WW (J) D Random Updates

SDI 08
WW(J)D Randomness Update File Index

WW(J)D Randomness Update File Index..............................................................................................................................................1
RES Counterplan—1NC Shell ..............................................................................................................................................................3
RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength..........................................................................................................................4
RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength..........................................................................................................................5
RES Counterplan—Reducing Fuel Costs → Military Modernization..................................................................................................6
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—1NC Shell.......................................................................................................................................................7
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence...............................................................................................................8
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence...............................................................................................................9
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence.............................................................................................................10
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—A2 Current F-22 Numbers Solve Air Power................................................................................................11
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—1NC Shell............................................................................................................................................12
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Solves CO2 Emissions.........................................................................................................................14
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Emissions..............................................................................................17
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—A2 Iron Fertilization Fails/Causes Ocean Damage.............................................................................18
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP Answers...................................................................................................................................................19
Stratospheric Scattering CP—1NC Shell.............................................................................................................................................20
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Additional R+D Funding Key.............................................................................................................21
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Warming...............................................................................................22
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming ......................................................................................................................23
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming.......................................................................................................................24
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming***...................................................................................25
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming.........................................................................................26
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Can’t Solve Ocean Acidification...................................................................................................27
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 CP Manipulates Nature..................................................................................................................28
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Scattering → Adverse Effects........................................................................................................29
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 International Cooperation Necessary.............................................................................................30
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Microclimate Turn.........................................................................................................................31
OPEC Flood DA—Internals—Saudi Arabia Can Produce Cheap Oil/Russia Can’t...........................................................................32
OPEC Flood DA—Uniqueness—OPEC Has Spare Capacity Now....................................................................................................33
OPEC Flood DA—Link Magnifier—500000 MBD Production ↑ Drastically Lowers Oil Prices......................................................34
OPEC Flood DA Answers—No Spare Capacity.................................................................................................................................35
Russian Oil Good—Internals—Oil Price ↓ Destroys Russian Economy............................................................................................36
Russian Oil Good—A2 Diversification Turn......................................................................................................................................37
Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economic Growth Slowing Now/Hard Landing Coming................................................................38
Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economy Overheating Now.............................................................................................................39
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—2NC Food Prices Module..........................................................................................................40
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Food Prices Extensions.............................................................................................................41
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Key to US Economy/Hegemony...............................................................................................42
CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle 1NC Turn..........................................................................................................................................43
CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle Extensions........................................................................................................................................44
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Burma/Asian Instability Module.............................................................................................................45
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Burma/Asian Instability Impact Module.................................................................................................46
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Darfur Genocide Impact Module............................................................................................................47
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Darfur Genocide Impact Module............................................................................................................48
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Saudi Reforms Impact Module...............................................................................................................49
2AC Answers to “Hybrid Seeds Turn” ...............................................................................................................................................50
2AC Answers to “Incentives ≠ Regulations”.......................................................................................................................................51
2AC Answers to “Business Confidence/Auto Industry DA”...............................................................................................................52
Bush Has Political Capital Now (2AC Answers to “Bush Bad”)........................................................................................................55
Obama Bad—2AC Tax Cuts Impact Turn Module..............................................................................................................................56
Obama Bad—Will Repeal Bush Tax Cuts...........................................................................................................................................57
Obama Bad—Bush Tax Cuts Key to Economy...................................................................................................................................58
Obama Bad—2AC Free Trade Good Impact Module ........................................................................................................................59
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SDI 08
Obama Bad—Obama = Protectionist/Destroys Global Economy.......................................................................................................60
Obama Bad—2AC War on Terrorism Impact Module........................................................................................................................61
Obama Bad—Obama Undermines War on Terrorism.........................................................................................................................63
Obama Bad Answers—Repealing Tax Cuts Solves Deficit/Key to US Economy..............................................................................64
Obama Bad Answers—Protectionism High Now................................................................................................................................65
Obama Bad Answers—Losing War on Terrorism Now/Lower Profile Good.....................................................................................66
Peak Oil Answers—Transition to Renewables = Takes Too Long......................................................................................................67
Oil Spills Adv Answers........................................................................................................................................................................68
High Oil Prices Adv Answers—Oil Prices Will ↓ By 2015.................................................................................................................69
High Oil Prices Adv Answers—Oil Prices Don’t Undermine Global Economy.................................................................................70
Oil Dependency Adv Answers—Oil Not Key to Terrorist Funding....................................................................................................71
Democracy Advantage Answers..........................................................................................................................................................72
Resource Wars Answers.......................................................................................................................................................................77
US/China Resource Wars Answers......................................................................................................................................................78
States CP—Solvency for Negative Incentives.....................................................................................................................................79
Politics Links—Ethanol = Unpopular/Controversial...........................................................................................................................80
Politics Links—Ethanol = Unpopular/Controversial...........................................................................................................................81
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SDI 08
RES Counterplan—1NC Shell

The United States federal government should substantially increase funding for the development,
procurement, and deployment of renewable energy systems in the United States armed forces.
Fuel costs directly trade off with US military modernization efforts—robust funding and political
support for alternative energy is vital
Army Times 1/22/07 (lexis)

Oil prices in recent days have taken a dip, but the dizzying heights that fuel costs reached over the past year have raised concerns that the petroleum-based U.S.
economy is much too dependent on the volatile Middle East. And gas prices also affect military modernization. Every $10 increase in the price
of a barrel of oil costs the U.S. military $1.3 billion a year, and unexpected increases generally come right out of acquisition
coffers, Pentagon officials say.
Indeed, the strategic importance of energy has shaped American foreign policy for more than half a century. Yet for too long, the U.S. government has
shied away from prudent investments into alternative sources of fuel and energy. However, energy concerns are beginning to shape U.S.
defense research. Energy-saving products are the inevitable wave of the future; U.S. planners -- in and out of the military -- would be smart to encourage domestic
industry to start developing them.
Of course, there's no such thing as a free tank of fuel. Converting nonliquid materials -- gas, corn, sawgrass, coal -- into jet fuel takes energy and produces
unwanted byproducts. Conservation, therefore, must play an even larger role in U.S. military planning and operations.
The Defense Department has made a good start. The Army is using solar-electricity generators in Iraq. The Navy is building its ships with drag-reducing bulbous
bows. The Air Force gets about 10 percent of its base electricity from wind, solar power and gas recovered from landfills. And overall, the Pentagon aims to reduce
energy use in its facilities by 2 percent a year through 2015.
But it's clear that developing and adapting to clean fuel alternatives has a long way to go in the military, as it does throughout U.S. society.
Robust funding and political support for continued research and development of military solutions to the over-dependence
on oil products is vital to military modernization and, ultimately, national security.
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SDI 08
RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength

Renewable energy systems are of significant strategic and tactical importance to the US military,
playing a vital role in meeting US national security requirements—they reduce logistical burdens and
fuel needs, are dependable and reliable, serve as a force multiplier by enhancing maneuverability and
flexibility, and save money and resources
Kuntz 07 (Gordon, Army Nurse Corps and the Kansas Army National Guard, "Renewable Energy Systems: Viable Options for
Contingency Operations," Environmental Practice 9, p. 157-8)
Although fossil fuel is used to power the services listed above, fuel to power some of these systems could come from sources that are not fossil fuel based.
Renewable energy systems ~RES! ~power from wind turbines and photovoltaic @solar# panels! are viable energy producing options that could
reliably provide energy during Contingency Operations. Although today’s RES technology is not sufficient to power tactical vehicles, RES
technology can provide power for other military needs currently receiving fossil fuel power. RES offer Commanders5 viable
sources of energy that can effectively augment, and in some cases replace, current fossil fuel generator systems. This benefit could
be of significant strategic and tactical importance when operating in austere environments with asymmetrical, irregular warfare
or to supply energy to a Forward Operating Base.
The logistical burden of providing fuel to generators alone is staggering. A 60-kW generator consumes fuel at a rate of 4.5 gallons per hour for
an annual total of well over 39,000 gallons.6 If the price for fuel was only $2.15 per gallon, this single fossil fuel generator would cost in excess of $84,000
annually to operate. Furthermore, there is an additional cost to maintain and repair these generators. Depending on the size and energy demands
of the Forward Operating Base, it is conceivable that a single Forward Operating Base could require approximately 5,400 gallons of fuel per 24 hours ~just under
$5 million annually! To power communication systems, lighting, heating, air conditioning, and other soldier comfort needs. Augmenting power generation
services with RES could greatly decrease this fuel need and reduce the logistical burden caused by fueling current generator
sets. RES could be used to power computers, power communication systems and radios, heat water, run medical equipment,
recharge batteries, and generate power for a wide variety of morale, welfare, and recreation items for soldiers.
Tactically, RES offer numerous advantages. RES decrease the need for fossil fuel, add power, decrease the logistical footprint,
and are dependable, durable, and reliable. The use of lighter RES equipment requires fewer transportation assets. Through their
quiet operation, RES enhance the unit’s stealth with noise reduction and loss of heat signature. RES use can become a force
multiplier by enhancing maneuverability, flexibility, mobility, interoperability, and agility. Communication lines are
strengthened by decreasing the vulnerability, number, and frequency of convoys, thus increasing soldier safety.7
Strategically, the use of RES strengthens national energy security and provides the Warfighter with energy necessary for
Contingency Operations. RES use supports the “Army Posture Statement” and the “Army Strategy for the Environment” while
saving money and conserving precious resources. If leaders are to be innovative, agile, versatile, and multi-skilled, adding
RES to their arsenal will be a crucial step to meet the National Security Strategy and foster transformation throughout all
levels of the US Army.
Renewable energy systems offer improved deployability, enhanced survivability, greater

maneuverability, resource efficiency, and improved warfighting
Kuntz 07 (Gordon, US Army War College + Colonel @ Army National Guard + Student, "USE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
IN CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS," April, www.aepi.army.mil/internet/use-of-renew-en-conting-ops.pdf)
Renewable energy systems can offer the Commander improved deployability, enhanced survivability, greater
maneuverability, improved use of resources, modularity, durability, reliability, augmentation of existing resources, and
allow for better management of energy and Warfighting systems (see Appendix C for example photographs of renewable
energy systems). Renewable energy system use in austere environments can work as a force multiplier to enhance the
Commander’s overall resources in challenging arenas where future conflicts tend to be headed. While it is doubtful that use
of renewable energy systems will completely replace using fossil fuels, use of renewable energy systems can enhance the
Commander’s energy arsenal, helping him to be less dependent on fossil fuels.
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SDI 08
RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength

Energy remains vital for the US military to accomplish its missions—renewable energy systems
enhance US military advantages while preserving resources, demonstrating environmental
stewardship, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels
Kuntz 07 (Gordon, Army Nurse Corps and the Kansas Army National Guard, "Renewable Energy Systems: Viable Options for
Contingency Operations," Environmental Practice 9, p. 160)
the US Army will most certainly require energy as a vital

The need for dependable, secure energy is a national security issue. It is very clear that
resource to accomplish its mission. As the world oil supply continues to diminish, oil prices continually rise, and the demand for
energy grows at an ever increasing rate, energy ~or the lack thereof! will undoubtedly influence many aspects of military
operations. RES are not a one-size-fits-all option intended to be the ultimate replacement of current energy sources. Rather, RES can effectively
augment current energy systems and are viable, efficient energy systems that can help provide the Warfighter with abundant
energy.
RES use can enhance maneuverability, mobility, survivability, and sustainability. Use of RES will improve stealth, yet
decrease detection, fuel storage, transportation needs, and waste. Lighter systems equate to fewer assets required to transport
energy producing systems. The logistical footprint is significantly decreased due to a lower fuel demand and communication lines
become more secure. RES can increase energy efficiency, promote energy security, improve soldier safety, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Use of
RES helps Commanders focus their attentions on mission priorities rather than on the transportation of fuel or exposure of
soldiers to hazards from improvised explosive device attacks. RES have the unique ability to offer Commanders important characteristics that fossil fuels lack,
at a price fossil fuels can no longer provide.
Establishing and implementing an integrated, cross-functional approach to provide recommendations for the right training, education, and direction in the use of
RES is paramount to the Army. Changes in current and future doctrine, along with policy emphasis on employment of RES, are overdue. RES systems not
only increase soldier safety through reduction of the logistical footprint, they also serve to save equipment, save money,
help preserve natural resources, demonstrate environmental stewardship, and greatly reduce the Army’s reliance on fossil
fuels. The old proverb is true: “If we continue to do what we have always done, we will continue to get what we have always gotten”—dependence on foreign oil
when that dependence is no longer sustainable.
Renewable energy systems is a value added resource to the military—they enhance combat readiness
and effectiveness through decreased logistical support, becoming a force multiplier, force protector,
and augmenting warfighing capabilities AND they can also be used to attract future recruits
Kuntz 07 (Gordon, US Army War College + Colonel @ Army National Guard + Student, "USE OF RENEWABLE ENERGY
IN CONTINGENCY OPERATIONS," April, www.aepi.army.mil/internet/use-of-renew-en-conting-ops.pdf)
Use of renewable
Changing the focus of renewable energy systems from an “environmental” reference to that of enhanced Warfight capacity is important.
energy systems is a value added resource to Commanders. Renewable energy systems enhance combat readiness and
effectiveness through decreased logistical support, becoming a force multiplier and augmenting Warfighting capability. Use of
renewable energy systems builds force protection posture for the Commander and can save soldier lives by decreasing or
removing the need for moving fossil fuel, thus avoiding soldier exposure to IED attack in convoys. Renewable energy systems are a value-
added resource for Commanders and are environmentally friendly by avoiding pollution. Renewable energy systems can also be a future
recruiting tool. As renewable energy systems are implemented, renewable energy systems experts and associated soldier technical
skills will be required.
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SDI 08
RES Counterplan—Reducing Fuel Costs → Military Modernization

Reducing the military’s fossil fuel use profile via renewables allows the DOD to redirect resources
towards increased investment in warfighting capability
Corrie et al 07 (LMI Thomas D. Crowley Tanya D. Corrie David B. Diamond Stuart D. Funk Wilhelm A. Hansen Andrea D.
Stenhoff Daniel C. Swift, government consultants, Transforming the Way DoD Looks at Energy: An Approach to Establishing an
Energy Strategy REPORT FT602T1/APRIL 2007,
http://www.oft.osd.mil/library/library_files/document_404_FT602T1_Transforming%20the%20Way%20DoD%20Looks%20at%2
0Energy_Final%20Report.pdf)
An energy transformation that leverages process change in the short term and technological innovation in the mid to long terms
will provide DoD the opportunity to address the strategic, operational, fiscal, and environmental disconnects inherent in its current
energy use and policies. Energy transformation will enable DoD to target its greatest energy challenges and focus change efforts
on addressing them. Incorporating new energy-efficient concepts and technologies increases the potential to enhance operational
effectiveness through increased reach and agility while reducing the logistics dependence of the force. From a fiscal perspective,
reduction in the energy use profile will allow DoD to redirect resources formerly spent on fuel to increase investment in
warfighting capability. Improved energy efficiency will also reduce DoD’s fiscal vulnerability to supply and price shocks in the energy market. More
efficient use of energy and the choice of alternative energy options which minimize or mitigate environmental impact will garner the support of the public while
acting in concert with national environmental goals.
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SDI 08
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—1NC Shell

Additional F-22s are essential in meeting 21st century threats, maintaining US global leadership, and
deterring potential adversaries via overwhelming US air superiority
Wall Street Journal 12/27/07 ("On the Wings of Eagles, or Not,"

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011043)
Maj. Stilwell survived the accident, but the F-15 fleet--America's signature fighter for 30 years--may not. This isn't just some maintenance
issue, but goes directly to the question of whether the United States intends to deploy the world's best Air Force or one that (fingers
crossed) is good enough.
The Air Force has since discovered significant stress fractures in at least eight other aircraft, and ordered that 442 of the older-model F-15s be grounded through at
least January (though 224 of the newer-model F-15Es continue to fly). Those 442 Eagles, or about a fifth of the total number of fighters fielded by the Air Force,
are mainly responsible for homeland defense. They're the ones that would have to be scrambled to intercept hijacked jetliners in the event of another 9/11.
In an alternative universe, the F-15 problem would not be significant, because the Air Force would already be flying large numbers
of its designated replacement, the F-22 Raptor. But the Raptor--a fifth-generation fighter that outclasses everything else in the
sky--was deemed too costly and too much of a "relic" of the Cold War. The Air Force currently has orders for no more than
183 of the planes (with some Raptor squadrons already fully operational), though there is now talk of keeping the production line open
for as many as 200 more. We think it's an investment worth making.
Before the F-15's problems became so glaring, it was plausible to argue that the plane was adequate to meet current defense needs until the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter--still in its testing phase--comes into service sometime in the next decade. But while the Air Force will surely engineer whatever patch
the
grounded Eagles need to make them airworthy again, it cannot patch the fact that it may be six months or longer before the
fleet is back to full operational readiness. This is hardly trivial for a force already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and
threats that stretch from the Korean Peninsula to the Horn of Africa.
Nor is there any getting over the fact that the F-15 first flew in 1972--long before many of the current crop of pilots were born--and that the plane is now outclassed
by its competitors in the export market. In 2005, a British Eurofighter reportedly defeated two F-15Es in a mock dogfight. Simulated dogfights have also shown
that the F-15s are somewhat inferior to Russia's more modern Su-35s.
Some defense experts claim the era of air-to-air combat is over, but similar erroneous forecasts have been made before. It's also far from clear that the single-engine
F-35 can be considered a genuine replacement for the twin-engine F-15 or an adequate substitute for the (also twin-engine) F-22. The F-35 is something of a
hybrid plane, with at least one version of it having a Harrier jet's vertical take-off and landing capabilities, and is also destined for shipborne service. Its great virtue
is that it's a cheaper plane, but its performance is in many ways compromised by the various roles it's meant to play. As a fighter, it cannot compete with the
Raptor.
As for cost, there's no doubt that at more than $100 million per additional plane, the Raptor is an expensive aircraft. But estimates
of the plane's price tag typically factor in research and development costs, meaning the price per plane actually increases the
fewer we build. And with a defense budget at roughly 4% of GDP (compared with a mid-1980s' peak of more than 6%), we have a long way to go before any
weapons system is more than the U.S. can really afford.
The issue, then, is whether the U.S needs the best plane in the sky. For all the talk of the F-22 being a legacy of the Cold War, we
are far from convinced that the U.S. will forevermore be faced with only Taliban-like adversaries incapable of fielding air forces of
their own, or that the era of great power military rivalries is over. Judging by the expensive weapons systems currently being
developed in China and Russia (which on Tuesday successfully tested a new ICBM, apparently Vladimir Putin's idea of the Christmas spirit), it seems
that neither country has reached that conclusion either.
We cannot predict what kind of adversaries the U.S. will face in the coming decades, but we do know that part of the responsibility of being the
world's "sole remaining superpower" is to be prepared for as many contingencies as possible. One prudent way of reducing
the threat is to discourage potential adversaries from trying to match America's advantages in numbers and technology.
Replacing our faltering Eagles with additional Raptors may be expensive, but allowing our neglect to be exploited by those
who wish us harm would be ruinous.
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SDI 08
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence

The Air Force’s fleet is in need of modernization—additional funding for F-22 Raptor purchases
ensures US air superiority, deterring potential adversaries
Investor's Business Daily 12/10/07 (lexis)

Military Strength:
For the second time in a month, America's front-line air superiority fighter has been taken out of service. The aging
of our air fleet suggests we are spending much too little, not a little too much, on defense.
Last Wednesday, the Air Force grounded more than 450 -- more than 60% -- of the F-15 Eagles it has deployed worldwide. The
action followed the discovery of cracks found near the canopy of two F-15 s among the 30 deployed at the Kadena Air Base on Japan's southern island of Okinawa.
In May, Gen. Ronald Keys, head of the Air Combat Command, warned that the Air Force was simply wearing out because of its commitments and the lack of new
aircraft.
The average Air Force warplane, he noted, was 23.5 years old -- older than some pilots -- compared with 8.5 years in 1967.
Keys expressed concern that lawmakers would pay attention only when a plane crashed "because a wing fell off."
The general was prophetic. On Nov. 2 the nation's entire fleet of F-15 s was grounded for "airworthiness concerns" after a plane flown by the Missouri National
Guard crashed during a training exercise. The Air Force said "preliminary findings indicate that a structural failure of the aircraft may have occurred." The plane
that crashed was built in 1980.
The Air Force returned the F-15 fleet to flight status on Nov. 21. The latest grounding order and discovery of the canopy cracks resulted from the ongoing
investigation ordered after the Guard crash.
That wasn't the first time an F-15 crashed this year. In May, an F-15 crashed just outside of Vincennes, Ind., during a flight practice with four F-16 s from the
Indiana Air National Guard's 181 st Fighter Wing.
In June, another F-15 from the 142 nd Fighter Wing of the Oregon National Guard went down over the Pacific during a training mission. And in a separate incident
in June, an F-15 crashed near Elelson Air Force base in Alaska.
Gen. Keys issued his warning because he was concerned that budget-cutting policymakers only pay attention to Air Force needs
when a plane either crashes on takeoff or over a city. The Air Force now spends 87% more on maintenance on its aging fleet of warplanes than it
did in 1996.
"I don't want to write a letter, or have a successor write a letter, "Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, your son or daughter is dead because the wing fell off on takeoff. We
knew it was going to fall off, we just didn't know when.' That is kind of what we're getting down to," Keys said.
The Air Force says it wants to buy new planes to lower the average age of the fleet to 15 years over the next decade. This is
estimated to require $400 billion.
The plan is to replace the F-15 with the stealthy and more maneuverable F-22 Raptor. But critics say the F-22 is too
expensive and built for a different type of conflict than the war on terror.
Democrats will say that if we weren't spending so much on Iraq, we would have money for such things. But it's not an either/or proposition. We have to fight and
win the war on terror, but we have to deal with other threats, too.
As President John F. Kennedy once said, "Only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt
they will never be employed."
The Cold War may be over but just because we're chasing al-Qaida through the mountains of Afghanistan doesn't mean we won't
one day be forced to duel with Chinese jets over the Taiwan Strait, or even Russian Blackjack bombers near Alaska or over the
North Atlantic. The arsenal of democracy needs both quality and quantity.
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SDI 08

The F-22 is the most dominant fighter plane in the world—it is essential to ensure American air
dominance
Pike 1/21/08 (John, Defense Expert + former member of Federation of American Scientists, "F-22 Raptor,"
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-22.htm)
The F-22
The F-22 program is developing the next-generation air superiority fighter for the United States Air Force to counter emerging worldwide threats.
Raptor is designed to ensure that America's armed forces retain air dominance. This means complete control of the airspace
over an area of conflict, thereby allowing freedom to attack and freedom from attack at all times and places for the full spectrum of
military operations. Air dominance provides the ability to defend our forces from enemy attack and to attack adversary
forces without hindrance from enemy aircraft.
During the initial phases of deployment into an area of conflict, the first aircraft to arrive are the most vulnerable because they face the entire
warfighting capability of an adversary. The F-22's state-of-the-art technology, advanced tactics, and skilled aircrew will ensure air
dominance from the outset of such situations. It is designed to penetrate enemy airspace and achieve a first-look, first-kill capability against multiple
targets. The F-22 is characterized by a low-observable, highly maneuverable airframe; advanced integrated avionics; and
aerodynamic performance allowing supersonic cruise without afterburner.
The F-22 is an air dominance fighter with much-improved capability over current Air Force aircraft. It is widely regarded
as the most advanced fighter in the world, combining a revolutionary leap in technology and capability with reduced support
requirements and maintenance costs. It will replace the F-15 as America's front-line, air superiority fighter, with deliveries to operational units in 2005.
Additional F-22 Raptors are essential in ensuring US air superiority for the future
Hampton 98 (Thomas, Major @ USAF + Graduate Student @ AIR COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE AIR UNIVERSITY,
"THE QUEST FOR AIR DOMINANCE: F-22—COST VERSUS CAPABILITY," http://www.fas.org/man/dod-
101/sys/ac/docs/98-111.pdf)
Since the incorporation of the airplane into military service, air superiority has been a key ingredient to success on the modern battlefield.
Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force, the USAF’s latest vision statement, lists air and space superiority as the first of six Air Force core
competencies. The F-15 Eagle is currently the USAF’s primary air superiority fighter. Designed in the 1960s and introduced into service in the mid-1970s, the F-
15’s status as the world’s premiere air superiority fighter is being challenged by new fighter designs from numerous countries, as
well as the proliferation of advanced surface-to-air missile systems. The F-22 is the USAF’s follow on air superiority fighter to the
F-15. The design features of stealth, supersonic cruise, integrated avionics, and sustained maneuverability will provide the F-22
with a first look, first shot, first kill capability in all environments, against all current and planned future threats. However,
at $102 million a copy, the F-22 is by far the most expensive fighter the USAF has ever pursued. Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
today’s environment of shrinking defense budgets has called into question the necessity of buying the F-22 at all. Although there are a number of less
expensive alternatives, none of them approach the combat capability of the F-22. The USAF is scheduled to buy 339 F-22s
which will reach initial operational capability in late 2004. This schedule must be maintained in order to ensure the USAF can provide air
superiority for U.S. forces in the future.
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SDI 08

