Solvency

Oil prices low – expiration of the October contract and declining stock market.

CNN Money, 9-18

[“Oil prices remain lower after a stunning drop”, RSR]

Oil prices remained under pressure Tuesday, less than a day after a sharp, sudden drop that had traders scrambling and economists scratching their heads. The October contract for U.S. crude was down 48 cents to $96.14 a barrel. On Monday, the price of light crude dropped $2.38, or 2.4%, with the contract tumbling more than $3 in less than a minute late in the session. "Energy prices were extremely volatile yesterday," wrote commodities analyst Stephen Schork, editor of The Schork Report. "The crude oil contract took a swan dive in the late afternoon despite a dearth of fundamental or economic news releases -- did another fund just explode?" Schork theorized that the plunge in oil prices might have been caused several factors, including the pending expiration of the October contract, and Monday's drop in stock prices.

Oil prices low - Saudi Arabia is acting to lower oil prices.

Reuters, 9-18

[“Saudi Arabia acting to lower oil prices: Gulf source”,

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/18/us-saudi-oil-prices-idUSBRE88H0HB20120918, RSR]

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is acting to lower oil prices, a senior Gulf source said on Tuesday, adding that the majority of OPEC producers wanted oil prices around $100 per barrel. The Gulf source told reporters the oil market was well balanced with no shortage of oil supply. Saudi Arabia was producing around 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries would be increasing output over the next few months. "We would like to see the price coming down and we are working to bring it down," said the Gulf source.

Oil prices low - Iran exports down.

Smith, Contributor, 9-17

[Grant, “Oil Trades Near Four-Month High on Signs of Improving Economy”, Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-17/oil-trades-near-four-month-high-on-signs-of-improving-economy.html, RSR]

South Korea stopped buying crude from Iran in August after its refiners lost insurance coverage on ships carrying supplies from the Persian Gulf nation. The tanker Freedom, owned by Tehran-based NITC, signaled it’s going to Ulsan in South Korea, IHS Inc. (IHS) ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg today show. The vessel, able to carry about 2 million barrels of crude, is scheduled to arrive Oct. 4. Purchases fell to zero last month, reducing imports from Iran for the first eight months of this year by 34 percent from a year earlier to 5.39 million metric tons, according to data posted on the Customs Service’s website Sept. 15. South Korea bought 1.14 million tons of crude oil, or about 270,000 barrels a day, in August 2011.

No tradeoff

Palmer et al,10

Resources for the Future,10 [Karen, Richard Sweeney, and Maura Allaire, Oct 2010, “Modeling Policies to Promote Renewable and Low-Carbon Sources of Electricity” http://www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-BCK-Palmeretal%20-LowCarbonElectricity-REV.pdf, p.2, accessed 9-21-12, WYO/JF

A greater reliance on domestic renewable sources of electricity may also be associated with energy security benefits, although the fact that very little electricity comes from oil means that the benefits from reduced oil consumption are likely to be small.

High oil prices don’t cause a transition to renewables

DR. KENT MOORS, 8/23

Global Energy Strategist, Money Morning “Oil Prices are Higher, But It Won't Be Much Help for Alternative Energy” http://moneymorning.com/2012/08/23/oil-prices-are-higher-but-it-wont-be-much-help-for-alternative-energy/, accessed 9-12-12,WYO/JF

With the movement to exploiting unconventional domestic sources of oil and gas, one of the primary arguments in favor of alternative energy is undercut. Absent any major breakthrough in technology (inverters for example, that would dramatically decrease the loss of electricity from solar and wind generation), the cost differential will remain. Despite the rise in oil and gas prices, alternatives will still be more expensive to utilize, even before considering the infrastructure expenses for delivery and support that would have to be introduced. The rise of shale gas and oil, along with the large volumes of other unconventional reserves present, make a move to alternatives less likely. Concerns about the economic recovery remain paramount, given the major position held by energy - both its availability and its cost. Once concerns about a double dip are over, Europe appears to have its house in order and financial cliffs are avoided, we may approach this differently. And genuine considerations about environmental stewardship may again become central to the discussion. But some of those concerns have come into focus with the recent announcement that carbon emissions have reached a 20-year low in the United States. This month, the U.S. Energy Information Agency cited "low-priced natural gas" as the primary driver of the steep emissions decline, as natural gas is replacing more-carbon intensive coal as a greater source of electricity generation. This does not bode well for the prospects of alternative energy.

Birds

Alt causes to bird death- wind kills 20 birds a year

R. Saidur, 11

Centre of Research UMPEDAC, Level 4, Engineering Tower, “Environmental impact of wind energy” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032111000669, accessed 10/10/12,WYO/JF

It is found that birds are one of the largest victim groups in mortality collision of wind turbines around the world [29]. Regional and overall birds’ fatality rates in United States are shown in Table 4. On the other hand, Sovacool and Benjamin stated that wind energy killed about twenty times fewer birds than fossil fuels. The number of birds killed by wind turbines can be negligible compared to other human activities [30]. It was found that out of the total number of birds killed in a year, only 20 deaths were due to wind turbines (for an installed capacity of 1000 MW), while 1500 deaths were caused by hunters and 2000 caused by the collisions with vehicles and electricity transmission lines (they are almost “invisible” for birds [31]). Summing up, it is important to understand that whatever impacts wind turbines have, on the one hand they are very obvious, and on the other hand, it is possible to minimize them through proper design and planning. In contrast, the impacts of thermal or nuclear energy production are slow to appear, are long term and no matter how much effort and money are spent, it is impossible to minimize them. In conclusion, we must decide that if we have to produce electricity, it is certainly preferable to produce it in a way which has the smallest possible impact on the environment. From a technical and economic standpoint, the most mature form of renewable and “clean” energy is wind energy. It can effectively contribute to combating climate change while at the same time providing various environmental, social and economic benefits [31]. Table 5 shows the leading human-related causes of bird kills in United States [32]. AWEA calculates that if wind energy were used to generate 100% of U.S. electricity needs, wind energy would only cause one bird death for every 250 human-related bird deaths with reference to the current rate of bird kills as described inTable 5[24].

