Tournament: UMKC | Round: R1 | Opponent: UT GM | Judge: Ryan Cheek

1AC: Warming

Scientific consensus on anthropogenic warming

Anderegg et al 10 ~[William, Professor of Biology at Stanford University; James W. Prall, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto; Jacob Harold, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; Stephen H. Schneider, Professor of Biology at Stanford University, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, "Expert credibility in climate change," 5-9, PNAS, vol 107, no 27, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/27/12107.full.pdf+html~~]
Preliminary reviews of scientific literature and surveys of climate scientists indicate striking agreement with the
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discussions in media, policy, and public forums regarding anthropogenic climate change.

Electricity sector and CO2 are key

Ferrey et al. ’10 (Steven, law prof at Suffolk, Chad Laurent JD at Suffolk, Cameron Ferrey president of Computers Across Borders, "Fire and Ice: World Renewable Energy and Carbon Control Mechanisms Confront Constitutional Barriers," 20 Duke Envtl. L. %26 Pol’y F. 125)
At the height of the last Ice Age, temperatures were only 5 ~[degrees
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successful GHG emission reduction plan will rely on reduction from the electricity sector.

Energy demand increasing

Mormann ’11 (Felix, prof at Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford Law School, "Requirements for a Renewables Revolution," 38 Ecology L.Q. 903)
With U.S. and global electricity generation expected to increase by 22 percent
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essential if current efforts in climate change mitigation are to be successful. n36
Fortunately, the case for rapid large-scale deployment of renewables in the electricity
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this Article focuses on the use of renewables for the generation of electricity.

New Renewables Can displace current emissions

Rossi ’10 (Jim, law prof at FSU, "The Future of Energy Policy: A National Renewable Portfolio Standard: The Limits of a National Renewable Portfolio Standard," 42 Conn. L. Rev. 1425)
The strongest case for renewables having a limited substitution effect may be in markets where
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although this requires a transmission system with sufficient capacity to accommodate renewables. n54

A Solution requires fast shift to renewables

Mormann ’11 (Felix, prof at Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford Law School, "Requirements for a Renewables Revolution," 38 Ecology L.Q. 903)
Climate change has turned the transition to renewable energy sources into one of the world’s
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despite the American public’s widespread awareness of and concern about climate change. n5
The transition to renewable sources of energy has long ceased to be of solely environmental
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growth in venture capital investment amidst the 2008/09 economic downturn. n9

Market forces are too slow – rate structure incentives are key to rapid transition

Mormann ’11 (Felix, prof at Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford Law School, "Requirements for a Renewables Revolution," 38 Ecology L.Q. 903)
The world’s decreasing oil reserves, ever stricter air pollution regulation, and struggles over
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. electricity mix at the speed necessary for successful climate change mitigation. n42
Today’s high-carbon economy must turn low-carbon by 2050 in order to
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who themselves tend to be electricity producers eager to eliminate additional competition. n94

====Plan rapidly cuts into fossil fuels ====
Alliance for Renewable Energy May 17, 2008, Why FITs?
http://www.allianceforrenewableenergy.org/2008/05/why-fits.html
Fits will speed up our shift from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. IN
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, Germany alone saved 100 million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. 

US environmental leadership is key to creating global action

Ivanova and Esty, 2008
Maria Ivanova, PhD,  Assistant Professor at McCormack Graduate School, Director of the Global Environmental Governance Project and Daniel C. Esty, Professor of Environmental Law and Policy at Yale Law School "Reclaiming U.S. Leadership in Global Environmental Governance", Summer-Fall 2008, SAIS Review vol. XXVII no. 2, accessed July 5, 2012 from http://www.umb.edu/editor_uploads/images/centers_institutes/center_governance_sustain/Ivanova-Esty-SAISReview-2008.pdf-http://www.umb.edu/editor_uploads/images/centers_institutes/center_governance_sustain/Ivanova-Esty-SAISReview-2008.pdf
We contend, moreover, that not only is U.S. participation critical
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impact is significant."4 Little progress is made without the United States. 

Worst-case warming results in extinction

Ahmed 2010 (Nafeez Ahmed, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development, professor of International Relations and globalization at Brunel University and the University of Sussex, Spring/Summer 2010, "Globalizing Insecurity: The Convergence of Interdependent Ecological, Energy, and Economic Crises," Spotlight on Security, Volume 5, Issue 2, online)
Perhaps the most notorious indicator is anthropogenic global warmings warming. The landmark 2007 Fourth
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– a situation endangering the survival of all life on earth.~[xi~]

No adaption to worst case – the impact is extinction

Tickell 8 (Oliver, Environmental Researcher, The Guardian, August 11, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange-http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/11/climatechange, JMB, accessed 6-23-11)
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told
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the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth 

Increased CO2 causes ocean acidification

Venkataramanan and smitha ’11(Department of Economics, D.G. Vaishnav College, Chennai, India Indian Journal of Science "Causes and effects of global warming p.226-229 March 2011 http://www.indjst.org/archive/vol.4.issue.3/mar11-pages159-265.pdf-http://www.indjst.org/archive/vol.4.issue.3/mar11-pages159-265.pdf)
Causes of global warming: The buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, mainly
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As carbon sinks fail, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere climbs%21

Ocean acidification will cause extinction

Romm 2012 (Joe Romm, Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, March 2, 2012, "Science: Ocean Acidifying So Fast It Threatens Humanity’s Ability to Feed Itself," http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/03/02/436193/science-ocean-acidifying-so-fast-it-threatens-humanity-ability-to-feed-itself/)
The world’s oceans may be turning acidic faster today from human carbon emissions than they
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seafood" are poised to expand and "remain for thousands of years."

