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Caselist.RoundClass[1]

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1		-2016-09-17 21:42:17.55
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Caselist.CitesClass[1]

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	1	+Endless growth is taken for granted in capitalist discourse producing the mindset of overconsumption. This represents nuclear power as necessary in solving short term electricity supply, without questioning the underlying assumption of why we need that electricity in the first place. Smith 13
	2	+Richard Smith economic historian, Ph.D., post-docs at the East-West Center in Honolulu and Rutgers University. , 11-10-2013, "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans," Truthout, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19872-capitalism-and-the-destruction-of-life-on-earth-six-theses-on-saving-the-humans
	3	+In mainstream discourse it is taken as an absolutely unquestioned given by scientists like James Hansen, environmentalists like George Monbiot, not to mention CEOs and presidents, that demand for everything must grow infinitely, that economies must grow forever. That's why Hansen, Monbiot, James Lovelock and others tell us that, Fukishima notwithstanding, we "have to" go nuclear for energy production. In their view, the human population is headed for 9 billion to 10 billion. All these billions want to consume like Americans, so we will need more power for their washing machines, air conditioners, iPads, TVs and (electric) SUVs. We can't burn more fossil fuels to produce this power because it will cook the planet. Renewables are great but can't reliably meet relentlessly growing "base load" demand for electricity 24/7. Therefore, they tell us, we have no choice but to turn to nuclear power. (Besides, what could go wrong with the "newest," "safest," "fourth generation" reactors? What indeed?)31 But not one of these people stops to ask the obvious question: Where are all the resources going to come from to support insatiable consumption on a global scale? In the capitalist lexicon, there is no concept of "too much." The word overconsumption cannot be found in Econ. 101 text books except as a temporary market aberration, soon to be erased as "perfect competition" matches supply to demand and shortages and surpluses vanish down the gullet of the consumer. The fact that we live on one small planet with finite resources and sinks is just beyond the capitalist imagination because, as Herman Daly used to say, the "wild facts" of environmental reality demolish their underlying premise of the viability of endless growth on a finite planet. So inconvenient facts must be denied, suppressed or ignored. And they are. When, on May 10,2013, climate scientists announced the latest "wild fact" that the level of heat-trapping CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere had passed the long-feared milestone of 400 ppm, an event fraught with ominous consequences for us all, this was met with total silence from the world's economic and political elites. President Obama was busy preparing his own announcement - that he was clearing the way for accelerated natural-gas exports by approving a huge new $10 billion Freeport LNG facility in Texas. Obama's Department of Energy gave Freeport LNG the green light because it "found the prospective benefits from exporting energy outweighed concerns about possible downsides." No surprise there. Freeport LNG chief Michael Smith wasn't anticipating downsides or any change in Obama's priorities. He said: "I hope this means that more facilities will get approval in due time, sooner than later. The country needs these exports for jobs, for trade and for geopolitical reasons. … "32That's why, even though, at some repressed level, most Americans understand that fracking the planet is disastrous, even suicidal for their own children in the long run, yet still for the present they have to make the mortgage payments and fill the gas tank. So they have little choice but to live in denial and support fracking.33 And so we go, down the slippery slope. No one stops to ask "what's it all for?" Why do we "need" all this energy? Why do we "need" all the stuff we produce with all this energy? It's high time we start asking this question. Economists tell us that two-thirds of America's own economy is geared to producing "consumer" goods and services. To be sure, we need food, clothing, housing, transportation, and energy to run all this. But as Vance Packard astutely observed half a century ago, most of what corporations produce today is produced not for the needs of people but for the needs of corporations to sell to people. From the ever-more obscene and pointless vanities of ruling class consumption – the Bentleys and Maseratis, the Bergdorf Goodman designer collections, the penthouses and resorts and estates and yachts and jets, to the endless waste stream of designed-in obsolescence-driven mass market fashions, cosmetics, furniture, cars, "consumer electronics," the obese 1000 calorie Big Macs with fries, the obese and overaccesorized SUVs and "light trucks," the obese and ever-growing McMansions for ever-smaller middle class families, the whole-house central air conditioning, flat screen TVs in every room, iThings in every hand, HandM disposable "fast fashion" too cheap to bother to clean, 34 the frivolous and astonishingly polluting jet and cruise ship vacations everywhere (even Nation magazine cruises with Naomi Klein!), and all the retail malls, office complexes, the packaging, shipping industries, the junk mail/magazine/catalog sales companies, the advertising, banking and credit card "industries" that keep this perpetual consumption machine humming along, not to mention the appalling waste of the arms industry, which is just total deliberate waste and destruction, the vast majority – I would guess at least three quarters of all the goods and services we produce today just do not need to be produced at all. It's all just a resource-hogging, polluting waste. My parents lived passably comfortable working class lives in the 1940s and 50s without half this stuff and they weren't living in caves. We could all live happier, better, more meaningful lives without all this junk ~-~- and we do not need ever-more energy, solar or otherwise, to produce it. We could shut down all the coal-powered electric generators around the world, most of which, especially in China, are currently dedicated to powering the production of superfluous and disposable junk we don't need and replace them with ~-~-- nothing. How's that for a sustainable solution? Same with nuclear. Since the 1960s, Japan built 54 nuclear power plants. But these were built not so much to provide electricity for the Japanese (their population is falling) as to power Japan's mighty manufacturing export engine producing all those disposable TVs and Gameboys and Toyotas and Hondas the world does not need and can no longer afford to consume.
