Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[2]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[2]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[2]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2016-09-27 22:04:57.803
	1	+2016-09-27 22:04:57.0

Caselist.CitesClass[2]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,78 @@
	1	+=Japan 1AC=
	2	+
	3	+==Plan==
	4	+
	5	+====Plan Text: The federal government of Japan should prohibit the production of nuclear power====
	6	+
	7	+====Decommissioning will be issued through four steps ====
	8	+Schmittem 16 **~~Schmittem, Marc (Analyst for EU-Japan Energy Cooperation ). "Nuclear Decomissioning in Japan- Opportunities for European Companies". EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation. Tokyo, March 2016. http://www.eu-japan.eu/sites/default/files/publications/docs/2016-03-nuclear-decommissioning-japan-schmittem-min'0.pdf~~ NB**
	9	+Decommissioning is the responsibility of the operator of a nuclear facility. The NRA defines the decommissioning of NPPs in Japan by the following four activities: Dismantling of the relevant reactor ~~includes~~ (1), transfer of nuclear fuel (2), removal of irradiated material (3), and the disposal of radioactive waste (4)19. Within these boundaries, nuclear operators can design their own decommissioning strategies. The 1currently preferred approach for commercial NPPsin Japan combines immediate dismantling with deferred dismantling. Immediate dismantling is a strategy where dismantling begins immediately after the approval of the project, whereas in deferred dismantling, the reactor is first placed in safe storage for a number of years to reduce the radioactive inventory. The operators of commercial power reactors in Japan have opted for such safe storage periods, but the dismantling of secondary facilities will begin as soon as possible. Like the decommissioning strategies of many other countries, the basic decommissioning strategy in Japan consists of sequential stages: Site preparation (including site characterisation, defueling and decontamination), safe storage, and deconstruction and dismantling (DandD) (see Figure 1). Waste management and disposal is also a part of the decommissioning process. The basic strategy envisions this as only becoming an issue during the DandD stage, but in practice waste from decommissioning also needs to be handled at earlier stages. While this is acknowledged in the individual decommissioning plans for Japanese reactors, lingering problems with waste management have led to delays in some ongoing decommissioning projects (see the description of the individual decommissioning projects in Part II and the discussion of waste management later in this chapter). The newest decommissioning plans also show a tendency for more prolonged safe storage periods.¶ In the first stage of the decommissioning project, the fuel in the reactor core and the spent fuel¶ pool (SFP) is retrieved and transported to either a temporary storage site21 or a reprocessing¶ plant22¶ . After a survey and characterisation of the radioactive inventory of the facility, systems¶ and facilities are decontaminated to reduce the radioactive dose rates in the work spaces and to¶ prepare the site for dismantling. In the second stage, the reactor core is placed in safe storage, during which basic safety, monitoring and cooling systems are maintained. This stage is meant to reduce the radioactive inventory in the reactor through natural decay processes. The duration of this phase is usually around 10 years for physicochemical reasons, but a certain period of relative inactivity in the decommissioning process might also be necessary for some utilities to recover the financial losses from the premature or long-term shut-down of the reactor after the Fukushima accidents (see part I.6). The dismantling of non-essential and redundant systems and speripheral facilities also begins at this point. The safe storage stage is followed by the DandD stage. During this phase, again in a number of sequential steps, the various components of the reactor are dismantled. aThis stage sees the highest demand for specialised equipment, particularly during the dismantling of the highly radioactive reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and its internals, where remote-controlled, submersible equipment is required for safety reasons. After the reactor has been dismantled, the reactor building and the remaining facilities are dismantled. Large quantities of waste, both radioactive and non-radioactive (see section I.4), are generated in this stage. The Japanese strategy envisions the implementation of strategies to reduce the amount of waste, through means such as a clearance system and the recycling of non-radioactive waste. At the end of the decommissioning process an application for verification of completion is submitted to the NRA, which then assesses the final state of the site. If the measurable radioactive dose rates are within the legal limits and all targets of the decommissioning plan have been reached, the NRA formally terminates the licence of the operator and releases the site from regulatory control. The site of the former reactor can then be reused for new purposes. The current plan is to build new reactors on the sites of decommissioned reactors, due to difficulties in acquiring sites for new reactors and an expected unwillingness of the local population to develop the land of the former NPP for agricultural or residential purposes23. However, in light of strengthened safety regulations, stricter licensing criteria and growing opposition to the operation of NPPs in the surrounding communities and local governments, it is not yet known if this strategy will be economically and politically feasible.
	10	+
	11	+====Plan would shift into complete renewable energy system—computer models prove and outweigh other sources====
	12	+**Esteban 14** **~~Esteban, Miguel. Portugal-Pereira, Joana. "Post-disaster resilience of a 100 renewable energy system in Japan". 1. Gradutate Program of Sustainability Science- Global Leadership Initiative (GPSS-GLI), Graduate School of Frontier Sciences.The University of Tokyo. Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa City, Japan. 2. Energy Planning Program, Graduate School of Engineering, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Centro de Tecnologia, Bloco C, Sala 211, Cidade Universitária, Ilha do Fundão, Rio de Janeiro RJ21941-972, Brazil. Accepted February 13, 2014~~ NB**
	13	+Proposed future 100 renewable energy system. The present paper modifies the methodology proposed by Esteban et al. ~~22,38~~ to take into account electricity demand for each hour of the year to calculate the reliability of an expanded renewable energy system. The method uses historical meteoro- logical data from AMeDAS (Automated Meteorological Data Acquisition System of the Japan Meteorological Agency) ~~50~~ for 2001 to estimate the hourly production of electricity. The method simulates the production of wind farms and PV panels distributed throughout Japan using equations that takes into account climatic conditions at each point (see Esteban et al. ~~22,38~~, for more de- tails). The software is EXCEL based, with the climate data for each point pasted and processed directly in the spreadsheet. The resulting file, at over 100 MB, was run using an Intel i7 processor laptop, taking up to 1 min to compute a given scenario. Using an EXCEL spreadsheet allowed the authors to observe directly all data manipulation, and was thus thought to be more intuitive than building the model using a computer language (such as Fortran or Cþþ). ¶ Solar panels were considered to be installed in major population centres. For the sake of simplicity, and due to computational limi- tations, the population of Japan was grouped into 15 different regions, with the weather station in each regional capital being used to determine the amount of solar electricity that can be produced in each hour of the year. Conversion efficiency was only assumed as 20, not much higher than that at present, with a list of the assumed characteristics of the solar cells given in Table 3 (for a more detailed discussion on conversion efficiency see Ref. ~~38~~). Regarding wind farms (Table 4) the authors considered only 24 of the largest wind farms. Future increases in turbine numbers are assumed to be located around the areas were these farms are currently situated, and the future proportional distribution of wind turbines is hence kept identical to their present spatial distribution. The maximum rated capacity of wind turbines was kept at 10 MW, which is probably easily achieved in the future (see Ref. ~~38~~). The ratio of solar wind installed capacity was kept at 31, as Esteban et al. ~~22~~ calculate this to be the most advantageous for the overall system stability of the country. ¶ If solar and wind power cannot meet electricity demand, the simulation will start to use other types of energy to balance the system. First it will resort to hydropower, then to biomass, and finally to hydro pumped-storage. In this case, the simulation fol- lows ~~23~~, and assumes that the installed capacity will be 19.4 GW and that the maximum storage capacity would be 1.2 PJ. Conven- tional hydropower would stay constant, with no new dams built. ¶ Finally, if the system cannot balance, the electricity from electric cars is used. In this sense it will be assumed that there are 35 million electric vehicles by 2030, and that each car has a battery with a 50-kWh storage capacity, they will represent a total storage capacity of 1750 GWh (see Ref. ~~25~~). The transmission capacity from batteries to grid was assumed to be high, at around 100 GW, as in many cases the batteries would only be used to directly power appliances within a house. ¶ A total of six different scenarios were analysed, combining different installed capacities of wind and solar power, but keeping all other renewables constant, in order to better visualise the re- sults (see Table 5). The electricity production due to solar and wind was worked out using meteorological data, while the production of hydropower, biomass and geothermal plants was assumed to be always available (the capacity factor of these plants is given in Table 6). Three different scenarios of energy consumption (see Fig. 2) were considered. Scenario A describes a Business as Usual scenario, Scenario B represents 10 saving in electricity consump- tion during the summer, and Scenario C corresponds to 20 sum- mer savings. In total this provides a matrix of 18 different scenarios of energy production and consumption. Reliability of a 100 renewable energy system ¶ Current electricity producing systems use basically two types of plants, base load plants that meet the constant electricity demands and other load-following, or "cyclical" plants, that can quickly be switched on and off to meet cyclical variations in demand ~~54~~. The challenge of a 100 renewable system would thus be to demon- strate that it can reliably meet electricity demand. However, the difference between a centralised and decentralised system resides in that the partial failure of the system would not necessarily result in blackouts for the entire population. Hence, essentially the grid could be re-built in a way in which large industries and power operators would be guaranteed energy supply, but housing would be given a lower priority, as they could supplement their energy needs from batteries and solar power. Such a system would auto- matically switch off air-conditioning units once batteries fell below a certain level, to guarantee that food and other perishable good did not get wasted. As such, even if the system could not supply the overall demand 100 of the time in one year, large blackouts would not take place. Furthermore, such a system would be more resilient the effect of large-scale natural disasters. ¶ As Ref. ~~38~~ points out, peaks in both solar and wind electricity production occur during the peak periods of electricity usage (during the afternoon), and this trend is generally repeated throughout the year in most locations. In fact, due to the smooth- ening effect of renewable energy installation in a country the size of Japan, a combination of solar and wind technologies will always yield some electric power ~~22~~. Fig. 3 shows the total electricity production and consumption for each of the scenarios considered. The amount of electricity wasted (such as extra wind during the night hours that cannot be stored) is also indicated. In this sense, scenario A1, B1 and C1 represent the greatest electricity wastage, due to a high level of redundancy in the system (wind or solar capacity that is not used most of the year, but that is needed only for the summer months). However, these scenarios though result in the lower levels of system stress (defined as the of hours in the year when demand is over 80 of the available capacity), and a completely reliable grid (i.e. when the installed capacity can meet 100 of electricity demand). Other scenarios represent progres- sively lower electricity wastage, though at the expense of system stress and reliability, as the chances of electricity shortage during the summer months increases In this sense scenario C6 is quite interesting, as it results in very little electricity wastage, despite reaching over 98.4 reliability. Obviously, in this case the system achieves higher stability by curtailing electricity consumption during the summer months, resulting in a reduced necessity for extra generation capacity for these months (that would be idle during most of the year). Thus, scenario C6 appears to be the best option, and means that attempting energy reduction policies dur- ing the summer months should go hand-in-hand with the devel- opment of a 100 renewable energy system. Finally, Fig. 4 also shows the system reliability without batteries (i.e. the of hours that the system can meet demand without having to resort to the energy stored in batteries). ¶ One of the problems often cited about the inclusion of tech- nologies such as wind in the electricity mix is that they can increase the ramping rate, or the speed at which load-following units must increase and decrease output ~~54~~. However, the current system does not suffer from this problem as wind and solar form the basis of the system and only a limited number of other energy sources are considered (biomass, hydro, pumped storage and batteries). All of these can be switched on or off relatively quickly, in comparison to other types of plants such as nuclear. Furthermore, "the combina- tion of multiple wind sites tends to smooth out the aggregated wind generation in a system, which reduces the per-unit size of ramps and mitigates the range of flexibility required" ~~54~~. The inclusion of more technologies, such as ocean or geothermal en- ergy, could also further enhance the smoothening effect and lower the ramping rate. ¶ Japan is a country that is particularly threatened by natural di- sasters. These events can have important consequences for the generation and distribution of electric power, and thus future government policy should attempt to make electricity supply more resilient and de-centralized, so that failure in one part of the system does not deprive large sectors of the population or industry of electricity. Prior to 2011, energy policy in Japan was dictated by the large power companies, which convinced the public of nuclear power trustworthiness. However, nuclear energy has also shown how it is unreliable in an earthquake-prone country, and the gov- ernment should try to curtail the power of the monopolised pro- duction and promote small-scale electricity generation. The present paper, therefore, attempts to assess the feasibility of a 100 renewable energy electricity system in Japan by the year 2030 in order to achieve a higher level electricity resilience. To this end, a model that simulates future electricity production based on hourly wind and solar data was developed, using estimated future hourly electricity demand in Japan for the year 2030. ¶ Through the analysis carried out, the authors showed that a large-scale 100 renewable PV-wind-hydro-biomass energy sys- tem in Japan can be reliable. Such as system would use pump-up storage and electric batteries to balance the daily fluctuations in supply and demand. The system is generally very stable during the winter, spring and autumn periods in Japan, with occasional small amounts of battery storage needed for the system to be able to successfully meet the electricity demand during these periods. The most important challenge of the system would be providing suffi- cient electricity to meet the summer demand peak. Scenarios A1e B1eC1 reveal the most optimised performance, as they guarantee stable and reliable supply. However, these scenarios have almost 93 higher installed capacity than scenarios A6eB6eC6, and most of this extra capacity would stand idle throughout the year. On the other hand, scenarios A6eB6eC6 reduce the idle installed capacity, though at the cost of decreasing system reliability. However, sce- nario C6 shows that if electricity consumption during summer months can be curtailed by 20, then the system appears to be very stable (98.4 reliability).