Wind power technology allows for turbines to turn themselves off before killing massive amounts of birds

R. Saidur, 11

Centre of Research UMPEDAC, Level 4, Engineering Tower, “Environmental impact of wind energy” http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032111000669, accessed 10/10/12,WYO/JF

3.1.3.2. Guidelines and consultancy for industry In United States, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed voluntary guidelines for the sitting of wind energy facilities. These guidelines make recommendations regarding sitting of the wind plants. However, the wind industries are resisting such guidelines. A wildlife consultant may identify any issues of possible concern. The consultant examines the proposed site and prepares a detailed report on impacts for review for the developer. These surveys reduce the threat to avian to minimal levels [38]. 3.1.3.3. Radar technologies Avian radar was developed for NASA and United States to detect birds as far as four miles away. The system will determine whether the birds are in danger or in safe. If the system detects that a bird is in danger, it will shut down the wind turbines automatically. Once a bird crossed the turbine safely, the system will automatically restart the turbine [39].

Economy

[___] Extend Royal – economic decline causes war – 3 reasons

--Redistribution of power causes miscalculation as global economic trends shift. Their defense doesn’t assume shifting global power or miscalculation means we should win full risk of impact

--Hampers trade expectations and encourages protectionism that most recent studies show increases the likelihood to trigger conflict because it undermines cooperative economic interdependency

--Diversionary theory indicates that governments have incentive to create military conflict during hard economic times to increase popularity and create a ‘rally around the flag’ effect.

[___] Outweighs

[Magnitude]

Economic collapse causes escalating nuclear exchange that destroys civilization and the biosphere.

Bearden, 2k (T.E., Director of the Association of Distinguished American Scientists, “The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How To Solve It Quickly”, Space Energy Access Systems, http://www.seaspower.com/EnergyCrisis-Bearden.htm)

History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea { } launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.

[Probability] There is a strong historical correlation between economic decline and war.

Mead 9 — Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow at the CFR, Professor at Yale (Walter Russel, "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger," The New Republic)

So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left the societies that have tried them in a progressively worse position, farther behind the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe. Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms in wealthier societies. As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And, consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

Sustaining US Job Growth is Key to the US Economy – Collapse Would Go Global

AP, 7-24

(“Another global recession on the horizon?”) http://www.thonline.com/news/business/article_fb02ea23-ccba-5ab3-b49f-09d509b58ca5.html, accessed 9/30/12,WYO/JF

Reinvigorating the US economy prevents global economic meltdown¶ One growing concern about the global economy is there's little margin for error: Unemployment is already at recession levels in Europe and the United States.¶ The United States, by far the world's biggest economy, has long pulled the global economy out of slumps. Now it needs help. Three years after the Great Recession officially ended, the American economy can't maintain momentum. For the third straight year, growth has stalled at mid-year after getting off to a promising start.¶ Unemployment stood at 8.2 percent in June -- the 41st straight month it's been above 8 percent.¶ Americans spent less at retail businesses for a third straight month in June, the longest losing streak since the recession. Economists are downgrading their estimates of economic growth in the April-June quarter. When the government releases its first estimate on Friday, many think it won't even match the first quarter's sluggish 1.9 percent annual pace.¶ The global slowdown is squeezing U.S. exports, which have accounted for an unusually large 43 percent share of U.S. growth since the recession officially ended in June 2009.¶ Consumer confidence has fallen four straight months in the face of scant hiring and weak economic growth. U.S. companies are nervous about the threat of tax increases and spending cuts that are scheduled to kick in at year's end unless Congress breaks a deadlock. The IMF has warned of a spillover to the rest of the world if the U.S. economy falls off the so-called fiscal cliff.

Economic collapse causes nuclear war with Russia

Filger 9 (Sheldon, “Russian Economy Faces Disastrous Free Fall Contraction,” The Huffington Post,, 5.10.9, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/russian-economy-faces-dis_b_201147.html ) ET

In Russia, historically, economic health and political stability are intertwined to a degree that is rarely encountered in other major industrialized economies. It was the economic stagnation of the former Soviet Union that led to its political downfall. Similarly, Medvedev and Putin, both intimately acquainted with their nation's history, are unquestionably alarmed at the prospect that Russia's economic crisis will endanger the nation's political stability, achieved at great cost after years of chaos following the demise of the Soviet Union. Already, strikes and protests are occurring among rank and file workers facing unemployment or non-payment of their salaries. Recent polling demonstrates that the once supreme popularity ratings of Putin and Medvedev are eroding rapidly. Beyond the political elites are the financial oligarchs, who have been forced to deleverage, even unloading their yachts and executive jets in a desperate attempt to raise cash. Should the Russian economy deteriorate to the point where economic collapse is not out of the question, the impact will go far beyond the obvious accelerant such an outcome would be for the Global Economic Crisis. There is a geopolitical dimension that is even more relevant then the economic context. Despite its economic vulnerabilities and perceived decline from superpower status, Russia remains one of only two nations on earth with a nuclear arsenal of sufficient scope and capability to destroy the world as we know it. For that reason, it is not only President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin who will be lying awake at nights over the prospect that a national economic crisis can transform itself into a virulent and destabilizing social and political upheaval. It just may be possible that U.S. President Barack Obama's national security team has already briefed him about the consequences of a major economic meltdown in Russia for the peace of the world. After all, the most recent national intelligence estimates put out by the U.S. intelligence community have already concluded that the Global Economic Crisis represents the greatest national security threat to the United States, due to its facilitating political instability in the world.