	4	+Nuclear discourse legitimates itself in the language of profit while simultaneously painting the ecology movement as irrational. This creates denial of facts, decontextualizing nuclear power from its role in global energy production and painting it as the only alternative. This causes structural violence. Maciejwska and Marszalek 11
	5	+Malgorzata Maciejwska institute of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences at Wroclaw University and Marcin Marszalek Sociologist, Wroclaw University, Sept. 2011, " Lack of power or lack of democracy: the case of the projected nuclear power plant in Poland " Economic and Environmental Studies Vol. 11, No.3 (19/2011), http://www.ees.uni.opole.pl/content/03_11/ees_11_3_fulltext_02.pdf. ***Brackets in Original
	6	+The deficit of democracy which emerges from the pro-nuclear discourse also manifests itself in the lack of recognition for historical movements of resistance against atomic power, which are dismissed as an aberration. The arguments of nuclear power plant’s safety, efficiency and profitability are the core legitimization for this exclusion. The importance of the ecological movements existing in the 1980s and social mobilization against nuclear energy at that time is neglected and devalued within the current pro-atomic discourse. During the Round Table debates in 1989, one of major postulates posed by the Solidarity movement concerned the need for social deliberation on the development of nuclear technology in Poland, which was constantly ignored by the government (at that time, as it is now, the issue of atomic power production evoked a lot of social objection) (Guła and Popczyk, 2010). The case of the recent explosions in the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant have recalled the same mechanism of negation. The independent media brought back the issue of ecological protests in Japan during the construction process of the first atomic power plant, but the Polish mass-media remained silent about it. As one of the Japanese anti-nuclear activist Yoko Akimoto said recently: Members of anti-nuclear movements struggled against the construction of nuclear power plants, identifying the danger of nuclear power plants in this earthquake-prone country. At that time, the government expropriated fishing rights from the fishery cooperative or local community to build the nuclear power plants. The government forcibly destroyed people’s life on fishing grounds to build those plants, saying with confidence that the nuclear power plant was safe (Akimoto, 2010). The ecological movement, past and present, is deprived of the power to represent the civil society and defined as a public enemy that produces extra (and unnecessary) economic and political costs. On the day of the first explosion in the Fukushima power plant, the polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said: The Japanese example shows how safe the nuclear power plants are, having the ability to weather even such terrible natural catastrophe. We are now facing one of the greatest earthquakes in history; just imagine what would have happen with a traditional power plant, how it would have polluted the environment during such a catastrophe (Tusk, 2011). This strategy of ‘damage control’ shows how even the unquestionable facts can be intercepted and used to support the arguments of pro-atomic discourse. The lack of acknowledgment for the history of nuclear industry and the history of resistance against the consequences of such technology, coupled with rear reflection on the future of nuclear power production is significant for the dominant discourse on nuclear energy. The possibility of running out of the uranium supplies and the question of the safety of shutting down the reactors as well as storing the radioactive waste, is now named by the ecologists as the problem of future generations – but still it is invisible for the present authorities. The strategy of public relations used by atomic lobby could be described as ‘cognitive segregation’: the process of nuclear production is shown as a defragmented process. The functioning of power plants is taken out of the global chain of production context. In other words, the major problem lies in the invisibility of the nuclear production’s blue print: the extraction, production and transportation of atomic fuel and the storage of nuclear waste. As a consequence, the influences of this process on people and nature and the information on how the energy corporations work in the global economy is erased from social consciousness. The link between those actors and their role in the decision making process is obscure – it is not obvious if and why the Polish government acts on behalf of those actors during the lawmaking process. The lack of transparency in the relations between the nuclear industry and the military industry could be regarded as an effort to deny the history of inventing and testing of nuclear energy. Moreover, while dismantling the holistic view, there are also efforts to underline the advantages of nuclear production for people and nature as well. Paradoxically, we are facing an information campaign which is being done ex-post: in fact the government has already decided about the construction of a nuclear power plant in Poland, now it is starting to convert the society to the idea. This perversion of government actions is an example of a well know strategy called TINA (‘there is no alternative’… for nuclear energy) in Poland2 . The authoritarian forms used in the document – the style in which it is written – indicate its implicit premises. The ‘informative effort’ of this campaign is a marketing background used commonly in any other advertisement to convince the potential clients. The authors of the future campaign claim, quite directly, that the society has to be persuaded to believe in the necessity of actions already undertaken behind their backs. This describes the hidden pro-atomic agenda: to build the power plant regardless of social approval is what makes ‘The Concept” a post factum campaign. Instrumentalizing the process of communication, ‘The Concept’ is an example of antidemocratic action: the public institutions which are supposed to be the core of democracy in the state, and are tax-funded by the citizens, do not fulfill their role.
	7	+Thus the role of the ballot is to reject overconsumption.
	8	+The Role of the Ballot is prior to over ethical theories –
	9	+1. Prior to having a discussion on nuclear power there has to be some way to guide the discussion. Currently, the discussion is hijacked by the idea that we must expand energy constantly – this is fundamentally flawed.
	10	+2. Debate is key – the environmental problem we face are from the fact that the environmental movement is painted as irrational.
	11	+3. Structural violence defines the scope of morality, it must be rejected. Learning about is key to do that. Winter and Leighton 99
	12	+Deborah DuNann Winter and Dana C. Leighton. Winter Psychologist that specializes in Social Psych, Counseling Psych, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Peace Psychology. Leighton: PhD graduate student in the Psychology Department at the University of Arkansas. “Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century.” Pg 4-5 , CP MG
	13	+Finally, to recognize the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about how and why we tolerate it, questions which often have painful answers for the privileged elite who unconsciously support it. A final question of this section is how and why we allow ourselves to be so oblivious to structural violence. Susan Opotow offers an intriguing set of answers, in her article Social Injustice. She argues that our normal perceptual/cognitive processes divide people into in-groups and out-groups. Those outside our group lie outside our scope of justice. Injustice that would be instantane- ously confronted if it occurred to someone we love or know is barely noticed if it occurs to strangers or those who are invisible or irrelevant. We do not seem to be able to open our minds and our hearts to everyone, so we draw conceptual lines between those who are in and out of our moral circle. Those who fall outside are morally excluded, and be- come either invisible, or demeaned in some way so that we do not have to acknowledge the injustice they suffer. Moral exclusion is a human failing, but Opotow argues convincingly that it is an outcome of everyday social cognition. To reduce its nefarious ef-¶ WInter and Leighton Structural Violence Page 5¶ fects, we must be vigilant in noticing and listening to oppressed, invisible, outsiders. Inclusionary thinking can be fostered by relationships, communication, and apprecia- tion of diversity.¶ Like Opotow, all the authors in this section point out that structural violence is not in- evitable if we become aware of its operation, and build systematic ways to mitigate its effects. Learning about structural violence may be discouraging, overwhelming, or maddening, but these papers encourage us to step beyond guilt and anger, and begin to think about how to reduce structural violence. All the authors in this section note that the same structures (such as global communication and normal social cognition) which feed structural violence, can also be used to empower citizens to reduce it. In the long run, reducing structural violence by reclaiming neighborhoods, demanding social justice and living wages, providing prenatal care, alleviating sexism, and celebrating local cultures, will be our most surefooted path to building lasting peace.
