Tournament: BERKELEY | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
Hate speech poses a direct threat to the oppressed. Banning it is necessary to promote inclusiveness.
Jared Taylor summarizes Waldron, 12, Why We Should Ban “Hate Speech”, American Renaissance, summarizing Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, Harvard University Press, 2012, 292 pp., 26.95. 8/24/12, http://www.amren.com/features/2012/08/why-we-should-ban-hate-speech/ Note – Taylor does not agree with but is summarizing Waldron’s position LADI
First-Amendment guarantees of free speech are a cherished part of the American tradition and set us apart from virtually every other country. They are not without critics, however, and the free speech guarantees under sharpest attack are those that protect so-called “hate speech.” Jeremy Waldron, an academic originally from New Zealand, has written a whole book explaining why “hate speech” does not deserve protection—and Harvard University Press has published it. Prof. Waldron teaches law and philosophy at New York University Law School, is a professor of social and political theory at Oxford, and is an adjunct professor at Victoria University in New Zealand. Perhaps his foreign origins influence his view of the First Amendment.  In this book, Professor Waldron makes just one argument for banning “hate speech.” It is not a good argument, and if this is the best the opponents of free speech can do, the First Amendment should be secure. However, in the current atmosphere of “anti-racism,” any argument against “hate speech” could influence policy, so let us understand his argument as best we can.  First, Professor Waldron declares that “we are diverse in our ethnicity, our race, our appearance, and our religions, and we are embarked on a grand experiment of living and working together despite these sorts of differences.” Western societies are determined to let in every sort of person imaginable and make them feel respected and equal in every way. “Inclusiveness” is something “that our society sponsors and that it is committed to.” Therefore, what would we make of a “hate speech” billboard that said: “Muslims and 9/11! Don’t serve them, don’t speak to them, and don’t let them in”? Or one with a picture of Muslim children that said “They are all called Osama”? Or posters that say such things as “Muslims out,” “No blacks allowed,” or “All blacks should be sent back to Africa”? Professor Waldron writes that it is all very well for law professors and white people to say that this is the price we pay for free expression, but we must imagine what it must be like for the Muslim or black who must explain these messages to his children. “Can their lives be led, can their children be brought up, can their hopes be maintained and their worst fears dispelled, in a social environment polluted by these materials?” Professor Waldron insists that a “sense of security in the space we all inhabit is a public good,” like pretty beaches or clean air, and is so precious that the law should require everyone to maintain it: Hate speech undermines this public good . . . . It does this not only by intimating discrimination and violence, but by reawakening living nightmares of what this society was like . . . . It creates something like an environmental threat to social peace, a sort of slow-acting poison, accumulating here and there, word by word, so that eventually it becomes harder and less natural for even the good-hearted members of the society to play their part in maintaining this public good. Professor Waldron tells us that the purpose of “hate speech” is to try to set up a “rival public good” in which it is considered fine to beat up and drive out minorities.

Impact – Fem
Hate speech has intrinsic harm, particularly against women—turns case
Horne 16 (Solveig, Minister of Children and Equality in Norway, “Hate Speech — A Threat to Freedom of Speech,” 03/08/2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/solveig-horne/hate-speech~-~-a-threat-to_b_9406596.html LADI)
Hate speech in the public sphere takes place online and offline, and affects young girls and boys, women and men. We also see hate speech attacking vulnerable groups like people with disabilities, LGBT-persons and other minority groups. Social media and the Internet have opened up for many new arenas for exchanging opinions. Freedom of speech is an absolute value in any democracy, both for the public and for the media. At the same time, opinions and debates challenge us as hate speech are spread widely and frequently on new platforms for publishing. Hate speech may cause fear and can be the reason why people withdraw from the public debate. The result being that important voices that should be heard in the public debate are silenced. We all benefit if we foster an environment where everybody is able to express their opinions without experiencing hate speech. In this matter we all have a responsibility. I am especially concerned about women and girls being silenced. Attempts to silence women in the public debate through hate speech, are an attack on women’s human rights. No one should be silenced or subjected to threats when expressing themselves in public. Women are under-represented in the media. In order to get a balanced public debate it is important that many voices are heard. We must encourage women and girls to be equal participants with men. Hate speech prevents women from making their voices heard. I also call upon the media to take responsibility in this matter. In some cases the media may provide a platform for hate speech. At the same time, I would like to stress that a liberal democracy like Norway strongly supports freedom of speech as a fundamental right. The Norwegian government takes hate speech seriously. In November, prime minister Erna Solberg and I launched a political declaration against hate speech on the behalf of the Norwegian government. Anyone can sign the declaration online and take a stand against hate speech. Politicians, representatives of labour unions and organizations are among those who have signed and supported the declaration. This year the Government will launch a strategy against hate speech. In this connection I have organised several meetings involving organizations and individuals to round table discussions on hate speech, and and received a lot of useful input for our strategy. One of the things I heard about is how destructive hate speech can be for women and girls who participate in the public debate. Some are ridiculed, subjected to sexually offensive language and even threatened with rape and violence. This underlines the importance of combating hate speech. We cannot afford that women are silenced in the public debate, because of their gender. We need arenas for dialogue, tolerance and awareness of the consequences of hate speech. It is important that we discuss this issue with our own children and in schools. We adults have a great responsibility. We need to think about how we express ourselves when children are present. What we say in our family settings have consequences for how our children behave against other people - online and offline. In order to combat hate speech we also need knowledge. I have initiated a research that will look into attitudes towards Jews and how minorities look at other minorities. In addition, the University of Oslo has established a centre for research on right-winged extremism. One of the centre`s mandate is to look into hate speech. The police plays a vital role in the fight against hate speech. Some expressions of opinions are forbidden by law. The new Norwegian General Civil Penal Code’s section 185 protects against serious hate speech which wilfully or through gross negligence is made publicly. The Norwegian police forces has established a net patrol that are working on this issue. Additionally they have strengthen their efforts against hate crime. Hate speech may be directed against people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, disability or sexual orientation. Hate speech can have serious consequences for individuals, groups and the whole society. It is important to take a stand and show that this cannot be tolerated. Politicians, organizations and other actors in the public debate must show responsibility and actively work against hate speech.

Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: La Reina AC | Judge: John Overing
Radiation spurs fungi growth- the aff takes away energy source¶ Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 07¶ The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, a part of Montefiore Medical Center, is a not-for-profit, private, nonsectarian medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. May 23, 2007. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070522210932.htm¶ Scientists have long assumed that fungi exist mainly to decompose matter into chemicals that other organisms can then use. But researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found evidence that fungi possess a previously undiscovered talent with profound implications: the ability to use radioactivity as an energy source for making food and spurring their growth. "The fungal kingdom comprises more species than any other plant or animal kingdom, so finding that they're making food in addition to breaking it down means that Earth's energetics--in particular, the amount of radiation energy being converted to biological energy--may need to be recalculated," says Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair of microbiology and immunology at Einstein and senior author of the study, published May 23 in PLoS ONE. The ability of fungi to live off radiation could also prove useful to people: "Since ionizing radiation is prevalent in outer space, astronauts might be able to rely on fungi as an inexhaustible food source on long missions or for colonizing other planets," says Dr. Ekaterina Dadachova, associate professor of nuclear medicine and microbiology and immunology at Einstein and lead author of the study. Those fungi able to "eat" radiation must possess melanin, the pigment found in many if not most fungal species. But up until now, melanin's biological role in fungi--if any--has been a mystery.¶ Radiation needed to continue fungi species; without it species extinction is certain¶ CBS, 08¶ Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek is a Dutch governmental institution that gathers statistical information about the Netherlands. January 4, 2008. https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2008/14/no-recovery-for-wild-mushroom-population¶ Deposits of airborne nitrogen and sulphur have decreased in recent years. Yet, wild mushrooms have become increasingly rare in Dutch forests since 2000. Nitrogen-sensitive species in particular have been reduced in number. Wild mushroom species insensitive to high atmospheric concentrations of nitrogen or species responding positively to high amounts of nitrogen have not been reduced at such a fast rate. There are about 3,500 mushroom species in the Netherlands. Approximately 500 species are under (serious) threat and figure on the so-called Red list. Nearly 200 species have already become extinct. Mushrooms are quite useful. They break down organic matter and produce nutrients for trees. If certain mushroom species become extinct, the chances of survival for other plants and animals are also diminishing. Eutrophication and acidification are the main causes for the declining mushroom population. Since 1981, the level of pollution has dropped dramatically, but the mushroom population has not thrived in the period 2000–2006. The current level of pollution appears to be still high for mushrooms in comparison to their natural habitat. Moreover, the pollution levels have hardly dropped in recent years. The quality of soil life in forests is still not back at its prior level. As a result, mushrooms and plants cannot benefit fully from the reduction in deposits of eutrophying and acidifying substances.¶ Fungi extinction causes end to biodiversity. ¶ Waking Times, 13¶ Waking Times is an independently owned and operated online magazine that seizes on the transformational power of information to trigger personal revolution and influence humanity’s evolution. Paul Edward Stamets is an American mycologist, author and advocate of bioremediation and medicinal mushrooms. November 12, 2013. http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/11/02/psychoactive-mushrooms-mycologist-paul-stamets-on-natures-little-teachers/¶ Examining the Mycelial network on the planet, Paul demonstrates how Mycelium is the Earth’s natural Internet allowing for communication between plant species. In fact, it acts as the neural network of the planet, as a sentient organism with the consciousness to respond to natural disasters and external events. Fungi is the foundation of our eco-system, excreting the enzymes that break down dead plant and animal material, and without it plants would all die.

Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: La Reina AC | Judge: John Overing
Prolif is an epistemological excuse for violence – their discourse wrecks alternative approaches – and trades off with structural violence – there is already a diplomatic solution in place – their refusal to acknowledge alternative approaches to their understanding of IR as violent ensures endless war
Woods 7 Matthew, PhD in IR @ Brown - Researcher @ Thomas Watson Institute of International Relations Journal of Language and Politics 6.1“Unnatural Acts: Nuclear Language, proliferation, and order,” p. 116-7
It is important to identify, expose and understand the successful creation of 'proliferation' as the inevitable, uncontrollable and dangerous spread of nuclear arms because it changed the world in innumerable ways. On one hand, it is the chief motivation for a wide array of cooperative endeavors among states and the central rationale for the most successful arms control agreement in modern history, the NPT. It inspired sacrifices that led to faith in our regard for others and stimulated confidence in international law. On the other hand, it is the reason for an unparalleled collection of international denial and regulatory institutions and it is the omnipresent and ineliminable threat at the heart of our chronic, unremitting suspicion of others. It is a cause of global inequality and double-standards among states and the progenitor of the name and identity 'rogue state' (states that reject the whaling ban are not 'rogue states'). It is a central element in world-wide toleration for human misery, such as starvation in North Korea, and in public toleration for the clear deception and dissembling of government elites, such as in the US. It is a vehicle in some media for racial stereotypes. The existence of 'proliferation' is a primary rationale among nuclear states for preserving and improving their nuclear arsenals. And faith in the existence of 'Proliferation’: most recently, brought about invasion, war and continuing death in the Middle East.  Every individual that fears it, organization that studies it and state that strives to prevent it embraces 'proliferation' as a real and known thing and, in part, orients their identity and behavior according to it. The successful creation of 'proliferation' represents the creation of our common sense, our everyday life and our natural attitude toward the nuclear world 'out there.' It is uncontestable and to suggest otherwise that nuclear states might be to blame for any spread of nuclear arms, or that it has actually been rare and so far benign or that it may even be beneficial (see a critical review of this literature in Woods 2002) - is to invite derision and ostracism. The reality of 'proliferation' is so massive and solidified that the essential role of (cell) proliferation in maintaining life and health is virtually forgotten, overwhelmed, its positive meaning restricted to the doctor's office and biology lab. In short, the creation of 'proliferation' is a textbook example of what some term hegemony, the creation by a dominant group of a world that realizes its ideological preferences while marginalizing other possibilities and co-opting subordinates.
