Politics

O/V
Disad outweighs and turns the case
a) competitiveness prevents all scenarios for great power conflict collapse
causes miscalc, arms races, and incentivizes enemy aggression around the globe
b) Suppresses conflict we control the internal link to all their impacts because
competitiveness dampens them only competitiveness maintains the
structural determinants of international relations the economic system,
security alliances, and balance of power all are maintained only by American
competitiveness it acts as a filter to all impacts
Moreover theyve conceded an independent transition wars impact unipolarity
diffuses great power conflict, shift to multi-polarity will be violent and cause great
power war that causes great power war before the case can solve.
Turns case - CIRs key to Latin American relations
Shifter 12
[Michael is the President of Inter-American Dialogue. Remaking the Relationship: The
United States and Latin America, April, IAD Policy Report,
http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/IAD2012PolicyReportFINAL.pdf]
Some enduring problems stand squarely in the way of partnership and effective cooperation . The
inability of Washington to reform its broken immigration system is a constant source of friction
between the United States and nearly every other country in the Americas. Yet US officials rarely refer to
immigration as a foreign policy issue. Domestic policy debates on this issue disregard the United States hemispheric
agenda as well as the interests of other nations
Turns their ethics claims - Illegal immigrants are subjected to virtual slavery
White 9 journalist specializing in liberal politics [Deborah, "Illegal Immigration Explained - Profits &
Poverty, Social Security & Starvation" http://usliberals.about.com/od/immigration/a/IllegalImmi.htm]
A major economic drawback, though, to allowing thousands...probably millions...of US businesses to pay
under-market wages and benefits to undocumented workers is that it depresses wages for all workers
in the US. All Americans workers, then have decreased incomes, lower benefits and higher rates of
poverty and hunger. An obvious moral drawback to allowing US businesses to pay under-market, lower than even minimum wage
rates, is that it's wrong. Minimum wage and standard minimal working conditions are established to
humanely provide for the safety and welfare of all workers...not just American-born workers. It's a matter of
decency and human rights, rooted in the United States' Christian-Judeo heritage. It's wrong and exploitative, and it's
immoral. It's an updated form of economic slavery. Writes Dr. Groody, "Immigrants die cutting North
Carolina tobacco and Nebraska beef, chopping down trees in Colorado, welding a balcony in Florida ,
trimming grass at a Las Vegas golf course, and falling from scaffolding in Georgia.... With an economic
gun at their backs, they leave their homes because hunger and poverty pushes them across the
border....Every day, immigrants dehydrate in deserts, drown in canals, freeze in mountains and
suffocate in tractor trailers. As a result, the death toll has increased 1,000 percent in some places."

The devaluation of agency eradicates the capacity to make meaningful political
judgments. Agency is a prerequisite for every value and a necessary condition for
establishing a just society.
Anthony Lang, Jr. The American University in Cairo, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5
(1): 67-107, 1999, p. 77-79
This article proposes that the attribution of state responsibility undermines the agency of individual citizens. This consequence is morally
important because agency is the basis of first generation human rights, or political and civil rights. Without agency, individuals will
be subjects and not citizens, that is, they will become pliant adherents to the will of the government and not
political actors interested in and able to affect the future of their political community. Certainly, other factors
will contribute to the undermining of' first generation human rights, ones that have no relation to the attribution of state responsibility, or even
a relation to foreign policy. But, as this article will argue, the attribution of state responsibility contributes toward the undermining of those
rights in a number of ways. What is agency, and why is it so important for civil life? The concept of agency has been a part of' sociology since
Max Weber's analyses of it (Weber, 1964: 87-157). In the past 15 years, it has found its way into the discipline of International Relations as well,
specifically through the works of Alexander Wendt (Wendt, 1987) who has generally followed the debates in sociology that focus on agency and
structure. The debate in International Relations parallels that between Weber from Marx - are individual, goal seeking persons or social and
political structures more important in understanding human interaction? In International Relations, the question has been posed as -- are
individual, goal seeking states or the structure of the international system more important in understanding the outcomes of international
political interaction? While drastically simplified, this question captures the debate in the social sciences, including International Relations,
concerning the question of agency. The notions of agency that underlie the arguments of' this article, however, are drawn more from political
philosophy than from the sociological literature. More specifically, my notion of' agency draws on three political philosophers. Hannah
Arendt has argued that action defines the human person in the political realm, that without the ability
to remake the web of social and political relations that action provides there can be no separate
sphere defined as the political (Arendt, 1958). Charles Taylor has also placed agency at the center of his attempts to understand the
political. He has argued persuasively that human agency is primarily the ability to interpret the self's actions in a meaningful way, i.e. a
self- interpretation that cannot be reduced to mere biological desire (Taylor, 1985). Richard Flathman's analyses of liberalism rely on a form of
agency in his argument that liberalism requires individuals who are able to resist the encroachments of normalization and institutionalization as
they assert themselves through their actions, words and thoughts (Flathman, 1992). Following these three thinkers, I assume the following
meaning for agency -- agency is the ability to act and speak publicly with meaningful intentions in such a
way as to have an effect on the world. It requires the ability to interpret those actions in ways that may not always be
communicable at first, but do presume some sense of shared meaning (Taylor, 1985: 25).18 Furthermore, following Arendt, the ability to act is
central to the creation of the political sphere. Without action, politics could not take place, for it is through actions that communities are
constituted. Finally following Flathman, strong notions of agency are necessary for liberal and democratic citizenship. Unless individuals
can think and act qua individuals, they will be unable to create a political community in which their rights are
protected. Agency is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for creation of a community that respects
civil and political rights. While this definition cannot be considered final, the elements of meaningfulness, publicness and willfulness
are all central to the understanding of agency I am using here. How does the attribution of state responsibility undermine individual agency?
