Harvard Westlake Paul Aff
| Tournament | Round | Opponent | Judge | Cites | Round Report | Open Source | Edit/Delete |
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| Apple Vally | 2 | xx | xx |
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| Apple Vally | 2 | xx | xx |
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| Grapevine | 2 | Klein NG | Drew Marshall |
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| Harvard-Westlake RR | 2 | Oakwood JW | Joseph Flores and Morven Sharp |
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| St Marks | 6 | Strake AS | Rodrigo Paramo |
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| Harvard-Westlake RR | 2 | Opponent: Oakwood JW | Judge: Joseph Flores and Morven Sharp NC - T any and Black Nihilism k |
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Cites
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AC - RosatomTournament: St Marks | Round: 6 | Opponent: Strake AS | Judge: Rodrigo Paramo 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 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 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. Second, role-playing as the government is key to real world education—3 unique reasons. Joyner 99 Plan Rosatom’s nuclear empire is on the rise now. Kraev 16 Rosatom is terrible – safety issues, environmental degradation, prolif, and massive corruption. Ulrich et al. 14 Accidents cause mass death and huge financial costs. Sovacool 08 While the Chair of the Public Information Committee of the¶ American Nuclear Society has publicly stated that "the industry has¶ proven itself to be the safest major source of electricity in the Western¶ world,"" 9 the history of nuclear power proves otherwise. The safety record¶ of nuclear plants is lackluster at best. For one salient example, consider¶ that Ukraine still has a Ministry of Emergency, some twenty-two years¶ after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster warranted its creation."' No less¶ than seventy-six nuclear accidents, defined as incidents that either resulted¶ in the loss of human life or more than $50,000 of property damage,¶ totaling more than $19 billion in damages have occurred worldwide from¶ 1947 to 2008."' See Table B.¶ One survey of major energy accidents from 1907 to 2007 found that¶ nuclear plants ranked first in economic cost among all energy accidents,¶ accounting for 41 of all accident related property damage, or $16.6 billion¶ in property loss, even though nuclear power plants did not even begin¶ commercial operation until the 1950s. 442 These numbers translate to more¶ than one incident and $332 million in damages every year for the past¶ three decades. Forty-three accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl¶ disaster in 1986, and almost two-thirds of all nuclear accidents have occurred¶ in the U.S., refuting the notion that severe accidents are relegated¶ to the past or to countries without America's modern technologies or industry oversight." 3 Even the most conservative estimates find that¶ nuclear power accidents have killed 4100 people,' or more people than¶ have died in commercial U.S. airline accidents since 1982."' "Nuclear¶ power accidents have involved meltdowns, explosions, fires, and loss of¶ coolant, and have occurred during both normal operation and extreme,¶ emergency conditions such as droughts and earthquakes."4 6 One index¶ of nuclear power accidents that included costs beyond death and property¶ damage-such as injuring and irradiating workers and malfunctions that¶ did not result in shutdowns or leaks--documented 956 incidents from 1942¶ to 2007." 7¶ Using some of the most advanced probabilistic risk assessment¶ tools available, an interdisciplinary team at MIT identified possible reactor¶ failures in the U.S. and predicted that the best estimate of core damage¶ frequency was around one every 10,000 reactor years." 8 In terms of the¶ expected growth scenario for nuclear power from 2005 to 2055, the MIT¶ team estimated that at least four serious core damage accidents will occur¶ and concluded that "both the historical and the PRA probabilistic risk¶ assessment data show an unacceptable accident frequency."" 9 Further,¶ "tihe potential impact on the public from safety or waste management¶ failure... make it impossible today to make a credible case for the immediate¶ expanded use of nuclear power."4 51¶ Another assessment conducted by the CEA in France tried to associate¶ nuclear plant design with human error such that technical innovation¶ could help eliminate the risk of human-induced accidents.45' Two types¶ of mistakes were deemed the most egregious: errors committed during field operations, such as maintenance and testing, that can cause an¶ accident, and human errors made during small accidents that cascade to¶ complete failure.452 There may be no feasible way to "design around" these¶ risks. For example, when another group of CEA researchers examined¶ the safety performance of advanced French Pressurized Water Reactors,¶ they concluded that human factors would contribute to about one-fourth¶ (twenty-three percent) of the likelihood of a major accident.453¶ Consider that the two most significant nuclear power accidents,¶ Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, were human caused and then exacerbated¶ by more human mistakes. Belarus/Lithuania Belarus is a critical country in Russia’s plans – they’re a key security asset in Eastern Europe. Lacroix 16. Increased Belarus-Lithuania tensions and Russian owned reactor completion both independently causes conflict and Russian annexation of Belarus – risks escalation into full scale war. Rekeda 16 Conflict in the Baltics goes nuclear before NATO even gets involved and spills over into the rest of Europe. Goldmanis 16 Belarusian annexation leads to Russia cutting the Baltic States off from the rest of Western Europe – causes conflict with NATO. Goldmanis 16 Russia-NATO war due to Baltic annexation is the most likely scenario for extinction – it spirals out of control and no one knows what’s going on. Thompson 16 US Heg Rosatom acts in favor of increasing Russian influence over the Middle East. Eran et al 15 | 10/16/16 |
JanFeb - Chronicle ACTournament: Harvard-Westlake RR | Round: 2 | Opponent: Oakwood JW | Judge: Joseph Flores and Morven Sharp | 1/13/17 |
NovDec - 4th Amendment AffTournament: Apple Vally | Round: 2 | Opponent: xx | Judge: xx Adorno, Theodor. “Education after Auschwitz,” Critical Model Since the possibility of changing the objective—namely societal and political— conditions is extremely limited today, attempts to work against the repetition of Auschwitz are necessarily restricted to the subjective dimension. By this I also mean essentially the psychology of people who do such things. I do not believe it would help much to appeal to eternal values, at which the very people who are prone to commit such atrocities would merely shrug their shoulders. I also do not believe that enlightenment about the positive qualities possessed by persecuted minorities would be of much use. The roots must be sought in the persecutors, not in the victims who are murdered under the paltriest of pretenses. What is necessary is what I once in this respect called the turn to the subject. One must come to know the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds, must reveal these mechanisms to them, and strive, by awakening a general awareness of those mechanisms, to prevent people from becoming so again. It is not the victims who are guilty, not even in the sophistic and caricatured sense in which still today many like to construe it. Only those who unreflectingly vented their hate and aggression upon them are guilty. One must labor against this lack of reflection, must dissuade people from striking outward without reflecting upon themselves. The only education that has any sense at all is an education toward critical self-reflection. But since according to the findings of depth psychology, all personalities, even those who commit atrocities in later life, are formed in early childhood, education seeking to prevent the repetition must concentrate upon early childhood. I mentioned Freud’s thesis on discontent in culture. Yet the phenomenon extends even further than he understood it, above all, because the pressure of civilization he had observed has in the meantime multiplied to an unbearable degree. At the same time the explosive tendencies he first drew attention to have assumed a violence he could hardly have foreseen. The discontent in culture, however, also has its social dimension, which Freud did not overlook though he did not explore it concretely. One can speak of the claustrophobia of humanity in the administered world, of a feeling of being incarcerated in a thoroughly societalized, closely woven, netlike environment. The denser the weave, the more one wants to escape it, whereas it is precisely its close weave that prevents any escape. This intensifies the fury against civilization. The revolt against it is violent and irrational. A pattern that has been confirmed throughout the entire history of persecutions is that the fury against the weak chooses for its target especially those who are perceived as societally weak and at the same time—either rightly or wrongly—as happy. Sociologically, I would even venture to add that our society, while it integrates itself ever more, at the same time incubates tendencies toward disintegration. Lying just beneath the surface of an ordered, civilized life, these tendencies have progressed to an extreme degree. The pressure exerted by the prevailing universal upon everything particular, upon the individual people and the individual institutions, has a tendency to destroy the particular and the individual together with their power of resistance. With the loss of their identity and power of resistance, people also forfeit those qualities by virtue of which they are able to pit themselves against what at some moment might lure them again to commit atrocity. Perhaps they are hardly able to offer resistance when the established authorities once again give them the order, so long as it is in the name of some ideal in which they half or not at all believe. When I speak of education after Auschwitz, then, I mean two areas: first children’s education, especially in early childhood; then general enlightenment that provides an intellectual, cultural, and social climate in which a recurrence would no longer be possible, a climate, therefore, in which the motives that led to the horror would become relatively conscious. Naturally, I cannot presume to sketch out the plan of such an education even in rough outline. Yet I would like at least to indicate some of its nerve centers. Often, for instance, in America, the characteristic German trust in authority has been made responsible for National Socialism and even for Auschwitz. I consider this explanation too superficial, although here, as in many other European countries authoritarian behavior and blind authority persist much more tenaciously than one would gladly admit under the conditions of a formal democracy. Rather, one must accept that fascism and the terror it caused are connected with the fact that the old established authorities of the Kaiserreich decayed and were toppled, while the people psychologically were not yet ready for self-determination. They proved to be unequal to the freedom that fell into their laps. For this reason the authoritarian structures then adopted that destructive and, if I may put it so, insane dimension they did not have earlier, or at any rate had not revealed. If one considers how visits of potentates who no longer have any real political function induce outbreaks of ecstasy in entire populations, then one has good reason to suspect that the authoritarian potential even now is much stronger than one thinks. I wish, however, to emphasize especially that the recurrence or non-recurrence of fascism in its decisive aspect is not a question of psychology, but of society. I speak so much of the psychological only because the other, more essential aspects lie so far out of reach of the influence of education, if not of the intervention of individuals altogether. Very often well-meaning people, who don’t want it to happen again, invoke the concept of bonds. According to them, the fact that people no longer had any bonds is responsible for what took place. In fact, the loss of authority, one of the conditions of the sadistic-authoritarian horror, is connected with this state of affairs. To normal common sense it is plausible to appeal to bonds that check the sadistic, destructive, and ruinous impulse with an emphatic “You must not.” Nevertheless I consider it an illusion to think that the appeal to bonds—let alone the demand that everyone should again embrace social ties so that things will look up for the world and for people— would help in any serious way. One senses very quickly the untruth of bonds that are required only so that they produce a result—even if it be good—without the bonds being experienced by people as something substantial in themselves. It is surprising how swiftly even the most foolish and naive people react when it comes to detecting the weaknesses of their betters. The so-called bonds easily become either a ready badge of shared convictions—one enters into them to prove oneself a good citizen—or they produce spiteful resentment, psychologically the opposite of the purpose for which they were drummed up. They amount to heteronomy, a dependence on rules, on norms that cannot be justified by the individual’s own reason. What psychology calls the superego, the conscience, is