	14	+
	15	+Advocacy: All countries will stop the production of nuclear power IMMEDIATELY. To clarify, this would not be a phaseout. I defend that the federal governments of countries take the action. I reserve the right to clarify.
	16	+Multiple disruptions throughout the international economy right now. On the brink of economic collapse. McBride 16
	17	+ James McBride, writer and editor @ Council on Foreign Relations, “5 Expert Predictions for the Global Economy in 2016,” The Atlantic, January 4, 2016, 7/20/2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/global-economy-2016/422475/ JW
	18	+The world will face economic challenges on multiple fronts in 2016. As the U.S. Federal Reserve begins its monetary tightening, Europe is struggling to manage migrant and debt crises, China’s financial stability is in doubt, and emerging economies are increasingly fragile. The global economy “could be doing much worse,” writes the Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Low oil prices and weak currencies are keeping the European and Japanese economies afloat, but Rogoff warns of “a slowing Chinese economy, collapsing commodity prices, and the beginning of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s rate-hiking cycle.” Emerging economies like Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey, rather than China, will be the real sources of concern in 2016, argues U.C. Berkeley’s Barry Eichengreen. With their high levels of short-term debt, these countries are vulnerable to currency crisis, “potentially leading to economic collapse.” For CFR’s Varun Sivaram, new investments announced at the Paris climate talks are reason for optimism in the energy sector. In particular, the $20 billion earmarked for clean-energy research and development “could make it more likely for breakthrough technologies to emerge.” In the United States, meanwhile, steady GDP and job growth has been constrained by weak productivity gains, writes the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis. Without increased productivity delivering higher living standards, the United States could face decades of “unhealthy economic populism.” Europe continues to face the risk of debt crises, writes CFR’s Robert Kahn, but the most dangerous economic risk for the continent in 2016 is “a growing populist challenge from both the Left and Right,” which could create economic-policy uncertainty and constrain policymakers.
	19	+Plan collapses the world economy – energy shortages, inflation, and natural gas spikes. Bauschard 8/12 cites Our Energy Policy Organization 1/6, Cicio no date, and Bezdek and Wendling 4.
	20	+Stefan Bauschard, Debate Coach citing multiple economists, 8-12-2016, "Essay — Resolved: Countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power.," Millennial Speech andamp; Debate, http://millennialsd.com/2016/08/12/essay-resolved-countries-ought-to-prohibit-the-production-of-nuclear-power/
	21	+The basic problem with banning nuclear power is that it would substantially undermine, if not completely eviscerate, the world economy. Why? To begin with, nuclear power would eliminate 11 of the world’s electricity supply1. That’s a lot. But even if you don’t’ think it’s a lot, consider that 20 of US electricity and nearly 80 of France’s electricity is generated from nuclear power2. Sixteen countries depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity3. That’s a lot of electricity to suddenly lose, especially when you consider that nearly all businesses depend on electricity to function. Some will argue that traditional renewable energy resources could replace nuclear power, but it would take at least 25 years for renewable energy to even replace existing nuclear power Our Energy Policy Organization, July 1-6, 2016, Nuclear Energy: Overview, http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NEO.pdf DOA: 8-10-16 For those who hope that renewables can quickly fill the gap left by closed nuclear energy facilities, NEI points out that wind and solar lack the scale and reliability of nuclear power plants that usually run 24/7 except when they are in refueling outages “Renewable sources are intermittent and do not have the same value to the grid as dispatchable baseload resources like nuclear plants. And renewables do not have the scale necessary to replace existing nuclear plants,” NEI say NEI’s comments also point to analysis by the independent market monitor for the New England and New York independent system operators (ISO) demonstrating that preserving existing nuclear power plants has a lower carbon abatement cost than renewables sources like wind and solar. “Looking to the future, the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook expects nuclear energy to produce 789 billion kWh in 2040. By then, EIA forecasts wind and solar will produce 818 billion kWh. So it will take the next 25 years for wind and solar to catch up to where nuclear energy is today,” NEI says. So, if nuclear power was banned, in at least the short-term there would be a massive energy shortage. Renewable energy would not be able to cover the difference, meaning that we would turn to natural gas and coal to make up the existing difference. Our Energy Policy Organization, July 1-6, 2016, Nuclear Energy: Overview, http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/NEO.pdf Recent closures of nuclear power plants hit the bottom line of those who can afford it least: households and businesses. After the shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, California consumers paid $350 million more for electricity the following year “Sooner or later, that nuclear capacity must be replaced and, when it is replaced with new gas fired combined cycle capacity, consumers will pay more on a levelized lifecycle cost basis,” NEI warns This would massively increase demand for both energy sources. And what happens when demand for a product goes up, especially suddenly? The price skyrockets, as limited supplies go to the highest bidder/purchaser, threatening the economy. Bezdek and Wendling, Energy Consultants at Management Information Services, April 2004 (Public Utilities Fortnightly) The Economy and Demand Destruction The energy crises of the 1970s demonstrated the harmful impact on jobs and the economy that natural gas shortages can have. The U.S. economy suffered through recessions, widespread unemployment, inflation, and record-high interest rates. In the winter of 1975-76, unemployment resulting from gas curtailments in hard-hit regions ran as high as 100,000 for periods lasting from 20 to 90 days. These effects were especially serious for the poor and for the nation’s minorities. More recently, the winter of 2002-2003 brought higher natural gas bills to many consumers, and low-income families were especially hard hit. As Paul Cicio, director of the Industrial Energy Consumers Association, notes: “The economic welfare of our economy, the competitiveness of our industries, the affordability of natural gas for all consumers are at risk. We cannot afford another natural gas crisis. Every U.S. energy crisis in the last 30 years has been followed by an economic recession, and the 2000-2001 price spike was no exception. The energy crisis devastated industrial consumers. When natural gas prices reached $4/MMBtu, manufacturing began to reduce Just think about it: When energy prices rise, every consumer has to pay more for energy, reducing demand for every day goods, such as clothes, vacations, electronics, and even food. And what happens to the cost of producing those goods? Those costs increase because energy is an essential element in the production of every good. This would trigger massive inflation in the economy, making it even more difficult for consumers to purchase goods. A spike in natural gas prices would threaten many industries, including the chemical industry, the steel industry, and all manufacturing industries that depend on energy inputs for production. Many more impacts to high natural gas prices are included in the August nuclear power update. Icon of Nuclear Power Update ~-~- August 2016 ~-~- In Progress ~-~- Updated 8-11-16 Nuclear Power Update ~-~- August 2016 ~-~- In Progress ~-~- Updated 8-11-16 ~-~- Subscribers Only (356.2 KiB) Simply put, banning nuclear power would be an economic disaster.
