Tournament: UGA | Round: 2 | Opponent:  | Judge:
1nc 1
Text: the fifty state governments of the United States should substantially increase the available funding for the nuclear loan guarantee program.
States solves upfront capital costs of nuclear power
Yanosek 12 (Kassia, Entrepreneur-in-Residence – Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, “Financing Nuclear Power in the US,” Stanford Energy Journal, Spring, http://energyclub.stanford.edu/index.php/Journal/Financing_Nuclear_Power_by_Kassia_Yanosek)
Furthermore, capital costs are inherently high, ranging in the billions or tens of billions of dollars, and are compounded by financing charges during long construction times. Without government support, financing nuclear is currently not possible in the capital markets.  Recently, Constellation Energy and NRG separately pulled the plug on new multi-billion dollar plants, citing financing problems. Projects, however, will get done on a one-off basis. Southern Company’s Vogtle Plant in Eastern Georgia is likely to be the sponsor of the first new generation to be constructed, taking advantage of local regulatory and federal support. Two new reactors of next-generation technology are in the permitting stage, which will bring online 2,200 megawatts (MW) of new capacity, and will cost $14 billion. The project will take advantage of tax credits and loan guarantees provided in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. What is the ideal financial structure for funding new nuclear generation? The simplest answer is “through the rate base.” This is typically accomplished by state-level legislation which allows utilities to pass the construction costs through to the ratepayers. The ideal mechanism, which exists in a few states, allows the utility to raise rates during plant construction and adjust rates periodically for delays or cost overruns. However, this structure is not possible in most markets. California, for example, has a moratorium where utilities are not legislatively authorized to recover rates for nuclear development. And even with a regulated territory, utilities often require additional financing to raise sufficient up-front funds for construction or to mitigate risks in markets where cost recovery through the rate base is not assured. Another option, which could be a complementary solution, is a project finance model, in which debt is raised at the project level and backstopped by long-term contracts with creditworthy parties.  Even this would be complex, since project financing would require finding a suite of investors willing to take on the different risk/return profiles that exist at different stages of the project. In addition, federal and/or state-based financial support designed specifically for nuclear would still be critical.
And – the signal is the same
Bickers 8 (Richard, Editor – NPO, quarterly journal published by the Nuclear Energy Institute, “The Trickle-Up Effect,” Nuclear Policy Outlook, Second Quarter, www.nei.org/filefolder/Outlook_June.pdf)
States Put Singular Stamp on Energy Policy—With National Implications Spurred by federal legislation and public concern about energy costs, electricity supply and environmental issues, the pace of state and local government activity on energy policy in general— and nuclear power in particular—has skyrocketed in the past few years. Energy, environmental and economic concerns are coalescing, and states are taking action. “For most people, the federal government seems too removed from their daily lives,” said Del. Sally Jameson (D), a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 2003. Her district straddles the nation’s capital and Calvert County, Md., home to Constellation Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant. “Most people look to the state for policy. They know us one-on-one and state policy directly affects their lives. “The federal government is so huge that they believe they will get lost in it. At the state level,” she noted, “their voices are heard.” Looking to the future, the United States must maintain at least the current 30 percent share of non-emitting electric generating capacity if it is to meet its clean-air goals. Even with conservative assumptions about increases in electricity demand and a doubling of renewable energy production, the United States faces a challenge to maintain its current proportion of carbon-free electricity production. A substantial increase in nuclear energy is essential. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which incorporated a wide range of measures to support current nuclear plants and provided important incentives for building new nuclear plants, reflects a national commitment to carbon-free energy sources. The legislation includes investment incentives to encourage construction of new nuclear plants, including production tax credits, loan guarantees and business risk protection for companies pursuing the first new reactors. Now, states are linking environment and energy in the policy calculus. “The view is that when the federal government isn’t taking the lead, the legislatures need to step up to the plate,” said Melissa Savage, program director for the Agriculture, Energy and Environmental Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). States are “repealing moratoriums, holding committee session study hearings, looking at changing regulations, and just getting the conversation started in some cases,” she noted. “We’re facing a pretty critical energy crunch in the country. The issue is starting to bubble back up,” Savage said. “In some states, it never went away.” Ten states have passed policies instituting some form of cost recovery assurance for nuclear plant construction. Three states have introduced and one has passed legislation requiring that nuclear energy be included in some form of clean or alternative energy portfolio. Six of the 13 states with moratoriums preventing new nuclear plants are considering removing those bans. Two states have passed local tax incentives for nuclear plants. For Maryland’s Jameson, the link between environmental and energy policy is a driving factor in policy formulation. “We are nearly surrounded by water in Maryland,” she said, pointing to the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean and a network of rivers. “We are doing everything we can to limit harm to our waterways and environment because of climate change and global warming.” The state has taken a “fairly proactive approach” to addressing both environmental and energy issues in the face of a Maryland Public Service Commission warning that electricity customers could face power restrictions or rolling blackouts as early as 2011, she said. STATES AS POLICY LABORATORIES “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1932. Historically, state and local governments have led the way on issues as varied as child labor, the environment and social reform. And state governments indeed are serving as laboratories in the development of policy supporting nuclear energy. One such policy is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a cooperative effort by 10 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Participating states have agreed to implement RGGI through a regional cap-andtrade program whereby participating states anticipate auctioning nearly the entire annual regional emissions budget, approximately 188 million tons of carbon dioxide. Each ton of carbon dioxide will constitute an “allowance.” The multi-state agreement treats all carbon-free sources of electricity, such as nuclear energy and renewables, equally in the framework for awarding monetary credits for greenhouse gas reduction. The RGGI states have agreed to participate in regional auctions for the allowances, beginning this September. Officials have scheduled a second auction in December.

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Immigration will pass now and it’s top of the docket
Helderman 1-25 Rosalind S. Helderman and David Nakamura, Wash Post, 1/25/13, “Senators nearing agreement on broad immigration reform proposal”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-nearing-agreement-on-broad-immigration-reform-proposal/2013/01/25/950fb78a-6642-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html
A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward comprehensive legislation in years. The six members have met quietly since the November election, most recently on Wednesday. Congressional aides stressed there is not yet final agreement, but they have eyed next Friday as a target date for a possible public announcement. The talks mark the most in-depth negotiations involving members of both parties since a similar effort broke down in 2010 without producing a bill. “We have basic agreement on many of the core principles,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the group, said this week. “Now we have to draft it. It takes time.” “The group we’ve been meeting with — and it’s equal number of Democrats and Republicans — we’re real close,” added Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), another member of the group. The accelerated pace signals that immigration reform is expected to be one of Congress’s highest priorities, and it comes as the White House prepares to launch its own public campaign on the issue. President Obama will travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday to speak about the need to “fix the broken immigration system this year,” the administration announced, an appearance in a state with a rapidly growing number of Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly supported his reelection. Obama also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Friday, and aides said he vowed that immigration will be his “top priority.” “What has been absent in the time since he put principles forward is a willingness by Republicans to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. “He hopes that dynamic has changed and there are indications what was once a bipartisan effort to push forward. . .will again be a bipartisan effort to do so.” Past efforts begun amid similarly high hopes have sputtered. But members of both parties increasingly see changes to the nation’s troubled immigration system as an area most likely to draw bipartisan agreement at a time when Congress is deeply divided on gun control, spending and taxes. The optimism is spurred by the sense that the political dynamics have shifted markedly since the last two significant bipartisan efforts failed. In 2007, a bill crafted in the Senate died after failing to win support of 60 members despite backing from then-president George W. Bush. Many Republicans, and some centrist Democrats, opposed that effort because it offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In 2010, extended negotiations between Schumer and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) broke down without producing legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a veteran of the 2007 effort who is part of the current working group, said Republican attitudes have dramatically shifted since the party’s defeat at the polls in November. Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote among Latinos and Asians, and a growing number of GOP leaders believe action on immigration is necessary to expand the party’s appeal to minority groups. “Obviously, it’s had a very distinct impression,” said McCain, who lost his own bid for the White House in 2008. “It’s time to move forward on this.” But he added, “I don’t claim that it’s going to be easy.” Also included in the new Senate group are Schumer, who chairs the key Senate subcommittee where legislative action will begin; Graham; Robert Menendez (D-N.J.); and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Two others, Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), have also been involved in some talks. Their timetable would aim for a bill to be written by March or April and potentially considered for final passage in the Senate as early as the summer. Proponents believe adoption in the GOP-held House would be made easier with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate. The working group’s principles would address stricter border control, better employer verification of workers’ immigration status, new visas for temporary agriculture workers and expanding the number of visas available for skilled engineers. They would also include a call to help young people who were brought to the country illegally as children by their parents become citizens and to normalize the status of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. But obstacles abound. For instance, Rubio has said he believes immigrants who came to the country illegally should be able to earn a work permit. But he has said they should be required to seek citizenship through existing avenues, and only after those who have come to the country legally. Democrats and immigration advocates fear that approach could result in wait-times stretching for decades, creating a class of permanent legal residents for whom the benefits of citizenship appear unattainable. They have pushed to create new pathways to citizenship specifically available to those who achieve legal residency as part a reform effort. It is not yet clear if the Senate group will endorse a mechanism allowing such people to eventually become citizens — something Obama is expected to champion. Schumer said it would be “relatively detailed,” but would not “get down into the weeds.” A source close to Rubio said he joined the group in December at the request of other members only after they agreed their effort would line up with his own principles for reform, which he outlined in an interview with the Wall Street Journal three weeks ago. His ideas have since been embraced by conservatives, including some longtime foes of providing legal status to those who have come to the country illegally. As a possible 2016 presidential contender widely trusted on the right, Rubio’s support could be key to moving the bipartisan effort. And while Rubio and other Republicans have said they would prefer to split up a comprehensive immigration proposal into smaller bills that would be voted on separately, the White House will pursue comprehensive legislation that seeks to reform the process in a single bill. “I doubt if there will be a macro, comprehensive bill,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who supported the 2007 effort. “Anytime a bill’s more than 500 pages, people start getting suspicious. If it’s 2,000 pages, they go berserk.” But in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Republican Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, strongly supports a single comprehensive bill, writing that “Congress should avoid quick fixes.” Schumer said Friday that a single package will be key for passage. “We’ll not get it done in pieces,” he said. “Every time you do a piece, everyone says what about my piece and you get more people opposing it.” White House officials said they welcome the bipartisan Senate group’s deliberations and do not think it will conflict with the administration’s strategy. Some Democrats in the House, including Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), have cautioned that the White House could harm the bid for bipartisan support if it acts too aggressively by authoring its own legislative proposal. But advocates, who were disappointed that Obama did not follow through on comprehensive reform in his first term, said they expect the president to be out front on the issue. “The president needs to lead, and then the Republicans have a choice: Are they going to do what they did in the last term and just be obstructionists?” said Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which spent millions recruiting new Hispanic voters this year. “Well, that didn’t work too well in November. Do the Republicans want the president not to get the credit? The best way to share the credit is for them to step up and engage and act together with the president. But it’s their choice. ”
PC is key to immigration
Chris Weigant, Political writer, 1/23/13 “Handicapping Obama's Second Term Agenda,” HuffPost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/obama-second-term_b_2537802.html

The second big agenda item is immigration reform. President Obama holds virtually all the cards, politically, on this one. All Republicans who can read either demographics or polling numbers know full well that this may be their party's last chance not to go the way of the Whigs. Their support among Latinos is dismal, and even that's putting it politely. Some Republicans think they have come up with a perfect solution on how to defuse the issue, but they are going to be proven sadly mistaken in the end, I believe. The Republican plan will be announced by Senator Marco Rubio at some point, and it will seem to mirror the Democratic plan -- with one key difference. Republicans -- even the ones who know their party has to do something on the immigration problem -- are balking at including a "path to citizenship" for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already in America.¶ The Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it too -- and it's not going to work. "Sure," they say, "we'll give some sort of papers to these folks, let them stay, and even let them work... but there's no need to give them the hope of ever becoming a full citizen." This just isn't going to be good enough, though. There are essentially two things citizens can do which green card holders cannot: serve on juries, and vote. The Republicans are not worried about tainted juries, in case that's not clear enough.¶ Republicans will bend over backwards in an effort to convince Latinos that their proposal will work out just fine for everyone. Latinos, however, aren't stupid. They know that being denied any path to citizenship equals an effort to minimize their voice on the national political stage. Which is why, as I said, Obama holds all the cards in this fight. Because this is the one issue in his agenda which Republicans also have a big vested interest in making happen. Obama and the Democrats will, I believe, hold firm on their insistence on a path to citizenship, and I think a comprehensive immigration bill will likely pass some time this year, perhaps before the summer congressional break. The path to citizenship it includes will be long, expensive and difficult (Republicans will insist on at least that), but it will be there.¶ On gun control, I think Obama will win a partial victory. On immigration, I think he will win an almost-total victory. On global warming, however, he's going to be disappointed. In fact, I doubt -- no matter how much "bully pulpiting" Obama does -- that any bill will even appear out of a committee in either house of Congress. This will be seen as Obama's "overreach" -- a bridge too far for the current political climate. Anyone expecting big legislative action on global warming is very likely going to be massively disappointed, to put it quite bluntly. In fact, Obama will signal this in the next few months, as he approves the Keystone XL pipeline -- much to the dismay of a lot of his supporters.¶ Of course, I could be wrong about any or all of these predictions. I have no special knowledge of how things will work out in Congress in the immediate future. I'm merely making educated guesses about what Obama will be able to achieve in at least the first few years of his second term. Obama has a lot of political capital right now, but that could easily change soon. The House Republicans seem almost demoralized right now, and Obama has successfully splintered them and called their bluff on two big issues already -- but they could regroup and decide to block everything the White House wants, and damn the political consequences. Unseen issues will pop up both on the domestic and foreign policy stages, as they always do. But, for now, this is my take on how the next few years are going to play out in Washington. Time will tell whether I've been too optimistic or too pessimistic on any or all of Obama's main agenda items. We'll just have to wait and see.

Plan drains capital and causes an immediate fight
Szondy 12 (David, freelance writer -- Gizmag, 2-16, “Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?” http://www.gizmag.com/small-modular-nuclear-reactors/20860/)

The problem is that nuclear energy is the proverbial political hot potato - even in early days when the new energy source exploded onto the world scene. The tremendous amount of energy locked in the atom held the promise of a future like something out of a technological Arabian Nights. It would be a world where electricity was too cheap to meter, deserts would bloom, ships would circle the Earth on a lump of fuel the size of a baseball, planes would fly for months without landing, the sick would be healed and even cars would be atom powered. But though nuclear power did bring about incredible changes in our world, in its primary role, generating electricity for homes and industry, it ended up as less of a miracle and more of a very complicated way of boiling water.¶ Not only complicated, but expensive and potentially dangerous. Though hundreds of reactors were built all over the world and some countries, such as France, generate most of their electricity from it, nuclear power has faced continuing questions over cost, safety, waste disposal and proliferation. One hundred and four nuclear plants provide the United States with 20 percent of the nation's power, but a building permit hadn't been issued since 1978 with no new reactors coming on line since 1996 and after the uproar from the environmental movement after nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, it seemed unlikely that any more would ever be approved - until now. This fierce domestic opposition to nuclear power has caused many governments to take an almost schizophrenic stance regarding the atom.
Immigration solves Mexican state collapse
Gittelson ‘9 (Citation: 23 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics and Pub. Pol'y 115 2009 THE CENTRISTS AGAINST THE IDEOLOGUES: WHAT ARE THE FALSEHOODS THAT DIVIDE AMERICANS ON THE ISSUE OF COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM Robert Gittelson has been a garment manufacturer in the Los Angeles area for over twenty-five years. His wife, Patricia Gittelson, is an immigration attorney with offices in Van Nuys and Oxnard, California. Robert also works closely with Patricia on the administrative side of her immigration practice. Throughout his career, Mr. Gittelson has developed practical, first-hand experience in dealing with the immigration issues that are challenging our country today. 

In the alternative, should we fail to pass CIR, and instead opt to deport or force attrition on these millions of economic refugees through an enforcement-only approach to our current undocumented immigrant difficulties, what would be the net result? Forgetting for now the devastating effect on our own economy, and the worldwide reproach and loss of moral authority that we would frankly deserve should we act so callously and thoughtlessly, there is another important political imperative to our passing CIR that affects our national security, and the security and political stability of our neighbors in our hemisphere. That is the very real threat of communism and/or socialism. First of all, the primary reason why millions of undocumented economic refugees migrated to the United States is because the economies of their home countries were unable to support them. They escaped extreme poverty and oppression, and risked literally everything they had, including their lives and their freedom, to come to this country to try to work hard and support themselves and their families. Deporting our illegal immigrant population back to primarily Latin America would boost the communist and socialist movements in that part of our hemisphere, and if the anti-immigrationists only understood that fact, they might rethink their "line in the sand" position on what they insist on calling 'amnesty. Communism thrives where hope is lost. The economies of Latin American nations are struggling to barely reach a level of meager subsistence for the population that has remained at home; Mexico, for example, has already lost 14% of their able-bodied workers to U.S. migration.3" Without the billions of dollars in remissions from these nations' expatriates working in the United States that go back to help support their remaining family members, the economies of many of these countries, most of whom are in fact our allies, would certainly collapse, or at least deteriorate to dangerously unstable levels. The addition of millions of unemployed and frustrated deported people who would go to the end of the theoretical unemployment lines of these already devastated economies would surely cause massive unrest and anti-American sentiment. The issue of Comprehensive Immigration Reform is not simply a domestic issue. In our modern global economy, everything that we do, as the leaders of that global economy, affects the entire world, and most especially our region of the world. If we were to naively initiate actions that would lead to the destabilization of the Mexican and many Central and South American governments, while at the same time causing serious harm to our own economy (but I digress ... ), it would most assuredly lead to disastrous economic and political consequences. By the way, I'm not simply theorizing here. In point of fact, over the past few years, eight countries in Latin America have elected leftist leaders. Just last year, Guatemala swore in their first leftist president in more than fifty years, Alvaro Colom.3" He joins a growing list. Additional countries besides Guatemala, Venezuela,32 and Nicaragua33 that have sworn in extreme left wing leaders in Latin America recently include Brazil,34 Argentina,3 5 Bolivia,36 Ecuador,37 and Uruguay.3s This phenomenon is not simply a coincidence; it is a trend. The political infrastructure of Mexico is under extreme pressure from the left.39 Do we really want a leftist movement on our southern border? If our political enemies such as the communists Chavez in Venezuela and Ortega in Nicaragua are calling the shots in Latin America, what kind of cooperation can we expect in our battle to secure our southern border?
Nuclear war
Bernd Debusmann, 9/1/2009, “Among top U.S. fears: A failed Mexican state”,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/world/americas/09iht-letter.1.19217792.html?_r=1

WASHINGTON — What do Pakistan and Mexico have in common? They figure in the nightmares of U.S. military planners trying to peer into the future and identify the next big threats. The two countries are mentioned in the same breath in a just-published study by the United States Joint Forces Command, whose jobs include providing an annual look into the future to prevent the U.S. military from being caught off guard by unexpected developments. "In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico," says the study - called Joint Operating Environment 2008 - in a chapter on "weak and failing states." Such states, it says, usually pose chronic, long-term problems that can be managed over time. But the little-studied phenomenon of "rapid collapse," according to the study, "usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems." Think Yugoslavia and its disintegration in 1990 into a chaotic tangle of warring nationalities and bloodshed on a horrific scale. Nuclear-armed Pakistan, where Al Qaeda has established safe havens in the rugged regions bordering Afghanistan, is a regular feature in dire warnings. Thomas Fingar, who retired as the chief U.S. intelligence analyst in December, termed Pakistan "one of the single most challenging places on the planet."This is fairly routine language for Pakistan, but not for Mexico, which shares a 2,000-mile, or 3,200-kilometer, border with the United States. Mexico's mention beside Pakistan in a study by an organization as weighty as the Joint Forces Command, which controls almost all conventional forces based in the continental United States, speaks volumes about growing concern over what is happening south of the U.S. border. Vicious and widening violence pitting drug cartels against each other and against the Mexican state have left more than 8,000 Mexicans dead over the past two years. Kidnappings have become a routine part of Mexican daily life. Common crime is widespread. Pervasive corruption has hollowed out the state. In November, in a case that shocked even those (on both sides of the border) who consider corruption endemic in Mexico, the former drug czar Noé Ramírez was charged with accepting at least $450,000 a month in bribes from a drug cartel in exchange for information about police and anti-narcotics operations. A month later, a Mexican army major, Arturo González, was arrested on suspicion that he sold information about President Felipe Calderón's movements for $100,000 a month. González belonged to a special unit responsible for protecting the president. Depending on one's view, the arrests are successes in a publicly declared anticorruption drive or evidence of how deeply criminal mafias have penetrated the organs of the state. According to the Joint Forces study, a sudden collapse in Mexico is less likely than in Pakistan, "but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state." It added: "Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." What form such a response might take is anyone's guess, and the study does not spell it out, nor does it address the economic implications of its worst-case scenario. Mexico is the third biggest trade partner of the United States (after Canada and China) and its third-biggest supplier of oil (after Canada and Saudi Arabia). No such ties bind the United States and Pakistan. But the study sees a collapse there not only as more likely but as more catastrophic. It would bring "the likelihood of a sustained violent and bloody civil and sectarian war, an even bigger haven for violent extremists and the question of what would happen to its nuclear weapons. That 'perfect storm' of uncertainty alone might require the engagement of U.S. and coalition forces into a situation of immense complexity and danger." The study then warns of "the real possibility that nuclear weapons might be used." It is not clear where on the long list of actual and potential crises around the world Mexico and Pakistan will rank once Barack Obama takes office as U.S. president on Jan. 20. During the election campaign, Obama repeatedly criticized Pakistan for not cracking down hard enough on terrorists inside its borders. Since then a new Pakistani president has come to power. Not long after that, tensions between Pakistan and India, also a nuclear power, rose sharply after gunmen attacked two luxury hotels and other sites in Mumbai, India's commercial capital, and killed 163 people. India described the attack as a conspiracy hatched in Pakistan and carried out by Pakistanis. Closer to home, the U.S. economic crisis looks likely to slow down a $1.4 billion assistance program - including military equipment, training, technology - to help the Mexican government gain the upper hand over the drug cartels and re-establish control over what some have called "failed cities" along the border, places where shootouts, beheadings and kidnappings have become routine. It would take a very rosy outlook on the future to expect rapid progress.

1nc 3
Their further interconnection of technology and global systems of economics allows for urbanization of the earth and the perfection of the war against nature
Zerzan in 08
The mega-cities have more in common with each other than with any other social organisms. Their citizens tend to dress the same and otherwise consume the same global culture, under a steadily more comprehensive surveillance gaze. This is the opposite of living in a particular place on the earth, with respect for its uniqueness. These days, all space is becoming urban space; there is not a spot on the planet that couldn't become at least virtually urban upon the turn of a satellite. We have been trained and equipped to mold space as if it were an object. Such an education is mandated in this Digital Age, dominated by cities and metro regions to an extent unprecedented in history.
How has this come to pass? As Weber put it, "one may find anything or everything in me city texts except the informing principle that creates the city itself."4 But it is c1earwhar the fundamental mechanism! dynamic! "principle" is and always has been. As Weber continued: "Every device in the city facilitating trade and industry prepares the way for further division of labor and further specialization of tasks."s Further massification. standardization. equivalence.
As tools became systems of technology-that is. as social complexity developed the city appeared. The city-machine was the earliest and biggest technological phenomenon. the culmination of the division of labor. Or as Lewis Mumford characterized it, "the mark of the city is its purposive social complexity."6 The two modes in this context are the same. Cities are the most complex artifacts ever contrived, just as urbanization is one of the prime measures of development.
The coming world-city perfects its war on nature, obliterating it in favor of the artificial. and reducing the countryside to mere "environs" that conform to urban priorities. All cities are antithetical to the land.

