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... ... @@ -1,66 +1,0 @@ 1 -AC: 2 -FWK 3 -The standard is consistency with utilitarianism. 4 -Psychological evidence proves we don’t identify with our future selves. Continuous personal identity doesn’t exist. Opar 14 5 -(Alisa Opar is the articles editor at Audubon magazine; cites Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business; and Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton) “Why We Procrastinate” Nautilus January 2014 AT 6 -The British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused a severely reductionist view of personal identity in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons: It does not exist, at least not in the way we usually consider it. We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. “His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people.” Parfit’s view was controversial even among philosophers. But psychologists are beginning to understand that it may accurately describe our attitudes towards our own decision-making: It turns out that we see our future selves as strangers. Though we will inevitably share their fates, the people we will become in a decade, quarter century, or more, are unknown to us. This impedes our ability to make good choices on their—which of course is our own—behalf. That bright, shiny New Year’s resolution? If you feel perfectly justified in breaking it, it may be because it feels like it was a promise someone else made. “It’s kind of a weird notion,” says Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “On a psychological and emotional level we really consider that future self as if it’s another person.” Using fMRI, Hershfield and colleagues studied brain activity changes when people imagine their future and consider their present. They homed in on two areas of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, which are more active when a subject thinks about himself than when he thinks of someone else. They found these same areas were more strongly activated when subjects thought of themselves today, than of themselves in the future. Their future self “felt” like somebody else. In fact, their neural activity when they described themselves in a decade was similar to that when they described Matt Damon or Natalie Portman. And subjects whose brain activity changed the most when they spoke about their future selves were the least likely to favor large long-term financial gains over small immediate ones. Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton, has come to similar conclusions in her research. In a 2008 study, Pronin and her team told college students that they were taking part in an experiment on disgust that required drinking a concoction made of ketchup and soy sauce. The more they, their future selves, or other students consumed, they were told, the greater the benefit to science. Students who were told they’d have to down the distasteful quaff that day committed to consuming two tablespoons. But those that were committing their future selves (the following semester) or other students to participate agreed to guzzle an average of half a cup. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. The disconnect between our present and time-shifted selves has real implications for how we make decisions. We might choose to procrastinate, and let some other version of our self deal with problems or chores. Or, as in the case of Parfit’s smoking boy, we can focus on that version of our self that derives pleasure, and ignore the one that pays the price. But if procrastination or irresponsibility can derive from a poor connection to your future self, strengthening this connection may prove to be an effective remedy. This is exactly the tactic that some researchers are taking. Anne Wilson, a psychologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, has manipulated people’s perception of time by presenting participants with timelines scaled to make an upcoming event, such as a paper due date, seem either very close or far off. “Using a longer timeline makes people feel more connected to their future selves,” says Wilson. That, in turn, spurred students to finish their assignment earlier, saving their end-of-semester self the stress of banging it out at the last minute. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. Hershfield has taken a more high-tech approach. Inspired by the use of images to spur charitable donations, he and colleagues took subjects into a virtual reality room and asked them to look into a mirror. The subjects saw either their current self, or a digitally aged image of themselves (see the figure, Digital Old Age). When they exited the room, they were asked how they’d spend $1,000. Those exposed to the aged photo said they’d put twice as much into a retirement account as those who saw themselves unaged. This might be important news for parts of the finance industry. Insurance giant Allianz is funding a pilot project in the midwest in which Hershfield’s team will show state employees their aged faces when they make pension allocations. Merrill Edge, the online discount unit of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has taken this approach online, with a service called Face Retirement. Each decade-jumping image is accompanied by startling cost-of-living projections and suggestions to invest in your golden years. Hershfield is currently investigating whether morphed images can help people lose weight. Of course, the way we treat our future self is not necessarily negative: Since we think of our future self as someone else, our own decision making reflects how we treat other people. Where Parfit’s smoking boy endangers the health of his future self with nary a thought, others might act differently. “The thing is, we make sacrifices for people all the time,” says Hershfield. “In relationships, in marriages.” The silver lining of our dissociation from our future self, then, is that it is another reason to practice being good to others. One of them might be you. 7 -Justifies Util: the absence of personal identity, only end states can matter. Shoemaker 99 8 -Shoemaker, David (Dept of Philosophy, U Memphis). “Utilitarianism and Personal Identity.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 183–199, 1999. http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/jvipaper.pdf 9 -Extreme reductionism might lend support to utilitarianism in the following way. Many people claim that we are justified in maximizing the good in our own lives, but not justified in maximizing the good across sets of lives, simply because each of us is a single, deeply unified person, unified by the further fact of identity, whereas there is no such corresponding unity across sets of lives. But if the only justification for the different treatment of individual lives and sets of lives is the further fact, and this fact is undermined by the truth of reductionism, then nothing justifies this different treatment. There are no deeply unified subjects of experience. What remains are merely the experiences themselves, and so any ethical theory distinguishing between individual lives and sets of lives is mistaken. If the deep, further fact is missing, then there are no unities. The morally significant units should then be the states people are in at particular times, and an ethical theory that focused on them and attempted to improve their quality, whatever their location, would be the most plausible. Utilitarianism is just such a theory. 10 -Prefer Additionally: 11 -1 Policymaking is key to critical thinking, thus the role of the ballot is to access the desirability of an aff policy option via empirical evidence. Harwood 5 12 -(Karey, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) “Teaching Bioethics through Participation and Policy-Making” Essays on Teaching Excellence Toward the Best in the Academy Vol. 16, No. 4, 2004-2005 A publication of The Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education AT 13 -Teaching bioethics to undergraduate students in the humanities and social sciences differs from teaching ethics to medical students or residents. One primary difference is that undergraduates are removed from the clinical setting, where a clinically-based case method of teaching is widely practiced and where students can develop their decision-making skills "at the bedside" through the mentoring of more senior physicians. Another difference is that undergraduates are not in training to join a profession, in this case a profession that has developed a fairly stable body of principles that are "applied" to real-life moral dilemmas (Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade, 2002; Wear, 2002). Instead, as part of a liberal arts education, an undergraduate course in bioethics should aim to prepare students for life as an engaged citizen in a democratic society (Callahan and Bok, 1980; Kohlberg, 1981) by developing skills in critical thinking and encouraging active engagement in the deliberation of issues in the areas of medicine and biotechnology. Critical thinking, most plainly, is the ability to make well-considered judgments. Critical thinking involves the analysis of concepts and arguments and the interpretation of concrete data or evidence (APA, 1990); but it also requires capacities for self-criticism, moral imagination, and empathy (Momeyer, 2002). It enables the discernment of better and worse arguments or better and worse courses of action, and thus rests on the premise that such judgments of value are possible. It is an essential set of skills, not because it is immediately applicable to a chosen career, but because "wide-awake, careful, thorough habits of thinking" (Dewey, 1933, p. 274) are important in all areas of human life, both individual and social. How to Teach Bioethics One way to foster the development of critical reasoning skills in the undergraduate setting is to provide groups of students with the opportunity to research, analyze, discuss, and propose public policy on emerging topics in bioethics. This type of activity simulates the work of a national bioethics commission and encourages students to view themselves as participants in a significant public debate. For example, a group of students might study stem cell research or international research on AIDS, acquiring enough scientific, medical, and historical background on these topics to be able to identify potential ethical questions. Some questions that might be considered include: Do the benefits of stem cell research justify the use of human embryos? Are all sources of human stem cells morally equivalent? Are the existing safeguards to protect human subjects adequate for international research on AIDS? Should developing countries be able to benefit from AIDS research when their citizens serve as research subjects? Without necessarily working to achieve complete agreement, students try to reach enough of a consensus to propose a policy or regulation. A group might decide that allowing stem cell research from "leftover" embryos created in the context of in vitro fertilization is acceptable, for example, but that creating embryos for the sole purpose of research is not. Students must give reasons for their regulations; and, in searching for and articulating these reasons, students are encouraged to examine the moral values and commitments that underlie their positions. An in-class presentation of the group’s work serves as the culminating exercise, and other students are invited to challenge and contribute to the debate about what ought to be done. Students typically relish this opportunity, seeing themselves not as a passive audience to be fed neutral information but as participants in a debate that matters. In other words, they exhibit the traits of engaged citizens. These activities are highly participatory and inquiry-guided, which means the learning is driven by the task of solving a problem: devising a public policy. Students are invested in and motivated by the group’s task and discover together what they need to learn about their topic. Included in this learning process is the integration of abstract ethical theories and concepts — ideally studied throughout the entirety of the course — into the concrete details of the case at hand. It is not a matter of simply "applying" the principle of justice to the topic of international research on AIDS, for example, just for the sake of getting something done (Evans, 2000). Students must ask: what does justice look like in this case? Does conducting an experiment to see how cheaply an individual