Rights Malthus K

Blocks
 1NC
Liberal values like privacy and liberty cause widespread
environmental destruction we must explicitly downgrade
these rights to allow for the emergence of a responsible
eco-authoritarian regime
Matthew Humphrey, 2007, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory:
The challenge to the deliberative ideal, p. 16-19, mm

liberal democracy cannot save us because

So much, then, for the eco-authoritarian diagnosis;
its choices are motivated by the wrong reasons and even were they not, we
cannot overcome the collective action problem and still retain our liberal
freedoms. It is not technology that has single-handedly created the problems we face with regard to our natural
environment, but our belief that the choices and preferences of the majority in democratic, affluent countries are and
should be viewed as absolute, beyond discussion (Westra, 1998: 3). What about the proposed solutions offered by this
group of thinkers? How does their version of coercive politics work? The solutions on offer can be usefully broken down
into two parts: changes in values and changes in institutions. It is because in crisis conditions there is insufficient time
to inculcate the former that stress is placed upon the latter, but both are required for an adequate analysis of the eco-
authoritarian position. There are, as one might expect, variations in terms of the values that the eco-authoritarians are
seeking to promote, depending upon which thinker one is referring to and which part of their argument. It is possible to
our conventional ways of thinking
make some generalisations however; most importantly,
about, and the importance vested in, justice, democracy, and liberalism are all
challenged in the eco-authoritarian literature, and in their place are offered a value or set of
values that is/are taken to be more in keeping with our newly discovered obligations to the non-human world or future
generations.6 These latter values promote a particular conception of the good, and some notion of a politics of virtue
that flows from that conception, be it, for example, integrity on the part of Laura Westra or the triumph of political
ecology over economics for William Ophuls. We will examine this call for value change in more detail before going on to
examine the changes to political institutions that the eco-authoritarians seek. One of the most important strategies of
the eco-authoritarians is to historicise certain principles that they see as being predominant in modern western
societies. For them,we are in danger of seeing the values of liberty, democracy, and
distributional justice as eternal verities whereas we should see them as products
of a specific time and place, and more importantly, as products of, or at least as dependent upon, the existence
of an economy of plenty which is both historically specific and fleeting. For
Ophuls the discovery of the New World in particular liberated the Old World from ecological scarcity, and created all the
peculiar institutions and values characteristic of modern civilisation democracy, freedom, and individualism. However,
the golden age of these values is all but over and we have to return to
something like a pre-modern, closed polity (Ophuls, 1977: 144, 145). In seeking to challenge
what they see as widely accepted and deeply held values in contemporary societies, the eco-authoritarians
seek to both promote a new set of values and recontest or downgrade
existing ones on the grounds that they are harmful to the prospects of
ecological survival. The fundamental divide here is between a politics of the right and a politics of the good.
Eco-authoritarians see liberalism (as a manifestation of the politics of the right) as being a transient phenomenon
crucially dependent upon the temporary conditions of material abundance ushered in by the fossil fuel age.
Liberalism is a function of the material conditions that make it possible and is
parasitic upon unsustainable economic policies. When the tragedy of the
commons strikes, then the concept of inalienable rights, the purely self defined pursuit of
happiness, liberty as maximum freedom of action, and laissez-faire all become
problematic (Ophuls, 1977: 152). As an account of the rights embedded in liberal ideology this is itself a
contestable account, but it illustrates the way in which liberal democracy is understood in this body of literature. The
problem lies in the rights that are granted which allow us to live according to our self-defined values. Westra also holds
individual and aggregate rights is
that the proliferation, under conditions of liberal democracy, of
undesirable from an environmental point of view (1998: 57). The choices we make under
these conditions are not constrained by a conception of the common good, and so can be harmful to all (Westra, 1998:
155). Hardin focuses on one particular right, that of procreation it is painful to have to deny, categorically, the claim
embodied in the UN Declaration on Human Rights that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must
irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else (1968: 1246). Nonetheless it is the case that
to couple the concept of the freedom to breed with . . . an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic
course of action (1968: 1246). So,the kinds of basic liberties that would be
constitutionally entrenched in, say, a Rawlsian liberal society in order to ensure people
the right to choose their own form of life are seen on this view as profoundly problematic in terms
of their ecological consequences. Abrogating these rights may violate the
liberal conception of justice, but injustice is preferable to total ruin (Ophuls,
quoting Hardin, 1977: 148). Justice, anyway, is one of the political concepts for which a move away from the liberal
definition is suggested as explained later in this chapter. Against the politics of the right the eco-authoritarians
recommend a virtue politics based upon a conception of the common good. Against the liberal desire to allow people to
choose their own values, wisdom tells us that not all values are equal and that virtue matters in life (Ophuls, 1977:
237). Virtue here entails recognising the necessity of living life according to ecological values and being prepared to
abandon or reconfigure those values that are not conducive to the end of sustainability. Westra offers the overarching
value of (ecological) integrity as the embodiment of this politics of the common good. This in turn is defined in terms of
ecosystem health, resilience, the optimum potential for speciation and development, and the non-constraint of non-
human nature by the actions of human beings (see Westra, 1998: 78). Integrity demands that approximately one-
third of the earths surface be left in a wild and unmanaged state. The value of integrity is taken to embody the good of
all, and so is uncompromising in its prescription of infinite, non-negotiable value to life (1998: 12). Integrity serves to
ground the precautionary principle, which should be mandatory in public policy.7 Integrity is more basic than justice,
and is an anti-democratic principle (1998: 9) because democratic choices are inadequate when it comes to realising the
principle (1998: 222). The principle is rendered compatible with the idea of right simply by being recast in terms of a
right, the fundamental and trumping right to integrity, which is taken to operate at both a micro (organism) and macro
(species, ecosystem) level. Only such a principle can protect people from unchosen harm, whereas democracy can inflict
it
unchosen harms, or at least the risk of such harms, onto defeated minorities. As a manifestation of the common good
behoves all of us to live according to the principle of ecological integrity, and
to the extent that we do not embrace this principle voluntarily, those in
authority will have to force it upon us , rather in the fashion of the forced administration of anti-
psychotic medicines. The Aristotelian wise man referred to above will have the task of running a top-down regulatory
regime the
top-down regulatory and public policy aspect will have to be
prescribed by an interdisciplinary team of biologists, ecologists,
political scientists, medical specialists and philosophers with a
strong traditional moral basis (1998: 1989). Given our poor habits of making democratic
decisions that are not underpinned by conceptions of the common good (1998: 155), of choosing leaders for the wrong
we have to accept the
reasons and making decisions on the basis of uninformed preferences,
imperative to downgrade the value of democracy and accept more
authoritarian forms of public rule. This downgrading of the value of democracy is common across this
literature, although at times it seems in tension with the projection of mutual coercion mutually agreed upon, which
implies a democratically legitimated move towards authoritarian forms of government. So for example Ophuls suggests
that certain normatively justified restrictions must be imposed upon a populace that would do something quite different
(and more damaging) if left to their own devices. The problem lies in legislating the appropriate temperance and virtue
without exalting the few over the many and subjecting individuals to the unwarranted exercise of power or to excessive
conformity to some dogma (1977: 227). To return to the Schumpeterian theme one of the significant problems with
democratic decision making for this group of writers stems from a belief that people vary significantly in terms of their
competence to make appropriate political decisions, whereas a key assumption of democratic theory is that people do
not differ greatly in competence (Ophuls, 1977: 159). If they do so differ, effective government may require the
sacrifice of political equality and majority rule.8 Indeed in certain circumstances democracy must give way to elite rule
(Ophuls, 1977: 159), such an elite being made up of the biologists, philosophers, and so on who function as the wise
man of Westras account. We may have to respect a plurality of positions but we do not have to accord them equal
weight in the political process (Westra, 1998: 2201, although is not entirely clear how we show respect to a political
position by granting it inferior status to our own beliefs). The problem with this analysis is the epistemological barrier it
seems to place in the path of us ever achieving mutual agreement upon the mutual coercion that is taken to be
necessary. If we could reach such agreement we would be democratically coercing ourselves to behave responsibly
(Ophuls, 1977: 155) and thus the authoritarian government we place over ourselves would have a degree of democratic
legitimacy. There is clearly, however, a problem with the analysis here. If we are both (1) woefully attached to the wrong
values already and (2) drop down to a childlike level of performance in the political sphere, it is difficult to see where the
political resources are that would enable us to vote down the liberties to which we are apparently so attached. It seems
rather more likely that eco-authoritarianism would consist in coercion that had not been mutually agreed and would
thus lack that imprimatur of democratic legitimation, which in turn leaves open the question of how the ecological wise
man could ever reach a position of authority, given that powerful economic and political interests are taken to be in
fundamental opposition to ecological values and also to manipulate the preferences of citizens (from what baseline of
preferences, that is, what the counter-factual is here, is not clear). As well as downgrading the value
of democracy, we must be prepared to similarly downgrade our attachment
to liberties, the value of which have to be set against the politics of the common good. Indeed we must
eliminate hazardous and wasteful individual rights, including property and procreative
rights. Strong rights must be basic only, and the prime instance of a basic right is that to ecological integrity. It
follows from this basic right to integrity that respect for wildness for both its services and its component life is basic as
well (Westra, 1998: 235). Limitations on rights to property, mobility, and procreation do not conflict with the ethic of
we should
(micro-) integrity because they are compatible with respect for life (1998: 256). Ophuls comments that
not fear that any concession of political rights to the community must lead to
the total subjugation of the individual by an all-powerful state, as
authoritarian rule can still be constitutional and limited (1977: 226).

The crunch is coming our current pace of growth is

unsustainable and will cause extinction
Rose Buchanan, 6/20/2015, writer at The Independent. Cites study from
scientists at Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-
phase-with-many-species--including-our-own--labelled-the-walking-dead-
10333608.html, mm

The planet is entering a new period of extinction with top scientists

warning that species all over the world are essentially the walking
dead including our own. The report, authored by scientists at
Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley universities, found that
vertebrates were vanishing at a rate 114 times faster than normal . In
the damning report, published in the Science Advances journal, researchers note that the last similar event
was 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs disappeared, most probably as a result of an asteroid. " We
are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event ," one of the authors
of the paper told the BBC. Gerardo Ceballos, lead author of the research, added: " If it is allowed
to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and
our species itself would likely disappear early on". The research examined
historic rates of extinction for vertebrates, finding that since 1900 more than 400
vertebrates have disappeared an extinction rate 100 times higher
than in other non-extinction periods. "There are examples of species all over the
world that are essentially the walking dead, said Stanford University professor Paul
Ehrlich. He added: "We are sawing off the limb that we are sitting
on." The research, which cites climate change, pollution and deforestation as causes for the rapid change,
notes that a knock-on effect of the loss of entire ecosystems could be dire. As our ecosystems unravel, the
Centre for Biological Diversity has noted that we could face a snowball effect whereby individual species
extinction ultimately fuels more losses. The report, which builds on findings published by Duke University
last year, does note that averting this loss is still possible through intensified conservation effects, but
that window of opportunity is rapid closing.
The alternative is to endorse a radical, eco-authoritarian
pedagogy. Only this can prevent extinction. Growth is
unsustainable and is destroying the environment our
alternative motivates existing social movements to topple
the political order this isnt crazy, credible climate
scientists are increasingly supporting this position.
Naomi Klein, 10/29/2013, New Statesman, (Klein is the author of The
Shock Doctrine), How science is telling us all to revolt,
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/science-says-revolt, mm

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through
the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union,
held annually in San Francisco. This years conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of
Nasas Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker
James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles. But it was Werners own session
that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled Is Earth F**ked? (full title: Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical
Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action
the geophysicist from the
Activism). Standing at the front of the conference room,
University of California, San Diego walked the crowd through the
advanced computer model he was using to answer that question. He talked about system
boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely
the bottom line was
incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But
clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so
rapid, convenient and barrier-free that earth-human systems are
becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a
clear answer on the are we f**ked question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, More or less.
There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope.
Werner termed it resistance movements of people or groups of people who
adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the
capitalist culture. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes
environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the
dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers,
anarchists and other activist groups. Serious scientific gatherings dont usually feature calls for mass
political resistance, much less direct action and sabotage. But then again, Werner wasnt exactly calling for
those things. He was merely observing that mass uprisings of people along the lines of the abolition
movement, the civil rights movement or Occupy Wall Street represent the likeliest source of friction to
slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control. We know that past social movements
have had tremendous influence on . . . how the dominant culture evolved, he pointed out. So it stands to
reason that, if were thinking about the future of the earth, and the future of our coupling to the
environment, we have to include resistance as part of that dynamics. And that, Werner argued, is not a
Plenty of scientists have been
matter of opinion, but really a geophysics problem.
moved by their research findings to take action in the streets .
Physicists, astronomers, medical doctors and biologists have been at
the forefront of movements against nuclear weapons, nuclear power, war, chemical contamination
and creationism. And in November 2012, Nature published a commentary by the financier and
environmental philanthropist Jeremy Grantham urging scientists to join this tradition and be arrested if
necessary, because climate change is not only the crisis of your lives it is also the crisis of our species
existence. Some scientists need no convincing. The godfather of modern climate science, James Hansen,
is a formidable activist, having been arrested some half-dozen times for resisting mountain-top removal
coal mining and tar sands pipelines (he even left his job at Nasa this year in part to have more time for
campaigning). Two years ago, when I was arrested outside the White House at a mass action against the
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, one of the 166 people in cuffs that day was a glaciologist named Jason Box,
a world-renowned expert on Greenlands melting ice sheet. I couldnt maintain my self-respect if I didnt
go, Box said at the time, adding that just voting doesnt seem to be enough in this case. I need to be a
citizen also. This is laudable, but what Werner is doing with his modelling is different. He isnt saying
that his research drove him to take action to stop a particular policy; he is saying that his research
shows that our entire economic paradigm is a threat to ecological
stability. And indeed that challenging this economic paradigm through
mass-movement counter-pressure is humanitys best shot at
avoiding catastrophe. Thats heavy stuff. But hes not alone. Werner is part
of a small but increasingly influential group of scientists whose research
into the destabilisation of natural systems particularly the climate
system is leading them to similarly transformative, even
revolutionary, conclusions. And for any closet revolutionary who has ever dreamed of
overthrowing the present economic order in favour of one a little less likely to cause Italian pensioners to
it makes the
hang themselves in their homes, this work should be of particular interest. Because
ditching of that cruel system in favour of something new (and perhaps, with
lots of work, better) no longer a matter of mere ideological preference but
rather one of species-wide existential necessity. Leading the pack of these new
scientific revolutionaries is one of Britains top climate experts, Kevin Anderson, the deputy director of the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which has quickly established itself as one of the UKs premier
climate research institutions. Addressing everyone from the Department for International Development to
Manchester City Council, Anderson has spent more than a decade patiently translating the implications of
the latest climate science to politicians, economists and campaigners. In clear and understandable
language, he lays out a rigorous road map for emissions reduction, one that provides a decent shot at
keeping global temperature rise below 2 Celsius, a target that most governments have determined would
stave off catastrophe. But in recent years Andersons papers and slide shows have become more
alarming. Under titles such as Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous . . . Brutal Numbers and Tenuous
Hope, he points out that the chances of staying within anything like safe temperature levels are
diminishing fast. With his colleague Alice Bows, a climate mitigation expert at the Tyndall Centre,
Anderson points out that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies all
while global consumption (and emissions) ballooned that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they
challenge the fundamental logic of prioritising GDP growth above all else. Anderson and Bows inform us
that the often-cited long-term mitigation target an 80 per cent emissions cut below 1990 levels by 2050
has been selected purely for reasons of political expediency and has no scientific basis. Thats because
climate impacts come not just from what we emit today and tomorrow, but from the cumulative emissions
that build up in the atmosphere over time. And they warn that by focusing on targets three and a half
decades into the future rather than on what we can do to cut carbon sharply and immediately there is a
serious risk that we will allow our emissions to continue to soar for years to come, thereby blowing through
far too much of our 2 carbon budget and putting ourselves in an impossible position later in the
century. Which is why Anderson and Bows argue that, if the governments of developed countries are
serious about hitting the agreed upon international target of keeping warming below 2 Celsius, and if
reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle (basically that the countries that have been spewing
carbon for the better part of two centuries need to cut before the countries where more than a billion
people still dont have electricity), then the reductions need to be a lot deeper, and they need to come a
lot sooner. To have even a 50/50 chance of hitting the 2 target (which, they and many others warn,
already involves facing an array of hugely damaging climate impacts), the industrialised countries need to
start cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions by something like 10 per cent a year and they need to start
right now. But Anderson and Bows go further, pointing out that this target cannot be met with the array of
modest carbon pricing or green-tech solutions usually advocated by big green groups. These measures will
certainly help, to be sure, but they are simply not enough: a 10 per cent drop in emissions, year after year,
is virtually unprecedented since we started powering our economies with coal. In fact, cuts above 1 per
cent per year have historically been associated only with economic recession or upheaval, as the
economist Nicholas Stern put it in his 2006 report for the British government. Even after the Soviet Union
collapsed, reductions of this duration and depth did not happen (the former Soviet countries experienced
average annual reductions of roughly 5 per cent over a period of ten years). They did not happen after Wall
Street crashed in 2008 (wealthy countries experienced about a 7 per cent drop between 2008 and 2009,
but their CO2 emissions rebounded with gusto in 2010 and emissions in China and India had continued to
rise). Only in the immediate aftermath of the great market crash of 1929 did the United States, for
instance, see emissions drop for several consecutive years by more than 10 per cent annually, according
to historical data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre. But that was the worst economic
crisis of modern times. If we are to avoid that kind of carnage while meeting our science-based emissions
targets, carbon reduction must be managed carefully through what Anderson and Bows describe as
radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the US, EU and other wealthy nations. Which is fine,
except that we happen to have an economic system that fetishises GDP growth above all else, regardless
of the human or ecological consequences, and in which the neoliberal political class has utterly abdicated
its responsibility to manage anything (since the market is the invisible genius to which everything must be
there is still time to avoid
entrusted). So what Anderson and Bows are really saying is that
catastrophic warming, but not within the rules of capitalism as they
are currently constructed. Which may be the best argument we have ever had for changing
those rules. In a 2012 essay that appeared in the influential scientific journal Nature Climate Change,
Anderson and Bows laid down something of a gauntlet, accusing many of their fellow scientists of failing to
come clean about the kind of changes that climate change demands of humanity. On this it is worth
quoting the pair at length: . . . in developing emission scenarios scientists repeatedly and severely
underplay the implications of their analyses. When it comes to avoiding a 2C rise, impossible is
translated into difficult but doable, whereas urgent and radical emerge as challenging all to
appease the god of economics (or, more precisely, finance). For example, to avoid exceeding the
maximum rate of emission reduction dictated by economists, impossibly early peaks in emissions are
assumed, together with naive notions about big engineering and the deployment rates of low-carbon
infrastructure. More disturbingly, as emissions budgets dwindle, so geoengineering is increasingly
in order to
proposed to ensure that the diktat of economists remains unquestioned. In other words,
appear reasonable within neoliberal economic circles, scientists
have been dramatically soft-peddling the implications of their
research. By August 2013, Anderson was willing to be even more blunt, writing that the boat had
sailed on gradual change. Perhaps at the time of the 1992 Earth Summit, or even at the turn of the
millennium, 2C levels of mitigation could have been achieved through significant evolutionary changes
within the political and economic hegemony. But climate change is a cumulative issue! Now, in 2013, we in
high-emitting (post-)industrial nations face a very different prospect. Our ongoing and collective carbon
profligacy has squandered any opportunity for the evolutionary change afforded by our earlier (and
larger) 2C carbon budget. Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining 2C budget demands
We probably
revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony (his emphasis).
shouldnt be surprised that some climate scientists are a little
spooked by the radical implications of even their own research . Most of
them were just quietly doing their work measuring ice cores, running global climate models and studying
ocean acidification, only to discover, as the Australian climate expert and author Clive Hamilton puts it,
But there are many
that they were unwittingly destabilising the political and social order.
people who are well aware of the revolutionary nature of climate
science. Its why some of the governments that decided to chuck their climate commitments in favour
of digging up more carbon have had to find ever more thuggish ways to silence and intimidate their
nations scientists. In Britain, this strategy is becoming more overt, with Ian Boyd, the chief scientific
adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writing recently that scientists should
avoid suggesting that policies are either right or wrong and should express their views by working with
embedded advisers (such as myself), and by being the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public
arena. If you want to know where this leads, check out whats happening in Canada, where I live. The
Conservative government of Stephen Harper has done such an effective job of gagging scientists and
shutting down critical research projects that, in July 2012, a couple thousand scientists and supporters held
a mock-funeral on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, mourning the death of evidence. Their placards said, No
The fact that the
Science, No Evidence, No Truth. But the truth is getting out anyway.
business-as-usual pursuit of profits and growth is destabilising life
on earth is no longer something we need to read about in scientific
journals. The early signs are unfolding before our eyes. And
increasing numbers of us are responding accordingly: blockading fracking
activity in Balcombe; interfering with Arctic drilling preparations in Russian waters (at tremendous personal
cost); taking tar sands operators to court for violating indigenous sovereignty; and countless other acts of
In Brad Werners computer model, this is the
resistance large and small.
friction needed to slow down the forces of destabilisation; the
great climate campaigner Bill McKibben calls it the antibodies
rising up to fight the planets spiking fever. Its not a revolution,
but its a start. And it might just buy us enough time to figure out a way to live on this planet that
is distinctly less f**ked.
 2NC Impact Overview
Extinction is inevitable the crunch is coming. All aspects
of the environment are in decline resource scarcity,
biodiversity loss, climate change due to liberalism and
democracy. Thats Humphrey, Buchanan and Klein from
the 1NC. This makes all of the affs impacts inevitable
absent the alternative.
The crunch is coming and causes extinction our evidence
is based on new scientific studies
Oliver Milman, 1/16/2015, The Guardian, Life on Earth now officially at
risk, scientists say, http://grist.org/climate-energy/life-on-earth-now-
officially-at-risk-scientists-say/, mm

Humans are eating away at our own life support systems at a rate unseen
in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases, and
releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has
found. Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have
pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark
results. Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded safe
levels human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land
system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen
flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use. Researchers spent five years identifying these
core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to
provide a baseline for the analysis. They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in
the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human
civilization has advanced significantly. Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic
highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100
times faster than the previous norm. Since 1950, urban populations have increased sevenfold, primary
energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertilizer used is now eight times higher. The
All of these changes are
amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.
shifting Earth into a new state that is becoming less hospitable to
human life, researchers said. These indicators have shot up since 1950
and there are no signs they are slowing down, said professor Will Steffen of the
Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center. Steffen is the lead author on both of
When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a
the studies.
massive increase in resource use and pollution . It used to be confined to local
and regional areas but were now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to
human activity, not natural variability. Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was
contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water. We are
clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we
change the marine ecosystem by overfishing its a death by a thousand cuts, he
said. That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate
change. There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For
example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the
the overall picture is one of deterioration
practice reversed in parts of Europe. But
at a rapid rate. Its fairly safe to say that we havent seen conditions in the past similar to ones
we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we dont want to cross, Steffen
said. If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6 degrees C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so
and that wont be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and thats true, there will
be life on Earth, but the Earth wont be robust for us. Some people
say we can adapt due
to technology, but thats a belief system, its not based on fact. There is no
convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37
degrees C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans cant and thats
a problem. Steffen said the research showed the economic system was
fundamentally flawed as it ignored critically important life support
systems. Its clear the economic system is driving us towards an
unsustainable future and people of my daughters generation will find it increasingly hard to
survive, he said. History has shown that civilizations have risen, stuck to their core values and then
collapsed because they didnt change. Thats where we are today. The two studies, published in Science
and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the U.S., Sweden,
Germany, and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, which takes place between Jan. 21 and 25.
 2NC - Alt Overview
The alternative is an endorsement of a radical, eco-
authoritarian pedagogy. Only this political strategy can
create a governance model that allows us to survive the
crunch. The Humphrey evidence says we must reject the
liberal tradition and formulate a centrally planned society
governed by ecologically conscious elites. The Klein
evidence provides a strategy of direct action to bring
about this transition. Even if the alternative does not
result in immediate political action, we still solve because
this space provides a unique forum to deploy our
alternative the university is the key site for training the
new class of eco-authoritarian elites
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 133-34, mm

Both de la Boetie and Hoppe are primarily concerned with the preservation of freedom of the individual,
this being the core value in their systems. But for us freedom is not the most fundamental value and is
merely one value among others. Survival strikes us as a much more basic value. Now our proposal is that
since fighters for freedom are always likely to arise, the probability of fighters
for life and survival arising must be as great if not greater. This will be
especially so if the opportunity is provided for such ecowarrior/philosophers to
develop and be nurtured in special institutions called real universities or
academies. At present our leaders are primarily trained in institutions that
perpetuate and legitimate our environmentally destructive system. The
conventional university trains narrow, politically correct thinkers who
ultimately become the economic warriors of the system. Our proposal is to
counter this by an alternative framework for the training and complete
education of a new type of person who will be wise and fit to serve and to
rule. Unlike the narrowly focused economic rationalist universities of today, the real university
will train holistic thinkers in all of the arts and sciences necessary for tough
decision making that the environmental crisis confronts us with. These
thinkers will be the true public intellectuals with knowledge well grounded in
ecology. Chapter 9 will describe in more detail how we might begin the process of constructing such
real universities to train the ecowarriors to do battle against the enemies of life. We must accomplish this
education with the dedication that Sparta used to train its warriors. As in Sparta, these natural elites will
be especially trained from childhood to meet the challenging problems of our times.