	14	+Government support for nuclear is blocking shift to renewables now—cost competitive and subsidies trade off
	15	+Mainichi 15 **~~Japan’s National Daily. March, 8-12-2015, "Editorial: Japan should not depend on nuclear power," Mainichi, http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20150812/p2a/00m/0na/008000c~~ NB**
	16	+However, the government's basic stance toward nuclear power has remained unchanged since the outbreak of the disaster, and lessons learned from the catastrophic accident have not been sufficiently put to good use. The restart of the Sendai plant's reactor must not be a step toward reviving the pre-disaster myth of nuclear plants' infallible safety. Lessons learned from the disaster include: Nuclear accidents can happen even if countermeasures are taken and that damage caused by nuclear accidents to people, the environment and society differ markedly from that triggered by other accidents in terms of quality and scale. Moreover, Japan is a volcanic country prone to earthquakes. Such being the case, it is highly risky to continue operating atomic power stations in this country. Nuclear energy is far from being a sustainable energy source when considering how to dispose of radioactive waste. Therefore, the Mainichi Shimbun has insisted that Japan should stop using nuclear plants as early as possible. At the same time, the Mainichi Shimbun has said there could be occasions where Japan must approve of the minimum necessary operation of atomic power plants under certain conditions, taking into account economic and social risks that would be caused by an immediate halt to all nuclear plants. However, the latest reactivation of the Sendai plant's No. 1 reactor does not meet such conditions and should not have been approved. In the first place, the government has not clearly characterized the restart as part of the process of phasing out nuclear power. The basic energy plan approved by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year states that Japan's reliance on atomic power will be reduced to the minimum possible level. As such, it is the national government's duty to draw up a road map toward steadily phasing out nuclear power in line with this policy. However, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry has set the ratio of nuclear power to total electric power to be generated in Japan in 2030 at 20-to-22 percent. To achieve this, it would be necessary to rebuild or extend the use of aging nuclear reactors beyond the 40-year limit, and construct new reactors. This indicates the government intends to return to a society dependent on atomic power. The essential condition of minimizing damage that would be caused by a nuclear accident to local residents has not been met. It is true that the new regulatory standards require nuclear plant operators to implement stricter safety measures, assuming serious accidents that had not been assumed under the previous standards. The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) that examines whether nuclear reactors meet the regulatory standards has become more independent of the government. However, these measures to beef up safety measures are necessary conditions but are not sufficient. In the Fukushima nuclear crisis, confusion in the chain of command worsened the situation. Information on the spread of radioactive substances was not provided to local residents, causing some of them to flee to areas where radiation levels were higher. The evacuation of hospitalized patients and residents of nursing care facilities was greatly confused and many people died while evacuating or at evacuationn shelters. Following the accident, the zone where local bodies are required to work out evacuation plans for local residents was expanded from 8-10 kilometers from nuclear plants to 30 kilometers. Evacuation plans have been worked out for residents near the Sendai plant, but evacuation drills have not been conducted to secure the effectiveness of the plan. The national government has tolerated the local body's failure. The attitude to hastily restart the Sendai nuclear reactor without taking sufficient safety measures for local residents is apparently based on the myth of nuclear plants' infallible safety. To ensure the safety of local residents, the local government should conduct evacuation drills, clarify problems involving the evacuation plan and even suspend operations at the plant depending on the results of the drills. A lack of clarity for responsibility over reactivating nuclear plants has not changed since before the March 2011 outbreak of the nuclear plant crisis. Since nuclear plants are operated by private companies as business activities, power companies are primarily responsible for restarting atomic power stations and ensuring safety at the plants. However, nuclear plants are operated as part of the government's policy. The government intends to approve reactivation of nuclear reactors as long as the reactors meet the regulatory standards, while the NRA is of the view that meeting the standards does not necessarily mean the plants are absolutely safe. This has raised concerns that nobody would be held responsible if another nuclear accident were to take place, just as was the case with the Fukushima crisis. There are more fundamental problems. The government has failed to show its determination to promote a nuclear and energy policy while gaining public understanding. In most opinion polls conducted by various news organizations, those who are opposed to restarting nuclear plants have outnumbered those in favor since the March 2011 accident. In an Aug. 8-9 survey conducted by the Mainichi Shimbun, 57 percent of the respondents expressed opposition to resuming operations at the No. 1 reactor at the Sendai power station. Still, no means have been secured to reflect public opinion in the country's energy policy even following the nuclear accident that has had such a huge impact on local residents. The process of using an advisory panel to the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry to determine the direction of the nation's energy policy has remained unchanged since before the crisis. The previous government led by the Democratic Party of Japan, which is now the largest opposition party, at least attempted to conduct a deliberative poll and took other measures to reflect public opinion in the energy policy. However, the current administration has not even shown such a stance. The fact that radioactive waste will only accumulate as long as atomic power plants are operated poses a serious challenge. It is necessary to consider final disposal of radioactive waste on the assumption that it will take 100,000 years before such waste becomes harmless, but Japan has no prospects for working out any feasible disposal plan. Even if a nuclear accident were not to occur again, atomic power stations can not be maintained over a long period as long as no solution is found to problems involving the final disposal of radioactive waste. First and foremost, the government should draw up a specific road map toward scrapping nuclear power. It is also necessary to create a system under which the NRA would evaluate local governments' evacuation plans and drills in advance. The restart of the Sendai Nuclear Power Plant should not be used as a springboard to revive Japan's dependence on atomic power.
	17	+
	18	+
	19	+====Fiscal changes in Japan indicate a transition to renewables has started ====
	20	+Dewit 15 **~~Andrew Dewit (Andrew DeWit is Professor in Rikkyo University’s School of Policy Studies and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal. His recent publications include "Climate Change and the Military Role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response," in Paul Bacon and Christopher Hobson (eds) Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster (Routledge, 2014), "Japan’s renewable power prospects," in Jeff Kingston (ed) Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2013), and (with Kaneko Masaru and Iida Tetsunari) "Fukushima and the Political Economy of Power Policy in Japan" in Jeff Kingston (ed) Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11 (Routledge, 2012). He is lead researcher for a five-year (2010-2015) Japanese-Government funded project on the political economy of the Feed-in Tariff.), 10-7-2015, "Japan’s Bid to Become a World Leader in Renewable Energy," Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/japans-bid-to-become-a-world-leader-in-renewable-energy/5480274. Asia Pacific Journal, Global Resaerch~~ NB**
	21	+Some of the most uersuasive evidence of the LDP’s expanding commitment to renewable energy and efficiency is found in the central government’s budget, particularly the central agencies’ requests for the coming fiscal year (April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017). During the summer of 2015, Japan’s fiscal process was notable for energy-related requests that mushroomed over the previous year. One standout example is the Ministry of Environment’s (MoE) submission for renewable energy and efficiency projects, which is fully 62 higher than its fiscal year 2015 spending.5 We shall explore these and related requests in greater detail presently, comparing them with budgets under the DPJ. But first, it is important to point out that these budget outlines are preliminary. In Japan’s fiscal process, central agencies submit their initial budget requests to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) by the end of August, which is followed by negotiations among MOF’s budget examiners and the various ministries and agencies. These negotiations generally last until about December, and result in a draft budget. It is likely that about YEN 5 trillion will be trimmed from the YEN 102 trillion budget request. But according to an analysis in the September 5, 2015 Asahi Shimbun these cuts are likely to be centred on social security.6 It is highly unlikely that the Abe cabinet did not approve the dramatic increases in proposed spending on renewable energy and efficiency, and thus they are probably not going to be sacrificed.¶ In addition, the expanded energy-related project requests are in part to be funded by extra revenues gleaned by increased "green" taxation of fossil fuels. This gives the spending programmes additional protection, because one rationale for the taxes is to increase incentives for the development and deployment of alternative energy. In spite of continuing steel-industry pressure to have such taxes axed,7 the LDP did not roll back the carbon taxes that were introduced in October of 2012, and have since been raised in stages. The taxes are set to reach YEN 289/ton of CO2 with the scheduled April 1, 2016 increase.8 As described above, the MoE’s energy-related fiscal request for 2016 was 62 higher than its fiscal 2015 initial budget. The MoE’s total request for 2016 was YEN 1.68 trillion, a 33 increase over the fiscal 2015 appropriation. One of the factors driving this overall increase is the Japanese government’s commitment to reducing its carbon emissions by 26 by 2030 versus 2013 levels. As a major part of this overall aim, the MoE’s renewable and efficiency-related spending requests for 2016 amount to just under YEN 176 billion.¶ The MoE is, of course, not the only central agency with a prominent role in directing public finance at renewable energy and efficiency projects undertaken by Japan’s local governments, private firms, NPOs and other actors. The METI is another major supplier of subsidies for such projects. In the energy field, the METI’s requests for 2016 total just under YEN 976 billion. This figure is a significant increase on the YEN 796.5 billion in the fiscal 2015 initial budget, and efficiency and renewables receive striking increases. To be sure, one of Japan’s leading journalists on energy-related matters, Ishida Masaya, criticizes the METI’s fiscal 2016 request for including about YEN 200 billion in spending on nuclear (including YEN 133 billion in support to local sites of nuclear reactors). This figure is roughly the same as the nuclear spending in fiscal 2015, which totals YEN 185 billion. Ishida regards maintaining this level of support for nuclear as being inconsistent with the new (from 2014) energy basic plan’s explicit commitment to maximize renewables and minimize nuclear.¶ But Ishida devotes considerably more attention to the METI’s aim to nearly double its support of efficiency and conservation, raising its fiscal 2015 YEN 127.7 billion spending in this category to YEN 242.9 billion. He adds that this spending to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce power consumption is largely targeted at factories, which are the most costly venues for achieving gains in energy efficiency and conservation. The METI’s spending on this category will thus nearly triple, from YEN 50 billion in 2015 to YEN 135.6 billion in 2016. Ishida rightly focuses on this initiative, as the METI itself describes the current need for efficiency and conservation as comparable to the period in the immediate wake of the 1970s oil shocks.9¶ METI is generally seen as powerfully influenced by vested energy interests, including the nuclear village and those focused on fossil fuels. So it is also telling that METI plans to more than double its spending in support of renewable-energy projects, from YEN 35.8 billion in 2015 to YEN 81.8 billion in 2016. METI will also raise its RandD on efficiency from YEN 50.7 to YEN 63.2 billion and its RandD on renewables from YEN 49.3 to YEN 53.7. METI is also asking for a tripling in its funding on hydrogen-related deployment (fuel cells and hydrogen stations) and research (including renewable power to gas10), from fiscal 2015’s YEN 11.9 billion to YEN 37.1 billion.11¶ Another central agency with a strong role in fostering the diffusion of renewables and efficiency is the Ministry of Infrastructure, Land, Transport and Tourism (MLIT). Since 2011, it has been undertaking one of the most interesting of Japan’s waste-heat related initiatives, through its "B-DASH" (Breakthrough by Dynamic Approach in Sewage High Technology) Project.12 Japan’s potential for waste-heat capture in its sewerage systems has been assessed at 15 million households’ worth of heat-energy use.13 The fiscal 2016 request for the B-DASH project aimed at exploiting this energy potential is YEN 3.6 billion, and via the initial fiscal 2015 budget the MLIT already has a YEN 901.2 billion fund for waste-heat recovery and other renewable-energy (e.g. methane) from Japan’s 460,000 kilometres of sewers, via the MLIT social infrastructure development disbursements.14 This project has already led to such initiatives as Toyota City’s "Future Challenge City" partnership, announced on August 26, 2015, with Sekisui Chemical on heat-recovery in the city’s sewers.15¶ Moreover, one of the increased efficiency-related fiscal requests by the MLIT is for housing and building stock. The MLIT fiscal 2015 budget for this category totals YEN 116 million, but the