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Cites

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1		-Revisionary intuitionism is true and concludes util:
2		-Yudkowsky 08, Eliezer, research fellow of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, The ‘Intuitions’ Behind ‘Utilitarianism, 2008, http://lesswrong.com/lw/n9/the_intuitions_behind_utilitarianism/
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4		-I haven’t said much about metaethics – the nature of morality – because that has a forward dependency on a discussion of the Mind Projection Fallacy that I haven’t gotten to yet. I used to be very confused about metaethics. After my confusion finally cleared up, I did a postmortem on my previous thoughts. I found that my object-level moral reasoning had been valuable and my meta-level moral reasoning had been worse than useless. And this appears to be a general syndrome – people do much better when discussing whether torture is good or bad than when they discuss the meaning of “good” and “bad”. Thus, I deem it prudent to keep moral discussions on the object level wherever I possibly can. Occasionally people object to any discussion of morality on the grounds that morality doesn’t exist, and in lieu of jumping over the forward dependency to explain that “exist” is not the right term to use here, I generally say, “But what do you do anyway?” and take the discussion back down to the object level. Paul Gowder, though, has pointed out that both the idea of choosing a googolplex dust specks in a googolplex eyes over 50 years of torture for one person, and the idea of “utilitarianism”, depend on “intuition”. He says I’ve argued that the two are not compatible, but charges me with failing to argue for the utilitarian intuitions that I appeal to. Now “intuition” is not how I would describe the computations that underlie human morality and distinguish us, as moralists, from an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness and/or a rock. But I am okay with using the word “intuition” as a term of art, bearing in mind that “intuition” in this sense is not to be contrasted to reason, but is, rather, the cognitive building block out of which both long verbal arguments and fast perceptual arguments are constructed. I see the project of morality as is a project of renormalizing intuition. We have intuitions about things that seem desirable or undesirable, intuitions about actions that are right or wrong, intuitions about how to resolve conflicting intuitions, intuitions about how to systematize specific intuitions into general principles. Delete all the intuitions, and you aren’t left with an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness, you’re left with a rock. Keep all your specificintuitions and refuse to build upon the reflective ones, and you aren’t left with an ideal philosopher of perfect spontaneity and genuineness, you’re left with a grunting caveperson running in circles, due to cyclical preferences and similar inconsistencies. “Intuition”, as a term of art, is not a curse word when it comes to morality – there is nothing else to argue from. Even modus ponens is an “intuition” in this sense – it‘sjust that modus ponens still seems like a good idea after being formalized, reflected on, extrapolated out to see if it has sensible consequences, etcetera. So that is “intuition”. However, Gowder did not say what he meant by “utilitarianism”. Does utilitarianism say… That right actions are strictly determined by good consequences? That praiseworthy actions depend on justifiable expectations of good consequences? That probabilities of consequences should normatively be discounted by their probability, so that a 50 probability of something bad should weigh exactly half as much in our tradeoffs? That virtuous actions always correspond to maximizing expected utility under some utility function? That two harmful events are worse than one? That two independent occurrences of a harm (not to the same person, not interacting with each other) are exactly twice as bad as one? That for any two harms A and B, with A much worse than B, there exists some tiny probability such that gambling on this probability of A is preferable to a certainty of B? If you say that I advocate something, or that my argument depends on something, and that it is wrong, do please specify what this thingy is… anyway, I accept 3, 5, 6, and 7, but not 4; I am not sure about the phrasing of 1; and 2 is true, I guess, but phrased in a rather solipsistic and selfish fashion: you should not worry about being praiseworthy. Now, what are the “intuitions” upon which my “utilitarianism” depends? This is a deepish sort of topic, but I’ll take a quick stab at it. First of all, it’s not just that someone presented me with a list of statements like those above, and I decided which ones sounded “intuitive”. Among other things, if you try to violatinge “utilitarianism”, you runs into paradoxes, contradictions, circular preferences, and other things that aren’tmsymptoms of moral wrongness so much as moral