The AFF’s performance of _ discounts evidence – they destroy the pursuit of knowledge by propagating decadence. Gordon 06
Lewis Gordon—professor at philosophy, African and Judiac Studies at University of Connecticut Storrs—2006 (Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times, p 28-29) A striking feature (among many) of the contemporary intellectual climate, as I pointed out in the introduction of this book, is the war on evidence. There are many instances of this, but perhaps most memorable are the many "charts" and so-called evidential claims made by Ronald Reagan during his presidency. The so-called evidence he advanced was rarely ever evident. We needn’t blame Reagan for this. It was happening everywhere. Think of the scores of pseudo-intellectuals who have mastered the performance of “academese” and the rhetorical advance of evidence like claims. Lying beneath all this are, of course, nihilistic forces, and lying beneath such forces are, as Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed little more than a century ago, decadent ones. Where truth has collapsed into commonness, then critical thinking isn't necessary, which makes the work of assessing evidence superfluous. The effect is the kind of nonthinking activities against which Ortega y Gasset argued. There are two extremes of this. On the one hand, there is oversimplicity that demands no reflection. On the other hand, there IS the dense, abstruse appearance of expertise that conceals an absence of thought. Both don't require thinking because their ultimate appeal is appearance. Evidence is paradoxically that which has been hidden but revealed as a conduit for the appearance of another hidden reality. In effect, then, It is an appearance that enables appearance, but it is an appearance that requires thinking in order to appear. In short, it is not an appearance that stimulates thought but a form of thought that stimulates appearance. This means that evidence is always symbolic; it always refers beyond Itself. Because whether affirmed or rejected, it always extends itself publicly for assessment, evidence is peculiarly social. And since it is social, evidence is subject to the complex exchange of intersubjective activities. Evidence must, in other words be subject to norms" and "criteria." By norms, I don't here mean normativity or social prejudices but instead an understanding of where an exceptional instance versus a typical instance of a case holds. This requires further understanding of relevance, which, too, requires the value of distinction. All this together provides a clue to the contemporary problem. When simply the performance of presenting evidence substitutes for evidence, then anything can count as evidence. We see this in scholarly texts where the authors announce the importance of looking at a subject and then later argue as though that announcement itself constituted examination. Think, as well, of some texts in literary and cultural studies with long, run-on commentary in end notes and footnotes that serve no role of substantiating the claims they supposedly demarcate. We also see it in cases where pronouncements of past failures of certain social remedies take the form of perennial truths.
The AFF’s decadence stops us from from various ways of knowing the world and ontologizes _ as the constitutive foundation of the world. Gordon 06
Lewis Gordon—professor of philosophy, African and Judiac Studies at the University of Connecticut—2014 (“Disciplinary Decadence and the Decolonization of Knowledge,” Africa Development 39.1: 81-92, 86-88). Failure to appreciate reality sometimes takes the form of recoiling from it. An inward path of disciplinary solitude eventually leads to what I call disciplinary decadence.12 This is the phenomenon of turning away from living thought, which engages reality and recognises its own limitations, to a deontologised or absolute conception of disciplinary life. The discipline becomes, in solipsistic fashion, the world. And in that world, the main concern is the proper administering of its rules, regulations, or, as Fanon argued, (self-devouring) methods. Becoming ‘right’ is simply a matter of applying, as fetish, the method correctly. This is a form of decadence because of the set of considerations that fall to the wayside as the discipline turns into itself and eventually implodes. Decay, although a natural process over the course of time for living things, takes on a paradoxical quality in disciplinary formation. A discipline, e.g., could be in decay through a failure to realise that decay is possible. Like empires, the presumption is that the discipline must outlive all, including its own purpose. In more concrete terms, disciplinary decadence takes the form of one discipline assessing all other disciplines from its supposedly complete standpoint. It is the literary scholar who criticises work in other disciplines as not literary. It is the sociologist who rejects other disciplines as not sociological. It is the historian who asserts history as the foundation of everything. It is the natural scientist that criticises the others for not being scientific. And it is also the philosopher who rejects all for not being properly philosophical. Discipline envy is also a form of disciplinary decadence. It is striking, for instance, how many disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences are now engaged in intellectual history with a focus on the Western philosophical canon. And then there is decadence at methodological levels. Textualism, for example, infects historiography at the level of archival legitimacy. Or worse, in some forms of textualism, the expectation of everything being contained in the text becomes evident in work in the human sciences that announce studying its subject through an analysis exclusively of texts on the subject. There are scholars in race theory, e.g., who seem to think that theorising the subject is a matter of determining what has been said on it by a small set of canonical texts. When appearance is reduced to textuality, what, then, happens to inquiry? What are positivism and certain forms of semiological imitation of mathematical phenomena but science envy? When biologism, sociologism, psychologism, and many others assert themselves, to what, ultimately, are they referring? In the human sciences, the problem becomes particularly acute in the study of problem people. Such people misbehave also in disciplinary terms. The failure to squeeze them into disciplinary dictates, from a disciplinarily decadent perspective, is proof of a problem with the people instead of the discipline. It serves as further proof of the pathological nature of such people.
Decadence destroys the possibility of a decolonized ethics of the oppressed to overturn. Gordon 14
Lewis Gordon—professor of philosophy, African and Judiac Studies at the University of Connecticut—2014 (“Disciplinary Decadence and the Decolonization of Knowledge,” Africa Development 39.1: 81-92, 88). The first is regarding the political significance of this critique. For politics to exist, there must be discursive opposition over relations of power. Such activity involves communicative possibilities that rely on the suspension of violent or repressive forces. In effect, that makes politics also a condition of appearance. To be political is to emerge, to appear, to exist. Colonisation involves the elimination of discursive opposition between the dominant group and the subordinated group. A consequence of this is the attempted elimination of speech (a fundamental activity of political life) with a trail of concomitant conditions of its possibility. It is not that colonised groups fail to speak. It is that their speaking lacks appearance or mediation; it is not transformed into speech. The erasure of speech calls for the elimination of such conditions of its appearance such as gestural sites and the constellation of muscles that facilitates speech – namely, the face. As faceless, problem people are derailed from the dialectics of recognition, of self and other, with the consequence of neither self nor other. Since ethical life requires others, a challenge is here raised against models of decolonial practice that centre ethics. The additional challenge, then, is to cultivate the options necessary for both political and ethical life. To present that call as an ethical one would lead to a similar problem of coloniality as did, say, the problem of method raised by Fanon. European modernity has, in other words, subverted ethics. As with the critique of epistemology as first philosophy, ethics, too, as first philosophy must be called into question. It is not that ethics must be rejected. It simply faces its teleological suspension, especially where, if maintained, it presupposes instead of challenging colonial relations. Even conceptions of the ethical that demand deference to the Other run into trouble here since some groups, such as blacks and Indians/Native Americans, are often not even the Other. This means, then, that the ethical proviso faces irrelevance without the political conditions of its possibility. This is a major challenge to liberal hegemony, which calls for ethical foundations of political life, in European modernity. It turns it upside down. But in doing so, it also means that ethics-centred approaches, even in the name of liberation, face a similar fate.
Interpretation - The AFF may only garner offense from hypothetical enactment of the resolution
This does not require the use of any particular style, type of evidence, or assumption about the role of the judge — only that the topic should determine the debate’s subject matter. Solves their method good offense – they can read as a framework argument to justify a topical plan, there’s no reason voting off it is key.====
Merriam-Webster defines production as:
Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary, “production.” the process of making or growing something for sale or use
West’s Encyclopedia of American Law defines nuclear power as:
"Nuclear Power." West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. 2008. The Gale Group 16 Aug. 2016 http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Nuclear+Power A form of energy produced by an atomic reaction, capable of producing an alternative source of electrical power to that supplied by coal, gas, or oil. The dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States in 1945 initiated the atomic age. Nuclear energy immediately became a military weapon of terrifying magnitude. For the physicists who worked on the atom bomb, the promise of nuclear energy was not solely military. They envisioned nuclear power as a safe, clean, cheap, and abundant source of energy that would end society's dependence on fossil fuels. At the end of World War II, leaders called for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Resolved reflects policy passage before a legislative body. Parcher 01
(1) Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constituent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Frimness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination or decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or decided on. A formal statemnt of a deciion, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any other conclusion is utterly inconcievable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they know the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desireablility of that resolution. That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to adopt their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the prelimanary wording of a resolution sent to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasis the fact that it's policy debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies. A resolution is either adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body. Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or 'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.
Violation:
Standards:
1. Engagement – there are infinite non topical AFFs - a precise and predictable point of difference is key to effective dialogue. Steinberg and Freeley 13
Steinberg and Freeley 13, * David, Lecturer in Communication studies and rhetoric. Advisor to Miami Urban Debate League. Director of Debate at U Miami, Former President of CEDA. And Austin, attorney who focuses on criminal, personal injury and civil rights law, JD, Suffolk University, Argumentation and Debate, Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 121-4. NS from file
Debate is a means of settling differences, so there must be a controversy, a difference of opinion or a conflict of interest before there can be a debate. If everyone is in agreement on a feet or value or policy, there is no need or opportunity for debate; the matter can be settled by unanimous consent. Thus, for example, it would be pointless to attempt to debate "Resolved: That two plus two equals four,” because there is simply no controversy about this state¬ment. Controversy is an essential prerequisite of debate. Where there is no clash of ideas, proposals, interests, or expressed positions of issues, there is no debate. Controversy invites decisive choice between competing positions. Debate cannot produce effective decisions without clear identification of a question or questions to be answered. For example, general argument may occur about the broad topic of illegal immigration. How many illegal immigrants live in the United States? What is the impact of illegal immigration and immigrants on our economy? What is their impact on our communities? Do they commit crimes? Do they take jobs from American workers? Do they pay taxes? Do they require social services? Is it a problem that some do not speak English? Is it the responsibility of employers to discourage illegal immigration by not hiring undocumented workers? Should they have the opportunity to gain citizenship? Does illegal immigration pose a security threat to our country? Do illegal immigrants do work that American workers are unwilling to do? Are their rights as workers and as human beings at risk due to their status? Are they abused by employers, law enforcement, housing, and businesses? How are their families impacted by their status? What is the moral and philosophical obligation of a nation state to maintain its borders? Should we build a wall on the Mexican border, establish a national identification card, or enforce existing laws against employers? Should we invite immigrants to become U.S. citizens? Surely you can think of many more concerns to be addressed by a conversation about the topic area of illegal immigration. Participation in this “debate” is likely to be emotional and intense. However, it is not likely to be productive or useful without focus on a particular question and identification of a line demarcating sides in the controversy. To be discussed and resolved effectively, controversies are best understood when seated clearly such that all parties to the debate share an understanding about the objec¬tive of the debate. This enables focus on substantive and objectively identifiable issues facilitating comparison of competing argumentation leading to effective decisions. Vague understanding results in unfocused deliberation and poor deci¬sions, general feelings of tension without opportunity for resolution, frustration, and emotional distress, as evidenced by the failure of the U.S. Congress to make substantial progress on the immigration debate. Of course, arguments may be presented without disagreement. For exam¬ple, claims are presented and supported within speeches, editorials, and advertise¬ments even without opposing or refutational response. Argumentation occurs in a range of settings from informal to formal, and may not call upon an audi¬ence or judge to make a forced choice among competing claims. Informal dis¬course occurs as conversation or panel discussion without demanding a decision about a dichotomous or yes/no question. However, by definition, debate requires "reasoned judgment on a proposition. The proposition is a statement about which competing advocates will offer alternative (pro or con) argumenta-tion calling upon their audience or adjudicator to decide. The proposition pro¬vides focus for the discourse and guides the decision process. Even when a decision will be made through a process of compromise, it is important to iden¬tify the beginning positions of competing advocates to begin negotiation and movement toward a center, or consensus position. It is frustrating and usually unproductive to attempt to make a decision when deciders are unclear as to what the decision is about. The proposition may be implicit in some applied debates (“Vote for me!”); however, when a vote or consequential decision is called for (as in the courtroom or in applied parliamentary debate) it is essential that the proposition be explicitly expressed (“the defendant is guilty!”). In aca¬demic debate, the proposition provides essential guidance for the preparation of the debaters prior to the debate, the case building and discourse presented during the debate, and the decision to be made by the debate judge after the debate. Someone disturbed by the problem of a growing underclass of poorly educated, socially disenfranchised youths might observe, “Public schools are doing a terri¬ble job! They' are overcrowded, and many teachers are poorly qualified in their subject areas. Even the best teachers can do little more than struggle to maintain order in their classrooms." That same concerned citizen, facing a complex range of issues, might arrive at an unhelpful decision, such as "We ought to do some¬thing about this” or, worse, “It’s too complicated a problem to deal with." Groups of concerned citizens worried about the state of public education could join together to express their frustrations, anger, disillusionment, and emotions regarding the schools, but without a focus for their discussions, they could easily agree about the sorry state of education without finding points of clarity or potential solutions. A gripe session would follow. But if a precise question is posed—such as “What can be done to improve public education?”—then a more profitable area of discussion is opened up simply by placing a focus on the search for a concrete solution step. One or more judgments can be phrased in the form of debate propositions, motions for parliamentary debate, or bills for legislative assemblies, The statements "Resolved: That the federal government should implement a program of charter schools in at-risk communities” and “Resolved; That the state of Florida should adopt a school voucher program" more clearly identify specific ways of dealing with educational problems in a manageable form, suitable for debate. They provide specific policies to be investigated and aid discussants in identifying points of difference. This focus contributes to better and more informed decision making with the potential for better results. In aca¬demic debate, it provides better depth of argumentation and enhanced opportu¬nity for reaping the educational benefits of participation. In the next section, we will consider the challenge of framing the proposition for debate, and its role in the debate. To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk about a topic, such as ‘"homeless¬ness,” or “abortion,” Or “crime,” or “global warming,” we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish a profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement “Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword” is debatable, yet by itself fails to provide much basis for dear argumen¬tation. If we take this statement to mean Iliad the written word is more effec¬tive than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose, perhaps promoting positive social change. (Note that “loose” propositions, such as the example above, may be defined by their advocates in such a way as to facilitate a clear contrast of competing sides; through definitions and debate they “become” clearly understood statements even though they may not begin as such. There are formats for debate that often begin with this sort of proposition. However, in any debate, at some point, effective and meaningful discussion relies on identification of a clearly stated or understood proposition.) Back to the example of the written word versus physical force. Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with—poems, novels, government documents, web¬site development, advertising, cyber-warfare, disinformation, or what? What does it mean to be “mightier" in this context? What kind of physical force is being compared—fists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, “Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis?” The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as “Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania.” Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advo¬cates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided
Outweighs: A. Even if their method is good, it isn’t valuable if it’s not procedurally debatable – they don’t get access to any of their offense B. The best solutions are formed with critical contestation from multiple sides – it’s more likely we make a good liberation strategy if both debaters can engage and test it C. Debate is about process not content – we inevitably switch sides, even if it’s arguing against one method with another. The individual ideas we learn, like , aren’t as valuable as learning how to effectively apply those ideas outside of round by engaging in precise discussions instead of just asserting opinions. D. They force the NEG to extremist generics – this is why cap and anthro are such common responses to their position - which causes more evasion than if we had a substantive debate about in the topic.
2. Procedural Fairness - Non topical advocacies mean they can defend anything outside the resolution which is unpredictable, and also defend uncontestable offense like _. This kills NEG ground and thus equal access to the ballot.
This is an independent voting issue which outweighs:
A. Evaluation – even if their arguments seem true, that’s only because they already had an advantage – fairness is a meta constraint on your ability to determine who best meets their ROB.
B. Fairness is key to effective dialogue. Galloway 07
Ryan, “DINNER AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE”, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007)
Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning: Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound decisions. Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an informed people who subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such discussion that we reach agreement which binds us to a common cause…If we are to be equal…relationships among equals must find expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197). Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). For example, an affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is oppressive or that actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing them from offering effective “counter-word” and undermining the value of a meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.
C. Links best to the role of the judge to determine the winner as per the ballot – that’s impossible if the round’s unfair. Even if their method is good for education there’s no reason you vote on it, just as even if exercise is good for soccer playerss you don’t vote for the team that ran most.
3. We solve all their offense
A. Arguments don’t injure people, but policies do—voting aff on this is censorship because it says we can’t even introduce ideas without harming them. Anderson 06
Amanda Anderson 6, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and English at Brown University, Spring 2006, “Reply to My Critic(s),” Criticism, Vol. 48, No. 2, p. 281-290
Probyns piece is a mixture of affective fallacy, argument by authority, and bald ad hominem. There's a pattern here: precisely the tendency to personalize argument and to foreground what Wendy Brown has called "states of injury." Probyn says, for example, that she "felt ostracized by the books content and style." Ostracized? Argument here is seen as directly harming persons, and this is precisely the state of affairs to which I object. Argument is not injurious to persons. Policies are injurious to persons and institutionalized practices can alienate and exclude. But argument itself is not directly harmful; once one says it is, one is very close to a logic of censorship. The most productive thing to do in an open academic culture (and in societies that aspire to freedom and democracy) when you encounter a book or an argument that you disagree with is to produce a response or a book that states your disagreement. But to assert that the book itself directly harms you is tantamount to saying that you do not believe in argument or in the free exchange of ideas, that your claim to injury somehow damns your opponent's ideas. When Probyn isn't symptomatic, she's just downright sloppy. One could work to build up the substance of points that she throws out the car window as she screeches on to her next destination, but life is short, and those with considered objections to liberalism and proceduralism would not be particularly well served by the exercise. As far as I can tell, Probyn thinks my discussion of universalism is of limited relevance (though far more appealing when put, by others, in more comfortingly equivocating terms), but she's certain my critique of appeals to identity is simply not able to accommodate the importance of identity in social and political life. As I make clear throughout the book, and particularly in my discussion of the headscarf debate in France, identity is likely to be at the center of key arguments about life in plural democracies; my point is not that identity is not relevant, but simply that it should not be used to trump or stifle argument. In closing, I'd like to speak briefly to the question of proceduralism's relevance to democratic vitality. One important way of extending the proceduralist arguments put forth by Habeimas is to work on how institutions and practices might better promote participation in democratic life. The apathy and nonparticipation plaguing democratic institutions in the United States is a serious problem, and can be separated from the more romantic theoretical investments in a refusal to accept the terms of what counts as argument, or in assertions of inassimilable difference. With respect to the latter, which is often glorified precisely as the moment when politics or democracy is truly occurring, I would say, on the contrary democracy is not happening then-rather, the limits or deficiencies of an actually existing democracy are making themselves felt. Acknowledging struggle, conflict, and exclusion is vital to democracy, but insisting that exclusion is not so much a persistent challenge for modern liberal democracies but rather inherent to the modern liberal-democratic political form as such seems to me precisely to remain stalled in a romantic critique of Enlightenment. It all comes down to a question of whether one wants to work with the ideals of democracy or see them as essentially normative in a negative sense: this has been the legacy of a certain critique of Enlightenment, and it is astonishingly persistent in the left quarters in the academy. One hears it clearly when Robbins makes confident reference to liberalisms tendency to ignore "the founding acts of violence on which a social order is based." One encounters it in the current vogue for the work of Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt. Saying that a state of exception defines modernity or is internal to the law itself may help to sharpen your diagnoses of certain historical conditions, but if absolutized as it is in these accounts, it gives you nothing but a negative diagnostic and a compensatory flight to a realm entirely other-the kind of mystical, Utopian impulse that flees from these conditions rather than confronts and fights them on terms that derive from the settled-if constantly evolving-normative basis of democratic modernity. If one is outraged by the flagrant disregard of democratic procedures in the current U.S. political regime, then one needs to be able to coherently say why democratic procedures matter, what principles underwrite them, and what historical movements and institutions have helped us to secure and support them. Argument as a critical practice and as a key component of democratic institutions and public debate has a vital role to play in such a task.
B. All arguments are framework - we don’t have the power to impose a norm, only to persuade you that their arguments should be rejected. Anderson 6
Amanda Anderson, Caroline Donovan Professor of English Literature and Department Chair at Johns Hopkins University, Senior Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University, 2006 (“Reply to My Critic(s),” Criticism, Volume 48, Number 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project MUSE, p. 285-287)
Let's first examine the claim that my book is "unwittingly" inviting a resurrection of the "Enlightenment-equals-totalitarianism position." How, one wonders, could a book promoting argument and debate, and promoting reason-giving practices as a kind of common ground that should prevail over assertions of cultural authenticity, somehow come to be seen as a dangerous resurgence of bad Enlightenment? Robbins tells us why: I want "argument on my own terms"—that End Page 285 is, I want to impose reason on people, which is a form of power and oppression. But what can this possibly mean? Arguments stand or fall based on whether they are successful and persuasive, even an argument in favor of argument. It simply is not the case that an argument in favor of the importance of reasoned debate to liberal democracy is tantamount to oppressive power. To assume so is to assume, in the manner of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, that reason is itself violent, inherently, and that it will always mask power and enforce exclusions. But to assume this is to assume the very view of Enlightenment reason that Robbins claims we are "thankfully" well rid of. (I leave to the side the idea that any individual can proclaim that a debate is over, thankfully or not.) But perhaps Robbins will say, "I am not imagining that your argument is directly oppressive, but that what you argue for would be, if it were enforced." Yet my book doesn't imagine or suggest it is enforceable; I simply argue in favor of, I promote, an ethos of argument within a liberal democratic and proceduralist framework. As much as Robbins would like to think so, neither I nor the books I write can be cast as an arm of the police. Robbins wants to imagine a far more direct line of influence from criticism to political reality, however, and this is why it can be such a bad thing to suggest norms of argument. Watch as the gloves come off: Faced with the prospect of submitting to her version of argument—roughly, Habermas's version—and of being thus authorized to disagree only about other, smaller things, some may feel that there will have been an end to argument, or an end to the arguments they find most interesting. With current events in mind, I would be surprised if there were no recourse to the metaphor of a regular army facing a guerilla insurrection, hinting that Anderson wants to force her opponents to dress in uniform, reside in well-demarcated camps and capitals that can be bombed, fight by the rules of states (whether the states themselves abide by these rules or not), and so on—in short, that she wants to get the battle onto a terrain where her side will be assured of having the upper hand. Let's leave to the side the fact that this is a disowned hypothetical criticism. (As in, "Well, okay, yes, those are my gloves, but those are somebody else's hands they will have come off of.") Because far more interesting, actually, is the sudden elevation of stakes. It is a symptom of the sorry state of affairs in our profession that it plays out repeatedly this tragicomic tendency to give a grandiose political meaning to every object it analyzes or confronts. We have evidence of how desperate the situation is when we see it in a critic as thoughtful as Bruce Robbins, where it emerges as the need to allegorize a point about an argument in such a way that it gets cast as the equivalent of war atrocities. It is especially ironic in light of the fact that to the extent that I do give examples of the importance of liberal democratic proceduralism, I invoke the disregard of the protocols of international adjudication in the days leading up to the invasion of Iraq; I also speak End Page 286 about concerns with voting transparency. It is hard for me to see how my argument about proceduralism can be associated with the policies of the Bush administration when that administration has exhibited a flagrant disregard of democratic procedure and the rule of law. I happen to think that a renewed focus on proceduralism is a timely venture, which is why I spend so much time discussing it in my final chapter. But I hasten to add that I am not interested in imagining that proceduralism is the sole political response to the needs of cultural criticism in our time: my goal in the book is to argue for a liberal democratic culture of argument, and to suggest ways in which argument is not served by trumping appeals to identity and charismatic authority. I fully admit that my examples are less political events than academic debates; for those uninterested in the shape of intellectual arguments, and eager for more direct and sustained discussion of contemporary politics, the approach will disappoint. Moreover, there will always be a tendency for a proceduralist to under-specify substance, and that is partly a principled decision, since the point is that agreements, compromises, and policies get worked out through the communicative and political process. My book is mainly concentrated on evaluating forms of arguments and appeals to ethos, both those that count as a form of trump card or distortion, and those that flesh out an understanding of argument as a universalist practice. There is an intermittent appeal to larger concerns in the political democratic culture, and that is because I see connections between the ideal of argument and the ideal of deliberative democracy. But there is clearly, and indeed necessarily, significant room for further elaboration here.
C. T version of the AFF
D. They can read these arguments on the NEG, there’s no reason affirming is key – switch side debate is key to tolerance instead of dogmatism. Muir 93:
Values clarification, Stewart is correct in pointing out, does not mean that no values are developed. Two very important values— tolerance and fairness—inhere to a significant degree in the ethics of switch-side debate. A second point about the charge of relativism is that tolerance is related to the development of reasoned moral viewpoints. The willingness to recognize the existence of other views, and to grant alternative positions a degree of credibility, is a value fostered by switch-side debate: Alternately debating both sides of the same question inculcates a deep-seated attitude of tolerance toward differing points of view. To be forced to debate only one side leads to an ego-identification with that side. , . . The other side in contrast is seen only as something to be discredited. Arguing as persuasively as one can for completely opposing views is one way of giving recognition to the idea that a strong case can generally be made for the views of earnest and intelligent men, however such views may clash with one's own. . . .Promoting this kind of tolerance is perhaps one of the greatest benefits debating both sides has to offer. 5' The activity should encourage debating both sides of a topic, reasons Thompson, because debaters are "more likely to realize that propositions are bilateral. It is those who fail to recognize this fact who become intolerant, dogmatic, and bigoted.""* While Theodore Roosevelt can hardly be said to be advocating bigotry, his efforts to turn out advocates convinced of their rightness is not a position imbued with tolerance.At a societal level, the value of tolerance is more conducive to a fair and open assessment of competing ideas. John Stuart Mill eloquently states the case this way: Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. . . . the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race. . . . If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of the truth, produced by its collision with error."*' At an individual level, tolerance is related to moral identity via empathic and critical assessments of differing perspectives. Paul posits a strong relationship between tolerance, empathy, and critical thought. Discussing the function of argument in everyday life, he observes that in order to overcome natural tendencies to reason egocentrically and sociocentrically, individuals must gain the capacity to engage in self-reflective questioning, to reason dialogically and dialectically, and to "reconstruct alien and opposing belief systems empathically."*- Our system of beliefs is, by definition, irrational when we are incapable of abandoning a belief for rational reasons; that is, when we egocentrically associate our beliefs with our own integrity. Paul describes an intimate relationship between private inferential habits, moral practices, and the nature of argumentation. Critical thought and moral identity, he urges, must be predicated on discovering the insights of opposing views and the weaknesses of our own beliefs. Role playing, he reasons, is a central element of any effort to gain such insight.
Outweighs: unwillingness to listen to other viewpoints is the root cause of their harms since_.
Voter: Drop the debater on T – the round is already skewed from the beginning because their advocacy excluded by ability to generate NC offense– letting them sever doesn’t solve any of the abuse
Theory is an issue of competing interpretations because reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters will exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.
It is impossible to solve colonization within a European body of knowledge – their foundation recreate every problem they criticizes. Wynter 06
- Impact – can’t solve antiblackness if you work within antiblack disciplines since that consciousness will always invade “radical” thought – just like you couldn’t explain to someone in the medival era why some planets seemed to move backwards because the planetary model was geocentric, you can’t explain to someone who uses western phil a true liberation strategy for black people
Syliva Wynter 6—2006 ( “Interview with Syliva Wynter,ProudFlesh Interview: New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics and Consciousness, Issue 4). NS
PROUD FLESH: At this point in your life’s work, who could think of your writing without thinking of its critical thesis on “humanism,” of Western humanism, or what it calls “Man,” which also raises critical questions of “consciousness,” does it not? And other questions, too, of course. SYLVIA WYNTER: Such as, “Why does this meaning have to be put on being Black—this meaning of non-being?” These are the kinds of questions that you guys are going to ask. I beg you guys to go back and read about Copernicus, Galileo and so on. The Darwinian thing was a bit of a struggle, but not as much--strangely enough . . . PROUD FLESH: Yes, you consistently show how “the Copernican revolution” was one enabled by imperialist exploration-cum-exploitation or conquest. For undergraduates in Western universities, in particular, they simply stick the Copernicus issue in the anthology of “modern Western philosophy,” as a lesser textual concern, without dealing with it or its significance; I mean, with no context or explanation. SYLVIA WYNTER: They never even wanted to write about it! And why? Because I think they are aware of the implications, if taken seriously. That’s how they took over the world. We have to take it all seriously. YOU CANNOT SOLVE THE ISSUE OF “CONSCIOUSNESS” IN TERMS OF THEIR BODY OF “KNOWLEDGE.” You just can’t. Just as within the medieval order of knowledge there was no way in which you could explain why it is that certain planets seemed to be moving backwards. Because you were coming from a geocentric model, right? So you had to “know” the world in that way. Whereas from our “Man-centric” model, we cannot solve “consciousness” because “Man” is a purely ontogenetic/purely biological conception of being, who then creates “culture.” So if we say “consciousness” is “constructed,” who does the constructing? You see? Whereas in Fanon’s understanding of ontogeny-and-sociogeny, there’s no problem. Do you see what I mean?
The alternative is radical decolonization that challenges the AFF’s overrepresentation of Western Man. Wynter 03
- Alt - basically do the AFF (burn everything down, end the world, whatever) without their use of western phil concepts – like pic out of psychoanalysis, western ontology focus, and social death focus - External impacts - global conflict, poverty, sexism, etc are all caused by overrepresentation of western man
Sylvia Wynter—2003 (“Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Number 3,257-337). NS
The argument proposes that the struggle of our new millennium will be one between the ongoing imperative of securing the well-being of our present ethnoclass (i.e., Western bourgeois) conception of the human, Man, which overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself, and that of securing the well-being, and therefore the full cognitive and behavioral autonomy of the human species itself/ourselves. Because of this overrepresentation, which is defined in the first part of the title as the Coloniality of Being/ Power/Truth/Freedom, any attempt to unsettle the coloniality of power will call for the unsettling of this overrepresentation as the second and now purely secular form of what Aníbal Quijano identifies as the "Racism/ Ethnicism complex," on whose basis the world of modernity was brought into existence from the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries onwards (Quijano 1999, 2000), 2 and of what Walter Mignolo identifies as the foundational "colonial difference" on which the world of modernity was to institute itself (Mignolo 1999, 2000). 3 The correlated hypothesis here is that all our present struggles with respect to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, struggles over the environment, global warming, severe climate change, the sharply unequal distribution of the earth resources (20 percent of the world's peoples own 80 percent of its resources, consume two-thirds of its food, and are responsible for 75 percent of its ongoing pollution, with this leading to two billion of End Page 260 earth's peoples living relatively affluent lives while four billion still live on the edge of hunger and immiseration, to the dynamic of overconsumption on the part of the rich techno-industrial North paralleled by that of overpopulation on the part of the dispossessed poor, still partly agrarian worlds of the South 4 )—these are all differing facets of the central ethnoclass Man vs. Human struggle. Central to this struggle also is the usually excluded and invisibilized situation of the category identified by Zygmunt Bauman as the "New Poor" (Bauman 1987). That is, as a category defined at the global level by refugee/economic migrants stranded outside the gates of the rich countries, as the postcolonial variant of Fanon's category of les damnés (Fanon 1963)—with this category in the United States coming to comprise the criminalized majority Black and dark-skinned Latino inner-city males now made to man the rapidly expanding prison-industrial complex, together with their female peers—the kicked-about Welfare Moms—with both being part of the ever-expanding global, transracial category of the homeless/the jobless, the semi-jobless, the criminalized drug-offending prison population. So that if we see this category of the damnés that is internal to (and interned within) the prison system of the United States as the analog form of a global archipelago, constituted by the Third- and Fourth-World peoples of the so-called "underdeveloped" areas of the world—most totally of all by the peoples of the continent of Africa (now stricken with AIDS, drought, and ongoing civil wars, and whose bottommost place as the most impoverished of all the earth's continents is directly paralleled by the situation of its Black Diaspora peoples, with Haiti being produced and reproduced as the most impoverished nation of the Americas)—a systemic pattern emerges. This pattern is linked to the fact that while in the post-sixties United States, as Herbert Gans noted recently, the Black population group, of all the multiple groups comprising the post-sixties social hierarchy, has once again come to be placed at the bottommost place of that hierarchy (Gans, 1999), with all incoming new nonwhite/non-Black groups, as Gans's fellow sociologist Andrew Hacker (1992) earlier pointed out, coming to claim "normal" North American identity by the putting of visible distance between themselves and the Black population group (in effect, claiming "normal" human status by distancing themselves from the group that is still made to occupy the nadir, End Page 261 "nigger" rung of being human within the terms of our present ethnoclass Man's overrepresentation of its "descriptive statement" Bateson 1969 as if it were that of the human itself), then the struggle of our times, one that has hitherto had no name, is the struggle against this overrepresentation. As a struggle whose first phase, the Argument proposes, was first put in place (if only for a brief hiatus before being coopted, reterritorialized Godzich 1986) by the multiple anticolonial social-protest movements and intellectual challenges of the period to which we give the name, "The Sixties." The further proposal here is that, although the brief hiatus during which the sixties' large-scale challenge based on multiple issues, multiple local terrains of struggles (local struggles against, to use Mignolo's felicitous phrase, a "global design" Mignolo 2000) erupted was soon to be erased, several of the issues raised then would continue to be articulated, some in sanitized forms (those pertaining to the category defined by Bauman as "the seduced"), others in more harshly intensified forms (those pertaining to Bauman's category of the "repressed" Bauman 1987). Both forms of "sanitization" would, however, function in the same manner as the lawlike effects of the post-sixties' vigorous discursive and institutional re-elaboration of the central overrepresentation, which enables the interests, reality, and well-being of the empirical human world to continue to be imperatively subordinated to those of the now globally hegemonic ethnoclass world of "Man." This, in the same way as in an earlier epoch and before what Howard Winant identifies as the "immense historical rupture" of the "Big Bang" processes that were to lead to a contemporary modernity defined by the "rise of the West" and the "subjugation of the rest of us" (Winant 1994)—before, therefore, the secularizing intellectual revolution of Renaissance humanism, followed by the decentralizing religious heresy of the Protestant Reformation and the rise of the modern state—the then world of laymen and laywomen, including the institution of the political state, as well as those of commerce and of economic production, had remained subordinated to that of the post-Gregorian Reform Church of Latin-Christian Europe (Le Goff 1983), and therefore to the "rules of the social order" and the theories "which gave them sanction" (See Konrad and Szelenyi guide-quote), as these rules were articulated by its theologians and implemented by its celibate clergy (See Le Goff guide-quote).