And liberal democracy is unsustainable the alternative

allows for a smooth transition by reconceptualizing our
political and cultural values
Bruce Jennings, May 2013, [Jennings is the Director of Bioethics and
Editor of Minding Nature at the Center for Humans and Nature], Center for
Humans & Nature, Governance in a Post-Growth Society: An Inquiry into the
Democratic Prospect, http://www.humansandnature.org/governance-in-a-
post-growth-society--an-inquiry-into-the-democratic-prospect-article-136.php,
mm

In addition, new developments have arisen to complicate governance enormously ,

such as the global mobility of capital and investment that undermines the relative power of the nation state as a
meaningful policy maker and as a locus of economic leverage. Meanwhile, regional and global ecological
problems have gotten much worse than they were in the 1970sclimate change,
biodiversity loss, fresh water shortages, damage to the ocean ecosystems. Hence, the
continuing viability of the liberal traditiona proud and hard-won intellectual orientation
promoting liberty, equality, and human rights for three hundred years beginning in the seventeenth century is in
serious question. Can we be sanguine about the possibility of genuinely coping with limits to growth while still
remaining committed to these basic values, institutions, and practices? Two points, however, do seem reasonably
certain. First, while we do not know what form the transition to a new structure of governance will take, that
transition will be necessary and inevitable. Consider the issue of climate
change and the attempt to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As we witness the current
struggles by global democracies to respond to the pronouncements of scientists and to set meaningful
limits to unsustainable economic forces and interests, these governments reveal indecision so
deep seated that it amounts to a paralysis of political and moral will. The timetable
of the challenges facing us and the timetable of our collective capacity to respond are tragically out of joint. The second
clear starting point is that whatever type and form of governance emerges, it will require normative legitimation to be
sustained. Beginning in the 1970s, a number of social theorists began to maintain that ecological constraints
will create a legitimation crisis for liberal democracy and that either a non-democratic authoritarian
state or at least a democratic regime with new non-democratic power centers will emerge from that crisis. A future
authoritarianism does not necessarily entail a military dictatorship or police state. Coercion alone, even if ethically
justified, cannot sustain behavioral compliance across a large population and govern complex networks of economic
activity under modern social conditions for a sustained period of time. Popular commitment and voluntary consent, not
coercion, are the key to modern governance, certainly on the national level, let alone on larger scales than that. Hence
whatever effective form of governance emerge s in a future degrowth society, a new
form of social contract will be needed as its foundation : a transformation within the
political culture that will produce voluntary consent to the new forms of governance and to new reach of political
authority. Such commitment is brought about in one of two ways: by purchase or by persuasion; by deploying financial
incentives and self-interested motivations, or by manipulating ideas, ideals, and arguments. If the growth of material
consumption and affluence will not be the currency with which to buy the necessary commitment and compliance, then
What would a social contract for a degrowth
what form of persuasion can secure them?
society be comprised of? For one thing, it would be based on the recognition that
advanced industrial societies had finally encountered the natural limits to their
expansion, and that henceforth they would have to make sweeping
technological, political, and social adjustments in order to bring economic
activity in line with the fragile and finite carrying capacity of the planet . In
addition, it would have to be based on new conceptions of justice because, without the continuing promise of an ever-
growing pie to hold them in abeyance, claims for substantive redistribution from the most to the least well-off will
inevitably arise, calling for potentially disruptive allocation decisions and, therefore, new principles of distributive justice
it will have to involve an ongoing type of political education
to legitimate them. Finally,
and cultural value transformation away from a political culture marked by
unrealistic expectations and political demands about future prosperity and a
growing consumerist orientation. Only thus can the preoccupation of future governance turn to
something other than the successful management of material economic growth without losing normative legitimacy and
social-political stability.
Rethinking the political order is a prerequisite any
action to save the environment in the current paradigm is
doomed to failure the alt is necessary and sufficient to
solve
William Ophuls, 2011, Platos Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology, p.
xii-xiv, (Ophuls received a PhD in Political Science from Yale in 1973, served
for eight years as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington and Tokyo, and has
taught at Northwestern University), [this evidence has been modified for
gendered language], mm

Some may object that a radical change in public philosophy is hardly

a practical or feasible solution as if it were somehow illegitimate to propose answers to our
problems that do not accord with received ideas or that cannot be implemented by existing institutions.
Butif our problems have been created by a certain way of thinking ,
then the only real solutions is to adopt a new way of thinking and
not to devise clever political or economic mousetraps based on the
old one. As Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, No problem can be solved from
the same level of consciousness that created it. And once adopted,
the new level of consciousness will almost automatically generate
the requisite practical measures. Why is it taboo to propose political change when we
complaisantly permit massive, unlegislated technological changes that have the effect of overturning the
social order? The current American political system is sacrosanct. If the founders could see how the
Constitution that they framed with such prudence has been subverted by their political progeny, they
would be appalled. The only genuine solution to our predicament is a new political philosophy, however
impractical, unfeasible, or event heretical it might seem to adherents of the old one. For some, political
philosophy is irrelevant for all practical purposes because technique and finance, not poetry, how legislate
for humankind. This makes our governing ideas mere resultants or rationales, not causes. But John
Maynard Keynes argued to the contrary that practical men [people] of affairs are in reality the intellectual
slaves of defunct scribblers. In our case, we are the slaves of Thomas Hobbes. Despite his lament at the
end of book 2 of Leviathan that his philosophical labor was as useless as Platos Republic, Hobbes ideas,
as revised and elaborated by John Locke and Adam Smith, became the template of modern life that is,
life seemingly determined by technique and finance. In other words, the economic and
technocratic juggernaut driving us toward an increasingly chaotic
and dismal future is but the physical manifestation of Hobbes mostly
unacknowledged philosophy. Until we invent and implement a better one
that is inspired by a vision of a more satisfying and genuinely sustainable future , nothing can
change for the better. In the end, not only do ideas matter, but they may
be all that matter. As Keynes said, the world is ruled by little else. The process is inevitably
dialectical: when ideas are given concrete form, that form then affects our way of thinking. To adapt
Winston Churchills tribute to the power of architecture, We shape our institutions, and afterward our
institutions shape us.
 2NC Alt Solvency (Environment)
Solvency deficits are irrelevant collapse is inevitable
the alternative is the only way to train a new class of eco-
authoritarians so we can survive the crunch
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 136, mm

It is not possible to take the argument further. Todaywe are reluctant to add the names of
any individuals who could be conscripted for our alternative Intensive Care
Management Government, because there are obviously defects in all individuals educated
in our existing institutionsincluding us! Nevertheless, as Darwinian evolutionists we believe
imperfections can be eliminated by a process of trial and error and selection. We
can rebuild the ship of civilization while it floats, slowly attempting to
produce better qualified people, people who are less selfish and more altruistic than
ourselves. The time frame for any sort of education-based leadership change
will be many decades and of course, humanity does not have the luxury of waiting for such a
time. Therefore, in our opinion, there is a considerable likelihood that some type of
economic or ecological crash will occur that will lead to the collapse of our
present social system. There will thus be casualties; there is no escape from the fact
that a great reckoning for humankind is to come. What we propose is a form of
crisis care management so that civilization does not perish; we wish to save a
remnant. Of course we have not answered all the questions that naturally arise when
any strategy of how to get there is postulated. Given that there is so little thought about what to
do in such worse case scenarios, we believe that some process is better than nothing
at all. Given the problems we have sketched, it is difficult to see where else one could go or what else
one could do. Therefore, take our proposal as a work in progress research program that can be
developed further.

An eco-authoritarian system can succeed Singapore is a

perfect model
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 124, mm

In the face of the environmental failures of the liberal democracies , there

may be lessons to be learned from one country, Singapore, which is often called
authoritarian and an illiberal democracy. Singapore became independent in 1965 when, like many other
countries in the third world, it was poor and lacked natural resources.13 Today its citizens have one of
the highest per capita incomes in the world without suffering the sectional and social consequences of
Singapore is in effect a one-party state with minimal parliamentary
affluence. Yet
opposition and restrictive laws. The Peoples Action Party (PAP) was elected in 1959 and has
governed ever since. It has dedicated itself to economic success by value creation and full employment.
It has created high standards in management, housing, health, education, transportation, and the
environment. It has used the expertise of multinational corporations without succumbing to their
philosophy. When the PAP is in effect the state, why has its authoritarian rule not become corrupt and
incompetent? Lee Kwan Yew was the leader of the PAP in the fi rst decades of its rule. He was a highly
intelligent technocrat who avoided the cult of personality and established a team based on intellectual
 Government is a meritocracy that renews itself from within its
and technical ability.
own ranks. Transition of leadership is managed carefully and appropriately
without the vituperation and denigration so prevalent in the liberal democracies. Economic advancement
has been a legitimizing factor for authoritarianism and opposition is insignificant. In the sphere of
parliamentary opposition there are nominated members to represent particular interests and expertise.
The PAP did not evolve into an authoritarian structure. It was created in this mold. Lee said that the PAP
founders believed that political stability was the top priority because it was a prerequisite for
development and modernization. This belief accompanied a shared apprehension about the transferability
of Western democracy to an Asian society and an underlying conviction that unfettered democracy
contained within it certain frailties always threatening to degenerate into mob rule.14 This viewpoint
from an Asian culture reflected Platos conclusions from centuries before and has been justified by Lees
outcomes. Singapore demonstrates that it is possible for a state to fashion an
intellectual elite that can succeed in creating a wealthy economy for all its citizens. In doing
this it does not allow the freedoms that many self-proclaimed leaders of the worlds liberal
democracies enjoy. However the freedoms of democracy are increasingly eroded by leaders using
the threat of terror and the imposition of law and order to bolster their own power. It is becoming
debatable whether it is better to live under these deprivations or under a benign authoritarianism that
Let us take the argument further by
provides basic human needs necessary for well-being.
asking whether a Singapore system could be developed to drive vital
environmental outcomes in the interests of humanitys future? The answer
is surely yes. Governance is by a team of technocratic elites supported by
educational structures described in the next chapter. An analysis of the pathetic, self-serving
performance of many elected representatives of liberal democracies is a cogent argument for this option.
 2NC AT Perm
The perm cant solve - rights and autonomy are
incompatible with an eco-authoritarian model privileging
these values makes environmentally responsible
governance impossible
Bruce Jennings, May 2013, [Jennings is the Director of Bioethics and
Editor of Minding Nature at the Center for Humans and Nature], Center for
Humans & Nature, Governance in a Post-Growth Society: An Inquiry into the
Democratic Prospect, http://www.humansandnature.org/governance-in-a-
post-growth-society--an-inquiry-into-the-democratic-prospect-article-136.php,
mm

Ecological authoritarians maintain that the successful

Ecological authoritarianism.
governance in a degrowth era will require centralized, elitist, and technocratic
management at least in the areas of economic and environmental policy.[9] Mindful of the internal
contradictions plural democratic governance faces as it attempts to cope with problems of productivity,
capital accumulation, and growth, ecological authoritarians stress the need for policy makers and planners
to be insulated from democratic pressures and granted an increasing measure of autocratic authority if
Ecological
they are to steer the economy on an ecologically rational and efficient course.
authoritarians are impressed, perhaps overly so, by the popular demand in pluralistic
democratic systems for democratic rights and material affluence . They speak of
democratic overload in reference to those pressures and demands: democratic overload of
policy makers leads to economic overload or overshoot of the carrying
capacity of ecosystems. The former has to be broken free from in order to prevent the latter.
Indeed, ecological authoritarians see a vicious cycle , a destructive feedback loop in this.
As pluralistic democracies succeed in their aim to increase economic
prosperity for the population, the democratic assertiveness of citizens for
more growth and prosperity also increases. As the economic management of
ever-higher levels of affluence becomes more complex, the tension between
democratic politics and scientific planning comes to a crisis point. The
ecological authoritarians here make an important point. The fact that pluralistic democracy has
demonstrated its inability to perform ecologically precautionary governance in a consistent or timely way
If
is not fortuitous; it is built into the deep structure and political logic of this type of system as such.
pluralistic democratic governments follow the dictates of ecological science
and planning, they will restrict growth in ways that risk losing their popular
base of support. If, conversely, such governments attempt to maintain their
legitimacy by bowing to short-term democratic pressures, they will not be
able to take (and require the private sector to take) the steps necessary to protect the
environment. Eventually economic downturn, inequality, and hardship will result from ecological
degradation, and again the governments will lose their popular support and legitimacy.[10] Note, however,
that the political costs of the first prong of this dilemma are more immediate than those from the second
prong, so pragmatism in a pluralistic democracy counsels the first course of action. Such pragmatism is
ecologically insane.
Starting Point DA The perm maintains the same political
reference point as the plan, which guts solvency for the
alt and ensures extinction
Pentti Linkola, 2009, (Linkola is a Finnish environmental activist and
scholar), Can Life Prevail? A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental
Crisis, p. 39-41, mm

I did not know how the dictionary defines the word utopia. Anyhow, Hovila uses it to indicate a model
differing from the dominating one or in more elaborate terms a model that differs from the one that
happens to prevail at the time of observation. This concept, I would argue, is both fruitless and
misleading. The words utopia and utopian are useful when used to describe reveries that are only dreamt
of: things impossible, deceptive, unrealistic or which lead to ruin. For a long time it has been clear that of
all known societies and economies, the most genuinely utopian are those that have been adopted at
present, as they are founded on the logical impossibility of continuous economic growth. When, in an
articles entitled Utopian Politics are Dangerous, Hovila describes the model societies suggested by Pentti
Linkola and Eero Paloheimo as unrealistic, dangerous utopias, his line of reasoning makes no sense
whatsoever. What could be more dangerous than the present unwavering
and relentless descent into a mass grave: this society of economic
growth and technology that every second is destroying the life
around us? If nothing else, the programmes of Linkola, Paloheimo and Schumacher
(who was also mentioned by Hovila) are examples of extreme realism, anti-idealism and
anti-utopianism. Each in their own way, these programmes have specifically
been devised to secure the survival of society, mankind and life: they are as far
away from being dangerous as could be. What Hovila writes is often unbelievable: The use of violent
methods poses a concrete risk. The recent raids carried out by animal-rights extremists are an example of
how utopians may collaborate with dissenters. In his expression of this matter Hovila even manages to
lump together two completely opposite things: the subtle and altogether limited violence of animal rights
activists on the one hand; the massive violence openly practiced by fur farmers and the vast, hidden
violence perpetrated by economic growth on the other. Hovila deftly writes: These models present the
same problem as all utopias: unless fully implemented, they will not be implemented at all. Without a
connection to the present, these programmes are simply meaningless. It is rather grotesque that Hovilas
words should be completely disproved by his own suggestions (in this case, in favour of greener farming).
For neither have his own compromising suggestions been realized to any degree: the complete end of
agriculture and absolute triumph of industrial farming are shaping market economy. Small adjustments
toward a softer direction have not been accepted any more than radical environmentalist alternatives:
integrated farming or IP (Integrated Production) plays no part whatsoever in the contemporary economy.
The worst mistake that
Hovilas point about being connected to the present is significant.
anyone thinking about society can make is to envisage the
prevailing system as the starting point: to begin from a tabula rasa, a
clean slate, is an absolute must in order to develop any sort of
programme. Human history across the world offers a wide range of
societal models: the model that happens to be the prevailing one in
our own society does no represent any intrinsically superior point of
reference. Any binding to a given societal model paralyses the whole
thinking process, as is shown by the conventionalities that Hovila like many others writes.
Links - General
 Link Privacy
The affirmatives conception of privacy is not value-
neutral it reinforces a materialist view of the world that
allows for widespread environmental destruction
Bruce Jennings, May 2015, [Jennings is the Director of Bioethics and
Editor of Minding Nature at the Center for Humans and Nature], Center for
Humans & Nature, Mine and Ours, http://www.humansandnature.org/mine-
and-ours-article-202.php?issue=26, mm

The concept of property is fundamental to an understanding of the

relationship between humans and nature . Moreover, land use, or land management
and governance, is a significant factor determining the human impact on
natural systems, including agriculture, biodiversity and habitat loss,
deforestation, and overall climate change . Aldo Leopold made the connection between property
and land use explicit: We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging
to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.[1] The
note Leopold sounds here has been an enduring one in social philosophy. Here are three of my favorite examples. Writing
in 1755, Jean-Jacques Rousseau maintained that a decisive turning point in the story leading from the state of nature to
human political and social being was the invention of property, especially as it manifested itself in the enclosure of land:
The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple
enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would
the human Race have been spared by someone who, uprooting the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his
fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the Earth to no one!
[2] A century later, writing shortly before his death in 1884, Karl Marx described the next step in human social evolution
as involving a change in our attitude toward ownership and the land: From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic
formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of
one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the
owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to
succeeding generations as boni patres familias.[3] Finally in 1944, economic historian and anthropologist Karl Polanyi
traced the changes that led in the late medieval and early modern period to viewing land, human labor, and capital as
commodities that could be bought and sold in an impersonal market. He regarded this way of looking at land and labor as
artificial and pernicious, but recognized how historically and politically powerful this alteration of perception had been in
history. It changed the ways in which the relationship between human beings and the material world was understood and
the ethical rules governing it. And it fractured the way that economic production and consumption had been embedded in
a larger cultural structure of meaning and norms, thereby setting the economy apart as a semi-autonomous sphere of life
and activity, with rules and a logic of its own. Polanyi argued that this commodification of material life and separation of
economic activity from a more seamless cultural web of meanings, despite its material benefits, was in other ways
impoverishing and diminishing to humanity. He expresses the point this way: The economic function is but one of many
vital functions of land. It [land] invests mans life with stability; it is the site of his habitation; it is a condition of his
physical safety; it is the landscape and the seasons. We might as well imagine his being born without hands and feet as
carrying on his life without land. And yet to separate land from man and organize society in such a way as to satisfy the
requirements of a real-estate market was a vital part of the utopian concept of a market economy.[4] At the beginning of
the twenty-first century, This is mine increasingly looks like a bad deal. Where is Rousseaus someone, that shadowy
figure who pulls up the stakes and fills in the ditch? Where are Marxs good householders and good ancestors? The
answer is, everywhere. But they operate on local scales mainly, and they are only slowly gaining ground.[5]They are the
new commons movement that is redefining property and the management and governance of common-pool resources. It
is a diverse movement, full of intellectual inspirations that are often conflicting. Recovering and re-governing the
commons in a practical sense must go hand in hand with rediscovering the concept of the commons. The concept, ethics,
and politics of the commons are vibrant topics in many disciplines. This is especially the case in economics. A starting
point for discussion in that discipline was Garrett Hardins essay The Tragedy of the Commons, which focused attention
on the vulnerability of common-pool resources to overexploitation or neglect. This is a situation in which individuals
following the logic of rational self-interest produce suboptimal collective results. Many, including Hardin himself, have
drawn the lesson that privatization of the common resource is the best solution to this collective action problem. However,
Elinor Ostroms work challenged this. Rather than embracing privatization as a solution to the degradation of the
commons, she found in many parts of the world that localized, culturally informed participatory management of common-
pool resources results in sustainable governance. And it avoids the conventional approaches of competitive market
privatization on the one hand, and of central government regulatory and legal control on the other.[6] Moreover, since
the concept of the commons tends to reintegrate economic activity within a broader cultural and value network as a
counterpoint to the fragmentation that Polanyi decried, it has also led to lively discussions between economists and
anthropologists, who find that much more is involved than rationality and efficiency, which are often the overriding
concerns of economists.[7] For example, a study of the aboriginal commons in Queensland, Australia, found that the land
is not understood as an economic resource primarily, but as a being with its own agency of listening, watching, nurturing,
One lesson to be drawn from these
disciplining and balancing human and natural resources.[8]
debates is that the relationship between humans and the natural world in
principle has many dimensions and facets. Commodification in a separate
sphere of market exchange and merely instrumental economic use flattens
the meaning of nature and perhaps removes some of the reasons for, and
inhibitions against, inappropriate and ultimately self-defeating exploitation of
the land. Exactly as Leopold envisioned. Property is not a thing, although we often use the word that way in common
parlance. It is more accurate to say that property is a relationship between and among
objects and people. As such it has consequencesit affects individual and group motivation and action, it
determines access to and control over resources, and it is value-laden, not value-neutral , from both an
economic and an ethical point of view. In the Western tradition, at any rate, property has been linked to the concept of
In modern times a privatized and individuated
rights going back to ancient Roman law.
understanding of property is predominant , and it links property closely with commoditization and
market exchange. But that conception of property is not the only possible one . Most
generally understood, property concerns access to resources, differentiating those who have free access to something
from those who do not, and setting the conditions under which various individuals and groups may obtain access and a
It is important to
right to use. Often, the right of access and use brings corresponding duties and obligations.
distinguish between private property and collective or common property . Today
the term property is often taken to be synonymous with private property or individual ownership, but this closes off
Private
creative possibilities, especially in connection with sustainable land use and ecological trusteeship.
property puts one person in control of how a resource is used; common
property involves shared control and shared use . Indeed, there are forms of property rights in
which the private owner does not have complete and exclusive control over access and use of a resource. Usufruct (usus
et fructus, use and enjoyment of fruits) arrangements cover a situation in which individuals have rights of access to
property owned by someone else, as long as the property is maintained appropriately. Use and enjoyment rights to
someone elses property historically have come in many forms and varieties, but one important notion that was developed
over time is the idea of estover (est opus, it is necessary) rights under which owners could not deny non-owning
occupiers access to resources needed to sustain themselves and to perform their services on the land. Such resources
could include access to grazing land, firewood, wild fruits, game, and the like. Hence it is important to note that while
common property involves shared ownership and shared power to determine resource use, and thus, the normative
dimensions of participatory decision making are readily apparent, even private property ownership can also be limited by
normative notions, such as the appropriate maintenance and usage necessary to sustain people or ecosystems. Common-
pool resources are those for which open access is difficult to restrain, either for physical or traditional cultural reasons.
Neither private ownership nor state ownership always provide the best governance and trusteeship for the commons.
The ontological separation of human life and well-being from natural living
systems on local, regional, and planetary scales is now the ideological default
setting. And so is private control of the land in the service of the personal and
material interests of the owner. These presumptionsand they are indeed presumptuous
go hand in hand. They both must be challenged and, in certain circumstances,
rebutted. Last year, new legislation in California to limit the virtually free-for-all drilling of deep water wells and the
depletion of aquifers in the face of the current severe drought in the Central Valley is a noteworthy example, but such
governmental regulation of common-pool resources is only one solution. Weaving an infrastructure of
more participatory common governance solutions, through the law and
through building alternative institutional arrangements in civil society mutual
associations, cooperatives, sustainably oriented covenants and contracts, and the like is an important
alternative and an opportunity for the conservation movement . When one is pleading
the case for the planet, commons-inspired efforts to reintegrate the property system with the fabric of other cultural and
natural systems is a worthy goal and an ethical imperative. Today the vision of ecological trusteeship through democratic
governance is not a self-evident truth by any means. It requires hard work to make a case for its ethical justification that
can persuasively garner popular support. But nature is chiming in and pressing its own case against the continued abuse
of the land in the name of private property rights. In the past, the notion of estover was applied as a basis for claiming
certain rights to common access and land use for people. How about the estover claims of nature itself? To the human
the current
cultural claim, It is mine, the answering response is the natural claim, It is necessary. In other words,
psychological and economic defaults of individualistic strategic thinking must
be reset to a mode of relational ethical thinking that is mindful of human
interdependence, sustaining the natural commons, and promoting the social
common good. From mine to ours, from Whats in it for me? to Whats in it for diverse, abundant, and resilient
life?
 Link Privacy Key to Democracy
Privacy is key to democracy continued mass surveillance
will break the system
Truthout, 9/24/2013, without privacy there can be no democracy,
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19039-without-privacy-there-can-be-no-
democracy, mm

She said, "Without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of speech or freedom
of opinion, and so there is no actual democracy ." This is not just true of international
relations. It's also true here within the United States. Back before the Kennedy administration largely put
an end to it, J Edgar Hoover was infamous in political circles in Washington DC for his spying on and
blackmailing of both American politicians and activists like Martin Luther King. He even sent King tapes of
an extramarital affair and suggested that King should consider committing suicide. That was a shameful
the NSA, other
period in American history, and most Americans think it is behind us. But
intelligence agencies, and even local police departments have put the
practice of spying on average citizens in America on steroids. As Brazil's President
points out, without privacy there can be no democracy. Democracy requires opposing voices; it requires a
certain level of reasonable political conflict. And it requires that government misdeeds be exposed. That
can only be done when whistleblowers and people committing acts of journalism can do so without being
a larger problem is that well over half some estimates run as high as
spied upon. Perhaps
70% of the NSA's budget has been outsourced to private corporations . These
private corporations maintain an army of lobbyists in Washington DC who constantly push for more spying
With the privatization of intelligence operations,
and, thus, more money for their clients.
the normal system of checks and balances that would keep government
snooping under control has broken down .
 Link Repression
Repressive political strategies like surveillance are key to
ensuring an authoritarian regime can maintain power
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm

History seems to teach us that the only reliable way to achieve true
autonomy from citizens demands is through an active and sustained
commitment to suppressing would-be dissenters and to imposing policies
without compromise. For both the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China, the
price of political openness was the risk of instability and political upheaval when
citizens came to disapprove of their leaders actions , and there is good reason to think
that this outcome was not a coincidence. 66 It is only by preventing robust civil
discourse and open dissent from emerging in the first place through
consistent repression that authoritarian governments have been able to
retain and exercise their power with relative impunity.67
 Link Spillover/US Key to Global Demo
Global democracy is declining now restoring faith in the
US model reverses this trend
Larry Diamond, January 2015, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Democracy,
26(1), facing up to the democratic recession,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ld_jod_jan2015-1.pdf, mm