request for 2016 is YEN 32.2 billion, or well over 300 times more. This prodigious increase apparently reflects a powerful commitment to raise efficiency in the country’s building stock after new, but non-obligatory, efficiency standards introduced in 2013 had little effect.16¶ Other central agencies with a direct interest in the diffusion of renewable energy and efficiency include the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) as well as the Ministry of Agriculture, Farms and Forestry (MAFF). Their roles in fostering the deployment of renewable energy focus less on the technology per se than on the coordination of local governments (MIC) as well as primary-sector producers, such as forestry firms in biomass (MAFF). Their proposed spending on energy projects generally did not leap as noticeably as the cases surveyed above, save for the MIC’s special programme of fostering the deployment of largely biomass-fired district heating and cooling systems in local areas. This programme is the "Distributed energy infrastructure project." It received YEN 240 million in fiscal 2015, but is slated to more than triple to YEN 700 million in fiscal 2016. The bulk of MIC’s large-scale spending increases are centred on the ICT infrastructure that is one of the core network technologies in Japan’s nationwide rollout of the smart community, internet of things, and related projects that cross multiple agency jurisdictions.17 The MIC spending on ICT in the fiscal 2015 initial budget is YEN 115.3 billion but is slated to increase to YEN 137.8 in fiscal 2016.18The above projects are in themselves good reasons to pay close attention to the MIC. But in addition, the current MIC Minister, Takaichi Sanae, has been a very strong proponent of renewable energy for several years. Under her leadership, the MIC bureaucracy have continued with their significant organizational initiatives to put local governments in charge of energy. We shall examine these initiatives in the subsequent section on institutional changes the LDP has made to foster the accelerated diffusion of renewables and efficiency. But for the present, note that the MIC collated the distributed and renewable-energy project spending – by the MIC itself as well as METI, MoE, and MAFF – relevant to local government. Takaichi presented the results of the MIC survey on these matters at a September 4, 2015 press conference. She pointed out that there are 31 subsidy programs, worth a total of YEN 102.7 billion in fiscal 2015 as well as an additional YEN 126 billion via the 2014 fiscal year’s supplementary budget.19
	22	+Govt is moving away from nuclear focus slowly, towards renewables but it isn’t happening quick enough—aff fiats they ban nuclear power, which causes them to shift money towards renewables because they are already moving towards that now but nuclear allocation trades off currently—companies are shifting now so the shift WILL happen—japans nuclear program is also uniquely insufficient so renewables are best
	23	+
	24	+====Their DAs are non-unique—Japan already relies a ton on coal and import dependence and nuclear is insufficient====
	25	+Dewit 2 **~~Andrew Dewit (Andrew DeWit is Professor in Rikkyo University’s School of Policy Studies and an editor of The Asia-Pacific Journal. His recent publications include "Climate Change and the Military Role in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response," in Paul Bacon and Christopher Hobson (eds) Human Security and Japan’s Triple Disaster (Routledge, 2014), "Japan’s renewable power prospects," in Jeff Kingston (ed) Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan (Routledge 2013), and (with Kaneko Masaru and Iida Tetsunari) "Fukushima and the Political Economy of Power Policy in Japan" in Jeff Kingston (ed) Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11 (Routledge, 2012). He is lead researcher for a five-year (2010-2015) Japanese-Government funded project on the political economy of the Feed-in Tariff.), 10-7-2015, "Japan’s Bid to Become a World Leader in Renewable Energy," Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/japans-bid-to-become-a-world-leader-in-renewable-energy/5480274. Asia Pacific Journal, Global Resaerch~~ NB**
	26	+So consider where Japan is. The country has just adopted mid-term energy targets that few find credible. It has also done this in the midst of enormous uncertainty on conventional energy supplies, prices, geopolitics and other factors. It bears keeping in mind that Japan is not just the world’s fifth-largest power market, but also the world’s largest importer of LNG, the second largest importer of coal, and the third-largest net importer of oil and oil products.32 Figure 2 on "Changes in Japan’s Power Mix" shows that the country’s import dependence on conventional fuels to produce power greatly increased between 2010 to 2013, when nuclear’s share shrank and LNG’s role ballooned from 29.3 percent of power to 43.2 percent, coal increased from 25 percent to 30.3 percent, and oil and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) more than doubled from 6.6 to 13.7 percent. Virtually all of these fuels are imported, so Japan’s import dependence increased dramatically, from 62 percent in 2010 to 88 percent in 2013. The comparison with the average EU power mix in 2011 is striking, as the EU’s overall dependence on imports is 49 percent.¶ Figure 2 shows that Japan in 2013 was even more import dependent than it was in 1973. That was the year of the first oil shock, which is still such a benchmark for vulnerability among Japanese policymakers that – as noted earlier – the METI emphasizes it in its fiscal and regulatory planning for efficiency and conservation and indeed uses when it produces figures (figure 2 is a direct translation of METI’s work). Admittedly Japan’s power mix in 2013 was less dependent on a single energy source, in contrast to the over 70 percent dependence on oil and LPG in 1973. At the same time, the geopolitical, climate and other risks of using fossil fuels in the present far exceed those of 1973.¶ Indeed, it is hard to exaggerate the scale of contemporary risks. For example, the September 21, 2015 Financial Times warns that current low prices for oil have put as much as USD 1.5 trillion of investment in energy projects in question. This constriction in the infrastructure of supply brings profound risks of dramatic price escalations as early as 2017.33 And in spite of continuing optimism concerning unconventional oil and gas reserves, especially the US "shale revolution," a growing number of objective and rigorously empirical studies of the actual resource base and costs of production suggest that shale’s important addition to the global supply portfolio is better measured in years than decades.34 Indeed, the shale boom was in large measure driven by a doubling of US high-yield "junk bond" debt to USD 2 trillion, a bubble that appears to be imploding.35 Meanwhile, demand for energy continues to grow: China’s gasoline consumption in July of 2015 was up 17 percent over the previous year.36 One respected expert’s extrapolation of present trends in oil warns that just China and India alone will be "theoretically consuming 100 of global net exports around the year 2032."37¶ In short, 3-11 and all that has happened since has reduced nuclear to at best a minor role in Japan’s power mix. Certainly nuclear appears incapable of displacing much of Japan’s environmentally damaging, expensive and geopolitically risky reliance on fossil fuels in the power mix. So the real question for LDP policymakers is whether they will allow vested energy interests to dominate investment decisions and income streams in the country’s power economy, its most critical infrastructure. The energy vested interests’ performance during the 2030 "best mix" debate showed that unchecked, their self-interest would turn Japan into an energy- and climate-technology Galapagos while the rest of the world embraces renewable energy and efficiency. This argument is not wishful thinking: on October 2, 2015, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that "renewable energy will represent the largest single source of electricity growth over the next five years, driven by falling costs and aggressive expansion in emerging economies." The IEA believes the coming five years will see renewables provide two-thirds of net additions to global power systems, representing over 700 gigawatts or over twice Japan’s installed power capacity. This forecast suggests that by 2020 renewable power generation will be supplying a volume of electricity "higher than today’s combined electricity demand of China, India and Brazil."38¶ The budget numbers reviewed above suggest that the LDP’s renewable-energy supporters are determined not to allow vested interests and incrementalism to ruin the country’s fortunes. They are using the Abe regime’s explicit commitment to maximize the share of renewables as an opportunity to use state finance to accelerate the diffusion of renewable energy and efficiency. But they are not doing this willy-nilly. It would seem that the Abe regime and Japan’s energy bureaucracy have also learned important lessons from various experiences, including the Board of Audit of Japan survey noted above. The survey assessed the return on directly subsidized renewable project spending. It found that 63.7 of total spending was devoted to solar, producing only 38.6 of total installed capacity. By contrast, a mere 0.8 of total subsidies spent on geothermal has resulted in projects that (once in operation) will represent 19.5 of installed capacity. For biomass, the return was not as powerful as geothermal. But even then, 25.3 of subsidy spending resulted in 17.6 of total installed capacity. And with both geothermal and biomass, the power output does not depend on the time of day or the weather.39
	27	+
	28	+
	29	+===Adv- Tech Leadership===
	30	+
	31	+====Japan is determined to reduce greenhouse gas emissions post-Paris deal====
	32	+Watanbe 3-15
	33	+Chisaki Watanbe (contributor). "Japan Signs Off on Climate Change Plan to Meet Paris Targets." Bloomberg News. March 15^^th^^, 2016. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-15/japan-signs-off-on-climate-change-plan-to-meet-paris-targets
	34	+Japan’s government signed off on a set of measures ranging from energy-saving steps to a broader use of hydrogen to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to meet the country’s commitments made last year at the Paris climate meeting. The cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to approve the plan in early May after public comment, Environment Minister Tamayo Marukawa said Tuesday. The goal is to cut emissions by 26 percent by 2030 using 2013 levels as a base. "The plan will map out the path to achieve the mid-term goal of a 26 percent reduction by 2030," Marukawa said at a news conference. "It also includes an 80 percent cut by 2050 as a long-term target." Japan will strengthen the development of innovative technologies, according to the plan, which also calls for local governments to compile their own measures. "It is very significant that we can show our determination to make contributions after the Paris Agreement," Marukawa said, referring to the international accord reached in December to tackle climate change.
	35	+
	36	+
	37	+====But, Japan’s reliance on nuclear power undermines their global credibility on climate change efforts====
	38	+McCurry 15
	39	+Justin McCurry (staff writer). "Can Japan's climate policy get back on track after Fukushima?" The Guardian. April 17^^th^^, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/17/can-japans-climate-policy-get-back-on-track-after-fukushima
	40	+Less than two decades ago, Japan positioned itself in the vanguard of the global fight against climate change when it helped broker the Kyoto protocol. Now, though, it is Fukushima, not Kyoto, that has come to define Japan’s energy policy, and with potentially grim consequences for its already stalled attempts to reduce CO2 emissions. It was telling that in the same week as a court blocked the restart of two nuclear reactors on the Japan Sea coast – citing concerns over their vulnerability to a major earthquake – the government released emissions data showing just how far Japan has regressed since the more hopeful days of the Kyoto summit in 1997. Environment ministry data showed that Japan’s CO2 emissions rose to the second-highest level on record in the year to March 2014. Local media reports said that Japan, the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, aims to reduce CO2 emissions by about 20 from 2013 levels by 2030 – a much lower target than other major developed economies. In earlier climate talks it pledged a more ambitious reduction of 25 by 2020 from 1990 levels. The new targets, if as unambitious as reported, are expected to draw criticism when Japan and other G7 countries meet in Germany in June, and at the UN climate conference in Paris in November. "The Fukushima disaster had a huge impact on Japan’s emissions reduction target, practically and politically," said Tetsunari Iida, director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies in Tokyo. As Britain and other countries push for more ambitions reductions, Japan has been accused of reneging on its climate change commitments as it ramps up fossil-fuel use, with plans to build more coal-fired plants in the absence of the nuclear option. All of Japan’s 48 working reactors went offline after Fukushima, and attempts by the pro-nuclear prime minister, Shinzō Abe, to push for restarts risk being held up by months, perhaps years, by legal wrangling. "The Abe administration is very close to big industry and the power monopolies and they have very low ambitions in terms of climate change policy," Iida said. "I expect that the new mid-term target, which has to be announced by the time the G7 meets, will be rather low." The March 2011 Fukushima disaster shattered the public’s faith in the "safety myth" surrounding nuclear energy, which once accounted for almost 30 of Japan’s energy needs, with plans to raise its share to about half with the construction of more reactors. Keith Henry, an analyst and founder of Asia Strategy, a government policy consultancy in Tokyo, said sensible discussion of CO2 emissions was being lost amid a highly emotive debate over the future of nuclear power post-Fukushima. "Depending on which side you believe, nuclear power is the saviour that will return Japan to a stable, secure energy supply and reduce its balance of payments deficit, or will be the potential source of another nuclear meltdown," Henry said. "The threat of a nuclear meltdown overrides concerns about an increase in CO2 emissions." Before an earthquake and tsunami sent three of Fukushima Daiichi’s six reactors into meltdown, nuclear was at the core of Japan’s emissions strategy. But the turning of the popular tide against nuclear has sent policymakers back to the drawing board, and risks leaving Japan’s climate change efforts in tatters.
