1AC-Sugar Aff

Advantage 1- Warming
First, warming is real and human causedthere is a consensus on this questionclimate deniers are funded by the oil companies and lack scientific backing Plait 13
Phil Plate. Slate: New Study: Climate Scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming Is Real and Our Fault. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/17/global_warming_climate_scientists_overwhelmingly_agree_it_s_real_an d_is.html. 05/17/13. DA-07/05/13.

A new study has just come out that looked at nearly 12,000 professional scientific journal papers about global warming, and found thatof the papers expressing a stance on global warming97 percent endorse both the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are causing it. Ninety-seven percent. Thats what we call a consensus, folks. The study was clever. They found the papers by searching on the terms global warming and global climate change. Once they compiled the list of papers, they looked at the abstracts (a short summary of the results scientists put at the top of their papers) to see if the paper itself talked about the causes of global warming. About 4000 of the papers did so. That may seem like a smallish fraction, but most papers
analyze measurements and climate effects, not the cause of global warming (like most astronomical papers on, s ay, galaxies dont discuss how galaxies form, but focus on their structure, content, and so on also, because there is such a strong consensus on warming, scientists don't generally feel the need to state the obvious in their abstracts). Examining

those 4000 papers, the study authors determined that 97.1 percent of them endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming. And heres where they did the clever bit: They contacted 8500 authors of the papers in question and asked them to self-rate those papers. They got responses from 1200 authors (a nice fraction), and, using the same criteria as the study, it turns out 97.2 percent of the authors endorse the consensus. Thats a remarkable agreement! And its no surprise. There have been several studies showing almost exactly the same thing. This new one is interesting due to the methodology, and the fact that its so robust. So, the bottom line: The vast majority of scientists who conduct climatological research and publish their results in professional journals say humans are the cause of global warming. There is essentially no controversy among actual climate scientists about this. Of course, if you read the Wall Street Journal or the contrarian blogs, you might think the controversy among scientists is bigger. But youll find that the vast majority of people writing those articles, or who are quoted in them, are not climatologists. Youll also find many, including politicians so vocally denying global warming, are heavily funded by fossil fuel interests, or lead institutes funded that way. Because deniers tend to go to the OpEd pages and TV, rather than science journals, the public perception is skewed in their favor; people think this is a bigger controversy than it is. The only controversy here is a manufactured one; made up by people who are basing it on ideology, not facts, evidence, and science. Thats not just my opinion; that statement itself is backed up by facts, evidence, and science. Global warming is real. Climate change is happening. Carbon dioxide in the air is increasing, and is at a higher level than it has been for the past three million years. That carbon dioxide is increasingly heating us up: we are warming at a rate faster than in the past 11,000 years, and most likely far longer than that. And its our fault. Its well past time we do something about it, and we need to get past this false
controversy. For more information, go to The Consensus Project, and see what we can do about it.

Warming will be fastpositive feedback loops will lead to runaway warming Healy, 13
Vast Reservoirs of Arctic Carbon Could Affect Global Warming NASA is measuring greenhouse gases above the Arctic tundra to assess the future of global warming By Patrick Healy |

Saturday, Jul 6, 2013 | Updated 8:42 AM PDT, http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/VastReservoirs-of-Arctic-Carbon-Could-Affect-Global-Warming-213926781.html Six to eight times a month, a Sherpa airplane with special instruments takes off from Fairbanks, Alaska, in search of data to answer the question: Is global warming causing changes to the environment that inevitably accelerate the climate change? That is the suspicion of Charles Miller, principal investigator for a research project that is focusing on greenhouse gas emissions in the skies above the Arctic tundra, the vast treeless region that produces only grasses and low brush during the brief growing season. "Climate change is already happening in the Arctic, faster than its ecosystems can adapt. Looking at the Arctic is like looking at the canary in the coal mine for the entire Earth system," said Miller, who is based at Pasadenas Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but who now spends much of the year in Alaska. The carbon compounds implicated in global warming are often associated with combustion, and that is a significant source. But Miller said the amount of carbon compounds such as methane and carbon dioxide that are trapped in the permafrost beneath the tundra is staggering -comparable to all of the greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. During the summer thaw, the very top of the permafrost melts -- a few inches to no more than a few feet -- releasing only a small amount of the carbon that has built up over eons from the annual die-back of vegetation. It decomposes slowly in the tundra environment and historically is recaptured during the winter freeze. Enter global warming. As temperatures warm, its thought that these organic materials could decompose more rapidly and give rise to gases such as carbon dioxide and methane," Miller said. The anticipated release of carbon should accelerate climate change...I think the experts all agree that thats the case. The question that were grappling with is how much carbon might be vulnerable to release, and how fast might it be released." One possible scenario is what scientists call a positive feedback loop, akin to whats known in the more common vernacular as a vicious circle that feeds on itself. The warmer it gets the more of this carbon gets released from the thawing permafrost. And it then itself contributes to the warming. So you get this positive buildup -- more and more warming. Determining whether that is actually happening is the mission for CARVE -- Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment, a five-year study now in its third summer. Ask Miller now if any trends are apparent, and he demurs, wanting to wait for more data. But he does say the airborne surveillance periodically encounter large plumes of methane, as much as 150 kilometers (90 miles) across. There are nuances, as well. It turns out not all carbon compounds are created equal when it comes to effect on the atmospheric greenhouse. Methane, for example, has a much greater impact than carbon dioxide, as much as 100 times greater over a 20-year period, according to Miller. Whats more, the climate itself can influence the type of carbon compounds thawing permafrost is more likely to release. Warm and dry is more favorable for carbon dioxide. Warm and wetter would be expected to produce more methane, and it would not take much of a shift to have a significant impact, Miller said. Iif the amount of methane to carbon dioxide shifts just a little bit in favor of methane, just one or two percent, then without increasing the amount of carbon thats released from the soil tremendously you can actually double or even triple the amount of radiative forcing and greenhouse gas warming," Miller said. "Thats why were really interested in -- whether the arctic is becoming warmer and drier or warmer and wetter. With the data CARVE is generating, Miller hopes climate scientists would be able to produce moreaccurate mathematical models for predicting the effects of climate change.

Now is the key time, Atmosphere has passed 400 parts per million IPA 13
Institute for Public Accuracy: As Global Warming Threshold Passes, Fossil Subsidies Continue. https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/05/14-7 05/14/13 DA-07/03/13 We passed the 400 ppm milestone as a result of the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the human-driven burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. The President and the White House are in part to blame. The President has spectacularly failed to forge bold policies to avert climate catastrophe. Its not surprising that there is no senior climate policy team inside the White House that is working on any aggressive plan to end investments and financing in the fossil fuels sector.

450 ppm threshold for irreversible warming Friedman 13

Thomas Friedman. New Straights Times: Time for America to apply the brakes. http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/time-for-america-to-apply-the-brakes-1.198790 01/10/13. DA- 07/03/13 Up to the dawn of the industrial age 200 years ago, the Earth's atmosphere contained 280 parts per million (ppm) of the heat-trapping greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Today, that number is nearly 400ppm, with 450ppm routinely cited as the tipping point where we create the conditions for out-of-control acceleration.

Warming causes extinction Tickell, 8

(Oliver, Climate Researcher, The Gaurdian, On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction, 8-11, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2008/aug/11/ climatechange) We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die. Watson's call was supported by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, who warned that "if we get to a four-degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase". This is a remarkable understatement. The climate system is already experiencing significant feedbacks, notably the summer melting of the Arctic sea ice. The more the ice melts, the more sunshine is absorbed by the sea, and the more the Arctic warms. And as the Arctic warms, the release of billions of tonnes of methane a greenhouse gas 70 times stronger

than carbon dioxide over 20 years captured under melting permafrost is already under way. To see how far this process could go, look 55.5m years to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a global temperature increase of 6C coincided with the release of about 5,000 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, both as CO2 and as methane from bogs and seabed sediments. Lush subtropical forests grew in polar regions, and sea levels rose to 100m higher than today. It appears that an initial warming pulse triggered other warming processes. Many scientists warn that this historical event may be analogous to the present: the warming caused by human emissions could propel us towards a similar hothouse Earth.

Even if you believe some of their defense, you should still vote affirmative the magnitude of global environmental destruction warrants it Cerutti 7, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Florence, 2007 (Furio Cerutti,
Global Challenges for Leviathan: A Political Philosophy of Nuclear Weapons and Global Warming. Lexington Books. p. 31) The second feature of the impasse is irreversibility, which is peculiar to the worst outcomes of global challenges and to some more ordinary issues of environmental policy as well, for example, the extinction of a species. We cannot completely undo the hole in the ozone layer (it will take decades to recover, even if we totally and immediately stop using chlorofluorocarbons); nor can we be confident that, after a large nuclear war, we would be able to reconstruct world society as we did after World War II. Not addressing the global challenges is not a risk that can be taken in the expectation that, if something goes wrong, we pay the price owed and go back to business as usual, or nearly as usual, as happened after Hiroshima and Chemobyl. The difference is-and this is the third aspect of the impasse-even greater, at least with regard to nuclear weapons: if something goes wrong, it could be not just "something," but everything and everyone that is doomed. Among the casualties there would probably be the very actor (humanity as a civilized species) who calculated and decided to take the risk (even if the calculation and decision were actually made by few leading members of our kind, a fact whose relevance we will soon assess). This is a circumstance that is not considered in any theory or philosophy of risk and is rather likely to outmaneuver this altogether. Whoever would counter this argument with reference to an established game like Russian roulette, should bear in mind that in this game 1. the player has something to gain, if s/he wins and does not lose her/his life (money, self-esteem, or social esteem because of her/his "courage"); 2. if s/he kills himself, s/he only kills her/himself and not others (a collective version of the game has not been proposed); 3. others (family, group) could even reap benefit from the money or the fame s/he may leave behind. None of these circumstances or opportunities apply to our risky game with lethal weapons. If we want to preserve our modem ability to rationally take risks, we should not deal with global and ultimate menaces as if they were risks to be taken. There is nothing to be gained by taking them. The unprecedented severity of the possible losses and the uncertainty in which these issues are enveloped request a different approach, which will be looked into in the last three chapters.

Advantage 2-Corn
US demand is high because of RFS mandate and we have US has removed trade barriers to sugar cane ethanol Morrow, 13
Ethanol trade undermines U.S. biofuels policy Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Wed, 3 Jul 2013 10:45 AM Author: Ali Morrow and Alex Plough Further consternation was sparked when Washington removed the tariff on sugarcane ethanol in 2012, along with a subsidy for U.S.-produced ethanol. These two measures made sugarcane ethanol cheaper and more attractive for gasoline producers required to fulfill the RFS mandate. Since then, sugarcane ethanol has flowed into the United States, while corn ethanol has been shipped to Brazil to meet demand there. More than 90 percent of new cars sold in Brazil are flexible fuel vehicles, which can run on ethanol, gasoline or a combination of the two. Brazil has been blending ethanol into its gasoline since 1976, and now requires that a quarter of every gallon of gasoline should be ethanol.

Lifting the embargo means US consumers will buy cheaper sugar products
Tomas Engle, writer for the West Virginia University Newspaper, Thursday, November 10, 2011. Column - Cuban embargo is counterproductive and should end, http://www.thedaonline.com/opinion/column-cuban-embargo-is-counterproductive-andshould-end-1.2691925#.UdSal_msiSo With one of the (number one) sources of sugar cane in the world blocked from one of the largest markets in the world, American sugar cane interests have greatly benefited at the expense of Cuban farmers. American consumers have also suffered at the expense of the embargo by having high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) seep into every food product they consume because of the high price of natural cane sugar and American farm subsidies to corn growers. While the topic of HFCS could fill up another column, American consumers should be able to buy products with cane sugar without having to deal with artificially higher prices. It's ironic that a policy initially started as a reaction against a communist government coming to power is now entrenched in our capitalist system by a governmentprotected monopoly and price controls.

Trades-off with corn Hank Bullwinkel, The Baltimore Sun, September 24, 2012. Ethanol from corn still sounds
questionable, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-09-24/news/bs-ed-ethanol-letter20120924_1_renewable-fuel-standard-ethanol-sugar-cane If Ernie Shea is right and ethanol is still the answer, he is wrong if he believes that corn-based ethanol is the right answer ("Ethanol still the answer," Sept. 21). I have no problem with the

Renewable Fuel Standard passed by Congress. I do have a problem with producing ethanol from corn. Sugar cane is a better source, but our tariffs on sugar and our embargo on Cuban products keep us from making ethanol for less. There may be other better sources than corn. By the way, my gas may be less expensive with ethanol, but I also get fewer miles per gallon. I wonder whether the one outweighs the other.

Corn Ethanol failsnot long term solution

Steve Fales and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Fales is Agronomist and Associate Director, Biorenewables Program, Iowa State University, OHanlon is Director of Research, 21st Century Defense Initiative Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, October 26, 2007. Beyond Corn-Based Ethanol, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2007/10/26-ethanol-ohanlon The concept of corn-based ethanol is sound that is, up to a point. As several of the panelists, including Jerry Schnoor, Mani Subramanian, and Tonya Peeples of the University of Iowa's engineering schools, one of us, Steve Fales of Iowa State's agronomy department, and John Miranowski of Iowa State's economics department underscored, however, there are lots of downsides to pushing the corn-based ethanol concept too far. The gist of the panelists' remarks was that it should be viewed as a transitional biofuel and not the final objective in and of itself. It can help us create markets for biofuel, refineries to make it, infrastructure (like dedicated pipelines) to move it around the country, and demand for cars utilizing it. But the real breakthrough will have to be of a different type.

Scenario 1: Food Prices

Corn Ethanol jacks food prices through the roof in the SQ Sandoval, Michael. "Ethanol Mandate Increases Food Prices, Leads to Social Unrest." The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation |. N.p., 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 5 July 2013.
<http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/07/ethanol-mandate-leads-to-social-unrest/>.

Ethanol production in the U.S. consumes a significant quantity of corn and has a large impact on corn prices. We believe that ethanol production increases the world corn price by up to 68 percent. Since some corn would likely go to ethanol production with or without a federal mandate, the mandates price impact is likely less than 68 percent. One estimate puts the price impact as low as 8 percent. However, the direction of the impact is clear: The ethanol mandate increases corn prices and the prices of food and products that use corn as an input. Since the impact of the mandate is bad in any case, it is not redeemed by arguing that the bad impact might be a small bad impact.

High food prices can crush the peoples in developing countries Johnson, Toni. "Food Price Volatility and Insecurity." Council on Foreign Relations. N.p., 16 Jan. 2013. Web.
5 July 2013. <www.cfr.org/food-security/food-price-volatility-insecurity/p16662>.

Higher food prices have the greatest impact in developing countries. "[F]or the planet's poorest two billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one" (ForeignPolicy), writes Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute. Aid groups including the UN World Food Program (WFP) point out that three food price shocks (2008, 2010, 2012) in five years have increased the number of chronically hungry people and jeopardized efforts to reduce global hunger. High prices also mean that monetary pledges for food aid buy less than before. The WFP states that every 10 percent increase in food prices necessitates an additional $200 million to buy the same amount of food. In 2010, the WFP bought 25 percent less food with the same amount of money than the year before.

Over a billion will starve Ziegler, 12

Jean Ziegler is vice president of the advisory committee of the UN Human Rights Council. From 2000 to 2008, he was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. The sociologist and writer is a well-known opponent of globalization. His current book "We Let Them Starve: The Mass Destruction in the Third World" was published in late 2012.FOOD SECURITY Jean Ziegler: 'Biofuels a big cause of famine' http://www.dw.de/jean-ziegler-biofuels-a-big-cause-offamine/a-16775009 The mechanisms that cause death by starvation are all human-caused reasons. The main reason for this daily massacre is speculation on the food market. Half of the global population lives in cities, where food is not produced. According to World Bank data, 1.2 billion humans are "extremely poor." If the corn price were to explode again, like it did in the past two years by 63 percent, then these people will die because they cannot pay these prices. The second reason is biofuels. Let's take the example of the largest producer in the world, the United States of America. In 2010, the USA burned 138 million tons of corn and hundreds of million tons of grain in order to manufacture ethanol and biodiesel. If you have

a car that runs on biofuel, you would have to use 352 kilograms of corn in order to fill up a 50-liter tank. A child in Zambia or Mexico - where corn is a basic staple - could live on this amount for a whole year.

Using food for fuel is making the food price spikes Sandoval, Michael. "Ethanol Mandate Increases Food Prices, Leads to Social Unrest." The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation |. N.p., 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 5 July 2013.
<http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/07/ethanol-mandate-leads-to-social-unrest/>.

Recent laws in the United States and Europe that mandate the increasing use of biofuel in cars have had far-flung ripple effects, economists say, as land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel. In a globalized world, the expansion of the biofuels industry has contributed to spikes in food prices and a shortage of land for food-based agriculture in poor corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America because the raw material is grown wherever it is cheapest.

Importing sugar ethanol is key to solve farmland trade-off and food crisis Steve Fales and Michael E. O'Hanlon, Fales is Agronomist and Associate Director,
Biorenewables Program, Iowa State University, OHanlon is Director of Research, 21st Century Defense Initiative Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, October 26, 2007. Beyond Corn-Based Ethanol, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2007/10/26-ethanol-ohanlon In addition, the United States has about 450 million acres of farmland of all types under cultivation today. Up to 100 million acres more would be needed to reach the president's goal using corn-based ethanol. It will be impractical to find that much new farmland; substantial amounts of food crops from existing farmland would have to be displaced to do so. The alternative is to use some other raw material. Thankfully, we already know what we have to do. Importing more ethanol made from sugar cane in places like Brazil is part of the answer (though we need to get the economics right so American ethanol producers are not displaced by cheaper ethanol made abroad). Cellulosic ethanol is the real key. It is made from plant biomass be it prairie grass (perhaps helping give Iowans their elusive third crop after corn and soybeans, as well as permitting more arid states to contribute as well), poplar and other such soft woods, cornstalks, or even algae, depending largely on which part of the country is at issue, and its agricultural advantages.

Scenario 2-Phosphorus
Corn Ethanol requires massive fertilizer use
Bill Frogameni, writer for South Florida Business Journal, Jun 30, 2008. Changing times, mixed outlook for South Florida farming, http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2008/06/30/story8.html?page=all The biggest concern for crop farmers is the cost of fuel and fertilizer. With high gas prices, all farmers are hit with higher production cost. The price of fueling farm equipment and moving crops to market is taking a big chunk from farmers' bottom line, said Arthur Kirstein, coordinator of the Office of Agricultural Economic Development at the University of Florida's Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service. At the same time, he said, South Florida farmers haven't benefited from the biofuel boom like Midwestern corn farmers, since South Florida isn't doing substantial biofuel production yet. And fertilizer costs have skyrocketed because more corn than ever is being planted.

Corn consumes more fertilizer than any other crop Union of Concerned Scientists, is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United
States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists, October 2011. The Energy-Water Collision: Corn ethanols threat to Water Resources, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/corn-ethanol-and-waterquality.pdf While many fertilized crops contribute to the problem, corna particularly resourceintensive crop is the leading culprit. Corn is planted on less than 23 percent of U.S. cropland (USDA 2009), but receives 40 percent of the fertilizer (ERS 2011b). Best practices for the timing and application of fertilizer can reduce water pollution, but these practices are not consistently followed. For example, according to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture assessment of conservation practices in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, 62 percent of the farmland there requires improved management of fertilizers to address excessive losses of nitrogen and phosphorus. Planting a winter cover crop could help reduce erosion and provide fertilizer uptake year-round, but cover crops are currently used on less than 1 percent of the basins acres (NRCS 2010).

Runoff from corn ethanol production creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico move towards non-corn ethanol is key Union of Concerned Scientists, is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United
States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists, October 2011. The Energy-Water Collision: Corn ethanols threat to Water Resources, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/corn-ethanol-and-waterquality.pdf

Pollution from corn farming is a leading cause of water quality problems in the Upper Mississippi River watershed, polluting drinking water in agricultural areas and degrading rivers and lakes, while also expanding the Gulf of Mexicos dead zone (a large area deprived of oxygen). These problemsand their associated economic and health impactsare exacerbated by government policies that increase demand for corn ethanol, in turn expanding U.S. corn production. Better agricultural practices that keep fertilizer out of freshwater can mitigate the water quality problems associated with corn cultivation and corn ethanol production, but if we want to protect water quality while also reducing U.S. oil dependence, biofuel production must move beyond corn to more diverse and environmentally friendly crops and waste materials.

Current biofuel mandates demand levels of corn productions that would make restoring gulf health near impossible Union of Concerned Scientists, is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United
States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists, October 2011. The Energy-Water Collision: Corn ethanols threat to Water Resources, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/corn-ethanol-and-waterquality.pdf In reviewing the implications of biofuel production on the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, the National Research Council concluded that, The potential for additional cornbased ethanol production to increase the extent of these hypoxic regions is considerable (NRC 2008). A study cited in that report found that expanded production of corn ethanol to meet government biofuel mandates would increase nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River by 10 to 18 percent and would make it much more difficult to meet the nitrogen pollution reduction targets the government has set to restore health to the gulf (Donner and Kucharik 2008). Another study found that meeting government biofuel mandates using corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol made from corn stover would increase nitrogen pollution in the gulf by more than 25 percent compared with producing the same amount of fuel from switchgrass, again making the pollution reduction targets for the gulf much harder to meet (Costello et al. 2009).

Advantage 3-Navy
Ethanol is key to military power current energy independence efforts dont solve Bob Dinneen, of the Houston Chronicle, July 2, 2013. Clean-burning biofuels can give us true independence www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Clean-burning-biofuels-can-give-ustrue-4643503.php
This week, we celebrate Independence Day. Yet, our

country still depends on oil imported from volatile regions. Trusting unreliable foreign sources brings high pump prices and jeopardizes national security. Fortunately, our armed forces understand the importance of reliable fuel sources. The Navy is launching its Great Green Fleet, powered by 50-50 mixtures of biofuel and petroleum-based fuel. We can provide our motorists and military with stable, domestically produced fuel. Since 2011, American-made ethanol has contributed more to the U.S. fuel supply than gasoline refined from oil imports from OPEC. Oil terminals in Houston blend 10 percent ethanol for sale in the Houston gas
market. From 2005 through 2012, dependence on imported petroleum products declined from 60 to 41 percent. So why do politicians and pundits target the fuel that saved motorists an average of $1.09 per gallon in 2011 and increases independence from foreign countries? Because of myths about ethanol.

US Navy is investing in advanced biofuels to reduces fossil fuel dependence corn ethanol doesnt solve
James Hacker, is an energy and sustainability consultant based in Washington DC. He is a 2009 graduate of the George Washington University, where he studied economics and international affairs and was a Presidential Academic Scholar, 23 December 2011. But whos buying? The Navy, biofuels, and subsidies, www.senseandsustainability.net/2011/12/23/whos-buying/
On December 5, the

US Navy announced the largest ever purchase of biofuels by the US governmentat 450,000 gallons, worth roughly $12 million, it eclipses any other one-off purchase in government history. The purchase is also unique for its makeup, as all 450,000 gallons are advanced drop-in biofuels, which can be burned in any gas-burning engine. None are corn ethanol. The purchase is likely to be the first of many, and the end goal is a US Navy with significantly reduced use of conventional fuels, replacing at least half of the 1.26 billion barrels used per year with advanced nonconventionals by 2020.

Only non-corn based biofuels solve Naval energy dependence

Lieutenant Alaina M. Chambers, U.S. Navy, and Steve A. Yetiv. Lieutenant Chambers is a masters student in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. is University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University THE GREAT GREEN FLEET: The U.S. Navy and Fossil-Fuel Alternatives, Naval War College Review, Summer 2011, Vol. 64, No. 3,

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/72d7de2c-b537-4466-9b4b-809c205d1747/The-GreatGreen-Fleet--The-U-S--Navy-and-Fossil-Fu Tactical vehicles are air, land, and sea-based vehiclesincluding, that is, aircraft, ships, and craftthat directly conduct or support military operations. They represent the overwhelming majority of Navy and Marine Corps fuel consumption and present special challenges in terms of finding reliable alternative fuels. Biofuels represent one of DoNs most promising sources, but with current technology they require extensive land and water resources to produce. For this reason, Secretary Mabus is adamant that DoN sources of biofuel are not to compete with food crops, as has corn-based ethanol. This policy puts the Navy on stronger political footing in developing biofuels.

Limited US agricultural space prevents naval biofuel transition now

Lieutenant Alaina M. Chambers, U.S. Navy, and Steve A. Yetiv. Lieutenant Chambers is a masters student in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. is University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University THE GREAT GREEN FLEET: The U.S. Navy and Fossil-Fuel Alternatives, Naval War College Review, Summer 2011, Vol. 64, No. 3, http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/72d7de2c-b537-4466-9b4b-809c205d1747/The-GreatGreen-Fleet--The-U-S--Navy-and-Fossil-Fu A skeptic might point to the sheer scale of the Navys biofuel goals. In order to supply the Navys entire current demand for aviation fuel with algae, an estimated five hundred square miles of land would be required to grow the plants. To bring the cost down to two dollars a gallon, carbon dioxide would have to be transported from nearby conventional power plants;40 otherwise the cost jumps to forty-four dollars.41 Similarly, without a program to manage land and infrastructure for biofuels, camelina grown in the amounts necessary to meet DoN demand would require an area equivalent to between a quarter and a third of the state of Montana.42 At present, these obstacles are prohibitive, as they are for other forms of green energy. However, they could be surmounted as technology progresses and economies of scale emerge. Advances, for instance, in battery technology have allowed for a variety of electric and hybrid vehicles to gain traction in the marketa development that would not have been possible a decade ago.

Status quo ethanol production falls short of Navys demand

James Hacker, is an energy and sustainability consultant based in Washington DC. He is a 2009 graduate of the George Washington University, where he studied economics and international affairs and was a Presidential Academic Scholar, 23 December 2011. But whos buying? The Navy, biofuels, and subsidies, www.senseandsustainability.net/2011/12/23/whos-buying/
Last, the system has not been particularly effective at stimulating a real, functional biofuels market. This is due to two factors. One, current subsidies reward production volume, regardless of the presence of an end-user or the methods used to produce, allowing the industry to operate inefficiently indefinitely. Two, Renewable Fuel Standards have been ineffective in guaranteeing a market.

While the latest round of Renewable Fuel Standards mandates 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol by 2022, all indications are that the industry wont even come close to that. In fact, the

EPA recently lowered the 2011 target from 243.4 million gallons to 6.6 million, with the 2012 target likely to be lowered as well. This is a result of refiners consciously deciding to under-produce versus their targets, largely because the overall size of the market remains uncertain. This brings us back to the US Navys biofuels goal. As has already been noted, the Navy is a sizeable user of conventional fuelseven with a number of nuclear-powered vessels, the Fleet still burns in excess of 1.26 billion barrels of fuel a year across its fleet of ships, aircraft and amphibious vehicles. By committing to an eventual transition to advanced biofuels, the Navy has effectively said, in the coming decades, there will be a minimum market of 1.26 billion barrels of advanced biofuelsa sizable proportion of the current
projections for the industry.

Navy investment causes other sectors to follow suit

Alan Yu, story from Chicago Public Media, June 28, 2013. Boeing, United, USDA and Navy hope to power Midwest flights with biofuels, http://www.wbez.org/boeing-united-usda-and-navyhope-power-midwest-flights-biofuels-107900
At a summit to announce the reports findings, representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Navy

joined

their civilian counterparts in declaring biofuels as the way forward for air travel. For example, the Navy used a 50/50 biofuel blend to power its Great Green Fleet, a carrier strike group that includes
the U.S.S. Nimitz, in the worlds largest maritime exercise last summer, says Tom Hicks, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy.

Hicks said that the Navy often takes the lead with adopting new technology, citing titanium and nuclear power as examples. He said civilians often follow their lead. As you look back over the history of the Navy, the history of the defense department, when we get involved in different technologies, those absolutely have commercial impact, Hicks said. And (aviation biofuels) is something that we see going forward, as these fuels can be entered into the commercial market and be cost competitive, that this will just part of the new normal for the Navy in the future.