incoherence. After you think about moral problems for a while, and also find new truths about the world, and even discover disturbing facts about how you yourself work, you often end up with different moral opinions than when you started out. This does not quite define moral progress, but it is how we experience moral progress. As part of my experienced moral progress, I’ve drawn a conceptual separation between questions of type Where should we go? and questions of type How should we get there? (Could that be what Gowder means by saying I’m “utilitarian”?) The question of where a road goes – where it leads – you can answer by traveling the road and finding out. If you have a false belief about where the road leads, this falsity can be destroyed by the truth in a very direct and straightforward manner. When it comes to wanting to go to a particular place, this want is not entirely immune from the destructive powers of truth. You could go there and find that you regret it afterward (which does not define moral error, but is how we experience moral error). But, even so, wanting to be in a particular place seems worth distinguishing from wanting to take a particular road to a particular place. Our intuitions about where to go are arguable enough, but our intuitions about how to get there are frankly messed up. After the two hundred and eighty-seventh research study showsing that people will chop their own feet off if you frame the problem the wrong way, you start to distrust first impressions. When you’ve read enough research on scope insensitivity shows – people will pay only 28 more to protect all 57 wilderness areas in Ontario than one area, people will pay the same amount to save 50,000 lives as 5,000 lives… that sort of thing… Well, the worst case of scope insensitivity I’ve ever heard of was described here by Slovic: Other recent research shows similar results. Two Israeli psychologists asked people to contribute to a costly life-saving treatment. They could offer that contribution to a group of eight sick children, or to an individual child selected from the group. The target amount needed to save the child (or children) was the same in both cases. Contributions to individual group members far outweighed the contributions to the entire group. There’s other research along similar lines, but I’m just presenting one example, ’cause, y’know, eight examples would probably have less impact. If you know the general experimental paradigm, then the reason for the above behavior is pretty obvious – focusing your attention on a single child creates more emotional arousal than trying to distribute attention around eight children simultaneously. So people are willing to pay more to help one child than to help eight. Now, you could look at this intuition, and think it wasrevealing some kind of incredibly deep moral truth which shows that one child’s good fortune is somehow devalued by the other children’s good fortune. But what about the billions of other children in the world? Why isn’t it a bad idea to help this one child, when that causes the value of all the other children to go down? How can it be significantly better to have 1,329,342,410 happy children than 1,329,342,409, but then somewhat worse to have seven more at 1,329,342,417? Or you could look at that and say: “Thuse intuition is wrong: the brain can’t successfully multiply by eight and get a larger quantity than it started with. But it ought to, normatively speaking.” And once you realize that the brain can’t multiply by eight, then the other cases of scope neglect stop seeming to reveal some fundamental truth about 50,000 lives being worth just the same effort as 5,000 lives, or whatever. You don’t get the impression you’re looking at the revelation of a deep moral truth about nonagglomerative utilities. It’s just that the brain doesn’t goddamn multiply. Quantities get thrown out the window. If you have $100 to spend, and you spend $20 each on each of 5 efforts to save 5,000 lives, you will do worse than if you spend $100 on a single effort to save 50,000 lives. Likewise if such choices are made by 10 different people, rather than the same person. As soon as you start believing that it is better to save 50,000 lives than 25,000 lives, that simple preference of final destinations has implications for the choice of paths, when you consider five different events that save 5,000 lives. (It is a general principle that Bayesians see no difference between the long-run answer and the short-run answer; you never get two different answers from computing the same question two different ways. But the long run is a helpful intuition pump, so I am talking about it anyway.) The aggregative valuation strategy of “shut up and multiply” arises from the simple preference to have more of something – to save as many lives as possible – when you have to describe general principles for choosing more than once, acting more than once, planning at more than one time. Aggregation also arises from claiming that the local choice to save one life doesn’t depend on how many lives already exist, far away on the other side of the planet, or far away on the other side of the universe. Three lives are one and one and one. No matter how many billions are doing better, or doing worse. 