	41	+
	42	+====A renewable japan saves the economy, outcompetes oil markets, makes japan a global provider sparking a EU partnership, and counterbalances other Asian Tech. ====
	43	+
	44	+Orlando et al 16: **Danuta Slusarska, and Fabio Orlando. 5-9-2016. "Japan’S Energy Policy Shifts Five Years After Fukushima - Friends Of Europe". Friends of Europe. N. p., 2016. Web. 11 Aug. 2016.**
	45	+It is estimated that between 2007 and 2014, the country invested roughly €17bn in coal power plants and mines abroad, mainly in Asia, with funds from Japanese credit agencies paid as bilateral loans. A pivotal role has also been played by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), a state-owned credit bank providing resources for foreign investment. The JBIC backed the construction of coal plants and invested in several coal facilities in countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Amid criticism from the international community concerned about the impact of such investment on global climate change mitigation, the Japanese government defended its bilateral loans as climate finance, arguing that by building more efficient coal plants it was helping developing countries to emit less greenhouse gases. But Japan will soon have to modify its strategy, as the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reached a deal last November to curb subsidies used to export technology for coal-fired power plants. Japan led the fight to block the deal, but ultimately had to concede. Yet it does not seem that Japan is ready to change its pro-coal strategy at home. Around 41 new coal-fired power plants are planned to be built over the next ten years, and a new tax system will favour imports of coal over natural gas. These policies threaten to bind Japan even closer to coal for decades to come, leaving the country highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. World frontrunner in energy efficiency One energy ‘fuel’ that Japan has in abundance is energy efficiency. Ever since the oil crisis of the 1970s, the government has put a great deal of effort into energy saving as a way to compensate for its scarcity in resources. As a result, Japan now has one of the lowest energy-intensive economies and one of the most energy-conscious populations among developed countries. Energy efficiency was of particular importance in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, when electricity capacity dropped drastically, threatening power blackouts. Much of the electricity savings were driven by a popular movement known as ‘Setsuden’ (energy saving), aimed at encouraging people and companies to conserve energy and adopt more sustainable practices. Measures included replacing high-consumption lighting with low-power LED lights, ‘thinning’ lighting by removing some bulbs, limiting air-conditioning, shutting off appliances instead of putting them on standby, cutting exterior lighting, changing working shifts to avoid peaks, or slowing down public transport. All this allowed Japan to drastically reduce power demand almost overnight. Energy-efficiency standards for many electrical appliances and vehicles were created under the Top-Runner Programme in 1999, and further reinforced in recent years. The New National Energy Strategy and the Energy Conservation Frontrunner Plan to promote energy conservation were adopted in 2006, setting a target to improve the country’s energy efficiency by at least 30 by 2030 compared to 2003 levels. Various financial and fiscal incentives have been put in place to encourage energy conservation and efficiency in industry, including sectoral benchmarks, tax incentive schemes, depreciation rates and low-interest loans. Large industrial companies are obliged to appoint an energy manager responsible for implementing an energy-efficiency plan for the company. Japan is also actively promoting demand-side management technologies and smart grids deployment, and is the world’s largest investor in smart meters. In the transport sector, Japan has introduced one of the strictest fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars, and light and heavy-duty trucks, and its main carmakers – Toyota, Nissan and Honda – enjoy a reputation of world-leading energy-efficient car manufacturers. Yet the reputation of the Japanese car industry is now under threat due to recent revelations that Mitsubishi’s employees falsified fuel economy tests data for more than 600,000 vehicles in order to cut corners, in a new scandal following the Volkswagen case. As a leader in energy-efficiency policies, RandD investment and innovation, Japan has also been actively contributing to international cooperation on advancing energy efficiency on a global scale and developing international standards through the International Energy Agency (IEA), International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation (IPEEC), New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) and regional initiatives such as APEC, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. It has also developed bilateral partnerships with its neighbours and major economies such as the EU and the US to boost capacity building and joint policy research, and to disseminate know-how thanks to joint demonstration projects. Focus on energy RandD and innovation Japan gives very high priority to research, development and deployment (RDandD), and its public spending as percentage of GDP exceeds that of all other major economies. According to the IEA, Japan has one of the world’s largest budgets dedicated to RDandD in the fields of nuclear energy, energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, smart grids, clean coal, and carbon capture and storage. The country is also the world’s leader in climate-related technological innovation, as indicated by the number of patents it holds, mainly in renewable energies, energy-efficient buildings and lighting, and electric and hybrid vehicles. A big boost to clean energy technologies was given by the Cool Earth-Innovative Energy Technology Programme. Adopted in 2008, the initiative is the outcome of a study conducted by an investigative commission comprising key intellectual figures and promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The programme focuses on 21 key technologies whose deployment is expected to accelerate substantial global emissions reductions, and has allowed Japan to promote international and regional cooperation on RandD and innovative technology development, while maintaining its international competitiveness. On this basis, Japan and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2014 launched the ‘Asia Pacific Clean Air Partnership’, aimed at encouraging existing regional initiatives supporting common projects in order to curb air pollution in the area. But as a result of two decades of economic stagnation, Japan has now visibly decreased its share of energy RDandD from 23 in 1990 to 12 in 2014. China is now poised to lead the world in total RandD spending by 2019 due to a recent surge in public investment in renewable energy RDandD. Further efforts will be necessary if Japan wants to stay at the forefront of energy research and development at the global and regional scale. Regulatory overhaul of the power sector In an unprecedented step to boost the country’s sagging economy, modernise the energy sector, lower energy bills, and advance efficiency and innovation, the Abe government has decided to embark on a major reform to deregulate electricity and gas markets. If done properly and in a coordinated way, the move could raise Japan to the rank of the world’s largest deregulated electricity market in history and a worldwide model to follow. Japan has lagged behind the US and the EU on similar measures for more than 10 years, as its regional monopoly companies have wielded strong political influence preventing any progress on liberalising the sector. Yet increased losses in power companies’ revenues and persisting high energy prices have made evident the need to change Japan’s ‘business as usual’. Japan’s electricity retail market was fully liberalised on 1 April 2016, allowing Japanese households to choose their power suppliers and opening up a ¥10tn (€81bn) market to newcomers. The unbundling of the transmission sector is scheduled for April 2020 and foresees to separate power grids from power plants in an attempt to ensure equal access to the power transmission network by all power suppliers. A bill revising the Gas Business Law, which calls for full liberalisation of the gas retail market by 2017, mandates that major city gas companies in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka separate their gas pipe management sections into new entities in April 2022. A new committee will be established to oversee transactions in the power and gas industries to ensure fair competition. The package of reforms is expected to bring much-needed competition to gas and electricity markets that have until now been monopolistically operated by local companies. The competition would allow the sectors – which have suffered from inefficiencies in the absence of economic incentives – to become more efficient, driving down costs. New players from a wide variety of industries have already lined up, bringing with them innovative services and new business models offering discount prices combining cell phone, Internet and electricity services. New entrants could also boost technological innovation and improvements in smart meters, energy efficiency and renewable energy, affecting the world’s technological landscape. Implications for Europe The 2011 earthquake and disaster at Fukushima sparked widespread public concern over the safety of nuclear power generation and led to a re-evaluation of energy policies in many parts of the world. The European Council decided to mandate a review of the safety features of European nuclear reactors. The so-called ‘stress tests’ were applied to all nuclear power plants in the EU and an Action Plan was published in 2012 containing further measures to improve the safety of nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, member states’ reactions differed, ranging from Germany deciding to phase out its nuclear power plants, to the UK giving the green light to boost its nuclear capacity with a new Hinckley Point C project. The similarities in environmental, political and economic situation offered fertile ground to build a close EU-Japan strategic partnership. Both like-minded partners face major challenges in view of improving energy efficiency, boosting competitiveness while addressing climate change and energy security issues, and dealing with growing competition from countries like China and India. Energy cooperation takes place as part of the EU-Japan Summit, EU-Japan Industrial Policy Dialogue, and Science and Technology Agreement. Yet a comprehensive focus on clean energy is still missing from existing cooperation structures. The new Strategic Partnership Agreement and Free Trade Agreement currently under negotiation could be the game changers, opening a new era in EU-Japan relations. For Japan, there is a clear interest in learning from the EU experiences about the best policies to incentivise and scale up renewable energy deployment, and solutions to accommodate large quantities of clean energy sources into its market. Meanwhile, Japan emerges as an attractive clean energy market for European companies, including SMEs and large utilities, in particular thanks to efforts to deregulate and liberalise Japan’s energy market.