Because the attribution of state responsibility does not depend on the responsibility of individuals within the state, there is a prima facie sense
in which individual agency is irrelevant to considerations of international responsibility. While being irrelevant does not cause something to
disappear, it certainly does not help in making that thing an important consideration. But even more importantly, certain manifestations of
state responsibility tend to undermine individual responsibility and agency. This article focuses on three aspects of agency -- physical, legal and
political. Each one of these aspects of agency is necessary to be an active citizen as opposed to simply a pliant subject of a community. Physical
agency means having a level of health and welfare that would allow one to pursue political activity. Legal agency means having the
legal status as a citizen necessary to protect one's civil rights. Political agency, perhaps the most difficult to identify, is
the set of political beliefs and ideas that prompt an individual to act on behalf of his or her own interests in the public sphere. Again, Arendt's
work on political action captures the idea suggested here -- the idea that political action is not just an addition to our daily
lives, but something -which distinguishes us from animals and which is necessary for our happiness. To inculcate the idea that
political action is a value in and of itself is a necessary step in the direction of a true democracy (Arendt, 1958)

UQ Debate
Will Pass Issue is still active Boehner is open for it
Washington Times 11/22 [The Washington Times, credible news outlet,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/21/rep-nancy-pelosi-open-piecemeal-approach-immigrati/, Pelosi open to piecemeal
approach on immigration, 11/22/13, CW]

Asked this week if that meant the issue is dead, Mr. Boehner said, Absolutely not. I believe that
Congress needs to deal with this issue, he said. Our committees are continuing to do their work. There are
a lot of private conversations that are underway to try to figure out how do we best move on a common-sense, step-by-step basis to address
this very important issue. He also said he was encouraged when Mr. Obama earlier this week also signaled his willingness to accept a piece-
by-piece approach. Theyre suspicious of comprehensive bills, but you know what? If they want to chop
that thing up into five pieces, as long as all five pieces get done, I dont care what it looks like, as long as its actually
delivering on those core values that we talk about, Mr. Obama said at The Wall Street Journals CEO Council Annual Meeting. Mr. Obama said
he thinks many House Republicans want to give illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, which he said would involve paying fines and, for
many, waiting more than a decade before they could obtain a green card. Beneath this weeks apparent agreement, however, lurk several
hurdles, including whether House Republicans insist that border security come before any legalization bill passes. Democrats have considered
that a non-starter. Mr. Boehner said Thursday that its the American people who are and should be skeptical of comprehensive bills.
The only way to make sure immigration reform works this time is to address these complicated issues
one step at a time, he said.


Obamas capital keeps the spotlight on immigration and pushes the House for a vote
House rejection of the Senate bill doesnt matter
Alexis Simendinger, RCP, 11/5/13, Obama Pushing Again for Immigration Reform,
www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/05/obama_pushing_again_for_immigration_reform_120577.html
President Obama this week is championing a menu of domestic issues he wants to move through Congress
in the weeks left in this congressional session, including most prominently immigration reform. House members
have 16 days left this year to complete legislative work, and lobbyists and advocates for reform among the GOP
in Congress are pulling out the stops in the final weeks to encourage them to cast their votes. On Tuesday
morning, the president is expected to repeat his bipartisan sales pitch that a comprehensive approach to
fixing the countrys immigration system would be good for the economy and job creation. Hell surround himself
with business leaders in the Roosevelt Room to repeat his entreaty to the House to take up a Senate-passed
measure or a series of bills favored by House Republicans in a long-odds effort to keep one of the years most
ambitious legislative projects from grinding to a halt. The painful government shutdown and Octobers
preoccupation with the disastrous implementation of the Affordable Care Acts online enrollment system pushed
the immigration debate out of the spotlight this fall. Obama is trying to enliven its chances by reprising
his role as the outside cheerleader , as some senators called him earlier this year. But as the White House
discovered during the shutdown drama and brinksmanship with default in October, many conservative lawmakers turned deaf ears to the
business communitys economic arguments on those issues -- and conservative lawmakers may be similarly unmoved by business leaders
whose hopes for an immigration overhaul are no secret. Earlier this year, the president hoped that political arguments -- the opportunity for
Republicans to patch up rocky relations with Hispanics by getting immigration reform done and off the table -- might encourage House Speaker
John Boehner and his conference to act. Many Democrats say theyre worried the Tea Partys visible drive to challenge fellow conservatives
heading into the 2014 midterms may have scuttled chances for passage of immigration reform for another year. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who
was among the original proponents of the comprehensive measure that passed the Senate by a vote of 68-32 in June, this week withdrew his
support for the bill he helped write. Hes endorsed a piecemeal, multi-bill approach favored by House leaders, which has an uncertain future.