1AC: Economic Leadership

We’re losing the renewable race

Mormann ’11 (Felix, prof at Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford Law School, "Requirements for a Renewables Revolution," 38 Ecology L.Q. 903)
The task of a timely transition to renewables is one of Herculean dimensions. The
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far-reaching that they may well be described as a renewables revolution.

Other nations are locking in their positions, a FIT solves

Toby D. Couture et al 2010, E3 Analytics, Karlynn Cory, Claire Kreycik, National Renewable Energy Laboratory,  Emily Williams, U.S. Department of State, July 2010 Technical Report, National Renewable Energy Laboratory,  work was funded by the DOE, "A Policymaker’s Guide to Feed-in Tariff Policy Design,"
With their increasing worldwide adoption, feed-in tariffs are poised to play an important role in advancing the deployment of renewable energy technologies. Many early adopters of FIT policies have had success propelling their renewable energy (RE) sectors (measured in manufacturing capacity, job creation, etc.) and in rapidly expanding the share of RE in their overall electricity mix. In particular, the policy framework created by FIT policies has enabled
certain countries such as Germany and Denmark to become incubators of RE technology and innovation, and create export opportunities in RE markets around the world. Combined with a long-term commitment to a renewable energy future, these countries have begun to lock in their strategic position in the energy economy of the 21st century. New sectors and technologies are
beginning to emerge, which provides other jurisdictions with the opportunity to develop similar competitive advantages as the global marketplace for renewable energy technologies expands and evolves. Through an overview of different policy practices found around the world, this report provides a comprehensive overview of FIT policy options, while highlighting a few key elements of policy
success. These include:
• long-term policy stability;
• payments based on the costs of RE generation; • differentiating the tariff prices
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through increased RE deployment, fewer environmental impacts, and increased job creation.
The benefits for project financing and RE investment are particularly worth noting: First, RE developers benefit from the long-term stability of the revenue streams generated from electricity sales, which helps foster a high level of investment security. Well-designed feed-in tariffs can help reduce risk, which can also help reduce the overall costs of RE development for society.
The stability of the framework makes it more likely for traditionally risk-averse investors
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both the location and the quantity of new RE manufacturing (Diekman 2008).
European Union (EU) experience suggests that the stability and longevity of the policy
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spur further innovation and technological cost reduction (Diekman 2008, Hvelplund 2005).

====Delay would lock the US out of the market====
NREL December 2008 Report Number: NREL/TP-6A0-44261
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Strengthening U.S. Leadership of International Clean Energy Cooperation Proceedings of Stakeholder Consultations" http://www.nrel.gov/international/pdfs/44261.pdf
The estimated range of net economic benefits to the United States in 2020 is %24
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decrease in global petroleum demand. Sources of Benefits Benefits from Clean Energy Markets
Both U.S. producers and consumers stand to benefit from significant global shifts toward clean energy technologies. The first impact comes through an increase in the export of CET products by U.S. producers.
However, U.S. CET producers will benefit from increased sales overseas only
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global market sector can develop significant and permanent cost advantages over later entrants.
Consumers can benefit from enhanced efforts in CET markets through lower CET prices. The
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the range of benefit estimates accounts for the possibility that prices might increase.

A domestic market is key

Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, CQ Transcriptions, Sen. Jeff Bingaman Holds a Hearing on Energy Department Budget, February 16, 2012 LN
CHU: Sure. Yes.
Very quickly, I think things like production tax credits are a way to stimulate
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either going to be buying or selling, and I’d rather be selling.

Robust renewable industry will promote exports, boosting US job growth

NREL December 2008 Report Number: NREL/TP-6A0-44261
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Strengthening U.S. Leadership of International Clean Energy Cooperation Proceedings of Stakeholder Consultations" http://www.nrel.gov/international/pdfs/44261.pdf
Economic and Market Benefits
U.S. leadership in clean energy markets will result in three types of
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U.S. exports2 resulting from a global clean energy market transformation.

Global demand is high, US involvement boosts economic stability

NREL December 2008 Report Number: NREL/TP-6A0-44261
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Strengthening U.S. Leadership of International Clean Energy Cooperation Proceedings of Stakeholder Consultations" http://www.nrel.gov/international/pdfs/44261.pdf
Climate change, the growing demand for fossil fuel resources, energy security, and
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presented in quantitative terms in the opportunity and benefits assessment section that follows.

Boosts Growth

NREL December 2008 Report Number: NREL/TP-6A0-44261
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Strengthening U.S. Leadership of International Clean Energy Cooperation Proceedings of Stakeholder Consultations" http://www.nrel.gov/international/pdfs/44261.pdf
The United States has an unparalleled opportunity to lead a global clean energy market transformation
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world and ensure that all citizens worldwide have access to modern energy services.

Economic boons are huge

Dennis Spisak 2008 , Green party Candidate for State Representative-60th District, Progress Ohio blog quoting the Sponsors of Inslee’s FIT bill’s press release, "Finally, US House Introduces Feed-In-Tariffs" July 1, 2008
http://www.progressohio.org/blog/2008/07/C29c.html
U.S. Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA), Bill Delahunt (
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potential to create thousands of new ’green-collar’ jobs here at home. 

Green tech is unique and key to economic recovery

King, 12 ~[YaShekia King, January 2012, US Green Technology, "Green Technology Will Come to the Economy’s Rescue" (http://usgreentechnology.com/us-green-stories/green-technology-will-come-to-the-economys-rescue/)~~]
I wrote this article because when we look around at our economically devastated country,
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addition to saving space that otherwise would have to be dedicated to landfills. 

And, Economic decline causes nuclear war

Burrows and Harris ’09 (Mathew J. Burrows, counselor in the National Intelligence Council, PhD in European History from Cambridge University, and Jennifer Harris, a member of the NIC’s Long Range Analysis Unit, April 2009 "Revisiting the Future: Geopolitical Effects of the Financial Crisis" http://www.twq.com/09april/docs/09apr_Burrows.pdf)

Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is
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within and between states in a more dog-eat-dog world. 