Perhaps the most worrisome dimension of the democratic recession has been
the decline of democratic efficacy, energy, and self-confidence in the West,
including the United States. There is a growing sense, both domestically and
internationally, that democracy in the United States has not been functioning
effectively enough to address the major challenges of governance. The diminished pace of legislation,
the vanishing ability of Congress to pass a budget, and the 2013 shutdown of the federal government
are only some of the indications of a political system (and a broader body politic) that appears
increasingly polarized and deadlocked. As a result, both public approval of Congress and public trust in
government are at historic lows. The ever-mounting cost of election campaigns, the surging role of
nontransparent money in politics, and low rates of voter participation are additional signs of democratic
ill health. Internationally, promoting democracy abroad scores close to the bottom of the publics foreign-
policy priorities. And the international perception is that democracy promotion has already receded as an
The world takes note of all this. Authoritarian state
actual priority of U.S. foreign policy.
media gleefully publicize these travails of American democracy in order to
discredit democracy in general and immunize authoritarian rule against U.S.
pressure. Even in weak states, autocrats perceive that the pressure is
now off: They can pretty much do whatever they want to censor the media, crush the opposition, and
perpetuate their rule, and Europe and the United States will swallow it. Meek verbal protests may ensue,
but the aid will still flow and the dictators will still be welcome at the White House and the Elyse
It is hard to overstate how important the vitality and self-confidence of
Palace.
U.S. democracy has been to the global expansion of democracy during the
third wave. While each democratizing country made its own transition, pressure and solidarity from
the United State and Europe often generated a significant and even crucial enabling environment that
helped to tip finely balanced situations toward democratic change, and then in some cases gradually
If this solidarity is now greatly diminished, so will be
toward democratic consolidation.
the near-term global prospects for reviving and sustaining democratic
progress. Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last
decade, and there is a growing danger that the recession could deepen and
tip over into something much worse. Many more democracies could fail,
not only in poor countries of marginal strategic significance, but also in big swing states such as Indonesia
and Ukraine (again). There is little external recognition yet of the grim state of democracy in Turkey, and
Apathy
there is no guarantee that democracy will return any time soon to Thailand or Bangladesh.
and inertia in Europe and the United States could significantly lower the barriers
to new democratic reversals and to authoritarian entrenchments in many
more states. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. We have not seen a third reverse
wave. Globally, average levels of freedom have ebbed a little bit, but not calamitously. Most important,
there has not been significant erosion in public support for democracy. In fact,
what the Afrobarometer has consistently shown is a gapin some African countries, a chasmbetween
the popular demand for democracy and the supply of it provided by the regime. This is not based just on
some shallow, vague notion that democracy is a good thing. Many Africans understand the importance of
political accountability, transparency, the rule of law, and restraint of power, and they would like to see
their governments manifest these virtues. While the performance of democracy is failing to inspire,
 There is hardly a dictatorship in the
authoritarianism faces its own steep challenges.
world that looks stable for the long run . The only truly reliable source of regime stability is
legitimacy, and the number of people in the world who believe in the intrinsic legitimacy of any form of
authoritarianism is rapidly diminishing. Economic development, globalization, and the information
revolution are undermining all forms of authority and empowering individuals. Values are changing, and
while we should not assume any teleological path toward a global enlightenment, generally the
movement is toward greater distrust of authority and more desire for accountability, freedom, and
political choice. In the coming two decades, these trends will challenge the nature of rule in China,
Vietnam, Iran, and the Arab states much more than they will in India, not to mention Europe and the
United States. Already, democratization is visible on the horizon of Malaysias increasingly competitive
electoral politics, and it will come in the next generation to Singapore as well. The key imperative in the
near term is to work to reform and consolidate the democracies that have emerged during the third wave
With more
the majority of which remain illiberal and unstable, if they remain democratic at all.
focused, committed, and resourceful international engagement, it should be
possible to help democracy sink deeper and more enduring roots in countries
such as Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Ghana. It is possible and urgently important to help
stabilize the new democracies in Ukraine and Tunisia (whose success could gradually generate significant
diffusion effects throughout the Arab world). It might be possible to nudge Thailand and Bangladesh back
toward electoral democracy, though ways must be found to temper the awful levels of party polarization
in each country. With time, the electoral authoritarian project in Turkey will discredit itself in the face of
mounting corruption and abuse of power, which are already growing quite serious. And the oil-based
autocracies in Iran and Venezuela will face increasingly severe crises of economic performance and
It is vital that democrats in the established democracies not lose
political legitimacy.
faith. Democrats have the better set of ideas. Democracy may be receding somewhat in practice, but
it is still globally ascendant in peoples values and aspirations. This creates significant new opportunities
If the current modest recession of democracy spirals into a
for democratic growth.
depression, it will be because those of us in the established democracies
were our own worst enemies.
Links Case Specific
 Link Mass Surveillance
The US is at a tipping point of an authoritarian transition
mass surveillance is key
John Suarez, 10/18/2013, Pam Am Post, The US surveillance state and
the totalitarian tipping point, http://panampost.com/john-
suarez/2013/10/18/the-us-surveillance-state-and-the-totalitarian-tipping-
point/, mm

In the 20th century, the United States reached levels of wealth for more people than had ever been seen in
human history. However, those in power whittled away at the nations basic freedoms, slowly and over
generations. Complaints were few because material prosperity endured. Today, massive and
unsustainable debts are maintaining the US standard of living.Freedom continues to be
whittled away at, but more US Americans are awakening to this hard truth, because material
prosperity for many is evaporating. One area that they view with growing alarm is the emergence of
the United States of America as a surveillance state , since, along with a militarized
police force, it is the infrastructure of totalitarianism .+ This is the second in a series of
reflections seeking to understand these negative trends in the United States. The first essay analyzed the
role of the US Supreme Court in particular, its decisions that undermined private property rights and
forced taxpayers to cooperate with evil. I concluded with the controversial proposition that the present
system in the United States is post-constitutional.+ For generations, US Americans believed that the first,
third, fourth, and ninth amendments found in the Bill of Rights protected the privacy of citizens of the
United States that only a small number engaged in criminal conduct would be subjected to surveillance,
the arrival of new
following a court order permitting such activity by the authorities.+ However,
technologies provided the state with the means to circumvent these
constitutional provisions. In the state of Florida, for example, automated systems are replacing
toll operators, and they either process your information via your Sun Pass or by photographing your license
plate and sending you the bill. According to the pre-paid toll program privacy policy, information
concerning a SunPass account is provided only when required to comply with a subpoena or court
order.+ In other words, they are compiling and storing information on your whereabouts.+ Affirming this
reality, the American Civil Liberties Union stated on July 18, 2013, that Police around the United States are
recording the license plates of passing drivers and storing the information for years with little privacy
protection. The information potentially allows authorities to track the movements of everyone who drives a
car.+ However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation makes clear that the federal and state governments
are monitoring not only US Americans physical movement, but also their telephone and e-mail
The government is mass collecting phone metadata of all US
communications.+
customers under the guise of the Patriot Act . Moreover, the media reports confirm that
the government is collecting and analyzing the content of communications of
foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as collecting collecting
[sic] much more, without a probable cause warrant. Finally, the media reports confirm the upstream
The Edward Snowden
collection off of the fiberoptic cables that Mr. Klein first revealed in 2006.
revelations expose a national government that is systematically monitoring
and recording the communications of the entire US American people all of the
time, and beyond. From the Wall Street Journal:+ The National Security Agency which
possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens has built a surveillance network
that covers more Americans Internet communications than officials have
publicly disclosed, current and former officials say. The system has the capacity to
reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a
wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of
emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet
technology . . . What is equally disturbing is that private companies are complicit in the behavior when
not engaging in their own monitoring of internet communications although, to be fair, their will is not
always on the side of the spying. (See the video below.) Further, even though the immense and illegal
surveillance apparatus is out in the open now, we see no remorse from the instigators and the elected
officials responsible. Rather, they are doubling down, and their apologists are right there with them.
Unfortunately, there is no plan; there is no conspiracy. This expansion and centralization of power has
continued under both Republicans and Democrats in the United States and would most likely continue
under a third party. Centralized power has become an end unto itself, and as the late Czech president
Vaclav Havel observed:+ Once the claims of central power have been placed above law and morality,
once the exercise of that power is divested of public control, and once the institutional guarantees of
political plurality and civil rights have been made a mockery of, or simply abolished, there is no reason to
respect any other limitations. The expansion of central power does not stop at the frontier between the
public and the private, but instead, arbitrarily pushes back that border until it is shamelessly intervening in
The United States is reaching a tipping point that
areas that once were private.
leads into a totalitarian abyss and the crackdown on privacy whistleblowers is one of
many ominous signs regarding where this centralization of power is heading.+
 Link Mass Surveillance (Spillover/US Key)
US mass surveillance gets modeled that empowers
authoritarianism abroad
Donahue 14 (Eileen,- visiting scholar at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute
for International Studies, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council
Why the NSA undermines national security)

The U.S. model of mass surveillance will be followed by others and could
unintentionally invert the democratic relationship between citizens and their governments. Under the
cover of preventing terrorism, authoritarian governments may now increase
surveillance of political opponents. Governments that collect and monitor digital
information to intimidate or squelch political opposition and dissent can more justifiably claim
they are acting with legitimacy. For human rights defenders and democracy
activists worldwide, the potential consequences of the widespread use by
governments of mass surveillance techniques are dark and clear .

Domestic surveillance sets a global precedent

Deibert 13 (6-12 Ronald,- professor of political science at the University of Toronto,
where he is director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the
Munk School of Global Affairs Why NSA spying scares the world)

Many of the countries in the Southern Hemisphere are failed or fragile states; many of
them are authoritarian or autocratic regimes. No doubt the elites in those regimes will use
the excuse of security to adopt more stringent state controls over the Internet
in their jurisdictions and support local versions of popular social media companies over which they
can exact their own nationalized controls -- a trend that began prior to the NSA revelations but which now
the revelations about NSA's
has additional rhetorical support. In the age of Big Data,
intelligence-gathering programs touched many nerves . The issue of surveillance won't
go away, and Americans will need to figure out the appropriate safeguards for
liberty in their democracy. It's an important debate, but one that doesn't include us "foreigners" that now
Americans would do well to consider the
make up the vast majority of the Internet users.
international implications of their domestic policies before they come home to bite
them.
 Link Border Surveillance
Border surveillance is key to the expansion of a global
surveillance regime and the emergence of
authoritarianism
Todd Miller, 7/11/2013, Truthout, surveillance surge on the border: how to
turn the US-Meixcan border into a war zone, http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/17513-surveillance-surge-on-the-border-how-to-turn-the-
us-mexican-border-into-a-war-zone, mm

This border surge, a phrase coined by Senator Chuck Schumer, is also a surveillance
surge. The Senate bill provides for the hiring of almost 19,000 new Border Patrol agents, the building of
700 additional miles of walls, fences, and barriers, and an investment of billions of dollars in the latest
this, the bill only continues in a post-9/11
surveillance technologies, including drones. In
tradition in which our southern divide has become an on-the-ground
laboratory for the development of a surveillance state whose mission is
already moving well beyond those borderlands. Calling this immigration reform
is like calling the National Security Agencys expanding global surveillance system a domestic
Its really all about the country that the United States is
telecommunications upgrade.
becoming -- one of the police and the policed. The $46 billion border security price tag in the
immigration reform bill will simply expand on what has already been built. After all, $100 billion was spent on border enforcement in the first
decade after 9/11. To that must be added the annual $18 billion budget for border and immigration enforcement, money that outpaces the
combined budgets of all other federal law enforcement agencies. In fact, since Operation Blockade in the 1990s, the U.S.-Mexico border has
gone through so many surges that a time when simple chain link fences separated two friendly countries is now unimaginable. To witness the
widespread presence of Department of Homeland Security agents on the southern border, just visit that international boundary 100 miles
south of Border Security Expo. Approximately 700 miles of walls, fences, and barriers already cut off the two countries at its major urban
crossings and many rural ones as well. Emplaced everywhere are cameras that can follow you -- or your body heat -- day or night. Overhead,
as in Afghanistan, a Predator B drone may hover. You cant hear its incessant buzzing only because it flies so high, nor can you see the crew in
charge of flying it and analyzing your movements from possibly hundreds of miles away. As you walk, perhaps you step on implanted
sensors, creating a beeping noise in some distant monitoring room. Meanwhile, green-striped Border Patrol vehicles rush by constantly. On the
U.S.-Mexican border, there are already more than 18,500 agents (and approximately 2,300 more on the Canadian border). In counterterrorism
mode, they are paid to be suspicious of everything and everybody. Some Homeland Security vehicles sport trailers carrying All Terrain
Vehicles. Some have mounted surveillance cameras, others cages to detain captured migrants. Some borderlanders like Mike Wilson of the
Tucson-based Border Action Network, a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation (a Native American people and the original inhabitants of the
Arizona borderlands), call the border security operatives an occupying army. Checkpoints -- normally located 20-50 miles from the
international boundary -- serve as a second layer of border enforcement. Stopped at one of them, you will be interrogated by armed agents in
green, most likely with drug-sniffing dogs. If you are near the international divide, its hard to avoid such checkpoints where you will be asked
about your citizenship -- and much more if anything you say or do, or simply the way you look, raises suspicions. Even outside of the
checkpoints, agents of the Department of Homeland Security can pull you over for any reason -- without probable cause or a warrant -- and do
what is termed a routine search. As a U.S. Border Patrol agent told journalist Margaret Regan, within a hundred miles of the international
divide, there's an asterisk on the Constitution. Off-road forward operating bases offer further evidence of the battlefield atmosphere being
created near the border. Such outposts became commonplace during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were meant to house
U.S. soldiers deployed into remote areas. On the border, there are high-tech yet rudimentary camps that serve the same purpose. They also
signal how agents of the Department of Homeland Security are gaining, maintaining, and expanding into rural areas traversed by migrants
and used by smugglers, though to this point never crossed by a known international terrorist. These rural areas, especially in Arizona, are
riddled with migrant causalities. More than 6,000 remains have been recovered since the mid-1990s, deaths not for the most part from
bullets but from exposure. The U.S. borderlands, according to sociologist Timothy Dunn, started to become a militarized zone as early as the
1970s -- in part, in response to the Pentagons low-intensity conflict doctrine. With Congressional immigration reform, if it passes the House of
Representatives, it may very well become a full-fledged war zone. Since the 1990s, the strategy of the Border Patrol has been termed
prevention by deterrence and has been focused on concentrating agents and surveillance technologies in urban areas, once the traditional
migrant routes. The idea was to funnel migrant flows into areas too dangerous and desolate to cross like the triple-degree-temperature desert
in Arizona. Deadly yes; impossible to cross, no. Although unauthorized border-crossings have slowed down in recent years, tens of thousands
continue to cross into the United States annually from Mexico and Central America, thanks in part to the continued havoc of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which left more two million Mexican farmers unemployed. I met Adira, a 21-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico,
in early June. She told me a story all too common in Arizona. As she described her experience, I realized that I was talking to somebody who
had probably died and been brought back to life. We were only a few blocks from the border. Homeland Security had formally deported her
only days before. Still reliving the trauma of her experience, she stared down, her face colorless, as she talked. I had heard the basics of her
story so many times before: to avoid the militarized surveillance apparatus, she and her companions walked for at least five days through the
southern Arizona desert with little -- and then no -- water or food. By the fourth day, the mountains began to talk to her, so she told me, and
she suspected she was coming to the end of her young life. After she couldnt walk any more, the guide dragged her, telling her constantly:
We just have to make it to the next point. When they reached a road on the American side of the border, she remembers convulsing four
times (just as she remembers blood bursting spontaneously from the noses of her companions). And then she remembers no more. She woke
up in a hospital. There were scars on her chest. Medics must have used a machine, she thought, to shock her back to life. She found out later
that somebody had lit a fire to attract the Border Patrol. Shes lucky not to be among those remains regularly found out in that desert. In
other words, each further tightening of the border is a death sentence passed on yet more Latin Americans. According to a statement by a
group of Tucson organizations, including No More Deaths and the Coalicin de Derechos Humanos, the border build-up in the immigration
reform bill promises more of the same: Make no mistake: this bill will lead to more deaths on the border. In early March , DRS
Technologies set up its integrated fixed-tower technology at the University of
Arizonas (UA) Science and Technology Park, just south of Tucson, an hour from the border, and very
close to where Adira almost lost her life. The company was eager to show off the long-
range surveillance technology it had been developing for borders in places
like Egypt and Jordan. It set up a mock operational control room to do a dog-and-pony show for
the local media. Four of its IT guys then focused their cameras on an elevated railroad spur more than four
miles away in the middle of the desert where two men were approaching each other to consummate a fake
drug deal. One handed the other a backpack. It was all vividly watchable on DRSs video screens. Although
the demonstration was
the odds of such a scenario actually happening ranged from slim to none,
a reminder of just how fertile the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are for defense-
and surveillance-related companies. Its here that new generations of
surveillance technology are regularly born and developed. For almost a
decade, the Department of Homeland Security has been attempting to build a
virtual wall along the border -- not a physical barrier but a high-tech
surveillance masterpiece, a complex web of technology, radar, unattended ground sensors, and
camera systems meant to detect anyone crossing the border anywhere. The last attempt to install such an
experimental system along part of the border was in 2006. Then the Department of Homeland Security
awarded Boeing Corporation a multi-billion-dollar contract to develop such a wall, known as SBInet. That
contract was abruptly cancelled in 2011, after the costly and delayed program advertised as offering
unprecedented situational awareness misfired regularly in the rugged terrain of the Arizona borderlands.
Now, companies like DRS are standing in line for the next round of potentially lucrative contracts, as
Homeland Security wantsto finish the job. The UA Tech Park is one place in the southern borderlands
where surveillance technology can be developed, tested, evaluated, and demonstrated. It has 18,000
linear feet of fencing surrounding its solar zone, a solar-technology-centric research area ideal for testing
sensor systems along a future border wall. On any of the roadways in its 1,345 acres, it can set up mock
border-crossings or checkpoints to test new equipment and methods. It draws on faculty and graduate
students from the college of engineering. In rapid-response teams, they offer third-party evaluations of
border control technology. Some of this same technology is also being created on the UA campus, thanks
in part to millions of dollars in DHS grants. Here, too, as Tech Park CEO Bruce Wright tells me, they can
test new technologies right in the field -- that is, on the border, presumably on real people. One of the
tech parks goals, he says, is to develop the first border security industry cluster of its kind in the United
States. In southern Arizona alone, they have already identified 57 companies, big and small, working on
border policing technology. The Tech Parks director of community engagement Molly Gilbert says, Its
really about development, and we want to create technology jobs in our border towns. These are sweet
words for the economically depressed communities of southern Arizona, their poverty rates usually
hovering at around 20%. With projected global revenues of approximately $20 billion in 2013 and a 5%
growth rate that has withstood a worldwide recession, the global border security industry was
flourishing even before the latest immigration reform proposal. Now, it is poised for a potential
bonanza. The key, as Wright stressed in a 2012 interview, is that the products developed for the U.S.-
Mexican borderlands be marketed in the future for the U.S.-Canada border, where defenses are already
being upgraded, for other international borders, but also for places that have little to do with borders.
These might include the perimeters of utility companies and airports, or police forces with expanding
national security and immigration enforcement missions. Theres
a huge market for this
technology worldwide, Wright told me then, because borders exist everywhere.
Theres the Palestinian-Israeli border, theres the Syrian-Israeli border, theres the German-Polish border...
Take it around the world and wherever you want to go there are borders, so the technology is very
adaptable and has a market worldwide.
 Link Project Bullrun
Project Bullrun undermines the foundation of democracy
it is key to an authoritarian transition
Eben Moglen, 5/28/2014, Watching the Watchers, Is privacy essential for
democracy? http://watchingthewatchers.org/news/2771/privacy-essential-
democracy, mm

When Snowden disclosed the existence of the NSA's Bullrun program we

learned that NSA had lied for years to the financiers who believe themselves entitled to the
truth from the government they own. The NSA had not only subverted technical
standards, attempting to break the encryption that holds the global financial industry together, it had
also stolen the keys to as many vaults as possible . With this disclosure the NSA forfeited
respectable opinion around the world. Their reckless endangerment of those who don't accept danger from
the United States government was breathtaking. The empire of the United States was the empire of
exported liberty. What it had to offer all around the world was liberty and freedom. After colonization, after
European theft, after forms of state-created horror, it promised a world free from state oppression. Last
century we were prepared to sacrifice many of the world's great cities and tens of millions of human lives.
We bore those costs in order to smash regimes we called "totalitarian," in which the state grew so powerful
and so invasive that it no longer recognized any border of private life. We desperately fought and died
against systems in which the state listened to every telephone conversation and kept a list of everybody
every troublemaker knew. But in the past 10 years, after the morality of freedom was withdrawn,
the state has begun fastening the procedures of totalitarianism on the
substance of democratic society. There is no historical precedent for the
proposition that the procedures of totalitarianism are compatible with the system
of enlightened, individual and democratic self-governance. Such an argument would be doomed
to failure. It is enough to say in opposition that omnipresent invasive listening creates fear. And that fear is
the enemy of reasoned, ordered liberty. It is utterly inconsistent with the American ideal to attempt to
fasten procedures of totalitarianism on American constitutional self-governance. But there is an even
deeper inconsistency between those ideals and the subjection of every other society on earth to mass
surveillance. Some of the system's servants came to understand that it was being sustained not with, but
against, democratic order. They knew their vessel had come unmoored in the dark, and was sailing without
a flag. When they blew the whistle, the system blew back at them. In the end -- at least so far, until
tomorrow -- there was Snowden, who saw everything that happened and watched the fate of others who
spoke up. He understood, as Chelsea Manning also always understood, that when you wear the uniform
you consent to the power. He knew his business very well. Young as he was, as he said in Hong Kong, "I've
been a spy all my life." So he did what it takes great courage to do in the presence of what you believe to
be radical injustice. He wasn't first, he won't be last, but he sacrificed his life as he knew it to tell us things
we needed to know. Snowden committed espionage on behalf of the human race. He knew the price, he
knew the reason. But as he said, only the American people could decide, by their response, whether
sacrificing his life was worth it. So our most important effort is to understand the message: to understand
its context, purpose, and meaning, and to experience the consequences of having received the
communication. Even once we have understood, it will be difficult to judge Snowden, because there is
always much to say on both sides when someone is greatly right too soon. In the United States, those who
were "premature anti-fascists" suffered. It was right to be right only when all others were right. It was
wrong to be right when only people we disagreed with held the views that we were later to adopt
ourselves. Snowden has been quite precise. He understands his business. He has spied on injustice for us
and has told us what we require in order to do the job and get it right. And if we have a responsibility, then
it is to learn, now, before somebody concludes that learning should be prohibited. In considering the
political meaning of Snowden's message and its consequences, we must begin by discarding for immediate
purposes pretty much everything said by the presidents, the premiers, the chancellors and the senators.
Public discussion by these "leaders" has provided a remarkable display of misdirection, misleading and
outright lying. We need instead to focus on the thinking behind Snowden's activities. What matters most is
We
how deeply the whole of the human race has been ensnared in this system of pervasive surveillance.
begin where the leaders are determined not to end, with the question of whether any form
of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive,
pervasive surveillance into which the United States government has led not
only its people but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. For almost
everyone who lived through the 20th century -- at least its middle half -- the idea that freedom was
consistent with the procedures of totalitarianism was self-evidently false. Hence, as we watch responses to
Snowden's revelations we see that massive invasion of privacy triggers justified anxiety among the
survivors of totalitarianism about the fate of liberty. To understand why, we need to understand more
closely what our conception of "privacy" really contains. Our concept of "privacy" combines three things:
first is secrecy, or our ability to keep the content of our messages known only to those we intend to receive
them. Second is anonymity, or secrecy about who is sending and receiving messages, where the content of
the messages may not be secret at all. It is very important that anonymity is an interest we can have both
in our publishing and in our reading. Third is autonomy, or our ability to make our own life decisions free
from any force that has violated our secrecy or our anonymity. These three -- secrecy, anonymity and
Without secrecy,
autonomy -- are the principal components of a mixture we call "privacy."
democratic self-government is impossible. Without secrecy, people may not discuss public
affairs with those they choose, excluding those with whom they do not wish to converse. Anonymity
is necessary for the conduct of democratic politics . Not only must we be able to choose
with whom we discuss politics, we must also be able to protect ourselves against retaliation for our
Autonomy is vitiated by the wholesale invasion of
expressions of political ideas.
secrecy and privacy. Free decision-making is impossible in a society where every move is
monitored, as a moment's consideration of the state of North Korea will show, as would any conversation
with those who lived through 20th-century totalitarianisms, or any historical study of the daily realities of
privacy is a requirement of
American chattel slavery before our civil war. In other words,
democratic self-government. The effort to fasten the procedures of pervasive surveillance on
human society is the antithesis of liberty. This is the conversation that all the "don't listen to my mobile
phone!" misdirection has not been about. If it were up to national governments, the conversation would
remain at this phony level forever.
 Link Section 702/PRISM
Section 702 and PRISM will bring about a quick
authoritarian system if allowed to continue
Kim Dotcom, 6/13/2013, The Guardian, PRISM: concerns over
government tyranny are legitimate,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/13/prism-utah-data-
center-surveillance, mm