And chinese threat construction
Pan, 04 (Political Science, Australian National U, Chengxin, Department of Political Science at Australian National University, “The ‘China Threat’ in American Self-Imagination: The Discursive Construction of Other as Power Politics”, Alternatives, June-July, ebscohost)
The discursive construction of the U.S. self and the "Chinese threat" argument are not innocent, descriptive accounts of some "independent" reality. Rather, they are always a clarion call for the practice of power politics. At the apex of this power-politics agenda is the politico-strategic question of "what is to be done" to make the United States secure from the (perceived) threats it faces. At a general level, as Benjamin Schwarz proposes, this requires an unhindered path to U.S. global hegemony that means not only that the United States must dominate wealthy and technologically sophisticated states in Europe and East Asia— America's "allies"—but also that it must deal with such nuisances as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong II, so that potential great powers need not acquire the means to deal with those problems themselves. And those powers that eschew American supervision— such as China—must be both engaged and contained. The upshot of "American leadership" is that the United States must spend nearly as much on national security as the rest of the world combined.6' This "neocontainment" policy has been echoed in the "China threat" literature. In a short yet decisive article titled "Why We Must Contain China," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer insists that "containing China" and "undermining its ruthless dictatorship" constitute two essential components of "any rational policy toward a rising, threatening China." Not only is a policy other than containment considered irrational, but even a delay to implement it would be undesirable, as he urges that "containment of such a bully must begin early in its career." To this end, Krauthammer offers such "practical" options as strengthening regional alliances (with Vietnam, India, and Russia, as well as Japan) to box in China; standing by Chinese dissidents; denying Beijing the right to host the Olympics; and keeping China from joining the World Trade Organization on the terms it desires. ^{Containing China is of course not the only option arising from the "China threat" literature. More often than not, there is a subtle, business-style "crisis management" policy. For example, Bernstein and Munro shy away from the word containment, preferring to call their China policy management.} Yet, what remains unchanged in the management formula is a continued promotion of controlling China. For instance, a perusal of Bernstein and Munro's texts reveals that what they mean by management is no different than Krauthammer's explicit containment stance. TM By framing U.S.China relations as an issue of "crisis management," they leave little doubt of who is the "manager" and who is to be "managed." In a more straightforward manner, Betts and Christensen state that coercion and war must be part and parcel of the China management policy: In addressing the China challenge, the United States needs to think hard ahout three related questions: first, how to avoid crises and war through prudent, coercive diplomacy; second, how to manage crises and fight a war if the avoidance effort fails; third, how to end crises and terminate war at costs acceptable to the United States and its allies. ^{This is not to imply that the kind of perspectives outlined above will automatically be translated into actual China policy, but one does not have to be exceedingly perceptive to note that the "China threat" perspective does exert enormous influence on U.S. policy making on China. To illustrate this point, I want now to examine some specific implications of U.S. representati
Civilization has doomed us all, laundry list of horrors – environmental collapse – no value 2 life – collective suicide
Zerzan 2008 John, the anti-christ, “Twilight of the Machines,”
Quite some time ago W.H. Auden summed it up: "The situation of our time surrounds us like a baffling crime." More recently the crisis has been manifesting and deepening in every sphere. Conditions are rapidly worsening and none of the old answers hold up. A friend and neighhor of mine spoke to this with eloquence and understanding: in dealing with others, she counseled. we need to remember that everyone's heart is broken.
Can there really be many left who don't know what direction the world system and this society in particular are taking? Global warming. a function of industrial civilization, will kill the biosphere well before this century is out. Species all over the planet are made extinct at an accelerating rate, dead zones in the oceans grow, the soil and the air are increasingly poisoned, rainforests sacrificed, and all the rest of it.
Children as young as two are on anti-depressants, while emotional disorders among youth have more than doubled in the past 20 years. The teen suicide rate has tripled since the 1970s. A recent study showed that nearly a third of high school students binge drink at least once a month; researchers concluded that "underage drinking has reached epidemic proportions in America."
Meanwhile, most everyone requires some kind of drug just to get through each day, against a backdrop of homicidal outbursts in homes, schools, and workplaces. One of the latest pathological developments among so many-is parents murdering their children.
A panoply of shocking and horrifying phenomena emanate from the disintegrating core of society. We inhabit a landscape of emptiness, grief, stress, boredom, anxiety in which our "human nature" is as steadily degraded as is what is left of the natural world.
The volume of knowledge is reportedly doubling every five years, but in this increasingly technicized, homogenized world an ever starker reality goes mainly unchallenged, so far. Michel Houellebecq's 1998 novel Les Particules EiementClires (a bestseller in France) captured a joyless, disillusioned modernity in which cloning comes as a deliverance. Civilization itself has proved a failure, and humanity ends up liquidating itself in absolute surrender to domination. How perfectly in tune with the prevailing, completely defeated and cynical postmodern zeitgeist.
Symbolic culture has atrophied our senses, repressed unmediated experience, and brought us, as Freud predicted, to a state of "permanent internal unhappiness." We are debased and impoverished to the point where we are forced to ask why human activity has become so hostile to humanity-not to mention its enmity to other life forms on this planet.
Answer this question when evaluating the aff – even if they can solve for X Y Z impact are they going to avert the long term ecological catastrophe industrial society is creating? If no then it’s time we ask the hard questions – the pessimism you feel is felt everywhere – everyone knows on some level that the party has to stop – at this point it’s only a question of whether you recognize and act accordingly on this truth. It’s our only chance
Zerzan 2008 John, the anti-christ, “Twilight of the Machines,” 114-5
Questions and ideas can only become currents in the world insofar as reality, external and internal, makes that possible. Our present state, devolving toward catastrophe, displays a reality in unmistakable terms. We are bound for a head-on collision between urgent new questions and a totality-global civilization-that can provide no answers. A world that offers no future. but shows no signs of admitting this fact, imperils its own future along with the life, health, and freedom of all beings on the planet. Civilizations rulers have always squandered whatever remote chances they had to prepare for the end of life as they know it, by choosing to ride the crest of domination, in all its forms. 114
It has become clear to some that the depth of the expanding crisis, which is as massively dehumanizing as it is ecocidal. stems from the cardinal institutions of civilization itself. The discredited promises of Enlightenment and modernity represent the pinnacle of the grave mistake known as civilization. There is no prospect that this Order will renounce that which has defined and maintained it, and apparently little likelihood that its various ideological supporters can face the facts. If civilization's collapse has already begun, a process now unofficially but widely assumed, there may be grounds for a widespread refusal or abandonment of the reigning totality. Indeed, its rigidity and denial may be setting the stage for a cultural shift on an unprecedented scale, which could unfold rapidly.
Of course, a paradigm shift away from this entrenched, but vulnerable and fatally flawed system is far from unavoidable. The other main possibility is that too many people, for the usual reasons (fear, inertia, manufactured incapacity, etc.) will passively accept reality as it is, until it's too late to do anything but try to deal with collapse. It's noteworthy that a growing awareness that things are going wrong, however inchoate and individualized, is fuelled by a deep. visceral unease and in many cases, acute suffering. This is where opportunity resides. From this new perspective that is certainly growing, we find the work of confronting what faces us as a species, and removing the barriers to planetary survival. The time has come for a wholesale indictment of civilization and mass society. It is at least possible that, in various modes, such a judgment can undo the death-machine before destruction and domestication inundate everything.}

Solvency
Loan guarantees don’t solve – costs too high
Slocum, 12 – director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, expert in issues dealing with regulation and deregulation of energy markets, the impact of mergers and lax regulations over electricity, petroleum, and natural gas, and federal energy legislation (Tyson, 2/3. “We Can't Afford to Expand Nuclear Power.” http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-nuclear-power-be-expanded/we-cant-afford-to-expand-nuclear-power)

In recent years, industry-driven legislative efforts—most notably the sweep of incentives for nuclear power in the 2005 Energy Policy Act—have been implemented to jump-start the nuclear industry, but even that mountain of money and regulatory rollbacks can't do the impossible: build a nuclear power plant affordably, safely, or timely and find a solution to the thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste. From loan guarantees to charging ratepayers up front for the cost of construction, to liability protections from Fukushima-style accidents, the industry has been unable to bring a new reactor online. Why? Because even with all this taxpayer help, it's still too costly. Photovoltaic solar this year will break the dollar-per-watt barrier, ushering in a rooftop revolution of cheap, clean, and consumer-owned energy. In addition to turning our buildings into power stations, investing in making our structures more energy-efficient remains the most cost-effective energy investment. Energy-efficiency programs can displace 23 percent of projected demand and provide a huge return for consumers. Charging taxpayers billions of dollars to bring a new reactor online wipes out any incentives to invest in these programs and suppresses local renewable projects that could bring green jobs and advance U.S. leadership in clean energy technology.
They’re factually wrong about loan guarantees – investors still have to pay upfront costs – deters investment
Gale et al 9 (Kelley Michael, Finance Department Chair – Latham and Watkins, “Financing the Nuclear Renaissance: The Benefits and Potential Pitfalls of Federal and State Government Subsidies and the Future of Nuclear Power in California,” Energy Law Journal, Vol. 30, p. 497-552, http://www.felj.org/docs/elj302/19gale-crowell-and-peace.pdf)
Much has been written on the DOE‘s loan guarantee program under the EPAct 2005, particularly in light of the changes to that program for renewable projects under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and as such we will not cover its ―nuts and bolts‖ in great detail. But generally speaking, the federal loan guarantee program applicable to nuclear projects authorizes the DOE to make guarantees of debt service under construction loans for up to eighty percent of the construction costs of new nuclear projects that will (1) avoid or reduce air pollutants and emissions of greenhouse gases, and (2) employ new or significantly improved technology to do so. 61 Several requirements must be met before the DOE can enter into a loan guarantee agreement. First, either an appropriation for the cost of the guarantee must have been made or the DOE must receive full payment for the cost of the guarantee from the developer. 62 Because no money has been appropriated to cover these costs and the DOE has stated it does not intend to seek appropriations to pay these costs for any nuclear projects, 63 it appears that project developers may be responsible for pre-paying the full costs of the loan guarantees, 64 unless the Bingaman legislation discussed below is passed as proposed or similar legislation is enacted. Two components currently make up the cost of the guarantee. The first part is an ―Administrative Cost‖: the DOE must receive fees sufficient to cover applicable administrative expenses for the loan guarantee including the costs of evaluating applications, negotiating and closing loan guarantees, and monitoring the progress of projects. 65 These administrative expenses passed on to the developer include an application fee of $800,000, a facility fee of one half of one percent of the amount guaranteed by the loan guarantee, and a maintenance fee of $200,000–$400,000 per year. 66 Second, the DOE must receive a ―Subsidy Cost‖ for the loan guarantee, which is defined as the net present value of the government‘s expected liability from issuing the guarantee. 67 The Subsidy Cost must be estimated by a developer in an application, but cannot be officially determined until the time the loan guarantee agreement is signed. 68 The administrative costs associated with the program have been criticized as overly burdensome, 69 and the Subsidy Cost remains unquantifiable but decisively enormous. In fact, Standard and Poor‘s recently estimated that the Subsidy Cost for a typical nuclear reactor could be as high as several hundred million dollars. 70 The lack of clarity around how to quantify these costs up front and, as discussed below, the position of the DOE that the Subsidy Cost is not an eligible project cost under the loan guarantee program, make it difficult for developers to arrange investment or interim financing to get them through the development process. 71 Additionally, before entering a loan guarantee, the DOE must determine that (1) ―there is reasonable prospect of repayment of the principal and interest on the guaranteed debt by the borrower,‖ (2) the amount guaranteed by the government under the loan guarantee, when combined with other available financing sources, is sufficient to carry out the nuclear construction project, and (3) the DOE possesses a first lien on the assets of the project and other assets pledged as security and its security interest in the project is not subordinate to any other financing for the project. 72 Finally, the loan guarantee obligation must bear interest at a rate determined by the Secretary to be reasonable, taking into account the range of interest rates prevailing in the private sector for similar Federal government guaranteed obligations of comparable risk and the term of the guarantee cannot exceed the lesser of thirty years or ninety percent of the useful life of the nuclear reactor. 73 These requirements create uncertainties for developers and financiers seeking to understand how the program will work to support the financing of a new nuclear power plant. For instance, it is unclear how government approval of interest rates will work in the context of a deal with multiple debt instruments that each may have different pricing. Setting interest rates in these types of deals is an iterative process of modeling interest rates and testing markets. Further, it is unclear how interest rates will be compared. To our knowledge, there are no ―similar Federal government guaranteed obligations of comparable risk‖ to debt issued for the construction of a nuclear power project. 74
No solvency – licensing issues, lack of nuclear waste management, and inefficient government intervention
Spencer and Loris 11 (Jack, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage for Nuclear Energy Policy, and Nicolas D., Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow at Heritage, focuses on energy and regulatory issues,"A Big Future for Small Nuclear Reactors?", Feb 2, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/02/a-big-future-for-small-nuclear-reactors)

While some designs are closer to market introduction than others, the fact is that America’s regulatory and policy environment is not sufficient to support a robust expansion of existing nuclear technologies, much less new ones. New reactor designs are difficult to license efficiently, and the lack of a sustainable nuclear waste management policy causes significant risk to private investment. Many politicians are attempting to mitigate these market challenges by offering subsidies, such as loan guarantees. While this approach still enjoys broad support in Congress and industry, the reality is that it has not worked. Despite a lavish suite of subsidies offered in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, including loan guarantees, insurance against government delays, and production tax credits, no new reactors have been permitted, much less constructed. These subsidies are in addition to existing technology development cost-sharing programs that have been in place for years and defer significant research and development costs from industry to the taxpayer. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the larger systemic problems that create the unstable marketplace to begin with. These systemic problems generally fall into three categories: 1. Licensing. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is ill prepared to build the regulatory framework for new reactor technologies, and no reactor can be offered commercially without an NRC license. In a September 2009 interview, former NRC chairman Dale E. Klein said that small nuclear reactors pose a dilemma for the NRC because the commission is uneasy with new and unproven technologies and feels more comfortable with large light water reactors, which have been in operation for years and has a long safety record. 11 The result is that enthusiasm for building non-light-water SMRs is generally squashed at the NRC as potential customers realize that there is little chance that the NRC will permit the project within a timeframe that would promote near-term investment. So, regardless of which attributes an SMR might bring to the market, the regulatory risk is such that real progress on commercialization is difficult to attain. This then leaves large light water reactors, and to a lesser extent, small ones, as the least risky option, which pushes potential customers toward that technology, which then undermines long-term progress, competition, and innovation. 2. Nuclear Waste Management. The lack of a sustainable nuclear waste management solution is perhaps the greatest obstacle to a broad expansion of U.S. nuclear power. The federal government has failed to meet its obligations under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended, to begin collecting nuclear waste for disposal in Yucca Mountain. The Obama Administration’s attempts to shutter the existing program to put waste in Yucca Mountain without having a backup plan has worsened the situation. This outcome was predictable because the current program is based on the flawed premise that the federal government is the appropriate entity to manage nuclear waste. Under the current system, waste producers are able to largely ignore waste management because the federal government is responsible. The key to a sustainable waste management policy is to directly connect financial responsibility for waste management to waste production. This will increase demand for more waste-efficient reactor technologies and drive innovation on waste-management technologies, such as reprocessing. Because SMRs consume fuel and produce waste differently than LWRs, they could contribute greatly to an economically efficient and sustainable nuclear waste management strategy. 3. Government Intervention. Too many policymakers believe that Washington is equipped to guide the nuclear industry to success. So, instead of creating a stable regulatory environment where the market value of different nuclear technologies can determine their success and evolution, they choose to create programs to help industry succeed. Two recent Senate bills from the 111th Congress, the Nuclear Energy Research Initiative Improvement Act (S. 2052) and the Nuclear Power 2021 Act (S. 2812), are cases in point. Government intervention distorts the normal market processes that, if allowed to work, would yield the most efficient, cost-effective, and appropriate nuclear technologies. Instead, the federal government picks winners and losers through programs where bureaucrats and well-connected lobbyists decide which technologies are permitted, and provides capital subsidies that allow investors to ignore the systemic problems that drive risk and costs artificially high. This approach is especially detrimental to SMRs because subsidies to LWRs distort the relative benefit of other reactor designs by artificially lowering the cost and risk of a more mature technology that already dominates the marketplace.
China
No reason why US stability solves arms race  

Question their il chain- they don’t halt the building of other nuke powers
Loan guarantees  make nuke leadership ineffective
Sokolski 12 (Henry, editor, Executive Director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, previous Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Pentagon, "PURE RISK: FEDERAL CLEAN ENERGY LOAN GUARANTEES", March, http://www.npolicy.org/userfiles/file/ure%20Risk-Federal%20Clean%20Energy%20Loan%20Guarantees.pdf)

Still what makes granting such guarantees diffi cult to resist is that the initial cost of awarding such loans is negligible. Also, such loan guarantees are almost entirely off-budget. Certainly, whatever the fi nal costs might be are most likely to be incurred well after the loans have been granted. These costs, though, do have to be paid and when they are incurred, there can be substantial political fallout. Again, the Solyndra Corporation’s default makes this painfully clear. Beyond having to pay for actual defaults, though, there are two other signifi cant risks associated with these loans. The fi rst is the moral costs of government offi cials backing commercial projects that turn out to be signifi cant money losers. Such misjudgments are rarely conceded until very late in the game (e.g., synfuels in the l970s, the Clinch River Breeder Reactor in the l980s, and corn ethanol in the l990s). Worse, in some cases, the government must cover its tracks by mandating that the public buy the product produced (e.g., ethanol) even thought it clearly is not cost effective against less expensive alternatives. The net effect of such fi scal cynicism is the diversion of fi nancing – public and private – from more worthy energy innovations to projects that otherwise would fail fi nancially. More important, public faith and credit in the federal government suffers with each transaction. Yet another set of concerns, which has drawn my center’s attention, is the corrosive effect these subsidies can have in the case of nuclear projects on U.S. and allied nuclear nonproliferation policy. As the last four decades of nuclear weapons proliferation have demonstrated, countries’ “peaceful” nuclear programs (e.g., in India, Iran, Iraq, North Korea) can and have been used to develop nuclear weapons programs. None of these “civilian” programs ever made much commercial sense. Historically, this is an important point that the U.S. and other like-minded governments have spotlighted to challenge these programs. Yet, the more heavily the U.S. and its allies have subsidized their own commercial nuclear programs, the less authority they have had to spotlight how uneconomical other states’ nuclear plans might be. We have already seen how costly this can be in the case of Iran. Before the Bush Administration established multi-billion-dollar commercial nuclear loan guarantees under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, both the Bush and Clinton administrations publicly criticized Tehran for subsidizing an uneconomical nuclear power program when it was fl aring millions of cubic feet of relatively clean natural gas. This criticism was one Tehran had difficulty deflecting. After 2005, though, the U.S. stopped making this case and instead conceded that Iran had a right to develop nuclear power no matter how uneconomical it might be. Although passage of the 2005 act did not cause the change in U.S. policy, it came just before this policy shift was announced and made any attempt to return to the previous sounder nuclear economic critique of Iran far more awkward. Yet another dimension of this problem is the U.S. Department of Energy’s recent granting of conditional nuclear loan guarantees to French government-owned nuclear fi rms to build nuclear plants in the U.S. Granting these loan guarantees has unintentionally rewarded a foreign nuclear supplier that has been undermining U.S. nonproliferation standards overseas. In specifi c, the French have undercut the new U.S. Gold Standard for nuclear nonproliferation created under the conditions of the 2009 U.S.-United Arab Emirates (UAE) nuclear cooperative agreement. This agreement required the UAE to forswear making nuclear fuel and to ratify an intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections agreement known as the Additional Protocol. The U.S. asked the French to uphold this standard but the French instead have consciously decided not to do so. This has caused Congress to question how serious the Executive Branch is about pushing the standard. When the U.S. Department of Energy awarded conditional loan guarantees to French fi rms to build nuclear plants in 2010, Congress, nonproliferation experts, and the press took note. They noted that whatever else the U.S. government should be doing to promote nuclear energy, it ought not to be using the U.S. Treasury to help foreign nuclear fi rms expand their business in the U.S. if they are simultaneously undermining U.S. nonproliferation standards overseas. This, of course, is a distance from the political and economic controversies surrounding such headline grabbers as Solyndra or, more recently, the United States Enrichment Corporation’s political diffi culties in securing a $2 billion federal loan guarantee for a new, commercial enrichment project. Still, it highlights the unintended, negative knock-on effects of such politicized loan making. Washington insiders’ cynical rejoinder to such arguments is that for most Americans these worries are simply too complicated to be comprehended, have no political visibility, and, therefore, can be ignored. This small monograph, however, assumes that after Solyndra, just the opposite is possible. Its aim is to clarify what otherwise might seem complicated. Although none of the authors of the essays it contains necessarily agree with one another on the importance of promoting nuclear power or any other specifi c form of electrical generation, each presents a clear set of evidence on why Congress and the Executive should stop increasing the amount of federal dollars available for making such loans. Some of this analysis is detailed. Some comes in brief op-ed length pieces. None are obscure. The hope is that each in its own way is persuasive regarding the bottom line: Continuing to pile on more clean energy loan guarantees constitutes nothing less than pure risk, i.e., creating a situation where there is a chance of running loss but no chance of gain.

No India/Pakistan war –
Economics
Tellis 2 (Ashley, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Orbis, Winter, p. 19)

In any event, the saving grace that mutes the potential for exacerbated competition between both countries remains their relatively strong economic constraints. At the Pakistani end, these constraints are structural: Islamabad simply has no discretionary resources to fritter away on an open-ended arms race, and it could not acquire resources for this purpose without fundamentally transforming the nature of the Pakistani state itself—which transformation, if it occurs successfully, would actually mitigate many of the corrosive forces that currently drive Islamabad’s security competition with India. 21 At the Indian end, these constraints may be more self-imposed. New Delhi commands a large pool of national resources that could be siphoned off and reallocated to security instruments, but the current weaknesses of the central government’s public finances and its reform program, coupled with its desire to complete the technological modernization programs that have been underway for many decades, prevents it from enlarging the budgetary allocations for strategic acquisitions at will. 22 With these constraints on both sides, future nuclearization in India and Pakistan is more likely to resemble an "arms crawl" than a genuine Richardson-type "arms race." The strategic capabilities on both sides will increase incrementally but slowly—and in India will have further to go because of its inferior capabilities compared to China’s. This slowness may be the best outcome from the viewpoint both of the two South Asian competitors and the United States.
Rising powers only prevent war- rivals aren’t threatening enough to destabilize the world
Ikenberry 11 – (May/June issue of Foreign Affairs, G. John, PhD, Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, “The Future of the Liberal World Order,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/67730/g-john-ikenberry/the-future-of-the-liberal-world-order?page=show DH)

Pronouncements of American decline miss the real transformation under way today. What is occurring is not American decline but a dynamic process in which other states are catching up and growing more connected. In an open and rule-based international order, this is what happens. If the architects of the postwar liberal order were alive to see today's system, they would think that their vision had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Markets and democracy have spread. Societies outside the West are trading and growing. The UnitedStates has more alliance partners today than it did during the Cold War. Rival hegemonic states with revisionist and illiberal agendas have been pushed off the global stage. It is difficult to read these world-historical developments as a story of American decline and liberal unraveling. In a way, however, the liberal international order has sown the seeds of its own discontent, since, paradoxically, the challenges facing it now -- the rise of non-Western states and new transnational threats -- are artifacts of its success. But the solutions to these problems -- integrating rising powers and tackling problems cooperatively -- will lead the order's old guardians and new stakeholders to an agenda of renewal. The coming divide in world politics will not be between the United States (and the West) and the non-Western rising states. Rather, the struggle will be between those who want to renew and expand today's system of multilateral governance arrangements and those who want to move to a less cooperative order built on spheres of influence. These fault lines do not map onto geography, nor do they split the West and the non-West. There are passionate champions of the UN, the WTO, and a rule-based international order in Asia, and there are isolationist, protectionist, and anti-internationalist factions in the West. The liberal international order has succeeded over the decades because its rules and institutions have not just enshrined open trade and free markets but also provided tools for governments to manage economic and security interdependence. The agenda for the renewal of the liberal international order should be driven by this same imperative: to reinforce the capacities of national governments to govern and achieve their economic and security goals. As the hegemonic organization of the liberal international order slowly gives way, more states will have authority and status. Butthis will still be a world that the United States wants to inhabit. A wider array of states will share the burdens of global economic and political governance, and with its worldwide system of alliances, the United States will remain at the center of the global system. Rising states do not just grow more powerful on the global stage; they grow more powerful within their regions, and this creates its own set of worries and insecurities -- which is why states will continue to look to Washington for security and partnership. In this new age of international order, the United States will not be able to rule. But it can still lead.
Nuclear expansion causes prolif – no way to contain
Tickell, 8/20/12 – British journalist, author and campaigner on health and environment issues, and author of the Kyoto2 climate initiative (Oliver, “Does the world need nuclear power to solve the climate crisis?” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/20/world-need-nuclear-power-climate-crisis)

A further hazard is that both plutonium-239 and uranium-233 can be used to make nuclear bombs, so the wholesale expansion of nuclear power and the widespread use of breeder reactors would create an uncontrollable proliferation hazard. The world already has some 2,000 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium, and is producing a further 75 tonnes of plutonium per year from its 440 reactors. Just 8kg of plutonium is enough to make a small nuclear bomb, so it is inconceivable that proliferation could be contained securely in a 11,000-reactor world producing enough plutonium for hundreds of thousands of bombs every year.

Economy
Economic decline doesn’t cause war
Tir 10 Jaroslav Tir - Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, “Territorial Diversion: Diversionary Theory of War and Territorial Conflict”, The Journal of Politics, 2010, Volume 72: 413-425)
Empirical support for the economic growth rate is much weaker. The finding that poor economic performance is associated with a higher likelihood of territorial conflict initiation is significant only in Models 3–4.14 The weak results are not altogether surprising given the findings from prior literature. In accordance with the insignificant relationships of Models 1–2 and 5–6, Ostrom and Job (1986), for example, note that the likelihood that a U.S. President will use force is uncertain, as the bad economy might create incentives both to divert the public’s attention with a foreign adventure and to focus on solving the economic problem, thus reducing the inclination to act abroad. Similarly, Fordham (1998a, 1998b), DeRouen (1995), and Gowa (1998) find no relation between a poor economy and U.S. use of force. Furthermore, Leeds and Davis (1997) conclude that the conflict-initiating behavior of 18 industrialized democracies is unrelated to economic conditions as do Pickering and Kisangani (2005) and Russett and Oneal (2001) in global studies. In contrast and more in line with my findings of a significant relationship (in Models 3–4), Hess and Orphanides (1995), for example, argue that economic recessions are linked with forceful action by an incumbent U.S. president. Furthermore, Fordham’s (2002) revision of Gowa’s (1998) analysis shows some effect of a bad economy and DeRouen and Peake (2002) report that U.S. use of force diverts the public’s attention from a poor economy. Among cross-national studies, Oneal and Russett (1997) report that slow growth increases the incidence of militarized disputes, as does Russett (1990)—but only for the United States; slow growth does not affect the behavior of other countries. Kisangani and Pickering (2007) report some significant associations, but they are sensitive to model specification, while Tir and Jasinski (2008) find a clearer link between economic underperformance and increased attacks on domestic ethnic minorities. While none of these works has focused on territorial diversions, my own inconsistent findings for economic growth fit well with the mixed results reported in the literature.15 Hypothesis 1 thus receives strong support via the unpopularity variable but only weak support via the economic growth variable. These results suggest that embattled leaders are much more likely to respond with territorial diversions to direct signs of their unpopularity (e.g., strikes, protests, riots) than to general background conditions such as economic malaise. Presumably, protesters can be distracted via territorial diversions while fixing the economy would take a more concerted and prolonged policy effort. Bad economic conditions seem to motivate only the most serious, fatal territorial confrontations. This implies that leaders may be reserving the most high-profile and risky diversions for the times when they are the most desperate, that is when their power is threatened both by signs of discontent with their rule and by more systemic problems plaguing the country (i.e., an underperforming economy).

