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  • Caselist.RoundClass[6]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[4]

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Caselist.RoundClass[6]

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1		-2016-09-24 17:45:58.921
	1	+2016-09-24 17:45:58.0

Caselist.CitesClass[4]

Cites

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	1	+First, the state is inevitable- policymaking is the only way to create change.
	2	+Coverstone 5 Alan Coverstone (masters in communication from Wake Forest, longtime debate coach) “Acting on Activism: Realizing the Vision of Debate with Pro-social Impact” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference November 17th 2005 An important concern emerges when Mitchell describes reflexive fiat as a contest strategy capable of “eschewing the power to directly control external actors” (1998b, p. 20). Describing debates about what our government should do as attempts to control outside actors is debilitating and disempowering. Control of the US government is exactly what an active, participatory citizenry is supposed to be all about. After all, if democracy means anything, it means that citizens not only have the right, they also bear the obligation to discuss and debate what the government should be doing. Absent that discussion and debate, much of the motivation for personal political activism is also lost. Those who have co-opted Mitchell’s argument for individual advocacy often quickly respond that nothing we do in a debate round can actually change government policy, and unfortunately, an entire generation of debaters has now swallowed this assertion as an article of faith. The best most will muster is, “Of course not, but you don’t either!” The assertion that nothing we do in debate has any impact on government policy is one that carries the potential to undermine Mitchell’s entire project. If there is nothing we can do in a debate round to change government policy, then we are left with precious little in the way of pro-social options for addressing problems we face. At best, we can pursue some Pilot-like hand washing that can purify us as individuals through quixotic activism but offer little to society as a whole. It is very important to note that Mitchell (1998b) tries carefully to limit and bound his notion of reflexive fiat by maintaining that because it “views fiat as a concrete course of action, it is bounded by the limits of pragmatism” (p. 20). Pursued properly, the debates that Mitchell would like to see are those in which the relative efficacy of concrete political strategies for pro-social change is debated. In a few noteworthy examples, this approach has been employed successfully, and I must say that I have thoroughly enjoyed judging and coaching those debates. The students in my program have learned to stretch their understanding of their role in the political process because of the experience. Therefore, those who say I am opposed to Mitchell’s goals here should take care at such a blanket assertion. However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political power. Powerful personal narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language of power. One need look no further than the annual state of the Union Address where personal story after personal story is used to support the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public policy contest debates encourage promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America. Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s students’ lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the center of the school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation. Simulation of success in the public realm is far more empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of governmental hegemony by teaching students that “nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy.” Contest debating is well suited to rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action. Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself making a difference on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference: the one that speaks the language of political power. The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing without question teaches students to be comfortable with the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must confront governmental power at some point. There is a fallacy in arguing that movements represent a better political strategy than voting and person-to-person advocacy. Sure, a full-scale movement would be better than the limited voice I have as a participating citizen going from door to door in a campaign, but so would full-scale government action. Unfortunately, the gap between my individual decision to pursue movement politics and the emergence of a full-scale movement is at least as great as the gap between my vote and democratic change. They both represent utopian fiat. Invocation of Mitchell to support utopian movement fiat is simply not supported by his work, and too often, such invocation discourages the concrete actions he argues for in favor of the personal rejectionism that under girds the political cynicism that is a fundamental cause of voter and participatory abstention in America today.
	3	+This constrains K impacts- even if discussion of oppression is good, absent the state the discussion has no impact- we need to have our discourse situated within the state and it’s policies.
	4	+Policy making necessitates tradeoffs—that means util.