Some proponents of Prism assert that it is an essential tool against terrorism. They claim that only data
belonging to foreigners (that is, non-US residents) is retained, and that content is not reviewed as a matter
of course, only algorithmically analysed for suspicious patterns. They point out that a search warrant is still
required from a secret court set up under the US. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) may be
spun up so that content accumulated over years of daily internet spooling may be extracted and
analysed, laying bare a suspects entire virtual life. Those safeguards have limited value. According to
congressional reporting, the FISA court received 1,789 applications for authority to conduct electronic
surveillance in 2012, but not one application was denied. We cannot debate whether the FISA court is a
rubber stamp, because its proceedings are secret. Further, any assurance to US citizens that the NSA will
not gather and archive their data is suspect. The Five Eyes alliance between the intelligence agencies of
the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK effectively permits those governments to circumvent
the prohibition against gathering data on their own citizens by sharing information across the Five Eyes
intelligence community. The UK for example can spy on Americans and make that information available to
Prior
the US government on its massive spy cloud one that the NSA operates and the Five Eyes share.
to 9/11, the operative presumption in developed nations favoured privacy , but
the security narrative has since reversed the presumption, eroding our
privacy rights in favour of government control over our personal information. However,
government is an instrument sometimes a crude one susceptible to abuse, as
demonstrated by recent admissions that the US Internal Revenue Service has targeted specific groups
based on ideology. When we empower the state, we empower those that hold sway over the state, and the
state is subject to influence from a multitude of quarters. I have personally been a victim of such abuses.
The US government has indicted me, shut down my cloud storage company Megaupload and seized all of
my assets because it claims I was complicit in copyright infringement by some of the people who used the
Megaupload service. I have emphasised that I am being prosecuted not because the charges against me
have some sound basis in US copyright law, but because the US justice department has been
instrumentalised by certain private interests that have a financial stake in neutralising my business. That
trend represents a danger not just to me, but to all of us. Recent polls in the US suggest that the public is
not much preoccupied with the fact that our data is being retained, so long as our own political party is in
The point we should
control of the government. That kind of fickle comfort is small-minded.
derive from Snowdens revelations a point originally expressed in March 2013 by
William Binney, a former senior NSA crypto-mathematician is that the NSAs
Utah Data Center will amount to a turnkey system that, in the wrong hands,
could transform the country into a totalitarian state virtually overnight. Every
person who values personal freedom, human rights and the rule of law must recoil against such a
possibility, regardless of their political preference. Others take a more cavalier approach, such as former
Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009: If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you
the
shouldn't be doing it in the first place. We should heed warnings from Snowden because
prospect of an Orwellian society outweighs whatever security benefits we
derive from Prism or Five Eyes. Viewed through the long lens of human history, concerns over
government tyranny are always legitimate. It is those concerns that underpin the
constitutions of most developed countries, and inform international principles of human rights and the rule
of law. Prism and its related practices should be discontinued immediately, and the Utah Data Center
should be leased to cloud storage companies with encryption capabilities.
Impacts Democracy Bad
 Democracy Bad Environment
Democracy cant save the environment studies prove a
correlation between democratization and environmental
destruction
Mark Beeson, 3/30/2010, (Department of Political Science and
International Relations, University of Western Australia, Perth), The coming
of environmental authoritarianism, Environmental Politics, vol 19, no 2,
https://www.academia.edu/539179/The_coming_of_environmental_authoritari
anism, mm

In much of East Asia, the population may not have the luxury or capacity even to engage in these sorts of
discursive practices, while the absence of effective democracy in much of the region stands as a
continuing obstacle to achieving anything approximating deliberative democracy. Even more
there is no compelling evidence that democracy
problematically in the long-run,
of any sort will necessarily promote good environmental outcomes
(Neumayer 2002), or that rising living standards will inevitably deliver a
sustainable environment (Dinda 2004). On the contrary, there is evidence to
suggest that in the initial phases at least, democratisation could indirectly
promote environmental degradation through its effect on national
income (Li and Reuveny 2006, p. 953). In other words, even the best of all outcomes rising living
standards and an outbreak of democracy may have unsustainable
environmental consequences that may prove to be their undoing in
the longer-term. In such circumstances, ideas about possible ways of reorganising societies to
lessen their impact on the natural environment may not find sufficient support to make them realisable or
effective. As Lieberman (2002, p. 709) points out, an ideas time arrives not simply because the idea is
compelling on its own terms, but because opportune political circumstances favor it. In much of
Southeast Asia and China the forces supporting environmental protection are comparatively weak and
unable to overcome powerful vested interests intent on the continuing exploitation of natural resources
In short, predominantly Western concerns with thick cosmopolitanism and the hope that a metabolistic
[sic] relationship with the natural environment might bind us to strangers (Dobson 2006, p. 177), seem
bizarrely at odds with lived experience where climate change is already profoundly undermining
The
sociability within national frameworks, let alone between them (Raleigh and Urdal 2007).
sobering reality would seem to be that . . . as the human population
grows and environmental damage progresses, policymakers will
have less and less capacity to intervene to keep damage from
producing serious social disruption, including conflict (Homer-Dixon 1991,
p. 79).

Liberalism makes an eco-extinction inevitable only an

authoritarian transition solves
Mark Beeson, 3/30/2010, (Department of Political Science and
International Relations, University of Western Australia, Perth), The coming
of environmental authoritarianism, Environmental Politics, vol 19, no 2,
https://www.academia.edu/539179/The_coming_of_environmental_authoritari
anism, mm
While evidence about the implications of environmental degradation and even global warming are
increasingly uncontroversial, their possible political consequences are more contentious. Although some
of the preceding analysis is necessarily speculative and inferential, the experiences of China and
The central question that
Southeast Asia highlight issues of unambiguously global significance.
emerges from this discussion is whether democracy can be sustained in the region
or anywhere else for that matter given the unprecedented and unforgiving nature of
the challenges we collectively face. Indeed, such is the urgency of the
environmental crisis that some have argued alarmingly persuasively that
humanity will have to trade its liberty to live as it wishes in favour
of a system where survival is paramount (Shearman and Smith 2007, p. 4). In such
circumstances, forms of good authoritarianism, in which environmentally
unsustainable forms of behaviour are simply forbidden, may become not only justifiable, but
essential for the survival of humanity in anything approaching a civilised form. Such
ideas are difficult to accept, especially for societies steeped in traditions of liberalism, individualism,
freedom of choice and personal advancement. The US is, of course, such a country, where an entire
national consciousness and way of life is predicated upon liberal values values which some consider
has done
profoundly inimical to environmental sustainability (Ophuls 1997). It is also the country that
most to contribute to global environmental problems like climate
change, but which has until now seemed incapable of addressing them politically (Stephens 2007).
In China, by contrast, an authoritarian regime has arguably done
more to mitigate environmental problems than any other
government on earth: without the one-child policy instigated in the 1970s, it is estimated that
there would already be another 400 million Chinese (Dickie 2008) and Chinas environmental problems
(and everyone elses) would be that much worse. Luckily for the worlds non-Chinese population, China
does not enjoy the same living standards as the US, and it is impossible to imagine that the vast majority
of its citizens ever will. There are, it seems, fundamental, implacable constraints on the carrying capacity
of the planet (Cohen 1995). The real tragedy about Chinas development is not the failure to democratise
rapidly, but that at the very moment that human beings seem to have figured out how to generate
economic development on a massive scale, it is becoming apparent that it cannot be
sustained, at least not by 6 billion people living Western lifestyles,
and certainly not by the 912 billion or so that some think will mark the extent of human expansion.6

Liberty and democracy make environmental destruction

inevitable only a rejection of liberal political systems can
solve
Brett Stevens, 2009, (writing in the Forward to Pentti Linkolas book Can
Life Prevail? A revolutionary approach to the environmental crisis), p. 14-15,
mm

In our time, it is not only unfashionable but inconceivable to think outside the
method of preserving individual autonomy. We worship freedom, itself
a negative definition focused not on what we can do but what we cannot be obligated to do. Our
civilization understands itself not as a product of history and maker of future history, but as a facilitation
like a big shopping mall with a legal system of individuals doing what pleases them, so long as they do
This condition has not made
not interrupt others doing the same and disrupt the peace.
us happy. While we agree that liberty, equality, fraternity and open economies are noble methods, the
goal of these having a better civilization and individual live s has not
manifested itself through those methods. By basing our ideal on
freedom, we have closed ourselves off to obligations outside of
ourselves, which coincidentally are the things that make us feel most alive. We are prisoners
of the self, and it is no surprise we act selfishly as a result . Linkola
most clearly distinguishes himself from other environmental
spokesmen by thinking practically about the effect of individuals as
a group: The consciousness of ecology has grown, but still the
Average Joe only increases the load. The bustle is controlled by three words: as long
as. As long as we can still travel to the other side of the globe four times a year, we will do it. As long as
we can still buy a SUV, we will buy it. This is the reality. In doing so, he has escaped the methodological
ghetto. The safe methods we have been using do not achieve our goals, so we must change. Linkola saw
that while every well-meaning education program has vanished without making change, the occasional
Either we
governmental fascism like the Endangered Species Act in the USA has produced results.
enforce an unpopular truth on ourselves, or we wait paralyzed by
our inability to transcend our methods, and let nature enforce it on
us through environmental cataclysm. To avoid the selfishness of
individuals, Linkola advocates an end to Third World aid and immigration, mandatory
population control, and the creation of a ruthless green police to clean up
the planet. His theories tie together deep ecology with a recognition
that democratic, liberal societies cannot control themselves. He believes
that the individual who connects himself to reality through struggle and not the individual withdrawing
into him or herself brings the greatest meaning to life.

Democracy cant solve the environment the public cant

exert enough influence to enact eco-friendly policies
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 165, mm

In this textwe have listed the impediments to recognition within the liberal
democracies, the inertia and self-interest in preventing political change , the
self-interest of the so-called free press, and the corporate and financial interests. And to
these impediments we must add the lack of understanding by the ordinary robotic worker and mechanical
consumer that he or she has now become. It will require a fundamental change in society for the citizen
to be able to understand the present political system, let alone the complexities of our dependence on
We doubt if any transformation of the masses is possible, at
ecological services.
least to the extent needed for a radical democratic transformation of the
present system. For example, most people have difficulty understanding the
nature of the monetary system of capitalism at the basic level described here. It is difficult
even for those with slightly higher IQs to grasp the diabolical logic of credit
creation. Yet without such a grasp, reform of the present system is
impossible. Without leadership with a will and power to act the crisis is
certainly insoluble. As scientific realists, we must look elsewhere if we are to
find a political answer adequate to the challenge of the environmental crisis.
Democracy, like communism, is a nice idea, and it is a pity that neither
works. If there was a way of saving democracy then we should save it, but it is unlikely that
there is any such way because the ordinary person or mass man is not made of
the right heroic stuff necessary to meet the challenge of our age .
 AT Petro/Liberty Impacts Environment O/W
The environment outweighs liberty putting liberty first
ensures extinction
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 162, mm

An ecologically sustainable legal system must give ultimate priority to the

preservation of the life support systems of the earth. This value must trump
the values of economic interest and personal liberty. Otherwise a tragedy of the
commons situation will arise. We recall that the classical tragedy of the commons13 is that
individual economic agents operating only with principles of economic utility maximization will all pursue
their exploitation of economic resource to produce the highest return, until that resource is exhausted
The pursuit of individual self-interest results in collective
(i.e., exterminated).
environmental destruction, which ultimately threatens the life of those
individuals and the entire economic system itself . Therefore the supreme
legal principle, which must be enshrined in the constitutions of all nations, must be the
principle of ecological sustainability and environmental protection. Roughly drafted such a
principle would assert: This nation has an overriding legal duty to protect the environment and ensure
that social, political, and all economic systems and activities that impact substantially upon the
environment by any agents, persons, or entities whatsoever are ecologically sustainable. By the
expression ecologically sustainable we mean X and in the assertion will be placed a concise drafting of
the principles of sustainability. Further to that, each person and corporation has a duty of environmental
protection.

Sustaining the environment outweighs protecting liberty

David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 85, mm

we reject the principle of

Our position differs from Wolff and other anarchists also insofar as
autonomy, the foundation belief of liberalism . It is the argument of this work that
liberalism has essentially overdosed on freedom and liberty. It is true that freedom
and liberty are important values, but such values are by no means fundamental or
ultimate values. These values are far down the list of what we believe to be
core values based upon an ecological philosophy of humanity: survival and
the integrity of ecological systems. Without such values, values such as
freedom and autonomy make no sense at all. If one is not living, one cannot
be free. Indeed liberal freedom essentially presupposes the idea of a sustainable life for otherwise the
only freedom that the liberal social world would have would be to perish in a polluted environment.
 AT Petro/Liberty Impacts - Freedom
Unsustainable
Personal liberty is unsustainable inevitable resource
constraints
William Ophuls, 2011, Platos Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology, p.
187-188, mm

The atomistic, liberal societies of today, along with their expansive notions of
personal freedom, are an artifact of an abnormal and transitory period of
abundance enabled by humanitys exploitation of found wealth the
virgin resources of the New World and the storehouses of untouched fossil fuels. With the return
of ecological scarcity, individuals will not have the same latitude to
go their own way to exist apart from or even in defiance of their community, on which they will
increasingly depend for livelihood. Nothing less than a resurgence of fraternity will make the return of
scarcity bearable. Without some feeling of kinship that induces us to seek or at least accept a common
the response to scarcity is likely to be Hobbesian in the
mode of life,
worst sense a war of all against all, ending only with the imposition
of order by a heavy-handed Leviathan.
 AT Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic peace theory is wrong- democracies do go to
war
Layne 7
Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 94
Wilsonian ideology drives the American Empire because its proponents posit that the
United States must use its military power to extend democracy abroad. Here, the
ideology of Empire rests on assumptions that are not supported by the facts. One
reason the architects of Empire champion democracy promotion is because they
believe in the so-called democratic peace theory , which holds that democratic states do not
fight other democracies. Or as President George W. Bush put it with his customary eloquence,
"democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful."136 The democratic peace theory is the
probably the most overhyped and undersupported "theory" ever to be concocted by
American academics. In fact, it is not a theory at all. Rather it is a theology that suits
the conceits of Wilsonian true believers-especially the neoconservatives who have
been advocating American Empire since the early 1990s. As serious scholars have
shown, however, the historical record does not support the democratic peace
theory.131 On the contrary, it shows that democracies do not act differently toward other
democracies than they do toward nondemocratic states. When important national
interests are at stake, democracies not only have threatened to use force against other
democracies, but, in fact, democracies have gone to war with other democracies.

Democracies start more wars- statistical analysis proves

Henderson 2
Errol Henderson, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Political Science at the
University of Florida, 2002, Democracy and War The End of an Illusion?, p.
146
Are Democracies More Peaceful than Nondemocracies with Respect to Interstate Wars ? The results
indicate that democracies are more war-prone than non-democracies (whether democracy
is coded dichotomously or continuously) and that democracies are more likely to initiate
interstate wars. The findings are obtained from analyses that control for a host of
political, economic, and cultural factors that have been implicated in the onset of
interstate war, and focus explicitly on state level factors instead of simply inferring state level
processes from dyadic level observations as was done in earlier studies (e.g., Oneal and Russett,
1997; Oneal and Ray, 1997). The results imply that democratic enlargement is more likely to
increase the probability of war for states since democracies are more likely to become
involved inand to initiateinterstate wars.
 AT Authoritarianism -> War
Authoritarian states best keep the peace- one decision
maker and natural aversion to casualties
Elman 97
Miriam Elman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at
Arizona State University, Paths to Peace Is Democracy the Answer?, p. 495-
496
NONDEMOCRATIC REGIME FEATURES HELP TO KEEP THE PEACE. Our
cumulative findings show that nondemocracies do not necessarily apply their internal norms of political
behavior to their foreign relations, and that such domestic norms do not necessarily reduce the chances for
international cooperation. For example, Kacowicz (Chapter 8) notes that both Mauritania and Peru
upheld norms of conflict resolution, compromise, and mediation at the international
level, though they ignored similar norms at home . Our findings suggest that we should not
assume that nondemocracies externalize domestic norms of conflict resolution when dealing with
international actors. They frequently initiate international negotiations and see war as an
option of last resort. Thus, aggressiveness or peacefulness cannot be readily inferred from the degree of
violence in a states domestic arena. In addition, we note that the absence of institutional constraints
on leaders can facilitate peace. Martin Main (Chapter 9) points out that because of the
absence of governmental and societal constraints on foreign policy, Iran and Iraq
were able to resolve long standing disagreements in the 1970s. The freedom of both
executives made the negotiation of a peaceful settlement easier than it might otherwise have been;
neither government feared the domestic political consequences of an unpopular
agreement. Similarly, in Chapter 11, Matthews argues that during the interwar period,
nondemocratic Turkey was able to pursue a moderate foreign policy toward Greece
because there were no institutional constraints on the leaders discre tion. Had Turkey
been more democratic, it would have been more aggressive internationally because hard-
line elites would not have been excluded from the policy making process. Thus, Matthews argues that when
leaders are moderate and prefer peaceful methods of international conflict resolution, nondemocracy
particularly the absence of checks on the leaders foreign policy choicescan be a force for peace instead of an
obstacle. Kurt Dassel (Chapter 10) also suggests that a sizeable subset of nondemocracies will usually adopt
peaceful rather than aggressive foreign policies. Dassel argues that, in authoritarian states that have
unstable regimes, if the military can use force domestically without jeopardizing its
cohesiveness, it will favor repressing domestic oppo nents and refrain from
international aggression. Thus, Dassel points out that regimes in which there are few checks on foreign
policy decision makers, and in which domestic conflicts are resolved through massive violence, may be the
very states that pursue pacific foreign policies; because force can be used at home, it will not be used abroad. In
short, democratic peace theorists wrongly assert that non-democracies are predisposed to aggression because of
the characteristics of their governments. In this book, we suggest that only some nondemocratic states will use
force abroad; treating all nondemocracies as potential aggressors is misleading.
Impacts Environment Core
 Impact Environment O/W Everything
Environmental destruction outweighs all other impacts
Chen 2000 [Jim, Professor of Law at the U of Minnesota, Minnesota Journal of Global Trade Winter
2000, pg. 211]

The value of endangered species and the biodiversity they embody

is literally . . . incalculable. What, if anything, should the law do to preserve it? There are those that invoke the story of Noahs Ark as a
moral basis for biodiversity preservation. Others regard the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially the biblical stories of Creation and the Flood, as the root of the Wests
deplorable environmental record. To avoid getting bogged down in an environmental exegesis of Judeo-Christian myth and legend, we should let Charles Darwin and

The loss of biological diversity is quite

evolutionary biology determine the imperatives of our moment in natural history .

arguably the gravest problem facing humanity. If we cast the question as

the contemporary phenomenon that our descendents [will] most

regret, the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of
natural habitats is worse than even energy depletion, economic
collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian
government. Natural evolution may in due course renew the earth will a diversity of species approximating that of a world unspoiled by Homo sapiens in
ten million years, perhaps a hundred million.
 Impact Environmental Destruction ->
Extinction
Environmental destruction results in climatic change,
famine, disease, nuclear war and ultimately extinction
Takacs, Instructor in Department of Earth Systems Science and Policy at
California State-Monterey Bay 1996 (David, Philosophies of Paradise,
Available online at www.dhushara.com/book/diversit/restor/takacs.htm,
Accesssed 07/13/2012, ZR)
More often, however, humans are said to benefit from such ecosystem
services. Half a century ago, Aldo Leopold warned: "Recent discoveries in
mineral and vitamin nutrition reveal unsuspected dependencies in the up-
circuit: incredibly minute quantities of certain substances determine the
value of soils to plants, of plants to animals. What of the down-circuit?
What of the vanishing species, the preservation of which we now
regard as an esthetic luxury. They helped build the soil; in what
unsuspected ways may they be essential to its maintenance?" More
recently, Jane Lubchenco feels very strongly that people are in fact much
more dependent on ecosystem services that are provided by both
managed and unmanaged ecosystems than is generally perceived to
be the case. So I think it's sheer folly for us to act in ways that are undermining the ability of both managed and
unmanaged ecosystems to provide these services that we're depen dent on. And that we're doing that more and more as
we pollute and destroy habitats, or alter habitats in one fashion or another. And I guess the bottom line is that we're
changing the environment faster than our ability to understand the consequences of how we're changing it." Most
predictions of eco-doom are predicated on this argument, and many are stated in much more dramatic terms than those
Lubchenco employs. As the argument runs, a myriad of organisms, especially "little things," comprise ecosystems that
provide countless services that keep the Earth's biotic and abiotic processes up and running.' According to Souls, "Many, if
not all, ecological processes have thresholds below and above which they become discontinuous, chaotic, or suspended."
Biodiversity may regulate these processes; among its many talents,
biodiversity is said to create soil and maintain its fertility, control
global climate, inhibit agricultural pests, maintain atmospheric gas
balances, process organic wastes, pollinate crops and flowers, and
recycle nutrients.' Confusion in this line of argumentation ties back into why the concept of biodiversity has
risen to prominence. Remember that biologists have scant understanding of the roles that species or populations play in
maintaining ecosystems. In interviews, Lovejoy, Falk, and Ray confessed that you can strip away many species from an
ecosystem without loss of ecosystem function. Ehrlich points out that by the time a species is endangered, it has probably
stopped playing an important role in keeping the system functioning anyway." Furthermore, it is not clear whether we
should focus on species as functional cogs in the ecosystem wheel, or whether ecological services are emergent
properties of ecosystems themselves. With the biodiversity concept, these dilemmas become nearly moot. Biodiversity
embraces lists of species, lists of ecosystems, the interactions of species within ecosystems, and the processes that
species may maintain or control. When arguing on behalf of bio-diversity, one need not focus on the specifics-specifically,
the specifics of what we don't know. It is enough to explicate some of the functions that keep ecosystems running, or that
ecosystems provide for us, and then extrapolate to the dangers associated with declining biodiversity. Peter Raven bases
his thinking on Leopold's observation "To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering": "In
every sense, in the sense of communities that will preserve soil,
promote local climate, keep the atmosphere, preserve water, and
every thing else, the first rule of being able to put together
communities well or have the world go on functioning well, or to
keep climates as they are, or to retard disease, to produce products
we want sustainably, be cause, after all, plants, algae, and photosynthetic
bacteria are the only device we have to capture energy from the sun
effectively-in all those senses, and in the sense that we're losing the parts so
rapidly, I con sider the loss of biological diversity to be the most
serious problem that we have-far more serious than global climate
change or stratospheric ozone depletion, or anything else ." "Habitat
destruction and conversion are eliminating species at such a
frightening pace that extinction of many contemporary species and
the systems they live in and support ... may lead to ecological
disaster and severe alteration of the evolutionary process," Terry
Erwin writes." And E. 0. Wilson notes: "The question I am asked most
frequently about the diversity of life: if enough species are extinguished,
will the ecosystem collapse, and will the extinction of most other
species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is:
possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One
planet, one experiment."" So biodiversity keeps the world running. It has
value in and for itself, as well as for us. Raven, Erwin, and Wilson oblige us to
think about the value of biodiversity for our own lives. The Ehrlichs' rivet-
popper trope makes this same point; by eliminating rivets, we play Russian
roulette with global ecology and human futures: "It is likely that destruction
of the rich complex of species in the Amazon basin could trigger
rapid changes in global climate patterns. Agriculture remains heavily
dependent on stable climate, and human beings remain heavily
dependent on food. By the end of the century the extinction of
perhaps a million species in the Amazon basin could have entrained
famines in which a billion human beings perished. And if our species
is very unlucky, the famines could lead to a thermonuclear war,
which could extinguish civilization ."" Elsewhere, Ehrlich uses different
particulars with no less drama: What then will happen if the current
decimation of organic diversity continues? Crop yields will be more
difficult to maintain in the face of climatic change, soil erosion, loss
of dependable water supplies, decline of pollinators, and ever more
serious assaults by pests. Conversion of productive land to
wasteland will accelerate; deserts will continue their seemingly
inexorable expansion. Air pollution will increase, and local climates
will become harsher. Humanity will have to forgo many of the direct
economic benefits it might have withdrawn from Earth's well stocked
genetic library. It might, for example, miss out on a cure for cancer;
but that will make little difference. As ecosystem services falter,
mortality from respiratory and epidemic disease, natural disasters,
and especially famine will lower life expectancies to the point where
can cer (largely a disease of the elderly) will be unimportant. Humanity
will bring upon itself consequences depressingly similar to those
expected from a nuclear winter. Barring a nuclear conflict, it appears that
civili zation will disappear some time before the end of the next
century not with a bang but a whimper.
 Impact Biodiversity Loss
Biodiversity loss risks extinction
Walsh 10 [Bryan, covers environment, energy and when the need arises
particularly alarming diseases for TIME magazine, Wildlife: A Global
Convention on Biodiversity Opens in Japan, But Can It Make a Difference?
October 18, 2010 http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/10/18/wildlife-a-
global-convention-on-biodiversity-opens-in-japan-but-can-it-make-a-
difference/#ixzz131wU6CSp]

