aff

CEDA NATIONALS SOLAR AFF v1
Advantage 1: warming
Advantage 2: competitiveness
1AC
The status quo prevents regional and state level feed in tariffs from being effective- the Public Utility Regulatory Policies act requires electricity produced be purchased at an “avoided cost” making solar impossible
D.A. Barber, 12 (regular correspondent for two Southern Arizona business publications and spent five years writing for the University of Arizona’s Report on Research. “U.S. Feed-in Tariffs will Increase PV Demand”, Energy Trend)
While FIT programs … for module companies.

Absent regulatory reform state RPS and Feed in Tariffs are doomed
Felix Mormann, ’11 (Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford Law School “Requirements for a Renewables Revolution”, 38 Ecology L.Q. 903)
Finally, in the absence of a strong, …state-level deployment policies.

Federal pre-emption KILLS FiT programs EVEN in situations where states have authority – federal legislation is key to overcome uncertainty
Dorsi 12 –Fellow, Phillips & Cohen LLP; J.D. Harvard Law School
(Michael, “Clean Energy Pricing and Federalism:  Legal Obstacles and Options for Feed-in Tariffs”. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/35/2/dorsi.pdf)
V. CONCLUSION States have often been laboratories of democracy, … forward an American renewable energy policy. 

Effective Feed in Tariffs are the only way to make solar power scalable, creates a strong manufacturing base and market competition
Melanie Hart and Kate Gordon 12, (Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress , “5 Myths and Realities About U.S.-China Solar Trade Competition”, Center for American Progress)
Innovation and demand-side policy, … key to U.S. market success.

The plan: United States Federal Government ought to give sanction to states setting rates above the avoided cost for the production of solar power.

Advantage 1 is Warming
FERC restrictions prevent effective Feed in tariffs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
DAVID YAFFE, ’10 (The Electricity Journal, “Are State Renewable Feed-In-Tariff Initiatives Truly Throttled by Federal Statutes After the FERC California Decision?”)
For the last few years, … dispersed renewable development. 

Effective feed in tariffs cause solar revolution
JENNIFER KHO, ‘9 (“Is a Feed-In Tariff a good FIT for the U.S.?”, Editor for Clean Technica)
But so far, there’s no question … we’ve found it’s not growing as fast as it should.”

Studies go aff- The plan DIRECTLY makes solar cost completive with natural gas, causing solar to satisfy nearly all of US electricity needs
Ken Willis, 12 (Emeritus Professor of Environmental Economics, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK  “Solar Energy Is Ready. The U.S. Isn't”, Bloomberg News)
Worldwide, the picture … competitive with commercial power rates in many states.

Energy leadership low– Obama push for energy independence predicated off gas and oil – tanks perception
Klare Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College 6-21-12 (Michael, “Is Barack Obama Morphing Into Dick Cheney?” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/barack-obama-energy-dick-cheney, Mike)
As details of his administration's … produce the exact opposite.¶ 

Effective feed in tariffs establish energy independence and environmental leadership
Kellie M. Delaney, ‘8 (J.D. Candidate, California Western School of Law, 2009; M.A., Comparative Literature and B.A., Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine. “THE SOLAR AGE: HOW FEED-IN LAWS FROM GERMANY CHART THE COURSE TO A U.S. SOLAR ENERGY MARKET”)

Can a new administration and political priorities …. changing political winds.
US Shift to Renewables Gives Credibility to Our Push to Reduce Other Short Term Pollutants to Solve Warming in the Short Term
Steve Seidel is Senior Advisor at C2ES 02/17/2012 http://www.c2es.org/blog/seidels/how-us-can-lead-short-lived-climate-pollutants
HOW U.S. CAN LEAD ON SHORT-LIVED CLIMATE POLLUTANTS
With Secretary Clinton’s …well worth making.

Leadership Now is Key to Give Durban Teeth and solve the worst impacts of global warming
Jan W. Dash, UU-UNO Climate Initiative Chair Dec 12, 2011 “The Durban Platform and what we should do about it” http://www.uu-uno.org/2011/12/the-durban-platform-and-what-we-should-do-about-it/
The Durban Climate Conference (COP17), … Let’s get to work.

Taking Concrete Policy Steps Towards Addressing Climate Change is Key to Flip International Perceptions
By BRYAN WALSH Tuesday, Oct. 04, 2011 Who's Bankrolling the Climate-Change Deniers? http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2096055,00.html
Not too long ago…the world on Sept. 14.

Extinction and try or die flips AFF
Sawin Senior Director of the Energy and Climate Change Program at the WorldWatch Institute Aug. ’12 (Janet, “Climate Change Poses Greater Security Threat than Terrorism,” http://www.worldwatch.org/node/77, Mike)
As early as 1988, …gradually declining caps. 

Warming is real and anthropogenic—skeptics are super silly
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that … since the evidence is so clear-cut. 

Advantage 2 is Competitiveness
Failure to stimulate demand for solar panels makes collapse of the domestic solar industry inevitable  
NYT 2012 May 17, 2012 “Topics: Solar Energy”
But BrightSource is also … of federal meddling in the marketplace.
That crowds the US out of the photovoltaic market
Damien LaVera, 6-28- ’12 (Deputy Director, Office of Public Affairs @ DOE, “Solar Manufacturing: To Compete or Not To Compete”, Energy.gov)
Last year, the … support and build a thriving solar industry here at home. 

That Creates Space for the US to Maintain an Edge in the Global Market – Continued Support is Key
Alex Rau, 3- ’12 (founder and the director of Climate Wedge, an investment firm focused on clean-energy technologies, carbon finance, and environmental commodities. “Is America Losing Its Edge in Clean-Energy Tech?”, Harvard Business Review)
Amid all the concern … in our energy policy:
The plan is key to reignite global manufacturing – it prevents Chinese monopoly on the market
Hart Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress and Gordon Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress 5-6-12 (Melanie and Kate, “5 Myths and Realities About U.S.-China Solar Trade Competition,” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/05/16/11592/5-myths-and-realities-about-u-s-china-solar-trade-competition/, Mike)
Innovation and demand-side policy, …. That is the real key to U.S. market success.