	5	+Governments can only justify legitimate policies to the public through a utilitarian framework. Thus, prefer util since it’s the most educational for this round as it best simulates policymaking.
	6	+Woller 97 Gary Woller (BYU Professor). “An Overview by Gary Woller.” A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics. June 1997. pp. 10.
	7	+Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's ex- pense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient.
	8	+Thus, the standard is maximizing expected well being.
	9	+Prefer:
	10	+1. No act/omission for governments—constraint based theories collapse to util.
	11	+ Sunstein and Vermule 05 (Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermuele, “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs,” Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper No. 85 (March 2005), p. 17.)
	12	+In our view, any effort to distinguish between acts and omissions goes wrong by overlooking the distinctive features of government as a moral agent. If correct, this point has broad implications for criminal and civil law. Whatever the general status of the act/omission distinction as a matter of moral philosophy, the distinction is least impressive when applied to government, because the most plausible underlying considerations do not apply to official actors. The most fundamental point is that unlike individuals, governments always and necessarily face a choice between or among possible policies for regulating third parties. The distinction between acts and omissions may not be intelligible in this context, and even if it is, the distinction does not make a morally relevant difference. Most generally, government is in the business of creating permissions and prohibitions. When it explicitly or implicitly authorizes private action, it is not omitting to do anything or refusing to act. Moreover, the distinction between authorized and unauthorized private action – for example, private killing – becomes obscure when government formally forbids private action but chooses a set of policy instruments that do not adequately or fully discourage it. If there is no act-omission distinction, then government is fully complicit with any harm it allows, so decisions are moral if they minimize harm. All means based and side constraint theories collapse because two violations require aggregation.
	13	+2. Necessary enabler consequentialism, or NEC, explains moral substitutability and justifies util. Sinott-Armstrong
	14	+Sinott-Armstrong, Walter. "An Argument for Consequentalism." Philosophical Perspectives, 6: Ethics, 1992. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1992. 399-421. Print.
	15	+
	16	+All of this leads to necessary enabler consequentialism or NEC. NEC claims that all moral reasons for acts are provided by facts that the acts are necessary enablers for preventing harm or promoting good. All moral reasons on this theory are consequential reasons, but there are two kinds. Some moral reasons are prevention reasons, because they are facts that an act is a necessary enabler for preventing harm or loss. For example, if giving Alice food is necessary and enables me to prevent her from starving, then that fact is a moral reason to give her food. In this case, I would not cause her death even if I let her starve, but other moral prevention reasons are reasons to avoid causing harm. For example, if turning my car to the left is necessary and enables me to avoid killing Bobby, that is a moral reason to turn my car to the left. The other kind of moral reason is a promotion reason. This kind of reason occurs when doing something is necessary and enables me to promote (or maximize) some good. For example, I have a moral reason to throw a surprise party for Susan if this is necessary and enables me to make her happy. Because of substitutability, these moral reasons for actions also yield moral reasons against contrary actions. There are then also moral reasons not to do what will cause harm or ensure a failure to prevent harm or to promote good. What makes these facts moral reasons is that they can make an otherwise immoral act moral. If I have a moral reason to feed my child, then it might be immoral to give my only food to Alice, who is a stranger. But this would not be immoral if giving Alice food is necessary and enables me to prevent Alice from starving, as long as my child will not starve also. Similarly, it is normally immoral to lie to Susan, but a lie can be moral if it is necessary and enables me to keep my party for Susan a surprise, and if this is also necessary and enables me to make her happy. Thus, NEC fits nicely into the above theory of moral reasons. NEC can providesan natural explanation of moral substitutability for both kinds of moral reasons. I have a prevention moral reason to give someone food when doing so is necessary and enables me to prevents them that person from starving. Suppose that buying food is a necessary enabler for giving the person food, and getting in my car is a necessary enabler for buying food. Moral substitutability warrants the conclusion that I have a moral reason to get in my car. And this act of getting in my car does have the property of being a necessary enabler for preventing starvation. Thus, the necessary enabler has the same property that provided the moral reason to give the food in the first place. This explains why substitutability holds for moral prevention reasons. The other kind of moral reason covers necessary enablers for promoting good. In my example above, if a surprise party is a necessary enabler for making Susan happy, and letting people know about the party is a necessary enabler for having the party, then letting people know is a necessary enabler for making Susan happy. The very fact that provides a moral reason to have the party also provides a moral reason to let people know about it. Thus, NEC can explain why moral substitutability holds for every kind of moral reason that it includes. Similar explanations work for moral reasons not to do certain acts, and this explanatory power is a reason to favor NEC.17