Transition to biofuels is key to the military

Martin LaMonica, CNET News where I write about cutting-edge and green technologies. I've been a journalist for more than 20 years covering the high-tech industry and green-tech startups. March 2, 2011. Navy: Full steam ahead on Great Green Fleet, http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20038428-54.html The Navy is already testing biofuel replacements for its aircraft and other equipment, either made by
growing plants and converting them to fuel or through "electrofuels" that use genetically engineered organisms that make fuel from water, carbon dioxide, and another energy source, such as hydrogen or electricity. The Defense Department's pursuit of fossil fuel alternatives was called into question by a RAND report in January that said alternative fuels for aviation offered "no direct benefit" from a military perspective over fossil fuels. Mabus didn't address the report specifically but said that all

major energy transitions in the history of the Navy were considered too expensive and too risky by military top brass, including the move from sail to coal. He said that the Navy would never allow oilproducing countries in volatile regions to produce its ships and aircraft, but the military does give them a say in whether the Navy's equipment will work. "Our dependence on fossil fuels creates strategic, operational, and tactical vulnerabilies for our forces and makes them

too susceptible to price and supply shocks caused by instability or natural disasters in volatile areas of the world where most of our fossil fuel is produced," he said.

Naval biofuel efforts will eliminate foreign oil dependence

Lieutenant Alaina M. Chambers, U.S. Navy, and Steve A. Yetiv. Lieutenant Chambers is a masters student in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. is University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University THE GREAT GREEN FLEET: The U.S. Navy and Fossil-Fuel Alternatives, Naval War College Review, Summer 2011, Vol. 64, No. 3, http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/72d7de2c-b537-4466-9b4b-809c205d1747/The-GreatGreen-Fleet--The-U-S--Navy-and-Fossil-Fu
Though its 300,000 barrels per day represents less than 2 percent of total American oil consumption, the Defense Department is the single largest consumer in the country.12 Of the services, at least 25 percent is allocated to the Navy, the second largest service consumer.13 The Army and Air Force have their own green energy initiatives, but this

article focuses on the Navys diverse and important measures to tackle the problem of fossil-fuel dependence. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabuss October 2009 energy vision addresses the Navys mission areas at sea, ashore, and in the air. In the transformative spirit of the Great White Fleet, it envisions a Great Green Fleet, made up of nuclear carriers, hybrid electric biofueled surface ships, and biofueled aircraft, supported by shorebased installations that run largely off renewable electricity.14 In spite of budget efficiency reviews and realignments in 2010, the Navy is pressing ahead with energy projects. This article makes two basic arguments. First, the U.S. Navy is engaged in what appears to be a serious move away from oil dependence. The American military is not generally viewed as a bastion of environmentally conscious innovation
quite the contrary. The popular idea is that the military tends to be conservative and not progressive; for their part, specialists in national security and world affairs tend not to think of the U.S. Navy as seeking novel ways to decrease oil dependence. They are more likely to view it as expending oil copiously and without great concern for the implications of doing so.

Green energy initiative key to military power

Andrew Winston, Founder, Winston Eco-Strategies; Author, 'Green to Gold' and 'Green Recovery', 05/17/11. The Navy's Tactical Strike on Fossil Fuel Use, Originally appeared in the Harvard Business Online, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-winston/navy-greenenergy_b_862390.html
Eighteen months ago, the

U.S. Navy announced it would source roughly half of its energy from alternative sources by 2020. Since then, the Navy has launched a number of innovative green projects, such as switching
some Marine forward bases in Afghanistan from fossil fuels to solar power. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, whom I recently saw speak about his energy program, runs a $150 billion budget and oversees 900,000 "employees." His experience can teach any organization some important lessons about making the case for green and executing the vision. Connect green to your core mission and strategy. For the Navy, going

green is about security and reducing dangerous reliance on fossil fuels from volatile parts of the world. As Mabus says, "we'd never let these regions produce our ships, but we give them a say in whether our ships sail, planes fly, or ground vehicles operate." Moving away from fossil fuels also saves soldiers' lives. For every 50 convoys of fuel, one Marine is killed or injured
(for more on the cost in lives and treasure, see this post). Guarding fuel also takes soldiers away from the real mission. Mabus puts it bluntly: "The big reason we're doing this is to make us better fighters." Then

connect green to cost savings. Since the 2009 energy goals, oil has risen$50 per barrel, costing the Navy $1.5 billion. Enough said. Set aggressive goals. Reaching for 50 percent renewables is driving innovation. Set a moderate goal, Mabus

says, and you'll get moderate results. Help your employees do their jobs. The Marines of the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines are using portable solar collectors to power up their many electronic devices. Eliminating batteries saves the battalion 600 pounds of gear. How happy are these guys now? Ignore the naysayers. As Mabus points out, the

Navy has switched fuel sources many times, from wind/sail to coal, from coal to oil, from oil to nuclear (partially). Each time, critics wondered why they'd embrace unknown fuels and in every case, he says, "the naysayers were proved wrong." Use pilot programs. The forward bases using solar energy are great demonstration projects. Another
big profile initiative is the U.S.S. Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship launched in late 2009 with hybrid gas-electric power. For speeds under 12 knots, it uses batteries, saving $2 million on its maiden voyage and an expected $250 million in its lifetime. Use data to drive buy-in and execution. One Marine per 50 convoys, $1.5 billion fuel cost rise, 600 pounds lighter, $250 million saved. Numbers work to paint a real picture. It's not just the Navy going green. The whole military is embracing this logic, as I've written about before. But

the Navy seems to be in the lead, and has a clear vision as to why green matters. The recent mythic raid on Osama bin Laden's compound gave us all a powerful demonstration of what the Navy SEALs can do. In talking about energy, Mabus makes a direct connection between the achievements of the military -- the Marines in particular -- and green: "Renewable energy will help us continue to be the most powerful expeditionary fighting force the world has ever known."

Naval power is key to deterrence, disaster relief and global stability

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAY MABUS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY BEFORE THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 08 MARCH 2011. http://www.armedservices.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/03%20March/Mabus%2003-08-11.pdf
Today, your

Navy and Marine Corps are conducting missions across the full range of military operations. They are engaged in combat in Afghanistan, stability operations in Iraq, deterrence and ballistic missile defense in the Pacific, Arabian Gulf, and the Mediterranean, as well as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations across the globe. Our unmatched global reach, endurance, and presence continue to allow the Navy and Marine Corps in partnership with our sister services to secure and advance Americas interests wherever challenges or crises have arisen, as well as operate forward to prevent crises from occurring. We remain the most formidable expeditionary fighting force the world has ever known, and with your continued support, the Navy and Marine Corps will continue to meet the multiplicity of threats that endanger international peace and security

Naval power is key to hegemony and economic growth

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAY MABUS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY BEFORE THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 08 MARCH 2011. http://www.armedservices.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/03%20March/Mabus%2003-08-11.pdf
It is clear that we live in a time of sweeping change and an era of strategic realignment. The President has stated that we must pursue a strategy of national renewal and global leadershipa strategy that rebuilds the foundation of American strength and influence. Seapower

has always been a part of that foundation and will continue to be an indispensible asset to American leadership and economic strength in the global community of nations. American seapower, as it has done for generations, continues to guarantee freedom of navigation and international maritime trade, underpinning global economic stability and

facilitating continued global economic growth. No other component of American military power is as flexible or adaptable as seapower. I see one of my primary responsibilities as Secretary to be
ensuring continuation of this responsiveness, flexibility, and adaptability through the policies we adopt and in the ships, aircraft, and weapons systems that we build.

Naval power is key to readiness and deterrence

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAY MABUS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY BEFORE THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 08 MARCH 2011. http://www.armedservices.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/03%20March/Mabus%2003-08-11.pdf Maritime nations have many inherent strategic advantages. Naval forces operating in the open ocean provide an effective conventional deterrent to those who threaten regional stability or promote extremism. Strong expeditionary forces can swiftly respond to crises and make potential adversaries pause before committing hostile actions. But should deterrence fail, our combat ready naval forces must be prepared to conduct sustained combat operations.

The unique flexibility of naval power checks numerous types of threats

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE RAY MABUS SECRETARY OF THE NAVY BEFORE THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 08 MARCH 2011. http://www.armedservices.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/03%20March/Mabus%2003-08-11.pdf The Navy and Marine Corps are Americas Away Team. They exist primarily to protect our nation far from home and respond quickly to crises wherever and whenever they occur. Exploiting their inherent mobility and maneuverability at sea, naval forces gather information, perform surveillance of seaborne and airborne threats, defend regional partners, deter prospective adversaries, interdict weapons of mass destruction, disrupt terrorist networks, conduct humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and support the work of American diplomacy. This variety of capabilities is a primary feature of seapower, and it provides the President and our Nation with unmatched flexibility to deter conflict and, if necessary, project power from the sea to defend U.S. national security interests. The ability to accomplish these tasks without placing a large presence ashore and absent concerns of sovereignty is absolutely critical in our world of increasingly sophisticated threats and growing geopolitical complexity.

Oil dependence ensures resource conflict with china

Lieutenant Alaina M. Chambers, U.S. Navy, and Steve A. Yetiv. Lieutenant Chambers is a masters student in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia. is University Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Old Dominion University THE GREAT GREEN FLEET: The U.S. Navy and Fossil-Fuel Alternatives, Naval War College Review, Summer 2011, Vol. 64, No. 3,

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/72d7de2c-b537-4466-9b4b-809c205d1747/The-GreatGreen-Fleet--The-U-S--Navy-and-Fossil-Fu From a different perspective, the U.S. Joint Forces Commands Joint Operating Environment, 2010 describes various threats posed by developing countries like China, which is racing to acquire oil resources around the world as its demand for oil rockets.7 The document, which speculates on global trends that could impact future joint military forces, addresses significant concerns about the destabilizing effects of American oil dependence. After all, future violent conflicts and humanitarian disasters will be directly in the purview of the U.S. military, whether caused by the stresses of climate change or an arms race over natural resources.8

Solvency
Cuba would say yesbut first the embargo must be lifted Specht 13
Jonathan Specht: Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf. 04/24/13. DA07/02/13 The ideal domestic policy scenario for the creation of a robust Cuban sugarcane ethanol industry would be a situation in which: the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is ended; U.S. tariff barriers are removed (in the case of sugar) or not revived (in the case of ethanol) ; and the RFS requiring that a certain percentage of U.S. fuel come from ethanol remain in place. Of course, changes in United States policy alone, even those that ensure a steady source of demand for Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol, would not be enough to create an ethanol industry from scratch. Cuba will need to foster the industry as a key goal of the post-Castro era and shape its domestic policies to encourage the growth of the industry.

Sugarcane ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 78% and fossil fuel usage by 97%key internal to warming Wang et all 8
Michael Wang*, May Wu, Hong Huo and Jiahong Liu (Center for Transportation Research, Argonne National Laboratory). International Sugar Journal: Life-Cycle Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emission Implications of Brazilian Sugarcane Ethanol Simulated with the GREET Model. http://www.afdc.energy.gov/pdfs/529.pdf 2008. DA- 07/02/13 By using data available in the open literature, we expanded the Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model developed by Argonne National Laboratory to include Brazilian-grown sugarcane ethanol. With the expanded GREET model, we examined the well-to-wheels (WTW) energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of sugarcane-derived ethanol produced in Brazil and used to fuel light-duty vehicles in the United States. Results for sugarcane ethanol were compared with those for petroleum gasoline. The sugarcane-to-ethanol pathway evaluated in the GREET model comprises fertilizer production, sugarcane farming, sugarcane transportation, and sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil; ethanol transportation to U.S. ports and then to U.S. refueling stations; and ethanol use in vehicles. Our analysis shows that sugarcane ethanol can reduce GHG emissions by 78% and fossil energy use by 97%, relative to petroleum gasoline. The large reductions can be attributed to use of bagasse in sugarcane mills, among other factors. To address the uncertainties involved in key input parameters, we developed and examined several sensitivity cases to test the effect of key parameters on WTW results for sugarcane ethanol. Of the total GHG emissions associated with sugarcane ethanol, the five major contributors are open-field burning of sugarcane tops and leaves, N2 O emissions from sugarcane fields, fertilizer production, sugarcane mill operation, and sugarcane farming. Brazil is going to phase out open-field burning in the future. This action will

certainly help further reduce GHG emissions of sugarcane farming, together with reductions in emissions of criteria pollutants such as Nox and particulate matter with diameters smaller than 10 microns. The eventual elimination of open-field burning in sugarcane plantations will result in additional GHG emission reductions by sugarcane ethanol of up to 9 percentage points.

US axn is the key to the industrylifting the embargo solves and jumpstarts the industry Specht 13
Jonathan Specht: Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf. 04/24/13. DA07/02/13 As the United States faces the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil, biofuels must be a part of the solution. However, it is imperative that policies promoting biofuels are capable of accomplishing the United States environmental and energy goals. Neither a wholesale abandonment of federal involvement in the development of biofuels nor a continuation of the corncentric status quo is an acceptable way forward. The development of a Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry is part of a potential solution. Whether the former incentives for the domestic ethanol that expired at the end of 2011 will be revived by a future Farm Bill remains to be seen. Even if they are not, as long as the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba continues there will be little chance of that country making a substantial investment in the development of an entire new industry. It is understandable, for face-saving reasons, that United States policy-makers would not consider ending the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba as long as Fidel Castro remains alive.196 But , as soon as possible after a governmental transition begins in Cuba, United States policy-makers should consider taking steps to encourage the creation of such an industry.

Cuban sugarcane industry key to US alternative energy model Cajide 12

Jeanette Cajide. Huffington Post: US-Cuba Policy: Moving Forward. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeanette-cajide/us-cuba-policy_b_2088347.html 11/09/12. DA07/03/13 Once we can normalize relations, one consideration to explore with Cuba is developing an alternative energy industry in Cuba and use Brazil as an example. Cuba used to be one of the top producers of sugar cane. Many of the fields sit empty today. If Cuba could rebuild its sugar cane industry and begin to produce ethanol-from-sugar, given its close proximity to the U.S.A., shipping costs from Cuba would be lower than shipping costs from Brazil, and the U.S. could create a sustainable alternative energy model.

Repeal agricultural sanctions to allow Cuban sugarcane access to US markets Yeomans 10

Allan Yeomans (agriculturalist and author of PRIORITY ONE Together We Can Beat Global Warming) On Ending Global Warming: CUBAN TRADE EMBARGO. BIG-OIL and GLOBAL

WARMING. en.allexperts.com/q/Global-warming-Climate-3851/ - 23k March 2010. DA07/03/12 Cubas main business is growing sugarcane. Using sugar is the cheapest and most practical way to produce ethanol. Every year from an acre of sugarcane you can produce 750 gallons of ready-to-use ethanol. (And it can be done organically.) If Cuba was allowed to trade freely with the US it could supply ethanol to US motorists at half the price you now pay for gasoline. When you look at the figures for Cuba you find that 75% of Cuba is sugar cane country. Thats like a paddock one hundred and seventy miles square. It would produce enough to continuously run 30 million cars on straight ethanol. Or 35 million cars on E85, which a lot of modern American cars are designed for. It is thus very logical for the oil conglomerates and the Middle East oil states to insist, and demand, and to connive, to insure that the Cuban Embargo continues indefinitely. Other things have also been arranged that suit the oil companies. There is a 2.5% duty on imported oil and imported ethanol into the US. So on face value that seems fair but, (and its a big but) if you import ethanol you pay an additional 54 cents duty on every gallon imported. With sugarcane ethanol you harvest the sap . With grain ethanol you harvest the nutritious seeds. So sugarcane is the logical choice. Corn farmers and the oil conglomerates in the US are now subsidized to produce and blend ethanol from corn. The costs have been astronomical and the impact is that just a tiny 1.5% of US fuel is derived from corn farming. Coincidently, the oil industries corn ethanol subsidies appear more than sufficient to offset the 1.5% loss in oil sales revenues. WHAT TO DO ? First eliminate the 54 cents penalty on imported ethanol from anywhere in the World. Secondly, eliminate the trade embargo on Cuba - at least on sugar and ethanol. And lastly, because it would be political impossible to cancel; maintain the corn subsidies to American farmers.

Warming 2nd lines

Warming: Real/Human Caused

Newest studies from NOAA prove warming is occurring now Brennan 13
Charlie Brennan. Huffington Post: Global Warming Over Land Is Real: CU-Boulder, NOAA Study. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/cu-boulder-led-study-conf_n_3068291.html 04/12/13 DA-07/05/13 The thermometers got it right. The Earth is warming, another study is reporting. Climate scientists recognize that changes in weather observation stations' immediate surroundings -- such as neighboring trees being replaced by heat-absorbing concrete -can eventually throw data from such stations into question. But now, a

new study directed by a researcher at the N ational O ceanic and A tmospheric A dministration that recreates climate history without the use of land-based observation systems shows the same thing that thermometers have been reporting. "This shows that global warming over land is real," said Gilbert Compo, a scientist at NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. "It is not an artifact of the observing system," said Compo, lead author of the study, which he presented to the European Geophysical Union on Tuesday in Vienna. "It is happening." Compo and his colleagues used an alternate method to review the planet's temperature history from 1871 through 2010. They deployed what is called 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR), a physically based, state-of-the-art data assimilation system
using barometric pressure records, ocean surface temperatures and other factors independent of land-based readings that can be skewed by changes in their surroundings. Compo's team came to a conclusion that supports land-based instruments' reporting that, since 1952, the Earth has shown a 1.18 degree Celsius increase in air temperature over land. Compo, in an email, stated that the actual number the 20CR analysis showed for warming since 1952 was 0.78 degrees Celsius, which he termed "statistically indistinguishable" from 1.18 degrees Celsius. Also, the study showed an increase from 1901 to 2010 of 0.99 degrees Celsius, which Compo said "is larger than some (land-based) instrument datasets, while smaller than others -- and is statistically indistinguishable from all of them." NOAA meteorologist Jeffrey Whitaker, a co-author of the study, explained why some land-based historical readings have come not to be trusted. "With weather stations that were in rural areas in the early part of the 20th century, you have cities that grow up around them, and they look like they have a (warming) trend, but part of that trend could be because a city grew up around them. It could have nothing to do with a global warming signal, per se. "But urbanization and land-use changes wouldn't affect our analysis because we didn't use any of that information," Whitaker added. "All we used were the barometers and the temperatures over the ocean." "One

thing we found was that the barometer is even more valuable than we thought," Compo said. "We were able to reproduce the hour-by-hour, day-by-day variations in temperature using only barometric pressure as a starting point." Whitaker is not
anticipating that the study, published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters, will suddenly turn around global warming skeptics. "This

doesn't really change the answer," Whitaker said. "This is just one extra piece of evidence. It is not enough that I think it is really going to sway anybody's mind who isn't already convinced, one way or the other." But Compo expressed hope "that the general public and decision makers, no matter what their political affiliation, would recognize that the warming of the land areas is real. Even the barometers can tell that the planet is warming."

Vast consensus warming human induced- negation scientists bought off by oil companies Gayomali 13
Chris Gayolamali. The Week: Scientists: Climate change is real. http://theweek.com/article/index/244345/scientists-climate-changeis-real 05/16/13. Da-07/05/13

As if the backing of NASA, 18 independent American scientific societies, and an intergovernmental panel established under the United Nations weren't enough to quell the protests popping up in comment sections across the Internet, a new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters confirms once again that climatologists almost unanimously believe that climate change is directly related to human-made carbon emissions. Researchers pored over nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific papers from 1991 to 2011. These papers,

according to Michael Todd at Pacific Standard, represented the work of 29,083 authors and 1,980 journals. The conclusion could hardly be stronger: 97 percent of scientists agree that anthropogenic, or human-caused, global warming exists. "That suggests both a consensus, and an overwhelming one," adds Todd. "The public perception of a scientific consensus on [anthropogenic global warming] is a necessary element in public support for climate policy," conclude the study's authors. And yet, according to Pew Internet Research (PDF), 57 percent of Americans are unaware that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus. Why the discrepancy? Big Oil is at least partly to blame. Following the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol in 1998, Popular Science reports that the American Petroleum Institute organized a task force to spend $5.9 million to "discredit climate scientists and quash growing public support of curbing emissions." The strategy, according to a leaked memo titled the "Global Climate Science Communications Plan," included efforts to "recruit, train, and pay willing scientists to sow doubt about climate science among the media and the public."

Research shows Earth is warming- not measurement error Ogburn 13

Stephanie Paige Ogburn. Scientific American: New Method ProvesAgainClimate Change Is Real. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-method-proves-climate-change-is-real 04/10/13. DA-07/05/13

In August 2012, John Christy, a climate scientist from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, testified to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the Earth is not warming. In part, Christy's testimony, a controversial one, was based on what he described as a problem with how surface temperatures are measured and averaged. Climate scientist Gilbert Compo's response to that was: Well, I'll measure those temperatures differently. So he set out to use an entirely different method to determine if the Earth's surface temperature had increased 1.2 degrees Celsius since preindustrial times. The answer: Undeniably yes. This new method shows that it is not a factor of measurement error and that the Earth has in fact warmed, said Compo. Data from ships' logs and Army bases "If I had ever had any doubts about whether global warming was happening, then this [study], which I know has no relationship to the land-based observations, dashed all of my doubts," Compo said. The results of the study were published online Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters The locations of weather stations, changes in instruments, the siting of weather stations in warmer urban areas, changes in land cover and other issues have all been cited as issues affecting the temperature trends often used to show that our planet is in fact warming. Compo's method uses none of these. Instead, the researcher and his colleagues use historic measurements of air pressure and ocean temperatures, put into a model, to calibrate surface temperatures over the 20th century. That project, called the 20th Century Reanalysis, gets those pressure data from historic data sources like ship logs and Army bases, which are compiled by volunteers at oldweather.org and ACRE, two efforts that catalog old weather data and make them available to researchers. Those many, many pieces of air pressure data help Compo and his
team piece together a snapshot of what was happening in the weather at a given point in time; every six hours since the 1870s, in fact. If

the researchers can spot pressure highs and lows, then they know where the wind is blowing, for instance. As they continue to add data points from around the globe and move forward in time, a process of elimination takes place until they know what the temperature is in, say, Washington, D.C., 100 years ago. "When I know where the highs and lows are, I know where the hot and cold spots have to be, I can start to line them up," said Compo. "It's like Sudoku." Skeptics remain skeptical Eugenia Kalnay, a professor at the University of Maryland who reviewed the paper, called the model "very sophisticated." Kalnay said it provides an answer to climate skeptics who point out that changes in land use or instrumentation make land-based temperature data unreliable.

Human drivers far outweigh any natural factors of warming NOAA 07

NOAA: How do Human Activities Contribute to Climate Change and How do They Compare with Natural Influences? http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/howhuman.pdf 2007. DA-07/05/13 Human activities contribute to climate change by causing changes in Earths atmosphere in the amounts of greenhouse gases, aerosols (small particles), and cloudiness. The

largest known contribution comes from the burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide gas to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases and aerosols affect climate by altering incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared (thermal) radiation that are part of Earths energy balance. Changing the atmospheric abundance or properties of these gases and particles can lead to a warming or cooling of the climate system. Since the start of the industrial era (about 1750), the overall effect of human activities on climate has been a warming influence. The human impact on climate during this era greatly exceeds that due to known changes in natural processes, such as solar changes and volcanic eruptions.

Greenhouse gases and CO2 only explanation for Global Warming EDF 12
Environmental Defense Fund: How we know human activity is causing warming. http://www.edf.org/climate/human-activity-causeswarming/ 2012. 07/05/13 That leaves the greenhouse

effect as the only remaining scientific explanation for the rise in global temperatures in recent decades. We have direct measurements of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere going back more than 50 years, and indirect measurements (from ice cores) going back hundreds of thousands of years. These measurements confirm that concentrations are rising rapidly. Though natural amounts of CO2 have varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today's CO2 levels are around 390 ppm. That's 30% more than the highest natural levels over the past 800,000 years. Increased CO2 levels have contributed to periods of higher average temperatures throughout that long record. (Boden, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center) We also know the additional CO2 in the atmosphere comes mainly from coal and oil, because the chemical composition of the CO2 contains a unique "fingerprint." As far as scientists are concerned, it's case closed: human activity is causing the Earth to get warmer, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, with a smaller contribution from deforestation. All other scientific explanations for why the Earth is getting warmer have been eliminated.

Warming: Irreversible
CO2 induced warming irreversible Wright 13
Helen Wright. Griffith University: Forest and soil carbon is important but does not offset fossil fuel emissions. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/gu-fas052913.php 05/29/13. DA- 07/05/13

Professor Brendan Mackey of Griffith University Climate Change Response Program is the lead author of an international study involving researchers from Australia and the U.K. Their findings are reported in
"Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy," published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change. "While

protecting and restoring natural forests is part of the solution, the reality is that for all practical purposes fossil fuel CO2 emissions are irreversible," Professor Mackey said. The findings highlight the urgent need for policy-makers worldwide to rethink the issue as many decision-makers, national and internationally, assume that fossil fuel emissions can be offset through sequestering carbon by planting trees and other land management practices. "There is a danger in believing that land carbon sinks can solve the problem of atmospheric carbon emissions because this legitimises the ongoing use of fossil fuels," Professor
Mackey said. The study found that protecting natural forests avoids emissions that would otherwise result from logging and land clearing while also conserving biodiversity. Restoring degraded ecosystems or planting new forests helps store some of the carbon dioxide that was emitted from past land use activities. "These land management actions should be rewarded as they are an important part of the solution," Professor Mackay said. "However, no

amount of reafforestation or growing of new trees will ultimately off-set continuing CO2 emissions due to environmental constraints on plant growth and the large amounts of remaining fossil fuel reserves. "Unfortunately there is no option but to cut fossil fuel emissions deeply as about a third of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 2 to 20 millennia."

Warming: Co2 cause

Human produced CO2 biggest cause to Global Warming EPA 13
Envionmental Protection Agency: Causes of Climate Change. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html 06/21/13. DA07/05/13

Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change. CO2 is
absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through animal and plant respiration, volcanic eruptions, and oceanatmosphere exchange. Human

activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, release large amounts of carbon to the atmosphere, causing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to rise. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased by almost 40% since pre-industrial times, from approximately 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in the 18th century to 390 ppmv in 2010. The current CO2 level is higher than it has been in at least 800,000 years. [1] Some volcanic eruptions released large quantities of CO2 in the distant past. However, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human activities now emit more than 135 times as much CO2 as volcanoes each year. Human activities currently release over 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. [1] This build-up in the atmosphere is like a tub filling with water, where more water flows from the faucet than the drain can take away.

Warming: Positive Feedbacks

If we dont curtail fossil fuels positive feedbacks will ensue Hansen 13
James. "Making Things Clearer: Exaggeration, Jumping the Gun, and The Venus Syndrome." Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, 15 Apr. 2013. Web. 5 July 2013. <http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdf>.

The inertia of the climate system is not our friend. Because climate responds slowly, we have felt so far only about half of the effect of gases already in the air. This limited response makes it easier for people to believe that we are exaggerating the climate threat. Climate system inertia
means that it will take several centuries for the eventual extreme global warming mentioned above to occur, if we are so foolish as to burn all of the fossil fuel resources. Unfortunately, despite the ocean's thermal inertia, the transient climate phase this century,

if we continue business-as-usual fossil fuel burning, is likely to cause an extended phase of extreme climate chaos. As ice sheets begin to shed ice more and more rapidly, our climate simulations indicate that a point will be reached when the high latitude ocean surface cools while low latitudes surfaces are warming. An increased temperature gradient, i.e., larger temperature contrast between low and high latitudes, will drive more powerful storms, as
discussed in "Storms of My Grandchildren".10 The science of climate change, especially because of the unprecedented human-made climate forcing, includes many complex aspects. This complexity conspires with the nature of reporting and the scientific method itself, with its inherent emphasis of caveats and continual reassessment of conclusions, to make communications with the public difficult, even when the overall picture is reasonably clear.