	22	+
	23	+Every crisis is an opportunity for radical change – Cuba proves. The aff is key to a mindset shift against overconsumption, a strategy of prefiguring political structures for change and creating that change. Alexander and Rutherford 14
	24	+Samuel Alexander co-director of the Simplicity Institute, is a lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne and Jonathan Rutherford, " THE DEEP GREEN ALTERNATIVE DEBATING STRATEGIES OF TRANSITION", Simplicity Institute; Report 14a. http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/The-Deep-Green-Alternative.pdf
	25	+As industrial civilisation continues its global expansion and pursues growth without apparent limit, the possibility of economic, political, or ecological crises forcing an alternative way of life upon humanity seems to be growing in likelihood (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 2013). That is, if the existing model of global development is not stopped via one of the pathways reviewed above, or some other strategy, then it seems clear enough that at some point in the future, industrial civilisation will grow itself to death (Turner, 2012). Whether collapse is initiated by an ecological tipping point, a financial breakdown of an overly indebted economy, a geopolitical disruption, an oil crisis, or some confluence of such forces, the possibility of collapse or deep global crisis can no longer be dismissed merely as the intellectual playground for doomsayers with curdled imaginations. Collapse is a prospect that ought to be taken seriously based on the logic of limitless growth on a finite planet, as well as the evidence of existing economic, ecological, or more specifically climatic instability. As Paul Gilding (2011) has suggested, perhaps it is already too late to avoid some form of great disruption . Could collapse or deep crisis be the most likely pathway to an alternative way of life? If it is, such a scenario must not be idealised or romanticised. Fundamental change through crisis would almost certainly involve great suffering for many, and quite possibly significant population decline through starvation, disease, or war. It is also possible that the alternative system that a crisis produces is equally or even more undesirable than the existing system. Nevertheless, it may be that this is the only way a post-growth or post-industrial way of life will ever arise. The Cuban oil crisis, prompted by the collapse of the USSR, provides one such example of a deep societal transition that arose not from a political or social movement, but from sheer force of circumstances (Piercy et. al, 2010). Almost overnight Cuba had a large proportion of its oil supply cut off, forcing the nation to move away from oil-dependent, industrialised modes of food production and instead take up local and organic systems – or perish. David Holmgren (2013) has recently published a deep and provocative essay, Crash on Demand , exploring the idea that a relatively small anti-consumerist movement could be enough to destabilise the global economy which is already struggling. This presents one means of bringing an end to the status quo by inducing a voluntary crisis, without relying on a mass movement. Needless to say, should people adopt such a strategy, it would be imperative to prefigure the alternative society as far as possible too, not merely withdraw support from the existing society. Again, one must not romanticise such theories or transitions. The Cuban crisis, for example, entailed much hardship. But it does expose the mechanisms by which crisis can induce significant societal change in ways that, in the end, are not always negative. In the face of a global crisis or breakdown, therefore, it could be that elements of the deep green vision (such as organic agriculture, frugal living, sharing, radical recycling, post-oil transportation, etc.) come to be forced upon humanity, in which case the question of strategy has less to do with avoiding a deep crisis or collapse (which may be inevitable) and more to do with negotiating the descent as wisely as possible. This is hardly a reliable path to the deep green alternative, but it presents itself as a possible path. Perhaps a more reliable path could be based on the possibility that, rather than imposing an alternative way of life on a society through sudden collapse, a deep crisis could provoke a social or political revolution in consciousness that opens up space for the deep green vision to be embraced and implemented as some form of crisis management strategy. Currently, there is insufficient social or political support for such an alternative, but perhaps a deep crisis will shake the world awake. Indeed, perhaps that is the only way to create the necessary mindset. After all, today we are hardly lacking in evidence on the need for radical change (Turner, 2012), suggesting that shock and response may be the form the transition takes, rather than it being induced through orderly, rational planning, whether from top down or from below. Again, this non-ideal pathway to a post-growth or post-industrial society could be built into the other strategies discussed above, adding some realism to strategies that might otherwise appear too utopian. That is to say, it may be that only deep crisis will create the social support or political will needed for radical reformism, eco-socialism, or eco-anarchism to emerge as social or political movements capable of rapid transformation. Furthermore, it would be wise to keep an open and evolving mind regarding the best strategy to adopt, because the relative effectiveness of various strategies may change over time, depending on how forthcoming crises unfold. It was Milton Friedman (1982: ix) who once wrote: only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. What this collapse or crisis theory of change suggests, as a matter of strategy, is that deep green social and political movements should be doing all they can to mainstream the practices and values of their alternative vision. By doing so they would be aiming to prefigure the deep green social, economic, and political structures, so far as that it is possible, in the hope that deep green ideas and systems are alive and available when the crises hit. Although Friedman obviously had a very different notion of what ideas should be lying around, the relevance of his point to this discussion is that in times of crisis, the politically or socially impossible can become politically or socially inevitable (Friedman, 1982: ix); or, one might say, if not inevitable, then perhaps much more likely. It is sometimes stated that every crisis is an opportunity – from which the optimist infers that the more crises there are, the more opportunities there are. This may encapsulate one of the most realistic forms of hope we have left.