in a developing country can be treated for AIDS promote justice, as we understand it? In asking these substantive questions, students in an undergraduate bioethics course are engaged in what Callahan calls "foundational" bioethics (Callahan, 1999). They are not merely engaged in means-end reasoning: how best to achieve an already settled goal (Wear, 2002). They are examining the goals themselves, and thus considering "a multiplicity of ultimate values" (Momeyer, 2002). Developing a Wide-awake Citizenry As any teacher of undergraduate ethics can attest, this kind of substantive discussion of "ultimate values" or "the good" can be murky territory. The allure of moral relativism is strong and the resources for challenging it seem limited. As Momeyer observed, "Students frequently arrive in our classrooms with very limited ways of morally engaging problematic situations, by, for instance, appealing to religious dogmas or a relentless subjectivism and/or relativism, or by privileging – as well enculturated Americans seemingly must, – the exercise of individual autonomy over all other values"(p. 412). Regardless of how one explains the allure of relativism, what is clear is that undergraduates need to develop skills in critical thinking if they are to be able to make the well-considered judgments that are inevitable and necessary in life. One benefit of a simulated bioethics commission is that it directs students’ attention toward a problem of public policy, which is to say a problem of societal significance. Discussing classic cases in medical ethics that focus on an individual patient’s dilemma, such as, famously, whether Dax Cowart’s requests to die after suffering severe burns over most of his body should have been honored by his physicians, provide essential occasions to learn about important concepts like informed consent, competence, and respect for autonomy. Indeed, effective teaching of ethics in any setting arguably requires a dynamic balance between conceptual analysis and concrete engagement of cases. But undergraduates also need opportunities to learn that their critical thinking skills will be needed in shaping the social policies of the future. Why is critical thinking a legitimate and valuable goal? And why is active engagement or participation in shaping social policies important? As Dewey once argued, the point of education is to teach students to think on their own because conscious thinking and participation are the hallmarks of democratic citizenship. Others have followed Dewey’s pragmatic sensibilities, including the developmental psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg, whose "just community" schools were an outgrowth of his belief that democratic participation in the making of rules for everyone in a community fosters students’ moral development. The writings of Jürgen Habermas (1995) on discourse ethics have also influenced legions of teachers to examine anew the value of a consensus-seeking dialogue that is widely inclusive and highly participatory. Conclusion If we are to avoid living in an "administered society," where we passively receive what is handed down to us from others, it is important to develop a sense of engagement in the social policies that are made and to practice the critical reasoning skills necessary to make well-considered judgments (Bellah, et al., 1991). Fortunately, continuing developments in medicine and biotechnology offer an abundance of ethical issues to debate. Teaching bioethics in the undergraduate setting is about paying attention to these debates and having a stake in their outcome. 14 -2 Actor specificity: governments are obligated to use util. Goodin 90 15 -Robert Goodin, Professor of Government, University of Essex, Australian National Defense University, “THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE,” p. 141-2, 1990. 16 -My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is Something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of util.itarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty., and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private Individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances. and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus. – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct. 17 -Accidents 18 -Nuclear power plants contain multiple nonlinear interactions – kills safety systems and guarantees accidents. Perrow 11 19 -Charles Perrow Charles Perrow is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. The author of several books and many articles on organizations, he is primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society (Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2001), and their catastrophic potentials (Normal Accidents: Living with HighRisk Technologies, Princeton University Press, 1999; The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters, Princeton University Press, 2011)., November 1, 2011, "Fukushima and the Inevitability of Accidents" Sagepub/Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/6/44 20 -In my work on “normal accidents,” I have argued that some complex organizations such as chemical plants, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons systems, and, to a more limited extent, air transport networks have so many nonlinear system properties that eventually the unanticipated interaction of multiple failures may create an accident that no designer could have anticipated and no operator can understand. Everything is subject to failure designs, procedures, supplies and equipment, operators, and the environment. The government and businesses know this and design safety devices with multiple redundancies and all kinds of bells and whistles. But nonlinear, unexpected interactions of even small failures can defeat these safety systems. If the system is also tightly coupled, no intervention can prevent a cascade of failures that brings it down. I use the term “normal” because these characteristics are built into the systems; there is nothing one can do about them other than to initiate massive system redesigns to reduce interactive complexity and to loosen coupling. Companies and governments can modularize integrated designs and deconcentrate hazardous material. Actually, though, compared with the prosaic cases previously mentioned, normal accidents are rare. (Three Mile Island is the only accident in my list that qualifies.) It is much more common for systems with catastrophic potential to fail because of poor regulation, ignored warnings, production pressures, cost cutting, poor training, and so on. All of the organizational faults I have noted have their counterpart in daily life. Like organizations and their leaders, people seek wealth and prestige and a reputation for integrity. In the process, they occasionally find it necessary to be deceitful, engaging in denials and coverups, cheating and fabrication. Everyone has violated regulations, failed to plan ahead, and bungled in crises. But people are not, as individuals, repositories of radioactive materials, toxic substances, and explosives, nor do they sit astride critical infrastructures. Organizations do. The consequences of an individual’s failures can only be catastrophic if they are magnified by organizations. The larger the organizations, the greater the concentration of destructive power. The larger the organizations, the greater the potential for political power that can influence regulations and ignore warnings. 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 -Statistical evidence proves – probability of a core melt accident in the next decade is 70 percent. Rose and Sweeting 3/2 25 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 26 -The 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan suggested once more that severe nuclear accidents could be even more frequent than safety studies had predicted and Feiveson had hoped. So we decided to estimate the probability of a severe accident – that is, a core-melt accident – by relating the number of past core-melt accidents to the total number of years reactors have been operating (i.e. “reactor years”). This type of prediction often runs up against the argument that nuclear operators learn from the past. Therefore we also tried to account for any learning effects in our analysis. We restricted our analysis to accidents related to civil nuclear reactors used for power generation, as arguments about trade-offs for using nuclear technology differ depending on the application. And, because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not distribute comprehensive, long-term reports on nuclear incidents and accidents because of confidentiality agreements with the countries it works with, we have had to use alternative sources for information on nuclear accidents over time. By our calculations, the overall probability of a coremelt accident in the next decade, in a world with 443 reactors, is almost 70. (Because of statistical uncertainty, however, the probability could range from about 28 to roughly 95.) The United States, with 104 reactors, has about a 50 probability of experiencing one core-melt accident within the next 25 years.1 27 -Prefer this analysis: 28 -First, accident risk assessment based on paths towards an accident fail – using past data is the most reliable – consensus of experts. Rose and Sweeting 2 29 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 30 -In the past, several studies have investigated the probability of a core melt using the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) method. This determines probability prior to accidents by analyzing possible paths toward a severe accident, rather than using existing data to determine probability empirically. Two studies by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1975, 1990) as well as a German government study (Hörtner 1980) examined seven different cases or reactors. Three calculations resulted in 1 accident in more than 200,000 reactor years, and a further three resulted in 1 accident in 11,000–25,000 reactor years. Only the result for the Zion reactor had an accident rate similar to ours, with 1 accident in 3000 years. After Chernobyl, Islam and Lindgren (1986, 691) published a short note in Nature in which, based on the known accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) and reactor years (approximately 4000) at the time, they concluded that “…the probability of having one accident every two decades is more than 95.” Regarding PRA, they wrote: “Our view is that this method should be replaced by risk assessment using the observed data.” This sparked an intensive discussion of statistical issues in the following year (Edwards 1986; Schwartz 1986; Fröhner 1987; Chow and Oliver 1987; Edwards 1987); however, there was agreement on the substantive conclusions of Islam and Lindgren. 31 -Second, there’s no learning effect – humans keep making the same mistakes. Rose and Sweeting 3 32 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 33 -We also wanted to see whether accidents become less frequent with more operational experience. But simply analyzing the number of severe accidents against reactor years is not very illuminating because, luckily, these accidents are rather rare. So we examined the relationship between the cumulative number of all accidents, from severe to minor ones, and cumulative reactor years. The accident rate is then estimated as the ratio of cumulative number of accidents to cumulative reactor years. If the probability of an accident remained constant over time, then a graph of the above accidentrate estimates against reactor years would exhibit no trend, whereas a learning effect would result in a decreasing accident probability and the graph would exhibit a decreasing trend. We began by plotting the data from the Guardian list, with a few exclusions.3 The graph shows a high accident rate at the beginning because of one accident in Russia in 1957. The accident rate then drops because the following years were accident-free. After around 500 reactor years, the plot appears to stabilize, varying around a constant value. This is confirmed by a detailed statistical analysis, which produces a probability for a (minor or major) accident in a nuclear power plant of about 1 in 1000 reactor years and shows no evidence of a learning effect. 