, but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. (Sagan & Waltz, 2003: 6–7) ‘Nuclear war
simply makes the risks of war much higher and shrinks the chance that a country will go to war’ (Snyder
& Diesing, 1977: 450). Using similar logic, Bueno de Mesquita & Riker (1982) demonstrate formally that a world with
almost universal membership in the nuclear club will be much less likely to experience nuclear war
than a world with only a few members.
Trade Solves Prolif
Cooperation from trade solves
OCC 8/5/10 Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, “Chapter 4: The Global Challenge of WMD Terrorism”,
http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2009/140890.htm
In this era of globalization, control of exports cannot occur only at national borders, but also must be
a concern for the knowledge sharing at U.S. research universities, laboratories, and industry. The reduced
domestic pool of qualified scientists and engineers has driven many U.S. companies, universities and laboratories to recruit foreign nationals in
order to remain competitive. The
increased presence of talented foreign science and engineering staff and
students carries the risk of WMD technology transfers by way of “deemed exports.” (A deemed export is the
release of information pertaining to the design and manufacturing of dual-use technology or source code to a foreign national within the
confines of the United States borders.) In accordance with the Export Administration Regulations, several USG departments and agencies
support a national effort to better control foreign access to sensitive dual-use technologies to prevent unauthorized transfers. STATE
SPONSORSHIP OF TERRORISM: A KEY CONCERN A state that directs WMD resources to terrorists, or one from which enabling resources are
clandestinely diverted, poses a grave WMD terrorism threat. Although terrorist organizations will continue to seek a WMD capability
independent of state programs, the sophisticated WMD knowledge and resources of a state could enable a terrorist capability. State sponsors
of terrorism and all nations that fail to live up to their international counterterrorism and nonproliferation obligations deserve continued
scrutiny as potential facilitators of WMD terrorism. NON-STATE FACILITATORS: AN EMERGING THREAT State sponsors
of terrorism
with WMD programs represent just one facext of the overall risk of WMD terrorism. The nongovernmental entities they use to facilitate their WMD programs have emerged as a growing
proliferation threat in recent years that could eventually provide terrorists with access to materials and expertise that are
particularly hard to acquire. In 2003, the United States and its international partners succeeded in interdicting a
shipment of WMD-related material destined for Libya’s then-active nuclear weapons program. The
facts surrounding this shipment indicated a transnational nuclear proliferation network reaching from East
Asia to Europe, developed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. This network was making available
sensitive technology and WMD-related materials to nations willing to pay. There is a risk that such non-state
facilitators and their networks could provide their services to terrorist groups. The dismantling of the A.Q. Khan network
revealed an uncomfortable truth about globalization. The very trends driving globalization, improved
communications and transportation links, can enable the development of extended proliferation
networks that may facilitate terrorist acquisition of WMD. Globalization requires that partner nations
work together closely to prevent, detect, and disrupt linkages that may develop between terrorists
and facilitators such as A.Q. Khan.
AT Disease
Growth Solves Disease
Growth allows for effective measures to prevent disease
David Fidler, Fall 8, Professor of Law, Indiana University, University Center on American and Global Security, “After the Revolution: Global
Health Politics in a Time of Economic Crisis and Threatening Future Trends,”
Further, the global
economic crisis is absorbing ever larger amounts of capital to keep governments, financial
institutions, and corporations afloat, which drastically reduces the availability of resources for addressing
the growing costs of providing adequate public health and health care for populations around the world.
Even before the global economic crisis hit, experts argued that the unprecedented increases in national spending and development assistance
for health were inadequate and, even worse, that many developed donor countries had not fulfilled existing aid pledges. 56 Thus, maintaining
existing levels of domestic spending and development assistance on health would not be sufficient, but increased expenditures seem unlikely
for years while the global economy recovers. The more likely scenario is reductions in health spending within national budgets and in foreign
aid programs. Such reductions, even if shortlived, will have a severe impact on global health activities already desperately in need of more
financial resources. Perhaps the cruelest irony of the global economic crisis is its emergence in the year WHO and global health stakeholders
renewed the push for achieving primary health care for all. The report of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health advocated for
primary health care in 2008.57 The World Health Report 2008 focused on primary health care, 58 and the WHO Director-General connected the
new emphasis on primary health care to the Declaration of AlmaAta, which first launched the “health for all” strategy based on universal
primary health care in 1978.59 However, 30 years ago, the Alma-Ata strategy was derailed by developments in the energy and economic
sectors that sound ominously familiar, as the WHO Director-General recognized in September 2008: Nor could the visionary thinkers in 1978
have foreseen world events: an oil crisis [that began in 1979], a global recession [in the early 1980s], and the introduction [in the 1980s], by
development banks, of structural adjustment programmes that shifted national budgets away from the social services, including health. As
resources for health diminished, selective approaches using packages of interventions gained favour over the intended aim of fundamentally
reshaping health care. The emergence of HIV/AIDS, the associated resurgence of tuberculosis, and an increase in malaria cases moved the focus
of international public health away from broad-based programmes and towards the urgent management of highmortality emergencies.60 The
effort to rejuvenate the primary health care movement in a year in which global food, energy, and economic crises emerged proved ill-timed,
and the
worsening nightmare of the global economic crisis threatens even more damage to the political,
economic, and social conditions needed to achieve progress on universal primary health care. Put another way,
political, economic, and intellectual capital for advancing the primary health care agenda will, for the foreseeable future, be in short supply.
Instead, as with the energy and food crises, global
health finds itself scrambling to address an emergency with
potentially devastating consequences for the health of individuals and populations, health services and systems, and the social
determinants of health.