The nuclear industry doesn’t uniquely create jobs – just shifts them
WSJ, 12 (7/13, “Fukushima Watch: No Reactors, Fewer Jobs? http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/07/13/fukushima-watch-no-reactors-fewer-jobs/)

Losing jobs in the nuclear power industry would likely mean an increase in jobs elsewhere. A group of researchers from Osaka University estimate that eliminating nuclear power in Japan by 2020 and increasing renewable energy use to 20% of the total could create 200,000 to 300,000 new jobs annually.  Central Research Institute, Inc., a consulting company in Tokyo, predicts that the renewable energy sector, including wind and solar power, will employ 1.4 million people by 2020, as the renewables market expands in size to ¥50 trillion and beyond.  The Ministry of the Environment, in a report published in 2010, said that increasing the amount of renewable energy to more than 10% of the nation’s total energy output by 2020, could create between 458,000 to 627,000 jobs.
You don’t solve – nuclear jobs go overseas
Clayton, 10 – staff writer for the Christian Science Monitor (Mark, 7/2. “US-backed loans to expand nuclear power: a boon for overseas jobs?” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0702/US-backed-loans-to-expand-nuclear-power-a-boon-for-overseas-jobs)

Nuclear power opponents and taxpayer groups on Friday took fresh aim at new nuclear reactor projects, hopping aboard a movement in Congress to oppose taxpayer support for power projects that might benefit foreign companies and overseas jobs. While activists have long claimed Congress and the White House would be fiscally irresponsible to grant loan guarantees for new nuclear power reactor construction due to projected high default rates, the groups for the first time Thursday released a report citing the loan guarantees' bolstering of foreign jobs and overseas ownership. As it turns out, all 18 corporate applicants seeking permits for new US nuclear power reactors – and lining up for tens of billions in federal loan guarantees – plan to use foreign manufacturers and labor to build major parts of those reactors. That's according to a new report by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, based in Takoma Park, Md., citing data gleaned from filings with the Nuclear Regulator Commission. The service, with the Association of Concerned Taxpayers and the Alliance for Generational Equity, said a few utilities now seeking US loan guarantees for nuclear projects were also largely foreign-owned. “Nuclear power is US-made power only in the same way that a shirt made in China is ‘American’ because you buy it at a Wal-Mart in this country," said NIRS executive director Michael Mariotte in a teleconference. "If American taxpayers were upset about bailing out US banks and car companies, they should be furious about being put at risk in order to fatten the bottom line of overseas nuclear companies.” The NRC filings, he said, show that all 18 pending reactor projects in the US feature reactors designed by French and Japanese companies. "Nearly all of the immediate employment benefits of the loan guarantees will flow to non-US workers, since virtually all major reactor components are made outside of the United States by foreign companies," Mr. Mariotte said. Most of the nuclear reactors' massive parts would be built by majority-owned foreign companies such as GE Hitachi, AREVA, and Westinghouse (Toshiba) in their overseas factories. Two of three reactor projects now on a US Department of Energy short list for taxpayer-backed loan guarantee bailouts – Calvert Cliffs Unit 3 in Maryland and South Texas Project Units 3 and 4 in Texas – have substantial foreign ownership involving French and Japanese companies. Another reactor project not in line to get quick funding – Nine Mile Point, Unit 3 in New York State – also has substantial foreign ownership. Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York this spring pleaded with the Obama administration not to spend federal stimulus funds on renewable energy projects when most wind and solar manufacturing was conducted overseas. Sens. Robert Casey (D) of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown (D) of Ohio, and Jon Tester (D) of Montana supported Senator Schumer's bill to put "Buy America" provisions on renewable-energy projects supported by taxpayer financing.
Loan guarantees deter innovation and cause defaults that destroy the market
Sokolski 12 (Henry, editor, Executive Director of The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Arlington, previous Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Pentagon, "PURE RISK: FEDERAL CLEAN ENERGY LOAN GUARANTEES", March, http://www.npolicy.org/userfiles/file/ure%20Risk-Federal%20Clean%20Energy%20Loan%20Guarantees.pdf)

If you ask any American if they support a program that guarantees energy security, job creation, innovation, and carbon abatement at little to no cost, he or she will surely respond positively. Clean energy loan guarantee proponents tout these benefi ts and more to justify further loan guarantees for commercial nuclear plants and other commercial clean energy projects. 1 But as the recent $535 million loss that the Solyndra solar project incurred demonstrates, the costs and political risks of clean energy loan guarantees can be signifi cant. Clean energy loan guarantees, moreover, are likely to inhibit innovation and increase the overall cost of borrowing for these purposes. At a minimum, they distort crucial market signals that determine where capital should be invested, causing unmerited lower interest rates and a reduction of capital in the market for more worthy projects. Public loan guarantees for new nuclear plant construction are particularly risky because of these project’s high construction costs. The nuclear industry downplays these risks, yet they have hedged their bets. Nuclear utilities have painstakingly limited the fi nancial exposure to their own reactor projects by taking out loans under separate corporate entities. This assures that the U.S. government can’t reach into their pockets if the nuclear project bellies up. 2 The default rate of new reactors is in dispute; some argue that it is as high as 50 percent; others argue that is much lower. What is clear, however, is the credit ratings of nuclear utility companies. Two of the five nuclear loan guarantee finalists had the lowest ratings of all the applicants, and a third was on the brink of being rated a junk bond. 3 Standard and Poor’s latest 2010 study on past corporate bond defaults found that corporations with junk bond ratings are significantly more likely to default than those with investment grade bonds (see Figure 3). 4 All of this suggests that it would be best if federal clean energy loan guarantees were eliminated. If this is impractical, at the very least, they should not be expanded: Six years after Congress created clean energy loan guarantees, $10 billion still remains up for grabs for new nuclear power facility projects alone. Creating more federal energy loan guarantee authority will only increase what are already substantial risks in the government’s portfolio.

Can’t solve innovation– requires a huge advance demonstration of success or else no one will invest
Yusuf, 8 – Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University (Moeed, November. “Does Nuclear Energy Have a Future?” The Pardee Papers No. 3. http://www.bu.edu/pardee/files/documents/Pardee-Nuclear-Yusuf.pdf)

The high-risk investment demand of the nuclear industry creates a chickenand-egg problem for nuclear enthusiasts. While they may rightly contend that nuclear plants have enhanced their capacity factors across the world and that newer designs for smaller and even more efficient plants could put nuclear energy at an advantage over the long run, even for these promises to be demonstrated, massive commercial nuclear expansion is required. 43 This demands ex ante investment; however, investors will not be forthcoming because of the poor legacy of the nuclear industry and the aforementioned investment risks in the developing world unless competitiveness is demonstrated on a large scale and over a prolonged period in advance. In essence then, as aptly summed up by Cochran: “….the bottom line is that in the current economic climate, commercial nuclear generation is not even close to being competitive with fossil-fueled plants and there is no easy path to a competitive market for new nuclear plants.”
New nuclear reactors drive up electricity prices
Cooper 9 (Mark, SENIOR FELLOW FOR ECONOMIC ANALYSIS INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT VERMONT LAW SCHOOL, "THE ECONOMICS OF NUCLEAR REACTORS: RENAISSANCE OR RELAPSE?," http://www.vermontlaw.edu/Documents/Cooper%20Report%20on%20Nuclear%20Economics%20FINAL%5B1%5D.pdf)

Within the past year, estimates of the cost of nuclear power from a new generation of  reactors have ranged from a low of 8.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) to a high of 30 cents. This  paper tackles the debate over the cost of building new nuclear reactors, with the key findings as  follows:  • The initial cost projections put out early in today’s so–called “nuclear renaissance” were about  one–third of what one would have expected, based on the nuclear reactors completed in the  1990s.  • The most recent cost projections for new nuclear reactors are, on average, over four times as  high as the initial “nuclear renaissance” projections.  • There are numerous options available to meet the need for electricity in a carbon–constrained  environment that are superior to building nuclear reactors. Indeed, nuclear reactors are the worst  option from the point of view of the consumer and society.  • The low carbon sources that are less costly than nuclear include efficiency, cogeneration,  biomass, geothermal, wind, solar thermal and natural gas. Solar photovoltaics that are presently  more costly than nuclear reactors are projected to decline dramatically in price in the next  decade. Fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage, which are not presently available, are  projected to be somewhat more costly than nuclear reactors.  • Numerous studies by Wall Street and independent energy analysts estimate efficiency and  renewable costs at an average of 6 cents per kilowatt hour, while the cost of electricity from  nuclear reactors is estimated in the range of 12 to 20 cents per kWh.  • The additional cost of building 100 new nuclear reactors, instead of pursuing a least cost  efficiency–renewable strategy, would be in the range of $1.9–$4.4 trillion over the life the  reactors.  Whether the burden falls on ratepayers (in electricity bills) or taxpayers (in large subsidies),  incurring excess costs of that magnitude would be a substantial burden on the national economy and  add immensely to the cost of electricity and the cost of reducing carbon emissions.
Asteroids
Expansion of nuclear power prevents us from getting off the rock – uses up finite fissionable material
Pwanson, 9 – software engineer (Saul, 1/29. “Why Nuclear Power Dooms Humanity to Extinction.” http://saulpwanson.com/2009/why-nuclear-power-dooms-humanity-to-extinction)

Recently, I discovered John McCarthy’s (creator of LISP) pages on sustainability that he’s been working on for many years. Prof. McCarthy is a proponent of using nuclear energy to achieve sustainability on this planet, and he has a lot of good information on his site. According to him, we’ll enjoy perhaps a billion years of sustainable energy with the nuclear fission available from materials on this planet. He also thinks conservation of energy (applying mental effort and resources to the reduction of energy consumption) is a huge mistake.  I too think nuclear energy is an important energy source to explore, but I am not as “extremely optimistic” as Prof. McCarthy. Conservation of energy, particularly fissionable materials, is not a huge mistake. My argument is:  The amount of fissionable nuclear material on the planet right now (and indeed, in the solar system) is the most there will ever be. Fissionable elements decay at a fixed rate, and new heavy elements are only created in a star’s death. Energy consumption has historically grown at a pace faster than population growth. In addition, cheap energy makes people optimize other (larger) economic factors. In other words, when gasoline prices are cheap and stable, people will move further from cities, where housing prices are cheaper, and consume more fuel in transportation between the city and themselves. This leads to energy consumption expanding to consume any additional supply. Space travel is widely recognized as the only infinite-horizon survival mechanism, for any life form (or: any life form that is confined to a single planet is doomed to extinction in the longest term). The more we understand about physics, the more we are certain that the theories of relativity are true. There don’t seem to be any shortcuts to getting around the universe; it just takes a huge amount of time and energy. The biggest misconception that most people have is exactly how much energy or time it would take to move a sustainable colony from the earth to another solar system (and no other planets in our solar system seem to be habitable). It is several orders of magnitude larger than traveling within our solar system, which is already almost prohibitive to do via chemical propulsion. Human interstellar travel using chemical energy is basically impossible.  Well, nuclear fission has 10 million times (7 orders of magnitude) more energy than chemical reactions. The power and energy density in nuclear material makes it ideal as a portable long-distance fuel. Other energy conveyances for interstellar transport have been proposed, but every one is almost as ridiculous as using the LHC to construct our own personal wormhole. (Fusion has the capability to generate even more energy, and the materials are abundant, but it’s pretty much not going to work out for energy production either). The huge amount of energy required to get to another star in a “reasonable” amount of time (only hundreds of years) means that it’ll even take a fair amount of fission fuel.  So, consuming nuclear fuel to satisfy our insatiable thirst for domestic energy may prevent us from ever leaving this planet. And our continuing disregard for the potential long-term effects of our short-term actions will very likely amplify those negative long-term effects. Nuclear haste makes nuclear waste.  Don’t get me wrong: we absolutely need to continue developing fission technology, for both space travel and energy emergencies here on earth (heaven forbid the aliens come and we don’t have powerful enough lasers to destroy them). This development should go beyond theoretical research, to large-scale engineering and “field tests” that may as well be used as civilian energy sources. But to retool our civilization’s energy infrastructure to rely on “abundant” nuclear energy is a huge mistake: without active conservation, our consumption will grow to take advantage of as much energy as we can produce, we’ll be consuming a fuel that is absolutely finite, and that fuel won’t be available when the asteroid is 50 years away and we really do need to get off the planet.  And that’s why abundant nuclear power ultimately dooms humanity to extinction. 

No resource wars – prefer statistical evidence
Pinker 11 (Steven, Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology – Harvard University, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” Google Books)
Once again it seems to me that the appropriate response is "maybe, but maybe not." Though climate change can cause plenty of misery and deserves to be mitigated for that reason alone, it will not necessarily lead to armed conflict. The political scientists who track war and peace, such as Halvard Buhaug, Idean Salehyan, Ole Theisen, and Nils Gleditsch, are skeptical of the popular idea that people fight wars over scarce resources. Hunger and resource shortages are tragically common in sub-Saharn countries such as Malawi, Zambia, and Tanzania, but wars involving them are not. Hurricanes, floods, droughts, and tsunamis (such as the disastrous one in the Indian Ocean in 2004) do not generally lead to armed conflict. The American dust bowl in the 1930s, to take another example, caused plenty of deprivation but no civil war. And while temperatures have been rising steadily in Africa during the past fifteen years, civil wars and war deaths have been falling. Pressures on access to land and water can certainly cause local skirmishes, but a genuine war requires that hostile forces be organized and armed, and that depends more on the influence of bad governments, closed economies, and militant ideologies than on the sheer availability of land and water. Certainly any connection to terrorism is in the imagination of the terror warriors: terrorists tend to be underemployed lower-middle-class men, not subsistence farmers. As for genocide, the Sudanese government finds it convenient to blame violence in Darfur on desertification, distracting the world from its own role in tolerating or encouraging the ethnic cleansing. In a regression analysis on armed conflicts from 1980 to 1992, Theisen found that conflict was more likely if a country was poor, populous, politically unstable, and abundant in oil, but not if it had suffered from droughts, water shortages, or mild land degradation. (Severe land degradation did have a small effect.) Reviewing analyses that examined a large number (N) of countries rather than cherry-picking one or two, he concluded, "those who foresee doom, because of the relationship between resource scarcity and violent internal conflict, have very little support in the large-N literature." Salehyan adds that relatively inexpensive advances in water use and agriculture practices in the developing world can yield massive increases in productivity with a constant or even shrinking amount of land, and that better governance can mitigate the human costs of environmental damage, as it does in developed democracies. Since the state of the environment is at most one ingredient in a mixture that depends far more on political and social organization, resource wars are far from inevitable, even in a climate-changed world.

New technology blocks US-China resource wars
Haixia 12 (Qi, Lecturer at Department of International Relations – Tsinghua University, “Football Game Rather Than Boxing Match: China–US Intensifying Rivalry Does not Amount to Cold War,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5(2), Summer, p. 105-127, http://cjip.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/2/105.full)
The rapid development of computer technology has provided a technological foundation for China's strategy of keeping a low profile. Widespread application of computer technology has accelerated the pace of progress in the sciences, which means that China and the United States need no longer use military force to obtain natural resources. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons prevented the United States and the Soviet Union from engaging in a direct war, but could not prevent them from fighting proxy wars. The main form of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War period was that of proxy wars, which related to the two states’ efforts to obtain natural resources. In the 1990s, information technology became primary driver of the global economy. With the rapid increase in the development pace of science and technology, hi-tech products now earn sizeable profits. Exporting hi-tech products has hence become a viable security strategy through which to obtain the natural resources needed to fuel economic development. This has made proxy wars an outdated military strategy, for which reason the United States and China need no longer engage in such wars. As early as 1988, Deng Xiaoping deemed that Science and technology was the primary productive force.52 Acknowledging the gap between China and the United States, the Chinese leaders determined a strategy of economic development whose centerpiece was improvement of science and technology. The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Party Congress on December 18 1978, proposed that the main focus of Party work beginning in 1979 should shift to the modernization of socialism. This was the beginning of China's strategy to ‘prioritize economic development’.53 The widespread use of computer technology creates a material basis on which the United States and China can maintain a superficial friendship.
-- Chinese leadership will pull back
Ross 1 (Robert S., Professor of Political Science – Boston College, The National Interest, Fall, Lexis)

The strategic costs to China of a war with the United States are only part of the deterrence equation. China also possesses vital economic interests in stable relations with the United States. War would end China's quest for modernization by severely constraining its access to U.S. markets, capital and technology, and by requiring China to place its economy on permanent war-time footing. The resultant economic reversal would derail China's quest for "comprehensive national power" and great power status. Serious economic instability would also destabilize China's political system on account of the resulting unemployment in key sectors of the economy and the breakdown of social order. Both would probably impose insurmountable challenges to party leadership. Moreover, defeat in a war with the United States over Taiwan would impose devastating nationalist humiliation on the Chinese Communist Party. In all, the survival of the party depends on preventing a Sino-American war.
-- History proves no risk of China war – their cards are all hype
Dyer 9 (Gwynne, Ph.D. in War Studies – University of London and Board of Governors – Canada’s Royal Military College, “China Unlikely to Engage in Military Confrontation”, Jakarta Post, 4-29,
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2005/03/12/china-unlikely-engage-military-confrontation.html)

Given America's monopoly or huge technological lead in key areas like stealth bombers, aircraft carriers, long-range sensors, satellite surveillance and even infantry body armor, Goss's warning is misleading and self-serving. China cannot project a serious military force even 200 miles (km) from home, while American forces utterly dominate China's ocean frontiers, many thousands of miles (kilometers) from the United States. But the drumbeat of warnings about China's ""military build-up"" continues.  Just the other week U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was worrying again about the expansion of the Chinese navy, which is finally building some amphibious landing ships half a century after Beijing's confrontation with the non-Communist regime on the island of Taiwan began. And Senator Richard Lugar, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned that if the European Union ends its embargo on arms sales to China, the U.S. would stop military technology sales to Europe.  It will come as no surprise, therefore, that the major U.S. defense review planned for this year will concentrate on the rising ""threat"" from China, or that this year for the first time the joint U.S.-Japanese defense policy statement named China as a ""security concern"", or that the Taiwan government urged the ""military encirclement"" of China to prevent any ""foreign adventures"" by Beijing. It comes as no surprise -- but it still makes no sense.  China's defense budget this year is 247.7 billion yuan: Around US$30 billion at the official exchange rate. There are those in Washington who will say that it's more like $60 billion in purchasing power, but then there used to be ""experts"" who annually produced hugely inflated and frightening estimates of the Soviet defense budget. Such people will always exist: to justify a big U.S. defense budget, you need a big threat.  It's true that 247.7 billion yuan buys an awful lot of warm bodies in military uniform in the low-wage Chinese economy, but it doesn't actually buy much more in the way of high-tech military systems.  It's also true that the Chinese defense budget has grown by double-digit increases for the past fourteen years: This year it's up by 12.6 percent. But that is not significantly faster than the Chinese economy as a whole is growing, and it's about what you have to spend in order to convert what used to be a glorified peasant militia into a modern military force.  It would be astonishing if China chose NOT to modernize its armed forces as the rest of the economy modernizes, and the end result is not going to be a military machine that towers above all others. If you project the current growth rates of military spending in China and the United States into the future, China's defense budget catches up with the United States about the same time that its Gross Domestic Product does, in the late 2030s or the early 2040s.  As to China's strategic intentions, the record of the past is reassuring in several respects. China has almost never been militarily expansionist beyond the traditional boundaries of the Middle Kingdom (which do include Tibet in the view of most Chinese), and its border clashes with India, the Soviet Union and Vietnam in the first decades of Communist rule generally ended with a voluntary Chinese withdrawal from the disputed territories.  The same moderation has usually applied in nuclear matters. The CIA frets that China could have a hundred nuclear missiles targeted on the United States by 2015, but that is actually evidence of China's great restraint. The first Chinese nuclear weapons test was forty years ago, and by now China could have thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on the U.S. if it wanted. (The United States DOES have thousands of nuclear warheads that can strike Chinese targets.)  The Beijing regime is obsessed with economic stability, because it fears that a severe downturn would trigger social and political upheaval. The last thing it wants is a military confrontation with its biggest trading partner, the United States. It will go on playing the nationalist card over Taiwan to curry domestic political favor, but there is no massive military build-up and no plausible threat of impending war in East Asia.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 3 | Opponent:  | Judge:
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Interpretation – “financial incentive” is a distinct class that is different from coercive incentives
Manage 6 (12 Manage, “Incentives,” 3-9, http://www.12manage.com/description_incentives.html)
Definition Incentives. Description.
An Incentive is any extrinsic reward factor that motivates an employee or manager or team to achieve an important business goal on top of his/her/their intrinsic motivation. It is a factor aiming to shape or direct behavior. In an optimal form, executives and employees should be remunerated well (but cost-effectively) where they deserve it, and not where they do not. Pay-offs for failure should be kept to a minimum. Furthermore, to be effective, a layered or gradual approach is better than an all-or-nothing incentive. A smart executive reward scheme is one of the pillars to ensure entrepreneurial behavior and maximizing shareholder value (Compare: Value Based Management). An incentive is unlike coercion, in that coerced work is motivated by the threat or use of violence, punishment or negative action, while an incentive is a positive stimulation. Incentives can also be used as Anti Hostile Takeover Mechanisms.
categories of incentives. Classes
    Financial Incentive. Also called, Remunerative Incentive, this category involves offering a material reward (often in the form of money) in exchange for certain results or behavior. In business, this is the most important category. The many variants include:
        Profit  sharing (the traditional, oldest approach).
        Merit pay (merit wage or salary increase, often depending on the results of an appraisal).
        Scientific Management (Taylor) and Piece-Rate systems (very effective on productivity, but may lead to quality issues).
        Pay for Performance or Gain Sharing.
    Moral Incentive. Where a particular behavior is widely regarded as the right thing to do, or as particularly admirable, or where the failure to act in a certain way is condemned as indecent.
    Coercive Incentive. Where a failure to behave in a certain way or to achieve certain results can be expected to result in physical force being used.
Furthermore, incentives can be either a:
    Personal Incentive (motivating a specific individual person).
    Social Incentive (motivating any individual in certain circumstances).
Violation – the plan is a mandate – incentives must be positive
Creighton 74 (David L., Principal – Creighton Services LLC, “Philosophies, Incentives, and Education,” Education Resources Information Center, http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED095067.pdf)
Before we go on, however, we had better stop and pick up what may turn out to be important philosophical details.' If a scientist says he is working with incentives, I will expect his use of the word 'incentive' to be slightly different -broader or narrower - from what it means in ordinary usage. To paraphrase a well known point made by Wittgenstein I might say - We can give the concept incentive rigid limits, that is use the word 'incentive' for a rigidly limited concept but we can also use it so that the extension is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we do use the word 'incentive.' How is it bounded? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all,- except for that special purpose.8 The scientist has a special purpose - scientific investigation - for which a boundary must be drawn. The only difficulty he is likely to encounter is translating his findings back into ordinary language. The extension of his concept will not be exactly the same as the ordinary one. And how will he tell us what he has discovered? Well, perhaps by teaching us his boundaries so we know how he is using the word. Everyone can get confused, however, and many times formers of boundaries have used a word in its normal sense and in its special purpose sense interchangeably. If this occurs in an argument, the argument will necessarily be invalid. And so we must all be careful: For psychologists, educators and myself I'd like to say some things about the way the concept of 'an incentive' functions. 'Incentive' in its most typical cases involves the offering of things like rewards. A punishment for non-compliance or failure-to meet a goal may motivate someone to' try harder but it is not an incentive. In fact it is proper to say that the word 'Incentive' is used precisely to mark off these positive inducements from negative ones. The threat of punishment or financial loss may act as a deterrent - fortunately not as an incentive.
Voting issue –
A. Limits – each category is massive, they explode the topic by allowing hundreds of new, conceptually distinct incentives – makes neg research impossible.
B. Categorical bi-directionality – negative incentives allow affs to ADD restrictions to parts of the topic – forcing us to defend both increased and decreased restrictions for each category – that explodes predictable limits.
C. Ground – different generics apply by category – they dodge the best incentive DA links by not picking a winner and negatively incentivizing a different type of energy source.
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Text: The fifty state governments of the United States should establish a feed-in tariff for the development of solar power in pursuance with the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act.
States can solves – FERC guidelines and California examples
Browning 10 (Adam Browning – Executive Director of the Vote Solar Initiative, 8/4/2010, “FERC Defines States’ Feed-In Tariff Authority,” http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/ferc-defines-states-feed-in-tariff-authority.)
FERC thus found that the CPUC's decision under AB 1613, including the CPUC-set price, would be consistent with these federal laws as long as it satisfies certain requirements: ● The CHP generators must be QFs pursuant to PURPA. ● The CPUC-set price must not exceed the avoided cost of the purchasing utility." In other words, state legislatures and regulators are restricted in their ability to mandate premium, fixed-price requirements. What does this mean going forward? While this decision clearly limits feed-in tariff options, it does not preclude effective wholesale distributed generation programs. When the issue came up in a recent, similar proceeding -- the CPUC's effort to expand the renewable feed-in tariff program under AB 1969 (R.08-08-009) -- parties were required to file legal briefs on this subject. Here are a few policy approaches that fall within state's price-setting authority: ● Set the feed-in tariff price at utilities' avoided cost ● Establish a more targeted requirement (e.g., solar PV systems from 1MW to 10 MW) and let the market set the price ● Set a price at avoided cost, and cover the marginal gap to a workable price with a tax benefit or renewable energy credit from a public benefit fund. There are a few real-world examples of feed-in tariffs that use this approach. The Sacramento Municipal Utilities District recently issued a feed-in tariff priced on their time-differentiated avoided cost of generation (modeled on expected PV output, it comes out to a levelized rate of about 14 cents per kWh). All 100 MW of the available contract capacity was immediately sold out, principally in 5 MW chunks (note that similar programs eligible for only smaller sytems have proven less effective). Another take on this approach comes from California's SB 32. Passed in 2009, it is a fixed-price feed-in tariff that attempts to raise the 'avoided cost' by capturing as much value associated with distributed generation as possible (avoided transmission and distribution upgrades, etc.).
PURPA is the state’s vehicle for feed-in tariffs
NREL 10 (Scott Hempling – National Regulatory Research Institute, Carolyn Elefant – The Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant, Karlynn Cory – National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Kevin Porter – Exeter Associates, Inc., January, 2010, “Renewable Energy Prices in State-Level Feed-in Tariffs: Federal Law Constraints and Possible Solutions,” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/47408.pdf.)
PURPA creates for retail utilities an obligation to buy capacity and energy from certain types of facilities. The statute makes state utility regulatory commissions responsible for administering that obligation with respect to retail utilities over which the state commission has jurisdiction. States can use the utility's PURPA obligation as a legal vehicle for creating feed-in tariffs. By relying on PURPA, they need not enact a separate state law. This section (Part I) provides the background necessary to understand how to design state-level feed-in tariffs within PURPA's constraints. It explains that: a. PURPA requires each utility to buy capacity and energy from FERC-certified "qualifying facilities.” The sales price can be established either (a) by state commissions, in which case the price must equal the utility’s “avoided cost” or (b) through utility-QF negotiations, in which case the price may exceed avoided cost. b. PURPA administration is split between FERC (which grants QF status) and states (which determine avoided cost and administer the utility's purchase obligation). c. In 2005, Congress authorized FERC to exempt utilities from PURPA QF purchase obligations if they are located where QFs have reasonable opportunities to sell into wholesale markets because of the availability of transmission access or RTO-organized markets. FERC has issued regulations governing the ability of utilities to request this PURPA exemption and has clarified that the utility is still obligated to purchase from QFs with a capacity of 20 MW and less. FERC has granted this exemption to most requesting utilities. d. FERC allows states to supplement a QF's avoided cost compensation (e.g., through cash grants, renewable energy credits, tax credits and/or production-based incentive payments) as long as the supplement does not take the form of mandatory utility payments for power to the QF. After providing this background, Part I summarizes NRRI guidance to states in how to design feed-in tariffs consistent with PURPA's constraints.