replaced in the name of bonds by external, unbinding, and interchangeable authorities, as one could observe quite clearly in Germany after the collapse of the Third Reich. Yet the very willingness to connive with power and to submit outwardly to what is stronger, under the guise of a norm, is the attitude of the tormentors that should not arise again. It is for this reason that the advocacy of bonds is so fatal. People who adopt them more or less voluntarily are placed under a kind of permanent compulsion to obey orders. The single genuine power standing against the principle of Auschwitz is autonomy, if I might use the Kantian expression: the power of reflection, of self-determination, of not cooperating. I once had a very shocking experience: while on a cruise on Lake Constance I was reading a Baden newspaper, which carried a story about Sartre’s play Morts sans s ´epulchre, a play that depicts the most terrifying things.3 Apparently the play made the critic uneasy. But he did not explain this discontent as being caused by the horror of the subject matter, which is the horror of our world. Instead he twisted it so that, in comparison with a position like that of Sartre, who engages himself with the horror, we could maintain—almost maintain, I should say—an appreciation of the higher things: so that we could not acknowledge the senselessness of the horror. To the point: by means of noble existential cant the critic wanted to avoid confronting the horror. Herein lies, not least of all, the danger that the horror might recur, that people refuse to let it draw near and indeed even rebuke anyone who merely speaks of it, as though the speaker, if he does not temper things, were the guilty one, and not the perpetrators. With the problem of authority and barbarism I cannot help thinking of an idea that for the most part is hardly taken into account. It comes up in an observation in the book The SS State by Eugen Kogon, which contains central insights into the whole complex and which hasn’t come near to being absorbed by science and educational theory the way it deserves to be.4 Kogon says that the tormentors of the concentration camp where he spent years were for the most part young sons of farmers. The cultural difference between city and country, which still persists, is one of the conditions of the horror, though certainly neither the sole nor the most important one. Any arrogance toward the rural populace is far from my intentions. I know that one cannot help having grown up in a city or a village. I note only that probably debarbarization has been less successful in the open country than anywhere else. Even television and the other mass media probably have not much changed the state of those who have not completely kept up with the culture. It seems to me more correct to say this and to work against it than to praise sentimentally some special qualities of rural life that are threatening to disappear. I will go so far as to claim that one of the most important goals of education is the debarbarization of the countryside. This presupposes, however, a study of the conscious and unconscious of the population there. Above all, one must also consider the impact of modern mass media on a state of consciousness that has not yet come anywhere close to the state of bourgeois liberal culture of the nineteenth century. In order to change this state of consciousness, the normal primary school system, which has several problems in the rural environment, cannot suffice. I can envision a series of possibilities. One would be—I am improvising here—that television programs be planned with consideration of the nerve centers of this particular state of consciousness. Then I could imagine that something like mobile educational groups and convoys of volunteers could be formed, who would drive into the countryside and in discussions, courses, and supplementary instruction attempt to fill the most menacing gaps. I am not ignoring the fact that such people would make themselves liked only with great difficulty. But then a small circle of followers would form around them, and from there the educational program could perhaps spread further. However, there should arise no misunderstanding that the archaic tendency toward violence is also found in urban centers, especially in the larger ones. Regressive tendencies, that is, people with repressed sadistic traits, are produced everywhere today by the global evolution of society. Here I’d like to recall the twisted and pathological relation to the body that Horkheimer and I described in The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Everywhere where it is mutilated, consciousness is reflected back upon the body and the sphere of the corporeal in an unfree form that tends toward violence. One need only observe how, with a certain type of uneducated person, his language—above all when he feels faulted or reproached—becomes threatening, as if the linguistic gestures bespoke a physical violence barely kept under control. Here one must surely also study the role of sport, which has been insufficiently investigated by a critical social psychology. Sport is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can have an anti-barbaric and anti-sadistic effect by means of fair play, a spirit of chivalry, and consideration for the weak. On the other hand, in many of its varieties and practices it can promote aggression, brutality, and sadism, above all in people who do not expose themselves to the exertion and discipline required by sports but instead merely watch: that is, those who regularly shout from the sidelines. Such an ambiguity should be analyzed systematically. To the extent that education can exert an influence, the results should be applied to the life of sport. All this is more or less connected with the old authoritarian structure, with modes of behavior, I could almost say, of the good old authoritarian personality. But what Auschwitz produced, the characteristic personality types of the world of Auschwitz, presumably represents something new. On the one hand, those personality types epitomize the blind identification with the collective. On the other hand, they are fashioned in order to manipulate masses, collectives, as Himmler, H¨oss, and Eichmann did. I think the most important way to confront the danger of a recurrence is to work against the brute predominance of all collectives, to intensify the resistance to it by concentrating on the problem of collectivization. That is not as abstract as it sounds in view of the passion with which especially young and progressively minded people desire to integrate themselves into something or other. One could start with the suffering the collective first inflicts upon all the individuals it accepts. One has only to think of one’s own first experiences in school. One must fight against the type of folkways Volkssitten, initiation rites of all shapes, that inflict physical pain—often unbearable pain—upon a person as the price that must be paid in order to consider oneself a member, one of the collective.6 The evil of customs such as the Rauhn¨achte and the Haberfeldtreiben and whatever else such long-rooted practices might be called is a direct anticipation of National Socialist acts of violence.7 It is no coincidence that the Nazis glorified and cultivated such monstrosities in the name of “customs.” Science here has one of its most relevant tasks. It could vigorously redirect the tendencies of folk-studies Volkskunde that were enthusiastically appropriated by the Nazis in order to prevent the survival, at once brutal and ghostly, of these folk-pleasures. This entire sphere is animated by an alleged ideal that also plays a considerable role in the traditional education: the ideal of being hard. This ideal can also, ignominiously enough, invoke a remark of Nietzsche, although he truly meant something else.8 I remember how the dreadful Boger during the Auschwitz trial had an outburst that culminated in a panegyric to education instilling discipline through hardness. He thought hardness necessary to produce what he considered to be the correct type of person.9 This educational ideal of hardness, in which many may believe without reflecting about it, is utterly wrong. The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism. Being hard, the vaunted quality education should inculcate, means absolute indifference toward pain as such. In this the distinction between one’s own pain and that of another is not so stringently maintained. Whoever is hard with himself earns the right to be hard with others as well and avenges himself for the pain whose manifestations he was not allowed to show and had to repress. This mechanism must be made conscious, just as an education must be promoted that no longer sets a premium on pain and the ability to endure pain. In other words: education must take seriously an idea in no wise unfamiliar to philosophy: that anxiety must not be repressed. When anxiety is not repressed, when one permits oneself to have, in fact, all the anxiety that this reality warrants, then precisely by doing that, much of the destructive effect of unconscious and displaced anxiety will probably disappear. People who blindly slot themselves into the collective already make themselves into something like inert material, extinguish themselves as self-determined beings. With this comes the willingness to treat others as an amorphous mass. I called those who behave in this way “the manipulative character” in the Authoritarian Personality, indeed at a time when the diary of H¨oss or the recordings of Eichmann were not yet known.10 My descriptions of the manipulative character date back to the last years of the Second World War. Sometimes social psychology and sociology are able to construct concepts that only later are empirically verified. The manipulative character—as anyone can confirm in the sources available about those Nazi leaders—is distinguished by a rage for organization, by the inability to have any immediate human experiences at all, by a certain lack of emotion, by an overvalued realism. At any cost he wants to conduct supposed, even if delusional, Realpolitik. He does not for one second think or wish that the world were any different than it is, he is obsessed by the desire of doing things Dinge zu tun, indifferent to the content of such action. He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person. If my observations do not deceive me and if several sociological investigations permit generalization, then this type has become much more prevalent today than one would think. What at that time was exemplified in only a few Nazi monsters could be confirmed today in numerous people, for instance, in juvenile criminals, gang leaders, and the like, about whom one reads in the newspapers every day. If I had to reduce this type of manipulative character to a formula—perhaps one should not do it, but it could also contribute to understanding—then I would call it the type of reified consciousness. People of such a nature have, as it were, assimilated themselves to things. And then, when possible, they assimilate others to things. This is conveyed very precisely in the expression “to finish off” “fertigmachen”, just as popular in the world of juvenile rowdies as in the world of the Nazis. This expression defines people as finished or prepared things in a doubled sense. According to the insight of Max Horkheimer, torture is a manipulated and somewhat accelerated adaptation of people to collectives.11 There is something of this in the spirit of the age, though it has little to do with spirit. I merely cite the saying of Paul Val ´ery before the last war, that inhumanity has a great future.12 It is especially difficult to fight against it because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids. Singer, Joseph William. "The player and the cards: nihilism and legal theory." The Yale Law Journal 94.1 (1984): 1-70. Moreover, we cannot respond adequately to problems faced in life by¶ generating abstract moral categories. Discussion of moral and legal choices¶ must focus on the rich context in which those problems occur. For some¶ purposes, it may be useful to characterize two persons as "employer" and¶ "employee" and to develop generalizations to describe and govern their¶ relationships. But it is important to remember that these are real people¶ we are talking about, and when we describe them in this way for the¶ purpose of judging what their relations should be like, we are closing our-¶ selves off from their actual life experiences. We can think impersonally¶ about a busboy as simply representing the table-clearing function; or we¶ can describe him, say, as a forty-year-old man, recently divorced, with¶ back trouble and money problems. As Robert Gordon argues, we need "to¶ unfreeze the world as it appears to common sense as a bunch of more or¶ less objectively determined social relations and to make it appear as (we¶ believe) it really is: people acting, imagining, rationalizing, justifying."'179¶ It may indeed be useful to develop general models to describe social life.