34 -Third, the authors analyzed every core melt accident, despite organizations like the IAEA hiding information. Rose and Sweeting 4 35 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 36 -After the Fukushima disaster, the authors analyzed all past core-melt accidents and estimated a failure rate of 1 per 3704 reactor years. This rate indicates that more than one such accident could occur somewhere in the world within the next decade. The authors also analyzed the role that learning from past accidents can play over time. This analysis showed few or no learning effects occurring, depending on the database used. Because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has no publicly available list of nuclear accidents, the authors used data compiled by the Guardian newspaper and the energy researcher Benjamin Sovacool. The results suggest that there are likely to be more severe nuclear accidents than have been expected and support Charles Perrow’s “normal accidents” theory that nuclear power reactors cannot be operated without major accidents. However, a more detailed analysis of nuclear accident probabilities needs more transparency from the IAEA. Public support for nuclear power cannot currently be based on full knowledge simply because important information is not available. 37 -Advocacy 38 -I advocate that all countries prohibit the production of nuclear power which is currently connected to the electrical grid. To clarify, this would include nuclear power plants, but would exclude things like research reactors. I defend action via the federal governments of countries. I defend it as a phaseout. I’ll spec to whatever in CX so long as it doesn’t screw solvency ~-~- but only I determine what that is. 39 -Only phaseout solves. Lucas 12 40 -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 41 -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 only certain way to eliminate this potentially devastating risk is to phase 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. 42 -Advantage 1 is Structural Violence 43 -Accidents cause structural violence – marginalized people bear the brunt of them. Cousins et al. 13 44 -Elicia Cousins Elicia Cousins is a doctoral student in sociology and a research assistant in SSEHRI. She is from Tokyo, Japan and received her BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton College in Minnesota, Claire Karban , Fay Li , and Marianna Zapanta , 2013 (The Study references other studies from 2013 implying it’s from at least 2013, but it does not list a formal date), " Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice: A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience" Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project”, https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ents/assets/Cousins_Karban_Li_Zapanta.pdf 45 -The range of potential impacts on biological health, wellbeing, and health-related behavior is vast for anyone involved, regardless of age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. However, we suggest that such stress is amplified in certain populations of heightened vulnerability. For example, the stress of parents (especially mothers) with preschool age children was particularly evident throughout the present analysis, a well-documented trend associated with technological disasters (Havenaar et al. 1996; Bromet and Schulberg 1986). Children are also particularly sensitive to physical and mental harm (Peek 2008; Bromet et al. 2000), a trend reflected in a recent survey of child evacuees from Fukushima24 that revealed stress levels double the Japanese average (Brumfiel 2013). A similar trend is evident in the United States, where low-income populations and people of color may encounter such stressors at higher levels and face greater difficulties in coping with them. Low-income populations are more likely to lack financial resources (Cutter 2006) and expansive social networks to rely upon (Dominguez and Watkins 2003) during emergencies. The differential response and recovery to Hurricane Katrina is a telling example of such trends: while those with resources left before the hurricane arrived, those without resources (mainly the poor, African American, elderly, or residents without private cars) had to remain and deal with the oncoming disaster (Cutter 2006). Low socioeconomic status is also associated with lower educational attainment, which constrains understanding of and access to disaster warnings and information on recovery (Ibid.). It follows that such populations would be more prone to stress from feelings of uncertainty. 46 -No amount of radiation is good – it kills – consensus and empirics. Mushak 7 47 -Paul Mushak magna cum laude at University of Scranton, Ph.D. in metalloorganic/organic chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Florida, postdoctoral work as a fellow in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in the School of Medicine at Yale University, was on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology from 1971 to 1985, and was an adjunct professor from 1985 to 1993. From 1995 to 2010, he was a member of the Montefiore Medical Center-Second Medical University of Shanghai, China Collaborating Centers for Prevention of Childhood Lead Poisoning and a visiting professor of Pediatric Environmental Health, Department of Pediatrics, April 2007, "Hormesis and Its Place in Nonmonotonic Dose–Response Relationships: Some Scientific Reality Checks," Environmental Health Perspectives, http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC1852676/ 48 -Radiologic hormesis. Some proponents of radiologic hormesis hold that the linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response relationship for radiologic carcinogenesis in humans and experimental animals is no longer tenable and radiologic hormesis should be the prevailing model (e.g., Calabrese 2005b; Pollycove and Feinendegen 2001). However, research into radiologic carcinogenesis in humans continues to feed a huge epidemiologic database documenting the persistence of radiologic carcinogenicity with lower dose. Little convincing evidence exists to support human radiologic hormetic responses nullifying the LNT model of low-dose carcinogenesis. Current thinking also is mixed about a conceptual context for human radiologic hormesis (Johansson 2003; Pollycove and Feinendegen 2001; Upton 2001). Recent expert consensus treatises on low-dose carcinogenicity of ionizing radiation in humans present analyses largely supporting the LNT model. The most recent report by the NAS/NRC on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, BEIR VII-Phase 2 (NAS/NRC 2006), endorsed preservation of the LNT model, that is, cancer risk proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold. Appendix D of the report covers radiation hormesis. The report concluded that animal and cell studies suggesting benefits or threshold to harm from ionizing radiation are "not compelling" and that, at present, any assumption of net health benefits of radiation hormesis over detrimental impacts at the same dose is unwarranted. The December 2004 draft report of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP 2004), the report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000), and the report of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP 2001) have all concluded the LNT model remains valid. The 2005 report of the joint French National Academy of Medicine and the Institute of France Academy of Sciences on low dose-carcinogenic effect relationships for ionizing radiation (Academie Nationale de Medecine 2005) raises doubts about use of, or recommendations for, the LNT model at low ( 100 mSv) and very low ( 10 mSv) doses. The French report refers to radiation hormesis only in passing and in narrow context. Several recent epidemiologic studies are consistent with an LNT dose response. The Techa River study in the Southern Urals region of Russia (Krestinina et al. 2005) reported individualized risk estimates for excess cancers from radioactivity exposures traced to a weapons plant leak in the 1950s. The extended cohort, with 29,873 people born between 1950 and 1960, provided strong evidence of low-dose radiologic carcinogenesis. Cardis et al. (2005), in their studies of 400,000 nuclear plant workers in 15 countries, concluded that 1-2 of cancer deaths among the cohort may be due to radiation. The results for the nuclear workers produced conclusions similar to those of the Techa River findings and both articles support the ICRP standard of 20 mSv/year for occupational protection. 49 -Accidents trap the poor who cannot afford to leave, and those who can receive huge emotional stress. Cousins et al 13 50 -Elicia Cousins Elicia Cousins is a doctoral student in sociology and a research assistant in SSEHRI. She is from Tokyo, Japan and received her BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton College in Minnesota, Claire Karban , Fay Li , and Marianna Zapanta , 2013 (The Study references other studies from 2013 implying it’s from at least 2013, but it does not list a formal date), " Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice: A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience" Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project”, https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ents/assets/Cousins_Karban_Li_Zapanta.pdf 51 -Technological disasters often involve the release of toxins into the environment, necessitating the displacement of residents of newly contaminated regions. First and foremost, this involves the stress arising from new financial burdens17, and the need for securing new housing and employment. However, it also involves the difficulties of adjusting to the new environment and to separation from friends, relatives, and familiar social networks. In the freeresponse section of the NAIIC survey, 334 respondents (4) wrote of constant stress due to an unfamiliar environment and prolonged refugee life. Another 24 (0.3) respondents explicitly mentioned the difficulties of building new relationships and getting along with people in their new environment, and feeling isolated and alone. One woman from Fukushima explained her feeling of being in limbo: I’m getting used to life here in Kyoto, but I can’t help but feel as though it’s just a temporary, almost “borrowed” life. I don’t have relatives or close friends in Kyoto, and it’s hard to feel like this is where I really should be, and that my feet are firmly on the ground (Fukushima City Happy Island Newspaper). Housing, job, and financial uncertainty can also serve as barriers to evacuation, heightening the stress associated with the inability to evacuate. In Japan, only areas in which cumulative radiation exposure is projected to reach 20mSv/year18 have been evacuated by the government, leaving residents of other areas to decide whether to evacuate “voluntarily” without government compensation. As a result, many who wish to evacuate cannot afford to; according to a 2011 survey by Friends of Earth Japan, financial and employment uncertainty were the main barriers to evacuation, and this continues to be true (Mitsuta interview). In many cases the mother and children have evacuated for the sake of the children’s health, while the father remains in Fukushima to continue his job and earn money. In the free response section of the NAIIC survey, 290 respondents (4) wrote about how much they missed seeing members of their family. 52 - 53 - 54 -Advantage 2 is BioD 55 -Nuclear power plants irreversibly damage biodiversity from accidents and waste: laundry list, empirics, and literature review. Kabasakal and Albayrak 11. 