Evans -Rear  Neg

States CP
Therefore, we offer the following counter-plan: The 50 states should [INSERT PLAN TEXT HERE].

Contention 1: Competition
a. Non-topical: The counter-plan uses the 50 individual states as actors to avoid over-centralization of power in the USFG.
b. Perms don’t compete: The plan requires USFG action, trampling upon federalism. Also the plan would cause considerable political backlash at the federal level. The only way to restore the balance of power and prevent backlash is to delegate energy policy to the states.
c. Net Benefit: Our Federalism and Politics DAs serve as net-benefits to the CP.

Contention 2: Solvency
McCallum 12
(McCallum, Ed [April 2012]. Renewable Energy Companies Prepare for Rising Tide of Demand. McCallum Sweeney Consulting. Retrieved from: http://www.areadevelopment.com/EnergyEnvironment/April2012/renewable-energy-industry-investment-locations-363528722.shtml)
At the risk of sounding redundant, states without an RPS should be aware that
AND
consider the locations that already have an understanding of the renewable energy sector.

Elections
Obama will win now, but just barely.
Bernstein 9/28/12
(Bernstein, Jonathan [September 28, 2012]. Obama is on track to win, but backers shouldn’t get overconfident. Here’s why. The Washington Post. Retrieved from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/obama-is-on-track-to-win-but-dont-get-overconfident-heres-why)
One way of gaming out what is happening in this election is to compare George
AND
moving Obama higher. But of course things could change at any moment.

Renewable energy splits the Democratic base – environment against unions.
Livengood 12
(Livengood, Chad [September 8, 2012]. Jobs vs. green energy debate splits Dems at Michigan convention. The Detroit News. Retrieved from: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120908/POLITICS01/209080389/Jobs-vs-green-energy-debate-splits-Dems-Michigan-convention?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE)
A November ballot proposal seeking a 25 percent renewable energy mandate in the state constitution
AND
," Hammel said. "And we just don't have that on this."

Union support key to Obama’s re-election.
Mead 12
(Mead, Walter Russell [August 24, 2012]. Are Unions the Key to Obama's Reelection?. The American Interest. Retrieved from: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/08/24/are-unions-the-key-to-obamas-reelection/)
That’s the question the FT is asking. It’s an important question. Major drives
AND
roughly doubling the AFL-CIO’s reach, according to the labour union.

Romney kills Russian relations and causes war
Richter 7-2 [Paul, LATimes, July 2, 2012, “Russian official: Romney's hard line could bring 'full-scale crisis',” latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-russian-official-romneys-hard-line-could-bring-fullscale-crisis-20120702,0,4689534.story, spencer]
MOSCOW  Mitt Romney’s comment that Russia is America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe
AND
” as a partner for Russia in a second term, Pushkov said.
US/Russia nuke war causes extinction.
Bostrom 02 (Dr. Nick Bostrom, Professor of Philosophy and Global Studies at Yale, 3/8/02, “Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards,” http://www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html)

With the exception of a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an extremely
AND
preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st century.

Violent Spaces K - 1nc

A. There is false sense of urgency constructed by their aff and inherent in the political nature of their response that must be abandoned prior to any ‘fix.’ Their attempt at modernization without addressing the effects of environmental displacement on communities of color makes the replication of these spaces inevitable.
White’02, Assistant Professor of Sociology at RISD [Damien Finbar, “A Green Industrial Revolution? Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age,” Environmental Politics, Vol. 11, No. 2, Summer 2002, p. 1-26]

A second area of general difficulties need to be addressed through the new political economy
AND
conditions for the workforce, are imported [Swatterthwaite, 1997:223].

B. The “pockets” of space and people left behind by their policies are a byproduct of the colonial mindset of environmental progress – this exercise of power, no matter what the intention, is a manifestation and perpetuation of environmental racism.
Bullard ’08 [Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D, Environmental Justice Resource Center,_Clark Atlanta University, 7/2/08, “POVERTY, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES” http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html]

The United States is the dominant economic and military force in the world today.
AND
schools, chronic unemployment, high poverty, and overloaded health care systems. 

C. We must take every opportunity to reject racism in all of its manifestations.
Barndt ‘91, co-director of Crossroads (a ministry to dismantle racism), (Joseph, Dismantling Racism, p. 155-156)
To study racism is to study walls.  We have looked at barriers and fences
AND
of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.

