Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[4]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[4]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[4]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-17 19:36:21.715
	1	+2016-09-17 19:36:21.0

Caselist.CitesClass[4]

Cites

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	1	+Link
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	3	+Nuclear power is responsible for a large portion of the world’s energy. NPR ‘11
	4	+NPR “A Nuclear-Powered World.” May 16, 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/05/16/136288669/a-nuclear-powered-world LG
	5	+Nuclear power plants generate 14 percent of the world's electricity, but some countries are more dependent on this power source than others. France relies on nuclear for 75.2 percent of its electricity; the United States, about 20 percent. And while China gets just 1.9 percent of their electricity from nuclear (the lowest proportion of any nuclear country) it plans to boost the number of nuclear power plants in operation by over 1,000 percent by 2020.
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	7	+Many countries are reliant upon nuclear power. WNA ’15
	8	+World Nuclear Association, February 2015, Nuclear Power in the World Today, http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Nuclear-Power-in-the-World-Today/ LG
	9	+Sixteen countries depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity. France gets around three-quarters of its power from nuclear energy, while Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ukraine get one-third or more. South Korea and Bulgaria normally get more than 30 of their power from nuclear energy, while in the USA, UK, Spain, Romania and Russia almost one-fifth is from nuclear. Japan is used to relying on nuclear power for more than one-quarter of its electricity and is expected to return to that level. Among countries which do not host nuclear power plants, Italy and Denmark get almost 10 of their power from nuclear.
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	11	+And, other resources can’t make up for the loss in energy that would occur if we ban nuclear production. Our Energy Policy Organization ‘16
	12	+Our Energy Policy Organization, July 1-6, 2016, Nuclear Energy: Overview, http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NEO.pdf DOA: 8-10-16 LG
	13	+For those who hope that renewables can quickly fill the gap left by closed nuclear energy facilities, NEI points out that wind and solar lack the scale and reliability of nuclear power plants that usually run 24/7 except when they are in refueling outages “Renewable sources are intermittent and do not have the same value to the grid as dispatchable baseload resources like nuclear plants. And renewables do not have the scale necessary to replace existing nuclear plants,” NEI say NEI’s comments also point to analysis by the independent market monitor for the New England and New York independent system operators (ISO) demonstrating that preserving existing nuclear power plants has a lower carbon abatement cost than renewables sources like wind and solar. “Looking to the future, the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook expects nuclear energy to produce 789 billion kWh in 2040. By then, EIA forecasts wind and solar will produce 818 billion kWh. So it will take the next 25 years for wind and solar to catch up to where nuclear energy is today,” NEI says.
	14	+Impact
	15	+A shift away from nuclear power impacts the economy.
	16	+Edward D. Kee, CEO of Nuclear Economics Consulting and expert in nuclear economics August 4, 2016, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Market failure” and nuclear power, http://thebulletin.org/E2809Cmarket-failureE2809D-and-nuclear-power9703 LG
	17	+∂ Recent closures of nuclear power plants hit the bottom line of those who can afford it least: households and businesses. After the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating station in 2013, California consumers paid $350 million more for electricity the following year. ∂ “Sooner or later, that nuclear capacity must be replaced and, when it is replaced with new gas- red combined cycle capacity, consumers will pay more on a levelized lifecycle cost basis,” NEI warns. ∂ Shutting down nuclear power plants also results in higher emissions. This is because (zero-emissions) nuclear power plants are usually replaced with natural gas plants which produce significant amounts of carbon emissions. In California, carbon emissions rose 9 million tons per year after the closure of San Onofre. In New England, emissions rose five percent after the closure of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in 2014. ∂ NEI emphasizes that the reasons for many of these recent premature closures are short-term price signals that are unsustainable, not long-term market fundamentals.
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	19	+An energy crisis will eviscerate the American economy. History Proves.
	20	+Bezdek and Wendling Federal consultant for energy economics, economist specializing in environmental economics, Energy Consultants at Management Information Services. “The Case Against Gas Dependence,” Public Utilities Fortnightly. April 2004. http://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2004/04/case-against-gas-dependence?page=02C3andi=/4363.cfm LG
