Aff & Neg Rps Starter

NU 2008-2009 Jeremy Selesner
RPS AFF and NEG

_________________..................................................................................................................................... .......3
***1AC................................................................................................................................ ...........................3
RPS 1AC – Inherency........................................................................................................................ ..............4
RPS 1AC – Plan Text........................................................................................................ ...............................6
RPS 1AC – Renewable Transition Advantage...................................................................... ............................7
RPS 1AC – Renewable Transition Advantage...................................................................... ............................9
RPS 1AC – Renewable Transition Advantage................................................................... .............................11
RPS 1AC – Solvency......................................................................................................... ............................24
RPS 1AC – Solvency......................................................................................................... ............................25
RPS 1AC – Solvency......................................................................................................... ............................26
RPS 1AC – Solvency......................................................................................................... ............................27
____________________.................................................................................................................... .................28
***Topicality................................................................................................................................ .................28
Topicality – Incentives.............................................................................................................. ....................29
Topicality – Incentives.............................................................................................................. ....................31
_________________................................................................................................................................... .......32
***Inherency............................................................................................................................. ...................32
RPS Won’t Pass Now.................................................................................................................................... .33
They Say “Markets Solve Now”..................................................................................................... ...............34
They Say “States Solve Now”........................................................................................ ..............................35
_________________________...................................................................................................... .......................36
***Global Warming Advantage......................................................................................................... ............36
Extinction Impact............................................................................................................................. ............37
CO2 Causes Warming................................................................................................................................... 38
Resource Wars Impact................................................................................................... ..............................39
Biodiversity Impact................................................................................................................... ...................40
_____________________.................................................................................................... ...............................41
***Economy Advantage.................................................................................................... ...........................41
Oil Dependence Collapses US economy........................................................................................... ............42
____________________.................................................................................................................... .................44
***Terrorism Addon................................................................................................................ ......................44
Terrorism Addon 2AC................................................................................................................................ ....45
__________________................................................................................................................... .....................46
***Hegemony Addon.............................................................................................................................. ......46
Environmental Leadership Addon 2AC................................................................................... ......................47
Soft Power Key to Hegemony......................................................................................................... ..............49
__________________................................................................................................................... .....................51
***Iran Addon............................................................................................................................................. ..51
Iran Addon 2AC............................................................................................................................ ................52
Hegemony Module........................................................................................................................ ...............53
_____________________.................................................................................................... ...............................54
***Democracy Addon...................................................................................................................... .............54
Democracy Addon 2AC..................................................................................................... ...........................55
Middle East Democracy Good – Nuclear War............................................................................................. ...56
Middle East Democracy Good – Nuclear War............................................................................................. ...58
Middle East Democracy Good – Terrorism............................................................................. .......................59
They Say “Transition Wars”............................................................................................................... ...........61
___________________.................................................................................................................................... ...62
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***Solvency................................................................................................................................................. .62
Solvency – Increase Renewables........................................................................................................... .......63
Solvency – Increase Renewables........................................................................................................... .......65
Solvency – Decrease Fossil Fuels.................................................................................... .............................66
Solvency – Decrease Emissions................................................................................... ................................67
Solvency – International Modeling................................................................................................................ 68
They Say “Transmission Lines”......................................................................................... ...........................69
They Say “No Enforcement”........................................................................................... .............................70
They Say “Empirically Failed”.......................................................................................... ............................71
They Say “Some Areas can’t support Renewables”....................................................... ..............................72
__________________................................................................................................................... .....................73
***Answers to Disads...................................................................................................................... .............73
Energy Price Responses............................................................................................................ ...................74
Energy Price Responses............................................................................................................ ...................76
Business Confidence Responses........................................................................................ ..........................77
______________________..................................................................................................................... .............78
***Counterplan Responses................................................................................................................... ........78
State Counterplan Responses................................................................................................. .....................79
State Counterplan Responses................................................................................................. .....................80
Efficiency Counterplan Responses.................................................................................... ...........................81
CEPS Counterplan Responses......................................................................................... .............................82
Free Market Counterplan Responses.......................................................................................... ..................83
R&D Counterplan Responses.......................................................................................... .............................84
*****NEGATIVE*****.................................................................................................................. ...................85
____________________.................................................................................................................... .................85
***Topicality................................................................................................................................ .................85
Incentives Topicality – 1NC Shell................................................................................................. .................86
Ext – RPS isn’t an Incentive.................................................................................................................... ......88
__________________................................................................................................................... .....................89
***Energy Price DA..................................................................................................................................... ..89
Energy Price DA – 1NC Shell...................................................................................................................... ...90
Energy Price DA – 1NC Shell...................................................................................................................... ...92
Ext – Federal RPS Increases Energy Prices............................................................................... ....................94
Ext – High Prices Cause Industry Flight..................................................................................... ...................96
Turns Case – Economy.................................................................................................. ...............................97
____________________.................................................................................................................... .................98
***States................................................................................................................................................ ......98
Inherency Turn – 1NC Shell........................................................................................................................... 99
Ext – States Solving in Status Quo...................................................................................... .......................100
Ext – National RPS Tradesoff........................................................................................... ...........................101
Counterplan – 1NC Shell................................................................................................ ............................102
Ext – Solvency......................................................................................................................................... ...103
They Say “Perm”............................................................................................................................... .........105
Federalism Links................................................................................................................. .......................106
___________________.................................................................................................................................. ...107
***Case Frontlines............................................................................................................................. .........107
Solvency Frontline................................................................................................................................. .....108
Ext – Wind Power.......................................................................................................... .............................113
Ext – Trade Off........................................................................................................... ................................114
Extend – Transmission Lines...................................................................................... ................................115
Economy Frontline......................................................................................................... ............................116
Economy Frontline......................................................................................................... ............................118
Global Warming Frontline............................................................................................................... ............119
Foreign Oil Dependence Frontline...................................................................................... ........................120
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_________________
***1AC
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RPS 1AC – Inherency
Contention 1 is Inherency
Many states have already adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard – However,

it is not sufficient to avert the massive environmental damage caused by
global warming – a National RPS is key to transition away from fossil fuels
Union of Concerned Scientists, 2007 [August 27, 2007, Renewable Electricity Standards
Renewable Energy--Mitigating Global Warming http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/clean_energy_
policies/RES-climate-strategy.html?print=t]
In order to ensure healthy air and a stable climate for our children and grandchildren, we must make
responsible decisions about our energy sources. Existing technologies and forward-thinking
policies offer practical and affordable solutions to reduce our dependence on the fossil fuels that
currently dominate America’s electricity system. This system threatens the health of our communities
by polluting the air and contributing to global warming. If left unchecked, heat-trapping
emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), are expected to cause irreversible damage to
communities throughout the United States and around the world. This damage will likely include
increased urban air pollution and emerging infectious diseases such as West Nile Virus;[1] sea-level
rise causing flooding and erosion in coastal communities; extreme weather including more
intense droughts and hurricanes; reduced productivity of some agricultural regions; and loss of
many treasured landscapes and species—from coral reefs to polar bears.[2] Practical solutions do
exist. For example, more than 40 percent of U.S. states have adopted a renewable electricity
standard—a policy that requires electricity suppliers to gradually increase their use of renewable
energy such as wind, solar, geothermal, and bioenergy. These states are demonstrating that
renewable standards are an affordable solution to reduce CO2 and other unhealthy air emissions,
while alleviating the harmful impact that fossil fuel extraction, transport, and use have on land and water
resources. Renewable electricity standards have been enacted in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
UCS projects that these standards will result in the development of 46,270 megawatts (MW) of new
renewable energy capacity by 2020—an increase of 340 percent over total U.S. levels (excluding hydro) in
1997.
CO2 Reduction from State Renewable Electricity Standards* *Projected reductions assuming states
achieve annual renewable energy targets. This commitment to increasing renewable energy at the state
level will have a significant impact on reducing CO2 emissions. By 2020, state standards will reduce total
annual CO2 emissions by 108.1 million metric tons (MMT)—the equivalent of taking 17.7 million cars off
the road or planting 25.9 million acres of trees—an area larger than the Commonwealth of Virginia. The
standards in California, New Jersey, Minnesota, New York, and Texas alone make up nearly 60 percent of
the projected reductions. In addition to realizing significant reduction of harmful emissions, the
states have also found that renewable standards are an effective means to help meet critical fuel
diversity, energy security, and economic goals. In fact, this approach has been so successful that
several states—including Arizona, California, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and, most recently,
Minnesota, New Mexico, and Colorado—have revisited and significantly increased or accelerated their
annual requirements. A National Standard Significantly Increases Climate Benefits While many states
are making important strides in reducing CO2 emissions with renewable electricity standards,
substantially greater benefits could be achieved if Congress adopted a national standard. A 2004
UCS analysis examined the costs and benefits of a 20 percent by 2020 renewable standard, and found that
America would increase its total renewable power to 180,000 MW in 2020—nearly 11 times more
than current levels.[3] The 20 percent national standard would reduce the projected growth in
power plant CO2 emissions under a business-as-usual scenario by more than half, or 434 MMT per
year by 2020. This level of reductions is equivalent to taking nearly 71 million cars off the road or planting
104 million acres of trees—an area approximately the size of Oregon and Washington combined. Even a 10
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percent standard would deliver substantial climate benefits, reducing annual CO2 emissions by 166 MMT
by 2020. Studies by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration have shown
similar results.
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RPS 1AC – Plan Text
Text: The United States federal government should adopt a 20 percent
renewable portfolio standard.
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RPS 1AC – Renewable Transition Advantage
Contention 2 is the Renewable Transition
The transition away from a fossil fuel based economy is inevitable – The only
question is whether it is done soon enough and in a way that is sustainable for
the environment and the economy
Alternative Energy Institute, 5/13/08 [http://www.altenergy.org/transition/transition.html]
Despite the Clinton administration's hope that the transition from a society dependent on fossil
fuels to a world of controlled population growth, sustainable economies and alternative green
energies will be forthcoming, the vision seems a bit optimistic. This shift will take strong political and
emotional fortitude and decades to accomplish. The transition is not only necessary for the planet's
ecological survival; it's critical to the health and well being of every human. Each year the health of
54,000 Americans is compromised from air pollution generated by power plants. Premature death can be
caused by acid rain and by particulates in the air that we breathe. Carbon-dioxide emissions are a
major culprit in the rapid global warming, which remains a long-range fossil fuel problem.
Virtually everyone agrees that the extraction, distribution, and burning of fossil fuels contribute
significantly to many of the planet's environmental problems. This knowledge hasn't yet stopped the
ever-increasing consumption of oil and gas by an ever-increasing world population. There are almost six
billion people on Earth now, nearly double since 1960, and sometime in the next century there
will be about 12 billion. According to Jennifer D. Mitchell in World Watch magazine, "We don't have
anything like a century to prevent that next doubling; we probably have less than a decade."
The fundamental problem is the world's population growth. Right now, there are about 98 people for every
square mile of the Earth. That amount is increasing rapidly; every second there are 2 more people on the
Earth; every hour 9,000 more; every month adds 6 million more. In other words, this rate of growth is like
adding another Mexico to the world each year and another China every decade. In a modern-day century,
from 1950 to 2050, the world's population is estimated to grow from 2.5 billion to 9.3 billion an increase of
almost 3 times. Currently, the planet's human population is doubling about every 39 years. By 2050, the
U.S. population alone will have increased the equivalent of adding four more states the size of California .
It took 10,000 generations to reach a world population of 2 billion in 1930, while it will only take us a
decade in the 1990s to produce around 1.5 billion more! Not to mention all the environmental and
humanitarian losses this overpopulation problem is causing.
With more and more developing countries wanting to offer their growing populations the opportunity to
consume fossil fuel products such as gasoline and electricity, it is obvious that the global oil supply will not
sustain an overpopulated planet. But the United States and Europe have been consuming a
disproportionate amount of energy for 150 years, and it is unreasonable for the industrialized West to
expect developing economies, such as the Asian Pacific, to forego the power and wealth that burning fossil
fuel brings to industry and commerce. Indeed, U.S. economists are counting on services and products sold
to these emerging markets to fuel the growing U.S. economy.
In the near future the world's economic dependence on petroleum production will continue to grow
because we have implemented few energy alternatives. But there is only so much oil in the ground, and it
won't last forever. It is likely that as non-OPEC production begins to diminish and Middle East OPEC
producers corner the petroleum market in the next decade, barrel prices will rise significantly. In fact, on
March 23, 1999, OPEC members agreed to cut crude oil production by 2.1 million barrels a day and hope to
maintain these lower levels for a full year starting April 1, 1999. This group of 11 oil-producing nations
approved the cuts in an effort to strengthen prices and end a global oil glut. Crude prices responded by
jumping almost $3 a barrel, and gasoline prices followed suit. Even if the U.S. sends in the marines to take
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over the Persian Gulf wells, oil companies will still keep raising the price as the precious reserves are slowly
pumped out.
Either way, oil will be getting more expensive in the future. As the price of oil increases, the first to suffer
will be the world's poorer nations. When oil becomes too costly, their oil-based energy consumption will
falter. A graphic example of this scenario occurred recently just 90 miles from Miami , Florida . It started
with the collapse of Communism, when Russia was forced to cut off cheap oil imports to Cuba . An
observer in 1993 wrote: " Cuba has become an undeveloped country. Bicycles are replacing automobiles.
Horse-drawn carts are replacing delivery trucks. Oxen are replacing tractors. Factories are shut down and
urban industrial workers re-settled in rural areas to engage in labor-intensive agriculture. Food
consumption is shifting from meat and processed products to potatoes, bananas and other staples."
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Life will become more difficult in the industrialized West too. Besides the increasing immigration
pressure from suffering Third World populations, Europe and especially the U.S. will be scurrying
to find alternative and renewable sources of energy. In their book, Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing
Human Impact on the Earth , authors Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees state, "With access to global
resources, urban populations everywhere are seemingly immune to the consequences of locally
unsustainable land and resource management practices at least for a few decades. In effect,
modernization alienates us spatially and psychologically from the land. The citizens of the industrial world
suffer from collective ecological blindness that reduces their collective sense of 'connectedness' to the
ecosystems that sustain them."
Under tremendous and increasing pressure politicians will have to address the fossil fuel and pollution
crisis. Difficult questions will have to be answered. Key among them are: What alternative energy sources
exist to replace our present great dependency on petroleum? New technologies will need about 50 years to
replace existing sources in terms of convenience of use. Can they be obtained in significant quantity and
how widespread around the world are they? What are their environmental impacts? It would be ideal if
politicians began dealing with these problems now, but in democratic societies, political representatives
are elected for short terms. Most politicians succeed by delivering short-term benefits and have little
motivation to adopt costly, sustainable, long-term energy policies with the aim of preparing for the
inevitable energy crisis. The Alliance to Save Energy believes that with just a few adjustments, society
will make the jump from unlimited oil consumption to sustainable economies based on improved
energy efficiency. But greater energy efficiency, fuel saving technologies and the installation of
minor adjustments in our daily lifestyles will not solve the coming oil crunch.
Renewable green energy sources can help reduce pollution and dependence on petroleum
products. A September 1998 public opinion survey revealed that three-quarters of Americans favor
increasing federal government purchases of renewable energy such as solar and wind to help reduce
pollution and save money. Wind and solar energy do not create dangerous waste products and are
indigenous, secure and freely available. The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) recently called on
Congress and the President to increase federal purchases of renewable energy. The federal government
spends $8 billion per year for all of its energy needs, including $3.5 billion for electricity. Unfortunately,
existing regulations often prevent the federal government from buying renewable energy. ASES wants
Congress to give federal agencies authority to purchase green power and renewable energy technologies
and to provide adequate funding to agencies to pay the higher up-front costs. Many believe that the
problem is more political than technological and that the next presidential election will offer opportunity to
make some changes.
Grass roots efforts among green consumers have already begun to carve inroads into the American
economy. About 25 percent of the adult population are starting to integrate environmental and social
values into purchasing and investing decisions. According to Cliff Feigenbaum, publisher of the
Greenmoney Journal , on Wall Street one dollar out of every ten invested now passes through some sort of
social screen. The Institute for Noetic Sciences reports that given equal price and quality, 76 percent of
consumers would switch to a company with socially or environmentally responsible products and services.
Regardless of whether the process will be easy or extremely difficult, sooner or later we are all going to
have to face some major changes to our current way of life. It is not that we lack the knowledge of
how to adopt sustainable measures. We are simply resisting such constraints, as many would call them,
which might threaten the luxuries in life that we have grown so accustomed to. The point is that we now
know the Western fossil-fuel-based model is sustainable neither for the West nor for the rest of
the world. The challenge is to help developing countries leapfrog to a more decentralized, efficient,
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renewables-based system. The alternative to this is following the coal or oil-based path; suffering
from price volatility, import dependence, mounting pollution and health problems, and expensive
retrofits. Ultimately, the question is not when will the global economy switch from burning
environment-damaging and limited petroleum products to using more earth-friendly alternative
energies, but how will industry and humanity handle the transition.
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We’ll isolate two impacts:
First is Global Warming:

Climate change is real. Recent studies are undeniable and empirical evidence
is confirming what models have already predicted. Temperature variability is
happening in such a way that it could only be caused by human activity.
Rosenzweig, et al. May 2008
Cynthia Rosenzweig1, NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research
David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, Marta Vicarelli, Peter Neofotis1, Qigang Wu3 School of
Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, Gino Casassa, Centro de Estudios Científicos, Annette Menzel5, Terry L. Root6,
Nicole Estrella5, Center of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Bernard Seguin7,
Piotr Tryjanowski8, Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Adam Mickiewicz
University, Chunzhen Liu9, China Water Information Center, Samuel Rawlins, Caribbean Epidemiology Center & Anton
Imeson, Attributing physical and biological impacts to anthropogenic climate change, Nature, May 15th, 2008
Significant changes in physical and biological systems are occurring on all continents and in most oceans,
with a concentration of available data in Europe and North America. Most of these changes are in the
direction expected with warming temperature. Here we show that these changes in natural systems since
at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and that these temperature
increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone. Given the
conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report that
most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very
likely to be due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations, and
furthermore that it is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years
averaged over each continent except Antarctica, we conclude that anthropogenic climate change is having
a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally and in some continents.
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And Failure to cut emmissions makes extinction inevitable – Positive feedback
loops cause runaway temperature increases
Hunter 2003 – Founder of Greenpeace
Thermageddon, p. (8-11 )
The most obvious fact of life at this juncture of history, Dexter, is that if we continue to pollute, burn, overfish, clearcut, strip-mine,
we will inevitably
dam, drain, net, poison, dump, exterminate, develop, fly, drive, and procreate at our current rate,
precipitate a global disaster. The tilting of the system has already begun. And all the high-tech gadgets in
the world will be of little joy to us if the biosphere has collapsed and the survivors are either clinging to a threadbare existence on a
ruined planet, or desperately trying not to make the same mistakes on other planets.
it is just a matter of time before the Alps are snowless, the Arctic Ocean
You will know. I can just guess. But
ice-free, the Amazon rainforests and the boreal canopy of the Canadian Shield burned, the
salmon vanished, the coral reefs bleached away, the Everglades inundated by salt water, the
Gulf Stream itself thrown out of whack. How long before the seasons as we know them have disappeared under a
chemical shroud? There is no point in my generation kidding itself any longer about what we are allowing to happen in our lifetimes.
There is no intellectually honest way to avoid facing the truth of our culpability.
all around us, above and below, the planetary life-support

The central characteristic of the new millennium is that
system is being degraded at a rate that leaves us very little maneu vering space. The
paradise called Earth is being transformed into a fiery, storm-whipped Hieronymus Bosch-
like ecological nightmare , with an even worse long-term possibility-a million-year ice age - looming on the
horizon. A great gear is shifting that will affect the global climate mechanism throughout the rest
of history.
No one could suspect that the doom of our civilization was to be found in these four separately
benign words: accelerated positive feedback loops. But this is the phrase that best describes the real threat
confronting us, and nobody in any position of power in my time is factoring it in. This is like driving a car with a
frosted windshield and a speed gauge that says you are barely moving, when in fact you are
racing out of control. Our governments, and far too many scientists, even the good guys, are behaving as though
climate change is something that is going to waltz into the lifetimes of our grandchildren at a stately pace. They
perceive it as an evolutionary process, involving incremental changes stretched over a huge rack of time. But it might not
might be speeding up as it advances, like a storm gathering momentum.
be coming that way at all. It
With each notch upward in temperature, more methane and carbon are released, the hydro-
logical cycle turns a little faster, the albedo - the reflective power of the planet's surface, which
plays a critical role in the absorption of warmth -lessens or intensifies, depending on evaporation
rates, and suddenly the rate of permafrost melt is greater than indicated by purely linear
projections. Moreover, what we cannot calculate is the cumulative effect. What we may in fact be seeing and
hearing all around us are the early stages of a sudden lurch into an entirely new climate regime,
probably another ice age, although in the short-which is to say the century-long - run, we will continue our descent into
an inferno of heat surges, drought, flood, and desertification. The worst news, of course, is that paleontologists have
uncovered proof from ice-core drilling that rapid,
dramatic changes in climate have indeed occurred before,
caused by changes in solar intensity and abrupt changes in ice sheets and/or ocean circulation
-and the terrible truth seems to be that the massively disruptive shifts in climate that they
caused took place within mere decades.
The point of no return could be reached within the next thirty years- a point no further away in time than the
breakup of the Beatles. This will be the most obvious fact of life to you, Dexter. By then, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be
double what it was in preindustrial times, just two centuries ago. The Arctic ice cap will be on the verge of vanishing entirely during
the summer, which will mean that its surface will change from white to black, making it absorb heat instead of reflecting it, and thus
altering the planet's albedo.
Beyond that moment of final polar dissolution, there will be absolutely
nothing we can do to stop or reverse the transformation set in motion. We will have precipitated
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a temperature-induced Gotterddmmerung so sweeping and destructive that I think we need a new
word to describe it. The scientific term "radiative forcing" describes the process in which a change in the atmosphere drives a
change in climate, but in order to properly convey the profundity of that process, we need stronger language by far.
I therefore submit a combination of thermal, meaning temperature, and Armageddon, the biblical world's-end, the final battle
between good and evil. This gives us the hybrid word Thermageddon. (Interestingly, the Bible in the Book of
Revelation describes the battle of Armageddon, saying "men were scorched with great heat ... the water thereof was dried up ... and
every island fled away.. :")
If our present sweet, gentle climate is envisioned as a field held or holding itself in an exquisitely
beneficent balance, what has begun to happen can no longer be thought of in such pastel terms as a
"warming" or simply a "change." The appropriate word for what is happening to our ten-thousand-year-
old Holocene-era climate, as scientists call it, is a "crash:"
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Adoption of a Federal RPS would decrease CO2 emissions.
Sam Schoofs, Calvin College, 2004,[ 6 August 2004 A federal Renewable Portfolio Standard: Policy Analysis
and Proposal, http://www.wise-intern.org/ journal/2004/WISE2004-SamSchoofsFinalPaper.pdf.]
There are a number of strong reasons for support of a federal RPS. First, the bulk (88%) of the electricity
generation in the U.S. comes from coal, natural gas, and nuclear power [1]. To meet the electricity needs of
the U.S. these sources are definitely needed, but there is currently too much reliance. Much of the new
electricity generation has relied on natural gas, a fuel that has seen dramatic increases in price in the past
several years [46]. Increased diversification of electricity generation sources, exactly the kind that
would come from a federal RPS, will decrease demand on natural gas and avoid the cost
fluctuations associated with higher demand [46], [47]. There are numerous environmental benefits
that would come from a federal RPS. The biggest impact would come from a decrease in CO 2
emissions, “because the renewable plants added to meet the RPS would displace plants fueled
with natural gas and, to a lesser extent, coal that would have been added without the RPS” [48].
Compared to the reference case, CO 2 emissions would drop by 7% with a 10% RPS and 18% with a
20% RPS [48]. Small decreases would also occur on SO 2 , NO x , and mercury emissions [48]. Thus, the
implementation of a federal RPS will result in a net benefit on air quality.
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US Leadership is critical – No international action is possible without it
Claussen and Diringer, 7
Eilleen, president of the pew center on global climate change and Elliot, director of international strategies
of the pew center on global climate change, Vol 29, Harvard international Review, A new climate treaty- US
leadership after Kyoto
http://www.harvardir.org/articles/1594/
The urgency of the task is irrefutable. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment
concluded with 90 percent confidence that human activity is warming the planet and warned of irreversible
and potentially catastrophic consequences if emissions continue unabated. Politically as well, the next few
years represent a critical window for action. The emission limits assumed by most industrialized countries
under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012. What momentum the treaty has achieved and the multibillion-
dollar carbon market it has spawned may well be lost unless a new agreement can be forged.
Any new treaty will be environmentally effective and politically feasible only to the degree that it
successfully engages and binds all of the world’s major economies. Coming to terms with cost and equity
while also bridging the gap between developed and developing is an extraordinary diplomatic challenge.
Meeting it will require fresh thinking and approaches, a genuine readiness to compromise and a collective
political will that, while perhaps emerging, is by no means assured. What is needed above all right now is
US leadership, for no country bears greater responsibility for climate change, nor has greater capacity to
catalyze a global response.
Responsibility is measured most directly in terms of emissions, and it should surprise no one that history’s
greatest economic power is also the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. By the same token, the
tremendous enterprise, prosperity, and technological prowess that have contributed so heavily to the
atmospheric burden uniquely qualify the United States to lead a low-carbon transition. Indeed, no nation
has done more to advance scientific understanding of
the causes and consequences of global warming. But thus far, the US contribution to the global effort
largely ends there.
For the first time, however, US politics are beginning to favor real climate action. Even before the recent
Democratic takeover of Congress, momentum was building for mandatory measures to reduce US
emissions. As on many other environmental issues, individual states are leading the way, with California
once again at the forefront. Business leaders, sensing that carbon constraints are inevitable and fearing a
patchwork of state rules, are increasingly calling for a uniform national approach. Ten major companies,
including General Electric, DuPont, and Alcoa, recently joined with four nonprofits in the US Climate Action
Partnership to push for mandatory emission limits. Several bipartisan bills now before Congress would
mandate emission cuts of 60 to 80 percent by 2050.
With the enactment of mandatory US measures probably occurring no later than 2010, the global politics
of climate change will be thoroughly transformed. Having resolved what it will do at home, the United
States will know far better what it can commit to abroad. To avoid losing competitive advantage to
countries without emission controls, the United States will have a strong incentive to rejoin and strengthen
the global climate effort.
For the struggling multilateral process, the United States’ re-entry cannot come soon enough. After
President Bush’s outright rejection of Kyoto, other countries rallied around the treaty and brought it into
force. But without the United States and Australia, the protocol encompasses only about one third of global
emissions. Even if all countries meet their targets, which is unlikely, global emissions in 2012 would still be
30 percent higher than in 1997, when Kyoto was negotiated. While talks on post-2012 commitments have
begun, under the treaty’s terms they contemplate targets only for those countries that already have them.
European leaders are floating ambitious numbers, but Japan and others have made clear they are not
taking on new commitments without movement by the United States and major developing countries. The
political reality is that the negotiations are headed nowhere, unless they are somehow broadened or linked
to bring in the other major players.
With the United States back at the table, there could be a way forward. Once the largest emitter says it is
ready to deal, China and other emerging economies might also be willing. Under this more hopeful
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RPS AFF and NEG

scenario, what could a future climate treaty look like? To begin with, it must commit all the major
economies. Today, 25 countries account for 85 percent of global emissions (as well as 70 percent of global
population and 85 percent of global GDP). Environmentally, no long-term strategy to cut global emissions
can succeed without them. Politically, it is imperative that all major economies be on board. All share
concerns about costs and competitiveness, and none can sustain an ambitious climate effort without
confidence that others will contribute their fair share. This requires binding commitments. But a new treaty
should be flexible, allowing countries to take on different types of commitments. Circumstances vary
widely among the major economies, and the policies that can address climate change in the context of
national priorities will vary from one to the other. Countries will need different pathways forward.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Second is the Economy:
The Economy is stable but reeling-the housing crisis has placed us on the brink
of recession
Sacramento Business Journal, 7/7/08