¶ But when it comes time to make decisions, we should recognize that we¶ are making decisions rather than discovering ourselves. In making those¶ decisions, it is right to focus on the particular social context, to decide¶ whether our descriptive model actually applies in that case and whether¶ we are allowing the model to turn our attention away from facts that we¶ would otherwise consider to be important. Expressive theory emphasizes the active role of the theorist in deciding¶ how to characterize situations, and in deliberating, conversing, intro-¶ specting, and judging.180 Expressive theory also emphasizes the communal¶ nature of theory and its complex relations with social life. The kernel of¶ truth in the idea of rational consensus is that all ideas and actions involve¶ relations among people. "Individuals do not simply 'have' opinions, they¶ form opinions. . . . The formation of opinions is not a private activity¶ performed by a solitary thinker."'' Traditional theorists have reified the¶ idea of rational consensus by treating it as a basis for what we do, as a¶ source of answers, as a generator of outcomes. But consensus, if it exists,¶ is not something that just happens to be there, that we could describe¶ accurately. It must be created, and the work of creating it is the work and¶ play of daily life, of living, contending, sharing, and being with other peo-¶ ple. Like law, consensus must be made, not found.182¶ Emphasis on the creative, communal nature of common understanding¶ creates an appropriate relationship between thought and action. The proc-¶ ess of generating values is something we do with others in the context of¶ relationships that continue over time.¶ Democratic politics is an encounter among people with differing in-¶ terests, perspectives, and opinions-an encounter in which they re-¶ consider and mutually revise opinions and interests, both individual¶ and common. It happens always in a context of conflict, imperfect¶ knowledge, and uncertainty, but where community action is neces-¶ sary. The resolutions achieved are always more or less temporary,¶ subject to reconsideration, and rarely unanimous. What matters is¶ not unanimity but discourse. The substantive common interest is¶ only discovered or created in democratic political struggle, and it re-¶ mains contested as much as shared. Far from being inimical to de-¶ mocracy, conflict-handled in democratic ways, with openness and¶ persuasion-is what makes democracy work, what makes for the¶ mutual revision of opinions and interest.'83¶ Legal theory can help create communal ties and shared values by freeing¶ us from the sense that current practices and doctrines are natural and¶ necessary and by suggesting new forms of expression to replace outworn¶ ones. For example, Gabel and Harris have suggested replacing our cur- rent rights orientation with a power orientation.'84 They would shift our¶ focus from viewing individuals as abstract citizens whose relations to each¶ other are governed by rights enforced by the state to viewing them as¶ active participants in shaping their relations in daily life. Such changes in¶ language may help focus our attention on facts we had previously ignored¶ and make us more keenly aware of alternative social arrangements.'85 Balkin, Jack M. "Critical legal theory today." (2008). The relative autonomy of law from politics – rather than its complete¶ autonomy – simultaneously poses a threat and a promise. The threat is that law¶ will fail to do much more than ratify and legitimate the interests of the powerful;¶ the promise is that it might hold off the worst excesses of power by giving people¶ discursive and institutional tools to talk back to power, to restrain its selfishness¶ and inhumanity, and to imagine finer, better visions of human association.¶ The threat and the promise of law are joined together inseparably. What¶ gives law its power to legitimate is its ability to re-describe unjust and unfair¶ events, social practices and institutions in terms of valued ideals of human¶ association like consent, freedom, dignity, equality and fairness. In the hands of¶ lawyers and politicians, law can disguise, mystify and legitimate great injustices¶ using the very ideas and ideals we admire. But law can only do this because it¶ appeals to these values and claims to try to put them into practice through law.¶ Recourse to law forces the powerful to talk in terms in which the powerless can¶ also participate and can also make claims.¶ From this standpoint, law is not simply an efficient tool of power that¶ powerful people and powerful groups can wield any way they like. They do not¶ merely shape the world with it; rather it shapes them and their world, because¶ they have bought into law as a means of achieving and wielding power. Law¶ shapes their beliefs and desires, their sense of the appropriate and the¶ inappropriate, their conceptions of the possible and impossible. Law generates its¶ own institutions and its own demands; it creates its own culture, it is its own form¶ of life; it struggles with other forms of knowledge and power for dominance.¶ That struggle might lead to yet another form of professional power displacing older ones. But it might offer a space for something far more beneficial and¶ noble.¶ The critical approach to law—or at any rate, my version of it—has always¶ been doubled, has always reflected the Janus word “legitimate.” On the one hand,¶ powerful people have used law to subordinate others and secure their own¶ interests under the guise of promoting laudable goals like freedom, equality,¶ liberty, consent, community and human dignity. On the other hand, by choosing¶ to speak in the language of law, powerful people and interests can sometimes be¶ called to account because they try to legitimate what they are doing in those¶ terms. The people they take advantage of can argue that this is a misuse of law,¶ an illegitimate attempt at mystifying rhetoric. They can appeal to the values that¶ law seeks to protect to promote better, more just, and more humane practices and¶ forms of human association.¶ Important theoretical debates among critical scholars in the 1970s and¶ 1980s period revolved around which conception of law was the best one. Some¶ critical scholars adopted a largely pejorative conception, focusing primarily on¶ law’s defects. They argued that the rule of law was enmeshed in irreconcilable¶ contradictions; they denounced rights talk as sterile, useless and¶ counterproductive.5¶ Others, especially feminist and critical race theory scholars,¶ pointed out that rights discourse and rule of law values were among the few¶ resources that disempowered people had.6¶ Rule of law and rights talk were¶ potentially emancipatory discourses. They held a limited but important potential¶ for liberation and for contesting the arbitrary and unjust use of power.¶ These feminist and critical race theorists understood the deemphasized elements – the other side – of critical claims about the relative autonomy of law.¶ They well recognized that rule of law values and rights discourse were hardly¶ perfect – after all, they had been used repeatedly to justify slavery and the¶ subordination of women – but that they had also allowed people to speak out¶ against and to restrain the worst excesses of power. Even in a period of deep¶ skepticism and disillusionment about what law could do, these critical scholars¶ retained a sense of the political importance of rule of law values and rights¶ discourse. That is not because they believed in a strict autonomy of law from¶ politics, but because they understood the political values that legal culture and¶ rights discourse might serve. The best version of critical theory, I think, employs an ambivalent¶ conception of law rather than a pejorative conception: it recognizes law’s relative¶ autonomy from other forms of power in social life, and it understands the dual or¶ Janus-faced nature of that relative autonomy. It sees both law’s limitations in the¶ face of power and its possibilities as a means of channeling power and preventing¶ its most serious injustices. Part 2 – The Police State Qualified immunity makes questions of civil rights irrelevant. It shuts down democratic debates about which rights we should value and prevents forms of activism that fight for legal recognition. Hassel ‘99 Diana Hassel - Associate Professor, Roger Williams University School of Law. B.A. 1979, Mount Holyoke College; J.D. 1985, Rutgers, the State University of New JerseyNewark. “Living a Lie: The Cost of Qualified Immunity.” Missouri Law Review. Winter 1999. http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3402andcontext=mlr JJN IV. THE COST OF QUALIFIED IMMUNITY Qualified immunity has not been universally admired. A large body of literature critiques the defense and calls for its modification, elimination, or expansion. While these critiques serve to illuminate some fundamental problems with the qualified immunity doctrine, they do not address the central problem with qualified immunity-its camouflaging effect. By camouflaging effect, I mean the ability of qualified immunity to make the underlying pattern of civil. rights doctrine undiscernible. The existing critical focus on the strengths and weaknesses of qualified immunity fails to uncover the underlying patterns in the availability of Section 1983 remedies. A. Current Critiques There are vociferous critics of the qualified immunity doctrine who attack the doctrine as a whole. This commentary suggests that the problem with the qualified immunity doctrine is that it is applied to the wrong group of defendants or that it should be eliminated entirely. Those who believe that it should be eliminated entirely generally seek to substitute governmental liability for that of individual government officials. 6 Others believe that the problem is not with the defense but that its application should be available only to a certain small group of government officials." 7 The bulk of the criticism of qualified immunity looks closely at the structure of the defense and argues that it is internally contradictory or should be modified to provide better results. This criticism breaks into two main areas: the problems inherent in the "reasonableness" element". of the qualified immunity defense and the difficulties that result from the attempt to define "clearly established""' 9 law. The complaints concerning the "reasonableness" element note that while the objective reasonableness element is designed to protect the defendant from protracted litigation, the defense does not really quickly resolve a lawsuit. 120 The fact issues raised by the reasonableness element of the defense require a fact-finding hearing which makes it difficult to end lawsuits prior to trial.' 2 ' In a contradictory approach, the objectively reasonable element also has been described as being essentially a bar to judgment for the plaintiff in a civil rights action. Because qualified immunity is designed to protect defendants notjust from liability, but from participation in litigation, some argue that qualified immunity has become essentially indistinguishable from absolute immunity.' 22 The objectively reasonable standard is also seen as a mechanism for the distortion of constitutional law. The focus on the question of what a reasonable official would have understood the law to require leads to a "redefining of the substantive constitutional law" in a way that gives little clear guidance as to what the constitution requires and thus provides little guidance for future actions.'23 Commentators similarly claim that the impact of the clearly established element of the qualified immunity defense is inefficient, distorts the law, and is too difficult a standard for plaintiffs to overcome. It is inefficient and distorting because courts spend their time reconstructing what the law was in the past rather than setting forth clear guidance as to what the law requires. 124 The qualified immunity defense has also been assailed because of its requirement that a constitutional right must be clearly established before any liability can attach. This is a difficult standard to overcome. 2 ' The difficulty in identifying clear legal authority establishing the unlawfulness of a particular official's act may be too difficult a task and thus exclude meritorious claims. 