Plan

The United States Federal Government should establish a feed-in tariff that requires electricity utilities to offer long-term contracts for wholesale electricity from solar and wind sources at a fixed premium above the wholesale market price of electricity.

1AC: Solvency

Mismatched State policies undermines renewable deployment – now is key

Kopetsky ’8 (Brad A., J.D. U of Wisconsin Law School, "Deutschland Uber Alles: Why German Regulations Need to Conquer the Divided U.S. Renewable-Energy Framework to Save Clean Tech (And the World)," 8 Wis. L. Rev. 941)
Global warming, threats to energy security, and rising energy costs have become unavoidable
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been very successful and used as a model in many developing nations. n23

All other incentives and policies will fail – A federal feed in tariff will result in rapid deployment and development of renewables
Ferrey et al. ’10  (Steven, law prof at Suffolk, Chad Laurent JD at Suffolk, Cameron Ferrey president of Computers Across Borders, "Fire and Ice: World Renewable Energy and Carbon Control Mechanisms Confront Constitutional Barriers," 20 Duke Envtl. L. %26 Pol’y F. 125)
It is estimated that roughly half of new renewable energy power capacity in the United
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higher the return on investment guaranteed by the feed-in tariff rates.

FITs provide market stability resulting in rapid deployment of renewable tech

Toby D. Couture et al 2010, E3 Analytics, Karlynn Cory, Claire Kreycik, National Renewable Energy Laboratory,  Emily Williams, U.S. Department of State, July 2010 Technical Report, National Renewable Energy Laboratory,  work was funded by the DOE, "A Policymaker’s Guide to Feed-in Tariff Policy Design,"
Feed-in tariffs (FITs) are the most widely used policy in the
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help meet combined energy security and emissions reductions objectives (Germany BMU 2007).
This policymaker’s guide provides a detailed analysis of FIT policy design and implementation and identifies
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considers both the relative advantages and disadvantages of various design options for FITs.
Drawing on the literature cited above, this paper explores experience with feed-in
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the prevailing market price (IEA 2008, Rickerson et al. 2007).
Criteria for judging the success of feed-in tariffs depend on the policy goals
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(Germany BMU 2007, Lipp 2007, Mendonça et al. 2009b).

Tournament: Wake | Round: R2 | Opponent: Concordia | Judge: Archer

ANTHRO

1. STRATEGY SKEW – ALLOWS NEG TO CROSS APPLY ARGUMENTS ON OTHER FLOWS – UNDERMINES AFF’S ABILITY TO UTILIZE BEST OFFENSE – AND SEVERS ABILITY TO STRAIGHT TURN BECAUSE COUNTERPLAN CAPTURES OFFENSE

2. ARGUMENTIVE IRRESPONSIBILITY – UNDERMINES ADVOCACY SKILLS BY ALLOWING NEG TO GO FOR WHICHEVER ADVOCACY IS LEAST COVERED

INTERPRETATION: NEGATIVE GETS ONE CONDITIONAL ADVOCACY – REMEDIES THEIR OFFENSE

K can’t solve the case impacts-

Grid- alt. can’t solve the grid. Blackouts still happen in the status quo and the grid will collapse unless we are prepared. That causes hege. Collapse because we can’t check aggressors overseas without planning here.

Also causes disease spread

Kelly and Osterholm 08 Nicholas S. Kelley, Research assistant with The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy(CIDRAP) Business Source and a doctoral student in the Divison of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health, and Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, director of the NIH‐supported Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance within CIDRAP, a professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, and an adjunct professor in the Medical School, University of Minnesota. Written in their report “Pandemic Influenza, Electricity, and the Coal Supply Chain” http://www.sovrn.com/PDF/pubs_CIDRAP_Coal_Report.pdf

When one considers public health preparedness, the availability of electricity generally is not considered a factor of concern for public health planners. Electricity is typically regarded as reliable and is, in most instances, available for all public health needs. Whether planning for influenza vaccination clinics, investigating outbreaks of a foodborne disease, or responding to a bioterrorism event, public health workers almost always assume that the lights will be on and power available. For disaster scenarios that would compromise electricity, such as after a hurricane, planning activities take into account the loss of power. Most pandemic planning activities, however, do not consider the potential for the loss of electricity. ¶ Most Americans rarely experience power outages for more than a short time (Apt 2004, Hines 2008). Between 1984 and 2006, organizations reported to the US Department of Energy (DOE) and National Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC) that 861 disturbances affected power delivery (Hines 2008). Of these disturbances, some 44% were related to weather (eg, ice storms, wind), nearly 30% involved equipment failure, and 5% were caused by supply shortages (Hines 2008). More than one cause can be reported for a failure (eg, high winds and ice storms could be listed for an outage), so these numbers are approximate. ¶ The United States has had several major electrical blackouts in the last half century, yet very little has been written about the public health impact of long‐term electrical power loss. Much, however, has been published about short‐term electrical blackouts and their impact on acute care, the risks of carbon monoxide poisoning from generators, and the surge in medical needs in the community after a blackout. Literature can be found on such topics as heat waves and the health impact of associated blackouts, though these articles focus on specific situations and do not expand analysis to broader public health implications related to long‐term electrical blackouts. ¶ Hurricane Katrina was a vivid reminder that key components of public health, such as safe water and refrigeration of food and medications, can be rendered ineffective if critical infrastructures break down. Power outages were common after Katrina, because parts of the electrical infrastructure were destroyed. Many healthcare facilities lost power for weeks (Currier 2006, LSU 2006). Hospitals and clinics were not the only facilities impaired by the loss of power. Three major pipelines in the Gulf Coast that transport oil and fuel to the Midwest and east coast of the United States were either totally shut down or partially out of service for a few days (Slaughter 2005). The biggest problem facing crews restoring power after Katrina was the "lack of food, water and shelter for its repair crews who are literally sleeping in their trucks" (Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability 2005). Conditions like these lead to such public health problems as increasing risks of infectious disease and occupational injury.¶ Public health preparedness today, whether for a chronic disease or a pandemic, depends on infrastructure advances of the past century and, in particular, on the availability of electricity. The 20th century saw great improvements in public health (CDC 1999c), one of the most significant of which concerned the control of infectious diseases (CDC 1999a). The availability of clean drinking water, sanitary sewage systems, and refrigeration—all of which require electricity—accounted for some of the largest drops in infectious disease mortality (CDC 1999a, CDC 1999b). The ability to provide safe drinking water in the 1900s had a significant impact on reducing infectious disease mortality. For example, the leading cause of mortality of children in Minneapolis in 1900 was typhoid fever, the result of consuming water from contaminated individual water supplies (Osterholm MT, unpublished data). Today, standard environmental health practices like ensuring the safety and maintenance of our water systems is considered the foundation of public health. Such practices typically operate in the background—unless a breakdown in the infrastructure occurs.