	17	+
	18	+3. Empiricism- only the real world can serve as the basis for ethical reasoning.
	19	+Schwartz: The empirical support for the fundamental principle of empiricism is diffuse but salient. Our common empirical experience and experimental psychology offer evidence that humans do not have any capacity to garner knowledge except by empirical sources. The fact is that we believe that there is no source of knowledge, information, or evidence apart from observation, empirical scientific investigations, and our sensory experience of the world, and we believe this on the basis of our empirical a posteriori experiences and our general empirical view of how things work. For example, we believe on empirical evidence that humans are continuous with the rest of nature and that we rely like other animals on our senses to tell us how things are. If humans are more successful than other animals, it is not because we possess special non-experiential ways of knowing, but because we are better at cooperating, collating, and inferring. In particular we do not have any capacity for substantive a priori knowledge. There is no known mechanism by which such knowledge would be made possible. This is an empirical claim.
	20	+This requires util to adjudicate- all judgments are determined based on consequences of pleasure and pain. Nagel:
	21	+Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere, HUP, 1986: 156-168.
	22	+ I shall defend the unsurprising claim that sensory pleasure is good and pain bad, no matter whose they are. The point of the exercise is to see how the pressures of objectification operate in a simple case. Physical pleasure and pain do not usually depend on activities or desires which themselves raise questions of justification and value. They are just is a sensory experiences in relation to which we are fairly passive, but toward which we feel involuntary desire or aversion. Almost everyone takes the avoidance of his own pain and the promotion of his own pleasure as subjective reasons for action in a fairly simple way; they are not back up by any further reasons. On the other hand if someone pursues pain or avoids pleasure, either it as a means to some end or it is backed up by dark reasons like guilt or sexual masochism. What sort of general value, if any, ought to be assigned to pleasure and pain when we consider these facts from an objective standpoint? What kind of judgment can we reasonably make about these things when we view them in abstraction from who we are? We can begin by asking why there is no plausibility in the zero position, that pleasure and pain have no value of any kind that can be objectively recognized. That would mean that I have no reason to take aspirin for a severe headache, however I may in fact be motivated; and that looking at it from outside, you couldn't even say that someone had a reason not to put his hand on a hot stove, just because of the pain. Try looking at it from the outside and see whether you can manage to withhold that judgment. If the idea of objective practical reason makes any sense at all, so that there is some judgment to withhold, it does not seem possible. If the general arguments against the reality of objective reasons are no good, then it is at least possible that I have a reason, and not just an inclination, to refrain from putting my hand on a hot stove. But given the possibility, it seems meaningless to deny that this is so. Oddly enough, however, we can think of a story that would go with such a denial. It might be suggested that the aversion to pain is a useful phobia—having nothing to do with the intrinsic undesirability of pain itself—which helps us avoid or escape the injuries that are signaled by pain. (The same type of purely instrumental value might be ascribed to sensory pleasure: the pleasures of food, drink, and sex might be regarded as having no value in themselves, though our natural attraction to them assists survival and reproduction.) There would then be nothing wrong with pain in itself, and someone who was never motivated deliberately to do anything just because he knew it would reduce or avoid pain would have nothing the matter with him. He would still have involuntary avoidance reactions, otherwise it would be hard to say that he felt pain at all. And he would be motivated to reduce pain for other reasons—because it was an effective way to avoid the danger being signaled, or because interfered with some physical or mental activity that was important to him. He just wouldn't regard the pain as itself something he had any reason to avoid, even though he hated the feeling just as much as the rest of us. (And of course he wouldn't be able to justify the avoidance of pain in the way that we customarily justify avoiding what we hate without reason—that is, on the ground that even an irrational hatred makes its object very unpleasant!) There is nothing self-contradictory in this proposal, but it seems nevertheless insane. Without some positive reason to think there is nothing in itself good or bad about having an experience you intensely like or dislike, we can't seriously regard the common impression to the contrary as a collective illusion. Such things are at least good or bad for us, if anything is. What seems to be going on here is that we cannot from an objective standpoint withhold a certain kind of endorsement of the most direct and immediate subjective value judgments we make concerning the contents of our own consciousness. We regard ourselves as too close to those things to be mistaken in our immediate, nonideological evaluative impressions. No objective view we can attain could possibly overrule our subjective authority in such cases. There can be no reason to reject the appearances here.