26 There is then a body of literature examining the discrepancy between what the qualified immunity defense was meant to accomplish and how it actually works. The defense does not protect defendants in a meaningful way. At the same time, it makes a judgment for the plaintiff almost impossible to obtain. Therefore, the defense seems to be serving no one's interests. These well documented weaknesses suggest that qualified immunity's role is not to allow for just outcomes, but to provide some other service. What is missing from these critiques is an analysis of what function the current doctrine serves. In the next section, I explain that while qualified immunity often results in unfairness or inefficiency, the doctrine also provides a flexible mechanism by which divisive issues are seemingly resolved. This mechanism, however, has a cost. B. Qualified Immunity as a Disquise The problem with qualified immunity is not so much that the outcomes are sometimes unfair but the fact that qualified immunity blocks a clear view of the real limitations that exist in civil rights law. Civil rights law is, in effect, being designed in the dark. Distinctions are being made about the types of cases that will receive compensation and the types that will not. These distinctions are not articulated as such; instead, the results are understood to be the result of the qualified immunity defense. As we have seen, for example, a procedural complaint in the context of an employment dispute is more likely to survive the qualified immunity defense than is a complaint about whether a police officer used excessive force in the arrest of a dangerous suspect. Rather than organizing civil rights law in these categorical ways, however, qualified immunity makes the civil rights remedial system appear to be about individual cases and the reasonableness of individual defendants. Current qualified immunity doctrine serves as a means to diffuse conflict. Without a clear rule that some kinds of civil rights harms will not be redressed, there is minimal pressure for change. This "hiding of the ball" quality of qualified immunity is why, in spite of many expressions of dissatisfaction with the system, there had been little effective rallying for change. The reason the discontent of the participants in this system has not led to a significant change is that the terms of the debate are defined by the immunity system rather than by the fundamental question of the extent of rights and liabilities in civil rights actions. The civil rights remedial scheme organized around qualified immunity thus has an inherently self-preserving or stabilizing quality. It allows for tinkering at the margins, but fundamental recasting of the terms of the debate is unlikely. My assertion that qualified immunity has a camouflaging effect on civil rights law is supported by a large body of scholarship that explores legal regimes that define reality in a way that limits the ability of the participants in the system to change it.'27 These scholars argue that when a legal system is accepted as being the only available way to organize an activity and thus seems inevitable, the legal system encourages acceptance of the status quo. 28 The insights gained by scholars working in this area are helpful to apply to the qualified immunity standard in order to explore its hold on the civil rights imagination. This analysis maps out the way a doctrine such as qualified immunity can develop into an obstacle to the very aims it professes to accomplish. Particularly apposite to an analysis of civil rights law is the work that has been done on the change-inhibiting impact of the development of antidiscrimination law.129 In commenting on the effect of the adoption of equal rights rhetoric on the struggle to end racial inequality, Kimberle Crenshaw has concluded that "society's adoption of the ambivalent rhetoric of equal opportunity law has made it that much more difficult for Black people to name their reality. While equal employment opportunity law has been adopted, the material reality of most Black people has not improved."'30 In fact, improvement may be hindered by the existence of the equal opportunity law since it may undermine the political consensus necessary for change.' 3 ' Another commentator has suggested that "the language of rights undermines efforts to change things by absorbing real demands, experiences, and concerns into a vacuous and indeterminate discourse. The discourse abstracts real experience and clouds the ability of those who invoke rights rhetoric to think concretely about real confrontations and real circumstances.' 32 The existence of antidiscrimination law can thus create the appearance of improvements in racial equality while at the same time not encouraging fundamental change. 33 The focus on the intent of the actor in equal protection claims rather than the impact on the person experiencing the discrimination has also been criticized as an inhibitor to the elimination of racial inequality. 3 By paying exclusive attention to the blameworthiness of the defendant, an examination of the impact of the challenged practice on those complaining about it is lost. Fairness to the defendant, rather than eliminating discriminatory effect, is the central concern. These commentators suggest that the economic and social reality of race inequality is obscured by the existence of antidiscrimination law and by the success of a small exceptional group. As Derrick Bell has stated, "Discrimination claims when they are dramatic enough and do not threaten majority concerns, are given a sympathetic hearing, but there is a pervasive sense that definite limits have been set on the weight that minority claims receive when balanced against majority interests."'35 While it is unclear what the alternative to antidiscrimination law is, these critiques strongly argue that antidiscrimination law does not do what it suggests it will do and may, in fact, make a better system more difficult to imagine and thus to create. This current critique of antidiscrmination law can be used to understand how the qualified immunity standard affects the system of compensation for constitutional wrongs. One major similarity is the way in which the existence of Section 1983 siphons off pressure to create some other system of redress. The open-ended language of the Section 1983 statute seems to promise a powerful remedy against governmental abuse. As we have seen, qualified immunity severely limits that remedy, but on a case-by-case basis. There is no general prohibition against certain types of civil rights claims, only the seemingly individualized application of the qualified immunity defense. The fact that some types of claims are destined to fail because of the type of claim they are, not because of the particularized behavior of the defendant, is hidden. Adding to the illusion of a generally available remedy is the spectacular success of a few high profile cases. A few large recoveries in cases that present particularly compelling facts obscure the reality of the fruitlessness of most claims. 36 On the other side of the lawsuit, qualified immunity promises much more to the defendant than it delivers. The defense is supposed to protect government actors not only from liability but also from entanglement with litigation. The promise is often not kept because the qualified immunity defense presents a combination of fact and law questions that cannot be quickly disposed of prior to trial. However, the theoretical protection offered by the defense and the low incidence of actual judgments against government actors lulls government employees into acquiescence to the system. The emphasis that qualified immunity places on the reasonableness of the defendant's actions rather than on whether a constitutional right was violated is another way in which qualified immunity distorts civil rights law. Qualified immunity makes the essential issue of a civil rights claim the question of whether it would be too much of an inhibitor of government action to require a particular defendant to pay damages to the plaintiff. The focus is not, at least initially, on whether the plaintiffs constitutional rights were violated. This emphasis also makes it difficult to discern and consider which rights are or should be protected and which we are content not to protect with monetary compensation. Qualified immunity's harm is that it makes it difficult to see the policy choices made by courts in civil rights actions. Cloaking these policy choices in the qualified immunity doctrine avoids the possibility of an open debate concerning which civil rights should be protected and how. VI. CONCLUSION Given its obvious flaws, the continuation of qualified immunity as the key legal issue in civil rights cases can only be explained by the hidden purpose it serves; it avoids the divisive and perhaps unresolvable conflicts among participants in civil rights litigation. Qualified immunity accomplishes this conflict-avoiding function by giving judges wide latitude in making determinations about its application and by couching the outcomes of civil rights litigation in terms that make the substantive results difficult to perceive. These qualities account for the faithful adherence to a doctrine that is regarded as so unsatisfactory to so many. The problem with this conflict avoidance mechanism is that it allows unarticulated decisions to be made about the extent of liability for civil rights violations. Civil rights litigation does have limitations to it; every case is not given an opportunity to succeed. These determinations are being made; they are just not described as such. Using qualified immunity as a shield from the truth may buy us peace, but it keeps from us the tools required for reform. Excessive force is the worst manifestation of this form of structural violence – 4th amendment cases get shut down before they even have a chance. Jeffries ‘13 Jeffries Jr, John C - David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, the University of Virginia. "The Liability Rule for Constitutional Torts." Virginia Law Review (2013): 207-270. The AFF changes police behavior – lawsuits are used by departments to create reform and individuals know their behavior will be watched – they don’t’ even need to win the lawsuits. Schwartz 10 The AFF changes culture – it is a form of social condemnation that validates the claims of the survivor. Armacost 98 Armacost 98 Barbara Armacost, Vanderbilt Law Review, April, 1998, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=90852, “Qualified Immunity: Ignorance Excused,” WP If constitutional rights are especially valued in comparison with other kinds of rights, it follows that constitutional violations would be viewed by society as especially serious and deserving of opprobrium. There is reason to think this is so. Constitutional violations, especially those that are likely to give rise to section 1983 suits, involve abuses of power by governmental actors. The implications of official misconduct go far beyond the concrete harm to persons or property suffered by any one individual. Public officials are, after all, charged with upholding and enforcing the law and acting for the public good. When officials use their public offices to engage in lawbreaking, there is a betrayal of trust that is experienced not only by the individual, but by the entire community. n432 Consider, for example, *675 the public outcry that was engendered by the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers. The image of a circle of uniformed law enforcement officials beating an unarmed man lying crumpled on the ground is troubling in a way that a private beating is not. Similar reactions accompanied recent allegations that New York City police officers openly beat and sodomized (with a toilet plunger) a young Haitian immigrant in the bathroom at the police station. n433 When the malefactor is a governmental official whose injurious conduct was made possible by her official authority and position, "ordinary injury is augmented by the abuse of governmental power." n434 In such cases wrongdoing that could "be described as trespass, assault and battery, false imprisonment, or defamation takes on new urgency." n435 If the law-enforcers cannot be trusted to conduct themselves according to the law, then who can? Governmental abuse of power creates a sense of indignation on the part of the governed, and special opprobrium is reserved for abusers of the public trust. n436∂ If individual liability for constitutional violations entails wrongdoing and signals societal condemnation, then it would make sense to retain such liability even if the financial burden is ultimately borne by the governmental employer rather than by the individual official. n437 Indeed, in the criminal context it has been argued that the *676 moral blame entailed by a criminal conviction is more important in discouraging antisocial conduct than the threat of official sanctions. n438 One need not go that far to accept that the human desire to avoid societal opprobrium plays an important role in gaining compliance with the criminal law. n439 Similarly, the societal condemnation accompanying damages liability for constitutional violations enhances the law's power to reduce unconstitutional conduct and reinforce constitutional norms. Moreover, the stigma entailed in such liability plays an important role in communicating those norms, not only through final verdicts in courts but through public reaction to reported allegations of clear constitutional impropriety. The plan fosters cooperation, which operates as a key check against police departments. Stefan ‘16 And, police won’t give up on policing – they will just change their behavior. The AFF forces de-escalation. Oliver 15 Unnecessary police killings may be deterred by internal department sanctions, state torts, civil rights actions, state homicide prosecutions, and federal civil rights prosecutions. Each of these potential sanctions ultimately turns on some version of a reasonableness standard that provides little in the way of details about when police are allowed to use deadly force. For all the possible penalties other than internal departmental sanctions, jurors or grand jurors must decide without the benefit of any sort of precedent.5 Using these mechanisms, courts have done virtually nothing to define the contours of the reasonableness standard that governs official uses of force.6 Further, courts have aggressively shielded officers from civil liabil- ity.7 The bulk of claims against police officers for excessive force are litigated in federal civil rights actions.8 Litigants must contend not only with a vague reasonableness standard when the case goes to a jury, but they must also overcome an officer’s qualified immunity defense.9 Qualified immunity is designed to ensure that police will not be over-deterred through the threat of a large jury verdict.10 Courts ruling on this defense at the summary judgment phase have been very deferential to what courts frequently describe as the split-second decision to use force.11 The vague reasonableness standard is thus only defined by courts in the context of the police-friendly qualified immunity context, which essentially leaves reasonableness to be defined by officers.12 The absence of clarity is problematic for officers attempting to comply with the law and for those who must judge officers’ conduct. With little guidance, through precedent or otherwise, to define reasonableness, officers are not sure when they have a duty to de-escalate a potentially violent encounter.13 Grand jurors judging officers’ conduct are similarly unable to determine when an officer’s course of conduct has been unreasonable. Decisions to charge or not charge officers are thus often criticized as the product of racial bias, rather than sound judgment, as only vague standards govern their considerations.14 By contrast, relatively clear standards govern police searches to discover evidence. The famed Supreme Court of California Justice Roger J. Traynor, who introduced the exclusionary rule into California jurisprudence, observed that as a result of the rule, “police now have a clearer idea than before of the restraints upon them.”15 The exclusionary rule has given a large number of defendants a reason to assert that police engaged in misconduct in gathering evidence.16 In each of these cases, a judge is required to rule on the admissibility of the challenged evidence and provide reasons that inform future po-l’ lice conduct, as well as subsequent judicial decisions.17 The frequency of Fourth Amendment litigation has provided courts an opportunity to address the contours of most investigative techniques | 11/4/16 |
