Drought

Drought will cause massive energy shut down, blackout’s

Michael Webber, 12

“Will Drought Cause the Next Blackout?” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/opinion/will-drought-cause-the-next-blackout.html?_r=0, accessed 10/12/12,WYO/JF

WE’RE now in the midst of the nation’s most widespread drought in 60 years, stretching across 29 states and threatening farmers, their crops and livestock. But there is another risk as water becomes more scarce. Power plants may be forced to shut down, and oil and gas production may be threatened. Our energy system depends on water. About half of the nation’s water withdrawals every day are just for cooling power plants. In addition, the oil and gas industries use tens of millions of gallons a day, injecting water into aging oil fields to improve production, and to free natural gas in shale formations through hydraulic fracturing. Those numbers are not large from a national perspective, but they can be significant locally. All told, we withdraw more water for the energy sector than for agriculture. Unfortunately, this relationship means that water problems become energy problems that are serious enough to warrant high-level attention. During the 2008 drought in the Southeast, power plants were within days or weeks of shutting down because of limited water supplies. In Texas today, some cities are forbidding the use of municipal water for hydraulic fracturing. The multiyear drought in the West has lowered the snowpack and water levels behind dams, reducing their power output. The United States Energy Information Administration recently issued an alert that the drought was likely to exacerbate challenges to California’s electric power market this summer, with higher risks of reliability problems and scarcity-driven price increases. And in the Midwest, power plants are competing for water that farmers want for their devastated corn crops. Unfortunately, trends suggest that this water vulnerability will become more important with time.

Blackouts cause nuclear meltdowns

Huffington Post, 11

“Long Blackouts Pose Risk To U.S. Nuclear Reactors” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/29/blackout-risk-us-nuclear-reactors_n_841869.html, accessed 10/12/12,WYO/JF

Long before the nuclear emergency in Japan, U.S. regulators knew that a power failure lasting for days at an American nuclear plant, whatever the cause, could lead to a radioactive leak. Even so, they have only required the nation's 104 nuclear reactors to develop plans for dealing with much shorter blackouts on the assumption that power would be restored quickly. In one nightmare simulation presented by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2009, it would take less than a day for radiation to escape from a reactor at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant after an earthquake, flood or fire knocked out all electrical power and there was no way to keep the reactors cool after backup battery power ran out. That plant, the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station outside Lancaster, has reactors of the same older make and model as those releasing radiation at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which is using other means to try to cool the reactors. And like Fukushima Dai-ichi, the Peach Bottom plant has enough battery power on site to power emergency cooling systems for eight hours. In Japan, that wasn't enough time for power to be restored. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Institute trade association, three of the six reactors at the plant still can't get power to operate the emergency cooling systems. Two were shut down at the time. In the sixth, the fuel was removed completely and put in the spent fuel pool when it was shut down for maintenance at the time of the disaster. A week after the March 11 earthquake, diesel generators started supplying power to two other two reactors, Units 5 and 6, the groups said. The risk of a blackout leading to core damage, while extremely remote, exists at all U.S. nuclear power plants, and some are more susceptible than others, according to an Associated Press investigation. While regulators say they have confidence that measures adopted in the U.S. will prevent or significantly delay a core from melting and threatening a radioactive release, the events in Japan raise questions about whether U.S. power plants are as prepared as they could and should be.

Meltdowns cause extinction

Lendman, 2011

(Stephen, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization, 03/ 13, “Nuclear Meltdown in Japan,”, The People’s Voice http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2011/03/13/nuclear-meltdown-in-japan, accessed 10/12/12,WYO/JF