SF Fed chief sees economy improving -- next year
Shocks in the housing, stock and commodity markets continue to dampen the economy but it will
pick up next year, the president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve said Monday.
Housing prices have further to fall, financial markets remain fragile and commodity prices
threaten to fuel inflation, Janet Yellen said in a speech at the University of California San Diego
Economics Roundtable.
"The earlier policy easing by the Federal Reserve will help cushion the economy from some of the
effects of the shocks," she said, "And the fiscal stimulus program is helping at present. Over time,
the drag from housing will wane and credit conditions should improve.”
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RPS AFF and NEG
Declining oil production makes economic collapse and war inevitable – Status
quo increases in prices are irrelevant because they are occurring gradually,
rather than as a sudden shock – Only a shift to alternative energy can solve
Richard Heinberg, 2005 [Senior Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute, “How to avoid oil wars, terrorism,
and economic collapse”, http://www.energybulletin.net/node/7552]
By now most well-informed people are aware that global oil production may soon reach its all-time
peak, and that the consequences will likely be severe.
Already many important oil-producing nations (such as the United States, Indonesia, and Iran)
and some whole regions (such as the North Sea) are past their production maximums. With nearly
every passing year another country reaches a production plateau or begins its terminal decline.
Meanwhile global rates of oil discovery have been falling since the early 1960s, as has been
confirmed by ExxonMobil. All of the 100 or so supergiant fields that are collectively responsible for about
half of current world production were discovered in the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s. No fields of comparable
size have been found since then; instead, exploration during recent years has turned up only much smaller
fields that deplete relatively quickly. The result is that today only one new barrel of oil is being
discovered for every four that are extracted and used.
World leaders are hampered in their ability to assess the situation by a lack of consistent data. Proven
petroleum reserve figures look reassuring: the world has roughly a trillion barrels yet to produce,
perhaps more; indeed, official reserves figures have never been higher. However, circumstantial evidence
suggests that some of the largest producing nations have inflated their reserves figures for
political reasons. Meanwhile oil companies routinely (and legitimately) report reserve growth for
fields discovered decades ago. In addition, reserves figures are often muddied by the inclusion of
non-conventional petroleum resources, such oil sands - which do need to be taken into account, but in
a separate category, as their rates of extraction are limited by factors different from those that constrain
the production of conventional crude. As a consequence of all of these practices, oil reserves data tend to
give an impression of expansion and plenty, while discovery and depletion data do the opposite.
This apparent conflict in the data invites dispute among experts as to when the global oil peak is
likely to occur. Some analysts say that the world is virtually at its peak of production now; others contend
that the event can be delayed for two decades or more through enhanced investment in exploration, the
adoption of new extraction technologies, and the substitution of non-conventional petroleum sources (oil
sands, natural gas condensates, and heavy oil) for conventional crude.
However, there is little or no disagreement that a series of production peaks is now within sight -
first, for conventional non-OPEC oil; then for conventional oil globally; and finally for all global conventional
and non-conventional petroleum sources combined.
Moreover, even though there may be dispute as to the timing of these events, it is becoming widely
acknowledged that the world peak in all combined petroleum sources will have significant global
economic consequences. Mitigation efforts will require many years of work and trillions of dollars in
investment. Even if optimistic forecasts of the timing of the global production peak turn out to be accurate,
the world is facing an historic change that is unprecedented in scope and depth of impact.
Due to systemic dependence on oil for transportation, agriculture, and the production of plastics
and chemicals, every sector of every society will be affected. Efforts will be needed to create
alternative sources of energy, to reduce demand for oil through heightened energy efficiency, and to
redesign entire systems (including cities) to operate with less petroleum.
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RPS AFF and NEG

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These efforts will be challenging enough in the context of a stable economic environment. However, if
prices for oil become extremely volatile, mitigation programs could be undermined. While high but stable
prices would encourage conservation and investment in alternatives, prices that repeatedly
skyrocket and then plummet could devastate entire economies and discourage long-term
investment. Actual shortages of oil - of which price shocks would be only a symptom - would be
even more devastating. The worst impacts would be suffered by those nations, and those aspects of
national economies, that could not obtain oil at any price affordable to them. Supply interruptions would
likely occur with greater frequency and for increasing lengths of time as global oil production gradually
waned.
Efforts to plan a long-term energy transition would be frustrated, in both importing and exporting
countries. Meanwhile the perception among importers that exporting nations were profiteering would
foment animosities and an escalating likelihood of international conflict.
In short, the global peak in oil production is likely to lead to economic chaos and extreme
geopolitical tensions, raising the spectres of war, revolution, terrorism, and even famine, unless
nations adopt some method of cooperatively reducing their reliance on oil.
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RPS AFF and NEG

US firms will be subject to tariff barriers if the U.S. doesn’t reduce
emissions – This causes uncertainty that damages the US economy
Kiplinger Business Forecasts 7/27/01 [What Kyoto's Revival Means for U.S. Business]
The money saved will grant U.S. businesses a considerable competitive advantage over foreign-based firms operating
under Kyoto's strictures"at least in the near term. Bet on those competitors characterizing that edge as a
de facto government subsidy. They're likely to press their own governments to respond.
"To the extent that the U.S. has tried to turn this into an economic and not an ecological issue,"
says Michael Marvin, president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, "the EU [European Union] may try
to show that the economic consequences of nonparticipation are greater than any perceived
economic consequences from participation." That could easily take the form of tariffs against
U.S. goods manufactured without the treaty-set CO2 limits. U.S. firms whose operations are
essentially in line with Kyoto's provisions may not be targeted for retaliation, particularly if their
exports are labeled as such.
Companies that have taken steps to cut their CO2 output worldwide, including DuPont, IBM, Johnson &
Johnson and others, will have a much easier time adjusting, if and when Kyoto comes into force. Their
emissions will be as low in the U.S. as in countries that plan to ratify the treaty.
But these companies do face a lost opportunity from the United States' refusal to go along. They won't be able to participate in the planned global market for pollution-credit
trading. Under such a system, a company or country that can't meet its emission-reduction targets will be able to get "carbon credits," either by creating carbon "sinks" (through
restoring CO2-absorbing forests, for example) or by purchasing credits from a country that has already lowered its emissions below target levels.
With the U.S. on the sidelines, any CO2-limiting activities a U.S. company engages in here would be worthless as far as generating carbon credits goes, though that company
would still gain credit for such activities conducted overseas"such as reforesting clear-cut areas in developing countries.
As the world's biggest generator of greenhouse gases, the U.S. is also the largest potential buyer of carbon credits. And the potential for what the World Bank estimates as a
$100-billion international commodities market in CO2 emissions shrinks considerably without U.S. participation. Also lost is the expertise the U.S. has already developed in setting
up commodities markets for other emissions, such as sulfur dioxide.
Persisting regulatory uncertainty poses yet another problem. "U.S. companies that have to deal
with different carbon regimes in different countries will find this expensive and have difficulty
harmonizing them, especially as long as the U.S. has no carbon regime of its own," says Alexandra
Deane Thornton, executive director of the Center for a Sustainable Economy. The resulting frustrations
will be comparable to those felt by companies doing business in different states with conflicting
state laws.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Economic collapse causes extinction
Bearden, Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000 (Tom, June 24,
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aaf97f22e23.htm, Accessed 9/11/03)
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the
arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to
be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and
South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China-
whose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into
the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such
extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then
compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept
is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a
nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its
perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD
exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site
within the United States itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and
perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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RPS AFF and NEG

An RPS would insulate the US energy price shocks.
Union of Concerned Scientists 2001 [December 2001, Federal renewable energy standard would help
prevent energy price shocks, http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et1201/et1201s6.html]
Adoption of a federal renewable energy standard would help insulate the United States from
energy price shocks by diversifying energy supply, according to a report released by the Union of
Concerned Scientists. The report, Clean Energy Blueprint, found that America could achieve at least 20
percent of its electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass energy sources by 2020 and save
consumers money, when combined with policies to save energy. “This report shows that there are
alternative solutions to the erratic prices and supply of commodities like natural gas,” said report author
Alan Nogee, Director of Clean Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Adopting a
renewable energy standard would diversify electricity generation, as well as reduce air pollution
and greenhouse gas emissions. It's time for Congress to follow twelve states and adopt this
standard.” The report outlines a series of policies to increase US energy efficiency and renewable
energy use, including a renewable portfolio standard that would require electric utilities to increase
non-hydropower renewable energy from about two percent today to 20 percent of overall
electricity generation by 2020. More than 100 organizations praised the policies outlined in the
report and called on the US Senate to include them in national energy legislation.
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RPS AFF and NEG

RPS 1AC – Solvency
Contention 4 is Solvency
Only an RPS can solve because it uses a market driven approach – Direct
subsidies are bureaucratic and inefficient
American Wind Energy Association, 2005[October 2005, The Renewables Portfolio Standard:
How It Works and Why It's Needed http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/RPSHowWhy.pdf]
What Are the Efficiency Advantages of the RPS Approach? An advantage of the RPS over direct subsidy
approaches is that it avoids the process of government agencies distributing funds, which can be
bureaucratic and inefficient. In addition, government-administered programs almost always
impose artificial constraints of various types, which increase costs. Second, under the RPS, no
renewable energy project is guaranteed a place in the market. Unlike a one-time competition for
funds, each project must continually compete to keep its place in the market created by the
standard. For example, existing projects and technologies must compete with new ones, and
project enhancements must compete with greenfield projects. Third, the certainty and stability of the
renewables market created by a properly-designed RPS will enable long-term contracts and
financing for the renewable power industry, which will, in turn, lower renewable power costs.
Fourth, the flexibility of the RPS encourages least-cost compliance for generators. Generators can
compare the cost of owning a renewables facility to the cost of a Credit/renewable power purchase
package and to secondary-market Credits. Those who are most efficient at generating renewable
power will end up producing it, and those who cannot efficiently produce it will purchase Credits
on the competitive market. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, since large generation companies
will be looking to improve their competitive position in the market, they will have an interest in
driving down the cost of renewables to reduce their RPS compliance costs. They may do this by
lending their own financial resources to a renewables project, by seeking out least-cost renewables
applications, or by entering into long-term purchasing commitments. This fosters a "competitive
dynamic" that is not achieved with policies that involve direct subsidies to renewable generators
without involving the rest of the electric industry.
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RPS AFF and NEG

A federal RPS is superior to states because it would create consistent rules,
which avoids litigation and encourages manufacturing
Global Power Report 2007 [June 14, “Nonprofits call for national renewable requirement over state-by-state
approach to portfolio standard”, Lexis]
A national renewable portfolio standard would be better than the current patchwork of state-
based standards because it would save consumers money, increase the country's manufacturing
base and avoid expensive litigation, according to a new report from a nonprofit group. By
establishing a consistent, national mandate and uniform trading rules for renewable energy
certificates, a federal RPS "can create a more just and more predictable regulatory environment
for utilities while jump-starting a robust national renewable energy technology sector," said the
Network for New Energy Choices. Opponents of a national RPS argue that a federal mandate would
increase utility rates, and the Bush administration has rejected the mandate idea on the grounds that it
would create "winners and losers" among regions of the country and hardships for areas where renewable
resources are not as prevalent, NNEC said. But it argued that a national RPS calling for 20% of generation
from renewable resources by 2020 would decrease consumer energy bills by an average of 1.5% per year
and save consumers billions of dollars. Legal battles are being waged over state RPS plans. A handful
of states, including California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas, have adopted restrictions on
out-of-state renewable resources that many scholars believe violate the Commerce Clause of the
Constitution, NNEC said. Growing tensions between federal and state regulators has brought about
a type of "Commerce Clause brinksmanship" that invites utilities to challenge the
constitutionality of state RPS mandates. One successful legal challenge could cascade into more
litigation, "collapsing the entire state-based RPS structure and destroying the emerging
interstate renewable energy market," NNEC said. On the other hand, a national RPS would lower
construction costs for renewable facilities, trim natural gas demand and lower natural gas prices,
provide utilities with a "hedge" against fossil fuel and environmental compliance costs and add
manufacturing jobs in areas of the country that are losing such jobs, NNEC said. A national RPS of
20% would create as many as 240,000 jobs in manufacturing, construction, shipping and finance, versus
75,000 jobs if the power were provided by fossil fuels. Although transmission enhancements to support
new renewable projects would require about 26,600 miles of new transmission in the next decade,
quadrupling planned expenditures to $56 billion by 2011, case studies show that opposition to power lines
turns into support when they are justified by connecting with renewable generation, NNEC said.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Regional differences will not prevent solvency – the national mandate will
minimize differences and subsidize under-resourced areas
Sam Schoofs, Calvin College, 2004,[ 6 August 2004 A federal Renewable Portfolio Standard: Policy
Analysis and Proposal, http://www.wise-intern.org/ journal/2004/WISE2004-SamSchoofsFinalPaper.pdf.]
5) Economic Development One hindrance to developing a federal RPS is that not all states have the
same renewable generation capacity and so under a federal plan, not all states would benefit in
the same way. It has been argued that a federal RPS will result in huge flows of cash from Eastern states,
which generally are ‘renewable poor’ to Western states, which generally are ‘renewable rich’ [55]. Under a
federal RPS, two scenarios could occur: the first is that the best energy sites in the country will be used
because these have the most economic benefits and money will indeed, flow to the states with the best
potential. The second scenario is that states will use their own RPS to control where generation of
renewables will occur [40]. In the first scenario, the absolute lowest cost energy sites in the country would
be found and developed, and credits would be traded between states. This would keep costs low, but only
certain states would benefit, unlike in the second scenario. The second scenario would result in economic
development occurring throughout the country, although at an overall higher cost than in the first
scenario. It has been suggested that many ‘renewable poor’ states could benefit from a federal
RPS because the materials and production used in making renewable generators could be done
in any state and shipped to the states where development will occur. It is likely that a federal RPS
would have results somewhere in between the two scenarios discussed above. Since 17 states currently
have an RPS, these (and other states who wanted to pass a state RPS) could control whether or not
renewable credits generated from other states are eligible to fulfill the state’s RPS. The inequities
that may arise between states that gain from an RPS and states that do not could be balanced by
promoting economic development in ‘renewable poor’ states. An RPS bill could use tax breaks to
encourage manufacture of equipment in certain states used to fulfill the RPS in other states. This
would mean that new businesses could be encouraged to start in a state that has poor solar potential such
as Michigan, which could produce solar panels that could be shipped to New Mexico to take advantage of
that state’s superior solar potential. In addition to solar panels, wind turbines, transmission materials, and
any other element could be manufactured throughout the country and shipped anywhere else. This type of
tax break should not be promoted to discourage the manufacture of renewables equipment that may be
occurring already, but should instead promote in ‘renewable poor’ states the new manufacturing capability
necessary to fulfill the RPS. This type of addition to an RPS would result in a more balanced economic
benefit for the whole nation.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Even if the plan only creates a “renewable Bubble” it still increases solvency
long term – even failed ventures build infrastructure and public awareness
New York Times 2007 [ May 27, “With Help, could Ethanol be the Next Internet Lexis]
Increasingly, however, businesses and consumers are finding that alternative energy and new energy-
efficiency technologies can pay real economic dividends. Mr. Bloomberg said that a taxi driver could save
thousands of dollars by driving a hybrid. Given the long-term trends of declining domestic crude oil
production and rising demand for gasoline, ''the economics get more favorable for producing renewable
fuel every day,'' even if government support were to decline, said Fred Seamon, senior economist at the
Chicago Board of Trade. Of course, history teaches that bubbles can leave behind a great deal of
useful commercial infrastructure and innovation. Companies like Global Crossing and WorldCom
may have failed horrifically, but the fiber-optic cable they laid helped companies like Google.
Many ethanol plants and solar-panel makers may fail as investments, but their innovations could
benefit the economy. Another important thing happens during these outbursts of investor
enthusiasm. Money spent on hype and promotion builds public consciousness and spurs
consumer demand. That's already starting to happen as utility customers sign up for green power and
Wal-Mart pitches compact fluorescent light bulbs by the millions. More people whose careers have
nothing to do with the vast energy industry are thinking about carbon emissions. ''I was at my doctor, and
we spent half the time talking about her new hybrid,'' Mr. Yergin said.
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RPS AFF and NEG

____________________
***Topicality
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Topicality – Incentives
An RPS creates a market incentive to develop renewables
Mary Hutzler, Director, Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting. 2003 [ May 2003, Analysis of a 10-
percent Renewable, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/service/sroiaf(2003)01.pdf]
To stimulate an increase in the use of renewable resources to generate electricity, several bills or
amendments in Congress call for the establishment of a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for all
electricity retail suppliers. A typical RPS requires that a share of the power sold in the United
States must come from qualifying renewable facilities. Companies who generate power from
qualifying renewable facilities will be issued credits that they can hold for their own use or sell to
others. To meet the RPS requirement, each individual electricity seller must hold credits - issued to their
own qualifying renewable facilities or purchased from others - equal to the share required in each year. For
example, a supplier with 100 billion kilowatt-hours of retail electricity sales in a year with a 5-percent RPS
requirement would have to hold 5 billion kilowatthours of credits. In a competitive market, the price of
renewable credits should rise to the level needed to stimulate power plant developers to bring on
the amount of qualifying renewable capacity needed to meet the RPS requirement. Thus, the RPS
provides a subsidy to renewables to make them competitive with other resource options.
However, it allows the market to determine the most economical renewable options to develop to comply.
Counterinterpretation – Incentive includes the fear of punishment

American Heritage Dictionary, 2006 [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Incentive]
in·cen·tive Audio Help (ĭn-sěn'tĭv) Pronunciation Key

n. Something, such as the fear of punishment or the expectation of reward, that induces action or
motivates effort.
An RPS is an incentive for investment in Renewables – it is Enforced by a

mandate.
The Baltimore Sun 2007 [October 17, “Bush’s Good Idea on Warming” Lexis
Imagine this: The Republican governor of a large, trendsetting state works with leaders of his state
legislature from both parties to enact groundbreaking legislation that requires private corporations and
others operating in the state to meet stringent pro-green goals. Is this Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of
California, 2007? It could be. But it also could be Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, 1999. The Renewable
Portfolio Standards Act adopted by Texas that year required the state's energy retailers to produce 5,000
megawatts of electricity from renewable sources by 2015. That legislation provided a strong incentive
for Texas energy companies to invest in renewables and established firm penalties for those that
failed to meet their mandate. By all accounts, it jump-started the state's development of alternative
energy, particularly wind farms. Nowadays, Texas leads the nation in wind-power generation.
An RPS is an incentive because it has a tradeable permit

B. Representing the RPS To represent a national RPS, the EMM has the ability to require that generation
from renewable facilities (including all generation from cogenerators) be equal to or greater than a
specified share of total annual generation. When this is done, the most economical renewable options are
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RPS AFF and NEG

constructed to meet the RPS requirement. The projected price of the renewable credits represents
the incentive needed by the last increment of renewable capacity added to make it competitive
with other options. The renewable credit price times the required generation in each year becomes part
of the operating costs of nonqualifying facilities because sellers of power from these facilities must
purchase renewable credits for them in order to comply with the required RPS share.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Topicality – Incentives
An RPS is a market incentive – the only mandate is the enforcement of credits
at the end of the year
American Wind Energy Association, 2005[October 2005, The Renewables Portfolio Standard: How It Works
and Why It's Needed http://www.awea.org/pubs/factsheets/RPSHowWhy.pdf]
How Would the RPS Work? Renewable Energy Credits are central to the RPS. A Credit is a tradable
certificate of proof that one kWh of electricity has been generated by a renewable generator. Credits are
denominated in kilowatt-hours (kWh) and are a separate commodity from the power itself. The RPS
requires all electricity generators (or electricity retailers, depending on policy design) to demonstrate,
through ownership of Credits, that they have supported an amount of renewable energy generation
equivalent to some percentage of their total annual kWh sales. For example, if the RPS is set at 5%, and a
generator sells 100,000 kWhs in a given year, the generator would need to possess 5,000 Credits at the
end of that year. Investors and generators make all decisions about how to comply, choosing the type of
renewable energy to acquire, which technologies to use, what renewable developers to do business with,
what price to pay, and which contract terms to agree to. Companies decide for themselves whether to
invest in renewable energy projects and generate their own Credits, enter into long-term contracts to
purchase Credits or renewable power along with Credits, or simply to purchase Credits on the spot market.
Only the bottom line is enforced: possession of a sufficient number of Credits at the end of each year. The
Credit system provides compliance flexibility and avoids the need to "track electrons." Because the RPS
applies equally to all generators, it is competitively-neutral.
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RPS AFF and NEG