No Extinction
No extinction from diseases – natural selection checks
Richard Posner, ‘5,Court of Appeals Judge: Professor, Chicago School of Law, Catastrophe, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_01994150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its
existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as
the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but
none has come close to destroying the entire human race. There is a
selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their
genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a
lethal virus, wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that
AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of the human race is
biological reason. Natural
probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited
the spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
Diseases “burn out” too fast to cause extinction – their ev is based on a sampling error
Schwartz, Science Writer for the Washington Post, ‘97
[Jim, “Battling an Outbreak Of Hype”, Washington Post, 1-19-1997,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/virusx.htm, RSR]
Regis delights in deflating the scaremongers, and parodies the scare talk surrounding the Kikwit outbreak. Thanks to global air
travel, he writes, "Your own home -your very own neighborhood -was only a day away from the Ebola virus!" He then debunks. Such
"hot" viruses as Ebola burn themselves out quickly, and are far from unstoppable. "A virus, including the
Ebola virus, was not something that magically tunneled through physical barriers. A layer of plastic or
rubber was all that was necessary to contain it, and household bleach was sufficient to kill it ." Regis's book
also focuses on the heroes of virology: the men and women who identify and fight the nasties. As the book's title suggests, he gives the most
ink to the scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. But he shows that America has no monopoly on
viral cowboys -people who will go to superhuman effort to get the job done. Sometimes they break the rules of public safety, and even
common sense. Belgian scientist Guido van der Groen sweet talks a Federal Express clerk into letting him ship deadly tissue samples from the
Kikwit outbreak to the CDC. The CDC's Lyle Conrad brings a victim of deadly Lassa fever into the United States from Africa via airplane in 1969,
greatly expanding our understanding of the disease -and earning a loud reprimand from the then-head of the CDC. This swashbuckling science,
Regis gushes, "was a mythic journey, a quest, one that partook of the legendary and the fabulous. . . . It was a romantic adventure in the classic
sense." Ryan's book is both broader and deeper. He refrains from the reporters' sometimes-overheated prose, and corrects their errors. But the
compelling human stories seem to drag in the telling. Virus X comes alive when Ryan delves into the science, as when he gives a breathtaking
step-by-step description of the process by which the CDC's Stuart Nichol was able to identify the hantavirus's genetic sequence even before the
virus itself had been successfully cultured. Little wonder, then, that Ryan really begins to cook as he draws sweeping scientific conclusions
toward the end of the book. He writes that "viruses, so often thought to be nothing more than parasites, play a much wider role" in nature's
grand plan. He takes on the vexing issue of why viruses that coexist in relative harmony with their natural hosts emerge to attack humans with
such lethal force. Because
a bug that wipes out its target population will become extinct itself, it's sound
evolutionary strategy to reach an accommodation instead, and to "co-evolve" with the host over
time. Ultimately, the bugs aren't out to kill us, Ryan explains: They just want to move in, like microscopic
Kato Kaelins. New hosts for the virus haven't had time to reach this accommodation, and so the initial encounters tend to be tragic. Yet
once adapted, the viral guests aren't mere freeloaders: Ryan suggests that they become part of the
host's armamentarium against turf invaders. Because we are the invaders of so many remote corners of the Earth, we run
into these "unwitting knights of nature. . . . Although not primarily designed to attack humanity, human exploitation and invasion of every
ecological sphere has directed that aggression our way." Ryan ends with a call for better monitoring of and response to emerging diseases -and,
just to make sure we get the message, conjures up a hypothetical "virus X," a true doomsday bug as lethal as Ebola Zaire but with the airborne
transmission abilities of measles. Brrrrrrrrrrr.
Regis, on the other hand, steadfastly refuses to fret, and takes on the
increasingly popular apocalyptic notion that emerging diseases are somehow "Gaia's revenge" on
humanity for overdevelopment. He scorns Preston's idea that "in a sense, the earth is mounting an immune response against the
human species" and Garrett's notion that "the microbes were winning." Many more Americans have been killed by
lightning than the 700 Ebola deaths worldwide , yet "nobody spoke of lightning as 'the revenge of the thunderclouds,' even
though there was abundant talk of Ebola as 'the revenge of the rain forest'," Regis sneers. This proliferation of new viral threats
is an "illusion," Regis says. What's new are the tools of detection. "The better the CDC got at
identifying the pathogens that caused age-old but hitherto unrecognized diseases, the more it looked
as if scads of trailblazing new microbes were out there amassing themselves for attack, gathering their
forces, and preparing to bring us 'the coming plague'."
AT Bio D
Trade Solves Environment
Strengtheninlg trade preserves the environment--Kuznets Curve proves
Frankel
9
Jeffery
1/x/ , Harvard Kennedy School of Government Faculty Working Group Paper Series, “Environmental Effects of
International Trade”
Economic growth has both harmful effects on environmental quality and beneficial effects. As a generalization, the harmful
effects come via the scale of industry and the beneficial effects come via shifts toward cleaner sectors and cleaner
production techniques. What is the net outcome of these conflicting effects? A look at data across countries or across
time allows some rough generalizations. For some important environmental measures, an inverted Ushaped relationship appears: at relatively low levels of income per capita, growth leads to greater
environmental damage, until it levels off at an intermediate level of income, after which further
growth leads to improvements in the environment. Grossman and Krueger (1993, 1995), and the World Bank (1992),
brought to public attention this empirical relationship finding for a cross section of countries, using measures of local pollution.8 Grossman
and Krueger (1993) are evidently the ones to have named the inverted U-shaped pattern “the Environmental Kuznets Curve.”
9 Grossman and Krueger (1995) estimated that SO2 (Sulfur Dioxide) pollution peaked when a country’s income was about $5,000-$6,000 per
capita (in 1985 dollars). Frankel and Rose (2003) estimated the peak at about $5,770. Most developing countries have not yet reached these
thresholds. For countries where a long enough time series of data is available, there is also some evidence that the same inverted U-shaped
relationship can hold across time. The air in major industrialized cities was far more polluted in the 1950s than it is today. A similar pattern
holds typically with respect to deforestation in rich countries: the percentage of US land that was forested fell in the 18th century and first half
of the 19th century, but rose in the 20th century.
Trade is good for the environment—spreads green innovation
Frankel 1/x/9 “Environmental Effects of International Trade” Harvard Kennedy School of Government Faculty Working Group
Jeffery
Paper Series)
While the possibility that exposure to international competition might have an adverse effect on
environmental regulation is familiar, less widely recognized and more surprising is the possibility of
effects in the beneficial direction, which we will call the gains from trade hypothesis. Trade allows countries to attain
more of what they want, which includes environmental goods in addition to market-measured
output.¶ How could openness have a positive effect on environmental quality, once we set aside the possibility of accelerating progress
down the beneficial slope of the Environmental Kuznets Curve? A first possibility concerns technological and managerial
innovation. Openness encourages ongoing innovation.18 It then seems possible that openness could encourage
innovation beneficial to environmental improvement as well as economic progress. A second possibility is an
international ratcheting up of environmental standards.19 The largest political jurisdiction can set the
pace for others. Within the United States, it is called the “California effect:” When the largest state sets high standards
for auto pollution control equipment, for example, the end result may be similar standards in other states as well. The United States or
the European Union can play the same role globally.¶ Multinational corporations (MNCs) are often the vehicle for these
effects. They tend to bring clean state-of-the-art production techniques from high-standard countries of
origin, to host countries where they are not yet known. The claim is not that all multinational corporations apply the
highest environmental standards when operating in other countries. Rather the claim is that the standards tend on average to be
higher than if the host country were undertaking the same activity on its own.20¶ Corporate codes of
conduct offer a new way that residents of some countries can pursue environmental goals in other
countries.21 Formal international cooperation among governments is another way that
interdependence can lead to higher environmental standards rather than lower.