House leaders, for instance, believe their members want to cast votes on tougher border security, but oppose the Senate-passed pathway to
citizenship for undocumented workers already in the country. The White House favors the Senate bill, but has opened the
door to the House approach, as long as the end product can be called comprehensive. In the meantime,
Obama wants to keep a public spotlight on the issue -- and on his willingness to work for passage. It has
broad bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans, business and labor leaders, law enforcement and faith
leaders, Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday. Its good for business, its good for our economy as a whole,
and it is the right thing to do. We believe it is time for the House to follow the Senate and take action.

Continued pressure overcomes their warrants
Gabriel Grand, PolicyMic, 11/12/13, This Advocate is Confident About the Immigration Reform Bill, and You
Should Be Too , www.policymic.com/articles/72917/this-advocate-is-confident-about-the-immigration-reform-bill-
and-you-should-be-too

Flash back to this June: the Gang of Eight had just passed a bipartisan immigration bill in the Senate with a strong 68-32 majority, and it
seemed like President Obama was going to have the bill on his desk by the end of the summer. Its now
November, and we still dont have any comprehensive immigration legislation on the books. Members of congress
on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns that the 2014 midterm elections will make already hesitant Republican representatives even
less likely to take a chance on immigration reform. Looking out at the thorny political horizons of these last months of
2013 and beyond, many Americans have sighed and shelved their hopes for immigration reform indefinitely.
But while most see the sand quickly draining from the immigration hourglass, Ali Noorani is ready to
turn our perspective upside-down. As Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, Noorani is one of the nations most
outspoken pro-immigration advocates. His Washington, D.C.-based organization has been at the center of every major U.S. immigration debate
since its founding in 1982. Under Nooranis leadership since 2008, the Forum works closely with business, law enforcement, faith and
immigrant leadership across the country. Noorani explained to PolicyMic Fellow Gabe Grand why the immigration reform effort is not dead, but
in fact alive and well. Gabe Grand: Youre the son of Pakistani immigrants. Does your personal heritage have an impact on the way you view
immigration? Ali Noorani: Absolutely. As a person whose family immigrated here, I know that this country has provided us with an incredible
amount of opportunity. I want to make sure that America continues to benefit from the value of immigrants and immigration. What new
perspective do millennials bring to the immigration debate? When you talk to younger people across the country, they all know immigrants
personally. Many of them have, in fact, come to know people who are undocumented. That experience is very personal. For millennials, the
immigration reform debate is not a policy conversation; its a conversation about their friends, their schoolmates, and even their co-workers.
When theres a policy debate about a person you see every day, you care about it more. This past Fall, Congress was occupied
with urgent issues like Syria, budget issues, the debt ceiling, the government shutdown. Is immigration also a time-sensitive
issue? I think its incredibly time-sensitive in terms of the survival of the Republican party. The fact is, an increasing number of House
Republicans are representing very diverse districts. Senate Republicans see their states changing. If the GOP wants to hang drapes in the White
House again, theyre going to have to get behind immigration reform. The deadline here is that election every two years, where Republicans are
making a case not only to Latino voters, but also to their base. Theres a fast-growing number of social and fiscal conservatives across the
country who want to see immigration reform, fast. What would you say to millennials who are wondering where the momentum behind this
past summers Senate immigration bill went? Two things here: I think we have to remember that Congress operates in two-year sessions. That
Senate bill is good to go until December 31, 2014. The second thing is that the House of Representatives has actually passed five bills out of
committee. So by no means are we dead in the water or starting from scratch in the House Republican leadership in the House will continue
to feel an enormous amount of pressure from both the left and the right to move immigration reform. Some House RepublicansTea Partiers
in particularhave been resistant to immigration reform. Our sense is that there is a clear majority of House Republicans
who want to pass immigration reform. The problem is that they havent landed on a solution of how to do it and when to do it.
Only the folks like Steve King (R-IA) and the hell no caucus, theyre the only ones saying, This isnt going to happen. And their numbers are
actually quite small. This election cycle, many congressional representatives will fall back on secure and sometimes gerrymandered districts.
Who's going to put pressure on those representatives? Within the Evangelical community, we are seeing pastors and congregants in very
homogeneous districts say, We want immigration reform to be passed. The Evangelical Immigration Table has really changed the
conversation amongst Evangelicals across the country. Where is that motivation coming from? For them, number one, its coming from
scripture. When Evangelicals look to the Bible, one of the key tenets is to welcome the stranger. What about conservative Christian groups like
Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration that use the Bible as grounds to call for a ban on Muslim immigrants? By no means am I a Biblical scholar,
but one thing that I do know about that group is that its led by four people and they have a very small number of followers. The Evangelical
Immigration Table is ten* of the nations largest Evangelical organizations. Their statement of principles has been signed by nearly 200
Evangelical leaders across the country. They have developed a community of what they call prayer partners of over 180,000 people. Then
youve got the entire Catholic church, which has relied on the Bible for guidance on the need for immigration reform for decades. I think
[Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration] is a fringe extremist group that doesnt represent any large part of the Evangelical community. (*Editors
note: the Evangelical Immigration Table is currently composed of 11 member organizations, according to the groups website.) Lets talk about
the 2014 midterm elections. Recently, GOP Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) said of immigration in the House, If we cant get it done by
early next year, then its clearly dead. Does immigration reform have a deadline once primaries start? The deadline for immigration
reform is December 31, 2014. The House is going to have multiple opportunities to act [before that date].
