Tournament: Damus | Round: 1 | Opponent: Harvard Westlake MaGr | Judge: Olivia Panchal
FW
Moral absolutism is useless, given that consequences morally and politically precede intentions.
Isaac Jeffrey Isaac. James H. Rudy professor of Political Science and director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University, Bloomington, “Ends, Means and politics,” Dissent, Spring 2002
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics— as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Only states of affairs give teleological relevance to ethics
Ariansen 98 Per Ariansen (University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy). “Anthropocentrism with a human face.” Ecological Economics 24 (1998) 153–162 AJ
Suspending for a while the idea of morality as a game, one could approach the question of the nature of ethics from another angle. One could try to seek out a set of necessary and sufficient condi- tions for ethics to be operative. What traits of ethics cannot be lacking without ethics losing its meaning? Will ethics be meaningful in a world where no suffering (to focus on the duty to alleviate suffering rather that promote happiness) is known to anyone? Technically it would be possible to tell a lie or break a promise in such a society, but the difference between lying and telling the truth or breaking and keeping promises would have no moral significance, since any outcome of any event is just as good (rather, as indifferent) as any other outcome of the event. In such a world any mention of responsibilities and duties would be meaningless. Ethics clearly needs to relate to joy and suffering. This axiological orientation is necessary to give meaning to the ethical project, to mark it out as an ethical project in contrast to other projects of rationalization.
Global justice requires a reduction in inequality and a focus on material rights.
Okereke 07 Chukwumerije Okereke (Senior Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia). Global Justice and Neoliberal Environmental Governance. Routledge 2007
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, these scholars provide very compelling arguments against mainstream conceptions of justice. In this approach, the obli- gation of justice is derived from the moral equality of human beings irrespective of their race, creed and nationality (O'Neill 1991; Brown 1992: 169; Beitz 1979; Sen 1999). The emphasis is on the positive rights of citizens - that is the kinds of rights that require state authorities to do something in order to provide citizens with the opportunities and abilities to act to fulfil their own potential - as opposed to negative rights/liberty, which refers to freedom from coercion and non-interfer- ence. The notion of justice as meeting needs, as seen in Chapter 2, figures very prominently in quite a number of the influencing materials that form the starting point for the discourse on global sustainable development. It has been suggested, in general, that this idea of justice is 'increasingly influential on non-governmen- tal organizations and the community of international policy makers' (Brighouse 2004: 67). In general, proponents of justice as need criticize liberal ideas of justice for concentrating on political equality (equal right to speech, vote, etc.) without addressing the problem of material equality - especially in the form of equal access to resources. They also claim that the ability to own property as well as the ability to exercise political rights (say the right to vote) depends first and foremost on the ability of citizens to function effectively. When the basic human needs of citizens, for example food, are not being met, other rights become merely 'hypothetical and empty' (Sen 1999: 75). Following on from this basic reasoning, the rights approach to justice is rejected and, in its place, human basic need is seen as the correct basis of political morality and the right benchmark for the determination of political judgment (Plant 1991: 185). In previous sections we saw that libertarian notions of justice sanction unlimited material inequality between citizens, provided that each person has obtained their possessions through legitimate means. All that matters is that the state should ensure fair rules of transitions and equality before the law. We saw also that liberal accounts of justice, especially Rawls' liberal egalitarianism, reject this formula- tion of justice because it does not secure the welfare of the less able in society. On the contrary, Rawls recommends that political institutions should be structured in ways that protect the interests of the least advantaged individuals in society. Accordingly, he sanctions societal inequities provided that such inequities work to the advantage of the least well-off. On closer reading, however, it turns out that Rawls difference principle (that inequities should work in favour of the least well- off) does not contain any explicit demand relating to the basic needs of the poor. As such, it is possible for Rawls' proviso to be met even when the least well-off in the society are denied their basic needs. For example, a distribution that changes from 20:10:2 to 100:30:4 satisfies Rawls difference principle but tells us noth- ing about the actual well-being of the least well-off. So, whereas some (mainly libertarians) criticize Rawls for not specifying the extent to which other people's liberty can be sacrificed for the sake of the least well-off, others (proponents of justice as meeting need) criticize Rawls for leaving the fate of the least well-off unprotected. Many scholars in the latter group sometimes argue along Marxian lines that as long as the means of production remain in the hands of the 'haves' there is no guarantee that inequities will benefit the least well-off. Maslow (1968), Bradshaw (1972) and Forder (1974) have all consequently argued that only the theory of need provides, as Maslow (1968: 4) puts it, 'the ultimate appeal for the determination of the good, bad, right and wrong' in a po- litical community. Without the theory of need, they say, it would be impossible to justify the welfare state in capitalist Western democracies. On the other hand, the co-existence of welfare and capitalism confirms the place of need as the criterion of moral political judgment. O'Neill (1991), Sen (1999) and Nussbaum (2000) have all extended versions of this argument to the international domain. O'Neill (1980, 1991) argues that adherence to the Kantian categorical imperative entails that the global community must act to remove the aching poverty and famine that threaten the existence of millions of people in developing countries. Sen (1999), for his part, calls for the strengthening of international institutions to make them able to assist the least well in the global society to achieve the measure of actual living that is required for the basic function and well-being of citizens. For Sen, as for O'Neill, all forms of liberty and rights are meaningful only when people have the substantive 'freedom to achieve actual living' (Sen 1999: 73; cf. O'Neill 1989: 288; 1986). Thomas Pogge also places emphasis on human basic need and starts his well-known book World Poverty and Human Rights with the rhetorical ques- tion: 'How can severe poverty of half of humankind continue despite enormous economic and technological progress and despite the enlightened moral norms and values of our heavily dominant Western civilization?' (Pogge 2002: 3). Many environmentalists believe that this is the conception of justice most con- sistent with the Bnmdtland version of sustainable development (Dobson 1998; Benton 1999: 201; Langhelle 2000: 299). This assertion is not difficult to sustain because the Bnmdtland Report contains several explicit arguments that firmly link the concept of sustainability with meeting the needs of the global population. It says, for example: The satisfaction of human needs and aspirations is the major objective of sustainable development. The essential needs of vast numbers in the develop- ing countries - for food, clothing, shelter, jobs - are not being met, and be- yond their basic needs, these people have legitimate aspirations for improved quality of life .... Sustainable development requires meeting basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity to satisfy their aspirations for a better life. (WCED 1987: 43).
Outweighs:
Arbitrariness – It’s morally arbitrary to hold people responsible for what they can’t change. Treating poor people differently than others is thus morally arbitrary, destroying the foundations of a theory.
Thus the standard is maximizing expected well being
Human Rights Council
Police brutality is the largest cause of a decline in US cred on human rights – the UN Human Rights Council has smashed the US for it
Sheriff 15 - Natasja Sheriff, independent journalist and a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute: May 11, 2015(“US cited for police violence, racism in scathing UN review on human rights” Al Jazeera Available at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/11/us-faces-scathing-un-review-on-human-rights-record.html Accessed on 10/27/16)IG
The United States was slammed over its rights record Monday at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, with member nations criticizing the country for police violence and racial discrimination, the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility and the continued use of the death penalty.
The issue of racism and police brutality dominated the discussion on Monday during the country’s second universal periodic review (UPR). Country after country recommended that the U.S. strengthen legislation and expand training to eliminate racism and excessive use of force by law enforcement.
"I'm not surprised that the world's eyes are focused on police issues in the U.S.," said Alba Morales, who investigates the U.S. criminal justice system at Human Rights Watch.
"There is an international spotlight that's been shone on the issues, in large part due to the events in Ferguson and the disproportionate police response to even peaceful protesters," she said.
Anticipating the comments to come, James Cadogan, a senior counselor to the U.S. assistant attorney general, told delegates gathered in Geneva, "The tragic deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Ohio and Walter Scott in South Carolina have renewed a long-standing and critical national debate about the even-handed administration of justice. These events challenge us to do better and to work harder for progress — through both dialogue and action."
All of the names he mentioned are black men or boys who were killed by police officers or died shortly after being arrested. The events have sparked widespread anger and unrest over the past year.
Cadogan added that the Department of Justice has opened more than 20 investigations in the last six years — including an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department — as well as the release of a report of the Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing in March, which included more than 60 recommendations.
But advocates like Morales say the U.S. could do much more.
"Use of excessive force by police was a major part of this year's UPR, and the fact that we still don't have a reliable national figure to know how many people are killed by police or what the racial breakdown is of those people is a travesty," she said. "A nation as advanced as the U.S. should be able to gather that number."
The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Although the problems are not new, the death of young men like Gray and Brown and the unrest that followed their killings in U.S. cities over the past year has attracted the attention — and criticism — of the international community.
"Chad considers the United States of America to be a country of freedom, but recent events targeting black sectors of society have tarnished its image," said Awada Angui of the U.N. delegation to Chad.
The U.S. responded to questions and recommendations from 117 countries during a three-and-a-half-hour session in Geneva on Monday morning, with the high level of participation leaving each country just 65 seconds to speak.
Among the various concerns raised by U.N. member states was the failure to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, the continued use of the death penalty, the need for adequate protections for migrant workers and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples.
Member states also called on the U.S. to end child labor, human trafficking and sexual violence against Native American and Alaska Native women and to lift restrictions on the use of foreign aid to provide safe abortion services for rape victims in conflict areas.
Pakistan, Russia, China and Turkey were among the most vociferous of the member states, with Russia informing the U.S. that "the human rights situation in the country has seriously deteriorated recently" before presenting seven recommendations to the U.S. delegation.
The Council can effectively create change but US leadership is key
Lagon 5/17 – Mark P. Lagon, Centennial Fellow and Distinguished Senior Scholar in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University: May 17, 2016(“A GLASS HALF FULL: WHY THE U.S. NEEDS TO BE ON THE U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL” Freedom House Available at https://freedomhouse.org/article/glass-half-full-why-us-needs-be-un-human-rights-council Accessed on 11/01/16)IG
Active membership in the Council by the U.S. has contributed to successes.  A resolution and rapporteur on Belarus were restored.
Moreover, I would never have thought ten years ago that a resolution devoted to Iran could be passed not only in New York but in Geneva.  The Human Rights Council resolution does not yet enumerate Iran’s human rights violations chapter and verse – as it should.  But it has sustained a Special Rapporteur when the international community (and candidly the United States) have let nuclear nonproliferation be a pretext for deprioritizing human rights in that country – both before and after a nuclear deal with Tehran.  Despite fears to the contrary, the Council once again extended the Iran mandate on March 23, 2016 by a 5 vote margin.  Today, the Council and the current Iran resolution remain important vehicles for the world to increase pressure on Iran to improve its human rights record.
While the Security Council has been all too inert on the atrocities of Assad in Syria, allowing ISIS to grow as a second source of atrocities, the Human Rights Council has repeatedly devoted its attention to those calamities.  On August 22, 2011, the Council established a Commission of Inquiry on Syria which found that the Syrian government is responsible for violations that amount to crimes against humanity. Since then, the UNHRC has held over 20 sessions on Syria and adopted no less than 17 resolutions.
The Human Rights Council was pretty feckless in calling attention to human rights abuses in Sri Lanka in the period when the United States refused to run to be a Member.  After the United States got on, there was a pronounced shift in the substance of resolutions adopted on Sri Lanka, making clear the international community’s demand for accountability for mass atrocities committed during the civil war.   Sri Lanka is making some progress. It is one ray of hope in Freedom House’s Freedom of the World survey, which shows ten straight years of a global recession of democracy, notably in freedom of expression, freedom of association, and rule of law.
Most striking was the Commission of Inquiry launched by the Council to investigate North Korea’s atrocities.  No single multilateral mandate or report on human rights has changed the terms of debate on a neglected human rights issue than this Commission headed by Australian jurist Michael Kirby.  No mandate devoted to atrocities-level abuse has treated a case where open warfare has not existed for decades.  And yet, so powerful were the Commission’s findings that China and Russia could not block North Korea’s human rights situation from being added to the U.N. Security Council’s standing agenda.
Less striking, but highly important, was action on Eritrea – a country all but forgotten, and of little strategic importance, yet so repressive that in 2014, some 6 percent of its population fled to seek asylum. In July 2012, the Council appointed a Special Rapporteur to shine a light onto widespread human rights violations. On June 27, 2014, the Council established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these gross and systematic abuses, with a particular focus on documenting crimes against humanity.
The United States helped make the numerous Council assessments of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and in the humanitarian flotilla controversy fairer.  The United States may not fix the quantitative volume and qualitative tilt of the Council’s treatment of Israel, but its presence has been helpful.  And at a minimum, the United States using its voice and vote means that excessive criticism of Israel is not answered with silence.
THEMATIC WORK
In a second area, the thematic work of the Human Rights Council has improved, and been ameliorated by U.S. leadership.  Let’s take a few examples.
First, the United States helped turn around a perverse set of resolutions on defamation of religion which gave states in Islamic-majority nations cover in order to use blasphemy laws to sideline and repress freedom of religion and of expression in the name of anti-defamation.  Those resolutions always have represented a latent threat for creation of a broader UN Declaration or Convention codifying their pernicious provisions.  In 2011, the United States, working with a cross-regional group of partners, engaged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to end-run intransigent, longstanding ambassadors in Geneva. The result was a new consensus framework on combatting religious intolerance, resting on the pillars of defending freedom of expression and veritable freedom of all religions. That victory is precarious and is already vulnerable.  As the single most pronounced voice for freedom of conscience and expression in the international community, the U.S. should be on the Council.i
Second, a much-needed mandate was created for Freedom of Assembly and Association, in large part because of U.S. leadership.  At a time when autocracies and ostensible democracies worldwide are squeezing civil society groups and demonizing them for getting international advice and backing, this mandate is essential.  We know the Rapporteur well.  Kenyan Maina Kiai happens to have won the Freedom Award at the annual dinner where I was named to become Freedom House’s President.  As Special Rapporteur, he embodies the UN’s thematic work on human rights at its most energetic and effective.
I have said in my book Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions that multilateral measures on economic and social aspirations are not inherently less important than the political and civil liberties Freedom House champions.  Yet the Human Rights Council does dignify a number of matters that no serious person could claim are really human rights.  The number of mandates for economic, social, and cultural rights have grown, even while the U.S. has been on the Council as a voice of reason.  Without the U.S. there, there would be even more silly mandates, like treating the real problem of toxic waste as a human rights matter.  And those efforts which have proven constructive, like the Council resolution on business and human rights springing from the work of John Ruggie as Special Representative, would be in danger of being taken in the wrong direction, which bears watching as Ecuador and others seek a related treaty.
UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW
A third area relates to peer review.  The most distinctive innovation of the negotiation I took part in to create the Council is the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).  It meant all nations, including some heinous, human rights-abusing states managing to get on the Council would be subject to regular scrutiny. Some of us feared the UPR would be a pretext for winnowing the number of country-specific resolutions and rapporteurs, but they have been sustained, especially when the U.S. has been a Council Member.
The UPR gives an opportunity for civil society groups to shine a light of accountability on their states.  The largest part of Freedom House’s work, our true comparative advantage, is capacity-building and emergency assistance to civil society organizations in all regions of the world.  We see how the UPR helps our local civil society partners assert their voice in an organized, focused and coordinated manner, which is why we support these frontline activists to engage directly in the UPR process, including appearing in Geneva and producing shadow reports. At its best, governments are adopting the practice of formally consulting with civil society, a good example being Mali, where the government arranged meetings between ministerial departments and representatives of civil society, and where the Ministry of Justice established a working group to prepare the UPR report. In more restrictive environments, civil society and even the media have the option of discussing UPR recommendations at one step removed: rather than themselves raising issues directly, they can report on recommendations raised by the international community.  According to a 2014 report of the civil society organization UPR Info, 48 percent of UPR recommendations triggered action (partially or fully implemented) within two and a half years, and 19 percent of recommendations that were not accepted but merely “noted” still resulted in action.
The UPR is not an unvarnished success.ii  It offers an opportunity to raise human rights issues in any nation every four years, makes recommendations to states, and those states in turn make commitments to address some of the recommendations.  Yet in a decade, with nations now getting repeatedly assessed, it is not clear to me that there is sufficient onus on states to live up to even the recommendations they agree to meet, much less those they do not.  This is one reason Freedom House helps civil society actors, like some from Venezuela, to present their case to the expert bodies assigned to assess how much parties to UN human rights conventions fulfill their commitments, because these treaty bodies have more impact than the UPR.
The United States is empirically the most vocal participant in the UPR dialogue with states under examination.  The UPR will be stronger over time for U.S. involvement in the Council.
Rights violations effect billions
CFR 13 - Council on Foreign Relations: June 19, 2013 (“The Global Human Rights Regime” From the multimedia Global Governance Monitor of the International Institutions and Global Governance program Available at http://www.cfr.org/human-rights/global-human-rights-regime/p27450#p1 Accessed on 10/27/16) IG
Although the concept of human rights is abstract, how it is applied has a direct and enormous impact on daily life worldwide. Millions have suffered crimes against humanity. Millions more toil in bonded labor. In the last decade alone, authoritarian rule has denied civil and political liberties to billions. The idea of human rights has a long history, but only in the past century has the international community sought to galvanize a regime to promote and guard them. Particularly, since the United Nations (UN) was established in 1945, world leaders have cooperated to codify human rights in a universally recognized regime of treaties, institutions, and norms.
An elaborate global system is being developed. Governments are striving to promote human rights domestically and abroad, and are partnering with multilateral institutions to do so. A particularly dynamic and decentralized network of civil-society actors is also involved in the effort.
Together, these players have achieved marked success, though the institutionalization and implementation of different rights is progressing at varying rates. Response to mass atrocities has seen the greatest progress, even if enforcement remains inconsistent. The imperative to provide people with adequate public health care is strongly embedded across the globe, and substantial resources have been devoted to the challenge. The right to freedom from slavery and forced labor has also been integrated into international and national institutions, and has benefited from high-profile pressure to combat forced labor. Finally, the steady accumulation of human-rights-related conventions has encouraged most states to do more to implement binding legislation in their constitutions and statutes.
Qualified immunity leads to circumvention of rights and propagates police brutality – denying it as a defense solves
Johnson 15 – Tabitha Johnson, : 2015(“QUALIFIED IMMUNITY OR JUSTIFIED BRUTALITY?: AN EXAMINATION OF THE QUALIFIED IMMUNITY DOCTRINE IN PETERSON V. KOPP” Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Vol. 4:2 p.265-267 Accessed on 11/04/16)IG
The Eighth Circuit then addressed Peterson’s excessive force claim.43 During his arrest, Peterson contended that Kopp used excessive force, thus violating Peterson’s Fourth Amendment right “to be free from unreasonable seizures.”44 In determining whether Kopp used excessive force in Peterson’s arrest, the court used an “objective reasonableness” test.45 The Eighth Circuit explained that this test took into account that an officer’s actions “must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”46 In determining whether an officer’s actions in pursuing an arrest were reasonable, the Eighth Circuit evaluated “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”47 The court concluded that Peterson’s purported crime was not severe, he was not posing a threat to others, nor was he fleeing.48 As Peterson’s disobedience was passive and non-threatening to others, Kopp’s infliction of physical force onto Peterson was deemed excessive.49
While Kopp’s arrest failed the excessive force test, the Eighth Circuit held that Kopp was entitled to qualified immunity because Peterson’s injuries sustained from the altercation with Kopp were de minimis.50 The injuries were de minimis because Peterson “did not seek medical care and his injuries resolved themselves without medical intervention.”51 To support its conclusion, the court provided a wealth of similar cases for comparison.52 The court further noted that a recent decision changed the law regarding the applicability of qualified immunity for de minimis injuries; however, the court also clarified that it rendered the ruling after the altercation between Kopp and Peterson.53 Therefore, Kopp was reasonable in assuming that, as long as the injuries he inflicted upon Peterson were de minimis, he would remain entitled to qualified immunity as his actions were “constitutionally permissible” at the time.54
Lastly, the Eighth Circuit addressed Peterson’s two retaliation claims.55 Peterson alleged that Kopp both pepper sprayed and arrested him for participating in a constitutionally protected activity.56 In determining whether Kopp acted in retaliation, the court determined that Peterson must show that “he engaged in a protected activity,” that “the government official took adverse action against him that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing in the activity,” and that “the adverse action was motivated at least in part by the exercise of the protected activity.”57 The Eighth Circuit consolidated the three prongs of the test by stating that a plaintiff need only show that “he was ‘singled out because of his exercise of constitutional rights’” in order to prevail on a retaliation claim.58 The court further implemented a fourth prong to this traditional test.59 To satisfy the test, Peterson would also need to prove a “lack of probable cause or a lack of arguable probable cause.”60
The Eighth Circuit first applied the aforementioned test to Peterson’s claim of retaliatory arrest.61 In applying this four-prong test, the Eighth Circuit held that “Kopp was entitled to qualified immunity on Peterson’s retaliatory arrest claim because, as detailed above, Kopp had at least arguable probable cause for the arrest,” as exemplified through his actions prior to his arrest.62
The Eighth Circuit then evaluated Peterson’s claim of being pepper sprayed out of retaliation.63 The court determined that Peterson presented enough evidence to prove that Kopp pepper sprayed him out of retaliation. 64 In reaching its conclusion, the Eighth Circuit noted that it was significant to Peterson’s contention that, shortly before being pepper sprayed, Peterson demanded Kopp’s badge number.65 This—along with Kopp’s outright refusal to provide Peterson with the requested information—justified the court’s decision to remand the issue.66 The court ultimately held that “a reasonable jury could conclude . . . that Kopp pepper sprayed Peterson in retaliation for asking for his badge number, and Peterson’s First Amendment right was clearly established at the time of the incident.”67 For these reasons, the Eighth Circuit remanded the retaliatory force claim for further review.
IV. CONCLUSION
Despite its arrival during a tumultuous era for civilian rights, Peterson does not stray from the majority of its precedents regarding the evaluation of qualified immunity. Peterson’s claims of wrongful arrest, retaliatory arrest, and excessive force all proved futile under the Eighth Circuit’s application of qualified immunity, while Peterson’s claim of retaliatory force has been remanded for further examination. It is clear from the holdings in Peterson that the doctrine of qualified immunity still reigns supreme in cases of purported police brutality. Unless there is a reevaluation of the doctrine on a fundamental and moral level, Peterson will provide precedent for further police brutality cases.
Miltary Urbanism
Immunity protects police surveillance- erodes fundamental journalist rights
Marvel 11 (Bill Marvel, journalist at Dallas Morning News, 11-04-2011,  "Bill Marvel: The illegal assault on photographers," http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2011/11/04/bill-marvel-the-illegal-assault-on-photographers)
In the absence of specific laws, Manning writes, police are harassing photographers under local ordinances against “loitering, disorderly conduct, assault, obstruction of justice, failure to obey police orders, disturbing the peace, provoking a riot and resisting a police officer.”
Although courts have consistently ruled in favor of the photographer in such encounters, police are slow to get the news.
The Long Beach, Calif., chief of police has warned that his department will arrest anyone taking pictures “with no apparent aesthetic value,” thus adding art criticism to the duties of his officers. (According to a Dallas Police Department spokesperson, citizens here can take pictures anywhere their presence is legal. Farmers Branch, where Allison Smith was forbidden to photograph the water tower, has no policy against photography, says a department spokesperson.)
But if you lose your camera, film or memory card and spend a couple of hours in jail, Manning says, few real remedies are available. You can sue. But as public servants, police enjoy qualified immunity. “Unless they’ve done something pretty egregious, there’s little you can do.”
“And without meaningful remedies, the right to take pictures in public places will further erode.”
To halt that erosion, Manning would like to see citizens more aware of their rights. Violations of those rights should be widely publicized. Lawyers should challenge the few existing statutes and ordinances against photography. And civil rights legislation should be expanded to cover photography.