Solar manufacturing is key to U.S. tech competitiveness and the economy
Hart Policy Analyst on China Energy and Climate Policy at the Center for American Progress and Gordon Vice President for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress 5-6-12 (Melanie and Kate, “5 Myths and Realities About U.S.-China Solar Trade Competition,” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2012/05/16/11592/5-myths-and-realities-about-u-s-china-solar-trade-competition/, Mike)
 The United States is actually quite … 70 percent of private R&D spending.

Absent the Plan US Solar Will Be Squeezed Out of the Market
Kexin Liu, ‘11 (Research Associate, Clean Air Task Force, “Brief on major China energy related trends/issues in the 4th Quarter of 2011”)
CASM’s statistics show that … if this trend continues.[4]

Competitiveness decline tanks U.S. hegemony – tech manufacturing is especially key
Segal 4 (Adam, Senior Fellow in China Studies at the C.F.R. “Is America Losing Its Edge?” http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/america-losing-its-edge)
The United States' … at home.

Heg solves multiple conflict scenarios
Kagan 12 (3/14, Robert, senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings, “America has made the world freer, safer and wealthier”, http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/14/opinion/kagan-world-america-made/index.html?iref=allsearch)
(CNN)  We take a lot for granted … the American order came into being.

Competitiveness theory is accurate – other nations believe it even if we don’t
Ezell & Atkinson 8 (Robert, Ph.D., President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a technology policy think tank, & Stephen, Senior Analyst at ITIF, co-founder of Peer Insight, innovation research & consulting firm, Sept
In the 21¶ st¶ century global economy, … 2000, the EU heads of states and governments agreed to make the EU “the most competitive ¶ and dynamic

CEDA NATIONALS SOLAR AFF v2
advantage1-energy democratization
advantage2-warming
advantage3-defending our assumptions

SOLAR AFFCALSWING-Contention One
The resolution begins at the wrong question- markets for solar power are inevitable- resolutional mechanisms only expand the existing grid rather than change actual electricity transmission patterns- this maintains corporate control of energy policy and thus our lives
Blaeloch August 24th 2012 (Janine, Director of the Western Lands Project, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest founded in 1997, earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy, worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors for eight years, work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents, forest activist since 1985, on the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch, Protest of Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and Associated Proposed
BLM Resource Management Plan Amendments, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/WesternLandsprotest.pdf) kc

The need to make a rapid transition to a renewable-based energy economy is urgent. Global warming threatens to unwind the relatively stable climate regime that has supported the evolution of present human and ecological systems. It is imperative that we target the most efficient, rapid and cost-effective path to a renewable energy future that creates quality employment, revitalizes local economies, protects the environment and renews our communities. The beauty of renewable energy is its ubiquity. Solar in particular is available globally at the point of use. Advances in renewable energy, including smart grid technologies, are revolutionizing our energy systems. Many experts agree that decentralized generation and distribution is the wave of the future. If we are to realize our full renewable energy potential, we must make a major departure from the old energy business model dependent on a constantly expanding, centralized utility system. In the U.S., utility monopolies have dominated our energy sector for more than half a century. Resistance to change permeates the highest echelons of government. The adoption of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) in many states, including the six states analyzed for solar resources in the PEIS,
reflects this old energy paradigm. But by mandating a market “add-on,” rather than a substitution, RPSs may be ineffective in reducing emissions or climate change. With no requirement to reduce fossil-fuel-generated power by an equivalent mega-wattage, RPS mandates are being used by Investor Owned Utilities to create an artificial market above existing generation, even as efficiency and conservation reduce overall demand. In addition, utilities are playing the green card to justify lucrative new transmission infrastructure. If left unchecked, RPS policies could undermine efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, unnecessarily increase the cost of renewable energy, and delay by decades our transition to a new energy economy. By converting public lands to industrial energy factories in fragile, remote areas with massive requirements for transmission at great cost to ratepayers and the environment, our renewable energy policy is taking the least enlightened path possible, while attempting to create the illusion of innovation and progress. As of July 2012, eleven solar projects on over 36,000 acres had been approved on public lands. The projects range from 618 to 7,025 acres, with the average power plant exceeding 3,300 acres. As of July, pending proposals numbered 76, and would cover a total of 695,387 acres of public land (email communication, July 10, 2012, from Jayme Lopez, Renewable Energy Coordination Office, BLM). The scale, intensity, and pace of development on public lands are unprecedented. Massive solar power plants pose irreversible, long-term, cumulative ecosystem and species-level threats to fragile desert and grassland biomes. In addition, allowing applications for and approving so many projects at once has rendered public review of environmental impact studies, let alone understanding of the cumulative impacts, nearly impossible.
Corporations use faulty data to push for alternatives that will fail and cause worse environmental harm
Blaeloch August 24th 2012 (Janine, Director of the Western Lands Project, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest founded in 1997, earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy, worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors for eight years, work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents, forest activist since 1985, on the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch, Protest of Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and Associated Proposed
BLM Resource Management Plan Amendments, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/WesternLandsprotest.pdf) kc

