Tournament:  | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge: 

WNPT Rd 1 vs Weber RS

MODERN democratic politics are suffused with a profound industrial cynicism—China’s pollution corrupts "our" atmosphere, and that pesky "third world" continues to threaten the certainty of "our" security interests. What’s the thing found under the surface of all of these problems, lurking quietly in the shadows of the politicians who hope to solve them? It’s certainly never the first thing we think about, but it’s probably the most basic thing we could point to. It’s humanity’s reduction of the world to standing units of calculation to DOMINATE, CONTROL and ORDER the world that arises from the metaphysical tradition exemplified by the West that we’ve seen since Being was forgotten with the fall of ancient Greece.

IN THIS ROUND we encounter the Affirmative AS AN EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF METAPHYSICS, with its own profound ontological and metaphysical commitments that were brought into this round, NOT as a neutral policy option. Their designation of the world as energy for consumption is part of a history of philosophical thinking which in late metaphysics composes everything as a standing-reserve of ATOMS, ENERGY, and NOTHINGNESS for us to throw around as we see fit.

This calculation encloses on beings and makes it seem like there’s no escape—the profound industrial nausea sets in, and before you know it there’s no exit from the rising clouds of the pollution that were thrown into the air so you could have the methane to power your electricity. Metaphysics challenge-forth Dasein to consume Being in EVERY possible way, naturalizing the annihilation of Being. Violence is ONLY possible after we render things destructible, making our ontological concern a prior question to any other analysis.

Joronen 2011 (Mikko, Dept. of Geography, U. of Turku, Finland, "Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the Metaphysical Globe," Antipode, 0(0).)
Although it is rather evident that machination proposes a violent unfolding of things by its
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world metaphysical violence offers an ontological grounding of the social relations of domination.

And, they elevate the science of sustainability to a metaphysical certainty: This reinforces technocratic decision-making, resulting in a forgetting of the ontological horizons of Being and the originary presence of nature as a phenomenological experience. This forgetting of Being results in serial policy failure, turning case; interrogating ontology is crucial to sustainable living. OUR AUTHOR IS A FORMER PRACTICING NUCLEAR PHYSICIST.

Goeminne 2011 (Gert, Postdoctoral Fellow, Research Foundation—Flanders, Ghent University Center for Sustainability Studies, former nuclear physics PhD, "Once Upon a Time I was a Nuclear Physicist" Muse, Perspectives on Science, Vol 19 No. 1 2011)
For more than 20 years, sustainable development has been advocated as a way of
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irresponsibility: science dismisses politics of taking decisions. Science cuts politics short.

This technology casts the world in damnation. We offer the words of William Wordsworth to articulate the devastation of the world caused by technology.

 (William Wordsworth, poet, "The Complete Poetical Works," ’The World is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon")
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon%21
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. —Great God%21 I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn."

OUR ALTERNATIVE is to reject the affirmative as a process of interpreting and interrupting the industrial metaphysics of technology;

Our interpretation of the round is that it presents two competing interpretations of the history of metaphysics: The affirmative presents the technology of Western metaphysics, and the alternative positions itself as a move away from this form of thought. The question of the round becomes whether our poetic account of Being better explains the metaphysics of modern life, or whether the affirmative’s enactment of a plan is the most effective ontological question. This means the judge is a theorist who weighs competing hermeneutic claims about the history of the world and determines which team’s interpretations of metaphysics leads to a better affirmation of life and Being. This means the plan is not a stale policy option; It is rather a PROFOUND call from the truth of Being itself. Only by plunging headfirst into the ancient house of myth, text, and philosophy offers an escape.

Caputo 1988 (John D., Prof. Phil and Prof. Religion @ Villanova Univ., "Radical Hermeneutcs: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project," Pp. 11-12)
Thus, philosophy for the young thinker must become a "hermeneutics of facticity"
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Being; it had come to mean restoring the original difficulty in Being..

Moving away from the affirmative’s metaphysics exposes the abyssal ground of Being—our poetic account of the universe escapes the technical control of modernity. Surrendering the myth of control solves.

Joronen 2011 (Mikko, Dept. of Geography, U. of Turku, Finland, "Dwelling in the Sites of Finitude: Resisting the Violence of the Metaphysical Globe," Antipode, 0(0).)
In its most basic sense, the word Gelassenheit, the letting-be,
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4, 60–61, 181, 2006:84–86).

Framework for the round is net benefits.  Just kidding. Assumptions about the truth of Being implicate all thought—read the plan as a call from the truth of Being itself, not as an ontologically neutral policy option—this is a prerequisite to any analysis.

Dillon 1999 (Michael, "The Scandal of the Refugee: Some Reflections on the ’Inter’ of International Relations and Continental Thought," Pp. 97-99)
As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and mutual implication of
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-innocent political slaves who claim only to be technocrats of decision making.

This rejection is not compatible with any pragmatic action—only by subordinating politics to a fundamental engagement of ontological questioning can enact the metaphysical liberation that escapes technology. Only a god can save us now, and all we can do is wait in the face of Being.

Heidegger 1966 (Martin, Rector Freiburg University, "Der Spiegel Interview with Martin Heidegger," 1966)
SPIEGEL: You apparently see, so you have expressed it, a world movement  
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to help humans to  this insight, and philosophy is at an end.