Bert Krages’ pamphlet The Photographer’s Right recommends that when stopped or threatened by law officers, photographers ask on what basis they are being stopped and if they are free to go. Above all, he says, remain calm and courteous, advice most professional photographers echo.
That’s good advice for anyone who carries a camera.
“People are talking about photographers’ rights,” says Scott Martin, a San Antonio photographer who had a tense encounter with heavily armed military police on a San Diego sidewalk. “It’s not just photographers. Everyone’s a photographer in the United States. We’re all snapping pictures.”
Yes, spies carry cameras. So does everyone else these days. There are a million eyes out there. Without our cameras, most of us would have to depend on postcards or our memories for views of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Denver skyline or the eye-catching symmetry of a new courthouse or an oil refinery. Family snapshots of loved ones departing at the airport or train station would not exist.
Without the witness of the camera, we would not have Lewis Hine’s moving images of the poor and powerless in turn-of-the-century America. We would not have Walker Evans’ or Dorothea Lange’s testament to the ravages of the Great Depression. The savage beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police would have gone undocumented. The civil rights struggle of the 1950s and ’60s would exist only in fading memories.
The attack on Americans’ rights to take photographs and make videos is no less than an assault on our right to observe, to see things for ourselves, to keep an eye on authorities, to record, to report, to protest. The War Against the Camera undermines our freedom as surely as an airplane flown into a high-rise or a bomb left on a street corner. The irony is that this right is being challenged by the very authorities we depend on to protect our rights.
A grey area for erosion of civil rights is created by qualified immunity – it uses unclear law to prevent rulings from ever taking place on those issues
Black 91 (H. Allen Black, Order of the Coif, teaching assistant and member of the William and Mary Law Review, March 1991, "Balance, Band-Aid, or Tourniquet: The Illusion OofQualified Immunity for Federal Officials", William and Mary Law Review, Volume 32 | Issue 3 Article 5, http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1937andcontext=wmlr)
In the context of a civil suit, however, the qualified immunity doctrine sets up a Catch-22 situation. The law is not clearly established, so qualified immunity protects the official's actions. The law remains unclear because the case is resolved through the immunity defense and the courts never determine the law. The immunity doctrine thus freezes constitutional law in the civil context, leaving its clarification almost exclusively to the criminal context.220 The resulting chilling effect on constitutional law is clearly contrary to the wisdom Thomas Jefferson expressed when he wrote that "no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation."221 The qualified immunity doctrine thus poses an added danger in that it may greatly restrict the protection of constitutional rights.2 Anderson v. Creighton provides a vivid example of how the doctrine freezes constitutional law and exposes citizens to greater police latitude. Because the Court resolved Anderson by summary judgment without reaching the principal issue of whether exigent circumstances justified the search of the Creighton residence, the Court did not clearly establish the constitutional law with regard to exigent circumstances in similar situations. The qualified immunity standard thus denied not only satisfaction of the Creightons' rights, but also clear guidance to well-meaning law enforcement officers who may find themselves in the same situation as Anderson. Dissenting in Anderson, Justice Stevens wrote, "I see no reason why the family's interest in the security of its own home should be accorded a lesser weight than the Government's interest in carrying out an invasion that was unlawful."
The resulting surveillance of social movements has created a dangerous chilling effect---forcing unwarranted precaution and conservatism on the part of the activist---reducing the movement to a series of moral badges.
Starr et al. 08 - Amory Starr, Professor of Sociology at Chapman University, Luis A. Fernandez, NAU Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University, Randall Amster, Peach Studies and Social Thought at Prescott College, Lesley J. Wood, Department of Sociology at York University, Manuel J. Caro, Centro Norteamericano de Estudios Interculturales at C/ Harinas, July 10, 2008, “The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis”, Qual Sociol (2008) 31:251–270, AJX
As we have shown, current surveillance is an alarming threat to mobilizations (constitutionally protected assemblies) and social movement organizations (protected associations). Our findings about the post-Seattle era are consistent with studies of previous eras (Marx 1970, 1974, 1979, 1988, 1992; Flam 1998; Churchill and VanderWall 1990, 2002; Donner 1980, 1990; Schultz and Schultz 1989, 2001; Powers 1987; Cunningham 2004; Davenport 2005, 2006; Boykoff 2006) with the enhancements of technology and influenced by the current popular leniency for policing and criminalization. Readers may be surprised by the broad based nature of current surveillance and by the inclusion of pacifist organizations among targets. However, as Cunningham (2004) has documented, the lack of criminal standard or test is nothing new. And Donner (1990) traces the recent history of “terrorist” accusations against pacifist organizations to the early 1980s targeting of antinuclear, anti-death penalty, and Latin American solidarity organizations by local police, as well as federal agencies. Disruptive counterinsurgent activity against organizations which have not met a criminal standard was officially forsworn with the closure of COINTELPRO. Yet these same acts are now undertaken by a network of law enforcement organizations.
We are concerned by social movement organizations’ persistent attempt to rationalize surveillance and repression. Rather than opposing government repression, too many organizations work to reinforce a hard line between legal and illegal political activities (a distinction also claimed by the organizations who refused interviews on these grounds), expending extensive resources in “careful wording” which they believe will keep them safe. This conceptual framework simply does not correspond with scholarship on surveillance, which documents a long and continuing history of targeting of non-criminal organizations on the basis of their political ideas. Lack of clarity about who is targeted for surveillance has led to a rationalization of repression, taking the form of blaming young people for their repression (particularly for “provoking” police actions at protests); and little support for “Green Scare” defendants and others facing illegal investigations, “terrorist” indictments, absurd bonds, and decades-long sentences for non-violent political activities. Rationalization collaborates with the creeping criminalization of dissent and political activity.
As shown above, the impacts of surveillance on associations included: fundraising, relations with members, reputation and connections with allies, redirection of agendas, displacement of strategic framing, and foreclosure of space for civil disobedience. Interviewees’ quantification of activists who have dropped out due to surveillance was striking. Moreover, rather than finding the customary dualism in which hardcore activists become more militant while others become more moderate. (Lichbach 1995; White 1989; Tarrow 1998; Zwerman and Steinhoff 2005) we found signs of pervasive pacification. In lieu of going “underground” to continue their actions (Davenport 2006; Johnston 2005; Zwerman et al. 2000), organizations are abandoning “grey area” civil disobedience activities and moving toward doing exclusively educational and permitted activities. Yet, knowing that even educational events are under surveillance, organizations do not feel safe even undertaking this most pacific type of action, increasing the risk and burden on groups wishing to participate in democratic dialogue. We heard reports from all types of groups that strategic and ideological dialogue has been both reduced and self-censored.
We were most alarmed to find security culture displacing organizing culture in most groups, including peace groups, pacifist groups, and other groups who only do legal  activities. Activists concerned about creeping criminalization of grey and formerly legal activity take extreme precautions, foregoing inclusivity and destroying all written records of their work. Groups also reported not taking notes at meetings. “We’re afraid to have a piece of paper with anything written on it at the end of any meeting.” Many interviewees, having internalized suspicion of undercovers, said that they don’t want to be seen writing anything down, as it would make them look as if they are surveilling the meeting. Moreover, concerned about future investigations, they do not keep diaries. This lack of archiving is the destruction in advance of the history of the movement, with implications for social movements’ capacity for active reflexivity. Moreover, affiliations become more temporary and less committed, with the result that “I’ve noticed a big shift from long-term strategizing and community building.” Conservative decisions on the part of activists and organizations are understandable in light of the costs of surveillance to organizational resources. The government provides no administrative mechanisms of accountability for false accusations, improper or unwarranted investigations, or erroneous surveillance. One organization that was illegally searched spent more than 1500 hours of volunteer time dealing with the fallout for their membership and relations with other organizations. Their lawsuit for damages took 5 years to resolve. Of the 71 organizations in our study, only two had managed to take legal action regarding surveillance. Our findings indicate that the harm suffered by political organizations and individuals as a result of widespread surveillance,  infiltration, and documentation, is legally cognizable and not at all speculative (cf. ACLU-NCA 2005), suggesting that legal standing can be established to overcome the burdens raised by the case of Laird v. Tatum, 408 US 1 (1972). Based on our reading of Cunningham (2004) and our data, we conclude that much current law enforcement surveillance is more properly conceptualized as counterinsurgency. The implementation of counterinsurgency (whose destructiveness is well-established) against a social movement (whose agenda is well known to be noncriminal) violates the fundamental protections of the First Amendment (which is the foundation of a democratic society, variously conceptualized as a marketplace of ideas, a context of free debate and dissent, or self-governance).
Our socio-legal analysis encourages a shift in the unit of analysis and litigation from individual activists and organizations to the context of diverse associational activities which make assembly possible: the social movement. If a social movement could gain standing as a class, it could include event participants who are not members of an organization, as well as dissenters who may have never taken action because of anticipatory conformity. The concept of social movements can bind overt repression, indirect interference (with fundraising, networks, etc.), and intimidating chilling effects. We also point to the need for a legal concept which could provide the basis for complaints regarding violations of the rights of political organizations and movements. Melucci emphasizes “collective action as a social production, as a purposive, meaningful and relational orientation” (1996, p. 386). Associational life depends on membership, donations, and access to space in which people feel comfortable engaging political ideas. Assaults on organizations that deprive them of resources and democratic space, and which burden potential participants with excessive risk amount to what are understood on an individual level as assault or excessive use of force. If private enterprise is protected by tort law from libel, denial of service, interference with customer access to premises, (tortious interference), then nonprofit organizations and civil society groups should also be protected from interference with advantageous relationships that affect their resources, capacity to mobilize them, and opportunity to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
The impact is endless warfare---the security state has resulted in a new politics of military urbanism that extends warfare into the battlespace, with no beginning or end, and where everyone is a target.
Graham 12, Professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University, January 2012, “When Life Itself is War: On the Urbanization of Military and Security Doctrine,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Volume 36.1, pgs. 136 - 155
The first key feature of the new military urbanism is the way it normalizes new imaginations of political violence and a whole spectrum of ambient threats to 'security' which centre on the everyday sites, spaces, populations and circulations of cities. As part of the defence of what Julian Reid calls 'logistical societies' societies where biopolitical threats emerge from the very central systems, flows and networks sustaining contemporary urban life — warfare within liberal modernity increasingly centres on securitizing and targeting the prosaic architectures and circulations of the city (see Reid, 2006; Dillon and Reid, 2009).
Driving the military targeting of the everyday sites, circulations and processes of urban life across the world is a new constellation of military doctrine and theory. In this, the spectre of state versus state military conflict is seen to be in radical retreat. Instead, the new doctrine is centred upon the idea that a wide spectrum of global insurgencies now operates across social, technical, political, cultural and financial networks, straddling transnational scales. These are deemed to provide existential threats to Western societies through themselves targeting or exploiting everyday urban sites, infrastructures and control technologies that sustain contemporary cities. Such lurking threats are deemed by security and military theorists to camouflage themselves within the 'clutter' of cities at home and abroad for concealment against traditional forms of military targeting. This, the argument goes, necessitates a radical ratcheting up of techniques of tracking, surveillance and targeting centred on both the architectures of circulation and mobility — infrastructures — and the spaces of everyday urban life.
The key concept driving the current 'transformation' in military thinking and practice is the shift from 'battlefield' to 'battlespace'. This concept is crucial because it basically sustains what Phil Agre (2001) has called 'a conception of military matters that includes absolutely everything'. Nothing lies outside the multidimensional and multiscale concept of battlespace, temporally or geographically. Battlespace has no front and no back, no start and no end; it is 'deep, high, wide, and simultaneous: there is no longer a front or a rear' (Blackmore, 2005). The concept of battlespace thus encompasses everything from the molecular scales of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, through the everyday sites, spaces and experiences of city life, to the planetary spheres of inner and outer space or the internet's globe-straddling 'cyberspace'. The focus of mobilization is thus no longer focused within delimited geographical or temporal spaces of 'symmetrical' state versus state warfare. Instead, it becomes increasingly unbound in time and space. Thus, state power seeks to target 'asymmetric' non-state forces and movements to the point where contemporary 'warfare' becomes effectively 'coterminous ... with the space of civil society itself' (Dillon and Reid, 2009: 128).
With wars and battle no longer declared or finished, temporalities of war threaten to extend indefinitely. 'War is back and seemingly forever' (Deer, 2007: l). No wonder Pentagon gurus convinced George Bush to replace the idea of the 'war on terror' with the new 'big idea' of the 'long war' in 2004 (McIntyre, 2004). All too easily, such a discourse slips into a world where life itself is war (Agre, 2001). Indeed, many military theorists now speak of a new (fourth) generation of asymmetric warfare in which nothing is ever outside the 'battlespace' (for a good example, see Hammes, 2006). This new 'generation' of war is based, they argue, on 'unconventional' wars, 'asymmetric' struggles, 'global insurgencies' and 'low intensity conflicts', which pit high-tech state militaries against informal fighters or mobilized civilians. Military theorist Thomas Hammes (2006:3) for example argues that, in the twenty-first century, so-called 'fourth generation' warfare will dominate global security politics, rooted in the concept that 'superior political will, when properly employed, can defeat greater economic and military power'. Using such doctrine, US commanders in Baghdad have emphasized the need to coordinate the entire 'battlespace' of the city, addressing civilian infrastructure, the shattered economy and cultural awareness, as well as 'the controlled application of violence' , in order to try and secure the city (Chiarelli and Michaelis, 2005).
Intrinsically anti-urban, such paradigms quickly transpose the prosaic social acts that together forge cosmopolitan urban life into existential societal threats. For example, US military theorist William Lind, radically extending the US 'culture wars' debates of the 1980s and 1990s, and swallowing whole Samuel Huntingdon's (1998) 'clash of civilizations' binary, has even argued that acts of urban immigration must now be understood as acts of 'warfare'. 'In Fourth Generation war', writes Lind (2004), 'invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army'. Under what he calls the 'poisonous ideology of multiculturalism', Lind (ibid.) argues that immigrants within Western nations can now launch 'a homegrown variety of Fourth Generation war, which is by far the most dangerous kind'.
Here we confront the realities of what the Center for Immigration Studies has called the 'weaponization' of immigration (Cato, 2008). Such new imaginations of warfare provide a powerful example of what happens when all aspects of human life are rendered as nothing but war; nations are imagined in narrow ethno-nationalist ways and diasporic cities emerge as mere cultural pollutants (See Cowen, 2007). 'The road from national genus to a totalized cosmology of the sacred nation' , writes Arjun Appadurai (2006: 4), 'and further to ethnic purity and cleansing, is relatively direct'.
Crucially, the emerging body of urban military doctrine thus works to radically blur the traditional separation of peace and war, military and civil spheres, local and global scales, and the 'inside' and 'outside' of nations. On the one hand, then, a wide variety of Western military theorists now concur that that 'modern urban combat operations will become one of the primary challenges of the 21 st century' (DIRC, 1997: 11). As US theorist of urban warfare Keith Dickson (2002: 4) puts it, the increasing perception within Western militaries is that 'for Western military forces, asymmetric warfare in urban areas will be the greatest challenge of this century ... The city will be the strategic high ground — whoever controls it will dictate the course of future events in the world'.
On the other hand, the US military's search for new doctrines to deal with the perceived urbanization of war, organized violence and security explicitly recognizes the similarities when dealing with 'urbanized terrain' at home and abroad. Whilst the various warlords, gangs, militias and insurgents operating throughout the burgeoning informal urban areas of the global South (see Souza, 2009) are widely imagined by Western military theorists to represent the key military challenges of the twenty-first century, dense labyrinthine cities everywhere — both at home and abroad — are imagined together as key future battlespaces. 'Despite the geographic differences' , writes Maryann Lawlor (2007) in the military magazine Signal, key personnel at the US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) in Norfolk, Virginia have engaged in massive war games and simulations (such as the exercise named 'Urban Resolve'), and in so doing 'identified several key concerns common to both areas'. These involve the difficulty of separating 'terrorists' or 'insurgents' from the urban civilian population; the high densities of infrastructure; the way cities interrupt old-style military surveillance and targeting systems; and the complex three-dimensional nature of urban battlespace.
Through such an analytical lens, the LA riots of 1992, various attempts to securitize urban cores for major sports events or political summits, the militarized responses to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, and the challenges of 'homeland security' in US cities, have all blurred together to be perceived as 'urban ' or 'low-intensity' operations or moments of 'irregular warfare' , in common with episodes of counterinsurgency warfare taking place on the streets of Baghdad (see Boyle, 2005). Indeed, the paradigms underpinning the new military urbanism allow transnational social movements and mobilizations against state oppression or the devastating effects of market fundamentalism, ecological crises and neoliberalization — for example, the Zapatistas or environmental and global justice campaigners — to be tackled as forms of 'netwar', equivalent to the radical and murderous Islamism of Al Qaeda (see Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001). Post-operational 'lessons learned' reports drawn up after military deployments to contain the Los Angeles riots in 1992, credited 'the "success" of the mission to the fact that "the enemy" — the local population — was easy to outmaneuver given their simple battle tactics and strategies' (cited in Cowen, 2007: 1).
Finally, the US military's focus on military operations within the domestic urban sphere of the 'homeland' has strengthened dramatically since the start of the so-called 'war on terror' (see Canestaro, 2003). This process allows the US military to overcome traditional legal obstacles to deployment in the US itself (Canestaro, 2003). It allows the tactics and lessons of planning and designing 'Green Zone' urban bases in the hearts of Baghdad and other cities to be imported domestically as the template for implanting analogous 'security zones' around financial and government districts in New York and other major US cities (see Nemeth, 2009). Finally, it means that high-tech targeting practices employing unmanned drones and organized satellite surveillance programmes, previously limited to the permanent targeting of spaces beyond the nation's boundaries to (purportedly) make the nation safe, are also starting to colonize the domestic urban spaces of the nation (see Gorman, 2008).
Significantly, the emergence of the new military urbanism works to compound longstanding trends towards punitive criminology and revanchist urban policy that have marked processes of urban neoliberalization in many Western and global South nations (see Smith, 2002; Wacquant, 2008). The US response to the devastation of the largely African-American city of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in November 1995 provides a paradigmatic example (Graham, 2006). For a brief period, some US Army officers articulated their highly militarized responses to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans as an attempt to 'take back' New Orleans from African-American 'insurgencies' (Chiarelli and Michaelis, 2005). In this case, rather than a massive humanitarian response treating the victims as citizens requiring immediate help, a largely military operation was (eventually) organized. Such a response merely reinforced the idea that the internal geographies of the US are the sites of state-backed wars against racialized and biopolitically disposable others as much as external actors (Giroux, 2006). This operation treated those abandoned in the central city as a threat and a military objective to be contained, targeted and addressed in order to protect the property of the normalized and largely white suburban and exurban populations who had escaped in their own cars (Giroux, 2006). In the process, African-American citizens of the city were rendered refugees in their own country. As Robert Stam and Ella Shohat (2007: 167) argue, 'Katrina not only ripped the roofs off Gulf Coast houses but also ripped the fagade off "the national security state
Together, these blurring processes thus sustain the imagination of all cities everywhere as key battlespaces requiring permanent targeting and mobilization within limitless imaginations of war. In the process, they threaten to fundamentally challenge accepted notions of citizenship, law and the distinction between a liberal 'inside' of the nation, controlled through policing, and an illiberal 'outside' where a nation's military forces are deployed (Bigo and Anastassia, 2006; Cowen and Smith, 2009). Instead of such (inevitably precarious and contradictory) binaries, we are rapidly moving towards a context where, as Jeremy Packer (2006: 378) puts it, 'citizens and non-citizens alike are now treated as an always present threat. In this sense, all are imagined as combatants and all terrain the site of battle'. The proliferation of anticipatory profiling and targeting systems, as we shall see in the next section, increasingly uses computer algorithms to define deviance, and hence threat, from the mass circulations and populations of the city, in advance of civil or criminal offences being proven (see Amoore, 2009).
Underview
Particularity is the best standard
PRICE ’98
(RICHARD PRICE is a former prof in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. Later, he moved to Johns Hopkins University to found the Department of Anthropology, where he served three terms as chair. A decade of freelance teaching (University of Minnesota, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Florida, Universidade Federal da Bahia), ensued. This article is co-authored with CHRISTIAN REUS-SMIT – Monash University – European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 1998 via SAGE Publications – http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~courses/PoliticalScience/661B1/documents/PriceReusSmithCriticalInternatlTheoryConstructivism.pdf)
One of the central departures of critical international theory from positivism is the view that we cannot escape the interpretive moment. As George (1994: 24) argues, ‘the world is always an interpreted “thing”, and it is always interpreted in conditions of disagreement and conflict, to one degree or another’. For this reason, ‘there can be no common body of observational or tested data that we can turn to for a neutral, objective knowledge of the world. There can be no ultimate knowledge, for example, that actually corresponds to reality per se.’ This proposition has been endorsed wholeheartedly by constructivists, who are at pains to deny the possibility of making ‘Big-T’ Truth claims about the world and studiously avoid attributing such status to their findings. This having been said, after undertaking sustained empirical analyses of aspects of world politics constructivists do make ‘small-t’ truth claims about the subjects they have investigated. That is, they claim to have arrived at logical and empirically plausible interpretations of actions, events or processes, and they appeal to the weight of evidence to sustain such claims. While admitting that their claims are always contingent and partial interpretations of a complex world, Price (1995, 1997) claims that his genealogy provides the best account to date to make sense of anomalies surrounding the use of chemical weapons, and Reus-Smit (1997) claims that a culturalist perspective offers the best explanation of institutional differences between historical societies of states. Do such claims contradict the interpretive ethos of critical international theory? For two reasons, we argue that they do not. First, the interpretive ethos of critical international theory is driven, in large measure, by a normative rejection of totalizing discourses, of general theoretical frameworks that privilege certain perspectives over others. One searches constructivist scholarship in vain, though, for such discourses. With the possible exception of Wendt’s problematic flirtation with general systemic theory and professed commitment to ‘science’, constructivist research is at its best when and because it is question driven, with self-consciously contingent claims made specifically in relation to particular phenomena, at a particular time, based on particular evidence, and always open to alternative interpretations. Second, the rejection of totalizing discourses based on ‘big-T’ Truth claims does not foreclose the possibility, or even the inevitability, of making ‘small-t’ truth claims. In fact, we would argue that as soon as one observes and interacts in the world such claims are unavoidable, either as a person engaged in everyday life or as a scholar. As Nietzsche pointed out long ago, we cannot help putting forth truth claims about the world. The individual who does not cannot act, and the genuinely unhypocritical relativist who cannot struggles for something to say and write. In short, if constructivists are not advancing totalizing discourses, and if making ‘small-t’ truth claims is inevitable if one is to talk about how the world works, then it is no more likely that constructivism per se violates the interpretive ethos of critical international theory than does critical theory itself.
The United States Federal Government ought to limit qualified immunity as a defense for police officers being tried in excessive force cases.
Wright 15 – Sam Wright, writer for Above the Law and public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government: November 03 2015(“Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity” Available at http://abovethelaw.com/2015/11/want-to-fight-police-misconduct-reform-qualified-immunity/ Accessed on 11/05/16)IG
Instead, police officers have recourse to the broad protections of the judicially established doctrine of qualified immunity. Under this doctrine, state actors are protected from suit even if they’ve violated the law by, say, using excessive force, or performing an unwarranted body cavity search — as long as their violation was not one of “clearly established law of which a reasonable officer would be aware.” In other words, if there’s not already a case where a court has held that an officer’s identical or near-identical conduct rose to the level of a constitutional violation, there’s a good chance that even an obviously malfeasant officer will avoid liability — will avoid accountability.
To bring about true accountability and change police behavior, this needs to change. And change should begin with an act of Congress rolling back qualified immunity. Removing the “clearly established” element of qualified immunity would be a good start — after all, shouldn’t it be enough to deviate from a basic standard of care, to engage in conduct that a reasonable officer would know is illegal, without having to show that that conduct’s illegality has already been clearly established in the courts?