Trade solves the environment
National Bureau of Economic Research 11/17/11, private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to
promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic
research in a scientific manner, and without policy recommendations, among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic
community, “Is Trade Good or Bad for the Environment?”; Frankel and Rose: NBER Research Associates
How could trade be good for the environment? Trade
allows countries to attain more of what they want, including
environmental protection (the authors call this proposition the gains-from-trade hypothesis). Trade might lead to
international pressures to increase environmental standards, or to beneficial technological and
managerial innovations. Multinational corporations tend to bring clean state-of-the-art production
techniques from higher-standard countries of origin to host countries where such standards are not
yet known. Furthermore, trade economists believe that openness to trade encourages continual
innovation both in technology and in management practice; such innovation likely will be applied to
environmental concerns as well as to pure economic goals. In other words, Frankel and Rose suggest,
environmental improvement may well accompany globalization.
Trade doesn’t hurt the environment--empirics
Frankel 1/x/9 “Environmental Effects of International Trade” Harvard Kennedy School of Government Faculty Working Group
Jeffery
Paper Series)
Empirical studies of cross-country data generally find no detrimental effects of trade on some measures of
environmental degradation such as local SO2 (sulphur dioxide) air pollution, controlling for income. Thus
globalization and the environment need not necessarily be in conflict. Trade and growth give countries
the means to clean the air, provided they have effective institutions of governance in place at the
national level. (Democratic governance is another determinant of environmental quality.)
No Biodiversity Impact
Empirics disprove biodiversity loss impacts - their authors are hysterics
Hank Campbell 3/8/11, creator of Science 2.0, a community of research professors, post-docs, science book authors and Nobel
laureates collaborating over scientific projects. "I Wouldn't Worry About The Latest Mass Extinction Scare," Science 2.0,
http://www.science20.com/science_20/i_wouldnt_worry_about_latest_mass_extinction_scare-76989
mass extinction: Is it almost here?
You've seen it everywhere by now - Earth's sixth
and other articles discussing an article in Nature
(471, 51–57 doi:10.1038/nature09678) claiming the end of the world is nigh. ¶ Hey, I like to live in important times. So do most people. And something so important it has
is it real?
only happened 5 times in 540 million years, well that is really special. But
¶ Anthony Barnosky, integrative biologist at the University of California at
Berkeley and first author of the paper, claims that if currently threatened species, those officially classed as critically endangered, endangered, and vulnerable, actually
went extinct, and that rate of extinction continued, the sixth mass extinction could arrive in 3-22 centuries. ¶ Wait, what?? That's a lot of helping verbs confusing what
If you know anything about species and extinction, you
have already read one paragraph of my overview and seen the flaws in their model. Taking a few extinct
mammal species that we know about and then extrapolating that out to be extinction hysteria right now if we don't
do something about global warming is not good science. Worse, an integrative biologist is saying evolution does not happen. Polar bears did not exist
forever, they came into existence 150,000 years ago - because of the Ice Age. ¶ Greenpeace co-founder and ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore
told a global warming skepticism site, “I quit my life-long subscription to National Geographic
when they published a similar 'sixth mass extinction' article in February 1999. This [latest journal]
Nature article just re-hashes this theme” and "The fact that the study did make it through peer-review
indicates that the peer review process has become corrupted.” ¶ Well, how did it make it through
should be a fairly clear issue, if it were clear. ¶
peer review? Read this bizarre justification of their methodology; "If you look only at the critically endangered mammals--those where the risk of extinction is at least 50
percent within three of their generations--and assume that their time will run out and they will be extinct in 1,000 years, that puts us clearly outside any range of normal
greater extinctions occurred when Europeans
visited the Americas and in a much shorter time. And since we don't know how many species there are now, or have
ever been, if someone makes a model and claims tens of thousands of species are going extinct today, that sets off cultural alarms. It's not science, though. ¶ If only
1% of species have gone extinct in the groups we really know much about, that is
hardly a time for panic, especially if some 99 percent of all species that have ever
existed we don't know anything about because they...went extinct. And we did not. ¶ It
won't keep some researchers, and the mass media, from pushing the panic button.
and tells us that we are moving into the mass extinction realm." ¶ Well,
Co-author Charles Marshall, also an integrative biologist at UC-Berkeley wants to keep the panic button fully engaged by emphasizing that the small number of recorded
extinctions to date does not mean we are not in a crisis. "Just because the magnitude is low compared to the biggest mass extinctions we've seen in half a billion years
doesn't mean they aren't significant." ¶
It's a double negative, bad logic and questionable science, though.
AT Democracy
Trade Solves Democracy
Trade promotes social stability—key to democracy
Griswold 11
Daniel
, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Mad about Trade: Why Main
Street America Should Embrace Globalization, “Free Trade and the Global Middle Class,” Hayek Society Journal Vol. 9
The growth of the global middle class is not just about incomes and reduced poverty, as important as that development is to human well-being.
Along with the expansion of trade and foreign investment in the past three decades, the world has also
become more hospitable to other realms of human freedom. The two developments are related. Political scientists
since Aristotle have noted that an educated and property owning middle class provides the most solid
foundation for representative democracy. When households own real property, their homes, businesses, and
financial assets, they are less likely to succumb to revolutionary appeals that have brought so much upheaval and misery
to poor countries. When people are better educated, they are more able to exercise independent judgment in choosing their rulers and public
policy. Economic
independence nurtures the confidence to assert social and political independence from
the government. Those traits have been the durable foundation of American freedom since our founding. Consistent with those theories,
our more globalized world has also become a more democratic world. According to the think tank Freedom House
based in New York, the past three decades of expanding global trade have also witnessed a dramatic
expansion of political and civil freedom around the world. Freedom House rates nearly 200 countries every year
according to freedom of speech, assembly, worship and other civil freedoms and the freedom to participate in open, competitive elections. In
1973, when its surveys began, Freedom House found that 35 percent of the world’s population lived in countries
that were classified as “Free,” where citizens enjoyed the full range of political and civil freedoms. Today that share has
grown to 46 percent. In that same time frame, the share living in countries classified as “Partly Free” has slipped from 18 to 17 percent
and the share living in countries classified as “Not Free,” where political and civil freedoms are denied, has dropped
from 47 percent to 37 percent. If the percentages were the same today as in 1973 there would be
roughly 700 million fewer people living in the full sunlight of democracy and civil liberty, and 700 million
more living in the darkness of tyranny. Expanding trade and globalization deserve a share of the credit. Economic
freedom and development have spread the tools of communication. Hundreds of millions of people in developing
countries now have access to cell phones, the Internet and satellite TV. Increased foreign travel and foreign investment have exposed them to a
world of new friendships, ideas, and lifestyles. A
more open and less controlled economy fosters the growth of
“civil society” – including new businesses, independent labor unions, professional associations, and clubs – what the great 18th century
British statesman Edmund Burke called society’s “little platoons.” People in a free and open market tend to see people
outside their ethnic and religious group not as threats but as potential customers and business
partners. People learn to practice tolerance and compromise in their everyday lives, essential public
traits for a democracy. Growth has also created a rising global middle class that is economically
independent and politically aware. Freed from the daily shackles of subsistence, these middle class families have turned their
attention to such causes as securing property rights, improving the environment, and getting their kids through college. As people
embrace the daily freedom of the marketplace and property ownership, they come to expect more
freedom in the political sphere. Nations open to the global economy are significantly more likely to
enjoy greater political and civil freedoms than those countries that are relatively closed. Governments
that grant their citizens a large measure of freedom to engage in international commerce find it
increasingly difficult to deprive them of political and civil liberties, while governments that “protect”
their citizens behind tariff walls and other barriers to international commerce find it much easier to deny those same
liberties. A special panel commissioned by the World Trade Organization to survey the state of the world trading system on the WTO’s 10th
anniversary rightly observed, “Generally, the marks of closed economies are lack of democracy and a free media,
political repression, and the absence of opportunity for individuals to improve their lives through
education, innovation, honest hard work and commitment. The spread of economic freedom, trade, globalization, and
middle-class incomes has helped to lay the foundation for the flowering of democracy in formerly
authoritarian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Chile. It is not a coincidence that within a decade after the
passage of NAFTA, one-party rule in Mexico was broken with the election of Vicente Fox in 2000. NAFTA helped to break
the grip of the long-ruling PRI over the economic life of the country. Now Mexico has become a vigorous multiparty democracy. In contrast,
countries where political freedom and civil freedoms are in retreat, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe, are also
countries where governments are busy curtailing economic freedom. The connection between
economic freedom, growth, and political and civil freedom should encourage those favor human
progress and strike a note of fear in the heart of oppressive governments around the world. If the
experience of other countries offers a pattern, the communist rulers in Beijing will find it increasingly difficult to suppress the legitimate desires
of their citizens to enjoy political rights and civil liberties commensurate with their citizens’ expanding economic freedoms and middle-class
incomes. The recent economic downturn and rising unemployment in China may provide a spark.