Reuters said the 1995 Kobe quake caused $100 billion in damage, up to then the most costly ever natural disaster. This time, from quake and tsunami damage alone, that figure will be dwarfed. Moreover, under a worst case core meltdown, all bets are off as the entire region and beyond will be threatened with permanent contamination, making the most affected areas unsafe to live in. On March 12, Stratfor Global Intelligence issued a "Red Alert: Nuclear Meltdown at Quake-Damaged Japanese Plant," saying: Fukushima Daiichi "nuclear power plant in Okuma, Japan, appears to have caused a reactor meltdown." Stratfor downplayed its seriousness, adding that such an event "does not necessarily mean a nuclear disaster," that already may have happened - the ultimate nightmare short of nuclear winter. According to Stratfor, "(A)s long as the reactor core, which is specifically designed to contain high levels of heat, pressure and radiation, remains intact, the melted fuel can be dealt with. If the (core's) breached but the containment facility built around (it) remains intact, the melted fuel can be....entombed within specialized concrete" as at Chernobyl in 1986. In fact, that disaster killed nearly one million people worldwide from nuclear radiation exposure. In their book titled, "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment," Alexey Yablokov, Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko said: "For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe. Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere." Stratfor explained that if Fukushima's floor cracked, "it is highly likely that the melting fuel will burn through (its) containment system and enter the ground. This has never happened before," at least not reported. If now occurring, "containment goes from being merely dangerous, time consuming and expensive to nearly impossible," making the quake, aftershocks, and tsunamis seem mild by comparison. Potentially, millions of lives will be jeopardized. Japanese officials said Fukushima's reactor container wasn't breached. Stratfor and others said it was, making the potential calamity far worse than reported. Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said the explosion at Fukushima's Saiichi No. 1 facility could only have been caused by a core meltdown. In fact, 3 or more reactors are affected or at risk. Events are fluid and developing, but remain very serious. The possibility of an extreme catastrophe can't be discounted. Moreover, independent nuclear safety analyst John Large told Al Jazeera that by venting radioactive steam from the inner reactor to the outer dome, a reaction may have occurred, causing the explosion. "When I look at the size of the explosion," he said, "it is my opinion that there could be a very large leak (because) fuel continues to generate heat." Already, Fukushima way exceeds Three Mile Island that experienced a partial core meltdown in Unit 2. Finally it was brought under control, but coverup and denial concealed full details until much later. According to anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, Japan's quake fallout may cause nuclear disaster, saying: "This is a very serious situation. If the cooling system fails (apparently it has at two or more plants), the super-heated radioactive fuel rods will melt, and (if so) you could conceivably have an explosion," that, in fact, occurred. As a result, massive radiation releases may follow, impacting the entire region. "It could be, literally, an apocalyptic event. The reactor could blow." If so, Russia, China, Korea and most parts of Western Asia will be affected. Many thousands will die, potentially millions under a worse case scenario, including far outside East Asia.

Elections

Romney will win now, economic models

Billy Hallowell, 10/8

“ELECTORAL COLLEGE MODEL PREDICTS ROMNEY WILL WIN EVEN BIGGER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT IN 2012” http://www.theblaze.com/stories/electoral-college-model-predicts-romney-will-win-even-bigger-than-previously-thought-in-2012/, accessed 10/10/12,WYO/JF

In August, TheBlaze told you about University of Colorado Professors Ken Bickers and Michael Berry and their highly-accurate Electoral College prediction model. As you may recall, Bickers and Berry, using their metrics, are able to retroactively predict every presidential win since 1980. Their 2012 model made headlines two months ago because, despite polling, it found that Republican presidential candidate Romney would win 320 Electoral Votes, stealing the White House away from President Barack Obama. Now, an updated version of their study has come to the same conclusion — but it intensifies the numbers behind a predicted Romney win. Despite the fact that polls still show a dead-heat race (Obama is currently at 48.2 percent, with Romney capturing 47.3 percent of likely voters in the most recent Real Clear Politics average), an updated election model shows an even larger gap between the Electoral College votes that Romney and Obama are projected to win. According to Bickers and Berry, the Republican challenger is projected to take 330 of the 558 votes, while Obama is expected to capture only 208 of them. With 270 as the major number needed for any candidate to win, this clearly shows Obama far from the mark, sending Romney — at least theoretically — to victory come November. While the model did not change, Bickers‘ and Berry’s analysis is based on updated economic data, which clearly helped sway the projection even further in Romney’s favor.

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.