The role of the ballot is to challenge the representations of the 1AC legitimated through a Western philosophical worldview. Their cultural framing is a prior question to their advocacy – they do not get to weigh the method. Wynter 92
- discourse and the cultural background of a theory help construct it and can’t be separated form the theory itself since they’re woven in to how it’s interpreted (by the judge for example), how it’s justified, and what political efficacy it has. They don’t get to weigh “ending the world” against the alt since their justification shape how their method works and are thus a prior question
Sylvia Wynter 92—1992 (“Beyond the Categories of the Master Conception: The Counterdoctrine of the Jamesian Poiesis,” in C.L.R. James Caribbean, eds. Paget Henry and Paul Buhle, 63-91). NS
To be effective systems of power must be discursively legitimated. This is not to say that power is originally a set of institutional structures that are subsequently legitimated. On the contrary, it is to suggest the equiprimordiality of structure and cultural conceptions in the genesis of power. These cultural conceptions, encoded in language and other signifying systems, shape the development of political structures and are also shaped by them. The cultural aspects of power are as original as the structural aspects; each serves as a code for the other's development. It is from these elementary cultural conceptions that complex legitimating discourses are constructed.
9/10/16
Africa PIC
Tournament: Voices | Round: 5 | Opponent: Loyola NT | Judge: Karen Qi Evaluate the round with the question “is the aff more desirable than the squo or a competitive policy option” – best for learning how to advocate positions in the real world instead of vague generalities
Plan text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear excluding countries across the continent of Africa. These countries will retain a choice over whether to prohibit, expand, or maintain nuclear power.
Net benefits: 1 Nuclear is currently being built in South Africa. ISS 5/11 ISS – African center for Peace and Security Training. “Africa going nuclear?.” ISS. May 11, 2016. https://www.issafrica.org/acpst/news/africa-going-nuclear JJN On a continent that has too often been cavalier about the future wellbeing of its people, it’s encouraging – at least from the development perspective – that South Africa is not alone in planning to build nuclear reactors. South Africa now has the only nuclear power plant on the African continent, comprising the two reactors at Koeberg, just north of Cape Town, producing a total of about 1 860 megawatts (MW) of electricity. It also has plans – which have become highly controversial – to build six to eight more reactors/units, adding a further 9 600 MW to the national grid. But 11 other African nations have also drafted plans to go fissile, according to Anton Khlopkov, Director of the Centre for Energy and Security Studies in Moscow. These are Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda, which constitute about a quarter of the 45 countries worldwide that are actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programmes. Speaking at a seminar on nuclear power in Africa at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria last week, Khlopkov pointed out that this number had dropped from about 60 before the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in Japan five years ago. So Fukushima was a blow to nuclear power, but evidently not a fatal one. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of nuclear power, he said, constructing 25 of the world’s nuclear power plants currently. The export sales of its national nuclear corporation Rosatom were US$6.4 billion last year (including also nuclear fuel and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.) Its foreign orders up to 2030 are worth US$110 billion. There are now 38 nuclear power reactors of Russian design operating outside of Russia, in 10 countries; and 25 more reactors that Rosatom is contracted to build in 12 countries. The most advanced plans for nuclear power plant construction in Africa are in Algeria, which proposes to build two units, generating 2 400 MW by 2030; Egypt, two units of 4 800 MW by 2030; Ghana, one unit of 1 000 MW by 2025; Kenya, four units, 4 000 MW by 2033; Morocco, one reactor by 2030; Nigeria, four units, 4 000 MW by 2027 and, of course, South Africa’s 9 600 MW fleet. Rosatom is one of several national nuclear corporations bidding for the South African contract. It is also in negotiations with Algeria, Egypt and Morocco to build their proposed nuclear power plants. It's not clear which other nuclear vendors are interested in building these and the other proposed African nuclear power plants. That Africa needs a lot more electricity is unquestionable. As Khlopkov said, only 24 of the population of sub-Saharan Africa now has access to electricity. Outside South Africa, the entire installed generation capacity of sub-Saharan Africa is only 28 gigawatts; about the same as Argentina’s. African manufacturers now experience power shortages for an average of 56 days a year, costing them 6 of sales revenues. The average electricity tariff in sub-Saharan Africa is US$0.13 per kilowatt-hour, compared to a range of US$0.04 to US$0.08 in the developing world at large. But is nuclear the solution for Africa?
Nuclear power is key to expand electricity in Africa and spur economic growth. Luke 15 Ronke Luke, Africa banking on nuclear power, 10/4/15, http://www.mining.com/web/africa-banking-on-nuclear-power/ VC It’s no secret that Africa’s economic development has been stifled by the shortage of electricity across the continent. The Africa Progress Report 2015 puts the annual electricity-related economic loss at 2 percent to 4 percent of GDP. In Ghana and Tanzania, electricity shortages are costing businesses 15 percent of sales. Over 600 million people are getting restless waiting for power. South Africa alone accounts for 50 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s current installed capacity of 9 GW. According to The Africa Progress Report 2015, at the current pace of electrification (investing $8 billion or 0.49 percent of GDP annually), the continent will achieve universal access in 2080. Declaring this unacceptable, Africa Progress Report 2015 projects Africa needs to invest $55 billion (or 3-4 percent of total GDP) annually to speed up the pace and reach universal access to electricity by 2030. Discussions about Africa’s power options often focus on renewables, hydropower and natural gas. Diesel, heavily used for power generation across Africa, and coal, widely used in Southern Africa, are not championed in discussions with international development organizations and financiers. To close the huge power deficit and boost their economies, Africa’s larger economies – South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria -and smaller uranium rich countries – Namibia and Niger – have decided it might be time to go nuclear. Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, and Morocco have also publicly expressed their interest in nuclear power. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has indicated that it will help African countries cooperate in developing nuclear electricity. IAEA will advise on international best practices and standards. National governments will be responsible for regulatory oversight.
South African nuclear energy policy gets modeled – sub-Saharan countries follow their example. Barber 14. D.A. Barber, Africa’s Nuclear Energy Hopefuls Learning From South Africa, 10/21/14, http://afkinsider.com/75817/africas-nuclear-energy-hopefuls-learning-south-africa/#sthash.9RdgtYHe.dpuf VC During August’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, the U.S.-based Nuclear Energy Institute hosted a delegation of African leaders from Niger, Namibia and South Africa to discuss nuclear energy development. “The take-away was primarily that nuclear has a role to play in the electrification of Africa,” Lipman told AFKInsider. “The strong message that the Africans gave us was that Africa is open for business and they’re going to have nuclear power no matter what,” says Lipman. South Africa’s participation in the Nuclear Energy Institute meeting is understandable, but Namibia and Niger are also considering nuclear because they both have the fuel to power the plants. The Africa Energy Outlook notes that sub-Saharan Africa “includes three of the ten-largest uranium resource-holders in the world,” which include Namibia and Niger. According to the International Energy Agency, while Namibia gets half its electric power from South Africa, it also holds about 8.2 percent of the world’s uranium reserves mined from two sites to fuel nuclear power stations around the world. For this reason, Namibia’s government has committed to a goal of supplying its own electricity from nuclear power. Niger also has two uranium mines which supplies about 7.7 percent of the world’s uranium. In May 2014, Niger and French nuclear power plant builder AREVA signed a 5-year agreement for operating those mines. But Nuclear Energy Institute’s Lipman says there are still opportunities for American companies to get involved. “They want to see American companies participate and they were very clear that our competitors are there,” Lipman told AFKInsider. “Whether it’s the Russians, Koreans, the Chinese, or the French, they’re there now; they’re cultivating those relationships,” says Lipman. Learning from South Africa The sub-Saharan Africa countries who have expressed interest in nuclear power need only look to South Africa to see the challenges that may lie ahead. While the newly-signed South African nuclear pacts set the framework for foreign suppliers to bid on the new nuclear build in a fair, competitive and cost effective manner. The South Africa Department of Energy signed nuclear energy technology cooperation pacts with Russia on September 20 and announced another with France on Oct 10. The energy department already has a nuclear pact with the U.S. and will soon finalize pacts China and Japan, uses these to set the procurement guidelines for foreign suppliers to bid on the nuclear program.
Poverty is a conflict multiplier and causes massive structural violence and unrest across the continent. Aigbe 14 Omoruyi Aigbe, CONFLICT AND POVERTY IN AFRICA: THE EFFECT OF NATURAL RESOURCE AND LEADERSHIP, 7/25/14 VC On April 15 2013, the United Nations’ Security Council met at the headquarter in New York, to discuss on preventing conflict in Africa; calling for a high priority to be given to addressing core root causes such as poverty, hunger, human rights abuses, marginalization and impunity. No doubt, conflicts rise where there is poor governance, human rights abuses and grievances over the unequal distribution of resources, wealth and power. Following up to that experts at the ’First Africa Union (AU), Regional Economic Communities (REC), Regional Mechanisms (RMs) For Conflict Prevention and Management’ met in Abuja Nigeria, under the auspices of ECOWAS in November of 2013, blaming poverty and underdevelopment as the root cause of conflicts in different parts of Africa, including the violence in Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. The problem of poverty is multidimensional; it goes beyond economics to include social, political, and cultural issues. Scholars like Laune Nathan (2003), John Burton (1997), Richard Sandbrook (1982) and Ted Gurr (1970) have in the past agreed that poverty is a result of lack of basic human needs, which lead to reactions that result in conflict. They are the proponent of human needs theory. However, Burton (ibid) argues that the denial of peoples’ biological needs and psychological needs that relate to growth and development are the drivers of conflict and instability in developing countries. Basic needs (such as food, water, shelter and health) unlike interest cannot be compromised or traded, concealed, or bargained for; an attempt to do this, leads to conflict. Robust evidence on the causes of conflict shows that low national incomes are almost always correlated with the occurrence of violence and conflict. According to Aristotle cited in Okanya (1996), “social strife and revolutions are not brought out by the conspiratorial or malignant nature of man; rather revolutions are derived from poverty and distributive injustice.” Consequently, when majority of people are poor and has no hope of ameliorating their condition, they are bound to be restive and seek recompense through violence, this is arguably the case of the Niger/Delta region in Nigeria. No regime can hold stability and peace when it is created on a sea of poverty (Okanya, Ibid). Conflict evidently brings poverty in as much as it brings destruction, violence, and hatred. Poverty, on the other hand, is a cause of conflict: when grievances are not handled properly, it is argued, poor people, who are restive, will stage an uprising (i.e Egypt and Tunisia), questioning government altogether and joining rebel groups, this may explain the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Decline in the economy and extreme poverty may then underpin the tendencies to resort to violent unrest. Nevertheless, at the root of conflicts always lie multifaceted factors: inequality of political, social, economic and cultural opportunities among different groups, lack of democratic governance and effective leadership, absence of civil society and mechanism for non-violent conflict management. However, some actors argue that the current research on the poverty-development-conflict nexus seems not to have provided convincing evidence on the association between poverty and conflict, the correlation is often understood to be indirect at best. 2 South African drought is bad now, but it’s going to get worse. Schneider 16. Keith Schneider, Drought Pushes South Africa To Water, Energy, and Food Reckoning, 1/19/16, http://www.circleofblue.org/2016/africa/drought-pushes-south-africa-to-water-energy-and-food-reckoning/ VC South Africa straddles the nation-defining economic line between developed and developing and has reached an inflection point in its progress. The nation’s 20th-century desperate need of new software and a bigger hard drive in the 21st. The powerful and closely tied ropes of ecological and economic transition are binding South Africa, the continent’s second largest economy, to a tree of slow deterioration and critical choices. How high will food prices climb if there is no break in the worst drought in 34 years? Will water shortages, expected over the next decade, change South Africa’s program to continue building two immense, thirsty, overdue, and expensive coal-fired power plants? How much is South Africa willing to invest in drinking water supply and wastewater treatment networks that have been poorly maintained, say local water authority managers, and need to expand to reach millions of residents and prevent raw sewage from contaminating rivers and lakes? The problems are not short-term. Neither are the solutions, say authorities and citizens. Supplies of water, energy, and food — the basic resources that drive every human community — are not assured in a nation where demand is growing and the capacity to deliver is in jeopardy. Over the next several months, in a series of regular frontline reports, Circle of Blue seeks to bring our readers new insights about how South Africa understands and anticipates the converging economic and ecological trends of this century, and builds a new foundation of stability and security for its citizens.
South African nuclear power is key to desalination and solving water shortages. Theletsane 16. Winnie Theletsane, ‘SA HAS TO BUILD NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS DUE TO LACK OF WATER’, 2/17/16, http://ewn.co.za/2016/02/17/SA-has-to-build-nuclear-power-station-due-to-lack-water VC CAPE TOWN - Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson says South Africa has to build nuclear power stations because the country doesn’t have enough water. Joemat-Pettersson argued the case in Parliament during the second and final day of debate on President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address (Sona). “Koeberg Nuclear Power Station uses 22 billion litres of sea water, it does not use fresh water, and it recycles water. Twenty-two billion litres of sea water; nuclear energy also contributes to desalination and we are going to need it.” The mister says by contrast, coal-fired power stations consume billions of litres of water. “Medupi Power Station will use 17 billion litres of fresh water a year; 17 billion litres of water, which we will all be looking for because this drought is not going to stop tomorrow.” Joemat-Pettersson says renewable energy cannot provide sufficient baseload supplies to support the industrialisation of the country.
South African water shortages cause failed harvests and jeopardize food security. VOA 16 Voice of America, South Africa: Drought Leads to Failed Crops, Water Shortages, 1/10/16, http://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-drought-leads-to-failed-crops-water-shortages/3138823.html VC Chakela is joined by dozens more residents of Senekal, a small town in South Africa's rural Free State province, one of four regions declared disaster areas as a drought dries up South Africa's heartland - along with much of eastern and southern Africa - bringing with it failed crops and acute water shortages. The drought is a sign of a changing climate the whole region must prepare for, say experts. The El Nino weather phenomenon has returned to southern Africa, marked by delayed rainfall and unusually high temperatures, according to the World Food Program. The environmental effects of El Nino are expected to last until at least 2017, affecting the food security of 29 million people due to poor harvests, said the WFP report. The conditions in Senekal should serve as a warning to the rest of region to prepare themselves for the dry years ahead, said Tshepiso Ramakarane, manager of the Setsoto municipality, where Senekal is located. "For the next 10 to 15 years, the situation is likely to get worse," he warned, adding that only days of sustained rainfall can solve the town's woes, despite the occasional scattered shower. "We are in the middle of a crisis." Other towns in the district have even less water, but Senekal is in worse shape because of its poor infrastructure and distance from the nearest dam, pointing up the vulnerability of many places in the country to drought due to poor sanitation and running water systems.
Food insecurity causes failed states and causes extinction. Brown 09 Lester R Brown - founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute “Can Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” Scientific American, May
The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse. Those crises are brought on by ever worsening environmental degradation One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today's economic crisis. For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire--and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos--and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too! For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization. I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy--most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures--forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible. The Problem of Failed States Even a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third decade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one. In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever. As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding see sidebar at left. Many of their problem's stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk. States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy. Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world's leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six). Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases--such as polio, SARS or avian flu--breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.
Turns the case – food shortages create massive structural violence and a non-human environment. Cribb 10 Cribb 10 (Julian Cribb is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He is former Director, National Awareness for CSIRO and Science Editor of The Australian newspaper. He was national foundation president of the Australian Science Communicators (ASC), president of the National Rural and Resources Press Club, a member of CSIRO advisory committees for agriculture, fisheries and entomology. He has served as a Director of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the Crawford Fund, the Secretariat for International Landcare, CSIRO Publishing, the Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation and the National Science and Technology Centre, Questacon. He was the creator of “Future Harvest” the global public awareness campaign for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Cribb, Julian. “Coming Famine : The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It.” Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 2010. 15-6. ebrary collections.)
Some observers also claim a link between food insecurity and terrorism, pointing out that hungry countries are among those most likely to furnish terrorism recruits. In 2002, heads of state from fifty countries met at a development summit in Mexico where they discussed the role of poverty and hunger as a breeding ground for terrorism. “No-one in this world can feel comfortable or safe while so many are suffering and deprived,” UN secretary general Kofi Annan told them. The president of the UN General Assembly, Han Seung-Soo, added that the world’s poorest countries were a breeding ground for violence and despair. The Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo added, “To speak of development is to speak also of a strong and determined fight against terrorism.” 10 Around the world many guerrilla and insurgent causes—such as Shining Path, the Tamil Tigers, and Abu Sayyaf—have claimed injustice in land ownership and use as one of their motivating causes. A lack of water is a key factor in encouraging terrorism. Mona El Kody, the chair of the National Water Research Unit in Egypt told the Third World Water Forum that living without an adequate level of access to water created a “non-human environment” that led to frustration, and from there to terrorism. “A non-human environment is the worst experience people can live with, with no clean water, no sanitation,” she said, adding that this problem was at its most acute in the Middle East, where 1 percent of the world’s freshwater is shared by 5 percent of the world’s population. Ms. El Kody added that inadequate water resources had the additive effect of reducing farming and food production, thereby increasing poverty—another factor that can lead to terrorism. 11 Most of the “new” conflicts are to be found in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia—the result of a cycle of constant famine, deprivation, and periodic violence, leading in inevitable sequence to worse hunger, greater deprivation, and more vicious fighting. Food and economic insecurity and natural resource scarcities . . . can be major sources of conflict. When politically dominant groups seize land and food resources, deny access to other culturally or economically marginalized groups, and cause hunger and scarcities, violence often flares. In Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sudan, food crises resulting from drought and mismanagement of agriculture and relief and development aid led to rebellion and government collapse, followed by even greater food shortfalls in ensuing years of conflict. Denial of the right to food has been linked to uprisings and civil war in Central America and Mexico. Food insecurity is also integral to civil conflicts in Asia. Competition for resources has generated cycles of hunger and hopelessness that have bred violence in Sri Lanka as well as Rwanda. 12 These afflicted regions are generally places disconnected from the global economic mainstream, where strong-man governments arise and just as quickly crumble, having only political quicksand on which to build a foundation for stability and progress. This is vital to an understanding of what is going wrong with global food production: in nearly all these countries, food is of the first importance, and only after you have enough food can you form a government stable enough to deliver water, health care, education, opportunity for women, justice, and economic development. By neglecting or reducing support for basic food production— as many have during the past twenty-five years—in order to spread aid across these equally deserving causes, the world’s aid donors may unintentionally have laid the foundation for future government failure and conflict. 3 Nuclear power is bound up with the global politics of nuclear weapons security – the aff is an instance where nuclear weapons states can perpetuate their power against non weapons states. Chung 14
CHUNG, ALEX H. "Postcolonial Perspectives on Nuclear Non-Proliferation." (2014).TF
Nuclear weapons were introduced to the world over 65 years ago by the United States with¶ the purpose of winning a war against the Axis powers of Japan and Germany (Daadler and¶ Lodal 2008, p. 80). The destructive nature of nuclear weapons presents a tremendous¶ existential threat to the safety and security of the world. In the words of Rajiv Gandhi,¶ addressing the UN General Assembly on 9 June 1988, “Nuclear war will not mean the death¶ of a hundred million people. Or even a thousand million. It will mean the extinction of four¶ thousand million: the end of life as we know it on our planet earth,” (Shultz et al. 2007, p. 2).¶ Accordingly, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) envisioned the end of nuclear¶ weapons, as the most universally accepted arms control agreement with 189 state members,¶ by recognising five Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) – the US, Russia, China, France, and¶ Britain (Peterson 2010). In return for the promise by all NWS states to completely disarm,¶ and assistance in the acquisition of civilian nuclear energy technology, all Non-Nuclear¶ Weapon States (NNWS) forever forego obtaining nuclear weapons, thereby preventing¶ horizontal proliferation with the stated goal of complete global nuclear disarmament¶ (Gusterson 1999, p. 113). It is significant to note that international institutions such as the¶ UN and the nuclear non-proliferation regime “are largely the product of interstate diplomacy¶ dominated by Western great powers,” (Barkawi and Laffey 2006, p. 331). The five NWS states¶ also hold the five permanent member seats on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC),¶ leading some to criticise the NPT for legitimising and institutionalising nuclear power at the¶ hands of the very few, and at the same time prohibiting the pursuit of nuclear security by the¶ rest of the world (Biswas 2001, p. 486; Biswas, forthcoming 2012). While there have been symbolic reductions in the nuclear stockpiles of the NWS states via bilateral and multilateral¶ treaties, the indefinite and unconditional extension of the NPT in 1995 continues to legitimise¶ the existence of nuclear weapons in the hands of the NWS/P-5, allowing them to modernise¶ their nuclear arsenals, and engage in vertical nuclear proliferation without interference from¶ the international community (Singh 1998, p. 41).¶ The exclusive nature of the NPT and the alignment of NWS status with the UNSC P-5 is¶ indicative of an international regime that perpetuates logics of colonial violence, oppression,¶ and inequity as represented by the emblematic clash between nuclear “haves” and nuclear¶ “have-nots” (Biswas 2001, p. 486; Peterson 2010). As such, the institutionalised demarcation¶ of NWS and NNWS states has led to accusations of “nuclear apartheid” (Biswas 2001, p.¶ 486; Singh 1998, p. 48). Put simply, “nuclear apartheid” highlights the material inequalities¶ in the distribution of global nuclear resources – “inequities that are written into,¶ institutionalised, and legitimised through some of the major arms-control treaties, creating an¶ elite club of nuclear ‘haves’ with exclusive rights to maintain nuclear arsenals that are to be¶ denied to the vast majority of nuclear ‘have nots’,” (Biswas 2001, p. 486). This is evidenced¶ by the United States having “worked diligently to preserve its nuclear supremacy” since¶ 1945; by attempting to keep the nuclear “secret” in perpetuity, by limiting America’s¶ European allies’ ability to command atomic weapons independently, and endeavouring,¶ unsuccessfully, to keep the Middle East and South Asia free of nuclear weapons (Maddock¶ cited in Rotter 2011, p. 1175).
The 1AC’s prohibition on African nuclear power is a representation of fear of lack of Western control and is an act of colonial violence. Hecht 10
The salience of "uranium from Africa" - both in the lead-up to the war and in subsequent opposition to it - traded on three sets of fears and assumptions widespread in the American public sphere: • the fear of nuclear weapons, and the assumption that acquiring "uranium" is tantamount to building an atomic bomb; • the fear of "Africa" as a dark, corrupt continent, and the assumption that actions there are ultimately unknowable or incomprehensible; • the fear of any nuclear materials not within direct Western control, and the assumption that the difference between licit and illicit nuclear trade is clear-cut. Commentators on the Iraq war spilled a lot of ink on the first of these, very little on the second, and only a bit more on the third. But they largely missed the complex technological and political threads that bind these three outlooks together. In this essay I attempt to break these restraints by offering three genealogies for "uranium from Africa." First, I consider the problem of when uranium counts as a "nuclear" thing, when it doesn't, and what Africa has to do with it. Before "uranium" becomes weapons-usable, it must be mined as ore, processed into yellowcake, converted into uranium hexafluoride, enriched, and pressed into bomb fuel. At what stage in this process does it come to count as a "nuclear material"? The answer, I argue, has depended on time, place, purpose, and markets. Second, I excavate the phrase's more specific rendition, displaying fragments of a history of "yellowcake from Niger." Places matter. Niger is not merely an avatar for global threats, but a nation with its own politics, priorities, and conflicts, all of which have significant bearing on the production and distribution of its uranium. Third, I examine another moment when African provenance of uranium was geopolitically contested: the flow of Namibian uranium to the U.S., Japan, and Europe during the height of international sanctions against apartheid. In this instance, licit trade and black markets were materially entwined in ways that made African things invisible
The symbolism of nuclear power is uniquely key – it’s the only path towards respect for black nations. Johnston 15
Franklin JOHNSTON strategist, project manager and advises the minister of education Friday, July 10, 2015 “Racism thrives because black nations fail” Jamaica Observer
Racism exists wherever there are black people. Why? In Jos, Nigeria, blacks just killed 42 blacks and we do not blink, yet we're rabid when police kill one black youth in the USA. Recall 300 virgins taken a year ago? Silence! Is it that we expect savagery of blacks but not whites? You racist!¶ It was a liberal dream that, with education, laws, and cultural exchange racism would die. But it did not. They love our jazz, ladies, entertainers, athletes, tennis aces, yet racism is as in days of Jim Crow or Enoch Powell's "river of blood" speech. Mixed marriages, integrated schools, black MPs, black president, did racism die? No way!¶ So, let's go back to first principles. Is racism normal? Are species wired to prefer their own? Are blacks fighting a losing battle? So let's deconstruct racism.¶ Old theories of racism and solutions don't work, nor do set asides and quotas; what next? What fuels racism? Some say slavery caused racism. But it is dead, and despite multi-hued slaves only black racism grows. Most ethnic groups are racist to blacks, and we equally so! Racist Africa expelled Asians (UK took them) as Dom Rep does Haitians today. Our racists target Indian, Chinese using derogatory names and belittle their success as "yuh see 'ow all a dem pack up inna on 'ouse, an a calaloo and rice dem eat an dem av money; mi haffi eat meat!" Many envy success, live a hedonist party life, and avoid hard graft. Blacks love talk of descending from African kings and love titles, but how does living in the past help today? Quite a racist conundrum. So, what really is racism?¶ Racism is about power not race. Black power was good, but misguided. One black man's success is no use as racism is not about personal power. Racism is about nation power. The day one black nation has top military, space and nuclear capability, racism goes into immediate remission. We can then dump goody-goody projects, empowerment seminars and basket weaving. Blacks will have power and get respect!¶ No black nation colonised a white one or other -- not ever! They had no power. Many black nations exist, but none prospers. That slavery is the root of racism or the cause of black poverty is a cleverly crafted subterfuge by lazy-brained blacks; rip-off reparations and back-to-Africa scams. Racism against "Gooks" died with Japan's prosperity; the Chinese blew it away with cash and WMDs. India (remember we dissed Coolie man?) is gone clear with technology, space and nuclear arms. African is the only major population to be universally disrespected, even here; why? They have no prosperous, potential menacing nation. Others ask: Can they make the grade? Maybe, but with no proof of concept, let's stick it to blacks!¶ Racism is rife in black nations. Small Jamaica is up front with big Nigeria as having great potential but mired in ennui, corruption and racism. China, USA, Russia, Europe call the shots and back it with cash or nukes! Racism in America will wane when we stop our minstrel show and build Jamaica. Global racism will fade when rich Nigeria goes nuclear and is seated at the top table. We may change hearts, but the ability to say "or else" is the power the world respects. Black nations fail and this feeds global racism. We are our worst enemies.¶ Did capitalism cause racism? Marcus Garvey was on track with economic and military plans. The best capitalists were colour blind African, Arab and later European men who founded offshore slavery; and I am open to reparations from all of them. But I would like to put a lick on 'Cudjoe' in West Africa for selling my grandfather of the fifth power to white people. I do not forgive Africa.¶ Racism is not of slavery and rich blacks can't stanch racism as it's not personal it's national. Whites are powerful for eons; other races got there later. Blacks are powerless victims and purveyors of racism. Black power was good but misguided. To riot in white man's country can't help us as it is still his land; riot in your own and build it fool! Only a prosperous black country with the fearsome trappings of WMDs can halt racism. When China was communist -- known for laundries and food; and it was dissed -- it built economic success, WMDs and got respect. Other races ordered their folks, scientists invented, stole or borrowed technology and got to a point where they could destroy the world -- welcome to the head table! Every black nation is a satrapy. Ours, with the best brand, shames the new world negro; rich, big Nigeria shames itself and black people everywhere! Blacks can end racism but we will not apply ourselves!
Taking nuclear technology away from South Africa is founded upon the racist legacy of apartheid. TNO 13. - White people in South Africa dismantled their nukes because they didn’t want them in the hands of a black gov. - The US supplied SA with HEU to build the bombs, but now they’re pressured to get rid of it post-apartheid The New Observer, The Bomb That Never Could Be Used: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons, 7/31/13, http://newobserveronline.com/the-bomb-that-never-could-be-used-south-africas-nuclear-weapons/ VC White South Africa built six atom bombs by 1989 at the Pelindaba nuclear research facility which was to the west of Pretoria. In 1989, the ruling National Party decided to hand power to black majority rule, but did not wish to see the weapons handed over to either a black government or one of the African National Congresses’ allies such as Libya. The nuclear weapons project serves as testament to two important facts about white South Africa. Firstly, it is yet another proof, if any was needed, of the falsity of the “environmental” theory of development. South Africa did not develop nuclear technology “just because” of its geographic location. The development was possible because of the race of the people who lived there, and had nothing to do with the geography, climate, or any other factor. Secondly, the fact that white South Africa developed these weapons for supposed use against its enemies, shows the delusion under which the apartheid leaders lived. The policy of apartheid guaranteed that white South Africa would inevitably be overrun with blacks, and the possibility of using these weapons in any operational thereafter was, therefore, nonexistent. White South Africa’s reliance on black labor meant that no matter where such a weapon might be aimed, whites and blacks alike would be targeted. The nuclear weapons project stands as a tribute to Afrikaner technological and scientific ability, but was an exercise in political self-delusion, just like apartheid. Additional information: – The South African nuclear weapons project was publicly acknowledged in March 1993 by then state president F.W. de Klerk. It was only announced after the weaponry had been fully dismantled and the core elements destroyed or removed. – The United States supplied South Africa with its first supply of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) for use at the Safari-1 research reactor, commissioned in 1965 at Pelindaba. The US supplied South Africa with about 100 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium fuel until 1975, when anti-Apartheid sanctions stopped the shipments. – Apartheid South Africa then turned to Israel for further assistance with its nuclear weapons programme. It is still a matter of debate as to how much technology Israel supplied, but it was probably limited to tools rather than actual weaponry.
10/9/16
SEPT-OCT Bioweapons DA
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Evanston HS | Judge: Rebecca Kuang Regional nuclear proliferation prevents biological warfare. Payne 98 (Dr. Keith B. Payne who is president at the National Institute for Public Policy Faculty, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service National Security Studies Program, April 1998, “Why We Must Sustain Nuclear Deterrence,” http://www.nipp.org/Adobe/Op20Ed203_20_98.pdf)
A single illustration of the lethality of biological weapons will clarify why the U.S. capability to deter regional challengers is of paramount importance: a single undeterred attacker employing as little as 20 kilograms of dispersed anthrax drifting downwind could, under the proper conditions, cause the deaths of 50 percent of the unprotected population in an area of more than 150 square miles. Such a biological attack against the unprotected populations of ten large U.S. urban areas could kill on the order of 20 million Americans. To risk understatement, deterrence is not less important in this post-Cold War period. In the absence of a revived great power competition, the most taxing likely role for U.S. deterrence policy will be deterring the use of WMD by hostile regional powers. What is the future role for nuclear weapons in regional deterrence? There are numerous recent confident assertions by prominent persons that U.S. conventional forces can reliably replace nuclear forces for deterrence of all but nuclear threats. Consequently, they conclude that nuclear weapons are largely unnecessary for regional deterrence. Such assertions ring hollow; they are speculative and unsupported by actual evidence. The evidence that does exist, including recent history, suggests strongly that when a challenger is highly motivated, and cost- and risk- tolerant, nuclear weapons can be essential to deterring WMD attacks. What, for example, was the value of nuclear weapons for deterrence in the Gulf War? By Iraqi accounts, nuclear deterrence prevented Iraq's use of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) that could have inflicted horrendous civilian and military casualties on us and our allies. Senior Iraqi wartime leaders have explained that while U.S. conventional threats were insufficient to deter, implicit U.S. nuclear threats did deter Saddam Hussein's use of chemical and biological weapons. As the then-head of Iraqi military intelligence, Gen. Waffic al Sammarai, has stated, Saddam Hussein did not use chemical or biological weapons during the war, "because the warning was quite severe, and quite effective. The allied troops were certain to use nuclear arms and the price will be too dear and too high." Immediately following the Gulf War many prominent U.S. military commentators, such as former Secretary of Defense McNamara, claimed that nuclear weapons were "incredible" and therefore "irrelevant" to the war.1 This assessment-that U.S. nuclear weapons are irrelevant to regional challengers-is at the heart of the various nuclear disarmament proposals; it also is gravely mistaken. The continuing proliferation of CBW can only increase our need for nuclear deterrence. The United States has given up chemical and biological weapons, and has thus given up the option of deterring chemical and biological threats with like capabilities. In some tough cases conventional forces alone are likely to be inadequate to deter CBW threats. Consequently, as CBW proliferates our nuclear capabilities become more, not less important for regional deterrence.