56 -November 17-20, 2011 Paper was presented in this time. Bekir Kabasakal Department of Biology, Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. and Tamer Albayrak Department of Biology, Faculty of Science and Art, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. Paper presented at the VI. International Symposium on Ecology and Environmental Problems. "Effects of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents on Biodiversity and Awareness of Potential Nuclear Accident Risk near the Eastern Border of Turkey," Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, http://www.academia.edu/2303350/Effects_of_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Accidents_on_Biodiversity_and_Awareness_of_Potential_Nuclear_Accident_Risk_near_the_Eastern_Border_of_Turkey 57 -Previous studies indicated that NPP accidents cause permanent damage to biodiversity. Recent publications indicate that if an accident happens at MNPP, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran might be influenced. Because of this reason it need to have an urgent action plan and take the necessary precautions for this possible catastrophe. KEYWORDS: Nuclear power plant, nuclear accident, nuclear risk, Metsamor, Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant * Corresponding author 1 INTRODUCTION Although Nuclear power plants (NPP) are designed to withstand earthquakes or other natural disasters and to shut down safely in the event of major earth movement, nonuclear facility is 100 safe due to a possible meltdown of the reactor (due to loss of coolant water leading to over-heating). If an accident occurs, it would create a major public hazard and may cause human fatalities and biodiversity loss 1. Moreover, nuclear reactors produce toxic waste, which is highly radioactive and can remain in the environment for several hundred years. Because of these reasons NPPs are highly risky energy resources while they do not produce CO 2 and other green gasses. The severity of any nuclear accident is measured on the international event scale (INES) from 0 to 7 (0 means no consequences and 7 is the major accident; level 1-3 are called incidents and level 4-7 are called accidents). Eight accidents have been reported above level 4 so far (Table 1). Two of those were the major accidents (INES level 7): Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011). Chernobyl nu-clear power plant disaster is the worst nuclear disaster 2. TABLE 1 - Nuclear power plant accidents and their effects. Date Location INES Level* 2011 Fukushima, Japan 7 1999 Tokaimura, Japan 41986 Chernobyl, Ukraine 7 1980 Saint-Laurent A2, France 41979 Three Mile Island, USA 51969 Saint-Laurent A1, France 41957 Mayak, Russia 61957 Windscale, UK 5*INES event scale: Level 7 = major accident; level 6 = serious accident; level 5 = accident with wider consequences; level 4 = accident with local consequences; Level 3 = serious incident; 2 = incident; 1 = anomaly; level O = no safety significance. © by PSP Volume 21 – No 11b. 2012 Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 34352 EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWERPLANT ACCIDENT ON BIODIVERSITY Previous nuclear accidents showed that right after the accident happens, vast amounts of radioactive material, which are harmful to living organisms such as Iodine -131and Caesium -137 or Cesium -137, are transported into the atmosphere 3. Once the radioactive materials are released, all living organism can be influenced in several ways 3, 4. For instance people can be exposed by two ways: from the deposited material itself as external irradiation, or the inhalation of any material resuspended into the atmosphere, and the transfer of material through the terrestrial and aquatic environment to food and water inhalation of radioactive material in the air as internal irradiation 5. Most information about effects of nuclear accidents on biodiversity and human were gained from the Cherno- byl accident. On-going studies on the consequences of the Fukushima accident have been showing that the marine ecosystem will be effected more than the terrestrial eco-systems 6. Effects of NPP accidents on biodiversity can be di-vided into two main topics: physiological and genetic effects of radiation and ecological consequences of radiation 7. Physiological and genetic effects of radiation: increased morphologic, physiologic, genetic disorders; increased mutation rates and developmental abnormalities, increase in general oncological morbidity, accelerated aging, reduction in body antioxidant levels 8-12. Ecological consequences of radiation: reduced adult survival and reproduction suggests and reduction in species abundance 13-16. 58 -Accidents go global. Max Planck Institute for Chemistry 12 Cites Lelevield. 59 -Max Planck Institute for Chemistry Non Government, Non Profit Organization Dedicated to Chemistry, Citing: Johannes Lelieveld PhD in Physics and Astronomy, 5-22-2012, "Probability of contamination from severe nuclear reactor accidents is higher than expected,", https://www.mpg.de/5809418/reactor_accidents 60 -Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an area is defined as being contaminated with radiation from this amount onwards. In view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants. Global risk of radioactive contamination. The map shows the annual probability in percent of radioactive contamination by more than 40 kilobecquerels per square meter. In Western Europe the risk is around two percent per year. Image Omitted The reactor accident in Fukushima has fuelled the discussion about nuclear energy and triggered Germany's exit from their nuclear power program. It appears that the global risk of such a catastrophe is higher than previously thought, a result of a study carried out by a research team led by Jos Lelieveld, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz: "After Fukushima, the prospect of such an incident occurring again came into question, and whether we can actually calculate the radioactive fallout using our atmospheric models." According to the results of the study, a nuclear meltdown in one of the reactors in operation worldwide is likely to occur once in 10 to 20 years. Currently, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation, and 60 more are planned. To determine the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown, the researchers applied a simple calculation. They divided the operating hours of all civilian nuclear reactors in the world, from the commissioning of the first up to the present, by the number of reactor meltdowns that have actually occurred. The total number of operating hours is 14,500 years, the number of reactor meltdowns comes to four—one in Chernobyl and three in Fukushima. This translates into one major accident, being defined according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), every 3,625 years. Even if this result is conservatively rounded to one major accident every 5,000 reactor years, the risk is 200 times higher than the estimate for catastrophic, non-contained core meltdowns made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1990. The Mainz researchers did not distinguish ages and types of reactors, or whether they are located in regions of enhanced risks, for example by earthquakes. After all, nobody had anticipated the reactor catastrophe in Japan. 25 percent of the radioactive particles are transported further than 2,000 kilometres Subsequently, the researchers determined the geographic distribution of radioactive gases and particles around a possible accident site using a computer model that describes the Earth's atmosphere. The model calculates meteorological conditions and flows, and also accounts for chemical reactions in the atmosphere. The model can compute the global distribution of trace gases, for example, and can also simulate the spreading of radioactive gases and particles. To approximate the radioactive contamination, the researchers calculated how the particles of radioactive caesium-137 (137Cs) disperse in the atmosphere, where they deposit on the earth’s surface and in what quantities. The 137Cs isotope is a product of the nuclear fission of uranium. It has a half-life of 30 years and was one of the key elements in the radioactive contamination following the disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The computer simulations revealed that, on average, only eight percent of the 137Cs particles are expected to deposit within an area of 50 kilometres around the nuclear accident site. Around 50 percent of the particles would be deposited outside a radius of 1,000 kilometres, and around 25 percent would spread even further than 2,000 kilometres. These results underscore that reactor accidents are likely to cause radioactive contamination well beyond national borders. 61 -Biodiversity is on the brink of global collapse – that causes extinction and is a threat multiplier. Torres 2/10 62 -Phil Torres Phil Torres is author, Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and freelance writer with publications in Salon, Skeptic, the Humanist, American Atheist, The Progressive, Humanity+, and many others. His forthcoming book is called The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse (Pitchstone Publishing) , 2-10-16, "Biodiversity Loss and the Doomsday Clock: An Invisible Disaster Almost No One is Talking About," Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/10/biodiversity-loss-and-doomsday-clock-invisible-disaster-almost-no-one-talking-about 63 -Everywhere one looks, the biosphere is wilting — and a single bipedal species with large brains and opposable thumbs is almost entirely responsible for this worsening plight. If humanity continues to prune back the Tree of Life with reckless abandon, we could be forced to confront a global disaster of truly unprecedented proportions. Along these lines, a 2012 article published in Nature and authored by over twenty scientists claims that humanity could be teetering on the brink of a catastrophic, irreversible collapse of the global ecosystem. According to the paper, there could be “tipping points” — also called “critical thresholds” — lurking in the environment that, once crossed, could initiate radical and sudden changes in the biosphere. Thus, an event of this sort could be preceded by little or no warning: everything might look more or less okay, until the ecosystem is suddenly in ruins. We must, moving forward, never forget that just as we’re minds embodied, so too are we bodies environed, meaning that if the environment implodes under the weight of civilization, then civilization itself is doomed. While the threat of nuclear weapons deserves serious attention from political leaders and academics, as the Bulletin correctly observes, it’s even more imperative that we focus on the broader “contextual problems” that could inflate the overall probability of wars and terrorism in the future. Climate change and biodiversity loss are both conflict multipliers of precisely this sort, and each is a contributing factor that’s exacerbating the other. If we fail to make these threats a top priority in 2016, the likelihood of nuclear weapons — or some other form of emerging technology, including biotechnology and artificial intelligence — being used in the future will only increase. Perhaps there’s still time to avert the sixth mass extinction or a sudden collapse of the global ecosystem. But time is running out — the doomsday clock is ticking. 64 -One species going extinct triggers the brink. Diner ’94 Brackets 65 -David N. Diner 1994, Judge Advocate’s General’s Corps of US Army, Military Law Review, Winter, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161, l/n, David N. 66 -In past mass extinction episodes, as many as ninety percent of the existing species perished, and yet the world moved forward, and new species replaced the old. So why should the world should be concerned now? The prime reason is the world's survival. 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 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. n68 2. 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. n73 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. n75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 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, mankind may be edging closer to the abyss. - EntryDate