_________________
***Inherency
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RPS AFF and NEG

RPS Won’t Pass Now
RPS won’t pass when it is brought up again – Congress prefers other solutions
to greenhouse
Electric Utility Week 2007 [December 17, “Energy bill heads for enactment, with some power privisions but
not key tax incentives, Lexis]
Congress is expected to adjourn for the year this week, but when members return in January they may look
at other measures as vehicles for attachment of tax credit extensions for wind and solar. The credits
expire next December. Reid and Pelosi also said they may continue to pursue an RPS. It "has support in
both Houses, and we will fight that another day," Pelosi said. But industry analysts pronounced the
RPS dead. When Congress turns its focus to greenhouse gas legislation, it could be that a
national RPS with renewable energy credits "seems duplicative and could result in higher compliance
costs if established parallel to an expected cap-and-trade program to achieve greenhouse gas reductions,"
said Stanford Group Senior Vice President Christine Tezak.
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RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “Markets Solve Now”
Market forces alone are not enough to commercialize Renewable energy –
government mandates will just level the playing field
New York Times 2007 [ May 27, “With Help, could Ethanol be the Next Internet Lexis]
Of course, government, through various industrial policies, has long encouraged the private sector to
invest in new technologies. Congress commissioned the first telegraph line in the 1840s, gave railroads
millions of acres of land to build rail networks and financed the research that led to the creation of the
Internet. ''I equate the government support of ethanol to the government electrifying rural America or
helping build the transcontinental railroads,'' said Matt Hartwig, communications director at the Renewable
Fuels Association. ''The government helped set it up, and once it was there, the private sector took it
over.'' Some experts say they believe the government should encourage alternative energy
because the playing field is far from level. ''The whole alternative energy sector is still an infant
industry and competing against a well-established, well-capitalized petroleum industry,'' said John
M. Urbanchuk, a director at the consulting firm LECG, based in Wayne, Pa. Because solar and wind
technologies are very much niche technologies, ''it would be hard for them to get into the market
without a mandate,'' said Michael Toman, senior economist at the RAND Corporation, which has
produced a study suggesting that the United States could get 25 percent of its energy from renewable
sources by 2025.
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RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “States Solve Now”
An RPS is necessary – all other state attempts have failed to stimulate the
renewables market
Sam Schoofs, Intern at Calvin College, 2004,[ 6 August 2004 A federal Renewable Portfolio Standard: Policy
As discussed in the previous section, states are already implementing renewable portfolio standards.
Seventeen states have an RPS or similar policy and more are under consideration, but this is not doing
enough to promote and develop renewable energy nationwide. Current policies concerning
renewable energy such as government money for research and development and tax credits have
provided benefits, but have not done enough to make renewable energy competitive. So-called
“green power” customer choice programs, which are made available for consumers to purchase “green
power” from their utilities, have also seen some support, but not enough to fully lower the cost gaps
between renewables and other sources of energy [49]. Typically only a small percentage of consumers
are willing to pay for the higher costs of “green power” despite poll numbers that indicate
otherwise [50]. Until the costs of renewable energy “become comparable to those of
conventional energy, green marketing programs are unlikely to attract many customers” [50].
There is a market failure happening in which the market on its own, or even the market coupled
with current policies for encouraging renewable energy, is not providing the proper impetus to
encourage renewables.
State RPSs in the status quo won’t significantly increase renewables

In the Reference case, plants using fossil fuels are projected to meet most of the growth in demand
expected over the next 20 years, as shown in Table 3. Increased generation from natural gas and coal are
expected to be especially important; for example, between 2001 and 2025 the generation from natural gas
is projected to increase from 618 billion kilowatt-hours to 1,637 billion kilowatt-hours. The share of total
generation coming from natural gas is projected to increase from 17 percent to 28 percent over the same
time period. Although coal generation increases by 900 billion kilowatt-hours from 2001 through 2025, its
share of generation drops from 51 percent to 48 percent. The generation from non-hydroelectric
renewable resources is projected to grow from 80 billion kilowatt-hours in 2001 to 185 billion kilowatt-
hours in 2025 in the Reference case, including combined heat and power applications. Much of this
growth in generation from non-hydroelectric renewable resources is expected to be encouraged
by various State mandates, RPS, and other programs, with a smaller amount coming from new
merchant power plants. However, even with this increase in generation, the Reference case share
of generation coming from these resources is only projected to increase from 2.2 percent in 2001
to 3.2 percent in 2025.
35
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_________________________
***Global Warming Advantage
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Extinction Impact
Failure to reverse carbon emissions causes mass death and suffering,
destroying the whole planet on a very short timeframe
WOOD 2007—Professor of Law at the University of Oregon, 34 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 577
Our prior carbon pollution has already locked us into an irrevocable temperature rise of up to two degrees Fahrenheit.
13 Two degrees does not sound like much at all until you realize that the Earth's average temperature has not varied
by more than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 10,000 years. 14 Just a few degrees of average temperature
change makes the difference between an ice age and our current climate. 15 Temperatures only five
to nine degrees Fahrenheit cooler than those today marked the end of the last Ice Age, when the northeast United
States was under 3000 feet of ice. 16 In light of that fact, consider the effect of a ten degree difference on the hot side.
17 Once we understand the climate premium that every single degree Fahrenheit carries, we would no more dismiss a
ten degree temperature rise for Earth than we would dismiss a 108 degree fever in our bodies. So, what does all of this
mean for us? In effect, you and I--along with all of the other people and species on this Earth--find ourselves in a
greenhouse with climbing temperatures. 18 And this situation is bound to create hostility as Americans
alone account for nearly thirty percent [*581] of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. 19 There
is no magic Tylenol that will cure this temperature rise overnight, because carbon dioxide can persist in the
atmosphere for up to a few centuries. 20 Hurricane Katrina--which devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in
2005--signaled what we can expect from the global warming already underway as a result of the
carbon emissions that we cannot call back. 21 Scientists across multiple disciplines warn of crop
losses, 22 food shortages, 23 flooding, 24 coastal loss, 25 wildfire, 26 drought, 27 pests, 28
hurricanes, 29 [*582] tornadoes, 30 heat waves, 31 landslides, 32 species extinctions, 33
vanishing snow pack, 34 increased disease vectors, 35 and other harms. 36 [*583] An international
climate research team recently warned of a need to prepare for as many as fifty million environmental refugees by
2010. 37 If we do nothing to curb carbon emissions, we will commit ourselves to a future that most
Americans cannot even imagine. Jim Hansen, the leading climate scientist for the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), presents the ten degree Fahrenheit scenario: it will send fifty percent or more
species into extinction. 38 That is equivalent to the mass extinction that occurred fifty-five million years ago. 39
In his words, "Life will survive, but it will do so on a transformed [*584] planet." 40 A mere five-degree Fahrenheit
temperature increase may cause an eighty foot rise in sea level. 41 Hansen points out: "In that case, the United States
would lose most East Coast cities: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami; indeed, practically the
entire state of Florida would be under water. Fifty million people in the U.S. live below that sea level." 42 I could go on
detailing on how climate crisis will affect the lives of every human on Earth. What I have mentioned is just the tip of
the iceberg--a phrase on its way out. British commentator Mark Lynas, author of High Tide, summarizes the Earth's
situation this way: "Let me put it simply: if we go on emitting greenhouse gases at anything like the
current rate, most of the surface of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable within the lifetimes
of most readers of this article." 43
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CO2 Causes Warming
Numerous Scientific studies prove that CO2 causes global warming, which
leads to extinction
Brandenburg and Paxson 1999 Rocket Scientist and Science Editor
Dead Mars, Dying Earth p. (45-47)
The monitoring of air samples at Mauna Loa was able to reveal a trend that has continued
predictably over time. Since 1955 , when monitoring began, to the present, the level of atmospheric
carbon dioxide has risen somewhere between 0.5 and 2.88 parts per million per year . Each year,
the blip in the graph that indicates the change of the seasons takes the line to yet a higher level,
irrespective of whether there was a car driving up the side of the mountain or not.'' Global air
contains a little more carbon dioxide every year, and the 1998 reading was the biggest increase in
a single year ever recorded. The propane car at the observatory was eventually abandoned when an increase in
traffic of regular cars up the mountain made it pointless to attempt to maintain the purity of the air to the same high
standard. Yet despite the fact that the liquid propane needed to run the car wasn't readily available in 1972 (and it cost
more than gasoline) and that the expense involved in converting the engine of a single car to propane was about $600, Dr.
Pueschel felt that conversion was worth the additional expense, even for the average car owner. Dr. Pueschel knew
something that virtually no one else knew: what a single automobile could do to air quality. He personally had witnessed the
impact a lone car had made on the monitoring equipment. "Someday we will have to pay, and it won't be cheap," he
predicted. Dr. Pueschel had also seen the relentless upward climb of the meedle measuring carbon dioxide in the global
atmosphere during the previous two decades. Could his warning have been any more clear? "We take for granted our air is
free, but someday we just won't have it anymore." ' The wisdom of hindsight may illuminate what he really meant when he
told the newspaper why they had bought the propane car. Gradually, incrementally, we are changing Earth's
atmosphere. But are we slowly altering our atmosphere away from something that supports human
life toward something deadly like the atmosphere of Mars? Such an atmosphere would have
been very familiar to Joseph Black, who isolated the very first atmospheric gas. Unitarian minister
Joseph Priestley would have recognized the atmosphere of Mars as well. So would coal miners from
the early part of the 20th century and the canary that lay gasping at the bottom of the cage, for the
atmosphere of Mars is made of fixed air. The atmosphere of Mars is made of blackdamp. The
atmosphere of Mars is made of carbonic acid gas. The atmosphere of Mars is made of a substance
that has over time had many names reflecting the toxic side of its nature. While today we call all of
them "carbon dioxide" (which we think of as a benign product of our own bodies and the harmless
bubbles in soda pop), this substance has clearly not always been viewed as a harmless gas . Nor
should it be in the future, for it is time once again to inform our opinions about this substance and
recognize its invisible, dark side. As long as a stylus attached to the monitoring equipment in some
lonely station on the top of an inactive volcano in Hawaii continues to etch a line ratcheting upward-
showing the increased amounts of carbon dioxide that, year after year, flood our atmosphere,
threatening us-then we too must think of it very differently. It isn't a matter of speculation. It is a
matter of hard, cold scientific fact supported by numerous studies conducted by many respected
scientists . In the overwhelming majority they agree: Earth's atmosphere has far too much of what
we now must think of as carbon die-oxide. It is warming our planet to the point where life,
human life, is endangered . We are going to have to do something decisive and effective about
this killer. No matter how successful or enlightened we think ourselves to be, we are not exempt
from the need to act-in the same way that we are not exempt from the need to breathe.
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Resource Wars Impact
Global climate change will cause resource wars across the planet – Spurring
massive nuclear proliferation and increasing the chance of a global
conflagration
Schwartz and Randall 3
Peter Schwartz, cofounder and chairman of Global Business Network and Doug Randall, senior practitioner at GBN,
“Abrupt Climate Change”, October 2003 http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231
As famine, disease, and weather-related disasters strike due to the abrupt climate change, many countries’
needs will exceed their carrying capacity. This will create a sense of desperation, which is likely to lead to
offensive aggression in order to reclaim balance. Imagine eastern European countries, struggling to feed
their populations with a falling supply of food, water, and energy, eyeing Russia, whose population is
already in decline, for access to its grain, minerals, and energy supply. Or, picture Japan, suffering from
flooding along its coastal cities and contamination of its fresh water supply, eying Russia’s Sakhalin Island
oil and gas reserves as an energy source to power desalination plants and energy-intensive agricultural
processes. Envision Pakistan, India, and China – all armed with nuclear weapons – skirmishing at their
borders over refugees, access to shared rivers, and arable land. Spanish and Portuguese fishermen might
fight over fishing rights – leading to conflicts at sea. And, countries including the United States would be
likely to better secure their borders. With over 200 river basins touching multiple nations, we can expect
conflict over access to water for drinking, irrigation, and transportation. The Danube touches twelve
nations, the Nile runs though nine, and the Amazon runs through seven.
In this scenario, we can expect alliances of convenience. The United States and Canada may become one, simplifying
border controls. Or, Canada might keep its hydropower—causing energy problems in the US. North and South Korea
may align to create one technically savvy and nuclear-armed entity. Europe may act as a unified block – curbing
immigration problems between European nations – and allowing for protection against aggressors. Russia, with its
abundant minerals, oil, and natural gas may join Europe. In this world of warring states, nuclear arms proliferation is
inevitable. As cooling drives up demand, existing hydrocarbon supplies are stretched thin. With a scarcity of energy
supply – and a growing need for access -- nuclear energy will become a critical source of power, and this will
accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national
security. China, India, Pakistan, Japan, South Korea, Great Britain, France, and Germany will all have nuclear weapons
capability, as will Israel, Iran, Egypt, and North Korea.
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Biodiversity Impact
Climate change will cause massive biodiversity loss and species extinction.
Nature 4
Feeling the heat: Climate change and biodiversity loss, Jan 8th
http://www.nature.com/nature/links/040108/040108-1.html
Many plant and animal species are unlikely to survive climate change. New analyses suggest that 15–37% of a sample
of 1,103 land plants and animals would eventually become extinct as a result of climate changes expected by 2050.
For some of these species there will no longer be anywhere suitable to live. Others will be unable to reach places
where the climate is suitable. A rapid shift to technologies that do not produce greenhouse gases, combined with
carbon sequestration, could save 15–20% of species from extinction.
The Impact is the end of civilization and all life on earth

Diner 1994 (David N. Judge Advocate General’s Corps of US Army, Military Law Review, Lexis)
No species has ever dominated its fellow species as man has. In most cases, people have assumed the God-like power of life and
death -- extinction or survival -- over the plants and animals of the world. For most of history, mankind pursued this domination with a
single-minded determination to master the world, tame the wilderness, and exploit nature for the maximum benefit of the human
In past mass extinction episodes, as many as ninety percent of the existing
race. n67
species perished, and yet the world moved forward, and new species replaced the old. So why
should the world be concerned now? The prime reason is the world's survival. Like all
animal life, humans live off of other species. At some point, the number of species could
decline to the point at which the ecosystem fails, and then humans also would become
extinct. No one knows how many [*171] species the world needs to support human life, and to find out --
by allowing certain species to become extinct -- would not be sound policy. In addition to food,
species offer many direct and indirect benefits to mankind. n68 2. Ecological Value. -- Ecological value is the value that species have
in maintaining the environment. Pest, n69 erosion, and flood control are prime benefits certain species provide to man. Plants and
animals also provide additional ecological services -- pollution control, n70 oxygen production, sewage treatment, and
biodegradation. n71 3. Scientific and Utilitarian Value. -- Scientific value is the use of species for research into the physical processes
of the world. n72 Without plants and animals, a large portion of basic scientific research would be impossible. Utilitarian value is the
direct utility humans draw from plants and animals. n73 Only a fraction of the [*172] earth's species have been examined, and
mankind may someday desperately need the species that it is exterminating today. To accept that the snail darter, harelip sucker, or
Dismal Swamp southeastern shrew n74 could save mankind may be difficult for some. Many, if not most, species are useless to man
in a direct utilitarian sense. Nonetheless, they may be critical in an indirect role, because their extirpations could affect a directly
useful species negatively. In a closely interconnected ecosystem, the loss of a species affects other species dependent on it. n75
Moreover, as the number of species decline, the effect of each new extinction on the remaining species increases dramatically. n76 4.
Biological Diversity. -- The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. n77 As the current mass
extinction has progressed, the world's biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing
the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications.
Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist
species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable
than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it
can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such
a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere
breaks down as a whole." n79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially
simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of
ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the
1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this
trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly
perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human
extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing,
one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, [hu]mankind may be edging closer to the
abyss.
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_____________________
***Economy Advantage
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Oil Dependence Collapses US economy
Oil Dependence holds the US economy hostage to supply side crises which
make a recession inevitable.
National Commission on Energy Policy, 5
Oil Dependence creates severe national security and economic risks, top officials find at crisis simulation event, July 24th
http://www.energycommission.org/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/1553/pid/500
The dependence of the U.S. on oil creates serious national security vulnerabilities that, if exploited, could result in
widespread economic dislocation and increased global instability, according to former top government officials who
gathered today to examine how the nation might manage an oil supply crisis.
The findings of these leading experts comes amid reports of terrorist threats against oil-rich Nigeria, a state-owned
Chinese company's bid for a major U.S. oil firm, and as Congress considers energy legislation that does little to curb
U.S. oil dependence.
In a scenario confronted by the bipartisan panel of intelligence, military, and energy experts, a series of events over
several months - unrest in Nigeria, an attack on an Alaskan oil facility, and the emergency evacuation of foreign
nationals from Saudi Arabia - drives the price of oil to over $150 per barrel. These events lower expected employment
levels by more than 2 million jobs, embolden countries that are major oil producers and consumers to pressure the
U.S. on key foreign policy concerns, and cause a variety of other significant economic and security challenges.
The scenario removed only 3.5 million barrels of oil from a global market of more than 83 million barrels, resulting in
the following consequences:
* Gasoline prices of $5.74 per gallon;
* Global oil price of $161 per barrel;
* Heating oil prices of $5.14 per gallon;
* Fall of gross domestic product for two consecutive quarters;
* Drop in consumer confidence by 30 percent;
* Spike in the consumer price index to 12.6 percent;
* Ballooning of the current accounts deficit to $1.087 trillion;
* Decline of 28 percent in the S&P 500;
* Aggressive pressure on the U.S. from China to end arm sales to Taiwan, and;
* Demands from Saudi Arabia for changes to U.S. policy regarding the Mid-East peace process.
Participants included:
Robert M. Gates, former Director of Central Intelligence;
Richard N. Haass, former Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State;
General P.X. Kelley, USMC (Ret.), former Commandant of the Marine Corps, member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
Don Nickles, former U.S. Senator;
Carol Browner, former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;
Gene B. Sperling, former National Economic Advisor;
Linda Stuntz, former Deputy Secretary of Energy;
Frank Kramer, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, and;
R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence.
Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) served as co-chairs of the Oil ShockWave event.
Other key findings:
# Once oil supply disruptions occur, there is little that can be done in the short term to protect the U.S. economy from
its impacts, including gasoline above $5/ gallon and a sharp decline in economic growth potentially leading into a
recession.
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43
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____________________
***Terrorism Addon
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Terrorism Addon 2AC
Oil Dependence makes terrorism inevitable
Sandalow, 7
David, energy and environment scholar at Brookings, “ending oil dependence”, Jan 22nd
http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/fellows/sandalow20070122.pdf
The United States is in a long war. Islamic fundamentalists struck our shores and are determined to do so
again. Like the Cold War, this struggle has many causes and will last for generations. Unlike the Cold War,
oil dependence plays a central role in the struggle.
Oil dependence lies behind the jihadist threat – not as the only cause, but as an important one. For
example, according to Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser at the time of the first Gulf War, “…what
gave enormous urgency to [Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait] was the issue of oil.”5 After removing Saddam
from Kuwait in 1991, U.S. troops remained in Saudi Arabia where their presence bred great resentment.
Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa, in 1996, was titled “Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying
the Land of the Two Holy Places.”
Today, deep resentment of the U.S. role in the Persian Gulf remains a powerful recruitment tool for
jihadists. That resentment grows not just from the war in Iraq, but from the U.S. relationship with the
House of Saud, the presence of U.S. forces throughout the region and more. Yet the United States faces
severe constraints in responding to this resentment. With half the world’s proven oil reserves, the world’s
cheapest oil and the world’s only spare production capacity, the Persian Gulf will remain the indispensable
region for the global economy so long as modern vehicles run only on oil. To protect oil flows, the U.S.
policymakers will feel compelled to maintain relationships and exert power in the region in ways likely to
fuel the jihadist movement.
Compounding this problem, the huge money flows into the region from oil purchases help finance terrorist
networks. Saudi money provides critical support for madrassas with virulent anti-American views. Still
worse, diplomatic efforts to enlist Saudi government help in choking off such funding, or even to
investigate terrorist attacks, are hampered by the priority we attach to preserving Saudi cooperation in
managing world oil markets.
Terrorism risks extinction