Permafrost melt in Siberia creates substantial positive feedbacks Mathews 6/24

Joe. "The Mud Report." : Positive Feedback Loops Create Problems for Climate Models and Possibly Wicked Outcomes. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, 24 June 2013. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://themudreport.blogspot.com/2013/06/positive-feedbackloops-create-wicked.html>.

Another positive feedback that's been overlooked until recently is the release of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from peat bogs into water courses from where it would in turn enter the atmosphere. Western Siberia, for instance, has a one million square kilometer region of permafrost peat bog that was formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The melting of its permafrost is likely to lead to the release of large quantities of methane.

Artic methane release is nonlinear and catastrophic Mathews 6/24, Joe. "The Mud Report." : Positive Feedback Loops Create Problems for Climate Models and Possibly Wicked
Outcomes. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, 24 June 2013. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://themudreport.blogspot.com/2013/06/positive-feedback-loops-create-wicked.html>. That issue,

Arctic methane release - the release of methane from seas and soils in permafrost regions of the Arctic - is the most accepted positive feedback mechanism and the most feared because of its potential to create non-linear catastrophic change. Large quantities of methane are stored in the Arctic in natural gas deposits, permafrost, and as submarine clathrates. Permafrost and clathrates degrade on warming, in addition organic matter stored in permafrost generates heat as it decomposes in response to the permafrost melting, thus large releases of methane from these sources may arise as a result of this positive feedback loop. Staying in the Arctic, there's the ice-albedo feedback loop. When ice melts, land or open water takes its place. Both land and open water are on average less reflective than ice and thus absorb more solar radiation. This causes more warming, which in turn causes more melting, and this cycle continues. Sea ice, and the cold conditions it sustains, serves to
stabilize methane deposits on and near the shoreline, preventing the clathrate breaking down and outgassing methane into the atmosphere. Recent observations in the Siberian arctic show increased rates of methane release from the Arctic seabed as well as the land.

Water vapor loop creates intense rainfalls Mathews 6/24, Joe. "The Mud Report." : Positive Feedback Loops Create Problems for Climate Models and Possibly Wicked
Outcomes. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, 24 June 2013. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://themudreport.blogspot.com/2013/06/positive-feedback-loops-create-wicked.html>. Then there's water vapor feedback.

As the atmosphere is warmed, the saturation vapor pressure increases, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will increase. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the increase in water vapor content makes the atmosphere warm further; this warming causes the atmosphere to hold still more water vapor. A recent study on global warming concluded, We have high confidence that the most extreme rainfalls will become even more intense."

Warming: Authors

Their authors lie

Dont believe their authors they underestimate the impact of global warming Fischer 11
Douglas Fischer. TDC: Evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts. http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdcnewsroom/2011/10/climate-alarmism 10/18/11. DA- 07/05/13 But as

the impacts of climate change become apparent, many predictions are proving to underplay the actual impacts. Reality, in many instances, is proving to be far worse than most scientists expected. "We're seeing mounting evidence now that the scientific community, rather than overstating the claim or being alarmist, is the opposite," said Naomi Oreskes, a science historian with the University of California, San Diego. "Scientists have been quite conservative ... in a lot of important and different areas." A decade ago scientists predicted
the Arctic wouldn't be ice-free in summer until 2100. But the extent of summer ice in the North has rapidly shrunk and today covers 70 percent of the area it did in 1979. Now some scientists think the Arctic could be naught but open water within 25 years. In August, a team lead by University of York researcher Chris Thomas published a study showing that plants and animals are moving to higher elevations twice as fast as predicted in response to rising temperatures. They're migrating north three times faster than expected, they found As for extinctions, earlier

this year two scientists at the University of Exeter paired predicted versus observed annihilation rates. The real-world rates are more than double what the best computer modeling showed: While the studies, on average, warned of a 7 percent extinction rate, field observations suggested the rate was closer to 15 percent. Oreskes has spent a career studying climate science. She finds ample evidence that climate scientists are indeed biased - just not in the way portrayed by politicians such as Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who claimed scientists paint a bleak picture to secure more research funding. In reality, Oreskes said, scientists skew their results away from worst-case, doomsday scenarios. "Many people in the scientific community have felt that it's important to be conservative - that it protects your credibility," she said. "There's a low-end bias. It has led scientists to understate, rather than overstate,
the impacts." Media's fault, too Not all scientists agree that they and their colleagues have deliberately downplayed impacts, of course. But other scholars have noted the misperception - and argued the fault lies not just with scientists, but also with journalists reporting those findings. In a notable 2010 study, the late William Freudenberg, a University of California, Santa Barbara, researcher who studied science and the media, found that new scientific findings are more than 20 times likely to show that global climate disruption is "worse than previously expected" rather than "not as bad as previously expected." He drew two conclusions from the assessment, one for scientists and one for journalists: Scientists

should be more skeptical toward supposed "good news" on global warming. And reporters, he warned, "need to learn that, if they wish to discuss 'both sides' of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate 'other side' is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date."

IPCC Great
IPCC is objective organization Pachauri 8
Rajendra K. Pachauri, Director-General of TERI, Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, The IPCC: Establishing the Evidence Page 13-14 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program. Reexamination

of the evidence on climate change is the basic purpose of the IPCC. The thorough, consensual, and objective manner in which these assessments are carried out provides solid credibility for the findings. One example: the IPCC nominated close to 2,000 experts to compile the Fourth Assessment Report. From this group it appointed about 600. The first draft was prepared and reviewed by other experts. On the basis of this review, the authors prepared the second draft, which went the rounds of expert and government reviews. Following this second review, the authors prepared the final draft along with a synthesis of the report for policymakers. These two sets of documents were approved by the working group that oversaw the preparation of the report and by the IPCC as a whole. The IPCC has followed a similarly elaborate process for every report. The
Fourth Assessment Report, currently in hand, closes some gaps and provides fresh knowledge on the science of climate change. The three reports of working groups 1, 2, and 3, which form part of the Fourth Assessment Report, were completed and released in early in 2007 (February, April, and May, respectively). The synthesis report of the Fourth Assessment Report is due to be completed and released in November 2007. Although the first three assessment reports strengthened previous basic findings, the fourth provides

even stronger scientific evidence and a stronger basis for actions necessary to move forward during the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. It is in the context of this
report that this chapter addresses not only the geophysical aspects of climate change but also the socioeconomic aspects, including equity implications.

Warming: Impacts
Systemic: Global warming leads to death, hunger, and poverty Hertsgaard 12
Mark Hertsgaard. The Daily Beast: Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year, New Report Reveals. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-change-kills-400-000-a-year-new-report-reveals.html 11/27/12. DA07/05/13

Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide. Climate change also is costing the world economy $1.2 trillion a year, the equivalent of 1.6 percent of economic output, reports the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by 20 of the worlds governments whose nations are most threatened by climate change and released on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Most of the 400,000 annual deaths are due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries, concludes the study, written by 50 scientists and policy experts from around the world. Separately, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that the record heat and drought that struck the United States and other key global food producers during the summer of 2012 will slash crop yields, raise food prices, and, unless urgent action is taken, turn into a catastrophe hurting tens of millions over the coming months. The new report is another reminder that climate changes most savage impact is hunger and poverty, said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, in a statement. Behind the statistics are the stories of real families and communities, for whom climate change means putting children to bed with empty stomachs. A Reuters report on the new study, however, dramatically overstated the projected death toll, stating,
more than 100 million will dieby 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change. But the 100 million figure includes deaths not only from climate change but also from air pollution and indoor cooking smoke, long major killers in developing countries, where women often cook with wood in poorly ventilated structures. What is new about the report is its calculation

Climate Vulnerability Monitor of 400,000 annual deaths from climate change. That is a significant increase over previous estimates. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, said in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 that climate change caused 150,000 extra deaths a year. But the 150,000 figure took into account only deaths from malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea caused by contaminated water, a common result of floods. Excluded were the effects of heat waves, crop losses due to an increase in pests, and a range of other deadly diseases, which can be substantial. For example, the record-breaking heat wave that blanketed Europe for six weeks in summer 2003 caused at least 71,449 excess deaths, according to a 2008 study sponsored by the European Union. As global warming intensifies in the coming years, the death toll could rise to 700,000 a year by 2030, the new report calculates, while the economic costs, if the effects of air pollution are included, could increase to 3.2 percent of global output.
These economic costs arise not only from stunting of crops, flooding, and wildfires, as Americans experienced this summer, but also from the lower productivity of workers when they labor under hotter conditions. Although most

of the human suffering and economic damage will occur in the worlds poorest nations, which have contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions that are overheating the planet, the United States is by no means
immune. Climate impacts could cut the U.S. GNP by 2 percent by 2030, according to the report.

Economic: Climate change costs 1.6% of global output Hertsgaard 12

Mark Hertsgaard. The Daily Beast: Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year, New Report Reveals. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/27/climate-change-kills-400-000-a-year-new-report-reveals.html 11/27/12. DA07/05/13

Nearly 1,000 children a day are now dying because of climate change, according to a path-breaking study published Wednesday (PDF), and the annual death toll stands at 400,000 people worldwide. Climate

change also is costing the world economy $1.2 trillion a year, the equivalent of 1.6 percent of economic output, reports the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, a study commissioned by 20 of the worlds governments whose nations are most threatened by climate change and released on the sidelines of the U.N. General
Assembly meeting in New York. Most of the 400,000 annual deaths are due to hunger and communicable diseases that affect above all children in developing countries, concludes the study, written by 50 scientists and policy experts from around the world. Separately, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has warned that the record heat and drought that struck the United States and other key global food producers during the summer of 2012 will slash crop yields, raise food prices, and, unless urgent action is taken, turn into a catastrophe hurting tens of millions over the coming months. The new report is another reminder that climate changes most savage impact is hunger and poverty, said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, in a statem ent. Behind the statistics are the stories of real families and communities, for whom climate change means putting children to bed with empty stomachs. A Reuters report on the new study, however, dramatically overstated the projected death toll, stating, more than 100 million will dieby 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change. But the 100 million figure includes deaths not only from climate change but also from air pollution and indoor cooking smoke, long major killers in developing countries, where women often cook with wood in poorly ventilated structures. What is new about the Climate Vulnerability Monitor report is its calculation of 400,000 annual deaths from climate change. That is a significant increase over previous estimates. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the gold standard for climate science, said in its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 that climate change caused 150,000 extra deaths a year. But the 150,000 figure took into account only deaths from malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea caused by contaminated water, a common result of floods. Excluded were the effects of heat waves, crop losses due to an increase in pests, and a range of other deadly diseases, which can be substantial. For example, the record-breaking heat wave that blanketed Europe for six weeks in summer 2003 caused at least 71,449 excess deaths, according to a 2008 study sponsored by the European Union. As global warming intensifies in the coming years, the death toll could rise to 700,000 a year by

2030, the new report calculates, while the economic costs, if the effects of air pollution are included, could increase to 3.2 percent of global output. These economic costs arise not only from stunting of crops, flooding, and wildfires, as Americans experienced this summer, but also from the lower productivity of workers when they labor under hotter conditions. Although most of the human suffering
and economic damage will occur in the worlds poorest nations, which have contributed little to the greenhouse gas emissions that are overheating the planet, the United States is by no means immune. Climate

impacts could cut the U.S. GNP

by 2 percent by 2030, according to the report.

External: Warming causes utter extinction Morgan 09

Professor of Current Affairs @ Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea (Dennis Ray, World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race, Futures, Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2009, Pages 683-693, ScienceDirect)

As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem, the one consolation is that this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move away from aggressive wars over natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons. On the other hand, another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be reversed within a short period of time because it is not a fastburning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops globally. This gradual process and course is longlasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about progress
and industrial development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often been depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is gradually rising. Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water sneaks up on it until it is debilitated. Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble attempt is to no avail . Whether this fable can actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global warming may eventually lead to a runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the time the politicians finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused, its development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself out of hot water. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the WorldMeteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of humaninduced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and

and the frog dies

mitigation.*16+. Since then, it has given assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior assessments came attacks fromsome parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis in planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more andmore research continually provided concrete and empirical evidence to confirm the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that human induced global warming is verifiable. As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben *17+, 12 years of impressive scientific research strongly confirms the 1995 report that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earths systemsthe balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy; . . . their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel. *17+. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only confirms global warming, with a stronger scientific consensus that the slow burn is very likely human caused, but it also finds that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before and the temperature increases would be considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet. *17+. Furthermore, almost everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent. *17]. Unless drastic action is taken soon, the average global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it could rise as much as 8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is melting the Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal areas, which could be much greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios, which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the long-term future of human civilization. In other words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient account of the dynamics of systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization and nature. As a matter of fact, as early as the 1950s, Hannah Arendt [18] observed this radical shift of emphasis in the human-nature relationship, which starkly contrasts with previous times because the very distinction between nature and man as Homo faber has become blurred, as man no longer merely takes from nature what is needed for fabrication; instead, he now acts into nature to augment and transform natural processes, which are then directed into the evolution of human civilization itself such that we become a part of the very processes that we make. The more human civilization becomes an integral part of this dynamic system, the more difficult it becomes to extricate ourselves from it. As Arendt pointed out, this dynamism is dangerous because of its unpredictability. Acting into nature to transform natural processes brings about an . . . endless new change of happenings whose eventual outcome the actor is entirely incapable of knowing or controlling beforehand. The moment we started natural processes of our own - and the splitting of the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process -we not only increased our power over nature, or became more aggressive in our dealings with the given forces of the earth, but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in *18+. So, in as much as we act into nature, we carry our own unpredictability into our world; thus, Nature can no longer be thought of as having absolute or iron-clad laws. We no longer know what the laws of nature are because the unpredictability of Nature increases in proportion to the degree by which industrial civilization injects its own processes into it; through selfcreated, dynamic, transformative processes, we carry human unpredictability into the future with a precarious recklessness that may indeed end in human catastrophe or extinction, for elemental forces that we have yet to understand may be unleashed upon us by the very environment that we experiment with. Nature may yet have her revenge and the last word, as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return. This is exactly the conclusion reached by the scientist, inventor, and author, James Lovelock. The creator of the wellknown yet controversial Gaia Theory, Lovelock has recently written that it may be already too late for humanity to change course since climate centers around the world, . . . which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earths physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earths family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earths surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. . . . Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This global dimming is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fools climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. [19] Moreover, Lovelock states that the task of trying to correct our course is hopelessly impossible, for we are not in charge. It is foolish and arrogant to think that we can regulate the atmosphere, oceans and land surface in order to maintain the conditions right for life. It is as impossible as trying to regulate your own temperature and the composition of your blood, for those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys *19+. Lovelock concludes his analysis on the fate of human civilization and Gaia by saying that we will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate *19+. Lovelocks forecast for climate change is based on a systems dynamics analysis of the interaction between humancreated processes and natural processes. It is a multidimensional model that appropriately reflects the dynamism of industrial civilization responsible for climate change. For one thing, it takes into account positive feedback loops that lead to runaway conditions. This mode of analysis is consistent with recent research on how ecosystems suddenly disappear. A 2001 article in Nature, based on a scientific study by an international consortium, reported that changes in ecosystems are not just

gradual but are often sudden and catastrophic [20]. Thus, a scientific consensus is emerging (after repeated studies of ecological change) that stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different, according to Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (who is also a co-author of the report). Carpenter continues, We realize that there is a common pattern were seeing in ecosystems around the world, . . . Gradual eventually to the system a flood or a drought - and, boom, youre over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse. *20+. If ecosystems are in fact mini-models of the system of the Earth, as Lovelock maintains, then we can expect the same kind of behavior. As Jonathon Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist and another co-author of the Nature report, puts it, Nature isnt linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you have the straw that breaks the camels back. Also, once the flip occurs, as Foley maintains, then the catastrophic change is irreversible. *20+. When we expand this analysis of ecosystems to the Earth itself, its frightening. What could be the final push on a stressed system that could break the camels back? Recently, another factor has been discovered in some areas of the arctic regions, which will surely compound the problem of global heating (as Lovelock calls it) in unpredictable and perhaps catastrophic ways. This disturbing development, also reported in Nature, concerns the permafrost that has locked up who knows how many tons of the greenhouse gasses, methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists are particularly worried about permafrost because, as it thaws, it releases these gases into the atmosphere, thus, contributing and accelerating global heating. It is a vicious positive feedback loop that compounds the prognosis of global warming in ways that could very well prove to be the tipping point of no return. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press describes this disturbing positive feedback loop of permafrost greenhouse gasses, as when warming . already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on. *21+. The significance and severity of this problem cannot be understated since scientists have discovered that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called yedoma is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times *my emphasis] the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels *21+. Of course, it wont come out all at once, at least by time as we commonly reckon it, but in terms of geological time, the several decades that scientists say it will probab ly take to come out can just as well be considered all at once. Surely, within the next 100 years, much of the world we live in will be quite hot and may be unlivable, as Lovelock has predicted. Professor Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study that appeared in Science, describes it as a slow motion time bomb. *21+. Permafrost under lakes will be released as methane while that which is under dry ground will be released as carbon dioxide. Scientists arent sure which is worse. Whereas methane is a much more powerful agent to trap heat, it only lasts for about 10 years before it dissipates into carbon dioxide or other chemicals. The less powerful heat-trapping agent, carbon dioxide, lasts for 100 years [21]. Both of the greenhouse gasses present in permafrost represent a global dilemma and challenge that compounds the effects of global warming and runaway climate change. The scary thing about it, as one researcher put it, is that there are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off *21+.14 In an accompanying AP article, Katey Walters of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks describes the effects as huge and, unless we have a major cooling, - unstoppable *22+. Also, theres so much more that has not even been discovered yet, she writes: Its coming out a lot and theres a lot more to come out. *22+. 4 . Is it the end of human civilization and possible extinction of humankind? What Jonathon Schell wrote concerning death by the fire of nuclear holocaust also applies to the slow burning death of global warming: Once

changes in vulnerability accumulate and

you get a shock

we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction, we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the
difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species [23].15 When

we consider that beyond the horror of nuclear war, another horror is set into motion to interact with the subsequent nuclear winter to produce a poisonous and super heated planet, the chances of human survival seem even smaller. Who
knows, even if some small remnant does manage to survive, what the poisonous environmental conditions would have on human evolution in the future. A remnant of mutated, sub-human creatures might survive such harsh conditions, but for

all purposes, human civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. Thus, we have no other choice but to consider the finality of it all, as Schell does: Death lies at the core of each persons private existence, but part of deaths meaning is to be found in the fact that it occurs in a biological and social world that survives. *23+.16 But what if the world itself were to perish, Schell asks. Would not it bring about a sort of second death the
death of the species a possibility that the vast majority of the human race is in denial about? Talbot writes in the review of Schells book that

it is not only the death of the species, not just of the earths population on doomsday, but of countless unborn generations. They would be spared literal death but would nonetheless be victims . . . *23+. That is the second death of humanity the horrifying, unthinkable prospect that there are no prospects that there will be no future. In the second chapter of Schells book, he writes that since we have not made a positive decision to exterminate ourselves but instead have chosen to live on the edge of extinction, periodically lunging toward the abyss only to draw back at the last second, our situation is one of uncertainty and nervous

insecurity rather than of absolute hopelessness. *23+.17 In other words, the

fate of the Earth and its inhabitants has not yet been determined. Yet time is not on our side. Will we relinquish the fire and our use of it to dominate the Earth and each other, or will we continue to gamble with our future at this game of Russian roulette while time increasingly stacks the cards against our chances of survival?

Crossing threshold causes higher sea levels, dislocation, restricted access to fresh water, drought, malnutrition, diseases, health risks, and food scarcityadaptation unlikely Schneider 12
Howard Schneider. Washington Post: World Bank warns of 4-degree threshold of global temperature increase. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-1119/business/35506100_1_celsius-climate-change-temperature 11/19/13 DA-07/03/13 In what World Bank President Jim Yong Kim acknowledged was a doomsday scenario, a new study by the organization cited the 4-degree increase as a threshold that would be likely to trigger widespread crop failures and malnutrition and dislocate large numbers of people from land inundated by rising seas . World climate goals aim to hold the mean temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius, by curbing emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat a phenomenon already thought to have boosted average temperatures nearly 1 degree from levels present before the start of the industrial age, Kim said in a briefing last week. That goal is unlikely to be met, he said, with an increase of 3 or 3.5 degrees Celsius now considered probable. The report noted that a drop in average temperature of around 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) triggered the last ice age, and it predicted that a temperature increase of that magnitude would similarly reshape the planet. In looking at the effects of a 4-degree increase, Kim said the bank was hoping to encourage countries to act more aggressively to achieve climate goals and to prompt poorer nations to begin planning ways to offset the long list of potential impacts . Those could include sea levels as much as three feet higher than currently expected a potentially devastating problem for large coastal cities in Asia and Africa. Warming on such a scale could also limit access to fresh water for irrigation and cause heat, drought and disease-related problems that could make it more difficult to meet world food demands and improve health . The kind of sea level rise we are talking about is going to make the process of urban planning and services to the poor absolutely fundamental, said Rachel Kyte, the World Banks vice president for sustainable development. The race to *develop+ heat-resistant and drought-resistant strains [of staple food crops+ becomes fundamental. Kyte said the organization has begun more intense and frequent talks with poorer nations over how to prepare for climate change usually at the instigation of officials who have seen the effects of shifting weather and climate patterns and now feel they need to plan for the worst. Countries such as Nigeria, Vietnam and Thailand are coming and saying, help us think through the options, Kyte said. This is an absolute change in the conversation we are having with our clients. The banks report, Turn Down the Heat, cast some doubt on how much can be done to avoid the worst outcomes. Predicting the course of the worlds climate is a difficult science, and it is impossible to forecast how technology, demographics and politics will shape what the world looks like in 90 years regardless of the temperature. But the report concluded that a 4-degree jump in average temperatures would

push some countries or regions to the brink of collapse, regardless of how hard they try to adapt. A 4C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, the report said. There is no certainty that adaptation to a 4C world is possible.

Warming: ATs

AT: Flawed methodology for research

Research for study finding real and human induced warming objective and unbiased *Cooks research method+ (AT: Cook Study, May 2013) Cook 13
John Cook. IOP Science: Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article 05/15/13. DA-07/05/13 This letter was conceived as a 'citizen science' project by volunteers contributing to the Skeptical Science website (www.skepticalscience.com).

In March 2012, we searched the ISI Web of Science for papers published from 19912011 using topic searches for 'global warming' or 'global climate change'. Article type was restricted to 'article', excluding books, discussions, proceedings papers and other document types. The search was updated in May 2012 with papers added to the Web of Science up to that date. We classified each abstract according to the type of research (category) and degree of endorsement. Written criteria were provided to raters for category (table 1) and level of endorsement of AGW (table 2). Explicit endorsements were divided into non-quantified (e.g., humans are contributing to global warming without quantifying the contribution) and quantified (e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations). Abstracts were randomly distributed via a web-based system to raters with only the title and abstract visible. All other information such as author names and affiliations, journal and publishing date were hidden. Each abstract was categorized by two independent, anonymized raters. A team of 12 individuals completed 97.4% (23061) of the ratings; an additional 12 contributed the remaining 2.6% (607). Initially, 27% of category ratings and 33% of endorsement ratings disagreed. Raters were then allowed to compare and justify or update their rating through the web system, while maintaining anonymity. Following this, 11% of category ratings and 16% of endorsement ratings disagreed; these were then resolved by a third party. Upon completion of the final ratings, a random sample of 1000 'No Position' category abstracts were re-examined to differentiate those that did not express an opinion from those that take the position that the cause of GW is uncertain. An 'Uncertain' abstract explicitly states that the cause of global warming is not yet determined (e.g., '...the extent of human-induced global warming is inconclusive...') while a 'No Position' abstract makes no statement on AGW. To complement the abstract analysis, email addresses for 8547 authors were collected, typically from the corresponding author and/or first author. For each year, email addresses were obtained for at least 60% of papers. Authors were emailed an invitation to participate in a survey in which they rated their own published papers (the entire content of the article, not just the abstract) with the same criteria as used by the independent rating team. Details of the survey text are provided in the
supplementary information (available at stacks.iop.org/ERL/8/024024/mmedia).

Unbiased methodology for NOAA study- avoided land based system data *NOAAs Research Method+ (NOAA Study, April 2013) Brennan 13
Charlie Brennan. Huffington Post: Global Warming Over Land Is Real: CU-Boulder, NOAA Study. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/12/cu-boulder-led-study-conf_n_3068291.html 04/12/13 DA-07/05/13

Compo and his colleagues used an alternate method to review the planet's temperature history from 1871 through 2010. They deployed what is called 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR), a physically based, state-of-the-art data assimilation system using barometric pressure

records, ocean surface temperatures and other factors independent of land-based readings that can be skewed by changes in their surroundings. Compo's team came to a conclusion that supports land-based instruments' reporting that, since 1952, the Earth has shown a 1.18 degree Celsius increase in air temperature over land. Compo, in an email, stated that the actual number the 20CR analysis showed for warming since 1952 was 0.78 degrees Celsius, which he termed "statistically indistinguishable" from 1.18 degrees Celsius. Also, the study showed an increase from 1901 to 2010 of 0.99 degrees Celsius, which Compo said "is larger than some (land-based) instrument datasets, while smaller than others -- and is statistically indistinguishable from all of them." NOAA meteorologist Jeffrey Whitaker, a co-author of the study, explained why some land-based historical readings have come not to be trusted. "With weather stations that were in rural areas in the early part of the 20th century, you have cities that grow up around them, and they look like they have a (warming) trend, but part of that trend could be because a city grew up around them. It could have nothing to do with a global warming signal, per se. "But urbanization and land-use changes wouldn't affect our analysis because we didn't use any of that information," Whitaker added. "All we used were the barometers and the temperatures over the ocean."

AT: Sun Causes Warming

Suns temp change would cool Earth- not heat it EDF 12
Environmental Defense Fund: How we know human activity is causing warming. http://www.edf.org/climate/human-activity-causeswarming/ 2012. 07/05/13

It's not the sun: cause of little warming since 1750, none since 1980s Ultimately, the climate system is powered by the sun: all else being equal, if you turn up the sun, you'll warm up the Earth. According to IPCC estimates, the sun has accounted for just a small portion of warming since 1750. A study of more recent solar activity has demonstrated that since about 1985 the sun has changed in ways that, if anything, should have cooled the planeteven as global temperatures have been rising. So the sun is not causing global warming.

AT: Reflectivity Causes Warming

Particle reflectivity keeps Earth cool- not responsible for warming [Also AT: Clouds] EDF 12
Environmental Defense Fund: How we know human activity is causing warming. http://www.edf.org/climate/human-activity-causeswarming/ 2012. 07/05/13

Around 30% of the sun's energy that reaches the Earth is reflected back into space. Changes in how much sunlight is absorbed, and how much is reflected, can affect global temperatures. Using satellite and land-based observations and computer models, scientists have calculated how Earth's reflectivity has changed over time. These calculations suggest that human-produced particulate pollution, especially reflective sulfur-containing particles, have had a cooling effect on the climate, masking some of the warming effect of greenhouse gases. In fact, the slight decrease in global temperature between 1945 and 1975 was likely caused by a combination of rising particulate pollution and natural factors. Warming resumed after 1975 when industrialized countries began to clean up their particulate pollution while continuing to increase their greenhouse gas emissions. As for human land use changes (primarily forest clearing for agriculture), they have on balance brightened the planet since 1750. This would have a cooling effect, yet we've seen warming. Changes in the frequency of volcanic eruptions, which can send reflective particles up into the stratosphere, also cannot explain the observed warming trend. So reflectivity is not causing global warming.