Things are moving so quickly in DC, and Congress is pretty astounding for its lack of short-term memory. (Laughing)
Syria, the shutdown Congress has gotten all riled up about [these issues], and then they kind of keep moving on. So for
us , its really just a matter of continuing to build the pressure from all these different perspectives and keeping things
moving. Is the goal, then, to get the Senate bill in its current form passed by December 31 of next year? The House is going to have its own
process. Were going to end up somewhere between whatever the House passes, and what the Senate has
passed. The Senate bill in its current form is 1200 pages long, and some of the Senators who voted on the bill this summer have said that they
didnt have time to read the whole thing. Could the bills size pose problems later down the line? First of all, if you were to go back and take a
look at the number of weeks between introduction and passage, there was more than enough time to read and dissect that bill. When Senator
Grassley (R-IA) claims that he has not had time to dissect the bill, and thenin literally the same paragraphoffers very specific amendments
to the bill I just think thats rather disingenuous. What about the Corker-Hoeven border security amendment? Is it fair for Senators to claim
that they were rushed into voting on that measure? It was actually not that long of an amendment. This is what we elected guys to do: to read
bills and vote on them. This was a small amendment, and each office has how many staff? If a Senator and their staff are actually unable to do
their job, then they might want to explore other career options. (Laughs) The Corker-Hoeven amendment allocates tens of billions of dollars to
border security. It calls for the doubling of border security agents, 700 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border, and the implementation
of high-tech border surveillance devices like drones and thermal imaging cameras. In our opinion, the Corker-Hoeven amendment was overkill.
Was it a concession? I mean, it was a negotiation. Both sides compromised. Theres been a lot of talk in the House about a piecemeal
approach to immigration reform. How does that method compare to the comprehensive legislation that the Senate has passed? There are
a bunch of different ways that the House can pass immigration reform. Whether its taking up discreet
pieces or something larger. Its really up to John Boehner (R-OH) to make that decision to bring a bill to the floor. And the fact is
that a majority of his conference are ready to move. Theres no other issue that has the depth of
support amongst both Republicans and Democratsnot only on the Hill, but, more importantly, across the country... Its just
a matter of reaching that tipping point.

Link Debate
Predictions
Even if they arent perfect, predictions are necessary for the future
Cowen, 2004 Professor of Economics at George Mason (Tyler, The Epistemic Problem does
not Refute Consequentialism, accessed through Cambridge Journals Online)//BZ

If we know for sure which remedy works, obviously we should apply that remedy. But imagine now that we are uncertain
as to which remedy works. The uncertainty is so extreme that each remedy may cure somewhere between three
hundred thousand and six hundred thousand children. Nonetheless we have a slight idea that one remedy is better
than the other. That is, one remedy is slightly more likely to cure more children, with no other apparent offsetting negative
effects or considerations. Despite the greater uncertainty, we still have the intuition that we should try to save as many children as
possible. We should apply the remedy that is more likely to cure more children. We do not say: We are now so
uncertain about what will happen. We should pursue some goal other than trying to cure as many children
as possible. Nor would we cite greater uncertainty about longer-run events as an argument against curing the children. We have
a definite good in the present (more cured children), balanced against a radical remixing of the future
on both sides of the equation. The definite upfront good still stands firm. Alternatively, let us assume
that our broader future suddenly became less predictable (perhaps genetic engineering is invented, which
creates new and difficult-to-forecast possibilities). That still would not diminish the force of our reason for saving more children. The
variance of forecast becomes larger on both sides of the equation - whether we save the children or not - and the value of the upfront
lives remains. A higher variance of forecast might increase the required size of the upfront benefit (to
overcome the Principle of Roughness), but it would not refute the relevance of consequences more
generally. We could increase the uncertainty more, but consequentialism still will not appear
counterintuitive. The remedies, rather than curing somewhere in the range of three to six hundred thousand children, might
cure in the broader range of zero to all one million of the children. By all classical statistical standards, this new cure scenario
involves more uncertainty than the previous case, such as by having a higher variance of possible outcomes. Yet this higher
uncertainty lends little support for the view that curing the children becomes less important. We still have an imperative to apply the
remedy that appears best, and is expected the cure the greater number of children. This example may appear excessively simple, but
it points our attention to the non-generality of the epistemic critique. The critique appears strongest
only when we have absolutely no idea about the future; this is a special rather than a general
case. Simply boosting the degree of background generic uncertainty should not stop us from
pursuing large upfront benefits of obvious importance.

Even if complexity is true, we still have to make educative predictions to stop
catastrophe
Garrett, 2012 BA from Stanford, PhD from Brandeis University, rom Director of Strategic
Foresight Initiative at the Atlantic Council (Banning, In Search of Sand Piles and Butterflies,
http://www.acus.org/disruptive_change/search-sand-piles-and-butterflies)//BZ

Disruptive change that produces strategic shocks has become an increasing concern for policymakers, shaken by momentous
events of the last couple of decades that were not on their radar screens from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 terrorist
attacks to the 2008 financial crisis and the Arab Spring. These were all shocks to the international system, predictable perhaps in
retrospect but predicted by very few experts or officials on the eve of their occurrence. This failure to predict specific
strategic shocks does not mean we should abandon efforts to foresee disruptive change or look
at all possible shocks as equally plausible. Most strategic shocks do not come out of the blue.