	26	+Two impacts:
	27	+1st Endless growth causes runaway warming and structural violence – only economic collapse solves. Smith 13
	28	+Smith, UCLA history PhD, 2013 (Richard, “’Sleepwalking to Extinction’: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life and Earth,” Common Dreams, 11/15/13, http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/11/15/sleepwalking-extinction-capitalism-and-destruction-life-and-earth, IC)
	29	+For all the climate summits, promises of “voluntary restraint,” carbon trading and carbon taxes, the growth of CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations have not just been unceasing, they have been accelerating in what scientists have dubbed the “Keeling Curve.” In the early 1960s, CO2 ppm concentrations in the atmosphere grew by 0.7ppm per year. In recent decades, especially as China has industrialized, the growth rate has tripled to 2.1 ppm per year. In just the first 17 weeks of 2013, CO2 levels jumped by 2.74 ppm compared to last year. Carbon concentrations have not been this high since the Pliocene period, between 3m and 5m years ago, when global average temperatures were 3˚C or 4˚C hotter than today, the Arctic was ice-free, sea levels were about 40m higher and jungles covered northern Canada; Florida, meanwhile, was under water along with other coastal locations we now call New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and many others. Crossing this threshold has fuelled fears that we are fast approaching converging “tipping points” — melting of the subarctic tundra or the thawing and releasing of the vast quantities of methane in the Arctic sea bottom — that will accelerate global warming beyond any human capacity to stop it. “I wish it weren’t true, but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400 ppm level without losing a beat,” said Scripps Institute geochemist Ralph Keeling, son of Charles Keeling. “At this pace, we’ll hit 450 ppm within a few decades.” “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University. Why are we marching toward disaster, “sleepwalking to extinction” as the Guardian’s George Monbiot once put it? Why can’t we slam on the brakes before we ride off the cliff to collapse? I’m going to argue here that the problem is rooted in the requirement of capitalist production. Large corporations can’t help themselves; they can’t change or change very much. So long as we live under this corporate capitalist system we have little choice but to go along in this destruction, to keep pouring on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, and that the only alternative — impossible as this may seem right now — is to overthrow this global economic system and all of the governments of the 1 that prop it up and replace them with a global economic democracy, a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization. Although we are fast approaching the precipice of ecological collapse, the means to derail this train wreck are in the making as, around the world we are witnessing a near simultaneous global mass democratic “awakening” — as the Brazilians call it — from Tahir Square to Zucotti Park, from Athens to Istanbul to Beijing and beyond such as the world has never seen. To be sure, like Occupy Wall Street, these movements are still inchoate, are still mainly protesting what’s wrong rather than fighting for an alternative social order. Like Occupy, they have yet to clearly and robustly answer that crucial question: “Don’t like capitalism, what’s your alternative?” Yet they are working on it, and they are for the most part instinctively and radically democratic; in this lies our hope. Capitalism is, overwhelmingly, the main driver of planetary ecological collapse From climate change to natural resource overconsumption to pollution, the engine that has powered three centuries of accelerating economic development, revolutionizing technology, science, culture and human life itself is, today, a roaring out-of-control locomotive mowing down continents of forests, sweeping oceans of life, clawing out mountains of minerals, pumping out lakes of fuels, devouring the planet’s last accessible natural resources to turn them into “product,” while destroying fragile global ecologies built up over eons of time. Between 1950 and 2000 the global human population more than doubled from 2.5 to 6 billion. But in these same decades, consumption of major natural resources soared more than sixfold on average, some much more. Natural gas consumption grew nearly twelvefold, bauxite (aluminum ore) fifteenfold. And so on. At current rates, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson says that “half the world’s great forests have already been leveled and half the world’s plant and animal species may be gone by the end of this century.” Corporations aren’t necessarily evil, though plenty are diabolically evil, but they can’t help themselves. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do for the benefit of their shareholders. Shell Oil can’t help but loot Nigeria and the Arctic and cook the climate. That’s what shareholders demand. BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and other mining giants can’t resist mining Australia’s abundant coal and exporting it to China and India. Mining accounts for 19 of Australia’s GDP and substantial employment even as coal combustion is the single worst driver of global warming. IKEA can’t help but level the forests of Siberia and Malaysia to feed the Chinese mills building their flimsy disposable furniture (IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world). Apple can’t help it if the cost of extracting the “rare earths” it needs to make millions of new iThings each year is the destruction of the eastern Congo — violence, rape, slavery, forced induction of child soldiers, along with poisoning local waterways. Monsanto and DuPont and Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science have no choice but to wipe out bees, butterflies, birds, small farmers and extinguish crop diversity to secure their grip on the world’s food supply while drenching the planet in their Roundups and Atrazines and neonicotinoids. This is how giant corporations are wiping out life on earth in the course of a routine business day. And the bigger the corporations grow, the worse the problems become. In Adam Smith’s day, when the first factories and mills produced