No scientific evidence has been presented to support the claim that these projects reduce greenhouse emissions. Indeed, recent evidence suggests that the opposite may be true. Recent work at the Center for Conservation Biology, University of California, Riverside, suggests that soil disturbance from large-scale solar development may disrupt Pleistocene-era caliche deposits that release carbon to the atmosphere when exposed to the elements, thus “negat[ing] the solar development C gains.” Researchers call for more studies on groundwater depletion, landscape fragmentation, vegetation type conversion and regional carbon budgets. The researchers warn that “moving forward with industrial-scale solar developments in undeveloped desert habitats without quantifying the array of impacts…may unknowingly compromise biodiversity and soil disturbance from large-scale solar ecosystem functioning.” (Allen, McHughen, Barrows. Impacts of Large-Scale Solar Development on Regional Ecosystem Dynamics: Critical Research Gaps. Desert Tortoise Council, 36th Annual Meeting and Symposium, February 18-20, 2011, Las Vegas, NV). In addition, sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), used primarily as an electrical insulator in high voltage transmission of electricity, is the most potent of the six greenhouse gases regulated by the EPA, with a global warming potential 23,900 times that of CO2. One pound of SF6 is equivalent to eleven tons of CO2, nothing sequesters it, and the chemical has a half-life in the atmosphere of 3,200 years (http://www.epa.gov/electricpower-sf6/basic.html). The cost and the effect on SF6 emissions of adding over 750 miles of new transmission infrastructure must also be factored into carbon-balance equations. Until sound scientific research confirms the untested assumption that displacing intact, carbon sequestering desert and grassland ecosystems with solar power plants will, in fact, result in a net CO2 reduction, it is spurious to claim that the current policy represents progress in addressing the climate crisis.
Desert ecological communities are already on the brink because of human beings- squo results in the extinction of multiple forms of life
Blaeloch August 24th 2012 (Janine, Director of the Western Lands Project, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest founded in 1997, earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy, worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors for eight years, work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents, forest activist since 1985, on the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch, Protest of Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and Associated Proposed
BLM Resource Management Plan Amendments, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/WesternLandsprotest.pdf) kc

Unlike other forms of energy extraction, concentrating solar development entails use of 100 percent of the surface of a site. Environmental impacts are long-term (decades to centuries) and any prospect of either short- or long-term reclamation is purely speculative. Indeed, the Draft Solar PEIS states, “In the extreme, natural recovery to pre-disturbance plant cover and biomass in desert ecosystems may take 50 to 300 years, with complete ecosystem recovery potentially requiring more than 3,000 years” (emphasis added, Lovich and Bainbridge 1999 cited in DPEIS, page 5 85). Offsite mitigation and translocation of affected federally threatened and endangered species, including the desert tortoise, Mojave fringe-toed lizard, flat-tailed horned lizard, golden eagle and desert bighorn, is another severe, unresolved concern. Translocation efforts for sensitive species are still experimental. Inadequately assessed and mitigated impacts from developing large swaths of desert are likely to undermine vital conservation and recovery efforts. It is impossible to determine how much land would be required as mitigation habitat for affected species such as the desert tortoise, because it is not known how many projects could ultimately be permitted. Further, there is little suitable habitat available on private lands in the areas most heavily targeted for industrial solar development, providing narrow opportunities to acquire whatever mitigation habitat might be needed. The prospects for the species survival, upon which “take” permits are based are likely overly optimistic, as was proven at the Ivanpah project, where the number of tortoises far outnumbered the estimates upon which the original “take” permit was based. The overall impact of multiple projects will be devastating to vulnerable species dependent on these habitats, particularly to unique populations restricted to narrow habitat conditions that may be unable to survive outside their home area. One important perspective on the mitigation question is provided in a report submitted by the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan Independent Science Advisors, who said: Desert species and ecological communities are already severely stressed by human changes to the landscape, including urbanization, roads, transmission lines, invasive species, and disturbances by recreational, military, mining, and other activities. Additional stress from large-scale energy developments, in concert with a changing climate, portends further ecological degradation and the potential for species extinctions… We…strongly advocate using ‘no regrets’ strategies in the near term—such as siting developments in already disturbed areas—as more refined analyses become available to guide more difficult decisions. …In most cases, translocations and transplantations have been used as “feel good” actions that are generally not effective at sustaining populations. Moreover, the practice has the potential to do more harm than good to populations of rare species by increasing mortality rates and decreasing reproductive rates and genetic diversity. (http://www.energy.ca.gov/2010 publications/DRECP-1000-2010-008/DRECP-1000-2010-008-F.PDF). The impacts on desert flora are also unknown. Scientists have not completed the floristic inventory of the California desert, one of the remaining floristic frontiers in the United States. Using the trends from the past 50 years and extrapolating forward in time, researchers can expect to discover another 200 native plant species in the California deserts over the next 50 years. Thus, approximately nine percent of today’s California desert plants are not yet named by science. Given the scale and rapid pace of energy development in the desert regions, plant extinctions are likely, many involving species never discovered or named (Email communication from James Andre, Director, University of California Granite Mountains Research Center, February 17, 2011).
Alternative solar development practices do exist and the technology works much better than utility scale solar- we advocate developing solar technology everywhere in the built environment
Blaeloch August 24th 2012 (Janine, Director of the Western Lands Project, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest founded in 1997, earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy, worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors for eight years, work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents, forest activist since 1985, on the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch, Protest of Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and Associated Proposed
BLM Resource Management Plan Amendments, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/WesternLandsprotest.pdf) kc