Biowar comparatively outweighs– It’s cheaper, kills more people, undetectable, and we have no defense. Stirling 07 former Scottish Editor at Burke's Peerage in London, B.Sc. in Pol. Sc. and History; M.A. in European Studies; B.Sc. in Education. (Lord, “War on Iran = You Die from Biowar” Op Ed News, October 22, 2007)
We have been conditioned, by seeing films of mushroom clouds and images of nuclear destruction in Japan at the end of WWII, to have some understanding of the horrific effects of a nuclear war. We have NOT been conditioned to understand the effects of Twenty-first Century advanced biological war. The kill numbers are very similar, just with biowar you don't get the "big bangs", the mushroom clouds, the nuclear bombers, the ICBMs, etc. Just sub-microscopic genetically engineered super killer viruses that we have absolutely no defense against, delivered in secret, with a slow horrifying unstoppable migration through the global human population. All the fear of a naturally mutated form of "bird flu" that might kill tens of millions is simply "child's play" compared to multiple designer military viruses that are built to kill in the many hundreds of millions to billions of people globally.¶ It costs approximately US$1 million to kill one person with nuclear weapons-of-mass destruction but only approximately US$1 to kill one person with biological weapons-of-mass destruction. Bioweapons are truly the "poor man's nukes". The Iranians are known to have a biological weapons program and they, and their allies, certainly have the means to deliver biowar agents into the Israeli and European and North American homelands. Bioweapons do not have to be dispersed via missiles or bombs, they are perfect for non-traditional normally non-military delivery systems. Being very small (there are, for example, typically approximately 40 million bacterial cells in every gram of soil and massively more viruses in the same gram), they lend themselves to an enormous variety of non-detectable methodologies for delivery and use in war, both regionally and globally.¶ What is being missed here, with all the talk of Iran developing nuclear weapons or not (depending on one's viewpoint), is that Iran is already a state that possesses WMD. HELLO, ANY WAR WITH IRAN IS HIGHLY APT TO INVOLVE LARGE SCALE DEATHS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD DUE TO THE NATURE OF THE IRANIAN WMD THREAT. Hello again, this means that YOU...the person reading this...is apt to die from biowar in event of a war with Iran! We are in a MAD....mutually assured destruction....pre-war state with Iran, just as we are with Russia and to a lesser extent with China when it comes to nuclear weapons. A famous line from the movie "Wargames" (referring to engaging in nuclear war and the odds of "winning" such a war) is "the only winning move is not to play". Sad to say, this does not seem to have any bearing on the apocalyptic strategy of the neocon push for war with Iran.¶ The nature of biowar is that it is a "gift that keeps on giving". Once released, advanced recombination DNA based viral bioweapons will continue to spread and kill and kill ....regardless if Iran (and its ally Syria) are but a sea of green radioactive glass devoid of all life. With advanced biowar agents, it is not the quantity that counts but the quality; humans themselves become the vectors and delivery systems of the bioweapons. It does not require large amounts of weapons running into the millions or billions of tons of high explosives; nor does it require ICBMs and cruise missiles and $100 million dollar warplanes to deliver the bioweapons. A very small group of human assets, prepositioned with small amounts of easily hidden biowar weapons (submicroscopic viruses), in the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and America can begin the process that will result in the deaths of hundreds of millions or even billions of human beings. When you get right down to it, does it matter if you die from some exotic bioengineered hemorrhagic fever or from radiation poisoning/nuclear blast .......dead is still dead. ¶ To begin to understand the truly horrific nature of the biowar threat, one only has to look to history for some "mild" examples. The Black Death bubonic pandemic, believed caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is estimated to have killed between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population after it spread to Europe in 1347 from South-western/Central Asia. ¶ Yersinia pestis, being a bacteria is massive when compared to a virus, and is easily treated with modern antibiotics. However, the Soviet Union's Biopreparat organization turned Black Death from a medieval plague into a 20th Century bioweapon. The Yersinia pestis bacteria was exposed to every then-known antibiotic, in a process that any advanced high school or early undergraduate college level biology class student could undertake, and the resulting antibiotic resistant Y. pestis was bred and loaded into a small number of Soviet ICBMs aimed at America. The resistant Y. pestis had also been exposed to various levels of radiation to "radiation harden" the bacteria. The intent was to hit American survivors of a nuclear war with a new and untreatable form of Black Death that itself could survive the effects of nuclear fallout. ¶ As frighting as a totally antibiotic resistant Yersinia pestis bacteria is, it remains "child's play" compared to the more advanced recombination DNA technology used in most biowar programs. This typically involves the recombining of viral DNA into new virus, "designer virus". The Soviets, years ago, engineered a new virus that combined elements of Smallpox and Ebola. With the genetic engineering of viruses those doing the "designing" can engineer into the virus a wide number of different characteristics. For instance, an advanced hemorrhagic fever can be designed to be: airborne (capable of being transmitted via sneezing), with a very small amount of viral material required to infect a human host, with a incubation period of 14 days or longer, with most of the incubation period that is both highly contagious and at best looks like a mild version of the common cold, with the resulting hemorrhagic fever having a mortality of 90 or more.¶ The same technology can be used to create a large number of different viruses which can all be released on a target population at the same time, vastly complicating detection and containment and treatment programs. In fact the normal research and development process used in genetic engineering results in a large number of different new viruses. ¶ Those nations not directly involved in a strike upon Iran, that is most of the rest of the world, will nevertheless face massive deaths within their nations...they will lose more of their citizens to the war, that we are about to unleash, than they lost in World War II and ALL THE OTHER WARS IN HISTORY COMBINED. Needless to say, this will have a profound effect on their actions towards those nations who have started the mess in the first place. The global military, political, economic, and medical chaos resulting from global biowar will make the use of nuclear weapons a likely outcome as America, the United Kingdom, France and other nations starting the war will be seen as out-of-control "mad dogs" who have unleashed World War III. The Book of Revelations speaks of one-third of the world dying, in the Final Battle, from plague ....biowar; and another one-third of the world dying from "wormwood"....which we now know to be nuclear war effects ...Chernobyl, which comes from the Ukrainian word "chornobyl", translates into wormwood (or its close relative mugwort). (Chernobyl is the site of a massive uncontrolled nuclear meltdown disaster in the Ukraine on the 26th of April 1986). ¶ We are in a period of extreme danger to us all. Even more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 60s. Yet far too many people are so uneducated as to the real dangers from advanced Twenty-first Century biowar that they are totally blind to the profound risk to their own lives.
10/16/16
SEPT-OCT Conventional War DA
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Evanston HS | Judge: Rebecca Kuang Prolif solves conflict—4 reasons. Waltz 81 (Kenneth, pol sci prof at Berkeley “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Better,” Adelphi Papers, Number 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981)
States risk too much going to nuke war 2. States don’t win very much in a nuclear war – everything is destroyed 3. Deterrent means states don’t have to fight/expand to scare away other countries – security concerns are a HUGE reason they go to war 4. An attacker knows the defenders will be much more likely to drop nukes because they’re defending their home, so they’re dissuaded from attacking
Weapons and strategies change the situation of states in ways that make them more or less secure, as Robert Jervis has brilliantly shown. If weapons are not well suited for conquest, neighbours have more peace of mind. According to the defensive-deterrent ideal, we should expect war to become less likely when weaponry is such as to make conquest more difficult, to discourage pre-emptive and preventive war, and to make coercive threats less credible. Do nuclear weapons have those effects? Some answers can be found by considering how nuclear deterrence and how nuclear defence may improve the prospects for peace. First, wars can be fought in the face of deterrent threats, but the higher the stakes and the closer a country moves toward winning them, the more surely that country invites retaliation and risks its own destruction. States are not likely to run major risks for minor gains. Wars between nuclear states may escalate as the loser uses larger and larger warheads. Fearing that.states will want to draw back. Not escalation but de-escalation becomes likely. War remains possible. but victory in war is too dangerous to fight for. If states can score only small gains because large ones risk retaliation, they have little incentive to fight. Second, states act with less care if the expected costs of war are low and with more care if they are high. In 1853 and 1854, Britain and France expected to win an easy victory if they went to war against Russia. Prestige abroad and political popularity at home would be gained. if not much else. The vagueness of their plans was matched by the carelessness of their acts. In blundering into the Crimean War they acted hastily on scant information, pandered to their people's frenzy for war, showed more concern for an ally's whim than for the adversary's situation, failed to specify the changes in behaviour that threats were supposed to bring. and inclined towards testing strength first and bargaining second. In sharp contrast, the presence of nuclear weapons makes States exceedingly cautious. Think of Kennedy and Khruschev in the Cuban missile crisis. Why fight if you can't win much and might lose everything? Third, the question demands a negative answer all the more insistently when the deter rent deployment of nuclear weapons contributes more to a country's security than does conquest of territory. A country with a deter-rent strategy does not need the extent of territory required by a country relying on a conventional defence in depth. A deterrent strategy makes it unnecessary for a country to fight for the sake of increasing its security, and this removes a major cause of war. Fourth, deterrent effect depends both on one's capabilities and on the will one has to use them. The will of the attacked, striving to preserve its own territory, can ordinarily be presumed stronger than the will of the attacker striving to annex someone else's territory. Knowing this, the would-be attacker is further inhibited.
Conventional wars are more common and more catastrophic than nuclear war. Johnson 99. Johnson ’99, Robert Johnson, Strategic Planning, “Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: The Key to Global Security?” CSIS Prospectus, Fall 1999, http://www.csis.org/pubs/prospectus/99FallJohnson.html, accessed 8/11/02 Conventional wars are no doubt less horrible and less destabilizing to civilization than nuclear wars may be, but they may be fought more often, with far more casualties, and environmental damage, than the world is used to today. And if nuclear weapons are the only Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that are removed, biological and chemical weapons will still remain. Biological weapons are much more indiscriminate and can have more devastating effects on civilization than nuclear weapons can. Ridding the world of only nuclear weapons may remove us from the somewhat benign fear of war that exists today and place us in a world where the threat of war is much more imminent and the consequences equally catastrophic.
Clinton’s ahead, by a margin of about 3 percentage points in an average of national polls, or 4 points in our popular vote composite, which is based on both national polls and state polls. While the race has tightened, be wary of claims that the election is too close to call — that isn’t where the preponderance of the evidence lies, at least for the moment. If one candidate is ahead by 3 or 4 percentage points, there will be occasional polls showing a tied race or her opponent narrowly ahead, along with others showing the candidate with a mid- to high single-digit lead. We’ve seen multiple examples of both of those recently.¶ In swing states, the race ranges from showing Trump up by 1 point in Iowa to a Clinton lead of about 6 points in her best states, such as Virginia. That’s a reasonably good position for Clinton, but it isn’t quite as safe as it might sound. That’s because the swing states tend to rise and fall together. A further shift of a few points in Trump’s favor, or a polling error of that magnitude, would make the Electoral College highly competitive.¶ 2. What’s the degree of uncertainty?¶ Higher than people might assume. Between the unusually early conventions and the late election — Nov. 8 is the latest possible date on which Election Day can occur — it’s a long campaign this year. But just as important, many voters — close to 20 percent — either say they’re undecided or that they plan to vote for third-party candidates. At a comparable point four years ago, only 5 to 10 percent of voters fell into those categories.¶ High numbers of undecided and third-party voters are associated with higher volatility and larger polling errors. Put another way, elections are harder to predict when fewer people have made up their minds. Because FiveThirtyEight’s models account for this property, we show a relatively wide range of possible outcomes, giving Trump better odds of winning than most other statistically based models, but also a significant chance of a Clinton landslide if those undecideds break in her favor.¶ 3. What’s the short-term trend in the polls?¶ It’s been toward Trump over the past few weeks. Clinton’s lead peaked at about 8.5 percentage points in early August, according to our models, and Trump has since sliced that figure roughly in half. Of Trump’s roughly 4-point gain since then, about 2 points come from Trump’s having gained ground, while the other 2 points come from Clinton’s having lost ground — possibly a sign that her lofty numbers in early August were inflated by a convention bounce.
Public popularity supports nuclear energy despite the Fukushima disaster – best polls prove Riffkin 15
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A slim majority of Americans (51) now favor the use of nuclear energy for electricity in the U.S., while 43 oppose it. This level of support is similar to what Gallup found when it last measured these attitudes two years ago, but it is down from the peak of 62 five years ago. Current support is on the low end of what Gallup has found in the past 20 years, with the 46 reading in 2001 the only time that it sank lower. The high point in support for the use of nuclear power, in 2010, was recorded shortly after President Barack Obama announced that the federal government would provide loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors, the first to be built in the U.S. in three decades. Support has generally dropped since then. However, between 2011 and 2012, support was stable, with 57 favoring nuclear energy. This is notable given that Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place shortly after polling in 2011.
That flips the election for the GOP – our link prices in other factors and we don’t need to win that Hillary gets the blame Needham 16
The Democratic presidential nominee will win the race for the presidency, but the election is shaping up as historically tight, according to a political model. Less than 11 months from Election Day, Moody’s Analytics is predicting that whomever lands the Democratic nomination will capture the White House with 326 electoral votes to the Republican nominee’s 212. Those results are heavily dependent on how swing states vote. The latest model from Moody’s reflects razor-thin margins in the five most important swing states — Florida, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia. In each of those states, the Democratic advantage is less than 1 percentage point, well within the margin of error. The election model weighs political and economic strength in each state and determines the share of the vote that the incumbent party will win. The most important economic variable in the model is the growth in incomes in the two years leading up to the election. That factor captures the strength of the job market in each state, including job growth, hours worked, wage growth and the quality of the jobs being created. The model also factors in home and gasoline prices. So far, the strength of the economy has kept the model on track for the Democratic nominee. But the trajectory of the president’s approval rating also makes a difference in who could win the White House. If President Obama’s approval rating shifts only a little more than 4 percentage points, a bit more than the margin of error for many presidential opinion polls, the move could further cut into Democratic hopes to retain the White House. Growing concern about terrorism and other issues could dent Obama’s approval rating further. Usually, if the sitting president’s approval rating is improving in the year leading up the election, the incumbent party receives a boost. But in most elections, the president’s rating has declined in the lead-up to the election, favoring the challenger party.
The real estate mogul has made strong public statements supporting nuclear power, but tends to favor further development of natural gas. In the aftermath of the 2011 Japan Fukushima nuclear disaster, Trump told Fox News “nuclear is a way we get what we have to get, which is energy.” “I’m in favor of nuclear energy, very strongly in favor of nuclear energy,” Trump said. “If a plane goes down people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash people keep driving.” The permitting process for nuclear power needs to be reformed, Trump explained. He qualified this statement saying “we have to be careful” because nuclear power “does have issues.” Trump specified that he favored the development of natural gas over nuclear energy in the same interview: “we’re the Saudi Arabia times 100 of natural gas, but we don’t use it.”
And, nuclear energy would become the key spinning factor for Republicans because of Clinton’s lack of support and Obama’s current policy – Republicans will pit nuclear power policy against Clinton regardless of her actual policy Siciliano 1/10
The presidential election may offer hope for a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy. And if a Republican wins the White House, it's more likely that the centerpiece of that effort, a controversial nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, will move forward. Republicans stand for what they call the "law of the land," referring to the fact that Congress chose Yucca Mountain to be the nation's nuclear waste dump, and that has not changed despite President Obama's and congressional Democrats' success in upending the project and focusing instead on wind and solar power. But even with a president who favors nuclear energy, it will still prove difficult to build the site to take radioactive waste from nearly 100 power plants. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest forms of electricity, yet the question of what to do with waste continues to fester. Many people see Yucca Mountain as the answer, but opponents say it's unsafe. But both sides agree that building more nuclear plants hinges on waste disposal. It pits the administration against lawmakers and exposes a rift between the pro-nuke and anti-nuke wings of the environmental movement. A big barrier to the nuclear option is price. Ben Zycher, senior energy fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said new nuclear reactors cost far too much, especially since natural gas is so cheap. That could sideline nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain this election year. Yucca Mountain's main adversary, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, but Zycher said other Nevada officials will step into the breach. "It may be a case without Reid in the Senate the path would be eased, but that's not particularly obvious," he said. David McIntyre, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged with licensing the dump, agrees, saying it "would be immensely difficult" to start back up after so many years of administration stalling. And Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is "not going to endorse it," Zycher said. Litigation and 2016 Rod McCullum, the Nuclear Energy Institute's director of used fuel issues, calls managing nuclear waste the "most technically simple, but politically complicated things we do." It might arise in the presidential election because President Obama has stalled longstanding nuclear waste policy, defying Congress, many states and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designates Yucca Mountain as America's long-term nuclear waste repository. Obama's efforts to hamstring Yucca during his first term helped keep Reid loyal. But both are leaving Washington, and federal courts have ruled that the administration could not kill the Yucca project without congressional consent and while continuing to collect money from utilities and states to build it. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013 dealt a blow to the administration by ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its work on licensing the facility, which it recently did despite Reid having choked off the commission's funding. McCullum said the commission has been "eeking" along.
Trump win means he will nuke ISIS – results in massive civilian casualties and Middle East destabilization. Hobbus 15
R. Hobbus 15, J.D., investigative journalist specializing in international politics, “Trump: I Will Absolutely Use A Nuclear Weapon Against ISIS,” 8/10, Real News Right Now, http://realnewsrightnow.com/2015/08/trump-i-will-absolutely-use-a-nuclear-weapon-against-isis/ NEW YORK, Ny. – In response to a question regarding his policy on ISIS, Republican presidential candidate and billionaire Donald Trump told Meet the Press on Sunday that as Commander-in-Chief, he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons to combat Islamic extremism. “Let’s face it, these people are barbarians,” Trump said. “And thanks to Obama’s failed policy in Iraq and Syria, they’re beheading Christians all over the world.” Mr. Trump said he’s already conferred with a number of high-level active military officials and has put together a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Islamic State within his first one hundred days in office. “It starts with the deployment of four or five of our Ohio-class nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them and we’re going to hit them hard. I’m talking about a surgical strike on these ISIS stronghold cities using Trident missiles.” The Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. With a payload of up to fourteen reentry vehicles, each carrying a 362-pound thermonuclear warhead with a yield of 100 kilotons, a single Trident has roughly seventy times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Trump’s plan to use thermonuclear weapons against ISIS-held areas such as the Syrian city of Al-Raqqah would result in an astronomically high number of civilian casualties, according to CNN military analyst Peter Mansoor. “Al-Raqqah alone has a population of over two hundred-thousand people, the vast majority of whom are not affiliated in any way with the Islamic State,” Mansoor said. “A strike of this magnitude would not only result in the loss of millions of innocent lives and infrastructure, but it would set diplomacy and stability in the region back at least a hundred years.”
ME war goes nuclear – causes extinction. Russel 9
Russell 9 – Senior Lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs @ Naval Postgraduate School James, “Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Nuclear War and Escalation in the Middle East,” Online
Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests in the bargaining framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the structure of the deterrent relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel and the United States that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United States; (6) the lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants. These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties could happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.
And, turns case – Trump disrespects indigenous people’s right to his lands and justifies xenophobic bigotry. Ross 15
Gyasi Ross editor at LargeBlackfeet Nation/Suquamish Territories “What a Trump Presidency Would Mean For Native People (Yeah, It's As Crazy As You'd Expect)” Indian Country 10/19/15
That’s right: there is one singularly bad candidate for Native people who shows an ugly hate toward Native people and just shows a nastiness towards brown people in general. That’s right: Donald Trump. He’s kind of a scumbag. I laughed about it early on, “He doesn’t even believe what he’s saying.” And I still don’t think that he believes 90 of what he says—but it doesn’t matter. If you rile up enough racist/xenophobic/misogynistic energy—as he has done—things get dangerous. It changes the tone; America already struggles getting past it’s racist past. It certainly doesn’t need new bigots stirring the pot.¶ And even if Trump doesn’t believe the racist garbage that he spews, it still has a hateful effect and stirs up the genuinely racist folks within America. And it’s not just the toothless, uneducated masses that have latched onto Trump’s prejudiced dog-whistles (they have); the neo-conservative bigots who utilize passive aggressive race-neutral language to antagonize people of color also have heeded his call. ¶ Of course his hate speech toward brown skinned migrants is epic; he seems to despise our brothers and sisters to the south (who have more right to be on this continent than he does). Yet, he says that the Mexicans who come here “… have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”¶ Well damn. It’s no surprise that his hate speech inspired hate crimes by some Neanderthals in Boston against a homeless Latino man. When the men were arrested they said, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported.”¶ Idiots call this type of racism “Nativist,” but that’s an evil lie. Donald Trump is not Native to this land and it’s not Native people carrying out this hate. It’s other immigrants. White immigrants who don’t like brown immigrants. ¶ He’s kinda equal opportunity in his hate of people of color. When speaking about the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement dedicated to securing basic human rights for black folks in this nation, Trump said, “I think they’re trouble. I think they’re looking for trouble…And I think it’s a disgrace that they’re getting away with it.”¶ But even with his obvious distaste of Mexican folks and Black folks, he has the longest history of antagonizing Native people.¶ Obviously, there’s the history of Trump crying to Congress that American Indian casinos should be shut down because Indian casinos are going to create “…the biggest organized crime problem in the history of this country. Al Capone is going to look like a baby.” Then, there was Trump playing racial police about mixed members of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe saying "They don't look like Indians to me.” Additionally, recently Trump was kind enough to speak for Native people about the Washington Redskins franchise, saying , "I know Indians that are extremely proud of that name." (in fairness, Jeb Bush did this same thing—these over-privileged and rich white men love to speak for Native people). ¶ Trump also recently went on record to say that if he were elected President, “I will immediately approve the Keystone XL pipeline...” that tramples on the sacred sites and water supplies of many, many Native people. ¶ Bad news. ¶ There are plenty more examples. And while we don’t have absolute certainty as to who will be best for Native people in this upcoming election cycle, we do know who will be the worst for Native people, Mexicans and black folks. ¶ Thank you Donald Trump for making that clear.
9/10/16
SEPT-OCT Elections DA v2
Tournament: Voices | Round: 1 | Opponent: Mission San Jose PB | Judge: David Dosch Clinton is projected to win, but the race is still close – majority of polls prove
Cohn 10/4 Nate Cohn, 10-4-2016, "Better Polling for Clinton, but Trump Is Keeping Core Support," New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/upshot/better-polling-for-clinton-but-trump-is-still-in-striking-distance.html Donald J. Trump had a difficult week after the first presidential debate, and, as you might expect, his polling was not great.∂ The national polls, and most polls in battleground states, released since the debate show Hillary Clinton with a comfortable advantage, perhaps by four or five percentage points nationwide among likely voters in a four-way race. She has led by even more in the head-to-head matchup.∂ The polls suggest that Mrs. Clinton’s performance has energized Democratic-leaning voters, helping to reduce the big gap between registered voters and likely voters that plagued her in many September polls. (Pollsters use responses to determine which registered voters are likely to vote on Election Day.)∂ But Mrs. Clinton’s big weakness among white working-class voters is still enough to keep Mr. Trump fairly close — perhaps closer than he’s been for much of the year.∂ On average, Mrs. Clinton has fared about two or three points better in post-debate polls than in similar surveys conducted in September. Yet she isn’t doing much better than she did in August or July — an indicator that Mr. Trump has made at least some meaningful gains over the last few months, if one assumes that the post-debate polls represent a relatively good moment for Mrs. Clinton. The three high-quality, live-interview national surveys that have been released since the debate — from Fox News, CNN/ORC and CBS News — tell a fairly consistent story about Mrs. Clinton’s renewed strength.∂ Before the debate, all three polls showed Mrs. Clinton ahead among registered voters. But, on average, they showed Mr. Trump ahead among likely voters.∂ The post-debate surveys did not show Mrs. Clinton doing much better among registered voters in the four-way race. But Mrs. Clinton took a comfortable lead of three to five points among likely voters, as the gap between registered and likely voters vanished.∂ It’s a big swing, but not an uncommon one. The period after high-profile media events can often lead to big shifts in enthusiasm, causing one side’s supporters to be disproportionately considered likely voters.∂ But there’s no guarantee that the shift holds. Sometimes it’s temporary, like a convention bounce. Other times, it’s a longer-lasting shift in voter interest, which really does pick up ahead of an election.∂ It’s worth noting that the CNN, Fox News and CBS News polls were among the best surveys for Mr. Trump before the debate, in no small part because they showed Mrs. Clinton facing the largest penalty among likely voters. Other surveys — like those from ABC/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal before the debate — actually showed Mrs. Clinton faring better among likely voters than registered voters. If most of Mrs. Clinton’s post-debate gains are driven by higher enthusiasm, she might not make as many gains in those surveys as she did in the CBS, Fox and CNN polls. Even so, Mrs. Clinton would probably lead by four or five points in an average of high-quality, live-interview national surveys.∂ That surge in Democratic enthusiasm has translated into gains in the battleground states. The bounce is most obvious in Sun Belt states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and even Nevada, where Democrats are most dependent on nonwhite and irregular voters to win elections. In general, the post-debate polls in these states are among Mrs. Clinton’s best polls of the year.∂ They show that Florida, in particular, might be a big problem for the Trump campaign. Mrs. Clinton has led in all four post-debate surveys of Florida. The two most highly regarded surveys of the bunch — from Quinnipiac and Mason-Dixon — showed Mrs. Clinton with four- and five-point leads. There is nearly no path to the presidency for Mr. Trump without Florida.∂ Mrs. Clinton also led by one to three points in three polls of North Carolina, a state that Mitt Romney won in 2012. Two polls showed Mrs. Clinton ahead by 11 points in Colorado.∂ But Mrs. Clinton did not post such impressive margins in the North, where Democrats have traditionally depended on winning considerable support among white working-class voters. Quinnipiac showed Mrs. Clinton still trailing by five points in Ohio, where she led in most polls until Labor Day. The polls in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire were better for her — with leads of four to nine points — but they are not among her best surveys of the year.∂ Mrs. Clinton’s debate win may have energized her supporters, but she does not appear to have made much progress shoring up her weakness among white voters without a college degree.∂ Mr. Trump led by an average of 56 to 28 among white voters without a degree in the three national surveys, nearly the same as the 58-to-29 margin he held in pre-debate surveys in September. Both were better for Mr. Trump than Mr. Romney’s 58-to-35 lead with that group in pre-election polls in 2012. They’re also better for Mr. Trump than many surveys after the Democratic convention.∂ Mr. Trump's strength among white working-class voters isn’t enough to put him in the lead — not nationally, not in the Sun Belt and not even in the relatively white states of the North. But it does keep him close.∂ The danger for Mr. Trump is that there’s very little he can do to fix his problem in Florida or North Carolina. If the Democratic turnout is strong, as post-debate polls imply, and Mrs. Clinton makes gains among well-educated white voters, as polls have shown all year, there just isn’t much room for him to fight back with additional gains among white working-class voters.∂ But if he can dodge Mrs. Clinton’s shot at a knockout blow in North Carolina or Florida, his strength among white working-class voters gives him a chance to defeat her.∂ To do it, he would need Ohio, Iowa, Maine’s Second Congressional District, where Mr. Trump leads — and then just nine more electoral votes to reach 269, the number needed to throw the race to the Republican-held House. He could do it by winning both Nevada and New Hampshire, or by winning Pennsylvania, or a tougher state like Wisconsin or Michigan.∂ It wouldn’t be easy. Mrs. Clinton has a clear polling edge in the states he needs. But it’s still possible. The Upshot’s model still gives Mr. Trump a 21 percent chance of becoming president.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A slim majority of Americans (51) now favor the use of nuclear energy for electricity in the U.S., while 43 oppose it. This level of support is similar to what Gallup found when it last measured these attitudes two years ago, but it is down from the peak of 62 five years ago. Current support is on the low end of what Gallup has found in the past 20 years, with the 46 reading in 2001 the only time that it sank lower. The high point in support for the use of nuclear power, in 2010, was recorded shortly after President Barack Obama announced that the federal government would provide loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors, the first to be built in the U.S. in three decades. Support has generally dropped since then. However, between 2011 and 2012, support was stable, with 57 favoring nuclear energy. This is notable given that Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster took place shortly after polling in 2011.
The real estate mogul has made strong public statements supporting nuclear power, but tends to favor further development of natural gas. In the aftermath of the 2011 Japan Fukushima nuclear disaster, Trump told Fox News “nuclear is a way we get what we have to get, which is energy.” “I’m in favor of nuclear energy, very strongly in favor of nuclear energy,” Trump said. “If a plane goes down people keep flying. If you get into an auto crash people keep driving.” The permitting process for nuclear power needs to be reformed, Trump explained. He qualified this statement saying “we have to be careful” because nuclear power “does have issues.” Trump specified that he favored the development of natural gas over nuclear energy in the same interview: “we’re the Saudi Arabia times 100 of natural gas, but we don’t use it.”
And, nuclear energy would become the key spinning factor for Republicans because of Clinton’s lack of support and Obama’s current policy – Republicans will pit nuclear power policy against Clinton regardless of her actual policy. Plan fractures democrats. Siciliano 16 John Siciliano, 1-10-2016, "The 2016 politics of nuclear energy," Washington Examiner , WP http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-2016-politics-of-nuclear-energy/article/2579855
The presidential election may offer hope for a resurgence of interest in nuclear energy. And if a Republican wins the White House, it's more likely that the centerpiece of that effort, a controversial nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, will move forward. Republicans stand for what they call the "law of the land," referring to the fact that Congress chose Yucca Mountain to be the nation's nuclear waste dump, and that has not changed despite President Obama's and congressional Democrats' success in upending the project and focusing instead on wind and solar power. But even with a president who favors nuclear energy, it will still prove difficult to build the site to take radioactive waste from nearly 100 power plants. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest forms of electricity, yet the question of what to do with waste continues to fester. Many people see Yucca Mountain as the answer, but opponents say it's unsafe. But both sides agree that building more nuclear plants hinges on waste disposal. It pits the administration against lawmakers and exposes a rift between the pro-nuke and anti-nuke wings of the environmental movement. A big barrier to the nuclear option is price. Ben Zycher, senior energy fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said new nuclear reactors cost far too much, especially since natural gas is so cheap. That could sideline nuclear energy and Yucca Mountain this election year. Yucca Mountain's main adversary, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, is retiring from Congress at the end of the year, but Zycher said other Nevada officials will step into the breach. "It may be a case without Reid in the Senate the path would be eased, but that's not particularly obvious," he said. David McIntyre, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, charged with licensing the dump, agrees, saying it "would be immensely difficult" to start back up after so many years of administration stalling. And Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is "not going to endorse it," Zycher said. Litigation and 2016 Rod McCullum, the Nuclear Energy Institute's director of used fuel issues, calls managing nuclear waste the "most technically simple, but politically complicated things we do." It might arise in the presidential election because President Obama has stalled longstanding nuclear waste policy, defying Congress, many states and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designates Yucca Mountain as America's long-term nuclear waste repository. Obama's efforts to hamstring Yucca during his first term helped keep Reid loyal. But both are leaving Washington, and federal courts have ruled that the administration could not kill the Yucca project without congressional consent and while continuing to collect money from utilities and states to build it. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013 dealt a blow to the administration by ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its work on licensing the facility, which it recently did despite Reid having choked off the commission's funding. McCullum said the commission has been "eeking" along.
Trump win means he will nuke ISIS – results in massive civilian casualties and Middle East destabilization. Hobbus 15 R. Hobbus 15, J.D., investigative journalist specializing in international politics, “Trump: I Will Absolutely Use A Nuclear Weapon Against ISIS,” 8/10, Real News Right Now, http://realnewsrightnow.com/2015/08/trump-i-will-absolutely-use-a-nuclear-weapon-against-isis/ NEW YORK, Ny. – In response to a question regarding his policy on ISIS, Republican presidential candidate and billionaire Donald Trump told Meet the Press on Sunday that as Commander-in-Chief, he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons to combat Islamic extremism. “Let’s face it, these people are barbarians,” Trump said. “And thanks to Obama’s failed policy in Iraq and Syria, they’re beheading Christians all over the world.” Mr. Trump said he’s already conferred with a number of high-level active military officials and has put together a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Islamic State within his first one hundred days in office. “It starts with the deployment of four or five of our Ohio-class nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them and we’re going to hit them hard. I’m talking about a surgical strike on these ISIS stronghold cities using Trident missiles.” The Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. With a payload of up to fourteen reentry vehicles, each carrying a 362-pound thermonuclear warhead with a yield of 100 kilotons, a single Trident has roughly seventy times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Trump’s plan to use thermonuclear weapons against ISIS-held areas such as the Syrian city of Al-Raqqah would result in an astronomically high number of civilian casualties, according to CNN military analyst Peter Mansoor. “Al-Raqqah alone has a population of over two hundred-thousand people, the vast majority of whom are not affiliated in any way with the Islamic State,” Mansoor said. “A strike of this magnitude would not only result in the loss of millions of innocent lives and infrastructure, but it would set diplomacy and stability in the region back at least a hundred years.”
ME war goes nuclear – causes extinction. Russel 9 Russell 9 – Senior Lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs @ Naval Postgraduate School James, “Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Nuclear War and Escalation in the Middle East,” Online Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests in the bargaining framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the structure of the deterrent relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel and the United States that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United States; (6) the lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants. These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties could happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.