Extinction

Greger 08 – M.D., is Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at The Humane Society of the United States (Michael Greger, , Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, http:~/~/birdflubook.com/a.php?id=111url:http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=111)

Senate Majority Leader Frist describes the recent slew of emerging diseases in almost biblical terms: “All of these new diseases were advance patrols of a great army that is preparing way out of sight.”3146 Scientists like Joshua Lederberg don’t think this is mere rhetoric. He should know. Lederberg won the Nobel Prize in medicine at age 33 for his discoveries in bacterial evolution. Lederberg went on to become president of Rockefeller University. “Some people think I am being hysterical,” he said, referring to pandemic influenza, “but there are catastrophes ahead. We live in evolutionary competition with microbes—bacteria and viruses. There is no guarantee that we will be the survivors.”3147 There is a concept in host-parasite evolutionary dynamics called the Red Queen hypothesis, which attempts to describe the unremitting struggle between immune systems and the pathogens against which they fight, each constantly evolving to try to outsmart the other.3148 The name is taken from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in which the Red Queen instructs Alice, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”3149 Because the pathogens keep evolving, our immune systems have to keep adapting as well just to keep up. According to the theory, animals who “stop running” go extinct. So far our immune systems have largely retained the upper hand, but the fear is that given the current rate of disease emergence, the human race is losing the race.3150 In a Scientific American article titled, “Will We Survive?,” one of the world’s leading immunologists writes: Has the immune system, then, reached its apogee after the few hundred million years it had taken to develop? Can it respond in time to the new evolutionary challenges? These perfectly proper questions lack sure answers because we are in an utterly unprecedented situation given the number of newly emerging infections.3151 The research team who wrote Beasts of the Earth conclude, “Considering that bacteria, viruses, and protozoa had a more than two-billion-year head start in this war, a victory by recently arrived Homo sapiens would be remarkable.”3152 Lederberg ardently believes that emerging viruses may imperil human society itself. Says NIH medical epidemiologist David Morens, When you look at the relationship between bugs and humans, the more important thing to look at is the bug. When an enterovirus like polio goes through the human gastrointestinal tract in three days, its genome mutates about two percent. That level of mutation—two percent of the genome—has taken the human species eight million years to accomplish. So who’s going to adapt to whom? Pitted against that kind of competition, Lederberg concludes that the human evolutionary capacity to keep up “may be dismissed as almost totally inconsequential.”3153 To help prevent the evolution of viruses as threatening as H5N1, the least we can do is take away a few billion feathered test tubes in which viruses can experiment, a few billion fewer spins at pandemic roulette. The human species has existed in something like our present form for approximately 200,000 years. “Such a long run should itself give us confidence that our species will continue to survive, at least insofar as the microbial world is concerned. Yet such optimism,” wrote the Ehrlich prize-winning former chair of zoology at the University College of London, “might easily transmute into a tune whistled whilst passing a graveyard.”3154

Warming- the alt. doesn’t change the way we get energy now. Even if they win a transition, it will be fueled by conventionals, and extinction will happen inevitably.

Engaging and discussing the state is key to warming

Held and Hervey 9

 David Held is Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of LSE Global Governance at the London School of Economics.

Angus Fane Hervey is a Doctoral Student and Ralph Miliband Scholar in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics.

www.policy-network.net/publications_download.aspx?ID=3426url:http://www.policy-network.net/publications_download.aspx?ID=3426

 The key role of the state In all of these challenges, states remain the key actors, as they hold the key to both domestic and international policymaking. The implementation of international agreements will be up to individual states, emissions trading and carbon pricing will require domestic legislation, and technological advance will need state support to get off the ground (Giddens, 2008). However, state strategies at the domestic level should involve the creation of incentives, not overly tight regulation. Governments have an important role in “editing” choice, but not in a way that precludes it altogether. This approach is represented in the form of what Giddens (2008) calls “the ensuring state,” whose primary role is help energise a diversity of groups to reach solutions to collective action problems. The state, so conceived, acts as a facilitator and an enabler, rather than as a top-down agency. An ensuring state is one that has the capacity to produce definite outcomes. The principle goes even further; it also means a state that is responsible for monitoring public goals and for trying to make sure they are realised in a visible and legitimate fashion. This will require a return to planning – not in the old sense of top down hierarchies of control, but in a new sense of flexible regulation. This will require finding ways to introduce regulation without undermining the entrepreneurialism and innovation upon which successful responses will depend. It will not be a straightforward process, because planning must be reconciled with democratic freedoms. There will be push and pull between the political centre, regions and localities, which can only be resolved through deliberation and consultation. Most importantly, states will require a long term vision that transcends the normal push and pull of partisan politics. This will not be easy to achieve. All this takes place in the context of a changing world order. The power structure on which the 1945 multilateral settlement was based is no longer intact, and the relative decline of the west and the rise of Asia raises fundamental questions about the premises of the 1945 multilateral order. Democracy and the international community now face a critical test. However, addressing the issue of climate change successfully holds out the prospect of reforging a rule-based politics, from the nation-state to the global level. Table 1 highlights what we consider to be the necessary steps to be taken along this road. By contrast, failure to meet the challenge could have deep and profound consequences, both for what people make of modern democratic politics and for the idea of rule-governed international politics. Under these conditions, the structural flaws of democracy could be said to have tragically trumped democratic agency and deliberative capacity.