The story of non-human life on the planet Earth over the past few decades is a simple
one: loss. While there are always a few bright spotsincluding the recovery of threatened animals like the brown pelican,
thanks to the quietly revolutionary Endangered Species Act on
a planetary scale biodiversity is steadily
marching backwards, with extinctions rising and habitat destroyed . Species as diverse as the tiger
less than 3,500 live in the wild todayto tiny frogs could be gone forever if the trends keep
heading downwards. In a bitterly ironic twist, back in 2002 the United Nations declared that 2010 would be the
international year of biodiversity, and countries agreed to" achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss
at the global, regional and national level," as part of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At this paper in
Science shows (download a PDF here), however, the world has utterly failed to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, and by
just about every measurement, things are getting worse all the time . (Read the Global Biodiversity
Outlook if you really want to be depressed.) With that cheery backdrop, representatives from nearly 200 nations are meeting in
the Japanese city of Nagoyahome to Toyota and not a whole lot elsefor the 10th summit of the CBD, where they will set
new goals for reducing species loss and slowing habitat destruction. At the very least, they should know how critical the
biodiversity challenge isas Japanese Environment Minister Ryo Matsumoto said in an opening speech: All life on
Earth exists thanks to the benefits from biodiversity in the forms of fertile soil, clear water
and clean air. We are now close to a 'tipping point' - that is, we are about to reach a threshold
beyond which biodiversity loss will become irreversible, and may cross that threshold in the
next 10 years if we do not make proactive efforts for conserving biodiversity. Ahmed
Djoghlaf, the executive secretary of the CBD, struck an even darker note, reminding
diplomats that they were on a clockand time was running out : Let's have the courage to look in the
eyes of our children and admit that we have failed, individually and collectively, to fulfil the Johannesburg promise made by
110 heads of state to substantially reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010. Let us look in the eyes of our children and
admit that we continue to lose biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, thus mortgaging their future. But what will actually come
out of the Nagoya summit, which will continue until Oct. 29? Most likely there will be another agreementa new protocol
outlining various global strategies on sustaining biodiversity and goals on slowing the rate of species loss. (You can download a
PDF of the discussion draft document that will be picked over at Nagoya.) It won't be hard for governments to agree on general
ambitions for reducing biodiversity losswho's against saving pandas?but the negotiations will be much trickier on the
question of who will actually pay for a more biodiverse planet? And much as we've seen in international climate change
negotiations, the essential divide is between the developed and developing nationsand neither side seems ready to bend. The
reality is that much of the world's biodiversitythe most fantastic species and the most complete forestsis found in the
poorer, less developed parts of the world. That's in part because the world's poor have been, well, too poor to develop the land
around them in the way rich nations have. (There was once a beautiful, undeveloped island off the East Coast of the U.S., with
wetlands and abundant forests. It was called Mannahatta. It's a little different now.) As a result, the rural poorespecially in
tropical nationsare directly dependent on healthy wildlife and plants in a way that inhabitants of developed nations aren't. So
on one hand that makes the poor directly vulnerable when species are lost and forests are chopped downwhich often results
in migration to thronging urban areas. But on the other, poverty often drives the rural poor to slash-and-burn forests for
agriculture, or hunt endangered species to sell for bush meat. Conservation and development have to go hand in hand. That
hasn't always been the mantra of the conservation movementas Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writes in Slate, conservation projects
in the past sometimes displaced the human inhabitants over a reserve or park, privileging nature over people. But that's changed
in recent decadesenvironmental groups like Conservation International or the Nature Conservancy now spend as much of
their time working on development as they do in protecting nature. "Save the people, save the wildlife"that's the new mantra.
The missing ingredient is moneyand that's what will be up for debate at Nagoya. As climate change has risen on the
international agenda, funding for biodiversity has laggedthe 33 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) donated $8.5 billion for climate change mitigation projects in 2008, but just $3 billion
annually for biodiversity. One way to change that could be through "payment for ecosystem services." A biodiverse
landscape, intact forests, clean water and airall of these ebbing qualities of a healthy world
are vital for our economies as well. (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, a UN-
funded study, estimates that nature degradation costs the world $2 trillion to $5 trillion a
year, with the poorest nations bearing the brunt of the loss.) Rich countries could pay more biodiverse developing nations to
keep nature runningallowing poorer countries to capitalize on their natural resources without slashing and burning. Will that
work? I'm skepticalthe experience of climate change negotiations have shown that the nations of the world are great at high
ideals and fuzzy goals, but not so hot at actually dividing up the pie in a more sustainable fashion. That doesn't mean there
aren't smaller solutionslike Costa Rica's just-announced debt-for-nature dealbut a big bang from Japan this month doesn't
seem too likely. The problem is as simple as it is unsolvable, at least so farthere's no clear path to national development so far
that doesn't take from the natural world. That worked for rich nations, but we're rapidly running out of planet, as a report last
week from the World Wildlife Fund showed. And there's something greater at stake as well, as the naturalist E.O. Wilson once
put it: The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is
the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats-this is
the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. We're losing nature. And that loss
really is forever.
 Impact Warming
Global warming is real, anthropogenic, and causes
extinction
Deibel 7 (Terry L. Deibel, professor of IR at National War College, 2007,
Foreign Affairs Strategy, Conclusion: American Foreign
Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature,
global warming to the stability of the climate
which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of
upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for
three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not
one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993
to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. In legitimate scientific circles, writes
Elizabeth Kolbert, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the
fundamentals of global warming. Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring
effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel
predicts brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century; climate
change could literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps
and aid the spread of cholera and malaria ; glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster
than expected, andworldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago; rising sea temperatures have been
accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes; NASA scientists have concluded from direct
temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second; Earths warming climate is estimated
to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year as disease spreads; widespread bleaching from Texas to
Trinidadkilled broad swaths of corals due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. The world is slowly disintegrating, concluded
Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. They call it climate changebut we just call it breaking up.
From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and
by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is
no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is
how much and how serous the effects will be. As the newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of
1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened
inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the
Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolinas
outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another
catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer
than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from
the most
moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But
frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from
the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past
ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even
though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one
humankinds continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is
can conclude is that
akin to playing Russian roulette with the earths climate and humanitys life support
system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, were just going to burn everything up;
were going to het the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and
then everything will collapse. During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter
to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries
but possible end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War eras equivalent of nuclear
winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long
run it puts dangers from terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat
not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on
this planet.
Crunch UQ
Crunch UQ Collapse Coming (Global Industrial
Collapse/Transition)
Global collapse is inevitable only our alternative allows
for us to survive the crunch
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, 66-
69, mm

the signs and symptoms of impending

It will not have escaped the readers attention that
collapse roughly sketched above are pervasive. Ecological problems,
exponential pressures, thermodynamic losses, risky complexity,
moral decay, and human incapacity are evident everywhere , differing only
in extent and degree among the various regions and societies that make up modern industrial civilization.
Moreover, all these societies are now interconnected in a vast and complex world system far beyond
We therefore confront a potential worldwide collapse, as
anyones ken or control.
a cascade of failure brings down a global order that is now approximately 250
years old (i.e., close to what Glubb deems to be the natural lifespan of a civilization). Having built up a
stupendous fabric far beyond anything that Gibbon could have conceived, the implosion to come seems
destined to be equally stupendous. Before civilization became universal, the consequences of decline and
fall may have been catastrophic for a particular society and for many or even most of its inhabitants, but
they were not fatal to civilization itself. There were always others to keep the flame alive. Or a lurking
horde of barbarians poised to bring fresh blood to a tired and moribund society. But now that a highly
interdependent, global, industrial civilization extends its monopoly to the ends of the earth, there are no
others to pick up the baton, nor any barbarian reservoirs to replenish its lan. Collapse, if and
when it comes again, will this time be global , says Tainer. It will also be
uniquely devastating. Given the enormous growth of populations and the extent of ecological
devastation and social dislocation caused by industrialization as well as the degree to which the methods
and materials of traditional agriculture have been abandoned in the rush to ramp up yields by converting
fossil fuel into food a gradual and gentle transition to a viable agrarian civilization capable of supporting
large numbers of people and a reasonable level of complexity is extremely unlikely. In fact, says Tainter,
the collapse of todays highly developed societies would almost
certainly entail vast disruptions and overwhelming loss of life, not
[to] mention a significantly lower standard of living for the
survivors. Wrights metaphor perfectly captures our plight: As we climbed the ladder of progress, we
kicked out the rungs below, leaving ourselves with no non-catastrophic way back to a less complex mode
of existence. At this point, even a return to a hunting and gathering would be challenging. Apart from a
few bands of isolated Tupi-Guarani in the Amazon, almost all of the remaining, scattered tribal peoples
have lost the territory, knowledge, and traditions that would enable them to survive if industrial civilization
were to collapse. What is to be done? First, we must recognize that the deep structural
problems elucidated above have no feasible solutions. Like Glubb, but for different reasons, Tainter does
not believe that todays societies can escape the dynamic that eventuates in collapse. A military-industrial
arms race among the sub-units of the existing global civilization rives increased complexity and resource
the task is not to
consumption regardless of costs, human or ecological. Hence, second,
forestall a foreordained collapse but, rather, to salvage as much as
possible from it, lest the fall precipitate a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization
are partially or completely lost. To this end, just as prudent mariners carry lifeboats and practice
a global civilization in its terminal phase would be well
abandoning ship,
advised to prepare arks, storehouses, and banks designed to preserve the
persons, tools, and materials with which to retain or reconstitute
some semblance of civilized life post-collapse . This appeal to prudence will not
be readily accepted. For the hubris of every civilization is that it is, like the Titanic, unsinkable. Hence the
motivation to plan for shipwreck is lacking. In addition, the civilizations contradictions and difficulties are
seen not as symptoms of impending collapse, but, rather, as problems to be solved by better policies and
personnel. In other words, the populace does not yet understand that the civilization has reached an
impasse. As Tainter notes, It takes protracted hardship to convince people that the world to which they
have been accustomed has changed irrevocably. Moreover, although collapse may be foreordained, its
course and timing are largely unpredictable. Collapse could happen suddenly or gradually, sooner or later,
so why act now? To make matters worse, preparing for this uncertain future requires present sacrifice
that is, the diversion of resources from both current consumption and from the task of coping with todays
problems at a time when those very same resources are becoming scarcer and more expensive. In short,
denial, evasion, and procrastination are all but inevitable. Thus if preparations for collapse are made at
all, they are likely to be too little and too late. Modern civilization is therefore bound for a worse fate than
the Titanic. When it sinks, the lifeboats, if any, will be ill provisioned, and no one will come to its rescue.
Humanity will undoubtedly survive. Civilization as we know it will
not. Although it would be intellectually dishonest of me to suggest any other outcome a tragic
denouement followed by a lengthy time of troubles I can envision an alternative to
civilization as it is currently conceived and constituted. This
alternative, which could not be imposed but would have to emerge slowly and organically, should
allow humanity to thrive in reasonable numbers on a limiter planet
for millennia to come. But it would require a fundamental change in
the ethos of civilization to wit, the deliberate renunciation of
greatness in favor of simplicity, frugality, and fraternity . For the pursuit of
greatness is always a manifestation of hubris, and hubris is always punished by nemesis. Whether human
beings are capable of such sagacity and self-restraint is a question only the future can answer.
 Crunch UQ Collapse Coming (Consumption)
The crunch is coming overconsumption causes extinction
only the transition solves
Karl Tate, 3/19/2014, Live Science, study: civilization doomed by
overconsumption, wealth inequality, http://www.livescience.com/44204-
study-civilization-doomed-by-overconsumption-wealth-inequality-
infographic.html, mm

A NASA-funded study looked at factors that cause a civilization to

collapse. In the past 5,000 years, many advanced societies have
collapsed, resulting in hundreds of years of decline and regression. Basing their model on how
predators and prey interact, the scientists concluded that societies that
collapsed had two factors in common: overconsumption of natural
resources and economic stratification. The so-called "balance of nature" works like
this: As a prey population grows, the predators that feed on them thrive as well. But once the predators
become too numerous and overconsume the prey, famine results. The predator population declines as well
In an
(a collapse). The study looked at three scenarios: Egalitarian, Equitable and Unequal.
Egalitarian society that has no elite class, an equilibrium can be
reached where the commoner population increases to the maximum
carrying capacity of the planet. However, if the population
overconsumes its resources, a collapse results from which there is no
recovery. Resources, wealth and population all go to zero. The
Equitable society divides the population into workers and
nonworkers. This society can reach equilibrium with slow growth and fairly
distributed salaries. In the Unequal scenario, the population collapses after
an apparent equilibrium when the elite population starts to take off, peaking around year
775. By year 900, everything has collapsed, and nature makes a recovery.

Ecological limits make the crunch inevitable absent the

alternative to a different societal model, extinction is
inevitable
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, 9-
11, mm

civilization resembles a long-running economic bubble .

As a process,
Civilizations convert found (or conquered) ecological wealth into economic goods and
population growth. As the bubble expands, a spirit of irrational exuberance reigns. Few take thought for the
morrow or consider that they are borrowing from posterity. Finally, however, resources are either effectively exhausted or
no longer repay the effort needed to exploit them. As massive demand collides with
dwindling supply, the ecological credit that has fueled expansion and
created a large population accustomed to living high off the hog is choked off. The civilization
begins to implode, in either a slow and measured decline or a more
rapid and chaotic collapse. As civilizations encounter emerging limits, they
will of course make every effort to innovate their way around them. However, as we shall
see later, these efforts themselves have costs that gradually accumulate. Thus the
civilizations indebtedness compounds. Unfortunately, the benefits accrue immediately, but the debts come due only
later, so the momentum of development continues. However, at some point, service on the accumulated debt begins to
preclude new investment, as more and more energy has to be expended simply running in place. Stealing resources from
others is not a permanent solution, because conquest, too, has serious costs: imperial overstretch has spelled the
downfall of many empires. Even peaceful trade provides no escape from
biophysical limits. To get resources from others, you must normally give something valuable in return
either resources themselves, or goods and services that depend ultimately on resources. In short, on a finite
planet you cannot grow forever or violate the laws of physics . If you
use renewable resources faster than they can regenerate, they will
dwindle and ultimately disappear; if you produce wastes faster than they can be rendered
harmless, they will poison you; and if you use nonrenewable resources to fuel current consumption,
they will eventually run out. Of course, the ultimate limits are rarely reached, because diminishing returns
on ecological exploitation and extraction set in well before then. Technology and good
management can forestall the day of ecological reckoning, but not
indefinitely. To make matters worse, it is not resources in general that matter, for natural processes are
governed by a basic ecological principle called the law of the minimum. Thus the factor in least supply is controlling. For
example, to grow cereals takes soil, seeds, fertilizer, and water as well as labor. Not only must all of these factors of
production be present for there to be a crop, but they must be present in the right quality or proportion. Thin soils or poor
seeds will stunt crop growth even if all the other factors are present in abundance. Thus some resources are more critical
for civilization than others. The most critical of all is water, without which life simply cannot be sustained. But as
civilizations develop, they tend to overuse and misuse their water supplies, with consequences that can be serious. For
example, salinization due to inappropriate irrigation plagued many ancient civilizations (and continues to be a problem
today). Civilizations also damage watersheds by cutting down the forests that moderate climate, promote rainfall, and
store water. In addition, the law of the minimum have a corollary: consuming to the limit when times are flush leaves a
civilization exposed to peril if resources decline in quality or quantity. For example, because rainfall varies from year to
year, water supply inevitably fluctuates. This means that past levels of agricultural production may not always be
achievable, threatening the civilization with hunger or even famine. To restate the corollary in prescriptive form ,
consistently pressing ecological limits is risky to the point of being
suicidal. Unfortunately, civilization does just that: as a system, its
basic mode is overshoot and collapse. That is, it tends to continue developing well beyond
the point of ecological sense (as ell as economic sense in many cases, although that is another story). In doing
so, it degrades or exhausts ecological resources that are critical for
its long-term survival. What ecologists call the carrying capacity is eroded.
When the inevitable day of reckoning arrives, the civilization
therefore experiences decline or even collapse until it comes into
balance with the remaining, impoverished resource base .
 Crunch UQ Crunch Coming (Entropy)
Entropy makes the crunch inevitable only a transition to
society with restricted rights and freedom solves
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, p.
29, mm

Civilization is trapped in a thermodynamic vicious circle from which

escape is well nigh impossible. The greater a civilization becomes,
the more the citizens produce and consume but the more they produce and
consume, the larger the increase in entropy. The longer economic
development continues, the more depletion, decay, degradation, and
disorder accumulate in the system as a whole, even if it brings a host of short-term
benefits. Depending on a variety of factors the quantity and quality of available resources, the degree of
technological and managerial skill, and so forth the process can continue for some time but not
At some point, just as in the ecological realm, a civilization exhausts its
indefinitely.
thermodynamic credit and beings to implode. The only way out
would be radically to transform civilization so that the human
economy resembled the natural economy. Nature is highly efficient in
thermodynamic terms. The steady flow of solar energy is not simply consumed but is instead used to build
up a rich and diverse capital stock. To put it more technically, nature internalizes
thermodynamic costs, using the same matter and energy over and over to wring a maximum of
life out of a minimum of energy. Although it might be theoretically possible for
the human economy to mimic the natural economy, it would involve
a radical transformation of civilization as we know it. Societies would have
to be far more intricately and closely coupled just as in natural ecosystems.
And individuals would have to tolerate strong checks on human will
and desire that is, powerful negative feedback, just as in natural
ecosystems. But even if such a hive-like existence were somehow acceptable, one would have to
question whether human beings have the managerial capacity to sustain it. Let us, therefore, turn to the
fourth biophysical limit that confronts civilization: the challenge of complexity.
 Crunch UQ Laws of Thermodynamics
Growth and consumption and unsustainable the laws of
thermodynamics prove
William Ophuls, 2011, Platos Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology, p. x-
xi, (Ophuls received a PhD in Political Science from Yale in 1973, served for
eight years as a Foreign Service Officer in Washington and Tokyo, and has
taught at Northwestern University), [this evidence has been edited for
gendered language], mm

This failure to grasp that the root of the disease is not defective public policies but a
defective public philosophy motivated me to resume the discussion in 1997 with Requiem
for Modern Politics. In that work, I argued that the modern political paradigm that is, the
body of political concepts and beliefs inherited from Thomas Hobbes and his successors was bound
for self-destruction even before the emergence of ecological
scarcity. That paradigm is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable because any polity that
abandons virtue and rejects community necessarily becomes the author of its own demise. The
tendencies toward moral decay, social breakdown, economic excess, and
administrative despotism that are evident everywhere in the so-called developed world testify
to the need for a new public philosophy on political as well as ecological grounds. This book attempts to
sketch the basic outline of such a philosophy a natural law theory of politics grounded in ecology,
physics, and psychology. In doing so, I make explicit the basic principles of ecological polity that were
implicit in my previous work and add new material to make the theory more robust. I start from the radical
premise that sustainability as usually understood is an oxymoron. Industrial man
[people] has used the found wealth of the New World and the stocks of fossil
hydrocarbons to create an antiecological Titanic. Making the deck chairs
recyclable, feeding the boilers with biofuels, installing hybrid winches and windlasses, and every other
effort to green the Titanic will ultimately fail. In the end, the ship is
doomed by the laws of thermodynamics and by implacable biological
and geological limits that are already beginning to bite . We shall soon be
obliged to trade in the Titanic for a schooner in other words, a postindustrial future that, however
technologically sophisticated, resembles the preindustrial past in many important respects. This book
attempts to envision the politics of that smaller, simpler, humbler vessel.
 Crunch UQ Transition Key
The crunch is coming we are entering a sixth mass
extinction only the transition can solve
Dovey 6/23/15
Dana Dovey, writer for Medical daily cites study from scientists at Stanford,
Princeton and Berkeley
http://www.medicaldaily.com/end-world-6th-mass-extinction-earths-history-
has-begun-and-humans-may-not-survive-339480

Extinction is a natural part of life. With each passing century species enter and fade
from existence, but mass extinctions are few and far between . To date,
Earth has seen only five, with the last one taking out the dinosaurs
about 65 million years ago. However, according to a recent study
completed by an international team of biologists, we are currently in
the midst of a sixth mass extinction, and humans may be one of the first species to die
off. Stories on pollution, habitat destruction, and the impending end of days are nothing new. What
marks this collaborative paper apart from the countless number of doomsday predictions is that it is based
on accurate and hard-to-dispute scientific data. Using fossil records, the team compared natural extinction
rates, which are also known as background extinction rates, to current extinction rates, and came up with
some disturbing figures. Results showed that even with conservative estimates, species today are
disappearing up to 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions. We emphasize that
our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to
According
place a realistic lower bound on humanitys impact on biodiversity, the researchers wrote.
to Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a researcher involved in the study, "[The study]
shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the
sixth great mass extinction event." Whats A Mass Extinction? The mass extinction of
the dinosaurs, scientifically known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction, is the best known of all
mass extinctions, but it is only one of five extinction events believed to have occurred on Earth. Mass
extinctions are defined as periods where abnormal or above average numbers of species completely die
out. For example, BBC reports that in the Permian mass extinction, which occurred an estimated 248
million years ago, about 96 percent of all of Earths species died out. The International Union for
Conversation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species, estimates
the current specter of extinction could wipe out 41 percent of amphibian species, 26 percent of all
mammals, and 13 percent of birds. It takes the Earth millions of years to recover
from mass extinctions. In the press release, senior author Geraldo Ceballos said, "Our species
itself would likely disappear early on." In a video clip, Ehrlich explains that this is because of our
dependence on the natural services that other species provide. Examples of this include the pollination
of crops and climate control. We are not likely to lose the honey bee as a species but we are already
losing it in lots of places where its important, say for pollinating your almond orchards, Ehrlich said. Past
extinctions were brought about by a number of uncontrollable factors, such as climate change, sea level
shifts, and possibly a large, catastrophic asteroid impact. What marks this current descent into extinction
as different is not only that it's believed to be completely man-made but also that it might be avoidable if
we take action against it now. The team writes that deforestation for farming and settlement, the
introduction of invasive species, carbon emissions, and our introducing toxins to the environment are
permanently and irreversibly destroying ecosystems. Despite the grim news, it may still be a bit early to
start building a doomsday bunker. Through intensified conservation efforts, we may still be able to
preserve the Earths ecosystem. But the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, the researchers said.
"Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly
intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to
alleviate pressures on their populations notably habitat loss, over-
exploitation for economic gain, and climate change ," they wrote.
 Crunch UQ AT Growth Sustainable
(Technology)
Tech doesnt make growth sustainable entropy and the
Jevons Paradox
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, 25-
26, mm

technological improvements actually increase

In addition,
thermodynamic costs. Take the substitution of the automobile for the horse. To make a horse
requires a modest investment in pasture, water, and fodder for the two to three years it takes from
conception until the horse can work. But to make a car requires not only many direct inputs steel, copper,
fuel, water, chemicals, and so forth but also many indirect ones such as a factory and labor force as well
as the matter and energy needed to sustain them. To use a technical term, the embodied energy in the
car is many times that in the horse. In addition, the thermodynamic cost of operating the car is far greater.
A horse needs only a modicum of hay, water and oats procured locally without too much difficulty. But the
auto requires oil wells, refineries, tankers, gasoline stations, mechanics shops, and so on that is, a
myriad of direct inputs that are difficult and expensive to procure, as well as a host of indirect costs. So the
substitution of auto for the horse may have brought many advantages, but at a heavy thermodynamic
price. Even the technological leap represented by the computer is no different. Its partisans may believe
that it will be the instrument of humanitys final liberation from the tyranny of nature, but a quick glance at
the enormous quantity of embodied energy in each computer and in the systems that support it, plus the
The idea that
major energy requirements needed to operate networks, testify otherwise.
technology will allow us to do ever more with ever less is a delusion.
The more humanity resorts to technology, the more it expedites
entropy (and generates other problems that we shall take up in the next chapter). It is vital to
understand that technology is not a source of energy. That is, it is not a fuel in its own
right, only a means for putting fuel to work or for transforming one energy resource into another. Thus, for
example, coal can be converted into gasoline but at a high thermodynamic price, because much of the
technology can make the
potential energy in the coal is lost in the process. Or
conversion of energy more efficient but, as e have seen, only up to a
point. (Moreover, gains in efficiency tend to be nullified by increases
in demand, a phenomenon known as Jevons Paradox). Similarly,
technology can make new energy resources available but only by
expanding energy to find and exploit them. So technology does not
make energy out of thin air. On the contrary, technology is always ultimately
dependent on the supply of energy. If the quantity or quality of
energy resources dwindles, the power of technology declines along
with them.
Authoritarianism UQ
 Auth. UQ Transition Now
Global authoritarianism is increasing now halting the
spread of liberal ideals like privacy is key to sustaining
the containment of democracy
Christopher Walker, 6/13/2014, (Walker is an executive director of the
International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for
Democracy), The Washington Post, Authoritarian regimes are changing how
the world defines democracy,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/christopher-walker-authoritarian-
regimes-are-changing-how-the-world-defines-
democracy/2014/06/12/d1328e3a-f0ee-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html,
mm

In 1947, George Kennans X-Article argued for a policy of containment to combat the spread of Soviet
influence. That policy would become the basic strategy of the United States throughout the Cold War.
More than six decades later, in an underappreciated twist, todays leading authoritarian
regimes are turning containment on its head, using massive
resources and coordinated political efforts to chip away at the rules-
based institutions that have served as the glue for the post-Cold War liberal order, while checking
the reform ambitions of aspiring democracies and reshaping the way the world
thinks about democracy. Call it the democracy containment
doctrine. Russias destabilization of Ukraine, where Moscow has annexed Crimea and provoked a
debilitating separatist rebellion in the eastern part of that country, has dominated the news recently. But
this action should be seen for what it is: a Kremlin containment effort to prevent Ukrainians from achieving
a democratically accountable government that would threaten Russias corrupt authoritarian system. The
Ukraine example is just one small part of a vast containment
ambition led by the regimes in Moscow, Beijing, Riyadh and Tehran ,
which may disagree on many things but share an interest in limiting the spread of democracy. The
strategy has evolved in three key areas. The first concerns
institutions. Seeing regional and international rules-based bodies as a threat to regime interests,
authoritarians have focused their efforts on hobbling key institutions democracy and human rights
mechanisms. Russia, in cooperation with other authoritarian regimes in Eurasia, has undermined the
human rights dimensions of the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, especially the latters election-monitoring and media-freedom functions. Venezuela plays a
Within the United
similarly harmful role with regard to the Organization of American States.
Nations, an authoritarian fraternity led by Security Council members China and Russia
routinely blocks democracy-friendly measures on a range of issues. Iran, along
with China and Russia, is pursuing greater control of the Internet in intergovernmental bodies worldwide.
As the authoritarians whittle away at democratic standards, they have created their own clubs, such as the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian Customs Union, that mimic their liberal
counterparts but whose aim is to institutionalize authoritarian norms. Through a treaty arrangement with
SCO members, China has challenged the norm against refoulement the return of persecuted individuals
to the hands of their persecutors by using a designation of terrorist as the basis for repatriation. China
has persuaded non-SCO countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia to cooperate with this new standard.
More broadly, authoritarian regimes work with each other to monitor activists and oppositionists and block
their movement, for instance through international watchlists and blacklists that are generated within
The second sphere relates to
the context of the SCO and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
the containment of both young democracies and middle-performing countries with
reform ambitions whose democratic success would pose a threat to authoritarian regimes. In
addition to Ukraine, Russia pursues a disruptive policy toward democratic hopefuls Georgia and Moldova.
The Baltic states, although NATO and European Union members, nevertheless are targets of Kremlin-
backed political efforts and media campaigns that aim to raise doubts about the integrity of their young
democracies. China is taking measures to slowly squeeze the democracy out of Hong Kong. Saudi Arabias
political and security commitment to Bahrains government has served to contain its smaller neighbors
The third sphere of containment is in the realm of ideas.
democracy movement.
These regimes may not be ideological in the Cold War sense, but they understand the
importance of ideas, which explains a good deal about why they
work so hard to try to prevent the emergence of alternative ones
within their own systems. With time, they have fine-tuned
arguments that share the goal of creating an anti-American, anti-
democracy narrative. This matters because the best-resourced regimes especially China
and Russia have built formidable traditional and new media outlets that enable them to project such
messages into the global marketplace. This prowess is especially apparent in the developing world, where
a new battle of ideas is underway. China has an enormous media presence in sub-Saharan Africa and has
rapidly gained a foothold there. Its multibillion-dollar international CCTV has programs in Arabic, French,
Russian and Spanish, and the state news agency Xinhua is expanding worldwide. Russias RT, in addition to
its virulently anti-Western English programming, broadcasts its jaundiced view of the world around the
clock in Spanish and Arabic. While the authoritarians claim that their massive international broadcasting
ventures are needed to offer an unfiltered view of their countries, it is telling that these state-led media
conglomerates devote so much of their programing to assailing the West and the idea of democracy. We
can infer from this that the emerging authoritarian doctrine reflects the need for leaders in Moscow, Beijing
and elsewhere to contain what they fear and do not possess: democratic accountability and legitimacy.
Given the stakes for the liberal order, the democratic world will need
to develop a serious long game sooner rather than later to respond to the
growing challenge presented by the migration of the authoritarians illiberal norms beyond their
borders.