They frame Iran as irrational and incapable of good policymaking – the aff is an instance of the nuclear apartheid, a manifestation of racism—ensures genocide and war is inevitable
Batur 07 Pinar, PhD @ UT-Austin – Prof. of Sociology @ Vassar, The Heart of Violence: Global Racism, War, and Genocide, Handbook of The Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations, eds. Vera and Feagin, p. 441-3
War and genocide are horrid, and taking them for granted is inhuman. In the 21st century, our problem is not only seeing them as natural and inevitable, but even worse: not seeing, not noticing, but ignoring them. Such act and thought, fueled by global racism, reveal that racial inequality has advanced from the establishment of racial hierarchy and institutionalization of segregation, to the confinement and exclusion, and elimination, of those considered inferior through genocide. In this trajectory, global racism manifests genocide. But this is not inevitable. This article, by examining global racism, explores the new terms of exclusion and the path to permanent war and genocide, to examine the integrality of genocide to the frame-work of global antiracist confrontation. GLOBAL RACISM IN THE AGE OF “CULTURE WARS” Racist legitimization of inequality has changed from presupposed biological inferiority to assumed cultural inadequacy. This defines the new terms of impossibility of coexistence, much less equality. The Jim Crow racism of biological inferiority is now being replaced with a new and modern racism (Baker 1981; Ansell 1997) with “culture war” as the key to justify difference, hierarchy, and oppression. The ideology of “culture war” is becoming embedded in institutions, defining the workings of organizations, and is now defended by individuals who argue that they are not racist, but are not blind to the inherent differences between African-Americans/Arabs/Chinese, or whomever, and “us.” “Us” as a concept defines the power of a group to distinguish itself and to assign a superior value to its institutions, revealing certainty that affinity with “them” will be harmful to its existence (Hunter 1991; Buchanan 2002). How can we conceptualize this shift to examine what has changed over the past century and what has remained the same in a racist society? Joe Feagin examines this question with a theory of systemic racism to explore societal complexity of interconnected elements for longevity and adaptability of racism. He sees that systemic racism persists due to a “white racial frame,” defining and maintaining an “organized set of racialized ideas, stereotypes, emotions, and inclinations to discriminate” (Feagin 2006: 25). The white racial frame arranges the routine operation of racist institutions, which enables social and economic repro-duction and amendment of racial privilege. It is this frame that defines the political and economic bases of cultural and historical legitimization. While the white racial frame is one of the components of systemic racism, it is attached to other terms of racial oppression to forge systemic coherency. It has altered over time from slavery to segregation to racial oppression and now frames “culture war,” or “clash of civilizations,” to legitimate the racist oppression of domination, exclusion, war, and genocide. The concept of “culture war” emerged to define opposing ideas in America regarding privacy, censorship, citizenship rights, and secularism, but it has been globalized through conflicts over immigration, nuclear power, and the “war on terrorism.” Its discourse and action articulate to flood the racial space of systemic racism. Racism is a process of defining and building communities and societies based on racial-ized hierarchy of power. The expansion of capitalism cast new formulas of divisions and oppositions, fostering inequality even while integrating all previous forms of oppressive hierarchical arrangements as long as they bolstered the need to maintain the structure and form of capitalist arrangements (Batur-VanderLippe 1996). In this context, the white racial frame, defining the terms of racist systems of oppression, enabled the globalization of racial space through the articulation of capitalism (Du Bois 1942; Winant 1994). The key to understanding this expansion is comprehension of the synergistic relationship between racist systems of oppression and the capitalist system of exploitation. Taken separately, these two systems would be unable to create such oppression independently. However, the synergy between them is devastating. In the age of industrial capitalism, this synergy manifested itself imperialism and colonialism. In the age of advanced capitalism, it is war and genocide. The capitalist system, by enabling and maintaining the connection between everyday life and the global, buttresses the processes of racial oppression, and synergy between racial oppression and capitalist exploitation begets violence. Etienne Balibar points out that the connection between everyday life and the global is established through thought, making global racism a way of thinking, enabling connections of “words with objects and words with images in order to create concepts” (Balibar 1994: 200). Yet, global racism is not only an articulation of thought, but also a way of knowing and acting, framed by both everyday and global experiences. Synergy between capitalism and racism as systems of oppression enables this perpetuation and destruction on the global level. As capitalism expanded and adapted to the particularities of spatial and temporal variables, global racism became part of its legitimization and accommodation, first in terms of colonialist arrangements. In colonized and colonizing lands, global racism has been perpetuated through racial ideologies and discriminatory practices under capitalism by the creation and recreation of connections among memory, knowledge, institutions, and construction of the future in thought and action. What makes racism global are the bridges connecting the particularities of everyday racist experiences to the universality of racist concepts and actions, maintained globally by myriad forms of prejudice, discrimination, and violence (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991; Batur 1999, 2006). Under colonialism, colonizing and colonized societies were antagonistic opposites. Since colonizing society portrayed the colonized “other,” as the adversary and challenger of the “the ideal self,” not only identification but also segregation and containment were essential to racist policies. The terms of exclusion were set by the institutions that fostered and maintained segregation, but the intensity of exclusion, and redundancy, became more apparent in the age of advanced capitalism, as an extension of post-colonial discipline. The exclusionary measures when tested led to war, and genocide. Although, more often than not, genocide was perpetuated and fostered by the post-colonial institutions, rather than colonizing forces, the colonial identification of the “inferior other” led to segregation, then exclusion, then war and genocide. Violence glued them together into seamless continuity. Violence is integral to understanding global racism. Fanon (1963), in exploring colonial oppression, discusses how divisions created or reinforced by colonialism guarantee the perpetuation, and escalation, of violence for both the colonizer and colonized. Racial differentiations, cemented through the colonial relationship, are integral to the aggregation of violence during and after colonialism: “Manichaeism division of the universe into opposites of good and evil goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanizes” (Fanon 1963:42). Within this dehumanizing framework, Fanon argues that the violence resulting from the destruction of everyday life, sense of self and imagination under colonialism continues to infest the post-colonial existence by integrating colonized land into the violent destruction of a new “geography of hunger” and exploitation (Fanon 1963: 96). The “geography of hunger” marks the context and space in which oppression and exploitation continue. The historical maps drawn by colonialism now demarcate the boundaries of post-colonial arrangements. The white racial frame restructures this space to fit the imagery of symbolic racism, modifying it to fit the television screen, or making the evidence of the necessity of the politics of exclusion, and the violence of war and genocide, palatable enough for the front page of newspapers, spread out next to the morning breakfast cereal. Two examples of this “geography of hunger and exploitation” are Iraq and New Orleans.