The next president is make it or break it for warming – its real and anthropogenic – GOP victory kills any possible progress. Neuhauser 15 Neuhauser, 15 - energy, environment and STEM reporter for U.S. News and World Report. (Alan, “The Climate Change Election”, August 14, 2015, US News, http://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2015/08/14/the-2016-election-is-critical-for-stopping-climate-change) For as long as Americans have voted and pundits have bloviated, each presidential election cycle has seemed The Most Important in All History. Next year, though, may truly – actually, seriously – be different, if climate scientists are right. The next candidate Americans send to the Oval Office, experts say, may also be the very last who can avert catastrophe from climate change. "It is urgent and the timeframe is critical and it has to be right now," says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown Law. "We can't lose another four years, much less eight years." This is not an overnight ice age or a rise of the apes. But global warming is already here, parching the American West, flooding coastal cities, strengthening storms, erasing species and inflaming armed conflict, with a rise of just 0.85 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. And it's going to get worse, experts say. Last year, a U.N. panel of scientists predicted the world had until 2050 to slash emissions by as much as 70 percent to keep temperatures from rising another 1.15 degrees by the end of the century. That's the threshold of an unstoppable cycle of Arctic and Antarctic melting, the release of heat-trapping gases that had been caught in the ice, more warming, more melting, more warming, more melting – until the glaciers and ice caps disappear. But some researchers – including the man who first presented the facts on climate change to Congress in 1988 – say that that tipping point may come even sooner, perhaps as early as 2036: Humans, in short, are having an even greater impact than expected. "Sea level projections and upcoming United Nations meetings in Paris are far too sluggish compared with the magnitude and speed of sea level changes," the scientist, Columbia professor James Hansen, wrote Wednesday in a QandA on the web forum Reddit, discussing a study he published in July. The needed changes are monumental: Halting climate change and heading off its worst consequences is going to require a wholesale switch from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas to renewables like wind and solar – potentially upending utilities, energy producers and construction contractors, the sort of change "of the magnitude of the invention of the steam engine or the electrification of society," says Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonpartisan energy research group. "How quickly can we transform one of the most complex industrial systems – our energy system – across the globe in order to move toward low carbon?" he asks . "There is absolutely no doubt we have to act now." This presents an election – and a choice – with no historical analogues. "This will be a make-or-break presidency as far as our ability to avert a climate change catastrophe," says Michael Mann, meteorology professor and director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, whose "hockey-stick" shaped graph warned of sharply rising emissions and temperatures. Pick any issue throughout history, he and others argue, none has shared the three qualities that make climate change stand apart: its threat to the entire planet, the short window to respond, and how sharply it has divided the two parties' candidates. "Republicans and Democrats have argued over issues for years, but I can't think of an example where one party didn't even say that the issue exists," says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University who has advised Evangelical and conservative climate action groups, and who has urged policymakers to address warming. Four of the five Democratic candidates has pledged or supported Obama administration efforts to cut the heat-trapping emissions that cause climate change: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley and Lincoln Chafee. Former Sen. Jim Webb has said he'd expand the use of fossil fuels and once voted to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating certain greenhouse gas emissions. Among the Republicans, eight of the 17 candidates have hedged: Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Lindsey Graham, Jim Gilmore, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki and Rand Paul have acknowledged that humans do contribute to global warming, but have questioned or stopped short of saying how much – a position at odds with the findings of a vast majority of scientists. "The climate is changing; I don't think anybody can argue it's not. Human activity has contributed to it," Bush said in an email interview with Bloomberg BNA in July – a statement that notably did not mention how much humans were at fault. During a campaign stop in New Hampshire in June, he had previously told listeners, "The climate is changing, whether men are doing it or not," one month after calling it "arrogant" to say climate science is settled. The rest of the GOP field – including three senators who rejected a January amendment tying human activity to climate change – has dismissed the issue outright. Paul also voted against the amendment. "As a scientist it's very frustrating to hear politicians basically saying, 'This isn't true,' or, 'They're just making it up to get government money,'" Hayhoe says. "A thermometer is not Democrat or Republican. What observations are telling us is not political – it is what it is." And there are conservative solutions for warming. Some party members, in fact, see it as an inherently Republican issue: Carbon emissions, for example, distort the free market, forcing others to pay the higher and indirect costs of climate change (storm recovery, disaster relief) plus the health costs associated with air pollution. "We allow the coal industry to socialize its costs, and we conservatives don't like allowing people to socialize anything," says former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now explores free-market solutions to climate change as head of the Energy and Enterprise Institute at George Mason University. A revenue-neutral carbon tax, one that does not support other programs and instead goes back to households, could fix that distortion, he and others argue. "The question is not, 'Is there going to be a tax on carbon?' It's, 'Do you want a tax that you have a voice in and control, or do you want to keep writing checks after disasters that you have no control over?'" says retired Rear Admiral David Titley, who has advised some of the GOP presidential candidates and directs the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State University. "That $60 billion relief bill for Hurricane Sandy that passed very quickly through a Republican-led House, did you get a vote on that tax? Because that's a tax." Yet Inglis, himself is a living example of what can happen to conservatives who call for climate action. The recipient of the JFK Profile in Courage Award in April, he was unseated in the Republican primary in 2010 after shifting his position on global warming. "Republicans say, 'Look at what happened to him when he said it was real. Do you want that to happen to you?'" Hayhoe describes. Oil, gas and coal companies, along with billionaire Libertarian industrialists David and Charles Koch, rank among the biggest campaign donors, and often seem as allergic to new taxes as a bubble boy to fresh pollen. But popular sentiment among voters appears to be changing: Most Republican voters say they support climate action, and last week, Shell did not renew its membership in the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council because of the group's opposition to climate action. Even the climate statements by the eight Republicans who have hedged on warming, vague as they were, may signify a kind of progress – especially during the primaries, when candidates play to their parties' more extreme bases. "In the Great Recession in 2010, it was this very atheistic position with regard to climate change: 'We don't believe,'" Inglis says. "Then, in the 2014 cycle, 'I'm not a scientist,' that was an agnostic position. These are data points on a trend line toward a tipping point." Republicans can exploit a distinct advantage on climate action, too, he adds: Voters tend to support the presidents who buck party stereotypes. "Nixon goes to China, Bill Clinton signs welfare reform – the country will trust a conservative to touch climate," Inglis argues. But climate scientists, environmental advocates and Democrats remain deeply skeptical. The most recent Republican president, for one, backpedaled on his 2000 campaign pledge to rein-in carbon emissions. Campaign donations remain hugely influential, and as Republican candidates lambaste the environmental agenda of the Obama administration, stopping climate change will actually require they expand upon Obama initiatives: resist industry pressure to slow the roll-out of tighter fuel standards for cars, push states to reduce emissions from their power sectors and uphold and ratchet-up international commitments to slow carbon emissions. There's also the Supreme Court: with four Supreme Court justices now over the age of 70, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pushing 80, the next president will likely have the chance to nominate new jurists to the court – a court that will almost certainly decide challenges to various environmental actions aimed at slowing global warming. "If we are going to avoid catastrophic, irreversible climate change impacts, we have to be ramping down our carbon emissions dramatically in the years ahead. The current administration has begun that process, but our next president must not only continue but build on that progress," Mann says. It is on the global stage where perhaps the spotlight – and climate scientists' hopes and expectations – will shine brightest. In December, negotiators from nearly 200 nations will meet in Paris to hammer-out an international climate accord. It is expected to include commitments from China and India, heavy polluters spurred to rein-in their emissions and invest in clean energy by America's own commitment to slash carbon emissions from its power sector. "The rest of the world is going to expect the U.S. to live up to its commitment made at the Paris meeting, no matter who is in the White House," says Henrik Selin, professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. "If you have a president who comes in and starts rolling back the Obama initiatives, you're going to have international leaders being very unhappy about this – and they are not just countries, they are trading partners. This is not just a domestic issue, it's also very much a foreign policy issue." And so far, he and others argue, none of the Republican candidates have offered a clear vision on climate, let alone any plan to slow warming. "If we want to get to that low-carbon future, we have to agree that's where we're going to go, and then we can fight over the speed at which we're going to get there," Kortenhorst, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, says. As David Sandalow, who held senior posts in the State Department and Energy Department under Obama and is an inaugural fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, describes: "There's a very big difference between electing a candidate who's committed to seriously addressing this problem and one who isn't. The implications of failing to address the problem in the next four years could be very serious."
10/8/16
SEPT-OCT India Desal DA
Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Mountain View DZ | Judge: Dosch, Stevens, Castillo India’s drought is terrible now and authorities say it will get worse. BBC 4/20 BBC News, 4-20-2016, "India drought: '330 million people affected'," BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-36089377 At least 330 million people are affected by drought in India, the government has told the Supreme Court Authorities say this number is likely to rise further given that some states with water shortages have not yet submitted status reports. The drought is taking place as a heat wave extends across much of India with temperatures crossing 40C for days now. An 11-year-old girl died of heatstroke while collecting water from a village pump in the western Maharashtra state. Yogita Desai had spent close to four hours in 42C temperatures gathering water from the pump on Sunday, local journalist Manoj Sapte told the BBC. She began vomiting after returning home and was rushed to hospital, but died early on Monday. Yogita's death certificate says she died of heatstroke and dehydration. The pump was a mere 500m from her house, but a typical wait for water stretches into hours. India is heavily dependant on monsoon rains, which have been poor for two years in a row. The government said that nearly 256 districts across India, home to nearly a quarter of the population were impacted by the drought. Schools have been shut in the eastern state of Orissa and more than 100 deaths due to heatstroke have been reported from across the country, including from the southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh which saw more than 2,000 deaths last summer. The western state of Maharashtra, one of the worst affected by the drought, shifted out 13 Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches due to be played in the state next month because of the amount of water needed to prepare pitches. There is growing public concern over the lack of water in many parts of the state following two successive years of drought and crop failures. The government has asked local municipalities to stop supplying water to swimming pools and, in an unprecedented move, a train carrying half a million litres of drinking water was sent to the area of Latur. Another train carrying 2.5 million litres of water is scheduled to reach there on Wednesday. States like Punjab and Haryana in northern India are squabbling over ownership of river waters. In water-scarce Orissa, farmers have reportedly breached embankments to save their crops. Water availability in India's 91 reservoirs is at its lowest in a decade, with stocks at a paltry 29 of their total storage capacity, according to the Central Water Commission. Some 85 of the country's drinking water comes from aquifers, but their levels are falling, according to WaterAid.
There’s high demand for desal to curb drought – it’s rising significantly now. Chennai 10 Chennai, 1-16-2010, "WABAG India is building the nation’s largest seawater desalination plant," Wabag, http://www.wabag.com/wabagmedia/wabag-india-is-building-the-nations-largest-seawater-desalination-plant/ MG In the near future, desalination demand in India is likely to expand at an annual rate of up to 15. The country is also looking to the use membrane-based solutions as, particularly in inland areas, there are high levels of salt, fluoride, arsenic, nitrates and iron in the groundwater. Some 97.5 per cent of the world’s available water reserves consist of saline seawater and are therefore undrinkable. However, during the past 50 years, the desalination of sea and brackish water has gained importance and has become a technically and economically viable method for the production of clean water for drinking and fresh water for industrial operations. WABAG is one of the few companies to offer a portfolio containing all the top technologies for the desalination of sea and brackish water. These consist of reverse osmosis on the basis of membrane technology and the thermal process, multi-effect distillation (MED), MED-TVC, mechanical vapour compression (MVC) and multi-stage flash (MSF). The company has been active in this area for around 30 years and during this period has constructed around 100 plants.
NP key to India desal – it’s highly effective and tech here now. Stephan 12 “India Boosts "Nuclear" Sea Water Desalination Projects,” Dominik Stephan, 10/08/12, The Process Worldwide. India boost seawater desalination projects powered by nuclear energy: New facilities in the vicinity of nuclear power plants will produce clean water for industrial and municipal customers, the local authorities reported.¶ An 1.8 million litres per day capacity desalination plant operating on the Reverse Osmosis (RO) process has been setup, as part of Nuclear Desalination Demonstration Project (NDDP) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu. Another plant, a Multi-Stage Flash (MSF) Desalination Plant with a capacity of 4.5 million litres per day has also been setup at Kalpakkam as a part of NDDP. It is located adjacent to Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) and uses low pressure steam as energy input for MSF desalination plant. The hybrid MSF-RO plant is operated to produce distilled water for high end industrial applications and potable water for drinking and other applications.¶ The per litre cost of conversion of seawater into potable water by atomic energy varies between 5 and 10 paise depending on site conditions, end product quality and the technology in use.¶ The technology for setting up desalination plants is available with the Government in the Department of Atomic Energy for large scale conversion of sea water into potable water.¶ The above information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions and in the Prime Minister’s Office, Shri V. Narayanasamy to the Parliament today.
Turns the case – water shortages create massive structural violence and a non-human environment. Cribb 10 Cribb 10 (Julian Cribb is a Fellow of the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He is former Director, National Awareness for CSIRO and Science Editor of The Australian newspaper. He was national foundation president of the Australian Science Communicators (ASC), president of the National Rural and Resources Press Club, a member of CSIRO advisory committees for agriculture, fisheries and entomology. He has served as a Director of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), the Crawford Fund, the Secretariat for International Landcare, CSIRO Publishing, the Australian Minerals and Energy Environment Foundation and the National Science and Technology Centre, Questacon. He was the creator of “Future Harvest” the global public awareness campaign for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Cribb, Julian. “Coming Famine : The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It.” Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press, 2010. 15-6. ebrary collections.)
Some observers also claim a link between food insecurity and terrorism, pointing out that hungry countries are among those most likely to furnish terrorism recruits. In 2002, heads of state from fifty countries met at a development summit in Mexico where they discussed the role of poverty and hunger as a breeding ground for terrorism. “No-one in this world can feel comfortable or safe while so many are suffering and deprived,” UN secretary general Kofi Annan told them. The president of the UN General Assembly, Han Seung-Soo, added that the world’s poorest countries were a breeding ground for violence and despair. The Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo added, “To speak of development is to speak also of a strong and determined fight against terrorism.” 10 Around the world many guerrilla and insurgent causes—such as Shining Path, the Tamil Tigers, and Abu Sayyaf—have claimed injustice in land ownership and use as one of their motivating causes. A lack of water is a key factor in encouraging terrorism. Mona El Kody, the chair of the National Water Research Unit in Egypt told the Third World Water Forum that living without an adequate level of access to water created a “non-human environment” that led to frustration, and from there to terrorism. “A non-human environment is the worst experience people can live with, with no clean water, no sanitation,” she said, adding that this problem was at its most acute in the Middle East, where 1 percent of the world’s freshwater is shared by 5 percent of the world’s population. Ms. El Kody added that inadequate water resources had the additive effect of reducing farming and food production, thereby increasing poverty—another factor that can lead to terrorism. 11 Most of the “new” conflicts are to be found in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia—the result of a cycle of constant famine, deprivation, and periodic violence, leading in inevitable sequence to worse hunger, greater deprivation, and more vicious fighting. Food and economic insecurity and natural resource scarcities . . . can be major sources of conflict. When politically dominant groups seize land and food resources, deny access to other culturally or economically marginalized groups, and cause hunger and scarcities, violence often flares. In Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sudan, food crises resulting from drought and mismanagement of agriculture and relief and development aid led to rebellion and government collapse, followed by even greater food shortfalls in ensuing years of conflict. Denial of the right to food has been linked to uprisings and civil war in Central America and Mexico. Food insecurity is also integral to civil conflicts in Asia. Competition for resources has generated cycles of hunger and hopelessness that have bred violence in Sri Lanka as well as Rwanda. 12 These afflicted regions are generally places disconnected from the global economic mainstream, where strong-man governments arise and just as quickly crumble, having only political quicksand on which to build a foundation for stability and progress. This is vital to an understanding of what is going wrong with global food production: in nearly all these countries, food is of the first importance, and only after you have enough food can you form a government stable enough to deliver water, health care, education, opportunity for women, justice, and economic development. By neglecting or reducing support for basic food production— as many have during the past twenty-five years—in order to spread aid across these equally deserving causes, the world’s aid donors may unintentionally have laid the foundation for future government failure and conflict.
Bad relations with Pakistan and need for water means India cancels the IWT treaty – multiple impacts, turns Indo-Pak war. Kugelman 9/30 “Why the India-Pakistan War Over Water Is So Dangerous,” Foreign Policy, 9/30/16, MICHAEL KUGELMAN (the senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC). - Modi is skeptical about the treaty now and thinks it’s not worth keeping if it’s not to his benefit - Drought makes him claim all of the flow of the rivers for himself, the IWT favors Pakistan 80-20 right now - Human devastation OW in Pakistan because it would horrific, more than a water war - Econ is predicated on high water but they are super in drought in Pakistan collapse - International opposition means India could get in trouble - India would bottle up rivers with damsn which have high probability of flooding major cities - Sets up dangerous precedent in China for them to cut India off from another river - LeT terrorist group uses water shortages as anti-India propaganda and attack India – no Pakistani restraint because they’re made Indo-Pak war Early on the morning of Sept. 29, according to India’s Defense Ministry and military, Indian forces staged a “surgical strike” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that targeted seven terrorist camps and killed multiple militants. Pakistan angrily denied that the daring raid took place, though it did state that two of its soldiers were killed in clashes with Indian troops along their disputed border. New Delhi’s announcement of its strike plunged already tense India-Pakistan relations into deep crisis. It came 11 days after militants identified by India as members of the Pakistani terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 18 soldiers on a military base in the town of Uri, in India-administered Kashmir.¶ Amid all the shrill rhetoric and saber rattling emanating from India and Pakistan in recent days — including India’s home minister branding Pakistan a “terrorist state” and Pakistan’s defense minister threatening to wage nuclear war on India — one subtle threat issued by India may have sounded relatively innocuous to the casual listener.¶ In reality, it likely filled Pakistan with fear.¶ On Sept. 22, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesman suggested, cryptically, that New Delhi could revoke the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). “For any such treaty to work,” warned Vikas Swarup, when asked if India would cancel the agreement, “it is important for mutual trust and cooperation. It cannot be a one-sided affair.”¶ The IWT is a 56-year-old accord that governs how India and Pakistan manage the vast Indus River Basin’s rivers and tributaries. After David Lilienthal, a former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, visited the region in 1951, he was prompted to write an article in Collier’s magazine, in which he argued that a transboundary water accord between India and Pakistan would help ease some of the hostility from the partition — particularly because the rivers of the Indus Basin flow through Kashmir. His idea gained traction and also the support of the World Bank. The bank mediated several years of difficult bilateral negotiations before the parties concluded a deal in 1960. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower described it as a “bright spot” in a “very depressing world picture.” The IWT has survived, with few challenges, to the present day.¶ And yet, it has now come under severe strain.¶ On Sept. 26, India’s government met to review the treaty but reportedly decided that it would not revoke the agreement — for now. New Delhi left open the possibility of revisiting the issue at a later date. Ominously, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told top officials present at the treaty review meeting that “blood and water cannot flow together.”Ominously, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told top officials present at the treaty review meeting that “blood and water cannot flow together.” Additionally, the government suspended, with immediate effect, meetings between the Indus commissioners of both countries — high-level sessions that ordinarily take place twice a year to manage the IWT and to address any disagreements that may arise from it.¶ These developments have spooked Pakistan severely. Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs advisor to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said revoking the IWT could be perceived as an “act of war,” and he hinted that Pakistan might seek assistance from the United Nations or International Court of Justice.¶ If India were to annul the IWT, the consequences might well be humanitarian devastation in what is already one of the world’s most water-starved countries — an outcome far more harmful and far-reaching than the effects of limited war. Unlike other punitive steps that India could consider taking against its neighbor — including the strikes against Pakistani militants that India claimed to have carried out on Sept. 29 — canceling the IWT could have direct, dramatic, and deleterious effects on ordinary Pakistanis.¶ The IWT is a very good deal for Pakistan. Although its provisions allocate three rivers each to Pakistan and India, Pakistan is given control of the Indus Basin’s three large western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — which account for 80 percent of the water in the entire basin. Since water from the Indus Basin flows downstream from India to Pakistan, revoking the IWT would allow India to take control of and — if it created enough storage space through the construction of large dams — stop altogether the flow of those three rivers into Pakistan. To be sure, India would need several years to build the requisite dams, reservoirs, and other infrastructure to generate enough storage to prevent water from flowing downstream to Pakistan. But pulling out of the IWT is the first step in giving India carte blanche to start pursuing that objective.¶ Pakistan is deeply dependent on those three western rivers and particularly the Indus. In some areas of the country, including all of Sindh province, the Indus is the sole source of water for irrigation and human consumption. If Pakistan’s access to water from the Indus Basin were cut off or merely reduced, the implications for the country’s water security could be catastrophic. For this reason, using water as a weapon could inflict more damage on Pakistan than some forms of warfare.¶ To understand why, consider the extent of Pakistan’s water woes. According to recent figures from the International Monetary Fund, Pakistan is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, with a per capita annual water availability of roughly 35,300 cubic feet — the scarcity threshold. This is all the more alarming given that Pakistan’s water intensity rate — a measure of cubic meters used per unit of GDP — is the world’s highest. (Pakistan’s largest economic sector, agriculture, consumes a whopping 90 percent of the country’s rapidly dwindling water resources.)¶ In other words, Pakistan’s economy is the most water-intensive in the world, and yet it has dangerously low levels of water to work with.¶ As if that’s not troubling enough, consider as well that Pakistan’s groundwater tables are plummeting precipitously. NASA satellite data released in 2015 revealed that the underwater aquifer in the Indus Basin is the second-most stressed in the world. Groundwater is what nations turn to when surface supplies are exhausted; it is the water source of last resort. And yet in Pakistan, it is increasingly imperiled.¶ There are other compelling reasons for India not to cancel the IWT, all of which go beyond the hardships the decision could bring to a country where at least 40 million people (of about 200 million) already lack access to safe drinking water.¶ First, revoking the treaty — an international accord mediated by the World Bank and widely regarded as a success story of transboundary water management — would generate intense international opposition. As water expert Ashok Swain has argued, revoking the IWT “will bring global condemnation, and the moral high ground, which India enjoys vis-à-vis Pakistan in the post-Uri period will be lost.” Also, the World Bank would likely throw its support behind any international legal action taken by Pakistan against India.¶ Second, if India decided to maximize pressure on Pakistan by cutting off or reducing river flows to its downstream neighbor, this would bottle up large volumes of water in northern India, a dangerous move that according to water experts could cause significant flooding in major cities in Kashmir and in Punjab state (for geographical reasons, India would not have the option of diverting water elsewhere). Given this risk, some analysts have proposed that New Delhi instead do something less drastic, and perfectly legal, to pressure Islamabad: build dams on the western rivers of the Indus Basin. The IWT permits this, even though these water bodies are allocated to Pakistan, so long as storage is kept to a minimum to allow water to keep flowing downstream. In fact, according to Indian media reports, this is an action Modi’s government is now actively considering taking.¶ Such moves, however, would not be cost-free for Pakistan. According to an estimate by the late John Briscoe, one of the foremost experts on South Asia water issues, if India were to erect several large hydroelectric dams on the western rivers, then Pakistan’s agriculture could conceivably lose up to a month’s worth of river flows — which could ruin an entire planting season. Still, it would not be nearly as serious as the catastrophes that could ensue if India pulls the plug on the IWT.¶ Third, if India ditches the IWT to punish its downstream neighbor, then it could set a dangerous precedent and give some ideas to Pakistan’s ally, China. Beijing has never signed on to any transboundary water management accord, and New Delhi constantly worries about its upstream rival building dozens of dams that cut off river flows into India. The Chinese, perhaps using as a pretext recent Indian defensive upgrades in the state of Arunachal Pradesh — which borders China and is claimed by Beijing — could well decide to take a page out of India’s book and slow the flow of the mighty Brahmaputra River. It’s a move that could have disastrous consequences for the impoverished yet agriculturally productive northeastern Indian state of Assam. The Brahmaputra flows southwest across large areas of Assam. Additionally, Beijing could retaliate by cutting off the flow of the Indus — which originates in Tibet — down to India, depriving New Delhi of the ability to limit the river’s flows to Pakistan.¶ Fourth, India’s exit from the IWT could provoke Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the vicious Pakistani terrorist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks. LeT has long used India’s alleged water theft as a chief talking point in its anti-India propaganda, even with little evidence that New Delhi has intentionally prevented water from flowing downstream to Pakistan. If India backed out of the treaty and took steps to stop the flow of the Indus Basin’s western rivers, LeT would score a major propaganda victory and would have a ready-made pretext to carry out retaliatory attacks in India. An angry Pakistani security establishment, which has close links to LeT, would not go out of its way to dissuade the group from staging such attacks. Indeed, given the damaging effects India’s move could have on ordinary Pakistanis in such a water-insecure country, Pakistan would be keen to find ways to strike back at India.
10/28/16
SEPT-OCT India Shift DA
Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Mountain View DZ | Judge: Dosch, Stevens, Castillo Nuclear power is currently progressing – many reactors are being built with only more planned – AFF halts development Groskopf 01/26 Christopher Groskopf – reporter. “New nuclear reactors are being built a lot more like cars.” Quartz. January 26, 2016. http://qz.com/581566/new-nuclear-reactors-are-being-built-a-lot-more-like-cars/ JJN At its birth, nuclear power was a closely guarded national enterprise, only accessible to the most prosperous nations. But over the last 50 years it has evolved into a robust international market with a global supply chain. Not only are more countries starting or considering new nuclear plants, a great many more countries are contributing to their construction. According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 66 nuclear reactors are under construction around the world. Dozens more are in various stages of planning. The vast majority of new reactors are being built in China, which has invested in nuclear power in a way not seen since the United States and France first built out their capacity in the 1960’s and 70’s. China’s 2015 Five Year Plan calls for 40 reactors to be built by 2020 and as many as ten more are planned for every year thereafter. Fifteen other countries around the world are also building reactors. The Chinese sprint toward nuclear power is along a path toward becoming a major exporter of nuclear technology and expertise. In addition to adopting western designs, China also has its own reactor designs. Plants based on those designs are also under construction both China and in Pakistan. Other countries are considering them. At the same time China has upgraded its capacity to produce pressure vessels, turbines and other heavy manufacturing components—all of which it is expected to begin exporting. This sort of globalized manufacturing is nothing new: cars, airplanes and most other complicated machines are built in this way. However, it is new for reactors, which must be constructed on-site and rely on highly specialized parts. Those parts must be manufactured to tolerances well beyond what is required in other industries. In some cases even the equipment needed to creating them must be purpose-built. Consider, for example, the steel pressure vessel at the heart of the most common reactor designs. These vessels can only be created in the world’s largest steel presses—some of which exert more than 30,000 pounds of force. The vessels are forged out of solid steel ingots that may weigh more than a million pounds. Until recently there were only a handful of such presses in the world. Today there are at least 23, spread across 11 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Such specialization is not limited to heavy manufacturing. Nuclear reactors require thousands of other mechanical and electronic components, many of which are purpose-made. A brochure from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) identifies hundreds of individual parts. (pdf) Even otherwise common products may need to meet extraordinarily fine tolerances. Standards require that steel elements relevant to safety are manufactured with exceptional “nuclear-grade steel.” According to another NEI list, the construction of a new reactor may require a total of: 500 to 3,000 nuclear grade valves 125 to 250 pumps 44 miles of piping 300 miles of electric wiring 90,000 electrical components According to Greg Kaser, who analyzes supply chains for the WNA, the market for nuclear components has been driven by US-based reactor companies, namely Westinghouse Electric Company. “The US can’t produce everything that’s required for a nuclear reactor anymore, so they have to go international,” Kaser told Quartz. Reactors based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 design are under construction in both the US and China. The parts for these reactors are sourced from all over the world. Many come from European companies that were originally created to supply domestic nuclear programs, but have since become important exporters. This trade in nuclear components is difficult to measure. Despite the specific qualifications of a nuclear-grade valve, it is still a valve and doesn’t necessarily show up in trade statistics as anything more. A great deal of trade is also in expertise. Engineers from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States frequently consult on (or lead) nuclear projects around the world. A 2014 WNA report (paywall) estimates that the total value of investments in new nuclear facilities through 2030 will be $1.2 trillion. But this nuclear globalization has not been greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. The 2011 nuclear contamination disaster at Fukushima, Japan, briefly stalled development of some projects and prompted Germany to begin shutting down all of its reactors. A decision by the UK to allow a Chinese company to develop new nuclear reactors in England has led to both domestic and international hand-wringing over the security implications. Others worry about about safety issues resulting from companies faking the certifications required for selling reactor components. In 2013, two South Korean nuclear reactors were shut down when it was discovered that they had installed cables with counterfeit nuclear certifications. This year the IAEA will update a procurement guide for plant operators that was published in 1996. (pdf) The new version will include a chapter specifically addressing counterfeit components. For the moment, it’s unlikely any of these concerns will be enough to slow the resurgent growth of the global nuclear industry. Though big nuclear companies often speak of localizing the supply chain—and keeping those jobs in their home country—international competition can drive down the price of building a reactor. In fact, the supply chain is likely to become even more important to the construction process in the future. New reactors being designed today are both smaller and more modular, and plans call for large sections of them to be assembled in factories and shipped to the site. If it sounds a lot like the assembly line at a automobile plant, that’s because it is. But of course, one small oversight or production flaw could make a much greater difference. Warming is anthropogenic and can be stopped if we reduce emissions. Nuccitelli 8/15
So far humans have caused about 1°C warming of global surface temperatures, but if we were to freeze the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide at today’s levels, the planet would continue warming. Over the coming decades, we’d see about another 0.5°C warming, largely due to what’s called the “thermal inertia” of the oceans (think of the long amount of time it takes to boil a kettle of water). The Earth’s surface would keep warming about another 1.5°C over the ensuing centuries as ice continued to melt, decreasing the planet’s reflectivity.¶ To put this in context, the international community agreed in last year’s Paris climate accords that we should limit climate change risks by keeping global warming below 2°C, and preferably closer to 1.5°C. Yet from the carbon pollution we’ve already put into the atmosphere, we’re committed to 1.5–3°C warming over the coming decades and centuries, and we continue to pump out over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.¶ The importance of reaching zero or negative emissions¶ We can solve this problem if, rather than holding the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide steady, it falls over time. As discussed in the above video, Earth naturally absorbs more carbon than it releases, so if we reduce human emissions to zero, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide will slowly decline. Humans can also help the process by finding ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it.¶ Scientists are researching various technologies to accomplish this, but we’ve already put over 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Pulling a significant amount of that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it safely will be a tremendous challenge, and we won’t be able to reduce the amount in the atmosphere until we first get our emissions close to zero.¶ There are an infinite number of potential carbon emissions pathways, but the 2014 IPCC report considered four possible paths that they called RCPs. In one of these (called RCP 2.6 or RCP3-PD), we take immediate, aggressive, global action to cut carbon pollution, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels peak at 443 ppm in 2050, and by 2100 they’ve fallen back down to today’s level of 400 ppm. In two others (RCPs 4.5 and 6.0) we act more slowly, and atmospheric levels don’t peak until the year 2150, then they remain steady, and in the last (RCP8.5) carbon dioxide levels keep rising until 2250. As the figure below shows, in the first scenario, global warming peaks at 2°C and then temperatures start to fall toward the 1.5°C level, meeting our Paris climate targets. In the other scenarios, temperatures keep rising centuries into the future We don’t know what technologies will be available in the future, but we do know that the more carbon pollution we pump into the atmosphere today, the longer it will take and more difficult it will be to reach zero emissions and stabilize the climate. We’ll also have to pull that much more carbon out of the atmosphere. ¶ It’s possible that as in three of the IPCC scenarios, we’ll never get all the way down to zero or negative carbon emissions, in which case today’s pollution will keep heating the planet for centuries to come. Today’s carbon pollution will leave a legacy of climate change consequences that future generations may struggle with for the next thousand years.¶ Five years ago, the Australian government established a Climate Commission, which published a report discussing why we’re in the midst of the ‘critical decade’ on climate change:¶ The risks of future climate change – to our economy, society and environment – are serious, and grow rapidly with each degree of further temperature rise. Minimising these risks requires rapid, deep and ongoing reductions to global greenhouse gas emissions. We must begin now if we are to decarbonise our economy and move to clean energy sources by 2050. This decade is the critical decade.¶ Our is the first generation to understand the problems our carbon pollution is causing, and the last that can take the necessary action to prevent them from causing a climate destabilization. In addition to the Australian Climate Commission, 31 major scientific organizations recently warned policymakers that:¶ To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced.¶ We have no excuse for inaction or complacency; the experts have clearly warned us. If we refuse to urgently act on this information, future generations will suffer the consequences of our failures today. Prohibiting nuclear power means warming can’t be solved – impracticality of renewables combined with a switch to coal only makes warming worse. Harvey ‘12 Fiona Harvey - award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian, used to work for financial times. “Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs.” The Guardian. May 3, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change JJN *bracketing in original Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough. "We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said. He said coal was likely to continue to be cheaper than renewables and other low-carbon forms of energy, unless the effects of the climate were taken into account. "Fossil fuel prices will remain low enough to wreck low-carbon energy unless you have incentives and carbon pricing," he told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. A group of four prominent UK environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and former heads of Friends of the Earth UK Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, have been campaigning against nuclear power in recent weeks, arguing that it is unnecessary, dangerous and too expensive. Porritt told the Guardian: "It nuclear power cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they're up and running, they're nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe." But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave. He said greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise despite the financial crisis and deep recession in the developed world, were "nowhere near" falling to the level that would be needed to avert dangerous climate change. He said: "Emissions per unit of energy need to fall by a factor of six. That means electrifying everything that can be electrified and then making electricity largely carbon-free. It requires renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage – these are all very big challenges. We need to understand the scale of the challenge." Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming – a wholesale change and overhaul of the world's energy systems and economy would be needed if the world is to hold carbon emissions to 450 parts per million of the atmosphere – a level that in itself may be inadequate. "We are nowhere close to that – as wishful thinking and corporate lobbies are much more powerful than the arithmetic of climate scientists," he said.
An analysis published Monday by Bloomberg states that coal power will become the largest source of electricity in Japan due to an effective ban on nuclear power. Nuclear power provided 29 percent of Japan’s total power output before 2011, but will decline to 13.6 percent by 2023 and 1.2 percent by 2040, according to the report. Japan got 24 percent of its electricity from coal in 2010 and the country plans to get more than a third of its power from coal by 2040.
Specifically in India nuclear is key. Bhoje 00 “THE NEED AND THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IN INDIA,” S.B. BHOJE, S. GOVINDARAJAN, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, 2000. India's energy requirements are very large due to a large population. Population¶ control is the best way to improve living standards and environment protection.¶ Coal and nuclear energy through FBR are the only major resources. Coal alone, if used¶ for electricity generation, will not last beyond the next century. The problems of greenhouse¶ effects and acid rain compel us to reduce coal consumption for power generation.¶ Indigenous Uranium reserves can sustain only about 12 GW(e) power generation for¶ 30 years. Therefore, FBR must be introduced at the earliest possible time.¶ India has acquired the comprehensive capability to design, build and operate power¶ reactors and manage complete fuel cycles.¶ Nuclear energy is economically competitive with alternate sources of energy, however,¶ efforts must be made to further improve it by reducing capital costs and construction time.¶ Concerns about radiation effects, decommissioning, radwaste management and¶ accident risks have been adequately addressed. Technologies are available for¶ decommissioning and radwaste management and a systematic approach in design and¶ operation to prevent accidents is ongoing.¶ Nuclear energy is environmentally the most benign compared with other options for¶ electricity generation.
India is a rising source of CO2 emissions and a global leader on climate change, proven at the Paris climate talks. Worland 15 Why No Country Matters More Than India at the Paris Climate Talks, Justin Worland, Dec. 2015, Times. Negotiators from India came to international climate talks in Paris this month walking a tightrope. On the one hand, officials wanted to show that the world’s fourth-biggest carbon emitter was ready to play a constructive role in international climate negotiations. On the other hand, negotiators need to show citizens back home that addressing climate change would not detract from development goals—particularly the need to bring power to the quarter of the population that goes without it.¶ Now, with just hours remaining before negotiators hopes to close a deal addressing climate change, India has emerged as a key player in shaping the agreement, leaving observers to hope that it will not play the same role slowing negotiations at the last minute that other key developing countries have played in past conferences.¶ “The presentation is just really different from what we saw earlier,” said Alyssa Ayres, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, of the country’s negotiating stance at Paris. Their message has become: “We can be flexible, we just need help getting where we want to go.”¶ India needs to sign onto whatever deal negotiators reach in Paris for the agreement to have legitimacy, given its importance in the global economy and its sheer size. Analysts expect the country of 1.2 billion people to continue to rise in the rankings of top emitters as its economy grows and as a greater share of its population gains access to electricity. “India is sometimes the man in the middle,” said Anjali Jaiswal, director of the India Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “India’s role here at the conference is often bridging the many nations across the world and also bridging development with climate action.” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly said that the country needs to address climate change, not because of pressure from Western countries but because of the potential damage warming could cause worldwide and in India especially. The country set an ambitious goal of receiving 40 of its power from renewable resources by 2030 and in recent weeks launched a solar power alliance aimed at growing solar power production in the developing world. The country also recently set a target to develop 100 GW of solar power capacity by 2022, a huge ramp up from current capacity.¶ Yet country’s leaders have publicly struck a hard line on many of the most divisive issues in climate policy. Modi defended a principle that developed countries should have more stringent responsibilities than their developing counterparts—a concept known as “differentiation”—and suggested that the principle should be a bedrock part of nearly every provision of the agreement. “Climate justice demands that, with the little carbon space we still have, developing countries should have enough room to grow,” he said at a speech at the beginning of the Paris summit.¶ Part of what underlies India’s position on differentiation is the belief that the efforts taken by the country so far outweighs its contribution to climate change. (India’s per-capita carbon emissions add up to just 1.7 metric tons, 10 times less than America’s per-capita emissions.) Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister, told TIME in an interview that his country had done four times their fair share to address climate change, based on past carbon emissions, while the developed countries have done far less. “The developed world has done much less than their fair share,” said Javadekar. “Everyone must at least do what their fair share demands. Then it will be a collective action. Then it will be more robust.”
MSR Reactors pave the way for nuclear innovation and cut Co2 emissions Cala 16 ANDRÉS CALA, THESE SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FOUND A WAY TO STOP NUCLEAR MELTDOWNS, OZY.com, MAY 31 2016 EE Nuclear power currently provides 11 percent of the world’s energy. But that number needs to grow to 17 percent to hit the globe’s targeted carbon dioxide emission reduction levels by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. And the robust and reliable nature of CO2-free nuclear power complements the expansion of more intermittent renewable energy, lowering demand for fossil-fuel generation. But to safely deliver, nuclear plants can’t carry the costs, safety or political baggage of existing sites. There are six leading technologies among the so-called fourth generation of nuclear power plants — all of them offer improvements, but MSR promises the best economy, some experts say. “MSR has a reasonable chance of being the winner” in the race, says Stephen Tindale, director of the U.K.-based Alvin Weinberg Foundation, a nonprofit organization advocating the use of advanced nuclear technology.