	46	+
	47	+
	48	+====Japan could become a lead renewables market, but only if they move beyond nuclear power—their tech will get exported and reduce climate change globally as they get modeled.====
	49	+Pollock 15 **~~Simon Pollock (Australia-based climate change writer and journalist. In addition to working on international climate change policy in Australia, he was a member of the start-up team that launched Al Jazeera English Television from its Asia Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur in 2006. Simon’s interest in development and environmental issues stemmed from observation of how the two don’t always mix during six years in Beijing as a Kyodo News reporter). "Japan’s Narrowing Nuclear Path to a Low-Carbon Future." Our World, brought to you by United Nations University. October 20th, 2015. https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/japans-narrowing-nuclear-path-to-a-low-carbon-future~~ KB**
	50	+Izadi-Najafabadi said Japan will eventually follow Europe and the United States in promoting the escalated use of renewables, but this is likely to take time and will probably require Japan’s industrial leaders, rather than its politicians, to show the way. Japanese industry is actually further developed in supporting advances in renewable technology than many outside the country realize. While China has stolen the limelight in terms of its huge move during recent years into the renewable energy market, it is less known that Japan represented the world’s second biggest solar photovoltaic (PV) market in 2013. It accounted for 10 percent of the global total, compared to 13 percent for China. This entailed an impressive doubling of PV capacity in Japan from the previous year. Japan’s technical edge The Climate Group recently reported how cutting-edge Japanese solar technology was behind the recent opening of one of the world’s largest floating solar panel plants in central Hyogo prefecture. Japanese ceramics company Kyocera, which has expanded globally, developed the water-based technology to get around Japan’s lack of land space and to help provide the necessary cooling for a solar plant’s operations. Some believe Japan possesses the technical edge to make inroads into the renewable energy market. Though perhaps not in the rapidly aggressive fashion by which it made gains in the automotive industry in the 1980s, leading it to overtake the United States as number one automobile maker. Llewelyn Hughes, an Australian National University lecturer and Japanese market consultant, told me that because the cost of production in China is much lower, Japanese companies are not doing as well as they used to in the solar market. "This picture, however, can be misleading as some renewable production in China actually represents outsourcing from Japan," said Hughes. "There is still a strong potential for Japan to apply its technological prowess and engineering expertise in renewable technology. Japan could become a lead renewables technology market, and then export this technology to developing countries to help them leapfrog over the more carbon-intensive steps adopted by the developed countries." Hughes pointed to a collaborative arrangement between Japan’s Panasonic and Tesla, a firm based in California perhaps best known for its electric cars among its array of high-tech products. As part of the collaboration, Panasonic’s innovation is helping to drive progress in battery storage, the "holy grail of renewables", said Hughes. There are also signs afoot that Panasonic may be about make a more concerted push into the global solar market by supplying batteries for homes, beginning in Europe. "Japan could become a lead renewables technology market, and then export this technology to developing countries to help them leapfrog over the more carbon-intensive steps adopted by the developed countries," says Llewelyn Hughes, an Australian National University lecturer and Japanese market consultant. Japanese companies’ collaboration with firms in China and the US to pave innovative paths to low-carbon development — based on high-tech cooperation and market force competition — calls into question the ongoing focus of state-based efforts to reduce climate change. While diplomats pore over obscure but highly politicised texts to broach an international agreement, companies are using the flow of ideas across national boundaries to find entrepreneurial ways to tackle climate change. Individual breakthroughs on new and innovative ways to seek profits across borders may help generate step changes leading to a low-carbon world, as has been the case with the Steve Jobs-led burgeoning communication revolution of tablets and smartphones. It is likely, however, that the positioning of nation states will continue to dominate news headlines about climate change — and this is an area where Japan’s climate reputation will likely continue to suffer. Japan’s increased use of coal brought by the sudden removal of nuclear power from its energy mix has made it far more difficult for the country to achieve domestic reduction targets considered credible by other nations. The sudden, tragic and disruptive nature of the 2011 earthquake helps to garner sympathy for Japan’s challenges in reducing its domestic emissions. Such considerations are likely, however, to be quickly forgotten when considering Japan’s ongoing support of coal mining and combustion in other countries. Japan funds overseas coal use A report by a consortium of environmental groups released in June found that Japan is now the planet’s top public financier of overseas coal plants, technology and mining. The report found that Japan provided more than US$20 billion to coal projects in other countries between 2007 and 2014 — roughly a quarter of total international support for coal-fired power. During the same period, according to the report, Japan contributed about US$5 billion to coal mining projects around the world. Japan’s decision to continue funding coal mining and combustion overseas sits uncomfortably with the World Bank’s announcement in 2013 that it would stop financing coal projects, except in rare cases. Japan’s support for overseas coal plants in Indonesia (US$1 billion in loans) and India and Bangladesh (US$630 million) as climate finance loans has raised the most ire among environmentalists. The Japanese government has portrayed its support in pragmatic terms, arguing that some countries can only afford to use coal for their energy generation. In this view, Japan’s financial assistance means developing countries can build high-tech coal combustion plants that cause less pollution than those that would be built without such help. Japanese support "is a very practical and realistic and effective way to reduce carbon dioxide", the Associated Press newswire quoted Takako Ito, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, as saying. As rising powers such as China and Brazil move to wind down their coal use, new coal plants in Japan are likely to face increased business risks. This issue has set off deliberations within the United Nations (UN) Green Climate Fund, the main international body channelling aid funds to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change. The UN body’s current stance — where the use of climate finance to support coal plants is not explicitly banned — is likened by Karen Orenstein, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth US, to a "torture convention that doesn’t forbid torture". Japan’s support for advancing coal in developing countries is likely to remain a weak spot in Japan’s diplomatic armour, opening it up to continuing overseas criticism. The power of the market, though, may ultimately play the biggest role in weaning Japan from its current support for coal projects in developing countries. As rising powers such as China and Brazil move to wind down their coal use, new coal plants in Japan are likely to face increased business risks. Conversely, current low demand for coal may allow Japanese utilities to seek lower prices. However, in the longer term, Japan’s current investments in coal at home and abroad could well prove to be a losing bet. Predicting future global trends is rarely straightforward, but judging by the perennial air pollution and high percentage of emissions caused by coal, it is unlikely this fossil fuel will be the energy source of choice for current and rising powers. The government’s faith in nuclear power is understandable considering it has served the country well prior to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. Fears about nuclear energy are, however, unlikely to dissipate quickly — especially in the only country that has borne the brunt of nuclear weapons. It seems then that the government’s current bet in putting renewables just below coal, and on a par with nuclear energy, threatens to push Japan out of a global growth curve leading to a low-carbon world based on renewable energy.
	51	+
	52	+
	53	+====Global warming definitively causes extinction====
	54	+Sharp and Kennedy 14** – (Associate Professor Robert (Bob) A. Sharp is the UAE National Defense College Associate Dean for Academic Programs and College Quality Assurance Advisor. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Strategic Security Studies at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) in the U.S. National Defense University (NDU), Washington D.C. and then as Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia (NESA) Center for Strategic Studies, collocated with NDU. Most recently at NESA, he focused on security sector reform in Yemen and Lebanon, and also supported regional security engagement events into Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and Qatar; Edward Kennedy is a renewable energy and climate change specialist who has worked for the World Bank and the Spanish Electric Utility ENDESA on carbon policy and markets; 8/22/14, "Climate Change and Implications for National Security," International Policy Digest, http://intpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climate-change-implications-national-security/)**
	55	+Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. If that whole time was to be reflected on a single one-year calendar then the dinosaurs died off sometime late in the afternoon of December 27th and modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago, or at around lunchtime on December 28th. Therefore, human life on earth is very recent. Sometime on December 28th humans made the first fires – wood fires – neutral in the carbon balance. Now reflect on those most recent 200,000 years again on a single one-year calendar and you might be surprised to learn that the industrial revolution began only a few hours ago during the middle of the afternoon on December 31st, 250 years ago, coinciding with the discovery of underground carbon fuels. Over the 250 years carbon fuels have enabled tremendous technological advances including a population growth from about 800 million then to 7.5 billion today and the consequent demand to extract even more carbon. This has occurred during a handful of generations, which is hardly noticeable on our imaginary one-year calendar. The release of this carbon – however – is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies imagination that so much damage has been done in such a relatively short time. The implications of climate change is the single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the damage. This relatively very recent ability to change our climate is an inconvenient truth; the science is sound. We know of the complex set of interrelated national and global security risks that are a result of global warming and the velocity at which climate change is occurring. We worry it may already be too late. Climate change writ large has informed few, interested some, confused many, and polarized politics. It has already led to an increase in natural disasters including but not limited to droughts, storms, floods, fires etc. The year 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to an American Meteorological Society (AMS) report. Research suggests that climate change is already affecting human displacement; reportedly 36 million people were displaced in 2008 alone because of sudden natural disasters. Figures for 2010 and 2011 paint a grimmer picture of people displaced because of rising sea levels, heat and storms. Climate change affects all natural systems. It impacts temperature and consequently it affects water and weather patterns. It contributes to desertification, deforestation and acidification of the oceans. Changes in weather patterns may mean droughts in one area and floods in another. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, sea levels rise but perennial river water supplies are reduced because glaciers are retreating. As glaciers and polar ice caps melt, there is an albedo effect, which is a double whammy of less temperature regulation because of less surface area of ice present. This means that less absorption occurs and also there is less reflection of the sun’s light. A potentially critical wild card could be runaway climate change due to the release of methane from melting tundra. Worldwide permafrost soils contain about 1,700 Giga Tons of carbon, which is about four times more than all the carbon released through human activity thus far. The planet has already adapted itself to dramatic climate change including a wide range of distinct geologic periods and multiple extinctions, and at a pace that it can be managed. It is human intervention that has accelerated the pace dramatically: An increased surface temperature, coupled with more severe weather and changes in water distribution will create uneven threats to our agricultural systems and will foster and support the spread of insect borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue and the West Nile virus. Rising sea levels will increasingly threaten our coastal population and infrastructure centers and with more than 3.5 billion people – half the planet – depending on the ocean for their primary source of food, ocean acidification may dangerously undercut critical natural food systems which would result in reduced rations. Climate change also carries significant inertia. Even if emissions were completely halted today, temperature increases would continue for some time. Thus the impact is not only to the environment, water, coastal homes, agriculture and fisheries as mentioned, but also would lead to conflict and thus impact national security. Resource wars are inevitable as countries respond, adapt and compete for the shrinking set of those available resources. These wars have arguably already started and will continue in the future because climate change will force countries to act for national survival; the so-called Climate Wars. As early as 2003 Greenpeace alluded to a report which it claimed was commissioned by the Pentagon titled: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security. It painted a picture of a world in turmoil because global warming had accelerated. The scenario outlined was both abrupt and alarming. The report offered recommendations but backed away from declaring climate change an immediate problem, concluding that it would actually be more incremental and measured; as such it would be an irritant, not a shock for national security systems. In 2006 the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – Institute of Public Research – convened a board of 11 senior retired generals and admirals to assess National Security and the Threat to Climate Change. Their initial report was published in April 2007 and made no mention of the potential acceleration of climate change. The team found that climate change was a serious threat to national security and that it was: "most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism." The team made recommendations from their analysis of regional impacts which suggested the following. Europe would experience some fracturing because of border migration. Africa would need more stability and humanitarian operations provided by the United States. The Middle East would experience a "loss of food and water security (which) will increase pressure to emigrate across borders." Asia would suffer from "threats to water and the spread of infectious disease. " In 2009 the CIA opened a Center on Climate Change and National Security to coordinate across the intelligence community and to focus policy. In May 2014, CNA again convened a Military Advisory Board but this time to assess National Security and the Accelerating Risk of Climate Change. The report concludes that climate change is no longer a future threat but occurring right now and the authors appeal to the security community, the entire government and the American people to not only build resilience against projected climate change impacts but to form agreements to stabilize climate change and also to integrate climate change across all strategy and planning. The calm of the 2007 report is replaced by a tone of anxiety concerning the future coupled with calls for public discourse and debate because "time and tide wait for no man." The report notes a key distinction between resilience (mitigating the impact of climate change) and agreements (ways to stabilize climate change) and states that: Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change. The 9/11 Report framed the terrorist attacks as less of a failure of intelligence than a failure of imagination. Greenpeace’s 2003 account of the Pentagon’s alleged report describes a coming climate Armageddon which to readers was unimaginable and hence the report was not really taken seriously. It described: A world thrown into turmoil by drought, floods, typhoons. Whole countries rendered uninhabitable. The capital of the Netherlands submerged. The borders of the U.S. and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland backed up with nuclear weapons. The CNA and Greenpeace/Pentagon reports are both mirrored by similar analysis by the World Bank which highlighted not only the physical manifestations of climate change, but also the significant human impacts that threaten to unravel decades of economic development, which will ultimately foster conflict. Climate change is the quintessential "Tragedy of the Commons," where the cumulative impact of many individual actions (carbon emission in this case) is not seen as linked to the marginal gains available to each individual action and not seen as cause and effect. It is simultaneously huge, yet amorphous and nearly invisible from day to day. It is occurring very fast in geologic time terms, but in human time it is (was) slow and incremental. Among environmental problems, it is uniquely global. With our planet and culture figuratively and literally honeycombed with a reliance on fossil fuels, we face systemic challenges in changing the reliance across multiple layers of consumption, investment patterns, and political decisions; it will be hard to fix!