Oil Links
Energy security militarizes energy – justifies intervention and causes serial policy failure
Ciuta 10 -- Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Centre of European Politics, School of Slavonic and East European Studies @ University College London, UK (Felix, 2010, "Conceptual Notes on Energy Security: Total or Banal Security?" Security Dialogue 41(123), Sage)
Even casual observers will be familiar with the argument that energy is a security issue because it is either a cause or an instrument of war or conflict. Two different strands converge in this logic of energy security. The first strand focuses on energy as an instrument: energy is what states fight their current wars with. We can find here arguments regarding the use of the ‘energy weapon’ by supplier states (Belkin, 2007: 4; Lugar, 2006: 3; Winstone, Bolton and Gore, 2007: 1; Yergin, 2006a: 75); direct substitutions in which energy is viewed as the ‘equivalent of nuclear weapons’ (Morse and Richard, 2002: 2); and rhetorical associations that establish policy associations, as exemplified by the panel ‘Guns and Gas’ during the Transatlantic Conference of the Bucharest NATO Summit. The second strand comes from the literature on resource wars, defined as ‘hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources’ (Victor, 2007: 1). Energy is seen as a primary cause of greatpower conflicts over scarce energy resources (Hamon and Dupuy, 2008; Klare, 2001, 2008). Alternatively, energy is seen as a secondary cause of conflict; here, research has focused on the dynamics through which resource scarcity in general and energy scarcity in particular generate socio-economic, political and environmental conditions such as population movements, internal strife, secessionism and desertification, which cause or accelerate both interstate and intrastate conflict (Homer-Dixon, 1991, 1994, 2008; Solana, 2008; see also Dalby, 2004). As is immediately apparent, this logic draws on a classic formulation that states that ‘a nation is secure to the extent to which it is not in danger of having to sacrifice core values, if it wishes to avoid war, and is able . . . to maintain them by victory in such a war’ (Lippmann, 1943: 51). The underlying principle of this security logic is survival: not only surviving war, but also a generalized quasi-Darwinian logic of survival that produces wars over energy that are fought with ‘energy weapons’. At work in this framing of the energy domain is therefore a definition of security as ‘the absence of threat to acquired values’ (Wolfers, 1952: 485), more recently reformulated as ‘survival in the face of existential threats’ (Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde, 1998: 27). The defining parameters of this traditional security logic are therefore: (1) an understanding of security focused on the use of force, war and conflict (Walt, 1991: 212; Freedman, 1998: 48); and (2) a focus on states as the subjects and objects of energy security. In the war logic, energy security is derivative of patterns of international politics – often captured under the label ‘geopolitics’ (Aalto and Westphal, 2007: 3) – that lend their supposedly perennial attributes to the domain of energy (Barnes, Jaffe and Morse, 2004; Jaffe and Manning, 1998). The struggle for energy is thus subsumed under the ‘normal’ competition for power, survival, land, valuable materials or markets (Leverett and Noël, 2007). A key effect of this logic is to ‘arrest’ issues usually not associated with war, and thus erase their distinctive characteristics. Even the significance of energy qua energy is abolished by the implacable grammar of conflict: energy becomes a resource like any other, which matters insofar as it affects the distribution of capabilities in the international system. As a result, a series of transpositions affect most of the issues ranked high on the energy security agenda. For example, in the European context, the problem is not necessarily energy (or, more precisely, gas, to avoid the typical reduction performed by such accounts). The problem lies in the ‘geopolitical interests’ of Russia and other supplier states, whose strength becomes inherently threatening (Burrows and Treverton, 2007; Horsley, 2006). Energy security policies become entirely euphemistic, as illustrated for example by statements that equate ‘avoiding energy isolation’ with ‘beating Russia’ (Baran, 2007). Such ‘geopolitical’ understanding of international politics also habituates a distinct vocabulary. Public documents, media reports and academic analyses of energy security are suffused with references to weapons, battles, attack, fear, ransom, blackmail, dominance, superpowers, victims and losers. It is therefore unsurprising that this logic is coterminous with the widely circulating narrative of the ‘new’ Cold War. This lexicon of conflict encourages modulations, reductions and transpositions in the meanings of both energy and security. This is evident at the most fundamental level, structuring encyclopaedic entries (Kohl, 2004) and key policy documents (White House, 2007), where energy security becomes oil security (security modulates energy into oil), which becomes oil geopolitics (oil modulates security into geopolitics). Once security is understood in the grammar of conflict, the complexity of energy is abolished and reduced to the possession of oilfields or gas pipelines. The effect of this modulation is to habituate the war logic of security, and also to create a hierarchy between the three constitutive dimensions of energy security (growth, sustenance and the environment). This hierarchy reflects and at the same time embeds the dominant effect of the war logic, which is the militarization of energy (Russell and Moran, 2008), an argument reminiscent of the debates surrounding the securitization of the environment (Deudney, 1990). It is of course debatable whether this is a new phenomenon. Talk of oil wars has been the subject of prestigious conferences and conspiracy theories alike, and makes the headlines of newspapers around the world. A significant literature has long focused on the relationship between US foreign policy, oil and war (Stokes, 2007; in contrast, see Nye, 1982). The pertinence of this argument cannot be evaluated in this short space, but it is worth noting that it too reduces energy to oil, and in/security to war. The key point is that this logic changes not only the vocabulary of energy security but also its political rationality. As Victor (2008: 9) puts it, this signals ‘the arrival of military planning to the problem of natural resources’ and inspires ‘a logic of hardening, securing and protecting’ in the entire domain of energy. There is, it must be underlined, some resistance to the pull of the logic of war, as attested for example by NATO’s insistence that its focus on energy security ‘will not trigger a classical military response’ (De Hoop Scheffer, 2008: 2). Yet, the same NATO official claims that ‘the global competition for energy and natural resources will re-define the relationship between security and economics’, which hints not only at the potential militarization of energy security policy but also at the hierarchies this will inevitably create. New geographies of insecurity will thus emerge if the relationship between the environment, sustenance and growth is structured by the militarized pursuit of energy (Campbell, 2005: 952; Christophe Paillard in Luft and Paillard, 2007).