We can understand and project long-term global trends and foresee at least some of their
potential effects, including potential shocks and disruptive change. We can construct alternative
futures scenarios to envision potential change, including strategic shocks. Based on trends and scenarios,
we can take actions to avert possible undesirable outcomes or limit the damage should they
occur. We can also identify potential opportunities or at least more desirable futures that we
seek to seize through policy course corrections. We should distinguish strategic shocks that are
developments that could happen at any time and yet may never occur. This would include such
plausible possibilities as use of a nuclear device by terrorists or the emergence of an airborne human-
to-human virus that could kill millions. Such possible but not inevitable developments would not necessarily be the
result of worsening long-term trends. Like possible terrorist attacks, governments need to try to prepare for such
possible catastrophes though they may never happen. But there are other potential disruptive changes,
including those that create strategic shocks to the international system, that can result from identifiable trends that make them more
likely in the futurefor example, growing demand for food, water, energy and other resources with supplies failing to keep pace.
We need to look for the sand piles that the trends are building and are subject to collapse at
some point with an additional but indeterminable additional grain of sand and identify the
potential for the sudden appearance of butterflies that might flap their wings and set off
hurricanes. Mohamed Bouazizi, who immolated himself December 17, 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, was the butterfly who
flapped his wings and (with the force multiplier of social media) set off a hurricane that is still blowing throughout the Middle
East. Perhaps the metaphors are mixed, but the butterflys delicate flapping destabilized the sand piles (of rising food prices,
unemployed students, corrupt government, etc.) that had been building in Tunisia, Egypt, and much of the region. The result was a
sudden collapse and disruptive change that has created a strategic shock that is still producing tremors throughout the region. But
the collapse was due to cumulative effects of identifiable and converging trends. When and what form change will take may be
difficult if not impossible to foresee, but the likelihood of a tipping point being reachedthat linear continuation of the present into
the future is increasingly unlikelycan be foreseen. Foreseeing the direction of change and the likelihood of discontinuities, both
sudden and protracted, is thus not beyond our capabilities. While efforts to understand and project long-term global trends cannot
provide accurate predictions, for example, of the GDPs of China, India, and the United States in 2030, looking at economic
and GDP growth trends, can provide insights into a wide range of possible outcomes. For example, it
is a useful to assess the implications if the GDPs of these three countries each grew at currently
projected average rates even if one understands that there are many factors that can and likely
will alter their trajectories. The projected growth trends of the three countries suggest that at some point in the next few
decades, perhaps between 2015 and 2030, Chinas GDP will surpass that of the United States. And by adding consideration of the
economic impact of demographic trends (Chinas aging and Indias youth bulge), there is a possibility that India will surpass both
China and the US, perhaps by 2040 or 2050, to become the worlds largest economy. These potential shifts of economic power from
the United States to China then to India would likely prove strategically disruptive on a global scale. Although slowly developing,
such disruptive change would likely have an even greater strategic impact than the Arab Spring. The rise of China has already
proved strategically disruptive, creating a potential China-United States regional rivalry in Asia two decades after Americans fretted
about an emerging US conflict with a then-rising Japan challenging American economic supremacy. Despite uncertainty
surrounding projections, foreseeing the possibility (some would say high likelihood) that China and then India
will replace the United States as the largest global economy has near-term policy implications for the US and
Europe. The potential long-term shift in economic clout and concomitant shift in political power
and strategic position away from the US and the West and toward the East has implications for
near-term policy choices. Policymakers could conclude, for example, that the West should make greater efforts to bring the
emerging (or re-emerging) great powers into close consultation on the rules of the game and global governance as the Wests
influence in shaping institutions and behavior is likely to significantly diminish over the next few decades. The alternative to
finding such a near-term accommodation could be increasing mutual suspicions and hostility
rather than trust and growing cooperation between rising and established powersespecially between
China and the United Statesleading to a fragmented, zero-sum world in which major global challenges
like climate change and resource scarcities are not addressed and conflict over dwindling
resources and markets intensifies and even bleeds into the military realm among the major
actors. Neither of these scenarios may play out, of course. Other global trends suggest that sometime in the next several decades,
the world could encounter a hard ceiling on resources availability and that climate change could throw the global economy into a
tailspin, harming China and India even more than the United States. In this case, perhaps India and China would falter economically
leading to internal instability and crises of governance, significantly reducing their rates of economic growth and their ability to
project power and play a significant international role than might otherwise have been expected. But this scenario has other
implications for policymakers, including dangers posed to Western interests from failure of China and/or India, which could
produce huge strategic shocks to the global system, including a prolonged economic downturn in the West as well as the East. Thus,
looking at relatively slowly developing trends can provide foresight for necessary course corrections now to avert catastrophic
disruptive change or prepare to be more resilient if foreseeable but unavoidable shocks occur. Policymakers and the
public will press for predictions and criticize government officials and intelligence agencies
when momentous events catch us by surprise. But unfortunately, as both Yogi Berra and Neils Bohr are credited
with saying, prediction is very hard, especially about the future. One can predict with great accuracy many natural events such as
sunrise and the boiling point of water at sea level. We can rely on the infallible predictability of the laws of physics to build airplanes
and automobiles and iPhones. And we can calculate with great precision the destruction footprint of a given nuclear weapon. Yet
even physical systems like the weather as they become more complex, become increasingly difficult and even inherently impossible
to predict with precision. With human behavior, specific predictions are not just hard, but impossible as uncertainty is inherent in
the human universe. As futurist Paul Saffo wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2007, prediction is possible only in a world in
which events are preordained and no amount of actions in the present can influence the future outcome. One cannot know for
certain what actions he or she will take in the future much less the actions of another person, a group of people or a nation state.