Tournament: Loyola | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Oakwood AB | Judge: Felix Tan, Adam Bistagne, Michael OKrent
Framework
The standard is maximizing expected well-being.
Personal Identity is irrelevant, we can separate our brains and become separate streams of thought.
Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984).
Some recent medical cases provide striking evidence in favour of the Reductionist View. Human beings have a lower brain and two upper hemispheres, which are connected by a bundle of fibres. In treating a few people with severe epilepsy, surgeons have cut these fibres. The aim was to reduce the severity of epileptic fits, by confining their causes to a single hemisphere. This aim was achieved. But the operations had another unintended consequence. The effect, in the words of one surgeon, was the creation of ‘two separate spheres of consciousness.’ This effect was revealed by various psychological tests. These made use of two facts. We control our right arms with our left hemispheres, and vice versa. And what is in the right halves of our visual fields we see with our left hemispheres, and vice versa. When someone’s hemispheres have been disconnected, psychologists can thus present to this person two different written questions in the two halves of his visual field, and can receive two different answers written by this person’s two hands

Given the absence of identity only utilitarianism makes sense
Shoemaker 99  
Shoemaker, David (Dept of Philosophy, U Memphis). “Utilitarianism and Personal Identity.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 183–199, 1999. http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/jvipaper.pdf
Extreme reductionism might lend support to utilitarianism in the following way. Many people claim that we are justified in maximizing the good in our own lives, but not justified in maximizing the good across sets of lives, simply because each of us is a single, deeply unified person, unified by the further fact of identity, whereas there is no such corresponding unity across sets of lives. But if the only justification for the different treatment of individual lives and sets of lives is the further fact, and this fact is undermined by the truth of reductionism, then nothing justifies this different treatment. There are no deeply unified subjects of experience. What remains are merely the experiences themselves, and so any ethical theory distinguishing between individual lives and sets of lives is mistaken. If the deep, further fact is missing, then there are no unities. The morally significant units should then be the states people are in at particular times, and an ethical theory that focused on them and attempted to improve their quality, whatever their location, would be the most plausible. Utilitarianism is just such a theory

Only utilitarianism can serve as the basis to legitimately justify policy to the public. Government actions will inevitably lead to trade-offs between citizens. The only justifiable way to resolve these conflicts is utilitarianism.
Gary Woller BYU Prof., “An Overview by Gary Woller”, A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 1997, pg. 10
Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's ex- pense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty  to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, Also, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
Inherency
Currently, Egypt lacks nuclear power but has entered into agreement with Russia to finance power plants.
Reuters 16 Reuters News Agency. “Russia to Lend Egypt $25 billion to build nuclear power plant.” Thursday May 19, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-russia-nuclear-idUSKCN0YA1G5 MSG
Russia will loan Egypt $25 billion to finance building and operating a nuclear power plant in Egypt, the official gazette said on Thursday.¶ ¶ Egypt and Russia signed an agreement on Nov. 19 for Russia to build Egypt's first nuclear power plant in Egypt and to extend Egypt a loan to cover the cost of construction.¶ ¶ It was not clear at the time what the deal was worth, but Egypt's president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the loan would be paid off over 35 years.¶ ¶ Egypt will pay an interest rate of 3 percent annually, according to the country's official gazette. Installment payments will begin on Oct. 15, 2029.¶ ¶ "The loan will be used by the Egyptian side for a period of 13 years between 2016-2028 ... the Egyptian side will repay loan amounts used over 22 years in 43 installments," the gazette said.¶ ¶ The loan will finance 85 percent of the value of each contract for the work, services and equipment shipping, the gazette said. Egypt will finance the remaining 15 percent.¶ ¶ The plant will be built in Dabaa, a site in the north of the country that Egypt has been considering for a nuclear power plant on and off since the 1980s. It is due to be completed in 20022, and the first of its four reactors is expected to begin producing power in 2024.¶ ¶ Egypt, with a population of 90 million and vast energy requirements, is seeking to diversify its energy sources. As well as a nuclear plant, Sisi has talked of building solar and wind energy facilities in the coming three years to generate around 4,300 megawatts of power.¶ ¶ The country also recently discovered a large reserve of natural gas off the Mediterranean coast.¶ ¶ (Reporting by Asma Alsharif, editing by Larry King)
ADVANTAGE 1 - ISIS
Advantage one is Isis.
ISIS is expanding its influence in Egypt and the Sinai
McFate et al 16 Jessica Lewis McFate (Director of Tradecraft and Innovation at the Institute for the Study of War. She joined ISW after eight years of service on Active Duty as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Her military career includes 34 months deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, where she provided intelligence support to tactical, operational, and theater commands. She has twice been awarded the Bronze Star Medal for her impact upon operations. She is the author of The ISIS Defense in Iraq and Syria: Countering an Adaptive Enemy, The Islamic State of Iraq Returns to Diyala, Al-Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, Parts I and II. Ms. McFate’s work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and she has made frequent appearances on both television and radio programs, including CNN, Al-Jazeera America, BBC, NPR, and Wall Street Journal Live. Ms. McFate holds a B.S. in Strategic and International History and International Relations from West Point and an M.A. in Strategic Intelligence from American Military University), "ISIS FORECAST: RAMADAN 2016," Institute for the Study of War, May 2016 AZ
ISIS will implement its global strategy with simultaneous and linked campaigns across multiple geographic rings. ISW has refined its previous assessment of these geographic campaigns to identify the following four rings: core terrain, including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and the Sinai Peninsula; regional power centers, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt; the remainder of the Muslim world; and the non-Muslim world. ISIS will pursue different strategic objectives in each ring in order to advance its grand strategic objective to expand its caliphate across all Muslim lands while provoking and winning an apocalyptic war against the West. ISIS has suffered numerous losses within Iraq and Syria that it will likely seek to reverse by setting new conditions during Ramadan. ISIS will attempt to exploit an ongoing political crisis in Iraq by targeting demonstrators or other soft targets in a mass casualty event that prompts the mobilization of Iraqi Shi’a and sparks reprisals against Iraqi Sunnis. ISIS will also launch attacks in Homs City, Tartous, and Latakia Provinces in Syria to exploit the current focus of pro-regime elements upon other major cities such as Aleppo and Damascus. ISIS has already demonstrated this capability in early 2016 and will continue to pursue these courses of action in April - May 2016 leading up to Ramadan. ISIS will also seek to generate new conditions in Iraq and Syria by launching attacks within neighboring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. ISIS will likely select targets in neighboring states that relieve pressure from the group in Syria while setting conditions for future expansion in those states. Targets that serve this dual purpose include foreign tourists, state security forces, and U.S. military elements in Turkey and Jordan. ISIS has already accelerated its attacks within Turkey and Lebanon since November 2015. Jordanian Special Operations Forces uncovered an operational ISIS presence in Irbid in March 2016, indicating that ISIS is developing the capability to conduct attacks inside Jordan as well. ISIS is similarly organizing campaigns to weaken regional power centers - including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and Egypt – in order to eliminate its rivals for leadership within the Muslim world. ISIS has pursued an indirect campaign against Iran that focuses upon its proxies in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, ISIS is escalating its attacks against security forces in Saudi Arabia with targets including the capital of Riyadh, Shi’a populations of Eastern Saudi Arabia, and potentially the holy city of Mecca, based upon recent arrests. These attacks may serve to boost regional recruitment for ISIS while signaling its long-term intent to seize control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. ISIS will also likely take advantage of political discontent against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to further drive disorder in mainland Egypt and delegitimize the rival version of Islamism espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt’s nuclear deal makes it as a target—political instability and civil unrest.
Follett 16 Andrew Follett, energy and environment reporter. “Egypt Gets $25 billion From Russia To Build Nuclear Reactors, Despite Terror Risk.” The Daily Caller News Foundation. May 23, 2016. http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/23/egypt-gets-25-billion-from-russia-to-build-nuclear-reactors-despite-terror-risk/ MSG
Egypt’s president announced Sunday the country will accept a Russian loan of $25 billion in order to build a nuclear power plant, despite recent terrorism and civil unrest in the country.¶ The loan will finance longstanding Egyptian plans to build a new reactor in Dabaa, despite long running terrorism concerns in the region. Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, signed a nuclear power plant deal with Russia last November, just days after the Kremlin announced a Russian aircraft was downed by an act of terrorism, killing all 224 people on board. The plane was heading from an Egyptian resort city to St. Petersburg in Russia.¶ Groups tied to the Islamic State (ISIS) have made repeated attacks in Egypt, even killing nine people, six of whom were police officers, with a bomb in Cairo in January. Egypt is also politically unstable, and has changed presidents three times since 2011. The country’s former president, Mohamed Morsi, was removed from office by a military coup in 2013 and sentenced to death last May.¶ Egypt has planned to build a nuclear reactor since 1955, but aborted most of its plans after the Chernobyl accident. Egyptian interest in nuclear power was renewed after the country signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Russia in 2004 and 2008, according to the World Nuclear Association. Egypt currently operates two extremely small and old reactors with technical assistance from Russia and Argentina.¶ ¶ Sponsored Content¶ ¶ I Was Voting for Hillary, Until I Read This...¶ LifeDaily¶ ¶ After Losing 100lbs Mama June is Actually Gorgeous¶ Look Damn Good¶ ¶ 25 Unseen Photos Of Bill The Clintons Don't Want You To See¶ Frank151¶ Sponsored Links by¶ The proposed Egyptian reactors would not produce the weapons-grade plutonium necessary for a nuclear bomb, but materials from the planned reactors could be used to create dirty bombs.¶ A dirty bomb combines radioactive material with conventional explosives that could contaminate the local area with high radiation levels for long periods of time and cause mass panic. ISIS has expressed interest in stealing radioactive material for a dirty bomb — though it would be millions of times weaker than an actual nuclear device.¶ Russia has supported the development of nuclear power in other countries with terrorism issues, such as Algeria.¶ Serious issues with terrorist groups in Algeria, like al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — a group of Islamist militants aimed to overthrow the Algerian government and create an Islamic state — have also not hampered Russia’s desire to build nuclear reactors. AQIM is designated as a terrorist organization by U.S. officials. The group even pledged allegiance to the ISIS in late Feburary.¶
Now is key – Egypt is vulnerable
McFate et al 16 Jessica Lewis McFate (Director of Tradecraft and Innovation at the Institute for the Study of War. She joined ISW after eight years of service on Active Duty as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army. Her military career includes 34 months deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, where she provided intelligence support to tactical, operational, and theater commands. She has twice been awarded the Bronze Star Medal for her impact upon operations. She is the author of The ISIS Defense in Iraq and Syria: Countering an Adaptive Enemy, The Islamic State of Iraq Returns to Diyala, Al-Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, Parts I and II. Ms. McFate’s work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and she has made frequent appearances on both television and radio programs, including CNN, Al-Jazeera America, BBC, NPR, and Wall Street Journal Live. Ms. McFate holds a B.S. in Strategic and International History and International Relations from West Point and an M.A. in Strategic Intelligence from American Military University), "ISIS FORECAST: RAMADAN 2016," Institute for the Study of War, May 2016 AZ
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government has undertaken recent measures that ISIS may exploit. Egypt gave two islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia in April 2016, sparking large protests by Muslim Brotherhood members and others in Cairo, Giza, and other cities.38 ISIS likely seeks opportunities in Egypt, Jordan and Syria to demonstrate that the Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to Islamism is invalid and ineffective. Muslim Brotherhood protests also provide an outlet for ISIS to tap into radicalizing populations and mount a wider campaign of attacks on the Egyptian mainland. ISIS can exploit Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s propensity to blame the Muslim Brotherhood for ISIS’s attacks. The attack claimed by ISIS against the Russian airliner departing Sinai in October 2015 demonstrates that ISIS is also incorporating covert explosive techniques previously used by al-Qaeda and conducting those attacks against Egypt’s airline industry. This capability may or may not be responsible for the Egyptian airliner downed on May 19, 2016 en route from Paris to Cairo.
Causes a massive nuclear war
Boyle 15 Darren Boyle, German Journalist. DailyMail.co. Isis planning 'nuclear holocaust' to wipe hundreds of millions from face of the earth', claims reporter who embedded with the extremists”. September 29, 2015. MSG
Islamic terrorists Isis want to wipe the west off the face of the earth with a nuclear holocaust according to a journalist who spent ten days with the group while researching a book. ¶ The terror group allowed Jürgen Todenhöfer to embed with the group because he has been a high-profile critic of US policy in the Middle East. ¶ The German journalist claimed the terror group wants to launch a 'nuclear tsunami' against the west and anyone else that opposes their plans for an Islamic caliphate.¶ The 75-year-old former German MP wrote up his findings in a new book 'Inside IS - Ten Days In The Islamic State'.¶ He said that upon his arrival in ISIS controlled territory, that he and his son were forced to hand over their mobile phones to their hosts. ¶ He said he spent several months talking to the terror organisation over Skype before he was allowed to travel into their area. ¶ He told Allan Hall in The Express: 'Of course I'd seen the terrible, brutal beheading videos and it was of course after seeing this in the last few months that caused me the greatest concern in my negotiations to ensure how I can avoid this. Anyway, I made my will before I left.¶ 'People there live in shellholes, in barracks, in bombed-out houses. I slept on the floor, if I was lucky on a plastic mattress. I had a suitcase and a backpack, a sleeping bag.' ¶ Mr Todenhöfer said Isis uses its beheading videos to instill terror into the civilian population in order to make it easier for them to take an area under control.'¶ Mr Todenhöfer warned that ISIS was the most dangerous terror organization he ever witnessed. ¶ 'I don't see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Arabs can stop IS. I came back very pessimistic.' ¶ RELATED ARTICLES¶ Previous¶ 1¶ Next¶ Elderly woman seriously injured after BLACK BEAR breaks into...¶ Corbyn's copy and paste politics: Labour leader's first big...¶ SHARE THIS ARTICLE¶ Share¶ He warned that the terror organisation is far more 'dangerous and organised' than people in the West realises. ¶ He said the West has 'no concept of the threat it faces' from the Islamic State and has underestimated the risk posed by ISIS 'dramatically'.¶ The German reporter spent most of his time in Mosul in northern Iraq, but he also traveled to the ISIS-controlled territories of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in Syria. ¶ He added: 'They are extremely brutal. Not just head-cutting. I'm talking about the strategy of religious cleansing. That's their official philosophy. They are talking about 500 million people who have to die.'¶ Scroll down for video ¶ Mr Todenhöfer said Isis, pictured, were the most 'brutal and dangerous' enemy he has ever seen ¶ +3¶ Mr Todenhöfer said Isis, pictured, were the most 'brutal and dangerous' enemy he has ever seen ¶ He claimed the terror group would try and wipe out hundreds of millions of people if they had the chance¶ +3¶ He claimed the terror group would try and wipe out hundreds of millions of people if they had the chance¶ Hollande confirms jet fighters destroyed ISIS training camp¶ He went on to say that ISIS are 'completely sure they will win this fight'.¶ In a stark warning issued in a detailed post on Facebook, the journalist wrote in German: 'The West underestimated the risk posed by IS dramatically.¶ 'The ISIS fighters are much smarter and more dangerous than our leaders believe. In the Islamic State, there is an almost palpable enthusiasm and confidence of victory, which I have not seen in many war zones.'¶ Mr Todenhöfer went on to say that ISIS have plans for mass genocide, with the aim or eradicating all atheists and religions that are not 'people of the book' or who do not subscribe to their particular brand of Islam.¶ 'The IS want to kill... all non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. All Shiites, Yazidi, Hindus, atheists and polytheists should be killed,' he wrote.¶ 'Hundreds of millions of people are to be eliminated in the course of this religious 'cleansing'.¶ 'All moderate Muslims who promote democracy, should be killed. Because, from the IS perspective, they promote human laws over the laws of God.¶ 'This also applies to - after a successful conquest - the democratically-minded Muslims in the Western world.'¶ The reporter describes the Islamic State is currently operating as a functioning totalitarian state - one which, he claims, many Sunni residents in Mosul are unopposed to since it is preferable to the oppression they suffered under the previous regime.¶ He told German television that ISIS wants to 'conquer the world'.¶ 'This is the largest religious cleansing strategy that has ever been planned in human history,' the journalist added. ¶ ISIS executes ten men in blue jumpsuits as suspected spies¶ Read more:¶ ISIS plan Islamic nuclear holocaust to wipe hundreds of millions from face of earth | World | News | Daily Express
WMD acquisition feasible – best data – kills the economy.
Robichaud 14 Carl, Specialist in Nuclear Policy at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2014, “Preventing nuclear terrorism requires bold action,” http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/201395-preventing-nuclear-terrorism-requires-bold-action/AKG
Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of the 21st century. Fortunately, the threat is a preventable one: consolidate and lock down weapons-usable materials and you dramatically reduce the risks. At the Nuclear Security Summit this week, President Obama and more than 50 world leaders will gather in The Hague with an opportunity to take a major step forward in doing just that. But taking the next step in this process will require strong leadership and skillful diplomacy. Though they rarely make the headlines, cases of smuggling, theft or loss of nuclear and radiological materials are alarmingly frequent. Over the past few years we’ve seen incidents from Moldova to India, South Africa to Japan. Just a few months ago in Mexico, carjackers unwittingly heisted radiological materials that, in the wrong hands, could have done significant harm. In fact, more than one hundred thefts and other incidents are reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) each year. In many of these instances we still do not know where the material came from, who stole it, or where it was headed. Nuclear technology is widespread, used not only in power production but in medicine, mining, and other industries. As a result, dozens of countries possess radiological materials that could be used in a “dirty bomb.” Beyond that, over 25 countries have highly-enriched uranium or plutonium—enough to build more than 20,000 new weapons like the one that destroyed Hiroshima and almost 80,000 like the one that destroyed Nagasaki. In the wrong hands, it wouldn’t take much plutonium or highly enriched uranium to fashion a nuclear device. You could fit a bombs-worth of this material into a lunch box.   Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the globe have expressed intent to acquire weapons-usable materials. If they succeed there is little doubt they would use such a device. Thus the spread of these materials is a grave threat—not only to the United States but to any country that relies upon the global economy, which would be severely disrupted if an attack ever succeeded.  Robert Gates, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, noted that, “Every senior leader, when you’re asked what keeps you awake at night, it’s the thought of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.”
And, economic collapse causes competition for resources and instability that triggers hotspots around the globe – co-opts all other causes of war
Harris and Burrows 9 Mathew, PhD European History @ Cambridge, counselor in the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Jennifer is a member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit “Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis” http://www.ciaonet.org/journals/twq/v32i2/f_0016178_13952.pdf Increased Potential for Global Conflict
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future opportunity for unintended consequences, there is a growing sense of insecurity. Even so, history may be more instructive than ever. While we continue to believe that the Great Depression is not likely to be repeated, the lessons to be drawn from that period include the harmful effects on fledgling democracies and multiethnic societies (think Central Europe in 1920s and 1930s) and on the sustainability of multilateral institutions (think League of Nations in the same period). There is no reason to think that this would not be true in the twenty-first as much as in the twentieth century. For that reason, the ways in which the potential for greater conflict could grow would seem to be even more apt in a constantly volatile economic environment as they would be if change would be steadier. In surveying those risks, the report stressed the likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda. Terrorism’s appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the world’s most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures, command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent collections of the angry and disenfranchised that become self-radicalized, particularly in the absence of economic outlets that would become narrower in an economic downturn. The most dangerous casualty of any economically-induced drawdown of U.S. military presence would almost certainly be the Middle East. Although Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is not inevitable, worries about a nuclear-armed Iran could lead states in the region to develop new security arrangements with external powers, acquire additional weapons, and consider pursuing their own nuclear ambitions. It is not clear that the type of stable deterrent relationship that existed between the great powers for most of the Cold War would emerge naturally in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran. Episodes of low intensity conflict and terrorism taking place under a nuclear umbrella could lead to an unintended escalation and broader conflict if clear red lines between those states involved are not well established. The close proximity of potential nuclear rivals combined with underdeveloped surveillance capabilities and mobile dual-capable Iranian missile systems also will produce inherent difficulties in achieving reliable indications and warning of an impending nuclear attack. The lack of strategic depth in neighboring states like Israel, short warning and missile flight times, and uncertainty of Iranian intentions may place more focus on preemption rather than defense, potentially leading to escalating crises. 36 Types of conflict that the world continues to experience, such as over resources, could reemerge, particularly if protectionism grows and there is a resort to neo-mercantilist practices. Perceptions of renewed energy scarcity will drive countries to take actions to assure their future access to energy supplies. In the worst case, this could result in interstate conflicts if government leaders deem assured access to energy resources, for example, to be essential for maintaining domestic stability and the survival of their regime. Even actions short of war, however, will have important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization efforts, such as China’s and India’s development of blue water naval capabilities. If the fiscal stimulus focus for these countries indeed turns inward, one of the most obvious funding targets may be military. Buildup of regional naval capabilities could lead to increased tensions, rivalries, and counterbalancing moves, but it also will create opportunities for multinational cooperation in protecting critical sea lanes. With water also becoming scarcer in Asia and the Middle East, cooperation to manage changing water resources is likely to be increasingly difficult both within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world.
Thus, the plan: The Arab Republic of Egypt should prohibit the production of nuclear power.
ADVANTAGE 2 – Middle East Relations
The Egypt-Russia nuclear deal strengthens Russian influence and displaces the US
Svet and Miller 15 Oleg Svet and Elissa Miller, security sector analyst and program assistant. “The United States Should Prevent an Egyptian Shift to Russia.” Middle East Institute. December 18, 2015. MSG
Roughly five decades since the Soviet foray into the Middle East vis-à-vis the Czech arms deal with Egypt in September 1955, Russia is reasserting its influence in Egypt. The deal marked the beginning of a brief period that saw Moscow serve as the primary military supplier for a number of regional countries that formed an ‘anti-imperialist front’, such as Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. Recent developments in Russo-Egyptian relations are reminiscent of Moscow’s dealings with Cairo during the mid-1950s, with the Russians hopeful of a similar outcome. While these developments do not present an immediate threat to the United States, Washington should not dismiss this ongoing strategic leveraging.¶ While the U.S. alliance with Egypt has largely been steady since the 1979 Camp David Accords, friction in recent years over the ouster of former President Mohammed Morsi and the increasing authoritarian style of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has strained this important relationship. Since 1987, the United States has supplied Egypt with $1.3 billion per year in military aid through Foreign Military Financing (FMF). The removal of Morsi, and a subsequent 18-month suspension of some military equipment, ultimately culminated in a decision to reform FMF to Egypt. Starting in 2018, FMF will be channeled through four categories—counterterrorism, border security, Sinai security and maritime security—and cash-flow financing (CFF), a perquisite that allowed Egypt to sign contracts for military equipment on credit, will come to an end.¶ The stresses in the U.S.-Egypt alliance have not gone unnoticed by Russia. Since assuming power in June 2014, Sisi has improved ties with Russia, making three trips to Moscow compared to none so far to Washington. Trade has been a key area of increased cooperation. During his visit to Egypt in February 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed “dynamic” bilateral relations, noting an 86 percent increase in trade in 2014. That month, Egypt agreed to establish a free trade zone with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. Recently, Cairo said it aims to replace Turkish goods restricted for import to Russia with Egyptian goods. Some analysts say that Egypt’s offer is not feasible, however, it nonetheless demonstrates Sisi’s intent to capitalize on opportunities to expand trade with Moscow. Energy has also been a sector of cooperation. Last month, Russia and Egypt signed an agreement to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant, which Russian representatives called “a truly new chapter in the history of bilateral relations.”¶ Military cooperation has also increased. In March 2014, Egypt and Russia signed a protocol to expand bilateral military ties. Six months later, Cairo reached a preliminary deal to purchase $3.5 billion of arms from Moscow. Earlier reports cited Russian sources saying deals had been reached to sell Egypt MiG-29 fighter jets, air defense missile complexes, Mi-35 helicopters, coastal anti-ship complexes, light weapons, and ammunition. Cairo has also repeatedly expressed its desire to work closely with Moscow on counterterrorism. In October, Egypt praised Russia’s military intervention in Syria as a major step in the fight against terrorism. Most recently, following Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigus’s November visit to Egypt, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia would respond shortly to an arms purchasing request from Cairo. That much of the recent expansion in Egypt-Russia military cooperation occurred while U.S. military assistance to Egypt was suspended should not be overlooked.¶ Robust ties with Egypt offer Russia important strategic advantages, not least of which is enhanced regional influence as the Kremlin enmeshes itself in the Syrian civil war and the global Sunni-Shia rivalry. Ties with Egypt have bolstered Russia’s ability to act as a counterweight to U.S. interests in the region. Alignment on counterterrorism and mutually beneficial trade relations—Egypt serves as market for Russian goods amidst western sanctions and Russia as a source of much-needed investment for Egypt’s economy—provide a strong foundation for Russia’s strategic maneuvering.¶ It remains unclear whether Sisi’s cozying up to Russia reflects a genuine policy shift or a strategic signal of defiance meant to push Washington to increase support for Cairo out of concern that it will move into Russia’s orbit. But the Egyptian outreach to Moscow should not be understated given the current realignment of regional power structures. Discord with the United States comes not only as Russia seeks to expand its foothold in the Middle East, but as Sisi attempts to establish a foreign policy independent of Washington. The Egyptian president appears to be working toward that end, having already garnered substantial international support, both material and rhetorical, from European and Gulf powers. Egyptian-Israeli relations are and have been strong for decades, casting doubt on the need for an American mediator. And Russia is willing to provide military hardware to Cairo absent any democracy conditions, while the United States has demonstrated willingness to suspend weapons deliveries over human rights concerns dismissed by Egypt.¶ In the face of a possible Egyptian rebalancing towards Russia, the United States has three basic policy options. On one extreme, the United States could interpret Egypt’s warming to Russia as provocation by an entitled ally whose repressive behavior, which is contributing to the exacerbation of radical elements, flies in the face of U.S. democratic values. Under this option, the United States would impose strict democratization conditions on aid. However, the United States can ill-afford to threaten its relationship with Egypt in this way at a time of Russian resurgence. Furthermore, such a policy risks unravelling the foundations of Egyptian-Israeli peace.¶ On the other extreme, the United States could provide Egypt with unconditional military aid in an attempt to counter Russian influence. As this policy would overlook any repressive domestic behavior, it could embolden a regime unlikely to reform. Those troubled by this course of action must recognize that Egypt will have to go somewhere for military aid, and Moscow is Cairo’s most attractive alternative. Egypt would certainly be less likely to pursue democratic reform under Russian stewardship. However, while a policy of unconditional support for Egypt may make sense on purely strategic grounds, it would face fierce opposition from those concerned about the regime’s repression. ¶ Several experts have advocated of late for middle of the road approaches that would maintain a strategic relationship with Egypt, but also avoid “coddling” a repressive regime. This third course of action recognizes the threats Cairo faces, notably ISIS, but also seeks to maintain strategic distance from Egypt’s authoritarian measures. The qualitative nature of security assistance could be changed from external defense-type capabilities to equipment and training more appropriate for counterterrorism missions. This would enhance the capability of the Egyptian armed forces to fight ISIS in the Sinai, Libya, and possibly elsewhere in the region. The decision to reform FMF to Egypt starting in 2018 is a positive step in this direction. Recent congressional authorities should also serve as a model for assistance. For example, section 1206 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which provides the authority for training and equipping foreign security forces for counterterrorism operations, focuses on equipment for internal security rather than external defense.¶ A centered approach recognizes that currently, the gravest threat to U.S. and Egyptian shared interests is not the lack of democratic progress, but the onslaught of groups like ISIS. The United States can employ such an approach as it eyes Egyptian and Russian rapprochement. For the time being, Sisi’s outreach to the Kremlin seems to be posturing. However, a balanced approach would allow the United States to maintain a strategic position of power should a hypothesized shift to Moscow materialize.¶ Needs to be cut
Egypt-US relations key to stability – it’s the lynchpin of American power projection, ensures counter-terror coop, moderates the Egyptian military, and keeps the Suez open – key to broader Middle East stability
CFR 2 Council on Foreign Relations. “Strengthening the US-Egyptian Relationship. Council on Foreign Relations. May 2002. MSG
The U.S.-Egyptian relationship is rooted in strategic calculation. It bolsters peace between Egypt and Israel and makes possible broader peace in the region. The U.S.-Egyptian relationship has helped Egypt modernize its military and has added weight to its position as a stabilizing regional force. America's support has also strengthened Egypt's economy. As has been true for the past two decades, a moderate Egypt is the key to peace and stability in the Middle East and a strong U.S.-Egyptian relationship is essential to securing American presence in the region.¶ The U.S.-Egyptian relationship has served the two sides well. Two decades of military cooperation and training have moderated Egypt's military establishment, the most powerful institution in Egypt, and made it a reliable U.S. partner. During the Gulf War, Egypt's support was central to Arab participation in the war against Iraq; Egypt's willingness to keep open its canal in crisis and allow overflight and refueling cannot be taken for granted. These ties remain central to the U.S. ability to project and protect its strategic interests in the world's most volatile region.¶ Washington has lost sight of what the Middle East would look like without a strong U.S.-Egyptian relationship. A nuclear-inclined or -armed Egypt, ambiguous on the issue of terror, uncertain on peace with Israel, and disinclined to negotiate would drastically recast the management of the Middle East.¶ Since September 11, it has become all too clear that U.S.-Egyptian ties are in trouble. Although the Egyptian government has stood firmly with the United States, the U.S. Congress has grown increasingly critical in its support for Egypt. Congress questions the line that Egypt has taken with Israel, its position on terrorism, issues of human rights, and economic and political reform.¶ A similar dissatisfaction with the U.S.-Egyptian relationship exists in Egypt. The events of recent months set loose demonstrations unprecedented in recent decades. The Egyptian public's perception of powerlessness is breeding alienation and intensifying anger. It underscores a key challenge to American statecraft- how to begin recreating a partnership that serves both Egyptian and American interests and helps further peace for the region. The United States needs Arab allies, especially in these challenging times; Egypt is our most important partner.¶ The generation of American statesmen and political leaders who forged the Egyptian-Israeli agreement and was committed to the political relationship between the United States and Egypt in the 1970s has largely passed. As the Mubarak era similarly draws to a close, Washington should work to ensure that the successor regime shares a commitment to the kind of relationship the United States has enjoyed over the past quarter century.¶ At the same time, both sides must recognize that the U.S.-Egyptian relationship has changed and now reflects new political realities, such as Egypt's struggling economic condition and concerns over governance and human rights. This generation of leaders must set new goals for the relationship and recalibrate the dialogue so that it reaches beyond the institutions of government and engages religious leaders, media, intellectuals, and the business establishment on both sides.¶ Foundations of the U.S.-Egypt Relationship¶ Political¶ Egypt is the most powerful moderate, balancing voice in the Arab world.¶ Its position in the region is critical to peace between Arab states and Israel.¶ Egypt's political clout shapes outlooks and guides agendas in the region.¶ Cairo's diplomatic corps has significant influence in regional and multinational bodies. Egypt plays an important role in the United Nations in shaping international consensus on issues important to peace and stability in the region.¶ Egypt's posture on key issues of importance provides cover for Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.¶ Egypt, a vigorous Organization of African Unity actor, has the ability to influence events in Africa.¶ Military¶ U.S.-Egyptian military ties are a key link in the U.S. relationship. They are a central stabilizing factor 