	23	+
	24	+4. Means based theories devolve to util
	25	+Inherency:
	26	+Metsamor’s decommissioning has been delayed- it’s operating until at least 2026.
	27	+Daly 13 John Daly, the chief analyst for Oilprice.com, “Armenia’s Metsamor NPP, Built Near Fault Line, Gets 10 Year Life Extension,” Oil Price, September 23, 2013, http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Armenias-Metsamor-NPP-Built-Near-Fault-Line-Gets-10-Year-Life-Extension.html
	28	+Armenia’s Metsamor NPP, Built Near Fault Line, Gets 10 Year Life Extension By John Daly - Sep 23, 2013, 6:52 PM CDT In a major piece of bad news for Armenia’s neighbors Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia, Armenia's energy minister Armen Movsisyan has told journalists that the country’s aging Metsamor NPP, originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2016," will operate until 2026."But not to worry, Armenia's President Serzh Sarkisian earlier this month signed an agreement with Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom to assist in renovating the facility, as in 2012 Armenia had postponed the Metsamor’s decommissioning until 2020. So, why the long faces in the Caucasus?
	29	+Armenia has plans for new nuclear reactors but they’ve been postponed –they’re stuck with Metsamor for the foreseeable future.
	30	+Sahakyan 16 Armine (Human rights activist based in Armenia) “Armenia Continues to Gamble on Aging Nuclear Plant in a Quake-Prone Area” Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/armine-sahakyan/armenia-continues-to-gamb_b_9788186.html
	31	+Armenia was supposed to have a new nuclear power plant this year that would replace one that National Geographic suggested a few years ago was the most dangerous in the world. The new plant was to have twice the electrical-generating capacity of the current one, allowing Armenia not only to meet its own power needs but to export electricity to neighboring counties. We’re well in to 2016, and not only is the new plant not operational — work on it hasn’t even begun.
	32	+
	33	+Plan text: Resolved: Armenia and the EU should ban the production of nuclear power in Armenia using the EU proposal for preventing the 2026 renewal of Metsamor. Daly 2 http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Armenias-Metsamor-NPP-Built-Near-Fault-Line-Gets-10-Year-Life-Extension.html Armenia’s Metsamor NPP, Built Near Fault Line, Gets 10 Year Life Extension By John Daly - Sep 23, 2013, 6:52 PM CDT The European Union has repeatedly called for the plant to be closed down, arguing that it poses a threat to the region, classifying Metsamor’s reactors as the "oldest and least reliable" category of all the 66 Soviet reactors built in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In 2004 the European Union's envoy called Metsamor "a danger to the entire region," but Armenia later turned down the EU's offer of a 200 million euro loan to finance Metsamor's shutdown,
	34	+
	35	+Advantage 1: Meltdowns
	36	+The Metsamor power plant – Armenia’s only form of nuclear power – is incredibly dangerous. It uses old tech, is unreliable, and lies on earthquake territory.
	37	+Lavelle et al 11 Marianne Lavelle and Josie Garthwaite (National Geographic News) “Is Armenia's Nuclear Plant the World's Most Dangerous?” National Geographic News April 14th 2011 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/04/110412-most-dangerous-nuclear-plant-armenia/
	38	+In the shadow of Mount Ararat, the beloved and sorrowful national symbol of Armenia, stands a 31-year-old nuclear plant that is no less an emblem of the country's resolve and its woe. The Metsamor power station is one of a mere handful of remaining nuclear reactors of its kind that were built without primary containment structures. All five of these first-generation water-moderated Soviet units are past or near their original retirement ages, but one salient fact sets Armenia's reactor apart from the four in Russia. Metsamor lies on some of Earth's most earthquake-prone terrain. In the wake of Japan's quake-and-tsunami-triggered Fukushima Daiichi crisis, Armenia's government faces renewed questions from those who say the fateful combination of design and location make Metsamor among the most dangerous nuclear plants in the world. Seven years ago, the European Union's envoy was quoted as calling the facility "a danger to the entire region," but Armenia later turned down the EU's offer of a 200 million euro ($289 million) loan to finance Metsamor's shutdown. The United States government, which has called the plant "aging and dangerous," underwrote a study that urged construction of a new one.