Free trade spreads democracy
Griswold 2/x/4 – Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at CATO Institute,“Free Trade Sows Seeds for Democracy”
One of the most powerful forces for spreading democracy and human rights in East Asia and the rest of the
world today may be the freedom to trade. Political scientists have long noted the connection between
economic development, political reform and democracy. Increased trade and economic integration
promote civil and political freedoms directly by opening a society to new technology, communications
and democratic ideas. Economic liberalization provides a counterweight to governmental power and creates space for civil society.
And by promoting faster growth, trade promotes political freedom indirectly by creating an
economically independent and politically aware middle class. In an April 2002 speech urging Congress to grant him
Daniel
trade promotion authority, President Bush argued, "Societies that are open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy
within their borders." In a new study for the Cato Institute, "Trading Tyranny for Freedom: How Open Markets Till the Soil for Democracy," I
conclude that that those assumptions rest on solid ground. Around
the globe, the recent trend towards globalization
has been accompanied by a trend toward greater political and civil liberty. In the past 30 years, cross-border
flows of trade, investment and currency have increased dramatically, and far faster than output itself. During that same period, political and
civil liberties have been spreading around the world.
AT Econonomy
Protectionism kills Economy
Protectionist policies are net worse—tanks global growth
Narissa Rahan 5/25/12, Washington DC based international trade negotiator and WTO expert, “Protectionism a Bad Idea”
THE international
trading community has reacted with growing concern to protectionist measures
implemented lately by a number of Latin American countries. In recent months, Argentina and Brazil have imposed
import restrictions in an effort to protect their domestic industries.¶ Among others, Argentina is now said to require individual approval for
imports of almost 600 products. Brazil has limited car imports from Mexico. Argentina has further rattled its foreign investors by expropriating
Spanish-controlled energy company YPF.¶ There could hardly be a worse time for any country to step up protectionist measures. According
to the International Monetary Fund, world output growth, which slowed to 3.9 per cent last year, is
expected to slow further to 3.5 per cent this year.¶ Meanwhile, global trade growth is decelerating:
after rebounding to 13.8 per cent in 2010, it dawdled to five per cent last year, and the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) expects it to crawl to 3.7 per cent this year.¶ True, emerging markets and developing
countries have been performing relatively strongly. But even China's recent trade figures were disappointing.¶ These countries, too, are not
impervious to the woes of their more advanced counterparts. Worries
of Europe falling into crisis and the United
States' faltering job growth are hardly ebbing. At a time when improvements in the global economy
remain disconcertingly fragile, stifling sources of growth like trade rather than preserving them
means playing with fire.¶ Of course, not all countries are affected in the same way or extent when upping trade barriers. However,
the more tapped in you are as a country into the global trading system, the greater the likelihood
you will do serious harm to yourself by being protectionist.¶ According to a Reuters report, the Latin
American region's imports and exports make up about 42.1 per cent of the region's gross domestic
product, roughly a 40 per cent rise since 1980. As a region, it has more to lose simply because it has gained so much
from trade over the last few decades.
Trade = Growth
Trade accelerates growth—consensus of economists
Peter Lloyd
11, professor of economics at the University of Melbourne, “Free Trade and Growth in the World Economy”
The unanimous view of trade economists today is that free trade is the best policy for a single small
(=price taking) economy, irrespective of the policies pursued by its trading partners. This is the old story that free trade allows a country to
specialise according to its comparative advantage. Departures from free trade, therefore, reduce national welfare. We are
all thoroughly familiar with this story too. There are now numerous measures of the deadweight losses from border protection for most
countries of the world and the gains from trade liberalisation, thanks to the efforts of the GTAP and the World Bank and other teams of cge
researchers.
Yet, I want to argue that we
still substantially underestimate the gains from trade liberalisation. The principal
the standard gains from liberalising trade are comparative statics. They increase the level
of real incomes and incomes per capita. The literature of the 1990s introduced an important distinction between the level
reason1 is that
effect and the rate of growth effect of trade liberalisation (for example, Grossman and Helpman, 1990). Old growth theory suggests that
trade liberalisation may raise the rate of capital formation by lowering the price of fixed capital
(Estevadeordal and Taylor, 2008) and possibly also increasing the rate of return on capital and the savings rate or
net capital inflow. This increase in capital formation in turn raises the rate of growth of real outputs
and real incomes. New Growth theory has added a number of other growth-inducing effects; trade liberalisation may
increase the variety of capital and intermediate inputs, or increase the productivity of R& D (Taylor, 1999).
The level effect is once-for-all whereas the growth effect is continuing.
A number of cross-sectional studies have found that countries that are more open to trade have higher
growth rates; see especially the influential study of Sachs and Warner (1995). This became the consensus view. It supported advocacy of
continued trade liberalisation in Developing Countries by economists and institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.
