Lepp-Miller Neg

1NC T

The aff fails to specify an agent of action – power in the federal government is divided
Rotunda, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, 01
(Ronald D., “THE COMMERCE CLAUSE, THE POLITICAL QUESTION DOCTRINE, AND MORRISON,” Summer, 2001, 18 Const. Commentary 319, accessed via LexisNexis on 7-7-12 Bosley)

The Framers of our Constitution anticipated that a self-interested "federal majority" would consistently seek to impose more federal control over the people and the states. n10 Hence, they created a federal structure designed to protect freedom by dispersing and limiting federal power. They instituted federalism [*321] chiefly to protect individuals, that is, the people, not the "states qua states." n11 The Framers sought to protect liberty by creating a central government of enumerated powers. They divided power between the state and federal governments, and they further divided power within the federal government by splitting it among the three branches of government, and they further divided the legislative power (the power that the Framers most feared) by splitting it between two Houses of Congress. n12
Vote negative

A. Ground – plan text specification is key to pre-round prep and to ensure DA links and CP competition

B. Moving target – 2AC clarification allows the aff to spike out of 1NC arguments making neg strategy impossible

1NC T

Interpretation and violation – removing export or trade restrictions are distinct from restrictions on production – our evidence is comparative
Ehring and Chinale 11
(Lothar – Assistant to Mr. Péter Balás, Deputy Director-General at the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission, responsible for multilateral affairs, as well as trade defence instruments and bilateral trade relations with Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Until 2008, Lothar Ehring served in the Unit of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade that is responsible for Legal Aspects of Trade Policy.  He was the Coordinator for legal issues of multilateral trade, handled several WTO disputes and also represented the European Community in the negotiations on the reform of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding and Gian Franco – external PhD fellow at the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation at Maastricht University, “Regulation of Energy in International Trade Law: WTO, NAFTA and Energy Charter,” p. 134-5, accessed via Google Books at 10-3-12 Bosley)

The perfect example to test and discuss this interpretation is the famous case of OPEC production quotas. These quotas. as implemented at the national levels of OPEC members, are horizontal restrictions on production. They limit exportation no more than domestic sales, and yet the argument is made time and again that they fall foul of Article XI:I of the GATT 1994.” The proponents of this thesis recognize that they are on thin ice, given that production limitations are as remote from being border measures as a restriction can possibly be. Equally clear is the fact that a production limitation definition does not discriminate against exports, neither de jure nor de facto. The proponents of the OPEC GATT-illegality attempt to overcome this conclusion with the argument that for some of the oil exporting countries in question, the near totality of the production goes to export. This. however, is legally irrelevant to the question of whether there is a discrimination against or higher burden on exports. The quantitative relationship between domestic consumption and exports can be very imbalanced for reasons of production and consumption capacities, in large part for reasons of a country’s size and the foreign demand for the product concerned. Also the conceptual argument that a restriction on production can be decomposed into a restriction on exportation as well a restriction on domestic sales is not plausible. The production restriction is precisely and inseparably both at the same time and this makes a qualitative difference that is impossible to set aside.

Vote negative

1. Ground – removing trade barriers lets them spike out of DAs or CPs related to production mechanisms, mooting other terms in the resolution and allowing for unpredictable external aff offense

2. Limits – they explode the topic by allowing multiple external means of modifying border policy – this is wholly unpredictable and a separate lit base the neg has to prepare for that makes the topic unmanageable

FX T—they only increase energy production if Chinese companies agree to increase trade—independent voter for fairness because it makes our disad links conditional

1NC CP

The 50 states should create a states compact to lower antidumping tariffs on crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells from the People’s Republic of China

A compact is the best means for interstate energy action and it avoids federal preemption
Craig, 2010
(Robin Kundis, Attorneys' Title Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs, Florida State University College of Law, University of Colorado Law Review, Summer, 2010, 81 U. Colo. L. Rev. 771; MULTISTATE DECISION MAKING FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY AND TRANSMISSION: SPOTLIGHT ON COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, UTAH, AND WYOMING: Constitutional Contours for the Design and Implementation of Multistate Renewable Energy Programs and Projects)MKD

While substantive and procedural considerations may influence the design as well as the content of a multistate renewable energy program, the most important structural issue facing the states designing such a program is whether to proceed through an interstate compact. As this Part explains, the Interstate Compact Clause may well require a compact for a multistate renewable energy program. If so, a program proceeding without a compact would simply be illegal.
Even when a compact is not constitutionally required, it offers such programs potentially valuable insulation from other constitutional issues. In particular, the existence of a compact could shield a multistate renewable energy program from the normal operation of federal preemption.
This Part first presents an overview of the Interstate Compact Clause and the three critical issues that arise under it: whether an interstate compact exists or is needed; whether Congress consented; and the legal status of the compact. It then looks at the applicability of the Clause to multistate renewable energy programs in general and concludes by detailing the positive legal advantages that a compact could provide to such programs. States should consider both the potential need for a compact and the potential advantages of operating through one when designing their multistate renewable energy programs.

PTIX

CIR will pass now – Congressional compromise despite sequester
Sherwood, Latinos Post, 3-1-13
(I-Hsien, “Immigration Reform News 2013: Progress for Bipartisan Bill in House Could Mean Vote is Pushed Through Against Republican Objections,” http://www.latinospost.com/articles/13353/20130301/immigration-reform-news-2013-progress-bipartisan-bill-house-mean-vote.htm, accessed 3-1-13 Bosley)

Even as the sequester cuts begin, there seems to be some progress on the equally contentious issue of immigration reform. Senate Republican backers of the bipartisan bill that provides a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country have met with their counterparts in the House of Representatives to try to win support for the measure. Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke with more conservative members of the House in an effort to sway them. While nothing is certain, McCain seemed pleased after the meeting, which included several strident immigration opponents. "Senator McCain was glad to have the opportunity to update key House members and get their advice and recommendations on this important effort," said Brian Rogers, McCain's communications director. "He looks forward to continuing these conversations as we move forward." Recent developments in the House show a weakening of the voting bloc that may bode well for supporters of reform. On Thursday, the House allowed a vote on the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which passed even without much Republican support. Previously, the House leadership would never have let the vote move forward if they weren't sure of victory. As similar result occurred when the House voted to approve relief funding for Hurricane Sandy victims. Only 49 Republicans supported the measure, but it still passed with overwhelming Democratic support. The same thing may happen with immigration reform. In the case of the Sandy vote, refusing to bring the bill to a vote would have been too politically toxic for the Republican leadership, as well as for representatives of hurricane stricken areas. Rep. Peter King of New York nearly led a coup within the House pushing the vote through, and he was still unable to win over many Republicans from other areas of the country, whose conservative base has no love for the mostly-liberal enclaves hit hardest by the storm. In the same way, it may turn out that the Republican leadership cannot prevent an issue like immigration reform from coming to a vote, not after Republicans lost 71 percent of the Latino vote in last year's presidential election, and not when some influential conservatives support the measure. And if Republicans cannot prevent a vote, Democrats need only a few like-minded voices from across the aisle to join them.