Tournament: BERKELEY | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
Financial aid is key to high graduation rates -- allows students to study full-time, encourages academic progress, and assists low-income students
Johnson 14 (Hans Johnson – supported by the College Access Foundation of California and writing for the Public Policy Institute of California, “Making College Possible for Low-Income Students: Grant and Scholarship Aid in California”, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_1014HJR.pdf, pg. 20-24, EmmieeM)
Students fail to complete college for many reasons, including financial constraints. Certainly it is well known that low-income students are less likely to finish college than other students, even accounting for differences in academic preparation and records. Surveys of students who drop out of college find that, indeed, financial constraints play an important role. In one survey, respondents not only cited the need to work as the primary reason for leaving college but also said that work and family commitments were the reasons for not being able to return to school. More than half of the respondents said that financial aid “that completely covered tuition and books” would induce them to return to school (Johnson et al. 2009). Studies on the direct effect of grant and scholarship aid on college completion also suggest that financial aid leads to increases in graduation rates. Assigning causality in such work is difficult, however, because students who apply for aid might be more motivated than others to earn a degree and because college prices and grant aid programs vary dramatically across colleges. In general, most studies find that grant aid for low-income students increases persistence rates by as much as 10 percentage points and completion rates by at least a few percentage points (Dynarski 2005; Deming and Dynarski 2009; Kuh et al. 2008).16 A rigorous study of Florida’s “Student Access Grant” found that students whose family income made them just barely eligible for the grant of $1,300 were four percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree within seven years than students who were ineligible for the grant because their income was just above the required level (28 versus 24; Castleman and Long 2013). Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics “Beginning Postsecondary Survey,” we examined college completion rates among students in the United States who first entered college in 2003 and were followed through 2009.17 The data show that grant aid is associated with higher rates of baccalaureate completion, even after controlling for institutional characteristics and student characteristics such as high school grade point average and family income. And our analysis indicated that the effect of grant aid is fairly strong: Every standard deviation increase in grant aid is associated with a 6.7 percentage point increase in the likelihood of graduating within six years. Our findings are consistent with but slightly different from those of Franke (2014). Restricting his analysis to students first enrolling in four-year colleges, Franke found that the effect of grant aid depends on its source: For every $1,000 in grant aid, federal aid (mostly Pell Grants) led to a 2.5 to 2.8 percent increase in degree attainment, state need-based aid led to a 2.4 to 2.6 percent increase, and institutional aid led to a 1.3 to 1.6 percent increase in degree attainment.18
Removing speech codes causes public colleges to lose federal funding under Title IX
Bernstein 3 (David E. Bernstein – George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law with a focus on constitutional history, “You Can’t Say That: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties From Antidiscrimination Laws”, “Censoring Campus Speech”, https://books.google.com/books?id=zU2QAAAAQBAJandpg=PA60andlpg=PA60anddq=public+colleges+could+lose+funding+if+they+allow+for+racistsandsource=blandots=W67N5E3bznandsig=xXeBW8YaTy_Ilb34MIbu-grciy4andhl=enandsa=Xandved=0ahUKEwiBoqTkn_nQAhVBjFQKHcc7CIkQ6AEITDAI#v=onepageandq=public20colleges20could20lose20funding20if20they20allow20for20racistsandf=false, pg. 60-61, EmmieeM)
Given these constitutional barriers, public university speech codes were on the way out until the federal Department of Education revived them in 1994. Male students at Santa Rosa Community College had posted anatomically explicit and sexually derogatory remarks about two female students in a discussion group hosted by the college's computer network.’ Several aggrieved students filed a complaint against the college with the WE's Office for Civil Rights. The DOE found that the messages probably created a hostile educational environment on the basis of sex for one of the students. University toleration of such offensive speech, the government added, would violate Title IX, the law banning discrimination against women by educational institutions that receive federal funding. Under this standard, to avoid losing federal funds, universities must proactively ban offensive speech by students and diligently punish any violations of that ban. The DOE failed to explain how its rule was consistent with the First Amendment. Speech codes enacted by public universities clearly violate the First Amendment even if the codes are enacted in response to the demands of the DOE, so requiring public universities to enact speech codes or forfeit public funds would obviously be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, facing this choice. public university officials have ignored the First Amendment issue and complied with DOE guidelines. Although a few schools may truly be concerned about the potential loss of federal funding, the prevailing attitude among university officials seems to be that the DOE's Santa Rosa decision provides a ready excuse to indulge their preference for speech codes. University officials implicitly reason that if the DOE can get away with ignoring the First Amendment, then so can they. Unfortunately, they may be right.

Federal funding is used to maintain financial aid resources – state funding is declining
Pew 15 (The Pew Charitable Trusts – compiles evidence and non-partisan analysis to inform the public and create better public policy, “Federal and State Funding of Higher Education: A Changing Landscape”, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2015/06/federal-and-state-funding-of-higher-education, EmmieeM)
States and the federal government have long provided substantial funding for higher education, but changes in recent years have resulted in their contributions being more equal than at any time in at least the previous two decades. Historically, states have provided a far greater amount of assistance to postsecondary institutions and students; 65 percent more than the federal government on average from 1987 to 2012. But this difference narrowed dramatically in recent years, particularly since the Great Recession, as state spending declined and federal investments grew sharply, largely driven by increases in the Pell Grant program, a need-based financial aid program that is the biggest component of federal higher education spending. Although their funding streams for higher education are now comparable in size and have some overlapping policy goals, such as increasing access for students and supporting research, federal and state governments channel resources into the system in different ways. The federal government mainly provides financial assistance to individual students and specific research projects, while state funds primarily pay for the general operations of public institutions.

Education promotes global competitiveness, power, and a more productive world
Duncan 10 – Arne Duncan is an American education administrator who has been United States Secretary of Education since 2009, 2010 (“The Vision of Education Reform in the United States: Secretary Arne Duncan's Remarks to United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO),” Paris, France, Department of Education, 11-4-2010, available online via http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/vision-education-reform-united-states-secretary-arne-duncans-remarks-united-nations-educational-scientific-and-cultural-organization-unesco-paris-france, accessed on 7-8-2015)CM