Western Lands Project, Basin and Range Watch, and Solar Done Right are protesting the FPEIS for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and associated Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendments because BLM failed to consider viable alternatives to utility scale solar energy development on undisturbed desert public lands and because it neglected or misstated numerous environmental impacts in several Solar Energy Zones. Distributed generation and degraded lands alternatives better serve the purpose and need for the Department of Interior’s renewable energy program by protecting the nation’s natural resources while helping build a viable renewable energy industry for the future. Both alternatives could provide the development of 10,000 megawatts of solar energy capacity by 2015. As solar technology evolves and matures it could be scaled up to eventually provide a significant portion of the nation’s energy needs. The goal of generating 10,000 MW of renewable energy from public lands by 2015 will likely be substantially exceeded–assuming the projects do not fail—with just solar projects approved and in process at this time. As of July 2012, 11 approved solar projects were anticipated to generate 4,532 MW, and 76 pending applications an additional 33,154 MW. We are not suggesting that an overall goal of generating renewable energy should stop at 10,000 MW (siting issues aside), however, as the EPA states in its DPEIS comments: While that objective represents only a fraction of our national renewable energy potential, it is an important benchmark cited as a driver for both the PEIS and other renewable energy projects currently under review. Under the Reasonably Foreseeable Development Scenario (RFDS), BLM and DOE estimate that 214,000 acres of BLM administered land (24,000 MW) and 71,000 acres of private land (8,000 MW) will be necessary to support the estimated amount of solar energy generated over the next 20 years in the six-state region. Although EPA strongly supports the development of renewable sources to meet a far greater portion of the nation’s energy needs, we believe that the selection of the preferred alternative, as described in the Draft PEIS, would be ill-advised at the present time. (USEPA Region IX comment letter on Draft PEIS dated May 2, 2011: http://www.epa.gov/region9/nepa/letters/solar-energy-six-states-DPEIS.pdf) Siting industrial-scale solar power plants on high-value, intact public lands is unnecessarily damaging and counter-productive in light of viable alternatives such as siting solar development on the nation’s millions of acres of disturbed, degraded and contaminated lands, and large- and small-scale solar developments on rooftops and everywhere in the built environment.
Must imagine the unimaginable- embracing the possibility of a total solar society creates new possibilities for humanity.
Hermann Scheer, member German Parliament, President of Eurosolar, and Chair the World Council for Renewable Energy, ’94 (A Solar Manifesto)
This claim will be regarded as excessive only by those who still underestimate the all encompassing, disastrous consequences of our current energy sources and who fail to recognize the central importance of energy supply. If we really want to succeed in tackling the problems outlined in Agenda 21 we have to arrive at "Agenda 1"  the all encompassing solar energy economy.  Solar energy is not a nostalgic remembrance of times past, of an earlier pastoral idyll, which was anything but an idyll for most human beings. Rather, the conversion of mans energy system to a solar one and, with it, the reintegration of humanity's energy system into the planet's, will be the decisive step toward incorporating humanity into "the rhythm of nature.' This opens up new opportunities in almost all relevant fields of action where we are now running out of options, and which those in charge refuse to see in an energy context. This all encompassing utilization of solar energy will offer a new perspective for humanity  a realizable, concrete vision, a realistic utopia This project embraces far more than replacing current energy supply technologies with solar energy technologies. This fundamental shift is meeting with such huge obstacles and opposition because it challenges the very web and interplay of energy, economics and social systems.  The introduction of a global solar energy system has more fundamental importance for humanity than the industrial Revolution and the French Revolution had for the economic and political development of modern times. Both revolutions led humanity into a new epoch, but one that no longer assures permanence. Only all embracing solar energy utilization promises the kind of development that will benefit humanity permanently, because it makes possible universal human rights and the right to self-determination in all societies. Only a global solar energy system permits an environmental economy, a humanization of the industrial Revolution and the transfer of both to all people. The Industrial Revolution's path has so far led mankind into deeper schisms and disruption. The reversal of social achievements which threatens now, even in the traditional centres of the Industrial Revolution, will lead to rapid self-destruction. A solar energy system, on the other hand, opens up unique and because of the basic importance of energy  manifold opportunities, as opposed to the multiple dangers caused by the existing energy system.
Endorsing the politics of the 1ac is the only alternative to extinction
Hermann Scheer, member German Parliament, President of Eurosolar, and Chair the World Council for Renewable Energy, ’94 (A Solar Manifesto)
[gender paraphrased]
The central objection is well known: conversion of mankind's total energy supply to solar energy is considered unrealistic. This can mean only two things: either, that man's selfdestruction is unavoidable; or, that there are other, more realistic prospects for the survival of mankind. No other possibilities exist.  The plea for solar energy is not a technological one, but a political one. Nor is it another analysis of the dangers of destroying the environment; it deals with the inadequate political efforts to avert crises arid the deplorable lack of perspective. It both aims at, and culminates in, a strategic design. Politics, in the original meaning of the word, is the forming of society according to values that are potentially valid for all people. In Greek philosophy, political action meant not only action on behalf of the community  in contrast to private, selforiented and selfserving action  but also a special way of shaping society: a form of action that takes its cue from ideas of equality and freedom, rather than despotism and tyranny.' This kind of rethinking should be at the core of political discussions at a time when just about every activity is labelled "political", even if there is no positive reference to the public at large. Terms like "special interest politics", 'company politics", "union politics"  are all, if interpreted rigorously, inherent contradictions. The degradation of the very concept of politics goes hand in hand with the increasing failure of politics to come to grips with the requirements of a humane shaping of society.
Our discussion is key to reorient politics away from large scale solar power
Blaeloch August 24th 2012 (Janine, Director of the Western Lands Project, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, fights public land privatization in order to protect the environment and the public interest founded in 1997, earned a degree in Environmental Studies (B.A., University of Washington, 1989), with a self-designed program focusing on Public Lands Management and Policy, worked as an environmental planner in both the private and public sectors for eight years, work included preparation and analysis of numerous U.S. Forest Service environmental impact statements and planning documents, forest activist since 1985, on the Board of Directors of Wilderness Watch, Protest of Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States and Associated Proposed
BLM Resource Management Plan Amendments, http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/WesternLandsprotest.pdf) kc