Warming

Center for Study of CO2 and Global Change—home of the Idso boys—is tied to pro-fossil fuel interests

Headen 98

[Emily, (CLEAR analyst) Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research, “Western Fuels Association’s Astroturf Empire: Coal Industry Campaign Multiplies Effort to Re-spin Global Warming,” 11/10/98 www.ewg.org/pub/home/clear/westernfuels.html //wndi03]

The Center "was created to disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climactic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content" (From mission statement. www.co2science.org) The Center is run by Sherwood Idso's sons, Craig (President) and Keith (Vice President). Sherwood sits on the Scientific Advisory Board along with Sylvan Wittwer of the Greening Earth Society. Other scientific advisors are Donald Baker, Edwin Olson, William Reifsnyder, Paul Reiter, and Kenneth E.F. Watt. According to the Arizona State University Web Directory, Craig Idso is currently a Graduate Research Associate at the Office of Climatology at ASU, a project run by Robert Balling, who is associated with two Western Fuels projects, the Greening Earth Society and the World Climate Review. It must be stressed that there is currently no evidence to indicate financial support of the Center by Western Fuels or Greening Earth, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that at the very least a working relationship exists. Both Idso brothers have been on the Western Fuels payroll at one time or another. Keith Idso, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, was a paid expert witness for Western Fuels Association at a 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities commission hearing in St. Paul, along with MIT's Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Robert Balling. (The Heat is On). According to news from Basin Electric, a Western Fuels Association member, Craig Idso produced a report, "The Greening of Planet Earth Ñ Its Progression from Hypothesis to Theory," in January 1998 for the Western Fuels Association. (The Center also came into being in January 1998, according to information provided by the Center). Fred Palmer of Western Fuels had nothing but praise for the Idso brothers at the release of the report, "They (Craig and Keith Idso) each are providing valuable service to the army of scientists at work in this important, though often overlooked, field of inquiry." (Basin Electric Latest News no date given) Additionally, Greening Earth Society issued a press release announcing The Center's web site on September 23, 1998. In the release, Fred Palmer, under the auspices of GES said, "The Center's viewpoint is a needed antidote to the misleading and usually erroneous scientific claims emanating from the Federal scientific establishment and adopted by leading politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore." The only contact information for The Center was the web address, and GES's Ned Leonard was listed as the sole phone contact on the press release. There is no information about sponsorship or funding on The Center's web site.

CO2 good arguments ignore atmospheric science because it’s about a balance of CO2, not just high CO2 levels in general being good

Prothero 12

(Donald R. Prothero is a Professor of Geology at Occidental College and Lecturer in Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology. “How we know global warming is real and human caused” Winter 2012. Academic OneFile//wyoccd)

* "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations (17)) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross inaccuracies in this ad. (18) True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming (19,20) and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research (21) actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous.

K

The Role of ballot is to say yes or no to the action and outcomes of the plan.

Second, is reasons to prefer:

(___) C. It is fair, Weigh Aff Impacts and the method of the Affirmative versus the Kritik, it’s the only way to test competition and determine the desirability of one strategy over another

Finally, It is a voter for competitive equity—prefer our interpretation, it allows both teams to compete, other roles of the ballot are arbitrary and self serving.

Risk management is inevitable and it’s our obligation to act upon those risks.

Coaffee 08

(Jon, School of Environment and Development, The University of Manchester, PhD in Urban Geography analysing at the impacts of risk, terrorism and security on urban development and planning, Energy Policy, “Risk, resilience, and environmentally sustainable cities,” October 18, 2008, Science Direct//wyo-mm)

Today, risk has evolved into a concept that goes well beyond the idea of financial loss. Douglas (1994), for example, argued that risk perceptions are related to a whole series of cultural factors reflecting a number of economic and political values. It is often associated with a set of newly defined ‘mega-scale’ risks, which “cannot be delimited spatially, temporally, or socially: they encompass nation-states, military alliances, and all social classes, and by their very nature, present wholly new kinds of challenge to the institutions designed for their control” (Beck, 1995, p. 1). As Giddens (1999, p. 34) further notes, risk is omnipresent in an interdependent world: “Whichever way you look at it we are caught up in risk management. With the spread of manufactured risk, governments can’t pretend such management isn’t their business. And they need to collaborate, since very few new-style risks have anything to do with the borders of nations.”

Our process of truth-seeking is good: using decision theory of comparing evidence of the best possible outcome is key to reducing dangers of unintended consequences.

Polasky et al 11

(Stephen, Stephen R. Carpenter, Carl Folke and Bonnie Keeler, Department of Applied Economics & Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, “Decision-making under great uncertainty: environmental management in an era of global change,” August 2011, http://www.urbaneco.washington.edu/sbs/docs/data/3313_PolaskyetalDecisionMakingTREE.pdf//wyo-mm)

We begin with a brief review of decision theory, which provides a systematic approach to decision-making under uncertainty. Decision theory is a powerful tool for providing advice on which management alternative is optimal given the available information. Decision theory, however, requires information about probabilities of various outcomes under alternative management options and the desirability of those outcomes. Such information is unlikely to be readily available in the context of global change issues. We next discuss threshold approaches that focus attention on critical values and try to limit the chance that these values will be exceeded. We then review scenario planning and resilience approaches. These approaches are well suited to scoping problems from broad perspectives and from multiple viewpoints and so can reduce the danger of unforeseen events or unintended consequences.

Experts are critical—they have extensive knowledge of primary and secondary works in their field, and the capacity to correctly apply that information to new situations

Goldman, 2001

[Alvin, University of Arizona, “Experts: Which ones should you trust?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63.1, 85-110, Online, http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/goldman/SeminarFall2007/October%2031st/Goldman%20-%20Experts%20Which%20Ones%20Should%20You%20Trust.pdf] /Wyo-MB