Grid DA
Currently the grid is reliable—but it’s on the brink 

USDE 12, US Department of Energy, The Smart Grid: An Introduction, Exploring the imperative of revitalizing America’s electric infrastructure, How The Smart Grid works as an enabling engine for our economy, environment, and our future. energy.gov/sites/prod/files/.../DOE_SG_Book_Single_Pages(1).pdf

Engineered and operated by dedicated professionals over decades, the grid remains our national engine
AND
each year. In short, the grid is struggling to keep up.

The introduction of intermittent energy creates instability in an already vulnerable power system 

Ono 12, Masahiro, (Engineering Systems Division) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Energy-efficient control of a smart grid with sustainable homes based on distributing risk, MIT Libraries http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/70413

Renewable energy sources cannot be directly substituted for conventional energy sources due to their uncontrollable
AND
energy produced at a future point in time cannot be predicted with certainty. 

Vulnerability opens the U.S. up to Cyber Attack

CHDS 10 (Center for Homeland Defense and Security) Electric Power Grid Resilience, The Navel Post-Graduate School for Homeland Defense and Security, The Nations Homeland Security Educator http://www.chds.us/?conferences/powergrid_may10

The United States faces numerous, complex energy security challenges in the 21st Century.
AND
will either destroy grid components or cause a reduction of equipment life expectancy.

Cyber Attacks create massive technological and economic destruction, creating a state of chaos equal to that of a terrorist attack  

Brito & Watkins 11, Jerry and Tate, (Tech Policy and Law @ George Mason Unv./Technology Policy Program) Loving the Cyberbomb? The Dangers of threat inflation in Cybersecurity Policy  
http://mercatus.org/publication/loving-cyber-bomb-dangers-threat-inflation-cybersecurity-policy

While the CSIS Commission report may be one of the most cited documents suggesting that
AND
.”63 Unfortunately, they present little, if any, evidence.6

NEG Versus Fullerton @ Csun

the affirmative’s discussion of transgender simply reinforces the social predisposition to discipline bodies into binary norms.  

 Sloop 04,  (John M., Disciplining Gender: rhetoric’s of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. p.27-28).

Hence, rhetorically and culturally, the public discussion of the case creates a complex body of discourse that calls for critical attention, especially by gender critics who hold a performative position. This case, a case that held the potential to problematize naturalized categories that tie gender to sex, consistently worked instead to reify binaristic expectations of gendered behavior. In effect, both those who posit gender as constructed and those who posit sex as natural (or at least primarily determinate) used the same set of signifiers to support their arguments about John/Joan’s success/failure in fitting his/her gender role. These signifiers make up a portion of what Sabrina Petra Ramet refers to as gender culture: “a society’s understanding of what is possible, proper, and perverse in gender-linked behavior” (2). Moreover, these signifiers represent the same “forced reiteration of norms” (Butler, Bodies 94) that we all face – the same reiterations that impel and sustain our own gender performances.

The question of transgender in public discourse puts a spotlight onto gender ambiguity and forces an answer from society. 

Sloop 04,  (John M., Disciplining Gender: rhetoric’s of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. p.52 ).

Historically, cases of gender ambiguity – or gender trouble – brought on by public disclosure of transgenderism or intersexuality have marked ongoing transitions in the meaning of gender within a given cultural context, see, e.g. Garber 11; Hoden, “Rape”; Degree 6). Indeed, Alice Dreger notes that the entire “history of hermaphroditism is largely the history of struggles over the ‘realities’ of sex – the nature of ‘true’ sex, the proper roles of the sexes, the question of what sex can, should, or must mean (15). While the Brandon Teena case is not a case about hermaphroditism (althought hermaphroditism is often invoked in mass mediated reports), the quantity of discourse that surrounds the case publically can be seen as a site for weighing public arguments over the “true” meaning of sex, a location where we might learn something about the struggle over the gendered meanings as it takes place in a contemporary, and mass mediated, cultural context. 

Case Turn - The discussion of transgender in an adversarial context mandates a hostile reaction and attitude toward transgender. 

Sloop 04,  (John M., Disciplining Gender: rhetoric’s of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. p.53).