	56	+
	57	+==FW==
	58	+The standard is maximizing expected pleasure
	59	+First, Moral realism is true and pain/pleasure are the only intrinsic values
	60	+GRAY 09
	61	+Gray, James W. "An Argument for Moral Realism." Ethical Realism. N.p., 07 Oct. 2009. Web. 04 Sept. 2015. https://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/an-argument-for-moral-realism/. MA in philosophy from San Jose State University (2008)
	62	+If we have evidence that anything in particular has intrinsic value, then we also have evidence that moral realism is true. Our experiences of pleasure and pain are probably the most powerful evidence of intrinsic value because such experiences are tied to our belief that they have intrinsic value. My argument that pain has intrinsic disvalue is basically the following: We experience that pain is bad. We experience that pain is important. The disvalue of pain is irreducible. The disvalue of pain is real. If pain is bad in the sense of being important, irreducible, and real, then pain has intrinsic disvalue. Therefore, pain has intrinsic disvalue. I am not certain that the premises are true, but I currently find good reasons for accepting them. Therefore, we have reason for accepting the conclusion. The conclusion could be read saying, "We have reason to believe that pain has intrinsic disvalue." If we accept that pain has intrinsic disvalue, then we will simultaneously accept moral realism.1 In order to examine the plausibility of my argument, I will examine each of the premises: We experience that pain is bad. We know pain is bad because of our experience of it. If someone described their pain as extremely wonderful, we would doubt they are feeling pain. Either the person is lying or doesn’t know what the word "pain" means. When a child decides not to touch fire because it causes pain, we understand the justification. It would be strange to ask the child, "So what? What’s wrong with pain?" We experience that pain is important. If pain is important in the relevant sense, then it can provide us reason to do something without merely helping us fulfill our desires. In other words, we must accept the following: The badness of pain isn’t just an instrumental value. The badness of pain is a final end. Pain’s badness isn’t an instrumental value – Pain’s disvalue is not an instrumental disvalue because pain can be quite useful to us. Pain can tell us when we are unhealthy or injured. We evolved pain because it’s essential to our survival. Pain’s bad for a different kind of reason. Pain’s disvalue is found in our negative experience, and this is why pain is a candidate for having an intrinsic disvalue. Whenever someone claims that something has intrinsic value, we need to make sure that it’s not just good because it’s instrumentally valuable. If it’s merely useful at bringing about something else, then it’s not good in and of itself (as intrinsic values are). Pain is perhaps the perfect example of something that is useful but bad. If usefulness was the only kind of value, then pain would actually be good because it helps us in many ways. Pain’s badness isn’t just our dislike of pain – We dislike pain because it feels bad.2 If pain didn’t feel bad, then we wouldn’t have such a strong desire to avoid intense pain. Pain means "feels bad" and it is manifested in various experiences, such as touching fire. We have to know the meaning of "bad" in order to understand pain at all. We attain an understanding of "bad" just by feeling pain. If pain was only bad because we dislike it, then we couldn’t say that "pain really matters." Instead, the badness of pain would just be a matter of taste. However, we don’t just say pain is bad because we dislike it. We also say pain is bad because of how it feels. Avoiding pain is a final end – A final end is a goal people recognize as being worthy of being sought after for its own sake. Money is not a final end because it is only valuable when used to do something else. Pleasure and pain-avoidance are final ends because they are taken t be worthy of being avoided for their own sake. We know that avoiding pain makes sense even when it doesn’t lead to anything else of value, so avoiding pain is a final end.3 If I want to take an aspirin, someone could ask, "Why did you do that?" I could answer, "I have a headache." This should be the end of the story. We understand that avoiding pain makes sense. It would be absurd for someone to continue to question me and say, "What difference does having a headache make? That’s not a good reason to take an aspirin!"4 Both realists and anti-realists can agree that pain is bad, and they can both agree that pain is a final end. Our desire to avoid pain is non-instrumental and such a desire is experienced as justified. (However, the ant-realist might argue that it is only taken to be justified because of human psychology.) If pain is a final end, then we understand (a) that pain is important and (b) it makes sense to say that we ought to avoid pain. Pain’s disvalue is irreducible. If the badness of pain was reducible to nonmoral properties, then we should be able to describe what "bad" means through a non-moral description. However, we currently have no way of understanding pain’s badness as being something else. We can’t describe pain’s badness in non-moral terms. If someone needs to know what " bad" means, they need to experience something bad. To say that some moral states are irreducible is just like saying that some mental states are irreducible. Pain itself can’t be described through a non-mental description. If we told people the mental states involved with pain, they would still not know what pain is because they need to know what it feels like. Someone could argue that "bad" means the same thing as something like "pain," and then we would find out that the badness of pain could be reduced to something else. However, pain and the badness of pain are conceptually separable. For example, I could find out that something else is bad other than pain. They could then reply that "bad" means the same thing as a disjunction of various other bad things, such as "pain or malicious intent." But people who disagree about what constitutes what is "bad" aren’t just arguing about the meaning of the word "bad." They are arguing about what has the property "bad."5 Additionally, the word "bad" would no longer have any importance. If "bad" just means "pain or malicious intent," then why care about it? Why ought I refrain from causing pain or having a malicious intent? It could be that we can find out that "bad" and "pain" are identical, but then "bad" might not be entirely reducible to "pain" (or a disjunction of bad things). We might still think that there are two legitimate descriptions at work. The "pain" description and the "bad" description. (Some people think water is H2O through an identity relation similar to this.) This sort of irreducible identity relation require us to deny that pain is "important." (If the identity theory did require us to deny that pain is "important," then we would have a good reason to reject such an identity theory.) I have given reason to think the word "bad" is irreducible, but I haven’t proven it. If someone could prove that pain isn’t important, and we can reduce pain to something else, then I will be proven wrong. I just don’t see any reason to agree with that position at this time. I discuss the badness of pain as irreducible in more detail in my essays "Objection to Moral Realism Part 1: Is/Ought Gap" and "Objections to Moral Realism Part 3: Argument from Queerness." The badness of pain is real. If the badness of pain is real, then everyone’s pain is bad. Pain isn’t bad just for me, but not for you. It states that we don’t all merely share a subjective preference in avoiding pain, but that pain’s badness is something worthy of being avoided and helping others avoid it. Why does it seem reasonable to believe pain’s badness to be real? There are at least four reasons. One, I experience that my pain hurts and I know that other people do as well. Two, it’s not just people’s subjective preferences in question. People hate pain because of how it feels. Three, people’s pain exists (and if pain exists, then the badness of the pain exists). Four, I see no reason to deny that the badness of other people’s pain exists. I will discuss this final consideration in more detail when I discuss anti-realist objections. We have no good reason to deny that pain is bad. We experience that pain is bad for ourselves, and other people experience that pain is bad for themselves as well. Even though pain is subjective, there is nothing delusional about our belief that pain is bad. It’s not just a personal like or a dislike. We don’t just agree to treat other people’s pain as important as part of a social contract. The belief that the badness of pain is real and "pain is bad no matter who experiences it" will be rejected by anti-realists. If I gave food to the hungry, it would be absurd to question why I did it. Imagine someone who disagrees with my action and says, "Other people’s pain is irrelevant. You should only try to avoid pain for yourself, so feeding the hungry is stupid." This person’s position is counterintuitive to the point of absurdity. We have all accepted that other people’s pain matters. It makes sense to feed the hungry, it makes sense to give to charity, and it makes sense to give someone an aspirin who has a headache. We don’t have to benefit from helping other people. To deny that "pain is bad no matter who experiences it" isn’t a position that many people can find acceptable. (I suppose some sociopaths might find it acceptable.) If pain is bad, important, irreducible, and real, then pain has intrinsic disvalue. I want to suggest this premise to be justified in virtue of the very meaning of intrinsic value. If pain is bad, important (worthy of being desired), irreducible, and real; then I think we have already established that pain has intrinsic disvalue by definition. We have established moral facts that could give us what we ought to do, such as, "We ought to avoid pain." Such an ought judgment is not merely based on my personal belief or desire; it’s based on the fact that pain is important no matter who experiences it. Conclusion: Pain has intrinsic disvalue If my premises are true, then the conclusion follows. I have given reason for accepting the premises, so we have some reason for accepting the conclusion, and the conclusion entails the truth of moral realism. I will take all of my premises to be sufficiently justified, but I will consider why someone might decide that the badness of pain "isn’t real." An anti-realist could attempt to deny that "pain is bad no matter who experiences it." The strongest evidence that badness is real is the fact that denying it seems to require unjustified philosophical commitments. I will attempt to show that the alternatives are less justified in the next section.
	63	+
	64	+Second, physicalism is true- moral facts must be physical
	65	+
	66	+====PAPINEAU 09====
	67	+
	68	+====Papineau, David, "Naturalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/naturalism/.====
	69	+In the middle of the nineteenth century the conservation of kinetic plus potential energy came to be accepted as a basic principle of physics (Elkana 1974). In itself this does not rule out distinct mental or vital forces, for there is no reason why such forces should not be ‘conservative’, operating in such a way as to compensate losses of kinetic energy by gains in potential energy and vice versa. (The term ‘nervous energy’ is a relic of the widespread late nineteenth-century assumption that mental processes store up a species of potential energy that is then released in action.) However, the conservation of energy does imply~~s~~ that any such special forces must be governed by strict deterministic laws: if mental or vital forces arose spontaneously, then there would be nothing to ensure that they never led to energy increases. During the course of the twentieth century received scientific opinion became even more restrictive about possible causes of physical effects, and came to reject sui generis mental or vital causes, even of a law-governed and predictable kind. Detailed physiological research, especially into nerve cells, gave no indication of any physical effects that cannot be explained ~~by~~ in terms of basic physical forces that also occur outside living bodies. By the middle of the twentieth century, belief in sui generis mental or vital forces had become a minority view. This led to the widespread acceptance of the doctrine now known as the ‘causal closure’ or the ‘causal completeness’ of the physical realm, according to which all physical effects can be accounted for by basic physical causes (where ‘physical’ can be understood as referring to some list of fundamental forces) non-physical causes of physical effects. As a result, the default philosophical view was a non-naturalist interactive pluralism which recognized a wide range of such non-physical influences, including spontaneous mental influences (or ‘determinations of the soul’ as they would then have been called). The nineteenth-century discovery of the conservation of energy continued to allow that sui generis non-physical forces can interact with the physical world, but required that they be governed by strict force laws. This gave rise to an initial wave of naturalist doctrines around the beginning of the twentieth century. Sui generis mental forces were still widely accepted, but an extensive philosophical debate about the significance of the conservation of energy led to a widespread recognition that any such mental forces would need to be law-governed and thus amenable to scientific investigation along with more familiar physical forces.~~5~~ By the middle of the twentieth century, the acceptance of the casual closure of the physical realm led to even stronger naturalist views. The causal closure thesis implies that any mental and biological causes must themselves be physically constituted, if they are to produce physical effects. It thus gives rise to a particularly strong form of ontological naturalism, namely the physicalist doctrine that any state that has physical effects must itself be physical. From the 1950s onwards, philosophers began to formulate arguments for ontological physicalism. Some of these arguments appealed explicitly to the causal closure of the physical realm (Feigl 1958, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). In other cases, the reliance on causal closure lay below the surface. However, it is not hard to see that even in these latter cases the causal closure thesis played a crucial role. Thus, for example, consider J.J.C. Smart's (1958) thought that we should identify mental states with brain states, for otherwise those mental states would be "nomological danglers" which play no role in the explanation of behaviour. Or take David Lewis's (1966) and David Armstrong's (1968) argument that, since mental states are picked out by their causal roles, and since we know that physical states play these roles, mental states must be identical with those physical states. Again, consider Donald Davidson's (1970) argument that, since the only laws governing behaviour are those connecting behaviour with physical antecedents, mental events can only be causes of behaviour if they are identical with those physical antecedents. At first sight, it may not be obvious that these arguments require the causal closure thesis. But a moment's thought will show that none of these arguments would remain cogent if the closure thesis were not true, and that some physical effects (the movement of matter in arms, perhaps, or the firings of the motor neurones which instigate those movements) were not determined by prior physical causes at all, but by sui generis mental causes. Sometimes it is suggested that the indeterminism of modern quantum mechanics creates room for sui generis non-physical causes to influence the physical world. However, even if quantum mechanics implies that some physical effects are themselves undetermined, it provides no reason to doubt a quantum version of the causal closure thesis, to the effect that the chances of those effects are fully fixed by prior physical circumstances. And this alone is enough to rule out sui generis non-physical causes. For such sui generis causes, if they are to be genuinely efficiacious, must presumably make an independent difference to the chances of physical effects, and this in itself would be inconsistent with the quantum causal closure claim that such chances are already fixed by prior physical circumstances. Once more, it seems that anything that makes a difference to the physical realm must itself be physical. Even if it is agreed that anything with physical effects must in some sense be physical, there is plenty of room to debate exactly what ontologically naturalist doctrines follow. The causal closure thesis says that (the chance of) every physical effect is fixed by a fully physical prior history. So, to avoid an unacceptable proliferation of causes, any prima facie non-physical cause of a physical effect will need to be included in that physical history. But what exactly does this require? The contemporary literature offers a wide range of answers to this question. In part the issue hinges on the ontological status of causes. Some