	39	+She continues: But the VVER 440s share one characteristic with Chernobyl that has been a continuing concern to many who live nearby: They have no containment structure. Instead, VVER 440s rely on an "accident localization system," designed to handle small ruptures. In the event of a large rupture, the system would vent directly to the atmosphere. "They cannot cope with large primary circuit breaks," the NEI's 1997 Source Book on Soviet nuclear plants concluded. "As with most Soviet-designed plants, electricity production by the VVER-440 Model V230s came at the expense of safety." Antonia Wenisch of the Austrian Institute of Applied Ecology in Vienna, calls Metsamor "among the most dangerous" nuclear plants still in operation. A rupture "would almost certainly immediately and massively fail the confinement," she said in an email. "From that point, there is an open reactor building, a core with no water in it, and accident progression with no mitigation at all."
	40	+Armenian Meltdown would cause massive life loss, kill agriculture, and threaten four other countries.
	41	+Sahakyan 2 Armine (Human rights activist based in Armenia) “Armenia Continues to Gamble on Aging Nuclear Plant in a Quake-Prone Area” Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/armine-sahakyan/armenia-continues-to-gamb_b_9788186.html
	42	+So Armenia continues to make due with the Metsamor plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency has inspected the facility, and declared it safe. But other experts are skeptical. The big worry is that the plant has no containment building — a steel or concrete shell that would prevent radiation from escaping during an accident. If a rupture developed in the reactor’s skin, radiation would have to be vented into the air to prevent a build-up of pressure that could trigger a meltdown or explosion. The longer a nuclear plant operates, the thinner its reactor skin becomes, experts say — and thinner skins are subject to rupture. A rupture would mean “an open reactor building, a core with no water in it (to cool the reactor) and accident progression with no mitigation at all,” said Antonia Wenisch of the Vienna-based Austrian Institute of Applied Ecology in Vienna. The stakes in Armenia’s nuclear gamble are high. An accident at Metsamor would devastate the capital of Yerevan, only 20 miles away and home to a third of Armenia’s population. It would also render unusable the Aras River Valley, Armenia’s premier agricultural area, where Metasamor is situated. In addition, radiation would envelop Turkey, whose border is only 10 miles from the nuclear facility, and Armenian neighbors Georgia and Iran.
	43	+Technological changes and alternate reactors won’t solve – can still melt down and causes increased cancer rates.
	44	+Idayatova 16 Anakhanum “Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear plant can cause major radiation accident” Trend News Agencyhttp://en.trend.az/world/turkey/2536379.html
	45	+Armenia's Metsamor nuclear power plant is a major threat not only for the entire Caucasus region, but it also poses a danger for the Armenian population, Malik Ayub Sumbal, journalist, expert on geopolitical and international conflicts, told Trend via e-mail May 20. Sumbal, who is also the founder of The Caspian Times news platform, said that the international community must learn a lesson from an accident at the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and prevent another disaster, which may be caused by Armenia's Metsamor nuclear power plant. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was an energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, initiated primarily by the tsunami that was triggered by the earthquake on March 11, 2011."The Metsamor nuclear power plant also poses a great threat for Turkey, as it is located just 16 kilometers off its borders," the expert said. "Moreover, the plant can cause cancer and other dangerous diseases among people living on the border with Armenia."Armenia has a nuclear power plant, Metsamor, built in 1970. The power plant was closed after a devastating earthquake in Spitak in 1988. But despite the international protests, the power plant's operation was resumed in 1995. Moreover, a second reactor was launched there. According to the ecologists and scholars all over the region, seismic activity of this area turns operation of the Metsamor nuclear power plant in an extremely dangerous enterprise, even if a new type of reactor is built.
	46	+And, nuclear meltdowns are a high risk threat that can cause massive death rates with time. Ross 11,
	47	+Timothy J. Ross (Ph.D, Stanford University Professor, Dept. Of civil engineering, University of New Mexico) Dec. 14, 2011 "Avoiding Apocalypse: Congress Should Ban Nuclear Power." www.law.buffalo.edu/content/dam/law/restricted-assets/pdf/environmental/papers/ross12.pdf
	48	+Despite proponents’ claims that it is safe, the history of nuclear energy is marked by a number of disasters and near disasters. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine is one of the most frightening examples of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear accident. An estimated 220,000 people were displaced from their homes, and the radioactive fallout from the accident made 4,440 square kilometers of agricultural land and 6,820 square kilometers of forests in Belarus and Ukraine unusable. It is extremely difficult to get accurate information about the health effects from Chernobyl. Government agencies in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus estimate that about 25,000 of the 600,000 involved in fire-fighting and clean up operations have died so far because of radiation exposure from the accident.(4) According to an April 2006 report commissioned by the European Greens for the European Parliament, there will be an additional 30,000 to 60,000 fatal cancer deaths worldwide from the accident.