1nc
Immigration will pass now and it’s top of the docket
Helderman 1-25 Rosalind S. Helderman and David Nakamura, Wash Post, 1/25/13, “Senators nearing agreement on broad immigration reform proposal”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-nearing-agreement-on-broad-immigration-reform-proposal/2013/01/25/950fb78a-6642-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html
A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward comprehensive legislation in years. The six members have met quietly since the November election, most recently on Wednesday. Congressional aides stressed there is not yet final agreement, but they have eyed next Friday as a target date for a possible public announcement. The talks mark the most in-depth negotiations involving members of both parties since a similar effort broke down in 2010 without producing a bill. “We have basic agreement on many of the core principles,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the group, said this week. “Now we have to draft it. It takes time.” “The group we’ve been meeting with — and it’s equal number of Democrats and Republicans — we’re real close,” added Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), another member of the group. The accelerated pace signals that immigration reform is expected to be one of Congress’s highest priorities, and it comes as the White House prepares to launch its own public campaign on the issue. President Obama will travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday to speak about the need to “fix the broken immigration system this year,” the administration announced, an appearance in a state with a rapidly growing number of Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly supported his reelection. Obama also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Friday, and aides said he vowed that immigration will be his “top priority.” “What has been absent in the time since he put principles forward is a willingness by Republicans to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. “He hopes that dynamic has changed and there are indications what was once a bipartisan effort to push forward. . .will again be a bipartisan effort to do so.” Past efforts begun amid similarly high hopes have sputtered. But members of both parties increasingly see changes to the nation’s troubled immigration system as an area most likely to draw bipartisan agreement at a time when Congress is deeply divided on gun control, spending and taxes. The optimism is spurred by the sense that the political dynamics have shifted markedly since the last two significant bipartisan efforts failed. In 2007, a bill crafted in the Senate died after failing to win support of 60 members despite backing from then-president George W. Bush. Many Republicans, and some centrist Democrats, opposed that effort because it offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In 2010, extended negotiations between Schumer and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) broke down without producing legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a veteran of the 2007 effort who is part of the current working group, said Republican attitudes have dramatically shifted since the party’s defeat at the polls in November. Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote among Latinos and Asians, and a growing number of GOP leaders believe action on immigration is necessary to expand the party’s appeal to minority groups. “Obviously, it’s had a very distinct impression,” said McCain, who lost his own bid for the White House in 2008. “It’s time to move forward on this.” But he added, “I don’t claim that it’s going to be easy.” Also included in the new Senate group are Schumer, who chairs the key Senate subcommittee where legislative action will begin; Graham; Robert Menendez (D-N.J.); and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Two others, Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), have also been involved in some talks. Their timetable would aim for a bill to be written by March or April and potentially considered for final passage in the Senate as early as the summer. Proponents believe adoption in the GOP-held House would be made easier with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate. The working group’s principles would address stricter border control, better employer verification of workers’ immigration status, new visas for temporary agriculture workers and expanding the number of visas available for skilled engineers. They would also include a call to help young people who were brought to the country illegally as children by their parents become citizens and to normalize the status of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. But obstacles abound. For instance, Rubio has said he believes immigrants who came to the country illegally should be able to earn a work permit. But he has said they should be required to seek citizenship through existing avenues, and only after those who have come to the country legally. Democrats and immigration advocates fear that approach could result in wait-times stretching for decades, creating a class of permanent legal residents for whom the benefits of citizenship appear unattainable. They have pushed to create new pathways to citizenship specifically available to those who achieve legal residency as part a reform effort. It is not yet clear if the Senate group will endorse a mechanism allowing such people to eventually become citizens — something Obama is expected to champion. Schumer said it would be “relatively detailed,” but would not “get down into the weeds.” A source close to Rubio said he joined the group in December at the request of other members only after they agreed their effort would line up with his own principles for reform, which he outlined in an interview with the Wall Street Journal three weeks ago. His ideas have since been embraced by conservatives, including some longtime foes of providing legal status to those who have come to the country illegally. As a possible 2016 presidential contender widely trusted on the right, Rubio’s support could be key to moving the bipartisan effort. And while Rubio and other Republicans have said they would prefer to split up a comprehensive immigration proposal into smaller bills that would be voted on separately, the White House will pursue comprehensive legislation that seeks to reform the process in a single bill. “I doubt if there will be a macro, comprehensive bill,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who supported the 2007 effort. “Anytime a bill’s more than 500 pages, people start getting suspicious. If it’s 2,000 pages, they go berserk.” But in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Republican Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, strongly supports a single comprehensive bill, writing that “Congress should avoid quick fixes.” Schumer said Friday that a single package will be key for passage. “We’ll not get it done in pieces,” he said. “Every time you do a piece, everyone says what about my piece and you get more people opposing it.” White House officials said they welcome the bipartisan Senate group’s deliberations and do not think it will conflict with the administration’s strategy. Some Democrats in the House, including Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), have cautioned that the White House could harm the bid for bipartisan support if it acts too aggressively by authoring its own legislative proposal. But advocates, who were disappointed that Obama did not follow through on comprehensive reform in his first term, said they expect the president to be out front on the issue. “The president needs to lead, and then the Republicans have a choice: Are they going to do what they did in the last term and just be obstructionists?” said Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which spent millions recruiting new Hispanic voters this year. “Well, that didn’t work too well in November. Do the Republicans want the president not to get the credit? The best way to share the credit is for them to step up and engage and act together with the president. But it’s their choice. ”
PC is key to immigration
Chris Weigant, Political writer, 1/23/13 “Handicapping Obama's Second Term Agenda,” HuffPost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/obama-second-term_b_2537802.html
The second big agenda item is immigration reform. President Obama holds virtually all the cards, politically, on this one. All Republicans who can read either demographics or polling numbers know full well that this may be their party's last chance not to go the way of the Whigs. Their support among Latinos is dismal, and even that's putting it politely. Some Republicans think they have come up with a perfect solution on how to defuse the issue, but they are going to be proven sadly mistaken in the end, I believe. The Republican plan will be announced by Senator Marco Rubio at some point, and it will seem to mirror the Democratic plan -- with one key difference. Republicans -- even the ones who know their party has to do something on the immigration problem -- are balking at including a "path to citizenship" for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already in America.¶ The Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it too -- and it's not going to work. "Sure," they say, "we'll give some sort of papers to these folks, let them stay, and even let them work... but there's no need to give them the hope of ever becoming a full citizen." This just isn't going to be good enough, though. There are essentially two things citizens can do which green card holders cannot: serve on juries, and vote. The Republicans are not worried about tainted juries, in case that's not clear enough.¶ Republicans will bend over backwards in an effort to convince Latinos that their proposal will work out just fine for everyone. Latinos, however, aren't stupid. They know that being denied any path to citizenship equals an effort to minimize their voice on the national political stage. Which is why, as I said, Obama holds all the cards in this fight. Because this is the one issue in his agenda which Republicans also have a big vested interest in making happen. Obama and the Democrats will, I believe, hold firm on their insistence on a path to citizenship, and I think a comprehensive immigration bill will likely pass some time this year, perhaps before the summer congressional break. The path to citizenship it includes will be long, expensive and difficult (Republicans will insist on at least that), but it will be there.¶ On gun control, I think Obama will win a partial victory. On immigration, I think he will win an almost-total victory. On global warming, however, he's going to be disappointed. In fact, I doubt -- no matter how much "bully pulpiting" Obama does -- that any bill will even appear out of a committee in either house of Congress. This will be seen as Obama's "overreach" -- a bridge too far for the current political climate. Anyone expecting big legislative action on global warming is very likely going to be massively disappointed, to put it quite bluntly. In fact, Obama will signal this in the next few months, as he approves the Keystone XL pipeline -- much to the dismay of a lot of his supporters.¶ Of course, I could be wrong about any or all of these predictions. I have no special knowledge of how things will work out in Congress in the immediate future. I'm merely making educated guesses about what Obama will be able to achieve in at least the first few years of his second term. Obama has a lot of political capital right now, but that could easily change soon. The House Republicans seem almost demoralized right now, and Obama has successfully splintered them and called their bluff on two big issues already -- but they could regroup and decide to block everything the White House wants, and damn the political consequences. Unseen issues will pop up both on the domestic and foreign policy stages, as they always do. But, for now, this is my take on how the next few years are going to play out in Washington. Time will tell whether I've been too optimistic or too pessimistic on any or all of Obama's main agenda items. We'll just have to wait and see.
Plan faces political barriers
Dong 12
Baofeng, Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, School of Architecture and Allied Arts, of the University of Oregon, June, http://www.oregonrenewables.com/Publications/Dong_Thesis_Solar_FIT_Final.pdf
Though FIT programs have experienced significant growth and great success in Germany, solar PV deployment in the U.S. still faces tremendous political and economic barriers. Trial FIT programs have been started in several states, such as California, Florida, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin (Couture and Cory 2009). As of 2009, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) district was the only public utility district (PUD) in the United States that had a FIT program based on the cost of renewable energy (RE) generation (Couture and Cory 2009). There is no overarching federal policy that requires certain amounts of renewable energy deployment. Legislation that has aimed to pass permanent tax credit for renewable energy has failed in Congress, and renewal of federal investment tax credit and other incentives has faced significant opposition.

Immigration reform expands skilled labor --- spurs relations and economic growth in China and India.
Los Angeles Times, 11/9/2012 (Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration reform, p. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/us-immigration-reform-eagerly-awaited-by-source-countries.html)
"Comprehensive immigration reform will see expansion of skilled labor visas," predicted B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. A former research chief for the congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform, Lowell said he expects to see at least a fivefold increase in the number of highly skilled labor visas that would provide "a significant shot in the arm for India and China." There is widespread consensus among economists and academics that skilled migration fosters new trade and business relationships between countries and enhances links to the global economy, Lowell said. "Countries like India and China weigh the opportunities of business abroad from their expats with the possibility of brain drain, and I think they still see the immigration opportunity as a bigger plus than not," he said.
US/India relations averts South Asian nuclear war.
Schaffer, Spring 2002 (Teresita – Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Security, Washington Quarterly, p. Lexis)
Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation. For Washington, the advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region. Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S. relations with India. For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.

Civ K
Guess what we’re bringing back the civ k
Solving GW unlimits growth by removing the obvious consequences – doesn’t do anything to change the underlying irresponsibilities and consumptive habits that cause the impacts. It’d be like a child with unlimited candy and no parents – locks in ecocide
Ehrenfield, 95 David, professor of biology at Rutgers, “Listening to the Land” interviewed by Derrick Jensen 79-80
The bottom line is really what we have to look at, and we’ve stopped looking at the bottom line. The bottom line with fusion is: What will happen if we have available to us a virtually inexhaustible source of energy?
We have to ask: How have we used energy in the past? The answer is, we haven’t used it responsibly. Does anyone really want more neon signs? Do people really want more battery operated snowmobiles destroying the environment of the north?
Having fusion power would be like having an unlimited supply of candy, and very few people have the willpower to resist this. Candy, too, is a source of energy. And we don’t have any way physiologically to get rid of excess energy we take in. We just store it as fat, which isn’t good for us. The same is true with energy. If we have too much we’re going to get societally fat—and sick.
Also energy destroys privacy. Do we really want to be able to go see anybody anytime we feel like it, without any thought to the cost of the fuel? The cost of fuel, although it’s an annoyance, is a useful thing.
There used to be a limit to how much you could run around seeing people and fragmenting your life. The limit was the distance you could walk conveniently. If you ever want to see how this functions, read Jane Austen’s best book, Emma. In it she describes the function of what I would consider a healthy community, and it isn’t till you finish the book that you realize that except for one fairly brief scene, all the action takes place within walking distance of the house of the central character. It’s striking, when you see what kind of life this enforces.
There are very few mechanisms keeping us responsible. Ultimately there are many limits that prevent us from doing anything we feel like doing, and prevent us from damaging ourselves. We see these easily in our personal lives. For instance, the limits for children are the parents. Anybody who’s had a one- or two-year-old knows that they have no sense about dealing with the world. And doing away with limits is like doing away with parents for a child.
Answer this question when evaluating the aff – even if they can solve for X Y Z impact are they going to avert the long term ecological catastrophe industrial society is creating? If no then it’s time we ask the hard questions – the pessimism you feel is felt everywhere – everyone knows on some level that the party has to stop – at this point it’s only a question of whether you recognize and act accordingly on this truth. It’s our only chance
Zerzan 2008 John, the anti-christ, “Twilight of the Machines,” 114-5
Questions and ideas can only become currents in the world insofar as reality, external and internal, makes that possible. Our present state, devolving toward catastrophe, displays a reality in unmistakable terms. We are bound for a head-on collision between urgent new questions and a totality-global civilization-that can provide no answers. A world that offers no future. but shows no signs of admitting this fact, imperils its own future along with the life, health, and freedom of all beings on the planet. Civilizations rulers have always squandered whatever remote chances they had to prepare for the end of life as they know it, by choosing to ride the crest of domination, in all its forms. 114
It has become clear to some that the depth of the expanding crisis, which is as massively dehumanizing as it is ecocidal. stems from the cardinal institutions of civilization itself. The discredited promises of Enlightenment and modernity represent the pinnacle of the grave mistake known as civilization. There is no prospect that this Order will renounce that which has defined and maintained it, and apparently little likelihood that its various ideological supporters can face the facts. If civilization's collapse has already begun, a process now unofficially but widely assumed, there may be grounds for a widespread refusal or abandonment of the reigning totality. Indeed, its rigidity and denial may be setting the stage for a cultural shift on an unprecedented scale, which could unfold rapidly.
Of course, a paradigm shift away from this entrenched, but vulnerable and fatally flawed system is far from unavoidable. The other main possibility is that too many people, for the usual reasons (fear, inertia, manufactured incapacity, etc.) will passively accept reality as it is, until it's too late to do anything but try to deal with collapse. It's noteworthy that a growing awareness that things are going wrong, however inchoate and individualized, is fuelled by a deep. visceral unease and in many cases, acute suffering. This is where opportunity resides. From this new perspective that is certainly growing, we find the work of confronting what faces us as a species, and removing the barriers to planetary survival. The time has come for a wholesale indictment of civilization and mass society. It is at least possible that, in various modes, such a judgment can undo the death-machine before destruction and domestication inundate everything.
1NC Solvency
It failed in Germany
Michaels 12 (Patrick J. Michaels – senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, 1/6/12, “A Sustainable Depression,”  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/sustainable-depression.)  This article appeared in The Washington Times on January 6, 2012.
The impetus for this originated in Germany with the 1990 Stromeinspeisungsgesetz, which sort of translates as "Law on Feeding Electricity Into the Grid." This law initially required utilities to purchase "renewable" (i.e. solar and wind) energy at the market price. It didn't exactly shock the electricity world that this would not work. Solar and wind were too expensive, so in 2000, the law was changed to become a welfare program for anyone who put a solar panel on a roof. Now called the Act Granting Priority to Renewable Energy Sources, it guaranteed an ultimate profit, sort of like buying your own slot machine and inviting the neighbors. In the beginning, Germans paid a "feed-in tariff" of 65 cents per kilowatt-hour for power from the roof; the total comparable cost for power from a new gas plant in the United States is about 6 cents. Solar panels sprouted everywhere. Q-Cells Corp. became the world's largest producer. Investors piled on. Q-Cells rose from $30 a share in October 2006 to a peak of $97.60 in 13 months. Today it is trading at 55 cents. A grand total of 1.9 percent of Germany's power comes from solar. Germany gradually reduced the tariff by about 50 percent, which substantially lengthened the time in which a panel will pay for itself. A huge supply of solar panels glutted the market, and the carnage is industrywide. A person who invested $2,500 in the Guggenheim Solar Energy Fund in 2008 (symbol: TAN) would have $267 today, typical for this sector.
Solar industry collapse inevitable – Europe proves picking solar as a winner guarantees long-term collapse
Glover 9/13 -- European associate editor for the independent online magazine Energy Tribune (Peter, 2012, "Solar Eclipsed?" http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/11672/Solar-Eclipsed)
The global solar power industry is in crisis. The industry blames widespread national subsidy cuts and over productivity; China, in particular, being widely vilified on the second count. However, the real cause of the solar industry’s malaise runs deeper, rooted, as it is, in the inescapable fact that, in terms of current technology, commercial scale solar energy remains a non-viable proposition. Wherever you look the solar power industry is mired in financial problems, all of which lead back to the (life support) of public subsidy, the impact of market-skewing regulations (creating the appearance of commercial viability) and, ultimately, protectionist trade wars (US and Europe v China). In economic good-times, three natural consequences of government-sponsored global industries that can be obfuscated by a network of feed-in tariffs, levies and other ‘green’ taxes to pay for them. But in leaner economic climes, the real cost of ‘free’ energy becomes all too clear. Germany’s solar industry has led the way in Europe. Until recently the country was the world leader in manufacturing solar cells. Half of the world’s total solar power generating capacity is installed in Germany. But, according to Klaus Dieter Maubach, Technology Chairman at the country’s power major EON, Germany’s solar industry is in a death spiral. Speaking to Focus magazine, Maubach states that “not a single company is in the black” and that the entire German solar industry “will disappear within five years”. His bleak prediction merely echoed the view of investment consultants Citigroup who warned in March that Germany’s subsidy cuts would “nearly kill Germany’s solar industry”. Widespread complaints of Chinese solar companies dumping cut price solar panels on the European market have merely added to the malaise. In early September, the European Commission announced a formal inquiry into this allegation that could well trigger a cut-throat solar trade war with China. But as Eon’s Maubach points out with regard to the international solar market, China itself is suffering from precisely the same market problems as all its competitors. While Beijing will attempt to stave off decline through government stimulus, it is only a question of time before the loss of European and US markets for cheap Chinese goods, including solar panels, causes an economic downturn there, too. In fact, the threat of a Europe v China solar ‘war’ is little more than a replay of last year’s dust up between the United States and China. In the wake of the infamous Solyndra scandal (which Solyndra execs blamed on cheap Chinese imports), the U.S. imposed savage protectionist anti-dumping tariffs. These ranged from 31 percent to as high as 250 percent on imported Chinese-made panels. No surprise then that the Chinese companies should turn their attention to key European markets to offload a product they are unable to sell domestically. The problems for U.S. solar cannot be laid at the door of Chinese competition alone. Once the massive infusion of government stimulus cash ran out and subsidies slowed in early 2011, U.S. solar companies had already begun filing for bankruptcy. And Solyndra wasn’t the only company desperate for more cash. One heavily-subsidized firm, First Solar, was even caught using the U.S. taxpayer loan guarantee to sell solar panels to itself. So are the Chinese really the chief villains of the global solar piece? Depends how you look at it. China’s over production only came about because Beijing’s economic stimulus for its solar industry led to explosive growth and, ultimately, unfettered over production. Given enormous government subsidies there was literally no incentive to slow production down. In the game of who could sustain massive public subsidy longest, cash-rich China clearly won. But the fact is that the sun looks to be setting on China’s solar industry, too. Beijing has also become aware it cannot go on subsidizing its solar and renewable industries. China is dumping its solar panels in a bid to at least redeem some of its costs. Meanwhile the dark clouds have gathered over China’s economy too with the solar sector there also now facing bankruptcy. Since 2005, Chinese solar companies saw heady growth receiving significant government support as a “strategic emerging industry”. But since 2010, the price of the key polysilicon wafers crucial to production has fallen by around 75 percent. In recent times, China’s big five firms have all reported disastrous trading losses. Worse still, according to the investment boys at Energy and Capital and others, China’s much-vaunted booming economy, already over-heating, is about to implode. Taken as a whole, government incentive schemes around the world have created a glut of suppliers that the capitalist free market would never have sanctioned. The eclipse of Europe’s solar industry is in truth down to simple economic realities hitting home as commercial scale solar power is simply too expensive a proposition to attract serious private sector investment and end massive public subsidies. In January, Spain’s economic crisis forced it to cut its renewable subsidy regime entirely. In April, a near-bankrupt Italian government estimated that its subsidy regime left it facing a $60 billion bill to photovoltaic generators over the next 20 years. In The Great British Solar Scam I wrote about how the UK’s bid to cuts its ludicrously generous solar subsidy regime saw it prevented from making subsidy cuts by a European court after the UK solar industry inevitably claimed widespread bankruptcies would result(1). What marks out both the entire renewable energy sector for economic decline above all else is the fact that it is effectively an expensive government-sponsored enterprise, not a child of the free and democratic marketplace. Consider again the elements colluding to produce the current crisis: the lifeline of public subsidy, energy levies and taxes and market-skewing regulation dove-tailing with incentivized over-capacity, protectionism and, ultimately, trade wars. All marks of an industry kept afloat by ideological fiat and not free market capitalism geared to meeting actual market need. To gain a final key perspective, a report by United Nations Environment Programme in June announced that global renewable energy investment generally reached $257 billion in 2011 rivalling the $302 billion invested in hydrocarbon power. Germany alone has committed over €100 billion in solar subsidies over the next 20 years – for a power that will produce a very small energy return. In total, renewable energy, of which solar is just a tiny fraction, makes up just 3 percent of our electricity. As the green utopian clouds obscuring the real cost of ‘free’ solar power clear, it’s easy to see why the industry is in eclipse.
Nat gas prevents solar development
Dumaine 12 -- senior editor-at-large @ CNNMoney (Brian, 4/17/12, "Will gas crowd out wind and solar?" http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/17/yergin-gas-solar-wind/?iid=HP_LN)
Fracking technology has given the U.S. a 100-year supply of cheap natural gas. What's its impact on coal, nuclear, wind, and solar power? Inexpensive natural gas is transforming the competitive economics of electric power generation in the U.S. Coal plants today generate more than 40% of our electricity. Yet coal plant construction is grinding to a halt: first, because of environmental reasons and second, because the economics of natural gas are so compelling. It is being championed by many environmentalists as a good substitute for coal because it is cleaner and emits about 50% less carbon dioxide. Nuclear power now generates 20% of our electricity, but the plants are getting old and will need to be replaced. What will replace them? Only a few nuclear plants are being built in the U.S. right now. The economics of building nuclear are challenging -- it's much more expensive than natural gas. Isn't the worry now that cheap natural gas might also crowd out wind and solar? Yes. The debate is over whether natural gas is a bridge fuel to buy time while renewables develop or whether it will itself be a permanent, major source of electricity. What do you think? Over the past year the debate has moved beyond the idea of gas as a bridge fuel to what gas means to U.S. manufacturing and job creation and how it will make the U.S. more globally competitive as an energy exporter. The President's State of the Union speech was remarkable in the way it wrapped the shale gas boom into his economic policies and job creation. I believe natural gas in the years ahead is going to be the default fuel for new electrical generation. Power demand is going to go up 15% to 20% in the U.S. over this decade because of the increasing electrification of our society -- everything from iPads to electric Nissan Leafs. Utilities will need a predictable source of fuel in volume to meet that demand, and natural gas best fits that description. And that won't make the environmental community happy? Well, natural gas may be a relatively clean hydrocarbon, but it's still a hydrocarbon. So wind and solar will have a hard time competing? Remember that wind and solar account for only 3% of our electric power, whereas natural gas is 23%, and its share will go up fast. Most of that 3% is wind. Natural gas has a new role as the partner of renewables, providing power when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Will solar scale? Solar is still under 1% of U.S. electric generation, and even though its costs have come down dramatically, they must come down a lot more. Solar is generally much more expensive than coal and natural gas. You have to remember that energy is a huge, capital-intensive business, and it takes a very long time for new technologies to scale. The euphoria that comes out of Silicon Valley when you see how quickly a Twitter or a YouTube can emerge doesn't apply to the energy industry.
Unsubsidized rooftop PV systems solve
Brudenall 12 (David Brudenall, Palmerston local politician, 9/25/12,  “Where can we find the ACT election candidates? – Electric logic,” The Canberra News, l/n)
Both J. McKerral (Letters, September 17) and John Bromhead (Letters, September 19) have made some assumptions about Professor Andrew Blakers' (September 13) claim that ''unsubsidised photovoltaic electricity from urban rooftops is now cheaper than retail electricity nearly everywhere''. McKerral assumes that PV system owners must benefit from renewal energy certificate subsidies, while Mr Bromhead assumes they receive generous feed-in tariff benefits; but neither has apparently considered the possibility that someone might install an unsubsidised rooftop PV system which does not feed into the grid, but instead provides power to just the dwelling it is installed on. If the cost to install a PV system which matches in output your daytime electricity consumption is cheaper per kilowatt-hour than the retail tariff, then Professor Blakers' argument wins. No need for renewable energy certificates or feed-in tariffs. And as the cost of retail electricity increases over time, so might the number people taking up the option to generate their own, cheaper power. And then of course, the floodgates might really open once the cost of batteries to store the PV-generated power for later consumption comes down.
No race for renewables – their NREL ev only says that FITs help CET exports – no warrants about lock out
Warming
Their plumber evidence – fit is fastest  is unqualified – it doesn’t even include cites
Global air pollution inevitable

Watson 5 (Traci, Staff Writer – USA Today, “Air Pollution From Other Countries Drifts into USA”, USA Today, 3-13, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/climate/2005-03-13-pollution-_x.htm)

Americans drive imported cars, wear imported clothes and chug imported beers. Now scientists are discovering another, less welcome import into the USA: air pollution.  Mercury from China, dust from Africa, smog from Mexico — all of it drifts freely across U.S. borders and contaminates the air millions of Americans breathe, according to recent research from Harvard University, the University of Washington and many other institutions where scientists are studying air pollution. There are no boundaries in the sky to stop such pollution, no Border Patrol agents to capture it. Pollution wafting into the USA accounts for 30% of the nation's ozone, an important component of smog, says researcher David Parrish of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By the year 2020, Harvard University's Daniel Jacob says, imported pollution will be the primary factor degrading visibility in our national parks.  While the United States is cutting its own emissions, some nations, especially China, are belching out more and more dirty air. As a result, overseas pollution could partly cancel out improvements in U.S. air quality that have cost billions of dollars. 