Obama will inevitably bash china

VOA, 8-29

GOP Outlines Tough Stance on China http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/08/29/gop-outlines-tough-stance-on-china-2/, accessed 9-12-12,WYO/JF

Although President Obama has refused to label China a currency manipulator, he has strongly criticized Chinese economic policies and brought a series of high-profile trade disputes against China. But the Republican platform accuses the president of a “virtual surrender” in responding to alleged Chinese trade violations. The GOP promises to impose duties on Chinese goods, if China does not change its policies and threatens punitive measures on foreign businesses that steal American technology and property. If China does not adhere to World Trade Organization standards, the platform warns that the U.S. government will “end procurement of Chinese goods and services.”

even if relations take a hit, cooperation won't because of mutual interest

Reuters, 9/5

“China, U.S. praise cooperation despite underlying strains” http://ajw.asahi.com/article/asia/china/AJ201209050036, accessed 9/16/12,WYO/JF

China and the United States avoided public sniping over maritime tensions on Sept. 5, neither yielding ground over South China Sea disputes while nonetheless stressing cooperation as they both focus on political transitions. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi gave avowals of mutual goodwill after their talks, which had been preceded by criticism from Beijing of Clinton's calls for a multi-lateral solution to the territorial disputes in the South China and East China Seas. Clinton told reporters that such disagreements did not have to hobble cooperation with China. "I'm very proud of the strength and resilience that we have built into our relationship," she said after talks with Yang in the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing. "It makes it possible for us to talk about anything, and to find ways to tackle issues frankly and forthrightly," Clinton said, adding that the two sides would not see eye-to-eye on all the issues that are part of their vast relationship. Yang also avoided public sparring. "We hope that China and the United States will work together to develop a positive and pragmatic relationship," he said, standing beside Clinton at a joint media briefing. The upbeat remarks underscored efforts by Beijing and Washington to contain quarrels, especially as they focus on domestic political hurdles. China's ruling Communist Party is preoccupied with a once-in-a-decade leadership over coming months, while President Barack Obama is focused on a re-election fight culminating in November's vote. But neither side gave ground on the South China Sea disputes, which have emerged as a persistent irritant in relations, reflecting suspicions in Beijing that the Obama administration is seeking to curb Chinese influence. China's claims over much of the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel islands, have also put it at loggerheads with Vietnam, the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations. A similar territorial dispute has set China against Japan in the East China Sea. China has been irked by the U.S.-backed proposals for a multi-lateral approach to managing and eventually resolving such disputes, preferring to negotiate separately with each of the far less powerful Asian claimants. "FISHING FOR ADVANTAGE" The overseas edition of state mouthpiece the People's Daily laid out China's concerns ahead of Clinton's meetings, and suggested the United States is seeking to gain leverage from China's tensions with Japan and Southeast Asian countries. "The United States' recent conduct concerning the Diaoyu islands and South China Sea issues cannot but create the suspicion that it is attempting to sow discord in order to fish for advantage," said a front-page commentary in the paper, which broadly reflects official thinking. "In the long term, this kind of adjustment in the United States' Asia-Pacific strategy will not bring gains, and could even backfire," it said. China and Japan have rival claims to the uninhabited Diaoyu islands -- called Senkaku in Japan -- and surrounding fishing areas and potentially rich gas deposits. "Regarding the South China Sea, the position of the Chinese government has been consistent and clear cut. China has sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and their adjacent waters," Yang, the foreign minister, told reporters. Clinton repeated that the United States took no position on the contending claims in the sea, and wanted China and Southeast Asian states to agree on a code of conduct to avoid dangerous flare-ups. The Obama administration wants greater Chinese cooperation on other international problems, including reining in the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, and finding a solution to the Syria crisis.

Zero risk of a trade war

Suominen 2009 (transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and trade economist at the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, 2009 (Kati, “A New Age Of Protectionism? the Economic Crisis And Transatlantic Trade Policy”, the German Marshall Fund Of The United States, http://www.gmfus.org//doc/Suominen%20final.pdf, March 2009)

This paper makes three arguments First, fears of an all-out trade war and spiraling protectionist backlash are exaggerated. There are a great many insurance policies in place to pre-empt anything akin to the beggar-thy-neighbor policies of the 1930s, including a solid multilateral system with bound tariffs and a credible dispute settlement mechanism, dozens of bilateral free trade deals with often deep tariff commitments, solid intellectual backing for free trade, well-organized export lobbies, and the unprecedentedly large stake that countries around the world have in the policies of their trading partners and the fortunes of the global trading system.