AT: Natural Causes

Natural carbon cycles imbalanced by human emissions Beck 6
Coby Beck. Grist: Natural emissions dwarf human emissionsBut emissions are only one side of the equation. http://grist.org/climate-energy/natural-emissions-dwarf-human-emissions/ 12/23/06 DA-07/05/13 Answer: Its

true that natural fluxes in the carbon cycle are much larger than anthropogenic emissions. But for roughly the last 10,000 years, until the industrial revolution, every gigatonne of carbon going into the atmosphere was balanced by one coming out. What humans have done is alter one side of this cycle. We put approximately 6 gigatonnes of carbon into the air but, unlike nature, we are not taking any out. Thankfully, nature is compensating in part for our emissions, because only about half the CO2 we emit stays in the air. Nevertheless, since we began burning fossil fuels in earnest over 150 years ago, the atmospheric concentration that was relatively stable for the previous several thousand years has now risen by over 35%. So whatever the total amounts going in and out naturally, humans have clearly upset the balance and significantly altered an important part of the climate system

AT: No Time Frame

It really is try or die with the affEven if we dont solve for global warming plan is critical to setting the political infrastructure to solve for climate change in the futurethe next few years make the plan the only option MIT Technology Review, 1-2, Dear Mr. President: Time to Deal with Climate Change In a letter to President Obama, the editors of MIT
Technology Review argue that addressing climate change must take top priority in the next four years. January 2, 2013, http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/508841/dear-mr-president-time-to-deal-with-climate-change/

Amid the crises and battles, both predictable and unforeseeable, that you will face over the next four years, one problem will stand out both for the economic and social dangers it poses and for the difficulty and cost of solving it. Whether you can develop a practical and sustainable strategy to address climate changespecifically, to begin lowering carbon dioxide emissionswill define the success of your new term as president. We do not make such a declaration lightly; we are keenly aware of the many other challenges you face. But the potential for global warming over the next decades threatens consequences so dire that they could overwhelm any progress you make toward other long-term economic, social, and political goals. Altering the course of climate change is a task that will take decades. It will require innovative new technologies and overhauls of the worlds energy, agricultural, and transportation infrastructure. We dont suggest that you can reverse the warming trend over the next four years, or even that you will be able to significantly decrease carbon dioxide emissions. But with the help of the worlds best economic, technical, and scientific minds, you can formulate a policy that will show the nationand the worldhow we can begin to make the changes necessary to ensure that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes at a safe level. Indeed, it is critical that you do so. Four years ago, you made a remarkable start. The $90 billion in your 2009 stimulus bill for energy projects and research breathed new life into the search for cleaner sources of energy. Theappointment of prominent researchers such as Steven Chu, your secretary of energy, and John Holdren, your senior advisor on science and technology, sent a signal that your administration was committed to making decisions based on facts and science. Most important, you made it clear that the government would play a vital role in encouraging the innovation needed to develop these new energy sources. But you also made several painful mistakes that doomed much of the progress you had hoped for. Perhaps most damaging, you justified much of the spending by holding out the prospect of green jobs and suggesting that the creation of a new clean-energy industry could jump-start the economy. In the May/June 2009 issue of this magazine (see Can Technology Save the Economy?), we cautioned against conflating economic stimulus with a sustainable and effective energy policy. Leading economists noted that job creation needed to happen quickly, while transforming our energy infrastructure would take decades. And much of the energy spending in the stimulus bill, suggested one, resembled pork-barrel politics to satisfy the immediate need for jobs. The rush to fund energy projects meant that the choices made were not always wise. As another economist warned, The cost here is not only the dollars. It may also be the dog that doesnt barkthe truly important program that we could put in place if we went about encouraging innovation in a thoughtful way. Many projects that received large investments in the 2009 stimulus legislation were not (in the term of those days) shovelreadythey were still just promising startups. And yet, because of the emphasis on job creation, hundreds of millions of dollars went into building big manufacturing facilities as quickly as possible. The result set companies like Solyndra, A123 Systems, and Abound Solar on a course that ended in bankruptcy. Each of these companies had interesting technologies, but none was

ready for the challenge of building commercial products and selling them in highly competitive energy markets. The outcome, which we foresaw in our 2009 article, was an entirely unnecessary black eye for the clean-energy effort. Renewable energy sources, like solar and advanced biofuels, are simply not yet ready to compete with fossil fuels. Solar power, for example, still generates less than 1 percent of our nations electricity and, under most circumstances, remains much more expensive than electricity generated from fossil fuels. We need new and far more advanced technologies. Creating cleaner ways to produce energy will require inventions in physics and chemistry labs and innovations in how we scale up and test those inventions. And it will require market incentives, such as a tax or some other price on carbon dioxide emissions, to encourage consumers and industry to use clean energy. Your administration can play a critical role in each of these areas, from increasing funding for energy R&D to helping establish facilities where companies can share the costs and risks of testing new technologies. Perhaps most important, you will need to rally the nation around the issue of tackling climate change. Only with broad public support can you hope to push a recalcitrant Congress into passing legislation that will establish some form of carbon pricing. Slowing down global warming wont be cheap. You have often stressed the economic benefits of choosing new energy technologies. You make a valid argument that moving away from fossil fuels will have positive implications for many businesses. And certainly new technologies will provide jobs and other economic opportunities. But we can no longer pretend that addressing climate change will be without real costs. Economic studies show that it is likely to cost trillions of dollars worldwide, though those analyses also present evidence that the price will grow higher the longer we wait. Adding to our difficulties is the recent boom in our countrys production of fossil fuels, including natural gas and related deposits of shale oil. Already, the glut of cheap natural gas created by advanced drilling technologies and by the nations vast supply of shale gas has made it difficult for renewable energy to compete on price. The inexpensive energy made available by these drilling activities is good news for the overall economy, but it is also a stark reminder that the motive for adopting nonfossil fuels is not market-driven but isand always has beena simple one: we must do it to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and begin stabilizing our climate. Its time to acknowledge that green jobs were always just political cover for that motive. You must say unambiguously that the real reason to transform our energy system is to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming. This is a deeply unpalatable political message. It means immediate spending and economic sacrifice by present-day voters in order to achieve benefits that will be realized decades from now. And it must be done while millions of Americans are still skeptical that global warming is taking place or that it is caused by human activity. But as extensive and exacting analyses over the last decade have shown, we can no longer wait without risking dramatic upheavals in global security and the health and welfare of hundreds of millions of the worlds inhabitants . The International Energy Agency reports that global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossilfuel combustion reached a record 31.6 metric gigatons in 2011. To have a decent chance of limiting the average global temperature increase to 2 C and avoiding the most devastating effects of climate change, we will need carbon emissions to peak at no more than 32.6 metric gigatons, and to start falling no later than 2017. The president who takes office that year will thus be facing a far more urgent problemprobably, like you, with no political consensus on how to solve it. But as a president in his final term, you have a chance to take risks. You have the power and the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a new cleanenergy policy that will help us avoid the worst consequences of climate change. It is quite possible that if this is not done over the next four years, it will be too late.

Global climate on brink for emission reduction WWF 12

WWF: UN assessment confirms world is standing on the brink of climate catastrophe. http://wwf.panda.org/?206816/WWF-UNassessment-confirms-world-is-standing-on-the-brink-of-climate-catastrophe 11/23/12. DA- 07/05/13

Governments are falling far short of their commitment to keep global average temperature rise below the accepted 2C goal, putting the world on the brink of climate catastrophe. The UN Environment Programs Emissions Gap Report 2012, released today, identifies a huge gap between current pledges to cut polluting greenhouse gas emissions for 2020 and the benchmark of 44 gigatonnes that offers a credible pathway to staying below 2C. Last year, UNEP
put the gap between pledges and whats needed at 6-11 gigatonnes but has now increased this estimate to an alarming 8-13 gigatonnes. In context, annual emissions from the US and China are currently around 7 and 10 to 11 gigatonnes, respectively. UNEPs

assessment confirms that the world is standing on the brink, says Samantha Smith, head of WWFs Global Climate and Energy Initiative.

AT: Cooling Now

Sun Proves
Sun Earth temperature relationships disprove the cooling theory Douglas 10
Steven. "Daily Kos." : Global Cooling Is the Hoax. Daily Kos, 5 July 2010. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/06/881939/-Global-Cooling-is-the-Hoax>. In short, the persons arguing that the earth's temperature is trending downward and that global cooling is now occurring are people coming at the data with pre-conceived notions. That's not Al Gore talking, or anyone else for that matter (e.g., Michael Mann, Jim

This research is supported by another peer reviewed paper published in 2005 which showed that solar radiation correlated well with global temperatures over the last 1150 years until 1975. Since that time there has been no correlation between solar output and global temperature. This led
Hansen, the scientists at Real Climate, etc.) who has studied and found evidence of global warming. that study's authors to conclude that: "... during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux

In plain English, the Sun is currently in a cycle which should normally lead to global cooling, yet we continue to see each decade since the 70's become hotter than the next. Indeed, the last three decades have been the hottest in recorded history, and each one has been warmer than the last. Those are the facts. So how can climate change "skeptics" continue to argue that we are cooling? They cheery pick the data they look at, that is how. It's what happens within the past 10 years or so, not the overall average, that counts, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology
has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source." professor and global warming skeptic. "I don't argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose. "Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games." That's the problem, some of the statisticians said. Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive." The trend disappears if the analysis starts in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said. In other words, Easterbrook and friends have looked for any possible excuse to claim that the trend of global temperatures shows cooling. The only way they could do that is by looking solely at the data from the time period between 1998-2009 and excluding all the rest of the data. Professor Grego was being kind when he called Easterbrook's claim "deceptive." To my mind it is out and out fraud.

But then that is what you would expect from someone whose non-peer reviewed claim of a coming global cooling crisis is hopelessly flawed and at times outright dishonest.

AT: Cloud Cover

Cloud cover is not key in determining climate change Adams 9
Peter. "Scientists: No Link Cloud Coverage and Global Warming." Scientists: No Link Cloud Coverage and Global Warming. Carnegie Mellon University's, 11 May 2009. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://phys.org/news161268877.html>. With the U.S. Congress beginning to consider regulations on greenhouse gases, a troubling hypothesis about how the sun may impact global warming is finally laid to rest. Carnegie Mellon University's Peter Adams along with Jeff Pierce from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, have developed a model to test a controversial hypothesis that says changes in the sun are causing global warming. The

hypothesis they tested was that increased solar activity reduces cloudiness by changing cosmic rays. So, when clouds decrease, more sunlight is let in, causing the earth to warm. Some climate change skeptics have tried to use this hypothesis to suggest that greenhouse gases may not be the global warming culprits that most scientists agree they are. In research published in Geophysical Research Letters, and highlighted in the May 1 edition of Science Magazine, Adams and Pierce report the first atmospheric simulations of changes in atmospheric ions and particle formation resulting from variations in the sun and cosmic rays. They find that changes in the concentration of particles that affect clouds are 100 times too small to affect the climate . "Until
now, proponents of this hypothesis could assert that the sun may be causing global warming because no one had a computer model to really test the claims," said Adams, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon. "The basic problem with the hypothesis is that solar variations probably change new particle formation rates by less than 30 percent in the atmosphere. Also, these particles are extremely small and need to grow before they can affect clouds. Most do not survive to do so," Adams said.

Despite remaining questions, Adams and Pierce feel confident that this hypothesis should be laid to rest. "No computer simulation of something as complex as the atmosphere will ever be perfect," Adams said.
"Proponents of the cosmic ray hypothesis will probably try to question these results, but the effect is so weak in our model that it is hard for us to see this basic result changing.

Cloud interaction with warming uncertain- history disproves idea of massive cloud cooling

Beck 6
Coby Beck. Grist: Models dont account for cloudsClouds are complex and uncertain, but unlikely to stop warming. http://grist.org/climate-energy/models-dont-take-clouds-into-account/ 11/19/06. DA-07/05/13

Objection: Clouds are a large negative feedback that will stop any drastic warming. The climate models dont even take cloud effects into account. Answer: All of the atmospheric global climate models used for the kind of climate projections synthesized by the IPCC take the effects of clouds into account. You can read a discussion about cloud processes and feedbacks in the IPCC TAR. It is true, however, that clouds are one of the largest sources of uncertainty in the GCMs. They are complicated to model because they have both positive feedbacks, preventing surface heat from escaping back into space, and negative feedbacks, reflecting incoming sunlight before it can reach the surface. The precise
balance of these opposing effects depends on time of day, time of year, altitude, size of the water droplets and/or ice particles, latitude, current air temperature, and size and shape. On top of that, different

types of clouds will interact, amplifying or mitigating one anothers effects as they coexist in different layers of the atmosphere. There are also latent heat considerations water vapor condenses during cloud formation and precipitation events, and water droplets evaporate when clouds dissipate. The ultimate contribution of clouds to global temperature trends is highly uncertain, but according to the best estimates is likely to be positive over the coming century. There is no indication anywhere that any kind of cloud processes will stop greenhouse-gas-driven warming, and this includes observations of the past as well as modeling experiments.

Clouds actually increase global warming IPCC 7

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis Summary for Policymakers. A Report of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Clouds are vehicles for energy. They carry solar energy from the warm tropics to other parts of the globe through weather systems. But they also act as gatekeepers between Earth and space, helping regulate the global temperature by capturing and releasing infrared (thermal) energy in the atmosphere. In this respect, clouds are like greenhouse gases. As detailed in the Earth Observatorys

if clouds change as a result of global warming, the change could cause additional warming. This image, acquired by the GOES satellite on May 30, 2010, shows thermal energy in the
newly updated article, Global Warming, Western Hemisphere. The areas that are warmest and therefore emitting the most thermal energy are white and pale gray. The desert lining the Pacific coast of South America is a bright white strip in the lower center of the globe. The coldest regions emitting the least amount of thermal energy are dark gray and black. These dark spots on the globe are high clouds. Clouds emit energy in proportion to their temperature. Low, warm clouds emit more thermal energy than high, cold clouds. This image illustrates that low clouds emit about the same amount of thermal energy as Earths surface does. This is most clearly seen over the Pacific Ocean. The water is nearly white, while the low marine clouds are pale gray, only slightly cooler. This means that a world without low clouds loses about the same amount of energy to space as a world with low clouds. High clouds are much colder than low clouds and the surface. They radiate less energy to space than low clouds do. The high clouds in this image are radiating significantly less thermal energy than anything else in the image. Because high clouds

absorb energy so efficiently, they have the potential to raise global temperatures. In a world with high clouds, much of the energy that would otherwise escape to space is captured in the atmosphere. High clouds make the world a warmer place. If more high clouds were to form, more heat energy radiating from the surface and lower atmosphere toward space would be trapped in the atmosphere, and Earths average surface temperature would climb. Clouds impact temperatures in other ways as well. They also reflect energy, shading and cooling the Earth. On balance, scientists arent entirely sure what effect clouds will have on global warming. Most climate models predict that clouds will amplify global warming slightly. Some observations of
clouds support model predictions, but direct observational evidence is still limited. Clouds remain the biggest source of uncertainty (apart from human decisions to control greenhouse gas emissions) in predicting how much global temperatures will change.

Turn- Positive Feedbacks cut down on cooling clouds Lelieveld 12

Jos. "Climate Change: More Carbon Dioxide Leads to Fewer Clouds." Climate Change: More Carbon Dioxide Leads to Fewer Clouds. IPCC, 4 Sept. 2012. Web. 05 July 2013. <http://phys.org/news/2012-09-climate-carbon-dioxide-clouds.html>. The cascade starts harmless: in

the double CO2 scenario, the stomata close earlier since the plants can assimilate the necessary CO2 for photosynthesis more optimally. As a result, less moisture is evaporated by the plants and there is overall less water vapour introduced into the atmosphere. Consequently, fewer cumulus clouds are formed, which means that the Earth's surface becomes warmer, as the sun's rays hit it directly and are not reflected by clouds. Then, warmer air creates more turbulence in the atmosphere near the surface, and in consequence there is more heat and less moisture transported. The earth and the atmosphere thus heat up through the plants' response to the higher CO2 levels. The researchers have thus found another feedback mechanism in the climate system, a selfreinforcing process. This feedback mechanism did not develop in the second scenario, in which the atmosphere only warms by two degrees Celsius without the effect of higher concentrations of the greenhouse gas CO2 on plants.

AT: SO2
Warming outweighs dimming Reynolds 10
Michael, PhD in Atmospheric Sciences, Report from the On-board Scientist: Aerosols, Volcanoes and Global Dimming, http://www.aroundtheamericas.org/log/report-from-the-on-board-scientist-aerosols-volcanoes-and-global-dimming/ On the other hand,

aerosols can add heat to the atmosphere which partially offsets the cooling effect. As the Earth heats up from the sun, it radiates heat back to space. Aerosols absorb some of the heat radiation and reduce the amount of heat radiation escaping out to space. This is the same heat-blocking effect attributed to greenhouse gasses, and in this way aerosols can have a heating effect on global climate. Nevertheless, the net effect of aerosols is to reduce the rate of global warming from greenhouse gasses. Does this mean we should all go build fires and drive our cars? No, because the offset that aerosols make on all of all these activities is smaller than the impact those activities make on global warming. Models and data now show that aerosols reduce the increase in global temperature by a factor of approximately 50% (there is uncertainty in the actual amount). So, they slow down the process but do not stop it. And they create pollution and effect health at the same time.

AT: Night Cooling

Rapid warming outweighs radiative cooling (Night Cooling) Philipona and Durr 04
Rolf Philipona and Bruno Durr. Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos, World Radiation Center: Greenhouse forcing outweighs decreasing solar radiation driving rapid temperature rise over land. http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/philipona04.htm. 11/05/13 DA-07/05/13 Since 1988, surface temperature over land in Europe increased three times faster than the northern hemisphere average. Here

we contrast surface climatic and radiative parameters measured in central Europe over different time periods, including the extreme summer 2003, to pinpoint the role of individual radiative forcings in temperature increases. Interestingly, surface solar radiation rather decreases since 1981. Also, on an annual basis no net radiative cooling or warming is observed under changing cloud amounts. However, high correlation (rT = 0.86) to increasing temperature is found with total heating
radiation at the surface, and very high correlation (rT = 0.98) with cloud-free longwave downward radiation. Preponderance of longwave downward radiative forcing suggests rapidly

increasing greenhouse warming, which outweighs the decreasing solar radiation measured at the surface and drives rapid temperature increases over land.

Brink on warming now- reducing fossil fuels key to solve PRN 13

PR Newswire: EIN News: Earth on Brink of Global Warming Catastrophe, Expert Warns http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ein-news-earth-on-brink-of-global-warmingcatastrophe-expert-warns-210829681.html 06/10/13. DA- 07/03/13 The chief economist at the International Energy Agency sees catastrophic consequences for the planet if governments fail to take more immediate and decisive action to combat global warming. Fatih Birol, one of the world's most respected energy experts, told the Guardian newspaper that greenhouse gas emissions were continuing to rise so fast that waiting much longer to replace the Kyoto protocol would set the earth on a path to 5C of warming, which he said would be "catastrophic." Current efforts are aimed at keeping temperature increases to 2C. Birol's comments come as climate negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany trying to develop targets for adoption by 2015, which would then go into effect by 2020. The IEA has calculated that making necessary clean energy investments now would cost about $1.5 trillion. Investments after 2020 to meet climate targets would cost $5 trillion. The latest IEA report shows that the U.S. has reduced its carbon emissions by 3.8%. China, still the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, has recorded its smallest increase in two decades. But China, India, Brazil and other emerging economies now account for 60% of global emissions, up from 45% in 2000. Industrialized nations want these nations to take on more responsibility. Birol said low cost ways governments could take urgent action on improving energy efficiency would be to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon power, stop the construction of inefficient power plants and phase out fossil fuel subsidies.

50 months remain Siddique 12

Haroon Siddique. The Guardian: Ignoring global warming is 'reckless' of the government, warn campaigners. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/01/climate-changecampaigners-threshold-warning 09/30/12. DA-07/03/13

The government's failure to tackle climate change is "reckless and short-sighted" with just 50 months remaining to prevent a critical threshold in the fight against global warming being breached, environmental campaigners warn today. In a letter to the Guardian and expanded on in an article in G2, they say global warming remains one of the greatest threats to human progress but condemn the fact it has dropped down the political agenda. The signatories, including senior figures at Greenpeace, Oxfam and the Women's Institute, as well as the designer Dame Vivienne Westwood and the environmental campaigner Bianca Jagger, warn there are just 50 months left before it will become unlikely that a 2C temperature rise can be prevented. The UK and the EU have set the 2C mark as a line the world should not cross.

Brink is coming fast- 400ppm signals danger Restuccia 13

Andrew Restuccia. Politico: Scientists alarmed as CO2 passes threshold. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/scientists-alarmed-as-co2-passes-threshold91205.html#ixzz2Y0otfmf5 05/10/13. DA- 07/03/13 NOAA said the daily mean CO2 concentration was 400.03 ppm on Thursday at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, the worlds oldest continuous carbon dioxide measurement station. That was the first time the figure had crossed 400 ppm there since measurements began at the site in 1958, the agency said. NOAA said last year that sites in the Arctic had already reached 400 ppm, but measurements from the facility in Hawaii are closely watched as an indicator of broader trends on the planet. Its unprecedented, said James Butler, director of the Global Monitoring Division of NOAAs Earth System Research Laboratory. Hitting 400 is just saying, Folks, we havent addressed this yet. Butler said the planet hasnt seen atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide this high since the Pliocene era, between 5 million and 2.5 million years ago. He said the global average temperature will probably reach 400 ppm in one or two years. Scientists warn that continued increases could result in catastrophe. A federal report released earlier this year, for example, said 5 million Americans living in low-lying areas could be affected by sea-level rise in the coming decades. And global emissions appear poised to continue soaring. Not only has the CO2 concentration risen over the decades, NOAA said, but the rate of increase has been accelerating from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years. Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm, NOAA said in a statement Friday. During the last 800,000 years, CO2 fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Todays rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended. The surge in atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions shows that federal and global policies to curb global warming arent even close to adequate, said Dan Lashof, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Its a very black-and-white record of what were doing to the atmosphere. The bottom line for climate policy can be measured by the CO2 concentration were observing in the atmosphere, Lashof said. Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org an activist group that has led the call for lowering carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 ppm called the measurement one more grim milestone. Somewhere between 350 and 400 ppm the arctic melted, and the ocean turned 30 percent more acidic, he said. And the countrys political leaders took no action even remotely commensurate with the scale of the crisis. Lets hope we can build this movement strong enough that that changes before we add another 50 ppm.

Emissions must be cut to avoid tipping point of 450ppm Kohr 13

Michael. The Star: No solution yet as climate threshold crossed. http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/climate/info.service/2013/climate130501.htm 05/20/13 DA07/03/13 On 10 May scientists announced that 400.03 ppm had been measured at a climate-observing station in Hawaii that is often used as a benchmark. The global average is expected to cross the 400 ppm mark in the next year. This means that for every one million molecules in the Earths atmosphere, there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the air is linked to the Earths temperature. The widely believed relationship is that the 450ppm level should not be crossed if global warming is to be below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial revolution level of around 1750. In fact more recently, some prominent scientists like James Hansen have found that crossing 350 ppm is already dangerous. In line with this, the existing CO2 in the atmosphere should be reduced though how this can be done is really unclear. Already the impacts of climate change are being felt in dramatic ways in the increase in extreme weather events, ranging from higher rainfall and extensive flooding in Pakistan, China, Southeast Asia and United Kingdom, drought in parts of Africa and the United States, raging fires in Australia and Russia, and big storms or hurricanes in the Philippines, Central America and the United States. How far worse will the situation be when more climate change is induced when the CO2 concentration increases from 400 ppm to 450 ppm and beyond? The increase in concentration has been dramatic. In 1958, it was 315 ppm, and this rose to about 375 ppm in 2000 before jumping to 400 ppm now. At this rate, we are on track not for a 2 degree but for a 3 to 5 degree increase in temperature by the end of the century a catastrophe. The present temperature is 0.8 degrees above the pre-industrial level and we are already seeing the major adverse effects. Imagine a 2 degree and worse a 4 degree world that our children and grandchildren will inherit. What needs to be done? Most importantly, the level of emissions has to be cut significantly.

Warming: Internal Links

Decreasing FF key to decrease warming

Decreasing US oil consumption key to mitigate warming Burwell 11
David Burwell. Canrnagie Endowment for International Peace: Our Global Choice: Asserting U.S. Leadership on Climate and Energy. http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/12/08/our-globalchoice-asserting-u.s.-leadership-on-climate-and-energy/8kon 12/08/11. DA- 07/02/13 Yet, as world leaders convene in Durban, South Africa this month seeking agreement on how to hold global temperatures below the 2 degree Celsius level by 2050, progress continues to elude us. Existing economic challenges and leadership transitions in the major carbonemitting economies, coupled with general finger pointing about who goes first, are blocking meaningful progress. Instead of acting, we will keep on "thinking." We can't afford to wait for collective buy-in. We must act -- fast. The place to start is with the major emitting nations -China, the United States, Russia, Europe, and India. Each country must choose its own promising emission reduction path and go for it -- flat out. This is an opportunity to both demonstrate global leadership and gain competitive advantage in a new global energy economy. In the United States, we have a clear and present opportunity to decarbonize a key sector -- transportation. There are five good reasons the United States should exhibit climate leadership on transportation. First, the United States is an oil sponge. America's share of global oil consumption is ten times its share of global oil reserves. As global oil demand continues to rise, from 87 million barrels per day to nearly 100 million barrels a day in 2035, fierce competition between nations will drive up oil costs. If, instead of weaning ourselves off oil, the United States turns full bore to Canadian oil sands, domestic oil shale, and other unconventional North American oils to feed our addiction, the costs to our economy, communities, and ecology will be unprecedented. The less oil we use, the better for all of us.

Cutting US emissions bolsters leadership and halts planetary extinction Burwell 11

David Burwell. Canrnagie Endowment for International Peace: Our Global Choice: Asserting U.S. Leadership on Climate and Energy. http://carnegieendowment.org/2011/12/08/our-globalchoice-asserting-u.s.-leadership-on-climate-and-energy/8kon 12/08/11. DA- 07/02/13 Taken together, the United States can significantly accelerate the decline in its demand for oil, with associated cuts in climate-forcing emissions. While we wish our leaders success at Durban, an international climate framework is unlikely. Continued global climate inaction begs individual action. Decarbonizing transportation in the United States will bolster market leadership, reduce oil dependence, rebuild infrastructure, and support a competitive economy. In the process, we can take the gun from our head and avoid planetary suicide. Think first -- then act. No joke.

Fossil fuels largest contributor to warming Center for Biological Diversity 9

Center for Biological Diversity: ENERGY AND GLOBAL WARMING. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/energy_and_global_warmi ng/ 2009. DA- 07/03/13

Fossil fuels coal, petroleum, and natural gas are our main sources of energy, producing the vast majority of fuel, electricity, and heat used by people across the globe. In 2005 a whopping 86 percent of energy used worldwide came from fossil fuel combustion, and right now in the United States, the number isnt much lower at about 85 percent. Unfortunately fossil fuels are also the primary culprit behind climate change. In the United States, theyre to blame for more than 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and 98 percent of CO2 emissions alone. And while natural processes can absorb some of this CO2, an estimated 4.1 billion metric tons of it is added to our atmosphere each year. That number will rise dramatically if we dont check ourselves.

Oil Combustion one of top two greenhouse gas producers Center for Biological Diversity 9
Center for Biological Diversity: ENERGY AND GLOBAL WARMING. http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/energy_and_global_warmi ng/ 2009. DA- 07/03/13 Burning petroleum emits about three-fourths as much CO2 as burning coal, and thanks to oils role as the established fuel for transportation globally, its neck-and-neck with coal in the race to become the leading greenhouse gas producer. On top of the enormous amounts of CO2 churned out when petroleum is burned as gas by cars and trucks, hundreds of millions of tons of the pollutant are emitted in the oil-refining process. And before oil even hits the plants, oil exploration and drilling can have a devastating effect on imperiled species, including the ribbon seal, the California condor and, of course, the polar bear.