in the U.S.-Egyptian relationship. More broadly, the U.S.-Egyptian defense relationship sends a signal of domestic moderation and deterrence to the region. The Egyptian military is deeply opposed to Islamic political radicalism.¶ Overflight rights, the sharing of intelligence and military perceptions in the region, transit through the Suez Canal, military supply, etc., demonstrate the important nature of the military relationship, especially during times of war.¶ Egypt hosts Operation Bright Star, the largest military exercise the United States conducts in the world. These maneuvers send a strong signal to the region of the close ties the U.S. shares with Egypt and its ability to quickly deploy American military power during times of crisis.¶ Cultural¶ Egypt's intellectual and academic voice is the strongest in the region.¶ Washington needs the full cooperation of Egypt's government, intellectuals, and religious leaders to counter Islamic radicalism.¶ While no single set of voices defines modern Islam, Egypt's intelligentsia, religious hierarchy, and institutions are central in defining Islamic religious and secular perspectives and diminishing the influence of radical Islamic tendencies. For the past several decades, Egypt has been a battleground between moderate and radical Islamic forces. The role of Egyptian militants in al-Qaeda and other radical movements is considerable.¶ Egypt is the largest exporter of culture in the region, although the Gulf has overtaken Egypt as the hub of modern media in the Middle East.¶ Economic¶ Egypt is the most populous nation in the Arab world and its economy vies with Saudi Arabia in size. Its economy is in trouble and its poor performance is fueling discontent on the street.¶ Egypt hosts significant American investment; the discovery of substantial gas reserves will increase Egypt's role in regional energy markets.¶ Current Perceptions¶ Changing Relations¶ Egypt has been cast as an obstructionist force in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the U.S.-led war against terrorism. In fact, Egypt has worked quietly and consistently for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and for an expansion of the Arab world's acceptance of Israel. Frustration, however, is understandable in the United States-the relationship began with the expectation that peace in the region would have been achieved years ago. Egypt has consistently made clear its belief that there must be progress toward Palestinian statehood; where it sees that progress checked, Egypt is outspoken and its criticism has been interpreted in many American circles as obstructionist.¶ Public dialogue does not reflect the close military and government relationships between the two countries. Both the Egyptian and American publics are extremely critical of the relationship and criticism has increased sharply since September 11 and the second Intifada.¶ The United States has unrealistic expectations of the leadership powers of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and of Egypt in the Arab world, in pursuing U.S. interests. There has been a transition in the structure of the Arab and Egyptian political systems. While these systems are essentially top-down structures, they are not command structures.¶ Egypt and Saudi Arabia are an axis of political power in the Middle East; they backstop one another on key political issues. Any U.S. military operation against Iraq would require the understanding, if not the support, of both countries.¶ U.S. Aid to Egypt¶ One of the pillars of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship is the near $2 billion of U.S. economic and military aid given yearly.¶ Many believe that the U.S. investment in Egypt should compel the Egyptian government to accommodate American views on the region, particularly with regard to Egypt's relationship with Israel-or at the very least moderate the harsh rhetoric. Moreover, some in the United States question the benefits of aid to Egypt, pointing to its lagging political and economic reforms and poor human rights record.¶ american assistance has contributed to Egypt's stability and gives the United States considerable influence in key decisions about Egyptian policies. Using military supply or assistance as direct, visible leverage is extremely dangerous, reinforcing the impression on the Egyptian street that its government is subservient to the United States. Such signals weaken the ability of the United States to pursue mutually beneficial initiatives.¶ U.S. aid to Egypt was originally targeted for specific purposes and, in many ways, continues to successfully address significant U.S. political goals: consolidating the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement and strengthening U.S.-Egyptian ties. In reality American aid is a two-edged sword that must be viewed judiciously. It reinforces the American voice in Egyptian councils, but it cannot replace a consensus on political and economic objectives.¶ U.S. military aid to Egypt has created a solidly pro-American military establishment, which is the strongest institution in Egypt and the fundamental basis of the regime. Twenty years of military cooperation is producing an Egyptian military leadership comfortable with American approach and doctrine. U.S. military aid helps ensure that Egypt remains associated with the United States, despite criticism from the Egyptian elite. But like all relationships, this one is not immutable. The Soviet Union learned this harsh lesson in the 1970s.¶ U.S. aid to Egypt was never intended to push Egypt to reform according to America's priorities. U.S. aid has not resulted in the anticipated economic growth and political change in Egypt, nor has it secured peace between Israel and the Palestinians and all Arab states. And it cannot. American lawmakers must recognize the value that U.S. aid has brought to the relationship and accept its limitations, as well as its promise-the influence the United States accrues by having a seat at the Egyptian table.¶ Egypt as Battleground¶ Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 terrorist attack, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organizational force behind al-Qaeda, were Egyptian.¶ Islamic radicalism has a history deeply rooted in Egypt and the Egyptian government has been fighting radicalism since the time of Anwar Sadat. In the 1990s, Egypt conducted a hard fought campaign to root out Islamic militants after a series of deadly attacks. There is a direct line from the assassins of Sadat to the radicals that gave birth to the Egyptian components of al-Qaeda.¶ The threat of Islamic radicalism to Egypt's stability is real and continuing. Attacks are primarily aimed at overthrowing the current Egyptian regime and replacing it with an Islamic one. In fact, September 11 attacks were also aimed at Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where Islamic militants have been stymied.¶ The inspiration for al-Qaeda's ideology was Egyptian, and Osama bin Laden was advised heavily by Egyptians. Egypt's fundamentalists gave substance to al-Qaeda's tilt toward anti-Israel, anti-U.S., and anti-Arab regime rhetoric and action. Omar Abdel Rahman, "the blind sheikh," was an early and major force in Islamic radical militancy; the first attack on the World Trade Center was his handiwork.¶ September 11 demonstrated to the Egyptian people and government that their own war against terrorism is part of a larger phenomenon that threatens Egypt and the entire world. Egypt's support and full-hearted cooperation in the U.S.-led war on terrorism demonstrates its commitment to fight against terrorism both inside and outside of its borders. The United States needs to preserve and strengthen that commitment.¶ Even though Egypt's government and elites are bitterly opposed to Islamic radicalism, Egyptian intellectuals and state-sponsored media have contributed to the climate of denigration of Israel and the United States and are partially responsible for the intensity of hostility on the Egyptian street. Whatever short-term advantages are gained in public opinion from attacks against Israel and the United States, they are deeply unsettling to Americans and undermine the foundations on which peace must be built. Moreover, such denigration blurs key moral distinctions especially important in the debate over the future of modern Islam, and contributes to the justification of the use of terror.¶ The media reality in the Arab world, including Egypt, is changing. Independent Arab papers and television have created cross-border competition in the media heretofore unknown. Arab governments have effectively lost some of their ability to control the airwaves and print media, and are struggling to cope with the consequences. The Egyptian government never had perfect control of its media; today the degree of official control over the press and press opinion is diminishing.¶ Egyptian Middle Class¶ There is growing animosity in the secular elite establishment toward the United States focused specifically on U.S. policy toward Israel. This negative dialogue is damaging government relations. Egypt's regime is extremely sensitive to the attitude of its elites.¶ Among the Egyptian middle class, there is respect for the United States, its accomplishments and the role it can play in the Middle East. Regrettably, there is a strong belief that the problems in the U.S.-Egyptian relationship and in American policies in the region are caused by the American-Jewish community and its perceived control over U.S. government institutions and media. This attitude-and the rhetoric that goes with it-distorts perceptions and damages the dialogue. It undercuts Egypt's standing in the United States and must be an issue in any ongoing dialogue-one the United States is frank enough to address.¶ The United States should not expect a tame Egyptian press. It can expect, however, that the media and key intellectual institutions reverse the climate of denigration that has chilled relations. Strong signals of respect and the need for peace must come from the top and are a reasonable objective of U.S. diplomacy. Egypt's intellectuals will not break ranks with perceived orthodoxy and challenge conventional wisdom unless there is a strong signal from the top.¶ The Troubled Economy¶ The deplorable conditions of the Egyptian economy are fueling discontent. Growth is flat; reform has stopped.¶ U.S. assistance cannot bail Egypt out; rather Egypt must make hard decisions and move decisively toward a market-based economy.¶ But Egypt cannot do so alone. Egypt needs the United States as an economic partner and counselor with the International Monetary Fund and in mobilizing international support for debt rescheduling. President Mubarak needs confidence if he is to undertake politically sensitive but much needed reform.¶ Updating the U.S.-Egypt Relationship¶ The United States must set new goals and priorities for the U.S-Egyptian relationship that redefine the U.S. strategic view of the relationship within the context of Egypt's role in the Arab world.¶ The dialogue must recreate a sense of partnership in influencing events in the region.¶ The dialogue should be aimed at Egypt's leaders and also its elite and middle class.¶ Disagreement is best kept on official or private channels and out of the media. The dialogue must be candid and broad, addressing issues of immediate concern-the crisis in the region and Iraq. It can seek common ground in questions of importance to American policy outside the Middle East-Africa, for example.¶ The dialogue must broach sensitive questions-the intellectual debate in Islam, the way Egypt's media addresses the role of the American-Jewish community, Israel, and the United States. These consultations must address Egypt's virtually stagnant economic reform program and put on the table discrete steps that Egypt should take to create a properly functioning market economy. The United States should offer its influence with international financial institutions and the business community to match steps that Egypt takes.

We’ll isolate three impacts---

1. Unique characteristics makes nuclear war uniquely likely in the Middle East – causes extinction.
   Russell 9
   James A. Russell (Senior Lecturer of National Security Affairs and Naval Postgraduate School). “Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in the Middle East”, IFRI (Proliferation Papers, #26, 2009). http://www.ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf.
   Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1) asymmetric interests in the bargaining framework that can introduce unpredictable behavior from actors; (2) the presence of non-state actors that introduce unpredictability into relationships between the antagonists; (3) incompatible assumptions about the structure of the deterrent relationship that makes the bargaining framework strategically unstable; (4) perceptions by Israel and the United States that its window of opportunity for military action is closing, which could prompt a preventive attack; (5) the prospect that Iran’s response to pre-emptive attacks could involve unconventional weapons, which could prompt escalation by Israel and/or the United States; (6) the lack of a communications framework to build trust and cooperation among framework participants. These systemic weaknesses in the coercive bargaining framework all suggest that escalation by any the parties could happen either on purpose or as a result of miscalculation or the pressures of wartime circumstance. Given these factors, it is disturbingly easy to imagine scenarios under which a conflict could quickly escalate in which the regional antagonists would consider the use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. It would be a mistake to believe the nuclear taboo can somehow magically keep nuclear weapons from being used in the context of an unstable strategic framework. Systemic asymmetries between actors in fact suggest a certain increase in the probability of war – a war in which escalation could happen quickly and from a variety of participants. Once such a war starts, events would likely develop a momentum all their own and decision-making would consequently be shaped in unpredictable ways. The international community must take this possibility seriously, and muster every tool at its disposal to prevent such an outcome, which would be an unprecedented disaster for the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.
   2. Middle east presence is the lynchpin of global power projection – solves global conflict
   Mead 15   Walter Russell Mead Distinguished Scholar, American Strategy and Statesmanship, Hudson Institute   August 5th, 2015   Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services
   The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and the Military Balance in the Middle East  http://www.hudson.org/research/11493-the-joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action-and-the-military-balance-in-the-middle-east
   Some might argue that, given the importance of Middle Eastern oil to the rest of the world, the United States could reduce our involvement in the Middle East with the assurance that other countries would step in to fill the vacuum. Why, some ask, should the United States assume the costs and risks of ensuring the flow of oil to other rich and powerful states around the world? The answers to this question go to the heart of American grand strategy for the last 100 years. As the bloodshed and destruction of warfare has increased, Americans have sought above all else to prevent wars between great powers from breaking out. While all war is destructive and horrifying, wars in which great powers, with their enormous technological and economic capabilities, turn their full strength against one another, have the potential to destroy civilization or human life itself. To make such wars less likely, the United States has worked to create an interdependent global system in which all countries depend so heavily on global flows of trade and investment that no country can contemplate cutting itself off from this system through starting wars. At the same time, the United States has worked to ensure the safe and secure passage of commerce across the world’s oceans, taking questions like energy out of the realm of geopolitical competition. In the Middle East, these policies have meant that since World War Two the United States has acted to prevent any power or combination of powers either inside or outside the region from gaining the ability to blackmail the world by threatening to interrupt the flow of oil to the great markets of Asia and Europe. Whether the danger came from external powers like the Soviet Union (which occupied part of Iran and threatened Turkey in the early years of the Cold War) or from ambitious leaders within the region (like Saddam Hussein when he invaded Kuwait), the United States has acted to ensure the security and political independence of the oil producing states of the region. These policies have helped create the longest era of great power peace in modern times. They have also reduced the cost of America’s military commitments. Because other countries do not feel the need to maintain large forces with an intercontinental capacity to protect their global trade, the United States has been able to maintain a global presence at a far lower cost than would be feasible if the world’s major economic powers were engaged in competitive military build ups. A strong American presence in the Middle East and on the high seas has the effect of suppressing security competition worldwide, enabling America’s most important interests to be secured with much less cost than would otherwise be possible. Should the United States withdraw from this role, the world would likely see increased competition among other powers. China, for example, would see a greater need to protect its oil security, accelerating the build up of its armed forces. Japan and India would both likely see this build up as a threat to their own energy and maritime security and would accelerate build ups of their own. Trust among these powers, already weak, would erode, and the dynamics of a zero-sum competition for security and access to resources would drive them towards greater hostility and more dangerous policies. Under those circumstances, American prosperity and security would be much harder to defend than they are now, and the risks of great power conflict would intensify. America’s Middle East policy is not just about the Middle East; it is about America’s global interest in a peaceful and prosperous world. The starting point for any American strategy in the Middle East today must be the basic approach that has served us well since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. America’s vital interests require us to look to the safety and the security of the Middle Eastern oil producing states, ensuring that no power, either external or regional, gains the power to interfere with the smooth and stable supply of oil and gas to the great economic and industrial centers of the world.
   3. Suez closure collapses global trade and causes oil shocks – that was above
   and Oil shocks go nuclear
   King 08 (Neil, Peak Oil: A Survey of Security Concerns, Center for a New American Security, p. 14-17)
   Many commentators in the United States and abroad have begun to wrestle with the question of whether soaring oil prices and market volatility could spark an outright oil war between major powers—possibly ignited not by China or Russia, but by the United States. In a particularly pointed speech on the topic in May, James Russell of the Naval Postgraduate School in California addressed what he called the increasing militarization of international energy security. “Energy security is now deemed so central to ‘national security’ that threats to the former are liable to be reflexively interpreted as threats to the latter,” he told a gathering at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Houston’s Rice University.6 The possibility that a large-scale war could break out over access to dwindling energy resources, he wrote, “is one of the most alarming prospects facing the current world system.”7 Mr. Russell figures among a growing pool of analysts who worry in particular about the psychological readiness of the United States to deal rationally with a sustained oil shock. Particularly troubling is the increasing perception within Congress that the financial side of the oil markets no longer functions rationally. It has either been taken over by speculators or is being manipulated, on the supply side, by producers who are holding back on pumping more oil in order to drive up the price. A breakdown in trust for the oil markets, these analysts fear, could spur calls for government action—even military intervention. “The perceptive chasm in the United States between new oil market realities and their impact on the global distribution of power will one day close,” Mr. Russell said. “And when it does, look out.”8 The World at Peak: Taking the Dim View For years, skeptics scoffed at predictions that the United States would hit its own domestic oil production peak by sometime in the late 1960s. With its oil fields pumping full out, the U.S. in 1969 was providing an astonishing 25 percent of the world’s oil supply—a role no other country has ever come close to matching. U.S. production then peaked in December 1970, and has fallen steadily ever since, a shift that has dramatically altered America’s own sense of vulnerability and reordered its military priorities. During World War II, when its allies found their own oil supplies cut off by the war, the United States stepped in and made up the difference. Today it is able to meet less than a third of its own needs. A similar peak in worldwide production would have far more sweeping consequences. It would, for one, spell the end of the world’s unparalleled economic boom over the last century. It would also dramatically reorder the wobbly balance of power between nations as energy-challenged industrialized countries turn their sights on the oil-rich nations of the Middle East and Africa. In a peak oil future, the small, flattened, globalized world that has awed recent commentators would become decidedly round and very vast again. Oceans will reemerge as a hindrance to trade, instead of the conduit they have been for so long. An energy-born jolt to the world economy would leave no corner of the globe untouched. Unable to pay their own fuel bills, the tiny Marshall Islands this summer faced the possibility of going entirely without power. That is a reality that could sweep across many of the smallest and poorest countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, reversing many of the tentative gains in those regions and stirring deep social unrest. Large patches of the world rely almost entirely on diesel-powered generators for what skimpy electricity they now have. Those generators are the first to run empty as prices soar. A British parliamentary report released in June on “The Impact of Peak Oil on International Development” concluded that “the deepening energy crisis has the potential to make poverty a permanent state for a growing number of people, undoing the development efforts of a generation.”9 We are seeing some of the consequences already in Pakistan – a country of huge strategic importance, with its own stash of nuclear weapons – that is now in the grips of a severe energy crisis. By crippling the country’s economy, battering the stock market, and spurring mass protests, Pakistan’s power shortages could end up giving the country’s Islamic parties the leverage they have long needed to take power. It’s not hard to imagine similar scenarios playing out in dozens of other developing countries. Deepening economic unrest will put an enormous strain on the United Nations and other international aid agencies. Anyone who has ever visited a major UN relief hub knows that their fleets of Land Rovers, jumbo jets and prop planes have a military size thirst for fuel. Aid agency budgets will come under unprecedented pressure just as the need for international aid skyrockets and donor countries themselves feel pressed for cash. A peaking of oil supplies could also hasten the impact of global climate change by dramatically driving up the use of coal for power generation in much of the world. A weakened world economy would also put in jeopardy the massively expensive projects, such as carbon capture and storage, that many experts look to for a reduction in industrial emissions. So on top of the strains caused by scarce fossil fuels, the world may also have to grapple with the destabilizing effects of more rapid desertification, dwindling fisheries, and strained food supplies. An oil-constricted world will also stir perilous frictions between haves and have-nots. The vast majority of all the world’s known oil reserves is now in the hands of national oil companies, largely in countries with corrupt and autocratic governments. Many of these governments—Iran and Venezuela top the list—are now seen as antagonists of the United States.