Before addressing this question, we should say more about the nature of expertise and the sorts of experts we are concerned with here. Some kinds of experts a r e unusually accomplished at certain skills, including violinists, billiards players, textile designers, and s o forth. These are not the kinds of experts with which epistemology is most naturally concerned. For epistemological purposes we shall mainly focus on cognitive or intellectual experts: people who have (or claim to have) a superior quantity or level of knowledge in s ome domain and an ability to generate new knowledge in answer to questions within the domain. Admittedly, there are elements of skill or know-how in intellectual matters too, so the boundary between skill expertise and cognitive expertise is not a sharp one. Nonetheless, I shall try to work on only one side of this rough divide, the intellectual side. How shall we define expertise in the cognitive sense? What distinguishes an expert from a layperson, in a given cognitive domain? I'll begin by specifying an objective sense of expertise, what it is to be an expert, not what it is to have a reputation for expertise. Once the objective sense is specified, the reputational sense readily follows: a reputational expert is someone widely believed to be an expert (in the objective sense), whether or not he really is one. Turning to objective expertise, then, I first propose that cognitive expertise be defined in "veritistic" (truth-linked) terms. As a first pass, experts in a given domain (the E-domain) have more beliefs (or high degrees of belief) in true propositions and/or fewer beliefs in false propositions within that domain than most people do (or better: than the vast majority of people do). According to this proposal, expertise is largely a comparative matter. However, I do not think it is wholly comparative. If the vast majority of people are full of false beliefs in a domain and Jones exceeds them slightly by not succumbing t o a few falsehoods that a r e widely shared, that still d o e s not ma k e him an "expert" (from a God's-eye point of view). To qualify as a cognitive expert, a person must possess a substantial body of truths in the target domain. Being an expert is not simply a matter of veritistic superiority to most of the community. Some non-comparative threshold of veritistic attainment must be reached, though there is great vagueness in setting this threshold. Expertise is not all a matter of possessing accurate information. It includes a capacity or disposition to deploy or exploit this fund of information to form beliefs in true answers to new questions that may be posed in the domain. This arises from some set of skills or techniques that constitute part of what it is to be an expert. An expert has the (cognitive) know-how, when presented with a new question in the domain, to go to the right sectors of his information-bank and perform appropriate operations on this information; or to deploy some external apparatus or data-banks to disclose relevant material. So expertise features a propensity element as well as an element of actual attainment. A third possible feature of expertise may require a little modification in what we said earlier. To discuss this feature, let us distinguish the primary and secondary questions in a domain. Primary questions are the principal questions of interest to the researchers or students of the subject-matter. Secondary questions concern the existing evidence or arguments that bear on the primary questions, and the assessments of the evidence made by prominent researchers. In general, an expert in a field is someone who has (comparatively) extensive knowledge (in the weak sense of knowledge, i.e., true belief) of the state of the evidence, and knowledge of the opinions and reactions to that evidence by prominent workers in the field. In the central sense of "expert" (a strong sense), an expert is someone with an unusually extensive body of knowledge on both primary and secondary questions in the domain. However, there may also be a weak sense of "expert", in which it includes someone who merely has extensive knowledge on the secondary questions in the domain. Consider two people with strongly divergent views on the primary questions in the domain, so that one of them is largely right and the other is largely wrong. By the original, strong criterion, the one who is largely wrong would not qualify as an expert. People might disagree with this as the final word on the matter. They might hold that anyone with a thorough knowledge of the existing evidence and the differing views held by the workers in the field deserves to be called an expert. I concede this by acknowledging the weak sense of "expert". Applying what has been said above, we can say that an expert (in the strong sense) in domain D is someone who possesses an extensive fund of knowledge (true belief) and a set of skills or methods for apt and successful deployment of this knowledge to new questions in the domain. Anyone purporting to be a (cognitive) expert in a given domain will claim to have such a fund and set of methods, and will claim to have true answers to the question ( ~ ) under dispute because he has applied his fund and his methods to the question(s). The task for the layperson who is consulting putative experts, and who hopes thereby to learn a true answer to the target question, is to decide who has superior expertise, or who has better deployed his expertise to the question at hand. T h e novicet2-experts problem is whether a layperson can justifiably choose one putative expert as more credible or trustworthy than the other with respect to the question at hand, and what might be the epistemic basis for such a choice ?

Scenario planning is good. In a catastrophe-ridden world—it’s vital to make predictions about the future.

Kurasawa, 2004

[Fuyuki, Professor of Sociology at York University, “Cautionary Tales: The Global Culture of Prevention

and the Work of Foresight.” 2004, Constellations, Vol. 11, No. 4]

Independently of this room for maneuver and the chances of success. Humanitarian, environmental, and techno-scientific activists have convincingly shown that we cannot afford not to engage in preventive labor. contractualist justification, global civil society actors are putting forth a number of arguments countering temporal myopia on rational grounds. They make the case that no generation, and no part of the world, is immune from catastrophe. Complacency and parochialism are deeply flawed in that even if we earn a temporary reprieve, our children and grandchildren will likely not be so fortunate unless steps are taken today. Similarly, though it might be possible to minimize or contain the risks and harms of actions to faraway places over the short-term, parrying the eventual blowback or spillover effect is improbable. In fact, as I argued in the previous section, all but the smallest and most isolated of crises are rapidly becoming globalized due to the existence of transnational circuits of ideas, images, people, and commodities. Regardless of where they live, our descendants will increasingly be subjected to the impact of environmental degradation, the spread of epidemics, gross North-South socioeconomic inequalities, refugee flows, civil wars, and genocides. What may have previously appeared to be temporally and spatially remote risks are ‘coming home to roost’ in ever faster cycles. In a word, then, procrastination makes little sense for three principal reasons: it exponentially raises the costs of eventual future action; it reduces preventive options; and it erodes their effectiveness. With the foreclosing of long-range alternatives, later generations may be left with a single course of action, namely, that of merely reacting to large-scale emergencies as they arise. We need only think of how it gradually becomes more difficult to control climate change, let alone reverse it, or to halt mass atrocities once they are underway. Preventive foresight is grounded in the opposite logic, whereby the decision to work through perils today greatly enhances both the subsequent Moreover, I would contend that farsighted cosmopolitanism is not as remote or idealistic a prospect as it appears to some, for as Falk writes, “[g]lobal justice between temporal communities, however, actually seems to be increasing, as evidenced by various expressions of greater sensitivity to past injustices and future dangers.”36 Global civil society may well be helping a new generational self-conception take root, according to which we view ourselves as the provisional caretakers of our planetary commons. Out of our sense of responsibility for the well-being of those who will follow us, we come to be more concerned about the here and now.

CP 2

Conditionality is bad:

Time Skew: allows them to neutralize large chunks of 2ac time, hurting 1AR strat. The 2AC matters most because it puts out all the arguments that the aff can go.

Decrease Education: multiple worlds cause muddled debates that preclude consistency of education.

Voting issue: for ground, fairness, and education.

Links to elections. Fossil fuel subsidies popular - lobbyists

Karpinski, President of the League of Conservation Voters, and Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International, 11 (Gene and Steve, End subsidies to fossil fuel companies, The Hill Blog, 20 October 2011, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/188787-end-subsidies-to-fossil-fuel-companies, da 8-16-12)

Unfortunately what is popular with the public is not always so popular in Washington. The fossil fuel industry employs a virtual army of lobbyists -- in 2011 the oil and gas industry has already spent more than $75 million lobbying on federal policies. This lobbying is backed up by tens of millions in campaign cash to make sure that Members of Congress put the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the American people. This past June the Senate failed to end handouts to the five biggest oil companies. Not surprisingly, those Senators voting against the repeal took five times more in campaign contributions from the oil industry than those who voted to end these handouts.