Trade solves the economy—GDP and empirics
Griswold 11
Daniel
, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Mad about Trade: Why Main
Street America Should Embrace Globalization, “Free Trade and the Global Middle Class,” Hayek Society Journal Vol. 9
Whenever the U.S. Commerce Department reports rising imports and an expanding trade deficit, the economic priesthood pronounces it bad
news for the economy. "Rising trade deficit could drag down economy," is a typical newspaper headline. As the Associated Press summarized
conventional thinking a few months ago, "Growth
slows when imports outpace exports, because more jobs go to
foreign workers." This is wrong in theory and in practice. The stakes are high. Misguided worries about
imports and trade deficits feed public anxieties, and can lead policy makers to reach for protectionist
measures that do more harm than good. They can cause investors to misread the fundamental forces driving growth. Contrary
to the prevailing orthodoxy, the U.S. economy shows no sign of suffering during periods when the trade deficit
is expanding. The mistaken assumption that imports and trade deficits are a drag on growth depends on the seemingly plausible idea that
anything we import is one less thing we make ourselves. The Bureau of Economic Analysis supports this error in its quarterly estimates of gross
domestic product by reporting that a rise in imports always represents a "subtraction in the calculation of GDP." Don't believe it. Much
of
what we import doesn't displace domestic production so much as complement it. Imports fuel
American industry by providing the raw materials, intermediate inputs and capital machinery our
producers need to compete. Competition from imports spurs innovation, cost containment, and
productivity gains. Lower prices for imported consumer goods allow households to spend more on home-grown services. The
dollars we spend on imports quickly return to buy U.S. assets. In 2010, our trade deficit in goods of
$647 billion was exactly offset by our trade surplus in services and investment income and our large capital
surplus — the amount of U.S. assets, including Treasury bonds, purchased by foreigners, minus the foreign assets purchased by Americans.
The grand balance of U.S. international transactions last year, as in every year, was zero. Contrary to the BEA's
unhelpful wording, a rising level of imports doesn't "subtract" from gross domestic product. The problem is
the way by which the government calculates GDP. It doesn't actually count what we produce, but rather what we spend —
adding up what the government spends, what households spend, what we invest, and what we export. Imports are already counted in
domestic expenditures in a way that makes them indistinguishable from domestic goods and services. If
the BEA didn't subtract
imports from total domestic expenditures, GDP would be overstated. So, when the BEA reports that
imports "subtracted" two percentage points from economic growth in the past quarter, that doesn't mean
that GDP would have grown that much faster without those pesky imports. It only means that other
components — private and government expenditures, investment, and exports — were overstated by that amount. The
subtraction reduces the overstatement, not real gross domestic product. In a recent study for the Cato Institute, I tested the conventional
wisdom on imports and the economy. Since 1980, the trade deficit has grown as a share of GDP during five sustained periods: 1982-84, 199295, 1997-2000, 2001-06 and 2009-10. It has shrunk during three sustained periods: 1987-92, 2000-01 and 2006-09. I then examined how the
U.S. economy performed during each of these periods in terms of real gross-domestic-product growth, equity prices (as measured by the
Standard & Poor's 500 Index), manufacturing output, total civilian employment and the unemployment rate. Contrary to the prevailing
orthodoxy, the
U.S. economy shows no sign of suffering during periods when the trade deficit is
expanding. To the contrary, real GDP grew more than three times faster at an annualized rate — 3.6%, versus 1%
— during periods when the trade deficit was expanding, compared to those in which it was shrinking. A rising trade
deficit was good news for investors, as well. The S&P 500 climbed an annualized average of 11% during periods when the deficit
was "worsening" compared with less than 1% during periods when it was "improving." Despite worries that trade is causing the deindustrialization of America, manufacturing
output expanded at a robust 5.2% a year during periods of rising
deficits, and shrank by 2% a year when the trade gap was contracting. People who blame job losses on trade
deficits should consider this: Civilian employment expanded at a healthy 1.4% a year during periods of rising trade deficits, while job growth
was virtually zero during stretches when the deficit was shrinking. The
jobless rate declined an average of 0.4 percentage
points per year when the trade gap was on an upward trend, and jumped a painful one point per year
when the deficit was trending down. Apparently, the only thing worse for the U.S. economy than a rising trade deficit is a falling
one. Politicians obsessed with the trade balance should give up the goal of promoting exports over imports. The aim of U.S. trade
policy should be to maximize the freedom of Americans to buy and sell in global markets for mutual
gain, whatever the mix of goods, services and assets we freely choose to trade.
Economic Decline not cause war
No chance of war from economic decline---best and most recent data
Daniel W. Drezner 12, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, “The Irony of Global
Economic Governance: The System Worked,” http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasn’t barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border
conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead
states to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.37 Whether through greater internal repression,
diversionary wars, arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict , there were genuine concerns that the global
economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the
disruptions of the Occupy movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. ¶ The aggregate
data suggests
otherwise , however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has constructed a “Global Peace Index” annually since 2007. A key conclusion
average level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in
2007.”38 Interstate violence in particular has declined since the start of the financial crisis – as have military
expenditures in most sampled countries. Other studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any
increase in violent conflict ; the secular decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.39 Rogers
Brubaker concludes, “the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protectionist nationalism or ethnic exclusion
that might have been expected.”40¶ None of these data suggest that the global economy is operating swimmingly. Growth
they draw from the 2012 report is that “The
remains unbalanced and fragile, and has clearly slowed in 2012. Transnational capital flows remain depressed compared to pre-crisis levels,
primarily due to a drying up of cross-border interbank lending in Europe. Currency volatility remains an ongoing concern. Compared to the
aftermath of other postwar recessions, growth in output, investment, and employment in the developed world have all lagged behind. But the
Great Recession is not like other postwar recessions in either scope or kind; expecting a standard “V”-shaped recovery was unreasonable. One
financial analyst characterized the post-2008 global economy as in a state of “contained depression.”41 The key word is “contained,” however.
Given the severity, reach and depth of the 2008 financial crisis, the proper comparison is with Great
Depression. And by that standard, the outcome variables look impressive . As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff
concluded in This Time is Different: “that its macroeconomic outcome has been only the most severe global recession since World War II – and
not even worse – must be regarded as fortunate.”42
AT S02
S02 not key
S02 is the only factor that could slow down anthropogenic forcings to the point where
declining solar radiation or internal climate variability could have dominated.
Robert K. Kaufmann et al, 6/2/2011. Department of Geography and Environment, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies,
Boston University. “Reconciling anthropogenic climate change with observed temperature 1998–2008,” Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences, www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/27/1102467108.abstract.