Transportation causes 33% of emissions Markham 9

Derek Markham. Planet Save: Global Warming Effects and Causes: A Top 10 List http://planetsave.com/2009/06/07/global-warming-effects-and-causes-a-top-10list/#BmrsXfE8d65t12Ze.99 06/07/09. DA- 07/03/13 Our modern car culture and appetite for globally sourced goods is responsible for about 33% of emissions in the U.S. [EPA pg. 8] With our population growing at an alarming rate, the demand for more cars and consumer goods means that we are increasing the use of fossil fuels for transportation and manufacturing. Our consumption is outpacing our discoveries of ways to mitigate the effects, with no end in sight to our massive consumer culture.

Sugarcane Ethanol Can Keep Us Off Brink on Warming

GHG emission reductions between 50%-80% needed to prevent brink National Geographic 10
National Geographic: Global Warming Solutions: What Can We Do? http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-solutions/ 01/12/10. DA- 07/03/13 The evidence that humans are causing global warming is strong, but the question of what to do about it remains controversial. Economics, sociology, and politics are all important factors in planning for the future. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) today, the Earth would still warm by another degree Fahrenheit or so. But what we do from today forward makes a big difference. Depending on our choices, scientists predict that the Earth could eventually warm by as little as 2.5 degrees or as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. A commonly cited goal is to stabilize GHG concentrations around 450-550 parts per million (ppm), or about twice pre-industrial levels. This is the point at which many believe the most damaging impacts of climate change can be avoided. Current concentrations are about 380 ppm, which means there isn't much time to lose. According to the IPCC, we'd have to reduce GHG emissions by 50% to 80% of what they're on track to be in the next century to reach this level.

C/A the Wang et all 8 from previously saying sugarcane ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 78% and fossil fuel usage by 97%- sufficient to solve

Food Crisis 2nd lines

Food Crisis: 2nd lines

Millions starve
By mandateing the production of ethanol 570million people go hungry annulay Sandoval, Michael. "Ethanol Mandate Increases Food Prices, Leads to Social Unrest." The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation |. N.p., 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 5 July 2013.
<http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/07/ethanol-mandate-leads-to-social-unrest/>.

Driving the food crisis, according to Bar-Yam, is legislation mandating ever-increasing amounts of ethanol production and consumptionthe Energy Policy Act of 2005 and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The mandate caps corn-ethanol production at 15 billion gallons per year. Ethanol is corn. Corn is food. When youre pulling into the gas station and youre filling your tank of gas, 10 percent of what youre putting into the tank is food. It could be eaten by people instead, said Bar-Yam. Today, the amount of corn that is being used is about 50 percent of all the corn that the U.S. produces, Bar-Yam continued. That amount is up from 15 percent before 2005. As a major exporter of corn globally, the consumption of food as fuel drives food costs higher by reducing it as a source of food, Bar-Yam explained. His findings show that the amount of corn used to produce one gallon of ethanol fuel would feed one person for a day, and the U.S. diversion of corn for ethanol could feed as many as 570 million people worldwide annually.

Biofuels cause
Recent Ethanol mandates are causing many adverse consequences National Center for Policy Analysis. "Ethanol Use Creates a Spike in Global Food Prices." ncpa.org. N.p., 10 June 2013. Web. 5 July 2013.
<www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=23262>.

Perhaps the most unexpected consequence of the policy has been its impact on worldwide food prices. The U.S. fuel industry relied heavily on corn ethanol to comply with the RFS requirements. The resulting demand drastically increased the price for corn globally, not just domestically. As corn prices skyrocketed, farmers switched to corn production from production of other cereals, which reduced the latter's supply. At the same time, consumers substituted less expensive rice and wheat for corn. This substitution increased demand and prices for wheat and rice, staple foods across many regions in Africa and Asia. Overall, the RFS program led to higher prices for staple foods all over the world. By some estimates, up to 70 percent to 75 percent of the increase in food prices was due to biofuels and the related consequences of low grain stocks, large land use shifts, speculative activity and export bans. The spike in food prices, coupled with the global economic crisis, halted and even reversed the long-time trend in reducing malnutrition.

Food prices have been steadily rising since 2008 causing mass hunger because of corn ethanol Johnson, Toni. "Food Price Volatility and Insecurity." Council on Foreign Relations. N.p., 16 Jan. 2013. Web.
5 July 2013. <www.cfr.org/food-security/food-price-volatility-insecurity/p16662>.

In 2008, food prices globally rose to unprecedented levels. While there was a marked drop in the next year, prices spiked again in mid-2011, exceeding 2008 levels and remaining relatively high through the rest of year and all of 2012. Many factors influence food price volatility, including agriculture and energy policy, commodity prices and market speculation, extreme weather events, rising global demand, and falling surplus stocks. Experts say this volatility has a dire impact on the world's poorest populations and without increases in agriculture production and improvement in food distribution, the world will have trouble feeding a growing population in the next two decades, and reducing hunger rates as targeted under the UN Millennium Development Goals.

SQ policy ensures continued use of corn Johnson, Toni. "Food Price Volatility and Insecurity." Council on Foreign Relations. N.p., 16 Jan. 2013. Web.
5 July 2013. <www.cfr.org/food-security/food-price-volatility-insecurity/p16662>.

The world has experienced a major growth in biofuel production, in part due to higher fuel prices, particularly in the United States. However, some argue that biofuels compete with food production and negatively impact prices. U.S. increases in corn production have largely gone to ethanol rather than to human consumption or animal feed. Corn-based ethanol rose from 15 percent of total U.S. corn production in 2006 to an estimated 40 percent in 2012. The 2011 NGO report recommends G20 countries end biofuel mandates and subsidies (PDF) and open "international markets so that renewable fuels and feed stocks can be produced where it is economically, environmentally, and socially feasible to do so."

Ethanol development in the US is the direct cause for children starving BADER, HANS. "Guatemalan Children Starve Due To Ethanol Mandates."OpenMarket.org. N.p., 7 Jan. 2013. Web. 6 July 2013. <http://www.openmarket.org/2013/01/08/guatemalan-childrenstarve-due-to-ethanol-mandates/>.

The New York Times reports that ethanol and biofuel mandates in the U.S. and Europe are fueling rising hunger in Guatemala, which now has the fourth-highest rate of child malnutrition in the world higher than in many less developed countries in Africa: With its corn-based diet and proximity to the United States, Central America has long been vulnerable to economic riptides related to the United States corn policy. Now that the United States is using 40 percent of its crop to make biofuel, it is not surprising that tortilla prices have doubled in Guatemala, which imports nearly half of its corn. In a country where most families must spend about two thirds of their income on food, the average Guatemalan is now hungrier because of biofuel development.. . .Roughly 50 percent of the nations children are chronically malnourished, the fourth-highest rate in the world, according to the United Nations. The American renewable fuel standard mandates that an increasing volume of biofuel be blended into the nations vehicle fuel supply each year to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and to bolster the nations energy security. Similarly, by 2020, transportation fuels in Europe will have to contain 10 percent biofuel.

Corn ethanol jacks up food prices ActionAid International USA. "FUELING THE FOOD CRISIS: The Cost to Developing Countries of US Corn Ethanol Expansion." ase.tufts.edu. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 July
2013.<ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_Fueling_Food_Crisis.pdf

The extended and widespread US drought is straining corn supplies at a time of record demand. Roughly 40% of US corn is now consumed in the production of ethanol, a practice that has been encouraged by a range of US government mandates and incentives. There is no doubt that the diversion of what amounts to 15% of world corn supply into fuel has put significant upward pressure on food prices. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that global biofuels expansion accounted for 20 40% of the price increases seen in 2007-8, when prices of many food crops doubled.

Corn ethanol is costing developing countries billions of dollars ActionAid International USA. "FUELING THE FOOD CRISIS: The Cost to Developing Countries of US Corn Ethanol Expansion." ase.tufts.edu. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 July
2013.<ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_Fueling_Food_Crisis.pdf

In a previous report, Biofueling Hunger: How US Corn Ethanol Policy Drives Up Food Prices in Mexico, ActionAid expanded on recent research that estimated the additional import costs to Mexico, in the form of higher corn prices due to US ethanol expansion, at $1.5 billion since 2004. In this report, we build on new work by the same Tufts University researchers to estimate the costs to import-dependent developing countries in other parts of the world. Using conservative estimates of ethanol and corn prices, Tufts researchers estimate that from trade year 2005-6 until 2010-11, US ethanol expansion cost net corn

importing countries $11.6 billion in higher corn prices, with more than half that cost, $6.6 billion, borne by developing countries.

The US mandates on Bio fuel are causing millions to starve from price spikes ActionAid International USA. "FUELING THE FOOD CRISIS: The Cost to Developing Countries of US Corn Ethanol Expansion." ase.tufts.edu. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 July
2013.<ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_Fueling_Food_Crisis.pdf

This report concludes that biofuels expansion, by diverting food and feed crops into fuel production while placing extra demands on land, is one of the driving forces behind the high food prices that drain resources from developing countries. In the context of the ongoing US drought, the expansion of US corn ethanol has had a particularly strong impact by creating a competing demand for corn as the market experiences a supply shock. Although two of the main policy instruments that helped launch the industry the blending subsidy and the protective tariff have been suspended, consumption mandates, through the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the gasoline blending mandate, remain in force. By leaving these mandates in place, the US government is effectively canceling out the value of US food and agricultural assistance to developing countries and undermining US aid goals.

The EPAs Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is the main cause for preventable world hunger ActionAid International USA. "FUELING THE FOOD CRISIS: The Cost to Developing Countries of US Corn Ethanol Expansion." ase.tufts.edu. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 July
2013.<ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_Fueling_Food_Crisis.pdf

Organizations, unions and many others have called on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to waive the RFS while corn supplies are strained. While ActionAid USA supports these calls for a waiver, we believe that a more comprehensive, longer-term approach is needed to alleviate the food crisis. In order to mitigate the impact of biofuels policies on food prices, calm food price volatility and create a better balance between food and energy policies, the US should: Remove volume or blending targets of foodbased fuels or fuels that require vast tracts of land for production Put plans to expand the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline on hold Explore the development of farmerowned reserves to ensure adequate stock to meet demand

US corn production and prices affect the rest of the world ActionAid International USA. "FUELING THE FOOD CRISIS: The Cost to Developing Countries of US Corn Ethanol Expansion." ase.tufts.edu. N.p., 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 5 July
2013.<ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/rp/ActionAid_Fueling_Food_Crisis.pdf

The debate over the effect of biofuels on food prices has intensified in the context of the food crisis, and the diversion of a large and increasing share of US corn to ethanol production has drawn particular attention. Deservedly so, since corn is one of the key staple food crops in the world and the primary source of calories and nutrients for nearly 1 billion people worldwide. Corn is also one of the most widely used feed crops for

animals, so its availability and price have direct impacts on the price of dairy products, eggs, and meat. The United States is at once the worlds largest producer and exporter of corn, so changes in US corn supply and use quickly affect prices worldwide.

Sugarcane will tradeoff with US corn ethanol RYAN TRACY, writer for the Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2013. U.S. Corn-Ethanol
Producers: Curb Imports From Brazil, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324610504578273842341906004.html In addition to competition from imports, U.S. producers are selling into a smaller market as Americans drive more fuel-efficient cars and ethanol makers' efforts to increase the amount of their product blended into gasoline haven't caught on. A 2007 law sets mandates for annual U.S. use of alternative fuels. The number is supposed to keep rising, with the EPA deciding the exact targets each year. But Congress limited the amount of corn starch-based fuels that can count toward the annual quota, to leave room for "advanced" biofuels. The EPA has determined that ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane qualifies as advanced whereas ethanol from Midwestern corn doesn't. While U.S. ethanol makers have criticized those categories, they haven't previously suggested reducing any of the mandates. Now, however, in discussions with the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs earlier this month, industry representatives have made clear that they believe the U.S. mandate encourages imports of ethanol made from Brazilian sugarcane at the expense of U.S. producers, according to people familiar with the meetings.

Low production and high demand will cause food prices to skyrocket with expected increases UN 13
(The United Nations News Centre, official site for daily UN news, press releases, statements, briefings and calendar of events. Includes UN radio, video, webcasts, magazines, etc, Food prices to stay high as productions dips, UN agency reports in 10-year outlook, June 6.) Accessed online at: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45095#.UdObYvnVDYR

Agricultural production is expected to slow down over the next decade , due largely to limited expansion of arable land, rising production costs, environmental pressures and resource constraints, the United Nations food agency said today, launching in Beijing its report on the global agricultural outlook. Although relatively resilient to economic downturns, the agricultural markets continue to reflect the impact of a two speed global economy with weak recovery in developed countries and vibrant growth in many developing countries, the authors reported in the Agricultural Outlook, 2013-2022 produced by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). This years report contains a special feature on the future of agriculture in China, whose agricultural output rose 4.5 times since 1980. With one-fifth of the worlds population, comparably little agricultural land and water resources, Chinas focus on food security and self- sufficiency have allowed it to improve access to food. In Beijing, OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurra and FAO DirectorGeneral Jos Graziano da Silva participated in the reports launch. The event was hosted by the Chinese Academy of Agricultur al Sciences and is part of a two-day international forum. and we need to do our best to ensure that poor farmers benefit from them, said Mr. Graziano da Silva. Lets not forget that 70 per cent of the worlds fo od insecure population lives in rural areas of developing countries and that many of them are small-scale and subsistence farmers themselves. He added: Chinas agricultural production has been tremendously successful. Since 1978, the volume of agricultural production has grown almost five fold and the country has made significant progress towards food security. China is on track to achieving the first millennium

High food prices are an incentive to increase production

global agricultural production for crop sectors and livestock production reviewed is projected to grow on average 1.5 per cent annually, compared to 2.1 per cent in the previous decade. These trends reflect rising costs, growing resource constraints, and increasing environmental pressures, which are anticipated to inhibit supply response in
development goal of hunger reduction. According to the report, virtually all regions, OECD and FAO said. Mr. Gurra said that the relatively bright picture strong demand, expanding trade and high prices assumes continuing economic recovery. If we fail to turn the global economy around, investment and growth in agriculture will suffer and food security may be compromised, he said. Governments need

to create the right enabling environment for growth and trade, he added. Agricultural reforms have played a key role in Chinas remarkable progress in expanding production and improving domestic food security. Policy reforms and economic growth across the globe have been changing demand and supp ly fundamentals sufficiently to turn agriculture into a more market-driven sector which provides investment opportunities, particularly in developing countries. The report forecasts that developing countries will boost their production growth, particularly economies that have invested in the agricultural sector, and therefore boost their trade growth, particularly exports in coarse grains, rice, oils, sugar, beef, poultry and fish. Consumption of these goods is also projected to increase, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, followed by Latin America and

Growing populations have been driving the increase in consumption, but also higher incomes, urbanization and changing diets. Meanwhile, average prices are expected to be higher for the coming decade than they have been in the previous ten years which included historic highs. The launch of the report comes one day after World Environment Day, which this year focused on curbing
other parts of Asia. the massive loss and waste inherent in todays food systems. At least one third of all food produced fails to make it from farm to table, according to FAO which is part of the Think. Eat. Save: Reduce Your Foodprint campaign with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and public and private sector partners. If it continues on the current trajectory, the world will need about 60 per cent more food calories in 2050 compared to 2006.

The plan relieves food prices by stimulating Cuban production of sugar ethanol Conason 8
(Joe Conason, American journalist, author and political commentator, editor-in-chief at The National Memo, "One more good reason to lift the embargo on Cuba, Salon.com, July 18.) Accessed online at: http://www.salon.com/2008/07/18/cuba_6/

With its huge potential for producing clean, renewable, sugar-based ethanol, Cuba represents a significant source of energy that will remain unavailable to American consumers unless we undo the embargo. Agricultural experts have estimated that Cuba could eventually provide more than 3 billion gallons of fuel annually, perhaps even more when new technologies for extracting energy from sugar cane waste (known as bagasse) come online placing the island third in world ethanol production , behind the U.S. and Brazil. Given the relatively small demand for auto fuel in Cuba, nearly all of that ethanol would be available for export to its nearest neighbor. Today the Cuban government manufactures only nominal amounts of ethanol, mainly because of government policies favoring table sugar and rum instead. Fidel Castro reportedly feels that using cane for fuel instead of food is a
capitalist crime against the poor. Having ceded power to his brother Ral, however, the aging ruler may no longer control economic policy and Ral is widely viewed as the

It is also worth noting that sugar ethanol not only seems to burn cleaner than the kind made from grain but could also reduce pressure on food prices.
more flexible and pragmatic Castro. A revitalized ethanol industry in Cuba would have an enormous ready market only 90 miles away.

Acting now to solve food prices is key further delay risks global shortages, starvation, and instability Chamie 13
(Joseph Chamie, Director of research at the Center for Migration Studies in New York, former director of the United Nations Population Division, More Foodless Days Ahead, Unless We Act Now,PassBlue, January 7.) Accessed online at: http://passblue.com/2013/01/07/more-

foodless-days-ahead-unless-we-act-now/ Even a quick read of the book will raise ones understanding of an impending food crisis. Readers are likely to agree with Brown that the world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest

with malnutrition and starvation for some and ultimately political instability than most people realize. While his presentation of the challenge is convincing and his goal to inspire action is laudable, the problem at the heart of his book as well as many other books of this type is how to take the necessary actions to avert an unmanageable food shortage . He
calls on the world to act now, but he is unclear on how these steps will be achieved. Throughout his book, Brown relies on the term we. A few examples noted in his conclusion are: We

cannot claim that we are unaware of the trends that are undermining our food supply and thus our civilization. . . . We have to mobilize quickly. . . . We know what to do.

POVERTY
Food prices will push ten million below poverty Inman 11
(Phillips Inman, Economic correspondent for The Guardian, Food price rises pushing millions into extreme poverty, World Bank warns, April 2011.) Accessed online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/14/food-price-inflation-world-bank-warning

Without action to increase the supply of food, 10 million more people could fall below the $1.25 (76p) a day extreme poverty line over the next few months in addition to the 44 million pushed into poverty by soaring food prices during the last year, he warned on Thursday. A report by the World Bank found prices had jumped by 36% since April 2010, driven in part by higher fuel
costs connected to instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Higher transport and fertiliser costs have sent the price of wheat, maize and soya back to levels last seen in the

More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and volatile food prices," Zoellick said. "We have to put food first and protect the poor and vulnerable, who spend most of their money on food." He was speaking before the IMF and World Bank meetings
price boom of 2008." later this week, which will be attended by finance ministers and central bankers including the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, and Bank of England governor

A further 10% increase in food prices could drive an additional 10 million people below the poverty line, while a repeat of the last year's increases would affect 34 million who are already close to the poverty line.
Mervyn King.

High food prices increase Latin American food insecurity and poverty

NSI 11
(The North-South Institute, Canadian policy research institution specializing in international development, Food Security in Latin America: Short-term Responses to the Global Food Crisis, Summer 2011.) Accessed online at: http://www.nsi-ins.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2012/10/2011-Food-Security-in-Latin-America-Short-term-responses.pdf

The effects of the food crisis in Latin America have varied from country to country, depending on food balance
(imports and exports) and overall capacity to fund food imports. Moreover, while a country that is a net food exporter may see segments of its population profit from higher food prices, it may

also be jeopardizing the food security of its poorer citizens as domestic food prices increase too. The result is a level of food insecurity comparable to that of
net food-importing countries. For instance, while Andean countries have benefited from seeing the price of their main agricultural exports stay relatively low compared to the price of cereal, Central America and the Caribbean suffered because of their lesser capacity to import food (Bianchi et al. 2009). Among

the potential negative effects of the rise in the cost of

food are: A decline in purchasing power of foods for which substitutes are not easily found locally A reduction in the profitability of non-food agricultural activities and the impact of this on rural employment and income levels A reduction in household income because of the need to scale back other subsidies directed at poor sectors of the population or an increase in taxes (Bianchi et al. 2009).Together, these factors have been shown to increase the percentage of people living below the poverty line, with some families becoming poor and others falling into extreme poverty (Bianchi et al. 2009). Those most at risk of suffering from food insecurity are the urban poor and rural families, who can be grouped as either landless labourers or producers in marginal agricultural areas. As consumers, both groups are penalized by the same high food prices that benefit the larger-scale producers (Pieiro and Bianchi 2009). Women,
the elderly, and children are even more at risk because of unequal distribution of resources within households and, in the case of children, because of their greater nutritional vulnerability (Pieiro and Bianchi 2009).

Impoverishment destroys value to life and human dignity Udayakumar 95

(S.P Udayakumar, Director of the South Asian Community Center for Education and Research, The Futures of the Poor, 1995.)

The economy of poverty, according to Fuglesang and Chandler, is an isolated buy oppressed economic subsystem which leads its own life below the national economy, and caters for itself on its own. With its narrow resource base, the economy of poverty cannot overcome the inherent gap between production and consumption, nor can it start and sustain the process of accumulation which is the basic premise for progress. Vic George and Irving Howards rightly claim that poverty is best defined in a composite manner, defined along a continuum which ranges from starvation to lack of social participation. Dismissing the traditional measurement of poverty in terms of income, Alan Durning contends that it is much more than an economic condition. Povertys horror extends into all aspects of a persons life: susceptibility to disease, limiting access to most types of services and information, lack of control over resources, subordination to higher social and economic classes, and utter insecurity in the face of changing circumstances. Flowing from these physical dimensions is povertys psychological toll-the erosion of human dignity and self-respect. Theres a moral obligation to take action against poverty Khalifa 6
(Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, President of the UN General Assembly, World Has A Moral Oblligation to Fight Poverty, Protect Human Rights of Most Vulnerable, December 8, 2006.) Accessed online at: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm

When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the human rights concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic services, such as health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice. History is littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to take action to empower the poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as discrimination and social exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take action.

WAR
High food prices and shortages are a catalyst for war history empirically proves
Roston 12
(Tom Roston, writer and editor who has been covering documentaries, movies and other aspects of American popular culture for close to 20 years, A Brief History of Food & War, The Food Republic, January 11.) Accessed online at: http://www.foodrepublic.com/2012/01/11/brief-history-food-war

Arab Spring, which toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, had a seemingly mundane, yet consistent motivating factor: the price of food. At the beginning of it all, the protests against Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were demonstrations against high bread prices. This is not to say that outrage over the rising prices was the only cause, but it was certainly an important one. Its difficult to delineate the myriad causes that go into uprisings or wars, but food access to it, the price of it, and its distribution has often been a significant factor. Some of those
Last years conflicts verge on the comical: Iceland and the United Kingdom were engaged in a series of naval skirmishes from the 1950s to the 1970s over fishing rights in the North Atlantic in what was known as the Cod War. There was also a Salt War in the 15th century, between papal allies and the duke of Ferrara in Italy, over control of the then-valuable commodity of salt. But most serious, they Back during the Roman Empire, Cicero documented that the increase in bread was leading to social unrest at home. So the Romans did what they do best: they brandished their imperial muscle and took other

such engagements are deadly

and

span history.

famine is often used as a tool to destroy ones enemies. Such was the case during the siege of Leningrad, an appalling 872-day stretch when the Germans cut off supply lines to the Russian city during World War 2: an estimated 1.5 million people died of famine. More recently, in Sudan, two million people have died, mostly of hunger, during the civil war there. In Somalia, the militant Islamist group, Al-Shabab, prohibited food aid to reach the people it wants to suppress. And when young men are starving, they are more prone to join the group that controls the food, which happened to be Al-Shabab. While tens of thousands of people have starved to death, the World Food Program had to suspend its operations after many of its aid workers were killed. For now and the future, food looks to be an even more important force in the conflicts our planet will have to endure. With an ever-expanding population, now topping seven billion people, and with increasingly large swaths of that population enjoying greater resource-burning lifestyles, theres even more pressure on the worlds food. In 2007-2008, a spike in food prices led to riots across the planet, from Haiti to Yemen to Bangladesh. When a heat wave in Russia means people in Libya are going to have to pay double for their bread, our planet looks quite fragile. We might not appreciate how a spike in food prices can cause such unrest, but take a look at these numbers, as noted by Lester Brown in last years enlightening Food Issue of Foreign Policy: Americans generally spend less than 10% of their income on food, but there are 2 billion people who live in poverty around the globe who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food. A slight increase for them means a whole lot. Its ironic to note that, in response to the food crisis of 2008, powerful countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea and China ventured beyond their
peoples grains, in this case Egypts, to placate their citizens. On the war front, borders to grow grain in cheaper regions, such as Ethiopia and Sudan, where, of course, people are often starving. Its remin iscent of what Rome once did with the Egyptians

Managing the planets resources has never been more vital. And, for all of the talk about oil, it might just be bread that matters most.
(and we know how that ended.)

GLOBAL INSTABILITY
Empirical models confirm high food prices cause global instability the brink is August
Merchant 13
(Brian Merchant, writer, We Are Now One Year Away From Global Riots, Complex Systems Theorists Say, Motherboard, June 5, 2013.)

the number one reason we riot? The plausible, justifiable motivations of trampled-upon humanfolk to fight back are manypoverty, oppression, disenfranchisement, etcbut the big one is more primal than any of the above. Its hunger, plain and simple. If theres a single factor that reliably sparks social unrest, its food becoming too scarce or too expensive. So argues a group of complex systems theorists in Cambridge, and it makes sense. In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The number one determinant was soaring food prices. Their model identified a precise threshold for global food prices that, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest. The MIT Technology Review explains how CSIs model works: The evidence comes from two sources. The first is data gathered by the
Whats United Nations that plots the price of food against time, the so-called food price index of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN. The second is the date of riots around the world, whatever their cause. Plot the data, and it looks like this: Pretty simple. Black dots are the food prices, red lines are the riots. In other words, whenever the UNs food price index, which measures the monthly change in the price of a basket of food commodities, climbs above 210, the conditions ripen for social unrest around the

For billions of people around the world, food comprises up to 80% of routine expenses (for rich-world people like you and I, its like 15%). When prices jump, people cant afford anything else; or even food itself. And if you cant eat or worse, your family cant eatyou fight. But how accurate is the model? An anecdote the researchers outline in the report offers us
world. CSI doesnt claim that any breach of 210 immediately leads to riots, obviously; just that the probability that riots will erupt g rows much greater. an idea. They write that on December 13, 2010, we submitted a government report analyzing the repercussions of the global fi nancial crises, and directly identifying the risk of social unrest and political instability due to food prices. Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire as an act of protest in Tunisia. And we all know what happened after that. Today, the food price index is hovering around 213, where it has stayed for months just beyond the tip of the identified threshold. Low corn yield in the U.S., the worlds most important producer, has helped keep prices high. Recent droughts in the mid-western United States threaten to cause global catastrophe, Yaneer Bar-Yam, one

We are on the verge of another crisis, the third in five years, and likely to be the worst yet, capable of causing new food riots and turmoil on a par with the Arab Spring. Yet the cost of food hasnt quite yet risen to the catastrophic levels
of the authors of the report, recently told Al Jazeera. When people are unable to feed themselves and their families, widespread social disruption occurs. reached last year. Around the time of the riots cum-revolutions, we saw the food price index soar through 220 points and even push 240. This year , weve pretty consistently

along the cusp of danger. But CSI expects a perilous trend in rising food prices to continue. Even before the extreme weather scrambled food prices this year, their 2011 report predicted that the next great breach would occur in August 2013, and that the risk of more worldwide rioting would follow.
hovered in the 210-216 rangeright

Food Crisis: Phosphorous 2nd lines

Worldwide sugar shortage coming soon
Bill Frogameni, writer for South Florida Business Journal, Jun 30, 2008. Changing times, mixed outlook for South Florida farming, http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2008/06/30/story8.html?page=all Rick Roth, owner of the 4,000-acre Roth Farms in Belle Glade and VP of the Florida Farm Bureau, agreed that fuel and fertilizer costs are a major strain for South Florida farmers. "The outlook is a little pessimistic," he said. However, Roth - who's farm is diversified with about 50 percent sugar, plus a mix of vegetables, rice and nursery items - said his operation may ultimately benefit from environmental trends. "There are going to be opportunities in the area of ethanol, biodiesel [and] organic fertilizer," he said, adding he foresees better days for sugar, in particular. "We believe there's going to be a shortage of sugar supply not just in this county, but worldwide."