Trade conflicts don’t escalate – new normal.

Feigenbaum 10

[Evan A. Feigenbaum is head of the Asia practice group at the Eurasia Group and adjunct senior fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2001 to 2009, he worked on East, Central, and South Asia at the U.S. State Department. Reluctant Warriors OCTOBER 19, 2010 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/10/19/reluctant_warriors?page=full]

A full-fledged trade war between the United States and China would be disastrous; thankfully, it's far from likely. Decision makers on both sides appear to have concluded that their trade disputes can be managed without undermining the entire U.S.-China relationship. Trade conflict is here to stay, but it is fast becoming a "new normal" in relations between Washington and Beijing.

Anthro

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.

Considerations for any ethical system for animals presuppose a human benchmark: Two impacts 1.) human centric value is inevitable and they don’t solve or their value creates a method of asserting value without warrants turns the k.

Hayward 97

[PhD, Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, “Anthropocentrism: a Misunderstood Problem”, Environmental Values, p. asp//wyo-tjc]

But if the project of overcoming speciesism can be pursued with some expectation of success, this is not the case with the overcoming of anthropocentrism. What makes anthropocentrism unavoidable is a limitation of a quite different sort, one which cannot be overcome even in principle because it involves a non-contingent limitation on moral thinking as such. While overcoming speciesism involves a commitment to the pursuit of knowledge of relevant similarities and differences between humans and other species, the criteria of relevance will always have an ineliminable element of anthropocentrism about them. Speciesism is the arbitrary refusal to extend moral consideration to relevantly similar cases; the ineliminable element of anthropocentrism is marked by the impossibility of giving meaningful moral consideration to cases which bear no similarity to any aspect of human cases. The emphasis is on the ‘meaningful’ here: for in the abstract one could of course declare that some feature of the nonhuman world was morally valuable, despite meeting no determinate criterion of value already recognised by any human, but because the new value is completely unrelated to any existing value it will remain radically indeterminate as a guide to action. If the ultimate point of an ethic is to yield a determinate guide to human action, then, the human reference is ineliminable even when extending moral concern to nonhumans. So my argument is that one cannot know if any judgement is speciesist if one has no benchmark against which to test arbitrariness; and, more specifically, if we are concerned to avoid speciesism of humans then one must have standards of comparison between them and others. Thus features of humans remain the benchmark. As long as the valuer is a human, the very selection of criteria of value will be limited by this fact. It is this fact which precludes the possibility of a radically nonanthropocentric value scheme, if by that is meant the adoption of a set of values which are supposed to be completely unrelated to any existing human values. Any attempt to construct a radically non-anthropocentric value scheme is liable not only to be arbitrary – because founded on no certain knowledge – but also to be more insidiously anthropocentric in projecting certain values, which as a matter of fact are selected by a human, onto nonhuman beings without certain warrant for doing so. This, of course, is the error of anthropomorphism, and will inevitably, I believe, be committed in any attempt to expunge anthropocentrism altogether.

(__) Doesn’t take a stance on democracy assistance means that aff acts as an impact turn to the k.

(__) Anti-anthropocentric rhetoric reinforces a more dominant frame of human value because they reify ideological opposition to respect for non-human life

Hayward 97

[PhD, Department of Politics at Edinburgh University, “Anthropocentrism: a Misunderstood Problem”, Environmental Values, p. asp//wyo-tjc]