Global authoritarianism is increasing now

Larry Luxner, 4/22/2015, Atlantic Council, Authoritarianism stages a
comeback, http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-
atlanticist/authoritarianism-stages-a-comeback, mm

From Azerbaijans Ilham Aliyev to Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe, dictators seem to be gaining
the upper hand these daysoutsmarting the most determined pro-
democracy activists with a clever mix of 21st-century technology
and old-fashioned repression. Why this is happening, and what we can do about it, is the
subject of an insightful new book that covers the A-to-Z of dictatorship around the globe: Is
Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? The answer is a resounding
yes, according to half a dozen scholars who gathered April 21 at the Atlantic Council to discuss the book
and its implications. The panel included the volumes two editors, Mathew Burrows and Maria J. Stephan,
The success rate
who together lead the Atlantic Councils Future of Authoritarianism project.
of civil disobedience has declined to a rate not seen since the 1950s .
Its worrisome, said Stephan, a Senior Policy Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).
Theres an element of authoritarian resilience around the world .

Global authoritarianism is consolidating now but the

transition could be derailed by a democratic resurgence
Democracy Digest, 7/3/2014, Are the authoritarians winning?
http://demdigest.net/blog/authoritarians-winning/, mm
 the advance of democratic
For the first time since the end of the cold war,
constitutionalism has stopped, the Harvard Kennedy Schools Michael Ignatieff asserts:
In the 1930s travelers returned from Mussolinis Italy, Stalins Russia, and Hitlers Germany praising the
hearty sense of common purpose they saw there, compared to which their own democracies seemed
weak, inefficient, and pusillanimous. Democracies today are in the middle of a similar period of envy and
Authoritarian competitors are aglow with arrogant
despondency.
confidence. In the 1930s, Westerners went to Russia to admire Stalins Moscow subway stations;
today they go to China to take the bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai, and just as in the 1930s, they
return wondering why autocracies can build high-speed railroad lines seemingly overnight, while
The Francis Fukuyama
democracies can take forty years to decide they cannot even begin.
momentwhen in 1989 Westerners were told that liberal democracy was the final form toward which
all political striving was directednow looks like a quaint artifact of a vanished unipolar
moment. The conflict between authoritarianism and democracy is not a new cold war, we are told,
because the new authoritarians lack an expansionary ideology like communism, he writes for the New
York Review of Books. This is not true. Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model
of state domination it is very much alive in the Peoples Republic of China and in Putins police state, he
notes: Nor does this new authoritarianism lack an economic strategy. Its goal is a familiar form of
modernization that secures the benefits of global integration without sacrificing political and ideological
control over its populations. Its economic model is price-fixing state capitalism and its legal system is rule
by (often corrupt) fiat in place of the rule of law. Its ethics rejects moral universalism in favor of a claim
that the Chinese and Russian civilizations are self-contained moral worlds. Persecution of gays, therefore, is
not some passing excess, but is intrinsic to their vision of themselves as bulwarks against Western
individualism. Russias and Chinas strategic visions may draw on different historical experiences, but the
messages they take from their histories are similar. Both dwell on the humiliations they have received at
the hands of the West. Both explicitly refuse to accept liberal democracy as a model. Both insist that their
twentieth-century experience of revolution and civil war necessitates centralized rule with an iron fist. The
Chinese and Russian variants of authoritarian modernization draw upon different resources, and they
remain geostrategic competitors, one rising, the other trying to halt its decline, but both see good reasons
to align their interests for the medium term. This commonality of interest is strikingthey vote together on
the Security Council, persecute their own dissidents, and jointly stick up for exterminatory dictatorship in
Syria. In their shared resentment toward the American world order, they have spoken as one since the day
the Americans bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. The
new authoritarians
offer the elites of Africa and Eurasia an alternate route to modern
development: growth without democracy and progress without freedom, notes Ignatieff. This is
the siren song some African, Latin American, and Asian political elites, especially the kleptocrats, want to
hear. U.S. no longer vanguard of democracy President Obamas recent address at West Point suggests
that he is listening to a new doctrine of restraint, he writes, one which captures a sense, among
America no longer has the power to shape the international
conservatives and progressives alike, that
no longer can imagine itself as the vanguard
order as it once did. In particular, it
democracy of an advancing global order of democracies. The Economists
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge urge Western democrats to learn from their authoritarian
competitors, says Ignatieff: The fact that Singapore and Shanghai are better governed than Detroit or Los
Angeles is hardly news. The issue is whether authoritarian governance is sustainable in the face of
demands by the middle class to be treated like citizens, and whether such governance is capable of
dealing with radical shocks like a long-term economic slowdown of the kind currently predicted for China.
The authoritarian archipelago is arrogant but it is brittle: it must
control everything, or soon it controls nothing. The saving grace of democracy is
its adaptability. It depends for its vitality on discontent. Discontent leads to peaceful regime change, and
as regimes change, free societies can discard failed alternatives.
 Auth. UQ Crunch Makes it Inevitable
The crunch makes a transition to authoritarianism
inevitable
Mark Beeson, 3/30/2010, (Department of Political Science and
International Relations, University of Western Australia, Perth), The coming
of environmental authoritarianism, Environmental Politics, vol 19, no 2,
https://www.academia.edu/539179/The_coming_of_environmental_authoritari
anism, mm

The environment has become the defining public policy issue of the era. Not only will political responses
continuing
to environmental challenges determine the health of the planet, but
environmental degradation may also affect political systems. This
interaction is likely to be especially acute in parts of the world where environmental problems are most
pressing and the states ability to respond to such challenges is weakest.One possible
consequence of environmental degradation is the development or
consolidation of authoritarian rule as political elites come to privilege regime maintenance and
internal stability over political liberalisation. Even efforts to mitigate the impact of, or respond
to, environmental change may involve a decrease in individual
liberty as governments seek to transform environmentally destructive behaviour. As a result,
environmental authoritarianism may become an increasingly
common response to the destructive impacts of climate change in an age of diminished
expectations. Long before the recent global economic crisis inflicted such
a blow on Anglo-American forms of economic organisation, it was
apparent that there were other models of economic development
and other modes of political organisation that had admirers around
the world. The rise of illiberal forms of capitalism and an apparent
democratic recession serve as a powerful reminders that there was
nothing inevitable about the triumph of Western political and
economic practices or values (Zakaria 2003, Diamond 2008). Nowhere has the potential
importance of authoritarian, state-led capitalist development been more evident than in East Asia.1 An
examination of East Asias development and the concomitant environmental problems it generates
highlights a number of broad-ranging trends that have widespread relevance.
Alt
 Environment Solvency Democracy Fails/Eco-
Authoritarianism Good
Democratic choice theory ensures environmental
destruction only eco-authoritarianism solves
Matthew Humprhey, 2007, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory:
The challenge to the deliberative ideal, p. 12-13, mm

The second set of background assumptions concerned the motivational aspects of human behavior and the
problems of co-ordinating collective responses to collective problems. The understanding of the
motivations and execution of human actions were based upon the rational actor model in its
people have a much clearer understanding
Schumpeterian mode. For Schumpter,
of their own personal, short-term interests than they do of their interests in respect
of political questions, which frequently relate to policy choices filtered through complex social and
economic problems and long-term time horizons. There are good reasons for this; we have sufficient
control over the circumstances of our daily lives such that our actions can make a genuine difference to
our welfare. If we know we can get the same model car cheaper at one showroom rather than another, or
we understand that an item of electrical equipment is still under guarantee and can be exchanged for
something new, this is important information. When it comes to the world of democratic politics, however,
the understanding of the average citizens, says Schumpeter, drops to that of a primitive, who fails to
understand complex processes of cause and effect (1943: 262). Who can say whether a drop in interest
rates two years ago caused inflation today? Or whether a rise in the value of the national currency in the
past led to increased unemployment now? It is not merely that these complex causal process are difficult
to understand, it is also that the average citizen has no incentive to try and understand them, which would
involve a great deal of effort for little reward (the reward of a better informed vote, for example, which
would have no more effect on the outcome of an election than an uninformed vote. Inefficacy does not
The implication of this argument is that when
reward information gathering).
citizens do come to take political action within a democracy, they
will be motivated by a narrow conception of their interests , and will
possess only a very rough understanding of how to promote them through the ballot box. This certainly
eco-authoritarians, who have no faith in the
appears to be the assumption of the
ability of citizens to act democratically with regard to a more
(ecologically) enlightened sense of their self-interest . Citizens cannot
be expected to vote for new laws that would curtail their existing
freedoms in the name of long-term environmental sustainability . Nor
can they be expected to modify their individual behavior through
appeals to an environmental ethic; and even if they did that, it
would be counter-productive for them in the long run, at least for
certain important behaviors (as explained in the following paragraphs).
 Environment Solvency China Proves
Eco-authoritarianism solves China proves
Thomas Friedman, 9/8/2009, New York Times, Our One-Party
Democracy, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html?
_r=0, mm

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following
conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy,
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But
which is what we have in America today.
when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today ,
it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically
difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st
century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric
cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power .
Chinas leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising
emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy
efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering
the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
 Alt AT Elites Wont be Benevolent/Wont Last
1NC Humphrey evidence says this version of
authoritarianism will not be abusive the alternative
ensures a class of virtuous elites committed to ecological
integrity rise to the top that prevents abuses of power
Eco-authoritarianism will be benevolent and durable a
political class already exists and the Roman Catholic
Church provides an appropriate model
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 134-35, mm

Government in the future will be based upon (or incorporate, depending on the level of
breakdown of civilization) a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise
specially trained philosopher/ecologists . These guardians will either rule
themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based upon their
ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for this task.
In the meantime can we move forward? There are those unsullied by the search for
power and influence and with ability, who already serve humanity with meager
financial reward in the professions, in science and medicine, in the
entrepreneurial social services, and, yes, in the religious orders, but they are not
prepared to join the political rabble. And even if they were, the present political cabal would not move
over for them. The emergence of the World Social Forum may offer some lessons in networking
individuals with common goals, the seed of an international organization for environmental equity and
sustainability. This would not be inward looking and self-serving like various Zionist organizations or the
Yale Skull and Bones, but might be universal like a reformed Roman Catholic Church. Come back St.
Authoritarian leadership exists in the Roman Catholic Church where
Francis!
power and greed are successfully suppressed to deliver spiritual succor to
the believers and nourishment for the poor. Lessons can be learned from the
modus operandi of this Church . In its service to humanity it publicly abhors
the destructiveness of both totalitarianism and capitalism , and its views might allow
it to be the chrysalis of care for the earth through directions to its flock. As Pope John Paul II stated: The
ecological crisis is a moral issue . . . respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also
to the rest of creation . . . Humanity has disappointed Gods expectations. Man, especially in our time, has
without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfi gured the earths habitat,
made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydrological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas
into deserts and undertaken unrestrained industrialization . . . We must therefore encourage and support
the ecological conversion which in recent years has made humanity more sensitive to the catastrophe to
which it has been heading.36 A recurrent theme in this text is the need for a new religious basis to
modern life to give substance and meaning to peoples existence as an alternative to consumerism and
materialism. A green pope who actively pursued the philosophical words of Pope John Paul II quoted
above would make a substantial contribution to the saving of civilization. But there is another important
The Roman Catholic Church is one of
contribution that Catholicism offers to our argument.
the longest surviving Western institutions. It is much older than the common
law, democracy, the English language, and Western science. The Church has seen
the collapse of one civilization (the Roman), has existed through a dark age, and survived wars,
it is truly remarkable and offers to all of us a
revolutions, and plagues. As a social institution
lesson in how to set up an organization for long-term survival. What is
important for our argument is that the Roman Catholic Church, unlike the fragmented
Protestant churches, has a rigid authoritarian structure and a strict hierarchy of
rule. If the Roman Catholic Church had been run as a democratic institution, as the Protestant churches
have been to some degree, it is highly doubtful whether the Roman Catholic Church would have
survived. We do not see in the Church an exact model to replicate for an alternative authoritarian model
of government, as it obviously would be a dangerous gamble to have one person as a political pope or
the survival of the Church as an authoritarian structure
world emperor. Nevertheless
does indicate that authoritarian systems, if set up correctly, can be long
lasting and stable.
 Alt AT Authoritarianism Bad
1NC Humphrey evidence says this version of
authoritarianism will not be abusive the alternative
ensures a class of virtuous elites committed to ecological
integrity rise to the top that prevents abuses of power
Historical failures of authoritarianism do not disprove the
alternative eco-authoritarianism learns from past
failures to avoid repeating them
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 124, mm

In proposing that liberal democracies will be replaced by authoritarian structures, we differ somewhat
from a select group of environmentalist writers who have also rejected a liberal democratic solution to the
environmental crisis.12 In general, such writers have felt that only centrally commanded economies can
meet the challenge of dealing with the environmental crisis. We do not join that camp. We recognize that
command economies committed to militarism and industrialization can be just as destructive, if not more
so than liberal democracies. The former Soviet Union is not our idea of paradise on
earth. Planned economies, where there is an attempt by a body of elite planners to coordinate
all aspects of an economy, is a recipe for disaster because there is simply too much information,
chaotic nonlinear effects, and unpredictable events to permit accurate planning. However we
believe that many aspects of the economy must be firmly regulated. This
position is a long way away from a planned economy. We have no lingering belief that
communism could or will save humanity, but we hold that when civilization-threatening
changes occur, liberal democratic solutions are the first things to go. The rule of law is abandoned, and
the rule of the strong dominates. We are not indicating that we like this; we are maintaining as a matter of
Nor are we supporting
real politick that this is what occurs historically and is likely to occur again.
a form of authoritarianism as witnessed in Nazi Germany where one Fuhrer makes
fundamental decisions about life and death for society. Such forms of authoritarianism typically lead to
social disaster when the leader, following the weaknesses of human will, succumbs to corruption or
madness.Our form of authoritarianism looks to the leadership of an entire
stratum of society rather than one individual or even part, and there is a
better chance that corruption and madness of the Hitler and Stalin levels can
we weeded out. But there is no guarantee; human life is uncertain and down the track, human life
promises to be desperate.
 Alt AT Human Nature
Historical evidence proves authoritarianism is more in line
with human nature than liberalism
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 130, mm

The hypothesis that a steady state economy will characterize the new order
follows from the limits to growth thesis defended in this book. If a growth economy is not
sustainable, then the economy must be either a steady state nongrowth economy or one that is
constantly decreasing and degenerating. A degenerating economy eventually leads to economic collapse
A
that is nonsustainable. By elimination, a sustainable economy must be a steady state economy.
future society is likely to be stratified and nonegalitarian because history
shows that this is the way societies in the past have been . The hypothesis defended
in this book is that liberalism and its values, as well as democracy, are just
moments in human history. It is likely that the human brain is hardwired for
authoritarianism, for dominance, and submission (chapter 5). This is a
reasonable scientific hypothesis that better fits the available historical
evidence than the hypothesis of liberal egalitarianism .
Aff Answers
 Aff AT Auth. Inevitable/Global Demo Resilient
Global democracy is resilient the US isnt key our
evidence assumes current trends
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm

This is an odd moment to predict a bright future for democracy. Despite the
unprecedented expansion of political freedom during the three decades from 1974, democratic regimes
are in trouble worldwide today. The past decade has witnessed democratic
breakdowns at a growing pace, and levels of freedom have receded in many places. Autocrats are
cooperating and innovating to preempt movements for democratic change. The worlds oldest and
most esteemed democracies, beginning with the United States , have lost
their luster and (it seems) their capacity to function effectively to address their most important
public policy challenges. Still, no other broadly legitimate form of government exists
today, and authoritarian regimes face profound challenges and
contradictions that they cannot resolve without ultimately moving toward
democracy. During the past century, democracy went from being a unique feature of the West (and
a few Western-leaning Latin American countries) to a system incorporated by a growing number of
nonWestern countries, most of them former British colonies that reached independence during the first
two decades after World War II. But the rise of communism and fascism and the shock of the Great
Depression during the interwar period had occasioned what the political scientist Samuel Huntington
called a reverse wave of democratic breakdowns. From the late 1950s to the mid- 1970s, the world
wrestled with a second reverse wave, during which military coups swallowed fragile and often deeply
polarized democracies in Latin America, Greece, Turkey, and parts of Asia, while elsewhere in Asia and
Africa one-party or personal authoritarian regimes came to dominate. A number of factors fed the
authoritarian zeitgeist: the spectacular failures of some democracies to govern effectively or maintain
order, the successes of East Asian developmental dictatorships, the popularity in poor countries of
authoritarian socialist models and ideologies, and the US-Soviet Cold War rivalry that saw each
superpower back any dictator who would offer geopolitical support. By the mid-1970s, democracy
seemed to many a quaint relic of a liberal pasta model of where the world had been, not where it was
headed. Then came Portugals Revolution of the Carnations in April 1974, overturning nearly half a
century of quasi-fascist dictatorship, and a new wave of democratization began. Even with the rise of
democracy in Portugal, Spain, and Greece in the subsequent few years, and then the transitions from
military to democratic rule in Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, few imagined that a truly
global process of transformation was under way. Even the popular protests that toppled Ferdinand
Marcos in the Philippines, or the student demonstrations that compelled the military to hand over power
The fall of the Berlin Wall, however, changed
in South Korea, did not suggest a global trend.
everything. Not only did it spark democratic transitions in Central and
Eastern Europe; the end of the Cold War unfroze the African landscape and
encouraged democratic openings throughout the continent. By the mid-
1990s, democracy had become a global phenomenon, accounting for about
three of every five states in the world.
Global democratization is consolidating now the US isnt
key
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm

Even so,a surprising number of other emerging democracies have met a litmus
test of reasonably liberal democracy (garnering one of the two best scores on the seven-point
Freedom House scales of both political rights and civil liberties). Forty percent of the worlds states
and about twothirds of the worlds democracies (or 79 nations in all) now meet this
test. And while the number and proportion of liberal democracies have hardly
changed in the last seven years, at least they have not declined. Moreover, a
number of other emerging market countries have consolidated a decent
level of democracyin the sense that it is very difficult to imagine another reversal of democracy in these
countries. To the extent that they find democratic consolidation a useful concept, most scholars of Brazil would put it
in this category. The same is true for Mexico, where democracy has survived in the face of widespread violence related
to drug trafficking. For all its disturbing levels of corruption, clientelism, paralysis, and dysfunction, it is similarly
difficult to imagine democracy being replaced by another type of regime in India. If, after a disappointing second term
for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia elects a reformist president in 2014 (such as the energetic,
progressive governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, who is now leading in the polls), Indonesian democracy might also turn in
a more liberal and stable direction. South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Indonesia are among the emerging market
members of the Group of 20 industrialized nations Three other members of that clubTurkey, Argentina, and South
Africafall into the category of more troubled or embattled democracies, with ruling executives and parties that appear
to harbor hegemonic ambitions. Each of the three will hold national elections in 2014 or 2015, during which each could
move either in the direction of further democratic decay or toward a more liberal and rooted democracy. Having
decimated the old power establishment in suspiciously wide-ranging trials of alleged coup plotters, while also continuing
to intimidate and constrain the press, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party
(AKP) remain the dominant political force in Turkey. After serving more than a decade as prime minister, Erdogan (whose
partys rules bar him from seeking another term in that post) is trying to change the constitution to create a muscular,
French-style semi-presidential system, which would enable him to remain in power for a long time. Turkey will hold its
first direct presidential election in August 2014, but it is not at all clear that Erdogan will succeed in amending the
constitution to give that post the strong executive powers he seeks. Widespread youth protests in recent months signal
the beginning of a societal pushback against the AKPs autocratic governing style. In Argentina, President Cristina
Fernndez de Kirchners bid to aggrandize her power has already failed. In midterm elections in late October 2013, her
party fell far short of the two-thirds majority it would need to amend the constitution to allow her a third term. Political
momentum is now shifting from her party due to corruption and economic mismanagement, and Argentines are
beginning to look beyond what will be a dozen years of rule by Fernndez de Kirchner and her late husband, Nstor
Kirchner. In South Africa, while there is little doubt that President Jacob Zumas African National Congress will win the
2014 national elections, a viable multiracial opposition is slowly beginning to rise in the form of the Democratic
Alliance, the countrys only party to have steadily and significantly increased its share of the vote in each of the four
post-apartheid national elections. Led by a savvy and effective institution builder, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille,
the Democratic Alliance is gradually expanding from its roots in South Africas racial minorities to appeal to black
voters dissatisfied with corruption, high unemployment, and poor service deliverylong-standing problems that have
The fate of democracy outside the West will be shaped
only grown worse under Zuma.
disproportionately by what happens in these weighty G-20 countries that could move
in either directionIndonesia, Argentina, Turkey, and South Africaand by whether Brazil and India can demonstrate
If
the ability of large democracies to generate vigorous, sustainable, and reasonably equitable economic growth.
these countries move even incrementally to entrench democracy and deliver
development, the G-20 will have become a strong club of democracies, with
only Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia holding out.
Global democracy is increasing liberal values and civil
society are trending upwards
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm

There are other reasons for optimism about the future of democracy. Particularly in
Asia, economic development in a number of countries is having the predictable effects it had in South
With rising levels of education and
Korea and Taiwan, and before that in Spain and Portugal.
incomes and growing access to information, values are changing . People are
becoming more tolerant of diversity, more politically demanding and
assertive, and more willing to protest. As Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and
Christian Welzel of Leuphana University put it, peoples value priorities are shifting from
material gain to emancipation from authority. Closely intertwined with this
psychological shift is the rise of civil societyof independent organizations and flows of
information, opinion, and ideas. These psychological and social changes undermine the legitimacy of
authoritarian rule and generate favorable conditions for democratization in Asianot only in Malaysia
and Singapore, where it will probably happen within a decade, but in China itself, where both the decay
of communist rule and the rise of a middle-class society are much more advanced than has generally
been appreciated. Without major political reforms, it is unlikely that communist rule can survive in China
beyond Xi Jinpings expected two five-year terms as president. And in terms of the pressure for political
change, Vietnam is not all that far behind China (particularly given South Vietnams earlier experience
with more pluralistic politics and more capitalist economics). Factor in as well the incremental progress
toward reviving democracy in Thailand, the efforts of reformist President Benigno Aquino to rein in
corruption in the Philippines, and a political opening in Myanmar (though it is still far from democracy),
it becomes possible to imagine that one of the most powerful emerging-
and
market trading blocs could be predominantly democratic within a decade.
 Aff AT Growth Unsustainable
Growth is sustainable innovation constantly increases
our carrying capacity
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm

When one factors in the growth of the proportion of GDP of services, the picture becomes even less
foreboding. Services have become the major drivers of global economic growth. They constitute over
63% of global GDP and well over 70% of GDP in the developed world,6 and the proportion is increasing.
While services such as translation, consulting, planning, accounting, massage therapy, legal advice, etc.,
also consume some natural resources, the quantity is infinitesimal in relation to the economic value
produced. If I manufacture a car for $10,000 I have consumed a huge amount of natural resources and
energy. But if I translate a 100,000-word book for $10,000 I have consumed merely the electricity
necessary to run my computer, and the electricity used to send the translation as an email attachment,
Consumers and the consumer society are not
and little else that is even measurable.
the problem. The problem lies in the production methods presently used by
manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. And the solution lies in the revolutions that are
also presently taking place in material science, water engineering, energy
harvesting, and food production. We might speculate that the world economy can
continue to grow indefinitely at 4%-5% a year while our negative footprint
on the planet simultaneously declines. By the end of this century the planet
will be able to carry a population of 12 billion people with an American
standard of living and one-tenth the present negative environmental
impact.