Data for global surface temperature indicate little warming between 1998 and 2008 (1). Furthermore, global
surface temperature declines 0.2 °C between 2005 and 2008. Although temperature increases in 2009 and 2010, the lack of a clear in- crease in
global surface temperature between 1998 and 2008 (1), combined with rising concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases,
prompts some popular commentators (2, 3) to doubt the existing understanding of the relationship among radiative forcing, internal variability,
and global surface temperature. This seeming disconnect may be one reason why the public is increasingly sceptical about anthropogenic
climate change (4).¶ Recent
analyses address this source of scepticism by focusing on internal variability or
expanding the list of forcings. Model simulations are used to suggest that internal variability can generate extended periods of
stable temperature similar to 1999–2008 (5). Alternatively, expanding the list of forcings to include recent changes in stratospheric water vapor
(6) may account for the recent lack of warming. But neither approach evaluates whether the current understanding of the relationship among
radiative forcing, internal variability, and global surface temperature can account for the timing and magnitude of the 1999–2008 hiatus in
warming.¶ Here we
use a previously published statistical model (7) to evaluate whether anthropogenic
emissions of radiatively active gases, along with natural variables, can account for the 1999–2008
hiatus in warming. To do so, we compile information on anthropogenic and natural drivers of global surface temperature, use these data
to estimate the statistical model through 1998, and use the model to simulate global surface temperature between 1999 and 2008. Results
indicate that net anthropogenic forcing rises slower than previous decades because the cooling effects
of sulfur emissions grow in tandem with the warming effects greenhouse gas concentrations. This slowdown, along with declining solar insolation and a change from El Nino to La Nina conditions, en- ables
the model to simulate the lack of warming after 1998. These findings are not sensitive to a wide range
of assumptions,¶ including the time series used to measure temperature, the omission of black carbon and stratospheric water vapor,
and uncertainty about anthropogenic sulfur emissions and its effect on radiative forcing (SI Appendix: Sections 2.4–7).¶ Results¶ Increasing
emissions and concentrations of carbon dioxide receive considerable attention, but our
analyses identify an important change
in another pathway for anthropogenic climate change —a rapid rise in anthropogenic sulfur emissions
driven by large increases in coal consumption in Asia in general, and China in particular. Chinese coal consumption more than
doubles in the 4 y from 2003 to 2007 (the previous doubling takes 22 y, 1980– 2002). In this four year period, Chinese coal consumption
accounts for 77% of the 26% rise in global coal consumption (8). These increases are large relative to previous growth rates. For example, global
coal consumption increases only 27% in the twenty two years between 1980 and 2002 (8). Because of the resultant increase in anthropogenic
sulfur emissions, there is a 0.06 W␣m2 (absolute) increase in their cooling effect since 2002 (Fig. 1). This increase partly reverses a period of
declining sulfur emissions that had a warming effect of 0.19 W␣m2 between 1990 and 2002.¶ The increase in sulfur emissions slows the
increase in radiative forcing due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations (Fig. 1). Net anthropogenic forcing rises 0.13 W␣m2 between 2002
and 2007, which is smaller than the 0.24 W␣m2 rise between 1997 and 2002. The smaller net increase in anthropogenic forcing is
accompanied by a 0.18 W␣m2 decline in solar insolation caused by the declining phase of the eleven year solar cycle, such that the sum of
modeled forcings increases little after 1998 and declines after 2002 (Fig. 1). This cooling effect is amplified by a net increase in the Southern
Oscillation Index (SOI) (9).¶ The effect of changes in anthropogenic and natural forcings on global surface temperature after 1998 is assessed
with a statistical model that is estimated with a sample that ends in 1998. As indicated in Fig. 2, the model simulation for global surface
temperature is consistent with observations. In short, net forcing does not rise between 1999 and 2008, nor does global surface temperature.
The hypothesis that the post 1998 period is consistent with the existing understanding of anthropogenic climate change is evaluated with a test
statistic that evaluates the null hypothesis that the long-run relationship between global surface temperature and radiative forcing is
unchanged after 1998. We fail to reject this null in two of three sample periods analyzed (SI Appendix: Table S3 and Section 2.3). The 95%
confidence intervals in Figs. 2 and 3 represent uncertainty in the statistical estimates of the regression model for observed paths of forcings,
SOI, and volcanic sulfates. Uncertainty about the forcings calculated with observed values for greenhouse gas concentrations, solar insolation,
and the SOI is small relative to the uncertainty about observations for anthropogenic sulfur emissions. Sensitivity analysis indicates that
uncertainty about the measure of surface temperature, anthropogenic sulfur emissions, or its conversion to radiative forcing has a small effect
on the model’s simulated forecast for global surface temperature (SI Appendix: Section 2.4 and Figs S3, S4). Similarly, the year in which the
simulation starts (SI Appendix: Fig. S6) or the sample period used to estimate the model (SI Appendix: Fig. S5) has little effect. As expected, the
ability of the model to simulate observed changes in global surface temperature after 1998 improves as less reliable observations from the
early portion of the sample period are eliminated from the estimation sample (Fig. 2). This improved accuracy is especially clear for the sample
period that starts in 1960, when direct measurements of greenhouse gas concentrations become available and temperature measures have
better coverage and are more reliable. The improved accuracy associated with more reliable measures of radiative forcing and temperature is
consistent with the hypothesis that anthropogenic activities, which alter the Earth’s heat balance, affect global surface temperature.¶ Drivers
of global surface temperature after 1998 are identified by simulating the model with observed values for the independent variables of interest
and estimated parameters, while the 1999– 2008 values for the other variables are held at their 1998 level. To identify the effects of human
activity on temperature, we simulate the model (estimation sample 1960–1998) with post 1998 values of solar insolation, SOI, and volcanic
sulfates held at their 1998 level while allowing greenhouse gas concentrations and sulfur emissions to evolve as observed. On net, human
activity has a small positive effect on temperature after 1999 because of slight increases in anthropogenic forcing and on-going adjustments to
postindustrial increases in anthropogenic forcings (Fig. 3). Note that observed temperature moves below the 95% confidence interval in 2000
and 2008 for the global surface temperature as driven by anthropogenic changes only (red line).¶ Conversely, holding greenhouse gas
concentrations and sulfur emissions at their 1998 values and allowing solar insolation, SOI, and volcanic sulfates to evolve as observed
generates a forecast that is consistent with the observed pattern of temperature change. Between 1998 and 2000, global surface temperature
de- clines due to a change in circulation from an El Nino to a La Nina and a decline in insolation associated with the eleven year solar cycle.