It is an absolute honor to address UNESCO. During the last 65 years, UNESCO has done so much to advance the cause of education and gender equity, alleviate poverty, and promote peace. When UNESCO was founded in 1945, much of Europe, Russia, and Japan lay in ruin. The promise of universal education was then a lonely beacon—a light to guide the way to peace and the rebuilding of nations across the globe. Today, the world is no longer recovering from a tragic global war. Yet the international community faces a crisis of a different sort, the global economic crisis. And education is still the beacon lighting the path forward—perhaps more so today than ever before. Education is still the key to eliminating gender inequities, to reducing poverty, to creating a sustainable planet, and to fostering peace. And in a knowledge economy, education is the new currency by which nations maintain economic competitiveness and global prosperity. I want to provide two overarching messages today about America's efforts to boost educational attainment and achievement. First, the Obama administration has an ambitious and unified theory of action that propels our agenda. The challenge of transforming education in America cannot be met by quick-fix solutions or isolated reforms. It can only be accomplished with a clear, coherent, and coordinated vision of reform. Second, while America must improve its stagnant educational and economic performance, President Obama and I reject the protectionist Cold War-era assumption that improving economic competitiveness is somehow a zero-sum game, with one nation's gain being another country's loss. I want to make the case to you today that enhancing educational attainment and economic viability, both at home and abroad, is really more of a win-win game; it is an opportunity to grow the economic pie, instead of carve it up. As President Obama said in his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last year, "Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail." There is so much that the United States has to learn from nations with high-performing education systems. And there is so much that America can share from its experience to the mutual benefit of nations confronting similar educational challenges. I am convinced that the U.S. education system now has an unprecedented opportunity to get dramatically better. Nothing—nothing—is more important in the long-run to American prosperity than boosting the skills and attainment of the nation's students. In the United States, we feel an economic and moral imperative to challenge the status quo. Closing the achievement gap and closing the opportunity gap is the civil rights issue of our generation. One quarter of U.S. high school students drop out or fail to graduate on time. Almost one million students leave our schools for the streets each year. That is economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable. One of the more unusual and sobering press conferences I participated in last year was the release of a report by a group of top retired generals and admirals. Here was the stunning conclusion of their report: 75 percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record, or are physically unfit. Now, everyone here today knows that education is taking on more and more importance around the globe. In the last decade, international competition in higher education and the job market has grown dramatically. As the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman famously pointed out, the world economy has indeed "flattened." Companies now digitize, automate, and outsource work to the most competitive individuals, companies, and countries. In the knowledge economy, opportunities to land a good job are vanishing fast for young workers who drop out of school or fail to get college experience. That is why President Obama often says that the nation that "out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow." Yet there is also a paradox at the heart of America's efforts to bolster international competitiveness. To succeed in the global economy, the United States, just like other nations, will have to become both more economically competitive and more collaborative. In the information age, more international competition has spawned more international collaboration. Today, education is a global public good unconstrained by national boundaries. In the United States, for example, concerns are sometimes raised about the large number of foreign-born students earning masters and doctorates in science and engineering fields. Immigrants now constitute nearly half of America's PhD scientists and engineers, even though they constitute only 12 percent of the workforce overall. These foreign-born students more often return to the country of origin than in the past. But their scientific skills and entrepreneurship strengthen not only their native economy but also stimulate innovation and new markets that can help boost the U.S. economy. The same borderless nature of innovation and ideas is evident when foreign-born students remain in America. Immigrants to the U.S. started a quarter of all engineering and technology companies from 1995 and 2005, including half of the start-ups in Silicon Valley, our high-tech capital. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, was born in Moscow but educated in the United States. Google is now used throughout the globe to gather information and advance knowledge. The brain drain, in short, has become the brain gain. It is no surprise that economic interdependence brings new global challenges and educational demands. The United States cannot, acting by itself, dramatically reduce poverty and disease or develop sustainable sources of energy. America alone cannot combat terrorism or curb climate change. To succeed, we must collaborate with other countries. Those new partnerships require American students to develop better critical thinking abilities, cross-cultural understanding, and facility in multiple languages. They also will require U.S. students to strengthen their skills in science, technology, engineering, and math—the STEM fields that anchor much of our innovation in the global economy. These new partnerships must also inspire students to take a bigger and deeper view of their civic obligations—not only to their countries of origin but to the betterment of the global community. A just and socially responsible society must also be anchored in civic engagement for the public good. In our view, the United States will be better off, in comparative terms, if we lead the world in educational attainment, rather than lagging behind. A generation ago, America did in fact lead the world in college attainment. But today among young adults, the U.S. is tied for ninth. That is why President Obama has set a goal that America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020, a decade from now. Yet even as the United States works to strengthen its educational system, it is important to remember that advancing educational attainment and achievement everywhere brings benefits not just to the U.S. but around the globe. In the knowledge economy, education is the new game-changer driving economic growth. Education, as Nelson Mandela says, "is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."From Indonesia to Pakistan to Kenya, education has immeasurable power to promote growth and stability. It is absolutely imperative that the United States seize the opportunity to help Haiti build a stronger school system from the ruins of its old, broken one—just as America coalesced to build a fast-improving, vibrant school system in New Orleans after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. From devastation, beautiful flowers can grow—crisis can seed opportunities for transformational change. In 2001, Afghanistan had barely 900,000 boys in school. They now have almost seven million children in schools, almost 40 percent of whom are girls. Dramatic change can happen in a short period of time. It just requires the commitment to succeed. Educating girls and integrating them into the labor force is especially critical to breaking the cycle of poverty. It is hard to imagine a better world without a global commitment to providing better education for women and youth—including the 72 million children who do not attend primary school today. And don't forget that a better-educated world would be a safer world, too. Low educational attainment is one of the few statistically significant predictors of violence. My department has been pleased to partner with the U.S. Agency for International Development to help ensure that our best domestic practices are shared world-wide. The United States provides over a billion dollars annually to partner countries working on educational reform. Our goal for the coming year will be to work closely with global partners, including UNESCO, to promote qualitative improvements and system-strengthening. With such a shared commitment, we believe that we can greatly reduce the number of children out of school and ensure that the children who are in class are actually learning. Ultimately, education is the great equalizer. It is the one force that can consistently overcome differences in background, culture, and privilege. As the author Ben Wildavsky writes in his new book, The Great Brain Race, in the global economy "more and more people will have the chance... to advance based on what they know rather than who they are."

economic collapse causes competition for resources and instability that escalates and goes nuclear
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.

Tournament: Loyola Invitational | Round: 2 | Opponent: La Reina AC | Judge: John Overing