3 = 1 + 1 + 1, no matter what other quantities you add to both sides of the equation. And if you add another life you get 4 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. That’s aggregation. When you’ve read enough heuristics and biases research, and enough coherence and uniqueness proofs for Bayesian probabilities and expected utility, and you’ve seen the “Dutch book” and “money pump” effects that penalize trying to handle uncertain outcomes any other way, then you don’t see the preference reversals in the Allais Paradox as revealing some incredibly deep moral truth about the intrinsic value of certainty. It just goes to shows that the brain doesn’t goddamn multiply. The primitive, perceptual intuitions that make a choice “feel good” don’t handle probabilistic pathways through time very skillfully, especially when the probabilities have been expressed symbolically rather than experienced as a frequency. So you reflect, devise more trustworthy logics, and think it through in words. When you see people insisting that no amount of money whatsoever is worth a single human life, and then driving an extra mile to save $10; or when you see people insisting that no amount of money is worth a decrement of health, and then choosing the cheapest health insurance available; then you don’t think that their protestations reveal some deep truth about incommensurable utilities. Part of it, clearly, is that primitive intuitions don’t successfully diminish the emotional impact of symbols standing for small quantities – anything you talk about seems like “an amount worth considering”. And part of it has to do with preferring unconditional social rules to conditional social rules. Conditional rules seem weaker, seem more subject to manipulation. If there’s any loophole that lets the government legally commit torture, then the government will drive a truck through that loophole. So it seems like there should be an unconditional social injunction against preferring money to life, and no “but” following it. Not even “but a thousand dollars isn’t worth a 0.0000000001 probability of saving a life”. Though the latter choice, of course, is revealed every time we sneeze without calling a doctor. The rhetoric of sacredness gets bonus points for seeming to express an unlimited commitment, an unconditional refusal that signals trustworthiness and refusal to compromise. So you conclude that moral rhetoric espouses qualitative distinctions, because espousing a quantitative tradeoff would sound like you were plotting to defect. On such occasions, people vigorously want to throw quantities out the window, and they get upset if you try to bring quantities back in, because quantities sound like conditions that would weaken the rule. But you don’t conclude that there are actually two tiers of utility with lexical ordering. You don’t conclude that there is actually an infinitely sharp moral gradient, some atom that moves a Planck distance (in our continuous physical universe) and sends a utility from 0 to infinity. You don’t conclude that utilities must be expressed using hyper-real numbers. Because the lower tier would simply vanish in any equation. It would never be worth the tiniest effort to recalculate for it. All decisions would be determined by the upper tier, and all thought spent thinking about the upper tier only, if the upper tier genuinely had lexical priority. As Peter Norvig once pointed out, if Asimov’s robots had strict priority for the First Law of Robotics (“A robot shall not harm a human being, nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm”) then no robot’s behavior would ever show any sign of the other two Laws; there would always be some tiny First Law factor that would be sufficient to determine the decision. Whatever value is worth thinking about at all, must be worth trading off against all other values worth thinking about, because thought itself is a limited resource that must be traded off. When you reveal a value, you reveal a utility. I don’t say that morality should always be simple. I’ve already said that the meaning of music is more than happiness alone, more than just a pleasure center lighting up. I would rather see music composed by people than by nonsentient machine learning algorithms, so that someone should have the joy of composition; I care about the journey, as well as the destination. And I am ready to hear if you tell me that the value of music is deeper, and involves more complications, than I realize – that the valuation of this one event is more complex than I know. But that’s for one event. When it comes to multiplying by quantities and probabilities, complication is to be avoided – at least if you care more about the destination than the journey. When you’ve reflected on enough intuitions, and corrected enough absurdities, you start to see a common denominator, a meta-principle at work, which one might phrase as “Shut up and multiply.” Where music is concerned, I care about the journey. When lives are at stake, I shut up and multiply. It is more important that lives be saved, than that we conform to any particular ritual in saving them. And the optimal path to that destination is governed by laws that are simple, because they are math. And that’s why I’m a utilitarian – at least when I am doing something that is overwhelmingly more important than my own feelings about it – which is most of the time, because there are not many utilitarians, and many things left undone.