Another El Nino warms the planet in 2002. The planet cools thereafter as solar insolation declines and a strong La Nina occurs in 2008.¶
Discussion¶ Our
explanation for the lack of warming can be evaluated against alternative hypotheses. A
recent analysis argues that the concentration of water vapor in the stratosphere decreases by about
10% after 2000 and this slows the rate of temperature increase by about 25% relative to the increase that would
have occurred due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases (6). If this hypothesis is correct, the omission of stratospheric
water vapor (or black carbon) would bias the statistical estimates and/or the model forecast.¶ To evaluate
this hypothesis, we test whether stratospheric water vapor (or black carbon) is related to either; (i) errors
in the long-run relation between radiative forcing and surface temperature, (ii) errors in the error
correction model that represents the dynamics by which surface temperature adjusts to long- and short-run determinants, or (iii)
errors in the forecast that is generated by the full statistical model (SI Appendix: Section 2.7). For stratospheric water
vapor, the analysis suggests a small negative correlation with the error from the long-run cointegrating relation, but the negative sign is
inconsistent with the warming effect of stratospheric water vapor. We
find no relation between stratospheric water
vapor and error in the dynamics by which surface temperature adjusts to long- and short-run determinants, or the simulation errors
generated by the full statistical model. For black carbon there is no relation with the residuals from the statistical estimates, but there is
evidence for a negligible (r2 _ 0.017) positive correlation between black carbon and the forecast error. Together,
these results
suggest that stratospheric water vapor (and black carbon) does not have a statistically significant
effect on surface temperature relative to the forcings included in the statistical model. The results are moot
regarding the effect of stratospheric water vapor (or black carbon) on global surface temperature in general.¶ Another explanation
for the recent hiatus in warming focuses on the internal variability of the climate system. To quantify the
effect of internal variability, simulations generated by climate models are analyzed to determine the probability of ten year periods with zero or
negative trends in surface temperature (5). Analysis of a twentieth century simulation indicates that ten year periods with zero or negative
temperature trends are likely (p > 0.05). This relatively high probability is partially attributed to natural variability.¶ While
it is possible
that internal variability is responsible for the 1999–2008 hiatus in warming, we suggest an alternative
interpretation of the simulations described by ref. 5 that is consistent with our results. During the twentieth century,
our measure of net anthropogenic forcing does not rise steadily. For example, there is no net increase in anthropogenic forcing between 1944
and 1976; this period is associated with stable or declining surface temperatures (Fig. 1). This balance probably is not affected by the omission
of black carbon emissions because they increase little between 1940 and 1970 relative to increases during other decades of the 1850–2000
period for which data are available (10). Under these conditions, periods of zero or negative ten year temperature trends reported by ref. 5
may coincide with pro- longed periods when anthropogenic forcing is stable or declining, and are therefore not likely generated by internal
variability. Our
interpretation is bolstered by the analysis of scenario A2 from the IPCC Special Report on
Emissions Scenarios in which net anthropogenic forcing increases steadily. For these simulations, results indicate
that ten year periods when temperature has no trend, or a negative trend, are unlikely- less than 5% (5). This lack of stable periods implies that
the higher probability of ten year periods with little or no temperature increase in the twentieth century simulations are associated with
prolonged periods when forcings do not rise. Together these results are consistent with ours- that a slowing in net forcing due to both
anthropogenic activities and natural variability is responsible for the 1999–2008 hiatus in warming.¶ The
finding that declining
solar insolation and El Niño/South Oscillation (ENSO) events dominate anthropogenic changes and
therefore create the 1999–2008 pattern in surface temperature also is generated by another
statistical model (11, 12). But this model represents net anthropogenic forcing with a deterministic time
trend between 1953 and 2007. This representation is flawed both statistically, because time series
that contain a stochastic trend cannot be approximated by a deterministic trend (13), and historically,
because the time trend overstates gains in radiative forcing during the 1950’s and overstates gains
during the last 10 y (Fig. 1). As such, it cannot capture the slow-down in net anthropogenic forcings that
allows the effects of declining solar radiation and changes from El Nino or La Nina to dominate the
1999–2008 period.
Short lifetime means SO2 reductions would immediately cause warming.
Zeke Hausfather, 6/24/2008. MA Environmental Management @ Yale, Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President of Energy at
Efficiency 2.0. “Why Reducing Sulfate Aerosol Emissions Complicates Efforts to Moderate Climate Change,” Yale Climate Forum,
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2008/06/common-climate-misconceptions-why-reducing-sulfate-aerosol-emissions-complicatesefforts-to-moderate-climate-change/.
A reduction of anthropogenic SO2 of around 50 percent worldwide over the next century, as projected in
the most recent IPCC report, would result in a significant warming effect on the global climate. Sulfates are
extremely short-lived particles, and emission reductions would have immediate effects on radiative
forcing. A 50 percent reduction in sulfate aerosol emissions would reduce by half their current radiative forcing of -0.83 W m-2. This
change in forcings would increase global temperatures by roughly 0.36 degrees C (.64 F) relative to a
scenario where aerosol emissions remain constant.¶ Figure three below shows the practical implications of a reduction in
aerosols in the next century. If current greenhouse gas concentrations remain constant at current levels, scientists
project about 1.34 degrees C (2.41 F) warming relative to pre-industrial temperatures by the end of the century (the world has
already warmed 0.74 degrees C (1.33 F) in the past century, and 0.60 degrees C (1.08F) additional warming is in the pipeline as a result of
Earth’s thermal inertia). A
reduction of anthropogenic atmospheric sulfate aerosols by 50 percent means that
1.34 degrees C (2.41 F) warming suddenly becomes 1.70 degrees C (3.06 F).
Acid rain impacts are exaggerated—EPA research concluded it was not that big of a
threat.
William Anderson and Jacquelynne McLellan, July 2006. Economics for Managers and Decision Making Analysis in the M.B.A.
program at Frostburg State University. “Newspaper Ideological Bias or “Statist Quo”? The Acid (Rain) Test,” The American Journal of Economics
and Sociology 65.3.
Robert Angus Smith, an English chemist, discovered that rainfall in London and other industrial cities had become very acidic by 1852, and
linked what he called “acid
rain” to the burning of raw coal to power the factories and electric generators of industrial England (LaBastille
not seen to be an
environmental crisis until the 1970s, when scientists in the United States, Canada, and Scandinavia found that acidic surface
1981). However, the rainfall, which had a pH factor con- siderably lower than the 5.5 pH of “normal” rain, was
waters of northern lakes could no longer support aquatic life. Paulos (1995) writes that popular press coverage often precedes detailed
scientific analysis, and acid rain was no exception. The National Academy of Sciences predicted a 100-fold increase in acid lakes by 1990 if SO2
emissions were not severely curtailed (National Research Council 1981). However, only
a small number of scientific studies
had investigated acid rain and its effects, so in 1980 President Jimmy Carter commissioned the National
Acid Precipitation Assess- ment Program (NAPAP) to examine the damage being caused by acid rain and to
recommend solutions. President Ronald Reagan expanded the NAPAP program in 1982 from a $10 million to $100 million annual
budget, and within a year, evidence emerged that contradicted the “mineral titration” theory then prevalent .
