Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[18]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[16]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[18]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-10-16 14:05:12.340
	1	+2016-10-16 14:05:12.0

Caselist.CitesClass[16]

Cites

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	1	+Ukraine relies on nuclear power from Rosatom right now, but is currently shifting to non-Rosatom reactors – banning causes grid shutdown and dependency on Russia, which turns case Wesolowsky 2/8
	2	+Wesolowsky, Tony. "Thirty Years After Chernobyl, Ukraine Doubles Down On Nuclear Power." RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. February 8, 2016. Accessed October 06, 2016. http://www.rferl.org/a/thirty-years-after-chernobyl-ukraine-doubles-down-nuclear-power/27539152.html. JD
	3	+Nearly 30 years after Chernobyl spewed nuclear dust across Europe and sparked fears of fallout around the globe, a strapped, war-torn Ukraine is opting for "upgrades" rather than shutdowns of its fleet of Soviet-era nuclear power reactors. Kyiv is planning to spend an estimated $1.7 billion to bring the facilities, many of which are nearing the end of their planned life spans, up to current Western standards. Ukrainian officials hope to further their energy independence from Moscow and potentially export some of the resulting electricity to Western Europe as part of an "EU-Ukraine Energy Bridge" that can further cement Kyiv's ties with Brussels. But can they allay fears, in Ukraine and beyond, that the plans will put Europe at risk of another Chernobyl? The project has the backing of the West, including a $600 million contribution split evenly between the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Euratom, the EU's nuclear agency. "The project we support ~-~- ourselves, the EBRD, and Euratom ~-~- is actually about the country's energy independence, and essentially, survival. Because for the country, where nuclear power plants produce over 50 percent of electricity, this sector remains vital ~-~- very, very important. This is a necessity," says Anton Usov, senior adviser for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus at the EBRD, an international institution funding projects in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. For Kyiv, keeping its nuclear power stations humming makes sense given the government's strategy to wean the country off Russian energy, namely gas. Ukraine is also making moves to end its dependence on Russia for the fuel powering the nuclear plants. Nuclear power accounts for around half of Ukrainian electricity. Enerhoatom, the state-run nuclear energy operator, runs 15 reactors at four nuclear power plants, including Europe's largest power plant at Zaporizhzhya, which houses five reactors. They are all equipped with pressurized reactors known by their Russian abbreviation, VVER, which are Russian-designed but an upgrade to the graphite-moderated RBMK reactors found at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
	4	+
	5	+Independently, high energy prices create energy poverty for already poor households. Lomborg 14
	6	+Bjorn Lomborg. “How Green Policies hurt the poor”. The Spectator. April 5, 2014. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/04/let-them-eat-carbon-credits/ AM
	7	+Britain’s environmentalists proudly announce that households have reduced their electricity consumption by almost 10 per cent since 2005.They seldom mention that this is helped by a 50 per cent increase in electricity prices, in part to pay for Britain increasing its share of renewables from 1.8 per cent to 4.6 per cent. Such a price increase of course hits the poorest hardest. As with many green taxes, it does so because it taxes a basic necessity that makes up a larger proportion of a small budget. Not surprisingly, higher energy prices mean the poor are forced to reduce their electricity consumption far more than the richest, who haven’t reduced their electricity consumption at all. Over the past five years, heating a home in the UK has become 63 per cent more expensive, while real wages have declined. Unsurprisingly, a greater number of poor households must spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy, becoming what is known as energy poor. This category now covers some 17 per cent of all British households. Worse, because the elderly are typically poorer, energy poverty affects about a quarter of all households whose inhabitants are over 60. Deprived pensioners are spending their days riding heated buses to keep warm, while a third are leaving part of their homes cold. Stories of fuel poverty frequently appear in the press. A 75-year-old widow, Rita Young, has been quoted saying: ‘I’ve worked all my life. It doesn’t feel fair. People my age don’t want to put hats and scarves on in their homes, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I sit in a blanket, put on a hat and sometimes go to bed at 7.30 in the evening.’ She joins almost a million other pensioners who are forced to stay in bed longer to keep warm because of rising fuel bills.
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	9	+Energy poverty creates hostilities between wealthy and poor people that causes conflict and mass structural violence. Aigbe 14
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	11	+Omoruyi Aigbe, CONFLICT AND POVERTY IN AFRICA: THE EFFECT OF NATURAL RESOURCE AND LEADERSHIP, 7/25/14 VC
	12	+
	13	+On April 15 2013, the United Nations’ Security Council met at the headquarter in New York, to discuss on preventing conflict in Africa; calling for a high priority to be given to addressing core root causes such as poverty, hunger, human rights abuses, marginalization and impunity. No doubt, conflicts rise where there is poor governance, human rights abuses and grievances over the unequal distribution of resources, wealth and power. Following up to that experts at the ’First Africa Union (AU), Regional Economic Communities (REC), Regional Mechanisms (RMs) For Conflict Prevention and Management’ met in Abuja Nigeria, under the auspices of ECOWAS in November of 2013, blaming poverty and underdevelopment as the root cause of conflicts in different parts of Africa, including the violence in Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. The problem of poverty is multidimensional; it goes beyond economics to include social, political, and cultural issues. Scholars like Laune Nathan (2003), John Burton (1997), Richard Sandbrook (1982) and Ted Gurr (1970) have in the past agreed that poverty is a result of lack of basic human needs, which lead to reactions that result in conflict. They are the proponent of human needs theory. However, Burton (ibid) argues that the denial of peoples’ biological needs and psychological needs that relate to growth and development are the drivers of conflict and instability in developing countries. Basic needs (such as food, water, shelter and health) unlike interest cannot be compromised or traded, concealed, or bargained for; an attempt to do this, leads to conflict. Robust evidence on the causes of conflict shows that low national incomes are almost always correlated with the occurrence of violence and conflict. According to Aristotle cited in Okanya (1996), “social strife and revolutions are not brought out by the conspiratorial or malignant nature of man; rather revolutions are derived from poverty and distributive injustice.” Consequently, when majority of people are poor and has no hope of ameliorating their condition, they are bound to be restive and seek recompense through violence, this is arguably the case of the Niger/Delta region in Nigeria. No regime can hold stability and peace when it is created on a sea of poverty (Okanya, Ibid). Conflict evidently brings poverty in as much as it brings destruction, violence, and hatred. Poverty, on the other hand, is a cause of conflict: when grievances are not handled properly, it is argued, poor people, who are restive, will stage an uprising (i.e Egypt and Tunisia), questioning government altogether and joining rebel groups, this may explain the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Decline in the economy and extreme poverty may then underpin the tendencies to resort to violent unrest. Nevertheless, at the root of conflicts always lie multifaceted factors: inequality of political, social, economic and cultural opportunities among different groups, lack of democratic governance and effective leadership, absence of civil society and mechanism for non-violent conflict management. However, some actors argue that the current research on the poverty-development-conflict nexus seems not to have provided convincing evidence on the association between poverty and conflict, the correlation is often understood to be indirect at best.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-10-16 14:05:14.589

Judge

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	1	+David Dosch

Opponent

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	1	+Lynbrook YZ

ParentRound

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	1	+18

Round

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	1	+2

Team

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	1	+Harvard Westlake Engel Neg

Title

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	1	+SEPT-OCT - DA - Ukraine Energy Prices

Tournament

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	1	+St Marks