This obvious point is made to dismiss any idea of trying to predict what will occur in the future
with accuracy, especially the outcomes of the interplay of many complex factors, including the
interaction of human and natural systems. More broadly, the human future is not predetermined but rather depends
on human choices at every turning point, cumulatively leading to different alternative outcomes. This uncertainty about
the future also means the future is amenable to human choice and leadership. Trends analyses
including foreseeing trends leading to disruptive changeare thus essential to provide
individuals, organizations and political leaders with the strategic foresight to take steps mitigate
the dangers ahead and seize the opportunities for shaping the human destiny. Peter Schwartz nearly a
decade ago characterized the convergence of trends and disruptive change as inevitable surprises. He wrote in Inevitable Surprises
that in the coming decades we face many more inevitable surprises: major discontinuities in the economic, political
and social spheres of our world, each one changing the rules of the game as its played today. If anything, there will be more, no
fewer, surprises in the future, and they will all be interconnected. Together, they will lead us into a world, ten to fifteen years hence,
that is fundamentally different from the one we know today. Understanding these inevitable surprises in our
future is critical for the decisions we have to make today . We may not be able to prevent
catastrophe (although sometimes we can), but we can certainly increase our ability to respond, and our
ability to see opportunities that we would otherwise miss.
IM
(Frank, Farm job, anyone?, Associated Content, p. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5877166/farm_job_anyone.html)
Those calling for tougher immigration laws and the UFW claim that farmers have become accustomed to hiring undocumented workers who are willing to work for little, and now make up half
the farm labor force. Legal immigrants make up a quarter of the farm labor. Those Americans who do get hired to do farm work often disappear
quickly. Farm work is often offered in remote locations which city dwellers find difficult to get to, and one solution would be to provide
transportation from central cities with high unemployment to outlying farms. Another possibility would be to use prisoners incarcerated for minor offenses. A shortage of
farm labor will cause food prices to rise at a time when many people are out of work and may be receiving government assistance. It will also increase our
dependence on imported food, which may not be up to FDA standards and could cause health problems, as has already happened. Another effect of the farm labor shortage
will be the continued disappearance of small family farms, which will either be abandoned or bought
by large conglomerates whose management is far removed from the local community.
Prevents extinction
Altieri 8 - Professor of agroecology @ University of California, Berkeley. [Miguel Altieri (President,
Sociedad Cientifica LatinoAmericana de Agroecologia (SOCLA), Small farms as a planetary ecological
asset: Five key reasons why we should support the revitalization of small farms in the Global South,
Food First, Posted May 9th, 2008, pg. http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2115]
The Via Campesina has long argued that farmers need land to produce food for their own communities and for their country and for this reason has advocated for genuine agrarian
reforms to access and control land, water, agrobiodiversity, etc, which are of central importance for communities to be able to meet
growing food demands. The Via Campesina believes that in order to protect livelihoods, jobs, people's food security and health, as well
as the environment, food production has to remain in the hands of small- scale sustainable farmers and
cannot be left under the control of large agribusiness companies or supermarket chains. Only by changing the export-led, free-trade based, industrial
agriculture model of large farms can the downward spiral of poverty, low wages, rural-urban migration, hunger and
environmental degradation be halted. Social rural movements embrace the concept of food sovereignty as an alternative to the neo-liberal approach that puts
its faith in inequitable international trade to solve the worlds food problem. Instead, food sovereignty focuses on local autonomy, local markets, local
production-consumption cycles, energy and technological sovereignty and farmer to farmer networks. This global movement, the Via Campesina, has
recently brought their message to the North, partly to gain the support of foundations and consumers, as
political pressure from a wealthier public that increasingly depends on unique food products from the South marketed via organic, fair trade, or slow food channels could marshal the sufficient
political will to curb the expansion of biofuels, transgenic crops and agro-exports, and put an end to subsidies to industrial farming and dumping practices that hurt small farmers in the South.