Air superiority is the prerequisite that must be achieved prior to the successful conduction of all other
military options—modernization in the form of additional F-22 Raptors is essential to US air
superiority in the future
Hampton 98 (Thomas, Major @ USAF + Graduate Student @ AIR COMMAND AND STAFF COLLEGE AIR UNIVERSITY,
"THE QUEST FOR AIR DOMINANCE: F-22—COST VERSUS CAPABILITY," http://www.fas.org/man/dod-
101/sys/ac/docs/98-111.pdf)
Achieving air superiority will be an absolute necessity in order to win on the modern battlefield of tomorrow. It is the enabling
capability that will allow joint forces the freedom to attack while enjoying freedom from attack; a prerequisite that must be
achieved prior to successfully conducting all other operations. Air superiority is also zero-sum: if one side has it, the other side doesn’t!
The U.S. has placed great importance on ensuring its ability to gain air superiority in the past. As a result, no U.S. ground troops have been killed by enemy aircraft
in well over 40 years.1 The USAF’s F-15 Eagle was designed specifically, and exclusively, for the air superiority mission and holds the title as the premiere air
superiority fighter in the world today. However, the F-15 will be 25 years old by the turn of the century and will lose its preeminence to
newer, more advanced fighter designs by that time. Advanced SAM systems will also make it very difficult for all conventional fighters to operate
over enemy territory without large SEAD support packages. Unless modernization efforts continue, the U.S. ability to guarantee air
superiority will diminish significantly.
The F-22 Raptor is the guarantor of America’s air superiority dominance in the 21st century. Its characteristics of stealth,
supercruise, agility, and integrated avionics will give it the undisputed edge in the air-to-air arena against any current or planned
future threat. The same characteristics will also allow it to operate alone in a heavy air defense environment over enemy airspace. The F-22’s inherent precision
air-to-ground capability will allow it to threaten virtually any target within the battlespace, including time critical targets such as TBM launchers. Increased
reliability and maintainability will allow the F-22 to generate higher sortie rates than the F-15, while its reduced airlift requirements will allow F-22 squadrons to
deploy with less than half the airlift support as well. Although cheaper alternatives to the F-22 do exist, none of them come close in
capability.
In its report, Transforming Defense—National Security in the 21st Century, the National Defense Panel concluded:
The types of missions our military and related security structures will be required to perform in 2010-2020 remain largely unchanged….We must be able to project
military power and conduct combat operations into areas where we may not have forward-deployed forces or forward bases. In particular, we must have the ability
to put capable, agile, and highly effective shore-based land and air forces in place with a vastly decreased logistics footprint.2
Whether the panel members realized it or not, they were encapsulating the major strengths and capabilities of the F-22 Raptor.
The F-22 will be the cornerstone of the U.S. air superiority force in the 21st century. It contributes directly to, or takes full
advantage of, all six Air Force core competencies and all four operational concepts of Joint Vision 2010. When stating his position on the
importance of air dominance in the future, former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said:
We are not looking for a fair fight. If we get into a fight with someone, we want it to be unfair. We want the advantage to be wholly and completely on our side.3
The F-22 Raptor is the revolutionary fighter that will guarantee America a very unfair advantage in any future conflict.
10
SDI 08
Fund F-22 Raptors CP—A2 Current F-22 Numbers Solve Air Power
The current number of F-22 Raptors is insufficient to maintain US air superiority
Gingrey 3/11/08 (Phil, House of Reps, R-GA, FNS, lexis)

MR. YOUNG: Congressmen, 187 Raptors are adequate to accomplish the National Military Strategy. There are at least two other studies
that look at this.
Let me start with the Threat Assessment, which suggests out through 2025, it is hard to see multiple high-end peers because high- end threat engagements. The
Joint Air Dominance study looks at 1 military combat operation, not 2, that too that you mentioned the Air Force study as a driver.
The Air Force study is 6 years old. It's also driven by this -- the force structure requirement to equip 10 squadrons, but not necessarily grounded in the intelligence
assessment of the threat or the probability that we will simultaneously conduct two military major combat operations --
REP. GINGREY: Mr. Secretary, with all due respect that that is not supported by any rigorous campaign-based analysis assessing the
most stressing scenarios and rapidly growing threats and that at least 3 independent, 3 independent studies, commissioned by DOD
recommended procuring significantly more than 220 Raptors.
And the Air Force urgently needs to replace approximately -- what, 500 1970 and 1980 vintage F-15, A-D Eagles, not to mention
over the last 10 years multiple independent studies and over 20 Air Force studies, all recommended the Air Force requires far,
far, more than 187 F-22 Raptors to do the job previously done by 800 F-15 A-Ds.
Additional procurement of F-22 Raptors is essential in ensuring the Air Force maintains air
superiority
Gingrey 2/27/08 (Phil, House of Reps, R-GA, FNS, lexis)

REP. GINGREY: Thank you. And I assume that requirement is based on, among other things, the fact that China and Russia are developing fifth-generation Raptor-
like technology, safety concerns pertaining to our F-15 fleet, and our nation's desire, of course, as you just said, Mr. Secretary, to maintain air superiority. I assume
that requirement is driven in part, that over the last 10 years multiple independent studies and over 20 Air Force studies have all
recommended that the Air Force requires far, far more than 187 F-22 Raptors to do the job previously done, by the way, by 800 F-
15 A's through D's. With a fleet of 187 Raptors, and after accounting for training, tests and maintenance requirements, fewer than
110 of those F-22s will be operational. Without a change in procurement plans, I believe this small number of F-22s will make it
extremely difficult for the Air Force to provide air dominance to our combatant commanders for the next several decades.
11
SDI 08
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—1NC Shell

Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase funding for the development
and deployment of ocean iron fertilization technology.
--The most effective approach to solving CO2 is to sequester it in the deep ocean using iron
fertilization AND such efforts would have no adverse environmental impacts on the ocean
Markels and Barber 01 (Michael and Richard, GreenSea Venture + Prof, Nicholas School of Environment @ Duke,
"Sequestration of CO2 by Ocean Fertilization," Poster Presentation at NETL Conference on Carbon Sequestration,
http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/p25.pdf)
The best approach is to sequester CO2 in the deep ocean by causing a bloom of plant life that then sinks to the deep waters
where it remains for about 1600 years5, as measured by the 14C to 12C ratio of upwelling of deep ocean water off of Peru. This process is
possible because large areas of the oceans have excess, unused plant nutrients and much less than expected phytoplankton
biomass, the so-called HNLC waters. The difference is that the HNLC waters are deficient in one or more of the micronutrients required for plants to grow.
While several essential metals may be involved in the limitation of growth in HNLC areas, iron has been shown to be the major micronutrient.
Generally, 100,000 moles of carbon biomass require 16,000 moles of fixed nitrogen, 1,000 moles of soluble phosphorous and one mole of available iron. The main
difficulty is the iron. Since surface ocean waters are highly oxygenated, any soluble iron is converted to Fe+++ with a half-life of about one hour and precipitates as
Fe(OH)3. A shovel full of earth is about 5.6% iron on the average. The ocean, on the other hand, has 0.0000000001 or less moles per liter of
iron, too little to sustain plant growth. The first problem, then, is how to add iron to the ocean so that it will be available to the
phytoplankton (plants). The phytoplankton themselves exude organic chelating compounds into the ocean that protect some of the iron that is there from
precipitation. Adding iron in the form of a chelate so that it does not precipitate but remains available for plant fertilization can mimic this natural process.6 An
essential element that may be in short supply in nutrient-depleted, tropical ocean waters is phosphorous. Most phosphates are soluble and can be added directly to
the ocean. Since the phosphate may attack the iron chelate, it may be necessary to keep the concentrations of both fertilizers low. This can be done by adding them
to the ocean separately in the form of small floating pellets that release the fertilizing element slowly over a period of days.7 This process
has been tested by GreenSea Venture, Inc. (GSV) in the Gulf of Mexico with good results. The remaining required essential element is fixed nitrogen. Bluegreen
algae or, as they are more properly called, cyanobacteria, have the ability to fix nitrogen, so inducing a bloom of nitrogen fixers might supply this requirement.
When the fertilizer mixed with water is added to the tropical ocean surface it mixes rapidly in the warm waters (the mixed layer)
and starts the phytoplankton bloom. The plants, mostly diatoms, multiply rapidly, increasing their numbers by two to three times per day,
until they run out of one of the required nutrients. They then cease growing, lose the ability to maintain buoyancy and
sink through the thermocline at a rate of about 75 feet a day. The sinking biomass is trapped in the cold, dense waters where it is eaten by
animal life and bacteria. This slowly converts the biomass back to CO2 in the deep waters. Where high concentrations of biomass are
generated and reach the ocean floor they may be covered by mud and debris, leading to anoxic digestion. The methane produced is converted to
methane hydrates by the high pressure of the deep ocean. It has been estimated that there is twice as much carbon in the methane hydrates of the
deep ocean floor than all the terrestrial fossil fuels combined. It is worth noting that the addition of CO2 in this low concentration,
natural process is not expected to have any adverse environmental impact on the ocean, which now has about 85 times as much
dissolved inorganic carbon as the atmosphere.
--Ocean iron fertilization solves the need for costly warming regulations—this avoids the unnecessary
use of scarce resources and allows policymakers to refocus attention on improving energy efficiency
and finding new energy sources which FURTHER solve the case
The expected impacts of a successful demonstration of the technology and the measurement of significant sequestration response
by the ocean to the planned chelated iron addition could be significant. The costly early actions now being contemplated to
counteract possible future impacts of increased CO2 content of the atmosphere would no longer be needed and instead all
responses could be tied to measured consequences, which could then be reversed. This would open new options, avoid the
unnecessary use of scarce resources and refocus attention on actual problems rather than seeking to deal with possible future scenarios.
Many entities, both governmental and industrial may decide to do very useful things based on these concerns, such as improved
energy efficiency and the exploration of new energy resources. This is to the good of society where they make economic sense and should be
implemented in any case.
A CO2 credit system may be instituted that will allow trading of credits to generate the lowest cost.
Credits from sequestering CO2 in the oceans
should be a part of this effort so as to take early advantage of this lower cost, environmentally benign, low human impact and
robust capacity approach to solving the global warming concerns, should this become necessary.
12
SDI 08
13
SDI 08
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Solves CO2 Emissions

Ocean iron fertilization can effectively rid the atmosphere of excess carbon dioxide by creating
plankton blooms that function as carbon sinks
Living on Earth 08 ("Iron Fertilization," http://www.loe.org/series/iron_fertilization/)

For a decade or so, scientists have been studying the ocean carbon cycles by scattering trace amounts of iron over small patches of open ocean. Oddly, they
discovered that certain parts of the ocean are anemic. Some “less fertile” areas like the Southern Pacific have all the nutrients necessary
for
life to thrive – but iron. Scattering just a tiny hint of this missing element creates a phenomenon bordering on the miraculous. Where
once, to the human eye, there was nothing – a bloom of single-celled plants suddenly appears. For the scientists who first discovered this, it must have been like
waving a magic wand and making the desert bloom.
“When you add iron, everything changes,” says oceanographer Richard Barber, one of the scientists involved in the first iron experiment. “All
the groups of micro-organisms, all these taxonomic groups, have been shown to grow better in these ocean waters when iron is added. This is a total rewriting
of what regulates growth in large portions of the ocean. As late as 1990, no textbook on biological oceanography would mention iron. Now every
textbook which teaches high school oceanography has a big section on the importance of iron.
“In one move, the view of how the ocean works has made a big leap….This is the single most significant piece of biological oceanographic research between 1950
and 2000.”
As oceanographers researched this during 1990s, others thought about applying these findings to real-world problems. To grow, the ocean-surface
plankton require a source of carbon, just as do land plants. That source is the atmosphere. Plants “inhale” carbon dioxide,
photosynthesize the carbon into plant material, then exhale the oxygen.
Some scientists and engineers reasoned that this might be a good way to rid the atmosphere of extra carbon. If you could make
the oceans bloom, they wondered, when the plant life died, wouldn’t it sink to the bottom of the ocean, carrying away the extra carbon with it? Indeed, many
scientists believe that oil and coal may derive from this process. And once the atmosphere was rid of its excess carbon (nearly twice what it was before the
Industrial Revolution), wouldn’t the world cool off?
Oceanographer John Martin first suggested this ultra-simple idea, perhaps somewhat playfully, almost as an advertising schtick, to
help him get research money. “Give me half a tanker of iron,” he boasted, “and I’ll give you the next Ice Age.” Whether he meant it
seriously or not (no one knows, because he died soon after), the suggestion quickly found its way into the popular literature. Kim Stanley Robinson’s wildly
successful 1993 science fiction trilogy about geo-engineering and terraforming, Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars, describes “the fertilization of the Antarctic
Ocean with iron dust, which was to act as a dietary supplement to phytoplankton” as a cure for both global warming and dying coral reefs.
By the late 1990s, a number of entrepreneurs had made the inevitable connection between “iron fertilization” and the new profit-driven trading markets.
George told me at lunch that there’s at least $180 billion a year out there available for carbon reduction technologies. He told me he wants some of that “money out
there to mitigate global warming that’s looking for a home.” He told me that a forest of plankton is the same as a forest on land, that the vast
majority of the ocean can act as a carbon sink, that much of the carbon in the plankton will actually sink to the bottom of
the ocean and stay there – “a conservative number about what sinks is one-third” – and that the carbon banked in that long-term savings account “will not
appear for at least a millennium. The ocean is a very secure place.”
Ocean iron fertilization can effectively address the concern regarding increasing CO2 levels in the
atmosphere
Sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the deep ocean by the fertilization of high nutrient, low chlorophyll (HNLC) ocean waters
can be an answer to the concerns arising from the increasing CO2 content of the atmosphere. This approach has the potential
to sequester CO2 for 1000 to 2000 years for a cost of about $2.00/ton of CO2. A technology demonstration is planned to fertilize an area of 5,000 square
miles of the equatorial Pacific that is expected to sequester between 600,000 and 2,000,000 tons of CO2 in a period of 20 days. The ecological changes expected
consist of the increase in diatoms, which double or triple each day until the limiting fertilizing element is used up. No adverse changes are expected, since
this is exactly what happens naturally when episodic fertilization occurs in the open ocean. The concept is that fertilization of
HNLC waters with chelated iron will cause a bloom of phytoplankton that sink below the thermocline into deep water after they die due to their
high density. The experiment, while large by land comparisons, is small in terms of ocean area, about one square degree. The demonstration protocol will include
measurements of the amount of inorganic CO2 that is removed from the surface layer and the amount of organic carbon that is produced and exported downward as
well as other effects in the water column over a period of 20 days. After this time no further effects of iron fertilization take place because macronutrient elements
(N, P and Si) are depleted to limiting concentrations. Since the iron enrichment is transient, no steady-state modification of the food web will occur. The experiment
will be carried out outside the EEZ of any nation, as were the previous five voyages, so, like them, no permits will be required. The
five recent ocean experiments observed iron stimulation of phytoplankton growth, but the effects were difficult to quantify in the 9 to 28 square mile experiments
since eddy diffusion along the edges of the patch diluted the bloom.
14
SDI 08

Ocean iron fertilization creates blooms of phytoplankton that remove CO2 from the atmosphere—this
can counteract global warming
Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.11/ecohacking.html)
In October 1993, the Columbus Iselin, a ship loaded with 23 scientists from 15 international research institutes, left Panama on a mission to study one of the great
riddles of oceanography. The mystery involved a dark, relatively lifeless stretch of the equatorial Pacific, a huge patch of water 250 miles southwest of
the Galapagos Islands that 19th-century mapmakers called the Desolate Zone. The zone is desolate because it's short on phytoplankton, the tiny,
floating surface algae that perform 50 percent of Earth's photosynthesis. Although it is rich in most of the nutrients required for plant life (phosphorous, nitrogen,
silicon), the area has very little phytoplankton, a condition that scientists call "high nutrient/low chlorophyll," or HNLC. Twenty
percent of the world's ocean water is HNLC, and for 70 years nobody could figure out why.
The Columbus Iselin set out to test a hypothesis that emerged in 1989, when an oceanographer named John Martin published a startling new theory in
Nature. Martin believed HNLC ocean water was missing a vital ingredient: iron. Plants require minute quantities of iron to produce
chlorophyll, and Martin was convinced that HNLC zones were, essentially, anemic. Sprinkle iron in the waters, he said, and they
would bloom like Eden. Martin also theorized that if you grew enough phytoplankton in HNLC zones worldwide, you
could lock up billions of pounds of carbon dioxide - phytoplankton converts CO2 gas to solid carbon mass, which is
effectively removed from the system when the dead plants sink to the deep ocean floor into a kind of permanent cold storage.
In other words, you could potentially redirect the earth's climate.
Strange though this sounds, it's possible. Scientists have long recognized that Earth's average temperature is altered by the atmospheric
concentration of CO2, a V-shaped molecule that traps heat in the lower atmosphere like glass traps heat in a greenhouse. At the end of the last ice age, roughly
18,000 years ago, atmospheric CO2 levels were only 180 parts per million, less than half the current (and rising) level of 366 ppm. Martin argued that huge
blooms of phytoplankton were responsible for the lower CO2 levels in that period; they reduced the earth's insulation and lowered the
global temperature. With more and more of the earth's water tied up in expanding glaciers, he reasoned, winds pushed iron-rich dust from the continents'
parched surfaces, creating new phytoplankton blooms and freezing even more water - a positive feedback loop for global cooling. Martin believed that if
this effect were triggered again on a smaller scale, it might even counteract the contemporary problem of global warming.
"Give me half a tanker of iron," he joked, "and I'll give you the next ice age."
Ocean iron fertilization is the solution to global warming—a few hundred boats filled with iron can
zero-out 8 gigatons of CO2 each year

Engineers both, the Markelses are wholly untouched by greenhouse guilt. In their view, civilization is a continuing triumph over natural barriers -
humankind has domesticated the beasts of land and air, increased crop yield through tools and genetics, extended the length and quality of life through science and
technology. Whenever nature throws us a curveball, we duck into the basement and invent a solution.
Global warming is just such a problem, and as far as Markels is concerned, we have the solution: iron. In an emergency, his iron-
fertilization system could be deployed by a small ecohacking navy. Markels would fertilize the pristine Southern Ocean, which circles Antarctica: Not only is it one
huge HNLC zone, but it's also largely uncluttered by shipping lanes and fishing boats. An iron-scattering fleet could ply the sea year-round, and the phytoplankton's
CO2-sinking progress would be measured by robots and satellites. According to Markels and his consulting oceanographer (IronEx vet Richard Barber, who is
more convinced of the experiment's scientific importance than of its earth-shattering commercial potential), each ton of iron dumped could pull 30,000
tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Given 200 boats, 8.1 million tons of iron, and 16 million square miles of HNLC ocean - just
over 11 percent of all the water in the world - Markels says his flotilla could zero out 8 gigatons of CO2 each year, the entire
global fossil-fuel emissions enchilada, all for an annual cost of around $16 billion. Crisis over. Next question?
"People are demanding that something be done," he says, shaking his index finger. "Sure, there are always going to be people who take the position that anything
you do to the ocean is evil. But what I'm proposing isn't new. I'm just doing it in a new way."
Markels explains that Mother Nature has been fertilizing with iron for eons. Today, naturally occurring iron enrichment is a key
ingredient in the world's richest fish fields. Iron-rich dust from the Gobi Desert blows east to fortify the salmon fisheries off Alaska; the largest natural
iron-fertilization field is situated off the coast of Peru, where an upwelling of iron and other nutrients creates a fish yield significantly larger than the combined
catches of the US and Mexico.
Markels sees a world of potential in those statistics. He claims ocean fertilization is modeled on these natural "iron nourishment"
processes - all he wants to do is provide a little push, plus a revenue model that sends most of the revenue his way.
15
SDI 08

Ocean iron fertilization experiments have already been successful at pulling thousands of TONS of
CO2 from the atmosphere—they’re a viable alternative to costly emissions reduction regulations

Martin died of prostate cancer in 1993 at the age of 56, a few months before a research mission he'd planned, called IronEx I, set off to test iron's impact on the
Desolate Zone. Two oceanography colleagues ran the experiment in his place: Richard Barber of Duke University and Ken Johnson of Moss
Landing Marine Labs, a public research center affiliated with San Jose State University. For two days, while the Columbus Iselin traversed a 25-square-mile grid of
HNLC ocean, Barber's team dumped 1,000 pounds of granular iron sulfate, dissolved in a weak acid solution, into the ship's wake. Lasers from a NASA P-3 Orion
airborne optical lab zapped the waters from above, scanning for new chlorophyll.
The results were promising but mixed: IronEx I produced phytoplankton, but it yielded four times less biomass than Martin's team had predicted. In 1995,
a project led by Kenneth Coale (now the acting director of Moss Landing Marine Labs) tried to increase the yield in a follow-up expedition called IronEx II.
This time scientists ladled out the thousand-pound iron payload in three separate servings. And this time the dead seas sprang
dramatically to life. Overnight, the HNLC waters clouded green. Fish were attracted by the harvest, and within days sharks and turtles were chasing
the new food supply. By the end of two weeks, IronEx II had produced the biomass equivalent of 100 full-grown redwoods - touch-of-life results that inspired
Johnson to rave about "a phytoplankton explosion of almost biblical proportions." The experimenters calculated that they had pulled 2,500 tons
of CO2 out of the atmosphere, and claimed they could do it again in desolate zones all over the world.
Michael Markels is not an oceanographer. He's a chemical engineer with a doctorate from Columbia University and an inventor who, in the 1960s, designed
noncombustible atmospheres for proposed space stations and helped solve heat-transfer problems in early nuclear reactors.
Nearly half a century later, Markels is 74 and semiretired after a career in environmental engineering that made him rich. He has a new wife, a new home, a gas-
guzzling Buick Park Avenue, and a big goal. He wants to put Martin's ideas into practice on a planetary scale, using iron to essentially hack
a solution to the greenhouse effect. Ignoring the continuing objections of ocean scientists, Markels has created a company, Ocean Farming Inc., devoted
to this prospect.
His motivation? A mix of profit and principle. Markels is an outspoken contrarian who doesn't believe global warming is much of a threat, but he's happy to sell
his services to people who think otherwise. He knows that in the years ahead, nations and corporations all over the world will pay dearly
for methods that allow them to meet the CO2 emissions cutbacks established in 1997 at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change in Kyoto, Japan. He figures most nations won't find the will to cut back on their fossil fuel-burning ways, so they'll have to meet the new standards by
buying pollution "credits" from those that do, or from individuals who figure out ways to lock up large amounts of CO2. He'll be in the second camp, the man with
the plan to switch on the worldwide air conditioner.
Markels is well outside the atmospheric science mainstream, but he's not a crackpot. At the moment, the USDepartment of Energy is considering a Markels
proposal that asks for $4 million to fund a "technology demonstration experiment." Markels wants to return to the Desolate Zone and test his patented iron-
dispersion techniques on a larger scale, carefully tabulating phytoplankton growth and the total lockup of CO2. He should know whether he's got a green light by
February. If he's funded, he'll rent a research vessel and depart in early 2002 with an independent team of university oceanographers to audit the results.
Markels' idea - to actively tip the balance of the global CO2 cycle - sounds weird, but in one sense it's as old as civilization itself: Human beings have been altering
the atmosphere for thousands of years through campfires, deforestation, fossil fuels, and the ozone-eating CFCs from hair sprays and refrigerators. But only
recently have we developed the technology - and the motivation - to try and change the climate intentionally. Increasing concern
about global warming has broadened the search for creative solutions.
16
SDI 08
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Emissions

Ocean fertilization is effective at reducing atmospheric CO2 levels, is a low-cost remedy and avoids the
economic/political consequences of emissions reductions
Carlin 07 (Alan, Senior Economist @ Environmental Protection Agency, June, 155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1401, lexis)
Although it has not really been demonstrated, this Article will assume that a careful analysis would show that preventing ocean acidification that would
substantially damage the Earth's coral reefs or other marine ecosystems is worthwhile from an economic viewpoint. This is by no means clear and deserves much
further study, but appears to be the most conservative assumption under current circumstances of uncertainty. It does appear likely that the most effective
remedies are those that can be implemented without the need for changes in personal lifestyle decisions. 189 That would
suggest primarily Remedy E (ocean fertilization), or Remedy C (artificial CO<2> sequestration), or possibly the use of limestone to neutralize the
acidification caused by the higher levels of CO<2>. Fertilizing the oceans appears to be effective in reducing atmospheric CO<2> levels
and is one of the lower cost remedies for reducing atmospheric CO<2>, but there is a need for research to greatly increase its effectiveness in
exporting carbon to the deep ocean. 190
Increased
Another important question is whether the use of Remedy E might directly reduce ocean acidification in the ocean layers in which phytoplankton live.
CO<2> removal by fertilized phytoplankton would presumably decrease concentrations of carbonic acid in these waters. This
would likely trigger increased absorption of CO<2> by the oceans from the atmosphere in order to maintain chemical equilibrium
and would lower atmospheric concentrations, but might nevertheless directly result in increased ocean pH levels as well. If so, Remedy E would be
(1) an attractive option for lowering atmospheric CO<2> concentrations and, indirectly, ocean acidification; (2) the most attractive
option for directly reducing ocean acidification; and (3) an interesting opportunity to increase ocean productivity, since phytoplankton
forms the base of much of the oceanic food chain. This would seem to be a very useful area for further research. Artificial [*1475] CO<2> sequestration appears
to cost much more, but it has fewer uncertainties.
17
SDI 08
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—A2 Iron Fertilization Fails/Causes Ocean