Counterplan fails to make private capital available to the renewable investors, means that they will not try to build renewables

Sherlock, 11

Molly F. Sherlock, Analyst in Economics, and Mark P. Keightley, Analyst in Public Finance, 6-28-2011, “Master Limited Partnerships,” CRS, http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ieeeusa.org%2Fpolicy%2Feyeonwashington%2F2011%2Fdocuments%2Fmasterlmtdpartnerships.pdf&images=yes, accessed 9/28/12,WYO/JF

The Obama Administration has also repeatedly emphasized the importance of investments in clean energy technologies and infrastructure. President Obama has noted that clean energy investments can enhance domestic energy security, promote environmental objectives, and create jobs. 1 One barrier to investments in renewable energy projects is that such projects are highly capital intensive. Capital intensive renewable energy projects continue to face a number of challenges with respect to financing. Policymakers have been exploring various options for increasing the availability and decreasing the cost of financing for the renewable energy sector. One option for attracting additional capital to the renewable energy sector that Congress may consider is allowing renewable energy activities access to the master limited partnership (MLP) business structure.

CP 1

First is theory,

50 State Fiat is bad unless it contains a solvency advocate that assumes every level of fiat including uniformity.

No literature base kills education- No one advocates all 50 states making one action at the same time.

Voter for fairness and education

1st the counterplan can’t solve the aff

Extend Freed and Stevens evidence- Federal action is key to change tax policies for renewables to be available to receive mlp’s. States Can’t change tax code.

MLP’s are controlled by the IRS tax code, which prevents formation around renewables

Freed and Stevens 11

(Josh and Mae, Freed is the Vice President of the Third Way Clean Energy Program and served for more than a decade as a political strategist for national, federal and local campaigns and was a senior staffer on Capitol Hill, Stevens is a Policy Advisor for the Third Way Clean Energy Program, Third Way, “A Small Tax Change, Big Clean Energy Results,” December 2011, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/475/Third_Way_Idea_Brief_-_A_Small_Tax_Change_Big_Clean_Energy_Results.pdf//wyo-mm)

The IRS limits use of the MLP structure to businesses that derive, and then pass through, 90% of their income to their investors. In practice, this means that MLPs must be used for mature assets, like oil and gas extraction. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 expanded the definition of income from qualifying sources to include the transportation of ethanol and biodiesel fuel. Clean energy generation projects still do not qualify. There is a simple fix. By amending the Internal Revenue Code Section 7704 (d) to include revenues from the generation and sale of electricity produced from clean energy sources as qualifying income, clean energy projects could qualify as MLPs. This could bring substantial private capital off the sidelines to finance these renewable projects and would level the playing field between competing energy technologies. Large-scale electricity generation projects with power purchasing agreements (PPAs), including utility-scale solar, geothermal, on and off-shore wind, nuclear and, eventually, carbon capture and storage, could all benefit from this reform.

And, federal tax law trumps state tax law because of the supremacy clause and preemption

Zimmerman, 2005

[Joseph, Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and the author of many books, including Interstate Economic Relations, also published by SUNY Press, “Congressional preemption: regulatory federalism.” May 2005, Online, SUNY Press] /Wyo-MB

Authors commonly cite the interstate commerce clause and the supremacy of the laws clause as sources of authority for Congress to enact preemption statutes. The former clause is not the only delegated power employable to remove authority from states. Congress also is authorized to enact preemption statutes relating to bankruptcy, natural- ization, copyrights, patents, and taxation. It is important to note the supremacy of the laws clause does not delegate a power to Congress and is limited to “conflict preemption,” that is, a court may invalidate a state constitutional or statutory provision if it conflicts with a congressional statute based upon a delegated power. Does invalidation of a specific state statute on the ground of a conflict deprive this state and sister states of all concurrent powers to regulate in the given field? The answer is no, but state law enactments in the field subsequent to a court’s conflict decision, of course, may be subject to court challenges if they conflict with a congressional statute. The reader should note it is the courts, not Congress, that determine whether there is a direct conflict between a federal law and a state law of a magnitude triggering activation of the supremacy of the laws clause (see chapter 6).

State incentives empirically have failed to support renewable projects without federal support because of budget constraints and weak global economy- means any state policy alone would fail and fed incentives are key.

Rowley et al 12

(Kath, Uday Varadarajan, Brendan Pierpont, and Andrew Hobbs, Climate Policy initiative, “Supporting Renewables while Saving Taxpayers Money,” September 2012, http://climatepolicyinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Supporting-Renewables-while-Saving-Taxpayers-Money.pdf//wyo-mm)