Analysis in the PEIS of the impacts of the alternatives suggested by Solar Done Right would serve to provide information to the public about the impacts of utility-scale development on public lands vis-à-vis attainable conservation efforts, distributed generation of solar energy, and generation of solar energy on already degraded public and private lands. Analysis of the suggested alternatives would also spur public discussion and participation in the nation’s development of its renewable energy plan. Most important, analysis of the suggested alternatives would provide additional information that would aid the Director in deciding whether to proceed with utility scale energy development with known long-term significant impacts on fragile desert public lands.
Contention Two
Corporation and politicians frame environmental harms in terms of global warming- this masks other forms of environmental degradation by pushing them to the periphery of public discussions
Crist 7 (Eileen, Bachelor’s from Haverford College in sociology in 1982 and her doctoral degree from Boston University in 1994, also in sociology, with a specialization in life sciences and society. She has been teaching at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since 1997, where she is the advisor for the undergraduate program “Humanities, Science, and Environment.” She also teaches part time in the Department of Animal Studies at The Humane Society University. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. She is also coeditor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis and Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. Eileen is author of numerous papers and contributor to the late journal Wild Earth, Beyond the Climate Crisis: A Critique of Climate Change Discourse) kc

While the dangers of climate change are real, I argue that there are even greater dangers in representing it as the most urgent problem we face. Framing climate change in such a manner deserves to be challenged for two reasons: it encourages the restriction of proposed solutions to the technical realm, by powerfully insinuating that the needed approaches are those that directly address the problem; and it detracts attention from the planet’s ecological predicament as a whole, by virtue of claiming the limelight for the one issue that trumps all others. Identifying climate change as the biggest threat to civilization, and ushering it into center stage as the highest priority problem, has bolstered the proliferation of technical proposals that address the specific challenge. The race is on for figuring out what technologies, or portfolio thereof, will solve “the problem.” Whether the call is for reviving nuclear power, boosting the installation of wind turbines, using a variety of renewable energy sources, increasing the efficiency of fossil-fuel use, developing carbon-sequestering technologies, or placing mirrors in space to deflect the sun’s rays, the narrow character of such proposals is evident: confront the problem of greenhouse gas emissions by technologically phasing them out, superseding them, capturing them, or mitigating their heating effects. In his The Revenge of Gaia, for example, Lovelock briefly mentions the need to face climate change by “changing our whole style of living.”16 But the thrust of this work, what readers and policy-makers come away with, is his repeated and strident call for investing in nuclear energy as, in his words, “the one lifeline we can use immediately.”17 In the policy realm, the first step toward the technological fix for global warming is often identified with implementing the Kyoto protocol. Biologist Tim Flannery agitates for the treaty, comparing the need for its successful endorsement to that of the Montreal protocol that phased out the ozone-depleting CFCs. “The Montreal protocol,” he submits, “marks a signal moment in human societal development, representing the first ever victory by humanity over a global pollution problem.”18 He hopes for a similar victory for the global climate-change problem. Yet the deepening realization of the threat of climate change, virtually in the wake of stratospheric ozone depletion, also suggests that dealing with global problems treaty-by-treaty is no solution to the planet’s predicament. Just as the risks of unanticipated ozone depletion have been followed by the dangers of a long underappreciated climate crisis, so it would be naïve not to anticipate another (perhaps even entirely unforeseeable) catastrophe arising after the (hoped-for) resolution of the above two. Furthermore, if greenhouse gases were restricted successfully by means of technological shifts and innovations, the root cause of the ecological crisis as a whole would remain unaddressed. The destructive patterns of production, trade, extraction, land-use, waste proliferation, and consumption, coupled with population growth, would go unchallenged, continuing to run down the integrity, beauty, and biological richness of the Earth. Industrial-consumer civilization has entrenched a form of life that admits virtually no limits to its expansiveness within, and perceived entitlement to, the entire planet.19 But questioning this civilization is by and large sidestepped in climate-change discourse, with its single-minded quest for a global-warming techno-fix.20 Instead of confronting the forms of social organization that are causing the climate crisis—among numerous other catastrophes—climate-change literature often focuses on how global warming is endangering the culprit, and agonizes over what technological means can save it from impending tipping points.21 The dominant frame of climate change funnels cognitive and pragmatic work toward specifically addressing global warming, while muting a host of equally monumental issues. Climate change looms so huge on the environmental and political agenda today that it has contributed to downplaying other facets of the ecological crisis: mass extinction of species, the devastation of the oceans by industrial fishing, continued old-growth deforestation, topsoil losses and desertification, endocrine disruption, incessant development, and so on, are made to appear secondary and more forgiving by comparison with “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. In what follows, I will focus specifically on how climate-change discourse encourages the continued marginalization of the biodiversity crisis—a crisis that has been soberly described as a holocaust,22 and which despite decades of scientific and environmentalist pleas remains a virtual non-topic in society, the mass media, and humanistic and other academic literatures. Several works on climate change (though by no means all) extensively examine the consequences of global warming for biodiversity, but rarely is it mentioned that biodepletion predates dangerous greenhouse-gas buildup by decades, centuries, or longer, and will not be stopped by a technological resolution of global warming. Climate change is poised to exacerbate species and ecosystem losses—indeed, is doing so already. But while technologically preempting the worst of climate change may temporarily avert some of those losses, such a resolution of the climate quandary will not put an end to—will barely address—the ongoing destruction of life on Earth.
We must focus on how climate change disproportionately affects individuals of color- failure to start with racism ensures environmental collapse and extinction
Utt 11 (Jamie, Masters of Arts in Teaching - Emphasis in Urban Education from
National-Louis University, B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, focus on Middle East and conflict resolution, traveled to the Middle East to help conflict resolution, taught social studies in Chicago, activist, speaker, Tim Wise and White Privilege, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/) kc