We turn your ethics claims, a renewable economy is key to global human energy rights and averting genocide

Scheer, 02- “THE SOLAR ECONOMY: Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Global Future”. Herman Scheer, Member of Parliament for the German Government, the Deutscher Bundestag. In addition, he is President of EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energies, and General Chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy. Pg. 51-52.

The most sensitive question humanity faces is whether the global economy produces enough to go around. If our economy continues to be based on limited, polluting resources and ever more concentrated global business structures, then there will not be enough for all. The more obvious this becomes, the more likely it becomes that in the absence of a clear alternative, the ideal of equal human rights will be revoked. This process is covertly already well under way. Carl Amery identifies the nub of the issue: if there is not enough to go around, then the Nazi doctrine of ‘national selection’ will not remain an isolated historical episode. Instead, the distinction between the privileged and the disenfranchised, between those seen as superior and those seen as inferior, will be maintained into the 21st century.29 We face the threat of new genocides in new wars for Lebensraum, and of ‘ecocides’, brought about by humans and guaranteed by the law of the market. But when nature strikes back, she has no regard for privilege; her selection is indiscriminate. She is just and yet unjust, for her also meets those who have not provoked her. Yet she will tolerate a compromise, which we ourselves must enact. The answer is not ‘environmental protection’, which merely maintains isolated reserves without arresting the overall destruction, but rather a natural economy which respectfully partakes of the ‘Wealth of Nature’ (Donald Worster),30 instead of disfiguring the world with rape and pillage in the pursuit of an imagined ‘Wealth of Nations’ (Adam Smith). The goal of universal provision is the social and democratic ideal of the modern age, an ideal which originated with the Industrial Revolution. But the Industrial Revolution’s excesses, which have led us to put ourselves above nature, make it impossible to realize this ideal for all people in the long term. To achieve universal provision, it is not necessary to give nature priority over the needs of humans. What is essential – and this is my sixth proposition – is the primacy of physical laws over the laws of the market. In practical economic terms, this means above all that locally or regionally produced solar energy, foodstuffs and solar resources should be consumed and marketed in preference to otherwise equivalent products. A society which, with the aid of its political institutions, is unable to reverse the primacy of the market over nature is destined to die. The choice is not between private or public enterprise, between the free market or the planned economy. It is a question of the physical laws that govern private and public enterprise, market and planned economy alike. Solar resources are products of the primary sector. In view of their fundamental importance in providing for the inhabitants of an economic region, they may not be subordinated to the market or to some macroeconomic plan. This is the essen- tial conclusion that follows from the sham existence of the fossil-fuelled global economy. By switching to a solar resource basis, we can end this sham, and ensure that there will be enough to go around.

Extend Mendonca- plan changes the way that we orient ourselves to nature to a way that takes us away from the anthropocentric status quo.

Permutation solves best—understanding that nature has both intrinsic and instrumental value creates pragmatic conservation.

Minteer, 06. Ben A., Assistant Professor in the Human Dimensions of Biology Faculty in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. “The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America,” p. 3, Google Books.

Although I describe it more fully in the individual chapters, one of the noteworthy features of the third way tradition in environmental thought is its embrace of a pluralistic mode of environmental value and action that accommodates both the prudent use and the preservation of nature, rather than demanding that we must always choose between these commitments. It is a way of thinking, in other words, that accepts the interpenetrating character of intrinsic and instrumental values in experience, the basic continuity of means and ends in environmental thought and practice. As such, the third way tradition is a strand within environmentalism that cannot be accurately characterized as either narrowly anthropocentric or ecocentric. Rather, it incorporates critical elements of both sensibilities in a more holistic, balanced, and practical vision of human environmental experience. Furthermore, this pragmatic strain in environmental thought views humans as thoroughly embedded in natural systems. Yet this recognition does not lead to the conclusion that humans have carte blanche with respect to the natural world, or that there is no moral limit to the domination of human will over the landscape. Instead, the third way view supports a wider and more integrative perspective in which human ideals and interests (including economic interests, but also other nonmaterial social, cultural, and political values) are understood to be wrapped up in the natural and built environment, and are secured and promoted through deliberate and broad-based planning and conservation efforts. While respectful of wilderness geographies and values, this tradition nevertheless represents a retreat from pure preservationist forms of environmentalism to views that accommodate ecologically benign and adaptive forms of technological enterprise and sustainable community development on the landscape.

No link- the plan does not engage in the anthropocentric mindset they say

Anthropocentrism is inevitable—we can’t empathize with non-humans

Hailwood, 2004 (Simon, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, How to be a Green Liberal, p. 39-40)

Now, as Plamwood says “identify” is still left vague within this context of declaring that “our self is that with which we identify”. If it is literal identity so that there is no “real” distinction between the world and myself then the same problems arise as with the indistinguishability claim just discussed. However, “identify with nature by expanding the self” could mean something like “very strongly empathize” by taking its interests for one’s own.  In this sense myself expands as I come to have identical interests with nature. But, against this, one cannot identify with nature in this sense, if only because non-human nature as such has no “interests”’ although particular organisms )and, perhaps, at a push, species of organism) do. However, I cannot make my interests the same as theirs. My interests cannot be identical with those of, say, a fox, not simply because I might keep chickens, which it will try to eat, but because for instance, I cannot digest raw chicken flesh. And, of course, natural organisms do not all have identical interests. For example, at least at the level of individual organisms, the interests of predator and prey are incompatible. Thus making them all identical with my interests is not a logical possibility, no matter how big myself might become. There is still also the obvious danger of identifying one’s own (or our own) interests with those of non-humans. It might be in our interests to identify with the interests of chickens where these conflict with the interests of foxes. But it would be delusional to then congratulate ourselves on having made progress in the project of expanding our “self” to encompass the natural.