Warming causes extinction. McCoy 14 (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4—2—14, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, ) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming 1, the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival, health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic 1. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations is at risk.” 2 Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” 3 The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. 4 “Business as usual” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40 increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” 5. The IPCC warns of “tipping points” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” 2 And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” 6
Independently coal causes millions of deaths from radiation – our evidence is directly comparative between coal and nuclear. Kharecha and Hansen 13
Kharecha, Pushker A., and James E. Hansen NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute. "Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power." Environmental science and technology 47.9 (2013): 4889-4895.
Mortality. We calculate a mean value of 1.84 million human¶ deaths prevented by world nuclear power production from¶ 1971 to 2009 (see Figure 2a for full range), with an average of¶ 76 000 prevented deaths/year from 2000 to 2009 (range 19¶ 000−300 000). Estimates for the top five CO2 emitters, along¶ with full estimate ranges for all regions in our baseline historical¶ scenario, are also shown in Figure 2a. For perspective, results¶ for upper and lower bound scenarios are shown in Figure S1¶ (Supporting Information). In Germany, which has announced¶ plans to shut down all reactors by 2022 (ref 2), we calculate¶ that nuclear power has prevented an average of over 117 000¶ deaths from 1971 to 2009 (range 29 000−470 000). The large¶ ranges stem directly from the ranges given in Table 1 for the¶ mortality factors.¶ Our estimated human deaths caused by nuclear power from¶ 1971 to 2009 are far lower than the avoided deaths. Globally,¶ we calculate 4900 such deaths, or about 370 times lower than¶ our result for avoided deaths. Regionally, we calculate¶ approximately 1800 deaths in OECD Europe, 1500 in the¶ United States, 540 in Japan, 460 in Russia (includes all 15¶ former Soviet Union countries), 40 in China, and 20 in India.¶ About 25 of these deaths are due to occupational accidents,¶ and about 70 are due to air pollution-related effects (presumably fatal cancers from radiation fallout; see Table 2 of¶ ref 16).¶ However, empirical evidence indicates that the April 1986¶ Chernobyl accident was the world’s only source of fatalities¶ from nuclear power plant radiation fallout. According to the¶ latest assessment by the United Nations Scientific Committee¶ on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR),17 43 deaths¶ are conclusively attributable to radiation from Chernobyl as of¶ 2006 (28 were plant staff/first responders and 15 were from the¶ 6000 diagnosed cases of thyroid cancer). UNSCEAR17 also¶ states that reports of an increase in leukemia among recovery¶ workers who received higher doses are inconclusive, although¶ cataract development was clinically significant in that group;¶ otherwise, for these workers as well as the general population,¶ “there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health¶ effect” attributable to radiation exposure.17¶ Furthermore, no deaths have been conclusively attributed (in¶ a scientifically valid manner) to radiation from the other two¶ major accidents, namely, Three Mile Island in March 1979, for¶ which a 20 year comprehensive scientific health assessment was¶ done,18 and the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. While¶ it is too soon to meaningfully assess the health impacts of the¶ latter accident, one early analysis19 indicates that annual¶ radiation doses in nearby areas were much lower than the¶ generally accepted 100 mSv threshold17 for fatal disease¶ development. In any case, our calculated value for global¶ deaths caused by historical nuclear power (4900) could be a¶ major overestimate relative to the empirical value (by 2 orders¶ of magnitude). The absence of evidence of large mortality from¶ past nuclear accidents is consistent with recent findings20,21 that¶ the “linear no-threshold” model used to derive the nuclear¶ mortality factor in Table 1 (see ref 22) might not be valid for¶ the relatively low radiation doses that the public was exposed to¶ from nuclear power plant accidents.¶ For the projection period 2010−2050, we find that, in the all¶ coal case (see the Methods section), an average of 4.39 million¶ and 7.04 million deaths are prevented globally by nuclear power¶ production for the low-end and high-end projections of IAEA,6¶ respectively. In the all gas case, an average of 420 000 and 680¶ 000 deaths are prevented globally (see Figure 2b,c for full¶ ranges). Regional results are also shown in Figure 2b,c. The Far¶ East and North America have particularly high values, given¶ that they are projected to be the biggest nuclear power¶ producers (Figure S2, Supporting Information). As in the¶ historical period, calculated deaths caused by nuclear power in¶ our projection cases are far lower (2 orders of magnitude) than¶ the avoided deaths, even taking the nuclear mortality factor in¶ Table 1 at face value (despite the discrepancy with empirical¶ data discussed above for the historical period).¶ The substantially lower deaths in the projected all gas case¶ follow simply from the fact that gas is estimated to have a¶ mortality factor an order of magnitude lower than coal (Table¶ 1). However, this does not necessarily provide a valid argument¶ for such large-scale “fuel switching” for mitigation of either¶ climate change or air pollution, for several reasons. First, it is¶ important to bear in mind that our results for prevented¶ mortality are likely conservative, because the mortality factors¶ in Table 1 do not incorporate impacts of ongoing or future¶ anthropogenic climate change.16 These impacts are likely to¶ become devastating for both human health and ecosystems if¶ recent global GHG emission trends continue.1,3 Also, potential¶ global natural gas resources are enormous; published estimates¶ for technically recoverable unconventional gas resources¶ suggest a carbon content ranging from greater than 700¶ GtCO2 (based on refs 23 and 24) to greater than 17 000¶ GtCO2 (based on refs 24 and 25). While we acknowledge that¶ natural gas might play an important role as a “transition” fuel to¶ a clean-energy era due to its lower mortality (and emission)¶ factor relative to coal, we stress that long-term, widespread use of natural gas (without accompanying carbon capture and¶ storage) could lead to unabated GHG emissions for many¶ decades, given the typically multidecadal lifetime of energy¶ infrastructure, thereby greatly complicating climate change¶ mitigation efforts.
10/28/16
SEPT-OCT Japan Politics DA
Tournament: Voices | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Peninsula JL | Judge: Bistagne, Go, Dada Abe is just shy of political capital for the supermajority necessary to make article 9 constitutional changes. Waiters 16 Riley Walters, 7-26-2016, "Electoral Win for Japanese Prime Minister Draws International Concern," Providence, https://providencemag.com/2016/07/electoral-win-japanese-prime-minister-draws-international-concern/ As the longest serving Prime Minster in a decade, Shinzo Abe has pushed a platform of social, economic, and strategic issues meant to spur Japan’s economy and raise its profile in the world community. Of particular concern to Japan’s neighbors is whether PM Abe will revise Japan’s 70-year-old constitution to allow for greater strategic engagement by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and ease the Diet’s ability to make constitutional revisions.∂ Article 96 of Japan’s constitution stipulates that amendments to the constitution can be enacted only with the affirmation of a two-thirds majority in both Houses of the Diet, followed by a majority vote by the general populace.∂ Currently the LDP and Komeito hold more than two-thirds (326 of 475) of the seats in the Lower House. However, following elections on July 10 they remain shy of the mark in the Upper House, holding only 146 of the 162 seats needed for a two-thirds majority. To secure the necessary super majority there, Prime Minister Abe would need to attract votes from other smaller parties less enthusiastic about constitutional revision, as well as convince a citizenry wary of constitutional revision.∂ Getting all the necessary votes and the public on the side of constitutional revision may require more political capital than the LDP is willing to spend. The public is divided on the topic of constitutional revision and expressed only faint interest in even debating the issue. Economic issues still remain the public’s top concern. Nuclear phase-out is very popular. Kingston 13 Jeff Kingston, Special For Cnn, 7-23-2013, "Will the real Shinzo Abe emerge?," CNN, http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/23/opinion/japan-real-abe-kingston/index.html Market opening enjoys the support of Japan's leading exporters, the global marquee firms that are industry leaders, but exports represent only about 13 of Japan's GDP. Domestic firms are not as competitive and are very anxious about the prospects of market opening measures, while the medical lobby is painting Armageddon scenarios about the consequences for national health care insurance, something that Japan's aging society wants to protect from the vagaries of impersonal market forces.∂ Structural reforms face other serious headwinds. Can the LDP push through comprehensive deregulation of the electricity market against the regional monopolies? Why does Japan pay 4-5 times the global price for LNG imports?∂ Abe also faces stiff public opposition over his plans to restart the nation's idled nuclear reactors. He is seen to be in the "nuclear village's" pocket, the vested interests in business and bureaucratic circles that advocate nuclear energy. But some 70 of the Japanese public favors phasing out nuclear power because of lingering safety concerns; 150,000 people remain displaced by the three reactor meltdowns in 2011. Moreover, TEPCO's ongoing clean-up at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has been marred by a series of screw-ups worthy of the Keystone cops and there are concerns that new safety guidelines may be trumped by political expediency. The constitutional reform planned by Abe creates a state of emergency and authoritarianism where individual rights are limited and authorities gain complete power – turns the aff. Takahashi 8/14 Saul Takahashi, 8-14-2016, "Japan’s Descent into Authoritarianism," Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/japans-descent-into-authoritarianism/5540977 In reality, Abe’s fixation on Constitutional reform is not confined to Article 9. As history has shown (in Japan and elsewhere), military escapades abroad come with tools for internal oppression, to stifle dissent – and it is such tools that the LDP has in mind. The LDP’s draft revised Constitution (which, since its publication in 2012, has received almost no attention in the mainstream Japanese media) is a model for despots and dictators everywhere. The LDP’s draft Constitution is not aimed at proscribing the limits of government prerogative: rather, it is the people whose rights would be restricted, while authorities enjoy unfettered power.∂ Clear and unambiguous language prohibiting torture in the current Constitution would be trashed under the LDP’s revisions – a clearly worrying sign, given the ongoing reports of systematic torture of criminal suspects at the hands of the Japanese police. Indeed, all of the extensive human rights safeguards in the current Constitution are essentially done away with, under a blanket restriction that the people “must understand that freedom and rights are accompanied by responsibilities and obligations” and that the exercise of rights ‘must never oppose the public interest or public order’. Promotional material published by the LDP says that “’Public order’ means the ‘social order’, and refers to a peaceful social life. It is obvious that individuals claiming their rights should not cause inconveniences for the social life of others.” The vague notion of a “peaceful social life” is particularly worrying, as senior LDP politicians have called peaceful demonstrations against government policy “a form of terrorism”. Indeed, Abe has suggested that he might start with proposing Articles to allow the government to declare a state of emergency, which could allow rights to be restricted practically at will.∂ Other LDP material, published in a manga format, dismisses the current Constitution as “individualistic”, arguing that “just because you have fundamental human rights doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want … if everybody acted selfishly, society would fall apart.” LDP material also lies about Japan’s legal obligations under international human rights law, suggesting that international law allows for the kind of sweeping restrictions in the LDP draft.
And, Article 9 change leads to prolif. Siegel 07 Siegel 07 (Michael T. Questioning the Rationale for Changing Japan’s Peace Constitution Asia-Pacific Geopolitics: Hegemony Vs. Human Security ed. Joseph A. Camilleri pp. 75-92 1/1/07 Google Books Acc) For almost sixty years, Japan has been protected from the security dilemma by the peace Constitution. Under thepresentConstitution,nolapaneugovernment could carry out a belligerent act against another county. This has given Japan the opportunity to build up a very strong military without that constituting a direct threat to other countries. This is not to any that neighbouring countries do not watch Japan cautiously. But as long as Japan's Constitution is unchanged, Japan's military strength will not constitute a direct threat This may have resulted in there being little awareness in Japan of the risks involved. While it is frequently mentioned that constitutional revision runs the risk of creating tensions in Asia, there has been little systemic and explicit discussion of the security dilemma in the mainstream press or in the public pronouncements of politicians in regard to the issue of constitutional revision. Japan currently has one of the highest level of military spending in the world (542 billion in constant 2003 US dollars in 2004 according to SIPRI,n or ahnost $46 billion according to the CIA World Pactbook,. thereby ranking fourth in the world according to SIPRI or third according to the CIA). If Article 9 O changed, if Japan becomes a country capable of military action overseas, then Japan's military potential will immediately come to constitute a threat to its neighbours of vastly different proportions than it does now. For the security and stability of the region. a change in Article 9 would constitute the equivalent of an instantaneous arms build-up of enormous proportions. An Agana France-Press report on interviews conducted with security experts in Japan after one of the reports of the Prime Minister's Council on Security and Defense Capabilities concluded that 'Japanese moves to overhaul ...defense-only" security policy that could enable it to launch preemptive strikes on foreign missile bases will trigger a wave of unease across Asia' adding that 'Any suggesnons that Japan is taking a higher military profile have unnerved China and other Asian countries that were invaded by Japan during World Was If Japan's Constitution is changed, that in itself is likely to son an eons race in the region—with all the risks that that entails. Asian prolif sparks an arms race and accidental nuke war. Cimbala 14 Stephen J. Cimbala, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Penn State Brandywine, an American Studies faculty member, B.A. in Journalism from Penn State in 1965, M.A.in 1967 and his Ph.D. in 1969 both in Political Science, from the University of Wisconsin, Madison,has consulted for a number of U.S. government agencies and defense contractors, 2014("Nuclear Weapons in Asia: Perils and Prospects", Military and Strategic Affairs, Volume 6, No. 1, March, Available Online at http://www.inss.org.il/uploadImages/systemFiles/MASA6-1Eng20(4)_Cimbala.pdf, Accessed 08-16-16, p. 24-5)WP Failure to contain proliferation in Pyongyang could spread nuclear fever throughout Asia. Japan and South Korea might seek nuclear weapons and missile defenses. A pentagonal configuration of nuclear powers in the Pacific basin (Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea – not including the United States, with its own Pacific interests) could put deterrence at risk and create enormous temptation toward nuclear preemption. Apart from actual use or threat of use, North Korea could exploit the mere existence of an assumed nuclear capability in order to support its coercive diplomacy.19 In Paul Bracken’s terms, North Korea can use its nuclear weapons to support either a “strategy of extreme provocation” or one intended to “keep the nuclear pot boiling” without having crossed the threshold of nuclear first use.20 In October 2013 there were reports of the DPRK renewing nuclear activities, and perhaps preparing for new nuclear tests. A five-sided nuclear competition in the Pacific would be linked, in geopolitical deterrence and proliferation space, to the existing nuclear deterrents of India and Pakistan, and to the emerging nuclear weapons status of Iran. An arc of nuclear instability from Tehran to Tokyo could place US proliferation strategies into the ash heap of history and call for more drastic military options, not excluding preemptive war, defenses, and counter-deterrent special operations. In addition, an unrestricted nuclear arms race in Asia would most likely increase the chance of accidental or inadvertent nuclear war. It would do so because: (a) some states in the region already have histories of protracted conflict; (b) states may have politically unreliable or immature command and control systems, especially during a crisis involving a decision for nuclear first strike or retaliation; (c) unreliable or immature systems might permit a technical malfunction resulting in an unintended launch, or a deliberate but unauthorized launch, by rogue commanders; (d) faulty intelligence and warning systems might cause one side to misinterpret the other’s defensive moves to forestall attack as offensive preparations for attack, thus triggering a mistaken preemption.
10/14/16
SEPT-OCT Japan Shift DA
Tournament: Voices | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Peninsula JL | Judge: Bistagne, Go, Dada Japan needs nuclear power – without it they shift to coal independently of renewable growth. Hay 16 Mark Hay, Five Years After Fukushima, Japan’s Nuclear Power Debate Is Heating Up, 3/16/16, https://www.good.is/articles/japan-nuclear-power-debate-heats-up VC Abe’s case for nuclear redevelopment is strong, simple, and already accepted by many in the nation: “Our resource-poor country cannot do without nuclear power to secure the stability of energy supply while considering what makes economic sense and the issue of climate change,” Abe said at a press conference last week. Post-Fukushima regulations, the prime minister argues, make nuclear power safer than ever, as do major advances in reactor technology. This belief has led the nation to green-light the reopening of a few reactors, starting with two in Kagoshima in August 2015, with seemingly minimal pushback. But Abe’s narrative isn’t the only way of looking at this. Others, like Naoto Kan, who was prime minister during the Fukushima disaster, have argued that the nation doesn’t need nuclear power at all. Instead, they say, renewable energy sources are the future of Japan. They may look more expensive and less feasible than restoring the nation’s massive nuclear capacity. But that may be an illusion. It can be hard from a layman’s perspective to sort out who’s right about Japan’s nuclear future, Abe or Kan. But a number of studies and pilot projects suggest that Kan’s correct when he says Japan could thrive without ever-troublesome nuclear power—although the country’s political powers seem stacked against that viable future. Those who agree with Abe see nuclear power as vital, given what’s happened to Japan without it. As of 2011, Japan had the third-greatest nuclear capacity among the world’s nations, behind only France and the United States, with reactors providing 30 percent of the country’s energy. Some hoped to hit 60 percent reliance by 2100. But since shutting off the reactors, Japan has been forced to rely on imported, costlier fuels, rapidly becoming the world’s largest gas importer, second-largest coal importer, and third-largest crude importer to feed its massive energy needs. Even with global oil prices in a tailspin, Japan’s 84 percent reliance on these materials has sent utility prices through the roof and spurred the worrying creation of dozens of new coal plants, which produce some of the smoggiest energy out there. Looking at the numbers, Abe’s followers argue that the nation needs to derive at least 22 percent of its energy from nuclear power by 2030 to thrive—which is to say that 30 to 37 reactors must be online by then. That figure seems to accord with the government’s 2015 15-year energy plan, which aims to boost renewable energy contributions to between 22 and 24 percent of the grid, alongside nuclear revivals. But these predictions shortchange Japan’s renewable potential. Sure, outside of hydropower, renewables account for just about 3 percent of Japan’s grid right now, and the sector has grown miserably slowly since the beginning of the new millennium. But that’s at least in part because, from 2002 to 2011, Japan was nuclear-obsessive.
An analysis published Monday by Bloomberg states that coal power will become the largest source of electricity in Japan due to an effective ban on nuclear power. Nuclear power provided 29 percent of Japan’s total power output before 2011, but will decline to 13.6 percent by 2023 and 1.2 percent by 2040, according to the report. Japan got 24 percent of its electricity from coal in 2010 and the country plans to get more than a third of its power from coal by 2040. Japan previously shut down all of its nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered the Fukushima disaster. The country has since transitioned away from nuclear power. Prior to the disaster, Japan operated 54 nuclear power plants and the government planned to build enough reactors to provide 50 percent of the country’s electricity power. After the disaster, Japan pledged to effectively abandon nuclear power by the 2030s, replacing it mostly with wind or solar power, causing the price of electricity to rise by 20 percent. The transition to green energy hasn’t gone well and the country likely won’t meet its goals, according to the report. Japan remains a top importer of oil, coal and natural gas and the government estimated that importing fuel costs the country more than $40 billion annually. Japan’s current government sees a revival of nuclear power as critical to supporting economic growth and slowing an exodus of Japanese manufacturing to lower-cost countries, but has faced incredible pushback.
Prefer our evidence: a) Their evidence cites someone working for a renewable company saying nuclear isn’t viable. This is marketing propaganda. b) Their evidence makes projections assuming nuclear power is a viable compliment. Only our evidence accounts for the energy grid after nuclear isn’t an option any more. c) Our evidence is predictive – read their cards. They are incredibly vague and just quotes from random politicians. Our evidence uses market projections and answers the argument that the shift to coal isn’t long term. d) No impact to renewable shift – if it’s happening in the status quo, then that’s uniqueness for us because it means that renewables will happen no matter what. The only relevant questions is whether or not the time frame between renewables being ready and the AFF is worth an unnecessary shift to coal.
Shift to coal makes it impossible to fight climate change. Kharecha and Hansen 13
Kharecha, Pushker A., and James E. Hansen NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute. "Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power." Environmental science and technology 47.9 (2013): 4889-4895.
GHG Emissions. We calculate that world nuclear power¶ generation prevented an average of 64 gigatonnes of CO2-¶ equivalent (GtCO2-eq), or 17 GtC-eq, cumulative emissions¶ from 1971 to 2009 (Figure 3a; see full range therein), with an¶ average of 2.6 GtCO2-eq/year prevented annual emissions from¶ 2000 to 2009 (range 2.4−2.8 GtCO2/year). Regional results are¶ also shown in Figure 3a. Our global results are 7−14 lower¶ than previous estimates8,9 that, among other differences,¶ assumed all historical nuclear power would have been replaced¶ only by coal, and 34 higher than in another study10 in which¶ the methodology is not explained clearly enough to infer the¶ basis for the differences. Given that cumulative and annual¶ global fossil fuel CO2 emissions during the above periods were¶ 840 GtCO2 and 27 GtCO2/year, respectively,11 our mean¶ estimate for cumulative prevented emissions may not appear¶ substantial; however, it is instructive to look at other¶ quantitative comparisons.¶ For instance, 64 GtCO2-eq amounts to the cumulative CO2¶ emissions from coal burning over approximately the past 35¶ years in the United States, 17 years in China, or 7 years in the¶ top five CO2 emitters.11 Also, since a 500 MW coal-fired power¶ plant typically emits 3 MtCO2/year,26 64 GtCO2-eq is¶ equivalent to the cumulative lifetime emissions from almost¶ 430 such plants, assuming an average plant lifetime of 50 years.¶ It is therefore evident that, without global nuclear power¶ generation in recent decades, near-term mitigation of¶ anthropogenic climate change would pose a much greater¶ challenge.¶ For the projection period 2010−2050, in the all coal case, an¶ average of 150 and 240 GtCO2-eq cumulative global emissions¶ are prevented by nuclear power for the low-end and high-end¶ projections of IAEA,6 respectively. In the all gas case, an average¶ of 80 and 130 GtCO2-eq emissions are prevented (see Figure¶ 3b,c for full ranges). Regional results are also shown in Figure¶ 3b,c. These results also differ substantially from previous¶ studies,9,10 largely due to differences in nuclear power¶ projections (see the Supporting Information).¶ To put our calculated overall mean estimate (80−240¶ GtCO2-eq) of potentially prevented future emissions in¶ perspective, note that, to achieve a 350 ppm CO2 target near¶ the end of this century, cumulative “allowable” fossil CO2¶ emissions from 2012 to 2050 are at most ∼500 GtCO2 (ref 3).¶ Thus, projected nuclear power could reduce the climate-change¶ mitigation burden by 16−48 over the next few decades¶ (derived by dividing 80 and 240 by 500).
This causes millions of death and outweighs harms from radiation – our evidence is directly comparative between coal and nuclear. Kharecha and Hansen 13
Kharecha, Pushker A., and James E. Hansen NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute. "Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power." Environmental science and technology 47.9 (2013): 4889-4895.
Mortality. We calculate a mean value of 1.84 million human¶ deaths prevented by world nuclear power production from¶ 1971 to 2009 (see Figure 2a for full range), with an average of¶ 76 000 prevented deaths/year from 2000 to 2009 (range 19¶ 000−300 000). Estimates for the top five CO2 emitters, along¶ with full estimate ranges for all regions in our baseline historical¶ scenario, are also shown in Figure 2a. For perspective, results¶ for upper and lower bound scenarios are shown in Figure S1¶ (Supporting Information). In Germany, which has announced¶ plans to shut down all reactors by 2022 (ref 2), we calculate¶ that nuclear power has prevented an average of over 117 000¶ deaths from 1971 to 2009 (range 29 000−470 000). The large¶ ranges stem directly from the ranges given in Table 1 for the¶ mortality factors.¶ Our estimated human deaths caused by nuclear power from¶ 1971 to 2009 are far lower than the avoided deaths. Globally,¶ we calculate 4900 such deaths, or about 370 times lower than¶ our result for avoided deaths. Regionally, we calculate¶ approximately 1800 deaths in OECD Europe, 1500 in the¶ United States, 540 in Japan, 460 in Russia (includes all 15¶ former Soviet Union countries), 40 in China, and 20 in India.¶ About 25 of these deaths are due to occupational accidents,¶ and about 70 are due to air pollution-related effects (presumably fatal cancers from radiation fallout; see Table 2 of¶ ref 16).¶ However, empirical evidence indicates that the April 1986¶ Chernobyl accident was the world’s only source of fatalities¶ from nuclear power plant radiation fallout. According to the¶ latest assessment by the United Nations Scientific Committee¶ on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR),17 43 deaths¶ are conclusively attributable to radiation from Chernobyl as of¶ 2006 (28 were plant staff/first responders and 15 were from the¶ 6000 diagnosed cases of thyroid cancer). UNSCEAR17 also¶ states that reports of an increase in leukemia among recovery¶ workers who received higher doses are inconclusive, although¶ cataract development was clinically significant in that group;¶ otherwise, for these workers as well as the general population,¶ “there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health¶ effect” attributable to radiation exposure.17¶ Furthermore, no deaths have been conclusively attributed (in¶ a scientifically valid manner) to radiation from the other two¶ major accidents, namely, Three Mile Island in March 1979, for¶ which a 20 year comprehensive scientific health assessment was¶ done,18 and the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident. While¶ it is too soon to meaningfully assess the health impacts of the¶ latter accident, one early analysis19 indicates that annual¶ radiation doses in nearby areas were much lower than the¶ generally accepted 100 mSv threshold17 for fatal disease¶ development. In any case, our calculated value for global¶ deaths caused by historical nuclear power (4900) could be a¶ major overestimate relative to the empirical value (by 2 orders¶ of magnitude). The absence of evidence of large mortality from¶ past nuclear accidents is consistent with recent findings20,21 that¶ the “linear no-threshold” model used to derive the nuclear¶ mortality factor in Table 1 (see ref 22) might not be valid for¶ the relatively low radiation doses that the public was exposed to¶ from nuclear power plant accidents.¶ For the projection period 2010−2050, we find that, in the all¶ coal case (see the Methods section), an average of 4.39 million¶ and 7.04 million deaths are prevented globally by nuclear power¶ production for the low-end and high-end projections of IAEA,6¶ respectively. In the all gas case, an average of 420 000 and 680¶ 000 deaths are prevented globally (see Figure 2b,c for full¶ ranges). Regional results are also shown in Figure 2b,c. The Far¶ East and North America have particularly high values, given¶ that they are projected to be the biggest nuclear power¶ producers (Figure S2, Supporting Information). As in the¶ historical period, calculated deaths caused by nuclear power in¶ our projection cases are far lower (2 orders of magnitude) than¶ the avoided deaths, even taking the nuclear mortality factor in¶ Table 1 at face value (despite the discrepancy with empirical¶ data discussed above for the historical period).¶ The substantially lower deaths in the projected all gas case¶ follow simply from the fact that gas is estimated to have a¶ mortality factor an order of magnitude lower than coal (Table¶ 1). However, this does not necessarily provide a valid argument¶ for such large-scale “fuel switching” for mitigation of either¶ climate change or air pollution, for several reasons. First, it is¶ important to bear in mind that our results for prevented¶ mortality are likely conservative, because the mortality factors¶ in Table 1 do not incorporate impacts of ongoing or future¶ anthropogenic climate change.16 These impacts are likely to¶ become devastating for both human health and ecosystems if¶ recent global GHG emission trends continue.1,3 Also, potential¶ global natural gas resources are enormous; published estimates¶ for technically recoverable unconventional gas resources¶ suggest a carbon content ranging from greater than 700¶ GtCO2 (based on refs 23 and 24) to greater than 17 000¶ GtCO2 (based on refs 24 and 25). While we acknowledge that¶ natural gas might play an important role as a “transition” fuel to¶ a clean-energy era due to its lower mortality (and emission)¶ factor relative to coal, we stress that long-term, widespread use of natural gas (without accompanying carbon capture and¶ storage) could lead to unabated GHG emissions for many¶ decades, given the typically multidecadal lifetime of energy¶ infrastructure, thereby greatly complicating climate change¶ mitigation efforts.
The Cuomo card on the case is the impact – warming causes massive violence against marginalized groups
Also, warming causes extinction. McCoy 14 (Dr. David McCoy et al., MD, Centre for International Health and Development, University College London, “Climate Change and Human Survival,” BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL v. 348, 4—2—14, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2510, ) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published its report on the impacts of global warming. Building on its recent update of the physical science of global warming 1, the IPCC’s new report should leave the world in no doubt about the scale and immediacy of the threat to human survival, health, and well-being. The IPCC has already concluded that it is “virtually certain that human influence has warmed the global climate system” and that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010” is anthropogenic 1. Its new report outlines the future threats of further global warming: increased scarcity of food and fresh water; extreme weather events; rise in sea level; loss of biodiversity; areas becoming uninhabitable; and mass human migration, conflict and violence. Leaked drafts talk of hundreds of millions displaced in a little over 80 years. This month, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) added its voice: “the well being of people of all nations is at risk.” 2 Such comments reaffirm the conclusions of the Lancet/UCL Commission: that climate change is “the greatest threat to human health of the 21st century.” 3 The changes seen so far—massive arctic ice loss and extreme weather events, for example—have resulted from an estimated average temperature rise of 0.89°C since 1901. Further changes will depend on how much we continue to heat the planet. The release of just another 275 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would probably commit us to a temperature rise of at least 2°C—an amount that could be emitted in less than eight years. 4 “Business as usual” will increase carbon dioxide concentrations from the current level of 400 parts per million (ppm), which is a 40 increase from 280 ppm 150 years ago, to 936 ppm by 2100, with a 50:50 chance that this will deliver global mean temperature rises of more than 4°C. It is now widely understood that such a rise is “incompatible with an organised global community.” 5. The IPCC warns of “tipping points” in the Earth’s system, which, if crossed, could lead to a catastrophic collapse of interlinked human and natural systems. The AAAS concludes that there is now a “real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people around the globe.” 2 And this week a report from the World Meteorological Office (WMO) confirmed that extreme weather events are accelerating. WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud said, “There is no standstill in global warming . . . The laws of physics are non-negotiable.” 6
10/14/16
SEPT-OCT MSR CP
Tournament: St Marks | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Mountain View DZ | Judge: Dosch, Stevens, Castillo Counterplan Text: The insert aff actors will increase production of nuclear power through denatured molten salt reactors. Williams 16 Stephen Williams Software engineer and former technical writer. Focuses now in many issues surrounding energy use, such as climate change, ocean acidification, energy poverty, and pollution. July 4, 2016. How Molten Salt Reactors Might Spell a Nuclear Energy Revolution, ZMEScience.com August 23, 2016 SH
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the United Nations, the Obama Administration and even over 70 of climate scientists agree that we must ramp up nuclear power if we are going succeed in dealing with climate change. Because of its exceptional safety and low cost, perhaps MSR technology is a nuclear technology that most everyone can embrace.
And, MSRs use up existing stockpiles of nuclear waste, decreasing the amount available for terrorist purposes. MSR waste cannot be used in weapons. Williams 16 Stephen Williams Software engineer and former technical writer. Focuses now in many issues surrounding energy use, such as climate change, ocean acidification, energy poverty, and pollution. July 4, 2016. How Molten Salt Reactors Might Spell a Nuclear Energy Revolution, ZMEScience.com August 23, 2016 SH
No nuclear reactor can be made proliferation proof, but MSRs have some significant advantages for proliferation resistance. First, the waste from MSRs is not useful for use in nuclear weapons since MSRs fission almost all actinides. Second, MSRs can use up existing stockpiles of nuclear waste from conventional reactors as well as existing stockpiles of plutonium, making these materials unavailable for use in nuclear weapons.
MSRs are feasible in India – they’re in future plans, India has the most thorium globally, and align with India’s non-prolif foreign policy. Ghoshal 6/15 Debalina Ghoshal (Research Associate at the Delhi Policy Group. She specializes in issues pertaining to missiles, missile defense, nuclear weapons, and artillery), “India’s Venture into Molten Salt Reactors,” 6/15/16, South Asian Voices. A major focus of India’s nuclear energy program has been to strengthen non-proliferation efforts. For instance, despite not being a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India has ratified the Additional Protocol which allows for further inspections of civilian nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA). Along with this, New Delhi has also concentrated on nuclear waste management and nuclear safety, especially after the Fukushima crisis. In this context, it is worthwhile to consider Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) technology— could be the third stage of India’s nuclear program—because it could not only enable India to achieve Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clean energy agenda, but also bolster its non-proliferation credentials.¶ What is MSR?¶ Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) technology is different from most current reactors in that it uses liquid fuel, instead of the more common solid fuel, as both fuel and coolant. These reactors use molten fluoride salts as the primary coolant and dissolve the fissile and fertile fuel in the salt. They use various types of fuel, including thorium. Thorium is particularly appealing to India because it has abundant thorium deposits, among the largest globally.¶ A Brief History¶ MSR technology is not a new innovation. The United States ventured into Thorium Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) technology during the 1950s to provide the U.S. Air Force with a nuclear bomber that could fly over the Soviet Union without stopping to refuel. This generated interest in exploration of the application of TMSR technology for civilian energy use. However, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) called off the project in 1976 due to a lack of funding.¶ Advantages of MSR Technology for India¶ India is already examining designs for an Indian Molten Salt Breeder Reactor (IMSBR). With India’s abundance in thorium, its Advanced Heavy Water Reactors (AWHR) would use low enriched uranium (LEU) to convert thorium into uranium for energy production. The use of LEU in these reactors is an important advantage because it carries a much lower risk for proliferation than HEU. This strengthens India’s non-proliferation credentials and aligns India with the global movement away from HEU, in accordance with the recent 2016 Nuclear Security Summit.
10/28/16
SEPT-OCT Multi-Plank CP
Tournament: Voices | Round: 1 | Opponent: Mission San Jose PB | Judge: David Dosch
-CP Text: Countries ought to - adopt the IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety - designate sub-seabed disposal as the sole candidate for its permanent nuclear waste repository.