Over the last decade, a number of states have implemented renewable energy policies such as binding targets for renewable energy generation or state tax concessions. These policies often include mechanisms to cover the gap between the cost of renewable electricity generation and market prices for electricity. These may involve explicit funding or subsidies such as tax concessions, rebates, or separate state funds for renewable energy. Others may involve implicit support—for example, regulators may be empowered to authorize increases in retail electricity prices to cover a utility’s incremental costs for compliance with renewable energy targets. In theory, states with such policies in place could have covered the cost gap in the absence of federal support through the increased use of such mechanisms. However: • State budget constraints from the recession made increasing support from states unlikely. The global economic downturn, which began with the financial crisis of 2008, was particularly difficult on state budgets. Significant tax revenue losses associated with economic contraction along with increased mandatory spending to provide services to those impacted by the downturn (such as through Medicaid insurance) created significant fiscal pressures in nearly every state. 16 While the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act provided $145 billion to state and local governments to help them cope with the downturn, this covered only about 40% of state deficits and states were nevertheless forced to make severe cuts to essential services. The cuts were particularly severe in states with balanced budget requirements. These constraints made it unlikely that states would have increased spending if federal renewable energy incentives had been removed. • The recession’s impact on electricity demand made additional ratepayer support unlikely. The impact of the recession on ratepayers was similarly stark. Unemployment reached nearly 10%. According to FERC, electricity demand in the U.S. fell by 4.2% in 2009 due to decreased economic activity (the steepest drop in 60 years). As a result, utilities and the relevant regulators would have faced an exceptionally difficult business and political environment for making a case to increase retail rates to cover additional costs of new renewable electricity generation. • European states facing fiscal constraints pulled back renewable energy policies but U.S. states did not. Nevertheless, renewable energy deployment in the U.S. continued to grow during the recession, and most state renewable energy targets prior to the recession were either maintained or strengthened. This is in marked contrast, for example, to the impact of the downturn on renewable energy deployment in Europe. E.U. Member States facing significant fiscal constraints—such as Spain and Italy— abruptly curtailed their renewable energy policy ambitions in the absence of E.U.-wide fiscal support analogous to the support provided by federal incentives to U.S. states. Thus, we believe that additional state or ratepayer support was not likely and that federal policies were critical to the recent growth in renewable energy deployment. Due to the continued weakness of the global economy, it does not appear that the budget and demand constraints noted above are likely to ease in the near term. Further, as we noted in the introduction, current state policies alone do not appear to be strong enough to sustain the level of growth in renewable energy deployment seen over the last four years. The PTC was allowed to expire at the end of 2001 and 2003 when wind faced similar market conditions, leading to booms just prior to expiration followed by substantially lower employment in the year after. As a result, it is likely that the expiration of federal incentives, in particular, the PTC for wind, could lead to significantly reduced levels of annual renewable energy deployment in the near future, another boom and bust cycle for renewables.

State governments fail at renewable energy policy—patchwork policies and budget constraints

Mann, 2011

[Roberta, Professor and Dean’s Distinguished Faculty Fellow, University of Oregon School of Law, “FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL TAX POLICIES FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: COORDINATION OR CROSS-PURPOSE?” 4-25-11, Lewis and Clark Law Review, Online, http://www.lclark.edu/live/files/8326-lcb152art4mann] /Wyo-MB

Coordination of federal, state, and local tax policies for climate ¶ change raises concerns similar to those raised by scholars contemplating ¶ the effect of comprehensive federal climate change legislation on ¶ existing regional, state, and local efforts to mitigate climate change. What ¶ level of government should bear the primary responsibility for setting ¶ climate change policy? From a business perspective, setting climate ¶ change policy at the national level is efficient because it avoids the need ¶ to comply with a patchwork of state and local regulations. From a fiscal ¶ perspective, letting the federal government fund climate change efforts ¶ makes sense as well. The federal government can run a deficit; most State ¶ governments are constitutionally prohibited from doing so¶ 12¶ and are ¶ further limited by their inability to print money. Recent federal economic stimulus legislation increased tax incentives ¶ for investments in renewable energy for individuals and businesses.¶ 13¶ At ¶ the same time, budgetary concerns caused some states to consider ¶ cutting back energy tax incentives.¶ 14¶ Local governments facing budget ¶ shortfalls may consider reducing climate-friendly public transportation ¶ services and increasing property taxes. On the other hand, state and local governments, while lacking revenue, may be well positioned to identify ¶ and encourage the use of locally abundant renewable energy sources.

Elections

Losing now Mali-10/11

Romney is winning Virginia

John Cassidy, 10/8

“Cassidy’s Count: Romney Bounce Changes Electoral Map in His Favor”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/10/cassidys-count-romney-bounce-changes-map-in-his-favor.html#ixzz28uo6LMt7, accessed 10/10/12,WYO/JF

Virginia: Even before the debate, there was evidence that Obama’s lead in the Old Dominion, which had expanded to as much as six or eight points in some polls taken in mid-to-late September, was narrowing significantly. On Friday, a Rasmussen poll taken the day after the debate showed Romney leading by one point (49 to 48) and a second survey, from We Ask America, showed the G.O.P. candidate leading by three points (48 to 45). To be sure, both polls come with warning signs attached. They were based on automated calling, which tends to be less reliable than human questioning, and Rasmussen’s results often lean towards the G.O.P.. Still, in the middle of last month, both organizations carried out polls in Virginia that showed Obama ahead: in the Rasmussen survey, he was up by one point, and in the We Ask America poll, he was up by three points. The polls released on Friday both showed sizable swings in Romney’s favor, and it’s hard to ignore them. Allowing for some sampling error and the different methodologies of the various pollsters, I suspect that the race in Virginia is once again very close, with Obama perhaps narrowly in front. A new poll from Public Policy Polling, which tends to lean to the Democrats, supports that interpretation. Published on Sunday night, it shows the President with forty-nine per cent of the vote and Romney with forty-six per cent. As the firm noted in a press release, Obama’s three-point lead “is the closest we’ve found the race in Virginia (in) the entire cycle.” Based on this poll and the others, I have decided to switch Virginia from Obama to toss-up.

Plan happens after the election

Ramsey Cox (writer for The Hill) September 24, 2012 “Congress to hold pro forma sessions until November” http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/251313-congress-to-hold-pro-forma-sessions-until-november

Rather than being in recess for more than five weeks, both the Senate and the House decided to hold pro forma sessions until after the November elections. Both chambers will gavel in Tuesday morning for a brief session; typically, legislative business doesn't take place in pro forma sessions. At most members ask to be recognized for a speech, but rarely do. It is unclear if the legislative branch was afraid of recess appointments by the White House, yet both sides took a formal recess in August. The Senate will hold a pro forma session every Tuesday and Friday until Nov. 13 at 2 p.m. when they’ll continue work on S. 3525, the Sportsmen Act, which would increase access to federal land for hunters and fishers while also supporting conservation measures.