	21	+The energy crises of the 1970s demonstrated the harmful impact on jobs and the economy that natural gas shortages can have. The U.S. economy suffered through recessions, widespread unemployment, inflation, and record-high interest rates. In the winter of 1975-76, unemployment resulting from gas curtailments in hard-hit regions ran as high as 100,000 for periods lasting from 20 to 90 days. 14 These effects were especially serious for the poor and for the nation's minorities. 15 More recently, the winter of 2002-2003 brought higher natural gas bills to many consumers, and low-income families were especially hard hit.∂ As Paul Cicio, director of the Industrial Energy Consumers Association, notes: "The economic welfare of our economy, the competitiveness of our industries, the affordability of natural gas for all consumers are at risk. We cannot afford another natural gas crisis. Every U.S. energy crisis in the last 30 years has been followed by an economic recession, and the 2000-2001 price spike was no exception. The energy crisis devastated industrial consumers. When natural gas prices reached $4/MMBtu, manufacturing began to reduce production and shift production to locations outside the U.S. At even higher prices, they shut down production, laying off employees, and damaging communities. We have arrived at this price threshold." 16∂ Moreover, two articles last year in Public Utilities Fortnightly that addressed natural gas supply, demand, and price issues seemed to confuse the solution with the problem. Robert Linden noted that high gas prices would lead to "demand destruction" in the industrial sector, which would, in part, counterbalance increasing power sector demand. 17 He further stated, "This price-induced demand destruction can be added to the other causes of reduced gas demand, including the closure of industrial facilities using natural gas as a feedstock." 18 Similarly, John Herbert, after noting that high natural gas prices have forced U.S. fertilizer plants to shut down, stated, "As fertilizer and other chemical plants continue to shut down, this will reduce demand for natural gas and increase overall supplies." 19∂Both authors are correct in pointing out that high natural gas prices will tend to reduce industrial natural gas demand as industrial plants shut down, and that this will temper future natural gas price increases. However, the "destruction" of the nation's industrial sector is an extremely serious problem for the United States; it is not a "solution" to the natural-gas pricing problem. We should be very concerned with the strongly negative impact high natural gas prices are having on the U.S. industrial sector and the potential implications of this for the U.S. economy. ∂Despite all of the hype in recent years about the new economy, the information economy, the service economy, etc., manufacturing is, by far, the most critical sector of the U.S. economy, and it creates the broad foundation upon which the rest of the economy grows. Manufacturing drives the rest of the economy, provides a disproportionate share of the nation's tax base, generates innovation, and disseminates new technology throughout the economy. The average manufacturing job creates 4.2 jobs directly and indirectly throughout the economy, whereas the average service and retail job generates about one other job, directly and indirectly. ∂The manufacturing sector uses 40 percent of the natural gas consumed in the United States, and virtually every manufacturing industry is heavily dependent on natural gas as a fuel, feedstock, and, increasingly, as a source of electricity generation. Price spikes in the cost of natural gas and electricity in the fall of 2000 precipitated the current manufacturing recession. During the past three years, this sector has been severely affected, losing more than 2.5 million jobs. n21 The current manufacturing recovery is slower than the first year of any recovery in 40 years. n22 Manufacturing is suffering from intense global competition and cannot pass though increased energy costs via product price increases. ∂Reliance on low-cost natural gas has been an often-unrecognized factor in the U.S. manufacturing sector's global competitiveness, and an ample supply of reasonably priced natural gas is critical to its competitiveness. This sector is bearing the brunt of the energy impacts of the natural gas crisis and is suffering from a triple whammy: High natural gas prices are causing industrial electricity prices to increase, the cost of natural gas as a feedstock and fuel is greatly increasing manufacturing costs, and industrial operations are the first to be cut off from natural gas supplies when winter emergencies occur. The natural gas crisis has become a matter of exporting profits and jobs to countries with cheaper natural gas. ∂Thus, the impact of high natural gas prices is, indeed, to destroy the U.S. industrial sector. However, instead of viewing this as an effect that will serve to moderate future natural gas price increases, this must be viewed as a very serious problem resulting from high natural gas prices. To the extent natural gas demand and prices are being driven by the increasing use of gas for electric power generation, the solution should be to substitute other fuels, such as nuclear and coal in this sector, and not to accept demand destruction in the nation's industrial sector.
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	23	+Job loss and financial hardship exacts a tremendous human cost. Dao and Loungani 2010 :