Anthropocentrism, widely used as a term of criticism in environmental ethics and politics, is something of a misnomer: for while anthropocentrism can intelligibly be criticised as an ontological error, attempts to conceive of it as an ethical error often involve conceptual confusion. I point out that there is no need for this confusion because a more appropriate vocabulary to refer to the defects the ethical ‘anti-anthropocentrists’ have in mind already exists. My argument is not just about semantics, though, but engages directly with the politics of environmental concern: blanket condemnations of ‘anthropocentrism’ not only condemn some legitimate human concerns, they also allow ideological retorts to the effect that criticisms of anthropocentrism amount to misanthropy. My argument, therefore, is that a more nuanced understanding of the problem of anthropocentrism allows not only a more coherent conceptualisation of environmental ethics but also a more effective politics. The article has five main sections. The first notes the paradox that the clearest instances of overcoming anthropocentrism involve precisely the sort of objectivating knowledge which many ecological critics see as itself archetypically anthropocentric. The second section then notes some ways in which anthropocentrism is not objectionable. In the third section, the defects associated with anthropocentrism in ethics are then examined: I argue, though, that these are better understood as instances of speciesism and human chauvinism. In order to explain why it is unhelpful to call these defects anthropocentrism, I note in section four that there is an ineliminable element of anthropocentrism in any ethic at all, and in the fifth section that the defects do not typically involve a concern with human interests as such anyway. Because of this last point, I also argue, the rhetoric of anti-anthropocentrism is not only conceptually unsatisfactory, it is counterproductive in practice.

(__) Permutation do both: Take action on democracy assistance while also realizing that anthropocentrism is an issue that needs to be addressed.

(__) YIELDING TO ANIMAL RIGHTS ENSURES MASSIVE SUFFERING AND EVENTUAL EXTINCTION OF ALL HUMANS

Epstein -5

Alex Epstein (Ayn Rand Institute) 8/15/2005

[“The "Animal Rights" Movement's Cruelty to Humans” online @ http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4368, loghry]

No sane person seeks to inflict needless pain on animals. Such practices, where they exist, should be condemned. But anyone concerned for human life must unequivocally endorse the rightness of using animals in medical research. Animal research is absolutely necessary for the development of life-saving drugs, medical procedures, and biotech treatments. According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray, M.D.: "Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements, and all vaccinations." Explains former American Medical Association president Daniel Johnson, M.D.: "Animal research--followed by human clinical study--is absolutely necessary to find the causes and cures for so many deadly threats, from AIDS to cancer." Millions of humans would suffer and die unnecessarily if animal testing were prohibited. But this is exactly what PETA and other "animal rights" organization seek. They believe that all animal research should be banned, including research conducted as humanely as possible (the declared and scrupulously practiced policy of most animal researchers). The founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, has declared unequivocally that animal research is "immoral even if it's essential" and that "Even painless research is fascism, supremacism." When questioned what her movement's stance would be if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, Newkirk responded: "We'd be against it." Chris DeRose, founder of the group Last Chance for Animals, writes: "If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn't make any difference to me." The goal of the "animal rights" movement is not to stop sadistic animal torturers; it is to sacrifice human well-being for the sake of animals. This goal is inherent in the very notion of "animal rights." According to PETA, the basic principle of "animal rights" is: "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment"--they "deserve consideration of their own best interests regardless of whether they are useful to humans." This is in exact contradiction to the requirements of human survival and progress, which demand that we kill animals when they endanger us, eat them when we need food, run tests on them to fight disease. To ascribe rights to animals is to contradict the purpose and justification of rights: the protection of human interests. Rights are moral principles governing the interactions of rational, productive beings, who prosper not in a world of eat or be eaten, but a world of voluntary, mutually beneficial cooperation and trade.

Security

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.

Alt fails, we need consumption policies established through the government because it’s the only effective mechanism to deal with the problems we’re enduring.

Power and Mont 10

(Kate and Oksana, European Topic Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Copenhagen, Denmark, Collaboration & Learning for Sustainable Innovation ERSCP-EMSU conference, “Dispelling the Myths about consumption behavior,” 2010, accessed via asp//wyo-mm)

The framing of behaviour change policy instruments is of crucial importance in promoting the values of society: reinforcing materialistic and self-interested values is unlikely to provide the longer-term acceptance of systemic policy interventions that is needed to tackle the many environmental issues we face today. We need the economic and infrastructural changes that reward “doing the right thing” and normalise sustainable lifestyles; and we also need a change in values and public opinion that makes sustainable levels and patterns of consumption desirable. We need consumption policies that are based on an understanding of consumption at the societal, rather than individual level.

IT’S A DOUBLE-BIND: EITHER THE ALTERNATIVE LINKS OR DOESN’T SOLVE. IN ISOLATION, ALTERNATIVES CAN’T INDIVIDUALLY DECONSTRUCT DOMINANT SECURITY DISCOURSE. THEY MUST ENGAGE WITH SECURITY, BUT IN DOING SO LEGITIMIZE THE PRACTICES BEING CRITIQUED.