Romney is winning Colorado now, Colorado is key to Romney’s campaign

Molly Ball, 10-5

“Colorado: Romney's Comeback State?” http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/colorado-romneys-comeback-state/263280/, accessed 10/10/12,WYO/JF

While Rust Belt states like Ohio and Wisconsin have lately seemed to be slipping from Romney's grasp, Colorado still looms as a tantalizing possibility for the Republican nominee. Polling has been inconsistent but tight; a recent We Ask America poll put President Obama up by 3 percentage points in the state, 49-46. "Colorado is a lot of farmers and cowboys -- and aging yuppies, like me," Dennis Dougherty, an affable, white-haired Republican financial adviser from the south suburbs, told me. "And hippies, I guess. But deep down, it's conservative. People vote their pocketbook." Strategists here aren't surprised to see Romney in better shape here than in other swing states or nationally. His pragmatic, moderate image, they say, is a good sell in the West. Secular, libertarian-leaning and skeptical of Washington, it's a region where neither religious issues nor class warfare get much traction, where voters of all political stripes generally like to see themselves as independent and pro-business. A common campaign tactic for both parties is to label opponents "extreme," an epithet that, research shows, makes voters here recoil. And with a sizable Mormon population, thanks to neighboring Utah, Romney's religion doesn't strike most Coloradans as foreign or exotic. Meanwhile, Romney's economic message resonates. (In Denver on Monday, he spoke in front of four 10-foot-tall blue signs reading "J," "O," "B" and "S.") Colorado's unemployment rate is above the national average, while Ohio, Iowa and Virginia all have rates below it. While Obama's popularity has declined by 2 points or less in the rest of the country since his election in 2008, the president has lost 12 points in the West, according to a recent New York Times analysis. Plus, as of this week, Romney has the endorsement of John Elway, the former Broncos quarterback and local demigod. On paper, this ought to be a ripe target for Romney -- and given his smashing success in Wednesday's debate in Denver, it would be fitting for Colorado to be the state where he stages his comeback.

Colorado will only reach voter enthusiasm if Obama takes further steps toward clean energy

Casey 2011

[Mike Casey, founder and president of Tigercomm. He uses his 27 years of communications experience to counsel cleantech company executives, pro-sustainability nonprofit leaders and elected officials on building and running their communications programs, Can Obama Go Back to Political base(ics)?, November 28, 2011, http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/2011/11/28/can-obama-go-back-to-political-baseics/, uwyo//amp]

President Obama made a smart move this month by putting the Keystone XL pipeline project into the deep freeze. It had been poor politics for him — and it would have been even worse policy for the country, especially when you consider the aggressive retooling of our world energy sources demanded by the International Energy Agency findings in its latest World Energy Outlook. But for the president’s staff, the question that lingers is whether it will relearn what it had mastered so well in 2008 — that while you have to campaign in the center, your base voters’ enthusiasm matters a lot. Based on articles like this one in Bloomberg Businessweek, about how environmentalists “matter less to Obama 2012,” it certainly doesn’t seem that way. For instance, the Businessweek article quotes Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt commenting that “[w]hen voters compare Obama’s record with [the Republican candidates for president], ‘there will be no question about who will continue our progress.’” The problem is, for ego-conscious millennials (the key, according to a new analysis by Center for American Progress political analysts Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin, to the 2012 election) like former Microsoft executive Jabe Blumenthal, who care deeply about environmental issues and who want to feel that their concerns are being heard at the highest levels, simply asserting that “I’m not Rick Perry” or “I’m not Mitt Romney” won’t work. To the contrary, Blumenthal says in the Businessweek piece, it’s “simply not true” that the specter of Romney, Perry or Gingrich will be sufficient cause for him to open his checkbook to the Obama campaign, as he did in 2008. Throughout the Keystone XL process, the message from Washington pundits and experts was that environmentalists “will not be happy, but they have nowhere else to go.” It’s hard to imagine such an arrogant statement being directed at African-American, gay or Latino voters, but the “nowhere else to go” sentiment directed at environmentalists seemed to have taught them it was time to chuck the tradition of patty-cake politics and “principled loserism” they’ve operated with for so long. The clincher in the Keystone fight was when committed Obama 2008 volunteers, donors and staffers started correcting the “nowhere else to go” idea. These Obama supporters recognized that they did indeed have somewhere else they could go: home, And not just on election day, but on all the days between now and then. In key states such as Colorado, where the green base is a lot of the base, these base voters realized that they could make themselves matter. In addition, environmental leaders such as 350.org’s Bill McKibben, Sierra Club’s Mike Brune, Friends of the Earth’s Erich Pica, and Greenpeace’s Phil Radford have shown they aren’t interested in the “nowhere to go” approach. I’m still not sure why the White House let things get to the point where supporters had to threaten to withhold their time, money and effort — all over a boondoggle that wouldn’t have dropped gas prices at all. To me, the politics around the Keystone XL pipeline were clear from the start. First there were the wildly inflated claims of jobs from an industry with a history of inflating them. And, of the jobs that would have been created, most would have been in states that were politically out of reach for Obama, and many of those would likely have been created after the election. Worse, the project had become a cafeteria line for TransCanada lobbyists, creating a paper trail of revolving door influence-peddling and inside dealing that the media would have acquired and used long into an Obama second term. On top of all that, the president’s approval of this project would have further depressed his base while benefiting an industry that is resolutely opposed to him — including his arch political enemies, the Koch brothers. It all leaves me scratching my head. But, hey, as a clean energy advocate, I’ll take the result. Going forward, there’s an opportunity for the Obama staff to stop confusing the critical task of courting the political center with the ill-advised practice of coddling lobbyists from a hostile oil industry. For the environmental community, there’s an opportunity to not resume the folded-hands, broken-hearted mode so much of its leadership has operated from over the last three decades. It will be interesting to see what the younger environmental.