 Tightened oil supplies will substantially boost these countries’ political leverage, but that enhanced power will carry its own peril. Playing the oil card when nations are scrambling for every barrel will be a far more serious matter that at any time in the past. The European continent could also undergo a profound shift as its needs—and sources of energy—diverge all the more from those of the United States. A conservation-oriented Europe (oil demand is on the decline in almost every EU country) will look all the more askance at what it sees as the gluttonous habits of the United States. At the same time, Europe’s governments may have little choice but to shy from any political confrontations with its principal energy supplier, Russia. An energy-restricted future will greatly enhance Russia’s clout within settings like the UN Security Council but also in its dealings with both Europe and China. Abundant oil and gas have fueled Russia’s return to power over the last decade, giving it renewed standing within the UN and increasing sway over European capitals. The peak oil threat is already sending shivers through the big developing countries of China and India, whose propulsive growth (and own internal stability) requires massive doses of energy. For Beijing, running low on fuel spells economic chaos and internal strife, which in turn spawns images of insurrection and a breaking up of the continent sized country. Slumping oil supplies will automatically pit the two largest energy consumers—the United States and China—against one another in competition over supplies in South America, West Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. China is already taking this competition very seriously. It doesn’t require much of a leap to imagine a Cold War-style scramble between Washington and Beijing—not for like-minded allies this time but simply for reliable and tested suppliers of oil. One region that offers promise and peril in almost equal measure is the Artic, which many in the oil industry consider the last big basin of untapped hydrocarbon riches. But the Artic remains an ungoverned ocean whose legal status couldn’t be less clear, especially so long as the United States continues to remain outside the international Law of the Sea Treaty. As the ices there recede, the risk increases that a scramble for assets in the Artic could turn nasty.

Tournament: Loyola | Round: 1 | Opponent: Polytechnic JL | Judge: Felix Tan
The standard is maximizing expected well-being.
Personal Identity is irrelevant, we can separate our brains and become separate streams of thought.
Derek Parfit
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984).
Some recent medical cases provide striking evidence in favour of the Reductionist View. Human beings have a lower brain and two upper hemispheres, which are connected by a bundle of fibres. In treating a few people with severe epilepsy, surgeons have cut these fibres. The aim was to reduce the severity of epileptic fits, by confining their causes to a single hemisphere. This aim was achieved. But the operations had another unintended consequence. The effect, in the words of one surgeon, was the creation of ‘two separate spheres of consciousness.’ This effect was revealed by various psychological tests. These made use of two facts. We control our right arms with our left hemispheres, and vice versa. And what is in the right halves of our visual fields we see with our left hemispheres, and vice versa. When someone’s hemispheres have been disconnected, psychologists can thus present to this person two different written questions in the two halves of his visual field, and can receive two different answers written by this person’s two hands

Given the absence of identity only utilitarianism makes sense
Shoemaker 99  
Shoemaker, David (Dept of Philosophy, U Memphis). “Utilitarianism and Personal Identity.” The Journal of Value Inquiry 33: 183–199, 1999. http://www.csun.edu/~ds56723/jvipaper.pdf
Extreme reductionism might lend support to utilitarianism in the following way. Many people claim that we are justified in maximizing the good in our own lives, but not justified in maximizing the good across sets of lives, simply because each of us is a single, deeply unified person, unified by the further fact of identity, whereas there is no such corresponding unity across sets of lives. But if the only justification for the different treatment of individual lives and sets of lives is the further fact, and this fact is undermined by the truth of reductionism, then nothing justifies this different treatment. There are no deeply unified subjects of experience. What remains are merely the experiences themselves, and so any ethical theory distinguishing between individual lives and sets of lives is mistaken. If the deep, further fact is missing, then there are no unities. The morally significant units should then be the states people are in at particular times, and an ethical theory that focused on them and attempted to improve their quality, whatever their location, would be the most plausible. Utilitarianism is just such a theory

Only utilitarianism can serve as the basis to legitimately justify policy to the public. Government actions will inevitably lead to trade-offs between citizens. The only justifiable way to resolve these conflicts is utilitarianism.
Gary Woller BYU Prof., “An Overview by Gary Woller”, A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 1997, pg. 10
Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's ex- pense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such justification cannot simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty  to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, Also, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation. (There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins, 1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe, be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above all, the scope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
Meltdowns are inevitable – other models are flawed
Max - Planck- Gesselschaft 12 –The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institute (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Major Reactor, 5-22-2012, "Severe nuclear reactor accidents likely every 10 to 20 years, European study suggests," ScienceDaily, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120522134942.htm) LADI
Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) -- some 200 times more often than estimated in the past. The researchers also determined that, in the event of such a major accident, half of the radioactive caesium-137 would be spread over an area of more than 1,000 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor. Their results show that Western Europe is likely to be contaminated about once in 50 years by more than 40 kilobecquerel of caesium-137 per square meter. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, an area is defined as being contaminated with radiation from this amount onwards. In view of their findings, the researchers call for an in-depth analysis and reassessment of the risks associated with nuclear power plants. The reactor accident in Fukushima has fuelled the discussion about nuclear energy and triggered Germany's exit from their nuclear power program. It appears that the global risk of such a catastrophe is higher than previously thought, a result of a study carried out by a research team led by Jos Lelieveld, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz: "After Fukushima, the prospect of such an incident occurring again came into question, and whether we can actually calculate the radioactive fallout using our atmospheric models." According to the results of the study, a nuclear meltdown in one of the reactors in operation worldwide is likely to occur once in 10 to 20 years. Currently, there are 440 nuclear reactors in operation, and 60 more are planned. To determine the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown, the researchers applied a simple calculation. They divided the operating hours of all civilian nuclear reactors in the world, from the commissioning of the first up to the present, by the number of reactor meltdowns that have actually occurred. The total number of operating hours is 14,500 years, the number of reactor meltdowns comes to four -- one in Chernobyl and three in Fukushima. This translates into one major accident, being defined according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), every 3,625 years. Even if this result is conservatively rounded to one major accident every 5,000 reactor years, the risk is 200 times higher than the estimate for catastrophic, non-contained core meltdowns made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1990. The Mainz researchers did not distinguish ages and types of reactors, or whether they are located in regions of enhanced risks, for example by earthquakes. After all, nobody had anticipated the reactor catastrophe in Japan.

Contamination spreads rapidly – no one is safe
Max - Planck- Gesselschaft 12 –The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institute (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Major Reactor, 5-22-2012, "Severe nuclear reactor accidents likely every 10 to 20 years, European study suggests," ScienceDaily, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120522134942.htm) LADI
25 percent of the radioactive particles are transported further than 2,000 kilometres Subsequently, the researchers determined the geographic distribution of radioactive gases and particles around a possible accident site using a computer model that describes Earth's atmosphere. The model calculates meteorological conditions and flows, and also accounts for chemical reactions in the atmosphere. The model can compute the global distribution of trace gases, for example, and can also simulate the spreading of radioactive gases and particles. To approximate the radioactive contamination, the researchers calculated how the particles of radioactive caesium-137 (137Cs) disperse in the atmosphere, where they deposit on Earth's surface and in what quantities. The 137Cs isotope is a product of the nuclear fission of uranium. It has a half-life of 30 years and was one of the key elements in the radioactive contamination following the disasters of Chernobyl and Fukushima. The computer simulations revealed that, on average, only eight percent of the 137Cs particles are expected to deposit within an area of 50 kilometres around the nuclear accident site. Around 50 percent of the particles would be deposited outside a radius of 1,000 kilometres, and around 25 percent would spread even further than 2,000 kilometres. These results underscore that reactor accidents are likely to cause radioactive contamination well beyond national borders. The results of the dispersion calculations were combined with the likelihood of a nuclear meltdown and the actual density of reactors worldwide to calculate the current risk of radioactive contamination around the world. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an area with more than 40 kilobecquerels of radioactivity per square meter is defined as contaminated. The team in Mainz found that in Western Europe, where the density of reactors is particularly high, the contamination by more than 40 kilobecquerels per square meter is expected to occur once in about every 50 years. It appears that citizens in the densely populated southwestern part of Germany run the worldwide highest risk of radioactive contamination, associated with the numerous nuclear power plants situated near the borders between France, Belgium and Germany, and the dominant westerly wind direction. If a single nuclear meltdown were to occur in Western Europe, around 28 million people on average would be affected by contamination of more than 40 kilobecquerels per square meter. This figure is even higher in southern Asia, due to the dense populations. A major nuclear accident there would affect around 34 million people, while in the eastern USA and in East Asia this would be 14 to 21 million people. "Germany's exit from the nuclear energy program will reduce the national risk of radioactive contamination. However, an even stronger reduction would result if Germany's neighbours were to switch off their reactors," says Jos Lelieveld. "Not only do we need an in-depth and public analysis of the actual risks of nuclear accidents. In light of our findings I believe an internationally coordinated phasing out of nuclear energy should also be considered ," adds the atmospheric chemist.
Fukushima proves the damage to the environment and human health is irreversible
Rosen 12 -- Dr Alex Rosen, University Clinic Düsseldorf, Department of General Pediatrics,  (“Effects of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns on environment and health” March 9th, 2012, https://www.ippnw.de/commonFiles/pdfs/Atomenergie/FukushimaBackgroundPaper.pdf) LADI
The Tōhoku earthquake on March 11th, 2011 led to multiple nuclear meltdowns in the reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Northern Japan. Radioactive emissions from the plant caused widespread radioactive contamination of the entire region. The vast majority of the nuclear fallout occurred over the North Pacific, constituting the largest radioactive contamination of the oceans ever recorded. Soil and water samples, as well as marine animals have been found to be highly contaminated. Increased levels of radioactivity were recorded at all radiation measuring posts in the Northern Hemisphere. Fallout contaminated large parts of Eastern Honshu island, including the Tokyo metropolitan area. Within a 20 km radius, up to 200,000 people had to leave their homes. Outside of this evacuation zone, the radioactive fallout contaminated more than 870 km2 of land, home to about 70,000 people who were not evacuated. These people were exposed to harmful radioisotopes and now have an increased risk to develop cancer or other radiation-induced diseases. Many people still live in areas with high contamination. Food, milk and drinking water have been contaminated as well, leading to internal radiation exposure. Most severely affected are children, as their bodies are more susceptible to radiation damage. Preliminary tests have shown internal radioactive contamination of children with iodine-131 and caesium-137. It is too early to estimate the extent of health effects caused by the nuclear disaster. Taking into consideration the studies on Chernobyl survivors and the findings of the BEIR VII report, scientists will be able to estimate the effects once the true extent of radioactive emissions, fallout and contamination are better studied. Large-scale independent epidemiological studies are needed in order to better help the victims of this catastrophe. Claims by scientists affiliated with the nuclear industry that no health effects are to be expected are unscientific and immoral.
It’s the single greatest danger to the environment
Stapleton 9 - Richard M Stapleton Is the author of books such as Lead Is a Silent Hazard, writes for pollution issues (“Disasters: Nuclear Accidents” http://www.pollutionissues.com/Co-Ea/Disasters-Nuclear-Accidents.html) LADI
Of all the environmental disaster events that humans are capable of causing, nuclear disasters have the greatest damage potential. The radiation release associated with a nuclear disaster poses significant acute and chronic risks in the immediate environs and chronic risk over a wide geographic area. Radioactive contamination, which typically becomes airborne, is long-lived, with half-lives guaranteeing contamination for hundreds of years. Concerns over potential nuclear disasters center on nuclear reactors, typically those used to generate electric power. Other concerns involve the transport of nuclear waste and the temporary storage of spent radioactive fuel at nuclear power plants. The fear that terrorists would target a radiation source or create a "dirty bomb" capable of dispersing radiation over a populated area was added to these concerns following the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Radioactive emissions of particular concern include strontium-90 and cesium-137, both having thirty-year-plus half-lives, and iodine-131, having a short half-life of eight days but known to cause thyroid cancer. In addition to being highly radioactive, cesium-137 is mistaken for potassium by living organisms. This means that it is passed on up the food chain and bioaccumulated by that process. Strontium-90 mimics the properties of calcium and is deposited in bones where it may either cause cancer or damage bone marrow cells. 

Biodiversity loss risks mass death of human and animal life - ecosystems aren’t resilient or redundant
Vule 13-School of Biological Sciences, Louisiana Tech University (Jeffrey V. Yule *, Robert J. Fournier and Patrick L. Hindmarsh, “Biodiversity, Extinction, and Humanity’s Future: The Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Human Population and Resource Use”, 2 April 2013, manities 2013, 2, 147–159) LADI
Ecologists recognize that the particulars of the relationship between biodiversity and community resilience in the face of disturbance (a broad range of phenomena including anything from drought, fire, and volcanic eruption to species introductions or removals) depend on context 16,17. Sometimes disturbed communities return relatively readily to pre-disturbance conditions; sometimes they do not. However, accepting as a general truism that biodiversity is an ecological stabilizer is sensible— roughly equivalent to viewing seatbelt use as a good idea: although seatbelts increase the risk of injury in a small minority of car accidents, their use overwhelmingly reduces risk. As humans continue to modify natural environments, we may be reducing their ability to return to pre-disturbance conditions. The concern is not merely academic. Communities provide the ecosystem services on which both human and nonhuman life depends, including the cycling of carbon dioxide and oxygen by photosynthetic organisms, nitrogen fixation and the filtration of water by microbes, and pollination by insects. If disturbances alter communities to the extent that they can no longer provide these crucial services, extinctions (including, possibly, our own) become more likely. In ecology as in science in general, absolutes are rare. Science deals mainly in probabilities, in large part because it attempts to address the universe’s abundant uncertainties. Species-rich, diverse communities characterized by large numbers of multi-species interactions are not immune to being pushed from one relatively stable state characterized by particular species and interactions to other, quite different states in which formerly abundant species are entirely or nearly entirely absent. Nonetheless, in speciose communities, the removal of any single species is less likely to result in radical change. That said, there are no guarantees that the removal of even a single species from a biodiverse community will not have significant, completely unforeseen consequences. Indirect interactions can be unexpectedly important to community structure and, historically, have been difficult to observe until some form of disturbance (especially the introduction or elimination of a species) occurs. Experiments have revealed how the presence of predators can increase the diversity of prey species in communities, as when predators of a superior competitor among prey species will allow inferior competing prey species to persist 18. Predators can have even more dramatic effects on communities. The presence or absence of sea otters determines whether inshore areas are characterized by diverse kelp forest communities or an alternative stable state of species poor urchin barrens 19. In the latter case, the absence of otters leaves urchin populations unchecked to overgraze kelp forests, eliminating a habitat feature that supports a wide range of species across a variety of age classes. Aldo Leopold observed that when trying to determine how a device works by tinkering with it, the first rule of doing the job intelligently is to save all the parts 20. The extinctions that humans have caused certainly represent a significant problem, but there is an additional difficulty with human investigations of and impacts on ecological and evolutionary processes. Often, our tinkering is unintentional and, as a result, recklessly ignores the necessity of caution. Following the logic inherited from Newtonian physics, humans expect single actions to have single effects. Desiring more game species, for instance, humans typically hunt predators (in North America, for instance, extirpating wolves so as to be able to have more deer or elk for themselves). Yet removing or adding predators has far reaching effects. Wolf removal has led to prey overpopulation, plant over browsing, and erosion 21. After wolves were removed from Yellowstone National Park, the K of elk increased. This allowed for a shift in elk feeding patterns that left fewer trees alongside rivers, thus leaving less food for beaver and, consequently, fewer beaver dams and less wetland 22,23. Such a situation represents, in microcosm, the inherent risk of allowing for the erosion of species diversity. In addition to providing habitat for a wide variety of species, wetlands serve as natural water purification systems. Although the Yellowstone region might not need that particular ecosystem service as much as other parts of the world, freshwater resources and wetlands are threatened globally, and the same logic of reduced biodiversity equating to reduced ecosystem services applies. Humans take actions without considering that when tugging on single threads, they unavoidably affect adjacent areas of the tapestry. While human population and per capita resource use remain high, so does the probability of ongoing biodiversity loss. At the very least, in the future people will have an even more skewed perspective than we do about what constitutes a diverse community. In that regard, future generations will be even more ignorant than we are. Of course, we also experience that shifting baseline perspective on biodiversity and population sizes, failing to recognize how much is missing from the world because we are unaware of what past generations saw 11. But the consequences of diminished biodiversity might be more profound for humans than that. If the disturbance of communities and ecosystems results in species losses that reduce the availability of ecosystem services, human K and, sooner or later, human N will be reduced. 