5		-
6		-Thus the standard is maximizing expected happiness.
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8		-Advocacy Text
9		-
10		-I advocate the countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. I defend normal means—countries will phase out nuclear power similar to how Germany has. Lucas 12 explains:
11		-
12		-Lucas 12 Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion and a member of the cross-party parliamentary environment audit committee, “Why we must phase out nuclear power,” The Guardian, February 17, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power
13		-Fukushima, like Chernobyl 25 years before it, has shown us that while the likelihood of a nuclear disaster occurring may be low, the potential impact is enormous. The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have disastrous consequences. The can only certain way be to eliminated this potentially devastating risk is to by phasinge out nuclear power altogether. Some countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now foresee Germany sourcing 100 of its power needs from renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90 majority. The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power, while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however. Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots movements opposing nuclear power have been springing up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens. The European level response has been to undertake stress tests on nuclear reactors across the union. However, these stress tests appear to be little more than a PR exercise to encourage public acceptance in order to allow the nuclear industry to continue with business as usual. The tests fail to assess the full risks of nuclear power, ignoring crucial factors such as fires, human failures, degradation of essential infrastructure or the impact of an airplane crash.
14		-
15		-Contention 1 is Radiation
16		-The most robust scientific evidence on this topic estimates that catastrophic nuclear meltdowns will occur every 10-20 years.
17		-Lawrence 11, M.G., D. Kunkel, J. Lelieveld, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Global risk of radioactive fallout after nuclear reactor accidents, 2011, http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/C13483/2011/acpd-11-C13483-2011-supplement.pdf
18		-
19		-To evaluate the global risks, we can use empirical evidence to estimate the factors 5 (a) and (b) from above. In the past decades, four INES level 7 catastrophic nuclear meltdowns have occurred, one in Chernobyl and three reactors in Fukushima. Note that we are not considering INES 6 and lower level accidents with partial core melts such as Three Mile Island (USA), Mayak (a plutonium production and reprocessing plant in Siberia) and Sellafield (UK). The total number of operational reactor years 10 since the first plant in Obninsk (1954) until 2011 has been about 14 500 (IAEA, 2011; Supplement). This suggests that the probability of a major reactor accident, i.e. the combined probability of the factors (a) and (b), is much higher than estimated in 1990. Simply taking the four reactor meltdowns over the 14 500 reactor years would indicate a probability of 1 in 3625 per reactor per year, 275 times larger than the 1990 15 estimate (NRC, 1990). However, since we are at a junction in time with impacts of a catastrophic meltdown still unfolding, this direct estimate is high-biased, and we round it off to 1 in 5000 per reactor per year for use in our model simulations. This is actually only a factor of two higher than the estimated core melt probability noted above, factor (a). Based on the past evidence, this principally assumes that if a core melt 20 occurs, the probability of containment before substantial radioactivity release is very small. We thus argue that including the factors (b)–(e) can distort the risk perception. Our rounded estimate implies that with 440 reactors worldwide a major accident can be expected to occur about once every 1 to 2 decades, depending on whether we count Fukushima as a triple or a single event
20		-
21		-These meltdowns are horrific, subjecting upwards of 30 million innocent people to radioactive contamination.
22		-Lawrence 11, M.G., D. Kunkel, J. Lelieveld, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Global risk of radioactive fallout after nuclear reactor accidents, 2011, http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/C13483/2011/acpd-11-C13483-2011-supplement.pdf