-- No impact

Schwartz 3 (Joel, Adjunct Scholar – Competitive Enterprise Institute, “Particulate Air Pollution: Weighing the Risks”, April, http://cei.org/pdf/3452.pdf)

Nonetheless, both the Bush Administration and congressional Democrats have proposed sweeping new measures to further crack down on power plant emissions.  The Administration’s Clear Skies Initiative and a more stringent Democratic alternative are largely justified by claims that current levels of particulate matter (PM) pose a serious public health threat.   Supporters of these bills promise substantial benefits from additional PM reductions.  
Nevertheless, the benefit claims for PM reductions rest on a weak foundation. EPA based its new annual fine PM (PM2.5) standard on a study known as the American Cancer Society (ACS) study of PM and mortality, which assessed the association between the risk of death between 1982 and 1998 with PM2.5 levels in dozens of American cities. Although the ACS study reported an association between PM and mortality, some odd features of the ACS results suggest that PM is not the culprit. For example, according  to the ACS results, PM increased mortality in men, but not women; in those with no more  than a high school degree, but not those with at least some college education; in former-  smokers, but not current- or never-smokers; and in those who said they were moderately active, but not those who said they were very active or sedentary.  These odd variations in the relationship between PM2.5 and mortality seem biologically implausible. Even more surprising, the ACS study reported that higher PM2.5  levels were not associated with an increased risk of mortality due to respiratory disease; a  surprising finding, given that PM would be expected to exert its effects through the  respiratory system. EPA also ignored the results of another epidemiologic study that found no effect of  PM2.5 on mortality in a cohort of veterans with high blood pressure, even though this  relatively unhealthy cohort should have been more susceptible to the effects of pollution  than the general population. The evidence therefore suggests that the existing annual standard for PM2.5 is unnecessarily stringent. Attaining the standard will be expensive, but is unlikely to improve public health.
Previous temperature spikes disprove the impact
Singer 11 (S. Fred, Robert M. and Craig, PhD physics – Princeton University and professor of environmental science – UVA, consultant – NASA, GAO, DOE, NASA, Carter, PhD paleontology – University of Cambridge, adjunct research professor – Marine Geophysical Laboratory @ James Cook University, and Idso, PhD Geography – ASU, “Climate Change Reconsidered,” 2011 Interim Report of the Nongovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
Research from locations around the world reveal a significant period of elevated air temperatures that immediately preceded the Little Ice Age, during a time that has come to be known as the Little Medieval Warm Period. A discussion of this topic was not included in the 2009 NIPCC report, but we include it here to demonstrate the existence of another set of real-world data that do not support the IPCC‘s claim that temperatures of the past couple of decades have been the warmest of the past one to two millennia. In one of the more intriguing aspects of his study of global climate change over the past three millennia, Loehle (2004) presented a graph of the Sargasso Sea and South African temperature records of Keigwin (1996) and Holmgren et al. (1999, 2001) that reveals the existence of a major spike in surface air temperature that began sometime in the early 1400s. This abrupt and anomalous warming pushed the air temperatures of these two records considerably above their representations of the peak warmth of the twentieth century, after which they fell back to pre-spike levels in the mid-1500s, in harmony with the work of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003), who found a similar period of higher-than-current temperatures in their reanalysis of the data employed by Mann et al. (1998, 1999).
Negative feedbacks check runaway warming -
A. Water Vapor
Sweger 11 Dr. Daniel M. Sweger, AB (Physics, Duke University, 1965) and Ph.D. (Solid State Physics, American University, 1974) has been a research scientist at NIST, where he was active in a variety of research areas, including cryogenic thermometry, solid state and nuclear physics, and molecular spectroscop, “ Earth’s Climate Engine Exploring the Dynamics of Earth’s Climate”, March 17th, 2011, http://junksciencearchive.com/Greenhouse/Earth-s_Climate_Engine.pdf, Chetan
The role of water vapor in determining surface temperatures is ultimately a dominant one. During daylight hours it moderates the sun’s energy, at night it acts like a blanket to slow the loss of heat, and carries energy from the warm parts of the earth to the cold. Compared to that, if carbon dioxide has an effect, it must be negligible. It is also clear from the data presented above that water vapor acts with a negative feedback. The data clearly shows that the relationship between the amount of water vapor in the air and temperature is negative; that is, the higher the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere the lower the surface temperature. In that regard, it almost acts as a thermostat. As the air cools as a result of an increasing moisture content in the atmosphere, there is a decrease in the amount of water vapor produced by evaporation. Eventually this decrease of the level of water vapor being introduced into the atmosphere results in a decrease in moisture content. At this point more sunlight reaches the earth’s surface resulting in higher temperatures and increasing evaporation. In the positive feedback mechanism as proposed by the global warming proponents this behavior would be reversed. Then the data would show a positive relationship between moisture content and temperature. But it does not.
B. Sulfate aerosols
Hausfather 8 – Zeke, Regular Contributor to the Yale Forum on Climate Change, June 24th,  “COMMON CLIMATE MISCONCEPTIONS Why Reducing Sulfate Aerosol Emissions Complicates Efforts to Moderate Climate Change” The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, http://yaleclimatemediaforum.org/ccm/0608_sulphate_aerosol_emissions.htm
With all the attention surrounding carbon dioxide these days, it is easy to forget that there are a number of other important natural and human-driven factors ("forcings" in climate circles) that influence Earth's climate.  Among the most important of these are sulfate aerosols, microscopic particles smaller than a millionth of a meter suspended in the air. Sulfate aerosols are produced primarily from sulphur dioxide (SO2) emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels. Along with ozone precursors, they are primary causes of acid rain and of lung irritation and ground-level haze or smog in polluted areas.  Sulfate aerosols also have a strong cooling effect on Earth, both through their ability to scatter incoming light and because of their propensity to increase cloud formation and reflectivity.  Among the most significant changes in climate change modeling between the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) and the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007 was a revision of the expected trajectory of human-induced sulfate aerosol emissions. In the earlier report, scientists assumed that aerosols would increase in rough proportional to economic growth. The authors of the 2007 report realized that emissions of aerosols, which have direct and immediate negative health effects to those in the area surrounding their emission, will likely be targeted for reductions as countries like China and India become wealthier. This emissions reduction would mirror a similar process that occurred in Europe and the United States.  Sulfate aerosols are the most significant substance in a category of aerosols tending to help cool the climate. Aerosols decrease radiative forcing in two ways: through direct aerosol effects as a result of an increased scattering and absorption of incoming solar radiation, and through indirect effects resulting from their ability to serve as cloud condensation nuclei.  An increased number of cloud condensation nuclei have a number of different effects: they increase the reflectivity of clouds by making them denser and giving them higher liquid water content, they increase the height of clouds, and they increase cloud lifetime.  Figure One, below, shows the major climate forcings over the past 120 years. The major positive forcings include CO2 at 1.66 watts per meter squared (W m-2), methane (CH4) at 0.46 W m-2, nitrous oxide (N2O) at 0.16 W m-2, and various halocarbons (CFCs, HCFCs, etc.) at 0.34 W m-2. Aerosol direct effects account for -0.5 ± 0.4 W m-2 negative forcing, with SO2 comprising -0.4 W m-2. Indirect effects are around -0.7 W m-2, with a large uncertainty range of -1.8 to -0.3 W m-2.  Aerosols are the primary reason why Earth is still at around 380 parts per million CO2-equivilent (CO2e), rather than the 460 ppm CO2e projected if all the positive forcings were added together. Conveniently enough, aerosols pretty much cancel out the warming from all the non-CO2 greenhouse gases. 0608_ccm_Fig1.jpg - 31186 Bytes Figure One. Radiative forcing of major climate factors over the past 123 years. Figure from Hansen et al 2005.  There are a number of different projections for sulfate aerosol emissions over the next century based on assumptions regarding the rate of economic growth, population growth, and technological development. Figure Two, below, shows an aggregation of all models of anthropogenic sulfate emissions used in the most recent IPCC report. Specific scenarios vary widely, but the median value across all models results by the year 2100 in sulfate aerosol emissions of 35 million metric tons, roughly one half of current emissions. 0608_ccm_Fig2.jpg - 55341 Bytes Figure Two. Projections of future aerosol emissions for SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) and post-SRES scenarios. Figure from the third working group of the latest IPCC report.  A reduction of anthropogenic SO2 of around 50 percent worldwide over the next century, as projected in the most recent IPCC report, would result in a significant warming effect on the global climate. Sulfates are extremely short-lived particles, and emission reductions would have immediate effects on radiative forcing. A 50 percent reduction in sulfate aerosol emissions would reduce by half their current radiative forcing of -0.83 W m-2. This change in forcings would increase global temperatures by roughly 0.36 degrees C (.64 F) relative to a scenario where aerosol emissions remain constant.  Figure three below shows the practical implications of a reduction in aerosols in the next century. If current greenhouse gas concentrations remain constant at current levels, scientists project about 1.34 degrees C (2.41 F) warming relative to pre-industrial temperatures by the end of the century (the world has already warmed 0.74 degrees C (1.33 F) in the past century, and 0.60 degrees C (1.08F) additional warming is in the pipeline as a result of Earth's thermal inertia). A reduction of anthropogenic atmospheric sulfate aerosols by 50 percent means that 1.34 degrees C (2.41 F) warming suddenly becomes 1.70 degrees C (3.06 F). Constant 2005 GHG Concentrations Constant SO2 1.34 degrees C (2.41 F) Reduced SO2 1.70 degrees C (3.06 F)  Figure Three. Based on a simple calculation of radiative forcings of the current atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases at equilibrium, assuming a climate sensitivity of roughly 0.87 degrees K. Also assuming that anthropogenic SO2 represent only 72 percent of total atmospheric SO2 flux and that the indirect aerosol effects of SO2 account for around 62 percent of total indirect aerosol forcing, or -0.43 W m-2
Transportation outweighs
Gordon, 10 – nonresident senior associate in Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program, where her research focuses on climate, energy, and transportation issues in the United States and China (Deborah, December. “The Role of Transportation in Driving Climate Disruption.” http://carnegieendowment.org/files/transport_climate_disruption.pdf)
Climate impacts differ by sector. On-road transportation has the greatest negative effect on climate, especially in the short term. This is primarily because of two factors unique to on-road transportation: (1) nearly exclusive use of petroleum fuels, the combustion of which results in high levels of the principal warming gases (carbon dioxide, ozone, and black carbon); and (2) minimal emissions of sulfates, aerosols, and organic carbon from on-road transportation sources to counterbalance warming with cooling effects. Scientists find that cutting on-road transportation climate and air-pollutant emissions would be unambiguously good for the climate (and public health) in the near term. Transportation’s role in climate change is especially problematic, given the dependence on oil that characterizes this sector today. There are too few immediate mobility and fuel options in the United States beyond oil-fueled cars and trucks. U.S. and international policy makers have yet to tackle transportationclimate challenges. In its fourth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the global transportation sector was responsible for the most rapid growth in direct greenhouse gas emissions, a 120 percent increase between 1970 and 2004. To further complicate matters, the IPCC projects that, without policy intervention, the rapidly growing global transportation sector has little motivation to change the way it operates, because consumer choices are trumping best practices. Herein lies a fundamental mismatch between the climate problem and solutions: transportation is responsible for nearly one of every three tons of greenhouse gas emissions but represents less than one of every twelve tons of projected emission reductions. Clearly this sector is a major contributor to climate change; therefore, it should be the focus of new policies to mitigate warming. Government must lead this effort as the market alone cannot precipitate the transition away from cars and oil, which dominate this sector.
No ocean acidification – IPCC uses unrealistic data and animals will adapt
Idso and Idso 11 Craig D., founder and chairman of the board of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, B.S. in Geography from Arizona State University, his M.S. in Agronomy from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and his Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University, former Director of Environmental Science at Peabody Energy,  faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University; and Sherwood, President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, former Research Physicist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Geology, Geography, and Botany and Microbiology at ASU, M.S from UMinnesota, receipt of the Arthur S. Flemming Award, "Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future," 1-31-11, http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf
The chemistry aspect of the ocean acidification hypothesis is rather straightforward, but it is not as solid as many make it out to be; and a number of respected researchers have published papers demonstrating that the drop in oceanic pH will not be nearly as great as the IPCC and others predict it will be, nor that it will be as harmful as they claim it will be. Consider, for example, the figure below, which shows historical and projected fossil fuel CO2 emissions and atmospheric CO2 concentrations out to the year 2500, as calculated by NOAA’s Pieter Tans (2009). As can be seen there, his analysis indicates that the air’s CO2 concentration will peak well before 2100, and at only 500 ppm compared to the 800 ppm value predicted in one of the IPCC’s scenarios. And it is also worth noting that by the time the year 2500 rolls around, the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration actually drops back down to about what it is today. When these emissions estimates are transformed into reductions of oceanic pH, it can readily be seen in the following figure that Tans’ projected pH change at 2100 is far less than that of the IPCC. And Tans’ analysis indicates a pH recovery to values near those of today by the year 2500, clearly suggesting that things are not the way the world’s climate alarmists make them out to be, especially when it comes to anthropogenic CO2 emissions and their effects on the air’s CO2 content and oceanic pH values. Another reason to not jump on the ocean acidification bandwagon is the fact that, with more CO2 in the air, additional weathering of terrestrial carbonates likely will occur, which would increase delivery of Ca 2+ to the oceans and partially compensate for the CO2induced decrease in calcium carbonate saturation state. And as with all phenomena involving living organisms, the introduction of life into the acidification picture greatly complicates things, as several interrelated biological phenomena must also be considered; and when they are, it becomes much more difficult to draw such sweeping negative conclusions. In fact, as demonstrated in numerous reviews of the scientific literature, these considerations even suggest that the rising CO2 content of earth’s atmosphere may well be a beneficial phenomenon with many positive consequences (Idso, 2009; Idso and Singer, 2009). As an example of this fact, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (hereafter, the Center) maintains an online ocean acidification database that may be accessed free of charge at http://www.co2science.org/data/acidification/acidification.php, showcasing over 1100 experimental results on this topic from the peer-reviewed scientific literature (as of Jan 2011). Specifically, their Ocean Acidification Database is an ever-growing archive of the responses of various growth and developmental parameters of marine organisms immersed in seawater at or near today’s oceanic pH level, as well as at levels lower than that of today. The measured parameters included in the database pertain to changes in calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival; and the data are arranged by marine organism, accessible by selecting an organism’s common or scientific name. In addition, the data have been grouped into similar types of organisms, such as bivalves, corals, fish, nematodes phytoplankton, etc. In considering the experimental results that are archived there, the mean response suggests that ocean acidification may indeed harm some organisms. However, it is critical to note that the vast majority of these experiments were performed under highly unrealistic oceanic pH conditions that will never occur, rendering their findings meaningless in terms of what might possibly happen in the real world. And as one examines the results over the more-likely-to occur pH decline range, a vastly different picture begins to appear. Returning to the Center’s ocean acidification database, consider the figure below, which depicts the percentage changes in all five of the major life characteristics examined in the database (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) as functions of the experimentallyorchestrated declines in seawater pH from the present, where each entry in the database is represented by its own individual point. As is clearly evident, the data portray an extremely wide range of pH reduction values, the greatest of which corresponds to an increase in the air’s CO2 concentration in excess of 100,000 ppm, which is orders of magnitude greater than what anyone is expecting will ever occur. Thus, highlighted in grey are all data points that pertain to experiments conducted under pH conditions that are considered to be “far, far beyond the realm of reality.” The low-end boundary of the unrealistic highlighted region of pH reduction shown in the figure is 0.5, which represents the high-end or maximum value of most IPCC-based projections of CO2induced pH reduction, which occurs in the vicinity of AD 2300. Thus, there should be little argument – even from people who think ocean acidification is going to be a problem – in excluding all values beyond a pH decline of 0.5 when considering how acidification of the ocean might realistically affect earth’s marine life. In the next graph to the right, results of all experiments that employed a seawater pH decline that fell somewhere in the stillmore-likely-to-occur range of 0.0 to 0.3 are plotted, where the latter value is the approximate IPCC-derived pH decline in the vicinity of AD 2100. Then, within this range, highlighted in grey, is the much smaller seawater pH reduction range that comes from the work of Tans (2009), who derived a maximum pH decline that could fall anywhere within an uncertainty range of 0.09 to 0.17 by about AD 2100, after which seawater pH begins its longterm recovery. The Tans prediction range has been emphasized in this manner because his analysis is considered to be more realistic than the analysis of the IPCC. Thus, data within the pH reduction range of 0.0 to 0.17 should be considered as being most characteristic of what might possibly occur in the real world, as time marches on and fossil fuel burning continues as per business as usual. And, interestingly enough – and even incorporating pH reduction data all the way out to 0.30 – the linear trend of all the data is actually positive, indicating an overall beneficial response of the totality of the five major life characteristics of marine sea life to ocean acidification, which result is vastly different from the tremendously negative results routinely predicted by the world’s climate alarmists. The next figure illustrates the averages of all responses to seawater acidification for all five of the life characteristics of the various marine organisms (calcification, metabolism, growth, fertility and survival) analyzed over the pH reduction ranges of 0 to 0.09 (from no change to the lower pH edge of the Tans estimate), 0.09 to 0.17 (Tans estimate), and 0.17 to 0.3 (from Tans to the IPCC). The most striking feature of this figure is the great preponderance of data located in positive territory, which suggests that, on the whole, marine organisms likely will not be harmed to any significant degree by the expected decline in oceanic pH. If anything, the results tend to suggest that the world’s marine life may actually slightly benefit from the pH decline. Clearly, the results depicted above suggest something very different from the theoretical model-based predictions of the climate alarmists who claim we are in “the last decades of coral reefs on this planet for at least the next ... million plus years, unless we do something very soon to reduce CO2 emissions,” or who declare that “reefs are starting to crumble and disappear,” that “we may lose those ecosystems within 20 or 30 years,” and that “we’ve got the last decade in which we can do something about this problem.” Such scenarios are simply not supported by the vast bulk of pertinent experimental data. Two other phenomena that suggest the predicted decline in oceanic pH will have little to no lasting negative effects on marine life are the abilities of essentially all forms of life to adapt and evolve. Of those experiments in the database that report the length of time the organisms were subjected to reduced pH levels, for example, the median value was only four days. And many of the experiments were conducted over periods of only a few hours, which is much too short a time for organisms to adapt or evolve to successfully cope with new environmental conditions. And when one allows for such phenomena -- as oceanic pH declines ever-so-slowly in the real world of nature -- the possibility of marine life experiencing a negative response to ocean acidification becomes even less likely (Idso, 2009).
Solar insufficient in solving warming
Post 12 -- BSME New Jersey Institute of Technology, MSME Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MBA, University of Connecticut. P.E. Connecticut. Consulting Engineer and Project Manager (Willem, 7/1/12, "Wind Energy CO2 Emissions Reductions are Overstated," http://theenergycollective.com/node/89476)
Solar energy is variable (during a day and during variable cloudiness) and intermittent; usually it is minimal in the morning, maximal at noon about 3-5 hours before the daily peak demand, minimal in the afternoon, minimal during foggy, overcast, snowy days, and zero at night. About 65-70 percent of the hours of a year solar energy is near zero, and it cannot be turned off, as in Southern Germany with about 1 million PV systems, when on sunny summer days solar energy surges to about 12,000 MW to 14,000 MW and has to be partially exported to France and the Czech Republic at fire sale prices, 5.5 euro cent/kWh or less, after having been subsidized at an average of about 50 euro cent/kWh. Example: German solar power is as little as 2% of rated capacity, or 340 MW, on cloudy days and when snow covers the panels. This means there are many hours during a year when no wind or solar energy is generated. Therefore, all conventional generator units will need to be kept in good operating condition, AND staffed 24/7/365, AND fueled to serve the daily demand when wind and solar energy is near zero. Without utility-scale energy storage, wind turbines and solar systems cannot replace any conventional units. All the units that would be needed WITHOUT the existence of wind turbines and solar systems, would also be needed WITH the existence of wind turbines and solar systems. Some of the conventional units would have less energy production with wind and solar energy on the grid, thereby adversely affecting their economics, due to increasingly inefficient start/stop, part-load and part-load-ramping operations, but without wind and solar energy on the grid, the energy production of almost all the conventional units would be needed to serve the daily demand. Building Wind Turbines Everywhere?: There are some (mostly wind turbine vendors, project developers, trade organizations, NRELs, financial types setting up LLC tax shelters for the top 1% of households, etc.) who say that building wind turbines everywhere there is wind, and connecting all of them with a national HVDC overlay grid into a super grid (similar to the US Interstate Highway System overlaying state and local roads), the variation and intermittency of wind energy in the diverse geographical areas will largely be canceling each other out so that the overall energy production will become increasingly steadier as more wind turbines are connected to the super grid, and that therefore there will be little need for balancing plants, and that there will always be wind energy somewhere no matter what the weather conditions in one or more geographical areas. Several National Renewable Energy Laboratories and other entities have made studies of this scheme, using mathematical modeling, as described in the EWITS and NEWITS reports. However, someone went one step further and combined the outputs of 5 widely dispersed geographical areas: - http://transmission.bpa.gov/Business/Operations/Wind/default.aspx Bonneville Power Administration, which serves 3.5 GW of installed capacity in the Pacific Northwest - The Australian Energy Market Operator, which serves 1.8 GW of installed capacity in New South Wales - The Independent Electricity System Operator, which serves 1.2 GW of installed capacity in Ontario - The Alberta Electric System Operator, which serves 0.8 GW of installed capacity in Alberta - http://www.eirgrid.com/operations/systemperformancedata/windgeneration/ EirGrid, which serves 1.4 GW of installed capacity in Ireland The result of the analysis is described in this article which concludes geographical dispersion of wind turbines does not reduce the variation and intermittency of wind energy. http://www.ethiopianreview.com/business/122605 A French energy systems analyst, Hubert Flocard, combined the wind energy outputs of several European nations. The results of his analysis yielded the same conclusion. http://www.dimwatt.eu/index.php/our-campaigns/keeping-the-lights-on/documents/108-ground-breaking-french-study-should-stop-further-expenses-on-the-so-called-super-grid Energy Cost Projections The US Energy Information Administration projects levelized production costs (national averages, excluding subsidies) of NEW plants coming on line in 2016 as follows (2009$) : Offshore wind $0.243/kWh, PV solar $0.211/kWh (higher in marginal solar areas, such as New England), Onshore wind $0.096/kWh (higher in marginal wind areas with greater capital and OandM costs, such as on ridge lines in New England), Conventional coal (base-loaded) $0.095/kWh, Advanced CCGT (base-loaded) $0.0631/kWh. http://www.energytransition.msu.edu/documents/ipu_eia_electricity_generation_estimates_2011.pdf IS WIND ENERGY GOOD ENERGY POLICY? Within federal, state and local governments tens of thousands of people are busying themselves promoting renewables by with holding meetings and public hearings, preparing studies, writing reports, energy plans, laws, rules and regulations, monitoring projects for compliance, etc. Outside of government wind turbine vendors (Siemens, GE, Vestas, Iberdrola, etc,), project developers/owners, financiers managing tax shelters, trade organizations, etc., are busying themselves popularizing wind energy as saving the planet from global warming with PR campaigns that claim there would be significant reductions of fossil fuel consumption and CO2 reductions/kWh, that capital costs/MW would decrease, and that wind energy costs/kWh would be at grid parity in the near future. These claims have largely not been realized. Global Warming is a Given: A just-released report from EIA shows the actual world energy consumption data and projected consumption data for the 1990 to 2035 period. The report shows world energy consumption is estimated to increase from 505 quads in 2008 to 770 quads in 2035, a 52% increase. The biggest part of the increase is by (non-OECD nations + Asia). http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/world.cfm See spreadsheet associated with figure 12 World energy consumption by fuel (quadrillion Btu) Liquids: From 173.2 in 2010 to 225.1 in 2035; 30% more Natural gas: 116.7 to 174.7; 50% more Coal: 149.4 to 209.1; 49% more Nuclear: 27.6 to 51.2; 86% more Renewables: 55.2 to 109.5; 98% more Renewables fraction of total consumption: From 10.6% in 2010 to 15.2% in 2035 Fossil fraction of total consumption: 84.1% to 79.1% The significant increase in projected fossil fuel consumption during the next 24 years means global warming will continue unabated, because (non-OECD + ASIA) will have energy consumption growth far outpacing the energy consumption growth of the rest of the world; i.e., global warming is a given. The above indicates the enormous investments required to achieve the 2035 projected renewables energy production would have practically no benefit regarding global warming.
Solar can only account for one sixth of global emissions – this assumes the most liberal estimates
IEA 12 (7-9,"Solar energy could meet one-sixth of global demand for heating and cooling in under 40 years" http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/july/name,28298,en.html)
Solar energy could account for around one-sixth of the world’s total low-temperature heating and cooling needs by 2050, according to a roadmap launched today by the International Energy Agency (IEA). This would eliminate some 800 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per year, or more than Germany’s total CO2 emissions in 2009. The IEA’s Solar Heating and Cooling Roadmap outlines how best to advance the global uptake of solar heating and cooling (SHC) technologies, which produce very low levels of greenhouse-gas emissions. Some SHC technologies, such as domestic hot water heaters, are already widely in use in certain countries, but others are just entering the development phase. While solar heating and cooling today makes a modest contribution to world energy demand, the roadmap envisages that if governments and industry took concerted action, solar energy could annually produce more than 16% of total final energy use for low-temperature heat and nearly 17% for cooling. This would correspond to a 25-fold increase in absolute terms of SHC technology deployment in the next four decades. “Given that global energy demand for heat represents almost half of the world’s final energy use – more than the combined global demand for electricity and transport – solar heat can make a significant contribution in both tackling climate change and strengthening energy security,” said Paolo Frankl, Head of the IEA’s Renewable Energy Division. Benefiting warm climate countries In addition to replacing fossil fuels that are directly burned to produce heat, solar heating technologies can also replace electricity used for heating water as well as individual rooms and buildings. This would be especially welcome in warm climate countries without gas infrastructure and lacking alternative heating fuels. South Africa is cited as an example of a country that would benefit, as electric water heating currently accounts for a third of average household (coal-based) power consumption there. On top of this, the report notes that solar thermal cooling technology – in which the sun’s heat can be used to cool air – can reduce the burden on electric grids at times of peak cooling demand by fully or partially replacing conventional electrically powered air conditioners in buildings.
Econ
Their brink evidence – morici – is almost a year old – econ has recovered since
And they didn’t highlight the part of the medonca card that says middle east internveiton – and no impact to consumption – current levels sustainable – hasn’t happened yet
U.S. isn’t key to the global economy

ML 6 (Merrill Lynch, “US Downturn Won’t Derail World Economy”, 9-18, http://www.ml.com/index.asp?id=7695_7696_8149_63464_70786_71164)

A sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy in 2007 is unlikely to drag the rest of the global economy down with it, according to a research report by Merrill Lynch’s (NYSE: MER) global economic team. The good news is that there are strong sources of growth outside the U.S. that should prove resilient to a consumer-led U.S. slowdown.  Merrill Lynch economists expect U.S. GDP growth to slow to 1.9 percent in 2007 from 3.4 percent in 2006, but non-U.S. growth to decline by only half a percent (5.2 percent versus 5.7 percent). Behind this decoupling is higher non-U.S. domestic demand, a rise in intraregional trade and supportive macroeconomic policies in many of the world’s economies. Although some countries appear very vulnerable to a U.S. slowdown, one in five is actually on course for faster GDP growth in 2007. Asia, Japan and India appear well placed to decouple from the United States, though Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are more likely to be impacted. European countries could feel the pinch, but rising domestic demand in the core countries should help the region weather the storm much better than in previous U.S. downturns. In the Americas, Canada will probably be hit, but Brazil is set to decouple.
Countries aren’t locking in their positions – still  cutting their uneconomical FiTs
Robert 12 (Maya Robert, Content Editor/writer for uSwitch, “Feed-In Tariff rates to be cut (again) from November 1st,” uSwitch Energy,
http://www.uswitch.com/blog/2012/09/06/feed-in-tariff-rates-to-be-cut-again/.)
The Feed-in Tariff, the government’s scheme that pays customers for generating their own renewable energy, will be cut from the 1 November. Instead of receiving the current rate of 16 pence for every kilowatt hour produced, owners of solar panels will now get 15.5 pence for systems smaller than four kilowatts and 13 pence for those up to 50 kilowatts.  Solar panels with a capacity above 50 kilowatts will not see their rates reduced in this latest round of cuts. It’s bad… but not that bad Although this is a cut to the Feed-Tariff rate, it’s nowhere near as drastic as the one implemented on August 1st. In that round of cuts, the rate was reduced from 21 pence per kilowatt hour to 16 pence - a fall of 24%.
Economic decline doesn’t cause war
Tir 10 Jaroslav Tir - Ph.D. in Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the University of Georgia, “Territorial Diversion: Diversionary Theory of War and Territorial Conflict”, The Journal of Politics, 2010, Volume 72: 413-425), Ofir
Empirical support for the economic growth rate is much weaker. The finding that poor economic performance is associated with a higher likelihood of territorial conflict initiation is significant only in Models 3–4.14 The weak results are not altogether surprising given the findings from prior literature. In accordance with the insignificant relationships of Models 1–2 and 5–6, Ostrom and Job (1986), for example, note that the likelihood that a U.S. President will use force is uncertain, as the bad economy might create incentives both to divert the public’s attention with a foreign adventure and to focus on solving the economic problem, thus reducing the inclination to act abroad. Similarly, Fordham (1998a, 1998b), DeRouen (1995), and Gowa (1998) find no relation between a poor economy and U.S. use of force. Furthermore, Leeds and Davis (1997) conclude that the conflict-initiating behavior of 18 industrialized democracies is unrelated to economic conditions as do Pickering and Kisangani (2005) and Russett and Oneal (2001) in global studies. In contrast and more in line with my findings of a significant relationship (in Models 3–4), Hess and Orphanides (1995), for example, argue that economic recessions are linked with forceful action by an incumbent U.S. president. Furthermore, Fordham’s (2002) revision of Gowa’s (1998) analysis shows some effect of a bad economy and DeRouen and Peake (2002) report that U.S. use of force diverts the public’s attention from a poor economy. Among cross-national studies, Oneal and Russett (1997) report that slow growth increases the incidence of militarized disputes, as does Russett (1990)—but only for the United States; slow growth does not affect the behavior of other countries. Kisangani and Pickering (2007) report some significant associations, but they are sensitive to model specification, while Tir and Jasinski (2008) find a clearer link between economic underperformance and increased attacks on domestic ethnic minorities. While none of these works has focused on territorial diversions, my own inconsistent findings for economic growth fit well with the mixed results reported in the literature.15 Hypothesis 1 thus receives strong support via the unpopularity variable but only weak support via the economic growth variable. These results suggest that embattled leaders are much more likely to respond with territorial diversions to direct signs of their unpopularity (e.g., strikes, protests, riots) than to general background conditions such as economic malaise. Presumably, protesters can be distracted via territorial diversions while fixing the economy would take a more concerted and prolonged policy effort. Bad economic conditions seem to motivate only the most serious, fatal territorial confrontations. This implies that leaders may be reserving the most high-profile and risky diversions for the times when they are the most desperate, that is when their power is threatened both by signs of discontent with their rule and by more systemic problems plaguing the country (i.e., an underperforming economy).
Renewable fail – even doubled production isn’t enough
Hughes 11 (J. David, Fellow in Fossil Fuels – Post Carbon Institute, Geoscientist – Geological Survey of Canada, and Team Leader – Canadian Gas Potential Committee, “Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?” Post Carbon Institute, May, http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/PCI-report-nat-gas-future-plain.pdf)
Electricity generation is the primary use for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar; yet these sources, including geothermal energy, generated only 2.7% of U.S. electricity in 2009, with biomass generating a further 1%. Even if these renewable sources more than double through 2035, as projected by the EIA, they will still constitute only 8% of forecast U.S. electricity demand. Proponents of wind and solar and other renewable sources of generation will argue that this forecast is far too conservative. Perhaps it is, but the scale of the problem of replacing hydrocarbons in electricity generation is simply daunting. Moreover, renewables have wellknown issues with intermittency and unpredictability, which compromise their ability to make up a major proportion of electricity supply, especially at current rates of consumption and necessary supply reliability.
No market for green jobs
Sullivan 12 -- Reuters Washington correspondent (Andy, 4/13/12, "Analysis: Obama's "green jobs" have been slow to sprout," http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-usa-campaign-green-idUSBRE83C08D20120413)
(Reuters) - Three weeks ago, President Barack Obama stood in front of a sea of gleaming solar panels in Boulder City, Nevada, to celebrate his administration's efforts to promote "green energy." Stretching row upon row into the desert, the Copper Mountain Solar Project not far from Las Vegas provided an impressive backdrop for the president. Built on public land, the facility is the largest of its kind in the United States. Its 1 million solar panels provide enough energy to power 17,000 homes. And it employs just 10 people. Three years after Obama launched a push to build a job-creating "green" economy, the White House can say that more than 1 million drafty homes have been retrofitted to lower heating and cooling costs, while energy generation from renewable sources such as wind and solar has nearly doubled since 2008. But the millions of "green jobs" Obama promised have been slow to sprout, disappointing many who had hoped that the $90 billion earmarked for clean-energy efforts in the recession-fighting federal stimulus package would ease unemployment - still above 8 percent in March. Supporters say the administration over-promised on the jobs front and worry that a backlash could undermine support for clean-energy policies in general. "All of this stuff is extraordinarily worthy for driving long-term economic transformation but extremely inappropriate to sell as a short-term job program," said Mark Muro, a clean-energy specialist at the Brookings Institution. Others say the green-jobs push has crowded out less fashionable efforts that would have put people back to work quickly. "From my perspective it makes more sense for us to arm our clients with the basic skills, rather than saying, 'By golly, you will do something in the green economy or you won't work,'" said Janet Blumen, the head of the Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow, a Las Vegas job-training organization that has seen positions in trucking and accounting go unfilled because training money had been earmarked for green efforts. A $500 million job-training program has so far helped fewer than 20,000 people find work, far short of its goal. Republicans, meanwhile, have seized on the failure of solar panel maker Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan guarantee, to argue that White House allies have been the only ones who have benefited from the green jobs push. "He handed out tens of billions of dollars to green energy companies, including his friends and campaign contributors at companies like Solyndra that are now bankrupt," Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said on April 4. VARYING ESTIMATES Backers of the notion of a "green collar" work force argue that earth-friendly energy is a promising growth sector that could create a bounty of stable, middle-class jobs and fill the gap left by manufacturing work that has moved overseas. On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama promised that a $150 billion investment would generate 5 million jobs over 10 years. Obama included $90 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to weatherize drafty buildings, fund electric-car makers and encourage other clean-energy efforts. "We'll put nearly half a million people to work building wind turbines and solar panels, constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings, and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to new jobs," he said at a wind-turbine plant in Ohio the day before he took office. In December 2009, Vice President Joe Biden said the effort would create 722,000 green jobs. The White House said in November 2010 that its clean-energy efforts had generated work for 225,000 people and would ultimately create a total of 827,000 "job years" - implying average annual employment of around 200,000 over the four years of Obama's presidential term. White House officials stand by that estimate and say job creation is only one aspect of the clean-energy push. "We have a record of success that has created tens of thousands of jobs and is ensuring that America is not ceding these industries to countries like China," White House spokesman Clark Stevens said. "Thanks to the investments we've made, these industries will continue to grow, along with the jobs they create." One problem is that, unlike other elements of the Recovery Act that injected money into the economy quickly, efforts to develop high-speed rail or electric-car batteries Obama also promoted could take a decade or longer to yield dividends. Gains in the sector don't necessarily lead to wider employment. The wind industry, for example, has shed 10,000 jobs since 2009 even as the energy capacity of wind farms has nearly doubled, according to the American Wind Energy Association. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry has added 75,000 jobs since Obama took office, according to Labor Department statistics. Federal agencies also have struggled to get stimulus money out the door in a timely manner, even for prosaic efforts that help local governments reduce energy costs. The rush of funding encouraged private-sector participants to inflate their job-creation projections as they angled for a piece of the action, insiders say. "They were obviously just guessing," said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts professor and green-energy supporter who helped the Energy Department sort through loan applications. "If an undergraduate gave me a paper of that quality I would have probably given them a C or a C-plus." SLOW PROGRESS The high-profile failures of companies that have benefited from federal backing, such as Solyndra and Beacon Power Corp., have given ammunition to Republicans who paint the effort as a costly boondoggle. They also have targeted the $500 job-training program that aims to train workers for skills they would need in a new "green economy." The program's initial results were so poor that the Labor Department's inspector general recommended last fall that the agency should return the $327 million that remained unspent. The numbers have improved somewhat since then, but the department remains far short of its goal of placing 80,000 workers into green jobs by 2013. By the end of 2011, some 16,092 participants had found new work in a "green" field, according to the Labor Department - roughly one-fifth of its target. The program also helped employed workers upgrade their skills.
Hurts jobs
Michaels 12 (Patrick J. Michaels – senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, 1/6/12, “A Sustainable Depression,”  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/sustainable-depression.)  This article appeared in The Washington Times on January 6, 2012.
But didn't all this sprout "green jobs"? After all, someone has to go up on the roof in Germany, and someone has to keep the panels clean in dusty Spain. Robbing Peter, in fact, did affect Paul, at a cost of about $800,000 per "green," job, according to King Juan Carlos University economist Gabriel Calzada. Two people got fired for every one who was hired.
Renewables cause depression – industry already tanking economies
Michaels 12 (Patrick J. Michaels – senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, 1/6/12, “A Sustainable Depression,”  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/sustainable-depression.)  This article appeared in The Washington Times on January 6, 2012.
If the Dow fell 85 percent, most folks would call that a depression. So why doesn't that apply to the "sustainable" energy business — mainly solar and wind power — where shares have fallen an average of 85 percent to 90 percent,

 even excluding the bankrupt Solyndras, Evergreens and Solons? This depression is global, hitting Chinese Suntech, the world's largest producer of solar panels, as well. Suntech has seen its shares plunge 88 percent. As in other depressions, scads of real money has been lost, sustained by the snake oil that global warming is such a threat to us all that we should not just encourage, but legally compel,people to install the most economically inefficient form of electrical generation on the planet — solar photovoltaic, and its sibling in inconstancy, wind power. In various states and around the world, these are legislated by "renewable portfolio standards." What we get is a sustainable depression.
Wind and Solar are uncompetitive
Michaels 12 (Patrick J. Michaels – senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute, 1/6/12, “A Sustainable Depression,”  http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/sustainable-depression.)  This article appeared in The Washington Times on January 6, 2012.
The bottom line is that wind and solar power are simply uncompetitive. Because of the inconstancy of the wind and the rotation of Earth, backup capacity of more than the average power production from "renewables" must be in place to preserve electrical stability. This capacity increasingly is in the form of natural-gas generation. The discovery of hundreds of years of natural gas in worldwide shale deposits guarantees that solar and wind will never produce much of the world's power. Natural-gas-fired electricity now costs about 84 percent less than solar, and it cuts carbon-dioxide emissions compared to conventional coal by 30 percent to 50 percent. The sustainable depression of "renewable" energy is likely to be permanent.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 5 | Opponent:  | Judge:
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Text: the fifty state governments of the United States should provide matching funds to companies willing to build a liquid fluoride thorium nuclear reactor in federal laboratories.
States solves upfront capital costs of nuclear power
Yanosek 12 (Kassia, Entrepreneur-in-Residence – Stanford University’s Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, “Financing Nuclear Power in the US,” Stanford Energy Journal, Spring, http://energyclub.stanford.edu/index.php/Journal/Financing_Nuclear_Power_by_Kassia_Yanosek)
Furthermore, capital costs are inherently high, ranging in the billions or tens of billions of dollars, and are compounded by financing charges during long construction times. Without government support, financing nuclear is currently not possible in the capital markets.  Recently, Constellation Energy and NRG separately pulled the plug on new multi-billion dollar plants, citing financing problems. Projects, however, will get done on a one-off basis. Southern Company’s Vogtle Plant in Eastern Georgia is likely to be the sponsor of the first new generation to be constructed, taking advantage of local regulatory and federal support. Two new reactors of next-generation technology are in the permitting stage, which will bring online 2,200 megawatts (MW) of new capacity, and will cost $14 billion. The project will take advantage of tax credits and loan guarantees provided in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. What is the ideal financial structure for funding new nuclear generation? The simplest answer is “through the rate base.” This is typically accomplished by state-level legislation which allows utilities to pass the construction costs through to the ratepayers. The ideal mechanism, which exists in a few states, allows the utility to raise rates during plant construction and adjust rates periodically for delays or cost overruns. However, this structure is not possible in most markets. California, for example, has a moratorium where utilities are not legislatively authorized to recover rates for nuclear development. And even with a regulated territory, utilities often require additional financing to raise sufficient up-front funds for construction or to mitigate risks in markets where cost recovery through the rate base is not assured. Another option, which could be a complementary solution, is a project finance model, in which debt is raised at the project level and backstopped by long-term contracts with creditworthy parties.  Even this would be complex, since project financing would require finding a suite of investors willing to take on the different risk/return profiles that exist at different stages of the project. In addition, federal and/or state-based financial support designed specifically for nuclear would still be critical.
And – the signal is the same
Bickers 8 (Richard, Editor – NPO, quarterly journal published by the Nuclear Energy Institute, “The Trickle-Up Effect,” Nuclear Policy Outlook, Second Quarter, www.nei.org/filefolder/Outlook_June.pdf)
States Put Singular Stamp on Energy Policy—With National Implications Spurred by federal legislation and public concern about energy costs, electricity supply and environmental issues, the pace of state and local government activity on energy policy in general— and nuclear power in particular—has skyrocketed in the past few years. Energy, environmental and economic concerns are coalescing, and states are taking action. “For most people, the federal government seems too removed from their daily lives,” said Del. Sally Jameson (D), a member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 2003. Her district straddles the nation’s capital and Calvert County, Md., home to Constellation Energy’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant. “Most people look to the state for policy. They know us one-on-one and state policy directly affects their lives. “The federal government is so huge that they believe they will get lost in it. At the state level,” she noted, “their voices are heard.” Looking to the future, the United States must maintain at least the current 30 percent share of non-emitting electric generating capacity if it is to meet its clean-air goals. Even with conservative assumptions about increases in electricity demand and a doubling of renewable energy production, the United States faces a challenge to maintain its current proportion of carbon-free electricity production. A substantial increase in nuclear energy is essential. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, which incorporated a wide range of measures to support current nuclear plants and provided important incentives for building new nuclear plants, reflects a national commitment to carbon-free energy sources. The legislation includes investment incentives to encourage construction of new nuclear plants, including production tax credits, loan guarantees and business risk protection for companies pursuing the first new reactors. Now, states are linking environment and energy in the policy calculus. “The view is that when the federal government isn’t taking the lead, the legislatures need to step up to the plate,” said Melissa Savage, program director for the Agriculture, Energy and Environmental Committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). States are “repealing moratoriums, holding committee session study hearings, looking at changing regulations, and just getting the conversation started in some cases,” she noted. “We’re facing a pretty critical energy crunch in the country. The issue is starting to bubble back up,” Savage said. “In some states, it never went away.” Ten states have passed policies instituting some form of cost recovery assurance for nuclear plant construction. Three states have introduced and one has passed legislation requiring that nuclear energy be included in some form of clean or alternative energy portfolio. Six of the 13 states with moratoriums preventing new nuclear plants are considering removing those bans. Two states have passed local tax incentives for nuclear plants. For Maryland’s Jameson, the link between environmental and energy policy is a driving factor in policy formulation. “We are nearly surrounded by water in Maryland,” she said, pointing to the Chesapeake Bay, Atlantic Ocean and a network of rivers. “We are doing everything we can to limit harm to our waterways and environment because of climate change and global warming.” The state has taken a “fairly proactive approach” to addressing both environmental and energy issues in the face of a Maryland Public Service Commission warning that electricity customers could face power restrictions or rolling blackouts as early as 2011, she said. STATES AS POLICY LABORATORIES “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country,” Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1932. Historically, state and local governments have led the way on issues as varied as child labor, the environment and social reform. And state governments indeed are serving as laboratories in the development of policy supporting nuclear energy. One such policy is the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a cooperative effort by 10 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Participating states have agreed to implement RGGI through a regional cap-andtrade program whereby participating states anticipate auctioning nearly the entire annual regional emissions budget, approximately 188 million tons of carbon dioxide. Each ton of carbon dioxide will constitute an “allowance.” The multi-state agreement treats all carbon-free sources of electricity, such as nuclear energy and renewables, equally in the framework for awarding monetary credits for greenhouse gas reduction. The RGGI states have agreed to participate in regional auctions for the allowances, beginning this September. Officials have scheduled a second auction in December.

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Immigration will pass now and it’s top of the docket
Helderman 1-25 Rosalind S. Helderman and David Nakamura, Wash Post, 1/25/13, “Senators nearing agreement on broad immigration reform proposal”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senators-nearing-agreement-on-broad-immigration-reform-proposal/2013/01/25/950fb78a-6642-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html
A working group of senators from both parties is nearing agreement on broad principles for overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, representing the most substantive bipartisan effort toward comprehensive legislation in years. The six members have met quietly since the November election, most recently on Wednesday. Congressional aides stressed there is not yet final agreement, but they have eyed next Friday as a target date for a possible public announcement. The talks mark the most in-depth negotiations involving members of both parties since a similar effort broke down in 2010 without producing a bill. “We have basic agreement on many of the core principles,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the group, said this week. “Now we have to draft it. It takes time.” “The group we’ve been meeting with — and it’s equal number of Democrats and Republicans — we’re real close,” added Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), another member of the group. The accelerated pace signals that immigration reform is expected to be one of Congress’s highest priorities, and it comes as the White House prepares to launch its own public campaign on the issue. President Obama will travel to Las Vegas on Tuesday to speak about the need to “fix the broken immigration system this year,” the administration announced, an appearance in a state with a rapidly growing number of Hispanic voters, who overwhelmingly supported his reelection. Obama also met with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus on Friday, and aides said he vowed that immigration will be his “top priority.” “What has been absent in the time since he put principles forward is a willingness by Republicans to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. “He hopes that dynamic has changed and there are indications what was once a bipartisan effort to push forward. . .will again be a bipartisan effort to do so.” Past efforts begun amid similarly high hopes have sputtered. But members of both parties increasingly see changes to the nation’s troubled immigration system as an area most likely to draw bipartisan agreement at a time when Congress is deeply divided on gun control, spending and taxes. The optimism is spurred by the sense that the political dynamics have shifted markedly since the last two significant bipartisan efforts failed. In 2007, a bill crafted in the Senate died after failing to win support of 60 members despite backing from then-president George W. Bush. Many Republicans, and some centrist Democrats, opposed that effort because it offered a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In 2010, extended negotiations between Schumer and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) broke down without producing legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a veteran of the 2007 effort who is part of the current working group, said Republican attitudes have dramatically shifted since the party’s defeat at the polls in November. Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote among Latinos and Asians, and a growing number of GOP leaders believe action on immigration is necessary to expand the party’s appeal to minority groups. “Obviously, it’s had a very distinct impression,” said McCain, who lost his own bid for the White House in 2008. “It’s time to move forward on this.” But he added, “I don’t claim that it’s going to be easy.” Also included in the new Senate group are Schumer, who chairs the key Senate subcommittee where legislative action will begin; Graham; Robert Menendez (D-N.J.); and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Two others, Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), have also been involved in some talks. Their timetable would aim for a bill to be written by March or April and potentially considered for final passage in the Senate as early as the summer. Proponents believe adoption in the GOP-held House would be made easier with a strong bipartisan vote in the Senate. The working group’s principles would address stricter border control, better employer verification of workers’ immigration status, new visas for temporary agriculture workers and expanding the number of visas available for skilled engineers. They would also include a call to help young people who were brought to the country illegally as children by their parents become citizens and to normalize the status of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. But obstacles abound. For instance, Rubio has said he believes immigrants who came to the country illegally should be able to earn a work permit. But he has said they should be required to seek citizenship through existing avenues, and only after those who have come to the country legally. Democrats and immigration advocates fear that approach could result in wait-times stretching for decades, creating a class of permanent legal residents for whom the benefits of citizenship appear unattainable. They have pushed to create new pathways to citizenship specifically available to those who achieve legal residency as part a reform effort. It is not yet clear if the Senate group will endorse a mechanism allowing such people to eventually become citizens — something Obama is expected to champion. Schumer said it would be “relatively detailed,” but would not “get down into the weeds.” A source close to Rubio said he joined the group in December at the request of other members only after they agreed their effort would line up with his own principles for reform, which he outlined in an interview with the Wall Street Journal three weeks ago. His ideas have since been embraced by conservatives, including some longtime foes of providing legal status to those who have come to the country illegally. As a possible 2016 presidential contender widely trusted on the right, Rubio’s support could be key to moving the bipartisan effort. And while Rubio and other Republicans have said they would prefer to split up a comprehensive immigration proposal into smaller bills that would be voted on separately, the White House will pursue comprehensive legislation that seeks to reform the process in a single bill. “I doubt if there will be a macro, comprehensive bill,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), who supported the 2007 effort. “Anytime a bill’s more than 500 pages, people start getting suspicious. If it’s 2,000 pages, they go berserk.” But in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Republican Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, strongly supports a single comprehensive bill, writing that “Congress should avoid quick fixes.” Schumer said Friday that a single package will be key for passage. “We’ll not get it done in pieces,” he said. “Every time you do a piece, everyone says what about my piece and you get more people opposing it.” White House officials said they welcome the bipartisan Senate group’s deliberations and do not think it will conflict with the administration’s strategy. Some Democrats in the House, including Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), have cautioned that the White House could harm the bid for bipartisan support if it acts too aggressively by authoring its own legislative proposal. But advocates, who were disappointed that Obama did not follow through on comprehensive reform in his first term, said they expect the president to be out front on the issue. “The president needs to lead, and then the Republicans have a choice: Are they going to do what they did in the last term and just be obstructionists?” said Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, which spent millions recruiting new Hispanic voters this year. “Well, that didn’t work too well in November. Do the Republicans want the president not to get the credit? The best way to share the credit is for them to step up and engage and act together with the president. But it’s their choice. ”
PC is key to immigration
Chris Weigant, Political writer, 1/23/13 “Handicapping Obama's Second Term Agenda,” HuffPost, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/obama-second-term_b_2537802.html
The second big agenda item is immigration reform. President Obama holds virtually all the cards, politically, on this one. All Republicans who can read either demographics or polling numbers know full well that this may be their party's last chance not to go the way of the Whigs. Their support among Latinos is dismal, and even that's putting it politely. Some Republicans think they have come up with a perfect solution on how to defuse the issue, but they are going to be proven sadly mistaken in the end, I believe. The Republican plan will be announced by Senator Marco Rubio at some point, and it will seem to mirror the Democratic plan -- with one key difference. Republicans -- even the ones who know their party has to do something on the immigration problem -- are balking at including a "path to citizenship" for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already in America.¶ The Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it too -- and it's not going to work. "Sure," they say, "we'll give some sort of papers to these folks, let them stay, and even let them work... but there's no need to give them the hope of ever becoming a full citizen." This just isn't going to be good enough, though. There are essentially two things citizens can do which green card holders cannot: serve on juries, and vote. The Republicans are not worried about tainted juries, in case that's not clear enough.¶ Republicans will bend over backwards in an effort to convince Latinos that their proposal will work out just fine for everyone. Latinos, however, aren't stupid. They know that being denied any path to citizenship equals an effort to minimize their voice on the national political stage. Which is why, as I said, Obama holds all the cards in this fight. Because this is the one issue in his agenda which Republicans also have a big vested interest in making happen. Obama and the Democrats will, I believe, hold firm on their insistence on a path to citizenship, and I think a comprehensive immigration bill will likely pass some time this year, perhaps before the summer congressional break. The path to citizenship it includes will be long, expensive and difficult (Republicans will insist on at least that), but it will be there.¶ On gun control, I think Obama will win a partial victory. On immigration, I think he will win an almost-total victory. On global warming, however, he's going to be disappointed. In fact, I doubt -- no matter how much "bully pulpiting" Obama does -- that any bill will even appear out of a committee in either house of Congress. This will be seen as Obama's "overreach" -- a bridge too far for the current political climate. Anyone expecting big legislative action on global warming is very likely going to be massively disappointed, to put it quite bluntly. In fact, Obama will signal this in the next few months, as he approves the Keystone XL pipeline -- much to the dismay of a lot of his supporters.¶ Of course, I could be wrong about any or all of these predictions. I have no special knowledge of how things will work out in Congress in the immediate future. I'm merely making educated guesses about what Obama will be able to achieve in at least the first few years of his second term. Obama has a lot of political capital right now, but that could easily change soon. The House Republicans seem almost demoralized right now, and Obama has successfully splintered them and called their bluff on two big issues already -- but they could regroup and decide to block everything the White House wants, and damn the political consequences. Unseen issues will pop up both on the domestic and foreign policy stages, as they always do. But, for now, this is my take on how the next few years are going to play out in Washington. Time will tell whether I've been too optimistic or too pessimistic on any or all of Obama's main agenda items. We'll just have to wait and see.
Thorium causes massive backlash
Niiler 12 Eric is a health and science writer at the Washington Post. “Nuclear power entrepreneurs push thorium as a fuel,” Feb 20, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nuclear-power-entrepreneurs-push-thorium-as-a-fuel/2011/12/15/gIQALTinPR_story.html?wprss=rss_national
Although the idea of thorium power has been around for decades — and some countries are planning to build thorium-powered plants — it has not caught on with the companies that design and build nuclear plants in the United States or with the national research labs charged with investigating future energy sources.¶ “There are small boatloads of fanatics on thorium that don’t see the downsides,” said Dan Ingersoll, senior project manager for nuclear technology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. For one thing, he said, it would be too expensive to replace or convert the nuclear power plants already running in this country: “A thorium-based fuel cycle has some advantages, but it’s not compelling for infrastructure and investments.”¶ He also pointed out that thorium would still have some radioactive byproducts — just not as much as uranium and not as long-lived — and that there is no ready stockpile of thorium in the United States. It would have to be mined.¶ Overall, he says the benefits don’t outweigh the huge costs of switching technologies. “I’m looking for something compelling enough to trash billions of dollars of infrastructure that we have already and I don’t see that.”¶ Thorium advocates such as Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer who is now chief executive of Huntsville, Ala.-based Flibe Energy, are not deterred.¶ “We recognize this is a new and different technology, and developing it is significantly different from the existing nuclear industry,” Sorensen said. “Part of the problem is that nuclear only means one thing in the public and U.S. government’s mind.”¶ Thorium exists in the ground as thorium oxide and is three to four times as abundant worldwide as uranium, according to a 2005 report from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Thorium is less radioactive than uranium, and it emits alpha particles, which are less biologically harmful than uranium’s gamma particles. That makes thorium easier to store safely.¶ With an extremely high melting point (over 6,000 degrees), thorium has been used in portable gas lanterns, high-temperature ceramic products and aerospace applications. But because of its radioactivity and the development of alternative materials, most uses of the element were phased out.¶ Once a working experiment¶ Half a century ago, however, the United States was taking a serious look at thorium as a nuclear fuel. It was used at a molten-salt reactor that government scientists built and ran from 1965 to 1969 at Oak Ridge.¶ But after India detonated a nuclear bomb in 1974 with plutonium extracted from a reactor designed for non-weapons use, fears of proliferation convinced successive U.S. administrations to cut back on experimental nuclear programs. The thorium-fuel project was mostly forgotten. Instead, all subsequent nuclear plants were designed to use uranium, the fuel that powers all 104 reactors operating in the United States today.¶ Almost all the U.S. plants are at least 25 years old; some are approaching 50. With the federal government unable to come up with a permanent waste disposal site, spent fuel rods — which remain radioactive for thousands of years — are piling up at each reactor site.¶ Nevertheless, utilities have been preparing to build 20 to 30 similar reactors to replace the older ones. (Earlier this month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Atlanta-based Southern Co.’s proposal to build two such reactors in Georgia. )¶ For the past few years, Sorensen has been trying to convince them to build LFTRs instead. He posts technical documents from the Oak Ridge thorium reactor on his blog, Energy from Thorium. Last year, he left his day job at Teledyne Brown Engineering to start Flibe, the name of which is derived from the mixture of fluoride, lithium and beryllium salts used in a LFTR.¶ “We can look back to Oak Ridge,” he says, to “rebuild the capability that existed in 1974.”¶ Sorensen says a LFTR using a mixture of thorium as a fuel plus either uranium or plutonium to kick-start the reaction could produce higher core temperatures at lower pressures than steam reactors, meaning it would not need as many safety and cooling systems.¶ Even better, he says, LFTRs could be configured to consume the spent fuel that is sitting around the country at nuclear sites.¶ Other entrepreneurs are taking a different tack. McLean-based Lightbridge wants to mix thorium and uranium to slightly boost the output of existing nuclear plants. Lightbridge is helping the Russian government build such a program, said Seth Grae, the company’s president and chief executive.¶ But most U.S. nuclear energy industry executives are wary of both approaches to thorium, saying that neither utilities nor investors are eager to gamble on an unfamiliar technology.