Try or die— our efforts to improve tech aren’t working, only a shift away from nuclear solves
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
Shedding the institutions that created the prospect of climate change will not happen on the watch of the green titans or extra large nuclear power. The modern cornucopian political economy fueled by abundant, carbon-free energy machines will, in fact, risk the possibility of climate change continually because of the core properties of the modern institutional design. Although the abundant energy machine originated and matured in the United States and industrial Europe, the logic of unending growth built into the modern model has promoted its global spread. Today, both extra-large nuclear power and industrial-scale renewables are at the forefront of the trillion dollar clean energy technology development and transfer process envisioned for the globe (International Energy Agency, 2006). Nuclear energy is seen as offering unlimited potential for rapid development in India and China, while large-scale renewables seamlessly fit into existing international financial aid schemes. A burgeoning renewables industry boasts economic opportunities in standardization and certification for delivering green titans to developing countries. If institutional change is to occur, if energy-society relations are to be transformed, and if the threat of global warming is to be earnestly addressed, we will have to design and experiment with alternatives other than these. Given the global character of the challenge, cookie cutter counter-strategies are certain to fail. Often, outside the box alternatives may not be sensible in the modern context. Like a paradigm shift, we need ideas, and actions guided by them, which fail in one context (here, specifically, the context of energy obesity) in order hopefully to support the appearance of a new context. The concept and practice of a sustainable energy utility is offered in this spirit.11 The sustainable energy utility (SEU) involves the creation of an institution with the explicit purpose of enabling communities to reduce and eventually eliminate use of obese energy resources and reliance on obese energy organizations. It is formed as a nonprofit organization to support commons energy development and management. Unlike its for-profit contemporaries, it has no financial or other interest in commodification of energy, ecological, or social relations; its success lies wholly in the creation of shared benefits and responsibilities. The SEU is not a panacea nor is it a blueprint for fixing our energy-carbon problems. It is a strategy to change energy-ecology-society relations. It may not work, but we believe it is worth the effort to invent and pursue the possibility. There should be little doubt about the difficulty of the task. Regimes develop through the interplay of technology and society over time, rather than through prescribed programs. They alter history and then seek to prevent its change, except in ways that bolster regime power. Of specific importance here, obese utilities will not simply cede political and economic success to an antithetical institution—the SEU. That is why change is so hard to realize. Shifting a society towards a new energy regime requires diverse actors working in tandem, across all areas of regime influence. Economic models, political will, social norm development, all these things must be shifted, rather than pulled, from the current paradigm. The SEU constructs energy–ecology-society relations as phenomena of a commons governance regime. It explicitly reframes the preeminent obese energy regime organization—the energy utility—in the antithetical context of using less energy. And, when energy use is needed, it relies on renewable sources available to and therefore governable by the community of users (rather than the titan technology approach of governance by producers). In contrast to the cornucopian strategy of expanding inputs in an effort to endlessly feed the obese regime, the SEU focuses on techniques and social arrangements which can serve the aims of sustainability and equity. It combines political and economic change for the purpose of building a postmodern energy commons; that is, a form of political economy that relies on commons, rather than commodity, relations for its evolution. Specifically, it uses the ideas of a commonwealth economy and a community trust to achieve the goal of postmodern energy sustainability. The meanings of commonwealth, community trust, and commons, relevant to a SEU, are explored below.
BioD key to the poverty and the economy
PLTA 14 (Pennsylvania Land Trust Association) “Economic Benefits of Biodiversity” Conservationtools.org Feb 24 AT
Biodiversity Underpins Economic Activity Agriculture, forestry and fisheries products, stable natural hydrological cycles, fertile soils, a balanced climate and numerous other vital ecosystem services depend upon the conservation of biological diversity. Food production relies on biodiversity for a variety of food plants, pollination, pest control, nutrient provision, genetic diversity, and disease prevention and control. Both medicinal plants and manufactured pharmaceuticals rely on biodiversity. Decreased biodiversity can lead to increased transmission of diseases to humans and increased healthcare costs. The outdoor tourism industry relies on biodiversity to create and maintain that which tourists come to see, as does the multi-billion dollar fishing and hunting industry. Related Benefits While this guide focuses on economic benefits, it is not meant to diminish the importance of the environmental and social benefits of biodiversity. Related guides at ConservationTools.org include: Economic Benefits of Land Conservation Economic Benefits of Parks Economic Benefits of Trails Economic Benefits of Smart Growth and Costs of Sprawl Organization of This Guide This guide presents an inventory of studies. The heading of each section is the title of the study and is hyperlinked to the ConservationTools.org library listing where the study can be viewed or downloaded. The organization responsible for the study is given, followed by a summary of the key economic findings of the study. Economic Impact Studies Economic and Environmental Benefits of Biodiversity BioScience Maintaining biodiversity is essential for organic waste disposal, soil formation, biological nitrogen fixation, crop and livestock genetics, biological pest control, plant pollination, and pharmaceuticals. Plants and microbes help to degrade chemical pollutants and organic wastes and cycle nutrients through the ecosystem. For example: Pollinators, including bees and butterflies, provide significant environmental and economic benefits to agricultural and natural ecosystems, including adding diversity and productivity to food crops. As many as one-third of the world’s food production relies directly or indirectly on insect pollination. About 130 of the crops gown in the United States are insect pollinated. Habitat fragmentation and loss adversely affects pollinator food sources, nesting sites, and mating sites, causing precipitous declines in the populations of wild pollinators. There are 6 million tons of food products harvested annually from terrestrial wild biota in the United States including large and small animals, maple syrup, nuts, blueberries and algae. The 6 billion tons of food are valued at $57 million and add $3 billion to the country’s economy (1995 calculations). Approximately 75 (by weight) of the 100,000 chemicals released into the environment can be degraded by biological organisms and are potential targets of both bioremediation and biotreatment. The savings gained by using bioremediation instead of the other available techniques; physical, chemical and thermal; to remediate chemical pollution worldwide give an annual benefit of $135 billion (1997 calculation). Maintaining biodiversity in soils and water is imperative to the continued and improved effectiveness of bioremediation and biotreatment. Biodiversity is essential for the sustainable functioning of the agricultural, forest, and natural ecosystems on which humans depend, but human activities, especially the development of natural lands, are causing a species extinction rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate. The authors estimate that in the United States, biodiversity provides a total of $319 billion dollars in annual benefits and $2,928 billion in annual benefits worldwide (1997 calculation) Linking Biodiversity Conservation and Poverty Alleviation: A State of Knowledge Review Convention on Biological Diversity Biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction are two global challenges that are inextricably linked. But biodiversity is generally a public good, so it is under-valued, or not valued at all, in national economies. This paper focuses on the question “which groups of the (differentiated) poor depend, in which types of ways, on different elements of biological diversity?” It focuses on biodiversity as a means of subsistence and income to the poor and biodiversity as insurance to prevent the poor from falling even deeper into poverty. Ten conservation mechanisms that can reduce poverty in the rural poor are identified: non-timber forest products, community timber enterprises, payments for environmental services, nature-based tourism, fish spillover, mangrove restoration, protected area jobs, agroforestry, grasslands management, and agrobiodiversity conservation. There are caveats to these links. The poor depend disproportionately on biodiversity for their subsistence needs and biodiversity conservation can be a route out of poverty under some circumstances. However, it is often the relatively low value or inferior goods that are most significant to the poor, and the more affluent’s pursuit of the higher commercial value often crowds out the poor. The scale of poverty reduction may be small; conservation interventions do not necessarily lend themselves to poverty interventions. A focus on the cash benefits of biodiversity conservation is too limited; it excludes the ability to meet basic human needs. And biomass may matter more in the short term, biodiversity (as the foundation for biomass) more in the long term. Conserving Biological Diversity in Agricultural/Forestry Systems Bioscience Both high agricultural productivity and human health depend on the activity of a diverse natural biota. Efforts to curb the loss of biodiversity have intensified in recent years, but they have not kept pace with the growing encroachment of human activities. An estimated $20 billion year is spent worldwide on pesticides. Yet, parasites and predators existing in natural ecosystems provide an estimated 5-10 times this amount of the pest control. Without the existence of natural enemies, crop losses by pests in agriculture and forestry would be catastrophic and costs of chemical pest controls would escalate enormously. A diverse group of microbes fix nitrogen from the atmosphere for use by crops and forests. An estimated $7 billion of nitrogen is supplied to US agriculture each year by nitrogen-fixing microbes and 90 million tons a year for use by agriculture worldwide with a value of almost $50 billion.
Nuclear Power multiplies the risk for nuclear proliferation and nuclear terror – safeguards are uncertain and nuclear power weakens them
Miller and Sagan 9 - Steven E. Miller, Director, International Security Program; Editor-in-Chief, International Security; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom, Scott Sagan, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1981-1982; Editorial Board Member, Quarterly Journal: International Security ("Nuclear Power Without Nuclear Proliferation?" Journal Article, Daedalus, volume 138, issue 4, pages 7-18, http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/publication/19850/nuclear_power_without_nuclear_proliferation.html) LADI
Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.
—President Barack Obama Prague, April 5, 2009
The global nuclear order is changing. Concerns about climate change, the volatility of oil prices, and the security of energy supplies have contributed to a widespread and still-growing interest in the future use of nuclear power. Thirty states operate one or more nuclear power plants today, and according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), some 50 others have requested technical assistance from the agency to explore the possibility of developing their own nuclear energy programs. It is certainly not possible to predict precisely how fast and how extensively the expansion of nuclear power will occur. But it does seem probable that in the future there will be more nuclear technology spread across more states than ever before. It will be a different world than the one that has existed in the past.
This surge of interest in nuclear energy — labeled by some proponents as "the renaissance in nuclear power" — is, moreover, occurring simultaneously with mounting concern about the health of the nuclear nonproliferation regime, the regulatory framework that constrains and governs the world's civil and military-related nuclear affairs. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and related institutions have been taxed by new worries, such as the growth in global terrorism, and have been painfully tested by protracted crises involving nuclear weapons proliferation in North Korea and potentially in Iran. (Indeed, some observers suspect that growing interest in nuclear power in some countries, especially in the Middle East, is not unrelated to Iran's uranium enrichment program and Tehran's movement closer to a nuclear weapons capability.) Confidence in the NPT regime seems to be eroding even as interest in nuclear power is expanding.
This realization raises crucial questions for the future of global security. Will the growth of nuclear power lead to increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear terrorism? Will the nonproliferation regime be adequate to ensure safety and security in a world more widely and heavily invested in nuclear power? The authors in this two-volume (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010) special issue of Dædalus have one simple and clear answer to these questions: It depends.
On what will it depend? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not so simple and clear, for the technical, economic, and political factors that will determine whether future generations will have more nuclear power without more nuclear proliferation are both exceedingly complex and interrelated. How rapidly and in which countries will new nuclear power plants be built? Will the future expansion of nuclear energy take place primarily in existing nuclear power states or will there be many new entrants to the field? Which countries will possess the facilities for enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium, technical capabilities that could be used to produce either nuclear fuel for reactors or the materials for nuclear bombs? How can physical protection of nuclear materials from terrorist organizations best be ensured? How can new entrants into nuclear power generation best maintain safety to prevent accidents? The answers to these questions will be critical determinants of the technological dimension of our nuclear future.
The major political factors influencing the future of nuclear weapons are no less complex and no less important. Will Iran acquire nuclear weapons; will North Korea develop more weapons or disarm in the coming decade; how will neighboring states respond? Will the United States and Russia take significant steps toward nuclear disarmament, and if so, will the other nuclear-weapons states follow suit or stand on the sidelines?
The nuclear future will be strongly influenced, too, by the success or failure of efforts to strengthen the international organizations and the set of agreements that comprise the system developed over time to manage global nuclear affairs. Will new international or regional mechanisms be developed to control the front-end (the production of nuclear reactor fuel) and the back-end (the management of spent fuel containing plutonium) of the nuclear fuel cycle? What political agreements and disagreements are likely to emerge between the nuclear-weapons states (NWS) and the non-nuclear-weapons states (NNWS) at the 2010 NPT Review Conference and beyond? What role will crucial actors among the NNWS — Japan, Iran, Brazil, and Egypt, for example — play in determining the global nuclear future? And most broadly, will the nonproliferation regime be supported and strengthened or will it be questioned and weakened? As IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has emphasized, "The nonproliferation regime is, in many ways, at a critical juncture," and there is a need for a new "overarching multilateral nuclear framework."1 But there is no guarantee that such a framework will emerge, and there is wide doubt that the arrangements of the past will be adequate to manage our nuclear future effectively.

Risk of nuclear terrorism is real and high now – extinction
Bunn et al 14 Matthew, Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School, with Martin Malin, Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Nickolas Roth, Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom, and William Tobey, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, March, “Advancing Nuclear Security: Evaluating Progress and Setting New Goals,” The Project on Managing the Atom, pg. 5-9/AKG
Unfortunately, nuclear and radiological terrorism remain real and dangerous threats.1 The conclusion the assembled leaders reached at the Washington Nuclear Security Summit and reaffirmed in Seoul remains correct: “Nuclear terrorism continues to be one of the most challenging threats to international security. Defeating this threat requires strong national measures and international cooperation given its potential global political, economic, social, and psychological consequences.”2 There are three types of nuclear or radiological terrorist attack: • Nuclear weapons. Terrorists might be able to get and detonate an assembled nuclear weapon made by a state, or make a crude nuclear bomb from stolen separated plutonium or HEU. This would be the most difficult type of nuclear terrorism for terrorists to accomplish—but the devastation could be absolutely horrifying, with political and economic aftershocks reverberating around the world. • “Dirty bombs.” A far simpler approach would be for terrorists to obtain radiological materials—available in hospitals, industrial sites, and more—and disperse them to contaminate an area with radioactivity, using explosives or any number of other means. In most scenarios of such attacks, few people would die from the radiation—but the attack could spread fear, force the evacuation of many blocks of a major city, and inflict billions of dollars in costs of cleanup and economic disruption. While a dirty bomb attack would be much easier for terrorists to carry out than an attack using a nuclear explosive, the consequences would be far less—an expensive and disruptive mess, but not the heart of a major city going up in smoke. • Nuclear sabotage. Terrorists could potentially cause a Fukushima-like meltdown at a nuclear reactor or sabotage a spent fuel pool or high-level waste store. An unsuccessful sabotage would have little effect, but a successful one could spread radioactive material over a huge area. Both the scale of the consequences and the difficulty of carrying out a successful attack would be intermediate between nuclear weapons and dirty bombs. Overall, while actual terrorist use of a nuclear weapon may be the least likely of these dangers, its consequences would be so overwhelming that we believe it poses the most significant risk. A similar judgment drove the decision to focus the four-year effort on securing nuclear weapons and the materials needed to make them. Most of this report will focus on the threat of terrorist use of nuclear explosives, but the overall global governance framework for nuclear security is relevant to all of these dangers. The danger of nuclear terrorism is driven by three key factors—terrorist intent to escalate to the nuclear level of violence; potential terrorist capability to do so; and the vulnerability of nuclear weapons and the materials needed to enable terrorists to carry out such an attack—the motive, means, and opportunity of a monstrous crime. Terrorist intent. While most terrorist groups are still focused on small-scale violence for local political purposes, we now live in an age that includes some groups intent on inflicting large-scale destruction to achieve their objectives. Over the past quarter century, both al Qaeda and the Japanese terror cult Aum Shinrikyo seriously sought nuclear weapons and the nuclear materials and expertise needed to make them. Al Qaeda had a focused program reporting directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri (now head of the group), which progressed as far as carrying out crude but sensible conventional explosive tests for the nuclear program in the desert of Afghanistan. There is some evidence that North Caucusus terrorists also sought nuclear weapons—including incidents in which terrorist teams were caught carrying out reconnaissance on Russian nuclear weapon storage sites, whose locations are secret.3 Despite the death of Osama bin Laden and the severe disruption of the core of al Qaeda, there are no grounds for complacency. There is every reason to believe Zawahiri remains eager to inflict destruction on a nuclear scale. Indeed, despite the large number of al Qaeda leaders who have been killed or captured, nearly all of the key players in al Qaeda’s nuclear program remain alive and at large—including Abdel Aziz al-Masri, an Egyptian explosives expert who was al Qaeda’s “nuclear CEO.” In 2003, when al Qaeda operatives were negotiating to buy three of what they thought were nuclear weapons, senior al Qaeda officials told them to go ahead and make the purchase if a Pakistani expert with equipment confirmed the items were genuine. The US government has never managed to determine who the Pakistani nuclear weapons expert was in whom al Qaeda had such confidence—and what he may have been doing in the intervening decade. More fundamentally, with at least two, and probably three, groups having gone down this path in the past 25 years, there is no reason to expect they will be the last. The danger of nuclear terrorism will remain as long as nuclear weapons, the materials needed to make them, and terrorist groups bent on large-scale destruction co-exist. Potential terrorist capabilities. No one knows what capabilities a secret cell of al Qaeda may have managed to retain or build. Unfortunately, it does not take a Manhattan Project to make a nuclear bomb—indeed, over 90 percent of the Manhattan Project effort was focused on making the nuclear materials, not on designing and building the weapons. Numerous studies by the United States and other governments have concluded that it is plausible that a sophisticated terrorist group could make a crude nuclear bomb if it got enough separated plutonium or HEU.4 A “gun-type” bomb, such as the weapon that obliterated Hiroshima, fundamentally involves slamming two pieces of HEU together at high speed. An “implosion-type” bomb, which is needed to get a sub-stantial explosive yield from plutonium, requires crushing nuclear material to a higher density—a more complex task, but still plausible for terrorists, especially if they got knowledgeable help. Many analysts argue that, since states spend billions of dollars and assign hundreds or thousands of people to building nuclear weapons, it is totally implausible that terrorists could carry out this task. Unfortunately, this argument is wrong, for two reasons. First, as the Manhattan Project statistic suggests, the difficult part of making a nuclear bomb is making the nuclear material. That is what states spend billions seeking to accomplish. Terrorists are highly unlikely to ever be able to make their own bomb material—but if they could get stolen material, that step would be bypassed. Second, it is far easier to make a crude, unsafe, unreliable bomb of uncertain yield, which might be delivered in the back of a truck, than to make the kind of nuclear weapon a state would want in its arsenal—a safe, reliable weapon of known yield that can be delivered by missile or combat aircraft. It is highly unlikely terrorists will ever be able to build that kind of nuclear weapon. Remaining vulnerabilities. While many countries have done a great deal to strengthen nuclear security, serious vulnerabilities remain. Around the world, there are stocks of nuclear weapons or materials whose security systems are not sufficient to protect against the full range of plausible outsider and insider threats they may face. As incidents like the intrusion at Y-12 in the United States in 2012 make clear, many nuclear facilities and transporters still grapple with serious problems of security culture. It is fair to say that every country where nuclear weapons, weapons-usable nuclear materials, major nuclear facilities, or dangerous radiological sources exist has more to do to ensure that these items are sustainably secured and accounted for. At least three lines of evidence confirm that important nuclear security weaknesses continue to exist. First, seizures of stolen HEU and separated plutonium continue to occur, including, mostly recently HEU seizures in 2003, 2006, 2010, and 2011.5 These seizures may result from material stolen long ago, but, at a minimum, they make clear that stocks of HEU and plutonium remain outside of regulatory control. Second, in cases where countries do realistic tests to probe whether security systems can protect against teams of clever adversaries determined to find a weak point, the adversaries sometimes succeed—even when their capabilities are within the set of threats the security system is designed to protect against. This happens with some regularity in the United States (though less often than before the 9/11 attacks); if more countries carried out comparable performance tests, one would likely see similar results. Third, in real non-nuclear thefts and terrorist attacks around the world, adversaries sometimes demonstrate capabilities and tactics well beyond what many nuclear security systems would likely be able to handle (see the discussion of the recent Västberga incident in Sweden). Of course, the initial theft of nuclear material would be only the first step. Adversaries would have to smuggle the material to wherever they wanted to make their bomb, and ultimately to the target. A variety of measures have been put in place in recent years to try to stop nuclear smuggling, from radiation detectors to national teams trained and equipped to deal with nuclear smuggling cases—and more should certainly be done. But once nuclear material has left the facility where it is supposed to be, it could be anywhere, and finding and recovering it poses an enormous challenge. The immense length of national borders, the huge scale of legitimate traffic, the myriad potential pathways across these borders, and the small size and weak radiation signal of the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb make nuclear smuggling extraordinarily difficult to stop. There is also the danger that a state such as North Korea might consciously decide to provide nuclear weapons or the materials needed to make them to terrorists. This possibility cannot be ruled out, but there is strong reason to believe that such conscious state decisions to provide these capabilities are a small part of the overall risk of nuclear terrorism. Dictators determined to maintain their power are highly unlikely to hand over the greatest weapon they have to terrorist groups they cannot control, who might well use it in ways that would provoke retaliation that would remove the dictator from power forever. Although nuclear forensics is by no means perfect, it would be only one of many lines of evidence that could potentially point back to the state that provided the materials; no state could ever be confident they could make such a transfer withoutbeing caught.6 And terrorists are unlikely to have enough money to make a substantial difference in either the odds of regime survival or the wealth of a regime’s elites, even in North Korea, one of the poorest countries on earth. On the other hand, serious risks would arise in North Korea, or other nuclear-armed states, in the event of state collapse—and as North Korea’s stockpile grows, one could imagine a general managing some of that stockpile concluding he could sell a piece of it and provide a golden parachute for himself and his family without getting caught. No one knows the real likelihood of nuclear terrorism. But the consequences of a terrorist nuclear blast would be so catastrophic that even a small chance is enough to justify urgent action to reduce the risk. The heart of a major city could be reduced to a smoldering radioactive ruin, leaving tens to hundreds of thousands of people dead. The perpetrators or others might claim to have more weapons already hidden in other major cities and threaten to set them off if their demands were not met—potentially provoking uncontrolled evacuation of many urban centers. Devastating economic consequences would reverberate worldwide. Kofi Annan, while serving as Secretary-General of the United Nations, warned that the global economic effects of a nuclear terrorist attack in a major city would push “tens of millions of people into dire poverty,” creating a “second death toll throughout the developing world.”7
Prolif in new states causes nuclear conflict.
Kroenig 14 – Matthew, Associate Professor and International Relations Field Chair at Georgetown University, and Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at The Atlantic Council (“The History of Proliferation Optimism: Does It Have A Future?”, April 2014, http://www.matthewkroenig.com/The20History20of20Proliferation20Optimism_Feb2014.pdf)
The spread of nuclear weapons poses a number of severe threats to international peace and security including: nuclear war, nuclear terrorism, global and regional instability, constrained freedom of action, weakened alliances, and further nuclear proliferation. Each of these threats has received extensive treatment elsewhere and this review is not intended to replicate or even necessarily to improve upon these previous efforts. Rather the goals of this section are more modest: to usefully bring together and recap the many reasons why we should be pessimistic about the likely consequences of nuclear proliferation. Many of these threats will be illuminated with a discussion of a case of much contemporary concern: Iran’s advanced nuclear program. Nuclear War. The greatest threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons is nuclear war. The more states in possession of nuclear weapons, the greater the probability that somewhere, someday, there will be a catastrophic nuclear war. To date, nuclear weapons have only been used in warfare once. In 1945, the United States used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing World War II to a close. Many analysts point to the sixty-five-plus-year tradition of nuclear non-use as evidence that nuclear weapons are unusable, but it would be naïve to think that nuclear weapons will never be used again simply because they have not been used for some time. After all, analysts in the 1990s argued that worldwide economic downturns like the great depression were a thing of the past, only to be surprised by the dot-com bubble bursting later in the decade and the Great Recession of the late Naughts.49 This author, for one, would be surprised if nuclear weapons are not used again sometime in his lifetime. Before reaching a state of MAD, new nuclear states go through a transition period in which they lack a secure second-strike capability. In this context, one or both states might believe that it has an incentive to use nuclear weapons first. For example, if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, neither Iran, nor its nuclear-armed rival, Israel, will have a secure, second-strike capability. Even though it is believed to have a large arsenal, given its small size and lack of strategic depth, Israel might not be confident that it could absorb a nuclear strike and respond with a devastating counterstrike. Similarly, Iran might eventually be able to build a large and survivable nuclear arsenal, but, when it first crosses the nuclear threshold, Tehran will have a small and vulnerable nuclear force. In these pre-MAD situations, there are at least three ways that nuclear war could occur. First, the state with the nuclear advantage might believe it has a splendid first strike capability. In a crisis, Israel might, therefore, decide to launch a preventive nuclear strike to disarm Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Indeed, this incentive might be further increased by Israel’s aggressive strategic culture that emphasizes preemptive action. Second, the state with a small and vulnerable nuclear arsenal, in this case Iran, might feel use ‘em or loose ‘em pressures. That is, in a crisis, Iran might decide to strike first rather than risk having its entire nuclear arsenal destroyed. Third, as Thomas Schelling has argued, nuclear war could result due to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack.50 If there are advantages to striking first, one state might start a nuclear war in the belief that war is inevitable and that it would be better to go first than to go second. Fortunately, there is no historic evidence of this dynamic occurring in a nuclear context, but it is still possible. In an Israeli-Iranian crisis, for example, Israel and Iran might both prefer to avoid a nuclear war, but decide to strike first rather than suffer a devastating first attack from an opponent. Even in a world of MAD, however, when both sides have secure, second-strike capabilities, there is still a risk of nuclear war. Rational deterrence theory assumes nuclear-armed states are governed by rational leaders who would not intentionally launch a suicidal nuclear war. This assumption appears to have applied to past and current nuclear powers, but there is no guarantee that it will continue to hold in the future. Iran’s theocratic government, despite its inflammatory rhetoric, has followed a fairly pragmatic foreign policy since 1979, but it contains leaders who hold millenarian religious worldviews and could one day ascend to power. We cannot rule out the possibility that, as nuclear weapons continue to spread, some leader somewhere will choose to launch a nuclear war, knowing full well that it could result in self-destruction. One does not need to resort to irrationality, however, to imagine nuclear war under MAD. Nuclear weapons may deter leaders from intentionally launching full-scale wars, but they do not mean the end of international politics. As was discussed above, nuclear-armed states still have conflicts of interest and leaders still seek to coerce nuclear-armed adversaries. Leaders might, therefore, choose to launch a limited nuclear war.51 This strategy might be especially attractive to states in a position of conventional inferiority that might have an incentive to escalate a crisis quickly. During the Cold War, the United States planned to use nuclear weapons first to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe given NATO’s conventional inferiority.52 As Russia’s conventional power has deteriorated since the end of the Cold War, Moscow has come to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons in its military doctrine. Indeed, Russian strategy calls for the use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict (something that most Western strategists would consider to be escalatory) as a way to de-escalate a crisis. Similarly, Pakistan’s military plans for nuclear use in the event of an invasion from conventionally stronger India. And finally, Chinese generals openly talk about the possibility of nuclear use against a U.S. superpower in a possible East Asia contingency. Second, as was also discussed above, leaders can make a “threat that leaves something to chance.”53 They can initiate a nuclear crisis. By playing these risky games of nuclear brinkmanship, states can increases the risk of nuclear war in an attempt to force a less resolved adversary to back down. Historical crises have not resulted in nuclear war, but many of them, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, have come close. And scholars have documented historical incidents when accidents nearly led to war.54 When we think about future nuclear crisis dyads, such as Iran and Israel, with fewer sources of stability than existed during the Cold War, we can see that there is a real risk that a future crisis could result in a devastating nuclear exchange. Nuclear Terrorism. The spread of nuclear weapons also increases the risk of nuclear terrorism.55 While September 11th was one of the greatest tragedies in American history, it would have been much worse had Osama Bin Laden possessed nuclear weapons. Bin Laden declared it a “religious duty” for Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons and radical clerics have issued fatwas declaring it permissible to use nuclear weapons in Jihad against the West.56 Unlike states, which can be more easily deterred, there is little doubt that if terrorists acquired nuclear weapons, they would use them. Indeed, in recent years, many U.S. politicians and security analysts have argued that nuclear terrorism poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security.57 Analysts have pointed out the tremendous hurdles that terrorists would have to overcome in order to acquire nuclear weapons.58 Nevertheless, as nuclear weapons spread, the possibility that they will eventually fall into terrorist hands increases. States could intentionally transfer nuclear weapons, or the fissile material required to build them, to terrorist groups. There are good reasons why a state might be reluctant to transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, but, as nuclear weapons spread, the probability that a leader might someday purposely arm a terrorist group increases. Some fear, for example, that Iran, with its close ties to Hamas and Hezbollah, might be at a heightened risk of transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists. Moreover, even if no state would ever intentionally transfer nuclear capabilities to terrorists, a new nuclear state, with underdeveloped security procedures, might be vulnerable to theft, allowing terrorist groups or corrupt or ideologically-motivated insiders to transfer dangerous material to terrorists. There is evidence, for example, that representatives from Pakistan’s atomic energy establishment met with Al Qaeda members to discuss a possible nuclear deal.59 Finally, a nuclear-armed state could collapse, resulting in a breakdown of law and order and a loose nukes problem. U.S. officials are currently very concerned about what would happen to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons if the government were to fall. As nuclear weapons spread, this problem is only further amplified. Iran is a country with a history of revolutions and a government with a tenuous hold on power. The regime change that Washington has long dreamed about in Tehran could actually become a nightmare if a nuclear-armed Iran suffered a break down in authority, forcing us to worry about the fate of Iran’s nuclear arsenal. Regional Instability: The spread of nuclear weapons also emboldens nuclear powers, contributing to regional instability. States that lack nuclear weapons need to fear direct military attack from other states, but states with nuclear weapons can be confident that they can deter an intentional military attack, giving them an incentive to be more aggressive in the conduct of their foreign policy. In this way, nuclear weapons provide a shield under which states can feel free to engage in lower-level aggression. Indeed, international relations theories about the “stability-instability paradox” maintain that stability at the nuclear level contributes to conventional instability.60 Historically, we have seen that the spread of nuclear weapons has emboldened their possessors and contributed to regional instability. Recent scholarly analyses have demonstrated that, after controlling for other relevant factors, nuclear-weapon states are more likely to engage in conflict than nonnuclear-weapon states and that this aggressiveness is more pronounced in new nuclear states that have less experience with nuclear diplomacy.61 Similarly, research on internal decision-making in Pakistan reveals that Pakistani foreign policymakers may have been emboldened by the acquisition of nuclear weapons, which encouraged them to initiate militarized disputes against India.62 