23		-Major reactor accidents of nuclear power plants are rare, yet the consequences are catastrophic. But what is meant by “rare”? And what can be learned from the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents? Here we assess the cumulative, global risk of exposure to radioactivity due to atmospheric dispersion of gases and particles following severe nuclear accidents (the most severe ones on the International Nuclear Event Scale, INES 7), using particulate 137Cs and gaseous 131I as proxies for the fallout. Our results indicate that previously the occurrence of INES 7 major accidents and the risks of radioactive contamination have been underestimated. Using a global model of the atmosphere we compute that on average, in the event of a major reactor accident of any nuclear power plant worldwide, more than 90 of emitted 137Cs radiation would be transported beyond 50 km and about 50 beyond 1000 km distance before being deposited. This corroborates that such accidents have large-scale and transboundary impacts. Although the emission strengths and atmospheric removal processes of 137Cs and 131I are quite different, the radioactive contamination patterns over land and the human exposure due to deposition are computed to be similar. High human exposure risks occur around reactors in densely populated regions, notably in West Europe and South Asia, where a major reactor accident can subject around 30 million people to radioactive contamination. The recent decision by Germany to phase out its of nuclear reactors will reduce the national risk, though a large risk will still remain from the reactors in neighbouring countries.
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25		-Best case scenario for the neg is no meltdowns but even normally operating nuclear power plants significantly increase radiation risk. This means our impact is unavoidable.
26		-
27		-Alldred 9, Mary and Kristin Shrader-Frechette, 2012, Department of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in Stony Brook, New York. Dr. Shrader-Frechette is O’Neill Fam- ily Endowed Professor, Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosoph, Environmental Injustice in Siting Nuclear Plants, 2009,
28		-http://www3.nd.edu/~kshrader/pubs/final-pdf-ej-nuke-siting-wi-Alldred_08-0544.pdf
29		-Even when reactors operate normally, statistically significant increases in infant and fetal mortality near US reactors,1 in childhood leukemia near German reactors,2 and in cancer near UK reactors,3 suggest that (even without any accidents) those living near reactors could face higher health risks.1,4,5 2. In the event of a reactor accident, those living nearby also could be most at risk, as suggested by increases in lung cancers and leukemias after the 1979 Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania accident.6 3. Minority and poverty-level communities often include higher percentages of women and children, both of whom are more sensitive to ionizing radiation, yet most radiation standards are devised to protect only adult males.7,8 4. Because indigenous uranium miners, nuclear workers, and minorities and poor people living near radioactive-waste dumps have experienced EIJ (see later paragraphs), it is important to ask whether there also is reactor-siting-related EIJ. 5. Few scholars have addressed this question, although some citizens’ groups note higher percentages of minorities or poor people living near nuclear plants,9 and some scientists suggest children, minorities, and poverty-level people are more sensitive than others to the roughly 100 radioisotopes routinely emitted by reactors.1,4,5 gates whether the apparent EIJ at sites like the Grand Gulf, Mississippi reactor is representative of other US nuclear-siting cases. Although further studies are needed to fully evaluate apparent environmental injustices, the article concludes that, while reactor-siting-related EIJ is not obvious at census-tract levels, zip-code data suggest reactor-related EIJ threatens threaten poor people (p 0.001), at least in the southeastern United States.
30		-
31		-Contention 2 is Animals
32		-
33		-Nuclear power kills billions of aquatic animals and can lead to ecosystem collapse.
34		-Cooper et al 8, Chistopher and Benjamin Sovacool, former Executive Director of the Network for New Energy Choices, Research Fellow in the Energy Governance Program at the Centre on Asia and Globaliaztion respectively, Nuclear Nonsense: Why Nuclear Power is No Answer to Climate Change and the World's Post- Kyoto Energy Challenges, p.61, http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040andcontext=wmelpr