But as troubling as colorblindness can be when evinced by liberals, colormuteness may be even worse. Colormuteness comes into play in the way many on the white liberal-left fail to give voice to the connections between a given issue about which they are passionate, and the issue of racism and racial inequity. So, for instance, when environmental activists focus on the harms of pollution to the planet in the abstract, or to non-human species, but largely ignore the day-to-day environmental issues facing people of color, like disproportionate exposure to lead paint, or municipal, medical and toxic waste, they marginalize black and brown folks within the movement, and in so doing, reinforce racial division and inequity. Likewise, when climate change activists focus on the ecological costs of global warming, but fail to discuss the way in which climate change disproportionately affects people of color around the globe, they undermine the ability of the green movement to gain strength, and they reinforce white privilege. How many climate change activists, for instance, really connect the dots between global warming and racism? Even as people of color are twice as likely as whites to live in the congested communities that experience the most smog and toxic concentration thanks to fossil fuel use? Even as heat waves connected to climate change kill people of color at twice the rate of their white counterparts? Even as agricultural disruptions due to warming — caused disproportionately by the white west — cost African nations $600 billion annually? Even as the contribution to fossil fuel emissions by people of color is 20 percent below that of whites, on average? Sadly, these facts are typically subordinated within climate activism to simple “the world is ending” rhetoric, or predictions (accurate though they may be) that unless emissions are brought under control global warming will eventually kill millions. Fact is, warming is killing a lot of people now, and most of them are black and brown. To build a global movement to roll back the ecological catastrophe facing us, environmentalists and clean energy advocates must connect the dots between planetary destruction and the real lives being destroyed currently, which are disproportionately of color. To do anything less is not only to engage in a form of racist marginalizing of people of color and their concerns, but is to weaken the fight for survival. The same is true for other issues, such as health care, where to ignore the specific racial aspects of the subject, as so many liberals and progressives do, is to further a form of colorblind racism. So, for instance, in the American health care debate, reform proponents typically focus on universal coverage alone, without addressing the way that even people of color with coverage receive inferior and often racist care, and the way that their experiences with racism (even if they have insurance) have health consequences that universal coverage cannot solve. To believe that universal coverage or even “single payer” could close racial health gaps between whites and people of color is to ignore the research on the primary causes of those gaps: research that says money and access are not the principal problems. In fact, to be blind to the importance of racism within the health care debate is to commit a huge strategic blunder as well. After all, research suggests that one of the principal reasons that the United States has such a paltry social safety net (including less comprehensive health care guarantees than those in other western industrialized nations) is because of a common belief that “those people” (meaning people of color) will take unfair advantage of such programs. So to not connect the dots between the nation’s broken health care system and racism is to miss one of the main reasons we’re in such a position in the first place!
Ignoring race teaches young individuals that inequality is the fault of the people that experience it
Utt 11 (Jamie, Masters of Arts in Teaching - Emphasis in Urban Education from
National-Louis University, B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, focus on Middle East and conflict resolution, traveled to the Middle East to help conflict resolution, taught social studies in Chicago, activist, speaker, Tim Wise and White Privilege, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/) kc

Indeed, to be colorblind in the face of profound racial disparities can encourage the mindset that whatever disparities exist must be the fault of those on the bottom. As parents, for example, if we do not discuss racism and discrimination with our children — and white parents, including liberal ones, show a serious hesitance to do this — they will grow up without the critical context needed to process the glaring racial inequities they can see with their own eyes quite clearly. So, white children may well come to conclude that the reason blacks, Latinos, and American Indian folks are so much more likely to be poor, and live in “less desirable” neighborhoods or communities is because there is something wrong with them. They must not try hard enough to succeed. If colorblindness encourages us to ignore color and its consequences, as it must almost by definition, then we are left with explanations for inequity that are not only conservative in nature, but racist too. For children of color, colorblindness, no matter the liberality behind it, can lead them to be ill-prepared for discrimination when and if it occurs in their lives. It can also lead them to internalize the blame for the inequities they too can see, and to conclude that black and brown folks have less than whites, on average, because they deserve less. Although many liberal and progressive parents think colorblind child-rearing is the way to raise antiracist children, the best and most recent research on the matter completely debunks this popular notion.
Ignoring race kills social movement planning and coalition building- we ask the wrong questions and prevents accurate critical self-reflection
Utt 11 (Jamie, Masters of Arts in Teaching - Emphasis in Urban Education from
National-Louis University, B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, focus on Middle East and conflict resolution, traveled to the Middle East to help conflict resolution, taught social studies in Chicago, activist, speaker, Tim Wise and White Privilege, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/) kc

Beyond the personal and familial settings, colorblindness also proves problematic in the realm of political activism. Within both liberal and further-left political advocacy and organizing, colorblindness leads persons in these formations to ignore the racial makeup of our own group efforts, and to pay no attention to how white-dominated they can often be. This colorblindness, by blinding us to the way in which liberal and left groups come to be so white (even when data says people of color tend to be more progressive than whites, and so, if anything, should be over-represented in these groups), makes it unlikely that individuals will interrogate what it is about their own practices that brings about such a skewed demographic. In short, while progressive formations should almost instinctively recoil from overwhelming whiteness — since it likely signals serious failings in coalition-building, strategy and tactics, as well as utter obliviousness to the way in which we’re going about our business and base-building — liberal-left colorblindness trades this critical introspection for a bland and dispassionate nonchalance. “Oh well,” some will say, “We put up signs and sent out e-mails, and we can’t control who comes to the meetings/rallies/protests and who doesn’t.” End of story, end of problem. So in the case of progressive organizing, colorblindness means we’ll ignore the obvious questions we should be asking when trying to ensure a more representative and diverse movement for change. Namely, questions like: When are the organizing meetings being held and where? Are people of color in on the planning at the beginning, or merely added to the agenda after the fact, as speakers at the rally or some such thing? Are we organizing mostly online (which means we’ll miss a lot of folks of color who don’t have regular internet access), or really building relationships across physical lines of community? Are we speaking to the immediate concerns in communities of color, and linking these to whatever issue we’re organizing around (more on this below)? Even cultural issues come into play. After all, if you’re trying to build a multiracial formation for social justice, or multiracial antiwar coalition, or movement for ecological sanity, you can’t evince a cultural style at every event that reflects what white folks may be comfortable with but which might seem distant to folks of color. So, for instance, to sing the same folk songs at a rally that you were singing forty years ago, or to come to an antiwar rally decked out in tie-dye, but not to include the music and styles of youth of color influenced by hip-hop, is to ensure the permanent marginality of your movement in the eyes of black and brown folks (and truthfully, young people of all colors). Put simply, freedom songs today are and must be different than in the sixties. But too often white-dominated liberal-left events and organizations resemble holdovers from an earlier time, rather than a movement that has grown to include multiple voices, styles and cultural norms. This is what happens when we don’t pay attention to, or care enough about, who is included and who isn’t at the table. It is the result, at least in part, of liberal-left colorblindness.
Ignoring racism in within radical movements dooms them to failure- marginalizes a large base of allies
Utt 11 (Jamie, Masters of Arts in Teaching - Emphasis in Urban Education from
National-Louis University, B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, focus on Middle East and conflict resolution, traveled to the Middle East to help conflict resolution, taught social studies in Chicago, activist, speaker, Tim Wise and White Privilege, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/) kc