Damage
Ocean iron fertilization is an effective solution to atmospheric CO2 levels, continued technological
developments ensure large-scale deployment AND even if all the CO2 in the atmosphere was
sequestered in the ocean it would have minimal environmental impacts
Should the increasing CO2 content of the atmosphere be determined to have adverse impacts much worse than their advantages,
the further demonstration of this technology can provide a solution, relieving the concerns regarding the continuous
increase of these adverse net impacts. CO2 sequestering could then be carried out in the equatorial Pacific and in other HNLC
waters, especially off of Antarctica, the main areas of the oceans that have a high capacity of sequestering CO2. For instance, if all
the CO2 in the atmosphere were sequestered in the ocean, it would raise the average concentration of CO2 in the ocean by
only about 1.2%. The ocean chemistry would not be altered significantly and the increase in outgassing of the CO2 from
the ocean surface would be minimal.
The cost of sequestering CO2 on a commercial scale is expected to be about $1.00 per ton of CO2. The sales price for CO2 sequestering credits, should they
become tradable, would be about $2.00 per ton of CO2, to include the cost of verification, overhead and profit. It is expected that these credits would be highly
valued since they would not suffer from the problems of fire hazard, leakage and additionality the forest projects for CO2 sequestering face. Such credits could be
produced within a few years of a successful technology demonstration. Alternately, technology development could be continued with the
objective of eventual large-scale CO2 sequestration to address major climate perturbations.
18
SDI 08
Ocean Iron Fertilization CP Answers

Ocean iron fertilization disrupts the oceanic food web, the “metabolism of the earth”—this risks
massive environmental problems

What do the eco-experts think of Markels? Not much. One of his biggest detractors is Penny Chisholm, a professor in MIT's departments of
civil/environmental engineering and biology, and a colleague and friend of John Martin's. She didn't set out to be a spoiler, one of those everything-is-
connected types Markels likes to lampoon. "I'm not a tree-hugger," she laughs, "but a lot of people think Markels is nuts." The problem, she says, is that
although Markels' plan sounds seductively simple - pour iron in the ocean, sink the algae, walk away - it isn't.
"The counterargument is complex," says Chisholm. "It has to do with biological systems." For Chisholm, what's missing is a reasonable discussion of scale and
time frame. Naturally iron-rich zones like the Peruvian coast waters evolved over eons, which allowed for the fine-tuning of local
flora and fauna in a way that led to ecological sustainability. It's a process that Markels, whatever his talents, can't mimic by
simply dumping iron overboard.
"Yes, he will create an algae bloom in the middle of the Pacific, a bloom of a species that doesn't usually thrive there," she says. "And yes, there's an algae bloom
off the coast of Peru. But they won't be the same thing. The parallels aren't really parallels."
Chisholm explains that, taken together, the organisms in the sea make up the food web - the "metabolism" of the earth. It's an
interconnected system, balanced in the same way as the organs in the human body. But when you change the species composition in the
ecosystem, you change they way they function in that metabolism. The effect on the earth would be a lot like the effect of
replacing a person's heart, liver, and spleen with organs from other animals.
One problem: Huge amounts of sinking organic matter can trigger production of methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times worse than CO2.
"Maybe we could get by with pig organs," Chisholm says, "but they probably wouldn't do the job as well, and our metabolism would get out of whack. Chicken
organs? They wouldn't work at all - too small. We'd die." She doesn't believe that Markels could "kill" the earth, but he could change it in
ways we might not like. "And try as we might, I don't think we could fix it afterward."
Ocean iron fertilization produces toxic phytoplankton blooms, the sinking organic matter releases
methane into the atmosphere, and causes hypoxia and anoxia which disrupts the marine oxygen pump

According to oceanographer John J. Cullen of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, other problems could stem from the types of
plant life produced by iron dumping. There are thousands of varieties of phytoplankton; fertilization will simply multiply the types
that happen to be present. "The outcome is unpredictable," Cullen says. "It's possible that toxic blooms could develop." What's
more, even "good" phytoplankton might be bad news. Huge amounts of sinking organic matter can trigger the production of
methane, a gas with a greenhouse impact 30 times greater than that of CO2 (although methane's half-life is only 25 years,
compared with CO2's 25,000 years). Over time, massive phytoplankton death might also result in widespread hypoxia - an oxygen-
poor aquatic environment - and even extended regions of anoxia - that is, no oxygen at all.
The proper functioning of the pump is key to all life on Earth
Bryant 03 (Donald A., Dep’t. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology @ Penn. State University, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, August 19, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/17/9647)
Oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for nearly all the primary biochemical production of organic matter on Earth. The byproduct of
this process, oxygen, facilitated the evolution of complex eukaryotes and supports their/our continuing existence. Because
macroscopic plants are responsible for most terrestrial photosynthesis, it is relatively easy to appreciate the importance of photosynthesis on land when one views
the lush green diversity of grasslands or forests. However, Earth is the “blue planet,” and oceans cover nearly 75% of its surface. All life on
Earth equally depends on the photosynthesis that occurs in Earth's oceans.
19
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—1NC Shell

Text: The United States federal government should substantially increase funding for research and
development for geoengineering, radiative forcing technology.
--Kyoto-style emissions reductions will cost trillions and ultimately fail to solve global climate change
—R + D for engineered climate selection via stratospheric scattering is the most efficient and efficient
step towards global climate change control
HIGHLIGHT: This Article identifies four major global climate change problems, analyzes whether the most prominent of the greenhouse gas (GHG) control
proposals is likely to be either effective or efficient in solving each of the problems, and then extensively analyzes both management and technological alternatives
to the proposals. Efforts to reduce emissions of GHGs, such as carbon dioxide, in a decentralized way or even in a few countries (such
as the United States or under the Kyoto Protocol) without equivalent actions by all the other countries of the world, particularly the
most rapidly growing ones, cannot realistically achieve the temperature change limits most emission control advocates believe are
necessary to avoid dangerous climatic changes, and would be unlikely to do so even with the cooperation of these other
countries. This Article concludes that the most effective and efficient solution would be to use a concept long proven by nature to
reduce the radiation reaching the earth by adding particles optimized for this purpose to the stratosphere to scatter a small
portion of the incoming sunlight back into space, as well as to undertake a new effort to better understand and reduce ocean acidification.
Current temperature change goals could be quickly achieved by stratospheric scattering at a very modest cost without the
need for costly adaptation, human lifestyle changes, or the general public's active cooperation, all required by rigorous
emission controls. Although stratospheric scattering would not reduce ocean acidification, for which several remedies are explored in this Article, it
appears to be the most effective and efficient first step toward global climate change control. Stratospheric scattering is not
currently being pursued or even developed, however; such development is particularly needed to verify the lack of
significant adverse environmental effects of this remedy. Reducing GHG emissions to the extent proposed by advocates, even if
achievable, would cost many trillions of dollars, and is best viewed as a last resort rather than the preferred strategy.
--And here’s some framework evidence—global climate change policies should be evaluated as to
whether they solve environmental problems in the MOST EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT WAY
AVAILABLE
Some scientists may oppose the geoengineering conclusions reached in this Article on the grounds that if global warming is "solved" through engineered climate
selection or other geoeneering approaches, then it may be harder to persuade people to reduce fossil fuel use. 197 This raises the question of whether the goal is to
solve environmental problems or to achieve some other objective. The position taken here is that the purpose should be to solve important
environmental problems in the most effective and efficient way available. [*1483] Those who advocate a regulatory
decarbonization-only approach risk achieving nothing, and thereby contributing to the risks facing our planet, in the hopes of
achieving a different objective. It is better to separate the various problems - gradual global warming, ocean acidification, global warming
tipping points, and global cooling from volcanic eruptions and nuclear conflicts - and design a realistic program to tackle each one. Otherwise,
we risk everything on a single overall solution that appears unlikely to be achieved, and which cannot solve all of the problems
anyway.
20
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Additional R+D Funding Key

Engineered climate solutions—using specialized materials to change the stratospheric makeup—is
much less expensive and more effective at solving climate change than emissions reductions—
additional R + D funding is key
It is very reasonable to assume that humans could greatly improve on nature's efforts by optimizing this last approach (Remedy F) to the problems of global
warming and cooling. The Livermore papers discuss the use of specialized materials in the stratosphere and find these approaches to
be much less expensive and more effective than the "conventional" approach of trying to adjust the emission rates of
GHGs. In fact, they state that the net costs of at least some of their approaches can be "strongly negative" (i.e., there would be no
net costs, only benefits). 154 This is because of benefits their approaches may provide in other areas, such as reduced exposure to ultraviolet radiation and
thus a reduction in skin cancer, greatly increased plant growth and agricultural productivity made possible by higher CO<2> levels created by the decoupling of
CO<2> levels from climate, and even (if desired) a changed distribution of the heat energy from the sun falling [*1460] on various parts of the world so as to
make it more even. One of the more important additional benefits would be the ability to respond rapidly, and presumably effectively,
to unanticipated and undesired changes in global temperatures in either direction, such as those that may occur as a result of major
volcanic eruptions. Remedy G analyzes the stratospheric approaches advanced in some of the recent Livermore papers. Remedy G meets all of the criteria
discussed in Part I.A, including environmental effectiveness, and would appear, based on the claims of its proponents, to be one of
the best remedies discussed in this Article, even though they agree some research and development would be useful before it is
actually implemented. It is particularly strong on the very important flexibility criterion as well as the economic ones. The only drawbacks appear to be that
it does not address the adverse effects of elevated CO<2> levels on ocean acidification, that it could have possible adverse environmental impacts on the
stratosphere, and that the impacts on rainfall patterns are not well understood (which is true of increasing CO<2> levels as well).
Funding for research and development regarding radiative forcing is key to breaking the relationship
between CO2 and global temperature
Although the basic physical and engineering principles needed to implement Remedy G appear to be on solid ground, there are many unanswered questions
concerning whether this option really has been optimized, exactly how it would be implemented, exactly how much it would cost, and the nature and extent of
nonglobal warming environmental effects that need to be answered before actual implementation could reasonably be undertaken. Proponents agree that some
research and development would be useful before it is actually implemented. In 1999, Teller et al. suggested additional
research and development of about $ 100 million to further refine this remedy and examine side effects; 159 their Tyndall
presentation in 2004 mentions [*1462] about $ 1 billion. 160 Several of the other "nonconventional" remedies would also require additional
refinement, but Remedy G might require more than most of the others given the numerous options and potential environmental risks that need more thorough
exploration. The authors recommend a series of trials using scaled-down quantities to make sure that their theoretical calculations hold up in the real world and that
they have not overlooked some negative environmental effects. In the case of the stratospheric options, the effects of these small-scale trials would be designed to
dissipate in less than five years if any should be detrimental as a result of the movement of the materials of concern down out of the stratosphere. Therefore, in the
proponents' view, these trials should not be considered a permanent alteration of the stratosphere even at a small scale. These trials appear prudent and would
hopefully alleviate possible concerns that this novel approach is overly risky, as long as the approach could be abandoned when and if adverse new information is
acquired. Wood lists some of the research that he recommends be undertaken. 161 Lee Lane, however, reports that no research is currently being
undertaken and recommends that it should be. 162
If the research and development were successful and subsequently implemented, this approach would break the
relationship between CO<2> levels and temperature. Humans could increase CO<2> levels substantially, if that is
otherwise the desired outcome, without incurring most of the costs imposed by unwanted global warming. And if CO<2> gets too
low and/or an ice age threatens, temperatures could be rapidly increased to avert it. But it would not decrease the nontemperature effects of increased CO<2> levels
in the atmosphere, such as increased ocean acidification.
21
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Warming

Geoengineering approaches like the CP are of minimal cost and achieve all the benefits of emissions
reductions
Although precise cost calculations are difficult to make, the equivalent cost per ton of carbon removed appears to be in the range of two to ten
cents, compared to $ 50 to $ 400 for the more conventional approaches (see Table 2 and Figure 1). This estimate is based on costs presented by
Wood 155 and an assumed offset of 10 gigatons of carbon per year, and appears to be consistent with David Keith's 2001 estimate. 156 Even if the costs are
underestimated (as sometimes happens with new technological proposals) by one or even two orders of magnitude, the conclusions remain the same.
According to its proponents, it meets the first aspect of the flexibility criterion by making possible timely adjustments of global
temperatures to "fine tune" them towards any of the goals listed above in Part III.B. It seems to have a better chance than any of the other
options (besides Remedy H) to control abrupt climate changes if advance agreement is reached as to what is to be done under specified circumstances,
or if rapid agreement could be reached as to what is to be done under new circumstances. It meets the second aspect of the flexibility criterion
[*1461] concerning the ability to control both global warming and cooling. And, according to its proponents, it even meets the third aspect of
the flexibility criterion concerning the ability (but not the necessity) to change the geographic distribution of global temperatures. The benefits and costs are
assumed to be what the Livermore paper authors say they are, although they are very close to those provided by Keith. 157 This may be a minor leap of faith since
most of the Livermore papers are nonpeer-reviewed literature, but does not alter the clear effectiveness of this general type of remedy, as demonstrated by the
climatic effects of major volcanic eruptions. Nordhaus argues that several geoengineering options are of such low cost that the costs
can be ignored, so that the net benefits are roughly equal to the benefits from global warming control. 158 Presumably this
would apply to this particular remedy, although it is not specifically mentioned by Nordhaus. On this basis, the efficiency of this remedy would
appear to be strongly positive.
Radiative forcing can precisely, rapidly, and cheaply solve global climate change while avoiding the
costs associated with climate regulations
A major advantage of options that change Earth's radiation balance is that they would allow global temperatures to be changed in
either direction and determined relatively precisely and independently of GHG levels. Additionally, this could be done without the
necessity for decisions by individuals against their immediate self-interest. Global temperatures could be maintained at what may be determined to be optimum on
the basis of other criteria, while the economic advantages of higher-than-natural corresponding atmospheric CO<2> levels, such as reduced control costs and
increased growth of some plants - including most domesticated crops 148 - are maintained. This has both good and bad results. It is good in that most of the
adverse effects of global warming, including almost all those commonly discussed, could be eliminated rapidly and cheaply
so that there would be no need to undertake expensive efforts to reduce GHG levels in terms of their climatological impacts. But the use
of engineered climate selection would not affect the nontemperature change impacts of elevated GHG concentrations, which would therefore not be mitigated. So
far, the most important nontemperature impact identified is elevated CO<2> concentrations on ocean acidification, 149 which in time would likely have adverse
effects on calcifying marine organisms (including corals). 150 The extent and importance of these effects would therefore appear to be an important research issue
in judging between the alternatives.
22
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming

Regulatory decarbonization approaches like the plan are doomed to fail and are counterproductive via
costs and creating a false sense of security—go-it-alone stratospheric radiative forcing remedies are a
superior remedy for global warming
The experience to date with the Kyoto Protocol has not shown that approach to be effective in significantly reducing the growth of
GHG emissions or stabilizing atmospheric CO<2> levels. There would obviously be considerable difficulty in reaching an international agreement to
undertake geoengineering projects not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, although the same would be true of follow-ons to the Protocol. The advantage of the
geoengineering approaches, however, is that once agreed upon, there is no need for individual cooperation by most of Earth's
energy-using population, as would be required for effective, worldwide energy conservation or other mitigation efforts on
the scale that would be needed to bring CO<2> emission levels back to less than "dangerous" levels. And if (as seems almost
certain) there are major volcanic eruptions that send material into the stratosphere, nuclear conflicts that send soot into the stratosphere, or if there
is a collapse of the ocean conveyor belt or other abrupt or unforeseen climate changes, there would appear to be no other
feasible remedy that could effectively mitigate the effects of those events on climate. Careful preparations for
geoengineering approaches involving Remedy G may be justifiable even if they are never used for reducing global
warming, but merely as an insurance policy against abrupt adverse climate changes such as these.
Continued pursuit of only regulatory decarbonization (Remedy 2) appears to be counterproductive given the implementation
problems [*1467] inherent in it. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence may be to discourage consideration of more
effective measures during the long period needed for the major deficiencies of Remedy B to become evident to all. Thus, although regulatory decarbonization
is strongly favored by many environmentalists, the net result of pursuing it alone may be to postpone effective action to control global
warming for as long as it takes for the world to recognize that this approach is very unlikely to significantly decrease atmospheric
GHG levels to the extent needed to reach the EU temperature limits, or even to decrease them at all.
The general conclusions outlined in Part V.D apply to this problem without change, so that Remedy G - adding optimized particles to the
stratosphere - appears to be the superior remedy. Gradual increases in global warming could most efficiently and effectively be
controlled using one of the radiative-forcing remedies. Attempts to control global warming through GHG control are unlikely to be
successful because of the lifestyle changes required and high costs involved. The principal result of efforts to do so may be to
delay effective action. Radiative-forcing remedies are among the few realistic alternatives available. They could best be carried
out on an internationally cooperative basis, but could also be implemented on a "go-it-alone" basis at the risk of possible international condemnation.
Engineered climate selection wouldn’t required any human lifestyle changes and would be the MOST
EFFECTIVE and EFFICIENT step towards global climate change control
An effective and efficient solution would be to actively pursue a combination approach involving both engineered climate selection - radiative forcing by means of
stratospheric particles optimized for this purpose - as well as a new effort to reduce ocean acidification. Immediate priority should be given to the former in order to
quickly solve all the problems unrelated to ocean acidification, while the more difficult, much slower, and much more costly effort to reduce ocean acidification is
undertaken. The cost of achieving the EU/UNFCCC temperature goals by the use of engineered climate selection would be
modest and would not require any human lifestyle changes or adaptation to higher world temperatures (unless desired, of
course). It appears to be the most effective and efficient first step toward global climate change control. This twofold approach
could be used to rapidly reduce the risks stemming from adverse feedback/tipping point problems, from global warming, and from global cooling from major
volcanic eruptions and nuclear conflicts. It could also be used to rapidly stabilize average global temperatures to any desired level. This
should also allow time for a greatly expanded effort to better understand ocean acidification and to determine the extent to which ocean pH levels need to be raised
and how this can be best achieved. Several suggestions have been made concerning geoengineering approaches, but it is clear that the problem deserves
much greater attention and research.
23
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming

Status quo climate change can be mitigated more rapidly, cheaply, efficiently, and effectively using
engineered climate selection using radiative forcing—this COMPARATIVELY more effective than
Kyoto-style warming regulations
First, the participating Annex I nations appear to have selected one of the more difficult, expensive, and probably ineffective
approaches - the [*1477] Kyoto Protocol - to climate change control examined in this Article. If it could be fully and effectively implemented
and expanded upon in future agreements, Kyoto might help to control ocean acidification (problem P2), but the available evidence indicates that all the other
presently known climate change problems could be mitigated more rapidly, cheaply, efficiently, and effectively using
engineered climate selection involving radiative-forcing - i.e., Remedy G, or possibly Remedies F or H. Even if effectively implemented, Kyoto
would not provide protection against global cooling from major volcanic eruptions or nuclear conflicts (Problem P4) or the ability to evade "tipping points" (P3) if
not recognized decades in advance. However, Kyoto does appear to be more effective and efficient than most of the alternative management
tools examined in Part V.E, with the exception of a "go-it-alone" strategy involving radiative forcing.
Second, an efficient and effective solution would seem to be active pursuit of both geoengineering approaches involving radiative forcing, as well as
a new effort to reduce ocean acidification, with immediate priority given to the former in order to rapidly solve what are potentially the most critical problems.
Although significant efforts would be needed in order to fine tune the proposals to implement these geoengineering approaches, to build an international
mechanism for making decisions, and to manufacture and launch the needed material and hardware, this approach could be used to rapidly reduce the
risks of adverse feedback and tipping point problems due to global warming and global cooling from major volcanic eruptions or
nuclear conflicts, and to rapidly stabilize global temperatures at any desired level. At the same time, the current GHG emission-control
efforts could be refocused on the problem of reducing ocean acidification, with an early review of how acidification can best be mitigated and how the present
international GHG emission-control efforts could be modified to make them much more efficient and effective for this new (but probably closely related) purpose.
The net result would be much earlier and more efficient control of three of the more detailed problems and at least the same progress (or lack thereof) in controlling
ocean acidification as under the Kyoto approach (Remedy B). This would appear to provide significant gains and no losses compared to the
Kyoto-only approach. This should also allow some time to better understand ocean acidification and to design and carry out
a carefully crafted program to reduce it.
Several suggestions have been made concerning those geoengineering approaches that appear to be the most efficient and effective [*1478] ways of reducing
acidification, but it is clear that the problem deserves much greater attention and research. The problem of increasing global temperatures could theoretically also
be solved by carbon dioxide emission controls, although it is doubtful how effective this approach would be. If such emission controls were used, the place to start
would appear to be implementation of the lowest cost options first, while possibly delaying the more expensive ones until the problem is better understood. Such a
delay would be economically rational given the sensitivity of the costs of carbon dioxide emissions reductions to the rapidity with which they occur. Substituting
lower emission technology would be much cheaper if the goods in which the technology is embedded need to be replaced anyway due to old age or technological
obsolescence. T.M.L. Wigley provides some atmospheric modeling along these lines. 192 This approach might also provide time to build a better replacement for
Kyoto that remedies some of its most glaring problems.
The proposed priorities among the various remedies are shown in Tables 1 and 1a. The rationale is as follows: Remedy G appears to be very
inexpensive and very effective in rapidly solving all climate change problems other than ocean acidification. Therefore, it is given the
highest priority, or 1.
24
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming***

Kyoto-type decarbonization regulations like the plan can’t solve global warming, are politically
unacceptable, and overly expensive—radiative forcing geoengineering is a FAR SUPERIOR
alternative that is less costly, more efficient, and more effective in controlling global temperatures
As of late 2006, many environmentalists, some developed nations, and the state of California appear to have concluded that there
is only one climate change problem - global warming - and only one solution - reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, usually
through the Kyoto Protocol or similar regulatory decarbonization approaches. This Article has argued instead that there are actually four major,
interrelated problems, and after a careful analysis of these problems and possible remedies for each of them, concluded that several different approaches will be
required to solve all of them. Although some remedies can address certain climate change problems, none can address all of them. An effective and efficient
climate change control program needs to use the best available approaches to solving each problem, instead of simply the single approach
of reducing GHG emissions.
This Article has assumed that global climate change is a major environmental problem - perhaps the most difficult one that the world has ever faced. For the
purposes of this Article, the climate change problem includes four related problems: continued and gradual global warming over the next few centuries; adverse
effects unrelated to temperature of increasing levels of GHGs in the atmosphere; the potential effects of "tipping points" where warming may trigger particularly
serious and abrupt adverse effects; and shorter-term episodes of global cooling caused by volcanic eruptions or nuclear conflicts. The Article then asked how
effective and efficient a variety of management and technological approaches, particularly the Kyoto Protocol, would be in preventing or mitigating each of these
problems, and whether there are alternative approaches that would be more so. The Article has taken a very broad view of the problem by including both long-and
short-term impacts of human activities and natural forces on global temperatures and GHG levels. It is only by looking at all the [*1486] major aspects of the
problem that effective and efficient solutions can be meaningfully discussed.
The Protocol and similar regulatory decarbonization approaches will not prevent either global warming or cooling, nor will they meet
international goals for maximum temperature increases. If fully implemented, Kyoto would probably result in minor decreases in the
temperature rise that would otherwise occur and would not provide any capability to respond to global cooling. One fundamental problem is that
achieving the EU/UNFCC goals through a Kyoto-type approach would require the participation of most of the world's
governments and population - including many rapidly growing countries that have not agreed to undertake any emission
reductions - to restrict energy use in ways that would directly reduce their welfare, but the Protocol does not provide the
effective incentives and penalties necessary to bring about such participation. It is difficult to see why politicians would
adopt such unpopular and expensive constraints on their constituents' activities or why many of their constituents would not
pursue every available loophole to avoid observing the imposed constraints.
It is unlikely that possible Kyoto follow-on agreements could overcome these implementation problems. In addition to being very
difficult to implement, the Kyoto approach is probably economically inefficient and would have to be very expensive if it were
to have a major impact on global temperatures. Additionally, it does not provide credit for the use of much less expensive engineered climate
selection, and it is particularly ill suited for affecting global temperatures rapidly or flexibly. Trying to use it to rapidly decrease
global warming would be even more expensive because of the need to replace GHG-emitting equipment early in the plan's life cycle.
Pursuit of regulatory emissions reduction approaches is counterproductive, given their inherent implementation problems. Unfortunately, pursuing these approaches
is likely to prevent serious consideration of more effective measures during the long period needed for the major deficiencies of this approach to become evident to
all.
Given these very serious problems with the Kyoto approach, the Article then asked if there are superior management and technological alternatives for controlling
climate change. To that end, Parts IV through V.E reviewed a wide array of control options using effectiveness, economic efficiency, and other relevant criteria.
That analysis concludes that superior alternatives exist involving radiative forcing and that these alternatives would be technically
sound; would allow [*1487] continued growth of fossil fuel use; would very dramatically lower control costs; are economically efficient;
would avoid the need for individual actions to reduce GHG emissions; and would permit relatively precise, rapid, and
flexible adjustment of global temperatures. These alternatives, however, would not decrease any nontemperature-related adverse effects of GHGs, of
which the most serious appears to be ocean acidification.
25
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming

Engineered climate selection avoids the politics and economy disadvantages of the plan while
representing the more prudent and efficient strategy to solve global climate change
This Article has reviewed several management approaches besides Kyoto and geoengineering projects, including voluntary efforts, non-Kyoto-based regulatory
decarbonization, and a new approach involving the use of all available technologies and approaches. It finds that the voluntary, decentralized, and
liability-based government-determined decarbonization approaches are likely to be even less effective and efficient than the Kyoto
approach. Efforts to reduce GHG emissions on a less than national scale (as is being attempted in California) or even in a few countries,
without equivalent actions by the rest of the world - particularly the most rapidly developing ones - cannot realistically achieve the
temperature change limits adopted by the European Union and based on United Nations goals. Failure to achieve this goal is believed by proponents of
GHG emission controls to pose "dangerous anthropogenic interference" with the climate system. Even a unified, worldwide effort to reduce GHG
emissions to this extent, should it ever be undertaken, would be highly problematic because of the great dependence of modern
society on energy use and the reluctance of most people to give up the advantages offered by modern society. The cost of
achieving these goals by the use of engineered climate selection, however, would be comparatively modest and would not
require any human lifestyle changes.
This Article therefore suggests a possible replacement for Kyoto, which would correct a number of the Protocol's deficiencies. If the world follows a Kyoto
approach, this Article suggests a possible replacement for the Kyoto Protocol that would correct a number of the Protocol's deficiencies. But even in this case
global temperatures appear almost certain to continue to increase, perhaps even at roughly current rates. At some point in the future this
may become all too evident, and engineered climate selection may be more carefully considered. It would seem far better, however, not to wait until this happens
before using engineered climate selection, since this would reduce the risk of hitting a tipping point, increase the possibility of warding off abrupt climate changes,
provide protection from volcanic cooling or nuclear winters, and avoid various climate-induced unpleasantries and costly adaptation expenses in the meantime.
Recently some have begun to advocate engineered climate selection as a fallback or insurance policy, in case their preferred regulatory decarbonization approach
does not solve the problem or an unforeseen event occurs that requires a rapid response. 201 A more prudent and efficient strategy would appear
to be to implement engieneered climate selection first and then see what further needs to be done.
26
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Can’t Solve Ocean Acidification

Stratospheric geoengineering approaches like the CP are a wise investment—they would reduce global
warming and allow effective ocean-acidification mitigation efforts to take effect
Assuming that a decision is made that CO<2> mitigation is worthwhile because of these effects, the inexpensive stratospheric geoengineering
approaches, which would hopefully already be underway, [*1480] should prove to be a wise investment since they would reduce global
warming until the ocean-acidification mitigation efforts took effect and would provide an insurance policy against abrupt
adverse climate changes in either direction. In the case where a decision is made to proceed with conventional CO<2> emission reduction after Remedy
G has already been implemented, the relatively small added costs of Remedy G would not be lost; all of the problems except ocean acidification would have been
addressed earlier. In addition, the added capability to address problems P3 and P4 would presumably have proved useful in and of itself. Finally, it should be noted
that without advance development, planning, international agreements, manufacturing, and delivery systems, Remedies G and F could not fulfill these shorter-term
climate control functions.
27
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 CP Manipulates Nature

Nature is manipulated by both our status quo consumption of fossil fuels and current demands to
restrict GHG emissions—the counterplan isn’t unique
The major philosophical argument is likely to question whether humans should take direct management responsibility for determining global temperatures and
GHG levels in the atmosphere. Although humans have been exerting an increasing effect on temperatures and GHG levels, it has heretofore been left to nature
rather than humans to determine the outcome of this important aspect of the environment. The argument is likely to be that it is not acceptable to change nature by
changing Earth's radiation balance or atmospheric GHG levels directly. It seems to be generally agreed that it is acceptable to change global temperatures by
increasing or decreasing GHG emissions as long as it does not involve overt decisions. In other words, it has until recently been acceptable to increase
GHG emissions as long as the increase is done for nonclimatic reasons, such as human gain or [*1481] convenience, and the effects were
generally unknown. Similarly, it has been acceptable to decrease GHG emissions to an earlier level since this merely rolls back some
of humankind's effects on the environment. But some may argue that it is not acceptable to deliberately remove GHGs already in
the atmosphere or to change Earth's radiation balance directly, even though such an action would be for exactly the same
purpose - to decrease global warming. That, it may be argued, would be interfering with "nature." A very good case, however, can be made
that human-induced GHG releases are already interfering with "nature," as would proposed reductions, just in a less overt and less
effective way. And directly managing global temperatures and GHG concentrations focuses attention on an environmentally important issue - the optimal
temperature regime and GHG concentrations for the earth.
An additional aspect of this argument is that although human activities have brought about a number of adverse unintended consequences as a result of economic
development, humans heretofore have responded to these problems by finding new technical, scientific, and natural resource
solutions without significantly reducing human welfare. The use of engineered climate selection and other geoengineering
approaches would follow this tradition rather than slowing human development in order to deal with the latest such problem in
what some may regard as a more "natural" way.
28
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Scattering → Adverse Effects

Even if stratospheric scattering produced adverse effects, such effects would dissipate within a year
and would be removed by normal atmospheric processes
Fortunately, the leading engineered climate selection proposals do not appear to involve irreversibilities, and the effects appear to
disappear in a relatively brief period. For example, in the case of stratospheric optimized particles, their effects could first be modeled further; if modeling
did not reveal significant problems, we could follow with subscale, real world experiments, and could finally try the approach in a limited geographical area - such
as the Arctic, which is experiencing the most rapid warming and has the lowest human population. If significant adverse effects were observed, they
would dissipate within a year or two as particles gradually fell into the troposphere and were removed by normal
atmospheric processes. In this circumstance, other types of particles could be tested or the project could be abandoned in the unlikely case that each type of
suitable particle proves to result in critical, adverse, and unintended consequences. But pursuit of the decarbonization approaches currently proposed
is very likely to result in continued global warming while the world waits for, and is likely to be disappointed by, the meager
results.
29
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 International Cooperation Necessary

International cooperation isn’t required for radiative forcing remedies—go-it-alone action by the US
would be a rapid, efficient, and effective means to control global climate change
(P1) Gradually increasing global warming could most rapidly, efficiently, and effectively be controlled using some of the
more interesting radiative forcing or engineered climate selection remedies and result in significant adaptation expenses. As
discussed, attempts to control this warming through GHG control under the Kyoto Protocol and similar approaches are likely to be
very slow and largely unsuccessful. Other management approaches based on decentralized controls, voluntary actions, or liability
for emissions would probably be even slower and less successful and efficient. However well intentioned and helpful they may be if they
reduce emissions that are less expensive to control, there is also a danger that they will end up delaying effective action by providing
false hope that these efforts will prove sufficient. Radiative forcing remedies, on the other hand, are some of the few realistic alternatives
available to meet the current temperature goals. They could best be carried out on an internationally cooperative basis, but could also be done on a "go-it-
alone" basis by technologically advanced countries, albeit at the risk of possible international condemnation.
30
SDI 08
Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Microclimate Turn

A2 Schneider/microclimate turn…tag yourself…
To date, the principal scientific attack on the Livermore papers has come from Stephen Schneider on the grounds that varying
insolation and albedo would "mess up" everyone's local (micro)climate. 163 [*1463] The proponents believe that research reported by Bala
Govindasamy on this issue provides an adequate response to this question. 164 Govindasamy's paper reported on detailed modeling and
argued that the "deep modes" of the current climate system maintain at least meso-scale climates worldwide without
significant alteration, as the space-and time-averaged insolation is varied by a few percent in order to offset 2X or 4X
increases in atmospheric CO<2>. 165 The proponents believe that Govindasamy shows that their remedies would provide
reasonably good compensation for any global warming due to higher CO<2> levels. 166 The proponents have tried to anticipate and answer
many other potential criticisms of their proposals as well. A recent news report provides some interesting insights into the motivation for the Livermore papers and
the internal questioning, research such as that mentioned above, and ultimately agreement that went on within the Laboratory concerning these proposals. 167
31
SDI 08
OPEC Flood DA—Internals—Saudi Arabia Can Produce Cheap Oil/Russia

Can’t
Saudi Arabia can produce a barrel of oil for ONE TENTH of the price of a barrel produced in Russia
Kenneth M. Pollack, Director of Research for Middle East Policy @ the Brookings Institution, July-August 2003 ("Securing the
Gulf" – Foreign Affairs)
Today, roughly 25 percent of the world's oil production comes from the Persian Gulf , with Saudi Arabia alone responsible for roughly 15 percent -- a figure
expected to increase rather than decrease in the future. The Persian Gulf region has as much as two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves,
and its oil is absurdly economical to produce, with a barrel from Saudi Arabia costing anywhere from a fifth to a tenth of
the price of a barrel from Russia. Saudi Arabia is not only the world's largest oil producer and the holder of the world's largest oil reserves, but it also
has a majority of the world's excess production capacity, which the Saudis use to stabilize and control the price of oil by increasing or decreasing production as
needed . Because of the importance of both Saudi production and Saudi slack capacity, the sudden loss of the Saudi oil network would paralyze the global
economy, probably causing a global downturn at least as devastating as the Great Depression of the 1930s, if not worse . So the fact that the United States does not
import most of its oil from the Persian Gulf is irrelevant: if Saudi oil production were to vanish, the price of oil in general would shoot through the ceiling ,
destroying the American economy along with everybody else's.
32
SDI 08
OPEC Flood DA—Uniqueness—OPEC Has Spare Capacity Now

OPEC has plenty of spare capacity now and such capacity will grow substantially by next year
Business Report 7/21/08 ("Speculators play a dominant role in oil trading,"

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4517197&fSectionId=553&fSetId=662)
Saudi Arabia has taken 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) off line since July 2005 and is producing just more than 8 million bpd
of its estimated 10.5 million bpd capacity.
It is forecast by the Energy Information Agency that next year Opec alone will have more than 3 million bpd of spare capacity.
Should global demand drop another 5 percent in the next year, which is most likely considering the increasing price, we could be looking at 8 million bpd less
demand than there was just a year ago.
As the London Telegraph pointed out recently, Opec's production surplus is 2 million bpd, which will rise to 3.5 million bpd by next
year. Non-Opec production will rise 1.5 million bpd by early next year. Iraq is no longer included as Opec or non-Opec production, a clever way to hide 2.4
million barrels.
33
SDI 08
OPEC Flood DA—Link Magnifier—500000 MBD Production ↑ Drastically

Lowers Oil Prices
Even a 500000 barrel a day production increase by Saudi Arabia would substantially reduce oil prices
and stop speculators from driving up oil prices
CBS Mobile News 7/17/08 ("Home > Opinion," http://wap.cbsnews.com/site?t=8pD24zrz8I1d.oOb6U07UQ)

To think that this dramatic and unexpected move by the Bush administration didn"t have a significant effect on oil prices is folly.
Even Democrats admit that relatively small margins in oil production could have a huge impact on prices.
"If they [Saudi Arabia] produced half a million barrels more oil a day the price would come down a very significant amount
and, at the same time, it would stop the speculation that keeps driving up the price of oil," Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.)
said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
34
SDI 08
OPEC Flood DA Answers—No Spare Capacity

OPEC lacks sufficient spare production capacity to control international oil markets
Kadakia 7/18/08 (Ruchir, international oil analyst @ Cambridge Energy Research Analysts, "OPEC and the oil crisis,"
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/07/18/oil_q/)
KADAKIA: You know, OPEC produces around 40 percent of the world's oil. If you look at the growth trend in oil, that percentage is
diminishing. And that's largely a part of the fact that OPEC has limited spare capacity and their production isn't ramping
up the way that it used to in the past.
RYSSDAL: Well, tell me about that spare capacity. What exactly does that mean?
KADAKIA: Well, spare capacity is how much oil is available in the short term that you can ramp up. The reason why it's so significant in the price of oil and why
it's such a large driver is that any type of small disruption in the market can only be met by spare capacity. For example, if a pipeline breaks down for natural reason
or if there's some type of geopolitical event, whether it's between Israel and Iran, or whatever it is, you know, you can't just go out and say that, "OK, well, prices
have been high now and we're just going to go drill oil and that's going to fix the problem," because there's often a five- to 10-year lead time before that supply ever
hits the market. So, it's the spare capacity that you can tap in a couple of months that can bring prices down.
RYSSDAL: When prices get really high and politicians get squeezed to do something about it, they often lean on OPEC. Does OPEC have the spare
capacity that the world seems to think it does?
KADAKIA: I don't think they do anymore. You know, it's a relative term when you say "what the world thinks they have." You know, today OPEC
has about 2 million gallons of spare capacity. I think everyone probably agrees that it's around 2 million. I think the real problem is that spare capacity has
dwindled since 2004. Two million barrels doesn't really cover the type of disruptions that we can see in this market. The
market is no longer confident that OPEC can meet the needs should there be some type of disruption.
35
SDI 08
Russian Oil Good—Internals—Oil Price ↓ Destroys Russian Economy

Any rapid decline in oil prices undermines the Russian economy
Hugh 7/9/08 (Edward, Macroeconomist in Spain and economics writer, "Russian Inflation: Is the Boom About to Bust?"
http://seekingalpha.com/article/84286-russian-inflation-is-the-boom-about-to-bust)
Well, the central point would be that the strong rise in oil prices we have seen since the start of the century has only served to
increase Russia’s dependence on oil and gas revenue and has not been used to facilitate the kind of diversification which could
allow for a more stable development path. As such, the Russian economy—despite the outward semblance of "you've never had it
so good" boom times—has never been more vulnerable to sudden falls in oil and gas prices.
The share of oil income in total fiscal revenue has increased substantially – from 10 to about 30 percent of GDP. Instead of
diversifying, Russia has, de facto, been specializing in oil. Oil now also accounts for about 60 percent of total exports. Higher oil
revenues allow for additional spending room, but they also complicate macroeconomic management and lead to an increased
dependence on a highly volatile and uncertain source of income. While this has not been a problem during the period of high oil
prices, it would be a major source of vulnerability if oil prices suffer any kind of rapid descent from the recent levels, and it
does put in place a "ceiling" on Russia inflation-free level of growth capacity given the fact that the resources sector seem to have
now reached its "peak output" level.
36
SDI 08
Russian Oil Good—A2 Diversification Turn

The Russian economy is diversifying now and strong international demand ensures high commodity
prices
iStockAnalyst 7/21/08 ("A Rougher Road for Emerging Market Stocks,"

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewiStockNews+articleid_2417346&title=A_Rougher_Road_for.html)
While the Russian economy is arguably too dependent on energy exports, we believe two factors mitigate this risk. First, rising
incomes and credit growth have led to strong Russian household consumption, which is supporting service and
manufacturing growth, and is helping to diversify the economy. Second, although increasing speculation has made a short-term correction in
raw material prices likely, in our view, we believe a secular increase in emerging market demand, combined with tight global capacity,
will keep the long-term commodity uptrend intact.
37
SDI 08
Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economic Growth Slowing Now/Hard

Landing Coming
Russian economic growth is slowing now, signaling that the economy is overheating and a hard
landing will hit in the fall
Bryanski 7/21/08 (Gleb, Reuters, "Russia economy slowdown signs may be skewed by soccer,"
http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11b43b1da4ef6ab0)
MOSCOW, July 21 (Reuters) - Unexpectedly weak data could herald a Russian economic slowdown, the government said on
Monday, although a better than expected showing in the Euro 2008 soccer championship may be partly to blame.
Russia's economic growth faltered in June to 6.5 percent from 7.7 percent in May, the Economy Ministry said on Monday. First half growth
was 8.0 percent.
Data on Monday also showed a sharp easing in Russia's capital investment rate in June while earlier data showed an abrupt
slowdown in industrial output last month.
"There is some tendency towards growth slowdown, seen first of all in the industrial production and capital investment," Deputy Economy
Minister Andrei Klepach told Reuters.
The Industry Ministry said in a statement June data suggested Russian companies are finding it harder to stay competitive as costs and interest rates rise, the rouble
strengthens and a global credit squeeze limits finance for modernisation.
But some economists said it was too early to talk about a change in Russia's rapid growth trend, which has been driven by surging revenues for its oil exports.
"It is a blip ... We expect a return to the strong underlying growth trend in July," said Rory MacFarquhar at Goldman Sachs in Moscow, one of the analysts who said
the soccer frenzy could be behind the weak June data.
The Russian soccer team, seen as an outsider, reached the semi-finals, crushing one of the favourites Netherlands. The game kept millions glued to TV screens.
Large crowds celebrated victories all night and many took days off to recover.
Monday's data showed Russia's capital investment rate slowing sharply in June to 10.8 percent year-on-year, from 15.3 percent in May and well below analysts'
forecast of 15.7 percent. The government sees 2008 investment growth at 14.4 percent.
The industrial output data showed June growth of just 0.9 percent year-on-year, from 6.7 percent in May.
'HOT AUTUMN'
Russia has managed to escape the worst of the global market turbulence and won a rating upgrade from Moody's last week.
Some economists warn, however, that the economy is overheated and may face a hard landing. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin
and former Economy Minister and now CEO of the country's largest lender German Gref have predicted a "hot autumn".
"We already see a slowdown on the investment demand side but it is a bit too early to talk about a slowdown on the consumer side," said Alexander Morozov from
HSBC. "Some slowdown would be useful for the economy in terms of fighting inflation."
38
SDI 08
Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economy Overheating Now

The Russian economy is starting to overheat now—multiple indicators prove
International Herald Tribune 7/7/08 ("RUSSIA: Inflation could challenge prospects for growth,"
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/07/news/7oxan-RUSECON.php)
However, there is evidence that the Russian economy is beginning to overheat. Unemployment has been falling since 2003,
and real wage growth has been accelerating away from labour productivity growth since 2004. Reports of strikes and other worker
protests indicate increasing worker activism in pursuit of higher pay or other benefits. This is not surprising, as shortages of skilled
labour are widely reported, and the overall pool of manpower is on the verge of shrinking.
The Russian economy is overheating now—extensive economic evidence proves
Hugh 7/9/08 (Edward, Macroeconomist in Spain and economics writer, "Russian Inflation: Is the Boom About to Bust?"
http://seekingalpha.com/article/84286-russian-inflation-is-the-boom-about-to-bust)
At the same time there is now extensive evidence that the Russian economy is overheating. The IMF in their June 2008 Article
IV Consultation Report mention three factors: 1i) the fact that inflation has almost doubled over the past year and now extends
well beyond food and energy price increases; 2) domestic demand is increasing at an annual rate of 15 percent in real terms, while
GDP is growing at 8 percent, a rate which is somewhat above the level that can be maintained without causing accelerating
inflation, according to estimates by both Russian and IMF experts;3) resource constraints have now become strikingly evident in
labor markets, where shortages are causing real wage increases of about 16 percent annually, well above growth in labor
productivity (see chart below), and unit labor costs are now rising steadily. Domestic resource constraints are also evident in the
rise in import volume growth to almost 30 percent annually.
The World Bank basically take a similar view, and point out that the Russian Economic Barometer index of industrial capacity
utilization has risen from 69 in 2001 to 81 in March 2008 (with 42 percent of the firms surveyed for the index reporting utilization
of over 90 percent). Also, an index of labor utilization has increased from 87 to 94 with three quarters of firms showing utilization
rates of over 90 percent. Meanwhile unemployment was running at 6.1 percent at end of 2007—its lowest level since 1994.
39
SDI 08
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—2NC Food Prices Module

Reduced rail service increases food prices
Pak 01 (Joon Je, Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, North Dakota State University, "Stimulating the effects of
railroad mergers," Southern Economic Journal, April, http://www.k-
state.edu/economics/weisman/publications/simulating_the_effect_of_railroad.pdf)
Conventional economic theory argues that an increase in intrarailroad competition will result in a decrease in railroad price. There
is substantial empirical support for this hypothesis. For example, Levin (1981b) found that hypothetical railroad price increases resulting from railroad
deregulation are quite modest in the presence of a moderate degree of intrarailroad competition.1 Levin (1981a) discovered that for various assumptions regarding
railroad demand elasticity and railroad revenue/variable cost ratios, the social benefit (net reduction in deadweight loss) of adding an equal-size railroad competitor
to a monopoly railroad market ranges from 6.8% to 18.9% of revenues in that market. Adding a third railroad in a two-firm railroad market yields social benefits of
2.4%-6.8% of revenues in that market. MacDonald (1987) found that increased intrarailroad competition results in lower railroad grain
prices. He found that a movement from a railroad monopoly to a duopoly with equal-size firms leads to an 18% decrease in railroad
corn prices. A movement from duopoly to triopoly causes railroad corn prices to fall another 11%. Similar results are reported in
MacDonald (1989). The Lemke and Babcock (1987) study of the impact of railroad mergers on western Kansas export wheat rail prices concluded that mergers do
not significantly increase market power as long as some intrarailroad competition is maintained. However, mergers that produce regional monopolies result in
substantial increases in railroad market power.
The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 contained restrictions on railroad rate bureaus and permitted confidential railroad/shipper contracts. These provisions of the act
fostered intrarailroad competition and several studies documented the decline in railroad grain prices resulting from increased
railroad rivalry.2
Higher US food prices increase food prices around the globe—corn proves
Gawain Kripke, Senior Policy Adviser, Oxfam America. From testimony before the House Energy and Commerce
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, CQ Researcher, May 6, 2008, p. Proquest
For about 1.2 billion people around the world, corn is the preferred staple cereal. Consider that the U.S. produces more than 40
percent of the world's corn supply. Dedicating 3.1 million bushels of corn for ethanol this year will take more than one-tenth of the global corn supply off
the market for food and feed. Furthermore, the U.S. exports nearly twice as much corn as all the other exporters combined. So, reduced
supply and/or higher prices in the U.S. corn market have significant implications for the rest of the world.
These food price blips will culminate in a massive famine and wars that risk extinction
Winnail, Ph.D., M.P.H, 1996 (Douglas S., "On the Horizon: Famine," September/October,
http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods004.htm)
What is seldom stated is that optimistic forecasts for increasing grain production are based on critical long-term assumptions that include normal (average) weather.
Yet in recent years this has definitely not been the case. Severe and unusual weather conditions have suddenly appeared around the globe. Some of the worst
droughts, heat waves, heavy rains and flooding on record have reduced harvests in China, Spain, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Canada--major grain
growing regions of the world--by 40 to 50 percent. As a result grain prices are the highest on record. Worldwatch Institute's president, Lester Brown, writes, "No
other economic indicator is more politically sensitive that rising food prices.... Food prices spiraling out of control could trigger
not only economic instability but widespread political upheavals"-- even wars. The chaotic weather conditions we have been experiencing
appear to be related to global warming caused by the release of pollutants into the earth's atmosphere. A recent article entitled "Heading for Apocalypse?" suggests
the effects of global warming--and its side effects of increasingly severe droughts, floods and storms--could be catastrophic, especially for agriculture. The
unpredictable shifts in temperature and rainfall will pose an increased risk of hunger and famine for many of the world's poor. With world food stores dwindling,
grain production leveling off and a string of bad harvests around the world, the next couple of years will be critical. Agricultural experts suggest it will take two
bumper crops in a row to bring supplies back up to normal. However, poor harvests in 1996 and 1997 could create severe food shortages and push millions over the
edge. Is it possible we are only one or two harvests away from a global disaster? Is there any significance to what is happening today? Where is it all leading? What
does the future hold? The clear implication is that things will get worse before they get better. Wars, famine and disease will affect the lives of
billions of people! Although famines have occurred at various times in the past, the new famines will happen during a time of unprecedented
global stress--times that have no parallel in recorded history--at a time when the total destruction of humanity would be possible! Is it
merely a coincidence that we are seeing a growing menace of famine on a global scale at a time when the world is facing the threat of a resurgence of new and old
epidemic diseases, and the demands of an exploding population? These are pushing the world's resources to its limits! The world has never before faced such an
ominous series of potential global crises at the same time! However, droughts and shrinking grain stores are not the only threats to world food supplies. According
to the U.N.'s studies, all 17 major fishing areas in the world have either reached or exceeded their natural limits. In fact, nine of these areas are in serious decline.
The realization that we may be facing a shortage of food from both oceanic and land-based sources is a troubling one . It's troubling because seafood--the world's
leading source of animal protein--could be depleted quite rapidly. In the early 1970s, the Peruvian anchovy catch--the largest in the world--collapsed from 12
million tons to 2 million in just three years from overfishing. If this happens on a global scale, we will be in deep trouble. This precarious situation is also without
historical precedent!
40
SDI 08
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Food Prices Extensions

US food price increases go global
Lapidos 4/1/08 (Juliet, Assistant Editor @ Slate, "Why Are Global Food Prices Soaring?" http://www.slate.com/id/2187882/)
High oil prices have also created a secondary problem: The burgeoning interest in biofuels. In 2006, 14 percent of the total corn crop in the United States was
converted into ethanol; by 2010, that figure will rise to 30 percent. When the production of corn intended for human or animal consumption decreases, prices go
up. Why does this local shift in policy affect food prices around the world? The diversion of American corn into energy has a ripple effect for two
reasons: First, the United States is the world's largest corn exporter, accounting for about 40 percent of global trade, so when corn-as-
food production decreases here, costs go up everywhere. Second, when the price of corn increases, farmers in the United States, Europe, and
elsewhere who use the crop to feed livestock look for cheaper alternatives, like wheat or sorghum. These alternatives, in turn,
become more expensive.
Food price blips will kill 1.1 billion people in the developing world
Tampa Tribune, January 20, 1996, p. Lexis

On a global scale, food supplies - measured by stockpiles of grain - are not abundant. In 1995, world production failed to meet demand for the third consecutive year, said Per
Pinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C. As a result, grain stockpiles fell from an average of 17 percent of annual
consumption in 1994-1995 to 13 percent at the end of the 1995-1996 season, he said. That's troubling, Pinstrup-Andersen noted, since 13 percent is well below the 17 percent
the United Nations considers essential to provide a margin of safety in world food security. During the food crisis of the early 1970s, world grain stocks were at 15 percent.
"Even if they are merely blips, higher international prices can hurt poor countries that import a significant portion of their food," he
said. "Rising prices can also quickly put food out of reach of the 1.1 billion people in the developing world who live on a dollar
a day or less."
41
SDI 08
CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Key to US Economy/Hegemony