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... ... @@ -1,66 +1,0 @@ 1 -AC: 2 -FWK 3 -The standard is consistency with utilitarianism. 4 -Psychological evidence proves we don’t identify with our future selves. Continuous personal identity doesn’t exist. Opar 14 5 -(Alisa Opar is the articles editor at Audubon magazine; cites Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business; and Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton) “Why We Procrastinate” Nautilus January 2014 AT 6 -The British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused a severely reductionist view of personal identity in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons: It does not exist, at least not in the way we usually consider it. We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. “His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people.” Parfit’s view was controversial even among philosophers. But psychologists are beginning to understand that it may accurately describe our attitudes towards our own decision-making: It turns out that we see our future selves as strangers. Though we will inevitably share their fates, the people we will become in a decade, quarter century, or more, are unknown to us. This impedes our ability to make good choices on their—which of course is our own—behalf. That bright, shiny New Year’s resolution? If you feel perfectly justified in breaking it, it may be because it feels like it was a promise someone else made. “It’s kind of a weird notion,” says Hal Hershfield, an assistant professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “On a psychological and emotional level we really consider that future self as if it’s another person.” Using fMRI, Hershfield and colleagues studied brain activity changes when people imagine their future and consider their present. They homed in on two areas of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, which are more active when a subject thinks about himself than when he thinks of someone else. They found these same areas were more strongly activated when subjects thought of themselves today, than of themselves in the future. Their future self “felt” like somebody else. In fact, their neural activity when they described themselves in a decade was similar to that when they described Matt Damon or Natalie Portman. And subjects whose brain activity changed the most when they spoke about their future selves were the least likely to favor large long-term financial gains over small immediate ones. Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton, has come to similar conclusions in her research. In a 2008 study, Pronin and her team told college students that they were taking part in an experiment on disgust that required drinking a concoction made of ketchup and soy sauce. The more they, their future selves, or other students consumed, they were told, the greater the benefit to science. Students who were told they’d have to down the distasteful quaff that day committed to consuming two tablespoons. But those that were committing their future selves (the following semester) or other students to participate agreed to guzzle an average of half a cup. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. The disconnect between our present and time-shifted selves has real implications for how we make decisions. We might choose to procrastinate, and let some other version of our self deal with problems or chores. Or, as in the case of Parfit’s smoking boy, we can focus on that version of our self that derives pleasure, and ignore the one that pays the price. But if procrastination or irresponsibility can derive from a poor connection to your future self, strengthening this connection may prove to be an effective remedy. This is exactly the tactic that some researchers are taking. Anne Wilson, a psychologist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, has manipulated people’s perception of time by presenting participants with timelines scaled to make an upcoming event, such as a paper due date, seem either very close or far off. “Using a longer timeline makes people feel more connected to their future selves,” says Wilson. That, in turn, spurred students to finish their assignment earlier, saving their end-of-semester self the stress of banging it out at the last minute. We think of our future selves, says Pronin, like we think of others: in the third person. Hershfield has taken a more high-tech approach. Inspired by the use of images to spur charitable donations, he and colleagues took subjects into a virtual reality room and asked them to look into a mirror. The subjects saw either their current self, or a digitally aged image of themselves (see the figure, Digital Old Age). When they exited the room, they were asked how they’d spend $1,000. Those exposed to the aged photo said they’d put twice as much into a retirement account as those who saw themselves unaged. This might be important news for parts of the finance industry. Insurance giant Allianz is funding a pilot project in the midwest in which Hershfield’s team will show state employees their aged faces when they make pension allocations. Merrill Edge, the online discount unit of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has taken this approach online, with a service called Face Retirement. Each decade-jumping image is accompanied by startling cost-of-living projections and suggestions to invest in your golden years. Hershfield is currently investigating whether morphed images can help people lose weight. Of course, the way we treat our future self is not necessarily negative: Since we think of our future self as someone else, our own decision making reflects how we treat other people. Where Parfit’s smoking boy endangers the health of his future self with nary a thought, others might act differently. “The thing is, we make sacrifices for people all the time,” says Hershfield. “In relationships, in marriages.” The silver lining of our dissociation from our future self, then, is that it is another reason to practice being good to others. One of them might be you. 7 -Justifies Util: the absence of personal identity, only end states can matter. Shoemaker 99 8 -Shoemaker, David (Dept of Philosophy, U Memphis). “Utilitarianism and Personal Identity.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 183–199, 1999. http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/jvipaper.pdf 9 -Extreme reductionism might lend support to utilitarianism in the following way. Many people claim that we are justified in maximizing the good in our own lives, but not justified in maximizing the good across sets of lives, simply because each of us is a single, deeply unified person, unified by the further fact of identity, whereas there is no such corresponding unity across sets of lives. But if the only justification for the different treatment of individual lives and sets of lives is the further fact, and this fact is undermined by the truth of reductionism, then nothing justifies this different treatment. There are no deeply unified subjects of experience. What remains are merely the experiences themselves, and so any ethical theory distinguishing between individual lives and sets of lives is mistaken. If the deep, further fact is missing, then there are no unities. The morally significant units should then be the states people are in at particular times, and an ethical theory that focused on them and attempted to improve their quality, whatever their location, would be the most plausible. Utilitarianism is just such a theory. 10 -Prefer Additionally: 11 -1 Policymaking is key to critical thinking, thus the role of the ballot is to access the desirability of an aff policy option via empirical evidence. Harwood 5 12 -(Karey, associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies) “Teaching Bioethics through Participation and Policy-Making” Essays on Teaching Excellence Toward the Best in the Academy Vol. 16, No. 4, 2004-2005 A publication of The Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education AT 13 -Teaching bioethics to undergraduate students in the humanities and social sciences differs from teaching ethics to medical students or residents. One primary difference is that undergraduates are removed from the clinical setting, where a clinically-based case method of teaching is widely practiced and where students can develop their decision-making skills "at the bedside" through the mentoring of more senior physicians. Another difference is that undergraduates are not in training to join a profession, in this case a profession that has developed a fairly stable body of principles that are "applied" to real-life moral dilemmas (Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade, 2002; Wear, 2002). Instead, as part of a liberal arts education, an undergraduate course in bioethics should aim to prepare students for life as an engaged citizen in a democratic society (Callahan and Bok, 1980; Kohlberg, 1981) by developing skills in critical thinking and encouraging active engagement in the deliberation of issues in the areas of medicine and biotechnology. Critical thinking, most plainly, is the ability to make well-considered judgments. Critical thinking involves the analysis of concepts and arguments and the interpretation of concrete data or evidence (APA, 1990); but it also requires capacities for self-criticism, moral imagination, and empathy (Momeyer, 2002). It enables the discernment of better and worse arguments or better and worse courses of action, and thus rests on the premise that such judgments of value are possible. It is an essential set of skills, not because it is immediately applicable to a chosen career, but because "wide-awake, careful, thorough habits of thinking" (Dewey, 1933, p. 274) are important in all areas of human life, both individual and social. How to Teach Bioethics One way to foster the development of critical reasoning skills in the undergraduate setting is to provide groups of students with the opportunity to research, analyze, discuss, and propose public policy on emerging topics in bioethics. This type of activity simulates the work of a national bioethics commission and encourages students to view themselves as participants in a significant public debate. For example, a group of students might study stem cell research or international research on AIDS, acquiring enough scientific, medical, and historical background on these topics to be able to identify potential ethical questions. Some questions that might be considered include: Do the benefits of stem cell research justify the use of human embryos? Are all sources of human stem cells morally equivalent? Are the existing safeguards to protect human subjects adequate for international research on AIDS? Should developing countries be able to benefit from AIDS research when their citizens serve as research subjects? Without necessarily working to achieve complete agreement, students try to reach enough of a consensus to propose a policy or regulation. A group might decide that allowing stem cell research from "leftover" embryos created in the context of in vitro fertilization is acceptable, for example, but that creating embryos for the sole purpose of research is not. Students must give reasons for their regulations; and, in searching for and articulating these reasons, students are encouraged to examine the moral values and commitments that underlie their positions. An in-class presentation of the group’s work serves as the culminating exercise, and other students are invited to challenge and contribute to the debate about what ought to be done. Students typically relish this opportunity, seeing themselves not as a passive audience to be fed neutral information but as participants in a debate that matters. In other words, they exhibit the traits of engaged citizens. These activities are highly participatory and inquiry-guided, which means the learning is driven by the task of solving a problem: devising a public policy. Students are invested in and motivated by the group’s task and discover together what they need to learn about their topic. Included in this learning process is the integration of abstract ethical theories and concepts — ideally studied throughout the entirety of the course — into the concrete details of the case at hand. It is not a matter of simply "applying" the principle of justice to the topic of international research on AIDS, for example, just for the sake of getting something done (Evans, 2000). Students must ask: what does justice look like in this case? Does conducting an experiment to see how cheaply an individual in a developing country can be treated for AIDS promote justice, as we understand it? In asking these substantive questions, students in an undergraduate bioethics course are engaged in what Callahan calls "foundational" bioethics (Callahan, 1999). They are not merely engaged in means-end reasoning: how best to achieve an already settled goal (Wear, 2002). They are examining the goals themselves, and thus considering "a multiplicity of ultimate values" (Momeyer, 2002). Developing a Wide-awake Citizenry As any teacher of undergraduate ethics can attest, this kind of substantive discussion of "ultimate values" or "the good" can be murky territory. The allure of moral relativism is strong and the resources for challenging it seem limited. As Momeyer observed, "Students frequently arrive in our classrooms with very limited ways of morally engaging problematic situations, by, for instance, appealing to religious dogmas or a relentless subjectivism and/or relativism, or by privileging – as well enculturated Americans seemingly must, – the exercise of individual autonomy over all other values"(p. 412). Regardless of how one explains the allure of relativism, what is clear is that undergraduates need to develop skills in critical thinking if they are to be able to make the