As a result, in Butler’s words, the discourse surrounding the Brandon Teena incident provides a case study of the public iteration of sexual norms as “a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production” of gender and sexuality (Bodies 95). Hence, while I do not deny the potential of the case for loosening cultural rules concerning gender, sex, and sexuality, my focus is on the ways in which reactions to the case – including reactions to the film – often reaffirm rather than challenge heternormative iterations. In this discussion, then, I intend to illustrate how a case in which gender trouble seemingly begs for a transgression of gender barriers and of heterosexual normaitivity becomes instead an instance in which gender is largely (though not completely) renormalized and re-essentialized, and in which numerous other cultural ideas are reaffirmed within the cultural milieu. In short, while rhetoric is “about” the transformation of public meaning, public discourse is also material and sedimented, as Greene reminds us, reifying norms and stabilizing identities. 

We need to not only understand individual realities, but the consequences of our rhetorical constructions of those realities. Simply negating current constructions is not enough to alter the current political violence against those who do not fit into the binary norm.

Sloop 04,  (John M., Disciplining Gender: rhetoric’s of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. p.79).

In Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein says that one of her purposes was to understand the cardboard characterizations of transgendered people she was witnessing in various arts and media, from poetry and drama to television and cinema, portraits “All drawn by people who were not us, all spoken in voices that were not ours” (59). In part, this study of Brandon Teena attends to those same voices. This has been a study of “Brandon’s voice” but rather of representations of Brandon’s voice, representations wrapped in layers of descriptions that are part of a mass cultural discourse concerning gender, sex, and sexuality. It is within these discourses that I have attempted to examine how Brandon Teena is understood, and perhaps the discursive constrains under which Brandon came to understand and negotiate his “Self,” as well as how transgenderism is understood, and therefore hwo sexuality and gender are understood in general. A number of observations and suggestions can be drawn from this analysis. First, I want to make clear that discourse studied here is part of a cultural ideology that affects all of us; it is a discourse that is defining, disciplinary, even when we negotiate within its boundaries. As Leslie Feinberg notes, everyone is constrained by the same body of public argument; hence, a critical reading of the disciplinary discourses about transsexualism, transgenderism, intersexualism, and so forth helps us all understand our position within gender and sexual discourses (92). Similarily, those discourses that shape how Brandon Teena was understood by individuals and by mass media reports are the same discourses  that shape each of us; they are the same discourses that work to reiterate gender norms and the influence of these norms. Even though I assume that these discourses can be read transgressively or “against the grain,” they are clearly also the discourses with which all of us must negotiate and hence should be everyone’s shared critical responsibility. 

We must acknowledge that rhetoric constructs gender and that our discourse has implications on those we talk about. 

Sloop 04,  (John M., Disciplining Gender: rhetoric’s of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. An expert on the rhetoric of the mass media, John M. Sloop has written several books on how the spoken and written word can influence political and cultural debate. p.81-82).

Finally, I am not trying to suggest that, “male,” “Female,”and “heterosexual” are useless or out-of-date categories, as it is clear that these remain meaningful to a number of people, including a wide range of queered indiviudals. Rather, I wish to point out that the discourses surrounding this case – a case very much open to numerous possibilities for refiguring gender and sexuality –instead fold it back into a traditional iteration of heterosexual normatively. As C. Jacob Hale notes in his essay on the Brandon Teena case, we would be wise to recognize that borders and categories are necessary as starting points. In short, while Hale sees the need for categories on which to base identity, he argues that the borders must be kept constantly loose, must be seen as creatively contingent and fluid: “Insofar as sex/gender is hegemonically constructed as nontechnologized and nonperformative, all of us whose sex/gender is explicitly technologized or performative are abjected from the organizing principles of this system at a singular minimum” (338). One of our jobs as critics – at least as a first step – is to continue to add to the metaphors that people have to work with, or at least to continue to encourage creativity within preexisting boundaries, to encourage the production of new taxonomies that would intervene in the hegemonic practice of naming and defining, as Judith Halberstam notes, drawing from Eve Sedgwick (8, 46-47). As Celeste Condit writes: “The goal of gender diversity approaches is dismantle traditional gender dimorphism without leaving persons identity-less. Both of these moves are necessary for gender liberation” (“In Praise” 97). The first step in making this move, at least in terms of our tasks as critics and teachers, is to reenvision rhetoric as a constructor of gender rather than as constructed by gender. 