Anthropocentrism key to survival—understanding the importance of ecosystems to future generations solves environmental destruction but radical biocentrism causes extinction.

Hwang 03

Kyung-sig Hwang, 2003. Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Seoul National University. “Apology for Environmental Anthropocentrism,” Asian Bioethics in the 21st Century, http://eubios.info/ABC4/abc4304.htm

While our ability to affect the future is immense, our ability to foresee the results of our environmental interventions is not. I think that our moral responsibility grows with foresight. And yet, paradoxically in some cases grave moral responsibility is entailed by the fact of one's ignorance. If the planetary life-support system appears to be complex and mysterious, humble ignorance should indicate respect and restraint. However, as many life scientists have complained, these virtues have not been apparent in these generations. Instead they point out, we have boldly marched ahead, shredding delicate ecosystems and obliterating countless species, and with them the unique genetic codes that evolved through millions of years; we have altered the climate and even the chemistry of the atmosphere, and as a result of all this-what?18   A few results are immediately to our benefit; more energy, more mineral resources, more cropland, convenient waste disposal. Indeed, these short-term payoffs motivated us to alter our natural environment. But by far the larger and more significant results, the permanent results, are unknown and perhaps unknowable. Nature, says poet, Nancy Newhall, "holds answers to more questions than we know how to ask." And we have scarcely bothered to ask.19 Year and year, the natural habitants diminish and the species disappear, and thus our planetary ecosystem (our household) is forever impoverished.  It is awareness of ecological crisis that has led to the now common claim that we need transvaluation of value, new values, a new ethic, and an ethic that is essentially and not simply contingently new and ecological. Closer inspection usually reveals that the writer who states this does not really mean to advance such a radical thesis, that all he is arguing for is the application of old, recognized, ethical values of the kind noted under the characterization of respect for persons, justice, honesty, promotion of good, where pleasure and happiness are seen as goods.  Thus, although W. T. Blackstone writes; "we do not need the kind of transvaluation that Nietzsche wanted, but we do need that for which ecologists are calling, that is, basic changes in man's attitude toward nature and man's place in nature, toward population growth, toward the use of technology, and toward the production and distribution of goods and services." We need to develop what I call the ecological attitude. The transvaluation of values, which is needed, will require fundamental changes in the social, legal, political and economic institutions that embody our values. He concludes his article by explicitly noting that he does not really demand a new ethic, or a transvaluation of values.  A human being is a hierarchical system and a component of super-individual, hierarchical system of sets. What is needed is not the denial of anthropocentrism, the placing of the highest value on humans and their ends and the conceiving of the rest of the nature as an instrument for those ends. Rather what is needed is the explicit recognition of these hierarchical systems and an ecological approach to science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge in which the myriad casual relationships between different hierarchical systems are recognized and put to the use of humanity.  The freedom to use the environment must be restricted to rational and human use. If there is irrational use - pollution, overpopulation, crowding, a growth in poverty, and so on - people may wipe out hierarchies of life related to their own survival and to the quality of their own lives. This sort of anthropocentrism is essential even to human survival and a radical biotic egalitarianism would undermine conditions for that survival.20 Rational anthropocentrism, one that recognizes the value of human life "transcends our individual life" and one in which we form a collective bond of identity with the future generations is essential is the process of human evolution.

CP

Foreclosing representations of the nuclear apocalypse prevents rational action to prevent nuclear war

Saint-Amour, professor of English at Pomona College, 2000  (Paul, Diacritics, 30.4, projectmuse)

The call for papers that initiated both the 1984 colloquium on nuclear criticism and the subsequent Diacritics issue invited, among other varieties, "the sort of criticism that reads other critical or canonical texts for the purpose of uncovering the unknown shapes of our unconscious nuclear fears" "Nuclear" 3. This essay has undertaken such a reading, though without appealing directly to the notion of "unconscious fears"—by appealing, rather, to the notion of a mass trauma brought about by the conspicuously increasing vulnerability of civilian populations to incineration in total war since 1900. The "nuclear condition" in which I have seen this trauma culminating is the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), whereby the Cold War superpowers held one another's civilians hostage with nuclear arsenals large enough to survive a first-strike and devastatingly retaliate against the aggressor's cities. The MAD doctrine held out the possibility of an "apocalypse without revelation" to which the first examples of nuclear criticism responded. Since 1989, the focus of the nuclear debate has shifted to the growth of the "nuclear club"; the rise of nuclear programs in so-called rogue states such as Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea; the trimming, detargeting, and retargeting of superpower nuclear arsenals; the theft of fissionable materials from Russian and other former Soviet states' storage facilities; the aging of the remaining arsenals and the growing danger of accidental launches; the prospect of a brain drain of both Eastern bloc and US nuclear scientists and workers; the destabilizing influence of US "Star Wars II" missile shield development; the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and revised deterrence posture; and the possibility of nuclear terrorism. Since September 11, 2001, the phrase "ground zero" has been revived, but in the context of an explicitly non-nuclear catastrophe. Yet despite the apparent waning of images of nuclear holocaust in the global imaginary, a nuclear condition still exists, and End Page 80 one that retains the fundamental logic of Mutually Assured Destruction beneath these shifts in focus and terminology. But because a full nuclear exchange seems less imminent in the current climate, it is easy to ignore the persistence of arsenals and defense policies that continue to hold such an exchange open as a possible, even foundational, scenario. Meanwhile, many supposedly nonrogue states continue to accept a severe degree of civilian "collateral damage" in conventional military action. And while international humanitarian law prohibits the use of nuclear weapons in most scenarios, it leaves open a loophole case—one of desperate self-defense—in which nuclear weapons use might still be considered legal, and nuclear states continue to maintain overkill-sized arsenals, in the name of such a slim eventuality. ¹³http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/diacritics/v030/30.4saint-amour.html#FOOT13#FOOT13 Nuclear criticism, or whatever undertaking succeeds that problematic but prematurely decommissioned enterprise, will need not only to investigate the cultural prehistories of the nuclear epoch but to meditate on the reasons for the near-invisibility of present nuclear politics and nuclear stockpiles, the dangers these stockpiles entail, and the costs they exact—to begin the future anterior work of determining what this nuclear condition will have been when it is really over.