SeptOct - Nuclear Renaissance ACTournament: Grapevine | Round: 2 | Opponent: Klein NG | Judge: Drew Marshall Part 1 is Framework Evaluation of energy policy requires a social context. This requires situating nuclear power in the broader context of society and the economy to understand that traditional cost benefit assessment relies on flawed technological optimism. Glover et al 06 From climate change to acid rain, contaminated landscapes, mercury ¶ pollution, and biodiversity loss,¶ 2¶ the origins of many of our least tractable¶ environmental problems can be traced to the operations of the modern energy¶ system. A scan of nightfall across the planet reveals a social dilemma that also ¶ accompanies this system’s operations: invented over a century ago, electric ¶ light remains an experience only for the socially privileged. Two billion human¶ beings—almost one-third of the planet’s population—experience evening light¶ by candle, oil lamp, or open fire, reminding us that energy modernization has ¶ left intact—and sometimes exacerbated—social inequalities that its architects¶ promised would be banished (Smil, 2003: 370 - 373). And there is the ¶ disturbing link between modern energy and war.¶ 3¶ Whether as a mineral whose ¶ control is fought over by the powerful (for a recent history of conflict over oil,¶ see Klare, 2002b, 2004, 2006), or as the enablement of an atomic war of ¶ extinction, modern energy makes modern life possible and threatens its future. With environmental crisis, social inequality, and military conflict among the¶ significant problems of contemporary energy-society relations, the importance ¶ of a social analysis of the modern energy system appears easy to establish. One¶ might, therefore, expect a lively and fulsome debate of the sector’s performance, ¶ including critical inquiries into the politics, sociology, and political economy of¶ modern energy. Yet, contemporary discourse on the subject is disappointing:¶ instead of a social analysis of energy regimes, the field seems to be a captive of ¶ euphoric technological visions and associated studies of “energy futures” that ¶ imagine the pleasing consequences of new energy sources and devices.4 One stream of euphoria has sprung from advocates of conventional energy, ¶ perhaps best represented by the unflappable optimists of nuclear power ¶ who, early on, promised to invent a “magical fire” (Weinberg, 1972) capable¶ of meeting any level of energy demand inexhaustibly in a manner “too cheap¶ to meter” (Lewis Strauss, cited in the New York Times 1954, 1955). In reply to¶ those who fear catastrophic accidents from the “magical fire” or the proliferation of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe¶ reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intentionally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimistic, forecasts can be heard from fossil fuel enthusiasts who, likewise, project¶ more energy, at lower cost, and with little ecological harm (see, e.g., Yergin¶ and Stoppard, 2003). Skeptics of conventional energy, eschewing involvement with dangerously scaled technologies and their ecological consequences, find solace in¶ “sustainable energy alternatives” that constitute a second euphoric stream.¶ Preferring to redirect attention to smaller, and supposedly more democratic,¶ options, “green” energy advocates conceive devices and systems that prefigure a revival of human scale development, local self-determination, and a¶ commitment to ecological balance. Among supporters are those who believe¶ that greening the energy system embodies universal social ideals and, as a¶ result, can overcome current conflicts between energy “haves” and “havenots.”¶ 5¶ In a recent contribution to this perspective, Vaitheeswaran suggests¶ (2003: 327, 291), “today’s nascent energy revolution will truly deliver power¶ to the people” as “micropower meets village power.” Hermann Scheer echoes¶ the idea of an alternative energy-led social transformation: the shift to a¶ “solar global economy... can satisfy the material needs of all mankind and¶ grant us the freedom to guarantee truly universal and equal human rights and¶ to safeguard the world’s cultural diversity” (Scheer, 2002: 34).¶ 6 The euphoria of contemporary energy studies is noteworthy for its historical consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment extending from the advent of steam power through the spread of electricity¶ (Nye, 1999). The modern energy regime that now powers nuclear weaponry¶ and risks disruption of the planet’s climate is a product of promises pursued¶ without sustained public examination of the political, social, economic, and¶ ecological record of the regime’s operations. However, the discursive landscape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader contours of energy-environment-society relations. As early as 1934, Lewis Mumford (see also his two-volume Myth of the¶ Machine, 1966; 1970) critiqued the industrial energy system for being a key¶ source of social and ecological alienation (1934: 196): The changes that were manifested in every department of Technics rested for the¶ most part on one central fact: the increase of energy. Size, speed, quantity, the¶ multiplication of machines, were all reflections of the new means of utilizing fuel and¶ the enlargement of the available stock of fuel itself. Power was dissociated from its¶ natural human and geographic limitations: from the caprices of the weather, from the¶ irregularities that definitely restrict the output of men and animals. By 1961, Mumford despaired that modernity had retrogressed into a lifeharming dead end (1961: 263, 248): ...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: machine fodder and cannon fodder: surplus values and surplus populations... The dirty crowded houses, the dank airless courts and alleys, the bleak pavements, the sulphurous atmosphere, the over-routinized and dehumanized factory, the drill schools, the second-hand experiences, the starvation of the senses, the remoteness from nature and animal activity—here are the enemies. The living organism demands a life-sustaining environment. Modernity’s formula for two centuries had been to increase energy in order¶ to produce overwhelming economic growth. While diagnosing the inevitable failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s¶ supporters would seek to derail present-tense¶ 7¶ evaluations of the era’s social¶ and ecological performance with forecasts of a bountiful future in which,¶ finally, the perennial social conflicts over resources would end. Contrary to¶ traditional notions of democratic governance, Mumford observed that the¶ modern ideal actually issues from a pseudomorph that he named the “democratic-authoritarian bargain” (1964: 6) in which the modern energy regime¶ and capitalist political economy join in a promise to produce “every material¶ advantage, every intellectual and emotional stimulus one may desire, in¶ quantities hardly available hitherto even for a restricted minority” on the¶ condition that society demands only what the regime is capable and willing¶ to offer. An authoritarian energy order thereby constructs an aspirational democracy while facilitating the abstraction of production and consumption¶ from non-economic social values. The premises of the current energy paradigms are in need of critical study¶ in the manner of Mumford’s work if a world measurably different from the¶ present order is to be organized. Interrogating modern energy assumptions,¶ this chapter examines the social projects of both conventional and sustainable energy as a beginning effort in this direction. The critique explores the¶ neglected issue of the political economy of energy, underscores the pattern of¶ democratic failure in the evolution of modern energy, and considers the discursive continuities between the premises of conventional and sustainable¶ energy futures. The Abundant Energy Machine8 Proposals by its stakeholders to fix the modern energy system abound.¶ Advocates envision bigger, more expensive, and more complex machines to¶ spur and sate an endlessly increasing world energy demand. From clean coal¶ to a revived nuclear energy strategy, such developments promise a worldwide¶ movement to a cleaner and more socially benign energy regime that retains¶ its modern ambitions of bigger, more, and better. Proponents even suggest¶ that we might have our cake and eat it too, promoting patterns of energy¶ production, distribution, and consumption consistent with an unconstrained¶ ideology of quantification while also banishing environmental threats and¶ taming social risks that energy critics cite in their challenges to the mainstream. Consistent with a program of ecological modernization, the conventional energy regime’s architects are now exploring new technologies and¶ strategies that offer what are regarded as permanent solutions to our energy¶ troubles without harming our ecological future or disturbing the goal of¶ endless economic growth and its attendant social relations. Part 2 is The Nuclear Renaissance The idea that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the environmental community’s opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The utility industry can’t get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not just nuke power but the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid system is now being undermined by the massive drops in the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in storage is here today. 8. Porter’s NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S. are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its reactors by 2022. But Porter attacks this by complaining that those nukes were supplying base load power that must be otherwise—according to him—shored up with fossil burners. Here’s his key line: “Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.” But as all serious environmentalists understand, the choice has never been between nukes versus fossil fuels. It’s between centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables. Porter’s article never mentions the word “battery” or the term “rooftop solar.” But these are the two key parts in the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously can’t bring itself to say: “Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete.” The key bridging element of battery back-up capability is on its way. Meanwhile there is absolutely no need for nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to prop up dying nuke reactors for “base load” generation is pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead should go to accelerating battery production and distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500 million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops. Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strong-armed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid. For an environmental movement serious about saving the Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier. The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very much in sight. The only question is how long corporate nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition. Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times that try to hide that obvious reality. At the heart of this renaissance is a drive to colonize other countries to sustain our nuclear addiction - Wittman 11 Wittman, Nora “The Scramble for Africa's Nuclear Resources” New African No.507 June 2011 THE CURRENT NUCLEAR POLLUTION in Japan and the reactions of politicians and governments throughout Europe, the USA and Asia, even in the eye of disaster, indicate that they will never stop using nuclear power for military means and domestic energy generation and supply.¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ As Japan was battling to control pollution from its Fukushima nuclear plant, destroyed by the massive earthquake that hit the region on II March, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was firmly pronouncing that a withdrawal from nuclear energy was totally out of question for France and will not happen--80 of domestic energy in France comes from nuclear plants.¶ A few hours later, EU ministers deemed it sufficient to submit European nuclear power reactors to a so-called "stress test", and even then only on a voluntary basis. Apparently, the nuclear industry and their party allies throughout the political spectrum have been for a long time in a tight marriage that is far too beneficial for them to split.