War is the root cause of structural violence
Goldstein 2001 – IR professor at American University (Joshua, War and Gender, p. 412, Google Books)
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace. Many peace scholars and activists support the approach, “if you want peace, work for justice.” Then, if one believes that sexism contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps. among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but rests on the assumption that injustices cause war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other way. War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other single cause, although all of these influence wars’ outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in part fueled and sustained these and other injustices.9  So, “if you want peace, work for peace.” Indeed, if you want justice (gender and others), work for peace. Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis, from types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in attitudes towards war and the military may be the most important way to “reverse women’s oppression.”  The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies, and moral grounding, yet, in light of this book’s evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war seems to be empirically inadequate.

It overwhelms barriers for expertise
Ackland 9 - Len Ackland, co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism., (“Weapons proliferation a big risk with nuclear power” February 10, 2009, http://www.cejournal.net/?p=903) LADI
As Tom Yulsman points out in his Feb. 5 posting, the tight connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is seriously underplayed and often ignored in discussions about the so-called “need” for nuclear power to help meet energy demand while addressing global warming concerns.  (Issues including accidents, terrorism, high-level nuclear waste disposal and economic costs are also important, but I won’t deal with them in this brief commentary.)    While Tom mentions the concern over plutonium, which I’ll return to momentarily in responding to the questions from the commenter on the Feb. 5 post, remember that the convergence between nuclear power and weapons occurs at two points in the nuclear “fuel cycle” — the cradle-to-grave process beginning with uranium mining and ending with nuclear waste or incredible explosions. The first power-weapons crossover comes during uranium “enrichment,” after uranium ore is milled to extract uranium in the form called “yellow cake” that is then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas. Enrichment of the gas means increasing the amount of the fissile uranium-235 isotope, which comprises 0.7 percent of natural uranium, to the 3-6 percent needed to make fuel rods for commercial nuclear reactors. The same centrifuges (the modern technology of choice) that separate the U-235 from the U-238 can be kept running until the percentage of U-235 reaches about 90 percent and can be used for the kind of nuclear bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Enrichment — low for nuclear power plants and high for bombs — is at the heart of the current controversy over Iran’s plans and capabilities. The second power-weapons crossover comes when low-enriched uranium fuel is burned in nuclear reactors, whether military, civilian, or dual use. Neutrons produced in the chain reaction are captured by the U-238 to form U-239 then neptunium-239 which decays into plutonium-239, the key fissile isotope for nuclear weapons. Other plutonium isotopes, such as Pu-240, Pu-241, and Pu-242 are also produced. The extent to which the uranium fuel elements are irradiated is called “fuel burnup.” Basically, military reactors designed specifically to produce Pu-239 burn the fuel for shorter periods, a few weeks, before the fuel rods are removed from the reactors in order to minimize the buildup of Pu-240 and other elements. Commercial reactors, aimed at maximizing the energy output in order to produce electricity, burn the fuel for a year or so before the fuel rod assemblies are changed out. The used or “spent” fuel contains higher percentages of the undesirable (for bomb builders) plutonium isotopes. Dual-use reactors, such as the one that caused the Chernobyl accident in 1986, tend toward the shorter fuel burnup times. The plutonium in the spent fuel is the 20,000 kilograms that the Federation of American Scientists estimates is produced each year by the world’s currently operating 438 reactors. Other sources estimate the amount of plutonium in spent fuel as much higher. For a good description of these issues, see David Albright, et. al., “Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies,” SIPRI, Oxford U. Press, 1997. Finally, before the plutonium-239 created in nuclear reactors can be used in weapons, it must first be separated from the uranium, transuranics and other fission products. This is done in “reprocessing” plants and is often benignly referred to as plutonium recycling. Currently there are only a handful of commercial reprocessing facilities, the one in France and the one in the United Kingdom having operated the longest. Much of the plutonium extracted by these plants is mixed with uranium and reused for nuclear fuel in commercial reactors. But reprocessing plants also exist in countries using plutonium for nuclear weapons. Thus, North Korea, the most recent country to join the nine-member nuclear weapons “club,” made weapons through its reprocessing facility. The fact that a country like North Korea could accomplish the manufacture of nuclear weapons should give pause to those who advocate nuclear power plants as an answer to global warming. A plutonium economy and/or the presence of uranium enrichment facilities in many nations around the world are dangerous prospects. Even accepting the arguments that life-cycle analysis of nuclear plants — which takes into account the emissions from mining, construction and so forth — puts them on a par with renewable energy sources in terms of greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t overcome their disadvantages. And the assurance from nuclear advocates that the next generation of plants (Generation IV, still under development) will be more “proliferation resistant,” isn’t comforting given the technologists’ track record.  And that still would be a long way from proliferation proof.

Tournament: St Marks | Round: 4 | Opponent: Greenville SK | Judge: Calen Martin
1AC
The neoliberal economy thrives on a mode of consumption that sees the world as cornucopian
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
Since the industrial revolution, social progress has been measured by material affluence. In turn, assuring wealth and its increase has been the responsibility of a set of institutions capable of planning for and (hopefully) delivering a boundless frontier of expanding production and consumption. Indeed, living well in modern times means an existence assured of a free and constantly rising flow of goods and services delivered conveniently and, ideally, at low cost.3 Perpetual acts of buying and selling adorn daily life as moderns dedicate time and imagination to shopping at levels unknown in human history. This commitment to the search for and absorption of more represents a “cornucopian” predisposition embedded in the micro- to macro-scales of modern life—from the personality of the modern individual to the culture and political economy of modern society (Byrne and Yun, 1999).
Making this feature of modern life work in real time is no easy task. It requires unending engineered change in products and production and in parallel, continual change in consumption preferences designed by advertising. Production and marketing techniques shape and serve, on a grand scale, an ethos of unconstrained producing, shopping, and buying. Planned obsolescence is a necessary practice, applied to all goods, from toys to automobiles to computers to buildings, and even to social relationships and personalities;4 all have designed shelf lives when they are to be discarded for new and improved versions. In this manner, market demand grows synergistically with the modern hum of progress. More than 50 years ago, a market analyst could readily describe the economic and technological logic underpinning modern success (Lebow, 1955).
Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption a way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate. (p. 5)
The lubricant for successful obsolescence is a finance system able to supply (and profit from) a wide range of credit facilities from installment buying to capitalized production. These facilities ensure that buying can keep up with producing, even if there is not enough money ready at hand.5 growth without end is, in this way, institutionalized as a permanent goal of modern society.

New strategies to implement nuclear energy underlie this modern consumerism
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
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.

Nuclear energy is part of the big energy movement promoting technological authoritarianism and exploitation of minorities
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
Life extension projects for the conventional energy regime are not limited to technological “greening” of fossil fuels. Plans also include a revival of “Giant Power” strategies, which had happened upon hard times by the 1980s. Gifford Pinchot, a two-term governor of Pennsylvania (1922-1926 and 1930- 1934) is credited with coining the term in a speech, proclaiming: Steam brought about the centralization of industry, a decline in country life, the decay of many small communities, and the weakening of family ties. Giant Power may bring about the decentralization of industry, the restoration of country life, and the upbuilding of small communities and the family. The coming electrical development will form the basis of a civilization happier, freer, and fuller of opportunity than the world has ever known.
The first proposals for Giant Power involved the mega-dams of the early and middle twentieth century. The U.S. pioneered this option with its construction of the Hoover, Grand Coulee, and Glen Canyon Dams, among others (Worster, 1992; Reisner, 1993). Undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, these projects were intended to “reclaim” the energy and water development potential from the rivers of the western United States. These were truly mammoth enterprises resulting in integrated water and energy resource development on scales previously unknown. Construction of the Glen Canyon Dam was authorized by the U.S. Congress under the Colorado River Storage Project. Built from 1957 to 1964, it was originally planned to generate 1,000 MW. Over the next few decades two additional generators were added to the dam, allowing the dam to produce 1,296 MW. In 1991 Interim Operating Criteria were adopted to protect downstream resources, which limited the dam releases to 20,000 cubic feet of water and the power output to 767 MW. The dam currently generates power for roughly 1.5 million users in five states (Bureau of Reclamation (U.S.), 2005a).
Energy as a Social Project 9
Mega-dams, such as the Glen Canyon, lost social support in the United States in the 1970s as ecological impacts and financial risks slowed interest. But many countries have shown a resurgent interest in large dams as an energy strategy. Canada has committed to building what will be one of the largest dams in the world—Syncrude Tailings—which will have the largest water impoundment volume in the world at 540 million cubic meters (Bureau of Reclamation (U.S.), 2005b). And China, with more than 20,000 dams of more than fifteen meters in height is constructing what will be the largest hydroelectric facility in the world on Earth’s third largest river. The Three Gorges Dam, on the Yangtze, at a “mere” 575 feet tall—sixty-first tallest in the world—will have a generating capacity of more than 18,000 MW, roughly equivalent to 10 percent of China’s electricity demand. This will require twenty-six hydro turbines, purchased from ABB, Alstom, GE, Kvaerner, Siemens, and Voith, highlighting the synergies between global corporatism and Giant Power (Power Technology, 2005).
Large-scale hydropower represents an attempt at a techno-fix of the democratic- authoritarian variety. Without disrupting the conventional energy regime’s paradigm of centralized generation and distribution, large dams purport to deliver environmentally benign and socially beneficial electricity in amounts that reinforce the giant character of the existing dams. In fact, both ecologically and socially disruptive, large dams represent continued commitment to the promises, prospects, and perils of the conventional energy regime and its social project (McCully, 2001: 265; Hoffman, 2002; Totten, Pandya, and Janson-Smith, 2003; Agbemabiese and Byrne, 2005; Bosshard, 2006).
A second mega-energy idea has been advanced since the 1950s—the nuclear energy project. Born at a time in U.S. history when there were no pressing supply problems, nuclear power’s advocates promised an inexhaustible source of Giant Power. Along with hydropower, nuclear energy has been conceived as a non-fossil technical fix for the conventional energy regime. But nuclear energy has proven to be among the most potent examples of technological authoritarianism (Byrne and Hoffman, 1988, 1992, 1996) inherent in the techno-fixes of the conventional energy regime. On April 26, 1986, nuclear dreams were interrupted by a hard dose of reality—the accident at Chernobyl’s No. 4 Reactor, with a radioactive release more than ten times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Medvedev, 1992). Both human and non-human impacts of this greatest of technological disasters have been well-documented (Medvedev, 1992). The Chernobyl explosion and numerous near-accidents, other technical failures, and extraordinary costoverruns caused interest in nuclear energy to wane during the 1980s and 1990s.
Notwithstanding a crippling past, the nuclear lobby has engineered a resurgence of interest through a raft of technological fixes that purport to pre- vent future calamitous failures while capitalizing on the supposed environmentally sound qualities of nuclear power. Huber and Mills, for example, title one of their chapters “Saving the Planet with Coal and Uranium” (2005: 156 - 171). A spokesperson for the Electric Power Research Institute has recently suggested that new pebble-bed modular reactors are “walk-away safe—if something goes wrong, the operators can go out for coffee while they figure out what to do” (quoted in Silberman, 2001). Such claims are eerily reminiscent of pre-Chernobyl comparisons between the safety of nuclear power plants and that of chocolate factories (The Economist, 1986). Huber and Mills go even further, claiming nuclear power will exceed the original source of solar power—the sun (2005: 180): “Our two-century march from coal to steam engine to electricity to laser will…culminate in a nuclear furnace that burns the same fuel, and shines as bright as the sun itself. And then we will invent something else that burns even brighter.”
Critics, however, note that even if such technical advances can provide for accident-free generation of electricity, there are significant remaining social implications of nuclear power, including its potential for terrorist exploitation and the troubling history of connections between military and civilian uses of the technology (Bergeron, 2002; Bergeron and Zimmerman, 2006). As well, the life-cycle of nuclear energy development produces risks that continuously challenge its social viability. To realize a nuclear energy-based future, massive amounts of uranium must be extracted. This effort would ineluctably jeopardize vulnerable communities since a considerable amount of uranium is found on indigenous lands. For example, Australia has large seams of uranium, producing nearly one-quarter of the world’s supply, with many mines located on Aboriginal lands (Uranium Information Center, 2005).12 Even after the uranium is secured and electricity is generated, the project’s adverse social impacts continue. Wastes with half-lives of lethal threat to any form of life in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 years have to be buried and completely mistake-free management regimes need to be operated for this length of time—longer than human existence, itself. Epochal imagination of this kind may be regarded by technologists as reasonable, but the sanity of such a proposal on social grounds is surely suspect (Byrne and Hoffman, 1996).

Nuclear power is used to artificially maintain the need for high production and consumption post-WWII, a model that has been exported world-wide under the clean energy project
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
When the United States began its post–World War II search for a new abundant energy machine, it is important to note that there was no imminent shortage of electricity supply. War conditions had led to a large increase in power plant construction to meet the needs of the weapons industry. As demand from the weapons industry receded, it would have taken decades before significant additions would have been required. However, national and state policy preempted this pathway by two actions. First, with the support of the electric utility industry (who stood to profit handsomely), the national and state regulatory apparatus promoted so called declining block rates, which reward growth in electricity with lower unit prices (Hirsh, 1989). Additionally, the real price of electricity was encouraged to fall annually through subsidies (Hirsh, 1989; Nye, 1999). Technology improvements played a role as well, but RandD investments which brought them into being were significantly influenced by policy guarantees of fast-growing demand (Byrne and Rich, 1986; Hirsh, 1989). Policy—not demand per se—created favorable conditions for electricity demand to rise quickly. Of course, modern business and the modern consumer welcomed and took advantage of the opportunity. Nuclear power would play a pivotal role in this trend.
In the 1950s, when preparations for nuclear power development were laid, it was the national policy decision to civilianize the nuclear technology industry that mattered far more than growing electricity demand. With considerable coal reserves and improving boiler and other technologies related to electricity generation, the U.S. electricity industry had no need to create a new power plant. And, in fact, the industry did not create what one of nuclear power’s American designers called “a marvelous new kind of fire” (Weinberg, 1972. p. 28).
Instead, a concerted 30-year, nationally funded RandD program, in combination with a portfolio of laws and rules favoring its development and use, created the most abundant energy machine in human history—the fleet of extra large nuclear power plants that would dominate the U.S. utility sector. Indeed, no technical idea had ever received more RandD and subsidy attention (Lovins, 1977; Martinez, 1990). Dwarfing competitors in capacity and generation volume by a factor of 1.5 to 2.0, the nuclear giants were technically impressive. Yet the utility industry hesitated for nearly two decades to plug them in. As a result, the initial versions of this titan technology were bought and paid for by the American taxpayer and turned over to a reluctant industry to operate. Although heralded as “too cheap to meter” (Strauss, 1954), lift-off for the nuclear energy era was, at times, halting, as utility executives worried about the “what ifs” of nuclear plant accidents and disposal of highly hazardous materials.
The industry’s fears proved correct when Three Mile Island Unit 2 suffered a partial core meltdown on March 28, 1979, after plant personnel failed to halt the loss of coolant in the containment vessel. The accident hobbled American development of the technology as no new plants ordered after the accident have been completed. The financial meltdown in 1983 of the Washington Public Power Supply System’s effort to build five nuclear plants, resulting in a default on $7.0 billion in bonds and nearly $24.0 billion in associated interest (Byrne and Hoffman, 1996), closed the first nuclear era for the United States.
International pursuit of this option continued until 1986, when, 4 weeks after the editors of The Economist declared nuclear plants to be as “safe as chocolate factories,” an explosion at Chernobyl No. 4 reactor triggered a global collapse of the industry. Only a handful of countries have continued to invest in the “revolution” that was originally depicted as “the solution to one of mankind’s profoundest shortages” (Weinberg, 1956, p. 299).
This is slated to change as a Nuclear Renaissance is planned in and beyond the United States. This time, though, the nuclear power solution is not only to guarantee economic growth but to do so in a carbon-constrained world. The key promise of rebranded nuclear power is that it (and, possibly, it alone) allows humanity to remain in perpetual growth mode while halting the prospect of climate change. Conceiving nuclear power as a renewable source, Huber and Mills (2005) forecast “a nuclear furnace that . . . shines as bright as the sun itself” (p. 180). Extolling “the virtue of waste,” these authors diagnose the problem of modernity in classical terms—civilization needs to assure ceaseless growth through technological advance. Conservation is depicted as defeatist, a perspective that accords precisely with the energy obesity regime of the last 150 years. The approach is reminiscent of President Nixon’s observation (1973):
Technological positivists are wrong anyways, nuclear worsens warming
Mez 16 Lutz Mez, Berlin Centre for Caspian Region Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. “The experts on nuclear power and climate change” The Bulletin, Feb 18 2016 AT
The electrical power production sector accounts for about 28 percent of global anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions and constitutes by far the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. That is why supposedly carbon dioxide-free nuclear power plants have frequently been praised as a panacea for addressing climate change. However, in 2013 nuclear electricity contributed just 10.6 percent of global electricity generation, and because electricity represents only 18 percent of total global final energy consumption, the nuclear share is just 1.7 percent of global final energy consumption. Even if generation in nuclear power plants could be increased significantly, nuclear power will remain a marginal energy source. Therefore, the turnaround in energy systems has to prioritize energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy technologies and cogeneration plants, which do not cause any more carbon dioxide emissions than nuclear power plants. From a systemic perspective, nuclear power plants are by no means free of carbon dioxide emissions. Today, they produce up to one third of the greenhouse gases that large modern gas power plants produce. Carbon dioxide emissions connected to production of nuclear energy amounts to (depending on where the uranium used in a reactor is mined and enriched) between 7 and 126 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour, according to an analysis by International Institute for Sustainability Analysis and Strategy co-founder Uwe Fritsche. For a typical nuclear power plant in Germany, the specific emission estimate of 28 grams has been calculated. An initial estimate of global carbon dioxide emissions through the generation of nuclear electricity in 2014 registered at about 110,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent—or roughly as much as the carbon dioxide emissions of a country like the Czech Republic. And this data does not even include the emissions caused by storage of nuclear waste. In the coming decades, indirect carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear power plants will increase considerably, because high-grade resources of uranium are exhausted and much more fossil energy will have to be used to mine uranium. In view of this trend, nuclear power plants will no longer have an emissions advantage over modern gas-fired power plants, let alone in comparison to the advantages offered by increased energy efficiency or greater use of renewable energies. Nuclear power plants may also contribute to climate change by emitting radioactive isotopes such as tritium or carbon 14 and the radioactive noble gas krypton 85. Krypton 85 is produced in nuclear power plants and released on a massive scale in the reprocessing of spent fuel. The concentration of krypton 85 in Earth's atmosphere has soared over the last few years as a result of nuclear fission, reaching a new record. Krypton 85 increases the natural, radiation-induced ionization of the air. Thus the electrical balance of the Earth's atmosphere changes, which poses a significant threat to weather patterns and climate. Even though krypton 85 is “one of the most toxic agents for climate,” according to German physicist and political figure Klaus Buchner, these emissions have not received any attention in international climate-protection negotiations down to the present. As for the assertion that nuclear power is needed to promote climate protection, exactly the opposite would appear to be the case: Nuclear power plants must be closed down quickly to exert pressure on operators and the power plant industry to redouble efforts at innovation in the development of sustainable and socially compatible energy technologies and especially the use of smart energy services.

This distances us from the social and environmental repercussions of our consumption on the socially marginalized. This leads to a form of technological positivism, doomed from the beginning since it never knew the reality of the poor in the first place.
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
A life involving less and less interaction with the natural world has quickly become a hallmark of living well as nearly 90 of the 24-hour day is now spent indoors (Fisk, 2000). Norms of “efficiency, rationality, optimizing and ‘time-saving’ behavior” justify the organization of human life beyond the confines of suboptimal nature (O’Hara and Stagl, 2001, p. 540). Separation from the natural world is facilitated and reinforced by technological advancements which collapse the boundaries of space and time enabling social transactions without natural limitation. In fact, the middle and upper classes of wealthy societies have little or no need to venture outside. The resulting social alienation from nature leaves mostly the poor to witness the environ- mental consequences of endless growth. Only their livelihoods are immediately and significantly threatened by the “normal pollution” of modernity (see Byrne, glover, and Martinez, 2002). Until pictures, video, and text on environmental harm are found online, the middle class cannot experience it. And this is (partly) why middle class environmentalism seeks redress in techno- logical positivism. The everyday of indoor life is protected and nourished by technology; so why shouldn’t this work for the outdoors as well?
Energy Obesity
The commodification of human life and nature are the foundations of the modern thrust. Together, these forces changed the direction of human and natural history, creating the distinct era in which life, in all forms, now transpires.