Nuclear power is critical to stop catastrophic warming ¶ Waldman 15 - Susanne, PhD in Risk Communication at Carleton University (“Why we Need Nuclear Power to Save the Environment” http://energyforhumanity.org/climate-energy/need-nuclear-power-save-environment/) RMT ¶ The idea we might need nuclear power to save the environment may have seen farfetched thirty years ago, at the height of the anti-nuclear movement. But it’s an idea that more and more scientists of all stripes as well as energy experts and even environmentalists are coming to share.¶ Last month, 75 biodiversity scientists signed an open letter imploring the environmental and conservation communities to rethink “idealistic” opposition to nuclear energy, given the threats to global ecosystems set in motion by climate change. This open letter follows in the wake of another published a year ago in the New York Times by climate scientists with a similar message: “there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power.”¶ These scientists who study the earth and the life on it are concerned it is too risky to rely solely on wind, solar and other so-called “green” power to replace fossil fuels, which are still the fastest growing energy sources by a long shot. As these scientists point out, renewable power sources would require enormous amounts of land, materials, and money to meet the world’s current and growing energy needs.¶ Wind and solar power are especially problematic because they are intermittent and can’t be dispatched to match demand. While the quest is on for grid storage options, there has not yet been a significant storage breakthrough, and any contribution it ends up making may only be modest.¶ In the meantime other power sources that can run full time are required to take up the slack. Options for doing so are limited to fossil fuels, biomass that is comparatively bulky and limited in scale, hydro power that is largely tapped out in some places, and nuclear power. The advantage of nuclear power is there is no shortage of suitable sites and it is the most low-footprint form of power generation, taking into account land use, materials, carbon footprint, and fuel density.¶ History has shown the most effective way to replace fossil fuel power over a 15-year-period is to build up nuclear. Ontarians, who rely on nuclear plants to deliver roughly three-fifths of our power every day, and have become coal-free, know this. So do people in France, where nuclear energy supplies around three quarters of power needs.¶ The problem is that as a complex form of technology, nuclear plants are relatively pricey to build. Few have been constructed of late in the Western world, during an era of cheap coal and gas, liberalized energy markets, cash-strapped governments, and hyped-up renewables. Experienced work forces who can put them up quickly have become hard to assemble on the fly.¶ These patterns can alter, though, as people come to recognize that once nuclear plants are up they can churn out steady carbon-free power for over half a century. Moreover the power they provide is typically quite cheap and not sensitive to fuel price volatility.¶ There’s an unquestionable scientific consensus about warming. ¶ Nuccitelli 16 — Dana Nuccitelli, Climate Writer for the Guardian, Environmental Scientist at Tetra Tech—a private environmental consulting firm, holds an M.A. in Physics from the University of California-Davis and a B.A. in Astrophysics from the University of California-Berkeley, 2016 (“It’s settled: 90–100 of climate experts agree on human-caused global warming,” Climate Consensus – The 97—a Guardian blog about climate change, April 13th, Available Online at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/13/its-settled-90100-of-climate-experts-agree-on-human-caused-global-warming, Accessed 07-15-2016)¶ There is an overwhelming expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming.¶ Authors of seven previous climate consensus studies — including Naomi Oreskes, Peter Doran, William Anderegg, Bart Verheggen, Ed Maibach, J. Stuart Carlton, John Cook, myself, and six of our colleagues — have co-authored a new paper that should settle this question once and for all. The two key conclusions from the paper are:¶ 1) Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90 and 100 that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97 consensus among publishing climate scientists.¶ 2) The greater the climate expertise among those surveyed, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming.¶ Graphic Omitted¶ Expert consensus is a powerful thing. People know we don’t have the time or capacity to learn about everything, and so we frequently defer to the conclusions of experts. It’s why we visit doctors when we’re ill. The same is true of climate change: most people defer to the expert consensus of climate scientists. Crucially, as we note in our paper:¶ Public perception of the scientific consensus has been found to be a gateway belief, affecting other climate beliefs and attitudes including policy support.¶ That’s why those who oppose taking action to curb climate change have engaged in a misinformation campaign to deny the existence of the expert consensus. They’ve been largely successful, as the public badly underestimate the expert consensus, in what we call the “consensus gap.” Only 12 of Americans realize that the consensus is above 90.¶ Video Omitted¶ Consensus misrepresentations¶ Our latest paper was written in response to a critique published by Richard Tol in Environmental Research Letters, commenting on the 2013 paper published in the same journal by John Cook, myself, and colleagues finding a 97 consensus on human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature.¶ Tol argues that when considering results from previous consensus studies, the Cook 97 figure is an outlier, which he claims is much higher than most other climate consensus estimates. He makes this argument by looking at sub-samples from previous surveys. For example, Doran’s 2009 study broke down the survey data by profession – the consensus was 47 among economic geologists, 64 among meteorologists, 82 among all Earth scientists, and 97 among publishing climate scientists. The lower the climate expertise in each group, the lower the consensus.¶ Graph Omitted¶ Like several of these consensus surveys, Doran cast a wide net and included responses from many non-experts, but among the experts, the consensus is consistently between 90 and 100. However, by including the non-expert samples, it’s possible to find low “consensus” values.¶ The flaw in this approach is especially clear when we consider the most ridiculous sub-sample included in Tol’s critique: Verheggen’s 2015 study included a grouping of predominantly non-experts who were “unconvinced” by human-caused global warming, among whom the consensus was 7. The only surprising thing about this number is that more than zero of those “unconvinced” by human-caused global warming agree that humans are the main cause of global warming. In his paper, Tol included this 7 “unconvinced,” non-expert sub-sample as a data point in his argument that the 97 consensus result is unusually high.¶ By breaking out all of these sub-samples of non-experts, the critique thus misrepresented a number of previous consensus studies in an effort to paint our 97 result as an outlier. The authors of those misrepresented studies were not impressed with this approach, denouncing the misrepresentations of their work in no uncertain terms. ¶ We subsequently collaborated with those authors in this newly-published scholarly response, bringing together an all-star lineup of climate consensus experts. The following quote from the paper sums up our feelings about the critique’s treatment of our research:¶ Tol’s (2016) conflation of unrepresentative non-expert sub-samples and samples of climate experts is a misrepresentation of the results of previous studies, including those published by a number of coauthors of this paper.¶ Consensus on consensus¶ In our paper, we show that including non-experts is the only way to argue for a consensus below 90–100. The greater the climate expertise among those included in the survey sample, the higher the consensus on human-caused global warming. Similarly, if you want to know if you need open heart surgery, you’ll get much more consistent answers (higher consensus) if you only ask cardiologists than if you also survey podiatrists, neurologists, and dentists.¶ That’s because, as we all know, expertise matters. It’s easy to manufacture a smaller non-expert “consensus” number and argue that it contradicts the 97 figure. As our new paper shows, when you ask the climate experts, the consensus on human-caused global warming is between 90 and 100, with several studies finding 97 consensus among publishing climate scientists.¶ There’s some variation in the percentage, depending on exactly how the survey is done and how the question is worded, but ultimately it’s still true that there’s a 97 consensus in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on human-caused global warming. In fact, even Richard Tol has agreed:¶ The consensus is of course in the high nineties.¶ Is the consensus 97 or 99.9?¶ In fact, some believe our 97 consensus estimate was too low. These claims are usually based on an analysis done by James Powell, and the difference simply boils down to how “consensus” is defined. Powell evaluated the percentage of papers that don’t explicitly reject human-caused global warming in their abstracts. That includes 99.83 of papers published between 1991 and 2012, and 99.96 of papers published in 2013.¶ In short, 97 of peer-reviewed climate research that states a position on human-caused warming endorses the consensus, and about 99.9 of the total climate research doesn’t explicitly reject human-caused global warming. Our two analyses simply answer different questions. The percentage of experts and their research that endorse the theory is a better description of “consensus.” However, Powell’s analysis is useful in showing how few peer-reviewed scientific papers explicitly reject human-caused global warming.¶ In any case, there’s really no question that humans are the driving force causing global warming. The experts are almost universally convinced because the scientific evidence is overwhelming. Denying the consensus by misrepresenting the research won’t change that reality.¶ With all of the consensus authors teaming up to show the 90–100 expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and most finding 97 consensus among publishing climate scientists, this paper should be the final word on the subject.