IAEA regulations produce concrete results to strengthen power plant safety. Amano 11
Yukiya Amano (Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Draft IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety, 9/5/11, https://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC55/Documents/gc55-14.pdf VC The purpose of the Action Plan is to define a programme of work to strengthen the global nuclear safety framework. The plan consists of actions building on the Ministerial Declaration, the conclusions and recommendations of the Working Sessions, and the experience and knowledge therein, including the INSAG letter report (GOVINF/2011/11), and the facilitation of consultations among Member States. The success of this Action Plan in strengthening nuclear safety is dependent on its implementation through the full cooperation and participation of Member States and will require also the involvement of many other stakeholders. They are therefore encouraged to work cooperatively to implement the Action Plan to maximize the benefit of the lessons learned from the accident and to produce concrete results as soon as possible. Progress on the implementation of the Action Plan will be reported to the September 2012 meeting of the Board of Governors and the 2012 General Conference and subsequently on an annual basis as may be necessary. In addition, the extraordinary meeting of the Contracting Parties to the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS) in 2012 will provide an opportunity to consider further measures to strengthen nuclear safety Strengthening nuclear safety in light of the accident is addressed through a number of measures proposed in this Action Plan including 12 main actions, each with corresponding sub-actions, focusing on: safety assessments in the light of the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station; IAEA peer reviews; emergency preparedness and response; national regulatory bodies; operating organizations; IAEA Safety Standards; international legal framework; Member States planning to embark on a nuclear power programme; capacity building; protection of people and the environment from ionizing radiation; communication and information dissemination; and research and development. Safety assessments in the light of the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Undertake assessment of the safety vulnerabilities of nuclear power plants in the light of lessons learned to date from the accident • Member States to promptly undertake a national assessment of the design of nuclear power plants against site specific extreme natural hazards and to implement the necessary corrective actions in a timely manner. • The IAEA Secretariat, taking into account existing experiences, to develop a methodology and make it available for Member States that may wish to use it in carrying out their national assessments. • The IAEA Secretariat, upon request, to provide assistance and support to Member States in the implementation of a national assessment of the design of nuclear power plants against site specific extreme natural hazards. • The IAEA Secretariat, upon request, to undertake peer reviews of national assessments and to provide additional support to Member States. IAEA peer reviews Strengthen IAEA peer reviews in order to maximize the benefits to Member States • The IAEA Secretariat to strengthen existing IAEA peer reviews by incorporating lessons learned and by ensuring that these reviews appropriately address regulatory effectiveness, operational safety, design safety, and emergency preparedness and response; Member States to provide experts for peer review missions. • The IAEA Secretariat, in order to enhance transparency, to provide summary information on where and when IAEA peer reviews have taken place, and to make publicly available in a timely manner the results of such reviews with the consent of the State concerned. • Member States to be strongly encouraged to voluntarily host IAEA peer reviews, including follow-up reviews, on a regular basis; the IAEA Secretariat to respond in a timely manner to requests for such reviews. • The IAEA Secretariat to assess, and enhance as necessary, the effectiveness of the IAEA peer reviews. Emergency preparedness and response Strengthen emergency preparedness and response • Member States to conduct a prompt national review and thereafter regular reviews of their emergency preparedness and response arrangements and capabilities, with the IAEA Secretariat providing support and assistance through Emergency Preparedness Review (EPREV) missions, as requested. • The IAEA Secretariat, Member States and relevant international organizations to review and strengthen the international emergency preparedness and response framework, taking into account recommendations given in the final report of the International Action Plan for Strengthening the International Preparedness and Response System for Nuclear and Radiological Emergencies, and encouraging greater involvement of the relevant international organizations in the Joint Radiation Emergency Management Plan of the International Organizations. • The IAEA Secretariat, Member States and relevant international organizations to strengthen the assistance mechanisms to ensure that necessary assistance is made available promptly. Consideration to be given to enhancing and fully utilizing the IAEA Response and Assistance Network (RANET), including expanding its rapid response capabilities. • Member States to consider, on a voluntary basis, establishing national rapid response teams that could also be made available internationally through RANET. • The IAEA Secretariat, in case of a nuclear emergency and with the consent of the State concerned, to conduct timely fact-finding missions and to make the results publicly available. National regulatory bodies Strengthen the effectiveness of national regulatory bodies • Member States to conduct a prompt national review and thereafter regular reviews of their regulatory bodies, including an assessment of their effective independence, adequacy of human and financial resources and the need for appropriate technical and scientific support, to fulfil their responsibilities. • The IAEA Secretariat to enhance the Integrated Regulatory Review Service (IRRS) for peer review of regulatory effectiveness through a more comprehensive assessment of national regulations against IAEA Safety Standards. • Each Member State with nuclear power plants to voluntarily host, on a regular basis, an IAEA IRRS mission to assess its national regulatory framework. In addition, a follow-up mission to be conducted within three years of the main IRRS mission. Operating organizations Strengthen the effectiveness of operating organizations with respect to nuclear safety • Member States to ensure improvement, as necessary, of management systems, safety culture, human resources management, and scientific and technical capacity in operating organizations; the IAEA Secretariat to provide assistance to Member States upon request. • Each Member State with nuclear power plants to voluntarily host at least one IAEA Operational Safety Review Team (OSART) mission during the coming three years, with the initial focus on older nuclear power plants. Thereafter, OSART missions to be voluntarily hosted on a regular basis. • The IAEA Secretariat to strengthen cooperation with WANO by amending their Memorandum of Understanding to enhance information exchange on operating experience and on other relevant safety and engineering areas and, in consultation with other relevant stakeholders, to explore mechanisms to enhance communication and interaction among operating organizations. IAEA Safety Standards Review and strengthen IAEA Safety Standards and improve their implementation • The Commission on Safety Standards and the IAEA Secretariat to review, and revise as necessary using the existing process in a more efficient manner, the relevant IAEA Safety Standards2 in a prioritised sequence. • Member States to utilize as broadly and effectively as possible the IAEA Safety Standards in an open, timely and transparent manner. The IAEA Secretariat to continue providing support and assistance in the implementation of IAEA Safety Standards. International legal framework Improve the effectiveness of the international legal framework • States parties to explore mechanisms to enhance the effective implementation of the Convention on Nuclear Safety, the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, the Convention on the Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency, and to consider proposals made to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety and the Convention on the Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident. • Member States to be encouraged to join and effectively implement these Conventions. • Member States to work towards establishing a global nuclear liability regime that addresses the concerns of all States that might be affected by a nuclear accident with a view to providing appropriate compensation for nuclear damage. The IAEA International Expert Group on Nuclear Liability (INLEX) to recommend actions to facilitate achievement of such a global regime. Member States to give due consideration to the possibility of joining the international nuclear liability instruments as a step toward achieving such a global regime.
The counterplan solves the accidents advantage – it enhances nuclear safety and creates high quality standards. Amano 11
Yukiya Amano (Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency), Draft IAEA Action Plan on Nuclear Safety, 9/5/11, https://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC55/Documents/gc55-14.pdf VC In June 2011 a Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety was convened to direct, under the leading role of the IAEA, the process of learning and acting upon lessons following the accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in order to strengthen nuclear safety, emergency preparedness and radiation protection of people and the environment worldwide. At the conference a Ministerial Declaration was adopted which inter alia: • “Requested the IAEA Director General to prepare a Report on the June 2011 IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety and a draft Action Plan, building on the Declaration of the Ministerial Conference and the conclusions and recommendations of the three Working Sessions, and the expertise and knowledge available therein, and to promote coordination and cooperation, as appropriate, with other relevant international organizations to follow up on the outcomes of the Conference, as well as facilitate consultations among Member States on the draft Action Plan”; • “Requested the IAEA Director General to present the Report and the draft Action Plan covering all the relevant aspects relating to nuclear safety, emergency preparedness and response, and radiation protection of people and the environment, as well as the relevant international legal framework, to the IAEA Board of Governors and the General Conference at their forthcoming meetings in 2011”; • “Called upon the IAEA Board of Governors and the General Conference to reflect the outcome of the Ministerial Conference in their decisions and to support the effective, prompt and adequately resourced implementation of the Action Plan”. In considering this Action Plan, it is important to note that: • The responsibility for ensuring the application of the highest standards of nuclear safety and for providing a timely, transparent and adequate response to nuclear emergencies, including addressing vulnerabilities revealed by accidents, lies with each Member State and operating organization. • The IAEA Safety Standards provide the basis for what constitutes a high level of safety for protecting people and the environment from harmful effects of ionizing radiation, and will continue to be objective, transparent and technologically neutral. • Transparency in all aspects of nuclear safety through timely and continuous sharing and dissemination of objective information, including information on nuclear emergencies and their radiological consequences, is of particular importance to improve safety and to meet the high level of public expectation. Nuclear accidents may have transboundary effects; therefore it is important to provide adequate responses based on scientific knowledge and full transparency. • As understanding of the accident develops, additional analysis of the root causes will be carried out. Further lessons may be learned and, as appropriate, be incorporated into the proposed actions by updating the Action Plan. The High Level Conference to be organized by Japan and the IAEA in 2012 will provide an opportunity for learning further lessons and for enhancing transparency.
SSD is the best storage option – buries nuclear waste under the sea. Wilson 14
Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News, founded the Resilient Design Institute Alex, "Safe Storage of Nuclear Waste", Green Building Advisor, www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/energy-solutions/safe-storage-nuclear-waste SP
The big question now is how long it will be until the plant can be decommissioned and what to do with the large quantities of radioactive waste that are being stored onsite. Terrorism risks with nuclear power My concern with nuclear power has always been more about terrorism than accidents during operation or storage. I continue to worry that terrorists could gain entry to nuclear plant operations and sabotage plants from the inside — disabling cooling systems and causing a meltdown. There is also a remote risk of unanticipated natural disasters causing meltdowns or radiation release, as we saw so vividly with the Fukushima Power Plant catastrophe in Japan in March, 2011. For more than 30 years, the nuclear industry in the U.S. and nuclear regulators have been going down the wrong path with waste storage — seeking a repository where waste could be buried deep in a mountain. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was the place of choice until… it wasn’t. Any time we choose to put highly dangerous waste in someone’s backyard, it’s bound to cause a lot of controversy, even in a sparsely populated, pro-resource-extraction place like Nevada. NIMBY opposition can be boosted by people in powerful places, and in the case of Yucca Mountain, Nevada senator Harry Reid has played such a role. (He has been the Senate Majority Leader since 2006 and served prior to that as the Minority Leader and Democratic Whip.) Aside from NIMBYism, the problem with burying nuclear waste in a mountain (like Yucca Mountain) or salt caverns (like New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns — an earlier option that was pursued for a while in the 1970s) is that the maximum safety is provided at Day One, and the margin of safety drops continually from there. The safety of such storage sites could be compromised over time due to seismic activity (Nevada ranks fourth among the most seismically active states), volcanism (the Yucca Mountain ridge is comprised mostly of volcanic tuff, emitted from past volcanic activity), erosion, migrating aquifers, and other natural geologic actions. A better storage option I believe a much better solution for long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste is to bury it deep under the seabed in a region free of seismic activity where sediment is being deposited and the seafloor getting thicker. In such a site, the level of protection would increase, rather than decrease, over time. In some areas of seabed, more than a centimeter of sediment is being deposited annually. Compacted over time, such sediment deposition could be several feet in a hundred years, and in the geologic time span over which radioactive waste is hazardous, hundreds to thousands of feet of protective sedimentary rock would be formed. The oil and gas industry — for better or worse — knows a lot about drilling deep holes beneath a mile or two of ocean. I suspect that the deep-sea drilling industry would love such a growth opportunity to move into seabed waste storage, and I believe the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or other agencies could do a good job regulating such work. The waste could be placed in wells extending thousands of feet below the seabed in sedimentary rock in geologically stable regions. Let's say a 3,000-foot well is drilled beneath the seabed two miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Waste could be inserted into that well to a depth of 1,000 feet, and the rest of the well capped with 2,000 feet of concrete or some other material. Hundreds of these deep-storage wells could be filled and capped, and such a sub-seabed storage field could be designated as forever off-limits. Industry or the Department of Energy would have to figure out how to package such waste for safe handling at sea, since the material is so dangerous, but I believe that is a surmountable challenge. For example, perhaps the radioactive waste could be vitrified (incorporated into molten glass-like material) to reduce leaching potential into seawater should an accident occur at sea, and that waste could be tagged with radio-frequency emitters so that any lost containers could be recovered with robotic submarines in the event of such accidents. While I’m not an expert in any of this, I’ve looked at how much money taxpayers and industry have already poured into Yucca Mountain — about $15 billion by the time the Obama Administration terminated federal funding for it in 2010, according to Bloomberg News — and the estimates for how much more it would take to get a working waste storage facility of that sort operational had risen to about $96 billion by 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy at the time. I believe that sub-seabed storage would be far less expensive.
Solves the aff ssd is able to isolate any radioactive nuclear waste from humans. Bala 2014
Amal Bala, Sub-Seabed Burial of Nuclear Waste: If the Disposal Method Could Succeed Technically, Could It Also Succeed Legally?, 41 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 455 (2014),SP In general, two related methods of underwater disposal of SNF exist: dumping containers of radioactive waste into the ocean, and sub-seabed disposal. 92 The purpose of underwater disposal of SNF is the same as any other type of SNF disposal, which is to isolate radioactive waste from human contact and the environment long enough for any release of radiation to become harmless.93 The potential advantages of certain types of underwater SNF disposal for the United States could include effective containment of the waste and avoiding the controversy of a land-based national repository, such as the failed project at Yucca Mountain. 94 Underwater disposal of SNF, specifically subseabed disposal, could occur far from the coast of any state or nation and could thereby avoid the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) syndrome, but this result is not guaranteed considering existing laws and a popular belief that Earth’s oceans are a global commons
10/8/16
SEPT-OCT Natives Epistemology K
Tournament: Voices | Round: 3 | Opponent: University JC | Judge: Sean Fee We agree that nuclear power should be prohibited, but are pic-ing out of the 1AC justifications.
Subpoint A: We’ll isolate 2 reasons the AC is colonialism in disguise
1- Epistemology
The 1AC is based on an opposition between western and indigenous peoples and epistemologies that is rooted in essentialism. This form of criticism reinforces colonialism by reinforcing hierarchical difference Andersen, PhD, 09 (Chris, Prof. Native Studies @ Alberta, “critical indigenous studies From Difference to Density” Cultural Studies Review 15 (2) p. 80-84) In two recent articles,3 American Indian studies professor Duane Champagne challenges ‘Western’ academic disciplines’ epistemological ability to analyse contemporary Indigeneity.4 Specifically, their failure to consider Indigenous collectivities’ active role in colonial contexts in terms not readily discernable in Western forms of knowledge means these disciplines miss large elements of Indigeneity and, as such, fail to offer a plausible basis for its analysis. Champagne contends that despite its current failure to do so, American Indian studies—extrapolated here to include all Indigenous studies—should instead assume this mantle by presuming the distinctive agency of Indigenous peoples, including a focus on exploring our relations according to our distinctive epistemologies and according to the goals and mandates set by Indigenous communities. Not only will this distinguish Native studies from the rest of the academia, it will better position it to assist Indigenous peoples in righting their relationships with dominant, ‘whitestream’ society.5 I agree with Champagne’s assertion that Indigenous studies—whether within or outside specific departments and faculties—should exist in contemporary academia and that Indigenous communities ought to constitute a central focus to this endeavour. Despite his obvious love for the discipline (a fidelity I share), however, his peculiar positioning of Indigenous studies as different needlessly marginalises our density and, in doing so, unnecessarily gives ground to disciplinary turf long claimed by older disciplines. Thus, although he usefully positions Indigenous communities as producers of complex knowledge about indigeneity, his separation of Indigenous from white society unnecessarily marginalises two elements of our density critical to this relationship: 1) the extent of Indigenous communities’ knowledges about whiteness (a social fact which requires an expertise in ‘Western’ concepts); and 2) the extent to which the production of academic knowledge through Indigenous studies is shaped by the ‘whitestream’ academic relations of power, marking it in tension with other forms of knowledge (such as community knowledge). Both are unfortunate omissions. Regarding the first, the epistemological aprioris of whiteness are a dominant representational source through which Western societies produce and consume Indigeneity. As such, Champagne recklessly jettisons so-called Western disciplinary concepts and methodologies as immutable precisely where and when they are most necessary. Regarding the second, he dismisses the contextual importance of accounting for the academic institutional conditions under which native studies units (are allowed to) exist. My sympathetic critique of Champagne’s argument is divided into three major parts and a conclusion. Part one extrapolates his analysis of current native studies and his prescriptions for how to fix it. In this context I examine his charge that ‘Western’ disciplines (anthropology, history, sociology and so on) are too epistemologically constricted to properly explain Indigenous agency or communities and I emphasise his failure to account for the conditions of possibility under which Native American studies entered into academic history (to borrow Foucauldian phraseology).6 This latter element challenges the relationships he posits between both Indigenous studies and other academic disciplines and Indigenous knowledge within and outside the academy. Part two unpacks his tropes to reveal an epistemological and ontological essentialism which positions Indigeneity as separate from (his notion of) colonialism, such that an endogamous focus on the former obviates the need for accounting for the influence of the latter (or at least, that native studies can analyse the former in a manner which separates it from the Western academic herd). I argue that Champagne reproduces a variant strain of ‘Aboriginalism’ 7 that oversimplifies contemporary Indigeneity and overstates the immutability of concepts emanating from existing ‘Western’ disciplines. In doing so, he unnecessarily limits the contributions Indigenous studies is ideally positioned to make in deconstructing Aboriginalist discourses and in doing so produces an oddly parochial formulation of the discipline. Finally, in part three I offer my own prescriptions for an Indigenous studies anchored in Indigenous density (rather than difference). The temporal and epistemological complexity of our relationships with whitestream society means that Indigenous studies must counter hegemonic representations of Indigeneity which marginalise or altogether ignore our density. Following in the footsteps of Geonpul scholar Moreton-Robinson’s path-breaking work, I argue that Indigenous studies’ study of both Indigeneity and whiteness must use all available epistemologies, not just those which apparently distance Western disciplines from Indigenous studies analysis.8 While Champagne’s formulation can possibly be stretched to examine whiteness, the epistemological strategies he proposes for analysing Indigeneity capture only specific, isolated elements of our complexity. The essay ends with a discussion of the implications of this argument. I Locating (Champagne in) the discipline of native studies Native studies ‘state of the discipline’ pieces often begin by differentiating our scholarship from that of longer-standing disciplines.9 Though these are as often prescriptive as reflective of actual practice, such immanent analysis signals a healthy and growing discipline. American Indian scholar Clara Sue Kidwell suggests that, at least in native studies, these debates often play themselves out in a tension between two poles of analysis: essentialism/difference and adaptation/assimilation.10 She suggests that the essentialism cluster is rooted in an extreme form of post-colonialism which ‘implies that American Indian ways of thinking existed before colonialism and remain unknowable by anyone outside those cultures. Native American studies/American Indian studies can recover the long-suppressed values, epistemologies, and voices from colonial oppression’.11 Conversely, adaptation clusters typically emphasise the agency of Indigenous collectivities in the face of whitestream colonialism. Like the essentialism cluster, however, Kidwell argues that in its extreme variant: the idea of adaptation, or acculturation, or agency represents the ultimate disappearance of Indian identity into American society. If Indians dress like everyone else, speak like everyone else, attend public schools, are citizens of the state in which they live and citizens of the United States, how can they justify claims to a distinctive identity?12 Like others taking the essentialist position in the debate,13 Champagne contends that Indigeneity and Indigenous communities are fundamentally different in ways which elide the epistemological premises of Western disciplines (more on this in part two). These disciplines employ data collection concepts and practices saturated with a concern for ‘examining the issues, problems, and conceptualizations that confront American or Western civilization’.14 Indigenous issues are merely positioned as a specific instance of more general patterns of minority oppression.15 Such thinking has, he suggests, detracted intellectual energy from the more laudable Indigenous studies disciplinary goal of ‘conceptualising, researching, and explaining patterns of American Indian individual and collective community choices and strategies when confronted with relations with the American state and society’.16 Champagne suggests that most native studies departments are multidisciplinary in character with faculty scattered in numerous disciplines teaching theories and concepts from numerous academic fields, to students as often as not from non-Aboriginal backgrounds, with a vague mandate for increasing or generating broader awareness about Indigenous history and contemporary realities.17 He admits that this multidisciplinarity is often advantageous in that ‘programs could be constructed from long-standing disciplines, and often seasoned scholars could be called upon to provide guidance and support’.18 However, to the extent that concepts central to Western disciplines remain ‘oriented toward examining the issues, problems, and conceptualizations that confront American or Western civilization’,19 these approaches effectively stifle the ability of American Indian studies to produce disciplinarily endogamous theory and methodology. The existing Indigenous studies academic landscape is thus, Champagne explains, littered with disjointed and epistemologically scattered forays into (and about) Indigenous communities. The current inability to produce distinctive theory and method has exacerbated institutional marginality (his context is American but this is readily extrapolated more broadly): fiscal conservativism limits the likelihood that even well-meaning administrators will build-in the solid, permanent funding required for stable Native studies departments (since money made available for ‘Aboriginal issues’ is just as likely to go to more wellregarded disciplines such as anthropology, history or education); broader multicultural or diversity concerns overshadow the distinctiveness of Indigenous experiences by linking them to broader forms of ‘minority’ oppression (thus the seemingly natural fit of native studies departments within ‘ethnic studies’ faculties); and mainstream theorising and methodological thinking has shown a reluctance to ‘think outside the box’ of Western modes of analysis.20 Champagne argues in a nutshell that: the university bureaucratic environment, weak resource support, the emphasis on race and ethnic paradigms over an indigenous paradigm, and the relegation of Indian Studies to serve general diversity interests for the university will continue to constrain, and often will prevent, full development of indigenous studies departments and programs at many universities.21 Champagne’s understanding of native studies’ relationship to the academy is reminiscent of the humanism Foucault critiques in his examination of nineteenth- and twentieth-century sexuality regulation.22 Foucault takes such explanations to task for their tendency to position power repressively as an entity which prevents actions and curtails freedoms. Foucauldian notions of power instead stress its repressive and constitutive character. They emphasise how discursive power shapes the formation of subjectivities which, in turn, shape the conditions under which subjects ‘enter into history’. Wedded to a repressive understanding of power, Champagne makes a homologous correlation between the current academic institutional marginality of Native studies and the forms of marginality Indigenous communities experience outside the academy. Thus correlated, he argues that a robust and holistic Indigenous paradigm can assist in rectifying this repression. For Champagne, then, academic and nonacademic Indigenous knowledge are comrades-in-arms, with Indigenous studies—anchored in an Indigenous paradigm—providing the missing link. In this guise, his Indigenous paradigm places Indigenous communities and nations at its centre, instead of colonial critique. Native studies, Champagne explains, ‘cannot center on a critique of the colonial experience but rather must focus on the individual and community choices American Indians make to realize their culture, values, and political and economic interests within the constraints and opportunities presented by changing colonial contexts’.23 While colonial critique can be useful for examining external forces relating to political, legal and market conditions, it ‘excludes choice and social action on the part of Native historical and cultural experience, and in effect American Indians are not analyzed as players in their own historical contexts but rather viewed as billiard balls knocked around by powerful colonial powers and forces’.24 Champagne thus draws a clear distinction between, on the one hand, what he thinks Western disciplines, with their focus on colonialism, can explain about indigeneity and on the other, what makes Indigenous peoples truly Indigenous and, presumably, what these disciplines remain unable to explicate. Perhaps equally importantly, he assumes that such boundaries are discrete and readily discernable, such that he effectively erases the object–subject relationship within which all other academic disciplines produce knowledge.25 Champagne’s ostensible focus on Indigenous communities reflects a central disciplinary trope of native studies. For example, Cook-Lynn states bluntly that ‘Indian Studies as an academic discipline was meant to have as it constituencies the native tribal nations of America and its major purpose the defense of lands and resources and the sovereign right to nationtonation status’.26 This emphasis on tribally specific knowledge is also emphasised by Muskogee scholar Craig Womack, who argues the need for ‘more attention devoted to tribally specific concerns’ in a literary context,27 part of a larger ‘literary nationalism’ movement with broadly allied concerns.28 Holm et al. argue even more specifically that native studies should emphasise the exploration and support of and for what they term ‘peoplehood’, positioned to include language, sacred history, territory and ceremony,29 while Kidwell suggests that native studies should endeavour to emphasise Indigenous relationships with land, the inclusion of Indigenous intellectual traditions, our inherent sovereignty and the importance of our Indigenous languages.30 Thus, while Champagne’s focal concerns are not abnormal, his attempt to isolate Indigenous communities epistemologically from the broader social fabric of dominant, whitestream society effectively removes a large part of our arsenal for combatting the damaging representations of Indigeneity woven into larger society. Parts of his argument turn on the idea that colonialism exists external to Indigenous communities and nations, as something we are subject to. Thus, it isn’t that we don’t suffer (from) colonialism; rather, its power resides outside our communities. From this perspective, theories of colonialism are explanatory tools but are not enough in-and-of-themselves because their externality precludes their ability to fully comprehend and analyse our communities’ distinctiveness. In line with the repressive formulation of power which anchors his understanding of Indigenous studies, for Champagne colonialism = sameness/assimilation and indigeneity = difference/freedom. I will have more to say on this below, but suffice it to say for now that his prescriptions become particularly problematic when he attempts to circumscribe the theories and methods native studies should use in analysis of/with Indigenous communities. One can perhaps forgive Champagne’s diagnosis in this context, since it represents only part of his argument and, as I said, is a common trope of Indigenous studies. However, consider a fuller example of his positioning of colonialism: Colonial theories emphasize external forces such as political, legal, market, and cultural constraints and hegemonies to which American Indian communities are subject. Colonial arguments are powerful tools and explain much change in American Indian communities, but the kind of change that is explained is externally enforced and often coercive. Such change is often subtly resisted and not internalized. footnote omitted An old Spanish saying is ‘I bend my knee but not my heart’.31 While his statements might legitimately swell our hearts with pride at the ways our ancestors resisted colonialism/oppression while retaining their dignity, traditions and collective self consciousness, they nonetheless avoid questions about how the cultural power of nationstates do not merely oppress, but seduce as well.32 Champagne’s essentialism in effect marginalises the complex ways in which our Indigenous habitus (to borrow from Pierre Bourdieu) is inevitably and irrevocably constituted in and by the fields of struggle we occupy.33 His colonialism thus staggers between a vulgar Marxism which stresses an autonomous subject who can/must reject (or accept) colonialism and an equally vulgar structural-functionalism that measures Indigenous agency and collective choices against a Cartesian indigeneity which exists outside the life and reach of contemporary nation-states’ cultural power.
2nd- Paternalism
The aff attempt to “save” indigenous people is a recasting of whiteman’s burden- it relies on the belief that indigenous groups are too primitive to make their own economic decisions Gover and Walker 92 (Kevin, Prof of Law ASU, Jana L, ESCAPING ENVIRONMENTAL PATERNALISM: ONE TRIBE'S APPROACH TO DEVELOPING A COMMERCIAL WASTE DISPOSAL PROJECT IN INDIAN COUNTRY http://faculty.virginia.edu/ejus/ESCAPE.htm) We have been asked to address the issue of environmental racism in the context of commercial solid and hazardous waste projects on Indian reservations. Let us say at the outset that we have no quarrel with those who believe that undesirable facilities-such as waste disposal facilities more likely to be found in a poor minority community than in a wealthy white one.' However, the environmental community must come to understand that not all such facilities are unwanted by the host community and that, in those cases where a community wishes to have such a facility, its decision is to be respected. As an example of such a host community located in Indian country, we will use our experience in helping the Campo Band of Mission Indians of California develop a solid waste project on its reservation. With respect to waste disposal, there are two issues facing Indian tribes today. First, how do tribes dispose of the solid waste generated on their reservations, and second, does a tribe want to use its land as a site for a commercial waste project as a form of economic development? Almost without exception, over the last year the media has focused its entire attention on the issue of commercial projects. We cannot count the number of articles in magazines and newspapers titled "Dances with Garbage."2 The media has created a steady drumbeat of stories about tribes all over the country building landfills and taking in hazardous waste, implying that the waste industry is marauding unchecked in Indian country, immune from any environmental regulation whatsoever. Is it true? In our experience over the last few years, this is just not the case, and we believe that much of the media attention has been misguided and uninformed. Even if we assume that some waste companies are targeting Indian country, tribes have almost always repelled these so-called attacks.3 In most cases, tribes are not even giving these companies an interview. Of the dozens of proposals that apparently have been made to tribes, only a small number remain under serious consideration.4 Tribal governments quite clearly have demonstrated that they are fully capable of deciding whether or not a project will serve their best interests. To set the record straight, the bigger problem is not that the waste industry is beating a path to the tribal door. Rather, it is the unauthorized and illegal dumping occurring on reservations. For most Indian communities the problem of open dumping on tribal lands is of much greater concern than the remote prospect that a commercial waste disposal facility may be sited on a reservation. Until 1986, Congress had left tribal governments completely out of the federal environmental scheme. In 1986, Congress enacted the first tribal amendments to federal environmental laws. Those amendments allowed tribes to be treated as states for program enforcement and grants under the Safe Drinking Water Act.5 Congress enacted similar amendments to Superfund in 1986,6 the Clean Water Act in 1987,7 and the Clean Air Act in 1990. 8 Unfortunately, Congress has not yet enacted tribal amendments to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)9 authorizing tribes to assume primary enforcement authority for solid and hazardous waste programs. This means that even though tribes possess inherent authority to do so,10 tribal amendments will be necessary before tribes will be eligible under RCRA for any federal grant or contract assistance to deal with their waste problems. On Indian lands, it is estimated that there are over 650 sites where solid waste has been disposed of.11 This includes 108 tribally-owned landfills constructed years ago by the Indian Health Service (IHS).12 Although IHS originally built these landfills to meet the then existing federal standards, now, under the more stringent federal standards, only a handful of the 108 are reported to be in compliance with EPA requirements.13 One estimate by the Indian Health Service found that it would cost $160 million to construct on reservations solid waste facilities that would be in compliance with EPA standards,14 and to date, we do not know where this money will come from.15 The threat of tribal environmental liability comes at a time when Indian reservations are some of the most impoverished places in the country. Off the reservations, states, counties, and cities are scrambling to deal with their own problems of an ever increasing waste stream, rapidly dwindling capacity in existing landfills, and increasing public opposition to the siting of "locally unwanted land uses"-or"LULUs"-such as landfills. We refer to these public position groups as NIMBYs or "Not in My Backyard" groups. Another term used to describe them which seems particularly fitting where tribal waste projects are concerned is "CAVE" or "citizens against virtually everything." At any rate, the overall high poverty level for Indian communities and the NIMBY pressure on state and local governments to put landfills in someone else's backyard have contributed to the false belief that reservations alone have been targeted by the waste companies. The second and more controversial issue facing tribes involves the use of reservation lands as sites for commercial solid and hazardous waste disposal facilities. Looking at the waste industry as a form of economic development, in many respects it can be a good match for tribal communities. The industry is usually willing to pay the costs of developing new projects without requiring a tribe to put any cash up front. Since most tribes just do not have the money to independently fund large-scale economic development, this makes the industry attractive to Indian communities desperate for development. The waste industry needs isolation and an abundance of land, and, again, because of the overall lack of tribal economic development, undeveloped land is a resource that many tribes have. The waste industry also provides numerous opportunities for unskilled and semi-skilled workers, including training in the construction and environment compliance fields. On most reservations, unemployment is extremely high and opportunities for training Indians very limited. Finally, the waste industry is and must be recognized as an indispensable and legitimate part of the services sector of the economy, and as such, can be an extremely profitable form of development for tribes. All of this means that, under certain circumstances, a solid or hazardous waste disposal project may represent a viable and appropriate form of industrial development for some tribes and can provide extraordinary opportunities for economic development on some reservations. It is not appropriate for every community, and we certainly are not urging tribes to site waste facilities on their reservations. Each tribe must decide for itself if it is interested in such development. Our intent is merely to put things in a more honest perspective and to describe one process that, when and if a tribe seriously considers a commercial waste proposal, it can use to evaluate the proposal effectively and, if it's feasible, plan for its development. (Continued) For tribes considering developing commercial waste projects on their reservations, the major issue they face will not be an environmental one, but instead one of power and racism. Much of the environmental community seems to assume that, if an Indian community decides to accept such a project, it either does not understand the Potential consequences or has been bamboozled by an unprincipled waste company. In either case, the clear implication is that Indians lack the intelligence to balance and protect adequately their own economic and environmental interests. This is clearly a racist assumption; the same assumption that guided the federal policies that very nearly eradicated Indian people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.40 It is "environmentalist racism," and ultimately every bit as destructive as the open hostility to Indian people that we experience in many Parts Of this country.
The affirmative has a one size fits all solution – allowing each group to decide is the best solution Leonard, JD, 97 (Louis G., Executive Editor, 1996 -- 1997, BOSTON COLLEGE THIRD WORLD LAW JOURNAL. SOVEREIGNTY, SELF-DETERMINATION, AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE MESCALERO APACHE'S DECISION TO STORE NUCLEAR WASTE 24 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 651 Spring) If there are adequate improvements in the federal regulatory framework surrounding nuclear waste, and improvements in internal tribal decision-making, tribes should have the general authority to decide whether to allow a waste-site on their land. Increased technical assistance and greater involvement by tribes at the federal level will help to educate tribal members from the outset and thus allow for an informed decision and a real opportunity for tribes to better resolve these issues for themselves. n355 This type of empowerment through education and knowledge is the only way to begin to right the generations of marginalization and discrimination that have characterized mainstream society's relationships with tribes throughout history. n356 These are the recommendations of an environmental justice approach: tribal self-determination empowered by knowledge. n357
Subpoint B: Our Critique turns and outweighs the case
Discourse matters- the resolution choses the policies we discuss but the affirmative picked their advantage framing for strategic purposes- they should have to bear the strategic costs for these choices- live by the sword die by the sword 2. Resolveability- our PIC solves any policy implications of their advocacy, in order to win the affirmative must win that their advantage framing is valuable. This is fair and predictable- since they get to pick what goes in the AC they should be prepared to defend it 3. The kritik turns the case- essentialist notions of indigenous identity are the root cause of imperialism Chow, PhD, 98 *Rey, Prof. Modern Culture and Media @Brown, Ethics After Idealism, p. 8-9) On the other hand, precisely because of the obstinacy of the methods of area studies, this is also a moment of danger because the turn toward "other" cultures that is espoused in the name of cultural studies could easily be used to refuse and replace rather than strengthen the theoretical modes of inquiry that remain a valuable part of comparative literature. For instance, it is disturbing to hear a kind of claim that is now often made about the study of nonWestern cultures in the age of multiculturalism: "Now we can go back to the study of indigenous cultures and forget all about `Western theory'!" Even though this is a caricatural paraphrase, I believe it accurately sums up the sentiments that are involved in the antitheoretical clamor for cultural studies. Let me be more specific about why such sentiments are problematic. In the age of the general criticism of Western imperialism, the study of nonWestern cultures easily assumes a kind of moral superiority, since such cultures are often also those that have been colonized and ideologically dominated by the West. For the same reason, "theory," for all its fundamental questioning of Western logocentrism, has easily but effectively been lumped together with everything "Western" and facilely rejected as a nonnecessity. This is evident in the manner in which the following type of question, for all its illogicality, continues to be in vogue among some practitioners of Asian studies: "Why should we use Western theory to study Asian cultures?" In the climate of multiculturalism, such practitioners find in cultural studies' obligatory turns toward pluralism a kind of rhetorical justification that works to their own advantage—for what better "reason" is there for the rejection of "Western theory" than the widely advocated study of "other" cultures? In the name of studying the West's ''others," then, the critique of cultural politics that is an inherent part of both poststructural theory and cultural studies is pushed aside, and "culture" returns to a coherent, idealist essence that is outside language and outside mediation. 21 Pursued in a morally complacent, antitheoretical mode, "culture" now functions as a shield that hides the positivism, essentialism, and nativism—and with them the continual acts of hierarchization, subordination, and marginalization—that have persistently accompanied the pedagogical practices of area studies; "cultural studies" now becomes a means of legitimizing continual conceptual and methodological irresponsibility in the name of cultural otherness. One prominent instance of such legitimation is the argument for returning to "indigenous" origins. As Spivak points out, the notion of a return to pure "indigenous theory" is not a viable one because of the history of imperialism: I cannot understand what indigenous theory there might be that can ignore the reality of nineteenthcentury history. As for syntheses: syntheses have more problems than answers to offer. To construct indigenous theories one must ignore the last few centuries of historical involvement. I would rather use what history has written for me.22 To add to Spivak's point, it should be emphasized that the advocacy for a return to indigenous theory and culture usually masks, with the violence of "the West," the violence of the cultural politics that is within an indigenous culture.