well-considered judgments that are inevitable and necessary in life. One benefit of a simulated bioethics commission is that it directs students’ attention toward a problem of public policy, which is to say a problem of societal significance. Discussing classic cases in medical ethics that focus on an individual patient’s dilemma, such as, famously, whether Dax Cowart’s requests to die after suffering severe burns over most of his body should have been honored by his physicians, provide essential occasions to learn about important concepts like informed consent, competence, and respect for autonomy. Indeed, effective teaching of ethics in any setting arguably requires a dynamic balance between conceptual analysis and concrete engagement of cases. But undergraduates also need opportunities to learn that their critical thinking skills will be needed in shaping the social policies of the future. Why is critical thinking a legitimate and valuable goal? And why is active engagement or participation in shaping social policies important? As Dewey once argued, the point of education is to teach students to think on their own because conscious thinking and participation are the hallmarks of democratic citizenship. Others have followed Dewey’s pragmatic sensibilities, including the developmental psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg, whose "just community" schools were an outgrowth of his belief that democratic participation in the making of rules for everyone in a community fosters students’ moral development. The writings of Jürgen Habermas (1995) on discourse ethics have also influenced legions of teachers to examine anew the value of a consensus-seeking dialogue that is widely inclusive and highly participatory. Conclusion If we are to avoid living in an "administered society," where we passively receive what is handed down to us from others, it is important to develop a sense of engagement in the social policies that are made and to practice the critical reasoning skills necessary to make well-considered judgments (Bellah, et al., 1991). Fortunately, continuing developments in medicine and biotechnology offer an abundance of ethical issues to debate. Teaching bioethics in the undergraduate setting is about paying attention to these debates and having a stake in their outcome. 14 -2 Actor specificity: governments are obligated to use util. Goodin 90 15 -Robert Goodin, Professor of Government, University of Essex, Australian National Defense University, “THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE,” p. 141-2, 1990. 16 -My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is Something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of util.itarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty., and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private Individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances. and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus. – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct. 17 -Accidents 18 -Nuclear power plants contain multiple nonlinear interactions – kills safety systems and guarantees accidents. Perrow 11 19 -Charles Perrow Charles Perrow is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. The author of several books and many articles on organizations, he is primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society (Organizing America: Wealth, Power, and the Origins of Corporate Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2001), and their catastrophic potentials (Normal Accidents: Living with HighRisk Technologies, Princeton University Press, 1999; The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters, Princeton University Press, 2011)., November 1, 2011, "Fukushima and the Inevitability of Accidents" Sagepub/Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/6/44 20 -In my work on “normal accidents,” I have argued that some complex organizations such as chemical plants, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons systems, and, to a more limited extent, air transport networks have so many nonlinear system properties that eventually the unanticipated interaction of multiple failures may create an accident that no designer could have anticipated and no operator can understand. Everything is subject to failure designs, procedures, supplies and equipment, operators, and the environment. The government and businesses know this and design safety devices with multiple redundancies and all kinds of bells and whistles. But nonlinear, unexpected interactions of even small failures can defeat these safety systems. If the system is also tightly coupled, no intervention can prevent a cascade of failures that brings it down. I use the term “normal” because these characteristics are built into the systems; there is nothing one can do about them other than to initiate massive system redesigns to reduce interactive complexity and to loosen coupling. Companies and governments can modularize integrated designs and deconcentrate hazardous material. Actually, though, compared with the prosaic cases previously mentioned, normal accidents are rare. (Three Mile Island is the only accident in my list that qualifies.) It is much more common for systems with catastrophic potential to fail because of poor regulation, ignored warnings, production pressures, cost cutting, poor training, and so on. All of the organizational faults I have noted have their counterpart in daily life. Like organizations and their leaders, people seek wealth and prestige and a reputation for integrity. In the process, they occasionally find it necessary to be deceitful, engaging in denials and coverups, cheating and fabrication. Everyone has violated regulations, failed to plan ahead, and bungled in crises. But people are not, as individuals, repositories of radioactive materials, toxic substances, and explosives, nor do they sit astride critical infrastructures. Organizations do. The consequences of an individual’s failures can only be catastrophic if they are magnified by organizations. The larger the organizations, the greater the concentration of destructive power. The larger the organizations, the greater the potential for political power that can influence regulations and ignore warnings. 21 - 22 - 23 - 24 -Statistical evidence proves – probability of a core melt accident in the next decade is 70 percent. Rose and Sweeting 3/2 25 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 26 -The 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan suggested once more that severe nuclear accidents could be even more frequent than safety studies had predicted and Feiveson had hoped. So we decided to estimate the probability of a severe accident – that is, a core-melt accident – by relating the number of past core-melt accidents to the total number of years reactors have been operating (i.e. “reactor years”). This type of prediction often runs up against the argument that nuclear operators learn from the past. Therefore we also tried to account for any learning effects in our analysis. We restricted our analysis to accidents related to civil nuclear reactors used for power generation, as arguments about trade-offs for using nuclear technology differ depending on the application. And, because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not distribute comprehensive, long-term reports on nuclear incidents and accidents because of confidentiality agreements with the countries it works with, we have had to use alternative sources for information on nuclear accidents over time. By our calculations, the overall probability of a coremelt accident in the next decade, in a world with 443 reactors, is almost 70. (Because of statistical uncertainty, however, the probability could range from about 28 to roughly 95.) The United States, with 104 reactors, has about a 50 probability of experiencing one core-melt accident within the next 25 years.1 27 -Prefer this analysis: 28 -First, accident risk assessment based on paths towards an accident fail – using past data is the most reliable – consensus of experts. Rose and Sweeting 2 29 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 30 -In the past, several studies have investigated the probability of a core melt using the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) method. This determines probability prior to accidents by analyzing possible paths toward a severe accident, rather than using existing data to determine probability empirically. Two studies by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1975, 1990) as well as a German government study (Hörtner 1980) examined seven different cases or reactors. Three calculations resulted in 1 accident in more than 200,000 reactor years, and a further three resulted in 1 accident in 11,000–25,000 reactor years. Only the result for the Zion reactor had an accident rate similar to ours, with 1 accident in 3000 years. After Chernobyl, Islam and Lindgren (1986, 691) published a short note in Nature in which, based on the known accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl) and reactor years (approximately 4000) at the time, they concluded that “…the probability of having one accident every two decades is more than 95.” Regarding PRA, they wrote: “Our view is that this method should be replaced by risk assessment using the observed data.” This sparked an intensive discussion of statistical issues in the following year (Edwards 1986; Schwartz 1986; Fröhner 1987; Chow and Oliver 1987; Edwards 1987); however, there was agreement on the substantive conclusions of Islam and Lindgren. 31 -Second, there’s no learning effect – humans keep making the same mistakes. Rose and Sweeting 3 32 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 33 -We also wanted to see whether accidents become less frequent with more operational experience. But simply analyzing the number of severe accidents against reactor years is not very illuminating because, luckily, these accidents are rather rare. So we examined the relationship between the cumulative number of all accidents, from severe to minor ones, and cumulative reactor years. The accident rate is then estimated as the ratio of cumulative number of accidents to cumulative reactor years. If the probability of an accident remained constant over time, then a graph of the above accidentrate estimates against reactor years would exhibit no trend, whereas a learning effect would result in a decreasing accident probability and the graph would exhibit a decreasing trend. We began by plotting the data from the Guardian list, with a few exclusions.3 The graph shows a high accident rate at the beginning because of one accident in Russia in 1957. The accident rate then drops because the following years were accident-free. After around 500 reactor years, the plot appears to stabilize, varying around a constant value. This is confirmed by a detailed statistical analysis, which produces a probability for a (minor or major) accident in a nuclear power plant of about 1 in 1000 reactor years and shows no evidence of a learning effect. 34 -Third, the authors analyzed every core melt accident, despite organizations like the IAEA hiding information. Rose and Sweeting 4 35 -Thomas Rose Professor of sensor technology at the Münster University of Applied Science; PhD in nuclear physics. Trevor Sweeting; emeritus professor of statistics at University College London, PhD in statistics and has published statistical information in medicine, engineering, computer science and elsewhere. 3-2-2016, "How safe is nuclear power? A statistical study suggests less than expected: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Vol 72, No 2," Taylor and Francis, http://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2016.1145910?platform=hootsuiteand 36 -After the Fukushima disaster, the authors analyzed all past core-melt accidents and estimated a failure rate of 1 per 3704 reactor years. This rate indicates that more than one such accident could occur somewhere in the world within the next decade. The authors also analyzed the role that learning from past accidents can play over time. This analysis showed few or no learning effects occurring, depending on the database used. Because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has no publicly available list of nuclear accidents, the authors used data compiled by the Guardian newspaper and the energy researcher Benjamin Sovacool. The results suggest that there are likely to be more severe nuclear accidents than have been expected and support Charles Perrow’s “normal accidents” theory that nuclear power reactors cannot be operated without major accidents. However, a more detailed analysis of nuclear accident probabilities needs more transparency from the IAEA. Public support for nuclear power cannot currently be based on full knowledge simply because important information is not available. 