The breakdown of the US railroad system threatens the US economy and hegemony
Freeman 02 (Richard, "Rebuilding U.S. Rail System is Top Priority," 9/6, Executive Intelligence Review,
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2002/2934rail_infra.html)
The breakdown of the U.S. rail transportation system, for both passengers and freight, threatens the operation of the American
physical economy and the integrity of the United States as a nation. A top priority reconstruction and overhauling of the rail system, that
restores its functioning as a continental system extending into every population and industrial center, is urgent.
An examination of the working of the U.S. rail system, shows that part of it no longer exists, and what does still exists is run down. On the freight rail side, for
Class I rail companies (the biggest ones), comparing 1980 to 2000, forty percent of the track has been contracted, 27% of the locomotives have been furloughed,
and 63% of the labor force has been fired. Putting haulage of coal to one side, the Class I rail companies' transport of goods—the vast majority in an economy,
ranging from grain, to iron, to chemicals—has fallen 45% on a per household basis, compared to the 1970 level.
The passenger side of the rail grid is in the same condition. Amtrak, the largest inter-city passenger rail carrier, transporting nearly four-fifths of inter-city
passengers, has been forced to live from month to month. Amtrak requested of the U.S. government, $1.9 billion for fiscal Year 2003, for operations, maintenance,
and minimal capital investment. The Conservative Revolutionaries in the House and President Bush jointly said that Amtrak should receive $521 million. Senator
McCain and the Wall Street Journal have both demanded the busting up of Amtrak, which would mean closing down already inadequate service to many parts of
the country.
The breakdown has generated deadly effects. On April 18, Amtrak's Auto Train out of Orlando, Florida derailed, tumbling 14 cars across the track, killing four and
injuring 150. The track is owned and maintained by CSX Corporation. Five days later, in Placentia, California, a freight train plowed into a Metrolink commuter
train, killing two and injuring 260 people. The Federal Railroad Administration has reported that in 2000, there were 2,059 derailments, already an increase of 18%
from 1997, and a pace of 40 derailments per week.
Rail- and Nation-Building
The inability to move people and goods from one part of the country to another in a timely and safe fashion, is a marker of a
general breakdown of the economy, and is the product of at least 30 years' deindustrialization policies. The link between rail-building and
nation-building must be revived. Rail should be the leading mode of transport in a well-functioning economy. Today, this requires a
two-phase process: maintaining and building the current rail grid; but moving as quickly as possible to overhaul it, through the introduction of high-speed rail and
then magnetically levitated train systems. "Maglev" represents a scientific revolution, which uses entirely different methods of locomotion, and can travel at speeds
of 250 to 300 mph (417 to 500 kph). The overhauled U.S. network can extend southward into Mexico and the rest of Ibero-America, and northward to Alaska,
through to Russia and the Eurasian Land-Bridge. The bill of materials to build rail will revive steel and other critical industries.
42
SDI 08
CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle 1NC Turn

--Aerosol pollution plays a significant role in the weakening of Earth's hydrological cycle—threatens
water availability and quality globally
US Mission to the EU 01 ("Aerosol Pollution Could Threaten Earth's Water Supply,"

http://www.useu.be/Categories/Evironment/Dec1001AerosolPollutionWater.html)
A new study issued by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, argues that
particles of human-produced pollution may be playing a significant role in weakening Earth's water cycle, much more than
previously realized. The study was funded in part by NASA and used new satellite data from NASA's Terra satellite revealing the
global nature of the particles.
Tiny aerosols primarily made up of black carbon, the authors argue, can lead to a weaker hydrological cycle, which connects
directly to water availability and quality, a major environmental issue of the 21st century.
The paper, based on results obtained during the international Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), is published in the Dec. 7 issue
of the journal Science.
"Initially we were seeing aerosols as mainly a cooling agent, offsetting global warming. In this article we are saying that perhaps
an even bigger impact of aerosols is on the water budget of the planet," said Scripps Professor V. Ramanathan, who along with
Professor Paul Crutzen, a co-author of the new study, led the INDOEX science team as co-chief scientists. "Through INDOEX we
found that aerosols are cutting down sunlight going into the ocean. The energy for the hydrological cycle comes from sunlight.
As sunlight heats the ocean, water escapes into the atmosphere and falls out as rain. So as aerosols cut down sunlight by large
amounts, they may be spinning down the hydrological cycle of the planet."
The fourth co-author of the paper, Daniel Rosenfeld, also notes that these aerosol particulates may be suppressing rain over
polluted regions. Within clouds, aerosols can limit the size of cloud droplets, stifling the development of the larger droplets
required for efficient raindrops.
--Freshwater availability and properly functioning hydrological cycle are key to global survival
Jackson et al 01 (Robert, Panel Chair, Department of Biology and Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University,
"Water in a Changing World," http://www.esa.org/science/Issues/TextIssues/issue9.php)
Life on earth depends on the continuous flow of materials through the air, water, soil, and food webs of the biosphere. The
movement of water through the hydrological cycle comprises the largest of these flows, delivering an estimated 110,000 cubic
kilometers (km3) of water to the land each year as snow and rainfall. Solar energy drives the hydrological cycle, vaporizing water
from the surface of oceans, lakes, and rivers as well as from soils and plants (evapotranspiration). Water vapor rises into the
atmosphere where it cools, condenses, and eventually rains down anew. This renewable freshwater supply sustains life on the land,
in estuaries, and in the freshwater ecosystems of the earth.
Renewable fresh water provides many services essential to human health and well being, including water for drinking, industrial
production, and irrigation, and the production of fish, waterfowl, and shellfish. Fresh water also provides many benefits while it
remains in its channels (nonextractive or instream benefits), including flood control, transportation, recreation, waste processing,
hydroelectric power, and habitat for aquatic plants and animals. Some benefits, such as irrigation and hydroelectric power, can be
achieved only by damming, diverting, or creating other major changes to natural water flows. Such changes often diminish or
preclude other instream benefits of fresh water, such as providing habitat for aquatic life or maintaining suitable water quality for
human use.
43
SDI 08
CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle Extensions

Aerosol pollution is weakening the hydrological cycle and will weaken the availability of freshwater
globally
US Mission to the EU 01 ("Aerosol Pollution Could Threaten Earth's Water Supply,"

http://www.useu.be/Categories/Evironment/Dec1001AerosolPollutionWater.html)
U.S. researchers report that particles of human-produced pollution may be reducing rainfall and threatening the Earth's fresh water
supplies.
According to a December 6 press release, a new study by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests that tiny
aerosol particles of soot and other pollutants -- formed by fossil fuel combustion and the burning of forests and other biomass --
are having a far greater effect on the planet's hydrological cycle than previously realized.
The study is based in part on new satellite data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and in part on the
international Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX), a multiplatform analysis of the Indian Ocean using satellites, aircraft, ships and
surface stations.
When sunlight heats the ocean as part of the hydrological cycle, water escapes into the atmosphere and falls out as rain. Through
INDOEX it was found that aerosol pollutants are cutting down the sunlight reaching the ocean and weakening the
hydrological cycle.
According to the study, if pollutants lead to reduced rain and snowfall, it could directly affect the replenishment of the
world's major stores of freshwater, including lakes, groundwater supplies, glaciers and high elevation snow pack.
The study not only warns about the role aerosols are playing on the regional and global water cycle, but also suggests that aerosol
pollution increases the solar heating of the atmosphere, and reduces the solar heating of the surface of the planet. The researchers
say these effects may be comparable to the global warming effects of greenhouse gases.
Hydrological cycle key to planetary survival
Water vapor in the atmosphere exerts an important influence on climate and on the water cycle, even though only 15,000 km3 of water is
typically held in the atmosphere at any time. This tiny fraction, however, is vital for the biosphere. Water vapor is the most important of the so-
called greenhouse gases (others include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane) that warm the earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Water vapor
contributes approximately two-thirds of the total warming that greenhouse gases supply. Without these gases, the mean surface temperature of the earth would be
well below freezing, and liquid water would be absent over much of the planet. Equally important for life, atmospheric water turns over every ten
days or so as water vapor condenses and rains to earth and the heat of the sun evaporates new supplies of vapor from the liquid
reservoirs on earth.
Declining freshwater availability risks armed conflict
Human impacts on the quality and quantity of fresh water can threaten economic prosperity, social stability, and the resilience of
ecological services that aquatic systems provide. As societies and ecosystems become increasingly dependent on static or
shrinking water supplies, there is a heightened risk of severe failures in social systems, including the possibility of armed
conflicts over water, and also complete transformations of ecosystems. Rising demand for fresh water can sever ecological
connections in aquatic systems, fragmenting rivers from floodplains, deltas, and coastal marine environments. It also can change
the quantity, quality, and timing of freshwater supplies on which terrestrial, aquatic, and estuarine ecosystems depend.
44
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Burma/Asian Instability Module

High oil prices foster corruption and civil conflict in Burma while insulating the ruling regime from
diplomatic pressure
Ross 10/26/07 (Michael, Assoc Prof of Poly Sci @ UCLA, "Myanmar, the latest petro bully,"
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/MyanmarLAT.pdf)
As in other states beset by the "resource curse," Myanmar's natural wealth helps keep a despotic government in power and
fosters corruption and civil conflict. What makes the petro bullies unique is their ability to buy political protection from powerful allies.
Sudan's president, Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, has used oil sales to China to hold off, then dilute, diplomatic pressure to stop the slaughter in Darfur. The
government of Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records in the world, but thanks to its oil riches, it was welcomed in Washington last year by
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a "good friend" of the United States. Another good friend, the Saudi royal family, rules one of the world's most
undemocratic regimes.
Some petro bullies violate treaties or pose threats to neighbors. Iran's uranium enrichment program violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but its government
is counting on its oil to buy its way out of trouble. Even when they do face sanctions -- as did Libya's Moammar Kadafi, or Iraq's Saddam Hussein after the Persian
Gulf War -- their oil exports allow them to evade economic pressures or cushion their effect.
The world's thirst for hydrocarbons has thus created a class of well-funded but unsavory governments that have little fear of economic sanctions. If the United
States and its allies refuse to buy their oil, someone else will. Unilateral sanctions, like those announced by Bush, might help. But as long as Myanmar and other
governments have petroleum to sell, they will have plenty of hard currency with which to buy new friends.
The link between oil riches and bad international behavior is even deeper than it first appears. One way to measure a country's "global
citizenship" is to count the number of major international treaties that it ratifies. Another way is to count its donations to U.N. peacekeeping operations. By both
measures, oil-exporting countries are unusually bad global citizens. They tend to ratify fewer major treaties and make stingier donations to U.N.
peacekeeping operations than non-oil exporters with similar levels of wealth. Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, for example, use oil and natural gas exports as a
substitute for international cooperation.
None of the bullies will run out of petroleum soon. But their political influence tends to rise and fall with world energy prices. The
higher the price of oil, the less susceptible they are to diplomatic pressures. When oil prices drop, so does their ability to buy
powerful friends. If Congress adopts an energy bill that produces large cuts in U.S. oil and gas imports, world prices will
drop and the lower the price of oil, the greater the chance that Myanmar, Sudan, Iran and others will ultimately have to face the
consequences of their actions.
Now is the key time—failure to diplomatically resolve the Burma crisis unleashes insecurity and
disunity throughout Asia
Green and Mitchell Nov/Dec 07 (Michael + Derek, Prof of IR @ Georgetown + Senior Fellow/Director for Asia Strategy
@ CSIS, "Asia's Forgotten Crisis," Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20071101faessay86610/michael-green-derek-
mitchell/asia-s-forgotten-crisis.html?mode=print)
The international community needs to act now to begin a process of concentrated and coordinated engagement for the benefit of the
Burmese people and of broader peace and stability in Asia. As with the six-party talks on North Korea, a multilateral approach will require some
compromise by all participants. The United States will need to reconsider its restrictions on engaging the SPDC; ASEAN, China, and India will need to reevaluate
their historical commitment to noninterference; Japan will need to consider whether its economics-based approach to Burma undermines its new commitment to
values-based diplomacy. But all parties have good reasons to make concessions. None of them can afford to watch Burma descend further into
isolation and desperation and wait to act until another generation of its people is lost. In addition to humanitarian principles, there are
strategic grounds for stepping up diplomatic efforts on Burma: it is now the most serious remaining challenge to the
security and unity of Southeast Asia. Of course, change will eventually come to Burma. But without the coordinated engagement of the
major interested powers today, that change will come at a great cost: to the stability of Southeast Asia, to the conscience of the international
community, and, most important, to the long-suffering Burmese people, who languish in the shadows as the rest of the world concentrates its energies elsewhere.
45
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Burma/Asian Instability Impact Module

Asian instability sparks nuclear conflict, destroys the nonproliferation regime, and cripples the US and
global economies
Jonathan S. Landay, Writer for Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 3/10/2000 ("Top Administration Officials Warn Stakes
for US are high in Asian Conflicts" – Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service) p. lexis
WASHINGTON _ The 3,700-mile arc that begins at the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea and ends on the glacier where
Indian and Pakistani troops skirmish almost every day has earned the dubious title of most dangerous part of the world.
Few if any experts think China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea, or India and Pakistan are spoiling to fight. But even a
minor miscalculation by any of them could destabilize Asia, jolt the global economy and even start a nuclear war . India, Pakistan
and China all have nuclear weapons, and North Korea may have a few, too. Asia lacks the kinds of organizations, negotiations and diplomatic relationships
that helped keep an uneasy peace for five decades in Cold War Europe. "Nowhere else on Earth are the stakes as high and relationships
so fragile ," said Bates Gill, director of northeast Asian policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "We see the convergence
of great power interest overlaid with lingering confrontations with no institutionalized security mechanism in place. There are
elements for potential disaster ."
In an effort to cool the region's tempers, President Clinton, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger all will hopscotch
Asia's capitals this month. For America, the stakes could hardly be higher. There are 100,000 U.S. troops in Asia committed to defending Taiwan, Japan
and South Korea, and the United States would instantly become embroiled if Beijing moved against Taiwan or North Korea attacked South Korea.
While Washington has no defense commitments to either India or Pakistan, a conflict between the two could end the global taboo against using
nuclear weapons and demolish the already shaky international nonproliferation regime. In addition, globalization has made a stable Asia
_ with its massive markets, cheap labor, exports and resources _ indispensable to the U.S. economy. Numerous U.S. firms and millions of American jobs
depend on trade with Asia that totaled $600 billion last year, according to the Commerce Department.
46
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Darfur Genocide Impact Module

High oil prices insulate the Sudanese regime from international pressure—this enables the genocide in
Darfur
Durrant 06 (Brian, Columnist @ Fleet Street Letter, "Why high oil prices are good for gold," 8/24,
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/17259/why-high-oil-prices-are-good-for-gold.html)
As a general rule when the price of crude oil rallies, the price of gold tends to follow suit. The link is straightforward. Gold is seen by some investors as the
ultimate hedge against inflation. So as energy prices rise, industry and transport costs rise, inflation goes up and so does demand for gold bullion. But there is
another link, which is less well known. Gold is often regarded as a "safe haven" asset in times of global political uncertainty. Meanwhile there is a very
persuasive link between high oil prices and political instability in the world. It follows that a rise in crude oil prices increases the demand for gold as
a safe haven asset. Let me explain.
There is no denying that the world is a much more dangerous and hostile place than it was ten years ago. The euphoria following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, talk of a "peace dividend"
As we speak there are four theatres of war in the Middle East; in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq
and the irresistible tide of free markets and democratisation have been dissipated.
and Afghanistan while genocide is being carried out in the Darfur region of Sudan. At the same time personal freedoms are being eroded in places like Russia, Iran
and Nigeria.
High oil prices: bad for peace
So what has caused this turn for the worse? This deterioration in the prospects for peace and freedom around the world. The usual suspects are the rise of "Islamofascism" (to use the neo-
cons preferred term) or America's wrong headed foreign policy. These factors have a part to play but there has been one enduring and underlying influence that has shaped the cause of
peace and freedom over the last thirty years. It's the oil rice.
Believe it or not, high oil prices are bad news for peace and personal freedoms. Oil-rich countries that have weak state institutions become nastier regimes as the oil price goes up. There
are a number of mechanisms at work.
First, a rise in oil revenues enables autocratic governments to relieve social pressures that otherwise lead to demands for greater accountability from the government. Nationalism is easier
on a full stomach. Because of the swelling coffers of petro-dollars, this year the Iranian government has promised to build 300,000 new housing units and maintain energy subsidies
that amount to 10% of GDP. At the same time oil revenues allow Iran to be more isolationist because they can turn their back on foreign investors. Here's an example: Turkcell (TCELL), a
Turkish mobile-phone operator, had signed a deal with Tehran to build the country's first privately owned mobile network. The company would invest $2.25bn, pay Tehran £0.3bn for the
licence and create 20,000 Iranian jobs. But the mullahs have suspended the contract claiming it might help foreigners spy on Iran. With oil prices high, the Iranian government don't need
to do anything to reform the economy.
Second, oil wealth leads to greater patronage spending. This in turn leads to cronyism and a web of corruption. Let's look at Nigeria. In 1999 when oil prices were around $25 a barrel
President Obasanjo came to office
after a period of military rule. He made headlines for tackling abuses in the military and releasing political prisoners. The term of presidency would be limited to 2 four year terms. Oil
accounts for 90% of Nigeria's exports. Now with oil at over $70 a barrel it is alleged that the legislature is being bribed to extend President Obasanjo's tenure and at the same time there is
a crack down on political opponents.
High oil prices: increased military spending
Autocratic governments also use their cash windfall to consolidate their position by spending lavishly on police, internal security and military hardware. Hugo Chavez signed a $1bn arms
deal with Russia last week,
purchasing 30 fighter jets and 30 military helicopters. Chavez and Putin also discussed plans to build two Kalashnikov factories in Venezuela. The oil-rich South American state supports
the insurgency in Iraq and has
close ties with North Korea and Iran.
Bumper oil revenues also encourage military adventurism. Saddam Hussein's attacks on Iran and Kuwait are well known but oil wealth also underpins terrorist groups like Hezbollah,
Hamas and al-Q'eada. Iran is bankrolling
Hezbollah. With oil at $75 a barrel, Iran earns oil revenues of $300m a day, when the oil price was $20 a barrel this daily income was only $80m.
In the world of militiamen, money rather than ideology talks. Take Afghanistan as an example. The Taliban are paying recruits up to $12 a day to fight locally, while the fledgling Afghan
National Army pays soldiers $4 a
day to risk their lives far away from home. The pay difference risks defections from the 38,000 strong ANA which has faced a much better and equipped insurgency since January. Afghan
defence ministry officials believe that funds for insurgency are flowing over the border from Pakistan and possibly from oil rich Arab countries.
Finally, oil wealth gives countries the confidence to cock a snook at the world and engage in repression within its borders knowing
full well that the international community covets its resources. So Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can declare that Israel should be wiped off the map and Venezuela's
President Chavez tells his supporters that free trade can go to hell. You can't help thinking that if oil were at $20 a barrel these countries would have to empower
their entrepreneurs rather than just sink new oil wells, while their grandstanding leaders would be out on their ears.
Indeed the boom in oil prices has given Sudan a staunch ally on the UN Security Council. China has invested more than $8bn
in Sudan's oil industry including a 1500km pipeline. Last year, China was purchasing between 50% to 60% of Sudan's crude oil production. In return,
arms, including tanks, planes and helicopters have been supplied to a country, which is orchestrating genocide against
African tribes in the eastern Darfur region. At the same time China have slowed efforts at the UN Security Council to use sanctions against
Khartoum and deploy a UN peacekeeping force in the area.
US reductions in consumption reduce oil prices globally—this forces Sudan to face the consequences of
its actions in Darfur
Ross 10/26/07 (Michael, Assoc Prof of Poly Sci @ UCLA, "Myanmar, the latest petro bully,"
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/MyanmarLAT.pdf)
None of the bullies will run out of petroleum soon. But their political influence tends to rise and fall with world energy prices. The
higher the price of oil, the less susceptible they are to diplomatic pressures. When oil prices drop, so does their ability to buy
powerful friends. If Congress adopts an energy bill that produces large cuts in U.S. oil and gas imports, world prices will
drop and the lower the price of oil, the greater the chance that Myanmar, Sudan, Iran and others will ultimately have to face the
consequences of their actions.
47
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Darfur Genocide Impact Module

Left unchecked, genocide will eat away at the structure of global society, destroying the international
institutions critical for global civilization
Campbell 01 (Kenneth, associate professor of political science and international relations and director of the international
relations program at the University of Delaware, Genocide and the Global Village, p. 26)
Genocide is the supreme crime! It is arguably the worst crime that can be committed in the present global system of nation-
states and peoples. Genocide is equal to or worse than the crime of aggression. Genocide attacks civilization itself. Contemporary
civilization is based upon certain fundamental shared moral values; one of which is the principle that groups of people have the right to exist as a distinct nationality, race, ethnicity, and
religion. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) spoke to this point in an Advisory Opinion on the Genocide Convention in 1951:
The Convention was manifestly adopted for a purely humanitarian and civilizing purpose…its object on the one had is to safeguard the very existence of certain human groups and on the
other to confirm and endorse the most elementary principles of morality.
In such a convention the contracting states do not have any interests of their own; they merely have, one and all, a common interest, mainly, the accomplishment of those high purposes.
If left unchecked, genocide eats away like a cancer at the structure of global society, eventually undermining and destroying just
those international institutions designed to foster global cooperation, mitigate global conflict, and avoid global catastrophe
such as the world experienced in the 1930s and 1940s.
Most scholars, political analysts, and policymakers, unfortunately, treat genocide as a mere humanitarian concern, having little to do with the traditional interests of
nation-states. They too often fail to see genocide as a threat to strategic global interests, such as political stability, economic
prosperity, peace, and security. Genocide, in fact, occupies a unique area of overlap between humanitarian concerns and more traditional state interests to the degree that
international peace and security are indivisible in a world of rapidly increasing globalization. For globalization not only speeds up the positive effects of open markets, open technologies,
and open societies, it increases the spread of pathological behavior such as genocide.
48
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Bad—1AC Saudi Reforms Impact Module

High oil prices discourage reform efforts in Saudi Arabia
Thomas L. Friedman, Pulitzer Prize winning author and columnist for the New York Times, Foreign Policy, May/June 2006,
“The First Law of Petropolitics”, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3426
When oil prices were at a nadir in the early 1990s, even Arab oil states, such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, which has
substantial gas deposits, were at least talking about economic reform, if not baby-step political reforms. But as prices started
to climb, the whole reform process slowed, particularly on the political side.
Collapse of moderate reform efforts causes Saudi internal instability
Most Middle East experts think that a revolution or civil war in any of the GCC states within the next few years is unlikely, but few say so now as confidently as
they once did. In fact, even the Persian Gulf regimes themselves are increasingly fearful of their mounting internal turmoil, something
that has prompted all of them to announce democratic and economic reform packages at some point during the last ten years. From Crown Prince
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to the emir of Qatar to the new king of Bahrain , the Persian Gulf rulers recognize the pressure building among their
populations and the need to let off some of the steam. If the reforms do not succeed and revolution or civil war ensues, the
United States might face some very difficult security challenges. Widespread unrest in Saudi Arabia, for example, would threaten
Saudi oil exports just as surely as an Iranian invasion.
This destroys the global economy
America's primary interest in the Persian Gulf lies in ensuring the free and stable flow of oil from the region to the world at large. This fact
has nothing to do with the conspiracy theories leveled against the Bush administration during the run-up to the recent war. U.S. interests do not center on whether
gas is $2 or $3 at the pump, or whether Exxon gets contracts instead of Lukoil or Total. Nor do they depend on the amount of oil that the United States itself
imports from the Persian Gulf or anywhere else. The reason the United States has a legitimate and critical interest in seeing that Persian Gulf oil continues to flow
copiously and relatively cheaply is simply that the global economy built over the last 50 years rests on a foundation of inexpensive, plentiful oil,
and if that foundation were removed, the global economy would collapse.
Today, roughly 25 percent of the world's oil production comes from the Persian Gulf , with Saudi Arabia alone responsible for roughly 15
percent -- a figure expected to increase rather than decrease in the future. The Persian Gulf region has as much as two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves, and
its oil is absurdly economical to produce, with a barrel from Saudi Arabia costing anywhere from a fifth to a tenth of the price of a barrel from Russia. Saudi
Arabia is not only the world's largest oil producer and the holder of the world's largest oil reserves, but it also has a majority of the
world's excess production capacity, which the Saudis use to stabilize and control the price of oil by increasing or decreasing production as
needed . Because of the importance of both Saudi production and Saudi slack capacity, the sudden loss of the Saudi oil network would
paralyze the global economy, probably causing a global downturn at least as devastating as the Great Depression of the
1930s, if not worse . So the fact that the United States does not import most of its oil from the Persian Gulf is irrelevant: if Saudi oil production were
to vanish, the price of oil in general would shoot through the ceiling , destroying the American economy along with everybody
else's.
Insert favorite economy impact (Mead, Bearden, Lewis, Torgeson)
49
SDI 08
2AC Answers to “Hybrid Seeds Turn”