4. The external impact outweighs the case- their AC framing promotes fascism that causes global imperialism Chow, PhD, 98 *Rey, Prof. Modern Culture and Media @Brown, Ethics After Idealism, p. 26-7) The Story of O, or, the New Fascism In the foregoing pages, I have tried to argue that fascism needs to be understood not only in its negative but more importantly in its positive aspects, and that fascism's production of idealism is a projectional production of luminosity as self evidence. In an essay entitled "The Evidence of Experience," which does not at first seem to have anything to do with the topic of fascism, Joan Scott has made comparable observations about the use of "experience" in the North American academy today. 39 In the general atmosphere of a felt need to deconstruct universalist claims about human history, Scott writes, scholars of various disciplines have increasingly turned to personal experience as a means of such deconstruction. However, she argues, by privileging experience as the critical weapon against universalisms, we are leaving open the question as to what authorizes experience itself. Scott charges that the appeal to experience "as uncontestable evidence and as an originary point of explanation" for historical difference has increasingly replaced the necessary task of exploring "how difference is established, how it operates, how and in what ways it constitutes subjects who see and act in the world."40 For me, what is especially interesting is the manner in which Scott emphasizes the role of vision and visibility throughout her essay. Beginning her discussion with Samuel R. Delany's autobiographical meditation, The Motion of Light in Water, Scott notes that "a metaphor of visibility as literal transparency is crucial to his project." She concludes that, for Delany, "knowledge is gained through vision; vision is a direct apprehension of a world of transparent objects."41 What Scott articulates here is the other side of Virilio's argument about the coterminous nature of visual perception and destruction—that is, the coterminous nature of visual perception and knowledge: "Seeing is the origin of knowing."42 While the technology of seeing, or seeing as technology, has become an inalienable part of the operation of militarism and fascist propaganda, Scott shows how it has also come to dominate our thinking about identity, so much so that visibility and luminosity are the conditions toward which accounts of difference and alternative histories derived from "personal experience" now aspire. This kind of aspiration, Scott implies, is an aspiration toward the selfevidence of the self's (personal) experience. The self as evidence: this means that the self, like the Stalin myth in Soviet cinema, is so transparent, so shone through with light, that it simply is, without need for further argument about its history or what Scott calls its "discursive character."
5. No aff offense- racism and romanticism are two sides of the same coin- their turns don’t grapple with the critical distinction between essentialized and nuanced conceptions of native identity Gagne, PhD, 3 (Karen, Prof. Sociology @Wisconsin Platteville, “Falling in Love With Indians: The Metaphysics of Becoming America.” CR: The New Centennial Review, 3:3 p. 206-207) Rroberto fernández retamar argues in caliban and other essays (1989) that the image of the Carib/cannibal, a “bestial man situated on the margins of civilization,” is contrasted with that of the Arawak/Taino, the peaceful, meek, and even timorously cowardly native. This Taino, he writes, would be transformed into the paradisiacal inhabitant of a utopian world—as in the world of Thomas More in 1516. Further, this notion of an Edenic creature would serve as a “working hypothesis for the bourgeois left, and, as such, offers an ideal model of the perfect society free from the constrictions of that feudal world against which the bourgeoisie is in fact struggling.” The vision of the cannibal, then, corresponds to the right wing of that same bourgeoisie. Retamar writes, “It belongs to the ideological arsenal of politicians of action, those who perform the dirty work in whose fruits the charming dreamers of utopias will equally share” (7; my emphasis). Both of these visions, as Shakespeare was to address in The Tempest, were perfectly reconcilable. The first epigraph I include above came from a book I found recently at a feminist bookshop. While I had hoped to find some literature to support my topic, I hadn’t expected to find one quite so precisely related to my premise concerning both “falling in love” and “becoming American.” But there it was, right on display near the register. Upon reading it, I considered it a different angle on the subject of representing Native Americans than that provided by Ian Frazier’s On the Rez (2000), and realized that both works provided contemporary examples of becoming American by falling in love with “natives.” Its author is an “acclaimed environmental activist and essay writer,” and the book is titled in very simple letters, Red. The subtitle, in much smaller letters, is Passion and Patience in the Desert (Williams 2001). The title of my paper is a twist on Richard Drinnon’s Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (1997). I argue that both Indian loving and Indian hating constitute two sides of the same racialization of the indigenous populations of the Americas, as well as two sides in the racialization of the colonizers. This duality has been significant to the process of the Self-development of the colonizer. Far from being a process of psychological development of the individual European, however, this process is the “collective attitude” that is the history of the Americas, to use a phrase by E. Franklin Frazier, cited by Greg Thomas (1999); it is “part of American psychology and the mentality of America,” to quote Robert F. Williams, cited again by Greg Thomas (2002). Further, these two ideas—which tend to coincide with the left and right visions of the bourgeoisie—are complementary rather than contradictory, as suggested by Retamar (7). They are complimentary visions in the “arsenal of the bourgeois,” and must be attacked accordingly.
Our alternative embraces epistemological pluralism- it recognizes the diversity and density of native communities instead of homogenizing them as a collective group of noble savages bamboozled by the nuclear industry. Emphasizing density instead of absolute difference avoids throwing out the baby with the bathwater Andersen, PhD, 09 (Chris, Prof. Native Studies @ Alberta, “critical indigenous studies From Difference to Density” Cultural Studies Review 15 (2) p. 95-6) By way of conclusion, let me offer some thoughts on where my removal of difference—a central pillar of Champagne’s Native studies—leaves us with respect to fashioning a discipline which can honour our past complexity while accounting for its contemporary and future manifestations.68 Champagne spends much of his analytical time arguing that Western concepts and disciplines are of only limited use to Indigenous studies because they fail to account for the distinctive needs, aspirations and epistemologies of Indigenous communities. A proper Indigenous studies discipline must thus produce: points of view and conceptualizations drawing on the everyday strategies and conceptions of American Indian communities that require mainstream academics and policy makers to rethink and extend the views of indigenous groups, as a means to include their views and socio-cultural actions outside the use of class, ethnicity, race, and even nationality. Native American Studies, and more generally indigenous studies, calls for conceptualizations and strategies that encompass issues, rights, and strategies of political, cultural, and territorial survival.69 He thus positions Native studies (a position familiar to Native studies practitioners) as a dog on the leash for Indigenous communities and nations. Such a position offers little in the way of analysis about the complexity of academic/community relations but it certainly feels good to say. He doesn’t appear to realise the extent to which analysing such a relationship necessarily requires sliding into disciplinary territory long claimed by other disciplines. If his point is that as Indigenous studies practitioners we need to claim this territory as our own, I am in full agreement. My point is merely that staking such a claim requires none of the epistemological baggage he wants to pack for the journey, and indeed raises troubling issues that require us to carefully unpack what he proposes to bring. Two of these are worth unpacking here. First, the community/academic relationship which appears to anchor Champagne’s formulation is problematic in that it ignores the ways that whiteness in the academy shapes the boundaries of its knowledge production in ways which do not necessarily subscribe to the regimes under which community knowledges are produced: Moreton-Robinson contends quite rightly that such representations ‘may not reflect the same knowledges about authenticity that are created and deployed within and by Indigenous communities and as such they may not be acceptable’.70 In ignoring this complexity, how on earth is Champagne to deal with the conflicts that inevitably arise? It does little good to acquiesce to one discourse or the other (though more often than not academic representations are given the nod), nor can we pretend that such differences are always reconcilable. These conflicts arise in situations pertaining to fundamentally irreconcilable positions on precisely the relationships between humans and nature (as Champagne points to) but they can also arise in more mundane situations, such as how to provide honorariums for elders involved in research projects in ways which don’t claw back from their monthly social assistance cheques. Second, even (or especially) if Indigenous studies is a dog on the leash for Indigenous communities and nations, why does this necessarily require an entirely new set of theoretical or methodological precepts that differ from those of mainstream disciplines? I agree with the broad strokes of Champagne’s argument about constructing a specific niche for ourselves in the academic, as do many other Native studies practitioners. But many of us have been involved in situations in which an Indigenous community has approached our department to ask for research assistance for mundane issues about collecting data on telephone or internet use in their community; proper application of census documents to produce the robust statistical profiles through which they interface with government funders; water purity samples to make determinations of water safety; or even archival documents to assist them in legal battles over hunting, fishing and other resource extraction questions. Although the disciplines of sociology, biological sciences, history or anthropology could and have undertaken this assistance, so can many existing Indigenous studies departments. It seems inherently strange to call for a theoretical and methodological orientation—and thus, according to Champagne, a discipline—which possessed none of this capability. His model presupposes the difference of Indigenous communities and in doing so slams the shutters closed on forms of expertise which might nonetheless prove of central concern to the communities. Champagne contends that ‘the issues confronting indigenous peoples are not reducible to race, class, ethnicity or other common analytical dimensions in use within mainstream disciplines’.71 The problem, from an epistemological standpoint, is that no issues of any peoples can be reduced to these factors. Concepts—all concepts—are by definition schematic and as such are laughably simplistic in the face of the enormous complexity of human life. This complexity requires us to acknowledge that Indigenous communities are—and have been for centuries—more than the ‘holistic, institutionally nondifferentiated’ entities in which ‘knowledge is inherently integrated with community, culture, and political and economic relations’72 painted by Champagne. Thus, although not fully captured by terms like race, ethnicity or class, such terms nonetheless assist greatly in reflecting upon the relationships between our communities and the various nation-states, and not only because they possess symbolic power in dominant society. The real irony of Champagne’s model of Indigenous studies is that his choices of analytical focus require none of the theoretical or methodological prescriptions he begs of them. For example, his most prominent critique of Indigenous studies—that a ‘cacophony’ of theoretical and methodological tools will ‘doom’ it to institutional marginality73—is usually emphasised as a disciplinary strength. Thus, Indigenous studies scholar Jace Weaver writes that: in dealing with the totalizing systems that we know as Native cultures, each view from traditional disciplines is limited and partial, NAS must draw together the various disciplines and their methods in order to achieve something approaching a complete picture of Natives, their cultures and experiences.74 This isn’t an issue for Champagne, apparently, since his positioning of Indigenous communities strips them of any of the epistemological complexity that would require us to intrude on others’ disciplinary turf. He sees this as his model’s strength but in fact it becomes its Achilles heel. By beginning with the assumption that Indigenous communities are epistemologically dense (rather than just different), however, Weaver’s appeal for interdisciplinarity becomes vital. Indeed, failure to account, interdisciplinarily, for this density elevates the danger of producing a naive, substantialist and ultimately parochial Indigenous studies.
CP Text: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should designate sub-seabed disposal as the sole candidate for its permanent nuclear waste repository. Wilson 14
Wilson, founder of BuildingGreen, Inc. and executive editor of Environmental Building News, founded the Resilient Design Institute Alex, "Safe Storage of Nuclear Waste", Green Building Advisor, www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/energy-solutions/safe-storage-nuclear-waste SP
The big question now is how long it will be until the plant can be decommissioned and what to do with the large quantities of radioactive waste that are being stored onsite. Terrorism risks with nuclear power My concern with nuclear power has always been more about terrorism than accidents during operation or storage. I continue to worry that terrorists could gain entry to nuclear plant operations and sabotage plants from the inside — disabling cooling systems and causing a meltdown. There is also a remote risk of unanticipated natural disasters causing meltdowns or radiation release, as we saw so vividly with the Fukushima Power Plant catastrophe in Japan in March, 2011. For more than 30 years, the nuclear industry in the U.S. and nuclear regulators have been going down the wrong path with waste storage — seeking a repository where waste could be buried deep in a mountain. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was the place of choice until… it wasn’t. Any time we choose to put highly dangerous waste in someone’s backyard, it’s bound to cause a lot of controversy, even in a sparsely populated, pro-resource-extraction place like Nevada. NIMBY opposition can be boosted by people in powerful places, and in the case of Yucca Mountain, Nevada senator Harry Reid has played such a role. (He has been the Senate Majority Leader since 2006 and served prior to that as the Minority Leader and Democratic Whip.) Aside from NIMBYism, the problem with burying nuclear waste in a mountain (like Yucca Mountain) or salt caverns (like New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns — an earlier option that was pursued for a while in the 1970s) is that the maximum safety is provided at Day One, and the margin of safety drops continually from there. The safety of such storage sites could be compromised over time due to seismic activity (Nevada ranks fourth among the most seismically active states), volcanism (the Yucca Mountain ridge is comprised mostly of volcanic tuff, emitted from past volcanic activity), erosion, migrating aquifers, and other natural geologic actions. A better storage option I believe a much better solution for long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste is to bury it deep under the seabed in a region free of seismic activity where sediment is being deposited and the seafloor getting thicker. In such a site, the level of protection would increase, rather than decrease, over time. In some areas of seabed, more than a centimeter of sediment is being deposited annually. Compacted over time, such sediment deposition could be several feet in a hundred years, and in the geologic time span over which radioactive waste is hazardous, hundreds to thousands of feet of protective sedimentary rock would be formed. The oil and gas industry — for better or worse — knows a lot about drilling deep holes beneath a mile or two of ocean. I suspect that the deep-sea drilling industry would love such a growth opportunity to move into seabed waste storage, and I believe the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or other agencies could do a good job regulating such work. The waste could be placed in wells extending thousands of feet below the seabed in sedimentary rock in geologically stable regions. Let's say a 3,000-foot well is drilled beneath the seabed two miles beneath the surface of the ocean. Waste could be inserted into that well to a depth of 1,000 feet, and the rest of the well capped with 2,000 feet of concrete or some other material. Hundreds of these deep-storage wells could be filled and capped, and such a sub-seabed storage field could be designated as forever off-limits. Industry or the Department of Energy would have to figure out how to package such waste for safe handling at sea, since the material is so dangerous, but I believe that is a surmountable challenge. For example, perhaps the radioactive waste could be vitrified (incorporated into molten glass-like material) to reduce leaching potential into seawater should an accident occur at sea, and that waste could be tagged with radio-frequency emitters so that any lost containers could be recovered with robotic submarines in the event of such accidents. While I’m not an expert in any of this, I’ve looked at how much money taxpayers and industry have already poured into Yucca Mountain — about $15 billion by the time the Obama Administration terminated federal funding for it in 2010, according to Bloomberg News — and the estimates for how much more it would take to get a working waste storage facility of that sort operational had risen to about $96 billion by 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Energy at the time. I believe that sub-seabed storage would be far less expensive.
Solves the aff ssd is able to isolate any radioactive nuclear waste from humans. Bala 2014
Amal Bala, Sub-Seabed Burial of Nuclear Waste: If the Disposal Method Could Succeed Technically, Could It Also Succeed Legally?, 41 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 455 (2014),SP
In general, two related methods of underwater disposal of SNF exist: dumping containers of radioactive waste into the ocean, and sub-seabed disposal. 92 The purpose of underwater disposal of SNF is the same as any other type of SNF disposal, which is to isolate radioactive waste from human contact and the environment long enough for any release of radiation to become harmless.93 The potential advantages of certain types of underwater SNF disposal for the United States could include effective containment of the waste and avoiding the controversy of a land-based national repository, such as the failed project at Yucca Mountain. 94 Underwater disposal of SNF, specifically subseabed disposal, could occur far from the coast of any state or nation and could thereby avoid the NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) syndrome, but this result is not guaranteed considering existing laws and a popular belief that Earth’s oceans are a global commons
A. Interp: The aff must defend that all countries prohibit the production of nuclear power. To clarify, they can’t advocate that a certain country or subset of countries prohibit nuclear power.
Counterplans that prohibit nuclear power for all countries except for one country or a subset of countries are theoretically illegitimate.====
Generic nouns such as “countries” without an article are the most common type of generalization, used in all contexts of writing and speech. Byrd “Generic Meaning,” Georgia State University, Transcript of lecture given by Pat Byrd (Department of Applied Linguistics and ESL). Douglas Biber and Susan Conrad, two of the authors of the Longman Grammar, have written about what they call "seemingly synonymous words." They have shown how the adjectives big, great, and large are used differently in academic writing from in fiction. Their point is that when a language has forms that seem to be synonyms--the forms are likely to be used in different ways in different settings. One can't just be substituted for another without a change in meaning or a violation of style. A big toe isn't the same as a large toe. And I don't think I know what a great toe might be. Or, for another example, a political scientist would call Georgia a large state but not necessarily a great state. But a politician from Georgia is likely to talk about the great State of Georgia.¶ A similar process is at work with the use of these generic forms in context. We have a set of sentences that seem to have very much the same meaning. It is probable that the uses of these forms do not entirely overlap. However, we do not yet have a complete picture of how generic forms are used. But the use of computers for linguistic research is a new field, and we get more information all the time. ¶ Here are some things that we do know about these generic noun phrase types when they are used in context:¶ 1. The + singular: The computer has changed modern life. ¶ This form is considered more formal than the others--and is not as likely to be used in conversation as the plural noun: Computers have changed modern life. ¶ Master (1987) found in the sample that he analyzed that this form with the was often used to introduce at topic--and came at the beginning of a paragraph and in introductions and conclusions.¶ 2. Zero + plural: Computers are machines. Computers have changed modern life. ¶ Probably the most common form for a generalization. It can be used in all contexts--including both conversation (Basketball players make too much money) and academic writing (Organisms as diverse as humans and squid share many biological processes). ¶ Perhaps used more in the hard sciences and social sciences than in the humanities. ¶ 3. A + singular: A computer is a machine. ¶ This generic structure is used to refer to individual instances of a whole group and is used to classify whatever is being discussed.¶ The form is often used for definitions of terms. ¶ It is also often used to explain occupations. My sister is a newspaper reporter. I am a teacher. ¶ Use is limited to these "classifying" contexts. Notice that this form can't always be subtituted for the other: *Life has been changed by a computer. *A computer has changed modern life. ¶ 4. Zero + noncount: Life has been changed by the computer. ¶ The most basic meaning and use of noncount nouns is generic--they are fundamentally about a very abstract level of meaning. Thus, the most common use of noncount nouns is this use with no article for generic meaning. ¶ Zero Article and Generic Meaning¶ Most nouns without articles have generic meaning. Two types are involved.¶ 1. Zero + plural: Computers are machines. Computers have changed modern life.¶ 2. Zero + noncount: Life has been changed by the computer.
Determining semantics comes before other standards: A. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it. B. Grammar is the most objective since it doesn’t rely on arbitrary determinants of what constitutes the best type of debate – it’s the only impact you can evaluate. C. The AFF isn’t topical regardless of fairness or education since it doesn’t affirm the text - we wouldn’t debate rehab again just because it was a good topic. Regardless of theory, you negate substantively because they fail their resolutional burden.
B. Violation: They specify
C. Standards:
1. Limits – they allow way too many affs. In addition to the 45 countries with plants or plants under-construction, there are over 45 additional countries considering nuclear power – some of which don’t even have government level consideration – exploding NEG prep burden and predictability which kills fairness and engagement. Procedurally, if I can’t access their education it doesn’t matter. T version of the AFF solves their offense – they can read advantages specific to any country which ensures NEG responses
Even if there are some turns, that AFF is massively over prepared for them since it limits their prep burden. Generics don’t solve – agent CPs or state bad Ks aren’t persuasive vs a nuanced AFF.
D. Vote on substantive engagement: otherwise we’re speaking without debating and there’s nothing to separate us from dueling oratory. It also creates the most valuable long-term skills since we need to learn how to defend our beliefs in any context, like politics.
Drop the debater on T:
A. Hold them accountable for their interp – a topical advocacy frames the debate - drop the arg lets them jump ship to a new layer killing NEG ground. B. Drop the arg on T is the same thing as drop the debater since T indicts their advocacy
Competing interps since reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.====
No RVIs: A. They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows. B. They can run theory on me too if I’m unfair so 1) theory is reciprocal because we’re both able to check abuse and 2) also cures time skew because they can collapse in the 2ar to their shell.
9/10/16
SEPT-OCT T-Nuclear Power
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Evanston HS | Judge: Rebecca Kuang A: West’s Encyclopedia of American Law defines nuclear power as: "Nuclear Power." West's Encyclopedia of American Law, edition 2. 2008. The Gale Group 16 Aug. 2016 http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Nuclear+Power A form of energy produced by an atomic reaction, capable of producing an alternative source of electrical power to that supplied by coal, gas, or oil. The dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States in 1945 initiated the atomic age. Nuclear energy immediately became a military weapon of terrifying magnitude. For the physicists who worked on the atom bomb, the promise of nuclear energy was not solely military. They envisioned nuclear power as a safe, clean, cheap, and abundant source of energy that would end society's dependence on fossil fuels. At the end of World War II, leaders called for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
B: The define nuclear weapons – a) doesn’t defend electrical power and b) weapons aren’t used as power.
C. Standards
Legal definition: NPT, Nuclear Weapons Feezone across Africa, Japan giving up nuclear weapons all prove they are different and use different regulatory mechanisms. And our definition of power comes from an encyclopedia of American Law, which proves we have the most precise legal definition.
Legal definition controls the i/l into critique because having debates about concepts in the way they don’t get applied makes us lazy advocates where our theories and advocacy can’t affect change in the world.
Engagement controls the I/l to any education or advocacy skills offense - Galloway 07
Ryan, “DINNER AND CONVERSATION AT THE ARGUMENTATIVE TABLE: RECONCEPTUALIZING DEBATE AS AN ARGUMENTATIVE DIALOGUE”, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007)
Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning: Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound decisions. Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an informed people who subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such discussion that we reach agreement which binds us to a common cause…If we are to be equal…relationships among equals must find expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197). Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). For example, an affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is oppressive or that actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing them from offering effective “counter-word” and undermining the value of a meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.
Also bad for procedural fairness because it makes the debate unpredictable and removes discussion from the way it’s discussed in the topic, which pidegon wholes the neg into a self-serving discussion where we only get generics.
2. Core Controversy - Contemporary debates separate the two – the debate about nuclear power is about. Debates about nuclear power are about energy. Herbst 07 “New Debate Over Nuclear Option,” Moira Herbst, 3/26/07, Bloomberg. In recent years, as prices for oil have surged and concerns over global warming have grown, experts around the world have debated ways to develop alternatives to traditional energy, from using corn for ethanol to harnessing wind for electricity. And governments from India to Britain to the U.S. are considering whether to make more use of a long-standing, but controversial energy source: nuclear power.¶ In the U.S., politicians as diverse as President George W. Bush and onetime rival Al Gore have expressed interest in expanding nuclear power (see BusinessWeek.com, 3/21/07, "Gore Rings a Green Alarm"). A key reason is nuclear power's reputation for being clean, because such plants typically don't generate the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. Just this month, Exelon (EXC) won approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a site on which they could build the first new U.S. nuclear power plant since 1979.¶ The controversy, of course, has long been over the hazards of using radioactive materials to produce energy. Twenty-eight years ago this week, on Mar. 28, 1979, an accident at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania sparked protests against nuclear plants in the U.S. The movement was solidified seven years later by the Chernobyl meltdown in the Soviet Union. Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club remain staunchly opposed to nuclear power.
Key to engagement because the central controversy of the topic is what the most literature and pre round prep centers on, so we have better ways to engage the aff. They also skew any preround prep, which means their discussion is bad.
3. Limits – they explode the topic by letting the aff tangentially defend anything, makes it impossible for the neg to prep.
4. Topical version of the AFF – defend energy and say that the criticism spills over
D. Vote on substantive engagement: otherwise we’re speaking without debating and there’s nothing to separate us from dueling oratory. It also creates the most valuable long-term skills since we need to learn how to defend our beliefs in any context, like politics.
Drop the debater on T:
A. Hold them accountable for their interp – a topical advocacy frames the debate - drop the arg lets them jump ship to a new layer killing NEG ground. B. Drop the arg on T is the same thing as drop the debater since T indicts their advocacy
Competing interps since reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation.
No RVIs - They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows
10/16/16
SEPT-OCT T-Plural
Tournament: Voices | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Peninsula JL | Judge: Bistagne, Go, Dada A. Interp: The aff must defend that two or more countries prohibit the production of nuclear power. “Countries” in the resolution is a plural noun which implicates more than one country. Scocco 07. Daniel Scocco, 2007 (English Grammar 101: Plural Form of Nouns. Online. Internet. Accessed May 13, 2014 at http://www.dailywritingtips.com/english-grammar-101-plural-form-of-nouns/) The English language has both regular and irregular plural forms of nouns. The most common case is when you need to add -s to the noun. For example one car and two cars.
B. Violation: The plan only prohibits nuclear power in one country
C) Standards:
1) Limits: their interp allows for a variety of single country cases as opposed to cases that affect the nuclear power production more broadly. Small cases are bad because of link magnitude – the warming DA doesn’t link hard to the Belgium aff
2) Resolution context: the resolution pluralizes countries for a reason.
D) Voting issue: you can’t vote for the aff regardless of fairness or education if they don’t meet the resolutional burden. Hold them accountable for their interp – topical advocacy frames the debate. You are literally not topical
Competing interps since reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation. You cant be reasonably topical
No RVIs: They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows
10/14/16
SEPT-OCT T-Plural v2
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lynbrook NS | Judge: David Dosch A. Interp: The aff must defend that two or more countries prohibit the production of nuclear power. “Countries” in the resolution is a plural noun which implicates more than one country. Scocco 07 Daniel Scocco, 2007 (English Grammar 101: Plural Form of Nouns. Online. Internet. Accessed May 13, 2014 at http://www.dailywritingtips.com/english-grammar-101-plural-form-of-nouns/) The English language has both regular and irregular plural forms of nouns. The most common case is when you need to add -s to the noun. For example one car and two cars.
B. Violation: The plan only prohibits nuclear power in one country
C) The standard is jurisdiction: the resolution they agreed to debate pluralizes countries for a reason. Outweighs all pragmatic standards:
1) Topicality is a constitutive rule of the activity, they agreed to debate the topic when they came to the tournament, and they should be held to that agreement. Tournament invitation says we are debating September/October – not a different topic.
2) You only have jurisdiction to vote on topical advocacies, you can’t vote affirmative if they haven’t affirmed.
3) Grammar is the most objective since it doesn’t rely on arbitrary determinants of what constitutes the best type of debate – it’s the only impact you can evaluate. This also means ground and education arguments beg the question of what type of ground they are entitled to in the first place. T
4) It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement, and there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it.
D) Voting issue: you can’t vote for the aff regardless of fairness or education if they don’t meet the resolutional burden. Hold them accountable for their interp – topical advocacy frames the debate.
Competing interps since A) reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention based on preference rather than argumentation and encourages a race to the bottom in which debaters exploit a judge’s tolerance for questionable argumentation. B) they cant be reasonably topical
No RVIs: A) Topicality is an aff burden, you don’t win just because you meet that burden, just like you wouldn’t win for meeting the burden of having inherency B) They incentivize debaters to go all in in theory and bait it with abusive practices, killing substantive clash on other flows
10/16/16
SEPT-OCT Ukraine Russia CP
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lynbrook NS | Judge: David Dosch Ukraine will stop the import of all Russian state owned nuclear power and will stop accepting funding of all materials or funding from Russian nuclear power plants, but will retain the right to produce nuclear power form other exporters. Blomme 15 Brian Blomme (Climate and energy communications manager for Greenpeace International), Count on the nuclear industry to have strange things happen, 7/7/15, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/Rosatom-Finnish-nuclear-project/blog/53456/ VC There's more. Mikhail Zhukov heads up Inteco, which used to be owned by the richest woman in Russia, Yelena Baturina. She happens to be married to Yuri Lužkov, the former mayor of Moscow. Baturina sold Inteco to 50 state-owned Sberbank and to billionaire Mihail Shishkanov. Sberbank is an essential financier of Rosatom. Given these unsettling findings, Greenpeace warned the Finnish government to carefully examine the license application by Fennovoima to ensure it meets ownership criteria and is in best interests of the country. But the concerns are bigger than Finland. As our Finnish program manager, Sini Harkki, said: "This game that Fennovoima and Rosatom appear to be playing should be a concern to any country that is in discussions with Rosatom regarding building nuclear reactors. If the state corporation is ready to play a game with something as simple as ownership rules, what else will it play games with in building a dangerous reactor?" Rosatom is actively pursuing nuclear contracts around the world. And this warning is something many other countries should heed. In October 2014, Greenpeace released a report on the problems with Rosatom and the Russian nuclear industry. This ownership game appears to be consistent with the kinds of problems that plague Rosatom and should be required reading for politicians in any country thinking of cutting a deal with Rosatom. Fennovoima and Rosatom looked for years for investors. Yet it only took a few days to expose what appears to be a hoax, and a front for Russian capital. That's not the end of nuclear problems in Finland. The country is suffering through a protracted mess with Areva, the French nuclear company, over the building the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant. The project is years late and billions over budget with no end to the problems in sight. With lessons like those from Rosatom and Areva's Finnish nuclear projects, it is no wonder that in Finland the public majority is against nuclear. In spite of the people's will, Finland's current energy strategy relies on nuclear. But with ample renewable resources to be developed and the usual mess with nuclear projects, it is time to reconsider that strategy, listen to the will of the Finnish citizens, and move into the nuclear-free clean-energy future.
Competes – Ukraine doesn’t ban and net benefits.
Ukraine moving closer to the EU now. Lies 4/7 Elaine Lies, Ukraine says it will push towards EU despite rejection by Dutch voters, 4/7/16, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-eu-poroshenko-idUSKCN0X40CX VC Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday his country will continue moving towards the European Union despite a resounding rejection by Dutch voters of a treaty on closer ties between the European body and Ukraine. The broad political, trade and defense treaty is already provisionally in place but has to be ratified by all 28 EU member states for every part of it to have full legal force. The Netherlands was the only country that had not done so. Many Ukrainian politicians feel their country deserves the treaty and are keen to show they have made progress in aligning their country with EU standards since the 2014 uprising that toppled pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. Dutch leaders campaigning for the treaty had said voting against it would also hand a symbolic victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Under any circumstances we will continue to implement the association agreement with the European Union including a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement," Poroshenko told reporters in Tokyo. "We will continue our movement towards the European Union."
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 4 | Opponent: Lynbrook NS | Judge: David Dosch Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear power – it mostly relies on Russia but has been moving towards Europe for nuclear. World Nuclear 9/26 World Nuclear“Nuclear Power in Ukraine” Updated 26 September 2016 http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/ukraine.aspx Ukraine is heavily dependent on nuclear energy – it has 15 reactors generating about half of its electricity.¶ Ukraine receives most of its nuclear services and nuclear fuel from Russia, but is reducing this dependence by buying fuel from Westinghouse.¶ In 2004 Ukraine commissioned two large new reactors. The government plans to maintain nuclear share in electricity production to 2030, which will involve substantial new build.¶ The government is looking to the West for both technology and investment in its nuclear plants.¶ A large share of primary energy supply in Ukraine comes from the country's uranium and substantial coal resources. The remainder is oil and gas, mostly imported from Russia. In 1991, due to breakdown of the Soviet Union, the country's economy collapsed and its electricity consumption declined dramatically from 296 TWh in 1990 to 170 TWh in 2000, all the decrease being from coal and gas plants. In December 2005 Ukraine and the EU signed an energy cooperation agreement which links the country more strongly to western Europe in respect to both nuclear energy and electricity supply. Today Ukraine is developing shale gas deposits and hoping to export this to western Europe by 2020 through the established pipeline infrastructure crossing its territory from the east.¶
Plan stops that progress and causes a shift to coal. Empirically proven in japan a ban on nuclear triggered a shift to coal. Follett 16 Follett, Andrew. (Energy and Science Reporter ) "The End Of Nuclear Power In Japan Is Bringing Back Coal." The Daily Caller. June 13, 2016. Accessed September 27, 2016. http://dailycaller.com/2016/06/13/the-end-of-nuclear-power-in-japan-is-bringing-back-coal/. SP
An analysis published Monday by Bloomberg states that coal power will become the largest source of electricity in Japan due to an effective ban on nuclear power. Nuclear power provided 29 percent of Japan’s total power output before 2011, but will decline to 13.6 percent by 2023 and 1.2 percent by 2040, according to the report. Japan got 24 percent of its electricity from coal in 2010 and the country plans to get more than a third of its power from coal by 2040. Japan previously shut down all of its nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered the Fukushima disaster. The country has since transitioned away from nuclear power. Prior to the disaster, Japan operated 54 nuclear power plants and the government planned to build enough reactors to provide 50 percent of the country’s electricity power. After the disaster, Japan pledged to effectively abandon nuclear power by the 2030s, replacing it mostly with wind or solar power, causing the price of electricity to rise by 20 percent. The transition to green energy hasn’t gone well and the country likely won’t meet its goals, according to the report. Japan remains a top importer of oil, coal and natural gas and the government estimated that importing fuel costs the country more than $40 billion annually. Japan’s current government sees a revival of nuclear power as critical to supporting economic growth and slowing an exodus of Japanese manufacturing to lower-cost countries, but has faced incredible pushback.
Nuclear is baseload power, which means it’s best suited to replace coal – it also means renewables can’t replace coal or nuclear – Germany proves. Kharecha and Hansen 13
Kharecha, Pushker A., and James E. Hansen. "Response to Comment on “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power”." Environmental science and technology 47.12 (2013): 6718-6719.