35		-Nuclear plants do not just use water-they also contaminate waterit at multiple points of the cooling cycle: at the point of intake, at the point of discharge, and during unexpected accidents. At the point of intake, nuclear plants bring water into the cooling cycle through filtering structures. To minimize the entry of debris, water is often drawn through screens.374 Seals, sea lions, endangered manatees, American crocodiles, sea turtles, fish, larvae, shellfish, and other riparian or marine organisms are frequently killed as they are trapped against the screens in a process known as impingement.375 Organisms small enough to pass through the screens can be swept up in the water flow where they are subject to mechanical, thermal and toxic stress in a process known as entrainment.376 Billions of smaller marine organisms, essential to the food web, are sucked into nuclear reactor systems and destroyed. Smaller fish, fish larvae, spawn, and a tremendous volume of other marine organisms are frequently pulverized by reactor condenser systems. One study estimated that more than 90 are scalded and discharged back into the water as lifeless sediment that clouds the water around the discharge area, blocking light from reaching the ocean or river floor, which further kills plant and animal life by curtailing photosynthesis and the production of oxygen. 377 During periods of low water levels, power plants induce even more environmental damage. Nuclear plants must extend intake pipes further into rivers and lakes, but as they approach the bottom of the water source, "they often suck up sediment, fish, and other debris... "371 Impingement and entrainment consequently account for substantial losses of fish and exact severe environmental consequences during the riparian environment's most vulnerable times. For example, federal environmental studies of entrainment during the 1980s at five power plants on the Hudson River in New York estimated grave year-class reductions in fish populations-the percent of fish killed within a given age class.3 79 One study concluded that the power plants were responsible for age reductions as high as 79 for some species.8 ° "An updated analysis of entrainment completed in 2000 at three of these plants estimated year-class reductions of 20 percent for striped bass, 25 percent for bay anchovy, and 43 percent for Atlantic tom cod. . ...,' Another study "evaluated entrainment and impingement impacts at nine . . . facilities along a 500 mile stretch of the Ohio River."3 2 The authors estimated that approximately 11.6 million fish were killed annually through impingement and 24.4 million fish from entrainment.3 The study calculated recreational related losses at about $8.1 million per year.3 4 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") calculated impingement losses at the Delaware Estuary Watershed at more than 9.6 million age-one equivalents of fish every year, or a loss of 332,000 pounds of fishery yield.385 The EPA calculated that entrainment related losses were even larger at 616 million fish, or a loss of sixteen million pounds of catch.38 Put into monetary value, the recreational fishing loss from impingement and entrainment at nuclear facilities was estimated to be about $5 million per year.38 ' Scientists also calculated that the cooling intake systems at the Crystal River Power Plant in Florida, ajoint nuclear and coal facility, kill about twenty-three tons of fish and shellfish every year.88 Top predators, such as gulf flounder and stingray "have either disappeared or changed their feeding patterns.3 8 9 In other parts of Florida, the economic losses induced from four power plants-Big Bend, PL Bartow, FJ Gannon, and Hookers Point-are estimated to be as high as $18.1 million.3s Similarly, in Southern California, marine biologists and ecologists found "that the San Onofre nuclear plant impinged nearly 3.5 million fish in 2003 .... 391 As a less noticed but equally important impact, water intake and discharge often alter natural patterns of water levels and flows. Such flows, part of the hydrological cycle, have a natural variability that differs daily, weekly, and seasonally.392 Plants and animals have adapted to these fluctuations, and such variability is a key component of ecosystem health.39 3 Withdrawals and discharges alter this natural cycle by removing water during drought conditions or discharging it at different times of the year with potentially serious, albeit not well-understood, consequences to ecosystem and habitat health.3 94 Interestingly, in some cases the environment has fought back, literally. "In September 1984, a flotilla ofjellyfish 'attacked' the St. Lucie nuclear plant in Florida, forcing both of its reactors to shut down for several days due to lack of cooling water."395 At the point of discharge, nuclear plant operators often treat cooling water with chlorine, anti-fouling, anti-microbial, and water conditioning agents "to limit the growth of mineral and microbial deposits that reduce... its heat transfer efficiency," 396 while "re-circulating water is treated with chlorine and biocides" to improve efficiency and eliminate nuisance organisms.39 7 What makes such treated water so effective in killing unwanted species, however, also makes it a potent "killer ofl nontarget organisms as well."398 Chlorine, biocides, and "their byproducts... present in discharged water plumes... are often toxic to aquatic