As a society we socially and culturally discipline transgender into hetronormative norms.

INVITATIONAL RHETORIC

Invitation rhetoric creates a ground of quality, value, and the desire for the audience to engage and understand the topic – proves better for education and fairness

Foss and Griffen 95  (Beyond Persuasion: A proposal for an invitational rhetoric. COMM UNICATIÓN MONOGRAPHS, Volume 62, March 1995). 

Invitational rhetoric is an invitation to understanding as a means to create a  relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-determination.
Invitational rhetoric constitutes an invitation to the audience to enter the rhetor’s
world and to see it as the rhetor does. In presenting a particular perspective, the
invitational rhetor does not judge or denigrate others’ perspectives but is open  to and tries to appreciate and validate those perspectives, even if they differ dramatically from the rhetor’s own. Ideally, audience members accept the  invitation offered by the rhetor by listening to and trying to understand the  rhetor’s perspective and then presenting their own. When this happens, rhetor  and audience alike contribute to the thinking about an issue so that everyone  involved gains a greater understanding ofthe issue in its subtlety, richness, and complexity. Ultimately, though, the result of invitational rhetoric is not just an understanding of an issue. Because of the nonhierarchical, nonjudgmental, nonadversarial framework established for the interaction, an understanding of the participants themselves occurs, an understanding that engenders appreciation, value, and a sense of equality. Another form offering may take, particularly in a hostile situation or when adominant perspective is very different from the one held by the rhetor, is re-sourcement (Gearhart, 1982). Re-sourcement 

Arguing only from personal conviction leads to hedonism and the silencing of marginalized points of view—our model is best to promote positive values.
Hicks & Greene ‘00 [Argument at Century’s End:  Reflecting on the Past and Envisioning the Future, ed. By Hollihan, 2000; 303-304]

Day’s rejection of the administrative logic and situational ethics underwriting the defenses of switch-side debating was in no way, however, an endorsement of the ethics of the platform.  He argued that the “rhetoric of commitment” (Eubanks & Baker, 1962) animating Murphy’s and Ehninger’s attacks not only misunderstood the method of democratic decision-making but could engender anti-democratic prejudices.  While sincerity criterion is appropriate for judging regarding the relationship between candidates and the issues they advocate, Day contended that it is wholly inappropriate for deciding the questions of value and social policy facing participants in deliberative forums.  The only ethical norm intrinsic to deliberation over substantive issues, according to Day, is the full and free expression of ideas.  Moreover, Day suspected that privileging an ethic of conviction would result in the covert suppression of minority views.  Debaters required to argue from their personal convictions would have no duty to present views which differed from their own, in fact, they would be prohibited from doing so.  Given the ego involvement accompanying personal conviction, Day feared that one-sided debating would further entrench the recalcitrance towards expressing unpopular opinions.  Furthermore, a forensics pedagogy modeled on rhetoric of personal conviction, a pedagogy prioritizes an individual’s commitment to a particular vision of the good over the technology of democratic decision-making would inculcate a conception of citizenship grounded in self-interest and authoritative tradition. 

Turn – our model of preparing for arguments from BOTH sides allows for deeper argument understanding. 

MITCHELL & SUZUKI ‘04 [BEYOND THE DAILY ME:  ARGUMENTATION IN AN AGE OF ENCLAVE DELIBERATION; Paper presented at the Second Tokyo Conference on Argumentation; AUGUST 2-5, 2004, http://www.pitt.edu/~gordonm/JPubs/MitchellSuzuki3.rtf]

Panoramic argument vision. The competitive pressure of tournament competition encourages debaters view the world through a wide-angle lens. In preparation for tournament debating, it is crucial for debaters to anticipate their opponents’ moves. This requires learning a wide array of arguments that vary in both content and form. Further, the rigorous dialectical method of debate analysis cultivates a panoramic style of critical thinking that elucidates subtle interconnections among multiple positions and perspectives on policy controversies. This same style of thinking is extremely useful in public debates, where students are in a good position to grasp and convey multifaceted controversies to public audiences. This requires debaters to expect and respect the heterogeneity of public argument, both horizontally (across different viewpoints) and vertically (in layers of depth on a single topic).