Growth is sustainable innovation will usher in a no limit

to growth era by 2020
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm

superlight materials that have the greatest potential to transform

But it is
civilization and, in conjunction with the above, to usher in the no limits to growth
era. I refer, in particular, to car- bon nanotubesalternatively referred to as Buckyballs or Buckypaper
(in honor of Buckminster Fuller). Carbon nanotubes are between 1/10,000th and 1/50,000th the width of
a human hair, more flexible than rubber and 100-500 times stronger than steel per unit of weight.
Imagine the energy savings if planes, cars, trucks, trains, elevatorseverything that needs energy to
movewere made of this material and weighed 1/100th what they weigh now. Imagine the types of
alternative energy that would become practical. Imagine the positive impact on the environment:
replacing many industrial processes and mining, and thus lessening air and groundwater pollution.
Present costs and production methods make this impractical but that infinite resource the human
mindhas confronted and solved many problems like this before. Let us take the
example of aluminum. A hundred fifty years ago, aluminum was more expensive than gold or
platinum.37 When Napoleon III held a banquet, he provided his most honored guests with aluminum
plates. Less-distinguished guests had to make do with gold! When the Washington Monument was
completed in 1884, it was fitted with an aluminum capthe most expensive metal in the world at the
timeas a sign of respect to George Washington. It weighed 2.85 kilograms, or 2,850 grams. Aluminum
at the time cost $1 a gram (or $1,000 a kilogram). A typical day laborer working on the monument was
paid $1 a day for 10-12 hours a day. In other words, todays common soft-drink can, which weighs 14
grams, could have bought 14 ten-hour days of labor in 1884.38 Todays U.S. minimum wage is $7.50 an
hour. Using labor as the measure of value, a soft drink can would cost $1,125 today (or $80,000 a
kilogram), were it not for a new method of processing aluminum ore. The Hall-Hroult process turned
aluminum into one of the cheapest commodities on earth only two years after the Wash ington Monument
was capped with aluminum. Today aluminum costs $3 a kilogram, or $3000 a metric ton. The soft drink
can that would have cost $1,125 today without the process now costs $0.04. Today the average cost of
industrial grade carbon nanotubes is about $50-$60 a kilogram. This is already far cheaper in real cost
revolutionary methods of production are now being
than aluminum was in 1884. Yet
developed that will drive costs down even more radically. At Cambridge University they
are working on a new electrochemical production method that could produce 600 kilograms of carbon
nanotubes per day at a projected cost of around $10 a kilogram, or $10,000 a metric ton.39 This will do
for carbon nanotubes what the Hall-Hroult process did for aluminum. Nanotubes will become
the universal raw material of choice, displacing steel, aluminum, copper and other metals
and materials. Steel presently costs about $750 per metric ton. Nanotubes of equivalent strength to a
metric ton of steel would cost $100 if this Cambridge process (or others being pursued in research labs
around the world) proves successful. Ben Wang, director of Florida States HighPerformance Materials
Institute claims that: If you take just one gram of nanotubes, and you unfold every tube into a graphite
sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field.40 Since other research has indicated that
carbon nanotubes would be more suitable than silicon for producing photovoltaic energy, consider the
implications. Several grams of this material could be the energy-producing skin for new generations of
superlight dirigiblesmaking these airships energy autonomous. They could replace airplanes as the
Modern American history has shown that
primary means to transport air freight.
anything human beings decide they want done can be done in 20 years if it
does not violate the laws of nature. The atom bomb was developed in four years; putting a man on the
It is a reasonable conjecture that by 2020 or earlier, an
moon took eight years.
industrial process for the inexpensive production of carbon nanotubes will be
developed, and that this would be the key to solving our energy, raw
materials, and environmental problems all at once.

Innovation proves there are no limits to growth

advancements are being made now that will quickly
reduce our impact on the environment
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm

The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place is the key to no
limits to growth. I refer to smart and superlight materials. Smart materials are materials that
have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external
stimuli.32 They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials)
or by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing
process by changing shape or repairing themselves as a consequence of various external stimuli.
These materials have all passed the proof of concept phase (i.e., are scientifically
sound) and many are in the prototype phase. Some are already commercialized and
penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has underlain a one-
kilometer stretch of local highway with piezoelectric material to harvest the wasted stress energy of
vehicles passing over and convert it to electricity.33 They reckon that Israel has stretches of road that
can efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of
the New Jersey Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway
and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential megawatts produced without any
fossil fuels. Additional energy is derivable from thermoelectric materials, which can transform wasted
heat into electricity. As Christopher Steiner notes, capturing waste heat from manufacturing alone in the
United States would provide an additional 65,000 megawatts: enough for 50 million homes.34 Smart
glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, airconditioning and lighting
up to 50% saving in energy has been achieved in retrofitted legacy buildings (such as the former Sears
Tower in Chicago). New buildings, designed to take maximum advantage of this and other technologies
could save even more. Buildings consume 39% of Americas energy and 68% of its electricity. They emit
38% of the carbon dioxide, 49% of the sulfur dioxide, and 25% of the nitrogen oxides found in the air.35
Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluorescent light
bulbs with LEDS which use 1/10th the electricity of incandescent and half the electricity of fluorescents.
These three steps: transforming waste heat into electricity, retrofitting buildings with smart glass, and
LED lighting, could cut Americas electricity consumption and its CO2 emissions by 50% within 10 years.
They would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction and home improvements. Coal
driven electricity generation would become a thing of the past . The coal released
could be liquefied or gasified (by new environmentally friendly technologies) into the energy equivalent
of 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. This is equivalent to the amount of oil the United States imports from
the Persian Gulf and Venezuela together.36 Conservation of energy and parasitic energy harvesting, as
well as urban agriculture would cut the planets energy consumption and air and water pollution
significantly. Waste-to-energy technologies could begin to replace fossil fuels .
Garbage, sewage, organic trash, and agricultural and food processing waste are essentially hydrocarbon
resources that can be transformed into ethanol, methanol, and biobutanol or biodiesel. These can be
Waste-
used for transportation, electricity generation or as feedstock for plastics and other materials.
to-energy is essentially a recycling of CO2 from the environment instead of
introducing new CO2 into the environment. Waste-to-energy also prevents the
production, and release from rotting organic waste, of methanea greenhouse gas 25 times more
powerful than CO2 . Methane accounts for 18% of the manmade greenhouse effect. Not as much as
CO2 , which constitutes 72%, but still considerable (landfills emit as much greenhouse gas effect, in
the form of methane, as the CO2 from all the vehicles in the world). Numerous prototypes of a variety of
When their declining costs meet the
waste-to-energy technologies are already in place.
rising costs of fossil fuels, they will become commercialized and, if history is any
judge, will replace fossil fuels very quicklyjust as coal replaced wood in a matter of
decades and petroleum replaced whale oil in a matter of years.

Momentum is building in the squo to prevent

environmental destruction and warming through
democratic channels there is no need to turn to eco-
fascism
Micah White, 9/16/2010, The Guardian, an alternative to the new wave of
ecofascism, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-
green/2010/sep/16/authoritarianism-ecofascism-alternative, mm

Humanity can avert climate catastrophe without accepting ecological

tyranny. However, this will take an immediate, drastic reduction of our consumption. This requires the
trust that the majority of people would voluntarily reduce their standard of living once the forces that
The future of environmentalism is in
induce consumerism are overcome.
liberating humanity from the compulsion to consume . Rampant, earth-
destroying consumption is the norm in the west largely because our imaginations are pillaged by any
corporation with an advertising budget. From birth, we are assaulted by thousands of commercial
messages each day whose single mantra is "buy". Silencing this refrain is the revolutionary alternative to
It is a revolution which is already budding and is marked by
ecological fascism.
the criminalisation of advertising, the revocation
three synergetic campaigns:
of corporate power and the downshifting of the global economy . In
So Paulo, the seventh largest city in the world, outdoor advertising has been
banned. Meanwhile, artists in New York City and Toronto are launching
blitzkrieg attacks on billboards, replacing commercials with art. Their efforts have put one
visual polluter out of business. Grassroots organisers in the US are pushing for an amendment to the
constitution that will end corporate personhood while others are fighting to revive the possibility of death
penalties for corporations. The second international conference on degrowth
economics met recently in Barcelona. In Ithaca, New York a local, time-based currency is thriving.
Buy Nothing Day campaign is celebrated in dozens of nations and now Adbusters is upping the ante with a
call for seven days of carnivalesque rebellion against consumerism this November. And, most important of
across the world everyday people are silently, unceremoniously
all,
and intentionally spending less and living more . Authoritarian
environmentalists fail to imagine a world without advertising, so they dream of putting
democracy "on hold". In Linkola's dystopian vision, the resources of the state are mobilised to
clamp down on individual liberty. But there is no need to suspend democracy if it
is returned to the people. Democratic, anti-fascist environmentalism
means marshalling the strength of humanity to suppress
corporations. Only by silencing the consumerist forces will both
climate catastrophe and ecological tyranny be averted. Yes, western
consumption will be substantially reduced. But it will be done voluntarily
and joyously.
 Aff - AT Growth Unsustainable Population
Overpopulation is overblown global growth will peak at
10 billion and decline to 7 billion by the end of the century
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm

One constant refrain of anti-growth advocates is that we are heading towards 12

billion people by the end of the century, that this is unsustainable, and thus that
we must proactively reduce the human population to 3 billion-4 billion in order to save the planet and
recent data indicates that a demographic
human civilization from catastrophe. But
winter will engulf humanity by the middle of this century. More than 60
countries (containing over half the worlds population) already do not have replacement
birth rates of 2.1 children per woman. This includes the entire EU, China, Russia, and half a dozen
Muslim countries, including Turkey, Algeria, and Iran. If present trends continue, India, Mexico and
The human population will peak at 9-10 billion
Indonesia will join this group before 2030.
by 2060, after which, for the first time since the Black Death, it will begin to shrink. By
the end of the century, the human population might be as low as 6 billion-7
billion. The real danger is not a population explosion; but the consequences of the impending
population implosion.47 This demographic process is not being driven by famine or disease as has been
the case in all previous history. Instead, it is being driven by the greatest Cultural Revolution in the
The fact is that even
history of the human race: the liberation and empowerment of women.
with present technology, we would still be able to sustain a global population
of 12 billion by the end of the century if needed. The evidence for this is cited above.
 Aff - AT Growth Unsustainable Warming
Innovation will solve warming in the status quo
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm

The goal of mitigating global warming/climate change without changing our

lifestyles is not nave. Using proven Israeli expertise, planting forests on just 12% of the worlds
semi-arid areas would offset the annual CO2 output of one thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (a
A global program of foresting 60% of the worlds semi-arid
gigaton a year).45
areas would offset five thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (five gigatons a year). Since
mitigation goals for global warming include reducing our CO2 emissions by eight gigatons by 2050, this
project alone would have a tremendous ameliorating effect. Given that large swaths of semi-arid land
areas contain or border on some of the poorest populations on the planet, we could put millions of the
worlds poorest citizens to work in forestation, thus accomplishing two positives (fighting poverty and
Moving agriculture from its current fieldbased
environmental degradation) with one project.
paradigm to vertical urban agriculture would eliminate two gigatons of CO2 .
The subsequent re-wilding of vast areas of the earths surface could help
sequester up to 50 gigatons of CO2 a year, completely reversing the
trend. The revolution underway in material science will help us to become
self-sufficient in energy. It will also enable us to create superlight vehicles and structures that
will produce their own energy. Over time, carbon nanotubes will replace steel , copper
and aluminum in a myriad of functions. Converting waste to energy will eliminate most
of the methane gas humanity releases into the atmosphere. Meanwhile,
artificial photosynthesis will suck CO2 out of the air at 1,000 times the rate
of natural photosynthesis.46 This trapped CO2 could then be combined with hydrogen to
create much of the petroleum we will continue to need. As hemp and other fast-growing plants replace
wood for making paper, the logging industry will largely cease to exist. Self-contained fish farms will
provide a major share of our protein needs with far less environmental damage to the oceans.
 Aff AT Alt Worse for Environment
A robust body of research proves that liberal, democratic
regimes are better at managing environmental problems
than authoritarian regimes
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm

a number of
As Eco-Authoritarianism has re-emerged into contemporary environmental discourse,
scholars have begun to pay closer attention to the environmental and
political performance of actual authoritarian societies, primarily including but not
limited to China. This scrutiny has revealed a largely-mixed track record including
some important successes alongside significant shortfalls. Critics of China in particular have questioned
the ability of the Communist Party to successfully implement and enforce its high-minded directives,42
noting that sometimes being aggressive has no bearing on being effective .43
Reservations about the actual effectiveness of authoritarian environmental policies have been echoed in
discussions of other regimes in countries like Egypt,44 Iran,45 and Thailand.46 Bolstering these concerns,
a recent study by Hanna Bck and Axel Hadenius has suggested the existence of a more general J-
shaped relationship between democratization and administrative efficiency across various countries and
time periods. According to Bck and Hadenius, administrative
quality is higher in strongly
authoritarian states than in states that are partially democratized; it is
highest of all, however, in states of a pronouncedly democratic character.47
They suggest that this may be because highly democratic states can rely on a
well-developed civil society for help in making sure that policies are well-calibrated to particular
contexts and for constructive feedback on policies once they are implemented.48 The authors note that
authoritarian governments can sometimes perform better than partially democratized societies with
poorly-developed civil societies, but that they have thus far been hard-pressed to find an effective
substitute for the genuine citizen participation that enables successful democracies to formulate and
although authoritarian governments may
implement their policies successfully.49 Thus
be free from certain policy-making constraints faced by governments in
liberal regimes, administrators in even the most successful authoritarian
countries have historically failed to match the levels of state capacity enjoyed
by citizens of prosperous democratic countries like Finland, New Zealand, and the
Netherlands.50 The dubious performance of actually existing authoritarian
governments may be thought to cast some doubt on the viability of Eco-
Authoritarianism as a response to the ecological crisis. Thus Anthony Giddens has
recently defended democracy against Shearman and Smith by observing that Totalitarian states
have generally had poor or disastrous environmental records. So also have most of
those that have undergone processes of authoritarian modernization, such as China, Russia or South
Korea.51 What Giddens fails to appreciate, however, is the extent to which contemporary Eco-
Authoritarians accept his observations. Shearman and Smith, for example, begin The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy by announcing, We agree that existing authoritarian societies,
largely based upon Marxist doctrines, have had an appalling environmental record. We accept that there
is no example of an existing authoritarian government that does not have a record of environmental
abuse.52
The alt would be far worse for the environment history
shows that democratic societies have better track records
at protecting the environment
Jonathon Adler, Prof. Law and Dir. Center for Business Law and Regulation
Case Western Reserve U., New Atlantis, Green Bridge to Nowhere, Fall,
2008, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/green-bridge-to-nowhere,
mm

The first item on his agenda is the replacement of modern capitalism with some undefined non-socialist
alternative. The planet cannot sustain capitalism as we know it, he warns, calling for a fundamental
transformation. But he does not understand the system he wants to reform, let alone what he would
substitute in its place. According to Speth, most environmental deterioration is a result of systemic
the least capitalist nations of the world also
failures of capitalism. This is an odd claim, as
have the worst environmental records. The ecological costs of economic
statism are far worse than those of economic liberty . The environmental
record of the various Soviet regimes amply bears this out : The Wests ecological
nightmares were the Soviet blocs environmental realities. This is not due to any anomaly of the Soviet
Nations with greater commitment to capitalist institutions experience
system.
greater environmental performance. While Speth occasionally acknowledges pockets of
environmental progress, he hardly stops to consider the reasons why some environmental resources have
been conserved more effectively than others. Fisheries are certainly declining throughout much of the
worldsome 75 percent of fisheries are fully or over-exploitedbut not everywhere. It is worth asking why.
Tropical forests in less-developed nations are declining even as most temperate forests in industrialized
Recognizing these different trends and identifying the key variables
nations are rebounding.
is essential to diagnosing the real causes of environmental deterioration and
prescribing a treatment that will work. Speth acknowledges that much of the world is undergoing
dematerialization, such that economic growth far outpaces increases in resource demand, but seems not
Were it
to appreciate how the capitalist system he decries creates the incentives that drive this trend.
not for market-driven advances in technological capability and ecological
efficiency, humanitys footprint on the Earth would be far greater. While
modern civilization has developed the means to effect massive ecological transformations, it has also
Market competition
found ways to produce wealth while leaving more of the natural world intact.
generates substantial incentives to do more with less thus in market economies we
see long and continuing improvements in productive efficiency. This can be seen everywhere from the
replacement of copper with fiber optics (made from silica, the chief component in sand) and the light-
weighting of packaging to the explosion of agricultural productivity and improvements in energy efficiency.
Less material is used and disposed of, reducing overall environmental impacts from productive activity.
The key to such improvements is the same set of institutional arrangements that Speth so decries:
property rights and voluntary exchange protected by the rule of lawthat is, capitalism. As research by
societies in which property
Wheaton College economist Seth Norton and many others has shown,
rights and economic freedoms are protected experience superior economic
and environmental performance than those societies subject to greater
government control. Indeed, such institutions have a greater effect on environmental performance
than the other factors, such as population growth, that occupy the attention of Speth and so many other
environmental thinkers. Speth complains that capitalism is fundamentally biased against the future; but
the marketplace does a far better job of pricing and accounting for future interests than the political
alternative. Future generations cannot participate in capitalisms markets [today], says Speth. Fair
enough, but they cannot vote or engage in the regulatory process either. Thus the relevant policy question
is what set of institutions does the bestor least badjob of accounting for such concerns, and here there
is no contest. However present-oriented the marketplace may be, it is better able to look past the next
election cycle than any plausibly democratic alternative.
China and Russia prove that eco-authoritarianism fails
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm

In its own way, the early Eco-Authoritarian position made a certain amount of
sense: if it were true that an ecological crisis was being caused by excessive autonomy, that democratic market
liberal societies would systematically fail to generate the constraints necessary to avoid the crisis, and that
authoritarian governments would be able to keep societies away from
catastrophe through enlightened central planning , then the relative appeal of
authoritarianism would be clear.21 The problem with this position, however, was its crucial
assumption that authoritarian governments would actually be able to
generate better outcomes through central planning. This premise was quickly challenged in
the academic literature by critics who argued that authoritarian governments would be hard-pressed to cope successfully
the
with their vastly increased size and complexity while also navigating difficult ecological challenges.22 But
biggest blows to early Eco-Authoritarianism came from the failure of real-
world experiments with centralized authoritarianism around the world . With
the disintegration of the Soviet Union and thoroughgoing economic reform of
the Peoples Republic of China, it became increasingly untenable in any area
of discourse to advocate centralized authoritarianism as a solution to any
problem, never mind one requiring highly complex, efficient, and coordinated
actions by public agents.

The eco-authoritarian model cant solve the USSR proves

Matthew Humphrey, 2007, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory:
The challenge to the deliberative ideal, p. 140, mm

the faith they

For all that the problems with which eco-authoritarians struggled were and remain real,
placed in an authoritarian state to resolve these problems was surely
misguided. Whilst the inferior ecological record of nondemocratic states in itself proves nothing (how
many of these states actually prioritised environmental goals?), the ability of a state to impose
its green will on an unwilling and resentful public who see their taken-for-
granted freedoms being curtailed is questionable, in the absence of a monstrous
architecture of green totalitarianism. Authoritarian states have often not been good at
achieving those policy goals that they have prioritised, as the forlorn
ambition of the Soviet Union to outstrip the productive capacity of the
capitalist West testifies. There is no obvious reason to expect an authoritarian
green state to be better than the Soviet Union at overcoming the internal
divisions, inefficiencies, corruption, and perverse incentives that plague such
states.
 Aff AT Alt AT Benevolent Leaders
Eco-authoritarianism inevitably collapses into tyrannical
despotism that makes solving the environment
impossible
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm

critics of authoritarianism have worried that unrestrained power

Traditionally,
granted to government officials could fall into the wrong hands, resulting in a
serious potential for tyrannical despotism.53 Despotism is obviously problematic due to
the harms it typically generates for citizens living under its rule, but in the current context we may also
a despotic regime would end up neglecting to prioritize
worry that
environmental protection, thereby failing to ameliorate the crisis that would
have motivated the shift toward authoritarianism in the first place. In order to
avoid this problem, Eco-Authoritarians would need to provide reason to think that following their
prescriptions would mean putting our collective futures not into the hands of injurious despots but rather
into those of administrators who possess both the capacity to address an impending environmental crisis
effectively and the motivation to do so. This challenge has two interrelated aspects: first, it must be shown
that a capable and benevolent eco-elite could be generated in the first place to rule over our society;
and second, it must be shown that a system of rule by eco-elites could be effectively perpetuated over
a long period of time. To my knowledge, the only contemporary Eco-Authoritarians who have taken up this
challenge are also the most extreme proponents of the view: David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith. In
The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, Shearman and Smith contend that
successful Eco-Authoritarianism would require leaders of a caliber far higher than we find in contemporary
society, and that producing such leaders would require a radically different system of education. This new
system would be built around superior real universities that would purportedly train holistic thinkers in
all of the arts and sciences necessary for tough decision making that the environmental crisis confronts us
with.54 The products would be true public intellectuals with knowledge well grounded in ecology,55
who would be charged with preserving remnants of our civilization when the great collapse comes as
the new priesthood of the new dark age.56 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the authors give only sketchy details
on exactly how real universities would achieve these felicitous results. Their main proposals in The
Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy seem limited to focusing scholarly research on
problems that are important to human well-being,57 expanding the role of information sharing among the
intellectual community,58 and accelerating the development of programs in environmental studies.59
Although many of these proposals seem reasonable and even attractive, they hardly seem like the sorts
of revolutionary changes that would equip graduating students with the capacities and motivations needed
to effectively rule over complex modern societies .
Even if a capable and benevolent eco-
elite could be produced, a further hurdle for Eco-Authoritarianism would
involve demonstrating that the quality of elite rule could be maintained over
time. Shearman and Smith do not take up this aspect of the issue in a substantive way, and to my
knowledge neither does any other contemporary EcoAuthoritarian. But the challenge of sustaining a
capable and benevolent ruling class over time is a notoriously difficult one for an authoritarian
regime to overcome. As the eco-anarchist philosopher Alan Carter has quite reasonably worried: Even if a
particular leader does turn out to be genuinely benevolent, even if he or she is not corrupted by the
exercise of power or the need to retain power, how can it be guaranteed that those who inherit his or her
Hierarchical structures, by their very nature, make
position will be equally benevolent?
it easy for the most competitive, most ruthless and least caring to attain
power. Moreover, the centralized exercise of authoritarian rule is an ever-
attractive goal for would-be usurpers, whose vision is usually less pure than
those whom they usurp, as the history of many coups attests to .60 At the very
 it seems that Eco-Authoritarians owe us some account of how their
least,
proposed regimes could predictably avoid corruption over time .
 Aff Perm Solvency
The perm solves best democracy is reflexive and can
resolve environmental problems. The alt alone fails
because the public will never get on board.
Bruce Jennings, May 2013, [Jennings is the Director of Bioethics and
Editor of Minding Nature at the Center for Humans and Nature], Center for
Humans & Nature, Governance in a Post-Growth Society: An Inquiry into the
Democratic Prospect, http://www.humansandnature.org/governance-in-a-
post-growth-society--an-inquiry-into-the-democratic-prospect-article-136.php,
mm

Ecological authoritarians are exceedingly pessimistic about the current state of

ordinary moral sensibility and political judgment in Western society. They rest their assessment
and theory of governance on a belief in the widespread cultural dominance of excessive
individualism and materialism, and seem to think that consumerism has thoroughly triumphed
over every competing cultural or ethical value system. As an account of the logical tendencies at work in a
this argument has validity, but not as a
particular form of economic system and society,
complete empirical description of currently existing culture and politics . It
underestimates the remaining moral capital in a growth-oriented society that
can be channeled in future degrowth directions, thereby making a different
form of democracy compatible with ecological requirements. Many still quite
powerfully held values compete with individualism and materialism in the attitudes and motivations of
it is far from clear that massive numbers of people
contemporary citizens. Furthermore,
will withdraw their allegiance from democratic governments even if they fail to
produce high levels of economic prosperity. Indeed, it is not at all clear that a democratic system would not
be able to survive even a period of considerable austerity, if the need for such measures were clear and if
the burdens and hardships were shared in a truly just and equitable way. These are large ifs. The
As a matter of intellectual
relationship between economics and political legitimation is complex.
history, this equating of all forms of democracy with materialism and a narrowly
self-interested individualism is overly selective. Even in the modern period, democratic
governance has rested on more than simply the ideology of growth and expansive capitalism. While
possessive individualism has certainly been one important strand within Western democratic
societies, it has not been the only strand, and it has not gone unchallenged from
within democratic thought itself.[20] Thus it is misleading to argue that democratic
governance cannot honestly appeal to any sense of public purpose larger than throwaway consumption.
Believing that democratic governments could neither call for nor obtain popular support except on the
ecological authoritarianism turns to non-
basis of a promise of more economic growth,
democratic governance out of a sense of despair. But, so far at least, neither the
sociological nor their historical arguments of this theory are sufficient to
warrant that conclusion.
 Aff Democratic Peace Theory
DEMOCRATIC PEACE THEORY IS EMPIRICAL FACT
McFaul, prof of political science @ Stanford and special assistant to Obama,
2010
(Michael, Advancing democracy abroad: why we should and how we can)

The second concern about democracies being more prone war is also
exaggerated. Democracies do not go to war with each other. More
precisely, Bruce Russett, one of the closest observers of this
phenomenon, writes, First, democratically organized political systems
in general operate under restraints that make them more peaceful in
their relations with other democracies. . . . Second, in the modern
international system, democracies are less likely to use lethal violence toward
other democracies than toward autocratically governed states or than
autocratically governed states are toward each other. Furthermore, there are
no clearcut cases of sovereign stable democracies waging war with each
other in the modern international system. Reflecting on a vast academic
literature on the causes of war, Jack Levy concluded that the
democratic peace theory is "the closest thing we have to empirical
law in the study of international relations."107 Democracies are not
pacifist regimes when dealing with autocracies. But democracies are peaceful
when interacting with other democracies.!