hat pins and iron tools and rolls of cloth by the thousands, capitalist freedom to make whatever they wanted didn’t much matter because they didn’t have much impact on the global environment. But today, when everything is produced in the millions and billions, then trashed today and reproduced all over again tomorrow, when the planet is looted and polluted to support all this frantic and senseless growth, it matters — a lot. The world’s climate scientists tell us we’re facing a planetary emergency. They’ve have been telling us since the 1990s that if we don’t cut global fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90 below 1990 levels by 2050 we will cross critical tipping points and global warming will accelerate beyond any human power to contain it. Yet despite all the ringing alarm bells, no corporation and no government can oppose growth and, instead, every capitalist government in the world is putting pedal to the metal to accelerate growth, to drive us full throttle off the cliff to collapse. Marxists have never had a better argument against capitalism than this inescapable and apocalyptic “contradiction.” Solutions to the ecological crisis are blindingly obvious but we can’t take the necessary steps to prevent ecological collapse because, so long as we live under capitalism, economic growth has to take priority over ecological concerns. We all know what we have to do: suppress greenhouse gas emissions. Stop over-consuming natural resources. Stop the senseless pollution of the earth, waters, and atmosphere with toxic chemicals. Stop producing waste that can’t be recycled by nature. Stop the destruction of biological diversity and ensure the rights of other species to flourish. We don’t need any new technological breakthroughs to solve these problems. Mostly, we just stop doing what we’re doing. But we can’t stop because we’re all locked into an economic system in which companies have to grow to compete and reward their shareholders and because we all need the jobs. James Hansen, the world’s preeminent climate scientist, has argued that to save the humans: “Coal emissions must be phased out as rapidly as possible or global climate disasters will be a dead certainty ... Yes, coal, oil, gas most of the fossil fuels must be left in the ground. That is the explicit message that the science provides. … Humanity treads today on a slippery slope. As we continue to pump greenhouse gases in the air, we move onto a steeper, even more slippery incline. We seem oblivious to the danger — unaware of how close we may be to a situation in which a catastrophic slip becomes practically unavoidable, a slip where we suddenly lose all control and are pulled into a torrential stream that hurls us over a precipice to our demise.” But how can we do this under capitalism? After his climate negotiators stonewalled calls for binding limits on CO2 emissions at Copenhagen, Cancun, Cape Town and Doha, President Obama is now trying to salvage his environmental “legacy” by ordering his EPA to impose “tough” new emissions limits on existing power plants, especially coal-fired plants. But this won’t salvage his legacy or, more importantly, his daughters’ futures because how much difference would it make, really, if every coal-fired power plant in the U.S. shut down tomorrow when U.S. coal producers are free to export their coal to China, which they are doing, and when China is building another coal-fired power plan every week? The atmosphere doesn’t care where the coal is burned. It only cares how much is burned. Yet how could Obama tell American mining companies to stop mining coal? This would be tantamount to socialism. But if we do not stop mining and burning coal, capitalist freedom and private property is the least we’ll have to worry about. Same with Obama’s “tough” new fuel economy standards. In August 2012 Obama boasted that his new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards would “double fuel efficiency” over the next 13 years to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from 28.6 mpg at present — cutting vehicle CO2 emissions in half, so helping enormously to “save the planet.” But as the Center for Biological Diversity and other critics have noted, Obama was lying, as usual. First, his so-called “tough” new CAFE standards were so full of loopholes, negotiated with Detroit, that they actually encourage more gas-guzzling, not less. That’s because the standards are based on a sliding scale according to “vehicle footprints” — the bigger the car, the less mileage it has to get to meet its “standard.” So in fact Obama’s “tough” standards are (surprise) custom designed to promote what Detroit does best — produce giant Sequoias, mountainous Denalis, Sierras, Yukons, Tundras and Ticonderogas, Ram Chargers and Ford F series luxury trucks, grossly obese Cadillac Escalades, soccer-kid Suburbans, even 8,000 (!) pound Ford Excursions — and let these gross gas hogs meet the “fleet standard.” These cars and “light” trucks are among the biggest selling vehicles in America today (GM’s Sierra is #1) and they get worse gas mileage than American cars and trucks half a century ago. Cadillac’s current Escalade gets worse mileage than its chrome bedecked tail fin-festooned land yachts of the mid-1950s! Little wonder Detroit applauded Obama’s new CAFE standards instead of damning them as usual. Secondly, what would it matter even if Obama’s new CAFE standards actually did double fleet mileage — when American and global vehicle fleets are growing exponentially? In 1950 Americans had one car for every three people. Today we have 1.2 cars for every American. In 1950 when there were about 2.6 billion humans on the planet, there were 53 million cars on the world’s roads — about one for every 50 persons. Today, there are 7 billion people but more than 1 billion cars and industry forecasters expect there will be 2 to 2.5 billion cars on the world’s roads by mid-century. China alone is expected to have a billion. So, at the end of the day, incremental half measures like CAFE standards can’t stop rising GHG missions. Barring some technical miracle, the only way to cut vehicle emissions is to just stop making them — drastically suppress vehicle production, especially of the worst gas hogs. In theory, Obama could simply order GM to stop building its humongous gas guzzlers and switch to producing small economy cars. After