philosophers think of causes as particular events, considered in abstraction from any properties they may possess (Davidson 1980). Given this view of causation, a mental or other apparently non-physical cause will be the same as some physical cause as long as it is constituted by the same particular (or ‘token’) event. For example, a given feeling and a given brain event will count as the same cause as long as they are constituted by the same token event. However, it is widely agreed that this kind of ‘token identity’ on its own fails to ensure that prima facie non-physical causes can make any real difference to physical effects. To see why, note that token identity is a very weak doctrine: it does not imply any relationship at all between the properties involved in the physical and non-physical cause; it is enough that the same particular entity should possess both these properties. Compare the way in which an apple's shape and colour are both possessed by the same particular thing, namely that apple. It seems wrong to conclude on this account that the apple's colour causes what its shape causes. Similarly, it seems unwarranted to conclude that someone's feelings cause what that person's neuronal discharges cause, simply on the grounds that these are both aspects of the same particular event. This could be true, and yet the mental property of the event could be entirely irrelevant to any subsequent physical effects. Token identity on its own thus seems to leave it open that the mental and other prima facie non-physical properties are ‘epiphenomenal’, exerting no real influence on effects that are already fixed by physical processes (Honderich 1982, Yalowitz 2006 Section 6, Robb and Heil 2005 Section 5). These considerations argue that causation depends on properties as well as particulars. There are various accounts of causation that respect this requirement, the differences between which do not matter for present purposes. The important point is that, if mental and other prima facie non-physical causes are to be equated with physical causes, ~~any~~ non-physical properties must somehow be constituted by physical properties. If your anger is to cause what your brain state causes, the property of being angry cannot be ontologically independent of the relevant brain properties. So much is agreed by nearly all contemporary naturalists. At this point, however, consensus ends. One school holds that epiphenomenalism can only be avoided by type-identity, the strict identity of the relevant prima facie non-physical properties with physical properties. On the other side stand ‘non-reductive’ physicalists, who hold that the causal efficacy of non-physical properties will be respected as long as they are ‘realized by’ physical properties, even if they are not reductively identified with them. Type-identity is the most obvious way to ensure that non-physical and physical causes coincide: if exactly the same particulars and properties comprise a non-physical and a physical cause, the two causes will certainly themselves be fully identical. Still, type-identity is a very strong doctrine. Type identity about thoughts, for example, would imply that the property of thinking about the square root of two is identical with some physical property. And this seems highly implausible. Even if all human beings with this thought must be distinguished by some common physical property of their brains—which itself seems highly unlikely—there remains the argument that other life-forms, or intelligent androids, will also be able to think about the square root of two, even though their brains may share no significant physical properties with ours (cf. Bickle 2006). This ‘variable realization’ argument has led many philosophers to seek an alternative way of reconciling the efficacy of non-physical causes with the causal closure thesis, one which does not require the strict identity of non-physical and physical properties. The general idea of this ‘non-reductive physicalism’ is to allow that a given non-physical property can be ‘realized’ by different physical properties in different cases. There are various ways of filling out this idea. A common feature is the requirement that non-physical properties should metaphysically supervene on physical properties, in the sense that any two beings who share all physical properties will necessarily share the same non-physical properties, even though the physical properties which so realize the non-physical ones can be different in different beings. This arguably ensures that nothing more is required for any specific instantiation of a non-physical property than its physical realization—even God could not have created your brain states without thereby creating your feelings—yet avoids any reductive identification of non-physical properties with physical ones. (This is a rough sketch of the supervenience formulation of physicalism. For more see Stoljar 2001 Sections 2 and 3.) Some philosophers object that non-reductive physicalism does not in fact satisfy the original motivation for physicalism, since it fails to reconcile the efficacy of non-physical causes with the causal closure thesis (Kim 1993. Robb and Heil 2005 Section 6). According to non-reductive physicalism, prima facie non-physical properties are not type-identical with any strictly physical properties, even though they supervene on them. However, if causes are in some way property-involving, this then seems to imply that any prima facie non-physical cause will be distinct from any physical cause. Opponents of non-reductive physicalism object that this gives us an unacceptable proliferation of causes for the physical effects of non-physical causes—both the physical cause implied by the causal closure thesis and the distinct non-physical cause. In response, advocates of non-reductive physicalism respond that there is nothing wrong with such an apparent duplication of causes if it is also specified that the latter metaphysically supervene on the former. The issue here hinges on the acceptability of different kinds of overdetermination (Bennett 2003). All can agree that it would be absurd if the physical effects of non-physical causes always had two completely independent causes. This much was assumed by the original causal argument for physicalism, which reasoned that no sui generis non-physical state of affairs can cause some effect that already has a full physical cause. However, even if ‘strong overdetermination’ by two ontologically independent causes is so ruled out, this does not necessarily preclude ‘weak overdetermination’ by both a physical cause and a metaphysically supervenient non-physical cause. Advocates of non-reductive physicalism argue that this kind of overdetermination is benign, on the grounds that the two causes are not ontologically distinct—the non-physical cause isn't genuinely additional to the physical cause (nothing more is needed for your feelings than your brain states). There is room to query whether non-reductive physicalism amounts to a substantial form of naturalism. After all, the requirement that some category of properties metaphysically supervenes on physical properties is not a strong one. A very wide range of properties would seem intuitively to satisfy this requirement, including moral and aesthetic properties, along with any mental, biological, and social properties. (Can two physically identical things be different with respect to wickedness or beauty?) Supervenience on the physical realm is thus a far weaker requirement than that some property should enter into natural laws, say, or be analysable by the methods of the natural sciences. Indeed some philosophers are explicitly anti-naturalist about categories that they allow to supervene on the physical—we need only think of G.E. Moore on moral properties, or Donald Davidson and his followers on mental properties (Moore 1903, Davidson 1980). In response, those of naturalist sympathies are likely to point out that any viable response to the argument from causal closure will require more than metaphysical supervenience alone (Horgan 1993, Wilson 1999). Supervenience is at least necessary, if non-reductive physicalists are to avoid the absurdity of strong overdetermination. But something more than mere supervenience is arguably needed if non-reductive physicalists are to make good their claim that non-physical states cause the physical effects that their realizers cause. Metaphysical supervenience alone does not ensure this. (Suppose ricketiness, in a car, is defined as the property of having some loose part. Then ricketiness will supervene on physical properties. In a given car, it may be realized by a disconnected wire between ignition and starter motor. This disconnected wire will cause this car not to start. But it doesn't follow that this car's then not starting will be caused by its property of ricketiness. Most rickety cars start perfectly well.) So it looks as if the causal closure argument requires not only that non-physical properties metaphysically supervene on physical properties, but that they be natural in some stronger sense, so as to qualify as causes of those properties' effects. It is a much-discussed issue how this demand can be satisfied. Some philosophers seek to meet it by offering a further account of the nature of the relevant non-physical properties, for example, that they are second-order role properties whose presence is constituted by some first-order property with a specified causal role (Levin 2004). Others suggest that the crucial feature is how these properties feature in certain laws (Fodor 1974) or alternatively the degree of their explanatory relevance to physical effects (Yablo 1992). And reductive physicalists will insist that the demand can only be met by type-identifying prima-facie non-physical properties with physical properties after all.~~6~~ There is no agreed view on the requirements for prima facie non-physical properties to have physical effects. This difficult issue hinges, inter alia, on the nature of the causal relation itself, and it would take us too far afield to pursue it further here. For the purpose of this entry, we need only note that the causal closure argument seems to require that properties with physical effects must be ‘natural’ in some sense that is stronger than metaphysical supervenience on physical properties. Beyond that, we can leave it open exactly what this extra strength requires. Some philosophers hold that mental states escape the causal argument, on the grounds that mental states cause actions rather than any physical effects. Actions are not part of the subject matter of the physical sciences, and so a fortiori not the kinds of effects guaranteed to have physical causes by any casual closure thesis. So there is no reason, according to this line of thought, to suppose that the status of mental states as causes of actions is threatened by physics, nor therefore any reason to think that mental states must in some sense be realized by physical states (Hornsby 1997, Sturgeon 1998). The obvious problem with this line of argument is that actions aren't the only effects of mental states. On occasion mental states also cause unequivocally physical effects. Fast Eddie Felsen's desire to move a pool ball in a certain direction will characteristically have just that effect. And now the causal closure argument bites once more. The snooker ball's motion has a purely physical cause, by the causal closure thesis. This will pre-empt Fast Eddie's desire as a cause of that motion, unless that desire is in some sense physically realized (Balog 1999, Witmer 2000). Other philosophers have a different reason for saying that mental states, or more particularly conscious mental states, don't have physical effects. They think that there are strong independent arguments to show that conscious states can't possibly supervene metaphysically on physical states. Putting this together with the closure claim that physical effects always have physical causes, and abjuring the idea that the physical effects of conscious causes are strongly overdetermined by both a physical cause and an ontologically independent conscious cause, they conclude that conscious states must be ‘epiphenomenal’, lacking any power to causally influence the physical realm (Jackson 1981; 1985. See also Chalmers 1995).~~7~~ The rejection of physicalism about conscious properties certainly has the backing of intuition. (Don't zombies—beings who are physically exactly like humans but have no conscious life—seem intuitively possible?) However, whether this intuition can be parlayed into a sound argument is a highly controversial issue, and one that lies beyond the scope of this entry. A majority of contemporary philosophers probably hold that physicalism can resist these arguments. But a significant minority take the other side.~~8~~ If the majority are right, and physicalism about conscious states is not ruled out by independent arguments, then physicalism seems clearly preferable to epiphenomenalism. In itself, epiphenomenalism is not an attractive position. It requires us to suppose that conscious states, even though they are caused by processes in the physical world, have no effects on that world. This is a very odd kind of causal structure. Nature displays no other examples of such one-way causal intercourse between realms. By contrast, a physicalist naturalism about conscious states will integrate~~s~~ the mental realm with the causal unfolding of the spatiotemporal world in an entirely familiar way. Given this, general principles of theory choice would seem to argue strongly for physicalism over epiphenomenalism.~~9~~ If we focus on this last point, we may start wondering why the causal closure thesis is so important. If general principles of theory choice can justify physicalism, why bring in all the complications associated with causal closure? The answer is that causal closure is needed to rule out interactionist dualism. General principles of theory choice may dismiss epiphenomenalism in favour of physicalism, but they do not similarly discredit interactionist dualism. As the brief historical sketch earlier will have made clear, interactionist dualism offers a perfectly straightforward theoretical option requiring no commitment to any bizarre causal structures. Certainly the historical norm has been to regard it as the default account of the causal role of the mental realm.~~10~~ Given this, arguments from theoretical simplicity cut no ice against interactionist dualism. Rather, the case against interactionist dualism hinges crucially on the empirical thesis that all physical effects already have physical causes. It is specifically this claim that makes it difficult to see how dualist states can make a causal difference to the physical world. It is sometimes suggested that physicalism about the mind can be vindicated by an ‘inference to the best explanation’. The thought here is that there are many well-established synchronic correlations between mental states and brain states, and that physicalism is a ‘better explanation’ of these correlations than epiphenomenalism (Hill 1991, Hill and McLaughlin 1999). From the perspective outlined here, this starts the argument in the middle rather than the beginning, by simply assuming the relevant mind-brain correlations. This assumption of pervasive synchronic mind-brain correlations is only plausible if interactionist dualism has already been ruled out. After all, if we believed interactionist dualism, then we wouldn't think dualist mental states needed any help from synchronic neural correlates to produce physical effects. And it is implausible to suppose that we have direct empirical evidence, prior to the rejection of interactive dualism, for pervasive mind-brain correlations, given the paucity of any explicit examples of well-established neural correlates for specific mental states. Rather our rationale for believing in such correlations must be that the causal closure of the physical realm eliminates interactive dualism, whence we infer that mental states can only systematically precede physical effects if they are correlated with the physical causes of those effects. G.E. Moore's famous ‘open question’ argument is designed to show that moral facts cannot possibly be identical to natural facts. Suppose the natural properties of some situation are completely specified. It will always remain an open question, argued Moore, whether that situation is morally good or bad. (Moore 1903.) Moore took this argument to show that moral facts comprise a distinct species of non-natural fact. However, any such non-naturalist view of morality faces immediate difficulties, deriving ultimately from the kind of causal closure thesis discussed above. If all physical effects are due to a limited range of natural causes, and if moral facts lie outside this range, then it follow that moral facts can never make any difference to what happens in the physical world (Harman, 1986). At first sight this may seem tolerable (perhaps moral facts indeed don't have any physical effects). But it has very awkward epistemological consequences. For beings like us, knowledge of the spatiotemporal world is mediated by physical processes involving our sense organs and cognitive systems. If moral facts cannot influence the physical world, then it is hard to see how we can~~‘t~~ have any knowledge of them.