¶ Africa is currently the continent where nuclear power plants are least present. Only one such plant is present in South Africa, imposed by the apartheid regime in the 1970s. It is located in Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, yet surrounded by the city's ever-spreading suburbs, and was built by a French company. Like most nuclear power plants, it has experienced serious problems and its reactors have had to be shut down several times, especially since 2005.¶ Of course, the idea is not totally unconceivable that there could have been more severe incidents before, and that in apartheid times the white supremacist regime would not have made it a top priority to inform and protect the surrounding African people. In 2010, 91 members of staff were contaminated with Cobalt-58 dust in an incident that was said to be confined to the plant only.¶ In view of these facts and the recent developments, it should be clearer than ever that Africa must not follow the path to ultimate and lasting nuclear destruction that European, North American and Asian leaders seem to be determined to continue to take. Indeed, Africa may not only have the responsibility to save itself from this fate, but may also ultimately have the power to save the world from some of this otherwise pre-programmed nuclear disaster. How? By refusing to let its vast nuclear resources be exploited.¶ South Africa's only nuclear power plant, In Koeberg, 30km north of Cape Town, was imposed by the apartheid regime in the 70s¶ ILLUSTRATION OMITTED¶ The nuclear powers are increasingly experiencing and preparing for problems of supply with the necessary crude nuclear materials such as uranium and plutonium. Even though it is said that countries such as the USA, Russia and China have or rather had vast uranium resources themselves, all of these countries are now very eager to identify, secure and exploit mines for nuclear materials throughout Africa.¶ Africa, the continent endowed with the richest natural resources, has vast nuclear materials in its soil. Almost every African country is currently being mined or examined and prepared for nuclear exploitation.¶ According to a recent report updated in February 2011 by the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), an environmental activist amalgamation based in Amsterdam, China National Nuclear Group, being that country's biggest nuclear power plant builder, signed a deal with the China-Africa Development Fund, a Chinese state-run institution, in 2010 to examine and exploit uranium resources throughout Africa.¶ French, Canadian, British, Swiss, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Australian and other companies are mining uranium, or have signed contracts to do so very soon with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, DRCongo, Gabon, Malawi, Mali, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and other African countries. … Although Giorgio Agamben’s (2005) work on the normalisation of exceptional state practice has been much cited, it would appear that Robert Jungk anticipated some of his main axioms. Jungk outlines how the extraordinary, as it pertains to the state’s possession of nuclear weapons and the development of atomic industries since the mid-1940s, became the ordinary (Jungk 1979: 58). When associated with nuclear weapons, the state operates under the guise of a paradigm of security which promises ‘peace’ in terms of a nuclear deterrence to other countries and also legiti-mates the excesses of state conduct whilst abrogating citizens’ rights in the name of ‘national security’. Jungk adds that, in fact, state authoritarianism applied to all nation-states with nuclear industries: ‘Nuclear power was first used to make weap-ons of total destruction for use against military enemies, but today it even imperils citizens in their own country, because there is no fundamental difference between atoms for peace and atoms for war’ (Jungk 1979: vii). The inevitable spread of tech-nological know-how through a range of international networks and the effects of the US’ ‘atoms for peace’ program in the 1950s led to a greater number of nations constructing institutions for civilian nuclear power, a development that was later realised to enable uranium enrichment for the manufacture of weapons .Because of the indeterminacy between atoms for peace and atoms for war, the nuclear industries began to play a key part in several nations’ security policies, both externally with reference to other states and also internally with reference to objec-tors and suspected anti-national contingents. Jungk notes ‘the important social role of nuclear energy in the decline of the constitutional state into the authoritarian nuclear state’ by focussing on a range of indicators, including a report published by the American National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in 1977 which suggested that:in view of the ‘high vulnerability of technical civilization’, emergency legislation should be introduced making it possible temporarily to ignore constitutional safeguards without previous congressional debate or consultation with the Supreme Court.(1979: 135) The bio-techno-political mode of governance encapsulates subjects into its folds such that it becomes a ‘technical civilisation’—a civilisation that, although promis-ing favourable aspects of modernity to the populace and development for the coun-try, is also to be accompanied by several risks to human and environmental safety that propel states, including democracies further towards authoritarianism. ‘Big sci-ence’—that is, science that is centralised or at least circumscribed by the state—and the bureaucracies surrounding it play a critical part in the normalisation of the state of exception, and the exercise of even more power over their citizens. Jungk elaborates on the routinisation of nuclear state violence, epistemological, juridical and physical :Such measures will be justified, not as temporary measures made necessary by an exceptional emergency … but by the necessity of providing permanent protection for a perpetually endangered central source of energy that is regarded as indispensable. A nuclear industry means a permanent state of emergency justified by a permanent threat. (1979: 135)This permanent state of emergency with respect to anything nuclear applies to restrictions on citizens’ freedom, the surveillance and criminalisation of critics and campaigners, the justification of the mobilisation of thousands of police men and sometimes military to deal with peaceful demonstrators against nuclear power, and a hegemony on ‘truth-claims’ where the nuclear industries are held as the solution to growing power needs whilst advancing themselves as climate change envi-ronmentalists. In this way, power structures and lifestyles need not be altered where nuclear power becomes, ironically, a powerful mascot of ‘clean and green’ energy. In India, the capitalist modality of the nuclear state was exacerbated by the ratification of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement in 2008, a bilateral accord which enables those countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to provide mate-rial and technology for India’s civilian nuclear operations even though it is nota signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. This has led to an expansionof the nuclear industries in the country where the limited indigenous resources of uranium could then be siphoned into the nuclear weapons industries. The imposition of the nuclear state hand-in-hand with multinational corporations in regions such as Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu (with the Russian nuclear com-pany, Atomstroyexport), Haripur in West Bengal (with the Russian company,Rosatom) or Jaitapur in Maharashtra (with the French company, Areva), without due consultation with residents around the proposed nuclear power plants, has prompted S. P. Udayakumar (2009) to recall an earlier history of colonization describing the contemporary scenario as an instance of ‘nucolonisation(nuclear + colonisation)’.The Indian nuclear state, with its especial mooring in central government, hasconducted environmental enquiries primarily for itself—and this so in only asummary fashion. In a context where the Ministry of Environment and Forestscan override the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report forthe first two nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in 2001, saying that the decisionwas first made in the 1980s before the EIA Notification Act (1994); or where theSupreme Court of India can dismiss a petition against the construction of thesereactors simply by saying: ‘There is no reason as to why this court should sit inappeal over the Governmental decision relating to a policy matter more so, whencrores of rupees having (sic) been invested’ (cited in Goyal 2002), then there is astrong basis upon which to consider the Indian state as a whole as a nuclearisedstate—that is, a state wherein matters relating to nuclear issues are given inordi-nate leeway across the board. The nuclear enclave consisting of scientists, bureau-crats and politicians, is both the exception to and the rule that underpins the rest of state practice. So even though we may be talking about a domain of distinct governmental practice and political technology as encapsulated by the notion of a nuclear state, it is evident that its influence spreads beyond the nuclear domain in a discourse of nuclearisation through state-related stratagems which have become increasingly authoritarian and defence-orientated since the late 1990s. In a nut-shell, discourses about the urgency of climate change, global warming, nuclear power and defence have converged in a draconian and oppressive manner that now parades itself as the necessary norm for the nation. Despite their particularities, machinations of the Indian nuclear state are also nota-ble elsewhere. Joseph Masco elaborates on the ‘national-security state’ in the USA(2006: 14). Tony Hall comments upon the ‘defence-dominated, well-cushioned(nuclear) industry’ in the United Kingdom (1996: 10). And on the recent issue of the construction of more nuclear power stations in Britain, David Ockwell observesthat a public hearing was only undertaken for ‘instrumental reasons (i.e. it was alegal requirement), as demonstrated by a public statement by then prime ministerTony Blair that the consultation ‘won’t affect the policy at all’ (2008: 264). These narratives are familiar across the board where a nuclear renaissance is apparent. But critics continue to dispute the hijacking of environmentalism by the state and argue that if climate change is the problem, then nuclear power is by no means a solution. Moreover, the half-life of radioactive waste cannot be brushed away in a misplacedvindication of the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid. Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government, the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is, healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism, particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development' projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly, there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in which shopfloor participation is minimised. Technologies are often chosen or designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace. Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour. The isolation of social control and responsibility and concern in the hands of political elites, together with the structure of the scientific community, act together to produce a system which keeps scientists locked into socially destructive research. Science is not value-free. Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation, can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists. Thus some scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction because the political decisions regarding these weapons are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have the right or expertise to question the political consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists' attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most scientists are ominously silent about the political side of the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major social structures such as the state and capitalism mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity, which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment. Within state bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community, women are discriminated against through job and career structures which concentrate men into the most powerful positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'. It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand, the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations to serve their own domination, for example to split the workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival. Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective, scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4. Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and inequality and which serve the interests of elites. Nuclear power is one component of this system. To oppose nuclear power effectively requires addressing the structures in which it is embedded. This view of nuclear power as a “quick fix” depoliticizes the global economy and energy system perpetuating massive inequality. Maciejewska and Marszalek ’11 Part 3 is the Advocacy Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power. Countries that currently produce power from nuclear reactors will immediately begin phasing out all nuclear power. Lucas 12 Voting affirmative endorses a social critique of nuclear power. Only instrumental reform to the energy system can effectively spill over to broader systemic problems without being coopted. Martin et. Al, 84 What is a strategy anyway? A strategy links the analysis of an issue with goals and objectives. Having chosen a strategy, it is implemented through appropriate actions. An action is a 'once-off' event such as a rally, march, blockade or lobbying a particular politician. A method, such as lobbying in general, refers to all actions of a certain type. Actions are coordinated together into a campaign. The campaign gives direction to a series of events. Given our analysis in section 1 of the structural forces responsible for the nuclear fuel cycle, the goal of stopping uranium mining must be closely linked to the goal of basic structural change in the state, capitalism, patriarchy and the division of labour. As such it must involve challenges to the structures which underlie nuclear concerns. The broader objectives for an anti-nuclear movement must include encouraging mass participation in decision making rather than elite control, decentralising the distribution of political power into smaller, local groups, and bringing about self-reliance based on environmentally sound technologies. These objectives involve fundamental changes to the way our society is organised at present. In effect, an anti-nuclear strategy must involve both actions aimed at stopping nuclear power and activities which challenge existing structures and help construct viable alternatives. In this context, the success or failure of an individual campaign must be viewed from the perspective of working towards these overall goals and objectives. The actions used by the anti-uranium movement fall into two main categories. Firstly there are actions which aim at convincing or influencing elites, such as lobbying or writing letters to politicians. Secondly are the actions such as rallies and blockades which usually involve more participation from the community. While such actions may be aimed at elites they are also important in educating or giving support to those who are involved. Lobbying. Lobbying is a direct attempt to convince or pressure elite decision-makers. It does nothing to challenge the state, patriarchy or other structures underlying nuclear power, but rather hopes to oppose nuclear power by 'working through the proper channels'. This leaves elite structures unchallenged and intact. Indeed lobbying is a form of political action most suited to powerful interest groups such as corporations and professional bodies. The state is the forum of the powerful, so for these kinds of groups lobbying often is an effective strategy. For small activist groups lobbying is useful only if it appears to be backed up by politically visible mass concern or mass action. In 1983, after the election of a Labor Government, the anti-uranium movement turned strongly to lobbying in an attempt to induce the Labor Caucus to implement the Labor Party platform. This effort was unsuccessful. Participating in environmental inquiries. In making submissions to the Ranger Inquiry, environmental groups made a concerted attempt to ensure that the issue of the Ranger mine was not divorced from the general issue of uranium mining and nuclear power, and that ultimate decisions were determined by the public rather than 'experts'. The Inquiry did in fact analyse the overall dangers of the nuclear industry and concluded that no decision on uranium mining should occur without public debate. These results helped fuel the ensuing widespread public debate on uranium mining in Australia. One reason for involvement in environmental inquiries is to challenge the role of experts in service to vested interests. The Ranger Inquiry commented on the bias of distinguished scientists who testified in favour of uranium mining. The Ranger Inquiry was unusual in making full use of broad terms of reference. Many environmental inquiries have institutional constraints which can make it questionable whether activists should spend much energy in that area. Many government inquiries with severely limited terms of reference offer few opportunities for activists to intervene effectively. There is not only the danger of being 'co-opted' if activists take part, but also the prospect that any structural challenges may be deflected by superficial concessions. Often such inquiries are not genuine and are only set up as window-dressing. For example, the Australian Science and Technology Council inquiry set up in November 1983 to investigate Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle has terms of reference which assume the continuation of uranium mining. Working through the trade union movement. In 1976 anti-uranium groups began a major effort to persuade trade unions and their Congress delegates to adopt and support anti-uranium policies. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) Congress adopted an anti-uranium policy in mid-1977. Following the re-election of the Liberal-National Government in December 1977, anti-uranium groups focussed on persuading unions to implement the ACTU policy. However, the members of a number of unions - including some with anti-uranium policies - continued to work in the uranium industry. Some union leaders chose not to attempt to convince members to avoid or leave the industry, while other leaders supportive of the policies could not persuade members working in the industry or transporting its products. The efforts within the trade union movement have been strong to the extent that they have mobilised rank-and-file action. One of the most valiant efforts to stop uranium mining was by the Waterside Workers Federation - supported by the Seamen's Union and the Transport Workers Union - in refusing to load yellowcake for export from Darwin in late 1981. This direct action - an obvious challenge to the power of corporations and the state - was only called off when deregistration threats from the Liberal-National Government induced the ACTU to back down. Efforts through the trade unions have been least effective when they have depended on action only by union elites. An ACTU policy against uranium mining is not enough: it does not in itself challenge any of the driving forces behind nuclear power. When Bob Hawke was President of the ACTU, the executive showed itself disinclined to mount even a strong publicity campaign against the uranium mining industry. Working through the parliamentary system. Since 1976 a major focus of the anti-nuclear power movement has been the ALP. A massive campaign of publicising and discussing the issue at the party branch level resulted in an anti-uranium platform being adopted in mid-1977. Since that time there has been strong anti-uranium feeling within the party. In late 1977 the focus of the anti-uranium movement became the federal election campaign. During this campaign the anti-uranium movement used the resources of local anti-uranium groups to help the ALP in marginal House of Representatives electorates and for the Australian Democrats in the Senate. Many anti-uranium activists pinned their hopes on a Labor victory. But the Liberal-National coalition won the election, and the anti-uranium campaign appeared to have little impact in marginal electorates. After this defeat, many activists left the movement while a number of local groups effectively ceased to exist. The danger in relying too much on anti-uranium action by a Labor Government was demonstrated in mid-1982 when the Labor anti-uranium platform was watered down on the initiative of party power brokers in spite of continuing support for the platform at the party branch level. The danger was further demonstrated in November 1983 when Labor Caucus, at the initiative of Cabinet, gave the go-ahead for Roxby Downs, potentially the largest uranium mine in the world. In each case the impetus to maintain the anti-uranium policy came from the grassroots of the party, while it was labour elites who pushed pro-mining stances. Any Australian government, whether Labor or not, is strongly tied to the established state apparatus and to the support of capitalism. It is futile to expect the government on its own - whatever its platform may be - to readily oppose aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. This will occur only when there is strong and continual pressure from the grassroots of the party and from the community at large. Grassroots mobilisation. The anti-uranium movement has used a wide variety of methods to inform and involve the community. Commonly used methods include leaflet distribution, articles, talks, discussions, films, petitions, rallies, marches, vigils and street theatre. Major anti-uranium rallies and marches were held each year in most large cities, especially in the peak years of the uranium debate, 1976-1979 and again since 1983. A typical grassroots activity has been the creation of nuclear-free zones, which is mainly a symbolic action which helps raise awareness and encourage local groups to openly oppose nuclear power. This activity has worked closely with the dissemination of information through the media, local groups, the alternative press and schools. In 1983 the people in the Bega Valley Shire voted to declare their area a nuclear-free zone. To counter this popular sentiment, the Shire Council called in nuclear experts in order to argue the case against the nuclear-free zone. In this case the nuclear-free zone campaign provided a channel for exposing and challenging the role of nuclear expertise and elites in promoting nuclear power. Civil disobedience has also been used by the anti-nuclear movement. In the late 1970s, nonviolent direct action was used on several occasions at ports where uranium was being loaded for export. At the Roxby Downs blockade in August 1983, several hundred people gathered to express their opposition and hinder mining operations. Two distinctive features of this protest were the use of nonviolent action and the way in which participants formed themselves into affinity groups. These are a form of political organising which is consciously anti-elitist and aims to democratise all group interactions. Education, rallies, marches, petitions and civil disobedience sometimes do little to challenge the structures underlying nuclear power. For example, the rally outside Parliament House in October 1983 was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the Labor Party at a time when it was considering its uranium policy. Similarly, the 'tent embassy' located on Parliament House lawns aimed to prick the conscience of the ALP. One of the aims of the Roxby Downs blockade was to mobilise pressure to influence the ALP. On the other hand, grassroots mobilisation often provides a potent challenge to nuclear power and the forces behind it. All the lasting successes of Australian anti-uranium campaigns have depended ultimately on grassroots mobilisation, which provides a reservoir of commitment and concern which elite-oriented activities do not. In 1975, the virtue of mining uranium was largely unquestioned among the general public and the labour movement. It was simply unthinkable that a mineral which could be profitably sold would be left in the ground. Yet by 1977 the anti-uranium view had become widely understood and strongly supported. This change in opinion happened largely through the educational and organising efforts of the local anti-uranium groups and of anti-uranium activists within organisations such as trade unions, schools and churches. The resurgence of anti-uranium activity in 1983 owed much to the framework established in the late 1970s. The anti-uranium platform adopted by the ALP in 1977 was the result of organising and education at the party branch level. ALP stands and action against uranium mining have come consistently from the party grassroots, and this in turn has depended on anti-uranium sentiment in the general community. Support for uranium mining within the ALP has always been strongest on the part of party elites. The anti-uranium stands and actions by Australian trade unions have been stronger than in any other country in the world. Building on a tradition of trade union action on social issues, this has come about from persistent grassroots education and organising at the shop floor level. It has been the rank-and-file unionists who have taken the strongest anti-uranium stands, and the trade union elites who have backed away from opposition. When in late 1981 the Seamen's Union refused to load yellowcake in Darwin, it was the rank-and-file workers who took a stand and made the sacrifices. Does grassroots mobilisation then provide the most fruitful avenue for challenging the structures behind nuclear power? Yes, but the choice of methods is not straightforward or automatic. The problem with many grassroots methods used by the anti-uranium movement is that they have not been systematically organised and focussed as part of an overall long-term strategy. Instead, individual groups - and indeed the national movement - has often just looked ahead to the next rally, the next signature drive, or the next ALP Conference. While this approach does have some merit for example in saving an area from irreversible environmental destruction, it is inadequate as an approach to stopping mining or transforming the structures underlying nuclear power. For example the closing of Roxby mine would prevent the destruction of the surrounding ecosystem including mound springs inhabited