Commodification of energy and the incessant need to make it bigger and better is what allows for the reproduction of capitalistic knowledge that leads to the commodification of human life and the environment - extinction
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
At the most basic level, oil and natural gas are just primary commodities, like tin, rubber, or iron ore. Yet energy commodities are special, in part because they are critical inputs to a very wide variety of production processes of modern economies. They provide the fuel that drives our transportation system, heats our homes and offices, and powers our factories.
For modern life, energy is the one commodity always needed to make and use anything. In this respect, energy supply is what enables the pursuit of boundless growth; because of modern energy, we can aspire to produce and possess everything.
The modern energy system epitomizes its age. Lovins and others roundly criticized its evolution on the ground that its scale and volume are poorly matched to the often much smaller scales and volumes of energy use. But the criticism misses a key point: the mismatch is, in fact, by design; it is essential for modern society to reproduce itself. After all, the potential for incessant growth can only be exploited if an ever-present capacity to fuel such growth exists. Having just enough energy presumes the nonsensical idea of just enough growth; there is never enough growth in the modern era.
Lewis Mumford’s thoughtful, in-depth analysis (1934, 1961, and 1970) explains why energy is special in our time. Modern energy systems only come in extra large sizes because “quantitative production has become, for our mass-minded contemporaries, the only imperative goal: they value quantification without qualification” (Mumford, 1961, p. 57). Volume and scale of output are the standard bearers of serious energy options because these are the shared metrics of the alliance of science, capitalism, and carbon power. All three run on the prin- ciple that more is better; more knowledge, more power, and more commodities are signs of progress. As a Mumford contemporary has observed, excessive accu- mulation of energy sustains the modern “social metabo- lism” (Martinez-Alier, 2006):
Energy is not a “sector” of the economy. On the con- trary, the market economy as a whole is only one part of the human ecology that must be characterized in terms of the human influence on the flows of energy and materials and interference in the biogeochemical cycles (for instance, in the carbon cycle, with the enhanced greenhouse effect). (p. 37, 55)
The wealth-energy association and its concomitant environmental needs has produced a feedback loop: the physical processes that produce material wealth are reliant on energy regimes which foster continued growth of output; increased growth in resource use and consumptive demand (through planned obsolescence and advertising) create and reinforce social norms and obligations to increase consumption; increased demand encourages expan- sion of the physical processes that produce material wealth; and so on. Perpetuation of this self-sealing logic is a defining characteristic of the modern energy regime, with little distinction between public and private operations. For example, critiques of the centralized energy monopolies and oligopolies from “big oil” to “giant” electric utilities (Pinchot and Ettinger, 1925; Yergin, 1991) were answered by pub- lic replicas of the large, complex, and hierarchically managed energy systems: the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Bonneville Power Administration, and the Rural Electrification Administration. These public programs reinforce, rather than oppose, the structures of energy obesity.
Much like biophysical obesity, energy obesity is driven by the need to expand without regard to quality of life. Its motive is the commodification of human life and the environment so that growth without end can be served. Thus, living well rests, in the modern case, on the antihealth ideal of energy obesity, and climate change represents, in scale, its most extensive threat to life in all forms.5
Thus the plan: Countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear power
Getting rid of nuclear is key to Soft Path energy, which curbs incessant production and consumption and allows us to shift the debate to also include the social ramifications of nuclear
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
In an October, 2008 New York Times article, journalist John Tierney argued that recent discussions about energy futures “. . . have a certain vintage quality. They’ve revived that classic debate: the hard path versus the soft path” (Tierney, 2008). His reference to Amory Lovins’ dichotomy (1977) is important. Part of Lovins’ criticism of hard path energy strategies (oil, gas, coal, nuclear power) cited the likelihood of rising costs, adverse environmental impacts, safety concerns, and weapons proliferation. His and others’ predictions about the safety, cost, and polluting effects of fossil fuels have largely proved accurate. But a central feature of the soft path alternative was that it envisioned a nonnuclear future.1 Citing a recent pronuclear power book by Tucker (2008) advocating a rebranding strategy for the technology, Tierney rejects the nonnuclear idea, echoing instead the proposal of many in the current energy debate for society to reconsider this “proven technology that doesn’t spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere” (Tierney, 2008).
Interestingly, Tierney (and all but one of the article’s 114 commenters) missed a key aspect of the soft path critique. Lovins’ (1977) soft path calls for the “rapid development of renewable energy sources justice matched in scale and in energy quality to end use needs” (p. 25) By design, hard path systems supply, rather than match, needs and intentionally disregard social definitions of scale and quality in favor of technical and, when it suits, certain environmental factors. In this way, hard path strategies ignore what soft paths insist on—a significant rethinking of the social relationship to energy (Byrne and Toly, 2006).

Try or die—only a shift away from consumption focused energy production towards communal energy prevents ecological catastrophe and ensures sustainable alternative energy, neither coal, nor other renewables are good enough
Byrne et al 09 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Cecilia Martinez - research professor at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, Colin Ruggero - PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research, teaching Sociology at the Community College of Philadelphia: (“Relocating Energy in the Social Commons Ideas for a Sustainable Energy Utility”, Sagepub Journals, Available at http://bst.sagepub.com/content/29/2/81.full.pdf+html, Accessed 8/13/16)IG
Shedding the institutions that created the prospect of climate change will not happen on the watch of the green titans or extra large nuclear power. The modern cornucopian political economy fueled by abundant, carbon-free energy machines will, in fact, risk the possibility of climate change continually because of the core properties of the modern institutional design. Although the abundant energy machine originated and matured in the United States and industrial Europe, the logic of unending growth built into the modern model has promoted its global spread. Today, both extra-large nuclear power and industrial-scale renewables are at the forefront of the trillion dollar clean energy technology development and transfer process envisioned for the globe (International Energy Agency, 2006). Nuclear energy is seen as offering unlimited potential for rapid development in India and China, while large-scale renewables seamlessly fit into existing international financial aid schemes. A burgeoning renewables industry boasts economic opportunities in standardization and certification for delivering green titans to developing countries. If institutional change is to occur, if energy-society relations are to be transformed, and if the threat of global warming is to be earnestly addressed, we will have to design and experiment with alternatives other than these. Given the global character of the challenge, cookie cutter counter-strategies are certain to fail. Often, outside the box alternatives may not be sensible in the modern context. Like a paradigm shift, we need ideas, and actions guided by them, which fail in one context (here, specifically, the context of energy obesity) in order hopefully to support the appearance of a new context. The concept and practice of a sustainable energy utility is offered in this spirit.11 The sustainable energy utility (SEU) involves the creation of an institution with the explicit purpose of enabling communities to reduce and eventually eliminate use of obese energy resources and reliance on obese energy organizations. It is formed as a nonprofit organization to support commons energy development and management. Unlike its for-profit contemporaries, it has no financial or other interest in commodification of energy, ecological, or social relations; its success lies wholly in the creation of shared benefits and responsibilities. The SEU is not a panacea nor is it a blueprint for fixing our energy-carbon problems. It is a strategy to change energy-ecology-society relations. It may not work, but we believe it is worth the effort to invent and pursue the possibility. There should be little doubt about the difficulty of the task. Regimes develop through the interplay of technology and society over time, rather than through prescribed programs. They alter history and then seek to prevent its change, except in ways that bolster regime power. Of specific importance here, obese utilities will not simply cede political and economic success to an antithetical institution—the SEU. That is why change is so hard to realize. Shifting a society towards a new energy regime requires diverse actors working in tandem, across all areas of regime influence. Economic models, political will, social norm development, all these things must be shifted, rather than pulled, from the current paradigm. The SEU constructs energy–ecology-society relations as phenomena of a commons governance regime. It explicitly reframes the preeminent obese energy regime organization—the energy utility—in the antithetical context of using less energy. And, when energy use is needed, it relies on renewable sources available to and therefore governable by the community of users (rather than the titan technology approach of governance by producers). In contrast to the cornucopian strategy of expanding inputs in an effort to endlessly feed the obese regime, the SEU focuses on techniques and social arrangements which can serve the aims of sustainability and equity. It combines political and economic change for the purpose of building a postmodern energy commons; that is, a form of political economy that relies on commons, rather than commodity, relations for its evolution. Specifically, it uses the ideas of a commonwealth economy and a community trust to achieve the goal of postmodern energy sustainability. The meanings of commonwealth, community trust, and commons, relevant to a SEU, are explored below.
Solves the current environmental crisis, social inequity, and military conflict. It’s all caused by our endless focus on energy production and vesting our hope in technological advancement
Byrne and Toly 6 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, Noah Toly - ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF URBAN STUDIES AND POLITICS and INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DIRECTOR OF URBAN STUDIES PROGRAM at Wheaton College, Leigh Glover - Director, GAMUT Centre for Sustainable Transport, University of Melbourne, Australia, Established in 1980 at the University of Delaware, the Center is a leading institution for interdisciplinary graduate education, research, and advocacy in energy and environmental policy: 2006 (“Transforming Power Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, http://seedconsortium.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/45925604/Byrne_etal.pdf, Accessed on 8/13/16)IG
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 prolifera- tion of nuclear weapons, a new promise is made to realize “inherently safe reactors” (Weinberg, 1985) that risk neither serious accident nor intention- ally harmful use of high-energy physics. Less grandiose, but no less optimis- tic, 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 danger- ously 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 prefig- ure 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 “have- nots.”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 histori- cal consistency with a nearly unbroken social narrative of wonderment ex- tending 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 land- scape has occasionally included thoughtful exploration of the broader con- tours 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 life- harming dead end (1961: 263, 248):
...an orgy of uncontrolled production and equally uncontrolled reproduction: ma- chine 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 inevi- table failures of this logic, Mumford nevertheless warned that modernity’s supporters would seek to derail present-tense7 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 “demo- cratic-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.

Energy debates should focus on critique of broad structures instead of productivist fixes.  Our role of the ballot is best even if they win some truth claims – we must shift the frame.
Zehner 12
Ozzie Zehner - visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and nowthwestern, he has appeared on PBS, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, and regularly guest lectures at universities: 2012 (“Green Illusions”, Nebraska UniversityPress, Available online at https://nccr.iitm.ac.in/Green20Illusions.pdf, Accessed 8/13/16)
Since this book represents a critique of alternative energy, it may seem an unlikely manual for alternative-energy proponents. But it is. Building alternative-energy infrastructure atop America's present economic, social, and cultural landscape is akin to building a sandcastle in a rising tide. A taller sand castle won't help. The first steps in this book sketch a partial blueprint for making alternative-energy technologies relevant into the future. Technological development alone will do little to bring about a durable alternative-energy future. Reimagining the social conditions of energy use will. Ultimately, we have to ask ourselves if environmentalists should be involved in the business of energy production (of any sort) while so many more important issues remain vastly underserved. Over the next several decades, it's quite likely that our power production cocktail will look very much like the mix of today, save for a few adjustments in market share. Wind and biofuel generation will become more prevalent and the stage is set for nuclear power as well, despite recent catastrophes. Nevertheless, these changes will occur over time—they will seem slow. Every power production mechanism has side effects and limitations of its own, and a global shift to new forms of power production simply means that humanity will have to deal with new side effects and limitations in the future. This simple observation seems to have gotten lost in the cheerleading for alternative-energy technologies. The mainstream environmental movement should throw down the green energy pom-poms and pull out the bifocals. It is entirely reasonable for environmentalists to criticize fossil-fuel industries for the harms they instigate. It is, however, entirely unreasonable for environmentalists to become spokespeople for the next round of ecological disaster machines such as solar cells, ethanol, and battery-powered vehicles. Environmentalists pack the largest punch when they instead act as power production watchdogs (regardless of the production method); past environmentalist pressures have cleaned the aidr and made previously polluted waterways swimmable. This watchdog role will be vital in the future as biofuels, nuclear plants, alternative fossil fuels, solar cells, and other energy technologies import new harms and risks. Beyond a watchdog role, environmentalists yield the greatest progress when addressing our social fundamentals, whether by supporting human rights, cleaning up elections, imagining new economic structures, strengthening communities, revitalizing democracy, or imagining more prosperous modes of consumption. Unsustainable energy use is a symptom of suboptimal social conditions. Energy use will come down when we improve these conditions: consumption patterns that lead to debt and depression; commercials aimed at children; lonely seniors stuck in their homes because they can no longer drive; kids left to fend for themselves when it comes to mobility or sexuality; corporate influence trumping citizen representation; measurements of the nation's health in dollars rather than well-being; a media concerned with advertising over insight, and so on. These may not seem like environmental issues, and they certainly don't seem like energy policy issues, but in reality they are the most important energy and environmental issues of our day. Addressing them won't require sacrifice or social engineering. They are congruent with the interests of many Americans, which will make them easier to initiate and fulfill. They are entirely realistic (as many are already enjoyed by other societies on the planet). They are, in a sense, boring. In fact, the only thing shocking about them is the degree to which they have been underappreciated in contemporary environmental thought, sidelined in the media, and ignored by politicians. Even though these first steps don't represent a grand solution, they are necessary preconditions if we intend to democratically design and implement more comprehensive solutions in the future. Ultimately, clean energy is less energy. Alternative-energy alchemy has so greatly consumed the public imagination over recent decades that the most vital and durable environmental essentials remain overlooked and underfunded. Today energy executives hiss silver-tongued fairy tales about clean-coal technologies, safe nuclear reactors, and renewable sources such as solar, wind, and biofuels to quench growing energy demands, fostering the illusion that we can maintain our expanding patterns of energy consumption without consequence. At the same time, they claim that these technologies can be made environmentally, socially, and politically sound while ignoring a history that has repeatedly shown otherwise. If we give in to accepting their conceptual frames, such as those pitting production versus production, or if we parrot their terms such as clean coal, bridge fuels, peacetime atom, smart growth, and clean energy, then we have already lost. We forfeit our right to critical democratic engagement and instead allow the powers that be to regurgitate their own terms of debate into our open upstretched mouths. Alternative-energy technologies don't clean the air. They don't clean the water. They don't protect wildlife. They don't support human rights. They don't improve neighborhoods. They don't strengthen democracy. They don't regulate themselves. They don't lower atmospheric carbon dioxide. They don't reduce consumption. They produce power. That power can lead to durable benefits, but only given the appropriate context. Ultimately, it's not a question of whether American society possesses the technological prowess to construct an alternative-energy nation. The real question is the reverse. Do we have a society capable of being powered by alternative energy? The answer today is clearly no. But we can change that. Future environmentalists will drop solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear, hydrogen, and hybrids to focus instead on women's rights, consumer culture, walkable neighborhoods, military spending, zoning, health care, wealth disparities, citizen governance, economic reform, and democratic institutions. As environmentalists and global citizens, it's not enough to say that we would benefit by shifting our focus. Our very relevance depends on it.

Reject the embrace of unsustainable neoliberal ideology to repoliticize the energy debate – frames of ideological justification must precede the engineering debate over energy
Byrne and Toly 6 - John Byrne - Distinguished Professor of Energy Climate Policy at the University of Delaware, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, Noah Toly - ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF URBAN STUDIES AND POLITICS and INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DIRECTOR OF URBAN STUDIES PROGRAM at Wheaton College, Leigh Glover - Director, GAMUT Centre for Sustainable Transport, University of Melbourne, Australia, Established in 1980 at the University of Delaware, the Center is a leading institution for interdisciplinary graduate education, research, and advocacy in energy and environmental policy: 2006 (“Transforming Power Energy, Environment, and Society in Conflict”, http://seedconsortium.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/45925604/Byrne_etal.pdf)
Differences in ecological commitments between conventional and sustainable energy strategies still demarcate a battleground that, we agree, is important—even fundamental. But so also are the common aspirations of the two camps. Each sublimates social considerations in favor of a politics of more-is-better, and each regards the advance of energy capitalism with a sense of inevitability and triumph. Conventional and sustainable energy visions equally presume that a social order governed by a ‘democratic’ ideal of cornucopia, marked by economic plenty, and delivered by technological marvels will eventually lance the wounds of poverty and inequality and start the healing process. Consequently, silence on questions of governance and social justice is studiously observed by both proposals. Likewise, both agree to, or demur on, the question of capitalism’s sustainability.22 Nothing is said on these questions because, apparently, nothing needs to be.
If the above assessment of the contemporary energy discourse is correct, then the enterprise is not at a crossroad; rather, it has reached a point of acquiescence to things as they are. Building an inquiry into energy as a social project will require the recovery of a critical voice that can interrogate, rather than concede, the discourse’s current moorings in technological politics and capitalist political economy. A fertile direction in this regard is to investigate an energy-society order in which energy systems evolve in response to social values and goals, and not simply according to the dictates of technique, prices, or capital. Initial interest in renewable energy by the sustainability camp no doubt emanated, at least in part, from the fact that its fuel price is non-existent and that capitalization of systems to collect renewable sources need not involve the extravagant, convoluted corporate forms that manage the conventional energy regime. But forgotten, or misunderstood, in the at- traction of renewable energy have been the social origins of such emergent possibilities. Communities exist today who address energy needs outside the global marketplace: they are often rural in character and organize energy services that are immune to oil price spikes and do not require water heated to between 550o and 900o Fahrenheit (300o and 500o Celsius) (the typical tem- peratures in nuclear reactors). No energy bills are sent or paid and governance of the serving infrastructure is based on local (rather than distantly developed professional) knowledge. Needless to say, sustainability is embodied in the lifeworld of these communities, unlike the modern strategy that hopes to design sustainability into its technology and economics so as not to seri- ously change its otherwise unsustainable way of life.
Predictably, modern society will underscore its wealth and technical acu- men as evidence of its superiority over alternatives. But smugness cannot overcome the fact that energy-society relations are evident in which the bribe of democratic-authoritarianism and the unsustainability of energy capitalism are successfully declined. In 1928, Mahatma Gandhi (cited in Gandhi, 1965: 52) explained why the democratic-authoritarian bargain and Western capital- ism should be rejected:
God forbid that India should ever take to industrialization after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom (England) is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar eco- nomic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. Unless the capitalists of India help to avert that tragedy by becoming trustees of the welfare of the masses and by devoting their talents not to amassing wealth for themselves but to the service of the masses in an altruistic spirit, they will end either by destroying the masses or being destroyed by them.
As Gandhi’s remark reveals, social inequality resides not in access to electric light and other accoutrements of modernity, but in a world order that places efficiency and wealth above life-affirming ways of life. This is our social problem, our energy problem, our ecological problem, and, generally, our political-economic problem.
The challenge of a social inquiry into energy-society relations awaits.
Material consequences first
Matsuda 88 (Mari, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hawaii, “When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method”, 11 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 7 1989)
The multiple consciousness I urge lawyers to attain is not a random ability to see all points of view, but a deliberate choice to see the world from the standpoint of the oppressed. That world is accessible to all of us. We should know it in its concrete particulars. We should know of our sister carrying buckets of water up five flights of stairs in a welfare hotel, our sister trembling at 3 a.m. in a shelter for battered women, our sisters holding bloodied children in their arms in Cape Town, on the West Bank, and in Nicaragua. The jurispru- dence of outsiders teaches that these details and the emotions they evoke are relevant and impor- tant as we set out on the road to justice. These details are accessible to all of us, of all genders and colors. We can choose to know the lives of others by reading, studying, listening, and venturing into different places. For lawyers, our pro bono work may be the most effective means of ac- quiring a broader consciousness of oppression. ¶ Abstraction and detachment are ways out of the discomfort of direct confrontation with the ugliness of oppression. Abstraction, criticized by both feminists and scholars of color, is the, method that allows theorists to discuss liberty, property, and rights in the aspirational mode of liberalism with no connection to what those concepts mean in real people's lives. Much in our mainstream intellectual training values abstraction and denigrates nitty-gritty detail. Holding on to a multiple consciousness will allow us to operate both within the abstractions of standard ju- risprudential discourse, and within the details of our own special knowledge.¶ Whisperings at Yale and elsewhere about how deconstructionist heroes were closet fascists remind me of how important it is to stay close to oppressed communities. High talk about language, meaning, sign, process, and law can mask racist and sexist ugliness if we never stop to ask: "Exactly what are you talking about and what is the implication of what you are saying for my sister who is carrying buckets of water up five flights of stairs in a welfare hotel? What do you propose to do for her today, not in some abstract future
 you are creating in your mind?" If you have been made to feel, as I have, that such inquiry is theoretically unsophisticated, and quaintly naive, resist! Read what Professor Williams, Professor Scales-Trent, and other feminists and people of color are writing.' The reality and detail of oppression are a starting point for these writers as they enter into mainstream debates about law and theory.
Evaluate arguments using particularity – no “root cause” or sweeping take-outs to our specific claims.
Price 98
(RICHARD PRICE is a former prof in the Department of Anthropology at Yale University. Later, he moved to Johns Hopkins University to found the Department of Anthropology, where he served three terms as chair. A decade of freelance teaching (University of Minnesota, Stanford University, Princeton University, University of Florida, Universidade Federal da Bahia), ensued. This article is co-authored with CHRISTIAN REUS-SMIT – Monash University – European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 1998 via SAGE Publications – http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~courses/PoliticalScience/661B1/documents/PriceReusSmithCriticalInternatlTheoryConstructivism.pdf)
One of the central departures of critical international theory from positivism is the view that we cannot escape the interpretive moment. As George (1994: 24) argues, ‘the world is always an interpreted “thing”, and it is always interpreted in conditions of disagreement and conflict, to one degree or another’. For this reason, ‘there can be no common body of observational or tested data that we can turn to for a neutral, objective knowledge of the world. There can be no ultimate knowledge, for example, that actually corresponds to reality per se.’ This proposition has been endorsed wholeheartedly by constructivists, who are at pains to deny the possibility of making ‘Big-T’ Truth claims about the world and studiously avoid attributing such status to their findings. This having been said, after undertaking sustained empirical analyses of aspects of world politics constructivists do make ‘small-t’ truth claims about the subjects they have investigated. That is, they claim to have arrived at logical and empirically plausible interpretations of actions, events or processes, and they appeal to the weight of evidence to sustain such claims. While admitting that their claims are always contingent and partial interpretations of a complex world, Price (1995, 1997) claims that his genealogy provides the best account to date to make sense of anomalies surrounding the use of chemical weapons, and Reus-Smit (1997) claims that a culturalist perspective offers the best explanation of institutional differences between historical societies of states. Do such claims contradict the interpretive ethos of critical international theory? For two reasons, we argue that they do not. First, the interpretive ethos of critical international theory is driven, in large measure, by a normative rejection of totalizing discourses, of general theoretical frameworks that privilege certain perspectives over others. One searches constructivist scholarship in vain, though, for such discourses. With the possible exception of Wendt’s problematic flirtation with general systemic theory and professed commitment to ‘science’, constructivist research is at its best when and because it is question driven, with self-consciously contingent claims made specifically in relation to particular phenomena, at a particular time, based on particular evidence, and always open to alternative interpretations. Second, the rejection of totalizing discourses based on ‘big-T’ Truth claims does not foreclose the possibility, or even the inevitability, of making ‘small-t’ truth claims. In fact, we would argue that as soon as one observes and interacts in the world such claims are unavoidable, either as a person engaged in everyday life or as a scholar. As Nietzsche pointed out long ago, we cannot help putting forth truth claims about the world. The individual who does not cannot act, and the genuinely unhypocritical relativist who cannot struggles for something to say and write. In short, if constructivists are not advancing totalizing discourses, and if making ‘small-t’ truth claims is inevitable if one is to talk about how the world works, then it is no more likely that constructivism per se violates the interpretive ethos of critical international theory than does critical theory itself.