Solar causes fights- Obama gets involved
Restuccia, Politico reporter, 12
(Andrew, “Obama: 'We will not walk away' from clean-energy agenda,” 3-21-12, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/217393-obama-we-will-not-walk-away-from-clean-energy, accessed 12-29-12 Bosley)

“You’d think that everybody would be supportive of solar power,” Obama said during a speech at a solar plant in Boulder City, Nev. “That’s what you’d think. And yet, if some politicians had their way, there won’t be any more public investment in renewable energy.” Obama’s speech, part of a four-state energy tour, signals that the White House continues to believe that investing in clean energy is a winning political issue, despite the GOP’s attacks on Solyndra, the now-defunct California solar panel maker that received a $535 million Obama administration loan guarantee in 2009. “As long as I’m president, we will not walk away from the promise of clean energy,” Obama said. The president spoke Wednesday afternoon at the Copper Mountain Solar 1 Facility, which the White House said was the largest photovoltaic solar power plant in the country. While Obama didn’t mention Solyndra in the speech, he acknowledged that some investments “won’t pan out.” But he stressed that long-term investment in the renewable energy industry will boost the economy and create thousands of jobs. “When it comes to new technologies, the pay-offs aren’t always going to start right away,” Obama said. “Sometimes you need a jumpstart to make it happen.” The president sought to portray Republicans as out of touch and clinging to old notions. “If these guys were around when Columbus set sail, they’d be charter members of the Flat Earth Society,” Obama said, reprising a line from an earlier speech. “One member of Congress who shall remain unnamed called these jobs ‘phony,’ ” he said. Obama praised Tuesday’s decision by the Commerce Department to impose modest tariffs on imports of Chinese solar panels into the United States. “China wasn’t playing fair when it comes to solar power,” he said. “When the playing field is level, then American workers and American businesses always win. That’s why we’ve got to make sure that our laws are properly enforced.” Republicans have been working for months to punish Obama politically for the administration’s clean-energy investments, focusing in on the Solyndra failure. The GOP alleges that officials missed red flags that hinted at the Solyndra’s financial problems and that the administration approved the loan to please Obama’s campaign donors.
CIR key to the economy
Reuters 1-29
(Edward Krudy, Reuters, “Analysis: Immigration reform could boost U.S. economic growth,” Tue Jan 29, 2013 1:14am EST, http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/29/us-usa-economyimmigration-idUSBRE90S06R20130129, EGM)

(Reuters) - The sluggish U.S. economy could get a lift if President Barack Obama and a bipartisan group of senators succeed in what could be the biggest overhaul of the nation's immigration system since the 1980s. Relaxed immigration rules could encourage entrepreneurship, increase demand for housing, raise tax revenues and help reduce the budget deficit, economists said. By helping more immigrants enter the country legally and allowing many illegal immigrants to remain, the United States could help offset a slowing birth rate and put itself in a stronger demographic position than aging Europe, Japan and China. "Numerous industries in the United States can't find the workers they need, right now even in a bad economy, to fill their orders and expand their production as the market demands," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration specialist at the libertarian Cato Institute. The emerging consensus among economists is that immigration provides a net benefit. It increases demand and productivity, helps drive innovation and lowers prices, although there is little agreement on the size of the impact on economic growth. President Barack Obama plans to launch his second-term push for a U.S. immigration overhaul during a visit to Nevada on Tuesday and will make it a high priority to win congressional approval of a reform package this year, the White House said. The chances of major reforms gained momentum on Monday when a bipartisan group of senators agreed on a framework that could eventually give 11 million illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens. Their proposals would also include means to keep and attract workers with backgrounds in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This would be aimed both at foreign students attending American universities where they are earning advanced degrees and high-tech workers abroad. An estimated 40 percent of scientists in the United States are immigrants and studies show immigrants are twice as likely to start businesses, said Nowrasteh. Boosting legal migration and legalizing existing workers could add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 10 years, estimates Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, a specialist in immigration policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. That's an annual increase of 0.8 percentage points to the economic growth rate, currently stuck at about 2 percent. REPUBLICANS' HISPANIC PUSH Other economists say the potential benefit to growth is much lower. Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard, believes most of the benefits to the economy from illegal immigrants already in the United States has already been recorded and legalizing their status would produce only incremental benefits. While opposition to reform lingers on both sides of the political spectrum and any controversial legislation can easily meet a quick end in a divided Washington, the chances of substantial change seem to be rising. Top Republicans such as Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana are not mincing words about the party's need to appeal to the Hispanic community and foreign-born voters who were turned off by Republican candidate Mitt Romney's tough talk in last year's presidential campaign. A previous Obama plan, unveiled in May 2011, included the creation of a guest-worker program to meet agricultural labor needs and something similar is expected to be in his new proposal. The senators also indicated they would support a limited program that would allow companies in certain sectors to import guest workers if Americans were not available to fill some positions. An additional boost to growth could come from rising wages for newly legalized workers and higher productivity from the arrival of more highly skilled workers from abroad. Increased tax revenues would help federal and state authorities plug budget deficits although the benefit to government revenues will be at least partially offset by the payment of benefits to those who gain legal status. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that proposed immigration reform in that year would have generated $48 billion in revenue from 2008 to 2017, while costing $23 billion in health and welfare payments. There is also unlikely to be much of a saving on enforcement from the senators' plan because they envisage tougher border security to prevent further illegal immigration and a crackdown on those overstaying visas. One way to bump up revenue, according to a report co-authored by University of California, Davis economist Giovanni Peri, would be to institute a cap-and-trade visa system. Peri estimated it could generate up to $1.2 billion annually. Under such a system, the government would auction a certain number of visas employers could trade in a secondary market. "A more efficient, more transparent and more flexible immigration system would help firms expand, contribute to more job creation in the United States, and slow the movement of operations abroad," according to a draft report, soon to be published as part of a study by the Hamilton Project, a think tank. There was no immediate sign that either the Obama or the senators' plan would include such a system. The long-term argument for immigration is a demographic one. Many developed nations are seeing their populations age, adding to the burden of pension and healthcare costs on wage-earners. Immigration in the United States would need to double to keep the working-age population stable at its current 67 percent of total population, according to George Magnus, a senior independent economic adviser at UBS in London, While Magnus says a change of that magnitude may prove too politically sensitive, the focus should be on attracting highly skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants in the way Canada and Australia do by operating a points system for immigrants rather than focusing mainly on family connections. "The trick is to shift the balance of migration towards those with education (and) skills," he added. HARD ROAD Academics at major universities such as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology often lament that many of their top foreign graduates end up returning to their home countries because visas are hard to get. "We have so much talent that is sitting here in the universities," said William Kerr, a professor at Harvard Business School. "I find it very difficult to swallow that we then make it so hard for them to stay." The last big amnesty for illegal immigrants was in 1986 when President Ronald Reagan legalized about 3 million already in the country. Numerous studies have shown that subsequently their wages rose significantly. Research on how immigration affects overall wages is inconclusive. George Borjas at Harvard says immigration has created a small net decrease in overall wages for those born in the United States, concentrated among the low-skilled, while Giovani Peri at UC Davis found that immigration boosts native wages over the long run. Hinojosa-Ojeda stresses that any reform needs to make it easier for guest workers to enter the country to avoid a new build-up of illegal workers. "If we don't create a mechanism that can basically bring in 300,000 to 400,000 new workers a year into a variety of labor markets and needs, we could be setting ourselves up for that again," said Hinojosa-Ojeda. Nowrasteh at Cato also believes an expanded guest worker program would stem illegal immigration and allow industries to overcome labor shortages. He found that harsher regulations in recent years in Arizona were adversely affecting agricultural production, increasing financial burdens on business and even negatively impacting the state's struggling real estate market. Some large companies have fallen foul of tougher enforcement regulations. Restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc fired roughly 500 staff in 2010 and 2011 after undocumented workers were found on its payrolls. Putting the chill on other employers, it is now subject of an ongoing federal criminal investigation into its hiring. "The current system doesn't seem to work for anyone," Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said.

Economic decline causes war
Cross apply their royal ev

K
Energy production enframes nature through the needs of a human subject, reducing our surroundings to standing-reserve.
Beckman 2K (Tad, Prof. of philosophy at Harvey Mudd College, “Heidegger and Environmental Ethics”, http://www2.hmc.edu/~tbeckman/personal/HEIDART.HTML//shree)