Yonah Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies, 8/28/03 (Washington
Times)
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated
dramatically that the international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and
implications of the terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States
and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a
critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on
September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists
striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel
and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism
triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide
attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now
revoked cease-fire arrangements [hudna]. Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other
countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"?
There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to
terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics,
double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist
propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have
introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The
internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age
of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications
concerning national, regional and global security concerns.
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__________________
***Hegemony Addon
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Environmental Leadership Addon 2AC
A national energy policy will create foundation for future climate change
agreements and restore our Global Leadership
Daniel Bodansky, National Interest, Fall 2001 [Bonn Voyage: Kyoto’s Uncertain Revival]
Although an impressive achievement, Kyoto suffers from the sin of hubris. Whether or not the United States eventually
negotiates some arrangement with the Kyoto system, it should consider a more modest, incremental
approach to the problem. Rather than negotiate international commitments first and then seek domestic support,
the United States should decide what it is willing to do domestically, and then examine ways that
the international process can help support these efforts.
A domestic climate policy could take several forms. Although economists tell us that a revenue-neutral carbon tax
would probably be the most efficient policy instrument, it would violate the political orthodoxy of "no new taxes" and
hence is probably a non-starter. A system of mandatory domestic targets and emissions trading (usually
referred to as "cap and trade"), combined with a safety valve to limit the potential costs of compliance, is more viable
politically. The level of initial effort could be comparatively modest. What is crucial is not so much the precise
level of effort, which could be ratcheted up later if necessary, but a sound architecture that achieves
significant buy-in from both industry and environmentalists and hence would not be subject to the vagaries of election
cycles or media fads.
Whatever approach is selected, by beginning at the national level, the United States would retain
control of its climate policy and be free to design an alternative system that could co-exist and
compete with Kyoto. Such an approach would also help repair America's shattered
credibility internationally.
International efforts should complement rather than attempt to coerce domestic action. The 1992
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which the United States is a party, provides a solid base on which to
build. Among other things, it requires countries to report regularly on their greenhouse gas emissions and on their
policies to limit emissions, and establishes an international process to review these national reports. These reporting
and review procedures help provide an information base that will be important regardless of what direction the
international climate change regime may take. More immediately, they promote accountability by providing
international scrutiny of domestic climate change measures.
Nevertheless, while the Framework Convention provides a useful infrastructure for international
cooperation, the next step is not necessarily U.S. re-engagement in the Kyoto process. One
alternative would be to begin with an agreement at the regional level or among like-minded
states that would allow American firms to receive credit for emission reduction projects in other
participating countries. Over time, as the Kyoto system gets underway and other countries develop
their own national climate change programs, a system of mutual recognition could develop under
which the United States, for purposes of emissions trading, would recognize other countries' emission allowances and
vice versa. The system would grow from the bottom up, through an increasing integration of
national climate programs. Eventually, developing countries might see the benefits of joining,
since most can reduce emissions more cheaply than industrialized countries (due to the inefficiency of their energy
systems), a comparative advantage that they could exploit through an international trading system.
We need to remember that we are dealing with a century-long problem, and that the level of emissions reductions we
achieve in the short-term will have only a modest long-term impact. We should not delay-delay merely forecloses
options and ultimately raises the overall costs of responding. But we can afford to proceed
deliberately, learning from experience and recognizing that we are building an architecture
for the long-term. To be effective, climate change policy need not be built in a day.
Nuclear War
Khalilzad 1995 – RAND, Ambassador to Afghanistan
Washington Quarterly, Spring
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of
a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term
guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which
the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment
47
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would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of
law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major
problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level
conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the
United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,
including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability
than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
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Soft Power Key to Hegemony
Soft power is key to hard power and the war on terrorism – its decline will cause domestic
isolationism
Nye – Dean of Government at Harvard – 2004 (Joseph, dean of the Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard, Political Science Quarterly, Summer, ebsco)
THE COSTS OF IGNORING SOFT POWER Soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or
payments. When you can get others to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in
your direction. Hard power, the ability to coerce, grows out of a country's military and economic might. Soft power arises from the
attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in they eyes of others, our
soft power is enhanced.
Skeptics about soft power say not to worry. Popularity is ephemeral and should not be a guide for foreign policy in any case. The
United States can act without the world's applause. We are so strong we can do as we wish. We are the world's only superpower, and
that fact is bound to engender envy and resentment. Fouad Ajami has stated recently, "The United States need not worry about
hearts and minds in foreign lands."(FN9) Columnist Cal Thomas refers to "the and does."(FN10) Moreover, the United States has been
unpopular in the past, yet managed to recover. We do not need permanent allies and institutions. We can always pick up a coalition of
the willing when we need to. Donald Rumsfeld is wont to say that the issues should determine the coalitions, not vice-versa.
But it would be a mistake to dismiss the recent decline in our attractiveness so lightly. It is true that the United States has
recovered from unpopular policies in the past, but that was against the backdrop of the Cold War, in which
other countries still feared the Soviet Union as the greater evil. Moreover, while America's size and
association with disruptive modernity are real and unavoidable, wise policies can soften the sharp edges of
that reality and reduce the resentments that they engender. That is what the United States did after World War II.
We used our soft power resources and co-opted others into a set of alliances and institutions that lasted for
sixty years. We won the Cold War against the Soviet Union with a strategy of containment that used our soft power as well as our
hard power.
It is true that the new threat of transnational terrorism increased American vulnerability, and some of our unilateralism after
September 11 was driven by fear. But the United States cannot meet the new threat identified in the national
security strategy without the cooperation of other countries. They will cooperate, up to a point, out of mere self-
interest, but their degree of cooperation is also affected by the attractiveness of the United States. Take Pakistan for example.
President Pervez Musharraf faces a complex game of cooperating with the United States on terrorism while managing a large anti-
American constituency at home. He winds up balancing concessions and retractions. If the United States were more attractive to the
Pakistani populace, we would see more non-cessions in the mix. It is not smart to discount soft power as just a question of image,
public relations, and ephemeral popularity. As I argued earlier, it is a form of power--a means of obtaining desired outcomes. When we
discount the importance of our attractiveness to other countries, we pay a price. Most important, if the United States is so
unpopular in a country that being pro-American is a kiss of death in their domestic politics, political leaders
are unlikely to make concessions to help us. Turkey, Mexico, and Chile were prime examples in the run-up to the Iraq war in
March 2003. When American policies lose their legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of others, attitudes of
distrust tend to fester and further reduce our leverage. For example, after September 11, there was an outpouring of
sympathy from Germans for the United States, and Germany joined a military campaign against the al Qaeda network. But as the
United States geared up for the unpopular Iraq war, Germans expressed widespread disbelief about the reasons the United States
gave for going to war, such as the alleged connection of Iraq to al Qaeda and the imminence of the threat of weapons of mass
destruction. German suspicions were reinforced by what they saw as biased American media coverage during the war and by the
failure to find weapons or prove the connection to al Qaeda right after the war. The combination fostered a climate in which
conspiracy theories flourished. By July 2003, one-third of Germans under the age of thirty said that they thought the American
government might even have staged the original September 11 attacks.(FN11) Absurd views feed upon each other, and
paranoia can be contagious. American attitudes toward foreigners harden, and we begin to believe that
the rest of the world really does hate us. Some Americans begin to hold grudges, to mistrust all Muslims, to boycott French
wines and rename french fries, to spread and believe false rumors.(FN12) In turn, foreigners see Americans as uninformed and
insensitive to anyone's interests but their own. They see our media wrapped in the American flag. Some Americans, in turn,
succumb to residual strands of isolationism, saying that if others choose to see us that way, "to hell with
'em." If foreigners are going to be like that, who cares whether we are popular or not. But to the extent that we allow
ourselves to become isolated, we embolden enemies such as al Qaeda. Such reactions undercut our soft power and
are self-defeating in terms of the outcomes we want. Some hard-line skeptics might say that whatever the merits of soft
power, it has little role to play in the current war on terrorism. Osama bin Laden and his followers are repelled, not
attracted by American culture, values, and policies. Military power was essential in defeating the Taliban government in Afghanistan,
and soft power will never convert fanatics. Charles Krauthammer, for example, argued soon after the war in Afghanistan that our swift
military victory proved that "the new unilateralism" worked. That is true up to a point, but the skeptics mistake half the answer for the
whole solution.
Look again at Afghanistan. Precision bombing and Special Forces defeated the Taliban government, but U.S. forces in Afghanistan
wrapped up less than a quarter of al Qaeda, a transnational network with cells in sixty countries. The United States cannot bomb
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al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Kuala Lumpur, or Detroit. Success against them depends on close civilian
cooperation, whether sharing intelligence, coordinating police work across borders, or tracing global
financial flows. America's partners cooperate partly out self-interest, but the inherent attractiveness of U.S.
policies can and does influence the degree of cooperation.
Equally important, the current struggle against Islamist terrorism is not a clash of civilizations but a contest
whose outcome is closely tied to a civil war between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilization.
The United States and other advanced democracies will win only if moderate Muslims win, and the ability to attract
the moderates is critical to victory. We need to adopt policies that appeal to moderates and to use public
diplomacy more effectively to explain our common interests.
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__________________
***Iran Addon
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Iran Addon 2AC
Oil dependence prevents the sanctions necessary to respond to Iranian
nuclearization
Sandalow, 7
David, energy and environment scholar at Brookings institution, “ending oil dependence”
This points to a broader problem -- oil dependence reduces the leverage of the world community in responding to
threats from oil-exporting nations. Today, the most prominent threat comes from Iran, whose nuclear ambitions could
further destabilize the Persian Gulf and put terrifying new weapons into the hands of terrorists. Yet efforts to respond to
this threat with multilateral sanctions have foundered on fears that Iran would retaliate by withholding oil from world
markets. Experts predict this would drive prices above $100 per barrel – a risk many governments are unwilling to
accept. In short, three decades after the first oil shocks -- and a quarter-century after the humiliating capture of U.S.
diplomats in Tehran – we remain hostage to our continuing dependence on oil.
And Iranian Nuclearization creates an arms race that escalates to Nuclear War
Allison in ‘06 [Graham, Professor of Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Boston globe March
12, “THE NIGHTMARE THIS TIME; A NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN WITH IRAN COULD BE THIS GENERATION'S
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. HERE ARE THE REASONS WE MUST NOT LET IT COME TO THAT,” Lexis]
<Before accepting the answer that the US can deal with an Iranian nuclear bomb, four further risks must be
weighed: the threat of proliferation, the danger of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch, the risk of theft of an Iranian weapon or materials, and the prospect of a
preemptive Israeli attack. 'A cascade of proliferation' The current nonproliferation regime is a set of agreements
between the nuclear "haves" and "have-nots," including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in which 184
nations agreed to eschew nuclear weapons and existing nuclear weapons states pledged to sharply
diminish the role of such weapons in international politics. Since 1970, the treaty has stopped the spread
of nuclear weapons with only two exceptions (India and Pakistan). UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's High Level
Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change warned in December 2004 that current developments in Iran and North Korea
threatened to erode the entire nonproliferation regime to a point of "irreversibility" that could trigger a
"cascade of proliferation." If Iran crosses its nuclear finish line, a Middle Eastern cascade of new nuclear
weapons states could produce the first multiparty nuclear arms race, far more volatile than the Cold War
competition between the US and USSR. Given Egypt's historic role as the leader of the Arab Middle East,
the prospects of it living unarmed alongside a nuclear Persia are very low. The International Atomic Energy Agency's reports of
clandestine nuclear experiments hint that Cairo may have considered this possibility. Were Saudi Arabia to buy a dozen nuclear warheads
that could be mated to the Chinese medium-range ballistic missiles it purchased secretly in the 1980s, few
in the American intelligence community would be surprised. Given its role as the major financier of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear
program in the 1980s, it is not out of the question that Riyadh and Islamabad have made secret arrangements for this contingency. In 1962, bilateral competition between the US
and the Soviet Union led to the Cuban missile crisis, which historians now call "the most dangerous moment in human history." After the crisis, President Kennedy estimated the
." A multiparty nuclear arms race in the Middle East would be like playing
likelihood of nuclear war as "between 1 in 3 and even
Russian roulette with five bullets in a six-chamber revolver-dramatically increasing the likelihood of a
regional nuclear war.>
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Hegemony Module
A Nuclear Iran would destroy US leadership
Logan 2k6
(Justin Logan, foreign policy analyst at CATO, The bottom line on Iran: the cost and benefits of preventative war vs. detterence, Policy
analysis no 583 December 4 2006)
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa583.pdf
Problem #3 – A Nuclear Iran Will “Cramp Our Style” (and Israel’s) Another likely result of Iran’s
acquisition of a nuclear weapon is that Iran will use its deterrent to limit U.S. and Israeli policy options in
the Middle East. Clearly, Iran’s nuclearization would dramatically raise the costs of a U.S. regime change
effort in Tehran. More broadly, however, Iran could attempt to extend deterrence to external goals, such as
the pursuit of regional hegemony or attempts to dominate Iraq, Azerbaijan, or even Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Analyst Thomas Donnelly admits openly that the fear of constraint is a
primary concern: A nuclear-armed Iran is doubly threatening to U.S. interests not only because of the
possibility it might employ its weapons or pass them to terrorist groups, but also because of the
constraining effect it will impose on U.S. behavior in the region.122 The prestigious realist scholar Kenneth
Waltz, in his groundbreaking work on the spread of nuclear weapons, put things still more bluntly: “A big
reason for America’s resistance to the spread of nuclear weapons is that if weak countries have some they
will cramp our style.”123 This is indisputably true, but it is less important if America revises its grandiose
and radical foreign policy posture. Analysts like Donnelly fear an Iranian bomb because they favor a
revolutionary American foreign policy that attempts to use force to transform regimes Washington dislikes.
Although the Bush doctrine’s failures are on display daily in Iraq, there is still a chance that the Bush
administration—or a subsequent administration—could decide on another rash, excessive use of the U.S.
military. An Iranian bomb would, in almost any foreseeable scenario, essentially eliminate the option of
forcible regime change in Iran. If America intends to remain unconstrained by anything other than its own
will in terms of its policy in the greater Middle East, then nuclear weapons will indeed give Iran influence
that it does not possess currently.
Nuclear War
Khalilzad 1995 – RAND, Ambassador to Afghanistan
Washington Quarterly, Spring
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of
a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term
guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which
the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment
would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of
law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major
problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level
conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the
United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,
including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability
than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
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_____________________
***Democracy Addon
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Democracy Addon 2AC
Oil dependence prevents the transition to democratic governments
Sandalow, 7
David, energy and environment scholar at Brookings institution, “ending oil dependence”
Oil wealth also corrodes democratic institutions. This dynamic is not inevitable, but it is widespread. A
growing body of scholarly work explores this topic, concluding that oil wealth is strongly associated with
corruption and authoritarian rule.7
A few examples underscore this trend. Bahrain, the Persian Gulf country with the smallest oil reserves, was
also the first to hold free elections.8 As oil prices climbed in recent years, both Vladmir Putin and Hugo
Chavez moved away from democratic institutions and toward more authoritarian rule. In Nigeria, oil
abundance contributes to widespread corruption.
Failure of global democracy causes nuclear war

Diamond 1995 (Larry- Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy in the
1990s, 1995)
This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia
nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly
powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones.
Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to
proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears
increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are
associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its
provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.
LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern
themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another.
They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do
not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading
partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible
because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets
to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach
agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the
rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be
built.
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Middle East Democracy Good – Nuclear War
AND Middle East Democracy key to prevent Global Nuclear War
Joshua MURAVCHIK, Resident Scholar at The American Enterprise Institute, 2001
["Democracy and Nuclear Peace," Presented before the NPEC/IGCC Summer Faculty Seminar at the
University of California—San Diego, July 11-14, Available Online at http://www.npec-web.org
/Syllabus/Muravchik.pdf, Accessed 11-23-2007]
The greatest impetus for world peace -- and perforce of nuclear peace -- is the spread of
democracy. In a famous article, and subsequent book, Francis Fukuyama argued that democracy's extension was leading to "the end of history." By this he meant the
conclusion of man's quest for the right social order, but he also meant the "diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict
between states."1 Fukuyama's phrase was intentionally provocative, even tongue-in-cheek, but he was pointing to two down-to-earth historical observations: that
democracies are more peaceful than other kinds of government and that the world is growing
more democratic. Neither point has gone unchallenged. Only a few decades ago, as distinguished an observer of international relations as George Kennan made a
claim quite contrary to the first of these assertions. Democracies, he said, were slow to anger, but once aroused "a democracy … fights in anger … to the bitter end."2 Kennan's
view was strongly influenced by the policy of "unconditional surrender" pursued in World War II. But subsequent experience, such as the negotiated settlements America sought in
Korea and Vietnam proved him wrong. Democracies are not only slow to anger but also quick to compromise . And to
forgive. Notwithstanding the insistence on unconditional surrender, America treated Japan and that part of Germany that it occupied with extraordinary generosity. In recent years
a burgeoning literature has discussed the peacefulness of democracies. Indeed the proposition that democracies do not go to war with one another has been described by one
political scientist as being "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations."3 Some of those who find enthusiasm for democracy offputting have
challenged this proposition, but their challenges have only served as empirical tests that have confirmed its robustness. For example, the academic Paul Gottfried and the
columnist-turned-politician Patrick J. Buchanan have both instanced democratic England's declaration of war against democratic Finland during World War II.4 In fact, after much
procrastination, England did accede to the pressure of its Soviet ally to declare war against Finland which was allied with Germany. But the declaration was purely formal: no
fighting ensued between England and Finland. Surely this is an exception that proves the rule. The strongest exception I can think of is the war between the nascent state of Israel
and the Arabs in 1948. Israel was an embryonic democracy and Lebanon, one of the Arab belligerents, was also democratic within the confines of its peculiar confessional division
of power. Lebanon, however, was a reluctant party to the fight. Within the councils of the Arab League, it opposed the war but went along with its larger confreres when they
opted to attack. Even so, Lebanon did little fighting and soon sued for peace. Thus, in the case of Lebanon against Israel, as in the case of England against Finland, democracies
nominally went to war against democracies when they were dragged into conflicts by authoritarian allies. The political scientist Bruce Russett offers a different challenge to the
notion that democracies are more peaceful. "That democracies are in general, in dealing with all kinds of states, more peaceful than are authoritarian or other nondemocratically
constituted states … is a much more controversial proposition than 'merely' that democracies are peaceful in their dealings with each other, and one for which there is little
systematic evidence," he says.5 Russett cites his own and other statistical explorations which show that while democracies rarely fight one another they often fight against
others. The trouble with such studies, however, is that they rarely examine the question of who started or caused a war . To
reduce the data to a form that is quantitatively measurable, it is easier to determine whether a conflict has occurred between two states than whose fault it was. But the latter
Democracies may often go to war against dictatorships because the dictators see
question is all important.
them as prey or underestimate their resolve. Indeed, such examples abound. Germany might have behaved more cautiously in the summer
of 1914 had it realized that England would fight to vindicate Belgian neutrality and to support France. Later, Hitler was emboldened by his notorious contempt for the flabbiness of
the democracies. North Korea almost surely discounted the likelihood of an American military response to its invasion of the South after Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly
defined America's defense perimeter to exclude the Korean peninsula (a declaration which merely confirmed existing U.S. policy). In 1990, Saddam Hussein's decision to swallow
Kuwait was probably encouraged by the inference he must have taken from the statements and actions of American officials that Washington would offer no forceful resistance.
Russett says that those who claim democracies are in general more peaceful "would have us believe that the United States was regularly on the defensive, rarely on the offensive,
during the Cold War."6 But that is not quite right: the word "regularly" distorts the issue. A victim can sometimes turn the tables on an aggressor, but that does not make the
victim equally bellicose. None would dispute that Napoleon was responsible for the Napoleonic wars or Hitler for World War II in Europe, but after a time their victims seized the
offensive. So in the Cold War, the United States may have initiated some skirmishes (although in fact it rarely did), but the struggle as a whole was driven one-sidedly. The Soviet
policy was "class warfare"; the American policy was "containment." The so-called revisionist historians argued that America bore an equal or larger share of responsibility for the
conflict. But Mikhail Gorbachev made nonsense of their theories when, in the name of glasnost and perestroika, he turned the Soviet Union away from its historic course. The Cold
War ended almost instantly--as he no doubt knew it would. "We would have been able to avoid many … difficulties if the democratic process had developed normally in our
country," he wrote.7 To render judgment about the relative peacefulness of states or systems, we must ask not only who started a war but why. In particular we should consider
what in Catholic Just War doctrine is called "right intention," which means roughly: what did they hope to get out of it? In the few cases in recent times in which wars were initiated
by democracies, there were often motives other than aggrandizement, for example, when America invaded Grenada. To be sure, Washington was impelled by self-interest more
than altruism, primarily its concern for the well-being of American nationals and its desire to remove a chip, however tiny, from the Soviet game board. But America had no
designs upon Grenada, and the invaders were greeted with joy by the Grenadan citizenry. After organizing an election, America pulled out. In other cases, democracies have
turned to war in the face of provocation, such as Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to root out an enemy sworn to its destruction or Turkey's invasion of Cyprus to rebuff a
power-grab by Greek nationalists. In contrast, the wars launched by dictators, such as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, North Korea's of South Korea, the Soviet Union's of Hungary and
Afghanistan, often have aimed at conquest or subjugation. The big exception to this rule is colonialism. The European powers conquered most of Africa and Asia, and continued to
hold their prizes as Europe democratized. No doubt many of the instances of democracies at war that enter into the statistical calculations of researchers like Russett stem from
the colonial era. But colonialism was a legacy of Europe's pre-democratic times, and it was abandoned after World War II. Since then, I know of no case where a democracy has
initiated warfare without significant provocation or for reasons of sheer aggrandizement, but there are several cases where dictators have done so. One interesting piece of
Russett's research should help to point him away from his doubts that democracies are more peaceful in general. He aimed to explain why democracies are more peaceful toward
each other. Immanuel Kant was the first to observe, or rather to forecast, the pacific inclination of democracies. He reasoned that "citizens … will have a great hesitation in …
calling down on themselves all the miseries of war."8 But this valid insight is incomplete. There is a deeper explanation. Democracy is not just a mechanism; it entails a spirit of
compromise and self-restraint. At bottom, democracy is the willingness to resolve civil disputes without recourse to violence. Nations that embrace this ethos in the conduct of
their domestic affairs are naturally more predisposed to embrace it in their dealings with other nations. Russett aimed to explain why democracies are more peaceful toward one
another. To do this, he constructed two models. One hypothesized that the cause lay in the mechanics of democratic decision-making (the "structural/institutional model"), the
other that it lay in the democratic ethos (the "cultural/normative model"). His statistical assessments led him to conclude that: "almost always the cultural/normative model shows
a consistent effect on conflict occurrence and war. The structural/institutional model sometimes provides a significant relationship but often does not."9 If it is the ethos that
makes democratic states more peaceful toward each other, would not that ethos also make them more peaceful in general? Russett implies that the answer is no, because to his
mind a critical element in the peaceful behavior of democracies toward other democracies is their anticipation of a conciliatory attitude by their counterpart. But this is too pat.
The attitude of live-and-let-live cannot be turned on and off like a spigot. The citizens and officials of democracies recognize that other states, however governed, have legitimate
interests, and they are disposed to try to accommodate those interests except when the other party's behavior seems threatening or outrageous. A different kind of challenge to
the thesis that democracies are more peaceful has been posed by the political scientists Edward G. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. They claim statistical support for the proposition
that while fully fledged democracies may be pacific, in th[e] transitional phase of democratization, countries become more aggressive and warprone, not less."10 However, like
others, they measure a state's likelihood of becoming involved in a war but do not report attempting to determine the cause or fault. Moreover, they acknowledge that their
research revealed not only an increased likelihood for a state to become involved in a war when it was growing more democratic, but an almost equal increase for states growing
less democratic. This raises the possibility that the effects they were observing were caused simply by political change per se, rather than by democratization. Finally, they
implicitly acknowledge that the relationship of democratization and peacefulness may change over historical periods. There is no reason to suppose that any such relationship is
governed by an immutable law. Since their empirical base reaches back to 1811, any effect they report, even if accurately interpreted, may not hold in the contemporary world.
They note that "in [some] recent cases, in contrast to some of our historical results, the rule seems to be: go fully democratic, or don't go at all." But according to Freedom House,
some 62.5 percent of extant governments were chosen in legitimate elections.11 (This is a much larger proportion than are adjudged by Freedom House to be "free states," a
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more demanding criterion, and it includes many weakly democratic states.) Of the remaining 37.5 percent, a large number are experiencing some degree of democratization or
heavy pressure in that direction. So the choice "don't go at all"12 is rarely realistic in the contemporary world. These statistics also contain the answer to those who doubt the
second proposition behind Fukuyama's forecast, namely, that the world is growing more democratic. Skeptics have drawn upon Samuel Huntington's fine book, The Third Wave:
Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Huntington says that the democratization trend that began in the mid- 1970s in Portugal, Greece and Spain is the third such
episode. The first "wave" of democratization began with the American Revolution and lasted through the aftermath of World War I, coming to an end in the interwar years when
much of Europe regressed back to fascist or military dictatorship. The second wave, in this telling, followed World War II when wholesale decolonization gave rise to a raft of new
democracies. Most of these, notably in Africa, collapsed into dictatorship by the 1960s, bringing the second wave to its end. Those who follow Huntington's argument may take
the failure of democracy in several of the former Soviet republics and some other instances of backsliding since 1989 to signal the end of the third wave. Such an impression,
however, would be misleading. One unsatisfying thing about Huntington's "waves" is their unevenness. The first lasted about 150 years, the second about 20. How long should we
expect the third to endure? If it is like the second, it will ebb any day now, but if it is like the first, it will run until the around the year 2125. And by then--who knows?--perhaps
mankind will have incinerated itself, moved to another planet, or even devised a better political system. Further, Huntington's metaphor implies a lack of overall progress or
direction. Waves rise and fall. But each of the reverses that followed Huntington's two waves was brief, and each new wave raised the number of democracies higher than before.
Huntington does, however, present a statistic that seems to weigh heavily against any unidirectional interpretation of democratic progress. The proportion of states that were
democratic in 1990 (45%), he says, was identical to the proportion in 1922.13 But there are two answers to this. In 1922 there were only 64 states; in 1990 there were 165. But
the number of peoples had not grown appreciably. The difference was that in 1922 most peoples lived in colonies, and they were not counted as states. The 64 states of that time
were mostly the advanced countries. Of those, two thirds had become democratic by 1990, which was a significant gain. The additional 101 states counted in 1990 were mostly
former colonies. Only a minority, albeit a substantial one, were democratic in 1990, but since virtually none of those were democratic in 1922, that was also a significant gain. In
short, there was progress all around, but this was obscured by asking what percentage of states were democratic. Asking the question this way means that a people who were
subjected to a domestic dictator counted as a non-democracy, but a people who were subjected to a foreign dictator did not count at all. Moreover, while the criteria for judging a
state democratic vary, the statistic that 45 percent of states were democratic in 1990 corresponds with Freedom House's count of "democratic" polities (as opposed to its smaller
count of "free" countries, a more demanding criterion). But by this same count, Freedom House now says that the proportion of democracies has grown to 62.5 percent. In other
words, the "third wave" has not abated. The fall of Communism not only ended the Cold War; it also ended the only universalist ideological challenge to democracy. Radical Islam
may still offer an alternative to democracy in parts of the world, but it appeals by definition only to Moslems and has not even won the assent of a majority of these. And Iranian
President Khatami's second landslide election victory in 2001 suggests that even in the cradle of radical Islam the yearning for democracy is That Freedom House could count 120
freely elected governments by early 2001 (out of a total of 192 independent states) bespeaks a vast transformation in human governance within the span of 225 years. In 1775,
the number of democracies was zero. In 1776, the birth of the United States of America brought the total up to one. Since then, democracy has spread at
an accelerating pace, most of the growth having
<<<Murachivik Continues on Next Page --- No Text Deleted>>>
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Middle East Democracy Good – Nuclear War
<<<Murachivik Continues from Previous Page --- No Text Deleted>>>
That this momentum has slackened somewhat since

occurred within the twentieth century, with greatest momentum since 1974.
its pinnacle in 1989, destined to be remembered as one of the most revolutionary years in all history, was inevitable. So many peoples were
swept up in the democratic tide that there was certain to be some backsliding. Most countries' democratic
evolution has included some fits and starts rather than a smooth progression. So it must be for the world as a whole. Nonetheless, the overall trend remains powerful and clear.
. This progress offers a source of hope
Despite the backsliding, the number and proportion of democracies stands higher today than ever before
for enduring nuclear peace. The danger of nuclear war was radically reduced almost overnight
when Russia abandoned Communism and turned to democracy. For other ominous corners of the
world, we may be in a kind of race between the emergence or growth of nuclear arsenals and the
advent of democratization. If this is so, the greatest cause for worry may rest with the Moslem
Middle East where nuclear arsenals do not yet exist but where the prospects for democracy may
be still more remote.
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Middle East Democracy Good – Terrorism
Middle East democracy promotion solves terrorism by spreading values
contrary to extremism and addressing the underlying cause
Jennifer L. WINDSOR, Executive Director of Freedom House, a United States-based international non-
governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and
human rights, 2003
["Promoting Democratization Can Combat Terrorism," The Washington Quarterly, Volume 26, Number 3,
Summer, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Project MUSE]
Can promoting democracy prevent renewed terrorist attacks against the United States? Although cynics
may scoff, democratization has gained credence as a counterterrorism strategy in the aftermath of
the September 11, 2001, attacks. The underlying logic is that democratic institutions and procedures,
by enabling the peaceful reconciliation of grievances and providing channels for participation in
policymaking, can help to address those underlying conditions that have fueled the recent rise of
Islamist extremism. The source of much of the current wave of terrorist activity— the Middle East
—is not coincidentally also overwhelmingly undemocratic, and most regimes in the region lack
the legitimacy and capacity to respond to the social and economic challenges that face them.
Although not without risks, and only if pursued as part of a broader strategy, democratization can help
reshape the climates in which terrorism thrives. More specifically, promoting democratization in the
closed societies of the Middle East can provide a set of values and ideas that offer a powerful
alternative to the appeal of the kind of extremism that today has found expression in terrorist
activity, often against U.S. interests.
The United States has launched a score of important post–September 11 initiatives to promote
democratization in the Middle East. To be most effective, the United States must further strengthen
diplomatic efforts that demonstrate to the people and the governments that human rights and
democratic practices are a U.S. priority and must cohesively integrate those diplomatic
messages with foreign assistance strategically directed to strengthen the forces for democratic reform
within the region.
Terrorism risks extinction