all, the federal government owns the company! But of course, how could he do any such thing? Detroit lives by the mantra “big car big profit, small car small profit.” Since Detroit has never been able to compete against the Japanese and Germans in the small car market, which is already glutted and nearly profitless everywhere, such an order would only doom GM to failure, if not bankruptcy (again) and throw masses of workers onto the unemployment lines. So given capitalism, Obama is, in fact, powerless. He’s locked in to promoting the endless growth of vehicle production, even of the worst polluters — and lying about it all to the public to try to patch up his pathetic “legacy.” And yet, if we don’t suppress vehicle production, how can we stop rising CO2 emissions? In the wake of the failure of climate negotiators from Kyoto to Doha to agree on binding limits on GHG emissions, exasperated British climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows at the Tyndall Centre, Britain’s leading climate change research center, wrote in September 2012 that we need an entirely new paradigm: Government policies must “radically change” if “dangerous” climate change is to be avoided “We urgently need to acknowledge that the development needs of many countries leave the rich western nations with little choice but to immediately and severely curb their greenhouse gas emissions... The misguided belief that commitments to avoid warming of 2˚C can still be realized with incremental adjustments to economic incentives. A carbon tax here, a little emissions trading there and the odd voluntary agreement thrown in for good measure will not be sufficient ... long-term end-point targets (for example, 80 by 2050) have no scientific basis. What governs future global temperatures and other adverse climate impacts are the emissions from yesterday, today and those released in the next few years.” And not just scientists. In its latest world energy forecast released on November 12, 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that despite the bonanza of fossil fuels now made possible by fracking, horizontal and deepwater drilling, we can’t consume them if we want to save the humans: “The climate goal of limiting global warming to 2˚C is becoming more difficult and costly with each year that passes... no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2˚C goal...” Of course the science could be wrong about this. But so far climate scientists have consistently underestimated the speed and ferocity of global warming, and even prominent climate change deniers have folded their cards. Still, it’s one thing for James Hansen or Bill McKibben to say we need to “leave the coal in the hole, the oil in the soil, the gas under the grass,” to call for “severe curbs” in GHG emissions — in the abstract. But think about what this means in our capitalist economy. Most of us, even passionate environmental activists, don’t really want to face up to the economic implications of the science we defend. That’s why, if you listen to environmentalists like Bill McKibben for example, you will get the impression that global warming is mainly driven by fossi- fuel-powered electric power plants, so if we just “switch to renewables” this will solve the main problem and we can carry on with life more or less as we do now. Indeed, “green capitalism” enthusiasts like Thomas Friedman and the union-backed “green jobs” lobby look to renewable energy, electric cars and such as “the next great engine of industrial growth” — the perfect win-win solution. This is a not a solution. This is a delusion: greenhouse gasses are produced across the economy not just by power plants. Globally, fossil-fuel-powered electricity generation accounts for 17 of GHG emissions, heating accounts for 5, miscellaneous “other” fuel combustion 8.6, industry 14.7, industrial processes another 4.3, transportation 14.3, agriculture 13.6, land use changes (mainly deforestation) 12.2. This means, for a start, that even if we immediately replaced every fossil-fuel-powered electric generating plant on the planet with 100 renewable solar, wind and water power, this would only reduce global GHG emissions by around 17. What this means is that, far from launching a new green-energy-powered “industrial growth” boom, barring some tech-fix miracle, the only way to impose “immediate and severe curbs” on fossil fuel production/consumption would be to impose an EMERGENCY CONTRACTION in the industrialized countries: drastically retrench and in some cases shut down industries, even entire sectors, across the economy and around the planet — not just fossil fuel producers but all the industries that consume them and produce GHG emissions — autos, trucking, aircraft, airlines, shipping and cruise lines, construction, chemicals, plastics, synthetic fabrics, cosmetics, synthetic fiber and fabrics, synthetic fertilizer and agribusiness CAFO operations. Of course, no one wants to hear this because, given capitalism, this would unavoidably mean mass bankruptcies, global economic collapse, depression and mass unemployment around the world. That’s why in April 2013, in laying the political groundwork for his approval of the XL pipeline in some form, President Obama said “the politics of this are tough.” The earth’s temperature probably isn’t the “number one concern” for workers who haven’t seen a raise in a decade; have an underwater mortgage; are spending $40 to fill their gas tank, can’t afford a hybrid car; and face other challenges.” Obama wants to save the planet but given capitalism his “number one concern” has to be growing the economy, growing jobs. Given capitalism — today, tomorrow, next year and every year — economic growth will always be the overriding priority ... till we barrel right off the cliff to collapse.
	30	+2nd Impact: nuclear power externalizes costs onto developing countries and poor individuals through uranium mining. This is structural violence of the worst kind. Maciejwska and Marsazalek 2
	31	+Malgorzata Maciejwska institute of Sociology and Faculty of Social Sciences at Wroclaw University and Marcin Marszalek Sociologist, Wroclaw University, Sept. 2011, " Lack of power or lack of democracy: the case of the projected nuclear power plant in Poland " Economic and Environmental Studies Vol. 11, No.3 (19/2011), http://www.ees.uni.opole.pl/content/03_11/ees_11_3_fulltext_02.pdf.