Heidegger clearly saw the development of "energy resources" as symbolic of this evolutionary path; while the transformation into modern technology undoubtedly began early, the first definitive signs of its new character began with the harnessing of energy resources, as we would say. (7) As a representative of the old technology, the windmill took energy from the wind but converted it immediately into other manifestations such as the grinding of grain; the windmill did not unlock energy from the wind in order to store it for later arbitrary distribution. Modern wind-generators, on the other hand, convert the energy of wind into electrical power which can be stored in batteries or otherwise. The significance of storage is that it places the energy at our disposal; and because of this storage the powers of nature can be turned back upon itself. The storing of energy is, in this sense, the symbol of our over-coming of nature as a potent object. "...a tract of land is challenged into the putting out of coal and ore. The earth now reveals itself as a coal mining district, the soil as a mineral deposit." {[7], p. 14} This and other examples that Heidegger used throughout this essay illustrate the difference between a technology that diverts the natural course cooperatively and modern technology that achieves the unnatural by force. Not only is this achieved by force but it is achieved by placing nature in our subjective context, setting aside natural processes entirely, and conceiving of all revealing as being relevant only to human subjective needs.  The essence of technology originally was a revealing of life and nature in which human intervention deflected the natural course while still regarding nature as the teacher and, for that matter, the keeper. The essence of modern technology is a revealing of phenomena, often far removed from anything that resembles "life and nature," in which human intrusion not only diverts nature but fundamentally changes it. As a mode of revealing, technology today is a challenging-forth of nature so that the technologically altered nature of things is always a situation in which nature and objects wait, standing in reserve for our use. We pump crude oil from the ground and we ship it to refineries where it is fractionally distilled into volatile substances and we ship these to gas stations around the world where they reside in huge underground tanks, standing ready to power our automobiles or airplanes. Technology has intruded upon nature in a far more active mode that represents a consistent direction of domination. Everything is viewed as "standing-reserve" and, in that, loses its natural objective identity. The river, for instance, is not seen as a river; it is seen as a source of hydro-electric power, as a water supply, or as an avenue of navigation through which to contact inland markets. In the era of techne humans were relationally involved with other objects in the coming to presence; in the era of modern technology, humans challenge-forth the subjectively valued elements of the universe so that, within this new form of revealing, objects lose their significance to anything but their subjective status of standing-ready for human design. (8) At this point, we have almost completed the analysis of modern technology in its essence.
This mindset allows the destruction of all forms of alterity to be reengineered for human purposes—destroys value to life
Lee 99 (Keekok, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, The Natural and the Artefactualshree)

To appreciate this dimension one needs to highlight the distinction between the artefactual and the natural. The former is the material embodiment of human intentionalityan analysis in terms of Aristotle's causes shows that all four causes, since late modernity, may be assigned to human agency.'- The latter, ex hypothesi, has nothing to do with human agency in any of its four causes. This shows that the artefactual and the natural belong to two very different ontological categories—one has come into existence and continues to exist only because of human purpose and design while the other has come into existence and continues to exist independently of human purpose and design. In the terminology of this book, the artefactual embodies extrinsic/imposed teleology while the natural (at least in the form of individual living organisms) embodies intrinsic/immanent teleology. However, the more radical and powerful technologies of the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries are capable of producing artefacts with an ever increasing degree of artefacticity. The threat then posed by modem homo faber is the systematic elimination of the natural, both at the empirical and the ontological levels, thereby generating a narcissistic civilization. In this context, it is, therefore, appropriate to remind ourselves that beyond Earth, nature, out there, exists as yet unhumanized. But there is a strong collective urge, not merely to study and understand that nature, but also ultimately to exploit it, and furthermore, even to transform parts of it into ersatz Earth, eventually making it fit for human habitation. That nature, as far as we know, has (had) no life on it. These aspirations raise a crucial problem which environmental philosophy ought to address itself, namely, whether abiotic nature on its own could be said to be morally considerable and the grounds for its moral considerability.  If no grounds could be found, then nature beyond Earth is ripe for total human control and manipulation subject to no moral but only technological and/or economic constraints. The shift to ontology in grounding moral considerability will, it is argued, free environmental philosophy from being Earthbound in the millennium about to dawn. In slightly greater detail, the aims of this book may be summarized as follows 1. To show how modem science and its technology, in controlling and manipulating (both biotic and abiotic) nature, transform it to become the  artefactual. It also establishes that there are degrees of 'artefacticity  depending on the degree of control and precision with which science and  technology manipulate nature. An extant technology such as biotechnology already threatens to imperil the existence of biotic natural kinds. Furthermore  technologies of the rising future, such as molecular nanotechnology, i  synergistic combination with biotechnology and microcomputer technology,.  could intensify this tendency to eliminate natural kinds, both biotic and abiotic  as well as their natural processes of evolution or change. 2. To  consider the implications of the above for environmental philosophy, and in so doing, to point out the inadequacy of the extant accounts about intrinsic value in nature. By and large (with some honorable exceptions), these concentrate on arguing that the biotic has intrinsic value but assume that the undeniable contingent link between the abiotic and the biotic on Earth would take care of the abiotic itself. But the proposed terraformation of Mars (and even of Earth's moon only very recently) shows the urgent need to develop a much more comprehensive environmental philosophy which is not merely Earthbound but can include the abiotic in its own right. 3. The book also raises a central inadequacy of today's approaches in  environmental philosophy and movements. They concentrate predominantly  on the undesirable polluting aspects of extant technologies on human an  nonhuman life, and advocate the introduction of more ecologically sensitive  technology (including this author's own earlier writing). If this were the most  important remit of environmental philosophy, then one would have to admit  that nature-replacing technologies (extant and in the rising future) could be  the ultimate 'green' technologies as their proponents are minded to maintain  in spite of their more guarded remarks about the environmental risks that ma'  be incurred in running such technologies.' Such technologies would also  achieve what is seemingly impossible, as they promise to make possible   world of superabundance, not only for the few, but for all, without straining  and stressing the biosphere as a sink for industrial waste. But this book argue  that environmental philosophy should not merely concern itself with the  virtuous goal of avoiding pollution risks to life, be that human or nonhuman It should also be concerned with the threat that such radically powerful technologies could render nature, both biotic and abiotic, redundant. A totally artefactual world customized to human tastes could, in principle, be designed and manufactured. When one can create artefactual kinds (from what Aristotle calls 'first. matter,' or from today's analogue, what we call atoms and molecules of familiar elements like carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, etc.) which in other relevant respects are indistinguishable from natural kinds (what Aristotle calls 'second matter'), natural kinds are in danger of being superseded. The ontological category of the artefactual would replace that of the natural. The upholding of the latter as a category worth preserving constitutes, for this book, the most fundamental task in environmental philosophy. Under this perspective, the worrying thing about modem technology in the long run may not be that it threatens life on Earth as we know it to be because of its polluting effects, but that it could ultimately humanize all of nature. Nature, as 'the Other,' would be eliminated. 4. In other words, the ontological category of the natural would have to be delineated and defended against that of the artefactual, and some account of 'intrinsic' value would have to be mounted which can encompass the former. The book argues for the need to maintain distinctions such as that between human/nonhuman, culture/nature, the artefactual/the natural. In other words, ontological dyadism is required, though not dualism, to combat the transformation of the natural to become the artefactual. The book also argues that the primary attribute of naturally-occurring entities is an ontological one, namely, that of independence as an ontological value. Such an attribute is to be distinguished from secondary attributes like intricacy, complexity, interests-bearing, sentience, rationality, etc., which are said to provide the grounds for assigning their bearers intrinsic value. In this sense, ontology precedes axiology.
Vote negative to endorse an cosmo-centric ethic that sees the universe as having intrinsic value independent of humanity
Lee 99 (Keekok, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, The Natural and the Artefactual, 1999shree)

We should not delude ourselves that the humanization of nature will stop at biotic nature or indeed be confined only to planet Earth. Other planets in our solar system, too, may eventually be humanized; given the technological possibility of doing so, the temptation to do so appears difficult to resist on the part of those always on the lookout for new challenges and new excitement. To resist the ontological elimination of nature as 'the Other,' environmental philosophy must not merely be earthbound but, also, astronomically bounded (at least to the extent of our own solar system). We should bear in mind that while there may be little pristine nature left on Earth, this does not mean that nature is not pristine elsewhere in other planets. We should also be mindful that while other planets may not have life on them, this does not necessarily render them only of instrumental value to us. Above all, we should, therefore, bear in mind that nature, whether pristine or less than fully pristine, biotic or abiotic, is ontologically independent and autonomous of humankind—natural forms and natural processes are capable of undertaking their own trajectories of existence. We should also remind ourselves that we are the controllers of our science and our technology, and not allow the products of our intellectual labor to dictate to us what we do to nature itself without pause or reflection. However, it is not the plea of this book that humankind should never transform the natural to become the artefactual, or to deny that artefacticity is not a matter of differing degrees or levels, as such claims would be silly and indefensible. Rather its remit is to argue that in systematically transforming the natural to become the artefactual through our science and our technology, we are at the same time systematically engaged in ontological simplification. Ontological impoverishment in this context is wrong primarily because we have so far failed to recognize that nature embodies its own funda¬mental ontological value. In other words, it is not true, as modernity alleges, that nature is devoid of all value and that values are simply humanly conferred or are the projections of human emotions or attitudes upon nature. Admittedly, it takes our unique type of human consciousness to recognize that nature possesses ontological value; however, from this it would be fallacious to conclude that human consciousness is at once the source of all values, or even the sole locus of axiologically-grounded intrinsic values. But most important of all, human con¬sciousness does not generate the primary ontological value of independence in nature; nature's forms and processes embodying this value exist whether human¬kind is around or not.