37 -Advocacy 38 -I advocate that all countries prohibit the production of nuclear power which is currently connected to the electrical grid via shutdown. To clarify, this would include nuclear power plants, but would exclude things like research reactors. I defend action via the federal governments of countries. I’ll spec to whatever in CX so long as it doesn’t screw solvency ~-~- but only I determine what that is. 39 -The plan solves – shutdowns are immediate and on time. Wells 15 40 -Deutsche Welle Germany’s international broadcaster, 6-29-15, "How far along is Germany's nuclear phase-out?," DW, http://www.dw.com/en/how-far-along-is-germanys-nuclear-phase-out/a-18547065 41 -Immediately after Fukushima, eight of 17 functioning nuclear plants were shut down, and the June decision established a timeline of taking the remaining plants offline by 2022. This past weekend, at midnight on Saturday (25.06.2015), the next shutdown took place: The Grafenrheinfeld power plant in Bavaria has been removed from the power grid, nearly exactly on schedule. 42 -Advantage 1 is Structural Violence 43 -Accidents cause structural violence – marginalized people bear the brunt of them. Cousins et al. 13 44 -Elicia Cousins Elicia Cousins is a doctoral student in sociology and a research assistant in SSEHRI. She is from Tokyo, Japan and received her BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton College in Minnesota, Claire Karban , Fay Li , and Marianna Zapanta , 2013 (The Study references other studies from 2013 implying it’s from at least 2013, but it does not list a formal date), " Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice: A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience" Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project”, https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ents/assets/Cousins_Karban_Li_Zapanta.pdf 45 -The range of potential impacts on biological health, wellbeing, and health-related behavior is vast for anyone involved, regardless of age, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. However, we suggest that such stress is amplified in certain populations of heightened vulnerability. For example, the stress of parents (especially mothers) with preschool age children was particularly evident throughout the present analysis, a well-documented trend associated with technological disasters (Havenaar et al. 1996; Bromet and Schulberg 1986). Children are also particularly sensitive to physical and mental harm (Peek 2008; Bromet et al. 2000), a trend reflected in a recent survey of child evacuees from Fukushima24 that revealed stress levels double the Japanese average (Brumfiel 2013). A similar trend is evident in the United States, where low-income populations and people of color may encounter such stressors at higher levels and face greater difficulties in coping with them. Low-income populations are more likely to lack financial resources (Cutter 2006) and expansive social networks to rely upon (Dominguez and Watkins 2003) during emergencies. The differential response and recovery to Hurricane Katrina is a telling example of such trends: while those with resources left before the hurricane arrived, those without resources (mainly the poor, African American, elderly, or residents without private cars) had to remain and deal with the oncoming disaster (Cutter 2006). Low socioeconomic status is also associated with lower educational attainment, which constrains understanding of and access to disaster warnings and information on recovery (Ibid.). It follows that such populations would be more prone to stress from feelings of uncertainty. 46 -No amount of radiation is good – it kills – consensus and empirics. Mushak 7 47 -Paul Mushak magna cum laude at University of Scranton, Ph.D. in metalloorganic/organic chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Florida, postdoctoral work as a fellow in the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry in the School of Medicine at Yale University, was on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in the Department of Pathology from 1971 to 1985, and was an adjunct professor from 1985 to 1993. From 1995 to 2010, he was a member of the Montefiore Medical Center-Second Medical University of Shanghai, China Collaborating Centers for Prevention of Childhood Lead Poisoning and a visiting professor of Pediatric Environmental Health, Department of Pediatrics, April 2007, "Hormesis and Its Place in Nonmonotonic Dose–Response Relationships: Some Scientific Reality Checks," Environmental Health Perspectives, http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC1852676/ 48 -Radiologic hormesis. Some proponents of radiologic hormesis hold that the linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response relationship for radiologic carcinogenesis in humans and experimental animals is no longer tenable and radiologic hormesis should be the prevailing model (e.g., Calabrese 2005b; Pollycove and Feinendegen 2001). However, research into radiologic carcinogenesis in humans continues to feed a huge epidemiologic database documenting the persistence of radiologic carcinogenicity with lower dose. Little convincing evidence exists to support human radiologic hormetic responses nullifying the LNT model of low-dose carcinogenesis. Current thinking also is mixed about a conceptual context for human radiologic hormesis (Johansson 2003; Pollycove and Feinendegen 2001; Upton 2001). Recent expert consensus treatises on low-dose carcinogenicity of ionizing radiation in humans present analyses largely supporting the LNT model. The most recent report by the NAS/NRC on the biological effects of ionizing radiation, BEIR VII-Phase 2 (NAS/NRC 2006), endorsed preservation of the LNT model, that is, cancer risk proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold. Appendix D of the report covers radiation hormesis. The report concluded that animal and cell studies suggesting benefits or threshold to harm from ionizing radiation are "not compelling" and that, at present, any assumption of net health benefits of radiation hormesis over detrimental impacts at the same dose is unwarranted. The December 2004 draft report of the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP 2004), the report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (2000), and the report of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP 2001) have all concluded the LNT model remains valid. The 2005 report of the joint French National Academy of Medicine and the Institute of France Academy of Sciences on low dose-carcinogenic effect relationships for ionizing radiation (Academie Nationale de Medecine 2005) raises doubts about use of, or recommendations for, the LNT model at low ( 100 mSv) and very low ( 10 mSv) doses. The French report refers to radiation hormesis only in passing and in narrow context. Several recent epidemiologic studies are consistent with an LNT dose response. The Techa River study in the Southern Urals region of Russia (Krestinina et al. 2005) reported individualized risk estimates for excess cancers from radioactivity exposures traced to a weapons plant leak in the 1950s. The extended cohort, with 29,873 people born between 1950 and 1960, provided strong evidence of low-dose radiologic carcinogenesis. Cardis et al. (2005), in their studies of 400,000 nuclear plant workers in 15 countries, concluded that 1-2 of cancer deaths among the cohort may be due to radiation. The results for the nuclear workers produced conclusions similar to those of the Techa River findings and both articles support the ICRP standard of 20 mSv/year for occupational protection. 49 -Accidents trap the poor who cannot afford to leave, and those who can receive huge emotional stress. Cousins et al 13 50 -Elicia Cousins Elicia Cousins is a doctoral student in sociology and a research assistant in SSEHRI. She is from Tokyo, Japan and received her BA in Environmental Studies from Carleton College in Minnesota, Claire Karban , Fay Li , and Marianna Zapanta , 2013 (The Study references other studies from 2013 implying it’s from at least 2013, but it does not list a formal date), " Nuclear Power and Environmental Justice: A Mixed-Methods Study of Risk, Vulnerability, and the Victim Experience" Environmental Studies Comprehensive Project”, https://apps.carleton.edu/curricular/ents/assets/Cousins_Karban_Li_Zapanta.pdf 51 -Technological disasters often involve the release of toxins into the environment, necessitating the displacement of residents of newly contaminated regions. First and foremost, this involves the stress arising from new financial burdens17, and the need for securing new housing and employment. However, it also involves the difficulties of adjusting to the new environment and to separation from friends, relatives, and familiar social networks. In the freeresponse section of the NAIIC survey, 334 respondents (4) wrote of constant stress due to an unfamiliar environment and prolonged refugee life. Another 24 (0.3) respondents explicitly mentioned the difficulties of building new relationships and getting along with people in their new environment, and feeling isolated and alone. One woman from Fukushima explained her feeling of being in limbo: I’m getting used to life here in Kyoto, but I can’t help but feel as though it’s just a temporary, almost “borrowed” life. I don’t have relatives or close friends in Kyoto, and it’s hard to feel like this is where I really should be, and that my feet are firmly on the ground (Fukushima City Happy Island Newspaper). Housing, job, and financial uncertainty can also serve as barriers to evacuation, heightening the stress associated with the inability to evacuate. In Japan, only areas in which cumulative radiation exposure is projected to reach 20mSv/year18 have been evacuated by the government, leaving residents of other areas to decide whether to evacuate “voluntarily” without government compensation. As a result, many who wish to evacuate cannot afford to; according to a 2011 survey by Friends of Earth Japan, financial and employment uncertainty were the main barriers to evacuation, and this continues to be true (Mitsuta interview). In many cases the mother and children have evacuated for the sake of the children’s health, while the father remains in Fukushima to continue his job and earn money. In the free response section of the NAIIC survey, 290 respondents (4) wrote about how much they missed seeing members of their family. 52 - 53 - 54 -Advantage 2 is BioD 55 -Nuclear power plants deck biodiversity from accidents and waste: laundry list, empirics, and previous literature. Kabasakal and Albayrak 11. 