	32	+The mainstream discourse produced by government experts and reproduced in the media overlooks the phenomena and voices which could undermine the pro-atomic agenda, especially in the context of the nuclear power plant costs calculations and technology design. In social science this mechanism is called ‘the externalization of costs’, which means that certain aspects and outcomes of atomic energy manufacturing become invisible to the public opinion. The concept also indicates that the heaviest burden and the risks of constructing the nuclear power plant are put on the shoulders of the society, namely on low-income households and small local communities which live near the reactors. Yet, there are multiple sources of information which show the alternative estimations the costs of nuclear energy and its consequences, in particular for people and nature. This section will focus on the analysis of how the externalization of nuclear costs works in practice. The main goal is not to investigate the technological details of power plant architecture but to look into the global chain of nuclear industry and its social and environmental effect on local communities. As one can read on the Institute of Atomic Energy POLATOM website, in the Frequent Asked Questions folder there is a recurrent thesis on the ‘political stability’ of the uranium suppliers, unfortunately without the explanation what this actually means (2011). But when combined with the general logic of costs calculation given by POLATOM and characterized as the one of financial nature, the ‘political stability’ might be interpreted in terms of supply reliability and low costs (or lack of strong price fluctuations) of uranium extraction (2011). The reflection on how the uranium mines work and what are the labor and living conditions in the extraction area is again taken out of the picture. The example of Niger in Africa3 , a country that is one of the biggest uranium suppliers, illustrates how cost externalization functions. Niger, a post-colonial French territory, has been exploited by France since the early 1970s, and uranium accounts for about 70 of the national export. Despite the very profitable uranium business (which is frequently emphasized by proatomic lobby experts) Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world. 3 The information and data on this issue were provided by Issa Aboubacar, member of Reseau National Dette et Developpement from Niger. LACK OF POWER OR LACK OF DEMOCRACY: THE CASE OF THE PROJECTED NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN POLAND 243 One of the major investors in uranium extraction is a French corporation AREVA. The company is also one of the most important players in Polish development plans as the future uranium supplier and power plant producer. The plan of nuclear reactor construction will drag Poland into the global chain of atomic production (a fact that is being kept in silence), and therefore Poland will be jointly responsible for the company’s interests and efficiency, as well as jointly responsible for the externalization of nuclear costs. The two biggest mines situated in the north of Niger are operated by Compagnie Minière d’Akouta (COMINAK) and Société des Mines de l’aïr (SOMAIR). Both operators are owned by international energy companies, mainly AREVA. The government of Niger owns only 31 of the shares in the first mine and 36 in second one. The only beneficiaries are state authorities in the capital, Niamey, situated in the southern part of the country, far from the mines. In contrast to Polish and French citizens, Niger citizens are deprived of the basic rights to social security and welfare: there is limited access to drinking water, food and electricity, there is no developed health care system or welfare. The unequal power relations are most visible in the economic field. France supplies its own electro-energetic grid mainly with nuclear power plants which are fuelled by Niger’s uranium. French profits are incomparable to the ones Niger’s citizens have been obtaining form their country’s natural resources. Paradoxically, it would seem that France is dependent on African uranium but post-colonial history shows the reverse power relation. In 1961 France and Niger signed the convention under which France secured the right to mine Niger’s uranium deposits. By the year 2006, France had exploited 100,000 tons of uranium, which – at an average price of 25,000 CFA (38 EUR) per kilogram of uranium – had brought gains in the amount of 2.5 trillion CFA (3.8 billion EUR). In 2007 the mines operators SOMAIR/COMINAK published data which confirmed the level of French exploitation in Niger: since 1971 Niger had gained a profit of 283 million CFA (431,000 EUR). Before the year 1973 the uranium extraction had barely brought any profits to the country (the estimated amount oscillates between 1.3 and 1.7 billion CFA, that is, about 2 – 2.6 million EUR). Hamani Diori, the first president since Niger gained independence in August 1960, wanted to claim back Niger’s shares in the uranium mines and started the struggle with French authorities. As a consequence, the French government overthrew Diori’s administration and helped a military junta to come to power. At the time when the junta was ruling the country, Małgorzata MACIEJEWSKA, Marcin MARSZAŁEK 244 the profits from uranium extraction increased to 24 billion CFA (36 million EUR). This was not related to the growth in shares but was a result of increasing uranium prices on global markets. After several years the prices of uranium dropped, which lead in 1980 to a deep crisis and indebtedness of the country. Since that time, the extraction of uranium has not brought real income to the state. The ambitious program for investments in the infrastructure which had begun in the late 1970s was left off, and the country introduced the policy of indebtedness in the private banks. Meanwhile, the austerity measures introduced, badly affected the standards of living in Niger. The state resigned from its responsibility to care for its citizens and cut the expenditures for the social security system. In 2002, the uranium business brought a profit of 5.39 billion CFA (8.2 million EUR), which made up only 3.35 Niger’s budget revenue. In fact, the mining business does not lead to an increase of Niger’s Gross Domestic Product because it does not bring growing or even stable profits. Since 1980 the number of workers employed in the mines dropped from 3000 to 1600 in 2010. The operating companies have started to hire workers on fixed or temporary contracts and to outsource to subcontractors who provide a cheap labor force, which has had a negative impact on the miners’ salaries. In other words, ‘political stability’ does not translate into economic stability. For a long time AREVA had exclusive rights to conduct the research on the level of radiation around the mining areas. The company was frequently sued for lowering the radiations measures. Recent independent research indicates that the level of radiation around the mining areas exceeds the norms of radiation rates which are safe for human life (Dixon, 2010). It is argued that the uranium extraction has been causing huge environmental damage and have been strongly influencing the quality of life. AREVA’s ex-workers have accused the company for neglecting the danger of radiation and not informing the society about the risks local residents and workers have been facing, as well as for not taking action to improve the environmental and human health protection. The workers do not wear special clothing which would protect them from radioactive dust present in the air and diffusing far beyond the mining areas. Until the 1980s, the workers were practically not informed about the radiation level. Today it is known that the workers’ settlements near the mines are contaminated. The other environmental risk is the contamination of water and LACK OF POWER OR LACK OF DEMOCRACY: THE CASE OF THE PROJECTED NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN POLAND 245 decreasing water supplies. The mines use massive amounts of water during the processing of uranium ore, thus clean drinking water for people and nature is becoming a scarce commodity. New uranium mines are being established in Niger, and there are plans to build more. Local communities cannot expect that the present and new companies will act on their behalf and for the good of the nature to protect the society and the ecosystem, for otherwise the uranium extraction could become unprofitable. That kind of neocolonial relation seems to be a widespread practice of the international corporations in the mining industry. The exploitation of people and nature, the transfer of the hidden costs onto their shoulders deepens the developmental and economic gap between the Global North and Global South. The fragile political and economic position and the indebtedness of developing countries results from the arrangements of global chains of production, trading and international policies mainly posed by rich and developed countries.

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	1	+2016-09-17 21:42:19.357

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	1	+Jennifer Melin

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	1	+Brentwood EL

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	1	+1

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	1	+3

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	1	+West Nelson Aff

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	1	+Greenhill R3 1AC

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	1	+Greenhill