Perhaps the most common way in which folks on the left sometimes perpetuate racism is by a vulgar form of class reductionism, in which they advance the notion that racism is a secondary issue to the class system, and that what leftists and radicals should be doing is spending more time focusing on the fight for dramatic and transformative economic change (whether reformist or revolutionary), rather than engaging in what they derisively term “identity politics.” The problem, say these voices, are corporations, the rich, the elite, etc., and to get sidetracked into a discussion of white supremacy is to ignore this fact and weaken the movement for radical change. But in fact, racism affects the lives of people of color quite apart from the class system. Black and brown folks who are not poor or working class — indeed those who are upper middle class and affluent — are still subjected to discrimination regularly, whether in the housing market, on the part of police, in schools, in the health care delivery system and on the job. True enough, these better-off folks of color may be more economically stable that their poor white counterparts, but in the class system they compete for stuff against whites in the same economic strata: a competition in which they operate at a decided and unfair disadvantage. So too, poor and working class whites, though they suffer the indignities of the class system, still have decided advantages over poor and working class people of color: their spells of unemployment are typically far shorter, their ability to find affordable and decent housing is far greater, and they are less likely to find themselves in resource-poor schools than even blacks and Latinos in middle class families. In fact, lower income whites are more likely to own their own home than middle class blacks, and most poor whites in the U.S. do not live in poor neighborhoods — rather they are mostly to be found in middle class communities where opportunities are far greater — whereas most poor people of color are surrounded by concentrated poverty. And black folks with college degrees, professional occupational status and health insurance coverage actually have worse health outcomes than white dropouts, with low income and low-level if any medical care, thanks to racism in health care delivery and black experiences with racism, which have uniquely debilitating health affects at all income levels. To ignore the unique deprivations of racism (as with sexism, heterosexism, ableism, etc) so as to forward a white-friendly class analysis is inherently marginalizing to the lived experience of black and brown folks in the United States. And what’s more, to ignore racism is to actually weaken the struggle for class unity and economic transformation. Research on this matter is crystal clear: it is in large measure due to racism — and the desire of working class whites to maintain a sense of superiority over workers of color, as a “psychological wage” when real wages and benefits have proven inadequate — that has divided the working class. It is this holding onto the status conferred by whiteness, as a form of “alternate property” (to paraphrase UCLA Law Professor, Cheryl Harris), which has undermined the ability of white and of-color working people to engage in solidarity across racial lines. Unless we discuss the way in which racism and racial inequity weakens our bonds of attachment, we will never be able to forward a truly progressive, let alone radical politics.
We reconceive black vulnerability as both a libidinal economy of enjoyment and a structure of political antagonism- only then can political thought think with and for the subject position it creates
Marshall 12 (Stephen, Associate Professor of political theory in The Departments of American Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, current research examines theories and practices of mastery and the ways persisting political projects of mastery haunt post-slavery liberal democracies, The Political Life of Fungibility, Theory & Event Volume 15, Issue 3, 2012, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v015/15.3.marshall.html) kc

Lingering with slavery as social and political formation, Saidiya Hartman explains that the juridical structure of slavery is founded not in the exploitation of slave labor but rather in the fungibility and ease of accumulation of the slave’s body as a commodity. As she notes, the replaceability and interchangeability endemic to the commodity makes the black body an abstract and empty vessel vulnerable to the projection of others feelings, ideas, desires, and values, inaugurating a political and libidinal economy of black subjection and vulnerability.11 Carefully tracking the myriad ways in which the fungibility of black bodies augment slave masters’ wealth, enable abolitionist imaginaries, and facilitate the constitution of the Jim Crow regime, Hartman not only fleshes out politically Toni Morrison’s insights about the “figurative capacities” of the “Africanist presence in American literature,” she invites us conceive the fungibility of black bodies and hence black vulnerability as both a libidinal economy of enjoyment and a structure of political antagonism. Libidinal economy of enjoyment refers to Hartman’s account of the systemic circulation of the “desire to don, occupy, or possess [blackness] as a sentimental resource” and the “comfort, consolation, pleasure,… and ease” which accompany its “use and possession”. 12 By structure of political antagonism, I refer to fungibility as a system of political cleavage, one which persists and remains occluded if and precisely when we examine black vulnerability through the liberal conceptual lens of injustice, the Marxist lens of exploitation, and even the more expansive if generic lens of domination.13 For Hartman, relations of chattel slavery inaugurate a distinctive structure of violence and vulnerability and the task for political thought is to try to think with and from the subject position it engenders.
That’s key to reverse the perception of the black body as socially dead- squo focuses on instances of black social death while the alt focuses on instances of black social life that was stolen away- this notion of embracing stolen life is key to liberatory  rather than self-destructive, nihilist black movement
Marshall 12 (Stephen, Associate Professor of political theory in The Departments of American Studies and African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, current research examines theories and practices of mastery and the ways persisting political projects of mastery haunt post-slavery liberal democracies, The Political Life of Fungibility, Theory & Event Volume 15, Issue 3, 2012, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v015/15.3.marshall.html) kc