Cubas sugar crop doesnt use commercial fertilizer

MARK KEENAN, The Sunday Times, February 21, 2010. A Cuban revolution; Denied international trade, Fidel Castro's people found new sources of medicines, food and fertilisers. We're still catching up, Lexis-Nexis When the wall came down in 1989, it killed Cuba's trade link. Instantly, the Cubans had no oil, machinery, medicines, food or fertilisers, but were rolling in sugar, rum and cigars nobody wanted. Havana, a cosmopolitan city of 2m people with great healthcare and education, went into meltdown. Before long, doctors began citing starvation induced blindness at their practices. I was in a hurry to get to Cuba before Castro died, to see what the fuss was about before corporate America got back in there. Soon after, the US turned the screw with the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. This meant a company trading with Cuba also got embargoed by the US. We holiday gringos felt guilty as we ate heartily in our luxury hotels while Havanans trekked on foot to the country to get their eggs. But the locals welcomed us as embargo-breakers bringing in badly needed tourist dollars. I've always been glad I was in Havana for what Cubans call the "Special Period". Imagine a Dublin where buses are pulled by horses, where the residents of Dun Laoghaire float into the bay in tractortyre inner tubes to catch fish to eat, or walk to Wicklow and back to trade granny's silver for a bag of potatoes. While our recent slump has led to cries of despair, the Cubans did what they always did in the face of adversity: they smiled, danced and sang, and they improvised like crazy. I met a guy handbuilding parts for

Studebakers and Plymouths from scrap metal, and a granny who made party dresses from curtains. The period sparked a revolution in Havana which, I believe, will resonate round the world more than the one in 1959. Instead of walking into the country to buy food, householders began growing it anywhere they could. On rooftops, balconies, in gardens. Locals requested use of waste ground and public spaces. Where buildings had collapsed, urban co-ops moved in and took out the rubble, replacing it with soil and then tomatoes, lettuce, cassavas, avocados and coffee. The government made laws to let residents gain use of disused sites, and got university horticulturists and researchers to help the larger groups. They came up with a cheap raisedbed system called an "organoponico", and sought ways to fertilise and protect crops in a nation without commercially produced fertilisers or pesticides. They helped to organise mass urban composting efforts, developing wormeries to transform waste, and making new types of irrigation systems. They used everything, stockpiling crop waste such as rice husks for compost.

Fertilizer run off from corn ethanol kills all the fishes
KENT GARBER, writer for US News and World Report, June 6, 2008. Dead Zones Grow in the Gulf of Mexico, www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/06/06/dead-zones-grow-in-thegulf-of-mexico Each spring, the cycle of death begins anew. Nitrogen and phosphorus, leached from fertilizer, pass from farmland into streams, from streams into riversthe Mississippi, the Potomac, the Susquehannaand then, finally, into some of the country's great bodies of water: the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay. There the chemicals collect each summer, spawning the growth of algae, which deplete the water of oxygen and lead to ghostly aquatic wastelands. Marine life, if mobile enough, will swim away; the rest will suffocate and die. Scientists have monitored the growth of these so-called dead zones since the late 1970s. They have tried to promote policies to reduce their size, without much success. Last summer, the dead zone along the Gulf of Mexico coast spanned nearly 8,000 square miles its third-largest occurrence on record and roughly the size of Massachusetts. Although states have tried to address the problem, cooperation among them is suffering, and federal leadership and funding are lagging. And now, scientists say, there is a new obstacle: the impact of ethanol production on water quality. Spurred by recent ethanol mandates and, to a lesser extent, high commodity prices, U.S. farmers are planting record-size crops. From 2006 to 2007, corn acres rose by about 15 million, mostly in the Mississippi River basin. Mid-Atlantic farmers are expected to plant 500,000 more acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat this year than they did in 2006, a 7 percent jump. To grow more crops, particularly corn, farmers usually have to use more fertilizer. Fertilizer runoff is the primary contributor to dead zone formation, the source of three quarters of the nitrogen and more than half of the phosphorous in the water. In a recent study, researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Wisconsin found that the U.S. government's goal to produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, with a maximum of 15 billion from corn, would most likely increase the nitrogen flow to the Gulf by 10 to 20 percent. "It is hard to be critical of a farmer if your crop is all you have," says Simon Donner, the paper's coauthor. Yet the new

biofuel policies, he says, seem to make it all but impossible to control dead zones in the near future, since cleaning up the Gulf would require at least a 30 percent reduction in nitrogen levels.

Runoff/Environment impacts
Corn production massively contributes to marine dead zone in the gulf threats ecosystems and fishing industry Union of Concerned Scientists, is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United
States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists, October 2011. The Energy-Water Collision: Corn ethanols threat to Water Resources, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/corn-ethanol-and-waterquality.pdf

Just as in lakes upriver, nitrogen and phosphorus flowing into the Gulf of Mexico stimulate algae growth. When the algae die and decompose, oxygen in the water is consumed, leading to severe oxygen depletion or hypoxia, which either kills fish and other marine life or forces them to seek more suitable habitats. The resulting dead zone peaks in size each summer; over the last five years it has averaged more than 6,000 square miles larger than Connecticut. The lack of oxygen threatens not only aquatic species but also the gulfs $2.8 billion-a-year commercial and recreational fishing industry (Committee on Environment and Natural Resources 2010). Corn and soybean crops contribute half the nitrogen and a quarter of the phosphorus that cause the dead zone (Figure 7) (Alexander et al. 2008). These crops are counted together because corn and soybeans are typically grown in rotation, but corn is the more heavily fertilized of the two, accounting for essentially all the nitrogen (97 percent) and most of the phosphorus (80 percent) applied (ERS 2011b). A coordinated effort by state and federal agencies to restore the health of affected marine fisheries and ecosystems in the gulf has set a target to reduce the average size of the dead zone by more than two-thirds (Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force 2009).

Phosphorus runoff from corn ethanol devastates fisheries Union of Concerned Scientists, is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United
States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists, October 2011. The Energy-Water Collision: Corn ethanols threat to Water Resources, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_energy/ew3/corn-ethanol-and-waterquality.pdf This increase in corn productionand the fertilizer use associated with ithas implications for water quality from the Corn Belt to the Gulf of Mexico. Rains wash nitrogen and phosphorus pollution from farm fields into creeks, then small rivers, large rivers, and ultimately the ocean. Along the way this pollution contributes to algae blooms in lakes and streams as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, where the algae causes a seasonal dead zone that threatens important fisheries (Rabalais et al. 2010).

Phosphorus pollution creates marine dead zones

Rowan Jacobsen, writer for popular science, 05.06.2011. Saving the Seas: Reducing Fertilizer Runoff to Resurrect Ocean Dead Zones, http://www.popsci.com/science/article/201104/reducing-fertilizer-runoff-resurrect-ocean-dead-zones Marine pollution takes many forms, from the millions of gallons of oil that run off our highways each year to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive gyre of floating plastic trash. But the most devastating pollutants are the nitrogen and phosphorus found in our fertilizer and sewage. When too much of either washes downstream, coastal waters become choked with heavily fertilized algae, which then dies and decomposes, consuming the oxygen in the water and asphyxiating animal life. This process, called eutrophication, has created at least 405 dead zones worldwide. Human sewage is the top source of eutrophication in the developing world, but in the U.S., Europe and China, animal waste and fertilizer are the main culprits. Every year in the U.S. alone, some 10 billion chickens, 80 million cows and 149 million pigs produce 500 million tons of manure, much of which is sprayed on fields. Farmers also add another 55 million tons of synthetic fertilizer to their cropland, much of which washes back into the watershed. The result: The largest dead zone on Earth spreads from the mouth of the Mississippi. In the summer, when Midwestern agricultural runoff reaches its peak, it can grow to be the size of New Jersey. Eutrophication is reversible. In the 1980s, for instance, the Black Sea contained the planets largest dead zone. But when the Soviet Union disintegrated, farmers there could no longer gain access to synthetic fertilizer; by 1996 the dead zone had disappeared entirely.

Gulf dead zone destroys the regional economy

Agence France-Presse, The Raw Story, June 26, 2013. Gulf of Mexico could see record-sized dead zone from pollution this year http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/26/gulf-of-mexico-could-see-record-sized-dead-zonefrom-pollution-this-year/ The Gulf of Mexico could see a record-size dead zone this year of oxygen-deprived waters resulting from pollution, US scientists have cautioned based on government data models. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations forecasts said the dead zone could be as large as New Jersey, or up to 8,561 square miles (22,172 square kilometers). Dead zones are toxic to marine life and are caused by excessive nutrient pollution due to agriculture runoff. They are influenced by weather, precipitation, wind and temperature. When there is little oxygen in the water, most marine life near the bottom is unable to survive. This years prediction for the Gulf reflects flood conditions in the Midwest that caused large amounts of nutrients to be transported from the Mississippi watershed to the Gulf, NOAA said in a statement. Last years dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was the fourth smallest on record due to drought conditions, covering an area of approximately 2,889 square miles. The final results will not be known until August. If the region gets a big tropical storm between early July and early August, the estimate would drop to 5,344 square miles. Over the past five years, the

Gulfs dead zone has averaged about 5,600 square miles. The largest dead zone on record for the waters off Louisiana, Texas, Florida and Mexico was 8,481 square miles in 2002. NOAA said the Gulf of Mexico dead zone affects nationally important commercial and recreational fisheries, and threatens the regions economy.

Dead zone stuff

KENT GARBER, writer for US News and World Report, June 6, 2008. Dead Zones Grow in the Gulf of Mexico, www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/06/06/dead-zones-grow-in-thegulf-of-mexico As is often the case, federal subsidies benefit some at the expense of others. Hard data are lacking, but anecdotes of economic distress abound. At the end of last summer, for example, fishermen, crabbers, and shrimpers in Grand Isle, La., called a news conference to call attention to the threat of dead zones to their livelihood. Some reported hauls down hundreds of thousands of pounds. The ecological impact may be worse: Unlike nitrogen, which eventually evaporates as a gas, phosphorus lingers in the water, contributing to dead zones of the future and the potential for significant environmental damage. Finding more. Not only are dead zones not going away, scientists say, but they are becoming more frequent and intense. A 2004 U.N. report documented nearly 150 dead zones worldwide, and scientists continue to come across new ones, including some apparently caused by climate change. Researchers at Oregon State University, for example, identified a recurring dead zone in the Pacific Northwest in 2002; during the 2006 cycle, it caused "mass die-offs" of marine life on the seafloor.

Collapse of ocean ecosystems ensures extinction of all life

Davidson, 3 Founder of the Turtle House Foundation and award-winning Journalist (Fire in the Turtle
House, p.47-51, EA] But surely the Athenians had it backward; its the land that rests in the lap of the sea. Thalassa, not Gaia, is the guardian of life on the blue planet. A simple, albeit apocalyptic, experiment suggests Thalassas power. Destroy all life on land; the ocean
creatures will survive just fine. Given time, theyll even repopulate the land. But wipe out the organisms that inhabit the oceans and all life on land is doomed. Dust to dust, says the

Bible, but water to water is more like it, for all life comes from and returns to the sea. Our ocean origins abide within us, our secret marine history. The chemical makeup of our blood is strikingly similar to seawater. Every carbon atom in our body has cycled through the ocean many times. Even the human embryo reveals our watery past. Tiny gill slits form and then fade during our development in the womb. The ocean is the cradle
of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate. The astonishing biodiversity is most evident on coral reefs, often called the rain

forests of the sea. Occupying less than one-quarter of 1 percent of the global ocean, coral reefs are home to nearly a third of all marine fish species and to as many as nine million species in all. But life exists in profusion in every corner of the ocean, right down to the hydrothermal vents on the seafloor (discovered only in 1977), where more than a hundred newly described species thrive around superheated plumes of sulfurous

gasses. The abundance of organisms in the ocean isnt surprising given that the sea was, as already mentioned, the crucible of life on Earth. It is the original ecosystem, the environment in which the primordial soup of nucleic acids (which can self-replicate, but are not alive) and other molecules made the inexplicable and miraculous leap into life, probably as simple bacteria, close to 3.9 billion years ago. A spectacular burst of new life forms called the Cambrian explosion took place in the oceans some 500 million years ago, an evolutionary experiment that produced countless body forms, the prototypes of virtually all organisms alive today. It wasnt until 100 million years later that the first primitive plants took up residence on terra firma. Another 30 million years passed before the first amphibians climbed out of the ocean. After this head start, its not surprising that evolution on that newcomer-dry land-has never caught up with the diversity of the sea. Of the thirty-three higher-level groupings of animals (called phyla), thirty-two are found in the oceans and just twelve on land.

Ecosystem lose causes extinction

David P. Ball is a freelance writer and photojournalist. Jun 6th, 2012. Earth on brink of 'irreversible' collapse of global ecosystem, new SFU study warns, http://www.vancouverobserver.com/sustainability/2012/06/06/new-tipping-point-study-warnstotal-irreversible-collapse-global-ecosystem?page=0,1
A state change in one place could propagate globally like an epidemic. Think about it think of different ecosystems coming close to a state change. Does that one tip over and cause the next one to tip over, and so on? When about 60 per cent of the earth is converted, that's a magic number in simple systems, for when an epidemic, rather than fizzling out, sweeps through the entire system. Until now, climatologists have documented the

according to the new review, which compiles existing data into a new mosaic, the earth could suddenly and irreversibly shift in a catastrophic chain reaction, once humans have impacted a majority of the planet's ecosystems. Based on the theory that changing systems can reach a rapid tipping point like an iceberg suddenly flipping, or an epidemic exploding the study's historic collaboration of 18 paleontologists, computer modellers, mathematicians, biologists and ecologists put their heads together to study whether such state changes could happen on a global scale. I would agree that it's fairly dramatic, Mooers admits, as we chat in his lab at SFU's
effects of carbon dioxide emissions on rising global temperatures and their predictions are dire. But Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Centre. At some point we've converted too much of the earth, and the

The earth may become a much more hostile place for everyone. . . The chances are that this transition would not only be extremely problematic to human society, but the new state might not be conducive to human society at all.
effects will be global. This review is dramatic it's quite stark.

North Korea mod

Phosphorus fertilizer key to North Korean agriculture BBC, May 28, 2013 Tuesday. North Korea applies new chemicals, organic fertilizers in farming,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.butlerlib.butlercc.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLi nkInd=true&risb=21_T17719351440&format=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrl Key=29_T17719351444&cisb=22_T17719351443&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=10962&doc No=2
Text of report in English by state-run North Korean news agency KCNA website Pyongyang, 28 May:

New kinds of agricultural chemicals and organic fertilizers have been applied to farming in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. They include maize seed-covering material, rice nursery herbicide, eurytropic herbicide, organic compound fertilizer, nitrogen humate compound fertilizer and phosphorus bacterial fertilizer. The maize seed-covering material is composed of 20
percent of insecticide, 40 percent of growth promoter and various kinds of other nutrient elements. It is effective for killing earthworm and accelerating initial growth of crops. The eurytropic herbicide is appropriate to killing annual and perennial weeds in rice nurseries and rice-transplanted and rice-sown fields. The phosphorus bacterial and multielement mineral fertilizers are effective for

preventing ceitocybe bescens and bacterial leaf blight and raising the yield of grain and vegetables. Kim Chi Yong, director of the Institute of Agricultural Chemicalization under the Academy of Agricultural Science, told KCNA that many local co-op farms have benefited from the application of those agricultural chemicals and organic fertilizers.

Phosphorus depletion strips North Korea of soil nutrients making agriculture unstable
Phil McKenna, writer for NOVA/PBS, Wed, 06 Mar 2013. Inside North Koreas Environmental Collapse www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/nature/inside-north-koreas-environmental-collapse/ But reunifying Korea would be a more daunting challenge, in part because of the heavily depleted soils. North Korean farmers are heavily reliant on nitrogen-based fertilizers, which in certain formulations can paradoxically drain the soil of nutrients. Its a very unbalanced fertilizer, lacking in magnesium, calcium, potassium, and phosphorus, says Dutch soil scientist Van der Kamp of the fertilizer predominantly used in North Korea. When you dont replace those minerals you basically mine the soil for these other nutrients, so the soils in general are very acidic, with very low organic matter content and low microbial activity. In 2012 the United Nations planned to distribute 2,000 metric tons of fertilizer containing each of the above-mentioned minerals to 260 collective farms as part of a $14 million agricultural aid package. But that aid is likely a drop in the bucket in terms of what is needed.

Food shortages cause North Korea nuclear lashout

David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, January 28, 2013. North Korea's Rhetoric And Nuclear Capabilities, http://m.npr.org/story/170473476 But at the same time, the North Koreans don't need to be able to reach the United States to have a credible deterrent. They've got enough artillery shells to destroy Seoul, the capital of one of the top 10 economies on Earth, without resort to nuclear weapons, and that is one of the reasons that the world has sort of danced around North Korea for so long. And, you know, the North Koreans have used their nuclear program and the thought that they could lash out in an effort to try to get the world to bring them aid. They're sort of like, you know, the hermit at the end of the street in a really nice neighborhood that wires up the whole house with barbed wire and explosives and said, you know, if somebody doesn't bring me take-out food every night, I'm blowing the whole neighborhood up.

Famine Mod
Phosphorus is rapidly depleting results in global starvation
Tom Philpott, writer for Mother Jones, March/April 2013 Issue. You Need Phosphorus to Liveand We're Running Out, http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/fertilizerpeak-phosphorus-shortage Morocco, it is thought, holds up to 85 percent (PDF) of the globe's known phosphate rock reserveand a lot of it lies in Western Sahara. Morocco's royal family thus controls what Jeremy Grantham, cofounder of the prominent Boston-based global investment firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., called the "most important quasi-monopoly in economic history." Who cares about phosphorus? For starters, every living thing on Earthincluding humans since all the crops we eat depend on it to produce healthy cells. Until the mid-20th century, farmers maintained phosphorus levels in soil by composting plant waste or spreading phosphorus-rich manure. Then new mining and refining techniques gave rise to the modern phosphorus fertilizer industryand farmers, particularly in the rich temperate zones of Europe and North America, quickly became hooked on quick, cheap, and easy phosphorus. Now the rest of the world is scrambling to catch up, and annual phosphorus demand is rising nearly twice as fast as the population. Our addiction to cheap P (as it's known in the periodic table) is risky for two reasons. The first, better-known one is that not all the phosphorus that farmers put on their land is absorbed by crops. A lot leaches into water, ending up in lakes and rivers, where it causes algal bloomswhich, as they decompose and suck up oxygen, create dead zones. But the scarier reason is that, like any mined material, phosphate rock is a finite resource, and there's fierce debate about just how long our supply can last. "Peak phosphorus" doesn't get a lot of buzz, but it should. In a recent essay in Nature, Grantham, who also runs an environmental foundation, put the case bluntly: Our P use "must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve."

Misc
China digging for scarce phosphorus
Paul Tentena, East African Business Week, May 21, 2013. China to Dig for Phosphates in Uganda, http://www.lexisnexis.com.butlerlib.butlercc.edu/lnacui2api/auth/checkbrowser.do?ipcounter= 1&cookieState=0&rand=0.7927317539315443&bhjs=1&bhqs=1 Guangzhou Dongsong Energy Group has negotiated a 49 year lease to mine the phosphates deposits in eastern Uganda. Estimated total deposits stand at 230 million tonnes and cover an area of
26 square kilometres. The Chinese firm will exploit the mineral found in Sigulu Hills in Tororo District with the end product mostly being fertilizer. The Group Executive Director, Jiang Xinting, was in Kampala during March to have talks with President Museveni about their plans for Uganda. Lv Weipong, the company managing director, said they have already secured a 49 year lease from the community that has some rights over the land. "We are now concluding our approvals with the relevant arms of government before commencing the mining," he said in Kampala. Weipong said they want to start with the

fertilizer project and later venture into steel mills and hydro power stations because of the high demand. Guangzhou Dongsong Energy Group has investments in the development of hydro power
stations, power grid transmission, coal mining and organic agriculture among others. The phosphates project will see Uganda produce phosphate fertilizers and phosphoric acid. It has long been considered a National Development Priority Project for the country. However progress has been hindered by finding someone with the money and expertise to work the extensive site. About five years ago, there was excitement when the Madhvani Group announced an initial $500 million investment to develop the Sukulu site. However little has been heard of this plan since then. Uganda's phosphate deposits are

associated with alkaline/carbonatitic and mainly found at Sukulu and Bukusu. Worldwide, there is a high demand for phosphorus fertilizer, especially in China and India.

Morocco-Western Sahara war scenario lead

Renee Cho, Writer for the Earth Institute of Colombia University | 4.1.2013. Phosphorus: Essential to LifeAre We Running Out?, http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/01/phosphorusessential-to-life-are-we-running-out/ Ninety percent of the phosphate rock reserves are located in just five countries: Morocco, China, South Africa, Jordan and the United States. The U.S., which has 25 years of phosphate rock reserves left, imports a substantial amount of phosphate rock from Morocco, which controls up to 85 percent of the remaining phosphate rock reserves. However, many of Moroccos mines are located in Western Sahara, which Morocco has occupied against international law. Despite the prevalence of phosphorus on earth, only a small percentage of it can be mined because of physical, economic, energy or legal constraints.

Water Shortage
Cuba is going through major water shortages
Grogg, 2012 Regional Editor of IPS Latin America since March 2003
Patricia. "INTER PRESS SERVICE." IPS Climate Change Aggravates Water Shortage in Cuba. IPS-Inter Press Service, 26 May 2012. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/03/climate-change-aggravates-water-shortage-in-cuba/>. ANTIAGO DE CUBA, Mar 26 2012 (IPS) - In this eastern Cuban city, Danny Dip Leyva has begun to use her shower again after decades of hauling water into her house by hand. But in Aurora, a small neighbourhood on the outskirts of Havana, Manuel Roque still longs for a regular supply of piped water. Many areas in Cuba still rely on tanker trucks for water. Credit: Jorge Luis Baos/IPS Nearly 900 km apart, Havana and Santiago de Cuba are this countrys largest and second-largest cities. Both depend mainly on rain for water, which makes supplies vulnerable to the effects of climate change. And both reflect the magnitude of the countrys water shortage and the governments efforts to solve the problem. Experts note that the worst natural disasters in Cuba are associated with hydrometeorological events, including drought and hurricanes, which are aggravated by climate change. The worst drought in recent years, in 2004 and 2005, began in eastern Cuba but eventually affected the entire country, causing some three billion dollars in losses. In Cuba, the dry season runs from November to April, and 80 percent of annual precipitation occurs from May to October. As of February 2012, the countrys 240 reservoirs held nearly 5.6 million cubic metres of water, or 56.5 percent of capacity. While the situation is not as critical as it was in 2005, experts point out with concern that 82 reservoirs were at less than 50 percent of capacity, and that 39 of these were below 25 percent of capacity and 10 percent were completely dry. Havana, with reserves at just 19 percent of capacity, was one of the cities with the most dire water shortages. The long and narrow Cuban archipelago has no major natural freshwater sources, making rainfall its principal source of water. The countrys reservoirs are part of a strategy followed by the government since the 1960s, to provide supplies during the dry season. According to reports from the National Institute of Water Resources (INRH), Cuba increased its capacity from 48 million cubic metres in 13 reservoirs in 1959 to almost nine billion cubic metres today. In addition to these surface water reserves, the country has three billion cubic metres of underground water reserves. In recent years, the Cuban government has revived plans that were interrupted by the severe economic crisis of the 1990s, hoping to find a long-term solution to water shortages with engineering works in the eastern and central regions to transfer water from rainy mountain regions to drier areas. The strategy includes the construction of reservoirs, canals and pipelines, as well as more than 80 km of mountain tunnels. Once completed, the distribution network will benefit at least nine of the countrys 15 provinces. The program is considered vital for the eastern region, due to its scarce groundwater reserves. This is adaptation on a major scale, and at a high economic cost. It is also necessary for society to accept that drought is here to stay, and that people must prepare and find solutions, such as having recipients for storing water, or if they have animals, storing forage and having places to move their livestock, Carlos Rodrguez, a land-use planning and environmental expert, commented to IPS. While he noted that Santiago and other parts of eastern Cuba are among the most vulnerable to drought, he said water shortages are also a problem in western provinces such as Havana and parts of Pinar del Ro, 160 km from the capital. Santiago, a city of about half a million, has six reservoirs. But its water supply

was inadequate for decades, and entire generations grew up carrying water to their homes. Piped water was available every six to 30 days, INRH official Gerardo Linares told reporters. The population grew and water sources became even more insufficient. Moreover, the citys old, deteriorated water grid presented another obstacle for piping water to peoples homes. But this year, Santiagos residents have a modern new aqueduct and water purification plant. Our quality of life has taken an enormous leap forward. Now we have water almost every day from our taps. In the past, water would flow every 15 or even 20 days, and taking a shower was a luxury, Dip Leiva, who lives in Santiagos Jos Mart district, built in the 1960s, told IPS. In Havana, water distribution is uneven: in some neighbourhoods water is always available, while in others, such as Roques, there is running water every other day, but only in the very early morning. Our water tanks arent always filled up all the way, and sometimes we end up waiting for water that never comes, Roque told IPS. According to official figures, 10.7 million of Cubas 11.2 million inhabitants have access to drinking water. Water is delivered to the homes of 8.4 million people, while 1.7 million have piped water less than 200 metres from their homes, and about 600,000 receive water from tanker trucks, known here as pipas. We have 2,411 human settlements, which are supplied with water through 22,326 km of piping, equivalent to 14 times the islands circumference, INRH official Caridad Daz said on a television programme broadcast late last year. However, the drought and the poor state of the water pipe system in Havana, population 2.2 million, are conspiring against stable distribution. Water authorities have acknowledged that about half the water pumped nationwide does not reach its destination, due to leaks in the pipes. The government plan for the updating of the economic model includes prioritising and expanding a program to rehabilitate the countrys water distribution networks, including the sale of fittings and accessories to the public. The plan also includes the mandatory regulation of metered consumption and rates that depend on consumption, both in the state and private sectors.

Cubas declining economy is contributing to water shortages

Bonnefoy NO DATE
Bonnefoy graduated from George Washington University with a degree in international affairs, and she holds a journalism degree from the University of Santiago. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in international studies from the University of Chile. Pascale. "Coping with Water Crisis in Cuba." IDRC. IDRC, n.d. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?PublicationID=904>. Over the past ten years, Cubas economic decline has led to a slow but steady deterioration of water supplies and sanitation services and a resulting increase in water-borne disease. When water shortages in parts of Cuba reached crisis proportions last year, two communities solved the problem by taking matters in their own hands and using slow sand filters as home water-treatment systems. In Santiago de Cuba, on the eastern part of the island, water shortages made headlines in August of last year. People in some areas of the city, including Veguita de Galo, were doing without water for up to 20 days at a stretch. In other areas, such as La Torre, service was frequently out for four and five days at a time. When water did flow through the citys mains, it was often on for just two or three hours. To cope with erratic supply, people began storing water, for longer and longer periods, increasing the risk of contamination. Moreover, some residents of Veguita de Galo turned to a private well for water that was turbid, salty and unsafe for drinking. Even before this most recent crisis the situation was intolerable. A survey revealed that 16 percent of households in Veguita de Galo did not have access to the water-distribution network. Even those that did had to treat their water before it was safe to drink. The regions facility for producing the chlorine used to treat the municipal water supply had

fallen victim to the combined economic shock of the American trade blockade and the fall of the Soviet bloc. A 1999 survey showed that water quality in 49 of the 50 water samples taken in Veguita de Galo was substandard. Cubas worsening economic situation also crippled the city`s three wastewater-treatment plants, triggering an increase in water-borne parasitic and infectious disease. Stored water: Dangerous Stockpiles Researchers focused on two areas within the Peoples Council of Veguita de Galo where the highest rate of water borne disease had been recorded. Of the 924 residents surveyed early on in the project, almost 45 percent did not treat their water. Furthermore, those most directly affected by the poor water quality did not seem aware of the risks involved in using it. The survey also revealed that almost all families stockpiled their water most often, in any container at hand. "Contaminated cisterns used to store water are a significant factor in the transmission of diarrheal illness," said Gustavo Marzn, project coordinator in Santiago de Cuba. "Contamination results when cisterns are improperly sealed or micro-organisms on utensils or hands come in contact with the water." A Solution: Slow-Sand Filters the main focus of the project was the installation of 703 slow-sand filters and an equal number of containers for the filtered water. This well known, easy-to-use filter technology had been adapted some years ago by a group of IDRC-supported researchers to conditions common in the developing world. Field tests across Latin America proved its robustness. [See related sidebar: From South to North the sand filter takes hold in Canada, by Colin Campbell] The filters are based on a centuries-old concept: water trickles through a layer of sand, and living organisms that form a biological layer on the sands surface purify the water. Easier than boiling water, and surprisingly untechnical, the filters remove nearly all water-borne parasites and bacteria, as well as a high proportion of heavy metals. Installing Filters: A Family Affair In January 2000, INHEM turned the production of the filter components over to GEOCUBA, a national firm. Families installed the filters themselves and had to find the gravel and sand that make the filter functional. This, along with washing the sand and gravel and then grading it into different sizes, proved a long process. The first filters were provided to those households lacking water-treatment services where there had been previous episodes of illness. The storage containers were distributed only after it was clear that the filters were working properly. "The entire population benefitted from the project," stated Hugo Cuevas, a community representative from Veguita de Galo. "It helped reduce diarrhea. It also saved time and fuel, because it was no longer necessary to boil the water and wait for it to cool. It also brought us closer to government institutions, giving us a better idea of what they do and showing us how to work together. Now our relationship is much stronger."