life even at low concentrations."3 99 In addition, discharged cooling water is usually higher in temperature than intake waters, "making electric utilities the largest thermal discharger in the U.S."4 °° Significant temperature differences between the intake water and its discharge, or temperature deltas, "can contribute to destruction of vegetation, increased algae growth, oxygen depletion and strain the temperature range tolerance of organisms."4 °' Further, "impacts can be multiple and widespread, affecting numerous species at numerous life cycle stages."4 2 "In some cases, plants and animals are not able to survive in or adapt to higher temperature waters .. .403 In other cases, "warmer temperatures can send the wrong signals to species," disrupting natural cycles, while some species that thrive in warmer waters "move into the plume and then become susceptible to the 'cold shocks' that occur during periodic plant shutdowns."'4 ' In still other cases, the warmer temperature plumes attract invasive or unwanted species that drive out indigenous species and alter habitats, sometimes irreparably.4 5 Both spikes of high temperature and the persistent, increasing stress of fluctuations in temperature affect aquatic organisms.40 6 The problem is especially acute in "shallower waters that turn over more slowly and therefore have a harder time absorbing thermal impacts."4 °7 In some cases, the thermal pollution from nuclear plants can induce eutrophication-a process where the warmer temperatures that alters the chemical composition of the water, resulting in a rapid increase of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorous.4 8 Rather than improving the ecosystem, such alterations usually cause "algal blooms, surface scums, floating plant mats" and other weedy growths that severely reduce water quality.40 9 In riparian environments, the enhanced growth of such choking algae and vegetation can collapse entire ecosystems.410 "This form of thermal pollution has been known to decrease the aesthetic and recreational value of rivers, lakes, and estuaries and complicate drinking water treatment."
36		-
37		-Biodiversity loss spills over and has a domino effect. Species extinction destroys biodiversity—means extinction.
38		-Diner 94:
39		-Diner, 1994 (Major David, JAG Corps, United States Army, Military Law Review, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161, p. 170-173)
40		-Like all animal life, humans live off of other species. At some point, the number of species could decline to the point at which the ecosystem fails, and then humans also would become extinct. No one knows how many *171 species the world needs to support human life, and to find out ~-~- by allowing certain species to become extinct ~-~- would not be sound policy. In addition to food, species offer many direct and indirect benefits to mankind. Ecological Value. ~-~- Ecological value is the value that species have in maintaining the environment. Pest, n69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits certain species provide to man. Plants and animals also provide additional ecological services ~-~- pollution control, n70 oxygen production, sewage treatment, and biodegradation. n71 3. Scientific and Utilitarian Value. ~-~- Scientific value is the use of species for research into the physical processes of the world. n72 Without plants and animals, a large portion of basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the direct utility humans draw from plants and animals. Only a fraction of the *172 earth's species have been examined, and mankind may someday desperately need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew n74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to man in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations could affect a directly useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. 4. Biological Diversity. ~-~- The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. n77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . .like a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads ~-~- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." n79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, humankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
41		-ot, humanity will face the grim consequences of its actions.”
42		-
43		-The evidence decisively concludes aff that fish feel pain-
44		-Singer 13, Peter, Fish: the forgotten victims on our plate, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/sep/14/fish-forgotten-victims