***SOUTH AFRICA IS DRAMATICALLY EXPANDING GMO’S NOW, 283 MILLION ACRES OF
GMO CROPS HAVE BEEN PLANTED GLOBALLY AND THEY’RE GOOD FOR NUMEROUS
REASONS.
Engineering News Online 7/4/08 [“DST to build South Africa’s bioeconomy”
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=136029]
Within the Ten-Year Innovation Plan, five challenges have been identified and the Farmer-to-Pharma grand challenge has been
prioritised as a value chain to strengthen the bioeconomy of South Africa. The ten-year plan proposes to help drive the transform-ation of the
South African economy from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy in which science and technology, information and learning move to the
centre of economic activity.
Worldwide and locally, biotechnology has applications in several areas, including human health and care, animal health and production, crop and plant production,
forestry, industry, mining and the environment. The investments and economic output of all of these types of applied biotechnologies form part of the
bioeconomy.
Meanwhile, Smit says that the DST is also currently in the process of establishing the Technology Innovation Agency, which is expected to provide a more focused
and strategic approach towards the commercialisation of biotechnology innovation, relevant to the needs and challenges of South Africa.
“Biotechnology, including genetically modified organisms (GMOs), could help produce more food by improving the yield a
hectare planted, produce crops that are resistant to drought, insects or pests, produce crops that are disease resistant, produce crops
that use water and nutrients in soil more efficiently and produce crops that are modified to increase their nutritional qualities and
content. Already more than 12-million farmers in 23 countries, including South Africa, have planted more than 283- million
acres of biotech crops,” says Smit.
AFRICA IS USING GMO’S NOW INCLUDING HYBRID SEEDS AND THEY’RE GOOD FOR
CROP PRODUCTION– BURKINA FASO PROVES.
REUTERS.COM 7/19/08 [“Burkina launches Monsanto GMO cotton to boost crop”
http://africa.reuters.com/business/news/usnBAN933329.html]
Cotton farmers in Burkina Faso will soon be planting genetically modified seeds that could boost output and cut costs after the
government became the first in West Africa to approve GMO cotton for general use this week.
Bt cotton, developed by U.S. farming biotechnology leader Monsanto, contains a bacterial protein that deters insects, reducing the need for costly pesticides and
raising yields by around 30 percent, Burkinabe researchers said.
Two strains of Bt cotton, both developed from local varieties, have been approved for production and general sale, Zourata Lompo, director
of Burkina Faso's National Biosecurity Agency (ANB) told a news conference on Thursday.
"This year we have authorised 15,000 hectares for seed production and if the socio-economic evaluation by our field workers is conclusive there is no reason
why next season we won't move to generalised production of genetically modified cotton," Lompo said.
50
SDI 08
2AC Answers to “Incentives ≠ Regulations”

Contextual evidence proves—regulations that force automakers to produce alternative fuels and cars
that run on them are "incentives"
Greenwood Commonwealth 7/19/08 ("Bush is right about lifting drilling ban,"

http://gwcommonwealth.com/articles/2008/07/20/opinion/editorials/edit01.txt)
Increased domestic production, of course, is only part of the solution to the energy crisis.
The long-term goal must be to decrease consumption. That
means creating incentives, even if they are in the form of regulations, to force the big oil companies and the automakers to produce
alternative fuels and cars that run efficiently on them.
51
SDI 08
2AC Answers to “Business Confidence/Auto Industry DA”

Obama and McCain both support federal regulation of tailpipe emissions—this makes regulation
inevitable
Shepardson 7/12/08 (David, Staff, Detroit News, "Carmakers can claim victory--for now,"
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080712/AUTO01/807120350)
WASHINGTON -- Automakers scored a major victory Friday after the White House and several Cabinet agencies denounced the
recommendations of career staff experts at the Environmental Protection Agency for limiting vehicle tailpipe emissions.
But the victory could be temporary as the next president will have to revisit the decision of whether to regulate vehicle
emissions. The presumptive presidential nominees, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, support
regulation.
Federal auto regulations increasing now—recent NHTSA fuel economy standards are ALREADY
triggering concern from automakers
Shepardson 7/2/08 (David, Staff, Detroit News, "Carmakers urge lowering fuel economy rules they call 'excessive',"
http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080702/AUTO01/807020334)
WASHINGTON -- Automakers including Detroit's Big Three said Tuesday that increased fuel economy rules are too aggressive
and called for them to be lowered.
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Chrysler LLC, as well as Toyota Motor Corp. and six other carmakers urged federal regulators to lower the
proposal that would increase fuel efficiency standards by 4.5 percent annually through 2015.
In a filing early Tuesday, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers -- the trade group that represents Detroit automakers and some foreign companies -- blasted the
April 22 proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that would raise fuel economy requirements to a fleetwide average of 31.6 mpg, including
35.7 mpg for passenger cars and 28.6 mpg for light trucks, starting in the 2011 model year.
"This goes beyond what is technologically feasible and economically practical," the alliance said, calling the proposal "excessive."
The alliance said the proposal would eliminate up to 82,000 auto jobs and reduce auto sales by as many as 856,000 vehicles by 2015. It said the regulations would
increase the cost of light trucks by an average of $4,000.
When it passed an energy bill last year, with the support of automakers, Congress required the NHTSA to set fuel economy standards at
the "maximum feasible," level with a minimum industry fleetwide average of 35 mpg by 2020. The NHTSA's April proposal is the first
regulatory step toward reaching that and achieves more than half of the target.
THEIR LINKS ARE WRONG – ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS ARE GOOD FOR

BUSINESSES – PREFER OUR EVIDENCE BECAUSE IT CITES THE MOST RECENT STUDIES.
Energy Efficiency News 8. [July 16 “Being green makes economic sense for businesses”
http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/458/]
Tighter environmental regulation means lower profits for businesses, right? Wrong, according to new research from George
Mason University in Virginia, USA. Nicole Darnall looked at over 2600 manufacturing facilities in seven countries and found
that those organisations that improve efficiency and overall environmental performance can increase profits.
“The primary reason why the United States and many other countries do not have national climate change policy and do not
implement more stringent environmental legislation is due to the costs the regulations would impose on firms,” says environmental
science and policy expert Darnall.
Her research shows that organisations can offset or completely eliminate the cost of regulations by improving production processes
– including reducing waste and using sustainable or more environmentally friendly resources – and introducing green products
and technologies.
“Many policymakers believe environmental regulations are a win-lose proposition—society benefits from a cleaner environment,
but businesses are at an economic disadvantage," says Darnall. "This research shows it can be a win-win.”
52
SDI 08

NON UNIQUE – CALIFORNIA IS TAKING ACTION ON FUEL EFFICIENCY AND THE
ENVIRONMENT NOW – ZERO LINK UNIQUENESS.
MONDAQ.COM 08. [JULY 9 “UNITED STATES: GREENHOUSE GAS CONTROL UPDATE: CALIFORNIA AND
GEORGIA” http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=63166]
California's draft "scoping plan" expands energy efficiency programs, distributed solar generation and the renewable portfolio
standard requirement, and establishes a cap-and-trade program by 2011. In Georgia, a state court imposed a carbon dioxide
emissions limitation for a power plant, citing Massachusetts v. EPA.
In 2006, California's legislature adopted Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), the Global Warming Solutions Act, which directed the
California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop a plan to reduce California's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels
by 2020. AB 32 also requires CARB to approve a scoping plan "for achieving the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions" by January 2009. On June 26, 2008, CARB released its long-awaited Climate Change Draft Scoping Plan to implement the directives of AB 32.
CARB will continue to revise this Draft Scoping Plan based on further analysis and public input to develop the Proposed Scoping Plan, which it will present for
further consideration in November 2008.
NON UNIQUE – GEORGIA IS DOING SWEEPING ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS NOW.

MONDAQ.COM 08. [JULY 9 “UNITED STATES: GREENHOUSE GAS CONTROL UPDATE: CALIFORNIA AND
GEORGIA” http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=63166]
California, while a groundbreaker in environmental regulation, is not the only state addressing climate change. For instance, a
state court in Georgia recently invalidated a permit for the development of a proposed coal-burning power plant and instructed the
state Environmental Protection Division to include carbon dioxide emissions limitations in any future permit for that plant. The
court, applying the Supreme Court of the United States' decision in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), for the first time linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit
under the Clean Air Act. See McDermott On the Subject " Two U.S. Supreme Court Rulings Pave the Way, Maybe ," published April 5, 2007. In Massachusetts v.
EPA, the Supreme Court found that carbon dioxide was a pollutant that could be regulated under the federal Clean Air Act. Although the federal government has
not issued any regulations in response to this decision, the Georgia court stated that federal air pollution control laws required pollution permits to cover all
pollutants that could potentially be regulated under the Clean Air Act. If upheld on appeal or adopted by other states, this decision could have a far-
reaching impact on the regulation and limitation of carbon dioxide emissions from emission sources, such as power plants, in the United States.
ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS COMING NOW FROM THE EPA – FOCUSED ON FUEL

EFFICIENCY AND EMISSIONS.
Columbus Dispatch 7/14/08 [“EPA takes aim at pollution caused by recreational boats”
http://dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/07/14/Boatpollute.ART_ART_07-14-08_B1_62ANV64.html?sid=101]
But tougher government mandates to reduce smog and airborne soot have expanded the focus to include trains, bulldozers,
lawn mowers and, now, boats.
A set of new rules the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to enact this summer would make manufacturers
build more-efficient, cleaner boat engines and fuel systems.
"It's going to be a big change for the industry," said John McKnight, environmental compliance director for the Chicago-based
National Marine Manufacturers Association, which represents U.S. boat-makers.
A SLEW OF EMISSIONS REGULATIONS TARGETING CARS COMING NOW AS A RESULT OF

MASS V EPA.
Wall Street Journal Online 7/19/08 [“The Lawnmower Men”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642309337666613.html?mod=googlenews_wsj]
The mess began in 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Mass. v. EPA that greenhouse gases are "air pollutants" under
current environmental laws, despite the fact that the laws were written decades before the climate-change panic. The EPA was
ordered to regulate if it decides that carbon emissions are a danger to the public. The 588-page "advance notice of proposed rulemaking" lays
out how the EPA would like it to work in practice.
Justice Antonin Scalia noted in his dissent that under the Court's "pollutant" standard "everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies," which the EPA
appears to have taken literally. It is alarmed by "enteric fermentation in domestic livestock" -- that is, er, their "emissions." A farm with over 25 cows would exceed
the EPA's proposed carbon limits. So would 500 acres of crops, due to harvesting and processing machinery.
But never fear. The EPA would regulate "farm tractors" too, plus "lawn and garden equipment." For example, it "could require a different unit
of measure [for carbon emissions] tied to the machine's mission or output -- such as grams per kilogram of cuttings from a 'standard' lawn for lawnmowers."
In fact, the EPA has new mandates for everything with an engine. There's a slew of auto regulations, especially jacking up
fuel-efficiency standards well beyond their current levels, and even controlling the weight and performance of cars and
trucks. Carbon rules are offered for "dirt bikes and snowmobiles." Next up: Nascar.
53
SDI 08

Business confidence is at historic lows—recent indices prove
Dallas Business Journal 7/3/08 ("CEO confidence drops again in June,"

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/06/30/daily45.html)
CEO confidence in the American economy took a nose dive in June, mirroring a 10 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial
Average and a weak outlook on employment, according to the monthly Chief Executive magazine CEO Index.
The index for June plunged 11.8 percent to 84.5 points, CEO magazine reported. The index started at 100 points in October 2002,
but has been around historical lows throughout the last quarter.
All five component indices -- current, future, business, investment and employment -- of the CEO Index fell last month.
Employment and Investment Confidence Indices were hit the worst, reaching their lowest levels since 2002 when polling began.
Business confidence is declining—CEO sentiment and recent indices prove
Dallas Business Journal 7/3/08 ("CEO confidence drops again in June,"

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/06/30/daily45.html)
Employment Confidence Index dropped 17 percent to all-time low of 77.1 points. The magazine said 51.9 percent of CEO expect
employment to drop over the next quarter. The Employment Confidence Index numbers correlate to the jobs data with a six-month
lag time. Therefore, employment is expected to remain weak through the Presidential Election.
The Investment Confidence Index also hit a historic low, falling 13 percent to 93.1 points in June. Only 23 percent of CEOs said
they were planning to increase capital spending at their company, while 39 percent said they are cutting spending.
"CEOs are clearly negative on the economy and they expect things to get worse before they get better," said Edward Kopko,
chairman and publisher of Chief Executive Magazine. "Particularly, CEOs' outlook on employment and investment over the next
quarter suggests that we are up for a challenging summer and election season."
US automakers are struggling now—a weak US economy and high oil prices are the primary culprits
Merx 7/16/08 (Katie, Business Writer @ Detroit Free Press, "GM lays out cuts for long haul, waiting for revived economy,"
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080716/BUSINESS01/807160356&imw=Y)
The world's largest automaker also suspended its stock dividend for the first time since 1922 as Chairman and Chief Executive
Officer Rick Wagoner seeks to conserve and raise $15 billion to sustain the company through 2009 as its sales plummet in the
face of a weak U.S. economy and high gasoline prices.
Fending off speculation about possible bankruptcy, Wagoner and his top generals said Tuesday that they are planning for an economy that is
worse than they actually expect: continued high oil prices, a permanent consumer shift from trucks to cars and sales at 1993 levels this year and
next.
But he added that the company will continue to "read and react" to economic conditions that come with no guarantees.
"As I've said from the start, our goal is not just to change GM's bottom line from red to black, our goal is to change GM for the long haul," Wagoner said. "We face
these challenges with confidence and strength. Our plan is not a plan to survive, it is a plan to win."
GM shares gained 46 cents, or 4.9%, Tuesday, closing at $9.84. But Moody's Investor Services is reviewing GM's junk-level credit rating for possible downgrade,
and some observers wondered whether Wagoner went far enough.
"This may be the last gasp of GM before, and its last desperate hope to avoid, bankruptcy," said David Gregory, professor of labor law at St. John's University. "The
real question is whether this restructuring cuts mortally into the bone of GM, and not simply to the bone."
Rivals Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC also have been cutting truck production and salaried-related expenses. Moody's is reviewing Chrysler's credit
rating for a possible downgrade and maintains a negative outlook on Ford's rating.
GM President and Chief Operating Office Fritz Henderson said the company believes U.S. auto sales will total 14.7 million this year, but said it is now is planning
as if light-vehicle sales will reach only 14 million both this year and next and oil prices will remain at their elevated level.
"If things were to deteriorate further, we've taken a very conservative outlook for where trucks and SUVs are going," Henderson said.
Wagoner announced the moves, which include cutting salaried-employee costs in the United States and Canada by 20%, just six weeks after the company's last
restructuring announcement on June 3.
Since then, Wagoner said, the U.S. economy and the environment for auto sales have deteriorated even further. That raised speculation among analysts and
investors that the company needed to raise more cash to sustain itself through 2009 or risk bankruptcy.
As recently as last week in Dallas, Wagoner denied that bankruptcy was a possibility and defended the corporation's cash position, but the automaker's
stock -- already at its lowest level in 54 years -- fell further in the face of his protest.
54
SDI 08
Bush Has Political Capital Now (2AC Answers to “Bush Bad”)

Bush still has tremendous clout on matters of national security—FISA and legislative victories prove
Feller 7/11/08 (Ben, AP Writer, "On national security, Bush still has juice,"
http://www.timeswv.com/headlinenews/local_story_193013456.html)
WASHINGTON — For an unpopular guy on his way out of his office, President Bush still has some juice.
When Bush signed a law Thursday to broaden the government’s eavesdropping power, he served notice of how much sway he
still holds on matters of national security. Yes, he is relevant in the twilight of his second term, even with anemic public
approval ratings and much of the country tuning him out.
Bush got the anti-terrorism spying legislation largely on his terms. He also has won fight after fight to keep the Iraq war going without a
timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops. He vetoed a bill that would have banned waterboarding for terror suspects, then watched as
Democrats failed to override him.
Bush will finish out his presidency strong—recent wins and a weak Democratic Congress ensure
Gannon 6/20/08 (Jeff, political blogger, Jeff Gannon - A Voice of the New Media, lexis)
Jun. 20, 2008 (Jeff Gannon - A Voice of the New Media delivered by Newstex) -- Democrats and the Old Media wrote President George W.
Bush off long ago,
but it appears that the "lame duck" is going to finish strong. Democrats took over Congress in 2006 promising they would pull
troops out of Iraq and push through a long list of liberal legislation. However, the "Accomplish-Nothing" Congress of Nancy
Pelosi and Harry Reid have failed to enact any key agenda item. This week has been a particularly bad week for the Democrats as
President Bush chalked up wins on FISA, telecom immunity and Iraq War funding. Next up is offshore oil drilling and
Bush will likely win that one, too. Gas now costs over $4 per gallon and the Democrats will get the blame for standing in the way of developing the
energy resources America desperately needs. After the floor debate on FISA and telecom immunity, I listened to C-SPAN callers during the vote. The moonbats are
howling, mostly at the 90 or so Democrats who voted for the bill. Newstex ID: JEFF-0001-26129751
Bush isn't a lame duck—FISA victory proves
Grier 7/10/08 (Peter, Staff, Christian Science Monitor, "White House scores key victory on government eavesdropping,"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0710/p02s05-uspo.html)
Washington - "Lame duck" might not mean "powerless" after all. With only six months left in office, the Bush administration
has won a rare legislative victory on a contentious issue: secret government eavesdropping.
The Senate on July 9 passed a final bill overhauling eavesdropping rules. The move marked the effective end of nearly a year of ferocious legislative argument over
the extent of government electronic surveillance and the nature of surveillance oversight in the electronic age.
The result is a measure that gives the White House much of what it wants. In particular, it shields from civil lawsuits telecommunications firms
that, without court permission, helped the government listen in on the communications of Americans in the months following Sept. 11.
55
SDI 08
Obama Bad—2AC Tax Cuts Impact Turn Module

Democratic victory in 2008 ensures the rollback of Bush’s tax cuts—this cripples the US economy
Will 07 (George, Award-winning Syndicated Columnist, "Where's Demo ranting about tax cuts?" 6/10,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070610/ai_n19292275)
They have a problem. How do you exclaim, as Hillary Clinton does, that today's economy is "like going back to the era of the robber barons," and
insist that the nation urgently needs substantial tax increases, in the face of these facts:
In the 102 quarters since Ronald Reagan's tax cuts went into effect more than 25 years ago, there have been 96 quarters of growth. Since the Bush tax cuts
and the current expansion began, the economy's growth has averaged 3 percent per quarter and more than 8 million jobs
have been created. The deficit as a percentage of GDP is below the post-World War II average.
Democrats, economic hypochondriacs all, see economic sickness. They should get on with legislating their cure.
Twenty-three months after the next president is inaugurated, the Bush tax cuts expire. The winner of the 2008 election and
her or his congressional allies will determine what is done about the fact that, unless action is taken, in 2011 the economy will be
walloped:
The five income tax brackets (10, 25, 28, 33 and 35 percent) will be increased 50, 12, 10.7, 9.1 and 13.1 percent, respectively, to 15, 28, 31, 36 and 39.6
percent. The child tax credit reverts to $500 from $1,000. The estate tax rate, which falls to zero in 2009, will snap back to a 60 percent
maximum and exemptions that have increased will decrease. The capital gains rate will rise and the marriage penalty will be revived, as will
the double taxation of dividends.
56
SDI 08
Obama Bad—Will Repeal Bush Tax Cuts

Democrats will repeal Bush’s tax cuts
Rhee 10/25/07 (Foon, Deputy National Political Editor @ Boston Globe, "Giuliani, Romney lay into tax proposal,"
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/10/21-week/ )
The divide on taxes between Republican and Democratic presidential contenders is wide and deep. The leading Republicans want
to keep President Bush's tax cuts, which are set to expire on Jan. 1, 2011 at the latest. The leading Democrats, on the other
hand, want to allow those tax cuts to lapse, or to repeal them sooner, in order to pay for healthcare reform and other programs.
Democrats will repeal Bush’s tax cuts
Chattanooga Times Free Press 11/1/07 (lexis)

That question should be paramount because tax increases are clearly what Democrats have in mind.
It is no secret that if Democrats maintain their majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate with a Democrat
elected president, they intend to repeal the tax cuts for everyone who pays income taxes that President George W. Bush
managed to get approved.
Democrats will rollback Bush’s tax cuts
Barone 10/15/07 (Michael, National Review, lexis)

Expiring cuts. Can we expect to see the tax issue revived in the United States? Possibly. The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010, and the
estate tax is scheduled to come back in full force in 2011, unless the Congress and president elected in 2008 take action.
Democratic presidential candidates are calling for letting the tax cuts on high earners expire, and House Democrats last week beat
back a proposal for a permanent repeal of the estate tax. So the issue may be squarely raised: If Democrats win, taxes on some voters (they will say a
few, Republicans will say many) will go up. Democrats starting with Bill Clinton have been carrying high-income suburban counties because of their stands on
cultural issues. But with those issues less prominent -- you haven't heard presidential candidates of either party talk much about them this year -- taxes could go
back into the spotlight.
57
SDI 08
Obama Bad—Bush Tax Cuts Key to Economy

Rolling back Bush’s tax cuts destroys the economy by undermining investor confidence, reversing the
stock market recovery, and derailing business confidence
Kerpen and Roff 05 (Phil and Peter, Policy Director + VP @ Free Enterprise Fund, "Keep the Good Times Rolling,"
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDAyODUxNWMzZThkMzBiZmQ2ODlmYjkyZWFhYzI0ZTk=)
The 2003 tax bill was a huge supply-side success story. The bill’s provisions, especially the capital-gains rate cut, the dividend rate cut, and the small
business expensing provisions, boosted the after-tax returns on capital and encouraged a sharp turnaround in business investment.
With the budget deficit standing at a paltry 2.6 percent of GDP and the economy humming along, it should be unthinkable that
policymakers would enact a series of massive tax hikes that could derail the good times. The natural instinct among policymakers — who
are risk-adverse creatures in general — is to leave well-enough alone when the public seems to be happy. Unfortunately, congressional inaction now will obliterate
the successful policies that have supercharged this economy.
Unless Congress extends the 2003 tax cuts, the following will occur: Small businesses will be hit with a tax increase on capital
expenditures, raising their cost of capital and hampering innovation and entrepreneurship; the tax rate on capital gains will increase
33 percent, destroying trillions of dollars of shareholder wealth and slamming the brakes on economic growth; the tax rate on
dividends will increase by a staggering 133 percent, making companies less accountable to investors and creating strong incentives for companies to inefficiently
hoard cash; and individual income-tax rates will increase, the top rate by over 13 percent, creating a disincentive to work and produce.
Inaction by Congress, in other words, will result in a massive tax hike, one that will be particularly onerous for seniors (many of whom are likely voters) who rely
on dividend income.
If all this is not bad enough, even the uncertainty created by the chance that the tax cuts won’t be extended could be enough to
undermine investor confidence, reverse the stock market recovery, and derail economic growth. Predictability is the
mother of business confidence. If there is an expectation that these tax hikes will occur, the cost of capital could increase
enough to send the economy into a tailspin.
Democratic tax hikes destroy investor confidence
Kerpen 07 (Phil, Policy Director @ Americans for Prosperity, "An All-Out Assault on Capital Gains,"
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Y2JhZTliZjMwZDhmYTk5NTZlNGNlMGE1NDRlZTA3Njg=)
Raising the capital-gains tax to 35 percent, or even 40 percent or more should the Democrats successfully raise income-tax rates,
would dramatically reduce the after-tax return on stock investments, which would be a great impediment to stock markets. It
would significantly raise the cost of capital, drying up investment in many innovative, entrepreneurial companies. It also would hit
the U.S. Treasury hard, contrary to the conclusions of the static-revenue scorekeepers. History is an excellent guide here: Every
capital-gains tax hike in the past thirty years has led to lower federal revenues, while every cap-gains tax cut has led to higher
revenues.
Investors need to weigh-in against tax hikes on capital now, and hold the line on private equity. If private-equity partnerships take a
hit from higher capital-gains tax rates, it won’t be long before regular investors feel the full force of the blow.
58
SDI 08
Obama Bad—2AC Free Trade Good Impact Module

The Democrats will pursue protectionist trade policies towards China—this threatens global trade
talks
Business Times Singapore 9/20/07 (lexis)

Unfortunately, much of the attention of the White House, Congress and the American media seems to be focused on political and sex scandals: the arrest of
Republican Senator Larry Craig in a toilet on suspicion of lewd conduct and his subsequent decision to resign from the Senate; the resignation of Attorney-General
Alberto Gonzales, who was in the spotlight this year for the firings of eight US attorneys; and the decision by Karl Rove, another long-time confidante of President
George W Bush, to retire. Moreover, as the race to the White House heats up, much of what will be happening in Washington until the
November elections in 2008 is going to be assessed and spun on the basis of that contest. Hence the main Democratic
presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards will compete for the support of Democratic primary voters by
reiterating calls for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, demanding to punish China for its currency policy and by making
protectionist noises on trade policy. At the same time, reflecting the views of their party's political base, the Republican presidential candidates will
accuse the Democrats of 'appeasing the terrorists', while President Bush will continue to do his best to secure his historical 'legacy' by investing his remaining
political dividends in resisting Congressional and public pressure to withdraw from Iraq.
The end result of all this political fighting in Washington could certainly be tragic when it comes to Iraq, especially if the White House and Congress fail to agree
on a common and coherent strategy there. No less depressing could be the effect of the deadlock in Washington on US economic and trade policy. The rising
populist rhetoric on Capitol Hill and a weakening US presidency would only contribute to the sense of anxiety, while the China bashing and the obstacles
placed on the ability of the White House to pursue new trade deals could spell a slow death of the Doha Round.
Global free trade solves nuclear conflict—creates economic disincentives to wage war
Copley News Service 12/1/99 (lexis)

nations join together in groups
Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have forgotten that threat. The truth is that
like the WTO not just to further their own prosperity, but also to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has
traded in the threat of a worldwide nuclear war for the benefit of cooperative global economics.
Some Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're
special-interest activists, whether the cause is environmental, labor or paranoia about global government.
Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher Bertrand Russell, the
father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to work together rather than strive against each other. These and other war
protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might
have been settled by bullets and bombs.
As long as nations are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other countries, they have a major
disincentive to wage war . That's why bringing China, a budding superpower, into the WTO is so important. As exports to the United States and the rest of
the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that prosperity increases demand for the goods we produce, the threat of hostility diminishes.
59
SDI 08
Obama Bad—Obama = Protectionist/Destroys Global Economy