Sovacool et al.1 begin their critique of our recently published¶ paper2 by claiming that nuclear power is unable to displace¶ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as effectively as energy¶ efficiency measures and renewable energy technologies in the¶ near term. However, much of their rationale reflects the¶ common misconception that the electric energy produced by¶ different electricity sources is interchangeable. For near-term¶ mitigation of climate change and air pollution, fossil fuel¶ sources of base load power such as coal and natural gas (i.e.,¶ those that can provide essentially continuous power) are most¶ effectively replaced by proven alternative base load sources such¶ as nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and properly (sustainably)¶ designed biomass energy (e.g., see ref 3). This is rooted in¶ the fact that wind and solar photovoltaic energy sources are¶ inherently variable and therefore cannot provide base load¶ power.¶ These issues are highlighted by the consequences of¶ Germany’s recent decision to phase out its nuclear power¶ production by 2022 following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear¶ accident. Despite a major, laudable expansion of wind and¶ solar power in recent years, Germany’s nuclear phaseout has so¶ far led to an increase in coal burning and an associated increase¶ in national GHG emissions4,5a disappointing outcome, given¶ the government’s stated intentions to reduce GHG emissions.¶ (It has also led to a significant increase in Germany’s electricity¶ rates.4¶ ) While the emissions increase has been modest so far, it¶ could become substantial in the mid- and long-term, due to the¶ typically multidecadal lifetime of fossil fuel-fired power plants.¶ Many of Sovacool et al.’s assertions regarding the various¶ costs of nuclear power rely on their Table 1. With the exception¶ of column two, the values in that table are, at best, misleading.¶ For instance, the 0−4.1 gCO2/kWh range for nuclear power in¶ column four (sourced from coauthor Jacobson6¶ ) represents¶ GHG emissions from the incineration of megacities due to¶ hypothetical nuclear war; this purely speculative estimate¶ appears to reflect the common and irrational conflation of¶ nuclear power with nuclear weapons. More importantly, the¶ “opportunity costs” for nuclear power listed in column three¶ (which substantially exceed the life-cycle emissions listed in¶ column two) are based on another set of highly dubious¶ assumptions by Jacobson6¶ namely, that it takes 10−19 years¶ between planning to operation for a nuclear reactor, and, as a¶ result of this delay, continuing fossil fuel GHG emissions from¶ the electricity sector are assigned to nuclear power. This¶ approach, based solely on the U.S. experience, is immediately¶ undermined by simply considering the example of France: in a¶ period of just 10 years (between 1977−1987), nuclear power¶ production in France experienced a ∼15-fold increase that led¶ to its share of electricity rising from 8.5 to over 70 (based¶ on ref 7). Thus, under the right conditions it is not inevitable¶ that the international construction of nuclear plants will face¶ long delays.
Turns the advantage - Natural gas is the worst form of Russian Expansionism. Hermant
For Vladimir Putin, natural gas is not just a resource. It is an economic and political weapon.¶ I cannot recall now whether we were heading back to Moscow from Makhachkala, Samara, or Ulyanovsk.¶ But I do remember how we were getting back. There on the tarmac on the side of a Soviet-era Tu-154 jet were the proud words “Газпром Авиа”, or Gazprom Avia. This gas company is so huge it runs its own airline on the side.¶ To understand how energy exports - especially natural gas – have helped fuel Mr Putin's long reign, look no further than Gazprom.¶ Since Mr Putin rose to power in 2000, the energy company has become a colossus.¶ It is an economy within an economy: nearly 400,000 employees, more than $US150 billion in revenues, and $US40 billion in profits heading straight into the hands of the Kremlin.¶ That cash, and billions more from crude oil exports, have allowed Mr Putin to spend vast sums to prop up inefficient industries.¶ It allows the Kremlin to essentially indirectly pay oligarchs to keep the jobless rate down.¶ It provides the money needed to overhaul the armed forces and the security services.¶ Of course, all the way up the pyramid of Russia's elite, entrenched corruption ensures everyone gets their share. Just do not rock the boat.¶ Natural gas is not just another export for Russia. It is a point of national pride.¶ For the Kremlin, it is an economic and political weapon.¶ We have all heard the statistics that the European Union gets about a quarter of its gas from Russia, but that is only part of the story.¶ Twelve European Union (EU) countries rely on Russia for more than 50 per cent of their natural gas. That is nearly half the EU.¶ The Baltic countries and Finland are 100 per cent reliant on Russia. Poland, Austria and Hungary are not far off.¶ Half of that gas makes its way to the EU through pipelines that pass through – you guessed it – Ukraine.¶ The former Soviet republic depends on Russia not only for gas, but also the desperately needed transit fees it earns from the pipelines.¶ When the Kremlin wants to pile the pressure on Kiev, like it did just before the annexation of Crimea, it does not need force. It can just raise the price of gas.¶ This month, Gazprom informed Ukraine's new government the price for its gas was going up 44 per cent. It also warned if Ukraine does not pay a $US1.7 billion bill soon, it could cut off supplies.¶ Kiev said if that happened supplies to Europe might be cut. Even under former president Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow realised the amount of gas passing through Ukraine on the way to Europe made it vulnerable.¶ It is already halfway through a strategy to bypass Ukraine, and cement its European markets.¶ The first step was the Nord Stream pipeline, which carries gas directly from Russia, underneath the Baltic Sea, to Germany.¶ Who was on board to help get that pipeline over the line? None other than Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor.¶ He joined the venture shortly after he left office, and remains the chairman of Nord Stream's shareholder committee. Nord Stream is majority owned by Gazprom.¶ Now Russia is racing to build the South Stream pipeline, which would carry gas under the Black Sea to southern Europe and Turkey.¶ If it succeeds, not only will it make countries like Romania and Greece even more reliant on Russian gas, it will send gas exports away from Ukraine's pipelines and further weaken Kiev's leverage.¶ In fact, many analysts believe Moscow's power play in Ukraine has been softened by one thing Mr Putin cannot do anything about: the seasons.¶ By the time the Kremlin's man in Kiev, Mr Yanukovych, was on his way out, it was nearly March.¶ Winter had already done its worst. If Russia turned off the gas, Ukraine's masses would have been uncomfortable, but they would have lived.¶ The same cannot be said if the confrontation had started in December.¶ European countries seek alternative gas supplies¶ Of course, all of this reliance on Russian gas puts the Kremlin in an interesting spot.¶ It revels in the economic power it derives from the huge role it plays in keeping the heat on in much of Europe.¶ But the episode in Crimea, when Moscow rolled the dice on EU sanctions, has accelerated efforts to undo the very dependence the Kremlin cherishes.¶ Mr Putin bet energy from Russia would trump EU political concerns over Russian expansionism. For now, it seems that he won that wager.¶ But already there is talk of building huge liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals in several locations in Europe to allow for alternative supplies from the Middle East, and possibly even the United States.¶ ¶ However, any serious reduction in Europe's reliance on Russian gas is still years away. Until then, the Kremlin – through Gazprom – will try to make it seem like energy from Russia is simply part of the European fabric.¶
Even if radiation is bad from nuclear, the radiation from coal is worse. Hvistendahl ‘07 Mara Hvistendahl is a contributing correspondent at Science. “Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste.” Scientific American. December 13, 2007. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ JJN The popular conception of nuclear power is straight out of The Simpsons: Springfield abounds with signs of radioactivity, from the strange glow surrounding Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant workers to Homer's low sperm count. Then there's the local superhero, Radioactive Man, who fires beams of "nuclear heat" from his eyes. Nuclear power, many people think, is inseparable from a volatile, invariably lime-green, mutant-making radioactivity. Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn't supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky. Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * See Editor's Note at end of page 2 At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels. Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas. In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants. The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals' bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants. McBride and his co-authors estimated that individuals living near coal-fired installations are exposed to a maximum of 1.9 millirems of fly ash radiation yearly. To put these numbers in perspective, the average person encounters 360 millirems of annual "background radiation" from natural and man-made sources, including substances in Earth's crust, cosmic rays, residue from nuclear tests and smoke detectors. Dana Christensen, associate lab director for energy and engineering at ORNL, says that health risks from radiation in coal by-products are low. "Other risks like being hit by lightning," he adds, "are three or four times greater than radiation-induced health effects from coal plants." And McBride and his co-authors emphasize that other products of coal power, like emissions of acid rain–producing sulfur dioxide and smog-forming nitrous oxide, pose greater health risks than radiation. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) maintains an online database of fly ash–based uranium content for sites across the U.S. In most areas, the ash contains less uranium than some common rocks. In Tennessee's Chattanooga shale, for example, there is more uranium in phosphate rock. Robert Finkelman, a former USGS coordinator of coal quality who oversaw research on uranium in fly ash in the 1990s, says that for the average person the by-product accounts for a miniscule amount of background radiation, probably less than 0.1 percent of total background radiation exposure. According to USGS calculations, buying a house in a stack shadow—in this case within 0.6 mile one kilometer of a coal plant—increases the annual amount of radiation you're exposed to by a maximum of 5 percent. But that's still less than the radiation encountered in normal yearly exposure to X-rays. So why does coal waste appear so radioactive? It's a matter of comparison: The chances of experiencing adverse health effects from radiation are slim for both nuclear and coal-fired power plants—they're just somewhat higher for the coal ones. "You're talking about one chance in a billion for nuclear power plants," Christensen says. "And it's one in 10 million to one in a hundred million for coal plants." Radiation from uranium and other elements in coal might only form a genuine health risk to miners, Finkelman explains. "It's more of an occupational hazard than a general environmental hazard," he says. "The miners are surrounded by rocks and sloshing through ground water that is exuding radon." Developing countries like India and China continue to unveil new coal-fired plants—at the rate of one every seven to 10 days in the latter nation. And the U.S. still draws around half of its electricity from coal. But coal plants have an additional strike against them: they emit harmful greenhouse gases. With the world now focused on addressing climate change, nuclear power is gaining favor in some circles. China aims to quadruple nuclear capacity to 40,000 megawatts by 2020, and the U.S. may build as many as 30 new reactors in the next several decades. But, although the risk of a nuclear core meltdown is very low, the impact of such an event creates a stigma around the noncarbon power source. The question boils down to the accumulating impacts of daily incremental pollution from burning coal or the small risk but catastrophic consequences of even one nuclear meltdown. "I suspect we'll hear more about this rivalry," Finkelman says. "More coal will be mined in the future. And those ignorant of the issues, or those who have a vested interest in other forms of energy, may be tempted to raise these issues again."
10/16/16
SEPT-OCT Util NC
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Evanston HS | Judge: Rebecca Kuang The rez is a question of state obligations since the state alone has the power to prohibit nuclear power – prefer actor specific obligations since they differ – police have a duty to arrest criminals but civilians don’t.
This is different from individual morality – the state doesn’t have an intent since policymakers pass laws for different reasons, and doesn’t have the reflexive capacity of individuals so it can’t be valued intrinsically. Policymakers have to use util Goodin Robert Goodin 90, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences, “The Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142
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 utilitarianism. 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.
So the standard is minimizing suffering
First, we should preserve our future ability to find moral truths. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom, Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority, 2012. NS
These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk. Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving—and ideally improving—our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value.
MATHENY 7 (Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Vol 27, No 5)
Even if extinction events are improbable, the expected values of countermeasures could be large, as they include the value of all future lives. This introduces a discontinuity between the CEA of extinction and nonextinction risks. Even though the risk to any existing individual of dying in a car crash is much greater than the risk of dying in an asteroid impact, asteroids pose a much greater risk to the existence of future generations (we are not likely to crash all our cars at once) (Chapman, 2004). The “death-toll” of an extinction-level asteroid impact is the population of Earth, plus all the descendents of that population who would otherwise have existed if not for the impact. There is thus a discontinuity between risks that threaten 99 of humanity and those that threaten 100.
3. Moral tunnel vision is complicit with evil. Issac 2
—Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, “Ends, Means, and Politics,” p. Proquest)
As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime--the Taliban--that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics--as opposed to religion--pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
4. Life is a prerequisite to any other aims – regardless of what people desire or wish to pursue, they need to be alive to pursue it in the first place, so extinction is a pre-requisite to anything else
10/16/16
SEPT-OCT Warming DA
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Evanston LT | Judge: Rodrigo Paramo Nuclear power is currently progressing – many reactors are being built with only more planned. Groskopf ‘01/26 Christopher Groskopf – reporter. “New nuclear reactors are being built a lot more like cars.” Quartz. January 26, 2016. http://qz.com/581566/new-nuclear-reactors-are-being-built-a-lot-more-like-cars/ JJN At its birth, nuclear power was a closely guarded national enterprise, only accessible to the most prosperous nations. But over the last 50 years it has evolved into a robust international market with a global supply chain. Not only are more countries starting or considering new nuclear plants, a great many more countries are contributing to their construction. According to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) 66 nuclear reactors are under construction around the world. Dozens more are in various stages of planning. The vast majority of new reactors are being built in China, which has invested in nuclear power in a way not seen since the United States and France first built out their capacity in the 1960’s and 70’s. China’s 2015 Five Year Plan calls for 40 reactors to be built by 2020 and as many as ten more are planned for every year thereafter. Fifteen other countries around the world are also building reactors. The Chinese sprint toward nuclear power is along a path toward becoming a major exporter of nuclear technology and expertise. In addition to adopting western designs, China also has its own reactor designs. Plants based on those designs are also under construction both China and in Pakistan. Other countries are considering them. At the same time China has upgraded its capacity to produce pressure vessels, turbines and other heavy manufacturing components—all of which it is expected to begin exporting. This sort of globalized manufacturing is nothing new: cars, airplanes and most other complicated machines are built in this way. However, it is new for reactors, which must be constructed on-site and rely on highly specialized parts. Those parts must be manufactured to tolerances well beyond what is required in other industries. In some cases even the equipment needed to creating them must be purpose-built. Consider, for example, the steel pressure vessel at the heart of the most common reactor designs. These vessels can only be created in the world’s largest steel presses—some of which exert more than 30,000 pounds of force. The vessels are forged out of solid steel ingots that may weigh more than a million pounds. Until recently there were only a handful of such presses in the world. Today there are at least 23, spread across 11 countries, according to the World Nuclear Association (WNA). Such specialization is not limited to heavy manufacturing. Nuclear reactors require thousands of other mechanical and electronic components, many of which are purpose-made. A brochure from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) identifies hundreds of individual parts. (pdf) Even otherwise common products may need to meet extraordinarily fine tolerances. Standards require that steel elements relevant to safety are manufactured with exceptional “nuclear-grade steel.” According to another NEI list, the construction of a new reactor may require a total of: 500 to 3,000 nuclear grade valves 125 to 250 pumps 44 miles of piping 300 miles of electric wiring 90,000 electrical components According to Greg Kaser, who analyzes supply chains for the WNA, the market for nuclear components has been driven by US-based reactor companies, namely Westinghouse Electric Company. “The US can’t produce everything that’s required for a nuclear reactor anymore, so they have to go international,” Kaser told Quartz. Reactors based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 design are under construction in both the US and China. The parts for these reactors are sourced from all over the world. Many come from European companies that were originally created to supply domestic nuclear programs, but have since become important exporters. This trade in nuclear components is difficult to measure. Despite the specific qualifications of a nuclear-grade valve, it is still a valve and doesn’t necessarily show up in trade statistics as anything more. A great deal of trade is also in expertise. Engineers from China, Japan, South Korea and the United States frequently consult on (or lead) nuclear projects around the world. A 2014 WNA report (paywall) estimates that the total value of investments in new nuclear facilities through 2030 will be $1.2 trillion. But this nuclear globalization has not been greeted with enthusiasm everywhere. The 2011 nuclear contamination disaster at Fukushima, Japan, briefly stalled development of some projects and prompted Germany to begin shutting down all of its reactors. A decision by the UK to allow a Chinese company to develop new nuclear reactors in England has led to both domestic and international hand-wringing over the security implications. Others worry about about safety issues resulting from companies faking the certifications required for selling reactor components. In 2013, two South Korean nuclear reactors were shut down when it was discovered that they had installed cables with counterfeit nuclear certifications. This year the IAEA will update a procurement guide for plant operators that was published in 1996. (pdf) The new version will include a chapter specifically addressing counterfeit components. For the moment, it’s unlikely any of these concerns will be enough to slow the resurgent growth of the global nuclear industry. Though big nuclear companies often speak of localizing the supply chain—and keeping those jobs in their home country—international competition can drive down the price of building a reactor. In fact, the supply chain is likely to become even more important to the construction process in the future. New reactors being designed today are both smaller and more modular, and plans call for large sections of them to be assembled in factories and shipped to the site. If it sounds a lot like the assembly line at a automobile plant, that’s because it is. But of course, one small oversight or production flaw could make a much greater difference.
Warming is anthropogenic and can be stopped if we reduce emissions. Nuccitelli 8/15
So far humans have caused about 1°C warming of global surface temperatures, but if we were to freeze the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide at today’s levels, the planet would continue warming. Over the coming decades, we’d see about another 0.5°C warming, largely due to what’s called the “thermal inertia” of the oceans (think of the long amount of time it takes to boil a kettle of water). The Earth’s surface would keep warming about another 1.5°C over the ensuing centuries as ice continued to melt, decreasing the planet’s reflectivity.¶ To put this in context, the international community agreed in last year’s Paris climate accords that we should limit climate change risks by keeping global warming below 2°C, and preferably closer to 1.5°C. Yet from the carbon pollution we’ve already put into the atmosphere, we’re committed to 1.5–3°C warming over the coming decades and centuries, and we continue to pump out over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.¶ The importance of reaching zero or negative emissions¶ We can solve this problem if, rather than holding the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide steady, it falls over time. As discussed in the above video, Earth naturally absorbs more carbon than it releases, so if we reduce human emissions to zero, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide will slowly decline. Humans can also help the process by finding ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it.¶ Scientists are researching various technologies to accomplish this, but we’ve already put over 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Pulling a significant amount of that carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it safely will be a tremendous challenge, and we won’t be able to reduce the amount in the atmosphere until we first get our emissions close to zero.¶ There are an infinite number of potential carbon emissions pathways, but the 2014 IPCC report considered four possible paths that they called RCPs. In one of these (called RCP 2.6 or RCP3-PD), we take immediate, aggressive, global action to cut carbon pollution, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels peak at 443 ppm in 2050, and by 2100 they’ve fallen back down to today’s level of 400 ppm. In two others (RCPs 4.5 and 6.0) we act more slowly, and atmospheric levels don’t peak until the year 2150, then they remain steady, and in the last (RCP8.5) carbon dioxide levels keep rising until 2250. As the figure below shows, in the first scenario, global warming peaks at 2°C and then temperatures start to fall toward the 1.5°C level, meeting our Paris climate targets. In the other scenarios, temperatures keep rising centuries into the future We don’t know what technologies will be available in the future, but we do know that the more carbon pollution we pump into the atmosphere today, the longer it will take and more difficult it will be to reach zero emissions and stabilize the climate. We’ll also have to pull that much more carbon out of the atmosphere. ¶ It’s possible that as in three of the IPCC scenarios, we’ll never get all the way down to zero or negative carbon emissions, in which case today’s pollution will keep heating the planet for centuries to come. Today’s carbon pollution will leave a legacy of climate change consequences that future generations may struggle with for the next thousand years.¶ Five years ago, the Australian government established a Climate Commission, which published a report discussing why we’re in the midst of the ‘critical decade’ on climate change:¶ The risks of future climate change – to our economy, society and environment – are serious, and grow rapidly with each degree of further temperature rise. Minimising these risks requires rapid, deep and ongoing reductions to global greenhouse gas emissions. We must begin now if we are to decarbonise our economy and move to clean energy sources by 2050. This decade is the critical decade.¶ Our is the first generation to understand the problems our carbon pollution is causing, and the last that can take the necessary action to prevent them from causing a climate destabilization. In addition to the Australian Climate Commission, 31 major scientific organizations recently warned policymakers that:¶ To reduce the risk of the most severe impacts of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions must be substantially reduced.¶ We have no excuse for inaction or complacency; the experts have clearly warned us. If we refuse to urgently act on this information, future generations will suffer the consequences of our failures today. Prohibiting nuclear power means warming can’t be solved – impracticality of renewables combined with a switch to coal only makes warming worse. Harvey ‘12 Fiona Harvey - award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian, used to work for financial times. “Nuclear power is only solution to climate change, says Jeffrey Sachs.” The Guardian. May 3, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/03/nuclear-power-solution-climate-change JJN *bracketing in original Combating climate change will require an expansion of nuclear power, respected economist Jeffrey Sachs said on Thursday, in remarks that are likely to dismay some sections of the environmental movement. Prof Sachs said atomic energy was needed because it provided a low-carbon source of power, while renewable energy was not making up enough of the world's energy mix and new technologies such as carbon capture and storage were not progressing fast enough. "We won't meet the carbon targets if nuclear is taken off the table," he said. He said coal was likely to continue to be cheaper than renewables and other low-carbon forms of energy, unless the effects of the climate were taken into account. "Fossil fuel prices will remain low enough to wreck low-carbon energy unless you have incentives and carbon pricing," he told the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. A group of four prominent UK environmentalists, including Jonathon Porritt and former heads of Friends of the Earth UK Tony Juniper and Charles Secrett, have been campaigning against nuclear power in recent weeks, arguing that it is unnecessary, dangerous and too expensive. Porritt told the Guardian: "It nuclear power cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons. Nuclear reactors are massively expensive. They take a long time to build. And even when they're up and running, they're nothing like as reliable as the industry would have us believe." But Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and professor of sustainable development at Columbia University in the US, said the world had no choice because the threat of climate change had grown so grave. He said greenhouse gas emissions, which have continued to rise despite the financial crisis and deep recession in the developed world, were "nowhere near" falling to the level that would be needed to avert dangerous climate change. He said: "Emissions per unit of energy need to fall by a factor of six. That means electrifying everything that can be electrified and then making electricity largely carbon-free. It requires renewable energy, nuclear and carbon capture and storage – these are all very big challenges. We need to understand the scale of the challenge." Sachs warned that "nice projects" around the world involving renewable power or energy efficiency would not be enough to stave off the catastrophic effects of global warming – a wholesale change and overhaul of the world's energy systems and economy would be needed if the world is to hold carbon emissions to 450 parts per million of the atmosphere – a level that in itself may be inadequate. "We are nowhere close to that – as wishful thinking and corporate lobbies are much more powerful than the arithmetic of climate scientists," he said.
An analysis published Monday by Bloomberg states that coal power will become the largest source of electricity in Japan due to an effective ban on nuclear power. Nuclear power provided 29 percent of Japan’s total power output before 2011, but will decline to 13.6 percent by 2023 and 1.2 percent by 2040, according to the report. Japan got 24 percent of its electricity from coal in 2010 and the country plans to get more than a third of its power from coal by 2040. Japan previously shut down all of its nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the 2011 magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered the Fukushima disaster. The country has since transitioned away from nuclear power. Prior to the disaster, Japan operated 54 nuclear power plants and the government planned to build enough reactors to provide 50 percent of the country’s electricity power. After the disaster, Japan pledged to effectively abandon nuclear power by the 2030s, replacing it mostly with wind or solar power, causing the price of electricity to rise by 20 percent. The transition to green energy hasn’t gone well and the country likely won’t meet its goals, according to the report. Japan remains a top importer of oil, coal and natural gas and the government estimated that importing fuel costs the country more than $40 billion annually. Japan’s current government sees a revival of nuclear power as critical to supporting economic growth and slowing an exodus of Japanese manufacturing to lower-cost countries, but has faced incredible pushback.
Shift to coal makes it impossible to fight climate change. Kharecha and Hansen 13
Kharecha, Pushker A., and James E. Hansen NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University Earth Institute. "Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions from historical and projected nuclear power." Environmental science and technology 47.9 (2013): 4889-4895.
GHG Emissions. We calculate that world nuclear power¶ generation prevented an average of 64 gigatonnes of CO2-¶ equivalent (GtCO2-eq), or 17 GtC-eq, cumulative emissions¶ from 1971 to 2009 (Figure 3a; see full range therein), with an¶ average of 2.6 GtCO2-eq/year prevented annual emissions from¶ 2000 to 2009 (range 2.4−2.8 GtCO2/year). Regional results are¶ also shown in Figure 3a. Our global results are 7−14 lower¶ than previous estimates8,9 that, among other differences,¶ assumed all historical nuclear power would have been replaced¶ only by coal, and 34 higher than in another study10 in which¶ the methodology is not explained clearly enough to infer the¶ basis for the differences. Given that cumulative and annual¶ global fossil fuel CO2 emissions during the above periods were¶ 840 GtCO2 and 27 GtCO2/year, respectively,11 our mean¶ estimate for cumulative prevented emissions may not appear¶ substantial; however, it is instructive to look at other¶ quantitative comparisons.¶ For instance, 64 GtCO2-eq amounts to the cumulative CO2¶ emissions from coal burning over approximately the past 35¶ years in the United States, 17 years in China, or 7 years in the¶ top five CO2 emitters.11 Also, since a 500 MW coal-fired power¶ plant typically emits 3 MtCO2/year,26 64 GtCO2-eq is¶ equivalent to the cumulative lifetime emissions from almost¶ 430 such plants, assuming an average plant lifetime of 50 years.¶ It is therefore evident that, without global nuclear power¶ generation in recent decades, near-term mitigation of¶ anthropogenic climate change would pose a much greater¶ challenge.¶ For the projection period 2010−2050, in the all coal case, an¶ average of 150 and 240 GtCO2-eq cumulative global emissions¶ are prevented by nuclear power for the low-end and high-end¶ projections of IAEA,6 respectively. In the all gas case, an average¶ of 80 and 130 GtCO2-eq emissions are prevented (see Figure¶ 3b,c for full ranges). Regional results are also shown in Figure¶ 3b,c. These results also differ substantially from previous¶ studies,9,10 largely due to differences in nuclear power¶ projections (see the Supporting Information).¶ To put our calculated overall mean estimate (80−240¶ GtCO2-eq) of potentially prevented future emissions in¶ perspective, note that, to achieve a 350 ppm CO2 target near¶ the end of this century, cumulative “allowable” fossil CO2¶ emissions from 2012 to 2050 are at most ∼500 GtCO2 (ref 3).¶ Thus, projected nuclear power could reduce the climate-change¶ mitigation burden by 16−48 over the next few decades¶ (derived by dividing 80 and 240 by 500).
Warming leads to extinction – multiple scenarios prove. Roberts ‘13 David Roberts - staff writer for Grist. “If you aren’t alarmed about climate, you aren’t paying attention.” Grist. January 10, 2013. http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-alarmism-the-idea-is-surreal/ JJN There was recently another one of those (numbingly familiar) internet tizzies wherein someone trolls environmentalists for being “alarmist” and environmentalists get mad and the troll says “why are you being so defensive?” and everybody clicks, clicks, clicks. I have no desire to dance that dismal do-si-do again. But it is worth noting that I find the notion of “alarmism” in regard to climate change almost surreal. I barely know what to make of it. So in the name of getting our bearings, let’s review a few things we know. We know we’ve raised global average temperatures around 0.8 degrees C so far. We know that 2 degrees C is where most scientists predict catastrophic and irreversible impacts. And we know that we are currently on a trajectory that will push temperatures up 4 degrees or more by the end of the century. What would 4 degrees look like? A recent World Bank review of the science reminds us. First, it’ll get hot: Projections for a 4°C world show a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high-temperature extremes. Recent extreme heat waves such as in Russia in 2010 are likely to become the new normal summer in a 4°C world. Tropical South America, central Africa, and all tropical islands in the Pacific are likely to regularly experience heat waves of unprecedented magnitude and duration. In this new high-temperature climate regime, the coolest months are likely to be substantially warmer than the warmest months at the end of the 20th century. In regions such as the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Tibetan plateau, almost all summer months are likely to be warmer than the most extreme heat waves presently experienced. For example, the warmest July in the Mediterranean region could be 9°C warmer than today’s warmest July. Extreme heat waves in recent years have had severe impacts, causing heat-related deaths, forest fires, and harvest losses. The impacts of the extreme heat waves projected for a 4°C world have not been evaluated, but they could be expected to vastly exceed the consequences experienced to date and potentially exceed the adaptive capacities of many societies and natural systems. my emphasis Warming to 4 degrees would also lead to “an increase of about 150 percent in acidity of the ocean,” leading to levels of acidity “unparalleled in Earth’s history.” That’s bad news for, say, coral reefs: The combination of thermally induced bleaching events, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise threatens large fractions of coral reefs even at 1.5°C global warming. The regional extinction of entire coral reef ecosystems, which could occur well before 4°C is reached, would have profound consequences for their dependent species and for the people who depend on them for food, income, tourism, and shoreline protection. It will also “likely lead to a sea-level rise of 0.5 to 1 meter, and possibly more, by 2100, with several meters more to be realized in the coming centuries.” That rise won’t be spread evenly, even within regions and countries — regions close to the equator will see even higher seas. There are also indications that it would “significantly exacerbate existing water scarcity in many regions, particularly northern and eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, while additional countries in Africa would be newly confronted with water scarcity on a national scale due to population growth.” Also, more extreme weather events: Ecosystems will be affected by more frequent extreme weather events, such as forest loss due to droughts and wildfire exacerbated by land use and agricultural expansion. In Amazonia, forest fires could as much as double by 2050 with warming of approximately 1.5°C to 2°C above preindustrial levels. Changes would be expected to be even more severe in a 4°C world. Also loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services: In a 4°C world, climate change seems likely to become the dominant driver of ecosystem shifts, surpassing habitat destruction as the greatest threat to biodiversity. Recent research suggests that large-scale loss of biodiversity is likely to occur in a 4°C world, with climate change and high CO2 concentration driving a transition of the Earth’s ecosystems into a state unknown in human experience. Ecosystem damage would be expected to dramatically reduce the provision of ecosystem services on which society depends (for example, fisheries and protection of coastline afforded by coral reefs and mangroves.) New research also indicates a “rapidly rising risk of crop yield reductions as the world warms.” So food will be tough. All this will add up to “large-scale displacement of populations and have adverse consequences for human security and economic and trade systems.” Given the uncertainties and long-tail risks involved, “there is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible.” There’s a small but non-trivial chance of advanced civilization breaking down entirely. Now ponder the fact that some scenarios show us going up to 6 degrees by the end of the century, a level of devastation we have not studied and barely know how to conceive. Ponder the fact that somewhere along the line, though we don’t know exactly where, enough self-reinforcing feedback loops will be running to make climate change unstoppable and irreversible for centuries to come. That would mean handing our grandchildren and their grandchildren not only a burned, chaotic, denuded world, but a world that is inexorably more inhospitable with every passing decade. Take all that in, sit with it for a while, and then tell me what it could mean to be an “alarmist” in this context. What level of alarm is adequate?
Climate change threatens indigenous people’s culture and puts them at increasingly lower odds of survival. Baird 08 Baird, Rachel (Litigation attorney in Torrington, Connecticut)."The Impact of Climate Change on Minorities and Indigenous Peoples." Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, April 2008. Indigenous peoples tend to live close to nature, in relatively natural environments, rather than in cities, growing and making much of the food and other products that they need to survive. This gives them an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of local weather and plant and animal life. Traditional wisdom on matters such as when to plant crops or where to hunt for food has been accumulated over many generations, but now that the climate is shifting, some of those understandings are proving to be no longer valid. Climate change, and the rapidly increasing amount of land being converted into plantations of biofuel crops, threatens the very existence of some cultures. In the Arctic, where the atmosphere is warming twice as quickly as in the rest of the world, there are currently some 400,000 indigenous peoples. They include the Sami people of northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, who traditionally herd reindeer as a way of life.11 Olav Mathis-Eira, a herder and vice-chair of the executive board of the Sami Council, says people first noticed signs of climate change in the mid-1980s, when winter rainfall increased. Now, higher temperatures and increased rainfall are making it harder for reindeer to reach the lichen they eat, which in winter can be covered in ice. ‘There are a lot of starving reindeer in some years,’ he says. The thinning of the Arctic ice has also made reindeer herding tracks dangerous, forcing people to find new routes. ‘Old people used to tell us how to move the herds and where it was safe to go,’ says Mathis-Eira. ‘Now they are not sure if they can do that any more ... because conditions are so different.’ The loss of their ability has damaged old people’s status, he adds: ‘Suddenly, they are nothing.’ Many aspects of Sami culture – language, songs, marriage, child-rearing and the treatment of older people, for instance – are intimately linked with reindeer herding, says Mathis-Eira. ‘If the reindeer herding disappears it will have a devastating effect on the whole culture of the Sami people.... In that way, I think that climate change is threatening the entire Sami, as a people.’ Climate change has also played havoc with the lives of indigenous people living on Nicaragua’s remote North Atlantic coast, where groups such as the Mayangna, Miskitu and Rama peoples live. Rainfall patterns have changed in line with what climate change scientists are predicting for the region and, as a result, people’s traditional knowledge about when to plant crops is no longer reliable. Their ability to correctly identify the rainy season has suffered, leading them to plant crops prematurely. Then, when the rain stops, they lose what they have planted and have to start all over again. Even when the main rainy season does arrive, it is shorter than before, inflicting further economic and psychological damage. ‘To see something growing really nicely is going to make the community optimistic,’ says Carlos Ling, a Nicaraguan who is humanitarian officer for Oxfam in the region. ‘In the middle of that rainy season, they see things rotting away, so collective confidence is being damaged.’ Without surplus crops to exchange with others for goods such as soap and cloth, indigenous peoples have become less prepared to take risks and try new methods, says Ling. ‘They are going to be even more prone to extinction because they are not going to survive in a changing environment when they are not changing themselves,’ he warns. As in the Arctic, the increasingly unpredictable weather has also undermined older people’s ability to interpret their environment and make decisions such as when to plant crops. This, in turn, has damaged community respect for them, and reduced people’s confidence that their community’s intimate knowledge of their environment will guarantee their livelihoods. Instead they have become more interested in alternative means of survival, such as helping drug-traffickers or allowing gold prospectors and loggers into the forest. ‘They are being pressured, more and more, to give away the forests,’ says Ling. While the amounts of money on offer seem small – $300 for a big tree, say – they are huge to people who might make $40 in an entire a year. According to the Nicaraguan government, people living on the Atlantic coast are among the nation’s poorest.12 In northern Kenya, increasingly severe and frequent droughts, as well as major floods, have had a devastating impact on pastoralists. Traditionally, they have survived by herding animals, in an already harsh and dry environment. However, the drought of 2005–6 led to a 70 per cent fall in the size of their herds of cattle, goats and camels, leaving some 80 per cent of pastoralists dependent on international food aid, according to Mohamed Adow. He is regional programme manager for Northern Aid, a Muslim organization based in Mandera in north-east Kenya, which does development and advocacy work with pastoralists. Droughts force them to travel long distances in search of water and have also sparked deadly conflicts over water. The deaths of so many livestock in 2005–6 reduced pastoralists’ food supplies and damaged their health. Around one-third of the pastoralists of northern Kenya are now ‘living on the periphery of their way of life’ – in villages and small communities, where they work for money, having given up their small numbers of remaining livestock to family or kinsmen, says Adow.13