Case

Trade

Zero incentive for China – we’d crush them

Goldstein, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at American, 11
(Joshua, Nonresident Sadat Senior Fellow, CIDCM at the University of Maryland and Research Scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Think Again: War,” Foreign Policy, Sept 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/think_again_war?page=full, accessed 5-24-12Bosley)

What about China, the most ballyhooed rising military threat of the current era? Beijing is indeed modernizing its armed forces, racking up double-digit rates of growth in military spending, now about $100 billion a year. That is second only to the United States, but it is a distant second: The Pentagon spends nearly $700 billion. Not only is China a very long way from being able to go toe-to-toe with the United States; it's not clear why it would want to. A military conflict (particularly with its biggest customer and debtor) would impede China's global trading posture and endanger its prosperity. Since Chairman Mao's death, China has been hands down the most peaceful great power of its time. For all the recent concern about a newly assertive Chinese navy in disputed international waters, China's military hasn't fired a single shot in battle in 25 years. "A More Democratic World Will Be a More Peaceful One." Not necessarily. The well-worn observation that real democracies almost never fight each other is historically correct, but it's also true that democracies have always been perfectly willing to fight non-democracies. In fact, democracy can heighten conflict by amplifying ethnic and nationalist forces, pushing leaders to appease belligerent sentiment in order to stay in power. Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant both believed that selfish autocrats caused wars, whereas the common people, who bear the costs, would be loath to fight. But try telling that to the leaders of authoritarian China, who are struggling to hold in check, not inflame, a popular undercurrent of nationalism against Japanese and American historical enemies. Public opinion in tentatively democratic Egypt is far more hostile toward Israel than the authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak ever was (though being hostile and actually going to war are quite different things). 

Deterrence checks

Glaser, Professor of Political Science at George Washington, 11
(Charles, also Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at GWU, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War?” Foreign Affairs March/April 2011, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67479/charles-glaser/will-chinas-rise-lead-to-war)

What does all this imply about the rise of China? At the broadest level, the news is good. Current international conditions should enable both the United States and China to protect their vital interests without posing large threats to each other. Nuclear weapons make it relatively easy for major powers to maintain highly effective deterrent forces. Even if Chinese power were to greatly exceed U.S. power somewhere down the road, the United States would still be able to maintain nuclear forces that could survive any Chinese attack and threaten massive damage in retaliation. Large-scale conventional attack by China against the U.S. homeland, meanwhile, are virtually impossible because the United States and China are separated by the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, across which it would be difficult to attack. No foreseeable increase in China’s power would be large enough to overcome these twin advantages of defense for the United States. The same defensive advantages, moreover, apply to China as well. Although China is currently much weaker than the United States militarily, it will soon be able to build a nuclear force that meets its requirements for deterrence. And China should not find the United States’ massive conventional capabilities especially threatening, because the bulk of U.S. forces, logistics, and support lie across the Pacific. The overall effect of these conditions is to greatly moderate the security dilemma. Both the United States and China will be able to maintain high levels of security now and through any potential rise of China to superpower status. This should help Washington and Beijing avoid truly strained geopolitical relations, which should in turn help ensure that the security dilemma stays moderate, thereby facilitating cooperation. The United States, for example, will have the option to forego responding to China’s modernization of its nuclear force. This restraint will help reassure China that the United States does not want to threaten its security - and thus help head off a downward political spiral fueled by nuclear competition. 

Won’t escalate

Lieber and Press 09 – Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown and Associate Progress of Government at Dartmouth
(Keir and Daryl – also Coordinator of the War at Peace Studies Program at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, “The Nukes We Need: Preserving the American Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs 88:6, November/December 09, http://www.afa.org/Edop/PDFs/Nukes_We_Need_Lieber&Press.pdf, accessed 5-24-12Bosley)

To illustrate the growth in U.S. counterforce capabilities, we applied a set of simple formulas that analysts have used for decades to estimate the effectiveness of counterforce attacks. We modeled a U.S. strike on a small target set: 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in hardened silos, the approximate size of China’s current longrange, silo-based missile force. The analysis compared the capabilities of a 1985 Minuteman ICBM to those of a modern Trident II submarine launched ballistic missile.1 In 1985, a single U.S. ICBM warhead had less than a 60 percent chance of destroying a typical silo. Even if four or five additional warheads were used, the cumulative odds of destroying the silo would never exceed 90 percent because of the problem of “fratricide,” whereby incoming warheads destroy each other. Beyond five warheads, adding more does no good. A probability of 90 percent might sound high, but it falls far short if the goal is to completely disarm an enemy: with a 90 percent chance of destroying each target, the odds of destroying all 20 are roughly 12 percent. In 1985, then, a U.S. ICBM attack had little chance of destroying even a small enemy nuclear arsenal. Today, a multiple-warhead attack on a single silo using a Trident II missile would have a roughly 99 percent chance of destroying it, and the probability that a barrage would destroy all 20 targets is well above 95 percent.Given the accuracy of the U.S.military’s current delivery systems, the only question is target identification: silos that can be found can be destroyed. During the Cold War, the United States worked hard to pinpoint Soviet nuclear forces, with great success. Locating potential adversaries’ small nuclear arsenals is undoubtedly a top priority for U.S. intelligence today. The revolution in accuracy is producing an even more momentous change: it is becoming possible for the United States to conduct lowyield nuclear counterforce strikes that inflict relatively few casualties. A U.S. Department of Defense computer model, called the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability (HPAC), estimates the dispersion of deadly radioactive fallout in a given region after a nuclear detonation.The software uses the warhead’s explosive power, the height of the burst, and data about local weather and demographics to estimate how much fallout would be generated, where it would blow, and how many people it would injure or kill. HPAC results can be chilling. In 2006, a team of nuclear weapons analysts from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) used HPAC to estimate the consequences of a U.S. nuclear attack using high-yield warheads against China’s ICBM field. Even though China’s silos are located in the countryside, the model predicted that the fallout would blow over a large area, killing 3–4 million people. U.S. counterforce capabilities were useless, the study implied, because even a limited strike would kill an unconscionable number of civilians. But the United States can already conduct nuclear counterforce strikes at a tiny fraction of the human devastation that the FAS/NRDC study predicted, and small additional improvements to the U.S. force could dramatically reduce the potential collateral damage even further. The United States’ nuclear weapons are now so accurate that it can conduct successful counterforce attacks using the smallest-yield warheads in the arsenal, rather than the huge warheads that the FAS/NRDC simulation modeled. And to further reduce the fallout, the weapons can be set to detonate as airbursts, which would allow most of the radiation to dissipate in the upper atmosphere.We ran multiple HPAC scenarios against the identical target set used in the FAS/NRDC study but modeled low-yield airbursts rather than high-yield groundbursts. The fatality estimates plunged from 3–4 million to less than 700—a figure comparable to the number of civilians reportedly killed since 2006 in Pakistan by U.S. drone strikes. One should be skeptical about the results of any model that depends on unpredictable factors, such as wind speed and direction. But in the scenarios we modeled, the area of lethal fallout was so small that very few civilians would have become ill or died, regardless of which way the wind blew. Critics may cringe at this analysis.Many of them,understandably, say that nuclear weapons are—and should remain—unusable. But if the United States is to retain these weapons for the purpose of deterring nuclear attacks, it needs a force that gives U.S. leaders retaliatory options they might actually employ. If the only retaliatory option entails killing millions of civilians, then the U.S. deterrent will lack credibility.Giving U.S. leaders alternatives that do not target civilians is both wise and just. A counterforce attack—whether using conventional munitions or low- or high-yield nuclear weapons—would be fraught with peril.Even a small possibility of a single enemy warhead’s surviving such a strike would undoubtedly give any U.S. leader great pause.But in the midst of a conventional war, if an enemy were using nuclear threats or limited nuclear attacks to try to coerce the United States or its allies, these would be the capabilities that would give a U.S. president real options.