by forms of aquatic life found nowhere else in the world. If the environment is altered, these unique creatures will be gone forever. However, the closing of Roxby in isolation would do nothing to prevent mining companies from setting up or increasing production in other places. If, on the other hand, existing power structures were challenged, and the closing of Roxby were carried out in conjunction with the closing of all uranium mines and a disbanding of uranium interests, then the safety of these ecosystems would be assured. What needs to be done is to focus on vulnerable points within the structures promoting nuclear power, and to devote efforts in these areas. What are the vulnerable points, then? Before looking at specific vulnerable points, let's examine the nuclear power issue as a whole. Nuclear power is a large-scale vulnerable point in the structures of the state, capitalism and so forth. In promoting nuclear power, and thereby entrenching centralised political and economic power, other consequences result which mobilise people in opposition: environmental effects (especially radioactive waste), the connection with nuclear weapons, threats to Aboriginal land rights, threats to civil liberties, and many others. In organising to oppose these specific threats, people at the same time can challenge the driving forces behind nuclear power. Here are a few of the specific vulnerable points which have been addressed by the anti-uranium movement. Threats to Aborigines. Nuclear power is alleged to be beneficial, but uranium mining is a severe cultural threat to Aborigines, who are already a strongly oppressed group in Australia. The anti-uranium movement and the Aboriginal land rights movements have been strengthened by joint actions, such as speaking tours. Centralised decision-making. Nuclear power has widespread social effects, but promoters of nuclear power claim the decisions must be taken by political and scientific elites. This runs counter to the rhetoric of Western democracies where ordinary people are meant to have a say in political decision-making. By moving in on this embarrassing contradiction, protests which demand a role for the public in decision-making about energy also challenge political elites and the political use of expertise. Capitalism and workers. Nuclear power is alleged to be good for the economy and for workers, but in practice massive state subsidies to the industry are the rule, and few jobs are produced for the capital invested. In challenging nuclear power as an inappropriate direction for economic investment, a challenge is made to the setting of economic priorities by corporations and the state. Capitalism also directs investments only into profitable areas, irrespective of their social benefits. If activists can undermine the profitability of marginal enterprises by delaying tactics or by jeopardising state subsidies, then capitalist investment can be shunted away from socially destructive areas. For example, direct actions against Roxby Downs could in the long run undermine its profitability and cause its closure. Grassroots mobilisation is usually the most effective way to intervene at vulnerable points such as these. A suitable combination of interventions then forms the basis for a strategy against uranium mining. But how can uranium mining actually be stopped? This is a good question. Grassroots mobilisation does not by itself stop uranium mining. The mobilisation must connect with major forces in society. There are several ways this can occur. Uranium mining could be stopped: (1) by direct decision of the government; (2) by the unions acting directly through strikes or bans to prevent uranium mining, export, or construction of nuclear plants; (3) through cost escalations, for example resulting from requirements to ensure safety or environmental protection, (4) by a referendum whose results were adhered to; (5) by legal action on the part of aborigines or anti-uranium forces; (6) by direct action to physically stop mining from proceeding. A critical element necessary to the success of any of these methods is the mobilisation of a large section of the public against uranium mining. Thus for example government action to stop mining would be likely to take place only if there were mass mobilisation on the issue. Similarly 'direct action' could only succeed if popular support were so great that the government refused to use sufficient force to physically overcome the resisters. To give an idea of how grassroots methods could be coordinated into a strategy to stop uranium mining, consider a hypothetical example. Suppose an analysis of the current political situation suggested that direct action by workers and unions gave the most immediate promise for directly stopping uranium mining, while government decision and cost escalations were also likely avenues for stopping mining. A grassroots strategy might include the following: Systematic community organising and education, to provide a basis in popular sympathy and support for direct action by workers. Points to be emphasised would include the right of workers to take direct action on conscience issues as well as work-related issues, and the importance of questioning decisions made solely on the basis of corporate profitability or state encouragement of large-scale economic investment. Development of alternative plans for investment and jobs based on input from workers and communities, and widespread dissemination of the ideas and rationale for the alternative plans. A series of rallies, marches, vigils and civil disobedience, aimed at both mobilising people and illustrating the strength of anti-uranium feeling. These actions would be coordinated towards major points for possible worker intervention, such as trade union conferences or the start of work for new mines. Through consultation with unions, workers and working-class families, the establishment of support groups and funds for workers and unions penalised for direct action against uranium mining. Plans to make parallel challenges to those by workers, such as simultaneous defiance of the Atomic Energy Act by trade unionists and community activists. Black bans of corporations or state instrumentalities by unionists could be coordinated with boycotts organised by community groups. With such a strategy, it is likely that the workers taking action would come under strong attacks from both corporations and the government. Preparation to oppose such attacks would depend on community mobilisation to demonstrate support for the workers in the media, in the streets, through informal communication channels and to the workers themselves. If direct action by workers began to be sustained through community support, it is quite possible that other channels for stopping uranium mining could come into play: the government - especially a Labor government - might back away from confrontation with unions supported by the community, or corporations might decide investment in this controversial area was too risky. Plans would be required to continue the campaign towards these or other avenues for stopping uranium mining. How does grassroots mobilisation provide a challenge to the structures underlying nuclear power? It challenges the division of labour and the role of elites, especially the role of political elites which have a corner on the exercise of social responsibility, by mobilising in a widespread way the social concern of ordinary people and by demonstrating the direct exercise of this concern for example by groups in the workplace. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the division of labour and the role of scientific elites through a challenge to the prestige and credibility of scientists who advocate nuclear power. As the nuclear power issue has been widely debated, it has become obvious to many people that the expertise of pro-nuclear scientists and engineers is tied to vested interests. The nuclear debate has greatly weakened the belief that 'the experts know best'. Grassroots mobilisation challenges the masculine rationality of dominant structures through calling contemporary values and attitudes to nature and to the future into question. Within the antinuclear movement, patriarchy has been challenged as at least some groups have addressed domination by men and developed egalitarian modes of interaction and decision-making. This sometimes has been fostered by nonviolent action training used to prepare for civil disobedience actions. The anti-nuclear movement has inevitably involved questioning the growth of energy use and development of programmes for a 'soft energy future' involving energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and redesign of communities to reduce energy requirements. The challenge to unending energy growth is a direct challenge to the state and capitalism, whose power is tied to traditional economic expansion. Mass mobilisation against uranium also challenges capitalism by bringing under scrutiny the rationale of pursuing profitability at the expense of social responsibility and by direct economic blows to corporate profitability. More fundamentally, nuclear power represents a potential new stage in the entrenchment of centralised political and economic control and of specialist knowledge in the service of elites. By challenging the political and economic rationale for nuclear power, and by making demands for local control over energy decision-making, a direct challenge is made to the power of the state and corporations. It is important to realise that none of these challenges on their own are likely to bring down these structures however much they may weaken them. Sufficiently many blows however over a sustained period could do so. Thus campaigns on the nuclear issue could begin or be part of a process of sustained challenge which could weaken them irreversibly. A grassroots strategy against nuclear power and uranium mining can be seen as a 'non-reformist reform': namely, it can achieve effective change within the system in a way which weakens rather than strengthens dominant structures, or which helps to prevent the entrenchment of new, more powerful structures. Such a strategy does not simply attempt to bypass the 'macro' level of existing structures in the way that some focusses on alternatives do, such as promoting changes in lifestyles only at the level of the individual. Rather such a strategy aims at interactions with existing structures in a way which goes beyond them. Nuclear phase out solves immediate harms of nuclear power and enables a culture shift towards renewables – Empirics prove. Klein 14 As we have already seen, the latest research on renewable energy, most notably by Mark Jacobson’s team at Stanford, shows that a global transition to 100 percent renewable energy-“wind, water and solar”-is both technically and economically feasible “by as early as 2030.” That means lowering greenhouse emissions in line with science-based targets does not have to involve building a global network of new nuclear plants. In fact that could well slow down the transition, since renewable energy is faster and cheaper to roll out than nuclear, critical factors given the tightness of the timeframe. Moreover, says Jacobson, in the near-term nuclear is “not carbon-free, no matter what the advocates tell you. Vast amounts of fossil fuels must be burned to mine, transport and enrich uranium and to build the nuclear plant. And all that dirty power will be released during the 10 to 19 years that it takes to plan and build a nuclear plant. (A wind farm typically takes two to five years .)” He concludes that “if we invest in nuclear versus true renewables, you can bet that the glaciers and polar ice caps will keep melting while we wait, and wait, for the nuclear age to arrive. We will also guarantee a riskier future for us all.” Indeed, renewable installations present dramatically lower risks than either fossil fuels or nuclear energy to those who live and work next to them. As comedian Bill Maher once observed, “You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”II. 32 That said, about 12 percent of the world’s power is currently supplied by nuclear energy, much of it coming from reactors that are old and obsolete.33 From a climate perspective, it would certainly be preferable if governments staggered their transitions away from high-risk energy sources like nuclear, prioritizing fossil fuels for cuts because the next decade is so critical for getting us off our current trajectory toward 4-6 degrees Celsius of warming. That would be compatible with a moratorium on new nuclear facilities, a decommissioning of the oldest plants and then a full nuclear phase-out once renewables had decisively displaced fossil fuels. And yet it must also be acknowledged that it was the power of Germany's antinuclear movement that created the conditions for the renewables revolution in the first place (as was the case in Denmark in the 19805), so there might have been no energy transition to debate without that widespread desire to get off nuclear due to its many hazards. Moreover, many German energy experts are convinced that the speed of the transition so far proves that it is possible to phase out both nuclear and fossil fuels simultaneously. A 2012 report by the German National Center for Aerospace, Energy and Transport Research (DLR), for instance, demonstrated that 67 percent of the electricity in all of the EU could come from renewables by 2030, with that number reaching 96 percent by 2050.34 But, clearly, this will become a reality only if the right policies are in place. | 9/10/16 |
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