The mineral titration theory assumed that acidic soils could not buffer acid rain, which then ran directly into lakes and streams and acidified
them. But Krug and Frink (1983) disputed the connec- tion between lake acidity and acid precipitation,
claiming that the composition of soil in the watersheds of lakes and streams had a greater impact upon surface water acidification than did
rainfall.¶ Krug later wrote (1990, 1991) that core
samples taken from acidic Adirondack lakes showed that those
waters had been acidic even before the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, other NAPAP studies found that the region
with the highest concentration of acidic lakes was not upstate New York but rather Florida, where acid rain did not fall (NAPAP 1988). This
finding was especially important because the news that many of Florida’s lakes were acidic originally had been reported as an example of the
peril of acid rain. Furthermore, researchers found numerous lakes in the mountains of Australia and New Zealand to be acidic despite the fact
that rainfall in that region had a normal pH (Anderson 1992).¶ NAPAP
scientists (1989) also failed to turn up evidence that
acid rain was destroying U.S. forests, including sugar maples. Researchers did document acid precipitation
damage to approximately one-tenth of 1 percent of the high-altitude eastern red spruce forests, but
found no other evidence of harm to trees and crops from acid rain (NAPAP 1989). Much of this news was included in
the 1987 Interim Report that NAPAP presented to Congress. While one might suppose that mem- bers of Congress
would have been pleased to find that an acid rain environmental disaster was not in the making, that
is not what happened. Instead, most in Congress gave the researchers a hostile reception. Representative
James Scheuer (D-NY), then chairman of the House Subcommittee on Natural Resources, Agriculture Research, and the Environment, attacked
both the report and NAPAP director J. Laurence Kulp, who resigned his position a week later. Environmental groups described the Interim
Report as “political propaganda” from the Reagan administration. NAPAP scientists were not unanimous about the findings, even
though
Roberts wrote: “The quality of NAPAP’s research effort is generally considered to be quite good,
perhaps first rate, and there is little quarrel with the individual facts.” The disagreement among scientists, she adds,
involved “the way the facts are presented—which tends to minimize the extent of the problem.” (Roberts 1987: 1404).¶ Newspaper Ideological
Bias 479 Although
scientists generally respected the NAPAP study, congressional leaders sided with
environmentalists. When President George H. W. Bush pursued stringent new rules for SO2 reduction (50 percent), he and William
Reilly, Bush’s appointed head of the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency, never publicly acknowledged any of the NAPAP findings. In the fall of
1990, Congress passed the new rules, which required a 10-ton reduction from daily point sources in SO2 emissions, and a 2-ton reduction in
N2O from 1980 levels, along with an 8.9-ton cap on SO2 by the year 2000. The
EPA permitted the NAPAP report to be
released only after the bill became law. The earliest discussions of acid rain occurred within a worldview that accepted at face
value that rainfall more acidic than “normal” automatically was dangerous. That modern industrial society has produced environmental
degradation is well accepted and, like many paradigms, is rooted in observable facts.¶ IV¶ Acid Rain Coverage by Six Newspapers¶ THE
EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE covers acid rain articles from six daily U.S. newspapers: Atlanta Constitution Chicago Tribune Los Angeles Times Boston
Globe New York Times Washington Post These papers were chosen because of the markets they serve, and because acid rain allegedly did not
affect their cities in the same way, thus potentially influencing the nature of their coverage of that issue. For example, the New York Times
represents readership in New York City, but it also is read nationwide. It is also the most influential news- paper in the Northeast, where the
country’s most acidic rainfall existed. The Washington Post, while read in other cities, influences the direction of government policy in the
nation’s capital. The problem of acid rain, however, was not seen to be as great in Wash- ington, D.C., as it was in New York and New England.¶
The Tribune and the Constitution both serve markets where acid rain was not as significant as in the Northeast. However, their circulation
markets were also served by electric utilities that generate most of their electricity by coal, and residents of Chicago and Atlanta found
themselves potentially facing higher electric bills under pending acid rain legislation. The Boston Globe is the most influential news- paper in
New England, where residents especially perceived danger from acid rain. Electric utilities in New England also use higher-cost fuels than coal,
the fuel of choice for utilities in the Midwest and Southeast. While expensive, these fuels do not emit as great an amount of pollutants blamed
for acid rain as do coal-burning power plants.¶ The Los Angeles Times is the major newspaper in the western United States, and no acidic
rainfall occurred in Los Angeles. However, the Times historically has long favored strict pollution measures, as air pollution in Los Angeles has
always been an important topic.¶ V¶ How the Press Covered Acid Rain¶ journalists
mostly disregarded the NAPAP study,
choosing to stay with the original paradigm of acid rain as an immediate peril. All six papers carried the story of
the September 1987 announcement, but discounted the information. The Boston Globe carried an “objective” story that said lake acidification
in the United States “is not a new phenomenon,” but still implicated acid rain. The New York Times centered its story upon the controversial
nature of the report, interviewing opponents of the summary. The Chicago Tribune interpreted the report as saying that acid rain did not pose a
“broad threat to the environment,” affecting “only small areas.” The Washington Post, not surprisingly, dwelt upon the report’s political aspects
instead of the science. The Los Angeles Times emphasized the controversy and environmentalist criticisms. Only the Atlanta Constitution noted
that the report had its supporters, reprinting a favorable editorial from the Wall Street Journal. Newspapers
in the United States
were selective in quoting “experts.” The treatment given to Gene Likens as opposed to Edward Krug is
a telling point. Likens was an ecology professor at Cornell University, and Krug was employed by the Illinois State Water Survey Division.
According to Abdullah (1989), in 1985 Likens was ranked seventh in mean citations in the scientific
acid rain literature, while Krug ranked third.¶ Yet, the mainstream press liberally quoted Likens, while
Krug was nearly invisible, according to a LexisNexis search of acid rain articles from 1980 to 1993. The search reveals that Likens was
cited 39 times in the press, most coming from papers like the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and the Associated Press and
United Press International.¶ Krug, however, was cited only nine times and then usually on edi- torial pages of conservative newspapers such as
the Washington Times, Daily Oklahoman, and St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His only cita- tion in a major newspaper was in the Washington Post, and
that was only because an EPA administrator attacked his views. The wire serv- ices cited him once, a UPI dispatch in 1983 in which other
scientists attacked his article in Science.¶ In December 1990, CBS’s 60 Minutes questioned why the govern- ment ignored NAPAP, interviewing
Krug and others. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post then asked why environmental reporters had ignored the other side. He wrote that
although the NAPAP report con- tained good news, it “was virtually ignored by the Washington Post and given scant attention by most major
news organizations last year, even while Congress debated and approved new acid rain controls that will cost as much as $4 billion a year.”
Wrote Kurtz: “Some reporters say privately that it is difficult to write stories that debunk the conventional wisdom of environmental activists,
whom the press treats more deferentially than industry spokesmen and other lobbyists” (Kurtz 1991: A3). For example, the
New York
Times during the measurement period never quoted a scientist who was skeptical of the apocalyptic acid rain
claims. Skeptics quoted by the Times usually were electric or coal industry representatives, or elected officials representing districts in which
coal-burning power plants were located.