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	25	+The human and social costs of unemployment are more far-reaching than the immediate temporary loss of income. They include loss of lifetime earnings, loss of human capital, worker discouragement, adverse health outcomes, and loss of social cohesion. Moreover, parents’ unemployment can even affect the health and education outcomes of their children. The costs can be particularly high for certain groups, such as youth and the long-term unemployed (see Katz, 2010; von Wachter, 2010a, 2010b; Holzer, 2010). A. Cost to Individuals and Families Loss of earnings: Layoffs are associated with substantial loss of earnings both over the short and long run. That is, even when workers are re-employed shortly after displacement, they suffer a decline in wages compared to the pre-displacement job and compared to similar workers that were not displaced. The decline in earnings is on average observed for job losers in any period, but is most pronounced for job losers during a recession (see Farber, 2005). Studies for the United States show that these earnings losses persist even in the long run: 15–20 years after a job loss in a recession, the earnings loss amounts on average to 20 (see e.g. Jacobson et al., 1993; von Wachter et al., 2009). An illustration of an average earnings path before and after job separation during the recession in the 1980s using U.S. administrative data is taken from von Wachter et al. (2009) and reproduced in Figure 4. These sustained earnings losses stem from the decline in value of certain occupation- or industry-specific skills that become obsolete, from the time-intensive process of finding an appropriate job, in particular for a mature worker, but also from so called “cyclical downgrading”— when workers take up worse jobs than they otherwise would have had in the absence of a recession. There is also evidence that the adverse effects on lifetime earnings are most pronounced for unemployment spells experienced at youth, especially upon college graduation, making the rising youth unemployment rate a particularly serious concern (see Oreopoulos et al., 2008; Kondo, 2008; Kahn, 2010). Using similar data and empirical methodology as the U.S. studies above, Schmieder et al. (2009) also find that workers who lost their stable jobs in 1982 in Germany suffered earnings losses of 10–15 that lasted at least 15 years. Thus even in countries with more generous welfare systems and lower earnings inequalities, workers are not shielded from long lasting and large income losses caused by job displacement. Impact on health: The hardship of job loss also has serious negative impacts on health. In the short run, layoffs are associated with higher risk of heart attacks and other stress-related illnesses (Burgard et al., 2007). But even in the long term, the mortality rate of workers that have been laid off is on average higher than that of comparable workers that did not lose their jobs, controlling for other relevant individual and aggregate characteristics. Based on social security data for the United States, Sullivan and von Wachter (2009) estimate that increased mortality rate due to unemployment can persist up to 20 years after the job loss and lead to an average loss of life expectancy from 1 to 1.5 years (see Figure 5). Moreover, displaced workers’ loss in earnings is associated with the increase in mortality odds: workers that are displaced but are lucky enough not to suffer a loss in subsequent earnings are not found to have a higher rate of mortality (Figure 6). This suggests that financial resources serve as an important determinant of individual health by influencing the ability to invest in good health care (and access to health insurance) and a healthy lifestyle, while a shortage of resources leads to poor lifestyle choices and can also be the reason for stress and depression.
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	28	+Not necessary but read if you have time:
	29	+Economic decline puts countries at risk of political instability, unrest, authoritarian power.
	30	+Mathews, Jessica Tuchman. President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace "Redefining Security." Foreign Affairs 68.2 (1989): 162-77. Web. AJ
	31	+If such resource and population trends are not addressed, as they are not in so much of the world today, the resulting economic decline leads to frustration, resentment, domestic unrest or even civil war. Human suffering and turmoil make countries ripe for authoritarian government or external sub version. Environmental refugees spread the disruption across national borders. Haiti, a classic example, was once so forested and fertile that it was known as the "Pearl of the Antilles." Now deforested, soil erosion in Haiti is so rapid that some farmers believe stones grow in their fields, while bulldozers are needed to clear the streets of Port-au-Prince of topsoil that flows down from the mountains in the rainy season. While many of the boat people who fled to the United States left because of the brutality of the Duvalier regimes, there is no question that~-~-and this is not widely recognized~-~-many Hai tians were forced into the boats by the impossible task of farming bare rock. Until Haiti is reforested, it will never be politically stable.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-17 19:36:23.932

Judge

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	1	+Kyle Fennessy

Opponent

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	1	+St Thomas AcademyVisitation SK

ParentRound

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	1	+4

Round

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	1	+1

Team

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	1	+Marlborough Coates Neg

Title

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	1	+Econ DA

Tournament

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	1	+Greenhill