Refusing to confront the possibility of nuclear war fosters complacency and thwarts efforts to stop apocalypse

Schell, 1982 (Jonathan, Journalist and Peace Activist, “The Fate of the Earth,” p. 231)

Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path – if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our preparations to bring it about – then we will in effect become the allies of death and in everything we do our attachment to life will weaken: our vision, blinded to the abyss that has opened at our feet, will dim and grow confused; our will, discouraged by the thought of trying to build on such a precarious foundation anything that is meant to last, will slacken, and we will sink into stupefaction as though we were gradually weaning ourselves from life in preparing from the end.

Imagining specific scenarios is vital to preventing nuclear omnicide

Harvard Nuclear Study Group, 1983 (“Living With Nuclear Weapons,” p. 47)

The question is grisly, but nonetheless it must be asked. Nuclear war sic cannot be avoided simply by refusing to think about it. Indeed the task of reducing the likelihood of nuclear war should begin with an effort to understand how it might start. When strategists in Washington or Moscow study the possible origins of nuclear war, they discuss “scenarios,” imagined sequences of future events that could trigger the use of nuclear weaponry. Scenarios are, of course, speculative exercises. They often leave out the political developments that might lead to the use of force in order to focus on military dangers. That nuclear war scenarios are even more speculative than most is something for which we can be thankful, for it reflects humanity’s fortunate lack of experience with atomic warfare since 1945. But imaginary as they are, nuclear scenarios can help identify problems not understood or dangers not yet prevented because they have not been foreseen.

Turn—masking—focusing solely on the language used to describe something masks the problem and makes it harder to confront

Meisner, professor of environmental studies at York University, 1995  (Mark, “Resourcist Language: The Symbolic Enslavement of Nature”, Proceedings of the Conference on Communication and Our Environment, ed: David Sachsman, p. 242)

Changing the language we use to talk about non­human nature is not a solution. As I suggested, language is not the problem. Rather, it seems more like a contagious symptom of a deeper and multi-faceted problem that has yet to be fully defined.  Resourcist language is both an indicator and a carrier of the pathology of rampant ecological degradation. Further­more, language change alone can end up simply being a band-aid solution that gives the appearance of change and makes the problem all the less visible. In a recent article on feminist language reform, Susan Ehrlich and Ruth King (1994) argue that because meanings are socially constructed, attempts at introducing nonsexist language are being undermined by a culture that is still largely sexist.  The words may have shifted, but the meanings and ideologies have not. The real world cure for the sick patient matters more than the treatment of a single symptom.   Consequently, language change and cultural change must go together with social-moral change. It is naive to believe either that language is trivial, or that it is deterministic.

Perm- do both

Perm solves best – combining their kritik of dominant economic discourse with political action is key to change.

Giroux, Prof of Comm @ McMaster, 2004 p. 142-143 (Henry, The Terror of Neoliberalism)

There is a lot of talk among academics in the United States and elsewhere about the death of politics and the inability of human beings to imagine a more equitable and just world in order to make it better. I would hope that of all groups, educators would be the most vocal and militant in challenging this assumption by reclaiming the university’s subversive role-specifically, by combining critiques of dominant discourses and the institutional formations that support and reproduce them with the goal of limiting human suffering while at the same time attempting to create the concrete economic, political, social, and pedagogical conditions necessary for an inclusive and substantive democracy. Critical scholarship is crucial to such a task, but it is not enough. Individual and social agency becomes meaningful as part of the willingness to imagine otherwise in order to act otherwise. Scholarship has a civic and public function, and it is precisely the connection between knowledge and the larger society that makes visible its ethical and political function. Knowledge can and should be used for amplifying human freedom and promoting social justice, and not simply for creating profits or future careers. Intellectuals need to take a position, and, as Said argues, they have an obligation to “remind audiences of the moral questions that may be hidden in the clamour of public debates - -. and deflate the claims of neoliberal triumphalism.”56 Combining theoretical rigour with social relevance may be risky politically and pedagogically, but the promise of a substantive democracy far outweighs the security and benefits that accompany a retreat into academic irrelevance and the safe haven of a no-risk professionalism that requires, as Paul Sabin observes, “an isolation from society and vows of political chastity.”