	70	+
	71	+
	72	+Understanding the intrincacies of politics, the state, and the military is a PREREQUISITE to addressing oppression – means our ACADEMIC theorizing is methodologically valuable and a PREREQUISITE to the alternative
	73	+Bryant 12 – (9/15, Levi, professor of Philosophy at Collin College and Chair of the Critical Philosophy program at the New Centre for Research and Practice, "War Machines and Military Logistics: Some Cards on the Table," https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/war-machines-and-military-logistics-some-cards-on-the-table/)
	74	+We need answers to these questions to intervene effectively. We can call them questions of "military logistics". We are, after all, constructing war machines to combat these intolerable conditions. Military logistics asks two questions: first, it asks what things the opposing force, the opposing war machine captured by the state apparatus, relies on in order to deploy its war machine: supply lines, communications networks, people willing to fight, propaganda or ideology, people believing in the cause, etc. Military logistics maps all of these things. Second, military logistics asks how to best deploy its own resources in fighting that state war machine. In what way should we deploy our war machine to defeat war machines like racism, sexism, capitalism, neoliberalism, etc? What are the things upon which these state based war machines are based, what are the privileged nodes within these state based war machines that allows them to function? These nodes are the things upon which we want our nomadic war machines to intervene. If we are to be effective in producing change we better know what the supply lines are so that we might make them our target. What I’ve heard in these discussions is a complete indifference to military logistics. It’s as if people like to wave their hands and say "this is horrible and unjust!" and believe that hand waving is a politically efficacious act. Yeah, you’re right, it is horrible but saying so doesn’t go very far and changing it. It’s also as if people are horrified when anyone discusses anything besides how horribly unjust everything is. Confronted with an analysis why the social functions in the horrible way, the next response is to say "you’re justifying that system and saying it’s a-okay!" This misses the point that the entire point is to map the "supply lines" of the opposing war machine so you can strategically intervene in them to destroy them and create alternative forms of life. You see, we already took for granted your analysis of how horrible things are. You’re preaching to the choir. We wanted to get to work determining how to change that and believed for that we needed good maps of the opposing state based war machine so we can decide how to intervene. We then look at your actual practices and see that your sole strategy seems to be ideological critique or debunking. Your idea seems to be that if you just prove that other people’s beliefs are incoherent, they’ll change and things will be different. But we’ve noticed a couple things about your strategy: 1) there have been a number of bang-on critiques of state based war machines, without things changing too much, and 2) we’ve noticed that we might even persuade others that labor under these ideologies that their position is incoherent, yet they still adhere to it as if the grounds of their ideology didn’t matter much. This leads us to suspect that there are other causal factors that undergird these social assemblages and cause them to endure is they do. We thought to ourselves, there are two reasons that an ideological critique can be successful and still fail to produce change: a) the problem can be one of "distribution". The critique is right but fails to reach the people who need to hear it and even if they did receive the message they couldn’t receive it because it’s expressed in the foreign language of "academese" which they’ve never been substantially exposed to (academics seem to enjoy only speaking to other academics even as they say their aim is to change the world). Or b) there are other causal factors involved in why social worlds take the form they do that are not of the discursive, propositional, or semiotic order. My view is that it is a combination of both. I don’t deny that ideology is one component of why societies take the form they do and why people tolerate intolerable conditions. I merely deny that this is the only causal factor. I don’t reject your political aims, but merely wonder how to get there. Meanwhile, you guys behave like a war machine that believes it’s sufficient to drop pamphlets out of an airplane debunking the ideological reasons that persuade the opposing force’s soldiers to fight this war on behalf of the state apparatus, forgetting supply lines, that there are other soldiers behind them with guns to their back, that they have obligations to their fellows, that they have families to feed or debt to pay off, etc. When I point out these other things it’s not to reject your political aims, but to say that perhaps these are also good things to intervene in if we wish to change the world. In other words, I’m objecting to your tendency to use a hammer to solve all problems and to see all things as a nail (discursive problems), ignoring the role that material nonhuman entities play in the form that social assemblages take. This is the basic idea behind what I’ve called "terraism". Terraism has three components: 1) "Cartography" or the mapping of assemblages to understand why they take the form they take and why they endure. This includes the mapping of both semiotic and material components of social assemblages. 2) "Deconstruction" Deconstruction is a practice. It includes both traditional modes of discursive deconstruction (Derridean deconstruction, post-structuralist feminist critique, Foucaultian genealogy, Cultural Marxist critique, etc), but also far more literal deconstruction in the sense of intervening in material or thingly orders upon which social assemblages are reliant. It is not simply beliefs, signs, and ideologies that cause oppressive social orders to endure or persist, but also material arrangements upon which people depend to live as they do. Part of changing a social order thus necessarily involves intervening in those material networks to undermine their ability to maintain their relations or feedback mechanisms that allow them to perpetuate certain dependencies for people. Finally, 3) there is "Terraformation". Terraformation is the hardest thing of all, as it requires the activist to be something more than a critic, something more than someone who simply denounces how bad things are, someone more than someone who simply sneers, producing instead other material and semiotic arrangements rendering new forms of life and social relation possible. Terraformation consists in building alternative forms of life. None of this, however, is possible without good mapping of the terrain so as to know what to deconstruct and what resources are available for building new worlds. Sure, I care about ontology for political reasons because I believe this world sucks and is profoundly unjust. But rather than waving my hands and cursing because of how unjust and horrible it is so as to feel superior to all those about me who don’t agree, rather than playing the part of the beautiful soul who refuses to get his hands dirty, I think we need good maps so we can blow up the right bridges, power lines, and communications networks, and so we can engage in effective terraformation
	75	+
	76	+====Extinction scenarios are key to genuine resistance to power- the state is inevitable but images of apocalypse are a useful tool for resistance ====
	77	+Schatz 12 **~~JL, Binghamton U, "The Importance of Apocalypse: The Value of End-­‐Of-­‐ The-­‐World Politics While Advancing Ecocriticism," The Journal of Ecocriticism: Vol 4, No 2 (2012)~~ KB**
	78	+Any hesitancy to deploy images of apocalypse out of the risk of acting in a biopolitical manner ignores how any particular metaphor—apocalyptic or not—always risks getting co‐opted. It does not excuse inaction. Clearly hegemonic forces have already assumed control of determining environmental practices when one looks at the debates surrounding off—‐shore drilling, climate change, and biodiversity within the halls of Congress. "As this ideological quagmire worsens, urgent problems … will go unsolved … only to fester more ominously into the future. … ~~E~~cological crisis … cannot be understood outside the larger social and global context … of internationalized markets, finance, and communications" (Boggs 774). If it weren’t for people such as Watson connecting things like whaling to the end of the world it wouldn’t get the needed coverage to enter into public discourse. It takes big news to make headlines and hold attention spans in the electronic age. Sometimes it even takes a reality TV show on Animal Planet. As Luke reminds us, "Those who dominate the world exploit their positions to their advantage by defining how the world is known. Unless they also face resistance, questioning, and challenge from those who are dominated, they certainly will remain the dominant forces" (2003: 413). Merely sitting back and theorizing over metaphorical deployments does a grave injustice to the gains activists are making on the ground. It also allows hegemonic institutions to continually define the debate over the environment by framing out any atftempt for significant change, whether it be radical or reformist. Only by jumping on every opportunity for resistance can ecocriticism have the hopes of combatting the current ecological reality. This means we must recognize that we cannot fully escape the master’s house since the surrounding environment always shapes any form of resistance. Therefore, we ought to act even if we may get co—opted. As Foucault himself reminds us, "instead of radial ruptures more often one is dealing with mobile and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in a society that shift about~~.~~ … And it is doubtless the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible, somewhat similar to the way in which the state relies on the institutional integration of power relationships. It is in this sphere of force relations that we must try to analyze the mechanisms of power" (96—‐97). Here Foucault "asks us to think about resistance differently, as not anterior to power, but a component of it. If we take seriously these notions on the exercise and circulation of power, then we … open … up the field of possibility to talk about particular kinds of environmentalism" (Rutherford 296). This is not to say that all actions are resistant. Rather, the revolutionary actions that are truly resistant oftentimes appear mundane since it is more about altering the intelligibility that frames discussions around the environment than any specific policy change. Again, this is why people like Watson use one issue as a jumping off point to talk about wider politics of ecological awareness. Campaigns that look to the government or a single policy but for a moment, and then go on to challenge hegemonic interactions with the environment through other tactics, allows us to codify strategic points of resistance in numerous places at once. Again, this does not mean we must agree with every tactic. It does mean that even failed attempts are meaningful. For example, while PETA’s ad campaigns have drawn criticism for comparing factory farms to the Holocaust, and featuring naked women who’d rather go naked than wear fur, their importance extends beyond the ads alone6. By bringing the issues to the forefront they draw upon known metaphors and reframe the way people talk about animals despite their potentially anti—‐Semitic and misogynist underpinnings. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s theorization of the multitude serves as an excellent illustration of how utilizing the power of the master’s biopolitical tools can become powerful enough to deconstruct its house despite the risk of co—‐optation or backlash. For them, the multitude is defined by the growing global force of people around the world who are linked together by their common struggles without being formally organized in a hierarchal way. While Hardt and Negri mostly talk about the multitude in relation to global capitalism, their understanding of the commons and analysis of resistance is useful for any ecocritic. They explain, ~~T~~he multitude has matured to such an extent that it is becoming able, through its networks of communication and cooperation … ~~and~~ its production of the common, to sustain an alternative democratic society on its own. … Revolutionary politics must grasp, in the movement of the multitudes and through the accumulation of common and cooperative decisions, the moment of rupture … that can create a new world. In the face of the destructive state of exception of biopower, then, there is also a constituent state of exception of democratic biopolitics~~,~~ … creating … a new constitutive temporality. (357) Once one understands the world as interconnected—instead of constructed by different nation—‐states and single environments—conditions in one area of the globe couldn’t be conceptually severed from any other. In short, we’d all have a stake in the global commons. Ecocritics can then utilize biopolitics to shape discourse and fight against governmental biopower by waking people up to the pressing need to inaugurate a new future for there to be any future. Influencing other people through argument and end—‐of—‐the—‐world tactics is not the same biopower of the state so long as it doesn’t singularize itself but for temporary moments. Therefore, "it is not unreasonable to hope that in a biopolitical future (after the defeat of biopower) war will no longer be I’lpossible, and the intensity of the cooperation and communication among singularities … will destroy its ~~very~~ possibility" (Hardt and Negri 347). In The context of capitalism, when wealth fails to trickle down it would be seen as a problem for the top since it would stand testament to their failure to equitably distribute wealth. In the context of environmentalism, not—‐in—‐my—‐backyard reasoning that displaces ecological destruction elsewhere would be exposed for the failure that it is. There is no backyard that is not one’s own. Ultimately, images of planetary doom demonstrate how we are all interconnected and in doing so inaugurate a new world where multitudes, and not governments, guide the fate of the planet.

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2016-09-27 22:04:59.655

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Nick Smith, Tom Mayes, Salim Damerdji

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Lake Highland Prep MC

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Doubles

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Lexington Weiler Aff

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+SEPTOCT- 1AC- Japan

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Valley