The best empirical data proves that democratic peace

theory is a statistical law
Robert Delahunty, law professor, St. Thomas, John Yoo, law professor, Cal
Berkeley, Winter 2010, Chicago Journal of International Law, p. 463

Democracies settle disputes through peaceful dispute settlement processes more often than others.
Democracies are more likely to initiate wars against non-democracies than vice-versa. Democracies fight shorter
wars with lower costs when they begin the wars. Transitional democracies are more likely to fight, and larger democracies
are less likely to go to war than smaller ones. Critics have questioned whether the findings are
statistically robust, or have argued that omitted variables such as the stability of the Cold
War are the true explanations. Yet it appears that the democratic peace is as close to a
statistical law as anything will be in international politics .

Rigorous statistical analysis supports democratic peace

theory
Robert Delahunty, law professor, St. Thomas, John Yoo, law professor, Cal
Berkeley, Winter 2010, Chicago Journal of International Law, p. 461-2
But before we reach any conclusion on whether American foreign policy ought to promote democracy--even to the point of
using force to achieve regime change--we need to understand the roots of the democratic peace. If the
peace is only a statistical regularity explained by factors other than domestic political systems, then spreading democracy will
not advance American national security and could well be counter-productive. Defining democracy in a narrow way in order
to fit the data might make the lessons for real world security more tenuous and even impractical. We need to understand the
causal mechanism that makes democracies less warlike with each other before we can link the national security policy of
The "empirical regularity" of the
individual states to Kant's larger goal of a league of democratic republics.
democratic peace thesis is critical to our argument. Rigorous statistical analysis shows
that democracies do not wage war with other democracies.
 Aff Nuclear War o/w Environment
Environmental collapse cant cause extinction---nuke war
outweighs---magnitude and probability
David Schweickart 10 is Professor at Loyola University Chicago. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics
(University of Virginia), and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Ohio State University). Is Sustainable Capitalism
Possible? Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2010) 67396752

It is not true either that the various ecological crises we are facing will bring about "the
end of the world." Consider the projections of the Stern Review, the recently released report
commissioned by the British Government. If nothing is done, we risk "major disruption to economic and
social activity, later in this century and the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars
and economic depression of the first half of the 20th century." This is serious. Some sixty million people
died in World War Two. The Stern Review estimates as many as 200 million people could be permanently
displaced by rising sea level and drought. But this is not "the end of the world." Even if the effects
are far worse, resulting in billions of deaths-- a highly unlikely scenario --there
would still be lots of us left. If three-quarters of the present population perished, that would still
leave us with 1.6 billion people--the population of the planet in 1900. I say this not to minimize the
potentially horrific impact of relentless environmental destruction, but to caution against
exaggeration. We are not talking about thermonuclear war--which could have
extinguished us as a species. (It still might.) And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that millions
of people on the planet right now, caught up in savage civil wars or terrorized by U.S. bombers (which
dropped some 100,000 lbs. of explosives on a Baghdad neighborhood during one ten-day period in January
2008--the amount the fascists used to level the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War), are
faced with conditions more terrible than anyone here is likely to face in his or her lifetime due to
environmental degradation.
 Aff Environment Impact Defense
No impact to the environment
Easterbrook 95 (Gregg, Distinguished Fellow @ The Fullbright
Foundation and Reuters Columnist, A Moment on Earth, p. 25, 1995)

In the aftermath of events such as Love Canal or the Exxon Valdez oil spill, every reference to the
environment is prefaced with the adjective "fragile." "Fragile environment" has become a welded phrase of
the modern lexicon, like "aging hippie" or "fugitive financier." But the notion of a fragile
environment is profoundly wrong. Individual animals, plants, and people are distressingly
fragile. The environment that contains them is close to indestructible. The living
environment of Earth has survived ice ages; bombardments of cosmic radiation more
deadly than atomic fallout; solar radiation more powerful than the worst-case projection for ozone
depletion; thousand-year periods of intense volcanism releasing global air pollution far worse than
that made by any factory; reversals of the planet's magnetic poles; the rearrangement of
continents; transformation of plains into mountain ranges and of seas into plains; fluctuations of ocean
currents and the jet stream; 300-foot vacillations in sea levels; shortening and lengthening of the seasons
caused by shifts in the planetary axis; collisions ofasteroids and comets bearing far more force
than man's nuclear arsenals; and the years without summer that followed these impacts. Yet hearts
beat on, and petals unfold still. Were the environment fragile it would have expired many eons
before the advent of the industrial affronts of the dreaming ape. Human assaults on the
environment, though mischievous, are pinpricks compared to forces of the
magnitude nature is accustomed to resisting.
 Aff AT Biodiversity Impact
No impact to biodiversity loss
Sagoff 97 Mark, Senior Research Scholar Institute for Philosophy and Public policy in School of
Public Affairs U. Maryland, William and Mary Law Review, INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW
SYMPOSIUM DEFINING TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION:
MUDDLE OR MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, 38
Wm and Mary L. Rev. 825, March, L/N Note Colin Tudge - Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy at
the London School of Economics. Frmr Zoological Society of London: Scientific Fellow and tons of other
positions. PhD. Read zoology at Cambridge. Simon Levin = Moffet Professor of Biology, Princeton. 2007
American Institute of Biological Sciences Distinguished Scientist Award 2008 Istituto Veneto di Scienze
Lettere ed Arti 2009 Honorary Doctorate of Science, Michigan State University 2010 Eminent Ecologist
Award, Ecological Society of America 2010 Margalef Prize in Ecology, etc PhD

Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the
brink of an episode of massive extinction, it may not follow from this grim fact that
human beings will suffer as a result. On the contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin Tudge have
challenged biologists to explain why we need more than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million species that grace the earth.
Noting that "cultivated systems often out-produce wild systems by 100-fold or more," Tudge declared that
"the argument that humans need the variety of other species is, when you think about it, a theological one." n343
elimination of all but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures does
Tudge observed that "the

not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344 This skeptic challenged ecologists to list
more than 10,000 species (other than unthreatened microbes) that are essential to ecosystem productivity or
functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if 99.9% of our fellow creatures

went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we need." n346 [*906] The
monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect to redundancy of
species. "At one extreme is the idea that each species is unique and important, such that its removal or loss will have
demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors of the
Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if any,
ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to centuries, the time period over which
environmental policy should operate." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that
species overlap in function to a sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others, with
negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other biologists believe, however,
that species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the life-support
systems and processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function perfectly well
with fewer of them, certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to remain even if
every threatened organism becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and
miserable world depicted in the movie Blade Runner could provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as
long as people forgot their aesthetic and moral commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The
Assessment makes this point. "Although any ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of species interacting among
themselves and their physical environment, the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of
. . . biotic variables on whose interactions the balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352 [*907] To
make up your mind on the question of the functional redundancy of species, consider an endangered species of bird,
plant, or insect and ask how the ecosystem would fare in its absence. The fact that the creature is endangered
suggests an answer: it is already in limbo as far as ecosystem processes are concerned. What crucial ecological
services does the black-capped vireo, for example, serve? Are any of the species threatened with extinction necessary
to the provision of any ecosystem service on which humans depend? If so, which ones are they? Ecosystems and the
species that compose them have changed, dramatically, continually, and totally in virtually every part of the United
States. There is little ecological similarity, for example, between New England today and the land where the Pilgrims
died. n353 In view of the constant reconfiguration of the biota, one may wonder why Americans have not suffered
more as a result of ecological catastrophes. The cast of species in nearly every environment changes constantly-local
extinction is commonplace in nature-but the crops still grow. Somehow, it seems, property values keep going up on
Martha's Vineyard in spite of the tragic disappearance of the heath hen. One might argue that the sheer
number and variety of creatures available to any ecosystem buffers that system against
stress. Accordingly, we should be concerned if the "library" of creatures ready, willing, and able to colonize
ecosystems gets too small. (Advances in genetic engineering may well permit us to write a large number of additions
to that "library.") In the United States as in many other parts of the world, however, the number of
species has been increasing dramatically, not decreasing, as a result of human activity. This is
because the hordes of exotic species coming into ecosystems in the United States far exceed the number of species
that are becoming extinct. Indeed, introductions may outnumber extinctions by more than ten to one, so that the
United States is becoming more and more species-rich all the time largely as a result of human action. n354 [*908]
Peter Vitousek and colleagues estimate that over 1000 non-native plants grow in California alone; in Hawaii there are
861; in Florida, 1210. n355 In Florida more than 1000 non-native insects, 23 species of mammals, and about 11 exotic
birds have established themselves. n356 Anyone who waters a lawn or hoes a garden knows how many weeds desire
to grow there, how many birds and bugs visit the yard, and how many fungi, creepy-crawlies, and other odd life forms
show forth when it rains. All belong to nature, from wherever they might hail, but not many homeowners would claim
that there are too few of them. Now, not all exotic species provide ecosystem services; indeed, some may be
disruptive or have no instrumental value. n357 This also may be true, of course, of native species as well, especially
because all exotics are native somewhere. Certain exotic species, however, such as Kentucky blue grass, establish an
area's sense of identity and place; others, such as the green crabs showing up around Martha's Vineyard, are
nuisances. n358 Consider an analogy [*909] with human migration. Everyone knows that after a generation or two,
immigrants to this country are hard to distinguish from everyone else. The vast majority of Americans did not evolve
here, as it were, from hominids; most of us "came over" at one time or another. This is true of many of our fellow
species as well, and they may fit in here just as well as we do. It is possible to distinguish exotic species from native
ones for a period of time, just as we can distinguish immigrants from native-born Americans, but as the centuries roll
by, species, like people, fit into the landscape or the society, changing and often enriching it. Shall we have a rule that
a species had to come over on the Mayflower, as so many did, to count as "truly" American? Plainly not. When, then,
is the cutoff date? Insofar as we are concerned with the absolute numbers of "rivets" holding ecosystems together,
extinction seems not to pose a general problem because a far greater number of kinds of mammals, insects, fish,
plants, and other creatures thrive on land and in water in America today than in prelapsarian times. n359 The
Ecological Society of America has urged managers to maintain biological diversity as a critical component in
strengthening ecosystems against disturbance. n360 Yet as Simon Levin observed, "much of the detail about
species composition will be irrelevant in terms of influences on ecosystem properties." n361 [*910] He added: "For net
primary productivity, as is likely to be the case for any system property, biodiversity matters only up to a point; above
a certain level, increasing biodiversity is likely to make little difference." n362 What
about the use of plants and animals in agriculture? There is no scarcity foreseeable. "Of an estimated 80,000 types of
plants [we] know to be edible," a U.S. Department of the Interior document says, "only about 150 are extensively
cultivated." n363 About twenty species, not one of which is endangered, provide ninety percent of the food the world
takes from plants. n364 Any new food has to take "shelf space" or "market share" from one that is now produced.
Corporations also find it difficult to create demand for a new product; for example, people are not inclined to eat paw-
paws, even though they are delicious. It is hard enough to get people to eat their broccoli and lima beans. It is harder
still to develop consumer demand for new foods. This may be the reason the Kraft Corporation does not prospect in
remote places for rare and unusual plants and animals to add to the world's diet. Of the roughly 235,000 flowering
plants and 325,000 nonflowering plants (including mosses, lichens, and seaweeds) available, farmers ignore virtually
all of them in favor of a very few that are profitable. n365 To be sure, any of the more than 600,000 species of plants
could have an application in agriculture, but would they be preferable to the species that are now dominant? Has
anyone found any consumer demand for any of these half-million or more plants to replace rice or wheat in the human
diet? There are reasons that farmers cultivate rice, wheat, and corn rather than, say, Furbish's lousewort. There are
many kinds of louseworts, so named because these weeds were thought to cause lice in sheep. How many does
agriculture really require? [*911] The species on which agriculture relies are domesticated, not naturally occurring;
they are developed by artificial not natural selection; they might not be able to survive in the wild. n366 This
argument is not intended to deny the religious, aesthetic, cultural, and moral reasons that command us to respect and
protect the natural world. These spiritual and ethical values should evoke action, of course, but we should also
recognize that they are spiritual and ethical values. We should recognize that ecosystems and all that dwell therein
compel our moral respect, our aesthetic appreciation, and our spiritual veneration; we should clearly seek to achieve
the goals of the ESA. There is no reason to assume, however, that these goals have anything to do with human well-
being or welfare as economists understand that term. These are ethical goals, in other words, not economic ones.
Protecting the marsh may be the right thing to do for moral, cultural, and spiritual reasons. We should do it-but
someone will have to pay the costs. In the narrow sense of promoting human welfare, protecting nature often
represents a net "cost," not a net "benefit." It is largely for moral, not economic, reasons-ethical, not prudential,
reasons- that we care about all our fellow creatures. They are valuable as objects of love not as objects of use. What is
good for [*912] the marsh may be good in itself even if it is not, in the economic sense, good for mankind. The most
valuable things are quite useless.

Biodiversity loss wont cause extinction

Lomberg 1 (Bjorn Lomborg, associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, August 9, 2001, Environmentalists tend to believe that, ecologically
speaking, things are getting worse and worse.

We are all familiar with the litany of our ever-deteriorating environment. It is the doomsday message
endlessly repeated by the media, as when Time magazine tells us that "everyone knows the planet is in
We are
bad shape", and when the New Scientist calls its environmental overview "self-destruct".
defiling our Earth, we are told. Our resources are running out. The population
is ever-growing, leaving less and less to eat. Our air and water is more and
more polluted. The planet's species are becoming extinct in vast numbers -
we kill off more than 40,000 each year. Forests are disappearing, fish stocks
are collapsing, the coral reefs are dying. The fertile topsoil is vanishing. We
are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere,
and will end up killing ourselves in the process . The world's ecosystem is
breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability. Global warming is probably
taking place, though future projections are overly pessimistic and the
traditional cure of radical fossil-fuel cutbacks is far more damaging than the
original affliction. Moreover, its total impact will not pose a devastating
problem to our future. Nor will we lose 25-50% of all species in our lifetime -
in fact, we are losing probably 0.7%. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and
the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. In fact, in
terms of practically every measurable indicator, mankind's lot has improved .
This does not, however, mean that everything is good enough. We can still do even better. Take, for
example, starvation and the population explosion. In 1968, one of the leading environmentalists, Dr Paul R
Erlich, predicted in his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In
the course of the 1970s, the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions - hundreds of millions of
people will starve to death." This did not happen. Instead, according to the UN, agricultural production in
the developing world has increased by 52% per person. The daily food intake in developing countries has
increased from 1,932 calories in 1961 - barely enough for survival - to 2,650 calories in 1998, and is
expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030. Likewise, the proportion of people going hungry in these countries has
dropped from 45% in 1949 to 18% today, and is expected to fall even further, to 12% in 2010 and 6% in
2030. Food, in other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant. This is reflected in its price.
Since 1800, food prices have decreased by more than 90%, and in 2000, according to the World Bank,
prices were lower than ever before. Erlich's prediction echoed that made 170 years earlier by Thomas
Malthus. Malthus claimed that, unchecked, human population would expand exponentially, while food
production.
 Aff AT Warming Impact
Warming will be slow and the impact will be small
Ridley 6/19/14, (Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist, a columnist for the Times
(London) and a member of the House of Lords. He spoke at Ideacity in Toronto on June 18., PCC
commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is
no , [ http://tinyurl.com/mgyn8ln ] , //hss-RJ)

The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is
conducted, you would think that only two positions are possible: that
the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there
is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold,
which is that man-made climate change is real but not likely to do
much harm, let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind
this century. After more than 25 years reporting and commenting on
this topic for various media organizations, and having started out
alarmed, thats where I have ended up. But it is not just I that hold this
view. I share it with a very large international organization, sponsored
by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the worlds
governments: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
itself. The IPCC commissioned four different models of what might happen to the
world economy, society and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate,
given a certain assumption about the atmospheres sensitivity to carbon dioxide. Three of the models
show a moderate, slow and mild warming, the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade
Now two
warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer.
degrees is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous,
according to the scientific consensus. That is to say, in three of the four
scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my childrens children
are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful
warming, let alone catastrophe. But what about the fourth scenario? This
is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what
assumptions lay behind this model, I decided to look up the original papers describing the creation of this
Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world that is very, very
scenario.
implausible. For a start, this is a world of continuously increasing
global population so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is
more than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in
the face of the fact that the world population growth rate has been
falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero i.e., stable
population in around 2070. More people mean more emissions.
Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5 scenario to be burning an
astonishing 10 times as much coal as today, producing 50% of its primary energy
from coal, compared with about 30% today. Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of
liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies contribute little, because
of a slow pace of innovation and hence fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy
portfolio over the entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario. Energy efficiency has improved very little.
These are highly unlikely assumptions. With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a
huge scale in the United States today, with the price of solar power plummeting, with nuclear power
experiencing a revival, with gigantic methane-hydrate gas resources being discovered on the seabed, with
energy efficiency rocketing upwards, and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually
every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible.
Notice, however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain.
The per capita income of the average human being in 2100 is three
times what it is now. Poverty would be history. So its hardly
Armageddon. But theres an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies of
climate sensitivity based on observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much
lower than assumed by the IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have
risen much faster than they have over the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this
week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With these much more realistic
estimates of sensitivity (known as transient climate response), even RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous
warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say, even if you pile crazy assumption
upon crazy assumption till you have an edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to
make climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let alone catastrophe. Thats
not me saying this its the IPCC itself. But what strikes me as truly fascinating about these scenarios is
that they tell us that globalization, innovation and economic growth are unambiguously good for the
environment. At the other end of the scale from RCP8.5 is a much more cheerful scenario called RCP2.6. In
this happy world, climate change is not a problem at all in 2100, because carbon dioxide emissions have
plummeted thanks to the rapid development of cheap nuclear and solar, plus a surge in energy efficiency.
The RCP2.6 world is much, much richer. The average person has an income about 15 times todays in real
terms, so that most people are far richer than Americans are today. And it achieves this by free trade,
massive globalization, and lots of investment in new technology. All the things the green movement keeps
saying it opposes because they will wreck the planet. The answer to climate change is, and always has
worry now in 2014 about a very small, highly implausible
been, innovation. To
set of circumstances in 2100 that just might, if climate sensitivity is
much higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal damage
to the world economy, makes no sense. Think of all the innovation that happened
between 1914 and 2000. Do we really think there will be less in this century? As for how to deal with that
small risk, well there are several possible options. You could encourage innovation and trade. You could put
a modest but growing tax on carbon to nudge innovators in the right direction. You could offer prizes for
low-carbon technologies. All of these might make a little sense. But the one thing you should not do is pour
public subsidy into supporting old-fashioned existing technologies that produce more carbon dioxide per
unit of energy even than coal (bio-energy), or into ones that produce expensive energy (existing solar), or
that have very low energy density and so require huge areas of land (wind). The IPCC produced two reports
last year. One said that the cost of climate change is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this
century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world economy with renewable energy is likely to
be 4% of GDP. Why do something that you know will do more harm than good?

Warming is slow no risk of an impact

Michaels and Knappenberger 11/19/13, (*Chip Knappenberger is the assistant
director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, and coordinates the scientific and
outreach activities for the Center. He has over 20 years of experience in climate research and public
outreach, including 10 years with the Virginia State Climatology Office and 15 years as the Research
Coordinator for New Hope Environmental Services, Inc, **Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for
the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State
Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American
Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for
thirty years. Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Chanage, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, With or Without a Pause
Climate Models Still Project Too Much Warming, [ http://www.cato.org/blog/or-without-pause-climate-
models-still-project-too-much-warming ] //hss-RJ)

A new paper just hit the scientific literature that argues that the apparent pause in the rise in global average surface
temperatures during the past 16 years was really just a slowdown. As you may imagine, this paper, by Kevin Cowtan and
Robert Way is being hotly discussed in the global warming blogs, with reaction ranging from a warm embrace by the
global-warming-is-going-to-be-bad-for-us crowd to revulsion from the human-activities-have-no-effect-on-the-climate
claque. The lukewarmers (a school we take some credit for establishing) seem to be taking the results in stride. After
all, the pause as curious as it is/was, is not central to the primary
argument that, yes, human activities are pressuring the planet to
warm, but that the rate of warming is going to be much slower than is
being projected by the collection of global climate models (upon which
mainstream projections of future climate changeand the resulting climate alarm (i.e., calls for emission regulations, etc.)
are based). Under the adjustments to the observed global temperature history put together by Cowtan and Way, the
models fare a bit better than they do with the unadjusted temperature record. That is, the observed temperature trend
over the past 34 years (the period of record analyzed by Cowtan and Way) is a tiny bit closer to the average trend from
the collection of climate models used in the new report from the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
than is the old temperature record. Specifically, while the trend in observed global temperatures from 1979-2012 as
calculated by Cowtan and Way is 0.17C/decade, it is 0.16C/decade in the temperature record compiled by the U.K.
Hadley Center (the record that Cowtan and Way adjusted). Because of the sampling errors associated with trend
estimation, these values are not significantly different from one another. Whether the 0.17C/decade is significantly
different from the climate model average simulated trend during that period of 0.23C/decade is discussed extensively
0.01C/decade in the global trend
below. But, suffice it to say that an insignificant difference of

measured over more than 30 years is pretty small beer and doesnt
give model apologists very much to get happy over. Instead, the
attention is being deflected to The Pausethe leveling off of global
surface temperatures during the past 16 years (give or take). Here, the
new results from Cowtan and Way show that during the period 1997-
2012, instead of a statistically insignificant rise at a rate of
0.05C/decade as is contained in the old temperature record, the rise
becomes a statistically significant 0.12C/decade. The Pause is transformed into The
Slowdown and alarmists rejoice because global warming hasnt stopped after all. (If the logic sounds backwards, it does
to us as well, if you were worried about catastrophic global warming, wouldnt you rejoice at findings that indicate that
future climate change was going to be only modest, more so than results to the contrary?) The science behind the new
Cowtan and Way research is still being digested by the community of climate scientists and other interested parties alike .

The main idea is that the existing compilations of the global average
temperature are very data-sparse in the high latitudes. And since the Arctic (more
so than the Antarctic) is warming faster than the global average, the lack of data there may mean that the global average
temperature trend may be underestimated. Cowtan and Way developed a methodology which relied on other limited
sources of temperature information from the Arctic (such as floating buoys and satellite observations) to try to make an
estimate of how the surface temperature was behaving in regions lacking more traditional temperature observations (the
authors released an informative video explaining their research which may better help you understand what they did).
They found that the warming in the data-sparse regions was progressing faster than the global average (especially during
the past couple of years) and that when they included the data that they derived for these regions in the computation of
the global average temperature, they found the global trend was higher than previously reportedjust how much higher
depended on the period over which the trend was calculated. As we showed, the trend more than doubled over the period
from 1997-2012, but barely increased at all over the longer period 1979-2012. Figure 1 shows the impact on the global
average temperature trend for all trend lengths between 10 and 35 years (incorporating our educated guess as to what
the 2013 temperature anomaly will be), and compares that to the distribution of climate model simulations of the same
period. Statistically speaking, instead of there being a clear inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of
the range which encompasses 95% of all modeled trends) between the observations and the climate mode simulations for
lengths ranging generally from 11 to 28 years and a marginal inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of
the range which encompasses 90% of all modeled trends) for most of the other lengths, now the observations track
closely the marginal inconsistency line, although trends of length 17, 19, 20, 21 remain clearly inconsistent with the
collection of modeled trends.Still, throughout the entirely of the 35-yr period
(ending in 2013), the observed trend lies far below the model average
simulated trend (additional information on the impact of the new
Cowtan and Way adjustments on modeled/observed temperature
comparison can be found here). The Cowtan and Way analysis is an
attempt at using additional types of temperature information, or extracting
information from records that have already told their stories, to fill in the missing data in the Arctic. There are

concerns about the appropriateness of both the data sources and the
methodologies applied to them. A major one is in the applicability of
satellite data at such high latitudes. The nature of the satellites orbit
forces it to look sideways in order to sample polar regions. In fact,
the orbit is such that the highest latitude areas cannot be seen at all.
This is compounded by the fact that cold regions can develop
substantial inversions of near-ground temperature, in which
temperature actually rises with height such that there is not a
straightforward relationship between the surface temperature and the
temperature of the lower atmosphere where the satellites measure the
temperature. If the nature of this complex relationship is not constant
in time, an error is introduced into the Cowtan and Way analysis.
Another unresolved problem comes up when extrapolating land-based
weather station data far into the Arctic Ocean. While land
temperatures can bounce around a lot, the fact that much of the ocean
is partially ice-covered for many months. Under well-mixed
conditions, this forces the near-surface temperature to be constrained
to values near the freezing point of salt water, whether or not the
associated land station is much warmer or colder. You can run this experiment yourself
by filling a glass with a mix of ice and water and then making sure it is well mixed. The water surface temperature must
hover around 33F until all the ice melts. Given that the near-surface temperature is close to the water temperature, the
limitations of land data become obvious. Considering all of the above, we advise caution with regard to Cowtan and Ways
findings. While adding high arctic data should increase the observed trend, the nature of the data means that the amount
of additional rise is subject to further revision. As they themselves note, theres quite a bit more work to be done this area.
In the meantime, their results have tentatively breathed a small hint of life back into the climate models, basically buying
them a bit more timetime for either the observed temperatures to start rising rapidly as current models expect, or, time
for the modelers to try to fix/improve cloud processes, oceanic processes, and other process of variability (both natural
Weve also taken a
and anthropogenic) that lie behind what would be the clearly overheated projections.

look at how sensitive the results are to the length of the ongoing
pause/slowdown. Our educated guess is that the bit of time that the
Cowtan and Way findings bought the models is only a few years long,
and it is a fact, not a guess, that each additional year at the current
rate of lukewarming increases the disconnection between the models
and reality.