Perm- do the cp

Changing representational practices hinders understanding of policy by overlooking questions of agency and material structures

Tuathail, 96  (Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p. 664, science direct)

While theoretical debates at academic conferences  are important to academics, the discourse and concerns of foreign-policy decision-  makers are quite different, so different that they constitute a distinctive problem-  solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics  assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign  policy and the exercise of power than they really are. This is not, however, to  minimize the obvious importance of academia as a general institutional structure  among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in particular states.  In general, I do not disagree with Dalby’s fourth point about politics and discourse  except to note that his statement-‘Precisely because reality could be represented in  particular ways political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war  fought’-evades the important question of agency that I noted in my review essay. The  assumption that it is representations that make action possible is inadequate by itself.  Political, military and economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and  leadership are all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized together  with representational practices. Both here and earlier, Dalby’s reasoning inclines  towards a form of idealism.  In response to Dalby’s fifth point (with its three subpoints), it is worth noting, first,  that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He analyzes certain CPD  discourses, root the geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor  its public-policy reasoning on national security. Dalby’s book is narrowly textual; the  general contextuality of the Reagan administration is not dealt with. Second, let me  simply note that I find that the distinction between critical theorists and post-  structuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third,  Dalby’s interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as  heavily influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an  interpretation that ignores the structural and ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at  that time. Gorbachev’s reforms and his new security discourse were also strongly self-  interested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited  regime of power from disintegration.  The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those  interested in the practice of critical geopolitics. While I agree with Dalby that questions  of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to engage, there is  a danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional  and the sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical  contexts within which particular discursive strategies become significant. Critical  geopolitics, in other words, should not be a prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant  that sometimes accompanies ‘poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like  the identity politics narrative; it needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is  human history.

Language isn’t inherently violent – violence exists independent of it

Apressyan, 98, Ruben G. Chair – Department of Ethics – Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, Director – Research and Education Center for the Ethics of Nonviolence, and Professor of Moral Philosophy – Moscow Lomonosov State University, Peace Review, v. 10 i. 4, December,

There is another aspect, however. Language per se is not violent; although, it easily may become an object of violence. This defenselessness against violence, means that violence exists beyond language. Speech is a prerogative of reason: violence is speechless. This means that violence has no need of language. With the help of language, violence may mark itself, give itself a kind of justification, allude to itself, or hide itself in various forms of reserve and awesomeness. Potential violence may resolve into speech or disembodied words. But in turn, words themselves, or words inserted into certain contexts or articulated with a certain intonation may appear as potentially violent. Thus language becomes a means of violence which "keeps silence."

Tournament: UNT | Round: 3 | Opponent: Oklahoma BY | Judge: Paul Mabrey

Perm—do the plan and the alternative. Capitalism isn’t wrong, just flawed in implementation—the perm fixes it

Barr 09

Charles Barr “Capitalism May Have Flaws, But Socialism Is Not the Answer”, The Tech from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http:~/~/tech.mit.edu/V129/N56/html

Capitalism has flaws, ...economy without overturning it.

Capitalism key to environmental protection 

Taylor, director of natural resource studies at CATO, Aprill 22, 2003

Jerry, Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism, http:~/~/www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3073url:http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3073

Indeed, we wouldn't even ...environmental organizations combined.

Root cause is a lie

Martin, professor of science, technology, and society – University of Wollongong, ‘90

(Brian, http:~/~/www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/html) 

In this chapter...movements to uproot them.

Renewables solve the the k

Norris ‘10

(Teryn, Dir of Americans for Energy Leadership, Public Policy major at Stanford University, and Senior Advisor at the Breakthrough Institute,” Make Poverty History: Make Clean Energy Cheap,” Daily Kos, 2-23,  http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2010/2/23/839776/-.html)

"If you gave me only...enough to deploy throughout the world.

Traditional free-market capitalism is gone – technological progress will move us toward a sustainable capitalism, and there is no superior alternative

Veron ‘9

(Nicolas, Research Fellow at Bruegel, National Journal Online, “Re-examining Capitalism,” 3-17,  http://economy.nationaljournal.com/2009/03/re-examining-capitalism.php?rss=1)

Nothing in what has...vvision of a self-organizing marketplace.

Alternative causes transition wars—turns the alt

Flood 04

            (Andrew, Anarchist organizer and writer, “Civilization, Primitivism, Anarchism,” http:~/~/www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1451url:http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1451)

However it is worth...and current oil production takes place.

Negativity fails: conservatives fill in

DEAN ‘9 (Jodi, teaches political theory at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, “Again and Again and again,” Theory and Even, Volume 12, Issue 1)

How then, does such..involved in constructing a new order.

Cap solves disease

Norberg 3

Johan Norberg, Fellow at Timbro (Swedish think tank), 2003, In Defense of Global Capitalism, p. 189 

Personally, I believe we have...and another couple of WHO.

Capitalism incentivizes peace—outweighs all other factors

Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, Nov 10, 2005

Doug, Spreading Capitalism is Good for Peace, http:~/~/www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5193url:http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5193

But

World War I demonstrated...economic liberty and peace remains.

Capitalism is sustainable

Matthews 11

Richard Matthews, eco-entrepreneur, eco-investor, sustainable writer, “Is Capitalism Sustainable?”, The Green Market, 5-12-2011, http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-capitalism-sustainable.html

Business has created...corporations and environmental organizations.

Ending capitalism dooms artificial intelligence

Kurzweil 1 (Ray, Ph.D. and Genius Inventor, “The Law of Accelerating Returns”, Lifeboat Foundation Special Reports, http://lifeboat.com/ex/law.of.accelerating.returns)

There is a vital economic imperative...to stop this progression.

AI solves every impact and averts multiple scenarios for extinction

Howe 2 (Mitchell, The Singularity Institute, “What are the Odds?”, Accelerating The Future, http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/articles/whataretheodds.htm)

Between now and 2029...remedied with surprising ease.

Capitalism is key to nanotech development

Nardi 1 (Bonnie A., Agilent Laboratories, “A Cultural Ecology of Nanotechnology”, National Science Foundation, March, http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/nanosciencestatement.html)

Brown and Duguid suggest...growth" is one to take seriously.

Disease outbreaks makes extinction inevitable without nanotechnology

Treder 5 (Mike, Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, 1-17, http:~/~/crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/what_we_believe/html(%%))

The second major reason...millions of lives and untold human suffering.