Democrats will turn protectionist—this will cripple the global economy
Sunday Business 9/1/07 (lexis)

Worryingly, though, a destructive and economically illiterate populism is gripping the Democrats and has made inroads into the Republicans.
All the
Democratic candidates are dishing out copious helpings of protectionist snake oil; if ingested, it would condemn America to
slow decline, destroy tens of millions of jobs and guarantee an economic catastrophe. Even Mrs Clinton is desperately trying
to distance herself from her husband's free trade policies of a decade ago, a deeply irresponsible U-turn which she cannot really believe in and of
which she should be ashamed. For their part, the Edwards and Obama campaigns genuinely seem to believe that all of America's economic problems would
disappear if people bought fewer imported goods. Just as indefensibly, on the Republican side, Mick Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and a dark horse
candidate, likes to boast that he's not a "Wall Street Republican" while saying that "there is no free trade without fair trade".
An America that turned protectionist would deliver a massive shock to the global economy; it would make the market
turmoil triggered by the sub-prime crisis look like a tea party. It is imperative that no candidate opposed to free trade be selected in the
Republican primaries; we must hope that, were a Democrat to be elected to the White House next year, he or she would see sense and stick to free trade.
60
SDI 08
Obama Bad—2AC War on Terrorism Impact Module

A Democratic presidential victory in 2008 means the US loses the war on terrorism
Hawkins 07 (John, Professional Blogger + Conservative Pundit, "The top 9 reasons why a Democratic president can't handle
the war on terrorism,"
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2007/02/23/the_top_9_reasons_why_a_democratic_president_cant_handle_the
_war_on_terrorism?page=2)
1) The Democratic insistence on treating the war on terrorism as a law enforcement issue will make it extremely difficult to deal
with terrorist groups. When you have heavily armed terrorists ensconced in foreign nations, sometimes with the approval of their government, it's simply not practical to capture
them, read them their rights, and take them back to America for trial. That is something that should be obvious after that approach was tried by Bill Clinton in the nineties and it failed to
produce results. Going back to it in the post 9/11 world, which is what the Democrats want to do, is nothing but an invitation to
catastrophe.
2) Ronald Reagan once said that, "Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong." Conversely, a super power that seems weak
invites attack. After spending the last six years railing against the Bush Administration and fighting tooth and nail against almost
every measure that makes it tougher on the terrorists, a Democratic victory in 2008 would be viewed by the world as nothing
less than an American capitulation in the war on terror. This would encourage the terrorists to launch more attacks and
cause our allies in the fight to lose heart.
3) When the only credible Democratic voice on national security in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, was defeated in the Democratic primary last year, the message sent to Democrats was,
"Being serious about defending America may cost you your job." After that, elected Democrats became even more reluctant to stand up against terrorism,
which is really saying something, since the Democratic Party has been nothing but a hindrance in the war on terrorism since they voted en masse for the war in Afghanistan.
4) The Democratic base doesn't take terrorism seriously and considers it to be nothing more than a distraction from socializing the economy, raising taxes, promoting gay marriage, and the
other domestic issues that are near and dear to the heart of liberals. It's old hat to hear Democrats say that they think global warming is more dangerous than terrorism, but at one point in
2006, 94% of the readers at the most popular liberal blog on earth, the Daily Kos, were actually saying that they thought that corporate media consolidation was a greater threat than
If you have a Democratic base that isn't serious about fighting terrorism -- and it isn't -- you will have a Democratic
terrorism.
President that isn't serious about fighting terrorism.
5) Using the American military to further the interests of our country makes liberals uncomfortable, even though they're usually happy to send the troops gallivanting off to the latest
godforsaken hotspot that has caught the eye of liberal activists. That's why many Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, who oppose winning the war in Iraq, are all for using our military in
Sudan. However, it is also why those same liberals will oppose using our military to tackle terrorists abroad except in Afghanistan, where it would be politically damaging for them to call
for a pull-out.
6) When the U.N. Security Council has members like China, France, and Russia that seem to be financially in bed with every country we end up at loggerheads with, the UN is going to be
even more hapless and ineffective than normal. Since the Democrats are so hung up on getting UN approval for everything we do, it will be practically impossible for them to move
forward on any serious, large scale foreign policy enterprise.
7) The Democrats are overly concerned with "international opinion," AKA "European opinion." The Europeans have mediocre militaries, pacifistic populations, fetishize international law,
and have extremely inflated views of their own importance. Other than Britain, they don't have much to offer in a military conflict, yet even getting token forces from them that are
minimally useful is like pulling teeth. Getting large numbers of European nations to cooperate with us on military ventures that are important to American security will be nearly
impossible at this point -- yet since Democrats place a higher priority on European approval than our national security, they will insist on it. This, combined with the logjam at the UN,
would hamstring any Democratic President.
8) The Democrats want to close Guantanamo Bay and put the terrorists held there into the American court system. The justice system in the United States is simply not designed to deal
with and interrogate terrorists or enemy fighters captured overseas by our troops. Putting the terrorists held at Gitmo into our court system would only mean that hundreds of terrorists
would be freed on technicalities because it's not advisable to reveal intelligence methods -- or because our soldiers aren't trained in the legal niceties that are necessary for policemen, but
should be irrelevant in a war zone. How absurd would it be to catch a Taliban fighter entering Afghanistan, take him back to the United States, have him released by a liberal judge, and
then dropped back off on the Afghan border where he'd be back shooting at our troops the next day? If a Democrat wins in 2008, we will get to find out all about it first hand.
9) The intelligence programs that have helped prevent another 9/11 would be curtailed under a Democratic President. As a general rule, Democrats favor weakening our military and
intelligence agencies. Add to that the complete hysteria we've seen from liberals over programs like the Patriot Act and the NSA tapping calls from terrorists overseas to people in the U.S.
Under a Democratic President, we would be sure to see our intelligence agencies systematically stripped of the powers they
need to detect and foil terrorist plots.
If a Democrat were to win in 2008, it would give terrorists worldwide a four year respite to rebuild, reload, and run wild without
serious opposition from the United States. The price our nation and our allies would pay in blood and treasure for that mistake would be
incalculable.
Winning the war on terrorism is critical to human survival
Jerusalem Post 5/12/04 (lexis)

In the first case, he maintained that submission only serves to encourage terrorists and their leaders and boost their motivation,
while survival would depend on nations taking all necessary steps to reduce the risks, including international intelligence cooperation.
"Dealing with terrorism requires a broad range of responses, starting with clear and coherent policies. It is necessary to have quality intelligence, as well as law enforcement, the military,
and the means to counter technological and cyber-terrorism," said Alexander.
"We also need an educational response because the children of today will be the terrorists of tomorrow. Unless we can defuse the extremist ideological and theological elements and their
propaganda, the measures won't work.
"We have to deal with the root causes and try to improve economic and social conditions - a sort of global Marshall plan - but first it is necessary to deal with the terror leadership.
"To this end some innocent civilians might be harmed but, make no mistake, this is war and to fight it nations have to pool their resources. No nation can deal with the problem
unilaterally.
"In the past, terrorism was regarded as a tactical rather than a strategic threat but it has become a permanent fixture and a challenge
to the strategic interests of nations.
61
SDI 08
"In fact," said Alexander, "it represents the most threatening challenge to civilization in the 21st century. The question of survival
will depend to a great extent on how civilized society tackles this threat."
62
SDI 08
Obama Bad—Obama Undermines War on Terrorism

Democrats will undermine the war on terrorism—they’re too weak on national security
Hawkins 07 (John, Professional Blogger + Conservative Pundit, "The top 9 reasons why a Democratic president can't handle
the war on terrorism,"
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2007/02/23/the_top_9_reasons_why_a_democratic_president_cant_handle_the
_war_on_terrorism?page=2)
Many people assume that the Democrats' opposition to the war on terrorism and their unwavering determination to undercut the war in Iraq are solely an outgrowth
of their dislike of George Bush. While Bush Derangement Syndrome and raw political considerations certainly are part of the problem, you've got to understand
that the modern Democratic Party is simply no longer capable of dealing with a conflict like the war on terrorism because of
the weird ideological tics of liberalism.
Look at how weak and helpless Jimmy Carter was when he was confronted by the Iranians. And Bill Clinton? Despite being
prodded to take action time and time again by world events like the bombing of the World Trade Center, Saddam Hussein's attempted assassination
of George Bush, Sr., the Khobar Towers bombing, the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole, along
with India, Pakistan, and North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons under his watch, Clinton seemed incapable of dealing effectively with any
serious foreign policy challenges.
That being said, if this nation were unfortunate enough to be burdened for four years with Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary
Clinton or one of the other liberals contending for the Democratic nomination, things would be even worse this time around.
Why would that be the case? There are a variety of reasons for it.
63
SDI 08
Obama Bad Answers—Repealing Tax Cuts Solves Deficit/Key to US

Economy
Repealing Bush's tax cuts are key to reducing the deficit and balancing the federal budget—this is key
to the US economy
Philadelphia Enquirer 7/14/08 ("Editorial: Costly Tax Cuts,"

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080714_Editorial__Costly_Tax_Cuts.html)
The cornerstone of McCain's economic plan is to extend the Bush tax cuts after 2010, when they are set to expire. Doing so would
cost the U.S. Treasury $1.8 trillion over the next decade, making it vastly more difficult to put the budget back in the black.
McCain is talking about restraining the growth of Medicare and Social Security. Good. Another worthy endeavor. But he hasn't specified what he would do. And
holding down spending and cutting government waste won't come close to making up the difference in lost revenue from extending the tax cuts.
By contrast, allowing all the tax cuts to expire (sometimes called the "cold turkey" option) would bring the budget into a surplus by 2012.
Of course, it would also impose tax increases on nearly all workers, which is never a preferred political option, no matter which party controls Congress and the
White House.
Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, isn't even promising to balance the budget in his first term. He said it's more important "to make some critical
investments right now in America's families."
But Obama is at least talking more about how to reduce the federal deficit. He has a plan that would raise taxes on workers earning more than $250,000 per year,
but would spend most of that extra revenue on government programs.
Reducing deficits and balancing the budget are critical for the nation's economy. Under President Bush, the national debt has
risen from $5.7 trillion to $9.4 trillion. More than $2 trillion of that total is owed to foreign banks and investors.
When the government borrows more money, it eventually drives up interest rates. That makes your mortgage and your car loan more
expensive. And when businesses can't get loans, or their costs go up, they usually react by cutting jobs. It's a formula for a deep,
sustained recession.
64
SDI 08
Obama Bad Answers—Protectionism High Now

Global protectionism is on the rise—the EU is pursuing agricultural protectionism and Obama and the
Farm Bill are demonstrations of rising US protectionism
The Times Online 6/23/08 ("Free trade becomes a scapegoat as times get tough,"
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4192986.ece?openComment=true)
That voters have got so used to more or less uninterrupted growth and cheap credit that they feel angry and betrayed. The temptation to search
for scapegoats, preferably foreign, is proportionately high. Just when the value of open economies and free trade most urgently
needs strong political advocates, they are - predictably but perilously - in short supply.
Goldilocks is having a bad-hair day and, instead of reaching for the hair conditioner, her hairdressers are throwing tantrums. President Sarkozy's ridiculous
outburst against Peter Mandelson last week explicitly and falsely asserted that the EU's modest Doha Round offer to reduce farm
subsidies and tariffs would cut EU farm production, thus condemning African children to starvation. This is naked, populist,
protectionism, built on a manifest untruth: only look at New Zealand, where farm production and exports boomed after the total removal of farm subsidies.
With farm prices high worldwide, there could be no better time than now to lower protectionist barriers, thus encouraging farmers in the developing world. Instead,
so far with German backing, France is pushing for “community preference” in agriculture and an even larger Common Agricultural Policy budget,
on the pretext of insulating Europe's consumers from high world prices.
Mr Sarkozy's ultimate goal may be to sink the Doha Round altogether. That is hardly a surprise. Affection for open markets has never been France's distinguishing
characteristic.
Much more worrying is the resurgence of protectionism in America. In the Democratic primary campaign, both Hillary
Clinton and Barack Obama treated free trade as a horseman of the Apocalypse, depicting a world in which American parents and children
compete for minimum-wage jobs while corporations heartlessly shift the better jobs overseas.
Mr Obama claims, for instance, that “entire cities...have been devastated” by Nafta, the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1993, which he blames for
destroying a million American jobs, when in fact total employment has risen by 27 million since 1993, when the trade deficit with Mexico, his favourite scapegoat,
accounts for a hardly significant 1.7 per cent of the US economy - and when, overall, job losses attributable to trade rather than to higher productivity amount to
only about 2 to 3 per cent of American layoffs.
Should he win, it is possible that Mr Obama will stop talking nonsense like this, for the simple reason that the cheaper dollar has helped to make exports the
brightest part of the US economy, accounting for 40 per cent of growth. Optimists point out that he has so far kept quiet on China.
Perhaps he has been told that price inflation is six points lower for blue-collar Americans than for wealthier ones, because poorer people buy more Chinese goods.
However, nothing could be less certain than his conversion to free trade, because the Democrats are likely to increase their majority in
Congress, and protectionism is raging in Democrat ranks - witness the 2008 Farm Bill, a $290 billion (£146 billion)
monument to protectionism.
The Farm Bill is an extreme form of protectionism that threatens the global economy
Rome Sentinel 6/24/08 ("Congress' decline and fall," http://www.romesentinel.com/news?newsid=20080624-141321)

But government should not be measured on its popularity. Failure is measured one vote at a time.
The latest failure is Congress’ vote to override
President Bush’s veto of the bloated Farm Bill — a protectionist conglomeration costing $290 billion in food programs and
agricultural subsidies that raises everyone else’s taxes and short-circuits the market place. While Congress bemoans the increasing cost of
food for the poor, if the goal were to make food more affordable for the poor they would stop taxing citizens to provide subsidies that go mostly to agri-business
giants, and open the markets to farm products from wherever they can be produced most economically. First American subsidies make it impossible for
Third World farmers to compete. Then America delivers foreign aid to salve the offense.
Congress’ agricultural free lunch undermines the economic engine used to raise the quality of American life. When citizens grow
accustomed to entitlement, societies decay from within. Stealing money from others in the name of equality saps the nation of drive and purpose. Instead, people
are owed, not a guarantee of quality of life, but an opportunity to train for the jobs wherever they are available that they may better earn quality of life.
US protectionism high now—farm bill, tariff on Brazilian ethanol
Marinis 7/2/08 (Alexander, Bloomberg, "Obama Skeptics Are Near, Admirers Far Away: Alexandre Marinis,"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_marinis&sid=a0K0kflNpmSM)
Obama voted in favor of the 2008 Farm Bill, a $289 billion tribute to protectionism that maintained the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff
the U.S. levies on imported ethanol. Obama rejects lowering this tariff, even though U.S. consumers are paying more than $4 a gallon for
gasoline. Ethanol could help lower those costs, reduce pollution and reduce U.S. dependency on oil imported from unstable nations.
65
SDI 08
Obama Bad Answers—Losing War on Terrorism Now/Lower Profile Good

US losing the war on terrorism now and a LOWER PROFILE in the war on terrorism is key to solving
the terrorist threat
Boston Globe 7/3/08 ("Pakistan's problems, and ours,"

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/07/03/pakistans_problem_and_ours/)
Hence the second nasty reality: the harsh facts on the ground that suggest the Bush administration has been losing its
proclaimed war on terrorism. It will be up to the next president to develop a coherent long-term strategy for coping with Al
Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups.
An incisive report in Monday's New York Times described an administration riven by turf battles and quarrels over anti-terrorist
tactics. A crucial unresolved dispute concerns plans for US forces to enter Pakistan in search of "high-value" Al Qaeda targets.
Bush's successor will need to reconsider the nature of the terrorist threat, starting with an understanding that the jihadist movement
is aimed primarily at overthrowing regimes in the Muslim world which it deems insufficiently Islamic. In this internal war within
the world of Islam, America has been targeted as the "far power" propping up governments such as those in Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Jordan, and Morocco.
The next US administration will need to lower the American profile in this war. It will have to cooperate more extensively,
and quietly, with intelligence services and law enforcement in the Arab world, central Asia, and Europe.
66
SDI 08
Peak Oil Answers—Transition to Renewables = Takes Too Long

Transition towards alternative energy would take a long time
Yetiv 6/24/08 (Steve, Prof of Poly Sci @ Old Dominion University, The Virginian-Pilot, lexis)
If peak oil is creeping up slowly, does this mean we're doomed? Well, no. But, depending on when oil does peak, it may produce effects for
which we are not prepared.
Oil prices could spike possibly to more than $200 a barrel . Such prices will increasingly spur work on affordable alternatives to oil, as we are already seeing today
in nascent form, but it will take a long time for such alternatives to penetrate the market. Our infrastructure is designed for oil.
We can't switch away from it overnight.
67
SDI 08
Oil Spills Adv Answers

Oil spills aren’t the only source of ocean pollution—land-based pollutants are the greatest threat
Swing 03 (John Temple, Foreign Affairs, "What Future for the Oceans," Sept/Oct, lexis)
The toll of unrestrained fishing is being compounded by another serious problem.
Oceans are being bombarded almost daily by land-based
pollutants that include river runoffs, the dumping of untreated sewage, toxins carried by the atmosphere, and even innocent-
seeming dredge waste. Collectively, these represent an ongoing threat to ocean stability and human welfare. More than 36 million
people currently depend on wild fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. In Asia, 80 percent of coral reefs are at risk and could suffer total collapse within 20
years. Likewise, 70 percent of the Asian mangrove cover is already gone and could disappear entirely by 2030. In the United States, where coastal tourism and
recreation is the fastest growing service-sector business-contributing almost $600 billion yearly to the GDP-salt marsh is disappearing at a rate of 20,000 acres per
year. Approximately 180 million people now visit U.S. coasts annually. Sadly, pollution and the pressure of development may make it increasingly less attractive to
do so in the near future.
68
SDI 08
High Oil Prices Adv Answers—Oil Prices Will ↓ By 2015

Energy Information Administration predicts oil prices to decline below $100 by 2015
Environment and Energy Daily – June 12, 2008

(Katherine Ling, E&E Daily Reporter, “OIL: Markey unhappy with EIA's low price predictions,” 12 Jun. 2008,
<http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2008/06/12/archive/4?terms=eia+price>)
In its revised annual energy outlook for 2008, the EIA predicts oil prices to decline to $57 per barrel in 2016 ($68 per barrel in
nominal dollars) for its reference case. In the high price scenario, EIA said prices would fall back to $79 per barrel ($86 in
nominal) in 2010 then rise to $90 per barrel ($107 in nominal) in 2015.
High oil prices have caused a decrease in its demand. Prices are likely to remain stable or even lower
as fuel subsidies draw the demand lower.
Energy Policy & Markets – May 13, 2008
(Environment and Energy Publishing, “OIL AND GAS: Global demand drops on high prices – IEA,” 13 May 2008, Lexis, <
http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu:2047/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4150324895&format=GNBFI&sort=
RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4150324898&cisb=22_T4150324897&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8322&docNo=1>)
Global oil demand will weaken despite growth in China and the Middle East as a result of record high crude prices and a
slowdown of advanced economies, according to the International Energy Agency forecast released today.
The IEA report said stockpiling was also a key factor in the demand decline.
Emerging economies might see a decline in demand as well if governments decide fuel subsidies are not sustainable, the IEA
added in the monthly report.
"While consumers may be adjusting to high oil prices, the full impact of current high oil prices in excess of $120 per barrel, if
sustained, has yet to be factored into either behavior or forecasts," the IEA said in the report.
The oil market should have been in a surplus for the past two months and will most likely remain that way through 2008 if the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries maintains current output levels, the report said, citing current data and estimates.
The report said the recent record high oil prices were driven by competition between users replenishing oil inventories and buying
oil to meet greater demand.
The high prices have decreased demand, though, and the unwinding of fuel subsidies in emerging economies could draw that
demand even lower.
Toronto-Dominion Bank reports oil prices will drop to $90 per barrel later this year.
Canwest News Service - April 19, 2008
(Eric Beauchesne, Canwest News Service, “Pain at pump good for some; Energy-producing provinces helped by record prices,” 19 April 2008,
<http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu:2047/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4150324895&format=GNBFI&sort=
RELEVANCE&startDocNo=51&resultsUrlKey=29_T4150324898&cisb=22_T4150324897&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8370&docNo=62>)
TD Bank Friday issued a report saying that "oil price relief is coming but not until later this year." And not before they drive pump
prices up to what the bank warned could be an average across Canada of between $1.25 and $1.35 -- and even higher in some
provinces such as British Columbia, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Sas-katchewan and Nova Scotia.
TD predicts, however, that gasoline prices should ease to a "more palatable level" of about $1 a litre by year-end, reflecting what
will be a drop in oil prices to $90 US.
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SDI 08
High Oil Prices Adv Answers—Oil Prices Don’t Undermine Global Economy
High oil prices not having as big of an impact on global economy as they did in earlier decades.
Rogoff, 06
Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard University, May 2006, pg. 1-2, “Oil and the Global Economy,”
http://www.nes.ru/public-presentations/Papers/Oil%20and%20the%20Global%20Economy_Rogoff__v2.pdf
There is now broad consensus among that oil price fluctuations impact global economic growth are somewhat less than they did
two to three decades ago ago. Yes, oil still packs a punch: mainstream empirical estimates, including those analyzed and extended
here, still suggest the doubling of oil price increases between 2003 and 2005 cumulatively lowered global output by at least 1.5%
to date, or about a 750 billion dollars. These same estimate suggest the effect is likely to be at least as large in 2006 as in either of
the preceding years. But, as significant as these losses are, they still seem relatively modest – half or less -- compared to
conventional assessments of the impact of the earlier oil shock episodes, which coincided (or nearly coincided) with far more
massive declines in global GDP growth. Instead, today, despite record high oil prices, global growth is strong across virtually
all regions of the world and projected to remain so for the next year or two. Three or four years ago, trend global GDP growth
was thought to be in the range of 4% (for purchasing power parity weighted GDP). Yet, today, the IMF (April 2006) is forecasting
global growth of 4.9% in 2006 and 4.7% in 2007, after 5.3% in 2004 and 4.8% in 2005. That is, despite oil prices having risen
from $25 per barrel in mid-2003 to nearly $70 as of this writing, growth is booming. Some of the answer, of course, lies in the fact
that recent oil prices increases have a strong demand component, but things are not that simple, since uncertainty over supplies in
Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela are also having a clear effect.
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SDI 08
Oil Dependency Adv Answers—Oil Not Key to Terrorist Funding

Terrorist countries don’t need funding from the oil industry to function
Jeffrey, Terence P, May 12, 2008, Human Events, <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3827/is_20080512/ai_n25480995>
"We know that the money that America spends on foreign oil is funding both sides of the war on terror, that it pays for every- '
thing from the madrassas that plant the seeds of terror in young minds to the Sunni insurgents that attack our troops in
Iraq," Obama said in October, laying out his energy plan. "We know this money corrupts budding democracies and allows
dictators from hostile regimes to threaten the international community."
John McCain made virtually the same, argument in December in his own energy speech. "Al-Qaeda must revel in the irony that
America is effectively helping to fund both sides of the war they caused," he said. "As we sacrifice blood and treasure, some of
our gas dollars flow to the fanatics who build the bombs, hatch the plots, and carry out attacks on our soldiers and citizens.
Iran made over $45 billion from oil sales in 2005, and it is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.
"The transfer of American wealth to the Middle East helps sustain the conditions on which terrorists prey," he said.
Nor was Hillary Clinton to be left out. "We are more dependent on foreign oil today than we were on 9-11," she said in November,
explaining her own energy policy. "And one-third of our trade deficit is the petroleum we import, as we transfer massive
amounts of wealth to undemocratic governments that use those funds to stifle opposition and finance extremism."
A cheaper, cleaner, more secure source of fuel for America would be good in its own right. But if some entrepreneur discovered
tomorrow a fuel that could be manufactured within the United States, wholly replace our petroleum consumption and give
U.S. producers a commanding position in the global energy market-thus beggaring the Persian Gulf-would that choke off funding
for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and end their war against us?
Would it stop Iran from building a nuke? Would it spur positive political change in the Middle East?
The most reasonable answers to these questions are: no, no and no.
Terrorism, unfortunately, is inexpensive. "Al-Qaeda," said the 9-11 commission staff report on terrorist financing, "funded a
number of terrorist operations, including the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa (which cost approximately $10,000), the
9-11 attacks (approximately $400,000 to $500,000), the Oct. 18, 2002, BaIi bombings (approximately $20,000) and potential
maritime operations against oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz (approximately $130,000)."
Even with "overhead" factored in, the commission said, al-Qaeda*s annual budget was only $30 million per year. Some Major
League Baseball players earn as much in a six-month season as Osama bin Laden needed to run al-Qaeda in the six months before
9-11.
If Americans gave up oil, Islamist fanatics could still afford mass murder.
Poor countries can build nukes, too. The CIA's "World Fact Book" says North Korea's "industrial capital stock is nearly beyond
repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts." Its total government budget in 2006 was $2.2 billion,
about one-twentieth the value of me oil revenue John McCain attributes to Iran for 2005. Yet, in 2006, North Korea tested a
nuclear device.
71
SDI 08
Democracy Advantage Answers