Within black studies, Hartman’s work has engendered a lively debate between scholars who describe themselves as afro-pessimists and those I will describe as afro-optimists.14 Because of space requirements I will only preface the main line of the dispute. On the one side are Fanonian inspired writers like Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton who argue that the vulnerability of black life is best grasped through a reformulation of Orlando Patterson’s theory of slavery as social death. “The application of slave law among the free,” Sexton writes, has outlived in the post-emancipation world a certain form of its prior operations,” however “the reconfiguration of its operations” reconstitutes anti-blackness “from slavery to mass imprisonment.”15 Highlighting Patterson’s insistence that slavery is a social death constituted essentially by subjection to dishonor, violence, and alienation rather than coerced labor, these writers contend that the fungibility of black bodies continues as a decisive structure of antagonism and argue that liberation from social death requires a politics of destruction in the service of heretofore unthinkable possibilities. “The world is unethical due to its subsumption by the slave relation,” Wilderson writes, a relation “not between the worker and the boss but between the Human and the Black.16 For the black to become human, relationality itself, as defined and constituted by the march of Modernity, would have to be destroyed.”17 If afro-pessimism engages black vulnerability by tracking the proliferation of death throughout black social life, afro-optimism engages it by mining the discordant sounds of racial injury for traces of life stolen away.18 Skeptical about what he takes to be an implicit pathologization of black life that circulates in afro-pessimist accounts of social death, Fred Moten advances the notion of “stolen life” to describe and embrace blackness as a “fugitive movement” of “the stolen” in and out of the law of slavery and indeed “every enclosure”. Characterized by an “originally criminal refusal of the interplay of framing and grasping [and] taking and keeping” as well as a “reluctance that disrupts” these practices, Moten explains, stolen life grounds the black radical tradition and the cultural production of the black avant guarde.19 Rather than contesting the criminal alterity of blackness, Moten embraces it “as a cause for optimism” and aligns fugitive movement with freedom’s possibility.
Discussion of knowledge practices rather than governmental policies is critical to fill the gap between academia and activism- plan is key to make the movement successful
Casas-Cortes, Osterweil and Powell 8 (Maria Isabel, Michal, Dana, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Anthropology Dept, Blurring Boundaries: Recognizing Knowledge-Practices in the Study of Social Movements, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.unlv.edu/journals/anthropological_quarterly/v081/81.1cortes.html) kc

Our impetus for this project comes from our contention that a great deal of even the most critical academic work on social movements has theoretical assumptions and methodological inclinations that prevent scholars from seeing or making sense of various knowledge-practices and their implications. This is significant, we argue, because the inability to recognize knowledge-practices as some of the central work that movements do, has made it difficult for social movement theorists to grasp the actual political effects of many movements. As the cases in the paper demonstrate, these effects include not only immediate strategic objectives for social or political change, but the very rethinking of democracy; the generation of expertise and new paradigms of being, as well as different modes of analyses of relevant political and social conjunctures. The argument is taken up in two parts. In the first section, "Towards a Different Mode of Engagement," we suggest a need for a different mode of engagement in social movement research that recognizes social movements not simply as objects to be studied and understood, but as subjects or actors who are knowledge-producers in their own right. In so doing we challenge [End Page 20] the social scientific mode of empiricism that stresses the search for mechanisms and causal variables to be generalized. Instead, we argue for a mode of engaging with social movements that does not set "culture" (and those who bear it) as something "out there" to be accounted for and explained as an independent variable, but instead studies social movements on (and in) their own terms. As such, and building on criticisms of the structural and positivist orientations of the field articulated by authors associated with the "cultural turn" (Johnston and Klandermans 1995; Goodwin and Jasper 2004; Polletta 2004), we argue for the need to go beyond the emphasis on determining the mechanisms by which social movements work. We suggest that if we push the cultural turn even further, incorporating insights from multiple fields working to understand human agency in diverse cultural worlds (see Holland et al., this issue), we will be able to engage with movements not simply as objects to be explained by the distanced analyst, but as lively actors producing their own explanations and knowledges. These knowledges take the form of stories, ideas, narratives, and ideologies, but also theories, expertise, as well as political analyses and critical understandings of particular contexts. Their creation, modification and diverse enactments are what we call "knowledge-practice."

Ignoring race means every social movement will fail- we must use antiracism to unite
Utt 11 (Jamie, Masters of Arts in Teaching - Emphasis in Urban Education from
National-Louis University, B.A. in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, focus on Middle East and conflict resolution, traveled to the Middle East to help conflict resolution, taught social studies in Chicago, activist, speaker, Tim Wise and White Privilege, http://changefromwithin.org/2011/04/13/tim-wise-and-white-privilege/) kc

In other words, unless all of our organizing becomes antiracist in terms of outreach, messaging, strategizing, and implementation, whatever work we’re doing, around whatever important issue, will be for naught. Only by building coalitions that look inward at the way racism and white privilege may be operating within those formations, and that also look outward, at the way racism and privilege affect the issue around which we’re organizing (be that schools, health care, jobs, tax equity, the environment, LGBT rights, reproductive freedom, militarism or anything else), can we hope to beat back the forces of reaction against which we find ourselves arrayed. The other side has proven itself ready and willing to use racism to divide us. In response, we must commit to using antiracism as a force to unite.