Jeff Huysmans, Lecturer in politics at the department of government at Open University, Alternatives “Defining Social Constructivism in Security Studies: The Normative Dilemma of Writing Security” Feb 2002 p. 50-51.

Although the critical edge of this literature cannot be ignored, denaturalizing security fields is not necessarily successful in moderating the normative dilemma. The research continues to map the security discourses, therefore repeating, in an often highly systematic way, a security approach to, for example, migration or drugs. Demonstrating the contingent character of the politicization does question the foundational character of this contingent construction, but it does not necessarily undermine the real effects. It does this only when these discourses rely heavily for their effects on keeping the natural character of its foundations unquestioned. This points to a more general issue concerning this kind of analysis. Although it stresses that language makes a difference and that social relations are constructed, it leaves underdeveloped the concept of security formation that heavily prestructures the possibilities to “speak” differently through rarifying who can speak security, what security can be spoken about, how one should speak about security, and so on.27 Another related problem is that the approach assumes that in dictating the mere existence of alternative practices challenges the dominance of the dominant discourse. This is problematic since the alternative constructions do not exist in a vacuum or in a sheltered space. To be part of the game, they must, for example, Coy test political constructions of migration. Alternative practices are thus not isolated but engage with other, possibly dominant, constructions. This raises the question of how the “engagement” actually works. It involves relations of power, structuring and restructuring the social exchanges. Staging alternative practices does not necessarily challenge a dominant construction. The political game is more complex, as Foucault’s interpretation of the “sexual revolution”— the liberation from sexual repression—of the second half of the twentieth century showed.28 In a comment on human-rights approaches of migration, Didier Bigo raises a similar point—that opposing strategies do not necessarily radically challenge established politicizations: “It is often misleading to counterpose the ideology of security to human rights because they sometimes have more in common than their authors would like to admit. They often share the same concept of insecurity and diverge only in their solutions.”29 The main point is that alternative discourses should not be left in a vacuum. The way they function in the political struggle should be looked at. How are the alternative discourses entrenched in a specific political game? Are they possibly a constitutive part of the mastery of the dominant construction?

CP

Perm – do the CP. Doesn’t sever because the federal government reduces restrictions on mlp’s.

Reject CP’s competition –

A. Topic education – instead of debate over the merits of master limited partnerships, we debate over the minute link differential to their celections d/a.

B. Logic- No test case on the docket proves uncertainty because the Courts just look like they’re making random rulings about energy policy.

Voter For fairness and education.

Congressional action is necessary- MLPs for renewables is illegal otherwise, courts can’t change rule of law they can just eliminate current mlp’s

Bullock 8.10

[Bruce, director of the Maguire Energy Institute SNL Electric Utility Report, “MLP structure for renewables could mobilize capital, lead to consolidation”, p. ln//wyo-tjc]

What needs to happen at the federal level to make MLPs for renewables a reality? Clearly, it'll take a change of law. Is there a revenue impact to this to the federal government? Our own thought is that this will bring capital into the industry and it will create some economic activity, so there will be benefits in that regard. The biggest hurdle, in fact, is to apply it to the renewable industry just like it's been applied to biodiesel and ethanol and other areas as the law evolved through the years.

Congress will circumvent the court.

NTT, no date

[National Timber Tax Website, no date. “Judicial Sources- Supreme Court”, http://www.timbertax.org/research/process/judicial/supreme_court///wyokb]

If the Supreme Court agrees to review a decision, its interpretation and application of the law are the final authority, and all lower courts, taxpayers, and the IRS must follow its decision. If Congress is unhappy with the Court's interpretation and application of the law Congress might repeal the challenged statute, or the federal administration might refuse to fund or enforce the underlying law and related activities. Neither a citizen nor the government can appeal a Supreme Court decision.

Perm Do both: Shields the link to politics, the courts would take the blame.

Supreme Court decisions are perceived by the electorate- plays a POWERFUL role in this election especially.