Impact to protectionism empirically denied

Sally 2010
(Razeen, Co- Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, “International trade and emerging protectionism since the crisis”, 01/26/08, http://www.ecipe.org/blog/international-trade-and-emerging-protectionism-since-the-crisis)

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the world has not hurtled into tit-for-tat protectionism. According to the WTO, new trade measures since the crisis started affect a maximum of 1 per cent of world trade in goods. New protectionism is concentrated in sectors that have long been protected: textiles, clothing, footwear, iron, steel, consumer electronics and agriculture. New anti-dumping, safeguards and countervailing-duty investigations have increased, but they still affect a tiny share of world trade. And up to one-third of new trade measures have been liberalising. Global Trade Alert (GTA) paints a more alarming picture. It counts at least 297 trade-discriminatory measures since November 2008. And protectionism in the pipeline is trending upwards. It estimates that one-third of new protectionist measures are bailouts to financial services, automobiles and other sectors. Thus the good news on remarkably mild “traditional” protectionism (mainly border barriers) is balanced by worrying signs of non-traditional, behind-the-border protectionism.

The US economy is resilient

Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International, 2009
(Fareed, “The Secrets of Stability,” 12/11/09, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/12/11/the-secrets-of-stability.html)

One year ago, the world seemed as if it might be coming apart. The global financial system, which had fueled a great expansion of capitalism and trade across the world, was crumbling. All the certainties of the age of globalization—about the virtues of free markets, trade, and technology—were being called into question. Faith in the American model had collapsed. The financial industry had crumbled. Once-roaring emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil were sinking. Worldwide trade was shrinking to a degree not seen since the 1930s. Pundits whose bearishness had been vindicated predicted we were doomed to a long, painful bust, with cascading failures in sector after sector, country after country. In a widely cited essay that appeared in The Atlantic this May, Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote: “The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump ‘cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.’ This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression.” Others predicted that these economic shocks would lead to political instability and violence in the worst-hit countries. At his confirmation hearing in February, the new U.S. director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, cautioned the Senate that “the financial crisis and global recession are likely to produce a wave of economic crises in emerging-market nations over the next year.” Hillary Clinton endorsed this grim view. And she was hardly alone. Foreign Policy ran a cover story predicting serious unrest in several emerging markets. Of one thing everyone was sure: nothing would ever be the same again. Not the financial industry, not capitalism, not globalization. One year later, how much has the world really changed? Well, Wall Street is home to two fewer investment banks (three, if you count Merrill Lynch). Some regional banks have gone bust. There was some turmoil in Moldova and (entirely unrelated to the financial crisis) in Iran. Severe problems remain, like high unemployment in the West, and we face new problems caused by responses to the crisis—soaring debt and fears of inflation. But overall, things look nothing like they did in the 1930s. The predictions of economic and political collapse have not materialized at all. A key measure of fear and fragility is the ability of poor and unstable countries to borrow money on the debt markets. So consider this: the sovereign bonds of tottering Pakistan have returned 168 percent so far this year. All this doesn’t add up to a recovery yet, but it does reflect a return to some level of normalcy. And that rebound has been so rapid that even the shrewdest observers remain puzzled. “The question I have at the back of my head is ‘Is that it?’ ” says Charles Kaye, the co-head of Warburg Pincus. “We had this huge crisis, and now we’re back to business as usual?” This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather, governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economy—through central banks and national treasuries—they buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national economies. It’s true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking again—the animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there’s a fundamental reason why we have not faced global collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of 2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. The world today is characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each historical in nature. 

Water Scarcity

No water wars – empirics disprove and there is no statistical data to support their causal claims

Katz, Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Haifa, 11
(David, “Hydro-Political Hyperbole: Examining Incentives for Overemphasizing the Risks of Water Wars,” Global Environmental Politics 11:1, February 2011, Muse, accessed 6-14-12 Bosley)

A number critiques have been leveled against both the theory and the empirical evidence behind the water wars hypothesis. One critique of the environmental security literature, of which much of the published material on water wars is guilty, is that warnings and threats of future violence are often considered as evidence. 28 Statements from the 1980s that the next war in the Middle East will be over water have already proven false. Research has shown, however, that even the more general predictions of imminent water wars that are based on comments by officials may be suspect. Leng, for instance, found no correlation between the frequency of threats of war and the onset of war.29 Examining conflict and cooperation over water resources, Yoffe and colleagues noted over 400 incidents of water-related verbal exchanges by political figures between 1948 and 1999 that were conflictual in nature, but only 37 instances of violent conflict of varying levels of intensity. Thirty of these were from the Middle East, none were more recent than 1970, none were all-out wars, and in none was water the central cause of conflict.30 Proponents of water war scenarios often premise their dire conclusions on the fact that water is essential for life and non-substitutable.31 Yet water for basic needs represents a small share of total water use, even in arid countries.32 Economists and others point out that over 80 percent of world freshwater withdrawals are for the agricultural sector, a relatively low-value use and one in which large gains in efficiency could be made by changes in irrigation techniques and choice of crops. Thus, economic critiques of the water war hypothesis stress that the value of water that would be gained from military conflict is unlikely to outweigh the economic costs of military preparation and battle, much less the loss of life.33 Some authors have even questioned the empirical basis for the conclusion that freshwater is increasingly scarce,34 an assumption on which the water war hypothesis relies. Such a “cornucopian” view claims that people adapt to scarcity through improvements in technology, pricing, and efficiency—rendering water less scarce, not more so. Perhaps the strongest case against the likelihood of water wars is the lack of empirical evidence of precedents. Wolf found only one documented case of war explicitly over water, and this took place over 4500 years ago.35 Moreover, he could document only seven cases of acute conflict over water. Yoffe and colleagues also find that armed conflict over water resources has been uncommon. 36 They found that cooperation was much more common than conflict, both globally and in all world regions except the Middle East/North Africa. This pattern may explain why only a limited number of case studies of water conflict are presented in the water wars literature. Analysts have criticized environmental security arguments that are based on case studies because such works tend to have no variation in the dependent variable.37 Many large sample statistical studies have attempted to address such shortcomings, however, in several cases these studies too have come under fire. For instance, a number of large-sample statistical studies find correlations between water-related variables and conflict, however, few, if any, provide convincing support for causal relationships. Moreover, several studies found that water availability had no impact on the likelihood of either domestic or international conflict,38 including at least one study that attempted to replicate earlier studies that claimed to have found such correlations.39 Moreover, the results of several studies that do find correlations between water and conflict are either not robust or are contrasted by other findings. For instance, Raleigh and Urdal find that the statistical significance of water scarcity variables is highly dependent on one or two observations, leading them to conclude that actual effects of water scarcity “are weak, negligible or insignificant.”40 Jensen and Gleditsch find that the results of Miguel and colleagues are less robust when using a recoding of the original dataset.41 Gleditsch and colleagues found that shared basins do predict an increased propensity for conflict, but found no correlation between conflict and drought, the number of river crossings, or the share of the basin upstream, leading them to state that “support for a scarcity theory of water conflict is somewhat ambiguous.”42 Evidence and Perception In sum, despite some instances of violent conflict over water, there is little systematic evidence of war over water resources. Evidence for a deterministic relationship between water scarcity and the outbreak of armed conflict is particularly weak. Less ambitious claims that water shortages will contribute to insecurity, which can, in turn, lead to violent conflict, have more empirical support. Even here, however, the importance of water as a causal variable is questionable. Several studies have found that variables such as regime type and institutional capacity are much more important indicators of conflict potential,43 and may have mitigating effects on any water-conflict link. As a consequence of accumulated research, many scholars have concluded that risks of water wars are low,44 and others have toned down or qualified their statements about the likelihood of future water wars.45 Some governmental reports have limited their contentions to highlighting that water scarcity can aggravate conflicts and increase insecurity,46 and many studies now emphasize water as a tool for cooperation.47 Warnings and predictions of imminent water wars continue to be commonplace, however. In a review of published academic literature, Gupta and van der Zaag find that articles on water conflict outnumber those on cooperation by nearly three to one, and are five times more likely to be cited.48 This article will now turn to offering possible explanations for the persistence and popularity of such declarations despite the bulk of expert opinion downplaying the risks of water wars.