Colorado is key to obama’s re-election

Sale 2012

[Anna Sale, politics journalist, July 08, 2012, Anna in the Swing States: Colorado's Swinging Suburbs and Untapped Latino Voters, http://www.wnyc.org/articles/its-free-country/2012/jul/08/colorados-swinging-suburbs-and-untapped-latino-voters/, uwyo//amp]

At the start of this summer, Mitt Romney was cutting into President Barack Obama's lead in the key swing state of Colorado, even as the president's advantage with Latino voters here was expanding. With the unemployment rate stuck above eight percent and immigration reform newly prominent on the president's priority list, we're asking Colorado's swing suburban voters if they're souring on the president they helped elect, and whether Latino voters here have been convinced enough by Obama's recent moves to make up that difference. Colorado’s swelling suburbs and the growing numbers of Latino voters are most often cited as the drivers behind recent Democratic gains in the western state. Latino voters made up just 13 percent of the electorate in 2008, but they proved decisive by overwhelming favoring Obama while white voters almost evenly split. Suburban voters were pivotal for another reason: their massive share of the vote in Colorado. They cast more than half of all votes here four years ago, and after supporting George W. Bush in 2004, they swung ten points to give Obama a slight edge over John McCain. Obama won Colorado by nine points in 2008, the first time a Democrat had a presidential race won here since 1992. This year, Colorado is in many ways the lynchpin in the Obama campaign’s strategy to remake the electoral map. As Obama campaign manager Jim Messina laid out last year, if the president repeats that win in Colorado, and captures Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and the states John Kerry won in 2004, Obama wins another term. This western strategy diminishes the importance of Ohio and Florida, even though those perennial battlegrounds are much bigger electoral prizes compared to Colorado’s relatively modest nine electoral votes. The Colorado electorate is largely broken up in thirds among Democrats, Republicans, and independents. Since 2008, the ranks of the unaffiliated, independent voters have grown in Colorado, and Democrats and Republicans now make up a slightly smaller percentage of registered voters in Colorado than they did four years ago. Much of the registration gains for Democrats and independents has happened in congressional districts with urban areas, contributing to the Democrats' recent success there.

US Relations Low- Reduction Program, NATO Cooperation

Mandel 10/11

[Seth Mandel, “U.S.-Russia Relations Keep Plummeting”, 10.11.2012, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/11/u-s-russia-relations-keep-plummeting/, \\wyo-bb]

Now that Moscow has expelled USAID from Russia and announced it will not renew one of the pillars of U.S.-Russia post-Soviet cooperation–the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program–the Obama administration and other disappointed actors will be looking for a silver lining. At least the Obama administration can take solace in the fact that while Putin is thoroughly dedicated to publicly and without consequence bullying Obama in the last month of the presidential election, he isn’t only isolating the U.S. As usual, Putin reserved some of his ire for NATO as well. Reuters reports: Russia will stop cooperating with NATO over Afghanistan after 2014 unless the alliance gets U.N. Security Council authorization for its new training mission in Afghanistan, a senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday.

just posturing

Canwest 3/17/09 (Canwest News Service, “Russia's militarization may be sabre-rattling: expert.” Peter O’Neil. Lexis.)

Russian sabre-rattling increased Tuesday as President Dmitry Medvedev, complaining of a threat by the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Alliance at its borders, promised a ``large-scale'' expansion of his country's conventional and nuclear arsenal. Russia has also spoken openly about vague plans to locate long-range strategic bombers in either Cuba or Venezuela, evoking chilling memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis that took the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. But two analysts told Canwest News Service that much of the noise from Russia, a country facing particularly difficult economic woes due to plunging energy prices, amounts to posturing directed at both domestic and international audiences. ``The Russian bear is lean and hungry in these hard times. But its teeth are in danger of falling out, and it can do little more than growl,'' said Fen Hampson, of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, in an e-mail.

Russia would never go to war against the U.S. – Russians won’t risk it.

Aron 07, Resident scholar and the director of Russian Studies at AEI, 6/29 (Leon, The United States and Russia, http://aei.org/publications/pubID.24606,filter.all/pub_detail.asp)

Yet the probability of a frontal confrontation and a new Cold War remains very remote for at least three reasons. First, despite the erosion, the countries’ geopolitical assets are still very weighty, as the bedrock issues of anti-terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and energy will continue to force them to seek common ground and at least limited partnership.[17] Second, the “restorationist” foreign policy notwithstanding, the three basic elements of the 1992-1993 national consensus on the foreign policy and defense doctrine remain largely the same. Russia is to stay a nuclear superpower and the regional superpower, but it seems to have settled for the role of one of the world’s great states, rather than a global superpower engaged in a worldwide competition with the United States. While these desiderata will continue to cause occasional sparring with the United States, they are no longer dedicated to the attainment of goals inimical to the vital interests of the United States and are not likely to ignite a relentless antagonistic struggle to the bitter end. Lastly, despite the muscular rhetoric emanating of late from the Kremlin, unlike the Soviet Union twenty years ago and China today, Russia is not a “revisionist” power. It does not seek radically to reshape the geopolitical “balance of forces” in its favor. Moscow may rail at the score, but it is unlikely to endeavor to change the rules of the game. For that, one needs a different ideology and, as a result, a different set of priorities. Yet even in today’s Russia flush with petrodollars, the share of GDP devoted to defense (around 3 percent) is not only at least ten times smaller than in the Soviet Union, but also below the 1992-1997 average in a Russia that inherited an empty treasury from the Soviet Union and that was, like every revolutionary government, unable to collect taxes. Calculated in purchasing power parity, Russia’s defense expenditures in 2005 ($47.77 billion) were less than one-eleventh of what the U.S. spent ($522 billion).[18]

Distrust will not spill-over into open conflict.

Sakwa 08 RICHARD SAKWA, h ead of the department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, International Afairs 8, March2008, (2008) 241–267

The end of the Cold War has been repeatedly announced, yet the beast stubbornly lives on.97 Nearly two decades after the fall of communism we have once again entered a period of self-reinforcing suspicion and distrust between the major nuclear powers. This does not necessarily mean that the world will enter a period of sustained and institutionalized rivalry between two powers that act as magnetic poles in global afairs. The conditions for a replay of the old Cold War in its classic form are simply not present. Russia and America do not lead rival ideological projects on a global scale; although disagreements over such issues as the appropriate role of multilateral mechanisms do exist, they exist also between NATO allies. Nor are there sustained and entrenched policy differences over such issues as nuclear proliferation, global warming or any number of other fundamental issues facing the world. Russia is just one among a number of potential great powers, and therefore old-fashioned bipolarism is a thing of the past, and Russian–American relations are no longer the axis on which world politics turns. Even the issue that has much exercised the policy community in Washington, Russia’s alleged ‘democratic backsliding’, is a matter of interpretation, and in any case new leaderships in both countries may provide an opportunity for the regime question to become less sharp.98 The term ‘Cold War’, therefore, is a contemporary international relations metaphor for a fundamentally strained relationship that cannot be resolved within the framework of the world views of either party but requires a rethinking of both.