¶ Global warming definitively causes extinction¶ Sharp and Kennedy 14 – (Associate Professor Robert (Bob) A. Sharp is the UAE National Defense College Associate Dean for Academic Programs and College Quality Assurance Advisor. He previously served as Assistant Professor of Strategic Security Studies at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) in the U.S. National Defense University (NDU), Washington D.C. and then as Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia (NESA) Center for Strategic Studies, collocated with NDU. Most recently at NESA, he focused on security sector reform in Yemen and Lebanon, and also supported regional security engagement events into Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and Qatar; Edward Kennedy is a renewable energy and climate change specialist who has worked for the World Bank and the Spanish Electric Utility ENDESA on carbon policy and markets; 8/22/14, “Climate Change and Implications for National Security,” International Policy Digest, http://intpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climate-change-implications-national-security/, Accessed 7/11/16, HWilson)¶ Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. If that whole time was to be reflected on a single one-year calendar then the dinosaurs died off sometime late in the afternoon of December 27th and modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago, or at around lunchtime on December 28th. Therefore, human life on earth is very recent. Sometime on December 28th humans made the first fires – wood fires – neutral in the carbon balance. ¶ Now reflect on those most recent 200,000 years again on a single one-year calendar and you might be surprised to learn that the industrial revolution began only a few hours ago during the middle of the afternoon on December 31st, 250 years ago, coinciding with the discovery of underground carbon fuels. ¶ Over the 250 years carbon fuels have enabled tremendous technological advances including a population growth from about 800 million then to 7.5 billion today and the consequent demand to extract even more carbon. This has occurred during a handful of generations, which is hardly noticeable on our imaginary one-year calendar. The release of this carbon – however – is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies imagination that so much damage has been done in such a relatively short time. The implications of climate change is the single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the damage. ¶ This relatively very recent ability to change our climate is an inconvenient truth; the science is sound. We know of the complex set of interrelated national and global security risks that are a result of global warming and the velocity at which climate change is occurring. We worry it may already be too late. ¶ Climate change writ large has informed few, interested some, confused many, and polarized politics. It has already led to an increase in natural disasters including but not limited to droughts, storms, floods, fires etc. The year 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to an American Meteorological Society (AMS) report. Research suggests that climate change is already affecting human displacement; reportedly 36 million people were displaced in 2008 alone because of sudden natural disasters. Figures for 2010 and 2011 paint a grimmer picture of people displaced because of rising sea levels, heat and storms. ¶ Climate change affects all natural systems. It impacts temperature and consequently it affects water and weather patterns. It contributes to desertification, deforestation and acidification of the oceans. Changes in weather patterns may mean droughts in one area and floods in another. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, sea levels rise but perennial river water supplies are reduced because glaciers are retreating. ¶ As glaciers and polar ice caps melt, there is an albedo effect, which is a double whammy of less temperature regulation because of less surface area of ice present. This means that less absorption occurs and also there is less reflection of the sun’s light. A potentially critical wild card could be runaway climate change due to the release of methane from melting tundra. Worldwide permafrost soils contain about 1,700 Giga Tons of carbon, which is about four times more than all the carbon released through human activity thus far. ¶ The planet has already adapted itself to dramatic climate change including a wide range of distinct geologic periods and multiple extinctions, and at a pace that it can be managed. It is human intervention that has accelerated the pace dramatically: An increased surface temperature, coupled with more severe weather and changes in water distribution will create uneven threats to our agricultural systems and will foster and support the spread of insect borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue and the West Nile virus. Rising sea levels will increasingly threaten our coastal population and infrastructure centers and with more than 3.5 billion people – half the planet – depending on the ocean for their primary source of food, ocean acidification may dangerously undercut critical natural food systems which would result in reduced rations. ¶ Climate change also carries significant inertia. Even if emissions were completely halted today, temperature increases would continue for some time. Thus the impact is not only to the environment, water, coastal homes, agriculture and fisheries as mentioned, but also would lead to conflict and thus impact national security. Resource wars are inevitable as countries respond, adapt and compete for the shrinking set of those available resources. These wars have arguably already started and will continue in the future because climate change will force countries to act for national survival; the so-called Climate Wars. ¶ As early as 2003 Greenpeace alluded to a report which it claimed was commissioned by the Pentagon titled: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security. It painted a picture of a world in turmoil because global warming had accelerated. The scenario outlined was both abrupt and alarming. The report offered recommendations but backed away from declaring climate change an immediate problem, concluding that it would actually be more incremental and measured; as such it would be an irritant, not a shock for national security systems. ¶ In 2006 the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – Institute of Public Research – convened a board of 11 senior retired generals and admirals to assess National Security and the Threat to Climate Change. Their initial report was published in April 2007 and made no mention of the potential acceleration of climate change. The team found that climate change was a serious threat to national security and that it was: “most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism.” The team made recommendations from their analysis of regional impacts which suggested the following. Europe would experience some fracturing because of border migration. Africa would need more stability and humanitarian operations provided by the United States. The Middle East would experience a “loss of food and water security (which) will increase pressure to emigrate across borders.” Asia would suffer from “threats to water and the spread of infectious disease. ” In 2009 the CIA opened a Center on Climate Change and National Security to coordinate across the intelligence community and to focus policy. ¶ In May 2014, CNA again convened a Military Advisory Board but this time to assess National Security and the Accelerating Risk of Climate Change. The report concludes that climate change is no longer a future threat but occurring right now and the authors appeal to the security community, the entire government and the American people to not only build resilience against projected climate change impacts but to form agreements to stabilize climate change and also to integrate climate change across all strategy and planning. The calm of the 2007 report is replaced by a tone of anxiety concerning the future coupled with calls for public discourse and debate because “time and tide wait for no man.” ¶ The report notes a key distinction between resilience (mitigating the impact of climate change) and agreements (ways to stabilize climate change) and states that: ¶ Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change. ¶ The 9/11 Report framed the terrorist attacks as less of a failure of intelligence than a failure of imagination. Greenpeace’s 2003 account of the Pentagon’s alleged report describes a coming climate Armageddon which to readers was unimaginable and hence the report was not really taken seriously. It described: ¶ A world thrown into turmoil by drought, floods, typhoons. Whole countries rendered uninhabitable. The capital of the Netherlands submerged. The borders of the U.S. and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland backed up with nuclear weapons. ¶ The CNA and Greenpeace/Pentagon reports are both mirrored by similar analysis by the World Bank which highlighted not only the physical manifestations of climate change, but also the significant human impacts that threaten to unravel decades of economic development, which will ultimately foster conflict. ¶ Climate change is the quintessential “Tragedy of the Commons,” where the cumulative impact of many individual actions (carbon emission in this case) is not seen as linked to the marginal gains available to each individual action and not seen as cause and effect. It is simultaneously huge, yet amorphous and nearly invisible from day to day. It is occurring very fast in geologic time terms, but in human time it is (was) slow and incremental. Among environmental problems, it is uniquely global. With our planet and culture figuratively and literally honeycombed with a reliance on fossil fuels, we face systemic challenges in changing the reliance across multiple layers of consumption, investment patterns, and political decisions; it will be hard to fix!