Water isn’t the root cause, politics is
Lawfield 10
(Thomas Lawfield, MA candidate at the University for Peace, “Water Security: War or Peace?” May 03, 2010 http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=715)

Second, water wars are not caused by water, but rather an inability of politics. Barnett makes the case clear by arguing that water war would be a ‘failure of politics’ rather than the outcome of justified demands for essential resources.[28] In this way, it is not scarcity that is the driver in the Malthusian sense, but a political, and politicised issue. This is most noticeable where conflict occurs in areas where there are both political tensions and water resources challenges. For example, there are absurd and exaggerated claims of a linkage between Israel’s water management and surrounding states. In reality, conflict in this region is strongly influenced by political circumstance that speaks to a wider discourse around Israel’s position in the Near East. That environmental constraints and pressures are woven into wider discourses of politics is no indication that they are the cause of conflict, but rather more that they are an important contextual factor that may be mobilised for political reasons. For instance, in 2000 Lebanon started building a small pumping station on the Wazzani river which is used by downstream Israel. This rapidly became a media issue in Israel, probably due to the heightened security discourse surrounding water. Claims were made that the action was comparable to the 1964 diversion of the Hasbani, an Arab coalition move to harm the Israeli economy. However, the story diminished even faster than it emerged, when officials on both sides showed their dismay at the emerging media frenzy.[29] There are two key trends to note from this example: first, that wider discussions around water wars influence the articulation of war in reality, and second the water component of the conflict is not significant, rather it acts as a trigger for the utilisation of wider political narratives. In essence, water is merely a tool for political ends. Third, war over water is illogical. States are not inherently belligerent, but act in self interested, utility-maximising ways. Rather, they engage in conflict if they stand to gain more than they loose. In the case of water, the costs of military engagement far outweigh the costs of cooperative engagement. For instance, Baskin points out that it would cost more for Israel to engage in war for the water resources of the West Bank than it would to buy the equivalent of the West Banks aquifers from elsewhere.[30] Water war protagonists also present the weak argument that there is a unique situation in the Middle East of the possibility of state territories changing, with water related land grabs. ‘Victory may bring land that offers more resources – either water or oil.’[31] This is not the case. State territories have been extremely stable for over a hundred years – conflict that attempts to enlarge boundaries would problematise the very existence and legitimacy of the state itself. By contrast, if they stand to gain by establishing cooperative relationships with other states in the international system, they will. It is difficult to see how good water management, which frequently demands cooperation, can be conducted through the use of conflict. That said, there are incidences of water related conflict on the intrastate level. For instance, in summer 2000, clashes involving thousands of farmers and police occurred in the Huang He river basin, China over government policy changes that meant a local dam runoff would no longer supply irrigation water for farmers but instead be used for urbanisation. In addition, in Pakistan there have been clashes between farmers in Punjab and Sind province over control of the Indus. But these are not resource pressure issues – rather water acts as one of many other triggers in a wider problem of social injustice and political discourses. 

No scientific data to support water wars theory

Buhaug et al., Research Professor at the Centre for the Study of Civil War, 12
(Halvard, Ole Magnus Thiesen – Doctoral Candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and Associate Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Civil War (CSCW) at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and Helge Holtermann – Doctoral Researcher at CSCW, PRIO, “Climate Wars? Assessing the Claim That Drought Breeds Conflict,” International Security 36:3, Winter 2012, MUSE, accessed 6-14-12 Bosley)

In his acceptance lecture on the occasion of the Nobel Peace Prize award, President Barack Obama stated, “There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, more famine, more mass displacement—all of which will fuel more conflict for decades.”79 So far, there is little scientific evidence to support this claim. The results presented in this article demonstrate that there is no direct, short-term relationship between drought and civil war onset, even within contexts presumed most conducive to violence. At the same time, the analysis solidifies claims of recent scholarship on the importance of ethnically inclusive institutions for maintaining peace. Ethnopolitical exclusion is strongly and robustly related to the local risk of civil war. These findings contrast with efforts to blame violent conflict and atrocities on exogenous non-anthropogenic events, such as drought or desertification. The primary causes of intrastate armed conflict and civil war are political, not environmental. Consequently, the future security of Africa depends not on climate mitigation but on political and socioeconomic development. A likely objection to this conclusion relates to the magnitude of things to come; the rate and extent of past warming and drying will increase manifold in coming decades, so we cannot use historical data to project future trends. This may hold some truth, as there are limits to the coping capacity of any (agrarian) society. Crops grow only under given climatic conditions, and livestock perish in the absence of water and pasture. At the same time, gloomy interjections tend to ignore technological, societal, and political developments that might mediate (or accentuate) adverse environmental change. Increasing urbanization relieves some of the pressure on rural lands; technological innovation, DNA manipulation, irrigation, and desalination plantations promise significant increases in agricultural productivity (even though implementing such technologies successfully may prove challenging); and increasing economic interdependence and the spread of liberal democratic values would [End Page 105] suggest a more equitable distribution of resources and better disaster preparedness and response. The last ten to fifteen years have seen a striking drop in the frequency of civil wars in Africa, at a time when temperatures have risen to unprecedented levels and drying has prevailed across much of the continent. Although a drought is unlikely to directly cause civil war, climate change will affect human security in a broader sense. Drought and other climatic shocks frequently cause dismay and poverty, and more extreme weather in the years to come suggests more human suffering. For this reason alone, we should invest more in solid research on the social dimensions of climate change. But to raise alarm about coming “climate wars” may do more harm than good,80 as it could lead to a militarization of the issue and raising of barriers to prevent immigration, thereby harming those who are most in need of assistance. Finally, future research needs to apply a broader understanding of political violence and armed conflict than is normally the case today. Given data limitations and a perception that major, state-based conflicts carry greater potential for political instability and state collapse than small-scale interethnic skirmishes, recent scholarship has focused almost exclusively on civil wars.81 This is reflected in the contemporary discourse on climate security, which is dominated by a state-centric approach. In contrast, narratives and news reports of conflict over diminishing resources frequently concern clashes between rivaling ethnic groups or between pastoralists and sedentary farmers. The conflicts in Assam in India, Darfur in Sudan, Kenya, Mali, and Mauritania, all central cases in the environmental security literature, were at least initially interethnic conflicts without explicit state involvement. Key questions in this regard are how environmental conditions and rapid environmental change affect intercommunal relations and local land use disputes, and what role the state plays in ending or fueling these conflicts. [End Page 106] 

Water shortages force cooperation, not conflict
Wolf et al 05 *Aaron T. Wolf is professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences at oregon state university and director of the transboundary freshwater Dispute Database. Annika Kramer is research fellow  Alexander Carius is director of adelphi research in berlin.  *Geoffrey D. Dabelko is the director of the environmental Change and security Program at the Woodrow Wilson international Center for scholars in Washington, D.C “Water Can Be a PathWay to PeaCe, not War” http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/NavigatingPeaceIssue1.pdf