45		-Let’s assume that all this fishing is sustainable, though of course it is not. It would then be reassuring to believe that killing on such a vast scale does not matter, because fish do not feel pain. But the nervous systems of fish are sufficiently similar to those of birds and mammals to suggest that they do. When fish experience something that would cause other animals physical pain, they behave in ways suggestive of pain, and the change in behaviors may last several hours. (It is a myth that fish have short memories.) Fish learn to avoid unpleasant experiences, like electric shocks. And painkillers reduce the symptoms of pain that they would otherwise show. Victoria Braithwaite, a professor of fisheries and biology at Pennsylvania State University, has probably spent more time investigating this issue than any other scientist. Her recent book Do Fish Feel Pain? shows that fish are not only capable of feeling pain, but also are a lot smarter than most people believe. Last year, a scientific panel to the European Union concluded that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that fish do feel pain. Why are fish the forgotten victims on our plate? Is it because they are cold-blooded and covered in scales? Is it because they cannot give voice to their pain? Whatever the explanation, the evidence is now accumulating that commercial fishing inflicts an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering. We need to learn how to capture and kill wild fish humanely – or, if that is not possible, to find less cruel and more sustainable alternatives to eating them.
46		-
47		-Contention 3 is Energy
48		-
49		-The original justification for nuclear power was the global need for alternative energy sources. But this project has been an utter failure—nuclear energy accounts for roughly 11 of global energy production.
50		-WNGC, World Nuclear Generation and Capacity, 2016, http://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/World-Statistics/World-Nuclear-Generation-and-Capacity
51		-According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (link is external), as of July 2015, there were 438 nuclear power reactors operating in 30 countries, and 67 new plants were under construction in 15 countries. They provided about 11 of the world's electricity in 2014 (the latest year global data are available - Nuclear Energy Institute (link is external)).
52		-
53		-Analytic
54		-
55		-Contention 4 is big picture weighing
56		-Analytic
57		-
58		-Kritik Underview
59		-
60		-Activist focus on meta-issues breeds utopianism, which leads to the failure of the movement, Occupy Wall Street and The Farm empirically confirms. Only the combination of thought and action can create change.
61		-Murray 14, PhD Candidate in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University, Prefiguration or Actualization? Radical Democracy and Counter-Institution in the Occupy Movement, http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/11/prefiguration-or-actualization-radical-democracy-and-counter-institution-in-the-occupy-movement/
62		-Many commentators have lauded the movement as an example of prefigurative politics, which they see as the cutting edge of contemporary radical politics.3 However, an overemphasis on the value of prefiguration can be debilitating, leading to a focus on internal movement dynamics at the expense of building a broader movement, and a focus on symbolic expressions of dissent as opposed to the development of alternatives to actually replace existing political, economic and social institutions. Occupy Wall Street (OWS) suffered this fate, partly due to the perception that the encampment and the decision-making procedures were prefigurative, and the perception that prefigurative politics itself will lead to revolutionary transformations in the political, economic and social structure. While Occupy Wall Street foundered on the prefigurative obsession with movement process, a group of activists, students and local residents in the San Francisco Bay Area have sought to overcome these challenges. Since 2012, they have worked under the banner of Occupy the Farm (OTF) to created an agricultural commons on a parcel of publicly owned land. Unlike OWS, OTF has worked to establish a counter-institution grounded in material resources and production, that is ultimately meant to increase participants’ autonomy from the state and capitalism. In this way it has been able to link radical democracy and economic justice in a material way, rather than merely symbolically. As it is generally practiced and conceptualized today, prefigurative politics is an inadequate framework for developing radical democratic political strategy. Instead of prefiguration, we should redirect our efforts toward developing and linking democratic counter-institutions that produce and manage common resources. Occupy the Farm illustrates some of the potential and the challenges of such a strateg

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-28 18:07:08.0

Judge

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1		-Alberto Tohme

Opponent

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1		-Kinkaid JY

ParentRound

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1		-8

Round

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1		-1

Team

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1		-Phoenix Country Day Whitfil Aff

Title

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1		-Sept-Oct Whole Res Util AC v1

Tournament

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1		-Greenhill