Yonah Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies, 8/28/03 (Washington
Times)
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated
dramatically that the international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and
implications of the terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States
and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a
critical strategic challenge to their national security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on
September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists
striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel
and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism
triggered by the second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide
attack at a time of intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now
revoked cease-fire arrangements [hudna]. Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other
countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist "surprises"?
There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute to
terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics,
double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist
propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have
introduced a new scale of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The
internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age
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of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber] with its serious implications
concerning national, regional and global security concerns.
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They Say “Transition Wars”
No evidence for transition wars – democracy actually prevents conflict by
increasing internal stability and preventing terrorism
Siegle, 05 (Joseph T. Siegle, expert on the political economy of democratic transition, fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2001-2004. “The Democracy Advantage: How
Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace” 3-17-05.
http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5129.html)
The third and final assumption is the notion that premature democratization is a recipe for instability. We
find empirically no strong basis for this reasonable hypothesis. What we do see, borne out in much of the
conflict literature of the last fifteen years, is that the prevailing factor that influences conflict—and today
most conflict is civil conflict—is poverty. Poor countries are more likely to be in conflict than wealthier
countries. Countries of per capita incomes below $2,000 have been in conflict, on average, one year out of
five since 1980. Above $4,000 a year, it is one year in thirty-three. When you control for that and you look
at countries that are going through political transition, you find that democratizers are no more likely to be
vulnerable to conflict than are other poor countries. Since the end of the Cold War, they are somewhat less
likely to be conflict-prone. In sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the civil conflict has taken place in recent
years, democratizers have been half as likely to experience civil conflict as have other poor countries in
that region. All of this has important ramifications for international security issues. Thirty percent of civil
conflicts spill over across their borders. Civil conflict in one country tends to reduce the per capita growth
levels among neighbors by, on average, a rate of 0.5 percent a year. This increases the likelihood of
political instability and economic turmoil. Poor countries with weak governance structures are inherently
better locations for international terrorist organizations to set up shop and conduct their operations.
TRANSITION THEORY is wrong – any move to democracy massively reduces the

risk of conflict
WARD & GLEDITSCH ’98 (Prof of Poli Sci @ U of Washington – Seattle & PhD Poli Sci, researcher @
Globalization and Democratization Program, U of Colorado Michael D., & Kristian S., “Democratizing for
Peace,” The American Political Science Review March 1998, Vol. 92, Iss: 1.: pg. 51-62)
As Figure 1 details, democratization-whether in mild or strong degrees-is accompanied by reduction, not

increase, in the risk of war. Though we do not present graphs of the converse, changes toward autocracy
and reversals of democratization are accompanied by increased risks of war involvement. These risks are
proportionally greater than the decline or benefits of further democratization. Thus, there is strong
evidence that democratization has a monadic effect: It reduces the probability that a country will be
involved in a war. Although the probability of war involvement does not decrease linearly, it does decrease
monotonically, so that over the entire range of democracy minus autocracy values, there is a reduction of
about 50%. During the democratic transition, at every point along the way as well as at the end points,
there is an attendant reduction in the probability of a polity being at war. We also find that reversals
toward greater levels of autocracy (not shown) not only increase the probability of war involvement.
Apparently, it is more dangerous to be at a given level of democracy if that represents an increase in the
level of authoritarianism than it is to be at the same level of democracy if that represents a decrease in
the authoritarian character of the regime. Stated differently, reversals are riskier than progress.ll It has
been argued that institutional constraints are theoretically important in translating the effect of democracy
into foreign policy (Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller 1992; Siverson 1995). If the idea of
democracy is separated into its major components, then the degree of executive constraints empirically
dominates the democracy and autocracy scales (Gleditsch and Ward 1997). Accordingly, we demonstrate
that moving toward stronger executive constraints also yields a visible reduction in the risk of war.
61
RPS AFF and NEG

___________________
***Solvency
62
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Solvency – Increase Renewables
An RPS is necessary to get utilities to invest in renewables – it shows that the
state is serious
Crain’s Cleveland Business 2007 [April 9, “State may require utilities to buy advanced energy”
Lexis]
An effort to require the state's utilities to buy electricity generated by wind or solar power could
provide the impetus for an advanced energy industry in Northeast Ohio. However, it could be some
time before such a mandate is in place. Late last month, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio added its
voice to a growing chorus pushing Ohio to join 22 other states and the District of Columbia in requiring
utilities to buy a certain percentage of the power they sell from renewable energy sources. Such required
purchases - called a renewable portfolio standard - are viewed as a key step in the development
of alternative energy businesses in the region and state. Wind turbine manufacturers, for example, are
considered unlikely to set up manufacturing facilities in areas that do not have programs that encourage or
require electric utilities to buy power from wind farms or solar fields. ``It's in many ways an indicator of
that state's commitment'' to advanced energy, said Richard Stuebi, BP fellow for energy and
environmental advancement at the Cleveland Foundation, which is encouraging the development of a wind
power industry in Northeast Ohio. ``I've had many discussions with companies in the advanced energy
sectors, and when you tell them you don't have a renewable portfolio standard you can almost hear them
stifling their laughter,'' Mr. Stuebi said. Bryan Starry, a site manager for JW Prairie Windpower LLC of
Lawrence, Kan., confirmed Mr. Stuebi's impression. His firm is the U.S. subsidiary of a German company
that develops wind farms and photovoltaic solar power systems, and he is following the work of the
Cuyahoga Regional Energy Development Task Force, which hopes to put wind turbines in Lake Erie. Mr.
Starry said a renewable portfolio standard, and other incentives for alternative energy
development, ``helps the industry along - it just equals the playing field'' among states and helps
develop an advanced energy industry in a state. Ohio House Bill 76, which has several Northeast Ohio
sponsors, would establish a renewable energy purchase requirement for utilities that operate in the state.
``We have to develop these alternatives,'' said Rep. Jennifer Brady, a Rocky River Democrat who is co-
sponsoring the bill. ``Mandate it (renewable power) and they will come.”
Empirically state programs prove that an RPS increases industry investment in

renewable energy
Imagine this: The Republican governor of a large, trendsetting state works with leaders of his state
legislature from both parties to enact groundbreaking legislation that requires private corporations and
others operating in the state to meet stringent pro-green goals. Is this Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of
California, 2007? It could be. But it also could be Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, 1999. The Renewable
Portfolio Standards Act adopted by Texas that year required the state's energy retailers to
produce 5,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable sources by 2015. That legislation
provided a strong incentive for Texas energy companies to invest in renewables and established
firm penalties for those that failed to meet their mandate. By all accounts, it jump-started the
state's development of alternative energy, particularly wind farms. Nowadays, Texas leads the
nation in wind-power generation. Technological innovation can help reconcile economic
development and the reduction of greenhouse gases that exacerbate global warming - but such
innovation is most likely when governments establish firm mandates.
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RPS AFF and NEG

An RPS is the ideal way to increase renewable energy because it aims at
ensuring realistic goals to be met.
While each of these renewable energy policies has its own implications and may deserve additional
analysis, this paper will focus on one of the types, Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). Initial success
that has occurred in states such as Texas has raised interest in this type of policy [14]. An RPS
employs market tools to accomplish its goal, a device that has worked for other policies, and there is
increased interest in this aspect of an RPS. In fact, an RPS has been called by some as “the ideal way to
encourage renewable energy development” because it “aims to ensure that renewable energy
targets are met at least cost and with a minimum of ongoing administrative involvement by the
government” [14]. Other renewable energy policies have their own positives and negatives, but will not
be focused on for this analysis.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Solvency – Increase Renewables
An RPS guarantees a substantial market for renewables – this is necessary to
jump start the industry, even if a few renewable sites can be developed
without one
Julie Cassidy, Legislative Analyst, 2007[July 2007, Topics of Legislative interest,http://209.85.173.104/

search?q=cache:VM7ehqMDuX8J:www.senate.michigan.gov/sfa/Publications/Notes/2007Notes/NotesJulAug
07jc.pdf+renewable+portfolio+standard+and+greenhouse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us]
Some, however, question the need to impose a government mandate on utilities to produce a
certain percentage of electricity by using renewable fuels. They note that, despite the absence of an
RPS, John Deere Wind Energy has begun construction of the Harvest Wind Farm, which will produce enough
electricity for more than 15,000 homes. Wolverine Power has signed a 20-year purchase agreement with
the wind farm, which is located in Huron County. The project is projected to save Michiganders $4.0 billion
over the length of the agreement. Those who support a renewable portfolio standard counter that it
would guarantee a market in the State for prospective investors in the alternative energy
industry and related industries, and point to the success of other states in attracting businesses
via an RPS. Additionally, proponents say, the RPS would be fair because it would allow each
provider to determine how it would meet the standard, and would stimulate competition and
lower prices. They caution, however, that a mandate should be practical and phased in slowly to protect
consumers from dramatic rate hikes due to increased demand for certain renewable resources.
65
RPS AFF and NEG

Solvency – Decrease Fossil Fuels
The adoption of an RPS would decrease the amount of fossil fuels
substantially.
Ming-Yuan Huang, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, 2007[ 25 July 2007, Is the choice of
renewable portfolio standards random? http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:VAx5f1F0F6IJ:www.bior
esourcemanagement.com/pub/Link7.pdf+renewable+portfolio+standard+and+greenhouse&hl=en&ct=cln
k&cd=33&gl=us]
The United States consumes about 100.3 quadrillion British thermal units (Btus) of energy per
year. Out of this total consumption, oil sources account for about 40%, while natural gas, coal,
nuclear, hydro, and other renewable sources contribute, respectively, 23%, 22%, 8%, 3%, and 1%. In the
recent past, the national consumption of energy has been on the rise, coupled with a decline in domestic
energy production. About 59% of current oil use is imported and thus the nation’s dependence on foreign
oil has increased since the mid-1990s (EIA, 2005a). National security concerns associated with high
dependency on foreign oil are prompting policy makers to search for innovative strategies to address these
issues. Furthermore, greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the use of fossil fuels are also raising
concerns among the public and policy makers. US greenhouse gas emissions in 2003 were about 6900
million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalently. The largest portion of this results from fossil fuel
combustion (US EPA, 2005), which is the greatest source of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses (IPCC,
2001). Compared with fossil fuels, renewable energy resources are thought to be environmentally
benign, socially desirable, and even economically competitive (Rabe, 2006). Therefore, the US
government has responded by promoting renewable portfolio standards (RPS), a policy proposed
to ensure an increasing percentage of energy generated by renewable energy sources. As of
September 2005, a RPS has been adopted in 21 states. Several other states are currently considering
adoption of a RPS policy.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Solvency – Decrease Emissions
Although an RPS will have less impact on SO2 and NOx it will have a major
impact on CO2.
While the RPS is projected to have little impact on sulfur dioxide (SO2) or nitrogen oxide (NOx) emission
levels, it is projected to have a significant impact on the SO2 allowance market. The 9-million ton
emission cap established in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) governs the level of power
plant SO2 emissions and it is projected to be met with or without an RPS. However, because the RPS is
projected to induce biomass co-firing in coal plants thereby reducing coal generation, the incremental
costs of complying with this cap are expected to be lower when an RPS is imposed. As a result, in 2025,
the cost of SO2 allowances is projected to be 32 percent lower with the RPS than in the Reference case,
while SO2 emissions remain at the CAAA cap. However, the increase in co-firing does not have the same
impact on NOx emissions, because NOx emissions are mainly determined by a plants’ boiler type and
emissions control equipment, rather than the fuel it is using. The RPS is projected to lead to lower
carbon dioxide emissions because fossil fuel generation is displaced by carbon free renewable
generation (Figure 4). By 2025, carbon dioxide emissions are projected to be 2.3 percent lower with the
RPS than in the Reference case.
A federal RPS will decrease global warming by decreasing fossil fuels

The Union of Concerned Scientists, 2007 [May 2007, A 20 Percent National Renewable Electricity Standard
Will Save Consumers Money and Reduce Global Warming Emissions http://www.ucsusa.
org/assets/documents/clean_energy/National-RPS-EIA.pdf
Increased renewable energy use would reduce toxic air pollution from power plants that threaten people’s
health by burning coal, oil, and natural gas. It would also reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, which
cause global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. CO2 emissions would be lower by nearly 180
million metric tons (MMT) per year by 2030 under a 15 percent national standard, and 263 MMT lower
under a 20 percent standard—a reduction equivalent to taking 29 to 43 million cars off the road. By
reducing the need to extract, transport, and consume fossil fuels, a national renewable electricity standard
would limit the damage done to our water and land and conserve our natural resources for future
generations. We found that a 20 percent renewable standard would displace the need for up to 1.9 billion
short tons of coal and 9.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas by 2030 compared to BAU. A Cleaner, Safer
Energy Future A national renewable electricity standard would make America’s energy supply more reliable
and secure. It would use local energy sources to put energy dollars back into the pockets of consumers.
While a 20 percent by 2020 renewable standard would have slightly lower consumer energy bills savings
than a 15 percent standard, it would have greater diversity, environmental and economic development
benefits. A national renewable standard is a common-sense step away from our dependence on an
unstable, dirty fossil fuel supply, and toward a future built on clean, renewable energy.
67
RPS AFF and NEG

Solvency – International Modeling
US action is critical – It is the worlds biggest polluter and no international
action is possible without it
For decades, the United States has been the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter. That top
spot is being overtaken by China. The post-Kyoto agreement certainly needs to include mandated caps
on China's emissions. But China, like several other nations, is very unlikely to agree to be capped
unless the United States is also fully part of the process. How much does the world need to reduce
its emissions? The key greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2). The world emits just under 30 billion
metric tons of it each year. Last year, the British government's high-level Stern review on climate
change judged that annual CO2 emissions need to be brought below 5 billion metric tons if
humanity is to stop heating up the environment in this way. The United States alone is emitting just
under 6 billion metric tons year. The bottom line? All nations need to work together to bring
emission rates radically downward. It has to be a cooperative venture. America's past and
present emissions have (unintentionally) inflicted harm on others around the world, and now
foreign emissions are increasingly hurting America, too.
US Leadership is key
Sir John Houghton, co-chair of the scientific assessment working group of the intergovernmental panel on climate change,
7/28/03 [The Guardian]
Nowadayseveryone knows that the US is the world's biggest polluter, and that with only one 20th
of the world's population it produces a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions. But the US
government, in an abdication of leadership of epic proportions, is refusing to take the problem
seriously - and Britain, presumably because Blair wishes not to offend George Bush - is beginning to fall behind too. Emissions
from the US are up 14% on those in 1990 and are projected to rise by a further 12% over the
next decade.
while the US refuses to

It is vital that Russia now ratifies the Kyoto protocol so that it can at last come into force. But
cooperate, it is difficult to see how the rest of the world can make much progress on the much
tougher longer-term agreements that will be necessary after Kyoto's mandate runs out in 2012.
Nor does the latest science provide any comfort. The intergovernmental panel on climate change has
warned of 1.4C to 5.8C (2.5F to 10.4F) temperature rises by 2100. This already implies massive changes in
climate, and yet the current worst-case scenarios emerging from the Met Office's Hadley centre envisage
even greater rises than this - a degree and speed of global warming the consequences of which are hard to
quantify or even imagine.
68
RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “Transmission Lines”
A National RPS would increase investment in transmission lines
Electric Utility Week 2007 [ June 4, “National renewables mandate versus state programs: Utilities differ on
virtues of each” Lexis]
Utilities favoring a national RPS recognized that new wind generation could require siting and building
transmission. That would entail regional coordination, they said, and building the new assets could add
costs for customers. Whether transmission will raise costs for wind energy consumers "depends on where
you source that wind," said Alliant's Smith. And, "it depends on where your lines are today." PG&E's
Cooper pointed out that like nuclear power, these assets would depreciate and costs would go down over
time. Avista, another signer, has been upgrading its transmission lines for the past five years to help
transmit future wind capacity, but the region is looking at the need for more transmission. Avista has
plans for boosting its renewable energy sources by about 450 MW, 300 of which would be wind, by 2017.
Based in Spokane, Washington, the company first acquired wind energy two years ago at about $35/MW,
but now wind development has run up to $90/MW, said Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof.
69
RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “No Enforcement”
Empirically, the SO2 allowance trading program proves that an RPS will be self
enforcing
American Wind Energy Association, 2005[October 2005, The Renewables Portfolio Standard: How It Works
What Is The Government's Role Under the RPS? Government involvement would be limited to
certifying Credits, monitoring compliance, and imposing penalties if necessary. The Credit
certification process would apply to renewable producers who wish to certify their renewables output.
Monitoring compliance would require each generator to demonstrate ownership of a sufficient number of
Credits relative to electricity sales. For generators that are not in full compliance with the RPS at the end of
the year, the administrative agency would assess an automatic penalty for each Credit that the generator
fails to produce as required. The amount of the penalty should be several times what it would have
cost to purchase the Credits. A high penalty level makes the policy self-enforcing by avoiding the
need to resort to costly administrative and enforcement measures. It is modeled after the federal
sulfur dioxide (SO2) allowance trading program, under which an automatic $2,000/ton penalty is
imposed for each excess ton of SO2 produced. Because of the high penalty associated with
noncompliance, the EPA has not had to take any enforcement actions -- it is far more economic
for power plants to comply than not.
An RPS would reduce compliances costs by generating capacity

Don Furman from the Committee on Senate Energy and Natural Resources 2005 [March 8, Statement of
Don Furman Senior VP, Regulation & External Affairs, PacifiCorp, Lexis]
4. A market-driven RPS policy would deliver a range of benefits to consumers and the environment.
Establishing a national system of tradable renewable energy credits would maximize cost-
efficiency. A cap on compliance costs may also be built into the national policy to ensure minimal
effect on consumers. Overall consumer costs could actually decline due to the reduction of
natural gas prices resulting from greater deployment of renewable generation. By adding a
significant amount of new renewable energy generating capacity, utilities will be able to reduce
the risk of compliance with any future limits on carbon dioxide emissions. For utilities with growing
customer demand, this risk-reduction element is a particularly important. Mr. Chairman, PacifiCorp
recognizes the interest in expanding the portfolio standard approach beyond renewable energy to include
other technologies, such as clean coal and nuclear power. It is important to spur the development of a
diverse base of technologies and fuel sources. PacifiCorp, for instance, is exploring the addition of an
Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal plant to our resource mix. Expanding a national
portfolio diversification policy beyond renewables should be approached carefully. Including the
significantly larger (in terms of both generating capacity and actual output) size of coal and nuclear
facilities would warrant a reconsideration of the targets and timeframes of the RPS proposals that have
been introduced in previous sessions. And the inclusion of these large-scale, longer-term technologies
should not come at the expense of maintaining incentives for renewable energy development. If Congress
desires to expand a portfolio standard requirement to include technologies beyond non-hydro renewable
energy, it may be wise to establish separate tiers for renewable and non-renewable sources.
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They Say “Empirically Failed”
Even if some state RPS’s have failed, the overall results prove that an RPS
works
4) Overall Results The overall results from State RPS policies have been positive. Although not
every state’s policy has resulted in the desired amount of renewables development, most states
have had some level of success. There are also signs that states that have enacted a policy that
was either too aggressive or not aggressive enough have been willing to adjust their goals
accordingly. This demonstrates that although the RPS is a complicated public policy measure, it
can be reevaluated after it is implemented and changed as appropriate. Table I summarizes the
states programs and their results.
Texas’s RPS proves that a federal mandate would work

However, certain criteria can be used to provide a partial answer of what has worked and what has not.
This analysis will then be useful for a discussion about whether or not a federal RPS should be
implemented.
1) Successes The easiest way to define which programs have been successful is based on whether or not
the RPS has thus far worked. Has it caused the development of any new renewable energy? Has it caused
the development of the renewable energy it wanted to? Have its goals been fully met up to this point?
Have the costs been manageable for both utilities and consumers? These questions offer a beginning for
evaluation and examine the broad, end goals of the RPS. Texas is, according to most experts, the best
designed and the most effective of all of the state RPS policies thus far. It has even been
described as the most successful RPS in the world and is “frequently pointed to as a model for
other states to follow” [22], [23]. Texas’ RPS has proven that “a well-crafted and implemented
RPS can deliver on its promise of strong and cost-effective support for renewable energy” [14]. It
has driven substantial new renewable energy development in the form of wind development [22]. Due to
the state’s ranking as second in the nation for wind energy potential, enough new wind installation
occurred in the earliest years of the RPS to meet and surpass the initial goals [22], [23]. The costs of this
wind development have been reasonable enough that they are being passed along to consumers
through competitive pricing mechanisms [22]. While the earliest development boom took advantage of
a federal production tax credit (PTC) and has since slowed down, “additional wind development is expected
in future years” [23]. Interestingly, Texas’ RPS mandates an amount in megawatts (MW) that begins at 3%
of the state’s energy needs and with overall growth in energy demand in the state, ends at just 2.2% by
2009 [14]. This means that there is substantially greater potential for renewable energy in the
state than the RPS mandates. However, the early success of the RPS, even as a relatively small
percentage of the state’s potential, can be and has been a useful guide for other states and
perhaps countries as they develop their own programs.
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RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “Some Areas can’t support Renewables”
Every region has renewable energy potential
Inside Energy 2007 [July 16, “Bingaman aid says Dems will revive RPS for inclusion in 2007 energy
bill”, Lexis]
In addition to agreeing with EIA findings that electric prices would not skyrocket, he said Republicans'
belief that an RPS would hurt regions with less wind was unfounded. "Multiple renewable
technologies are eligible for RPS credits, and each region has significant renewable potential,"
Glick said. He concurred that the Southeast has less wind sources, but the region's biomass
generation potential is abundant. Because biomass is slated to provide four times as much
energy generation as wind if an RPS is approved, the Southeast has enough renewable potential
to meet 50% of its current electricity demand, Glick said.
72
RPS AFF and NEG

__________________
***Answers to Disads
73
RPS AFF and NEG

Energy Price Responses
An RPS would lower overall energy prices and improve price stability – local
generation and a lack of external fuel costs
Julie Cassidy, Legislative Analyst, 2007[July 2007, Topics of Legislative interest,http://209.85.173.104/
search?q=cache:VM7ehqMDuX8J:www.senate.michigan.gov/sfa/Publications/Notes/2007Notes/NotesJulAug
07jc.pdf+renewable+portfolio+standard+and+greenhouse&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=23&gl=us]
Energy Prices According to the 21 st Century Plan, a significant amount of the power generated in Michigan
comes from coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, while only 3.0% comes from renewable resources.
Renewable portfolio standard advocates assert that a more diverse mix of fuels, particularly those
indigenous to Michigan, would reduce the overall cost of electricity and provide some protection
against price fluctuations. First, energy sources such as wind and solar power are free, while coal,
natural gas, and uranium necessarily carry a cost. Furthermore, nearly all of the fossil fuels used
currently in Michigan power plants must be imported from other states and countries, which adds to the
cost. According to RPS proponents, over time, increased use of in-State, renewable fuel would
result in lower costs to consumers. Additionally, price spikes at peak demand times or due to
shortages of traditional fossil fuels would be mitigated. Environmental Concerns Another argument in
favor of an RPS is that renewable fuels would reduce emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases,
resulting in fewer environmental consequences and health problems. Many argue that shifting to a greater
reliance on renewable energy sources also would mitigate increases in the cost of energy due to measures
to reduce pollution from fossil fuels enacted in the future, such as a carbon tax, pollution permits, or a
requirement for carbon capture equipment. Economic Development Proponents of an RPS emphasize
Michigan's strong traditions of manufacturing and agriculture, and tout the thousands of jobs that could be
created to provide raw materials, manufacture components of renewable energy generation facilities, and
construct and operate those facilities. In addition to providing jobs, such facilities would generate
increased tax revenue to local governments.
An RPS won’t increase electricity prices significantly – their link evidence is

electric industry propaganda
Waste Information & Management Services, 2007, [June 14, 2007. The Mandated
Renewable Portfolio Standard Debate. http://enewsusa.blogspot.com/2007/06/mandated-renewable-
portfolio- standard.html
eNewsUSA]
On June 12, Senator Bingaman issued a release saying he had "found the cure for the RPS blues!"
Bingaman said, "Utility commissioners in the Southeast (and some lobbyists in Washington) are
running a temperature about the prospects for a national renewable portfolio standard (RPS).
They seem to be feeling under the weather because they think such a law would mean higher
costs for consumers. This suspicion is supported by 'evidence' in a study commissioned by -
surprise, surprise - the utility industry’s biggest trade association, the Edison Electric Institute..."
Bingaman released what he called the "cure" which he said "puts in context any overheated allegations
that a national renewable portfolio standard would harm consumers." He announced the a new 29-page
study, prepared by "experts" at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) entitled, Impacts of a
15 Percent Renewable Portfolio Standard. Bingaman indicates that a key finding of the EIA study is that,
"The increased use of renewable energy in a national RPS leads to only slightly higher electricity
expenditures (0.5 percent) by 2030 and lower coal and natural gas prices." He said, "So, if fear of
renewables is the fever, EIA’s new analysis surely is the cure." According to EIA, the specific 15%
Bingaman RPS proposal which it analyzed would exempt smaller electricity providers – those with fewer
than 4 billion kilowatthours in annual sales – from meeting the requirement, and would not allow current
generation from existing hydroelectric and municipal solid waste facilities to meet the requirement.
However, retail sellers who generate from existing hydroelectric and municipal solid waste facilities are
allowed to exclude this generation from their sales base when calculating their required renewable share.
74
RPS AFF and NEG

The RPS would allow affected electricity providers to generate their own renewable energy or trade
renewable energy credits to assure compliance. Compliance could also be achieved by purchasing credits
from the government at an inflation-adjusted rate of 1.9 cents per kilowatthour credit. Generation from
distributed generators, represented by end-use photovoltaic installations in this analysis, would earn three
credits for every kilowatthour of generation.
75
RPS AFF and NEG