56 -November 17-20, 2011 Paper was presented in this time. Bekir Kabasakal Department of Biology, Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. and Tamer Albayrak Department of Biology, Faculty of Science and Art, Mehmet Akif Ersoy University. Paper presented at the VI. International Symposium on Ecology and Environmental Problems. "Effects of Nuclear Power Plant Accidents on Biodiversity and Awareness of Potential Nuclear Accident Risk near the Eastern Border of Turkey," Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, http://www.academia.edu/2303350/Effects_of_Nuclear_Power_Plant_Accidents_on_Biodiversity_and_Awareness_of_Potential_Nuclear_Accident_Risk_near_the_Eastern_Border_of_Turkey 57 -Previous studies indicated that NPP accidents cause permanent damage to biodiversity. Recent publications indicate that if an accident happens at MNPP, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Iran might be influenced. Because of this reason it need to have an urgent action plan and take the necessary precautions for this possible catastrophe. KEYWORDS: Nuclear power plant, nuclear accident, nuclear risk, Metsamor, Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant * Corresponding author 1 INTRODUCTION Although Nuclear power plants (NPP) are designed to withstand earthquakes or other natural disasters and to shut down safely in the event of major earth movement, nonuclear facility is 100 safe due to a possible meltdown of the reactor (due to loss of coolant water leading to over-heating). If an accident occurs, it would create a major public hazard and may cause human fatalities and biodiversity loss 1. Moreover, nuclear reactors produce toxic waste, which is highly radioactive and can remain in the environment for several hundred years. Because of these reasons NPPs are highly risky energy resources while they do not produce CO 2 and other green gasses. The severity of any nuclear accident is measured on the international event scale (INES) from 0 to 7 (0 means no consequences and 7 is the major accident; level 1-3 are called incidents and level 4-7 are called accidents). Eight accidents have been reported above level 4 so far (Table 1). Two of those were the major accidents (INES level 7): Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011). Chernobyl nu-clear power plant disaster is the worst nuclear disaster 2. TABLE 1 - Nuclear power plant accidents and their effects. Date Location INES Level* 2011 Fukushima, Japan 7 1999 Tokaimura, Japan 41986 Chernobyl, Ukraine 7 1980 Saint-Laurent A2, France 41979 Three Mile Island, USA 51969 Saint-Laurent A1, France 41957 Mayak, Russia 61957 Windscale, UK 5*INES event scale: Level 7 = major accident; level 6 = serious accident; level 5 = accident with wider consequences; level 4 = accident with local consequences; Level 3 = serious incident; 2 = incident; 1 = anomaly; level O = no safety significance. © by PSP Volume 21 – No 11b. 2012 Fresenius Environmental Bulletin 34352 EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWERPLANT ACCIDENT ON BIODIVERSITY Previous nuclear accidents showed that right after the accident happens, vast amounts of radioactive material, which are harmful to living organisms such as Iodine -131and Caesium -137 or Cesium -137, are transported into the atmosphere 3. Once the radioactive materials are released, all living organism can be influenced in several ways 3, 4. For instance people can be exposed by two ways: from the deposited material itself as external irradiation, or the inhalation of any material resuspended into the atmosphere, and the transfer of material through the terrestrial and aquatic environment to food and water inhalation of radioactive material in the air as internal irradiation 5. Most information about effects of nuclear accidents on biodiversity and human were gained from the Cherno- byl accident. On-going studies on the consequences of the Fukushima accident have been showing that the marine ecosystem will be effected more than the terrestrial eco-systems 6. Effects of NPP accidents on biodiversity can be di-vided into two main topics: physiological and genetic effects of radiation and ecological consequences of radiation 7. Physiological and genetic effects of radiation: increased morphologic, physiologic, genetic disorders; increased mutation rates and developmental abnormalities, increase in general oncological morbidity, accelerated aging, reduction in body antioxidant levels 8-12. Ecological consequences of radiation: reduced adult survival and reproduction suggests and reduction in species abundance 13-16. 58 -Accidents spread a lot. Max Planck Institute for Chemistry 12 Cites Lelevield. 59 -Max Planck Institute for Chemistry Non Government, Non Profit Organization Dedicated to Chemistry, Citing: Johannes Lelieveld PhD in Physics and Astronomy, 5-22-2012, "Probability of contamination from severe nuclear reactor accidents is higher than expected,", https://www.mpg.de/5809418/reactor_accidents 60 -Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an area is defined as being contaminated with radiation from this amount onwards. In view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants. Global risk of radioactive contamination. The map shows the annual probability in percent of radioactive contamination by more than 40 kilobecquerels per square meter. In Western Europe the risk is around two percent per year. Image Omitted The reactor accident in Fukushima has fuelled the discussion about nuclear energy and triggered Germany's exit from their nuclear power program. It appears that the global risk of such a catastrophe is higher than previously thought, a result of a study carried out by a research team led by Jos Lelieveld, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz: "After Fukushima, the prospect of such an incident occurring again came into question, and whether we can actually calculate the radioactive fallout using our atmospheric models." According to the results of the study, a nuclear meltdown in one of the reactors in operation worldwide is likely to occur once in 10 to 20 years. Currently, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation, and 60 more are planned. To determine the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown, the researchers applied a simple calculation. They divided the operating hours of all civilian nuclear reactors in the world, from the commissioning of the first up to the present, by the number of reactor meltdowns that have actually occurred. The total number of operating hours is 14,500 years, the number of reactor meltdowns comes to four—one in Chernobyl and three in Fukushima. This translates into one major accident, being defined according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), every 3,625 years. Even if this result is conservatively rounded to one major accident every 5,000 reactor years, the risk is 200 times higher than the estimate for catastrophic, non-contained core meltdowns made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1990. The Mainz researchers did not distinguish ages and types of reactors, or whether they are located in regions of enhanced risks, for example by earthquakes. After all, nobody had anticipated the reactor catastrophe in Japan. 25 percent of the radioactive particles are transported further than 2,000 kilometres Subsequently, the researchers determined the geographic distribution of radioactive gases and particles around a possible accident site using a computer model that describes the Earth's atmosphere. The model calculates meteorological conditions and flows, and also accounts for chemical reactions in the atmosphere. The model can compute the global distribution of trace gases, for example, and can also simulate the spreading of radioactive gases and particles. To approximate the radioactive contamination, the researchers calculated how the particles of radioactive caesium-137 (137Cs) disperse in the atmosphere, where they deposit on the earth’s surface and in what quantities. The 137Cs isotope is a product of the nuclear fission of uranium. It has a half-life of 30 years and was one of the key elements in the radioactive contamination following the disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The computer simulations revealed that, on average, only eight percent of the 137Cs particles are expected to deposit within an area of 50 kilometres around the nuclear accident site. Around 50 percent of the particles would be deposited outside a radius of 1,000 kilometres, and around 25 percent would spread even further than 2,000 kilometres. These results underscore that reactor accidents are likely to cause radioactive contamination well beyond national borders. 61 -Biodiversity is on the brink of global collapse – that causes extinction and is a threat multiplier. Torres 2/10 62 -Phil Torres Phil Torres is author, Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and freelance writer with publications in Salon, Skeptic, the Humanist, American Atheist, The Progressive, Humanity+, and many others. His forthcoming book is called The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse (Pitchstone Publishing) , 2-10-16, "Biodiversity Loss and the Doomsday Clock: An Invisible Disaster Almost No One is Talking About," Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/10/biodiversity-loss-and-doomsday-clock-invisible-disaster-almost-no-one-talking-about 63 -Everywhere one looks, the biosphere is wilting — and a single bipedal species with large brains and opposable thumbs is almost entirely responsible for this worsening plight. If humanity continues to prune back the Tree of Life with reckless abandon, we could be forced to confront a global disaster of truly unprecedented proportions. Along these lines, a 2012 article published in Nature and authored by over twenty scientists claims that humanity could be teetering on the brink of a catastrophic, irreversible collapse of the global ecosystem. According to the paper, there could be “tipping points” — also called “critical thresholds” — lurking in the environment that, once crossed, could initiate radical and sudden changes in the biosphere. Thus, an event of this sort could be preceded by little or no warning: everything might look more or less okay, until the ecosystem is suddenly in ruins. We must, moving forward, never forget that just as we’re minds embodied, so too are we bodies environed, meaning that if the environment implodes under the weight of civilization, then civilization itself is doomed. While the threat of nuclear weapons deserves serious attention from political leaders and academics, as the Bulletin correctly observes, it’s even more imperative that we focus on the broader “contextual problems” that could inflate the overall probability of wars and terrorism in the future. Climate change and biodiversity loss are both conflict multipliers of precisely this sort, and each is a contributing factor that’s exacerbating the other. If we fail to make these threats a top priority in 2016, the likelihood of nuclear weapons — or some other form of emerging technology, including biotechnology and artificial intelligence — being used in the future will only increase. Perhaps there’s still time to avert the sixth mass extinction or a sudden collapse of the global ecosystem. But time is running out — the doomsday clock is ticking. 64 -One species going extinct triggers the brink. Diner ’94 Brackets 65 -David N. Diner 1994, Judge Advocate’s General’s Corps of US Army, Military Law Review, Winter, 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161, l/n, David N. 66 -In past mass extinction episodes, as many as ninety percent of the existing species perished, and yet the world moved forward, and new species replaced the old. So why should the world should be concerned now? The prime reason is the world's survival. 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 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. n68 2. 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. n73 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. n75 Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 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, mankind may be edging closer to the abyss. - EntryDate
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -2016-10-29 23:40:59.381 - Judge
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Adam Torson - Opponent
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Greenhill SK - ParentRound
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -West Nelson Aff - Title
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Accidents Aff V2 Modified Advocacy - Tournament
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Meadows
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -3 - EntryDate
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -2016-10-28 20:13:18.0 - Judge
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Ryan Fink - Opponent
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Immaculate MC - Round
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -2 - Tournament
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Meadows
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -2016-10-29 23:40:57.0 - Judge
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Adam Torson - Opponent
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... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@ 1 -Greenhill SK - Round
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +2016-09-18 14:22:31.0 - Judge
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Nigel Ward - Opponent
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Holy Cross TL - Round
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Greenhill
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +2016-09-18 14:22:33.0 - Judge
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Nigel Ward - Opponent
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Holy Cross TL - Round
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +6 - Tournament
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... ... @@ -1,0 +1,1 @@ 1 +Greenhill