But can these arguments really captivate the attention and support of northern consumers and philanthropists? Or is there a need for a different argumentone that emphasizes that the
very quality of life and food security of the populations in the North depends not only on the food products, but in the ecological services provided by small farms of the South. In fact, it is
herein argued that the functions performed by small farming systems still prevalent in Africa, Asia and Latin Americain the post-peak oil era that humanity is entering
comprise an ecological asset for humankind and planetary survival . In fact, in an era of escalating fuel
and food costs, climate change, environmental degradation, GMO pollution and corporate- dominated
food systems, small, biodiverse, agroecologically managed farms in the Global South are the only viable form of
agriculture that will feed the world under the new ecological and economic scenario. There are at last five reasons
why it is in the interest of Northern consumers to support the cause and struggle of small farmers in the South: 1. Small farmers are key for the worlds
food security While 91% of the planets 1.5 billion hectares of agricultural land are increasingly being devoted to agro-export crops, biofuels and transgenic soybean to feed cars
and cattle, millions of small farmers in the Global South still produce the majority of staple crops needed to feed the planets rural and
urban populations. In Latin America, about 17 million peasant production units occupying close to 60.5 million hectares, or 34.5% of the total cultivated land with average farm sizes of about
1.8 hectares, produce 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of the potatoes for domestic consumption. Africa has approximately 33 million small farms, representing 80 percent of all
farms in the region. Despite the fact that Africa now imports huge amounts of cereals, the majority of African farmers (many of them women) who are smallholders with farms below 2
hectares, produce a significant amount of basic food crops with virtually no or little use of fertilizers and improved seed. In Asia, the majority of more than 200 million rice farmers, few farm
more than 2 hectares of rice make up the bulk of the rice produced by Asian small farmers. Small increases in yields on these small farms that produce most of the worlds staple crops will
have far more impact on food availability at the local and regional levels, than the doubtful increases predicted for distant and corporate-controlled large monocultures managed with such
high tech solutions as genetically modified seeds. 2.Small farms are more productive and resource conserving than large-scale
monocultures Although the conventional wisdom is that small family farms are backward and unproductive, research shows that small farms are much more
productive than large farms if total output is considered rather than yield from a single crop. Integrated farming systems in which the small-scale farmer produces grains, fruits, vegetables,
fodder, and animal products out-produce yield per unit of single crops such as corn (monocultures) on large-scale farms. A large farm may produce more corn per hectare than a small farm in
which the corn is grown as part of a polyculture that also includes beans, squash, potato, and fodder. In polycultures developed by smallholders, productivity, in terms of harvestable products,
per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the same level of management. Yield advantages range from 20 percent to 60 percent, because polycultures reduce losses due to weeds,
insects and diseases, and make more efficient use of the available resources of water, light and nutrients. In overall output, the diversified farm produces much more food, even if measured in
dollars. In the USA, data shows that the smallest two hectare farms produced $15,104 per hectare and netted about $2,902 per acre. The largest farms, averaging 15,581 hectares, yielded
$249 per hectare and netted about $52 per hectare. Not only do small to medium sized farms exhibit higher yields than conventional farms, but do so with much lower negative impact on the
environment. Small farms are multi-functional more productive, more efficient, and contribute more to economic development than do large farms. Communities
surrounded by many small farms have healthier economies than do communities surrounded by depopulated, large mechanized farms.
Small farmers also take better care of natural resources, including reducing soil erosion and
conserving biodiversity. The inverse relationship between farm size and output can be attributed to
the more efficient use of land, water, biodiversity and other agricultural resources by small farmers. So in terms of
converting inputs into outputs, society would be better off with small-scale farmers. Building strong rural economies in the Global South based on productive small-scale farming will allow the
people of the South to remain with their families and will help to stem the tide of migration. And as population continues to grow and the amount of farmland and water available to each
person continues to shrink, a small farm structure may become central to feeding the planet, especially when large- scale agriculture devotes itself to feeding car tanks. 3. Small
traditional and biodiverse farms are models of sustainability Despite the onslaught of industrial farming, the persistence of thousands
of hectares under traditional agricultural management documents a successful indigenous agricultural strategy of adaptability and resiliency. These microcosms of traditional agriculture that
have stood the test of time, and that can still be found almost untouched since 4 thousand years in the Andes, MesoAmerica, Southeast Asia and parts of Africa, offer promising models of
sustainability as they promote biodiversity, thrive without agrochemicals, and sustain year-round yields even under marginal environmental conditions. The local knowledge
accumulated during millennia and the forms of agriculture and agrobiodiversity that this wisdom has nurtured, comprise a
Neolithic legacy embedded with ecological and cultural resources of fundamental value for the future of
humankind. Recent research suggests that many small farmers cope and even prepare for climate
change, minimizing crop failure through increased use of drought tolerant local varieties, water harvesting, mixed cropping, opportunistic weeding, agroforestry and
a series of other traditional techniques. Surveys conducted in hillsides after Hurricane Mitch in Central America showed that farmers using sustainable practices such as mucuna cover crops,
intercropping, and agroforestry suffered less damage than their conventional neighbors. The study spanning 360 communities and 24 departments in Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala
showed that diversified plots had 20% to 40% more topsoil, greater soil moisture, less erosion, and experienced lower economic losses than their conventional neighbors. This demonstrates
that a re-evaluation of indigenous technology can serve as a key source of information on adaptive capacity and resilient capabilities exhibited by small farmsfeatures of strategic importance
for world farmers to cope with climatic change. In addition, indigenous technologies often reflect a worldview and an understanding of our relationship to the natural world that is more
realistic and more sustainable that those of our Western European heritage. 4. Small farms represent a sanctuary of GMO-free agrobiodiversity In general, traditional small scale farmers
grow a wide variety of cultivars . Many of these plants are landraces grown from seed passed down from generation to generation, more genetically heterogeneous than modern cultivars, and
thus offering greater defenses against vulnerability and enhancing harvest security in the midst of diseases, pests, droughts and other stresses. In a worldwide survey of crop varietal diversity
on farms involving 27 crops, scientists found that considerable crop genetic diversity continues to be maintained on farms in the form of traditional crop varieties, especially of major staple
crops. In most cases, farmers maintain diversity as an insurance to meet future environmental change or social and economic needs. Many researchers have concluded that this varietal
richness enhances productivity and reduces yield variability. For example, studies by plant pathologists provide evidence that mixing of crop species and or varieties can delay the onset of
diseases by reducing the spread of disease carrying spores, and by modifying environmental conditions so that they are less favorable to the spread of certain pathogens. Recent research in
China, where four different mixtures of rice varieties grown by farmers from fifteen different townships over 3000 hectares, suffered 44% less blast incidence and exhibited 89% greater yield
than homogeneous fields without the need to use chemicals. It is possible that traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, competitive ability, performance on intercrops,
storage quality, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities which may not be important to farmers (Jordan, 2001). Under this scenario, risk could increase and farmers would lose their ability
to adapt to changing biophysical environments and increase their success with relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs while supporting their communities food security.