Energy Price Responses
Turn – Decentralization – An RPS reduces costs by decentralizing energy
infrastructure
Increasing national concerns about the United States’ energy portfolio, electric reliability, and the
environmental hazards of current electricity generation technologies, among other issues, have led many
to believe that a policy change should be adopted to increase reliance on renewable energy. Renewable
Portfolio Standards (RPS) have been implemented in 13 states and have met with varied success.
Several proposals have been made to implement an RPS on a national level. This paper will investigate the
successes and failures of state RPS, and reasons attributed. The pros and cons of these state RPS policies,
will be examined as evidence for whether a federal program could combine the best elements of current
RPS policies and encourage long-term renewable energy competitiveness in the market. There are many
reasons why proponents of renewable energy seek to encourage its use as an energy source in the future.
These reasons will be mentioned briefly in order to establish a background for the topic of this paper. Each
of these reasons has numerous facets and counterarguments that have been explored on an in-depth level
in other sources; for this paper, these arguments will be given in a simplistic form for the purpose of
brevity. The first reason renewable energy is promoted is the potential for distributed generation.
This would allow power to be generated at various points throughout the grid. The benefits of
this are two-fold: first, there would be lower transmission losses if this distributed energy were
used at or near the point of production. Second, spreading out the distribution of power allows for
greater national security since power is being generated at multiple sources, rather than at centralized
locations, which could be prone to debilitating attacks. These two benefits combine to alleviate strain on
the electricity grid, and could help prevent blackouts, such as the one from August 2003, from reoccurring.
An RPS would lower energy prices by relieving demand pressure – studies

prove
Inside Energy 2007 [July 16, “Bingaman aid says Dems will revive RPS for inclusion in 2007 energy
bill”, Lexis]
The RPS, Lowery said, will ensure increased energy security, reduced emissions and lower costs, which is
the nature of any domestic energy supply. Renewables represented 2% of electricity generation in
the 1970s and today still only represent about 2% to 3% of the country's energy supply. Lowery
said multiple studies have pointed to the benefits of renewable energy, but without a federal push these
benefits will never be fully realized. Lowery noted that an Energy Information Administration analysis
determined that natural gas prices would eventually go down if more renewable generation was
introduced to the market to take some of the demand off of gas. He said gas prices could be
lowered 16% to 23% between now and 2026 if a 15% RPS was in place, according to the EIA,
which would lower the cost of electricity.
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RPS AFF and NEG

Business Confidence Responses
Many industries favor an RPS – they have already committed resources toward
renewables
With the Senate poised to debate a national mandate for renewable power sources, many investor-owned
utilities oppose such a thing, fearful it would conflict with their current development plans and raise their
costs. But a number of others hope that a federal requirement would benefit their investments in
wind power. Meanwhile, anticipating legislative activity next week, some on Capitol Hill are talking
about an alternative to the usual renewable portfolio standard, a plan that would include in the mix new
nuclear power and coal generation that has carbon sequestration. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
has slated next week as the time for the full Senate to consider S. 1419, a bill to encourage energy
efficiency, set fuel economy standards and promote technologies to capture and sequester carbon dioxide
emissions from power plants. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman
said he would offer an amendment setting a renewable portfolio standard for utilities at 15% by 2020.
Bingaman's amendment is expected to include power generated from solar, wind, geothermal and biomass
resources and allow utilities without a strong renewable energy supply to buy credits to meet their
requirements. The provision is not expected to preempt the RPS programs already in progress in 24 states.
The prospects of a national RPS have the utility industry divided. A handful of utilities and other energy
companies were among the nearly 200 trade associations, businesses, and advocacy groups
signing a recent letter to the Senate leadership and Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico, in
favor of the national-RPS idea. The cost of developing wind power has doubled in some areas because
production of turbines has not kept pace with the increased demand for the technology, utilities said. Still,
the fuel is free and utilities in and around windswept states are not worried about a federal mandate for
wind power.
An RPS increases local economies – tax revenue, jobs and rent

American Wind energy association, 2005[October 2005, The Renewables Portfolio Standard: How It Works
* Income for communities: Every 100 MW of wind development generates about $1 million in
property tax revenue. The 160-MW wind farm in rural Prowers County, Colorado, increased the county’s
revenue by 29%. *Jobs: Every 100 MW of wind development creates about 500 job-years of
employment. An increase in U.S. wind energy installations to 50,000 MW could create 150,000 jobs in the
manufacturing sector alone, according to a study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project. *Payments to
landowners: A single wind turbine can provide $2,000-$4,000 per year in income to landowners,
mostly farmers and ranchers. The development of 1,000 MW in Texas following the adoption of that
state’s RPS led to royalty payments of $2.5 million in 2002 alone.
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______________________
***Counterplan Responses
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RPS AFF and NEG

State Counterplan Responses
A National RPS is critical to give the certainty to Renewable industries
required to attract investment
RPS advocates cite benefits to industry"We think by having a national standard it would set a floor
and give more certainty to us as we plan our new generation investment," said Scott Smith,
spokesman, a spokesman for Alliant Energy in Wisconsin. "Having this certainty would create greater
economies of scale and that in return would help to lower the overall cost" of wind generation.
Alliant, which signed the letter for an RPS, is planning another 100 MW of wind in its Interstate Power &
Light territory by 2009, up to 100 MW for its Wisconsin Power & Light customers by the end of next year
and another 200 MW in that area in 2009. Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco, also a signatory of
the letter, said it was looking to invest in renewable energy sources outside California, which opposes fossil
fuel generation. "If we can do it, other companies can look at that," said spokesman Shawn Cooper. A
mandate rather than voluntary programs for renewables would help advance technologies and
make domestic green technologies a viable option, he said. Asked about its support for a national
RPS, letter signatory Dominion Energy in Richmond, Virginia, suggested that by signing on it could help
influence the debate. "Dominion realizes that there is a national conversation taking place about RPS and
we want to have a seat at that table. We supported recent RPS legislation in Virginia and feel we can
provide workable ideas and input on the national level," the company said.
Federal RPS solves better – States lack uniformity – a national program can
build on the best of state experiments
Global Power Report 2007 [June 14, “Nonprofits call for national renewable requirement over state-by-state
approach to portfolio standard”, Lexis]
But the lack of uniformity among the state RPS rules creates problems, NNEC said. Some states
enjoy low utility rates by generating power from coal while ratepayers in RPS states "pick up the
tab for cleaning the air and water and diversifying the nation's electricity generation," the report
said. In addition, some states ? including Washington State ? exclude hydropower from resources
that can be used to meet RPS requirements. That means that ratepayers there are forced to buy
higher-cost renewable energy credits from generators outside the state, NNEC said. While states can
be regarded as laboratories for policy innovation and there is a time for accepting "the quirks
and foibles of state experimentation in national energy policy ... now is the time to model the
best state RPS programs and craft a coherent national policy that protects the interests of
regulated utilities and American consumers," the group concluded. NNEC, formed in 2006, is a New
York-based nonprofit group funded by a charitable group, The Tamarind Foundation
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State Counterplan Responses
State solutions fail due to environmental mercantilism – each state will try to
protect their own renewable industries
The Boston Globe 2008 [March 3, “Mercantilism and the Green Energy Debate” Lexis)
GOVERNOR DEVAL Patrick and his fellow New England governors have clear and ambitious environmental
agendas. They want to reduce the enormous carbon emissions of our electricity industry. Their states
have put renewable portfolio standards in place and have all signed on to the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative. These proposals require buying more and more electricity from renewable and low-carbon
sources. The goals are ambitious, but they are doable and would certainly make a huge contribution
toward undoing America's dismal record in the fight against global warming. In New England, however,
there's a real danger that the laudable environmental goals of Patrick and other governors will be
undermined by the emergence of environmental mercantilism - actions by individual states to
subsidize their own renewable energy industries. State regulators and legislators are under
intense pressure to help out home-grown renewable energy projects even when cheaper
alternatives are available next door. Wind energy is the most striking example. Experts generally
agree that, in the Northeast, the best locations for wind farms are in the far north (the Canadian Maritimes,
northern Maine) and offshore. But power demand is greatest in southern New England, and even if the
maligned Cape Wind project were built, it plus every other wind project in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and
Rhode Island would not produce enough home-grown renewable energy to meet the combined renewable
energy needs of these three populated states. As a result, the region will have to build new, high-voltage
electric transmission lines to convey the wind and other renewable resources from northern New England.
To its credit, New England's electricity operator, Independent System Operator New England, has launched
a public stakeholder process to obtain the necessary approvals for those power lines. The process of
approving and constructing those line will take years, so if we want the region to comply with its own
environmental requirements, we must get started.
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Efficiency Counterplan Responses
Adding efficiency credits would undermine an RPS – it would disincentivize
renewables
Inside Energy 2007 [July 16, “Bingaman aid says Dems will revive RPS for inclusion in 2007 energy bill”,
Lexis]
Lowery agreed with Brown that energy efficiency is a relatively inexpensive solution, citing it as a
prime reason why efficiency cannot mix with the RPS. He argued that utilities would simply comply
with just efficiency, and the nation would still have limited renewable generation. "While driving
efficiency is a great outcome, if you neglected renewables you've missed the chance," he said.
He also said it was "critically important" not to mix the renewable credits with the efficiency
credits that utilities can buy to help them meet the standard. "Different things drive the price of
the credits ? so vastly different that you confuse the credit price markets so thoroughly that you
wind up perhaps not driving anything."
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CEPS Counterplan Responses
Adding Coal and Nuclear to an RPS would crowd out renewables
Inside Energy 2007 [July 16, “Bingaman aid says Dems will revive RPS for inclusion in 2007 energy bill”,
Lexis]
Lowery also said Bingaman would not support a portfolio standard that allowed nuclear power and
clean coal to be entered into the mix. He explained that keeping the portfolio standard percentage
the same would allow nuclear and clean coal generation to overtake renewable resources,
considering 20% of the country's power already comes from nuclear power. "You wind up with
nothing but a compliance mechanism," Lowery said. "It doesn't accomplish anything other than what
was going to happen anyway." Lowery said raising the percentage to a level that would ensure renewable
generation would also be problematic. Models created by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican-Minnesota,
brought the requirement to "25% with pretty stringent requirements before it was having any effect at all,"
Lowery said. "When you say 25%, you've just federalized all future electricity decisions. That's an odd
position for conservatives to be taking."
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Free Market Counterplan Responses
A free market solution will fail – Government mandates through an RPS are
necessary to build a market for renewables
Energy Justice Network, Sept 2007 [Promoting Green Energy: The Free Market Approach vs. The Public
Policy Approach http://www.energyjustice.net/rps/
The mainstream environmental movement has put a lot of its resources into promoting "green"
energy through a market-based approach rather than a public policy approach. The market-
based approach is characterized as the voluntary purchasing of "green" power products, which
nearly always cost more than buying only conventional power. A public policy approach can take several
forms, but usually is done through state or federal laws that provide tax credits or purchasing requirements
to "renewable" forms of energy. Purchasing requirements can apply to the state or federal government,
requiring them to buy certain types of electricity or they can require sellers of electricity to have a certain
percentage of "renewable" power in their mix. The latter type is known as a Renewable Portfolio Standard
(RPS). As of September 2007, 26 states have RPS policies as a matter of state law (and 4 others have a
"goal"). See DSIRE website for details. The environmental and social damage caused by continued reliance
on nuclear power, fossil fuels, hydroelectric dams and "biomass" incineration is extreme. If we're to act
with the urgency that these environmental hazards demand, we must pursue strategies that do more than
make people feel good while creating comparatively little change. RPS policies have a much larger
effect on the energy supply than volunteer purchasing can, even if we get large institutions like
colleges and universities to start buying "green" power. RPS vs. Volunteer Purchasing Approach
There are serious limitations to the volunteer purchasing ('free market') approach to supporting
clean energy. Just as we cannot expect that people who pay more for organic food will cause all
food production to become organic, we cannot expect that voluntary approaches will be
sufficient to clean up our energy supply, since only a tiny percentage of the energy supply can be
affected by volunteer purchasing. We advocate strong public policies, such as tax credits and
Renewable Portfolio Standards for wind and solar development.
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RPS AFF and NEG

R&D Counterplan Responses
An RPS solves better than direct government financing of R&D
Another cost-related question is whether the costs of renewable energy could be driven down by
research and development, rather than by a government mandate like an RPS. This question
implies that giving extra money to renewable energy R&D now may result in future cost reductions that
would decrease or even eliminate the cost gap between renewables and traditional fuels. While great
benefits have been seen from money spent on R&D, there are a number of reasons why
implementing an RPS may be the best approach. First, a federal RPS would bring large-scale
development of renewable energy and nationwide standards that would lower costs. This is a
“learn by doing” approach that will more than likely decrease installation costs and general product
costs due to the benefits of economies of scale. Second, the difference in magnitude between the
funding that is typically given for renewable energy and the investment that will be made to
fulfill an RPS will be orders of magnitude different. This difference will contribute to the economies of
scale mentioned above. Third, the boom and bust cycles of renewable energy funding will be
avoided. Because some tax incentives, such as R&D funding or the PTC, are short-lived and unstable, this
leads to “‘boom and bust’ cycles that may not be as conducive to building a strong renewable
energy industry as the steady market growth offered by a well-designed RPS” [22]. Lastly,
companies may naturally choose to invest in R&D since renewable energy requires large amounts of
capital. Private R&D could be funded as a way for companies to seek more cost-effective methods
of fulfilling the federal mandate. To summarize, using an RPS allows the market to decide which
type of renewable energy to use to meet the mandate, benefits from economies of scale, and
avoids inconsistent government funding.
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*****NEGATIVE*****
____________________
***Topicality
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RPS AFF and NEG

Incentives Topicality – 1NC Shell
A. Interpretation – Incentives includes only positive motivators – It excludes
penalties for failing to act
Russel Thomas, 2007 [Principal at Meritology, a consultancy that models business value and risk for
information technology, Incentive-based Cyber Trust – A Call to Action,
http://meritology.com/resources/Incentive-based%20Cyber%20Trust%20Initiative%20v3.5.pdf]
“Incentive” – Our definition differs somewhat from the usual economic definition: “In economics, an
incentive is any factor (financial or non-financial) that provides a motive for a particular course of action, or
counts as a reason for preferring one choice to the alternatives. Since human beings are purposeful
creatures, the study of incentive structures is central to the study of all economic activity (both in terms of
individual decision-making and in terms of co-operation and competition within a larger institutional
structure).” [13] Generally, the incentives we consider are tied to desired outcomes, so that they are a
form of gain sharing or shared equity. For purposes of this paper and the proposed Initiative, “incentive” is
further qualified to include only positive incentives such as remunerative, moral, and personal
incentives. We exclude negative or coercive incentives from this definition because we want to
draw on and stimulate “market forces”, broadly defined. Market systems normally motivate agents
through positive incentives. In contrast, coercive incentives (penalties, etc. for failures to act) are
usually administered through non-market processes such as legal, regulatory, or authority
institutions.
B. Violation - Alternative energy incentives are contextually different from

rules and regulations like an RPS – The plan mandates a goal and imposes a
fine if companies do not meet it
Sam Schoofs, Calvin College, 2004,[ 6 August 2004 A federal Renewable Portfolio Standard: Policy
D. Renewable Energy Policy Overview

There are two main categories of renewable energy policies. The first category gives some
financial incentives to encourage renewable energy that includes tax incentives, grants, loans,
rebates, and production incentives [13]. Tax incentives cover personal, sales, property, and corporate
taxes and they help to reduce the investment costs and to reward investors for their support of renewable
energy sources [12], [13]. As an example, 24 states currently have some form of grant program in place
that ranges from as small as $500 up to $1,000,000 [13]. The second category of renewable energy
policies is called rules and regulations, which mandate a certain action from an obligated entity.
Included within this category are renewable portfolio standards, equipment certification,
solar/wind access laws, and green power purchasing/aggregation polices [13]. As an example,
equipment certification allows the states to regulate the performance criteria that equipment is required to
meet in order to be eligible for financial incentives [12]. Seven states currently have equipment
certification programs in place
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RPS AFF and NEG

C. Vote Neg
Limits – They double the number of mechanisms they can use to increase
alternative energy – The carbon tax, cap-and-trade, and equipment
certification all become topical – Having limited mechanisms is key to prevent
shallow debate because of the lack of a strict definition for “alternative
energy”
Ground – Requiring a positive incentive forces the aff to defend an increased

government spending for alternative energy, rather than simply a decrease in
fossil fuel consumption – This avoids core negative disads to having more
alternative energy because they can claim negative penalties only promote
conservation and not alternative energy – It also avoids disads to spending
and direct government subsidies – Their “market-based” approach avoids core
solvency questions
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RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – RPS isn’t an Incentive
An RPS is contextually different from incentives – it is a mandate.
The Sunday Oregonian 2006 [August 13, “The Alternatives, Lexis]
In Oregon, Gov. Ted Kulongoski might be the furthest along in defining a portfolio standard for the
state. He calls it his "25 x 25 plan." Under the concept, patterned after a national drive, 25 percent
of the state's electric energy would come from renewables by 2025. Details have yet to be drafted,
although Kulongoski has said he wouldn't count hydro, which makes up 44 percent of the state's mix today.
Non-hydro renewable energy --wind, geothermal, biomass and solid waste --contributes 4 percent. Most
states with standards outline shorter time horizons and more modest requirements than Kulongoski
proposes. The governor, a Democrat running for re-election this fall, admits his plan is ambitious, but he
said it's necessary, given the threats of fossil-fuel dependency and global warming. "There's a real need to
be bold, to position Oregon as a leader in this," said Charlie Burr, a spokesman for Kulongoski. Ron Saxton,
the Republican challenger to Kulongoski, bluntly characterizes the 25 x 25 plan as "a gimmick."
Saxton said he would depend on incentives geared toward further development of renewable
energy and related businesses --Oregon's energy tax credit is an example of the kind of aid he
would back --but not mandates.
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RPS AFF and NEG

__________________
***Energy Price DA
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RPS AFF and NEG

Energy Price DA – 1NC Shell
Despite overall economic problems, US manufacturing is experiencing positive
growth
IPS News, 7/5/08 [Inter Press Service,
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/90516/?ses=562de9e2b38e3df7b97b087063eae9e8]
An unexpected spurt in manufacturing activity is doing little to dispel the gloom that envelopes
the U.S. economy midway through the year. Last week, the private sector Institute for Supply
Management (ISM) bucked economists' expectations and said the manufacturing sector last month
clawed its way back to positive growth. The ISM's manufacturing index rose to 50.2 in June, up
from the May reading of 49.6. Economists polled by news and business organisations had
expected a reading of around 48.6. Anything above 50 reflects growth in the sector; anything below it
indicates contraction. "The manufacturing sector showed a slight improvement in June as the
[index] registered above 50 percent after four months of decline," said Norbert Ore, chairman of the
ISM's manufacturing survey committee.
An Federal RPS would cause manufacturing industry flight to avoid high

energy prices
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007. [June 27, 2007, Competitive Enterprise Institute http://www.cei.org
/gencon/014,06020.cfm
Although 21 states have already passed an RPS, this is not an argument in favor of a federal RPS.
These RPS states tend to have a much higher potential for renewable energy and/or less energy-
intensive manufacturing. In the RPS states that do have considerable manufacturing, the effect
of adopting an RPS has been to raise electricity prices and push manufacturing into states or
other countries with lower electricity prices. Therefore, the effect of a federal RPS would be to
require states with low electricity prices and proportionately lower renewable energy potential,
such as is found in our industrial heartland, to raise electricity prices to a level that would force
their industries to migrate overseas to countries with cheaper energy rates and no renewable
portfolio standards.
Overseas manufacturing shift devastates the US economy and global

leadership
Choate 2002, Pat Choate, director of the Manufacturing Policy Project and Edward Miller, president of DSI, former
economic treaty negotiator, 2002 , http://www.uscc.gov/researchpapers/2000_2003/reports/analysis.htm
For two centuries, industrial and military self-sufficiency was America’s policy. It succeeded brilliantly.
It protected against European adventurism in the 19th century. It enabled the nation to become
the richest, most industrialized country in the world. And it allowed America to be the arsenal of
democracy in the 20th century. Even when America disarmed following World War I and again after
World War II, it still had the industrial capacity -- the potential -- to re-arm quickly if a threat
emerged. And when one did, America’s factories quickly converted to war production, allowing the Allied forces to
out produce and ultimately overwhelm the Axis powers in the 1940s and hold off the enemy during the Korean War.
Following the Korean War, the U.S. defense industrial base was repeatedly modernized, again enabling the USA to cope
with any foreign threat. And self-sufficiency was taken a step further during the Cold War as the United
States actively led Europe, Japan and others in denying the Soviet Union the technologies,
machinery, skills, and research they needed to keep apace — economically and militarily. That
policy of strength and containment succeeded, too. The Soviet Union could not match the West, its people grew weary,
and that empire broke into pieces. But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, America seems to have quickly forgotten
the older lessons and policies that long served it well. In a very real way, the mood of America in these first days of the
21st century is akin to that of America in the 1920s. Then, the "war to end wars" had ended. The threat was gone.
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RPS AFF and NEG

America could return to the business of America, which was perceived to be business. With the collapse of the
Soviet Union, America remains the sole super power. Americans are generally prosperous. And while as
recently as the 1980s, the global competitiveness of domestic industries was a top concern of national leaders, their
successors now focus on assuring stockholders higher share prices and American consumers a steady flow of
inexpensively produced goods, regardless of where they are made. Once again, the business of America seems to be
business. Today, a smaller, simpler, more trusting, view dominates. Terrorists are seen as the principal threat to
national security. The emergence of China -- a one-party, repressive, Communist state — as an economic and military
power is mainly seen not as a danger, but as a business opportunity. And global economics is treated as something
analogous to celestial mechanics -- a self-driven, self-correcting system in which markets balance supply and demand,
assuring ever more growth and development. But there is also something different about what America is doing now
from what it did after World War I and World War II. Then, the United States shifted military production back to civilian
uses and even though military expenditures were cut, the U.S. industrial base remained in America. The long-held
policy of self-sufficiency was not disturbed. Unlike in the past, however, now that the Cold War is over, the U.S.
industrial base is being taken apart, piece-by-piece, and relocated to other nations. In the
process, much of American’s industrial and military production base is being sold to foreign
interests, and more important a significant portion of it is being physically relocated into other
nations, including our most likely strategic rival — China.
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Energy Price DA – 1NC Shell
The collapse of U.S. leadership will unleash conflicts – resulting in great power
wars
Thayer 2006 [Bradley A., Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Duluth,
The National Interest, November -December, “In Defense of Primacy”, lexis]
countries want to align themselves

A remarkable fact about international politics today--in a world where American primacy is clearly and unambiguously on display--is that
with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes--their
own protection, or to gain greater influence.
Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America--their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements--and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That
is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this
country, or any country, had so many allies.
U.S. primacy--and the bandwagoning effect--has also given us extensive influence in international politics, allowing
the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to create
coalitions of like-minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United
States to operate with allies outside of the UN, where it can be stymied by opponents. American-led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to
conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effectiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the
typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation.
You can count with one hand countries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to
consistently resist the agenda and actions of the United States.
Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from

China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even
openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, resort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting
communication and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for
the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates.
The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases--Venezuela, Iran, Cuba--it is an anti-U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrinsically anti-American.
Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power--Rome, Britain or the United States today. Scholars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic
effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics.
Everything we think of when we consider the current international order--free trade, a robust monetary
regime, increasing respect for human rights, growing democratization--is directly linked to U.S. power.
Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most
Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages followed Rome's
significant lessons:
collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. Without U.S. power, the liberal order created
by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Ral Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)."
Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive
outcomes for Washington and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states
that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of
complicated relationships aligned--between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills
Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's
likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars.

Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread democracy and other elements of its
ideology of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal
democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are
governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not
have clashing interests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. leadership. And so, in general,
democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States.
Critics have faulted the Bush Administration for attempting to spread democracy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's critics to explain why
democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted.
Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or stabilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Perhaps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to
Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Afghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election,
even though remnant Taliban forces threatened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Washington
fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western-style democracies, but democratic
progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive.
With its allies, the United States has

Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the global economy.
labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network characterized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and
mobility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a global
public good from which all states benefit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this
network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well-being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as
well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin-offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess.
Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his career confident in the
socialist ideology of post-independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recognizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of
free market economic policies and globalization, which are facilitated through American primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of
American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides.
Fourth and finally,the United States, in seeking primacy, has been willing to use its power not only to advance its interests but to promote the
welfare of people all over the globe. The United States is the earth's leading source of positive externalities for the world. The U.S. military has participated in over fifty operations
since the end of the Cold War--and most of those missions have been humanitarian in nature. Indeed, the U.S. military is the earth's "911 force"--it serves, de facto, as the
world's police, the global paramedic and the planet's fire department. Whenever there is a natural disaster, earthquake, flood, drought, volcanic eruption, typhoon or tsunami, the United States assists the countries
in need. On the day after Christmas in 2004, a tremendous earthquake and tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra, killing some 300,000 people. The United States was the first to respond with aid.
Washington followed up with a large contribution of aid and deployed the U.S. military to South and Southeast Asia for many months to help with the aftermath of the disaster. About 20,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors,
airmen and marines responded by providing water, food, medical aid, disease treatment and prevention as well as forensic assistance to help identify the bodies of those killed. Only the U.S. military could have
accomplished this Herculean effort. No other force possesses the communications capabilities or global logistical reach of the U.S. military. In fact, UN peacekeeping operations depend on the United States to supply
UN forces.
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RPS AFF and NEG

American generosity has done more to help the United States fight the War on Terror than almost any
other measure. Before the tsunami, 80 percent of Indonesian public opinion was opposed to the United States; after it, 80 percent had a favorable opinion of America. Two years after the disaster, and
in poll after poll, Indonesians still have overwhelmingly positive views of the United States. In October 2005, an enormous earthquake struck Kashmir, killing about 74,000 people and leaving three million homeless.
The U.S. military responded immediately, diverting helicopters fighting the War on Terror in nearby Afghanistan to bring relief as soon as possible. To help those in need, the United States also provided financial aid
to Pakistan; and, as one might expect from those witnessing the munificence of the United States, it left a lasting impression about America. For the first time since 9/11, polls of Pakistani opinion have found that
more people are favorable toward the United States than unfavorable, while support for Al-Qaeda dropped to its lowest level. Whether in Indonesia or Kashmir, the money was well-spent because it helped people in
the wake of disasters, but it also had a real impact on the War on Terror. When people in the Muslim world witness the U.S. military conducting a humanitarian mission, there is a clearly positive impact on Muslim
As the War on Terror is a war of ideas and opinion as much as military action, for the United
opinion of the United States.
States humanitarian missions are the equivalent of a blitzkrieg.

THERE IS no other state, group of states or international organization that can provide these global
benefits. None even comes close. The United Nations cannot because it is riven with conflicts and major cleavages that divide the international body time and again on matters
great and trivial. Thus it lacks the ability to speak with one voice on salient issues and to act as a unified force once a decision is reached. The EU has similar problems. Does anyone expect Russia or China to take
up these responsibilities? They may have the desire, but they do not have the capabilities. Let's face it: for the time being, American primacy remains humanity's only practical hope of solving the world's ills.
93
RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – Federal RPS Increases Energy Prices
A Federal RPS will increase electricity prices because it doesn’t account for
state differences
Waste Information & Management Services, 2007, [June 14, 2007. The Mandated Renewable Portfolio
Standard Debate. http://enewsusa.blogspot.com/2007/06/mandated-renewable-portfolio- standard.html
eNewsUSA]
The letter indicates, "The Chamber understands such legislation will require utilities to generate at
least 15 percent of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020, or else purchase credits
from the federal government or other companies. A mandatory RPS could raise electricity prices
for all consumers, result in a wealth transfer among states, and impose new burdens on the
reliability of the nation’s electric grid." The Chamber further indicates, "The amendment’s one-size-
fits-all mandate fails to take into account two critical factors: (1) the U.S. is made up of fifty
individual states, not all of which possess enough renewable power capability to meet a 15
percent RPS; and (2) the 20 states able to meet this standard have already implemented
renewable power programs on their own. A federal RPS will force those states lacking adequate
renewable resources to purchase credits from the federal government -- essentially a direct tax
on electricity used by businesses and other consumers, driving up energy costs, and hurting
economic growth. Moreover, the federal mandate will undercut and/or preempt existing programs in the
states that have imposed their own RPS... renewable generation sufficient to meet an unrealistic 15-
percent mandatory federal requirement is neither cost-effective nor achievable nationwide."
Federal RPS would increase electricity prices because it imposes a one size fits
all approach on different states
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 2007 [Alternative energy rule would be costly” Lexis
In a Dec. 18 opinion column, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy criticized Southern Company for
opposing a one-size-fits-all federal renewable portfolio standard that would mandate power
companies to produce a percentage of their electricity from alternative sources such as wind, solar and
biomass ("Future 'failed by one vote,' " @issue). Renewable energy and efficiency programs will play a role
in meeting current and future energy needs, and Southern Company will continue to invest in research as
well as programs for customers and the environment. However, because there are differences from
state to state in the availability of renewable resources like wind and solar, there are significant
differences in what these technologies will cost in different regions of the country. A federal
mandate ignores this critical fact. Wind energy, for example, is one of the most economical
renewable sources in states where there is a lot of wind. While solar is expensive wherever it is
used, there's simply a lot more solar capacity in states with arid climates. As a result, a one-size-
fits-all approach penalizes certain regions because it doesn't consider the impacts on consumers and
economies in states where these resources are not as economic. In reality, a federal mandate could
drastically raise electricity prices for consumers in states such as Georgia, and result in a
significant transfer of wealth from consumers in renewable energy-poor regions to distant
suppliers and the federal government.
A Federal RPS would increase electricity prices where renewable energy is less
available
William Yeatman, Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007, [June 12, 2007, Renewable Portfolio
Standard Threatens Consumers, http://cei.org/pdf/5982.pdf.]
94
RPS AFF and NEG

As part of comprehensive legislation to raise energy prices, Congress is once again considering proposals
to set a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) for electric utilities. Such a requirement would raise
electricity prices for consumers and industry, but would negatively affect some regions of the
country much more than others. As the Bush Administration Statement of Policy of June 12, 2007
correctly states: A limited Federal RPS would result in higher electricity costs for consumers in
areas where renewable resources are less available and could place new strains on electricity
reliability needs.
95
RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – High Prices Cause Industry Flight
High energy prices cause wholesale shift of US manufacturing base overseas
Sun.com 2004 – March, http://www.sun.com/br/0304_ezine/man_gas.html
U.S. firms cannot survive when costs triple. Companies using gas for feedstock, such as nitrogen fertilizer producers,
have been among the first to feel financial pain. High gas prices, which account for up to 90 percent of fertilizer costs,
have forced nine nitrogen fertilizer plants to close or cease operations since January 2001. The remaining facilities
have only operated at 50 percent capacity. Where are farmers getting their fertilizers? According to the U.S.
Government Accounting Office, the 25 percent decline in U.S. fertilizer sales has been accompanied by a 43 percent
increase in imports and a 7 percent decrease in agricultural consumption.
Job losses follow plant closures. Russell Gold, staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, recently wrote, "U.S. chemical
makers have lost an estimated 78,000 jobs since natural gas prices began to rise in 2000." Theo H. Walthie, business
group president, Hydrocarbons and Energy and EO-EG at The Dow Chemical Company, recently confirmed this
pessimistic statistic when he spoke at the February 2004 CERAWEEK conference. According to Walthie, sustained high
natural gas prices forced Dow to shutter U.S. plants, and focus investments overseas, accounting for some of the
3,500 jobs Dow lost globally in 2003. Walthie said more U.S. manufacturing jobs are at risk unless U.S. natural gas
prices become globally competitive in the near-term. Where are the jobs and investments going? Companies like Dow
Chemical are relying more on their joint-venture facilities in Malaysia and Kuwait, where natural gas prices are lower
than in the United States. New plant additions by Asian-owned companies are also on the drawing board in Taiwan and
China, positioning these companies to supply growing regional markets that turn basic chemicals into plastic parts.
Higher Gas Costs Means Higher Beef Prices—and More Natural gas use is widespread. This raw material accounts for
38 percent of industrial energy use, 15 percent of commercial building use, and 16 percent of electric generation use.
Increases in gas prices ripple throughout the economy. For example, as average gas prices rose by 303 percent at the
end of 2000, fertilizer prices increased by 144 percent. Without offsetting cost savings from other farming expenses,
farmers would have curtailed production to boost corn prices to recoup expenses. Higher corn prices lead to higher
prices for corn syrup and grain feed, ultimately forcing up prices for hundreds of consumer products such as soft
drinks, breakfast cereals, burgers, and ethanol used in gasoline. Rising gas prices also increase electricity costs,
hurting profit margins of every U.S. business. Because of environmental restrictions, natural gas—a clean-burning fuel
—powers 90 percent of all recently built electric generation plants. In New England, where gas fuels 40 percent of
electricity plants, average power prices hit 30 cents per kilowatt hour in mid-January 2004—a 600-percent increase
over normal prices. Why the price shock? An eighth of the region's power generators shut down because they lacked
gas or they sold their gas to residential heating markets instead of producing electricity. The past decade's
construction of gas-fired power plants is the major factor increasing gas demand. Most states regulate retail electricity
prices—passing increased wholesale power costs through to retail customers. Manufacturers, however, face global
competitors, and cannot pass energy cost increases through to consumers. The result is that power generators can
outspend manufacturers for natural gas—forcing manufacturers to go offshore to find cheap gas supplies.
High energy prices cause manufacturing to shift overseas, devastating the US

economy
IECA 2003 – Industrial Energy Consumers of America
12-3, http://www.ieca-us.com/downloads/natgas/$111bilion.doc
The impact of high energy costs on manufacturing is significant and it contributed greatly to reduce manufacturing
after-tax profits during the 41 month natural gas crisis. According to Bureau of Census data, manufacturing profits fell
47.7 % during the time period of the natural gas crisis versus the previous 41 months. Manufacturing plays an
important role in the economic health of our country and we must recognize that affordable energy, including natural
gas, is essential. In the past, the affordability of U.S. energy was a key factor in manufacturing building their factories
here. Now, the non-globally competitive price of natural gas and natural gas feedstock is forcing manufacturing
companies to produce their products elsewhere. According to the National Association of Manufacturers,
manufacturing accounts for 22 % of GDP growth, contributes one-third of the economy’s productivity growth, creates
more business activity and jobs in other sectors than any other industry, performs 62 % of U.S. private sector R&D,
pays the highest wages –18 % higher than the national average and makes two-thirds of all U.S. exports.
96
RPS AFF and NEG

Turns Case – Economy
Manufacturing is key to the US economy
US Newswire, 4-28-2004, p. l/n
Manufacturing is the backbone of the American economy. A strong manufacturing sector is in the interest of the entire
economy, helping to create jobs in everything from mining to services, increasing productivity growth, and producing
the large majority of exports. -- Manufacturing jobs pay 50 percent more than non- manufacturing jobs. In 2002 the
average compensation for manufacturing jobs was $55,000 - compared to $35,000 for non- manufacturing private-
sector jobs. That is more than 50 percent higher. An important part of the higher compensation in manufacturing is in
the form of better health and retirement benefits. (Bureau of Economic Analysis) -- Each manufacturing job supports
4.2 additional jobs throughout the economy - a strong manufacturing sector helps boost the entire economy.
Manufacturing jobs create jobs in everything from the mining needed for raw materials to the transportation industry
that moves the goods and the retail stores that sell them. In total, each manufacturing job supports 4.2 additional jobs
throughout the economy - nearly three times the rate for the business and personal services sector. (EPI) -- Each dollar
spent on manufacturing results in an additional $1.43 in spending on other products and services. In contrast, the
comparable multiplier for spending on information products is $0.80 and for spending on financial & business services
is $0.50. (Joel Popkin and Company, Securing America's Future: The Case for a Strong Manufacturing Base, 2003) --
Productivity growth in manufacturing is 50 percent higher than the economy wide average. Productivity growth in
manufacturing from 1989 to 2003 was 3.6 percent annually - compared to 2.2 percent annually for non-manufacturing.
(Bureau of Labor Statistics) -- Manufacturing is responsible for two-thirds of all private- sector R&D - $127 billion in
2002. (Popkin based on NSF data) -- Manufacturing is responsible for 90 percent of patents. (NAM)
97
RPS AFF and NEG

____________________
***States
98
RPS AFF and NEG

Inherency Turn – 1NC Shell
States are adopting RPS plans in the status quo – A federal RPS would disrupt
them and divert resources to compliance taxes
Edison Electric Institute, 2007[December, 2007. 10 Things You Need to Know About a Federal
Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)
http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/electricity_policy/federal_legislation/RPS10 ThingstKnow07-07-30.pdf]
2. States, working with their utilities, are encouraging the development of renewable energy
resources, based on their own unique circumstances and available resources. Already, 26 states
and the District of Columbia have adopted mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards. Two
more states have RPS goals. Every one of these state plans includes at least one resource not given
credit under the proposed federal RPS.
3. Each state RPS plan includes carefully considered targets and timetables based on what makes
sense for the state. Because of the diversity of state RPS plans, a federal RPS mandate could
undercut or preempt state efforts. Ten of the 27 existing state plans would not meet a federal 15-
percent RPS target by 2020.
4. Electric utilities are not anti-renewable, as some would have you believe. In fact, the electric power
industry has significantly expanded the use of non-hydropower renewable energy resources for generating
electricity throughout the last decade. The industry believes that promoting renewable energy resources,
through tax credits and increased funding for research and development—in addition to renewable energy
programs in the states—is the most effective way to expand the use of renewables.
5. A 15-percent federal RPS would mandate a 400-percent jump from the roughly 3 percent of total
generation that renewable energy sources now put onto the U.S. power grid—in just 12 years. To put this
into perspective, to meet a 15-percent RPS by 2020 using wind power—the fastest-growing renewable
energy source—would require 19,834 new wind turbines (2 megawatts in size). Stretched across the nation
—rotor blade to rotor blade—these turbines would cover 862 miles, or roughly the distance from
Washington, DC, to St. Louis.
6. A federal RPS mandate is essentially an electricity tax, with the heaviest burden falling on
states without renewable resources. Utilities in most states will have to comply with a federal
RPS mandate by making payments to the federal government. In fact, an analysis of a study by the
Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reveals that UCS assumes 60 to 70 percent of compliance with a
federal RPS would be made through alternative compliance payments—i.e., taxes.
99
RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – States Solving in Status Quo
State RPSs will solve now – they are already providing a market for renewables
Electric Utility Week March 28, 2005 [Renewable standards will spur 52,000 MW of plants worth $53 billion,
study says Lexis
State renewable portfolio standards will stimulate development of 52,000 MW of new projects
over the next 15 years, according to a study by Global Energy Decisions. The Boulder, Colo.,-based
company conducted the study, "Renewable Energy: The Bottom Line," along with Palmer Bellevue and Bio
Economic Research Associates. It concludes that more than 40,000 MW of the 52,000 MW will come from
new wind projects. That is largely due to the economics of wind, which is becoming increasingly
competitive with gas-fired plants. RPS requirements are helping to create "the most important
development in U.S. renewable energy in the last 25 years," Global Energy states. It estimates that
renewables development will involve about $53 billion in new investment in the 15-year period.
Electric utilities will bear a large burden in implementing state RPS. The study lists utilities most affected
by RPSs, and their estimated costs: Southern California Edison, $3.6 billion; Commonwealth Edison
(Exelon), $3.5 billion; Pacific Gas and Electric, $3.3 billion; PECO Energy, $1.9 billion; and PPL, $1.9 billion.
California’s RPS will set a national model now

California’s policy has been in effect since the start of 2003, but little information seems to be
available about whether it has caused any development. The California energy commission and
California public utilities commission are still in the process of rule making and working out the details of
the program. It is notable that California has implemented one of the most aggressive standards
and has made that even more impressive by adopting a goal to meet the 20% standard by 2010
instead of 2017 as the original mandate proposed [37]. California’s commitment to an RPS sends
a strong message that it is seeking to diversify its energy supply and lessen its reliance on
natural gas fired production [38]. If its efforts to enact an RPS succeed, it will be a large
encouragement to renewable energy development around the country and due to California’s
size, will prove the efficacy of a larger scale RPS [38].
100
RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – National RPS Tradesoff
A Federal RPS would hinder state programs – there is unequal access to
resources and transmission lines
Electric Utility Week, 2008 [ June 4, “National renewables mandate versus state programs: Utilities differ
on virtues of each” Lexis]
EEI says national mandate would hinder state programs The investor-owned utility trade
association offers a number of reasons that a federal RPS would be bad for business. Chief
among them is how such a mandate could hamper the two dozen existing state programs, which
consider renewable resources and utilities' energy supplies available within that state. "At a bare
minimum, a federal program should not interfere with any of these programs or start second-guessing
what a renewable is and how much electricity it should provide," said Edison Electric Institute spokesman
Dan Riedinger. "We have some very serious concerns with the prospect of a federal RPS." Some areas
of the country because of their lack of wind or constant sunshine may have a more difficult time
meeting a federal RPS. Requiring utilities to build new generation or allowing utilities to buy
credits to meet the mandate will only increase costs for customers, according to Riedinger. It is
also likely that transmission would have to be developed to serve these new renewable sources
located in areas often distant from population centers, he said. New transmission can cost $1 million
to $3 million per mile and take several years to complete. That is an issue "that has to be incorporated in
the design of any RPS requirement, certainly a federal one," said Riedinger. Further, at least 10 of the
24 state RPS's would fail to meet the proposed 15% by 2020 based on the stringency of the
requirements, he said. EEI had not seen a draft of Bingaman's proposed RPS amendment but based on
the senator's 2003 version, which cleared the Senate but stalled in the House, there are resources
considered renewables by some states that are not covered under the federal plan, Riedinger said.
In addition, there are concerns that state investments made by utilities to meet a state RPS would
be not transferred into a federal RPS and that those funds would be used to develop renewable
resources not available to those utilities, he said. "That is the potential irony that could occur,"
Riedinger said.
An RPS would undermine state renewable programs

Edison Electric Institute, 2007[December 1, 2007,Oppose the 15% Federal RPS Mandate in the Energy Bill
http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/electricity_policy/federal_legislation/EEI_RPS.pdf]
A new energy bill expected to reach the House floor soon contains a one-size-fits-all federal
renewable portfolio standard (RPS) mandate that would require shareholder-owned electric utilities to
obtain up to 15% of their electricity from renewables by 2020, or make equivalent payments to the federal
government. Such a federal RPS mandate would raise electricity prices for consumers; upset ongoing
renewable energy programs in the states; create winners and losers among states, electricity
generators and electricity suppliers; and impose new burdens on electric reliability. Moreover, an RPS is not
a solution to achieving energy independence.
101
RPS AFF and NEG

Counterplan – 1NC Shell
Text: All fifty states and relevant territories should adopt a renewable portfolio
standard.
State solve best – differences between access to renewable resources require

local solutions and they can better coordinate the mandates with existing
state-level programs and the construction of new transmission lines
Electric Utility Week, 2008 [ June 4, “National renewables mandate versus state programs: Utilities differ
on virtues of each” Lexis]
EEI says national mandate would hinder state programs The investor-owned utility trade
association offers a number of reasons that a federal RPS would be bad for business. Chief
among them is how such a mandate could hamper the two dozen existing state programs, which
consider renewable resources and utilities' energy supplies available within that state. "At a bare
minimum, a federal program should not interfere with any of these programs or start second-guessing
what a renewable is and how much electricity it should provide," said Edison Electric Institute spokesman
Dan Riedinger. "We have some very serious concerns with the prospect of a federal RPS." Some areas
of the country because of their lack of wind or constant sunshine may have a more difficult time
meeting a federal RPS. Requiring utilities to build new generation or allowing utilities to buy
credits to meet the mandate will only increase costs for customers, according to Riedinger. It is
also likely that transmission would have to be developed to serve these new renewable sources
located in areas often distant from population centers, he said. New transmission can cost $1 million
to $3 million per mile and take several years to complete. That is an issue "that has to be incorporated in
the design of any RPS requirement, certainly a federal one," said Riedinger. Further, at least 10 of the
24 state RPS's would fail to meet the proposed 15% by 2020 based on the stringency of the
requirements, he said. EEI had not seen a draft of Bingaman's proposed RPS amendment but based on
the senator's 2003 version, which cleared the Senate but stalled in the House, there are resources
considered renewables by some states that are not covered under the federal plan, Riedinger said.
In addition, there are concerns that state investments made by utilities to meet a state RPS would
be not transferred into a federal RPS and that those funds would be used to develop renewable
resources not available to those utilities, he said. "That is the potential irony that could occur,"
Riedinger said.
102
RPS AFF and NEG

Ext – Solvency
California’s size means it can provide the same model that the federal
government does
California’s policy has been in effect since the start of 2003, but little information seems to be
available about whether it has caused any development. The California energy commission and
California public utilities commission are still in the process of rule making and working out the details of
the program. It is notable that California has implemented one of the most aggressive standards
and has made that even more impressive by adopting a goal to meet the 20% standard by 2010
instead of 2017 as the original mandate proposed [37]. California’s commitment to an RPS sends
a strong message that it is seeking to diversify its energy supply and lessen its reliance on
natural gas fired production [38]. If its efforts to enact an RPS succeed, it will be a large
encouragement to renewable energy development around the country and due to California’s
size, will prove the efficacy of a larger scale RPS [38].
State RPSs are already providing a market for renewables

Electric Utility Week March 28, 2005 [Renewable standards will spur 52,000 MW of plants worth $53 billion,
study says Lexis
State renewable portfolio standards will stimulate development of 52,000 MW of new projects
over the next 15 years, according to a study by Global Energy Decisions. The Boulder, Colo.,-based
company conducted the study, "Renewable Energy: The Bottom Line," along with Palmer Bellevue and Bio
Economic Research Associates. It concludes that more than 40,000 MW of the 52,000 MW will come from
new wind projects. That is largely due to the economics of wind, which is becoming increasingly
competitive with gas-fired plants. RPS requirements are helping to create "the most important
development in U.S. renewable energy in the last 25 years," Global Energy states. It estimates that
renewables development will involve about $53 billion in new investment in the 15-year period.
Electric utilities will bear a large burden in implementing state RPS. The study lists utilities most affected
by RPSs, and their estimated costs: Southern California Edison, $3.6 billion; Commonwealth Edison
(Exelon), $3.5 billion; Pacific Gas and Electric, $3.3 billion; PECO Energy, $1.9 billion; and PPL, $1.9 billion.
State programs can better adapt to drastically different local conditions

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 2007 [Alternative energy rule would be costly” Lexis
In a Dec. 18 opinion column, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy criticized Southern Company for
opposing a one-size-fits-all federal renewable portfolio standard that would mandate power
companies to produce a percentage of their electricity from alternative sources such as wind, solar and
biomass ("Future 'failed by one vote,' " @issue). Renewable energy and efficiency programs will play a role
in meeting current and future energy needs, and Southern Company will continue to invest in research as
well as programs for customers and the environment. However, because there are differences from
state to state in the availability of renewable resources like wind and solar, there are significant
differences in what these technologies will cost in different regions of the country. A federal
mandate ignores this critical fact. Wind energy, for example, is one of the most economical
renewable sources in states where there is a lot of wind. While solar is expensive wherever it is
used, there's simply a lot more solar capacity in states with arid climates. As a result, a one-size-
fits-all approach penalizes certain regions because it doesn't consider the impacts on consumers and
103
RPS AFF and NEG

economies in states where these resources are not as economic. In reality, a federal mandate could
drastically raise electricity prices for consumers in states such as Georgia, and result in a
significant transfer of wealth from consumers in renewable energy-poor regions to distant
suppliers and the federal government.
104
RPS AFF and NEG

They Say “Perm”
Perm Can’t Solve – A federal RPS would disrupt state programs
Edison Electric Institute, 2007[December, 2007. 10 Things You Need to Know About a Federal
Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS)
http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/electricity_policy/federal_legislation/RPS10 ThingstKnow07-07-30.pdf]
2. States, working with their utilities, are encouraging the development of renewable energy
resources, based on their own unique circumstances and available resources. Already, 26 states
and the District of Columbia have adopted mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards. Two
more states have RPS goals. Every one of these state plans includes at least one resource not given
credit under the proposed federal RPS.
3. Each state RPS plan includes carefully considered targets and timetables based on what makes
sense for the state. Because of the diversity of state RPS plans, a federal RPS mandate could
undercut or preempt state efforts. Ten of the 27 existing state plans would not meet a federal 15-
percent RPS target by 2020.
4. Electric utilities are not anti-renewable, as some would have you believe. In fact, the electric power
industry has significantly expanded the use of non-hydropower renewable energy resources for generating
electricity throughout the last decade. The industry believes that promoting renewable energy resources,
through tax credits and increased funding for research and development—in addition to renewable energy
programs in the states—is the most effective way to expand the use of renewables.
5. A 15-percent federal RPS would mandate a 400-percent jump from the roughly 3 percent of total
generation that renewable energy sources now put onto the U.S. power grid—in just 12 years. To put this
into perspective, to meet a 15-percent RPS by 2020 using wind power—the fastest-growing renewable
energy source—would require 19,834 new wind turbines (2 megawatts in size). Stretched across the nation
—rotor blade to rotor blade—these turbines would cover 862 miles, or roughly the distance from
Washington, DC, to St. Louis.
6. A federal RPS mandate is essentially an electricity tax, with the heaviest burden falling on
states without renewable resources. Utilities in most states will have to comply with a federal
RPS mandate by making payments to the federal government. In fact, an analysis of a study by the
Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reveals that UCS assumes 60 to 70 percent of compliance with a
federal RPS would be made through alternative compliance payments—i.e., taxes.
105
RPS AFF and NEG