Cuba attempting to solve water shortage

Bonnefoy NO DATE
Bonnefoy graduated from George Washington University with a degree in international affairs, and she holds a journalism degree from the University of Santiago. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in international studies from the University of Chile. Pascale. "Coping with Water Crisis in Cuba." IDRC. IDRC, n.d. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?PublicationID=904>. Local Input Shifts Project Focus. The Agua Segura, or safe water project, as it came to be called, was launched to evaluate a technology for treating water in the home. However, researchers soon adopted a broader focus and began examining factors in the urban environment that affect human health in other words, they began taking an ecosystems approach to human health. This approach, which IDRC has pioneered, relies on community participation. Community members identify local health concerns and then work with a

multidisciplinary team of researchers to root out the causes. There is almost always a complex mix of social, economic, and cultural factors. In Veguita de Galo, for example, peoples ignorance of the dangers of using untreated water, the crumbling water treatment and water supply infrastructure, the deepening national economic crisis, and the time it took to recognize the problem all affected the residents health. The team consequently set two new goals training for health personnel and community members, as well as the repair of facilities. In total, some 860 households and 3,800 residents participated in the project. Addressing Root Causes INHEM began by training members of the provincial commission and district commissions. With support from the Pan American Health Organization in Cuba, two team members attended a workshop in Costa Rica on slow-sand filters. They then passed on this knowledge to other members of the community, including school children. Four people were also trained in microbiological techniques to assess water safety; this group, in turn, trained a community monitoring body. Water mains were repaired with support from the Canadian Embassy, and 16 defective valves were also replaced to regulate flow, increase pressure, and improve water supply. Other problems related to environmental sanitation, such as sewage discharge through cracked and broken pipes were also solved.A Collective Undertaking Making local people an integral part of identifying local health problems and designing and implementing solutions has left its mark on the researchers as well as the community. This is the first time a single community has taken part in all phases of a project, from technology implementation through monitoring, from assessment to supervision," underlined Isabel Carbonell, Director of the CPHE and one of Agua Seguras senior coordinators. "Before, we would submit projects and carry them out ourselves. Today, the community can manage and maintain its own projects." "The population took over the project," added Regla Caas, senior project coordinator at INHEM and now working with UNICEF in Havana. "We learned to listen to people tell us what theyd do to solve their problems. The community had never participated so directly in a project. The lesson we learned was that the closer we work with the community, the better the results."

Drought in Cuba is devastating to Cubans Voss, 2011

Michael has been based in Cuba since 2007 after Fidel Castro became ill and handed power to his brother Raul. Since then he has reported on the political and economic changes along with a broad range of social and cultural issues.Michael is a veteran foreign correspondent who has been covering Latin America since the mid 1990s when he was the BBCs South America Correspondent. Michael. "Cuba Faces Its Worst Drought for 50 Years." BBC News. BBC, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13079773>. Cuba is facing its worst drought in half a century, with tens of thousands of families almost entirely reliant on water trucks for essential supplies. The drought started two years ago, and reservoirs are now down to a fifth of their normal levels. The government is providing road deliveries of water to more than 100,000 people in the worst affected areas of the capital, Havana. The situation in Havana is compounded by a pipe network in poor condition. The state-run newspaper Granma says up to 70% of water pipes supplying the capital are leaking and in urgent need of repair, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says. Residents are having to use buckets and bottles to fill up with water from the road deliveries. "It's completely out of control," one resident, Ana Gomez, said. "Just imagine that you can't wash when you want to, you have to wash when you are able to." Another, Enrique Olivera Gonzalez, said: "As there is no water, you can't wash your clothes, cook, or clean your house." Cubans are hoping the rainy season in May and June will bring some

respite. But even a normal rainfall will not be enough to fill up the reservoirs, our correspondent says.

Water shortage affects 10 percent of Cuban population

The Global Times. 2012
"Water Shortage Affects 10 Percent of Cuban Population." Water Shortage Affects 10 Percent of Cuban Population. The Global Times, 10 June 2012. <http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/713946/Water-shortage-affects-10-percent-ofCuban-population.aspx> Some 10 percent of the Cuban population are suffering from water supply shortages and the country's capital city Havana is among the most affected. According to a Saturday report by the Cuban state TV, 1.16 million Cubans, with 808,000 of them in Havana, have to cope with insufficient water supply daily. Leakage from an aging pipeline network is a major cause for the supply shortage, the report said, adding that some of the water supply lines were built more than a century ago. According to figures by Cuba's water sector regulator National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH), between 50 and 58 percent of water pumped nationwide fails to reach its destination due to such leakages, and another 22 percent is lost inside households. The INRH officials said the institute is currently undertaking a restoration program of the water supply networks in 11 cities across the island nation. The Cuban media have called for the "saving and rational use" of water, saying such measures "constitute a large reservoir" amid grave challenges from the climate change and drought in recent years. Between 2004 and 2005, Cuba suffered the most severe drought in a century, when the reservoir capacity decreased to nearly 27 percent and over 1.5 million people had to be supplied with water tankers. Cuban scientists warned that drought will not cease affecting the country despite the rainy periods, as the island is in the same latitude as world's largest desert of Sahara. The Cuban authorities said to cope with drought requires very large investment since it is expensive to build canals, improve the aqueducts and renovate reservoirs. US Embargo has caused suffering and even death

American Association for World Health Report. 1997

""Denial of Food and Medicine:." Impact of the U.S Embargo on Health and Nutrition in Cuba. American Association for World Health Report, Mar. 1997. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html>. After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act. A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto

embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc. Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA): A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba. Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests." Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States. Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. nongovernmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S. Taken together, these four factors have placed severe strains on the Cuban health system. The declining availability of foodstuffs, medicines and such basic medical supplies as replacement parts for thirty-year-old X-ray machines is taking a tragic human toll. The embargo has closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain life-saving medicines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died . In general, a relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources. High-technology hospital wards devoted to cardiology and nephrology are particularly under siege. But so too are such basic aspects of the health system as water quality and food security. Specifically, the AAWH's team of nine medical experts identified the following health problems affected by the embargo: Malnutrition: The outright ban on the sale of American foodstuffs has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993. Water Quality: The embargo is severely restricting Cuba's access to water treatment chemicals and spare-parts for the island's water supply system. This has led to serious cutbacks in supplies of safe drinking water, which in turn has become a factor in the rising incidence of morbidity and mortality rates from water-borne diseases. Medicines &

Equipment: Of the 1,297 medications available in Cuba in 1991, physicians now have access to only 889 of these same medicines - and many of these are available only intermittently. Because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals, Cuban physicians have access to less than 50 percent of the new medicines available on the world market. Due to the direct or indirect effects of the embargo, the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuban clinics. Medical Information: Though information materials have been exempt from the U.S. trade embargo since 1 988, the AAWH study concludes that in practice very little such information goes into Cuba or comes out of the island due to travel restrictions, currency regulations and shipping difficulties. Scientists and citizens of both countries suffer as a result. Paradoxically, the embargo harms some U.S. citizens by denying them access to the latest advances in Cuban medical research, including such products as Meningitis B vaccine, cheaply produced interferon and streptokinase, and an AIDS vaccine currently under-going clinical trials with human volunteers. Finally, the AAWH wishes to emphasize the stringent nature of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Few other embargoes in recent history - including those targeting Iran, Libya, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Chile or Iraq - have included an outright ban on the sale of food. Few other embargoes have so restricted medical commerce as to deny the availability of life-saving medicines to ordinary citizens. Such an embargo appears to violate the most basic international charters and conventions governing human rights, including the United Nations charter, the charter of the Organization of American States, and the articles of the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of civilians during wartime.

Clean water is limited in Cuba

Surez, 2013
Magaly Norvis Otero. "Eastern Cuba Hit by Food Shortages - Institute for War and Peace Reporting - P57606." Eastern Cuba Hit by Food Shortages - Institute for War and Peace Reporting - P57606. Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 14 Mar. 2013. Web. 03 July 2013. <http://iwpr.net/report-news/eastern-cuba-hit-food-shortages> Foodstuffs are in short supply in Santiago de Cuba Province in the far southeast of Cuba, a legacy of Hurricane Sandy which raged through the area in October. The flooding and infrastructure damage caused by the hurricane dealt a grave blow to farmers in eastern Cuba, with large areas under crops wiped out. Fruit and vegetables have had to be brought in to Santiago de Cuba from other provinces, but they are in short supply. You cant find anything, local human rights activist Mayln Isaac said. The state-run markets that should have a supply are empty. Not even the private ones have products. When malanga [root vegetable also known as eddoe] does turn up, it costs eight pesos a pound and no one can afford it. According to Arelis Rodrguez, a resident of Santiago de Cuba, This food deficit has worsened a pre-existing crisis. People are desperate, and the government doesnt seem interested in finding a solution. Alberto Ramrez, who lives in the Santa Brbara neighborhood in the Santiago de Cuba city, said most people were filling up on rice, though even that was expensive at 11 pesos a kilogram from private traders. You can see that wages dont stretch that far, he added. The average wage in Cuba is about 400 pesos a month, around 15 US dollars. As for fresh produce, Ramrez said, most shops only had oranges that were well past their best. The flooding increased the incidence of cholera, malaria and dengue fever in eastern Cuba, so the availability of clean is a pressing concern. The drinking water is undrinkable because of the high chlorine level, but thats how you have to drink it, Isaac said. And now there are food shortages, too. Officials in Havana, who asked to remain anonymous, said a lot of agricultural produce was spoiled while in storage, because there were not enough vehicles to transport it to provinces that needed it.

(See Farm Produce Goes to Waste in Cuba on food storage problems generally.) In Santiago de Cuba itself, local resident Ana Celia Rodrguez Torres, a resident in the province, confirmed foodstuffs often went to waste, and were taken either to a local pig farm or to an animal feed factory. After the hurricane, eastern Cuba received assistance from a number of countries. Bolivia dispatched 120 ton of food and water to Santiago de Cuba, and Venezuela 150 tons of humanitarian aid goods. But locals say not all of this assistance has been handed out as it should have been. Some of the aid was sold to people at very high prices. The tinned bonito fish sent by Venezuela went on sale at 40 pesos a can, while [construction materials] went to the military reserve forces. Water Contamination killing people in Cuba

The Economist. 2012

"Cuban Health Care: Under Observation." The Economist. The Economist, 14 July 2012. Web. 3 July 2013. <http://www.economist.com/node/21558613/print>. CHOLERA was eradicated in Cuba more than half a century ago. But on July 3rd the government announced that the disease had returned, infecting 53 people and killing three in the south-eastern province of Granma. Since then unconfirmed reports have said that up to 15 may have died, and that the outbreak has spread to Havana, at the opposite end of the island. The most likely source is Haiti, which since 2010 has suffered an epidemic that has killed more than 7,000 people, plus 363 in the Dominican Republic, its neighbour. Only 50 miles (80km) of sea separate Haiti from Cuba, which has sent hundreds of doctors to help the Haitians control the outbreak (and who may inadvertently have brought the illness back). Tests are expected to establish within days whether the Cuban cases match the Haitian strain. So far Cubas celebrated health-care system seems to be coping. The response is generally excellent in containing outbreaks of disease, says a European diplomat in Havana. Health workers have distributed chlorine drops and rehydration salts in Granma province. State-controlled media have reminded people to boil water, keep food refrigerated and wash their hands frequently. Nevertheless, the communist states habitual lack of openness has generated rumours. Until recently, Cubans were justifiably proud of their health-care system. Life-expectancy matches that of Americans, who are eight times richer. Infant mortality ties with Canadas as the lowest in the Americas. Measles jabs have been near-universal for more than 20 years, putting Cuba ahead of many rich countries. But Cubas crumbling economy has put this system under stress. Though the state still trains armies of doctors, a third of these are deployed overseas in soft-power missions. Pharmacies are generally ill-stocked. In many hospitals patients must provide their own sheets, food and dressings. Neglect of infrastructure means that almost 10% of the population lacks access to clean drinking water. The American embargo against the island does not help: equipment for radiology, mammograms and cancer therapy is hard to replace, says Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think-tank. Ral Castro, the president, who this month visited China and Vietnam, is trying to revive the economy by cautiously transferring chunks of it into private hands. The next step, reported this week, will be to let transport and other service workers form co-operatives, currently restricted to farming. If the health service is to thrive again, this sort of economic surgery will need to speed up.

Reasons Cuban ethanol would out-compete/ another Internal Link for the water scenario
Patino 09.

Christian Santiago Patino, Studied at georgetown University . "The Cuban Sugar Dilemma: The Prospect for a Green Future". ASCE 2009. Accessed online at: www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume19/pdfs/patino.pdf

Cuba will also have an advantage given its specialization in sugarcane-based ethanol. Among ethanol production methods, the production of sugarcane-based ethanol is the most cost efficient. Ethanol blends made from starches such as potatoes, corn, wheat, or barley are more expensive to produce because before their starch content can be distilled it must first pass through three extra steps. The three steps that must be carried out before starches can be distilled bring about significant costs for starch-based ethanol producers. Additional costs are incurred by starch-based ethanol producers due to the high water requirements in the refining process of starches into simple sugars. Although water has yet to be valued as highly as energy,
excessive water usage is yet another unnecessary cost evaded by sugarcane based ethanol producers. In Minnesota, for example, it is estimated that during 2005, corn bio-refineries consumed an average of 4.2 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol produced (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 118). Furthermore, sugarcane-based ethanol benefits greatly from its ability to use leftover bagasse to produce heat and energy. When

sugarcane bagasse is burnt, the heat can be used to power the ethanol factories, reducing energy costs. Since only 20 percent of the bagasse is estimated to be needed to power each factory, the rest can be sold onto the electric grid (Goettemoeller and Goettemoeller 149). In todays competitive world, small cuts in the cost of production will determine which ethanol blends compete in the international market. The recent bankruptcy of VeraSun Energy, a starch based ethanol producer and the second
largest ethanol producer in the United States, reflects the difficulty that starch based ethanol producers have to manufacture ethanol at a competitive price. Todays low sugarcane yields should not discourage the development of Cubas prospective ethanol sector; instead, it is important that investors embrace long time horizons. Cuba possess

the ideal conditions for sugarcane cultivationwith time and good harvesting practices, production yields should increase to a competitive level. This expected rise in production is what will make Cuban ethanol an enticing business; and Cubas modern transportation networks and highly experienced labor force will complement this process.

Solvency

Warming/oil dependence
Sugarcane key to effectively reducing emissions and reducing oil dependency PRN 10
PR Newswire: EPA Reaffirms Sugarcane Biofuel is Advanced Renewable Fuel with 61% Less Emissions than Gasoline. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/epa-reaffirms-sugarcanebiofuel-is-advanced-renewable-fuel-with-61-less-emissions-than-gasoline-83483922.html. 02/03/10. DA- 07/02/13 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that ethanol made from sugarcane is a low carbon renewable fuel, which can contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As part of today's announcement finalizing regulations for the implementation of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), the EPA designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel that lowers GHG emissions by more than 50%. "The EPA's decision underscores the many environmental benefits of sugarcane ethanol and reaffirms how this low carbon, advanced renewable fuel can help the world mitigate climate change while diversifying America's energy resources," said Joel Velasco, Chief Representative in Washington for the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA). Sugarcane ethanol is a renewable fuel refined from cane that grows typically in tropical climates. Compared to other types of ethanol available today, using sugarcane ethanol to power cars and trucks yields greater reductions in greenhouse gases and is usually much cheaper for drivers to purchase. Brazil has replaced more than half of its fuel needs with sugarcane ethanol -- making gasoline the alternative fuel in that country and ethanol the standard. Many observers point to sugarcane ethanol as a good option for diversifying U.S. energy supplies, increasing healthy competition among biofuel manufacturers and improving America's energy security. The RFS2 will help the United States meet energy security and greenhouse gas reduction goals sought by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA). The new regulations establish minimum biofuels consumption in the U.S. of more than 12 billion gallons (45 billion liters) in 2010, rising to 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) in 2022, of which 21 billion gallons per year would have to be one of three types of advanced biofuels: cellulosic, biomass diesel, and "other advanced," that meet required GHG reduction thresholds as determined by the EPA. Today, the EPA affirmed that sugarcane ethanol meets the "other advanced" category in the RFS2, although with a GHG reduction level that exceeds the requirement for all categories as well. Specifically, the EPA's calculations show that sugarcane ethanol from Brazil reduces GHG emissions compared to gasoline by 61%, using a 30-year payback for indirect land use change (iLUC) emissions. "We are pleased that the EPA took the time to improve the regulations, particularly by more accurately quantifying the full lifecycle greenhouse emission reductions of biofuels. The EPA's reaffirmation of sugarcane ethanol's superior GHG reduction confirms that sustainably produced biofuels can play an important role in climate mitigation. Perhaps this recognition will sway those who have sought to raise trade barriers against clean energy here in the U.S. and around the world. Sugarcane ethanol is a first generation biofuel with third generation performance," noted Velasco. Last year, UNICA submitted comments to the EPA with abundant scientifically credible evidence showing that -- even including indirect emissions -- sugarcane ethanol has a reduction of GHG emissions of 73-82% compared with gasoline, on a 30- or 100-year time horizon

respectively. The RFS2 requires the use of at least 4 billion gallons (over 15 billion liters) of "other advanced" renewable fuels a year by 2022. In 2010, the RFS requires 200 million gallons of this type of advanced renewable fuel. "While we are reviewing the final ruling, it is clear that the EPA has incorporated many of the comments that UNICA and other stakeholders made during the public process. The EPA should be congratulated for the way it upheld Obama's goals of transparency and scientific integrity in the environmental rulemaking. And we hope that other governments will take note of the manner in which the EPA has handled this process," concluded Velasco.

Brazil proves emission reduction and decreased oil dependence PRN 10

PR Newswire: EPA Reaffirms Sugarcane Biofuel is Advanced Renewable Fuel with 61% Less Emissions than Gasoline. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/epa-reaffirms-sugarcanebiofuel-is-advanced-renewable-fuel-with-61-less-emissions-than-gasoline-83483922.html. 02/03/10. DA- 07/02/13 Brazil is a leader in the production of sugarcane ethanol, which is widely considered to be the most efficient biofuel available today. In 2009, Brazil produced over 7 billion gallons of sugarcane ethanol, most of which is used in Brazil in flex fuel vehicles. As a result of Brazil's innovative use of sugarcane ethanol in transportation and biomass for cogeneration, sugarcane is the leading source of renewable energy in the nation, representing 16% of the country's total energy needs. In fact, gasoline has become the alternative fuel in Brazil, reducing the country's dependence on fossil fuels and cutting emissions. A recent study in the November 2009 edition of the journal Energy Policy indicated that since 1975, over 600 million tons of CO2 emissions have been avoided thanks to the use of ethanol in Brazil.

Sugarcane ethanol boosts greenhouse gas mitigation 40% before 2020Adami et all 8
Dr. Marcos Adami, senior researcher at INPE - Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, Diviso de Sensoriamento Remoto, Jose dos Campos (SP), Brazil. Sugarcane ethanol Contributions to climate change mitigation and the environment. http://www.baff.info/english/rapporter/SugarcaneBook_Wageningen.pdf. 2008. DA-07/02/13 The analyses of the GHG emissions (and mitigation) with ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil in the last years (2002-2008) and the expected changes in the expansion from 2008 to 2020 show that: the large energy ratios (output renewable/input fossil) may still grow from the 9.4 value (2006) to 12.1 (2020) in two Scenarios: the better use of cane biomass to generate surplus electricity (2020 Electricity Scenario: already under implementation) or to produce more ethanol (2020 Ethanol Scenario: depending on technology development). The Ethanol Scenario, if fully implemented, would reduce the area needed by 29%. The corresponding GHG mitigation (with respect to gasoline), for ethanol use in Brazil, would increase from the 79% (2006) to 86% (2020) if only the ethanol is considered (with emissions allocation to co-products), or from 86% (2006) to 95% or 120% (2020: Ethanol or Electricity Scenarios) if all co-products credits and emissions are considered for ethanol (substitution criterion).

Sugarcane ethanol key to prevent warming Filho and Macedo 10

Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho & Isaias C. Macedo. Ethanol and Bioelectricity: Contribution of Ethanol to Climate Change. http://sugarcane.org/resourcelibrary/books/Ethanol%20and%20Bioelectricity%20book.pdf June 2010. DA- 07/03/13 The use of low-carbon, renewable energy is an important strategy for mitigating emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and combating global warming. Sugarcane ethanol, which has a very favorable energy and emissions balance, is a commercially available alternative with the potential to expand rapidly in many countries and as new applications emerge. From a lifecycle perspective, sugarcane ethanol has the capacity, in Brazil, to reduce around 90% of GHG emissions when compared with gasoline. In 2006 the reduction of GHG emissions attributable to the use of ethanol (as a gasoline substitute) reached 22% of final emissions for the transportation and electricity generation sectors in Brazil, and could reach 43% in 2020. In relation to Brazils total energy consumption (electricity, industrial, transportation, residential, and others), large-scale consumption of ethanol avoided the equivalent of 10% of total emissions in 2006 and will reach 18% in 2020 (excluding agricultural and land-use changes). The potential for new uses (substituting other fossil fuels and increased exports) could considerably increase this share. The emissions reductions to be sought globally through the coming decades make it possible to study the value of GHG mitigations generated by ethanol (determined by the additional global cost of the appropriate set of technologies for a desired level of mitigation). This additional value of Brazilian ethanol is estimated at US$0.20 per liter of ethanol. In other words, each liter of ethanol used is equivalent to US$0.20 that would otherwise have to be spent on measures to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, so reducing the investments that countries would need to make to control global warming.

Using sugarcane ethanol saves single country 92 million tons of CO2 per year Filho and Macedo 10
Luiz Gylvan Meira Filho & Isaias C. Macedo. Ethanol and Bioelectricity: Contribution of Ethanol to Climate Change. http://sugarcane.org/resourcelibrary/books/Ethanol%20and%20Bioelectricity%20book.pdf June 2010. DA- 07/03/13 Tabela 7 shows total avoided emissions for selected years between 2006 and 2020. Two references are considered in regards to the avoided emissions for the substitution of electrical energy: an average between the build margin and the operating margin in Brazil (260 t CO2 e / gWh) and the value associated with natural gas plants (570 t CO2 e /gWh). Thus, in the 11 years 2010 2020, total avoided emission would be 1,015 million tonnes of CO2 e, with an average of 92 million tonnes of CO2 e per year; or 7% more if the emissions from the substituted electricity are computed based on natural gas generation (a 12% increase in the last year).

Sugarcane ethanol crucial to solve global warming UNICA 9

UNICA: Sugarcane as a Key Element Against Global Warming to be Highlighted at Green Week in Brussels. http://english.unica.com.br/releases/show.asp?rlsCode=%7B07A12C34-E50E-4B9492F0-4550A0F9A2B9%7D 06/23/09. DA- 07/03/13 What does sugarcane have to do with Global Warming? Everything , when you consider Brazil''s highly successful, 30-year experience with sugarcane as a feedstock for ethanol. In place since the mid-70s, the largest program in the world to replace a fossil fuel with renewable energy has saved some 600 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It would take 20 years for six billion trees to achieve the same results. Details of the Brazilian success story will be

presented at a panel on Wednesday, June 24, during Green Week, the largest annual conference on the European Union''s environmental policies, scheduled from June 23 to 26 in Brussels. At its booth in the exhibit area, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA), the largest organization representing Brazil''s sugar-energy industry, will also provide detailed information about the efficiency of large-scale production and use of sugarcane ethanol as a motor fuel to reduce GHG emissions. In Brazil, the biofuel replaces over half the country''s gasoline needs by volume, making gasoline the alternative fuel. Flex-fuel cars introduced in 2003, which run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol, now account for 34% of Brazil''s entire light vehicle fleet and close to 90% of new light vehicle sales. According to the senior international affairs advisor to UNICA''s president, Geraldine Kutas, the idea is to detail the impressive performance of sugarcane in the production of ethanol and other value-added products, and its subsequent impact on Brazil''s energy matrix: 46% of it is composed by renewable sources. "Brazil could be a low-carbon economy. Unfortunately, even though the country is a large renewable energy producer, it is also the fourth largest emitter of carbon, because of deforestation. The fight against climate change requires ambitious public policies and joint leadership from the government and the public sector," Kutas concludes. The In ternational E nergy A gency has recently confirmed that sugarcane ethanol can deliver a verifiable reduction in GHG emissions that can exceed 100% when compared to the use of gasoline , provided that surplus electricity generated in the production process is sent to distribution grids. All of Brazil''s nearly 400 sugar and ethanol mills are self-sufficient in electricity, and a growing number of mills are generating a surplus by using cane straw and bagasse, which is what''s left of the sugarcane after it has been processed into ethanol and sugar. More than 100 countries around the world already grow sugarcane, and UNICA advocates that many of them can benefit from the same cane-based energy technology developed in Brazil.