Although there is a high probability that the introduction of transgenic crops will enter centers of genetic diversity, it is crucial to protect areas of peasant agriculture free of contamination
from GMO crops, as traits important to indigenous farmers (resistance to drought, food or fodder quality, maturity, competitive ability, performance on intercrops, storage quality, taste or
cooking properties, compatibility with household labor conditions, etc) could be traded for transgenic qualities (i.e. herbicide resistance) which are of no importance to farmers who dont use
agrochemicals . Under this scenario risk will increase and farmers will lose their ability to produce relatively stable yields with a minimum of external inputs under changing biophysical
environments. The social impacts of local crop shortfalls, resulting from changes in the genetic integrity of local varieties due to genetic pollution, can be considerable in the margins of the
Global South. Maintaining pools of genetic diversity, geographically isolated from any possibility of cross fertilization or genetic pollution from uniform
transgenic crops will create islands of intact germplasm which will act as extant safeguards against potential ecological failure derived from the
second green revolution increasingly being imposed with programs such as the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in Africa. These genetic sanctuary islands will serve as the only source of GMO-free
seeds that will be needed to repopulate the organic farms in the North inevitably contaminated by the advance of transgenic agriculture. The small farmers and indigenous communities of the
Global South, with the help of scientists and NGOs, can continue to create and guard biological and genetic diversity that has enriched the food culture of the whole planet. 5. Small
farms cool the climate While industrial agriculture contributes directly to climate change through no less
than one third of total emissions of the major g reen h ouse g ase s Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), small, biodiverse
organic farms have the opposite effect by sequestering more carbon in soils. Small farmers usually treat their soils with
organic compost materials that absorb and sequester carbon better than soils that are farmed with conventional fertilizers. Researchers have suggested that the conversion of 10,000 small- to
medium-sized farms to organic production would store carbon in the soil equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road. Further climate amelioration
contributions by small farms accrue from the fact that most use significantly less fossil fuel in
comparison to conventional agriculture mainly due to a reduction of chemical fertilizer and pesticide
use, relying instead on organic manures, legume-based rotations, and diversity schemes to enhance beneficial insects. Farmers who live in rural communities
near cities and towns and are linked to local markets, avoid the energy wasted and the gas emissions associated with transporting food hundreds and even thousands of miles. Conclusions
The great advantage of small farming systems is their high levels of agrobidoversity arranged in the form of variety
mixtures, polycultures, crop-livestock combinations and/or agroforestry patterns. Modeling new agroecosystems using such diversified designs are extremely valuable to farmers whose
systems are collapsing due to debt, pesticide use, transgenic treadmills, or climate change. Such diverse systems buffer against natural or human-induced variations in production conditions.
There is much to learn from indigenous modes of production, as these systems have a strong ecological basis, maintain valuable genetic diversity, and lead to regeneration and preservation of
biodiversity and natural resources. Traditional methods are particularly instructive because they provide a long-term perspective on
successful agricultural management under conditions of climatic variability. Organized social rural movements in the
Global South oppose industrial agriculture in all its manifestations, and increasingly their territories constitute isolated areas rich in unique agrobiodiversity, including genetically diverse
material, therefore acting as extant safeguards against the potential ecological failure derived from inappropriate agricultural modernization schemes. It is precisely the ability to generate and
maintain diverse crop genetic resources that offer unique niche possibilities to small farmers that cannot be replicated by farmers in the North who are condemned to uniform cultivars and
to co-exist with GMOs. The cibo pulito, justo e buono that Slow Food promotes, the Fair Trade coffee, bananas, and the organic products so much in demand by northern consumers can
only be produced in the agroecological islands of the South. This difference inherent to traditional systems, can be strategically utilized to revitalize small farming communities by exploiting
opportunities that exist for linking traditional agrobiodiversity with local/national/international markets, as long as these activities are justly compensated by the North and all the segments of
the market remain under grassroots control. Consumers of the North can play a major role by supporting these more equitable markets
which do not perpetuate the colonial model of agriculture of the poor for the rich, but rather a model that promotes small biodiverse farms as
the basis for strong rural economies in the Global South. Such economies will not only provide
sustainable production of healthy, agroecologically-produced, accessible food for all, but will allow
indigenous peoples and small farmers to continue their millennial work of building and conserving the agricultural and
natural biodiversity on which we all depend now and even more so in the future.