Immigration reform expands skilled labor --- spurs relations and economic growth in China and India.
Los Angeles Times, 11/9/2012 (Other countries eagerly await U.S. immigration reform, p. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/11/us-immigration-reform-eagerly-awaited-by-source-countries.html)
"Comprehensive immigration reform will see expansion of skilled labor visas," predicted B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. A former research chief for the congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform, Lowell said he expects to see at least a fivefold increase in the number of highly skilled labor visas that would provide "a significant shot in the arm for India and China." There is widespread consensus among economists and academics that skilled migration fosters new trade and business relationships between countries and enhances links to the global economy, Lowell said. "Countries like India and China weigh the opportunities of business abroad from their expats with the possibility of brain drain, and I think they still see the immigration opportunity as a bigger plus than not," he said.
US/India relations averts South Asian nuclear war.
Schaffer, Spring 2002 (Teresita – Director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Security, Washington Quarterly, p. Lexis)
Washington's increased interest in India since the late 1990s reflects India's economic expansion and position as Asia's newest rising power. New Delhi, for its part, is adjusting to the end of the Cold War. As a result, both giant democracies see that they can benefit by closer cooperation. For Washington, the advantages include a wider network of friends in Asia at a time when the region is changing rapidly, as well as a stronger position from which to help calm possible future nuclear tensions in the region. Enhanced trade and investment benefit both countries and are a prerequisite for improved U.S. relations with India. For India, the country's ambition to assume a stronger leadership role in the world and to maintain an economy that lifts its people out of poverty depends critically on good relations with the United States.

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Prius effect
Solving GW unlimits growth by removing the obvious consequences – doesn’t do anything to change the underlying irresponsibilities and consumptive habits that cause the impacts. It’d be like a child with unlimited candy and no parents – locks in ecocide
Ehrenfield, 95 David, professor of biology at Rutgers, “Listening to the Land” interviewed by Derrick Jensen 79-80
The bottom line is really what we have to look at, and we’ve stopped looking at the bottom line. The bottom line with fusion is: What will happen if we have available to us a virtually inexhaustible source of energy?
We have to ask: How have we used energy in the past? The answer is, we haven’t used it responsibly. Does anyone really want more neon signs? Do people really want more battery operated snowmobiles destroying the environment of the north?
Having fusion power would be like having an unlimited supply of candy, and very few people have the willpower to resist this. Candy, too, is a source of energy. And we don’t have any way physiologically to get rid of excess energy we take in. We just store it as fat, which isn’t good for us. The same is true with energy. If we have too much we’re going to get societally fat—and sick.
Also energy destroys privacy. Do we really want to be able to go see anybody anytime we feel like it, without any thought to the cost of the fuel? The cost of fuel, although it’s an annoyance, is a useful thing.
There used to be a limit to how much you could run around seeing people and fragmenting your life. The limit was the distance you could walk conveniently. If you ever want to see how this functions, read Jane Austen’s best book, Emma. In it she describes the function of what I would consider a healthy community, and it isn’t till you finish the book that you realize that except for one fairly brief scene, all the action takes place within walking distance of the house of the central character. It’s striking, when you see what kind of life this enforces.
There are very few mechanisms keeping us responsible. Ultimately there are many limits that prevent us from doing anything we feel like doing, and prevent us from damaging ourselves. We see these easily in our personal lives. For instance, the limits for children are the parents. Anybody who’s had a one- or two-year-old knows that they have no sense about dealing with the world. And doing away with limits is like doing away with parents for a child.
Answer this question when evaluating the aff – even if they can solve for X Y Z impact are they going to avert the long term ecological catastrophe industrial society is creating? If no then it’s time we ask the hard questions – the pessimism you feel is felt everywhere – everyone knows on some level that the party has to stop – at this point it’s only a question of whether you recognize and act accordingly on this truth. It’s our only chance
Zerzan 2008 John, the anti-christ, “Twilight of the Machines,” 114-5
Questions and ideas can only become currents in the world insofar as reality, external and internal, makes that possible. Our present state, devolving toward catastrophe, displays a reality in unmistakable terms. We are bound for a head-on collision between urgent new questions and a totality-global civilization-that can provide no answers. A world that offers no future. but shows no signs of admitting this fact, imperils its own future along with the life, health, and freedom of all beings on the planet. Civilizations rulers have always squandered whatever remote chances they had to prepare for the end of life as they know it, by choosing to ride the crest of domination, in all its forms. 114
It has become clear to some that the depth of the expanding crisis, which is as massively dehumanizing as it is ecocidal. stems from the cardinal institutions of civilization itself. The discredited promises of Enlightenment and modernity represent the pinnacle of the grave mistake known as civilization. There is no prospect that this Order will renounce that which has defined and maintained it, and apparently little likelihood that its various ideological supporters can face the facts. If civilization's collapse has already begun, a process now unofficially but widely assumed, there may be grounds for a widespread refusal or abandonment of the reigning totality. Indeed, its rigidity and denial may be setting the stage for a cultural shift on an unprecedented scale, which could unfold rapidly.
Of course, a paradigm shift away from this entrenched, but vulnerable and fatally flawed system is far from unavoidable. The other main possibility is that too many people, for the usual reasons (fear, inertia, manufactured incapacity, etc.) will passively accept reality as it is, until it's too late to do anything but try to deal with collapse. It's noteworthy that a growing awareness that things are going wrong, however inchoate and individualized, is fuelled by a deep. visceral unease and in many cases, acute suffering. This is where opportunity resides. From this new perspective that is certainly growing, we find the work of confronting what faces us as a species, and removing the barriers to planetary survival. The time has come for a wholesale indictment of civilization and mass society. It is at least possible that, in various modes, such a judgment can undo the death-machine before destruction and domestication inundate everything.
Solvency
Plantext only says for federal laboratories- means you should be skeptical about their ability to solve in the near future because they are at best only researching  
Thorium doesn’t solve the problems with nuclear
Makhijani, 12 – president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (Arjun, 5/4. “Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Energy Problems?” Interview with Ira Flatow, Richard Martin. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems)

FLATOW: Not everyone sees thorium reactors as cheap, clean and safe alternatives, that - as a bet for the future. With me is Dr. Arjun Makhijani. He is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. He's here in our D.C. studios. Do you agree with Richard Martin that we missed out on thorium? If we had started out with thorium, would be in better shape now? ARJUN MAKHIJANI: I don't think so. I think the problems of nuclear power, fundamentally, would remain. The safety problems would be different. I mean, Mr. Martin and proponents of thorium are right in the sense that the liquid fuel reactor has a number of safety advantages, but it also has a number of disadvantages. For instance, this breeder reactor lost out with the sodium-cooled breeder, in the incident that Mr. Martin mentioned, because the liquid - the molten sodium reactor, the sodium-cooled reactor has a much better breeding ratio. It produces a lot more excess fuel that you can then take to the next reactor. In this reactor, because thorium is not a fissile material, you actually need either plutonium or enriched uranium to start it. In fact, this reactor that operated in Oak Ridge for a few years, it actually started up in 1964, it never used thorium to breed uranium-233. Some uranium-233 was put into the reactor at one point, but it had been made in another reactor. It hadn't been made in that reactor. It operated with enriched uranium, some plutonium and some uranium-233, but not made in that reactor. So what are the problems? The problem is that with this particular reactor, most people will want a reprocessing, that is separating the fissile material on-site. so you have a continuous flow of molten salt out of the reactor. You take out the protactinium-233, which is a precursor of uranium, and then you put the uranium back in the reactor, and then you keep it going. But if you look at the Princeton University paper on thorium reactors from a few years ago, you'll see that this onsite reprocessing allows you to separate protactinium altogether. Now, the U.S. wouldn't do it, but if you were a county without nuclear materials and had a reprocessing plant right there, you'd separate the protactinium-233, you'd get pure uranium-233, which is easier to make bombs with than plutonium. I can read you the quote from the Princeton University paper, but I won't bother. FLATOW: So you're saying that it doesn't solve the safety issues. MAKHIJANI: It doesn't solve the proliferation problem. It doesn't solve the waste problem, either. So every nuclear reactor, no matter what type, creates fission products, which are highly radioactive materials, some short-lived, some long-lived, to make energy. With the present reactors, we create about a ton per reactor, per year. If you have a more efficient reactor, at least you will create half a ton, probably eight-tenths of a ton, nine-tenths of a ton. This is highly radioactive waste. If you look at Oak Ridge's current evaluation, they say you have to condition this waste, you have to convert the fluorides, and then you have to have a deep geologic repository. What's in this waste? Cesium-137 and strontium-190, hundreds of years, just like today's reactors. Cesium-135 and iodine-129, millions of years half-life. Technetium-99, 200,000 years. Now, Mr. Martin says that you don't have to worry about Technetium-99 because it's used in medical practice on millions of people. Now, Technetium-99 is radioactive, and it's used not because it's risk-free, but because there's some need that balances off the risk according to the doctor, gives some benefit to the person. Technetium-99, like other radioactive materials, inside your body, creates a cancer risk. So you ask: Well, how much cancer risk does medical use of radiation in the United States create every year? If you use National Academy's coefficients for cancer risk, the answer would be about 90,000 cancers.
Minimum of 20 years before the aff solves
Makhijani, 12 – president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (Arjun, 5/4. “Is Thorium A Magic Bullet For Our Energy Problems?” Interview with Ira Flatow, Richard Martin. http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems)

So we're talking about two different risks, here: the risks associated with an innovative form of nuclear power based on a very abundant and safe material versus the risk of a three-degree-Celsius, let's say, rise in global temperatures over the next 50 years, within, you know, my son's lifetime. So, as a society, I don't think we're very good at calculating risk. And so to hone in on these pretty technical issues of, well, there might be some proliferation risk with thorium, there's no question that thorium - liquid-fueled thorium reactors can be used to consume the existing waste from conventional reactors. It's unpressurized liquid chemistry. We are really good at that. And one thing we haven't mentioned yet is the whole issue of nuclear accidents. And so I'd like to dwell on that for a moment, as well.
FLATOW: Well, I've only got about a minute or so to go. But you brought it up, and let me get a reaction from Dr. Makhijani.
MARTIN: Of course.
MAKHIJANI: I have a favorite molten salt reactor. My reactor is free. It's in the sky, 93 million miles away. You can store its energy in molten salt. It is being done today. You can generate electricity for 24 hours a day. The - so the impermanency problem has been solved. I don't know why - I'm still trying to understand why photovoltaics are still so expensive in this country. But you know Germany - I was at a seminar yesterday at the Heinrich Boll Foundation about the Germany decision to get out of nuclear. They're going to have a completely renewable system maybe by the time thorium reactors become commercial. This isn't going to happen tomorrow, even if you pour money into it. It would take 10 years for the NRC to understand and write regulations for this thing. And it would take 10 years before that to build the reactors, do the experiments and produce the data so you can regulate this thing, because all of our regulation is based on light water reactors.
India proves thorium fails
Makhijani and Boyd, 9 – president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Ph.D. in engineering; and Director of the Safe Energy Program at Physicians for Social Responsibility (Arjun and Michele, July. “Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power,” A Fact Sheet Produced by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Physicians for Social Responsibility)

Ongoing Technical Problems Research and development of thorium fuel has been undertaken in Germany, India, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the U.S. for more than half a century. Besides remote fuel fabrication and issues at the front end of the fuel cycle, thorium-U-233 breeder reactors produce fuel (“breed”) much more slowly than uranium-plutonium-239 breeders. This leads to technical complications. India is sometimes cited as the country that has successfully developed thorium fuel. In fact, India has been trying to develop a thorium breeder fuel cycle for decades but has not yet done so commercially. One reason reprocessing thorium fuel cycles haven’t been successful is that uranium-232 (U-232) is created along with uranium-233. U-232, which has a half-life of about 70 years, is extremely radioactive and is therefore very dangerous in small quantities: a single small particle in a lung would exceed legal radiation standards for the general public. U-232 also has highly radioactive decay products. Therefore, fabricating fuel with U-233 is very expensive and difficult.

Natural gas blocks thorium reactors
McMahon 12 (Jeff, Contributor – Forbes, “Small Modular Nuclear Reactors By 2022 -- But No Market For Them,” Forbes, 5-23, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2012/05/23/small-modular-reactors-by-2022-but-no-market-for-them/)
The Department of Energy will spend $452 million—with a match from industry—over the next five years to guide two small modular reactor designs through the nuclear regulatory process by 2022. But cheap natural gas could freeze even small nuclear plants out of the energy market well beyond that date. DOE accepted bids through Monday for companies to participate in the Small Modular Reactor program. A number of reactor manufacturers submitted bids, including NuScale Power and a collaboration that includes Westinghouse and General Dynamic. “This would allow SMR technology to overcome the hurdle of NRC certification – the ‘gold standard’ of the international nuclear industry, and would help in the proper development of the NRC’s regulatory framework to deal with SMRs,” according to Paul Genoa, Senior Director of Policy Development at the Nuclear Energy Institute. Genoa’s comments are recorded in a summary released today of a briefing given to Senate staff earlier this month on prospects for small modular reactors, which have been championed by the Obama Administration. DOE defines reactors as SMRs if they generate less than 300 megawatts of power, sometimes as little as 25 MW, compared to conventional reactors which may produce more than 1,000 MW. Small modular reactors can be constructed in factories and installed underground, which improves containment and security but may hinder emergency access. The same summary records doubt that SMRs can compete in a market increasingly dominated by cheap natural gas. Nuclear Consultant Philip Moor told Senate staff that SMRs can compete if natural gas costs $7 to $8 per million BTU—gas currently costs only $2 per MBTU—or if carbon taxes are implemented, a scenario political experts deem unlikely. “Like Mr. Moor, Mr. Genoa also sees the economic feasibility of SMRs as the final challenge. With inexpensive natural gas prices and no carbon tax, the economics don’t work in the favor of SMRs,” according to the summary. The SMRs most likely to succeed are designs that use the same fuels and water cooling systems as the large reactors in operation in the U.S. today, according to Gail Marcus, an independent consultant in nuclear technology and policy and a former deputy director of the Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, simply because the NRC is accustomed to regulating those reactors. “Those SMR designs that use light water cooling have a major advantage in licensing and development and those new designs based on existing larger reactor designs, like Westinghouse’s scaled‐down 200 MW version of the AP‐1000 reactor, would have particular advantage.” This is bad news for some innovative reactor designs such as thorium reactors that rely on different, some say safer, fuels and cooling systems.

Not commercially viable
Sims, 9/5/12 (David, “Can Thorium Provide a Safer Nuclear Future?” http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2012/09/05/can-thorium-provide-a-safer-nuclear-future/)

However, critics of the thorium alternative point out that it’s more expensive than uranium because it can’t sustain a reaction by itself and must be bombarded with neutrons. Uranium can be left alone in a reaction, while thorium must be constantly prodded to keep reacting. Although this allows for safer reactions (if the power goes out it simply deactivates), it’s a more expensive process. Thorium is a popular academic alternative: in the lab it works well, but it hasn’t been successfully – or profitably – used on a commercial scale yet. India’s the market leader in trying to harness thorium for the energy grid. It has the largest proven thorium reserves and the world’s only operating thorium reactor, Kakrapar-1, a converted conventional pressurized water reactor. China’s working to develop the technology as well, while the United States, France and Britain are studying its viability. Proponents of renewable energy concede that thorium is preferable to uranium, but argue that the millions in subsidies thorium will require to become commercially viable would be better spent on solar, wind and other alternative energy sources. Nuclear advocates are more hospitable to thorium, but hesitant to put all their eggs in one basket. The element hasn’t shown itself to be feasible as a profitable commercial energy source, whereas uranium has. Despite a history of reactor meltdowns and near-meltdowns, there’s a renewed emphasis on nuclear power in the world today, and nuclear industry advocates don’t see now as the time to try an unproven alternative. The bottom line is that thorium is more abundant than uranium, cleaner and safer, but given current capabilities, it produces more expensive energy than uranium and still leads to environmental waste issues.

Desal
Almost all of their impact evidence on the desal advantage is 10 years old or more
Central asia is disproven by north Korean testing and sinking of the submarine –
Caucus is disproven by the same – and the turkey tension Egypt tension
Latin America is disproven by Mexican civil war – and there’s an alt cause of hegemony that they don’t access
Egypt is from the 90s obviously disproven by the revolution
The cfr evidence – that’s indus treaty indicates the treaty is going to break down no matter what because it is too inflexible – the card specficially says us no solvency
6 However, the United States cannot expect this region to continue to avoid ‘‘water wars’’ in perpetuity
Status quo solves and nuclear desalination is ineffective
Smith 11 (Gar, Editor Emeritus of Earth Island Journal, a former editor of Common Ground magazine, a Project Censored Award-winning journalist, and co-founder of Environmentalists Against War, "NUCLEAR ROULETTE: THE CASE AGAINST A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE," June, International Forum on Globalization series focused on False Solutions, http://ifg.org/pdf/Nuclear_Roulette_book.pdf)

By 2025, 3.5 billion people will face severe fresh-water shortages. Nuclear proponents groping for justifications to expand nuclear power have argued that the waste heat from power plants can provide a “cheap and clean” solution to the inherently costly process of removing salt from seawater. Desalination plants (there are 13,080 worldwide, mostly oil- and gas-fired and mostly in wealthy desert nations) already produce more than 12 billion gallons of drinkable water a day. 153 The first nuclear desalinator was installed in Japan in the late 1970s and scores of reactor-heated desalination plants are operating around the world today.¶ But nuclear desalination is another False Solution. The problem with atomic water-purifiers is that using heat to treat seawater is an obsolete 20 th -century technology. Thermal desalination has given way to new reverse osmosis systems that are less energy intensive and 33 times cheaper to operate. 154 Nuclear desalination advocates claim that wind, solar, and wave power aren’t up to the task while new low-temperature evaporation technology may be able to produce high purity water at temperatures as low as 122° Fahrenheit. 155 Promoting reactors as a solution to the world’s water shortage is especially ludicrous since nuclear power plants consume more water than any other energy source. 156¶ Even proponents admit there is a potential risk that running seawater through a radioactive environment might contaminate the drinking water produced. 157 Undeterred, scientists in Russia and India have proposed anchoring small atom-powered water-plants offshore near densely populated coastal cities. But this would provide no relief for the billions of people living inland in water-starved regions of North Africa and Asia.¶ Desalination is merely a way of giving a marginal new purpose to existing reactors whose balance sheets would be improved if they were retrofitted with desalination chambers. As with power generation, so with desalination: efficiency in water use (better irrigation technology, crop selection, eliminating transit losses, etc.) beats new production.¶ A real solution to the growing global water shortage needs to address the increasing amount of water diverted to wasteful agricultural and industrial practices and concentrate on preventing the water from being contaminated in the first place—by, among other things, capping the size of local populations to match locally available water supplies.
No water wars – empirics vote neg
Allouche 11 (Jeremy, Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. "The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade" Food PolicyVolume 36, Supplement 1, January 2011, Pages S3-S8 Accessed via: Science Direct Sciverse)

The question of resource scarcity has led to many debates on whether scarcity (whether of food or water) will lead to conflict and war. The underlining reasoning behind most of these discourses over food and water wars comes from the Malthusian belief that there is an imbalance between the economic availability of natural resources and population growth since while food production grows linearly, population increases exponentially. Following this reasoning, neo-Malthusians claim that finite natural resources place a strict limit on the growth of human population and aggregate consumption; if these limits are exceeded, social breakdown, conflict and wars result. Nonetheless, it seems that most empirical studies do not support any of these neo-Malthusian arguments. Technological change and greater inputs of capital have dramatically increased labour productivity in agriculture. More generally, the neo-Malthusian view has suffered because during the last two centuries humankind has breached many resource barriers that seemed unchallengeable.¶ Lessons from history: alarmist scenarios, resource wars and international relations¶ In a so-called age of uncertainty, a number of alarmist scenarios have linked the increasing use of water resources and food insecurity with wars. The idea of water wars (perhaps more than food wars) is a dominant discourse in the media (see for example Smith, 2009), NGOs (International Alert, 2007) and within international organizations (UNEP, 2007). In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared that ‘water scarcity threatens economic and social gains and is a potent fuel for wars and conflict’ (Lewis, 2007). Of course, this type of discourse has an instrumental purpose; security and conflict are here used for raising water/food as key policy priorities at the international level.¶ In the Middle East, presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers have also used this bellicose rhetoric. Boutrous Boutros-Gali said; ‘the next war in the Middle East will be over water, not politics’ (Boutros Boutros-Gali in Butts, 1997, p. 65). The question is not whether the sharing of transboundary water sparks political tension and alarmist declaration, but rather to what extent water has been a principal factor in international conflicts. The evidence seems quite weak. Whether by president Sadat in Egypt or King Hussein in Jordan, none of these declarations have been followed up by military action.¶ The governance of transboundary water has gained increased attention these last decades. This has a direct impact on the global food system as water allocation agreements determine the amount of water that can used for irrigated agriculture. The likelihood of conflicts over water is an important parameter to consider in assessing the stability, sustainability and resilience of global food systems.¶ None of the various and extensive databases on the causes of war show water as a casus belli. Using the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) data set and supplementary data from the University of Alabama on water conflicts, Hewitt, Wolf and Hammer found only seven disputes where water seems to have been at least a partial cause for conflict (Wolf, 1998, p. 251). In fact, about 80% of the incidents relating to water were limited purely to governmental rhetoric intended for the electorate (Otchet, 2001, p. 18).¶ As shown in The Basins At Risk (BAR) water event database, more than two-thirds of over 1800 water-related ‘events’ fall on the ‘cooperative’ scale (Yoffe et al., 2003). Indeed, if one takes into account a much longer period, the following figures clearly demonstrate this argument. According to studies by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), organized political bodies signed between the year 805 and 1984 more than 3600 water-related treaties, and approximately 300 treaties dealing with water management or allocations in international basins have been negotiated since 1945 (FAO, 1978 and FAO, 1984).¶ The fear around water wars have been driven by a Malthusian outlook which equates scarcity with violence, conflict and war. There is however no direct correlation between water scarcity and transboundary conflict. Most specialists now tend to agree that the major issue is not scarcity per se but rather the allocation of water resources between the different riparian states (see for example Allouche, 2005, Allouche, 2007 and Rouyer, 2000). Water rich countries have been involved in a number of disputes with other relatively water rich countries (see for example India/Pakistan or Brazil/Argentina). The perception of each state’s estimated water needs really constitutes the core issue in transboundary water relations. Indeed, whether this scarcity exists or not in reality, perceptions of the amount of available water shapes people’s attitude towards the environment (Ohlsson, 1999). In fact, some water experts have argued that scarcity drives the process of co-operation among riparians (Dinar and Dinar, 2005 and Brochmann and Gleditsch, 2006).¶ In terms of international relations, the threat of water wars due to increasing scarcity does not make much sense in the light of the recent historical record. Overall, the water war rationale expects conflict to occur over water, and appears to suggest that violence is a viable means of securing national water supplies, an argument which is highly contestable.¶ The debates over the likely impacts of climate change have again popularised the idea of water wars. The argument runs that climate change will precipitate worsening ecological conditions contributing to resource scarcities, social breakdown, institutional failure, mass migrations and in turn cause greater political instability and conflict (Brauch, 2002 and Pervis and Busby, 2004). In a report for the US Department of Defense, Schwartz and Randall (2003) speculate about the consequences of a worst-case climate change scenario arguing that water shortages will lead to aggressive wars (Schwartz and Randall, 2003, p. 15). Despite growing concern that climate change will lead to instability and violent conflict, the evidence base to substantiate the connections is thin (Barnett and Adger, 2007 and Kevane and Gray, 2008).
Desalination fails
AP, 12 (Associated Press, Jason Dearing and Alicia Chang, 9/22. “Desalination no panacea for Calif. water woes.” http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/sep/22/desalination-no-panacea-for-calif-water-woes/)