(5) In 1979, the United States had its own disaster following an accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Reactor in Pennsylvania. Although there were no immediate deaths, the incident had serious health consequences for the surrounding area. A 1997 study found that those people living downwind of the reactor at the time of the event were two to ten times more likely to contract lung cancer or leukemia than those living upwind of the radioactive fallout.(6) The dangers of nuclear power have been underscored more recently by the close call of a catastrophic meltdown at the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio in 2002, which in the years preceding the incident had received a near-perfect safety score.(3) Climate change may further increase the risk of nuclear accidents. Heat waves, which are expected to become more frequent and intense as a result of global warming, can force the shut down or the power output reduction of reactors. During the 2006 heat wave, reactors in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Minnesota, as well as in France, Spain and Germany, were impacted. The European heat wave in the summer of 2003 caused cooling problems at French reactors that forced engineers to tell the government that they could no longer guarantee the safety of the country’s 58 nuclear power reactors.(3)
	49	+Renewable Resources specifically in Armenia can solve energy crisis- they can take up half the energy grid by 2020. Vorotnikov 13 http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2013/07/renewable-resources-will-help-armenia-avoid-energy-crisis.html Yerevan, Armenia ~-~- Armenia is set to develop its renewable energy resources in the coming years, announced its deputy minister of energy and natural resources Areg Galstyan. It will set its focus mainly on hydropower plants, but it will put some emphasis on solar energy, as well. However the government is hesitant towards the development of its wind sector. The Armenian government is taking renewables development very seriously as it has little to no traditional fuel reserves. Without the alternative energy, the country could face serious crisis in coming decades. "Armenia is highly dependent on imported gas and other energy sources. Today the share of renewable resources in the total energy structure of the country accounts for 23 percent,” according to the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. “We expect that by 2020 this figure should exceed 50 percent.”
	50	+Banning Metsamor and preventing Meltdown risk is key to maintaining Turkey-Armenia relations. Daily News 14
	51	+ “Turkey wants nuclear plant in Armenia to be shut down,” March/21/2014, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-wants-nuclear-plant-in-armenia-to-be-shut-down~-~-~-~-~-~-.aspx?pageID=238andnid=63928
	52	+The Metsamor nuclear power plant in Armenia is outdated and should be urgently closed down, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said, re-voicing concerns about the safety of the plant. Speaking with reporters during a visit to the Turkish province of Iğdır near Turkey’s eastern border on March 21, Yıldız said Turkey had sent an official appeal to the International Atomic Energy Agency concerning the shutdown of the plant. “The nuclear plant, which was put online in 1980, has had a lifespan of 30 years. This plant has expired and should be immediately closed,” Yıldız said. He stressed Metsamor is just 16 kms away from Turkey’s border, and it was necessary to bring the issue to international attention and obtain support for the plant’s closure.
	53	+Improving Armenia Turkey relations is key to alleviate regional racism in the squo. MacDonald 16
	54	+Alex MacDonald, “New footage implicates alleged coup plotters in Dink murder,” September 7, 2016 http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/new-footage-implicates-alleged-coup-plotters-murder-turkish-armenian-activist-791069797
	55	+Activists have warned that Armenians in Turkey continue to face suspicion and discrimination. A poll released in 2011 suggested that 73.9 of Turks held negative views about Armenians, just ahead of Jews and Greeks. Some Armenians have expressed fear over a surge in nationalist sentiment in Turkey, which often targets Armenians. “I stopped wearing my necklace that has an ornamental cross on it a few months back. Not because I wanted to but due to fear,” said Turkish-Armenian Jaklin Solakyan, speaking to Middle East Eye in April. “I am really fed up of being denigrated and discriminated against. This is my country, and I am an equal citizen. Why do we need to be constantly targeted because we are minorities?” In particular, the issue of the Armenian genocide is a taboo subject in Turkey, where the government continues to argue that the killings that took place in 1915 did not constitute a genocide and saw an equal number of Turks, Kurds and Armenians killed. Turkish government officials threatened to break off ties with Germany after the parliament voted to recognise the Armenian genocide in early June.
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	57	+1. Analytics
	58	+2. analytics

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-24 17:46:01.286

Judge

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	1	+Abbey Chapman

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	1	+Dowling Catholic MH

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	1	+6

Round

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	1	+2

Team

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	1	+Strake Jesuit Chen Aff

Title

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	1	+SO - Armenia AC v2

Tournament

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	1	+Valley