Biofuels and sugarcane ethanol key part in reducing warming Hongo 8

Jon Hongo. Japan Times: Ambassador touts biofuel as climate change cure. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/06/20/national/ambassador-touts-biofuel-as-climatechange-cure/#.UdOzfvlQFsk 06/20/08. DA- 07/02/13 Brazil, one of the outreach participants, is ready to promote ethanol production as a solution for a variety of issues, and will propose differentiated responsibilities for developing countries during talks to create an international framework on global warming. Amado, who has been stationed in Japan since 2005, said the climate change crisis is undeniable and Brazil intends to do its part in curbing the trend. He said his country boasts one of the cleanest energy metrics in the world, with more than 46 percent of its needs satisfied with renewable sources such as biomass fuel and hydroelectric plants. This is an extraordinary contribution to reducing worldwide carbon emissions, Amado stressed, adding that since the introduction of biofuel in the 1970s, Brazil has saved an estimated 700 million tons in carbon dioxide emissions

Plan Solves Warming Specht, Jonathan, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols
Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf

Assuming that Cuba is able to meet all the challenges standing in the way of creating a sugarcane-based ethanol industry, including the removal of U.S. legal barriers, and it begins importing ethanol to the United States, the United States would benefit environmentally in two ways. First, Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol would directly benefit the United States by reducing the negative environmental effects of cornbased ethanol production, to the extent to which it replaced domestically produced cornbased ethanol.55 Second, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Cuban sugarcanebased ethanol would indirectly benefit the United States as well as the rest of the world by reducing the speed of global climate change.56

Plan Solves Warming Specht, Jonathan, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane Ethanols
Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf Assuming that Cuba is able to meet all the challenges standing in the way of creating a sugarcane-based ethanol industry, including the removal of U.S. legal barriers, and it begins importing ethanol to the United States, the United States would benefit environmentally in two ways. First, Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol would directly benefit the United States by reducing the negative environmental effects of cornbased ethanol production, to the extent to which it replaced domestically produced cornbased ethanol.55 Second, by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Cuban sugarcanebased ethanol would indirectly benefit the United States as well as the rest of the world by reducing the speed of global climate change.56

Will be modeled

US key-

Lifting the Embargo solves

Lifting embargo solves Conason 8
Joe Conason. Salon: One more good reason to lift the embargo on Cuba. http://www.salon.com/2008/07/18/cuba_6/ 07/18/08. DA- 07/02/13 Now there is at least one more incentive to change course. With its huge potential for producing clean, renewable, sugar-based ethanol, Cuba represents a significant source of energy that will remain unavailable to American consumers unless we undo the embargo . Agricultural experts have estimated that Cuba could eventually provide more than 3 billion gallons of fuel annually, perhaps even more when new technologies for extracting energy from sugar cane waste (known as bagasse) come online placing the island third in world ethanol production, behind the U.S. and Brazil. Given the relatively small demand for auto fuel in Cuba, nearly all of that ethanol would be available for export to its nearest neighbor.

Repealing US sanctions on Cuban ethanol will reinvigorate the Cuban sugarcane ethanol sector Jaffe and Soligo 10
Amy Myers Jaffe and Ronald Soligo. Rice University: Potential Growth for U.S. Energy in Cuba. http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/EF-pub-BioFuelsWhitePaper-010510.pdf January 2010. DA- 07/03/13 Despite the past scale of the sugar industry in Cuba, if Cuba were to today choose to develop its ethanol industry, there are some questions as to how much land could be devoted to sugarcane. Cuba currently has a policy of promoting greater land use for food production. According to FAOSTAT, during the period 1970-1990, the average area harvested was 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres), and it may be difficult to sustain levels much higher than that. Some of the land that has been idle since the decline of the sugar industry has been converted to food crops in an effort to reduce food imports. Other land is earmarked for forest development, and there have been recent discussions of investing in soybeans. However, given that Cuba has had a traditional comparative advantage in the production of sugar, the diversion of land to other uses may reflect the effects of economic sanctions that tend to encourage autarky where possible and promote export crops that can be sold in markets other than the United States. With the removal of the US-imposed sanctions on imported ethanol, Cuba could arguably recapture its comparative advantage in sugar , which would ease the pressure to be self-sufficient in food production. Thus, acreage that has been diverted to other uses could return to sugarcane cultivation.

Now is the key time-subsides for ethanol have been suspended in the SQ ensuring Sugar will compete Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf

The domestic ethanol industry grew in large part due to governmental support. At the end of 2011, however, the federal tax credit for ethanol expired,16 and the future of federal involvement in promoting ethanol remains in doubt pending the passage of a new Farm Bill. Before the end of 2011, ethanol was, as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the only industry that benefits from a triple crown of government intervention: its use is mandated by law, it is protected by tariffs, and companies are paid by the federal government to use it.17 Although there have also been too many smaller federal and state incentives for the industry to list18 (e.g. loan guarantees for refinery construction), the three policies mentioned by Senator Feinstein were the primary means by which the government fostered the growth of the domestic ethanol industry. These three policies were the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS),19 the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC),20 and the tariff on imported ethanol.21 Of these three, only the RFS is law as of January 2013.

Say yes
They would say yesalready want to engage over ethanol
Dale McFeatter, of the Korea Times, April 12, 2009 Sunday. Rethinking Cuba, Lexis-Nexis And there is growing support for easing the trade embargo on Cuba, which only makes sense because the embargo is closing in on 50 years of proven failure. It was counterproductive in that Fidel Castro regularly invoked it to excuse his economic mismanagement. We already allow the sale of certain agricultural products to Cuba, and there's no reason farmers should be favored over other exporters. If Cuba wants to send back cigars and rum and people think that consuming them would be supporting a dictatorship, don't drink the rum or smoke the cigars. If we're going to persist in the delusion that ethanol is somehow going to be a workable substitute for gasoline, we're going to need additional sources of ethanol and Cuba has plenty of sugar cane. A delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus visited Havana and reported back that the Castro brothers, the only voices that really count in Cuba, are ready for better relations with the United States. According to the Associated Press, Raul Castro, who became interim leader of Cuba after Fidel's surgery in 2006 and was formally named president last year, told the delegation that "everything was on the table" in reopening dialogue with the United States.

Solves Dependence and shocks

Lifting Cuban embargo allows us to access sugar ethanol solve oil shocks, dependence and boosts the Cuban economy
Robert B. Matthews

and, Sam Houston State University, USA, Eric Steglich, USA, August 11. International Business & Economics Research Journal A Tale Of Two Countries: What The United States Can Learn From Brazil About Reducing Dependence On Foreign Oil
As noted above, Brazil gets 50% of its gasoline and over 40% of its motor fuels from Biofuels. An equivalent ratio here would mean somewhere between 5 and 6 million barrels per day from Biofuels. That level is clearly achievable, with relatively inexpensive modifications to automobiles to enable flex fuel operations. The

US currently gets about 1 million barrels a day from corn ethanol, and further growth expectations for that market are limited. The quickest possibility of a material impact probably lies with sugarcane ethanol from Latin America. Estimates are that as much as 10% of world gasoline usage could be replaced with sugar cane ethanol using current technology (Goldemberg, 2007). Ron Soligo has estimated the potential for
sugar cane ethanol from Latin America to be 2.5 to 3 million barrels per day, depending on amount of land dedicated and yields obtained (Soligo and Jaffe, 2008). If

the trade sanctions with Cuba were lifted, Juan Toms Sanchez of the that Cuba alone could supply up to 3.2 billion gallons of ethanol annually (200,000 barrels/day, or 1% of total U.S. energy consumption), while Cuba expert Jorge
Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy estimates Hernandez Fonseca projects a more modest production figure around 2 billion gallons per year (Elledge, 2009). The difficulty arises because the current sanctions make the acquisition of accurate information more difficult. Since Cuban sugar production has declined from 44 million tons/year in 1950 to 11 million tons/year today (Zuurbier, 2008), significant upside potential is obvious. These impacts are substantially larger than any other steps under consideration, except perhaps the drill here, drill now option.

We would still be importing, but it would be from countries that are closer and have more in common than areas in the Middle East and elsewhere in the third world. The existence of a new cash crop in Latin America could dramatically improve their economies, reducing the
pressure from illegal immigration, and could also provide farmers with an alternative to marijuana, cocaine, and other plants that are the source of many drugs currently being smuggled into the U.S. Moreover,

the ability to use ethanol as a substitute for gasoline would introduce at least some elasticity into the gasoline consumption model, thereby limiting the exposure to oil price shocks in the future. The EPA
estimates that use of sugar cane ethanol could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 61%, compared to 21% for corn ethanol (EPA, 2011). Additional ethanol supplies could be obtained from domestic sugar cane and sugar beets. Estimating the potential production from these sources is difficult, but perhaps another 500,000 barrels per day would be possible. That would mean a total of 4 million barrels per day from ethanol, slightly less than the 40% number, but a significant reduction in oil consumption. Additionally, this would enable the installation of significant ethanol infrastructure now, to be in place already when more exotic forms of ethanol, like cellulosic, become commercially viable. Incurring those costs now would actually reduce the commercial viability threshold for the exotic sources of ethanol, as they become available.

We dont link to your oil disadvantage other markets fill in. AllAfrica, the most comprehensive news organization covering Africa, June 25, 2013.
Nigeria: Presidency Says U.S Oil Policy Won't Affect Nigeria's Economy, allafrica.com/stories/201306260183.html He said the Federal Government is already adopting appropriate strategies to effectively mitigate the impact of decline in the U.S. markets, with the number and volume of term contracts with Asian refiners gradually being increased, assuring that in both the short and medium term, a combination of market openings in Europe and Asia would effectively compensate for the loss of the U.S. market.

Fossil fuel dependence is still crippling military effectiveness NATO, 05 Jul. 2013. Armies get smart on energy, http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SIDCBDBAFE1-D4A5B08F/natolive/news_102180.htm A growing dependence on oil and gas, the progressive exhaustion of fossil fuels, constant increases in the price of raw materials, threats to the security of energy supplies and concerns about the consequences of climate change make energy security a major issue. According to Pike Research, the US Department of Defence alone spends approximately US$20 billion per year on energy: US$15 billion on fuels and US$5 billion on facilities and infrastructure. Quite apart from cost, the energy dependence of the armed forces has an impact on operational effectiveness. Alliance operations involve an increasingly complex and costly logistical organisation. Transporting large quantities of fuel also creates risks to the safety of the soldiers.

ATs

AT: SQ solves you adv

Oil production isnt solving dependence Tim Fernholz, writer for Quartz, March 20, 2013. Will Americas oil boom save its manufacturing sector, or make it ill?,qz.com/65208/will-americas-oil-boom-save-itsmanufacturing-sector-or-make-it-ill/
This year, for the first time since 1995, the US will at some point be producing more crude than it imports, the government points out today. This is largely due to the boom in shale oil production resulting from fracking, a relatively new drilling technique. But

the oil isnt just helping reduce Americas dependence on foreign sources; its making it cheaper for American manufacturers to get the energy they need. By this telling, the energy boom could lead to a factory boom. Or will it? JP Morgan chief economist Michael Feroli fears that Dutch disease could hinder American manufacturing. The name comes from the Netherlands experience in the sixties and seventies, when offshore petroleum discoveries lead to an oil export boom that drove up the value of the guilder, making Dutch goods sold abroad more expensive and leading to the decline of manufacturing. Other countries resource booms have had similar results. While the US isnt about to become a net exporter any time soon, it will sell more oil abroad and that will put upward pressure on the dollar.

AT: Politics
Key to FTAs The Irish Times, November 6, 2008. Pragmatic hopes of end to US neglect and hectoring
Obama favours taxing Brazil's sugar cane-derived ethanol, which is more competitive than the US corn-based biofuel, and has been critical of free trade deals with other Latin American countries such as Colombia.

AT PX: Plan popular

The public favors the plan likes both off shore drilling and environmental responsiveness
Jillian L. Genaw, J.D. Candidate, Indiana Univ. School of Law-Indianapolis; May 2010. A special thanks to Dennis and Tracie Genaw for their guidance and support throughout the process of completing this Note and to all members of the Indiana International and Comparative Law Review who assisted in the editing process, April 1, 2010. OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE EXPANSION OF CUBAS OIL PROGRAM: A DISCUSSION OF ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=b89b0bae-8d29-4a73-ba94a91eca4d6381%40sessionmgr10&vid=1&hid=25, pg 49, 50 Public sentiment favoring environmental protection drove Congress to pass the OCS Moratorium in 1981.92 However, the American public is now much less concerned about the potential environmental effects that offshore oil drilling has on the environment.93 In fact, a recent public opinion poll showed that as many as sixty-seven percent of voters were in favor of resuming offshore oil drilling off the coast of Florida and other states.94 Recently, offshore oil drilling has garnered greater support due to the struggling U. S. economy and rising energy costs.95 Thus, one argument that must be considered in support of lifting the OCS Moratorium is that it was largely driven by public sentiment that no longer exists. This is not to say that Americans are no longer concerned about the environment, in fact, the Green Movement has swept the nation.96 Rather, technological advancement and other factors have offset these concerns.97

Cuban Americans favor the planengagement is popular Padgett, July 3

Why This Summer Offers Hope For Better U.S.-Cuba Relations TIM PADGETT, http://wlrn.org/post/why-summer-offers-hope-better-us-cuba-relations, July 3 2013 Second, although the White House is still intimidated by the Cuban exile lobby, its had its own numbers to ponder -- namely, poll results from South Floridas Cuban-American community. Over the past five years, surveys have consistently shown that CubanAmericans, especially the more moderate younger generation and more recently arrived Cubans, favor engagement with Cuba as a way of promoting democratization there. Some polls even indicate that a majority want to ditch the failed 51-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. As a result, Obama -- who according to one exit poll won 48% of Floridas Cuban vote in last years presidential election, which would be a record for a Democratic candidate -feels more elbow room for dilogo with the Castro regime. The Administration even recently let Gonzlez return to Cuba.The Cuban-American community in Miami is definitely changing, says Cuban-American Elena Freyre, president of the Foundation for Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations in Miami. Its reached kind of a critical mass at this point, and I think people are ready to try something different. Freyre notes that Obamas appointment this year of former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as the new U.S. secretary of state is also having an impact. Mr. Kerry has always felt *the U.S.s+ position with Cuba made no sense, she says. Hes been

very vocal about thinking that if we engage Cuba we will get a lot further. Kerry, for example, believes the U.S. should lift its ban on U.S. citizen travel to Cuba.

AT: Lifting the Embargo(LE) wont increase exports

Lifting Cuban embargo revives Cuban sugar ethanol exports Carmen Gentile, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 12, 2006. Sweet dreams;
Cash-starved Cuba hopes to resuscitate neglected sugar sector, Lexis-Nexis It has been decades since the communist island stood alone at the top of the list of the world's biggest sugar producers, but Cuban officials reportedly are adamant about reviving sugar, the country's No. 1 export until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. One Cuba analyst with close ties to the country's sugar ministry noted that Cuban officials were seeking overseas assistance in reviving the industry, though they acknowledged that will be difficult because of the country's chronic lack of revenue and resources. Brazil is now king among the world's sugar producers, and its decades-long ethanol program is the envy of Cuba and every other country hoping to capitalize on the alternative-fuel craze prompted by the jump in gasoline prices. Cuba, however, is woefully behind the times in terms of sugar cane planting and production. The island is producing a fraction of the sugar it did just 30 years ago. During the 1970s, Cuba was producing about 8 million tons of sugar a year. The Caribbean nation will likely produce just 1.3 million tons of sugar this growing season, according to forecasts. Analysts attribute the dramatic decrease in production to the end of Soviet-era sugar subsidies and Cuba's failure to maintain its sugar processing plants over the years. "For centuries it was the backbone of the Cuban economy," said Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, a group of American businesses interested in ending the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba and restoring normal trade relations with the island nation. Soon after the flow of money from Moscow stopped, global sugar prices dropped to 4 cents per pound and Cuba could no longer generate the revenue necessary to maintain production. "It just wasn't economically viable anymore," Mr. Jones said. Now, with sugar commanding prices between 13 cents and 14 cents per pound, Cuba is looking for investors to help get the industry back on track. Spain is reportedly interested, as is China, already a partner with Cuba in its efforts to develop offshore oil fields. In response to the growing global demand for the commodity, Havana created a Cuban business society called ZERUS, which is charged with supervising investment projects in Cuba's sugar sector. ZERUS Director Jose Rivera Ortiz said in an recent interview with Cuban business magazine Opciones that Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Investment has already approved the group's initiative to revive the sugar industry - with an eye on ethanol. "To the Cuban government, sugar is their El Dorado," said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington think tank focused on Latin America. But Mr. Birns expressed skepticism about Cuba's chances of resurrecting the long-neglected industry. "The inefficiency of the system for the last 15-20 years has decreased production significantly," said Jorge Pinon, an energy specialist who teaches at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Affairs. According to Mr. Pinon's estimates, Cuba needs $4.4 billion in foreign investment in its sugar ethanol industry over the next five years just to get the program started. That won't happen overnight and certainly not without the financial help of foreign investment, he said. "If Cuba can get the foreign investment it needs, then that's a different story; but right now it's just wishful thinking," Mr. Pinon said. The only real solution to jumpstarting Cuba's ethanol ambitions, some analysts say, would be an end to President Fidel Castro's 47-year regime coupled with the cessation of the U.S. embargo.

AT: No demand
High demand for Cuban ethanol
Patino 09.
Christian Santiago Patino, Studied at georgetown University . "The Cuban Sugar Dilemma: The Prospect for a Green Future". ASCE 2009. Accessed online at: www.ascecuba.org/publications/proceedings/volume19/pdfs/patino.pdf

If Cuba becomes an important ethanol supplier, its location will place it in a particularly advantageous position given that Cuba lies closer to the United States and to Europe than most of its future competitors. Cuba already has preferential access to the ethanol thirsty European market and there is a realistic possibility that before too long the United States will normalizes its trade relations with the Caribbean island. Everything indicates that Cuba can become an important ethanol producer, now it is necessary that the knowledge of science, engineering, finance, and marketing are brought together to support the development of Cubas prospective ethanol sector.

AT: Cant fill in fast enough

Cuban Sugar Ethanol as US Replacement Possible Now Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf To speak of a Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry is, at this point, largely a matter of speculation. Because of the anti-ethanol views of Fidel Castro (who has said that ethanol should be discouraged because it diverts crops from food to fuel), Cuba currently has almost no ethanol industry. In the words of Ronald Soligo and Amy Myers Jaffe of the Brookings Institution, Despite the fact that Cuba is dependent on oil imports and is aware of the demonstrated success of Brazil in using ethanol to achieve energy selfsufficiency, it has not embarked on a policy to develop a larger ethanol industry from sugarcane. There is, however, no reason why such an industry cannot be developed. As Soligo and Jaffe wrote, In addition, Cuba has large land areas that once produced sugar but now lie idle. These could be revived to provide a basis for a world-class ethanol industry. We estimate that if Cuba achieves the yield levels attained in Nicaragua and Brazil and the area planted with sugarcane approaches levels seen in the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba could produce up to 2 billion gallons of sugar-based ethanol per year.

Cuban Sugar Ethanol as US Replacement Possible Now Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf To speak of a Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry is, at this point, largely a matter of speculation. Because of the anti-ethanol views of Fidel Castro (who has said that ethanol should be discouraged because it diverts crops from food to fuel), Cuba currently has almost no ethanol industry. In the words of Ronald Soligo and Amy Myers Jaffe of the Brookings Institution, Despite the fact that Cuba is dependent on oil imports and is aware of the demonstrated success of Brazil in using ethanol to achieve energy selfsufficiency, it has not embarked on a policy to develop a larger ethanol industry from sugarcane. There is, however, no reason why such an industry cannot be developed. As Soligo and Jaffe wrote, In addition, Cuba has large land areas that once produced sugar but now lie idle. These could be revived to provide a basis for a world-class ethanol industry. We estimate that if Cuba achieves the yield levels attained in Nicaragua and Brazil and the area planted with sugarcane approaches levels seen in the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba could produce up to 2 billion gallons of sugar-based ethanol per year.

AT: LE wont jumpstart the industry

Ending Agricultural Restrictions Key Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf The ideal domestic policy scenario for the creation of a robust Cuban sugarcane ethanol industry would be a situation in which: the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is ended; U.S. tariff barriers are removed (in the case of sugar) or not revived (in the case of ethanol); and the RFS requiring that a certain percentage of U.S. fuel come from ethanol remain in place. Of course, changes in United States policy alone, even those that ensure a steady source of demand for Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol, would not be enough to create an ethanol industry from scratch. Cuba will need to foster the industry as a key goal of the post-Castro era and shape its domestic policies to encourage the growth of the industry.

Removing embargo would energize Cuban governmental and private sector to rebuild their sugar industry Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf The ideal domestic policy scenario for the creation of a robust Cuban sugarcane ethanol industry would be a situation in which: the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is ended; U.S. tariff barriers are removed (in the case of sugar) or not revived (in the case of ethanol); and the RFS requiring that a certain percentage of U.S. fuel come from ethanol remain in place. Of course, changes in United States policy alone, even those that ensure a steady source of demand for Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol, would not be enough to create an ethanol industry from scratch. Cuba will need to foster the industry as a key goal of the post-Castro era and shape its domestic policies to encourage the growth of the industry.

AT: Kills Brazilian Bio D

Plan Solves Brazilian Diversity Loss Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf The full debate over the environmental consequences of the Brazilian biofuel production111 is largely beyond the scope of this Article. Still, the primary issue in this dispute is worth noting, because it accentuates one of the most significant differences between the U.S. corn-based ethanol industry and the potential Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol industry. In Brazil, the expansion of sugarcane production to meet demand for ethanol production has led to land use changes that parallel the expansion of corn production for ethanol in the United States. Clearing portions of the Amazon rainforest one of the most significant repositories of carbon on Earth 112 would represent an environmental cost of ethanol production that outweighs its benefits. The Amazon region, however, is largely unsuitable for sugarcane production.113 But, sugarcane production is contributing to destruction of another sensitive habitat, the bio-diverse Cerrado savannah region of Brazil.

AT: Destroys Cuban environment

Cuba Solves Best Laundry List Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol would have the environmental benefits of Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol without its most obvious negative factor, damaging habitat in the Cerrado. The environmental effects of biofuels depend on a number of factors. Whether or not a given type of biofuel is environmentally beneficial depends on what the fuel is, how and where the biomass was produced, what else the land could have been used for, how the fuel was processed and how it is used.115 Taken together, these factors point to sugarcane-based ethanol grown in Cuba as one of the most environmentally friendly biofuels possible. The environmental benefits of using sugarcane to produce ethanol are numerous. First, it is much more energy efficient to derive ethanol from sugarcane than corn. Making ethanol from corn only creates approximately 1.3 times the amount of energy used to produce it, but making ethanol from sugarcane creates approximately eight times the amount of energy used to produce it.116 Second, unlike much of the corn presently grown in Great Plains states, sugarcane grown in Latin America does not need to be irrigated.117 Third, sugarcane requires relatively small amounts of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.118 Fourth, whereas most U.S. ethanol refineries are powered by coal or natural gas,119 sugarcane ethanol refineries can be powered by bagasse, a natural product left over from the sugar refining process.120 In fact, refineries powered with bagasse can even produce more electricity than they need and sell power back to the electric grid.121 Fifth, although corn can only be planted and harvested once a year, in tropical climates sugarcane can be cut from the same stalks multiple times per year.122 Each of these factors in favor of sugarcane ethanol is true of ethanol from Brazil as well as of any potential ethanol from Cuba. However, there are additional environmental factors that clinch Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol as one of the most environmentally friendly fuel sources available to the United States under current technology.123 First, because Cuba is closer to the United States, transporting ethanol from Cuba to the United States would require less energy than transporting ethanol from Brazil to the United States (especially if it is used in Florida, an option further explored in the section on economic effects).124

No Effect on Cuban Environment Specht, Jonathan 4/24/13, University of California Davis, Raising Cane: Cuban Sugarcane
Ethanols Economic and Environmental Effects on the United States. http://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/36/2/specht.pdf Another reason Cuban sugarcane-based ethanol could be one of the most environmentally friendly fuels possible is that Cuba could produce a significant amount of ethanol without any negative impacts on native habitat. A striking amount of Cuban agricultural land fifty five percent as of 2007 is simply lying fallow and is not cultivated with anything.125 Although its character may have changed due to

years of neglect, this land is not virgin native habitat like the grasslands of North Dakota or the Cerrado of Brazil. Cuba therefore could greatly increase its production of sugarcane, and thus its production of sugarcane-based ethanol, without negative impacts on wildlife habitat. While it is not environmentally perfect no form of energy is Cuban sugarcane- based ethanol would raise fewer environmental concerns than the fuel sources it would displace: petroleum, domestic corn-based ethanol, and Brazilian sugarcane based ethanol. Therefore, from a purely environmental perspective, changing U.S. law and policy in order to promote the importation of Cuban sugarcanebased ethanol should be encouraged.

AT: Must remove all the embargo to solve

Repealing parts of the embargo solvesit would give the president the flexibility to solve democratic backsliding in Cuba Cuba Study Group 2013, Restoring Executive Authority Over U.S. Policy Toward Cuba,
February 2013, http://www.cubastudygroup.org/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=45d8f827-174c4d43-aa2f-ef7794831032 The Cuba Study Group believes the most effective way to break the deadlock of all-ornothing conditionality and remedy the ineffectiveness of current U.S. policy is by decodifying the embargo against Cuba through the repeal of Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions that limit the Executive Branchs authority over Cuban policy. Repealing Helm-Burton and related statutory provisions would shift the primary focus of U.S. Cuba policy away from the regime and toward empowering Cuban people. It would also enhance the leverage of the United States to pro- mote a multilateral approach toward Cuba, as well as embolden reformers, democracy advocates and private entrepreneurs inside the island to press their government for greater change. De-codifying the embargo would allow the Executive Branch the flexibility to use the entire range of foreign policy tools at its disposaldiplomatic, economic, political, legal and culturalto incentivize change in Cuba. The President would be free to adopt more efficient, targeted policies necessary for pressuring the Cuban leadership to respect human rights and implement political reforms, while simultaneously empowering all other sectors of society to pursue their economic wellbeing and become the authors of their own futures. Repealing Helms-Burton would also free civil society development and assistance programs to be implemented outside of a contentious sanctions framework.

AT: Cuba will say no

Cuba likes the plan needs foreign investment and wants to export sugar ethanol
Chuck Squatriglia, Wired Magazine, 02.19.08. With Fidel Gone, Will Cuba Become a Global Ethanol Player?, www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/02/cuba_ethanol
Of course, reaching either of those numbers would require Raul Castro to open the door to foreign investment, but that may not be as unlikely as it sounds. The Washington Post notes there's speculation that Fidel's

exit opens the door to economic reform like we've seen in China, and it's worth noting Cuba is quietly modernizing its ethanol infrastructure. Raul Castro is seen as a pragmatist who is more concerned with improving Cubans' daily lives than spreading la revolucin, and according to Reuters he is believed to favor loosening state control on Cuba's economy. The country has said it would allow foreign investment in its tourism
industry. Whether that means he'll allow foreign investment in the sugar and ethanol industries remains to be seen (Cuba produces about 1.2 million tons of sugar annually, but was the world's leading producer before Castro took over in 1959). Cuba

started overhauling 11 of its 17 ethanol refineries last year. That's an expensive proposition, and the money will have to come from somewhere. And its not as if agribusiness wouldn't love to have a piece of that pie. The Wall Street Journal notes that Archer Daniels Midland tried to get in on the Cuban ethanol game in the 1990s but was rebuffed by Fidel. Perhaps Raul will be more welcoming. Cuba doesn't have much need for ethanol, Sanchez writes, and could export as much as 3 billion gallons a year -- worth about $7 billion at today's prices. Don't look for any of that ethanol to flow in America though. The State Department says it
won't lift the trade embargo on Cuba any time soon.

AT: Corn Ethanol good

US corn ethanol is unsustainable in the future Rice University Release, 7/5/13. New study predicts rising irrigation costs, reduced yields
for U.S. corn, http://www.manitobacooperator.ca/2013/07/05/new-study-predicts-risingirrigation-costs-reduced-yields-for-u-s-corn/ If the climate continues to evolve as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States stands little to no chance of satisfying its current biofuel goals, according to a new study by Rice University and the University of California at Davis. The study published online in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology suggests that in 40 years, a hotter planet would cut the yield of corn grown for ethanol in the U.S. by an average of seven per cent while increasing the amount of irrigation necessary by nine per cent.

AT: Cuban Sugar inefficient

Cuba is moving towards more efficient sugar production now

The Associated Press, September 29, 2011. Cuba does away with emblematic Ministry of
Sugar, http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/sep/29/cuba-does-away-with-emblematic-ministryof-sugar/?print=1
Juan Tomas Sanchez, who contributes writings on Cuban agriculture to the U.S.-based Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, said the

restructuring should save money on overhead but more must be done to improve efficiency, like overhauling transportation and replotting fields to work better with new machinery. "It's logical. ... It has a strategic importance," said Sanchez, who also heads a Florida exile group known as the Association of Cuban Settlers. "But it has to be accompanied by a necessary investment of capital." Granma said the Cabinet ministers also assessed the progress of a national agriculture overhaul begun in 2008 as part of Raul Castro's program to overhaul the economy with some free-market initiatives, including turning over fallow state land to private farmers and cooperatives.