Federalism Links
An RPS violates federalism because it expands federal authority into state
jurisdictions
Inside Energy 2005 [March 14, “Domenici hints coal, nuclear energy should be part of renewable standard”
Lexis]
Bingaman said Domenici's plan amounted to the federal government exceeding its bounds. "For the
federal government to step in and say we are also going to have in federal law provisions that try to
influence what utilities nationwide do in this much broader area to include coal gasification [and] nuclear,
that seems to me to be a substantial expansion of federal involvement that we haven't seen
advocated before." Several witnesses at the hearing cautioned Domenici not to draft a bill that would
turn back progress that states have made in applying their own portfolio standards. "States should be
afforded maximum flexibility to structure, apply and supplement standards within a state in a
way that best promotes the unique resource, technology and economic goals of each state," said
Dan Morgan, a member of the D.C. Public Service Commission. Wayne Brunetti, chairman of Colorado-
based utility Xcel Energy, opposed a federal RPS, but said if Congress decides on a requirement it
should "defer to existing state programs." Xcel will be forced to adhere to Colorado's new renewable law,
which was passed through a ballot initiative in November. Brunetti supported Domenici's approach of
allowing a larger set of electricity sources to qualify. Morgan opposed it, arguing "You have to set the bar
much higher if you're going to have an impact at all," he said. Domenici, who is trying to develop a
bipartisan energy bill with Bingaman, acknowledged that his proposed portfolio standard could be difficult
to sell. "It's pretty complicated," he told Inside Energy outside a Republican luncheon before the hearing.
"We've got to be confident of what the percentage is and what the mix is."
National RPS undermines federalism – it undermines state choices

Electric Utility Week 2007 [August 13, “Headed for energy bill conference, Congress faces big divide on
renewable requirements”, Lexis]
State utility regulators had voiced opposition to the RPS language because it would delve into
their jurisdiction and require state commissions to allow utilities to pass through compliance
costs of this new federal standard. Regulators from various states hold different views of a
national RPS mandate, but as a group they agree on a concern about the cost passthrough
provision. The National Association of Regulatory Commissioners told Congress it opposed the
mandatory cost recovery language in the Udall amendment and that the "potential risks of adverse
impacts on retail electric customers and local economies stemming from an inappropriate federal mandate
are significant and must be considered." Although the RPS provision says utilities "shall not be denied the
opportunity to recover the full amount of the prudently incurred incremental cost" of compliance, IOUs
were not mollified.
106
RPS AFF and NEG

___________________
***Case Frontlines
107
RPS AFF and NEG

Solvency Frontline
An RPS will only encourage growth in Wind Energy, which can’t solve –
Environmentalists block it and it is not reliable
Robert Michaels, 12/20/07 [a professor of economics at California State University, Fullerton, and an
adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, “Hot Air and Wind”,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9473]
Nor will the RPS advance "renewable energy" writ large. It will, in effect, be a wind-energy
requirement. Wind's technology is advancing, and it offers investors accelerated depreciation
and a 1.9-cent per kilowatt-hour federal tax credit (extended to some other renewables in 2005). By
contrast, solar energy remains uneconomic in most applications. Geothermal resources are
regionally restricted and large enough to attract complaints from environmentalists in the
permitting process. Biomass burners look like fossil-fueled plants, emit the same pollutants, and
are sited under the same stringent standards.
The government can set carbon-reduction goals, but the market should determine the best ways of
meeting them.
Wind's aesthetics and economics have changed. Bucolic images of windmills are fading as noisy
newer models top 400 feet, and public resistance keeps states like Massachusetts from meeting
their own renewable energy quotas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, wind's
costs per kilowatt-hour hit bottom in 2002 and have since increased by 60 percent. In 2004, the levelized
cost of a coal-fired kilowatt hour was 3.53 cents, compared to 4.31 cents for nuclear, 5.47 for gas and 5.7
for wind. According to a study by Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University for the National Bureau of Economic
Research, removing subsidies to nuclear and wind power takes the former to 5.94 cents and the latter to
6.64.
Wind's seeming competitiveness does not reflect its dependability. Geothermal and biomass can
be dispatched to deliver energy when it is needed, but wind turbines require moving air to
produce their power. Avoiding blackouts requires production and demand on an electrical grid be
equal every second, so operators need gas-fired "load-following" generators that can adjust
instantly. If wind exceeds 10 percent of a system's capacity, the costs of maintaining reliability increase
disproportionately and interconnection charges may not cover them. An outage of a conventional
generator will most likely be an isolated incident that does not affect the operation of other ones. Wind is
more likely to stop blowing without warning over an entire region, so protecting wind turbines
requires larger percentages of reserves.
Moreover, wind is least available when it would be most valuable. During the five highest load hours
of 2006, California's 2,300 megawatts of wind energy generating capacity produced only 12.2 percent of
their nominal capacities. For planning purposes, Texas lists a wind unit's "effective capacity" as 8.7 percent
of its nameplate value.
And that turns the environment impact – Wind mills and transmission lines
destroy it
Edison Electric Institute, 2007[December, 2007. 10 Things You Need to Know About a Federal Renewable
Portfolio Standard (RPS) http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/electricity_policy/federal_legislation/RPS10
ThingstKnow07-07-30.pdf]
9. An RPS mandate will require not only the development and construction of many new renewable
energy projects, it also will result in additional indirect costs, primarily for new transmission lines
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needed to move power from remote regions where renewables often are located to load centers.
A study1 by the non-partisan think tank Resources For the Future found: “Recent efforts to site renewable
energy projects have provoked as much, if not more, opposition than conventional energy projects.
Because renewable energy resources are often located in sensitive and isolated environments,
such as pristine mountain ranges or coastal waters, siting these facilities is especially difficult.
Moreover, the viability of different renewable energy projects depends not only on complex
economic and environmental factors, but also on the availability of supporting infrastructures,
such as transmission lines.”
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Solvency Frontline
RPS fails – Companies would pay the fine rather than switching to Renewables
Jerry Taylor, 2002 [director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute, Evaluating the Case for
Renewable Energy Is Government Support Warranted?, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa422.pdf]
The Clinton administration proposed a federal RPS that would require all U.S. electricity suppliers to
obtain renewable energy credits equal to 7.5 percent of sales from 2010 through expiration in 2015. Under
the administration’s plan, credits could be obtained by generating electricity with specified renewables
(one credit for every kilowatt-hour), purchasing credits from others, or purchasing credits unsupported by
generation from the Department of Energy at 1.5 cents per credit, effectively setting a cap on the price of
renewable energy. Because actual renewable sources of electricity have costs that exceed 1.5
cents per kWh, retail suppliers would for the most part buy credits from the Department of
Energy rather than actually purchase or produce renewable energy. The EIA estimated that the
Clinton RPS would increase renewables’ market share only to 3.4 percent in 2020.80
Approximately 82 percent of the 36 billion kWh increase in renewable energy would come from mixing
biomass (essentially, wood chips, paper, and various specialty plants) with coal in existing coal-fired power
plants.81 Removing the 2015 sunset provision would increase the predicted market share for renewables
to 4.2 percent.82
Turn – RPS trades off with Clean Coal and Nuclear power, which are more
effective at controlling emmissions
Renewables may be costly, but RPS advocates see both environmental and industrial benefits. Those
benefits, however, come at a higher price than necessary. An RPS reverses decades of improvement in
environmental regulation, where cap-and-trade markets have replaced command regimes and
regulators set allowable emissions by comparing costs and benefits. Instead, it forces the use of
politically favored technologies rather than allowing market participants to choose their own
methods of environmental compliance.
Utilities are investing in relatively few renewables because they can better comply with future
emissions standards by building conventional generators equipped with newer control
technologies. Some experts even believe that a combination of nuclear energy and carbon
sequestration (extraction and underground storage of CO2 from the plant's stack gases) can control
greenhouse gas emissions more cheaply than renewables. The government can set carbon-
reduction goals, but the market should determine the best ways of meeting them.
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Solvency Frontline
Current Transmission Lines are insufficient to allow a growth in renewables
4) Technological Ability The main technological question surrounding a federal RPS is whether or
not the current power transmission grid could handle the added transmission from renewable
sources. In many cases, building new renewable generation sources would require supplemental
transmission lines to be built, adding cost to an already expensive technology [23]. Oftentimes
the sites that are the best for renewable generation are located far from where people want to
live, for example with wind generation, “people don’t like to live where it’s windy enough to be of
commercial significance” [23]. This means that new generation is often built where the resource is best,
but far away from where large densities of people—and the best transmission lines—are located [23].
These new transmission lines can be quite costly and can face lengthy permitting delays [18]. In
some cases, it is possible that the rapidity of renewable development could outpace the ability of
the transmission lines, leading to available capacity with no technological ability to be used [23].
In order to prevent such delays, careful planning must be done to make sure proper local and state
procedures have been followed.
Renewables can never replace fossil fuels – They aren’t reliable enough so we
always need reserves
Edison Electric Institute, 2007[December, 2007. 10 Things You Need to Know About a Federal Renewable
Portfolio Standard (RPS) http://www.eei.org/industry_issues/electricity_policy/federal_legislation/RPS10
ThingstKnow07-07-30.pdf]
7. Wind and solar are intermittent technologies that can be used only when those resources are
available. As a result, intermittent renewable resources must be backed up by generating facilities
that can be better controlled, such as natural gas plants. This means that the cost of most
renewables will be in addition to—not a substitute for—the cost of building reliable, baseload and
peaking non-renewable generation.
Massachusetts RPS empirically proves that an RPS doesn’t create long term
contracts for renewable energy
Massachusetts has also encouraged a fair amount of development with its policy so far and can be
labeled as successful. Through a properly designed program, the 1% goal by 2003 was met and over 200
MW have been approved as of July 12, 2004, with the majority coming in the form of landfill gas and
biomass [19], [31]. It is likely that new renewable energy development will continue, although there is
increasing concern about the lack of long-term contracting [22]. Without a framework for long-
term contracts, there are fewer new development opportunities, and compliance with the state’s
mandate may include payments to the Alternative Compliance Mechanism [22]. The Alternative
Compliance Mechanism is “a 5 cent/kWh buy-out payment that can be made in lieu of purchasing [tradable
credits]” [22]. However, if development opportunities continue to come slowly, future compliance
may drive the cost of tradable credits higher [22]. If the future holds rising prices for compliance,
Massachusetts’ overall success will be more mediocre.
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Ext – Wind Power
An RPS would force wind generators in suboptimal areas – all the good areas
are already used
In the Reference case, the basic capital cost of new wind plants is expected to decline from $1,004 per
kilowatt in 2002 to approximately $989 per kilowatt-hour in 2025. When the RPS is imposed, the revenue
from credit sales is expected to make more new wind plants competitive and lead to more wind capacity
being built. As more wind plants are built their capital costs are expected to decline further as
manufacturers and project developers learn more about their construction and operation. For example,
with the RPS the cost of new wind plants is projected to decline to $971 per kilowatt by 2025. By 2025 with
the RPS, capacity factors for new wind turbines in the best wind resources improve to 44%, compared with
42% in the Reference case. However, at the same time, to reach the quantity of new wind capacity called
for in the RPS case – from just over 4 gigawatts in 2001 to 41 gigawatts of wind capacity by 2025 –
developers are projected to have to build on less attractive sites, such as those requiring upgrades to
existing transmission lines, those with more expensive land, and those having more difficult terrain. After
adjusting the $971 per kilowatt to reflect these factors the cost of new wind plants in the RPS case in 2025
is expected to be as high as $1165 per kilowatt in some of the regions with the most windy land. As might
be expected, the costs of all new power plants are influenced by these factors. All new plants must incur
some site-specific development and transmission interconnection costs and these costs are incorporated in
this analysis. However, while wind plants have no choice but to locate where high quality wind resources
are available, new natural gas plants are more flexible in their location and their developers will attempt to
avoid sites that require above average development expenditures.
An RPS will only help wind energy

William Yeatman, Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007, [June 12, 2007, Renewable Portfolio
Standard Threatens Consumers, http://cei.org/pdf/5982.pdf.]
Renewable Energy is Wind Energy. The notion that an RPS will include a “portfolio” of renewable energy
sources is misleading—wind energy is the only economically viable renewable energy source given current
technologies. Although other renewable sources, such as biomass and solar, have long-term potential, they
are currently no more than niche technologies. Even assuming that these technologies improve
significantly in the next decade or two, a major logistical obstacle will remain. The technology to convert
biomass into electricity remains prohibitively expensive and uncertain. Huge investments will be needed to
build infrastructure to gather and transport large quantities of biomass to generating plants. With solar
energy, the near-term potential is almost certainly at the consumer level rather than large-scale
generation, again because of cost and reliability issues. In other words, the potential for photovoltaic
panels is greater on rooftops than across deserts. Wind power, on the other hand, is an established
technology. In an analysis of the impact of a 10-percent nationwide RPS on the energy industry, the federal
Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that “non-hydro electric technologies such as geothermal,
solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, and ocean technologies are not projected to have net capacity
additions.” As of 2004, of the estimated 2,335 megawatts of renewable energy use attributable to state
renewable standards, 2,183 megawatts (93 percent) were generated by wind. Thus, a renewable portfolio
standard is, in reality, a mandate for wind power.
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Ext – Trade Off
An RPS wouldn’t decrease much CO2 – it would trade off with low carbon
alternatives and sequestration
Global Power Report 2007 [September 13 “EIA says federal renewable portfolio standard of 25% would
raise electricity costs, lower GNP, Lexis]
Andy Kydes, an EIA analyst, said the policy substantially would increase renewable energy use,
especially from wind, biomass and geothermal resources, but so much of the energy sector's
resources would be directed to improving its renewable capacity that investment in nuclear
energy, advanced coal generation and other low-carbon or efficient technologies would decrease,
which would cancel out some of the mandate's carbon benefits.
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Extend – Transmission Lines
Increasing wind power will outstrip supply lines
Electric Utility Week 2007 [June 11, “As utilities race to meet RPS with new wind projects, key grid
expansion sets slower pace” Lexis]
Supply line shortages driving up turbine prices In another conference session on June 4 featuring
turbine manufacturers, Charles Vaughan, regional director for the Eastern US and Canada for Clipper
Windpower, described how shortages along the entire supply line are responsible for turbine prices rising
over the past 24 months. These shortages are also a result of the wind industry growth that saw a
27% increase in US installed wind energy capacity in 2006. Component vendors are having a
hard time keeping up with demand, he said. Furthermore, wind manufacturers are now competing
with other growing industries for these component supplies. As a result of this increased
demand suppliers are now expanding capacity and new entrants are coming into the market, he
said. ? Lyn Corum
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Economy Frontline
No energy wars – Fossil fuel reserves are virtually infinite
Robert Bradley, 1999 [president of the Institute for Energy Research in Houston, Texas, and an adjunct
scholar of the Cato Institute, “The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa341.pdf]
The Growing Abundance of Fossil Fuels

Only a few years ago academics, businessmen, oilmen, and policymakers were almost uniformly
of the opinion that the age of energy scarcity was upon us and that the depletion of fossil fuels
was imminent.4 While some observers still cling to that view today, the intellectual tide has
turned against doom and gloom on the energy front. Indeed, resource economists are almost
uniformly of the opinion that fossil fuels will remain affordable in any reasonably foreseeable
future.
Resources As Far As the Eye Can See

Proven world reserves of oil, gas, and coal are officially estimated to be 45, 63, and 230 years of
current consumption, respectively (Figure 1). Probable resources of oil, gas, and coal are officially
forecast to be 114, 200, and 1,884 years of present usage, respectively.5 Moreover, an array of
unconventional fossil-fuel sources promises that, when crude oil, natural gas, and coal become
scarcer (hence, more expensive) in the future, fossil-fuel substitutes may still be the best source
fuels to fill the gap before synthetic substitutes come into play.
The most promising unconventional fossil fuel today is orimulsion, a tarlike substance that can be burned
to make electricity or refined into petroleum. Orimulsion became the “fourth fossil fuel” in the mid- 1980s
when technological improvements made Venezuela’s reserves commercially exploitable. Venezuela’s
reserve equivalent of 1.2 trillion barrels of oil exceeds the world’s known reserves of crude oil, and other
countries’ more modest supplies of the natural bitumen add to the total.
With economic and environmental (postscrubbing) characteristics superior to those of fuel oil and coal
when used for electricity generation, orimulsion is an attractive conversion opportunity for facilities located
near waterways with convenient access to Venezuelan shipping. While political opposition (in Florida, in
particular) has slowed the introduction of orimulsion in the United States, orimulsion has already
penetrated markets in Denmark and Lithuania and, to a lesser extent, Germany and Italy. India could soon
join that list. Marketing issues aside, this here-and-now fuel source represents an abundant backstop fuel
at worst and a significant extension of the petroleum age at best.6
The significance of orimulsion for the electricity-generation market may be matched by technological
breakthroughs commercializing the conversion of natural gas to synthetic oil products. For remote gas
fields, gas-to-liquids processing can replace the more expensive alternative of liquefaction. In mature
markets with air quality concerns, such as in California, natural gas could become a key feedstock from
which to distill the cleanest reformulated gasoline and reformulated diesel fuel yet.7A half dozen
competing technologies have been developed, several by oil majors who are committing substantial
investments relative to government support. The widespread adaptation of gas-to-oil technologies could
commercialize up to 40 percent of the world’s natural gas fields that hitherto have been uneconomic.8
In addition to orimulsion and synthesized natural gas, tar sand, shale oil, and various
replenishable crops also have great promise, however uneconomic they now are, given today’s
technology and best practices (Figure 2).9 Michael Lynch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
estimates that more than 6 trillion barrels of potentially recoverable conventional oil and another 15 trillion
barrels of unconventional oil (excluding coal liquefaction) are identifiable today, an estimate that moves
the day of reckoning for petroleum centuries into thefuture.1 0 The gas resource base is similarly loaded
with potential interfuel substitutions, with advances in coal-bed methane and tight-sands gas showing
immediate potential and synthetic substitutes from oil crops having long-run promise (Figure 3). If crude oil
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and natural gas are retired from the economic playing field, fossil fuels boast a strong “bench” of clean and
abundant alternatives. Even the cautious Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of
Energy conceded that “as technology brings the cost of producing an unconventional barrel of oil closer to
that of a conventional barrel, it becomes reasonable to view oil as a viable energy source well into the
twenty-second century.”1 1
Technological Advances and Increasing Resources

Despite a century of doom and gloom about the imminent depletion of fossil-fuel reserves, fossil-
fuel availability has been increasing even in the face of record consumption. World oil reserves
today are more than 15 times greater than they were when record keeping began in 1948; world
gas reserves are almost four times greater than they were 30 years ago; world coal reserves have
risen 75 percent in the last 20 years.1 2 Thus, today’s reserve and resource estimates should be
considered a minimum, not a maximum. By the end of the forecast period, reserves could be the same or
higher depending on technological developments, capital availability, public policies, and commodity price
levels. Technological advances continue to substantially improve finding rates and individual well
productivity.1 3 Offshore drilling was once confined to fields several hundred feet below the ocean, for
instance, but offshore drilling now reaches depths of several thousand feet. Designs are being considered
for drilling beyond 12,000 feet.1 4
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Economy Frontline
No Energy Shocks – Increasing global liberalization of markets has eliminated
the risk
Robert Bradley, 1999 [president of the Institute for Energy Research in Houston, Texas, and an adjunct
scholar of the Cato Institute, “The Increasing Sustainability of Conventional Energy,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa341.pdf]
The Chimera of Energy Security

Although the underlying physical stock of crude oil has always been plentiful, critics can point to
interruptions in oil imports to the United States and other net importing regions as the operative
constraint. Energy security became a concern in the United States and other industrialized nations with
the “oil shocks” and oil product shortages of 1973–74 and 1979.Enhancing “energy security” has been a
major mission of the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency of the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development ever since the troubled 1970s.
Energy security, like resource exhaustion, has proven to be an exaggerated rationale for
government intervention in petroleum markets (such as emergency price and allocation regulation,
publicly owned strategic oil reserves, international contingency supplysharing agreements, and crash
programs to fund new electricity sources or transportation alternatives). The lesson from the 1970s
energy crises is that government price and allocation regulation can turn the process of
microeconomic adjustment to higher energy prices into a “macroeconomic” crisis of physical
shortages, industrial dislocations, lost confidence, and social instability.2 5 The “oil crises that were
not,” during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980–81 and the UN ban on Iraqi oil exports of a decade later,
demonstrated that freer markets can anticipate and ameliorate sudden supply dislocations without
physical shortages, the need for price and allocation regulation, or strategic petroleum reserve
drawdowns.2 6
The international petroleum market is subject to geopolitics, which will occasionally lead to supply
disruptions and temporarily higher world prices. But the risk of higher prices must be balanced with the
normalcy of price wars and a “buyers’ market,” given an abundant resource base and natural pecuniary
incentives to find and market hydrocarbons. Markets learn, adjust, and improve over time as technology
and wealth expand. “Market learning” from the 1970s has resulted in increased energy efficiency; greater
diversity of supply; enlarged spot-market trading, futures trading, and risk management; and greater
integration and alignment of producer interests with consumer interests. 2 7 Future oil crises like those
of the 1970s are highly improbable because of the ameliorating effects of the new market
institutions.
Transient price flare-ups as a result of politically driven supply reductions are, of course, possible. In the
developed world, such “worst-case” events for motorists are not qualitatively, or even quantitatively,
different from abnormally cold winters for natural gas consumers and abnormally hot summers for
electricity users. They are transient economic burdens, not macroeconomic or national security events
worthy of proactive “energy policy.”
World oil markets are more fluid and efficient than ever before, and this improvement can be
expected to continue as more economies are liberalized in future decades. Any alleged “energy
security premium,” making the social cost of oil greater than its private cost, is small and largely
internalized by the market.2 8 Thus investments such as the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which
holds oil with an embedded cost several times the recent market price of crude oil in present dollars, and
international oilsharing agreements in the event of a shortfall, such as those under the auspices of the
International Energy Agency, are unnecessary, create bad incentives, and are potentially costly as well.
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Global Warming Frontline
Even if we adopt an RPS, Coal use will still increase and CO2 emissions will
continue
Platts Coal Outlook 2007 [August 13, “House approves energy bill with RPS, now to panel to solidify
details”, Lexis]
"Coal generation is still expected to grow significantly" from 2,015 billion KWh in 2005, EIA said. In
the agency's Short-Term Energy Outlook for August, EIA said electricity producted from coal is expected to
total 1,986.2 billion KWh this year and climbing to 1,995.8 billion KWh in 2008. Under the RPS,
renewables would account for at least 15% of net generation of 5,773 billion KWh or 866 billion KWh.
In 2007, in STEO August, the agency estimated renewables would provide 339.7 billion KWh and in 2008,
355.3 billion KWh. Carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector would increase in all cases,
but "the rate of growth is lower" with the RPS, EIA concluded. CO2 emissions would be down about
6.7% under RPS by 2030. "By 2030, prices for natural gas and coal, two key fuels for the electric power
sector, are lower with the RPS than in the reference case," EIA said.
The US has already set an international model for renewables

Electric Utility Week 2007 [December 17, “Energy bill heads for enactment, with some power privisions but
not key tax incentives, Lexis]
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who backed the RPS and tax package, said she would accept
the Senate's slimmed-down version with its historic corporate average fuel economy standard
and its "major commitment to homegrown biofuels" and would proceed to get the bill through
Congress this week and to the White House. "The House will pass this remarkable legislation next
week. I am hopeful that President Bush will sign it," said Pelosi, a California Democrat. The bill, H.R. 6,
"sets our nation on a new course ? a new direction for energy security," she said. The Senate's
overwhelming passage "sends a message to world leaders meeting in Bali that the United States
is serious about addressing global warming," said Pelosi, referring to global climate change talks
in Indonesia aimed at establishing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
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Foreign Oil Dependence Frontline
RPS is irrelevant to Oil Dependence – 95 percent of electric power comes from
domestic sources
The House of Representatives passed an energy-independence bill two weeks ago intended to make
America more secure. Last week, the Senate rejected a provision in the bill establishing a "renewable
portfolio standard" requiring all investor-owned utilities (but not municipal systems and rural cooperatives)
to obtain 2.75 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010 and 15 percent by 2020.
A renewable portfolio standard is irrelevant to promises of energy independence and security.

Over 95 percent of our power comes from domestic or nearby sources: coal (49 percent), gas (20
percent), uranium (20 percent), and water (7 percent). None of these resources is insecure or held
hostage by foreign actors.
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Many states have already adopted a Renewable Portfolio Standard – However,

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Alternative Energy Institute, 5/13/08 [http://www.altenergy.org/transition/transition.html]

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First is Global Warming:

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all around us, above and below, the planetary life-support

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Sacramento Business Journal, 7/7/08

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Counterinterpretation – Incentive includes the fear of punishment

in·cen·tive Audio Help (ĭn-sěn'tĭv) Pronunciation Key

An RPS is an incentive for investment in Renewables – it is Enforced by a

An RPS is an incentive because it has a tradeable permit

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State RPSs in the status quo won’t significantly increase renewables

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The Impact is the end of civilization and all life on earth

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Terrorism risks extinction

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