Winkler, 11

Adam, constitutional law professor at UCAL. “Supreme Court's 2012 Decisions Could Sway Presidential Election”, Dec 16, 2011 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/16/supreme-court-s-2012-decisions-could-sway-presidential-election.html//wyokb]

In 1962, Justice Felix Frankfurter cautioned against the Supreme Court entering what he called the “political thicket.” The justices never heeded Frankfurter’s warning. Indeed, with seemingly every political issue ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, Frankfurter’s belief that the court could stay above the electoral fray seems quaint and outdated. Heading into the 2012 election, it looks like the Supreme Court is once again set to play a powerful role in deciding who wins and who loses come Election Day.

Perm do both – shields the links to politics

Heise in 2k

(Michael, Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University, “Education and the Constitution: Shaping each other and the nextcentury: Preliminary Thoughts on the Virtues of Passive Dialogue”, Akron Law Review, 34 Akron L. Rev. 73)

Second, active judicial participation in the school finance area might indirectly exacerbate one problem that it seeks to solve. One problem that arises in the school finance context involves legislative inertia. The question is how courts should approach and respond to instances of legislative inertia, assuming that such a condition is easily recognizable. By seeking to address an issue by actively and directly [*106] engaging lawmakers, courts may ultimately "solve" one inertia problem, but they will do so in a manner that will fuel additional inertia problems in the future. Specifically, active judicial participation often provides political "cover" for lawmakers eager to avoid tough -- and possibly divisive -- political questions that sometimes occupy the center of the political process. Once lawmakers see that judges are willing to inject themselves into political debates, some lawmakers might be induced to become more, rather than less, complacent. Moreover, once the judiciary becomes engaged with a political problem, it becomes part of that problem. To the extent that such problems might not go away anytime soon or, for that matter, worsen, the judiciary's institutional credibility could become an issue.

CP Tanks Biz Con

Woellert 5 (Lorraine, Legal Correspondent – Business Week, “Forget Roe and the Framers. Let’s Talk Business”, Washington Post, 10-16, Lexis)

Friends and peers trying to describe Miers and Roberts like to use the P-word -- pragmatic. That's sweet music to business ears: Corporations worship pragmatism and don't give a whit about judicial philosophy. But it's rank heresy to many on the right, who have had it up to here with jurists who weigh social and cultural mores when crafting opinions. Religious and other social conservatives want justices who will apply a very narrow "strict constructionist" interpretation to the Constitution and not read new rights -- such as the right to privacy found in Roe v. Wade -- into the framers' text. Roberts already has disappointed them. "Judges take a more practical and pragmatic approach when deciding the rule of law," rather than sticking to a strict philosophy, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Framers were aware they were drafting for the future." Roberts also tipped his hat to the importance of legal precedent and the need to avoid enacting rapid and radical changes in law: "It is a jolt to the legal system to override precedent." Translation: Roe might be here to stay, but business can take comfort. What corporate America wants from the judicial branch more than anything else is consistency and predictability -- tools for planning in the short term. That's one reason CEOs mourned the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor. Legal scholars have scoffed at her philosophical inconsistency, but business execs lauded her practicality and her frequent acknowledgments of real-world situations in opinions that often made their 9-to-5 workday a little easier.

Recession results

Braithwaite 4

(John, Australian Research Council Federation fellow, Australian National University, and chair of the Regulatory Institutions Network, The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 592 Annals 79, March, Lexis)

The challenge of designing institutions that simultaneously engender emancipation and hope is addressed within the assumption of economic institutions that are fundamentally capitalist. This contemporary global context gives more force to the hope nexus because we know capitalism thrives on hope. When business confidence collapses, capitalist economies head for recession. This dependence on hope is of quite general import; business leaders must have hope for the future before they will build new factories; consumers need confidence before they will buy what the factories make; investors need confidence before they will buy shares in the company that builds the factory; bankers need confidence to lend money to build the factory; scientists need confidence to innovate with new technologies in the hope that a capitalist will come along and market their invention. Keynes's ([1936]1981) General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money lamented the theoretical neglect of "animal spirits" of hope ("spontaneous optimism rather than . . . mathematical expectation" (p. 161) in the discipline of economics, a neglect that continues to this day (see also Barbalet 1993).