These apocalyptic warnings fly in the face of history: no nations have gone to war specifically over water resources for thousands of years. International water disputes—even among fierce enemies—are resolved peacefully, even as conflicts erupt over other issues. In fact, instances of cooperation between riparian nations outnumbered conflicts by more than two to one between 1945 and 1999. Why? Because water is so important, nations cannot afford to fight over it. Instead, water fuels greater interdependence. By coming together to jointly manage their shared water resources, countries can build trust and prevent conflict. Water can be a negotiating tool, too: it can offer a communication lifeline connecting countries in the midst of crisis. Thus, by crying “water wars,”
Not Inherent-Status Quo solves solar globally
REVE, 06/13/2012, UNEP says global transition to renewable energy accelerating, http://www.evwind.es/2012/06/13/unep-says-global-transition-to-renewable-energy-accelerating/
Record investments, technological advancement, supportive policies and increased political goodwill have powered a dramatic transition to cleaner sources of fuel in many countries globally. According to UNEP’s Global Renewables Status Report 2012 released on Monday, investments in clean energy hit 257 billion U. S. dollars by December 2011. "Renewable energy markets and policy frameworks have evolved rapidly in recent years. Renewable energy sources have grown to supply an estimated 16-17 percent of global final energy consumption in 2010," said the report. It was compiled by the UNEP and Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). The flagship report shed light on renewable energy market trends, investments and policy development globally by relying on updated data provided by a network of 400 researchers. Experts stressed that this report dovetails with global aspirations to accelerate the transition to cleaner and greener energy sources. "There may be multiple reasons driving investments in renewables, from climate, energy security and the urgency to electrify rural and urban areas in the developing world as one pathway towards eradicating poverty-whatever the drivers the strong and sustained growth in renewable energy sector is a major factor that is assisting many economies towards a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient green economy," UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said. The UN has designated 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All and intends to galvanize actions that catalyze the attainment of this goal. "This sends yet another strong signal of opportunity to world leaders and delegates meeting later in June at the Rio+20 summit, namely that transforming sustainable development from patchy progress to a reality for seven billion people is achievable when existing technologies are combined with inspiring policies and decisive leadership," Steiner said. During 2011, modern renewable energy sources recorded significant growth across all end use sectors including power, transport, heating and cooling. "In the power sector, renewables accounted for almost half of the estimated 208 gigawatts (GW) of electric capacity added globally in 2011.Wind energy and solar power accounted for almost 40 percent and 30 percent of new renewable capacity respectively. They were followed by hydropower at 25 percent," the Status report said. It stressed that there exist untapped yet immense potential for renewable energy deployment offered by heating and cooling sectors. Solar was the fastest growing renewable energy source across the globe. According to Global Renewables Report, solar energy (photovoltaic and concentrated solar power) attracted double investments ahead of wind power and its operating capacity increased by 58 percent annually. Overall investments in solar power surged by 52 percent to reach 147 billion dollars and manifested in a booming photovoltaic (PV) installations in Italy and Germany alongside rapid spread of small scale PV in China and Britain.

Lack of production materials gut solvency of solar

Patrick Moriarty and Damon Honnery, September 15, 2011, Patrick Moriarty is in the Department of Design, Monash University, and Damon Honnery is in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Monash University, What is the global potential for renewable energy?, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Volume 16 http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1364032111003984/1-s2.0-S1364032111003984-main.pdf?_tid=991a2d30-efc6-11e1-be8b-00000aacb362&acdnat=1346017384_db3b0ba9f3724eeb9ff8bae72676c7ad

A final factor to consider is the availability of the materials used to produce RE systems. A number of the most rapidly advancing RE technologies depend on materials that are potentially in short supply, or which will require increasing amounts of energy input to extract and process raw materials as resource quality falls. The cost reductions implied by learning curves depend on exponential growth in production, but such growth will also hasten resource depletion if RE sources are to replace fossil fuels in the future [14]. Several researchers, including Fridley [48] and Kleijn and van der Voet [49], have documented how some amorphous PV cells, permanent magnets in wind turbines, as well as several other ‘green technologies’ such as fuel cells, rely on mineral resources that may not be sufficient to satisfy the orders of magnitude increases needed for these technologies.

Private Sectors won’t compensate
Adam Davidson December 28, 2011, Davidson is the co-founder of NPR’s Planet Money, Will China Outsmart the U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/adam-davidson-china-threat.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Partly as a result, the U.S. still dominates the world of research and development, as it has for more than a century. The country spends nearly double the annual R.-and-D. budgets of Japan and Germany combined. But China’s decade long rise from a nonplayer in R. and D. to the world’s second-largest spender poses a serious threat. A recent study by the Battelle Memorial Institute, a research firm, predicts that China’s spending will match ours around 2022. In research terms, that is effectively today. China already has plans to focus on exciting but vague ideas now — like green energy and bio- and nanotechnology — that will most likely become products in the 2020s. And if U.S. government labs, university departments and corporate researchers aren’t already on top of the next generation of breakthroughs, the country will very likely fall behind in 10 or 20 years when those innovations become marketable products. Our global competitiveness is based on being the origin of the newest, best ideas. How will we fare if those ideas originate somewhere else? The answers range from scary to scarier. Imagine a global economy in which the U.S. is playing catch-up with China: while a small class of Americans would surely find a way to profit, most workers would earn far less, and the chasm between classes could be wider than ever. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to prevent this trend. Overall government research spending (relative to G.D.P.) has been heading down since its peak in the space-race years of the 1960s. And because it’s nearly impossible to imagine Congress significantly increasing research financing, any growth in long-term R. and D. will be, largely, up to the private sector. And that’s the real problem. From a C.E.O.’s perspective, long-term R. and D. is a lousy investment. The projects cost a lot of money and often fail. And even when they work, some other company can come along and copy all the best ideas free. Charles Holliday Jr., the C.E.O. of DuPont who retired three years ago, told me that it’s tough to get investors to think more than two years ahead — at most. “The stock market pays you for what you can do now,” he said. As a result, DuPont isn’t the only American company changing the way it does R. and D. Corporate research labs at I.B.M., AT&T, Xerox and others have also been slimmed way down or cut altogether. 

Current Silver supply is too small to meet demands
Scully 12 (Mike, mechanical engineer and product designer, January 27, 2012, The Silver Singularity Is Near, http://community.nasdaq.com/News/2012-01/the-silver-singularity-is-near.aspx?storyid=117209)ERM
The main way the futures market keeps down the spot price of silver is by greatly adding to the supply of silver for investment. Take the example of the COMEX which currently has 102,516 open interest contracts (512 million ounces) promised for future delivery. This compares to roughly 117 million ounces of physical silver available for investment in 2010 (Mine supplies 736 + recycling 215 + gov't. sales 45 - fabrication 879 = 117Moz.) Shorts have promised to deliver over four times the amount of physical silver available per year. In other words, demand for silver investment at today's price is much higher than physical supply. This works fine as long as futures investors don't take physical delivery. Shorts can simply settle the contract for the cash value and everybody's happy. If a small amount of investors stand for delivery, the shorts can transfer silver from their accounts at the COMEX or buy silver on the open market. However, as more investors stand for physical delivery, things can get dicey.¶ Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital was clearly concerned about this leverage risk in the COMEX when he said the following:¶ "My opinion is very simple as a fiduciary... to the extent that you own gold and you are going to own it a long time it's not a trade. It costs us about 90 basis points a year to roll it through financial futures contracts," he said.¶ "And then we went and looked at the COMEX. The COMEX at the time they had about $80 billion in open interest between futures and futures options. In the warehouse they had $2.7 billion of deliverables. So $80 billion in open interest  $2.7 billion in deliverables. We're gonna own it a long time. You're on the board, as a fiduciary, what do you do? That's an easy one. You go get it. So you go take a billion of $2.7 billion and you let them worry about the rest."¶ "When I talked to the head of deliveries at COMEX NYMEX, I was like, 'What if 4% of the people want deliveries?' He said, 'Oh Kyle, that never happens. We rarely ever get a 1% delivery.' And I asked, 'Well what if it does happen?' And he said,'Price will solve everything' And I said, 'Thanks, give me the gold.'"¶ Mr. Bass was discussing the gold futures market, but the same dynamics apply to the silver market. With silver at $33 one big fish like Bass (pun intended) could take down 30 million ounces with his billion dollars, which is 80% the entire amount of registered silver at the COMEX.¶ Thanks, give me the silver!¶ To date, there hasn't been a failure to deliver on a futures contract at the COMEX. But that's not to say it can't happen. Already there are cracks appearing in the silver derivatives dam. The silver derivatives market requires some amount of physical silver to back it up. As the physical silver available in the market decreases, the paper market becomes more and more leveraged. Many trends are converging to remove physical silver from the market. Here are a few industrial trends:¶ For the past decades, governments have been selling their silver stockpiles into the markets, thus adding to supply. These stockpiles are basically depleted and governments are likely to become net buyers of silver.¶ Photographic demand, which has been decreasing for the past decade is becoming a less significant part of demand and will soon cease to be a driver of silver demand trends. Also, as most photographic silver is recycled, photographic use approaching zero means less recycling supply moving forward.¶ Similarly, A steady decline in silverware demand is also reaching its lower bounds and at some point will cease to be a negative driver of silver demand trends.¶ According to the Silver Institute, during silver's bull market from 2001 to 2010, mine supply increased by an average of 2.2% per year, from 606 to 736 million ounces. However, demand from industrial uses (from which the majority of silver cannot be recycled at anywhere near today's price) increased 3.7% per year