Tournament:  | Round:  | Opponent:  | Judge: 

1NC

The tech isn’t there for thorium—either they don’t solve or they rapidly create new technologies without meditating on them.

NNL ’12 "Comparison of thorium and uranium fuel cycles," National Nuclear Laboratory (UK), March 2012, http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/meeting-energy-demand/nuclear/6300-comparison-fuel-cycles.pdf
Thorium fuel cycle R%26D has a long history dating back to the very
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that there is little appetite or belief in the safety or performance claims.

Thorium is conspiracy theory shit

Shanahan 9-11 Zachary Shanahan, Director of CleanTechnica, "Why Thorium Nuclear Isn’t Featured on CleanTechnica," CleanTechnica, 9/11/2012, http://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/11/why-thorium-nuclear-isnt-featured-on-cleantechnica/
I had a reader email me recently asking why we don’t feature thorium nuclear technology
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every government that looks into the matter doesn’t want cheap, safe energy?

Even radical emissions reductions are too little, too late

Dye 10-26 Lee Dye, "It May Be Too Late to Stop Global Warming," ABC News, 10/26/2012, http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/late-stop-global-warming/story?id=17557814%26singlePage=true~~%23.UI58icXR5DA
Here’s a dark secret about the earth’s changing climate that many scientists believe, but
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endanger progress to avoid a few degrees of temperature change?" he asks.

Expanded international agreements are key but every major party faces massive political roadblocks to increased involvement

Schreurs ’12 Miranda A. Schreurs, Director of the Environmental Policy Research Centre, Free University of Berlin, "Breaking the impasse in the international climate negotiations: The potential of green technologies," Energy Policy 48, September 2012, pp. 5-12, Elsevier
The Durban outcome has kept the international negotiation process alive, but does not reflect
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will be reluctant to accept commitments that could affect its economic growth perspectives.

Necessary tech advances are difficult and costly

Tickell 10-31 Oliver Tickell, author, journalist, and campaigner specializing in environment, energy, and health issues, "The Promise and Peril of Thorium," James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 10/31/2012, http://wmdjunction.com/121031_thorium_reactors.htm
However, four major challenges complicate efforts to get LFTRs operational on a production scale
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, so that the resulting electricity can be sold in competitive energy markets.

Takes a uselessly long time

Tickell ’12 Oliver Tickell, "Thorium: Not ’green’, not ’viable’, and not likely," Nuclear Pledge, June 2012, http://www.nuclearpledge.com/reports/thorium_briefing_2012.pdf
3.8 Timescale Claim: Thorium and the LFTR offer a solution to current and medium-term energy supply deficits. Response: The thorium fuel cycle is immature. Estimates from the UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (see 4.2 below) suggest that 10-15 years of research will be needed before thorium fuels are ready to be deployed in existing reactor designs. Production LFTRs will not be deployable on any significant scale for 40-70 years.

The myth of sustainability is a metaphysical construction that abstracts human ecology from any coherent ontological framework. This reintrenches the problems of technological politics, making environmental destruction inevitable.

Irwin 2008 (Ruth, Lecturer Phil. @ Univ. Auckland ~New Zealand~, "Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change: Risking it All," Pp. 180-81) CJQ
The global awareness of environmental issues has escalated steeply, since I began to write
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the purpose of potential resource in the unfolding machinery of production and consumption. 

Can’t build new reactors—lack of industrial production facilities and trained workers

Mez September 2012—Lutz Mez ~Department of Political and Social Sciences, Freie Universitat Berlin~ "Nuclear energy–Any solution for sustainability and climate protection" Energy Policy 48 (2012) 56–63
The nuclear industry has been battling a host of problems for three decades. A
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been closed must be torn down and solutions finally found for nuclear waste.

New Tech is bad—it breaks current global convergence increasing cost and lowering safety

Lester and Rosner ’9 — Richard K. Lester ~Professor of Nuclear Engineering and head of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology~ and Robert Rosner ~Astrophysicist and founding director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago. Director of Argonne National Laboratory from 2005 to 2009~ "THE GROWTH OF NUCLEAR POWER:  Drivers and Constraints" MIT-IPC-Energy Innovation Working Paper 09-002 July 2009 (forthcoming in Daedalus) http://web.mit.edu/ipc/research/energy/pdf/EIP_09-002.pdf
In its earliest years, the nuclear power industry also seemed destined to develop  along
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energy  growth? How might it affect the course of international nonproliferation efforts? 

No Arctic war—coop now, converging interests, and their ev is alarmism

Fries ’12 Tom Fries, Renewable Energy Analyst and Multimedia Content Editor at The Arctic Institute Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, "Perspective Correction: How We Misinterpret Arctic Conflict," The Arctic Institute, 4/18/2012, http://www.thearcticinstitute.org/2012/04/perspective-correction-how-we.html
War and conflict sell papers — the prospect of war, current wars, remembrance
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innovating to better press their cases in different venues and through different channels.

No correlation with ecosystem stability

Calgary Herald, August 30, 1997
Ecologists have long maintained that diversity is one of nature’s greatest strengths, but new
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high biodiversity as a controller of ecosystem function and insurance against ecological collapse."