Squeezing salt from the ocean to make clean drinking water is a worldwide phenomenon that has been embraced in thirsty California, with its cycles of drought and growing population. There are currently 17 desalination proposals in the state, concentrated along the Pacific where people are plentiful and fresh water is not. But many projects have been stymied by skyrocketing construction costs, huge energy requirements for running plants, regulatory delays and legal challenges over environmental impacts on marine life. Only one small plant along Monterey Bay is pumping out any drinking water. From Marin County to San Diego, some water districts are asking themselves: How much are we willing to pay for this new water? "We found that our demand for water had dropped so much since the time we started exploring desalination, we didn't need the water," said Libby Pischel, a spokeswoman for the Marin Municipal Water District. "Right now, conservation costs less than desalination." Desalination plants can take water from the ocean or drill down and grab the less salty, brackish water from seaside aquifers. Because of their potential impacts to marine life, the California Coastal Commission reviews each project case-by-case. There was great fanfare in 2009 when the last regulatory hurdle was cleared to build the Western Hemisphere's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, north of San Diego. At the time, it was proposed that the $320 million project would suck in 100 million gallons of seawater and be capable of producing 50 million gallons of drinking water a day. It was expected to come online by this year. Since then, the plant owner, Poseidon Resources LLC, has been negotiating a water purchase agreement and is close to clinching a 30-year deal with the San Diego County Water Authority, a wholesaler to cities and agencies that provide water to 3.1 million people. The compact is essential for Poseidon to obtain financing to build what has become a $900 million project, which includes the seaside plant and a 10-mile pipeline. The San Diego agency hopes the plant opens in 2016 and anticipates desalination will account for 7 percent of the region's supply in 2020. It estimates the cost is comparable to other new, local sources of drinking water, such as treated toilet water or briny groundwater. Interest is still high, but "people are realizing that desalination isn't a magic fix to the state's water issues," said coastal commission water expert Tom Luster. Water can be de-salted in different ways. Poseidon's project will use reverse osmosis. Other plants shoot ocean or brackish water at high pressure through salt-removing membrane filters. Because pumps must be used constantly to move massive amounts of water through filters, these facilities are extremely energy intensive. Also, in many cases, desalinated water is pricier than importing water the old-fashioned way - through pipes and tunnels. And it is cheaper to focus on conservation when possible: new technologies like low-flow toilets and stricter zoning laws that require less water-intensive landscaping have helped curb demand in communities throughout the state.
Turn – nuclear power increases water scarcity
Sovacool and Cooper, 7 – Senior Research Fellow for the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research, and founder of the Network for New Energy Choices (Ben and Chris, June. “Renewing America: The Case for Federal Leadership on a National Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)”, http://www.newenergychoices.org/dev/uploads/Renewing%20America_NNEC_Final.pdf)

If projected electricity demand is met using water-intensive fossil fuel and nuclear reactors, America will soon be withdrawing more water for electricity production than for farming.  Perhaps the most important—and least discussed—advantage to a federal RPS is its ability to displace electricity generation that is extremely water-intensive.  The nation’s oil, coal, natural  gas, and nuclear facilities consume about 3.3 billion gallons of water each day.244  In 2006, they  accounted for almost 40 percent of all freshwater withdrawals (water diverted or withdrawn from  a surface- or ground-water source), roughly equivalent to all the water withdrawals for irrigated  agriculture in the entire United States.245   A conventional 500 MW coal plant, for instance, consumes around 7,000 gallons of water per  minute, or the equivalent of 17 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day.246  Older, less  efficient plants can be much worse.  In Georgia, the 3,400 MW Sherer coal facility consumes as  much as 9,913 gallons of water for every MWh of electricity it generates. Data from the  Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) also confirms that every type of traditional power plant  consumes and withdraws vast amounts of water.   Conventional power plants use thousands of  gallons of water for the condensing portion of their thermodynamic cycle.  Coal plants also use water to clean and process fuel, and all traditional plants lose water through evaporative loss.  Newer technologies, while they withdraw less water, actually consume more.  Advanced power plant systems that rely on re-circulating, closed-loop cooling technology convert more water to  steam that is vented to the atmosphere.  Closed-loop systems also rely on greater amounts of  water for cleaning and therefore return less water to the original source.  Thus, while modern  power plants may reduce water withdrawals by up to 10 percent, they contribute even more to  the nation’s water scarcity. Nuclear reactors, in particular, require massive supplies of water to cool reactor cores and spent nuclear fuel rods.  Because much of the water is turned to steam, substantial amounts are lost to  the local water table entirely.  One nuclear plant in Georgia, for example, withdraws an average  of 57 million gallons every day from the Altamaha River, but actually “consumes” (primarily as  lost water vapor) 33 million gallons per day from the local supply, enough to service more than 196,000 Georgia homes. With electricity demand expected to grow by approximately 50 percent in the next 25 years, continuing to rely on fossil fuel-fired and nuclear generators could spark a water scarcity crisis. In 2006, the Department of Energy warned that consumption of water for electricity production  could more than double by 2030, to 7.3 billion gallons per day, if new power plants continue to  be built with evaporative cooling.  This staggering amount is equal to the entire country’s water consumption in 1995 

Desalination trades off with more effective strategies that manage demand
Food and Water Watch, 9 – nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food (February, “DESALINATION: An Ocean of Problems.” http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Desal-Feb2009.pdf)

With all costs considered, ocean desalination is a risky water supply option. This means that while policymakers are dealing with ocean desalination proposals, they are distracted from evaluating and implementing better options. In fact, emphasis on ocean desalination ignores the fact that the water shortages in our country are not due to a lack of natural water resources, but rather to shortsighted water policy that focuses on finding new water resources instead of managing existing resources wisely. Further, our country loses 6 billion gallons of water per day due to problems such as leaking pipes. Utilities cannot account for this water because many have not implemented comprehensive leak monitoring programs. 104 Meanwhile, all of the desalination plants in the United States today operating at their full capacity 105 could only produce a quarter of that unaccounted for water. * Numerous academic studies show that management alternatives and efficiency programs offer great potential for alleviating water supply problems at a much lower cost and without the dangers associated with large scale reverse osmosis plants. According to the National Research Council report on desalination, simply redistributing water can be much cheaper than desalination and more efficient. 106 The proposed Massachusetts Conservation Standards agree. They state that “finding new water by investing in efficiency and demand management is almost always more cost-effective than developing a new source.” 107 Likewise, a World Bank official told the World Wildlife Fund that “saving water rather than the development of new sources is often the best ‘next’ source of water both from an economic and from an environmental point of view.”  108
Desalination kills the environment.
Food and Water Watch, 9 – nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food (February, “DESALINATION: An Ocean of Problems.” http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Desal-Feb2009.pdf)

In Tampa Bay, where water authorities created the largest ocean desalination plant in the country to avoid shortages, other options were actually more effective. While the desalination plant experienced technical and bureaucratic failures, Tampa Bay Water built a new reservoir and treatment plant, and implemented conservation programs. In this time, groundwater pumping decreased from 192 million to 121 million gallons per day, despite increased population. 117 This meant savings of 71 million gallons a day — almost three times as much as the 25 million gallons a day that the desalination plant was supposed to produce. Conclusion Ocean desalination is not a safe or affordable drinking water option. Water from these plants costs far more than other water supply options, which means rate hikes that fall disproportionately on the very citizens who can least afford them. Meanwhile, the associated water pollution, chemical contaminants, marine life destruction, global warming and privatization could cause irreparable damage to our remaining clean water resources and public drinking water systems.
Extinction.
Jayawardena 9 (Asitha, London South Bank University, “We Are a Threat to All Life on Earth”, Indicator, 7-17, http://www.indicator.org.uk/?p=55)

Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995) explain in detail why the natural environment is so important for life on Earth. It is from the environment that the living organisms of all species import the energy and raw material required for growth, development and reproduction. In almost all ecosystems plants, the most important primary producers, carry out photosynethesis, capturing sunlight and storing it as chemical energy. They absorb nutrients from their environment. When herbivores (i.e. plant-eating animals or organisms) eat these plants possessing chemical energy, matter and energy are transferred ‘one-level up.’ The same happens when predators (i.e. animals of a higher level) eat these herbivores or when predators of even higher levels eat these predators. Therefore, in ecosystems, food webs transfer energy and matter and various organisms play different roles in sustaining these transfers. Such transfers are possible due to the remarkable similarity in all organisms’ composition and major metabolic pathways. In fact all organisms except plants can potentially use each other as energy and nutrient sources; plants, however, depend on sunlight for energy. Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995) further reveal two key principles governing the biosphere with respect to the transfer of energy and matter in ecosystems. Firstly, the energy flow in ecosystems from photosynthetic plants (generally speaking, autotrophs) to non-photosynthetic organisms (generally speaking, heterotrophs) is essentially linear. In each step part of energy is lost to the ecosystem as non-usable heat, limiting the number of transformation steps and thereby the number of levels in a food web. Secondly, unlike the energy flow, the matter flow in ecosystems is cyclic. For photosynthesis plants need carbon dioxide as well as minerals and sunlight. For the regeneration of carbon dioxide plants, the primary producers, depend on heterotrophs, who exhale carbon dioxide when breathing. Like carbon, many other elements such as nitrogen and sulphur flow in cyclic manner in ecosystems. However, it is photosynthesis, and in the final analysis, solar energy that powers the mineral cycles. Ecosystems are under threat and so are we Although it seems that a continued energy supply from the sun together with the cyclical flow of matter can maintain the biosphere machinery running forever, we should not take things for granted, warn Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995). And they explain why. Since the beginning of life on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago, organisms have evolved and continue to do so today in response to environmental changes. However, the overall picture of materials (re)cycling and linear energy transfer has always remained unchanged. We could therefore safely assume that this slowly evolving system will continue to exist for aeons to come if large scale infringements are not forced upon it, conclude Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995). However, according to them, the present day infringements are large enough to upset the world’s ecosystems and, worse still, human activity is mainly responsible for these infringements. The rapidity of the human-induced changes is particularly undesirable. For example, the development of modern technology has taken place in a very short period of time when compared with evolutionary time scales – within decades or centuries rather than thousands or millions of years. Their observations and concerns are shared by a number of other scholars. Roling (2009) warns that human activity is capable of making the collapse of web of life on which both humans and non-human life forms depend for their existence. For Laszlo (1989: 34), in Maiteny and Parker (2002), modern human is ‘a serious threat to the future of humankind’. As Raven (2002) observes, many life-support systems are deteriorating rapidly and visibly. Elaborating on human-induced large scale infringements, Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995) warn that they can significantly alter the current patterns of energy transfer and materials recycling, posing grave problems to the entire biosphere. And climate change is just one of them! Turning to a key source of this crisis, Sloep and Van Dam-Mieras (1995: 37) emphasise that, although we humans can mentally afford to step outside the biosphere, we are ‘animals among animals, organisms among organisms.’ Their perception on the place of humans in nature is resonated by several other scholars. For example, Maiteny (1999) stresses that we humans are part and parcel of the ecosphere. Hartmann (2001) observes that the modern stories (myths, beliefs and paradigms) that humans are not an integral part of nature but are separate from it are speeding our own demise. Funtowicz and Ravetz (2002), in Weaver and Jansen (2004: 7), criticise modern science’s model of human-nature relationship based on conquest and control of nature, and highlight a more desirable alternative of ‘respecting ecological limits, …. expecting surprises and adapting to these.’
Corporate control over water tanks solvency
The American Prospect, 8 (Maude Barlow, “Where has all the Water Gone?”, Vol. 19, Iss. 6, pg. A2, June 2008, Proquest)

THREE SCENARIOS COLLUDE TOWARD disaster. Scenario one: The world is running out of freshwater. It is not just a question of finding the money to hook up the 2 billion people living in water-stressed regions of our world. Humanity is polluting, diverting, and depleting the Earth's finite water resources at a dangerous and steadily increasing rate. The abuse and displacement of water is the ground-level equivalent of greenhouse-gas emissions and likely as great a cause of climate change. Scenario two: Every day more and more people are living without access to clean water. As the ecological crisis deepens, so too does the human crisis. More children are killed by dirty water than by war, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and traffic accidents combined. The global water crisis has become a powerful symbol of the growing inequality in our world. While the wealthy enjoy boutique water at any time, millions of poor people have access only to contaminated water from local rivers and wells. Scenario three: A powerful corporate water cartel has emerged to seize control of every aspect of water for its own profit. Corporations deliver drinking water and take away wastewater; corporations put massive amounts of water in plastic bottles and sell it to us at exorbitant prices; corporations are building sophisticated new technologies to recycle our dirty water and sell it back to us; corporations extract and move water by huge pipelines from watersheds and aquifers to sell to big cities and industries; corporations buy, store, and trade water on the open market, like running shoes. Most important, corporations want governments to deregulate the water sector and allow the market to set water policy. Every day, they get closer to that goal. Scenario three deepens the crises now unfolding in scenarios one and two. Imagine a world in 20 years in which no substantive progress has been made to provide basic water services in the Third World; or to create laws to protect source water and force industry and industrial agriculture to stop polluting water systems; or to curb the mass movement of water by pipeline, tanker, and other diversions, which will have created huge new swaths of desert. Desalination plants will ring the world's oceans, many of them run by nuclear power; corporate-controlled nanotechnology will clean up sewage water and sell it to private utilities, which will in turn sell it back to us at a huge profit; the rich will drink only bottled water found in the few remaining uncontaminated parts of the world or sucked from the clouds by corporate-controlled machines, while the poor will the in increasing numbers from a lack of water.

Warming
Nuclear doesn’t solve warming –
A) Not cost-competitive and can’t produce enough hydrogen
Ahearne et al, 12 – adjunct scholar for Resources for the Future and an adjunct professor of engineering at Duke University (John F, February. Federation of American Scientists. “The Future of Nuclear Power in the United States.” http://www.fas.org/pubs/_docs/Nuclear_Energy_Report-lowres.pdf)

In response to mitigating climate change, many countries will  find that nuclear power is neither the least-cost nor the quickest approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.1 Until nuclear energy is able to produce hydrogen or process heat, or until transportation sectors are electrified, nuclear energy’s potential contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions will be somewhat limited.
B) Takes too long and can’t reduce emissions
Madsen and Dutzik, 9 – Policy Analyst at Frontier Group and senior policy analyst with Frontier Group (Travis and Tony, November. With Bernadette Del Chiaro and Rob Sargent of the Environment America Research and Policy Center. “Generating Failure: How Building Nuclear Power Plants Would Set America Back in the Race Against Global Warming.” http://www.environmentamerica.org/sites/environment/files/reports/Generating-Failure~-~--Environment-America~-~--Web_0.pdf)
Building 100 new nuclear reactors would happen too slowly to reduce global warming pollution in the near-term, and would actually increase the scale of emission cuts required in the future. At best, the nuclear industry could have a new reactor up and running by 2016, assuming that construction could be completed in four years. This pace would be faster than 80 to 95 percent of all reactors completed during the last wave of reactor construction in the United States. 70 If construction follows historical patterns, it could take nine years after a license is issued before the first reactor is up and running – into the 2020s. Under this very plausible scenario, new nuclear power could make no contribution toward reducing U.S. emissions of global warming pollution by 2020 – despite the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars for the construction of nuclear power plants. And even if the industry completed 100 new reactors by 2030, which is highly unlikely, these reactors would reduce cumulative power plant emissions of carbon dioxide over the next two decades by only 12 percent below business as usual, when a reduction of more than 70 percent is called for. In other words, 100 new nuclear reactors would be too little, too late to successfully meet our goals for limiting the severity of global warming.
C) Transportation outweighs
Gordon, 10 – nonresident senior associate in Carnegie’s Energy and Climate Program, where her research focuses on climate, energy, and transportation issues in the United States and China (Deborah, December. “The Role of Transportation in Driving Climate Disruption.” http://carnegieendowment.org/files/transport_climate_disruption.pdf)
Climate impacts differ by sector. On-road transportation has the greatest negative effect on climate, especially in the short term. This is primarily because of two factors unique to on-road transportation: (1) nearly exclusive use of petroleum fuels, the combustion of which results in high levels of the principal warming gases (carbon dioxide, ozone, and black carbon); and (2) minimal emissions of sulfates, aerosols, and organic carbon from on-road transportation sources to counterbalance warming with cooling effects. Scientists find that cutting on-road transportation climate and air-pollutant emissions would be unambiguously good for the climate (and public health) in the near term. Transportation’s role in climate change is especially problematic, given the dependence on oil that characterizes this sector today. There are too few immediate mobility and fuel options in the United States beyond oil-fueled cars and trucks. U.S. and international policy makers have yet to tackle transportationclimate challenges. In its fourth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the global transportation sector was responsible for the most rapid growth in direct greenhouse gas emissions, a 120 percent increase between 1970 and 2004. To further complicate matters, the IPCC projects that, without policy intervention, the rapidly growing global transportation sector has little motivation to change the way it operates, because consumer choices are trumping best practices. Herein lies a fundamental mismatch between the climate problem and solutions: transportation is responsible for nearly one of every three tons of greenhouse gas emissions but represents less than one of every twelve tons of projected emission reductions. Clearly this sector is a major contributor to climate change; therefore, it should be the focus of new policies to mitigate warming. Government must lead this effort as the market alone cannot precipitate the transition away from cars and oil, which dominate this sector.
D) No global spillover – can’t solve developing countries
Socolow and Glaser, 9 – Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and Assistant Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University (Robert H. and Alexander, Fall. “Balancing risks: nuclear energy and climate change.” Dædalus Volume 138, Issue 4, pp. 31-44. MIT Press Journals.)

In this paper we consider a nuclear future where 1,500 GW of base load nuclear power is deployed in 2050.  A nuclear fleet of this size would contribute about one wedge, if the power plant that would have been built instead of the nuclear plant has the average CO2 emissions per kilowatt hour of all operating plants, which might be half of the value for a coal plant. Base load power of 1,500 GW would contribute one fourth of total electric power in a business-as-usual world that produced 50,000 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity per year, two-and-a-half times the global power consumption. However, in a world focused on climate change mitigation, one would expect massive global investments in energy efficiency–more efficient motors, compressors, lighting, and circuit boards–that by 2050 could cut total electricity demand in half, relative to business as usual. In such a world, 1,500 GW of nuclear power would provide half of the power. We can get a feel for the geopolitical dimension of climate change mitigation from the widely cited scenarios by the International Energy Agency (iea) presented annually in its World Energy Outlook (weo), even though these now go only to 2030. The weo 2008 estimates energy, electricity, and CO2 emissions by region. Its 2030 world emits 40.5 billion tons of CO2, 45 percent from electric power plants. The countries of theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd) emit less than one third of total global fossil fuel emissions and less than one third of global emissions from electric power production. By extrapolation, at midcentury the oecd could contribute only one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.  It is hard for Western analysts to grasp the importance of these numbers. The focus of climate change mitigation today is on leadership from the OECD countries, which are wealthier and more risk averse. But within a decade, the targets under discussion today can be within reach only if mitigation is in full gear in those parts of the developing world that share production and consumption patterns with the industrialized world. The map (see Figure 1) shows a hypothetical global distribution of nuclear power in the year 2050 based on a highnuclear scenario proposed in a widely cited mit report published in 2003. Three-fifths of the nuclear capacity in 2050 as stated in the mit report is located in the oecd, and more nuclear power is deployed in the United States in 2050 than in the whole world today. The worldview underlying these results  is pessimistic about electricity growth  rates for key developing countries, relative to many other sources. Notably, per  capita electricity consumption in almost  every developing country remains below 4,000 kWh per year in 2050, which  is one-fifth of the assumed U.S. value   for the same year. Such a ratio would  startle many analysts today–certainly  many in China.  It is well within limits of credulity   that nuclear power in 2050 could be  nearly absent from the United States   and the European Union and at the   same time widely deployed in several   of the countries rapidly industrializing  today. Such a bifurcation could emerge,  for example, if public opposition to nu clear power in the United States and  Europe remains powerful enough to   prevent nuclear expansion, while elsewhere, perhaps where modernization  and geopolitical considerations trump  other concerns, nuclear power proceeds  vigorously. It may be that the United  States and other countries of the oecd  will have substantial leverage over the  development of nuclear power for only   a decade or so.  Change will not happen overnight.  Since 2006, almost 50 countries that  today have no nuclear power plants   have approached the International  Atomic Energy Agency (iaea) for assistance, and many of them have announced plans to build one or more  reactors by 2020. Most of these countries, however, are not currently in a  good position to do so. Many face important technical and economic constraints, such as grid capacity, electricity demand, or gdp. Many have too   few trained nuclear scientists and engineers, or lack an adequate regulatory  framework and related legislation, or  have not yet had a public debate about  the rationale for the project. Overall,   the iaea has estimated that “for a State  with little developed technical base the  implementation of the first nuclear  power plant would, on average, take  about 15 years.”  11  This lead time constrains rapid expansion of nuclear   energy today.  A wedge of nuclear power is, necessarily, nuclear power deployed widely–  including in regions that are politically  unstable today. If nuclear power is suf-ficiently unattractive in such a deployment scenario, nuclear power is not on  the list of solutions to climate change.
E) China and domestic politics block
Hale 11 (Thomas, PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics – Princeton University and a Visiting Fellow – LSE Global Governance, London School of Economics, “A Climate Coalition of the Willing,” Washington Quarterly, Winter, http://www.twq.com/11winter/docs/11winter_Hale.pdf)

Intergovernmental efforts to limit the gases that cause climate change have all but failed. After the unsuccessful 2010 Copenhagen summit, and with little progress at the 2010 Cancun meeting, it is hard to see how major emitters will agree any time soon on mutual emissions reductions that are sufficiently ambitious to prevent a substantial (greater than two degree Celsius) increase in average global temperatures. It is not hard to see why. No deal excluding the United States and China, which together emit more than 40 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases (GHGs), is worth the paper it is written on. But domestic politics in both countries effectively block ‘‘G-2’’ leadership on climate. In the United States, the Obama administration has basically given up on national cap-and-trade legislation. Even the relatively modest Kerry-Lieberman-Graham energy bill remains dead in the Senate. The Chinese government, in turn, faces an even harsher constraint. Although the nation has adopted important energy efficiency goals, the Chinese Communist Party has staked its legitimacy and political survival on raising the living standard of average Chinese. Accepting international commitments that stand even a small chance of reducing the country’s GDP growth rate below a crucial threshold poses an unacceptable risk to the stability of the regime. Although the G-2 present the largest and most obvious barrier to a global treaty, they also provide a convenient excuse for other governments to avoid aggressive action. Therefore, the international community should not expect to negotiate a worthwhile successor to the Kyoto Protocol, at least not in the near future.

Warming is irreversible
ANI, 10 (“IPCC has underestimated climate-change impacts, say scientists”, 3-20, One India, http://news.oneindia.in/2010/03/20/ipcchas-underestimated-climate-change-impacts-sayscientis.html)

According to Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of Earth and atmospheric science, "Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today's concentration, by the end of this century, the global average temperature would increase by about 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 2.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policy makers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change." "Of course, greenhouse gas emissions will not stop tomorrow, so the actual temperature increase will likely be significantly larger, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to society unless other steps are taken to reduce the Earth's temperature," he added. "Furthermore, while the oceans have slowed the amount of warming we would otherwise have seen for the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the ocean's thermal inertia will also slow the cooling we experience once we finally reduce our greenhouse gas emissions," he said. This means that the temperature rise we see this century will be largely irreversible for the next thousand years. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions alone is unlikely to mitigate the risks of dangerous climate change," said Green.
No impact to warming
Idso and Idso 11 (Craig D., Founder and Chairman of the Board – Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, and Sherwood B., President – Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, “Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future Pursuing the Prudent Path,” February, http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/ prudentpath/prudentpath.pdf)

As presently constituted, earth’s atmosphere contains just slightly less than 400 ppm of the colorless and odorless gas we call carbon dioxide or CO2. That’s only four-hundredths of one percent. Consequently, even if the air's CO2 concentration was tripled, carbon dioxide would still comprise only a little over one tenth of one percent of the air we breathe, which is far less than what wafted through earth’s atmosphere eons ago, when the planet was a virtual garden place. Nevertheless, a small increase in this minuscule amount of CO2 is frequently predicted to produce a suite of dire environmental consequences, including dangerous global warming, catastrophic sea level rise, reduced agricultural output, and the destruction of many natural ecosystems, as well as dramatic increases in extreme weather phenomena, such as droughts, floods and hurricanes. As strange as it may seem, these frightening future scenarios are derived from a single source of information: the ever-evolving computer-driven climate models that presume to reduce the important physical, chemical and biological processes that combine to determine the state of earth’s climate into a set of mathematical equations out of which their forecasts are produced. But do we really know what all of those complex and interacting processes are? And even if we did -- which we don't -- could we correctly reduce them into manageable computer code so as to produce reliable forecasts 50 or 100 years into the future? Some people answer these questions in the affirmative. However, as may be seen in the body of this report, real-world observations fail to confirm essentially all of the alarming predictions of significant increases in the frequency and severity of droughts, floods and hurricanes that climate models suggest should occur in response to a global warming of the magnitude that was experienced by the earth over the past two centuries as it gradually recovered from the much-lower-than-present temperatures characteristic of the depths of the Little Ice Age. And other observations have shown that the rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the development of the Industrial Revolution have actually been good for the planet, as they have significantly enhanced the plant productivity and vegetative water use efficiency of earth's natural and agro-ecosystems, leading to a significant "greening of the earth." In the pages that follow, we present this oft-neglected evidence via a review of the pertinent scientific literature. In the case of the biospheric benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, we find that with more CO2 in the air, plants grow bigger and better in almost every conceivable way, and that they do it more efficiently, with respect to their utilization of valuable natural resources, and more effectively, in the face of environmental constraints. And when plants benefit, so do all of the animals and people that depend upon them for their sustenance. Likewise, in the case of climate model inadequacies, we reveal their many shortcomings via a comparison of their "doom and gloom" predictions with real-world observations. And this exercise reveals that even though the world has warmed substantially over the past century or more -- at a rate that is claimed by many to have been unprecedented over the past one to two millennia -- this report demonstrates that none of the environmental catastrophes that are predicted by climate alarmists to be produced by such a warming has ever come to pass. And this fact -- that there have been no significant increases in either the frequency or severity of droughts, floods or hurricanes over the past two centuries or more of global warming -- poses an important question. What should be easier to predict: the effects of global warming on extreme weather events or the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperature? The first part of this question should, in principle, be answerable; for it is well defined in terms of the small number of known factors likely to play a role in linking the independent variable (global warming) with the specified weather phenomena (droughts, floods and hurricanes). The latter part of the question, on the other hand, is ill-defined and possibly even unanswerable; for there are many factors -- physical, chemical and biological -- that could well be involved in linking CO2 (or causing it not to be linked) to global temperature. If, then, today's climate models cannot correctly predict what should be relatively easy for them to correctly predict (the effect of global warming on extreme weather events), why should we believe what they say about something infinitely more complex (the effect of a rise in the air’s CO2 content on mean global air temperature)? Clearly, we should pay the models no heed in the matter of future climate -- especially in terms of predictions based on the behavior of a non-meteorological parameter (CO2) -- until they can reproduce the climate of the past, based on the behavior of one of the most basic of all true meteorological parameters (temperature). And even if the models eventually solve this part of the problem, we should still reserve judgment on their forecasts of global warming; for there will yet be a vast gulf between where they will be at that time and where they will have to go to be able to meet the much greater challenge to which they aspire
No consensus over human induced warming – lots of qualified scientists agree
WSJ, 12 (Wall Street Journal, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming”, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html)

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:
 A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.  In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew my membership because I cannot live with the APS policy statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"  In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.  Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.  The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.  The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.   Corbis Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.  This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.  Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."  Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.  Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.