 from 350 to 487 million ounces.¶ The trends discussed above are enough to show that we will reach a point at some time in the future where fabrication demand exceeds supply. But it is the investment trends discussed below that I believe will bring us to a supply/demand crunch much sooner than (almost) anyone expects.¶ Silver coin sales are skyrocketing.¶ During the early 2000s, global coin sales were stable at around 35-40 million ounces. Then from 2007 to 2010 coin sales increased 38% per year to 101Moz. and show no signs of having slowed for 2011. Physical coin sale could soon eat up the entire bullion supply. Silver coins are not recycled because the coin value is higher than the melt value. In case you are wondering if this trend can continue, keep in mind that 100Moz. equates to 1/68th of a coin for each person on the planet.¶ Chinese investment demand is "going parabolic" and the Chinese people seem to prefer physical.¶ In the COMEX futures markets, the multiple margin hikes by the CME in 2011 shook out a bunch of weak longs which drove down the price but decreased leverage and formed a stronger foundation for future price advances.¶ Eric Sprott's fund (PSLV) recently completed a secondary offering deal which will remove 10.6 million ounces of physical silver worth about $350k from the market. This is part of what could eventually become a $1.5B offering, so it looks like he's determined to break the paper market's back.¶ And perhaps the beginning of the end for the futures market was the bankruptcy of MF Global. From that we learned that the regulators will twist bankruptcy rules to put big banks such as J.P. Morgan ahead of regular investors. We learned new buzzwords like rehypothecation and co-mingling. We learned that leveraged accounts aren't safe, and we learned that even investors who own allocated physical bars of gold with listed serial numbers can see those bars confiscated and chopped up for distribution by a bankruptcy judge. These were valuable lessons which caused many futures investors to decrease their leverage, increase their due diligence regarding their broker, or get out of the futures markets all together and get in to physical.¶ As physical silver is removed from the foundation of the paper market, leverage will increase until a leveraged short can't get the silver and defaults on his contract. That's when promises are broken, confidence turns to panic, and the leveraged derivatives house of cards comes toppling down.¶ To continue my multiple metaphors, that's when the derivatives dam breaks. That's the 101st Elmo buyer entering Walmart with a thousand determined shoppers close behind him. That's what folks like Ray Kurzweil might call "the singularity". It's the point when all hell breaks loose and things go hyperbolic. The stampede for physical silver will begin.¶ Paper futures contract holders will increasingly stand for physical delivery, creating the ultimate short squeeze as paper shorts frantically try to acquire physical metal that is nowhere to be found to cover their positions.¶ Manufacturers who use silver in their products will scramble to secure physical silver supply lines to prevent their manufacturing lines from grinding to a halt, buying up anything and everything they can get their hands on.¶ Governments who have been net sellers of silver for the past 30 years and now have virtually no silver stocks, will be competing to increase their sovereign stockpiles of this strategically critical element at any price.¶ The general investing public will become fully aware of the incredible supply and demand story for silver that had been hidden under the surface by the murky layer of paper scum, and dive in to get a piece of the action.¶ In the words of that COMEX manager, "price will solve everything." Indeed. A much, much higher price.

Solar power producers use 11% of the world’s silver
Goossens 11 (Ehren, Jun 23, 2011, Silver Surge Makes ‘Headwind’ For Solar/Fossil Fuel Rivalry, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-22/silver-surge-makes-headwind-for-solar-in-fossil-fuel-rivalry.html)ERM
Soaring silver prices are hampering the solar industry’s ability to compete with fossil fuels. Panel makers consume about 11 percent of the world’s supply of silver, the material in solar cells that conducts electricity. The metal has appreciated 74 percent to $35.30 a troy ounce on average so far this year from $20.24 last year.¶ The surge in silver prices is squeezing margins for most solar companies, according to research by Barclays Capital. ¶ A typical solar cell uses 0.10 grams of silver for each watt of generating capacity. That amounts to about 20 grams in a 200-watt panel, adding $23.52 to the cost of each panel, according to New Energy Finance. ¶ Prices for solar cells have dropped about 27 percent this year and would be even lower if each panel didn’t require about 20 grams of silver, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That’s pushing back the date when companies such as Solarworld AG (SWV) and LDK Solar Co. can deliver solar power at prices that are competitive with traditional energy.¶ “Global silver prices have gone up a lot, and solar cells use silver paste as the front-side contact material,” Shawn Qu, chief executive of Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ), which is based in China, said in an interview. “The increase of the silver costs will give us a challenge in efforts to reduce solar cell costs.”¶ Prices for photovoltaic solar panels were $1.49 a watt in June, compared with about $1.80 in January, New Energy Finance estimates, as manufacturers especially in China raised production and incentives were trimmed in Europe.¶ ‘Headwind’¶ “Some companies are implementing measures to reduce silver consumption, but we believe rising silver prices could still act as a headwind,” Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients.¶ The price of the silver paste that Canadian Solar uses to print circuits on the front of its solar cells more than tripled in the past year, Qu said. That adds about 3 cents to 4 cents a watt, or 2 percent, to the cost of the panels.¶ The company’s gross margins narrowed to about 15 percent in the first quarter from 17 percent in the prior quarter as the price of cells fell faster than the cost of production, the company based in Suzhou New District, China, reported in May.¶ A typical solar cell uses 0.10 grams of silver for each watt of generating capacity. That amounts to about 20 grams in a 200-watt panel, adding $23.52 to the cost of each panel, according to New Energy Finance. The cost for metal in each panel totals about 11 cents a watt, up from 5 cents a year ago, the London-based industry researcher estimates.

Silver is key to Heg
Savoie 04 (Charles, independent researcher and author of “The Silver Stealers” chronology; masters from ISU, November 2004, WAR & SILVER, http://www.silver-investor.com/charlessavoie/cs_nov04.htm)ERM

Let's take a look at the need for silver as a vital resource material necessary to warfare. We won't be able to examine any detailed weapons breakdown of specific items by exact silver content from one defense contractor to another on a current basis, because that information isn't readily available. I can tell you that as of January 2, 1980-nearly a quarter century past-some 84,000 military parts (aircraft, submarines, etc.) contained precious metal, mostly silver (Wall Street Journal, January 2, 1980, page 10). American Superconductor and Intermagnetics General won't openly discuss how much silver they will need for superconducting cables. That's probably an understanding with the COMEX shorts-anything to suppress projected silver demand statistics! As you probably know, America has been without a silver stockpile for strategic defense applications for several years. We aren't swimming in silver as we were going into World War II. One of the implications 

could be a limitation on our ability to wage war overseas; and also spell inadequacy as to our ability to defend our shores. Silver is the most versatile metal there is, and a strategic shortage will hurt us more so than shortages of other strategic metals such as tantalum, platinum, chromium, vanadium and cobalt. America cannot produce enough silver to meet our internal needs, that hasn't happened in most of a century; therefore, silver imports are vital. Over 153 years ago, Merchants Magazine & Commercial Review (March 1851), page 280 spoke of-  "…the numerous uses to which we apply silver, beyond the uses to which we apply gold." 

Nuclear war
Filger, Huffington Post staff writer and author, 09
(Sheldon, “Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction” 3-10-09, http://www.globaleconomiccrisis.com/blog/archives/356, accessed 7-5-12 Bosley)

In Russia historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is rarely encountered in other major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nation’s history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect that Russia’s economic crisis will endanger the nation’s political stability, achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic Crisis. There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval. It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama’s national security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in the world. During the years Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia, security forces responsible for guarding the nation’s nuclear arsenal went without pay for months at a time, leading to fears that desperate personnel would illicitly sell nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. If the current economic crisis in Russia were to deteriorate much further, how secure would the Russian nuclear arsenal remain? It may be that the financial impact of the Global Economic Crisis is its least dangerous consequence.