The oil destroys democracy hypothesis has been exaggerated
Michael L. Ross, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at UCLA, 2001, “DOES OIL HINDER DEMOCRACY?”,
www.polisci.ucla.edu/faculty/ross/doesoil.pdf
Qualitative studies of the oil-impedes-democracy hypothesis also have important limitations. The vast majority have been
country-level case studies of oil-rich states in the Mideast. Although many have been empirically rich and analytically nuanced, the
Mideast is nevertheless a difficult place to test this claim, since virtually all oil-rich Mideast governments have been highly
authoritarian since gaining independence. The absence of variation on the dependent variable—as well as on Islam, an
important control variable—has made testing difficult. It has also allowed Mideast specialists to neglect tasks that would help
sharpen and refine the oil-impedes-democracy claim—defining the key variables better, specifying the causal arguments in
falsifiable terms, and outlining the domain of relevant cases to which their arguments apply. As a result, the notion of the rentier
state has suffered from a bad case of conceptual overstretch: assertions about the influence of oil on Middle East politics have
become so general that their validity has been diluted. As Okruhlik observes, “The idea of the rentier state has come to imply so
much that it has lost its content.”
Alternate causality – US military assistance prevents democracy – war on terrorism will ensure continued assistance
In These Times, February 6, 2004, p. http://www.alternet.org/story/17775/?page=entire
Why don't oil and democracy mix? At least part of the answer can be found in Washington's policy of providing military
aid and training to leaders who guarantee an uninterrupted flow of oil, defending it against all threats -- even those coming from
their own citizens. Since the beginning of the war on terrorism in 2001, the United States' top 10 sources of oil imports have
experienced a 350 percent increase in U.S. military aid and training. In 2003, the United States plans to provide these
countries with $58 million in military assistance. In fiscal year 2001, their military assistance totaled $12.2 million. A large part
of the increase is explained by Washington's rewarding of regimes like Algeria and Nigeria for their ability to cloak
domestic repression in the rhetoric of the "war on terrorism." As the United States looks ahead to a never ending war on
terrorism and growing dependence on foreign oil, this dynamic will become increasingly common. Africa accounts for 16
percent of U.S. oil imports, and the National Intelligence Council predicts an increase to 25 percent by 2015. Hunger for this oil,
combined with the need to collect allies in the war on terrorism, led the Bush administration to adopt a "see no evil"
position toward human rights problems and inequality in the continent's oil-rich nations.
Authoritarism causes oil dependency – not the other way around

John Tierney, New York Times, May 5, 2008, p. http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/rethinking-the-oil-curse/?hp
But the new report in Science argues that the causation goes in the opposite direction: The conflicts and bad policies
created the heavy dependence on exports of natural resources. When a country’s chaos and economic policies scare off
foreign investors and send local entrepreneurs abroad to look for better opportunities, the economy becomes skewed. Factories
may close and businesses may flee, but petroleum and precious metals remain for the taking. Resource extraction becomes
“the default sector” that still functions after other industries have come to a halt, according to the authors, C. N.
Brunnschweiler of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and E.H. Bulte of the Oxford Center for the Study of Resource-Rich
Economies.
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SDI 08

Oil wealth incubates democracy – empirical examples of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago
Ben Smith, Associate Professor, Political Science and Asian Studies at the University of Florida, and Joseph Kraus, PhD
Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida, "When Oil Lubricates Democracy: Transition and
Consolidation in Latin America and Africa", March 2005, p.
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/8/9/5/pages88959/p88959-1.php
We argue that democracy can succeed over the long term in oil-rich countries only when distributional pressures can be controlled
so as to prevent them from spilling outside electoral politics into political violence. In addition, we suggest that oil wealth can
actually serve to “incubate” a new democracy given constrained distributional tendencies. When economic policy options,
and the incentives for politicians to use oil revenues as a political resource to favor narrow interests at the exclusion of others, are
limited to those with a wide constituency in society, the cushion that oil revenues provide can provide a temporary subsidy to
democratic politics, raising all groups’ well-being and, just as importantly, perceptions of their own well- being, long
enough that democracy acquires a solid and widespread constituency in society. Thus, challenges to it brought, for example,
by a sudden drop in the price of oil, are less nlikely to pull apart a pro-democracy coalition when the early years of democracy
are characterized by uncontrolled and narrowly directed rent distribution. As we will see, just such a process took place in
Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. All three countries experienced serious economic crises after the 1986 oil
bust, and in all three countries the political upheaval that followed threatened to take a zero-sum shape as disadvantaged
ethnic groups mobilized against the state. However, these conflicts in all three countries continue to be waged within the
broad parameters of democratic procedures, leading us to be cautiously optimistic that democracy will survive and even
deepen in all three.
Studies are wrong – you cannot generalize a causation of oil and authoritarianism – data and empirical examples prove
Stephen Haber, Director of the Social Science History Institute and Associate Director of IRiS and Victor Menaldo, Ph.D.
Candidate, Department of Political Science at Stanford University, Working Paper No. 351, “Do Natural Resources Fuel
Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse”, December 2007, p. scid.stanford.edu/pdf/SCID351.pdf
To do so with an eye to proper causal inference, we developed new datasets to analyze the relationship of resource dependence
and regime types within countries over the time. We observe countries prior to their becoming resource dependent, and evaluate
whether increasing resource dependence over time affected their regime type – both relative to their level of democracy before
resource dependence and relative to the democratization experiences of countries that were similar to them save for resource
dependence. Our results indicate that natural resource dependence does not undermine democracy, preclude democratic
transitions, or protract democratic transitions. Nor do they indicate that democratization is universally promoted by natural
resource dependence. The results of our longitudinal analyses contradict a large body of scholarship that relies on pooled
regression techniques. We wonder why this was the case, and therefore replicate those results and subject them to a series of
standard diagnostics. We find that pooling the data comes at a very large cost: omitted variable bias produces spurious
inferences; outliers drive regression results; and results are sensitive to the measure of resource dependence on which the
researcher chooses to focus. Taken together, the analysis of long-run time series data and the reexamination of the extant cross-
sectional findings indicate that regime types are not determined by the presence or absence of natural resource wealth. This
is not to say that there may not be cases in which natural resources contributed to the maintenance of an authoritarian
regime in a particular time and place—indeed, it would be surprising if this never happened. It is to say, however, that the
evidence does not support generalizable, law-like statements about the impact of natural resources on
regime types. Our evidence also does not support the view that there are conditional resource curse effects that are systematic
—at least to the degree that these conditions are captured by differences in resource dependent countries’ Polity Scores at the time
of resource discovery and development. Some of our time-series cases, such as Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and Venezuela, had
extremely low Polity Scores at the time of their independence from Spain—but they subsequently developed their natural
resource sectors and democratized.
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SDI 08

Previous poor institutions are the problem – not oil dependency
Thomas Brambor, Ph.D. candidate in the department of Political Science at Stanford University, “Oil and Institutional Change: Is
there a resource curse?”, March 8, 2008 p. http://tbrambor.googlepages.com/Brambor_Midwest2008.pdf
Empirically, natural resource abundance has been found to be strongly associated with a host of negative outcomes in cross-
country time-series analyses. We review the existing literature and find that virtually all articles employing the ratio of primary
commodity exports over GDP as the measure of resource abundance find strong evidence for the 'resource curse', while those using
per capita production or reserves as the measure of resource abundance find evidence against the 'resource curse'. Contrary to
claims in the literature that institutions are the result of resource abundance, we propose to view the quality of pre-existing
intuitions as the origin of natural resource dependence. Natural resource abundance translates into natural resource
dependence only in the presence of poor institutions. In an empirical analysis using a panel of 98 oil-producing countries
from 1918-2000, we find no evidence for the impact of crude oil production on the quality of institutions.
Poor institutions indicate authoritarianism, not high oil prices

Thomas Brambor, Ph.D. candidate in the department of Political Science at Stanford University, “Oil and Institutional Change: Is
there a resource curse?”, March 8, 2008 p. http://tbrambor.googlepages.com/Brambor_Midwest2008.pdf
Empirically, we find no evidence for the impact of crude oil production on political institutions as argued in the most recent
wave of the resource curse literature. Extensive 'pre-regression' analysis, using graphs and comparison of means, reveals none
of the within-country patterns of the effects of natural resources on institutions that we would expect if the resource curse
hypothesis was true. In- stead, we argue that natural resource abundance translates into natural resource dependence only
in the presence of poor institutions. Further research that deals with these criticisms is necessary to corroborate that the
phenomenon of the 'resource curse' indeed exists.
Their authors ignore the examples when oil spurred democracy

Ben Smith, Associate Professor, Political Science and Asian Studies at the University of Florida, and Joseph Kraus, PhD
Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida, "When Oil Lubricates Democracy: Transition and
Consolidation in Latin America and Africa", March 2005, p.
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/8/9/5/pages88959/p88959-1.php
Nonetheless, democracy has managed in five instances to take root in oil-rich soil, and in three of those to become
consolidated; whether or not they are outliers, to our minds, is less important than the potential lessons they may hold for
successful democratic consolidation. In this essay we ask: under what conditions can democracy consolidate despite oil? The
answers we find call into question a number of prominent theories of both democratization and the politics of the resource
curse. Drawing on a comparative historical analysis of Congo- Brazzaville, Ecuador, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, and
Venezuela, we suggest that oil’s effects can be mitigated, and even brought to encourage democratic development, when
distributional conflict can be contained within the electoral arena and economic policy similarly constrained. When political
parties are strongly institutionalized and configured in such a way as to limit social conflict over rent distribution, 2 or when a
strong middle class exists that can similarly rein in the rent-seeking tendencies of both upper and lower classes, democracy can
survive despite oil. More specifically, as the (so far) successful resolution of ethnically motivated political conflicts in
Ecuador, Trinidad, and Venezuela suggest, the early stability that oil rents can induce in a new democracy may allow it to
become sufficiently institutionalized to survive such crises and even to deepen.
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SDI 08

Studies show that oil wealth actually reduces conflict
C. N. Brunnschweiler, Research Assistant at CER-ETH (Center of Economic Research at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology) and E. H. Bulte, research fellow of the Oxford Center for the Study of Resource-Rich Economies, Science Magazine,
Vol. 320. no. 587, May 2, 2008, p. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5876/616
However, as already suggested by the simple results at the bottom of the figure, our findings present the possibility of even better
news on natural resources. When using the new World Bank variable to proxy for resource abundance, we find that the direct
effect of resource wealth (particularly the subset of mineral resource wealth) on income growth is positive and significant. All
things considered, an increase in subsoil wealth by one standard deviation--roughly the difference between Senegal and Sweden--
would have brought Senegal's growth performance on a par with that of Mozambique or Kenya; not a huge improvement, but
certainly not a growth curse. Similarly, resource wealth also attenuated the risk of conflict. This is due to a positive indirect
effect: Resource wealth raises income, and higher incomes, in turn, reduce the risk of conflict. Three important caveats are relevant
here. First, the number of countries in our regressions is modest (limited by the resource abundance variables). Second, consistent with most of the existing
literature, our resource data do not include diamond deposits and trade flows. A focus on highly disaggregated resource measures (diamonds, but also oil) in
subsequent work seems worthwhile. Third, although we believe our resource variables represent improvements over the conventional proxy, they are not perfect.
Even though differences in resource stock values are driven by differences in stocks, and not by differences in local institutions (7), they are functions of historic
exploration and exploitation. Therefore, they are probably not fully exogenous. The hunt for the perfect resource variable is on, but unlikely to be settled anytime
soon. Nevertheless, our cross-country estimations cast serious doubt on the paradigm of a general resource curse. It appears as if, across the board,
resource riches may be associated with higher incomes and a lower risk of civil war. Although there are undoubtedly specific
countries where specific resources have eroded institutions or torn countries apart in civil strife, we find this is not the general
pattern. This is consistent with several case studies that fail to show a robust link between the onset of war and resource
extraction (10), and with evidence that the sector involved in turning natural resources into primary products has many
more positive spillovers to the rest of the economy than often are argued (11). Finally, it is consistent with the main message sent
by the World Bank in its most recent World Development Report, which, after years of intellectual neglect, finally looks favorably
at the primary sector. The last word in the resource curse debate is far from having been spoken; but economic advisors should be
aware that natural resources do not necessarily spell doom for development. Instead, their exploitation can be a valuable
part of a sustainable development strategy.
Oil encourages democracy and prevents war

Victor Menaldo, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science at Stanford University, and Sam Seljan, Ph.D. Candidate,
Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, April 24, 2008, p.
http://www.stanford.edu/~vmenaldo/Papers/ViolentSecessionismAPSA.pdf
What causes secessionist war? A popular explanation is the “Resource Curse”: that oil encourages separatist groups to emerge and
seek independence. We reevaluate this claim using a country fixed-effects approach. We find that oil discoveries actually lower
the odds of civil war, inclusive of war aim. This surprising result is driven by the strong, negative relationship between oil
and secessionist war. We develop a theory that explains these puzzles, centered on the unique commitment problem induced by
new oil discoveries. In order to extract oil after it’s discovered, the state must grant the regions greater autonomy, and
bolster their representation in the national legislature. And regions that are oil rich, but capital and expertise poor, must
reciprocate: bargain over their share of the rents, not try to “steal” them. We find support for this theory: onshore oil
discoveries encourage regional elections and bicameralism and, in turn, federalism lowers the odds of secessionist war.
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SDI 08

Oil actually prevents secessionist wars
Victor Menaldo, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science at Stanford University, and Sam Seljan, Ph.D. Candidate,
Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego, April 24, 2008, p.
http://www.stanford.edu/~vmenaldo/Papers/ViolentSecessionismAPSA.pdf
We find strong evidence that the relationship between new oil discoveries and secessionist war onset is negative. After
controlling for country fixed-effects and holding other time-varying covariates of secessionist war onset constant, onshore oil
discoveries are both substantially and significantly associated with lower odds of a secessionist war breaking out. This result is
robust to measuring both the dependent variable and independent variable in different ways; it is also robust to lagging the independent variable by five periods
instead of one, to ensure robustness to endogeneity, and to the introduction of controls for oil production and diamond production. This finding strongly contradicts
the Resource Curse variant of the study of the relationship between natural resources and civil war, in which the former is thought to be uniformly bad for intrastate
peace. We offer a theory about the strategic dynamic of mutual hostages that obtains between the center and the region(s) where new oil is discovered to explain
this puzzle. When new onshore oil reserves are discovered, there are strong incentives for the central government to extend a
credible commitment to the region(s) in which the oil is discovered that it will share the future oil rents with it (them) in
exchange for their acquiescence and cooperation: in allowing the oil to be drilled, refined and transported. The specific way in
which this commitment is made credible is via the adoption and maintenance of institutions of both political decentralization and
regional representation in the center. That is, ceteris paribus, after new onshore oil reserves are discovered, regions are allowed
to hold either state and municipal elections or both. Moreover, in some cases, bicameralism is adopted and maintained, as are electoral quota
systems that compensate for a lack of representation by regionally-defined parties. We find that this is the case after controlling for country fixed-effects, as well as
other determinants of decentralization and regional repress entation. However, our empirical model is, by construction, probabilistic: not all onshore oil discoveries
monolithically induce observable improvements in political decentralization and regional representation. Nonetheless, our theory predicts that, conditional on
greater decentralization and regional representation having indeed been adopted and maintained, the odds of a secessionist war breaking out should diminish.
We verify this implication empirically: onshore oil producers that are federalist have an easier time warding off secessionist wars,
whereas onshore oil producers that are not federal have less success.
76
SDI 08
Resource Wars Answers

Resource wars are nothing but myth- never occur, just Hollywood myth
David G. Victor, a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable
Development. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed a task force on energy security,
2007, “What resource wars”, accessed July 10, 2008, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16020 <Campbell>
RISING ENERGY prices and mounting concerns about environmental depletion have animated fears that the world may be
headed for a spate of “resource wars”—hot conflicts triggered by a struggle to grab valuable resources. Such fears come in many
stripes, but the threat industry has sounded the alarm bells especially loudly in three areas. First is the rise of China, which is
poorly endowed with many of the resources it needs—such as oil, gas, timber and most minerals—and has already “gone out” to
the world with the goal of securing what it wants. Violent conflicts may follow as the country shunts others aside. A second
potential path down the road to resource wars starts with all the money now flowing into poorly governed but resource-rich
countries. Money can fund civil wars and other hostilities, even leaking into the hands of terrorists. And third is global climate
change, which could multiply stresses on natural resources and trigger water wars, catalyze the spread of disease or bring about
mass migrations. Most of this is bunk, and nearly all of it has focused on the wrong lessons for policy. Classic resource wars are
good material for Hollywood screenwriters. They rarely occur in the real world. To be sure, resource money can magnify and
prolong some conflicts, but the root causes of those hostilities usually lie elsewhere. Fixing them requires focusing on the
underlying institutions that govern how resources are used and largely determine whether stress explodes into violence. When
conflicts do arise, the weak link isn’t a dearth in resources but a dearth in governance.
77
SDI 08
US/China Resource Wars Answers

China’s rise is peaceful- no bloodshed over resources.
David G. Victor, a professor of law at Stanford Law School and the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable
Development. He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed a task force on energy security,
2007, “What resource wars”, accessed July 10, 2008, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16020 <Campbell>
RESOURCE WARS are largely back in vogue within the U.S. threat industry because of China’s spectacular rise. Brazil, India,
Malaysia and many others that used to sit on the periphery of the world economy are also arcing upward. This growth is fueling a
surge in world demand for raw materials. Inevitably, these countries have looked overseas for what they need, which has animated
fears of a coming clash with China and other growing powers over access to natural resources. Within the next three years, China
will be the world’s largest consumer of energy. Yet, it’s not just oil wells that are working harder to fuel China, so too are
chainsaws. Chinese net imports of timber nearly doubled from 2000 to 2005. The country also uses about one-third of the world’s
steel (around 360 million tons), or three times its 2000 consumption. Even in coal resources, in which China is famously well-
endowed, China became a net importer in 2007. Across the board, the combination of low efficiency, rapid growth and an
emphasis on heavy industry—typical in the early stages of industrial growth—have combined to make the country a voracious
consumer and polluter of natural resources. America, England and nearly every other industrialized country went through a similar
pattern, though with a human population that was much smaller than today’s resource-hungry developing world. Among the
needed resources, oil has been most visible. Indeed, Chinese state-owned oil companies are dotting Africa, Central Asia and the
Persian Gulf with projects aimed to export oil back home. The overseas arm of India’s state oil company has followed a similar
strategy—unable to compete head-to-head with the major Western companies, it focuses instead on areas where human-rights
abuses and bad governance keep the major oil companies at bay and where India’s foreign policy can open doors. To a lesser
extent, Malaysia engages in the same behavior. The American threat industry rarely sounds the alarm over Indian and Malaysian
efforts, though, in part because those firms have less capital to splash around and mainly because their stories just don’t compare
with fear of the rising dragon. These efforts to lock up resources by going out fit well with the standard narrative for resource wars
—a zero-sum struggle for vital supplies. But will a struggle over resources actually lead to war and conflict? To be sure, the
struggle over resources has yielded a wide array of commercial conflicts as companies duel for contracts and ownership. State-
owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation’s (CNOOC) failed bid to acquire U.S.-based Unocal—and with it Unocal’s
valuable oil and gas supplies in Asia—is a recent example. But that is hardly unique to resources—similar conflicts with tinges of
national security arise in the control over ports, aircraft engines, databases laden with private information and a growing array of
advanced technologies for which civilian and military functions are hard to distinguish. These disputes win and lose some
friendships and contracts, but they do not unleash violence.
78
SDI 08
States CP—Solvency for Negative Incentives

States are ESPECIALLY able to establish negative incentives, but less able to establish positive
incentives
Steinzor 98 (Rena, Associate Professor, University of Maryland School of Law, 22 Harv. Envtl. L. Rev. 103, lexis)
Positive and negative incentives can be imposed from the top down by Congress or other legislative bodies, functioning as the ultimate arbiters of intractable
disputes in a democracy. EPA and its state counterparts are also able to establish and enforce incentives, especially negative ones since
they have the authority to punish but lack the authority to raise the revenues needed to support certain kinds of positive
approaches.
79
SDI 08
Politics Links—Ethanol = Unpopular/Controversial

Ethanol has been unpopular in the states since 2007- most see it as doing no good
Reed 08(Jason, Reporter, Daily Emerald,

http://media.www.dailyemerald.com/media/storage/paper859/news/2008/01/30/News/Ethanol.Law.Divides.Public.Opinion-3175718.shtml)
State lawmakers spent a large portion of the 2007 legislative session to make Oregon a national leader in protecting the
environment by integrating ethanol into its gasoline. But one law has polarized public opinion about whether Oregon drivers will
help save the environment or cause more harm to it.
By Sept. 16 all petroleum-based gasoline sold in Oregon must be mixed with corn ethanol. The deadline for Lane County is April
15, and gasoline retailers in northwestern Oregon had a Jan. 15 deadline. Retailers will sell a mix that is 90percent gasoline and 10
percent ethanol.
While advocates of ethanol use have praised Oregon's move to join the handful of other states that mandate such mixtures, critics have
yelled and screamed that the corn starch-based ethanol that Oregon will utilize causes extreme environmental damage and
economic problems and is not energy efficient.
Some reports state the ethanol process from seed to gas tank uses up to two-thirds more energy than it creates. Others reports, such
as one from OEC, found the energy used to create ethanol is renewable, unlike crude oil, and therefore reduced the energy used to
produce ethanol in the long run.
While debate swirls and gets heated between proponents and critics, state officials say the embryonic plan should eventually
evolve to make ethanol cleaner and more efficient.
For the time being, many see the step as one in the right direction.
"The issue is polarizing, but we now have a law and we all need to come together and work together."
Ethanol mandates are extremely controversial and spark partisanship in Congress
James 5/1/08 (Frank, Staff @ Chicago Tribune, "Congress's motor seizing on ethanol?,"
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/05/congresss_motor_seizing_on_eth.html)
There appears to be growing buyer's remorse on the part of many Capitol Hill lawmakers over ethanol mandates passed by
Congress which many lawmakers are contributing to higher food prices.
Meanwhile, other lawmakers are defending ethanol, insisting the corn-based fuel is getting too much blame for the rising costs.
At this morning's hearing on higher food costs being held by Congress's Joint Economic Committee, the split was clear.
Sen. Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat, pointed to the corn being diverted into fuel instead of food, as a major cause for food-price increases.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a major farm state, said not so fast. Corn can't be blamed for wheat-price increases since corn generally doesn't
displace wheat but soybean acres, he said.
Plus, if ethanol mandates were reduced, fuel prices could shoot up 15 percent, Brownback said.
The Hill newspaper has a good overview on the ethanol issue. One of the best lines comes from a food-industry lobbyist:
Scott Faber, vice president for federal affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), compared lawmakers to late-night revelers who are just beginning
to understand the consequences of their actions.
"A lot of lawmakers are wondering who the hell they woke up with," Faber said.
This is exactly the kind of issue Congress has the most trouble resolving because it pits highly desirable goals against each
other.
Increased production of ethanol is reducing the U.S.'s reliance on foreign oil, a huge positive, even though economists like Joseph
Glauber, chief economist at the U.S. Agriculture Department, who is at this morning's hearing, do contribute to higher food prices.
But ethanol has been a boon to many farmers and many parts of rural America.
Meanwhile, how can anyone be against taking steps that could lower food prices?
That sound you hear is Congress's gears grinding in the ethanol versus food prices debate.
80
SDI 08
Politics Links—Ethanol = Unpopular/Controversial

Ethanol is falling out of favor—consumer opposition to higher food prices has spurred Congressional
opposition to ethanol mandates
Mercer 5/22/08 (David, Associated Press, "Ethanol turmoil a serious threat to some companies,"
http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080522/BUSINESS/805220375/1003/RSS03)
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Not long ago, the fledgling ethanol industry was the darling of investors, farmers, the federal government
and a lot of Americans who liked the idea of turning corn into fuel.
Advertisement
But suddenly, it doesn't have nearly as many friends.
Rising worldwide food prices and shortages have spurred calls in Congress to roll back the federal requirement that increases the
amount of ethanol and other biofuels blended with the nation's gasoline supply. Critics say so much corn is being used for ethanol that there's less
available for people and animals to eat, raising prices of everything from tortillas to meat.
What's more, investors who bought into the industry in good times aren't seeing the returns they'd hoped for as once-record profits began to fall.
"Consumers are starting to get restless and Washington is starting to listen," said Morningstar analyst Ann Gilpin, who follows Decatur,
Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland, the country's second-largest ethanol producer.
The public doesn’t support ethanol—industry PR campaigns aren’t having any effect on consumer
sentiment
Mercer 5/22/08 (David, Associated Press, "Ethanol turmoil a serious threat to some companies,"
http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080522/BUSINESS/805220375/1003/RSS03)
Ethanol companies have gone on a public relations campaign in the past few weeks, touting studies that raise doubts about the degree to which
ethanol is affecting global food prices, advertising locally in newspapers and on radio in Washington and parts of the Midwest. The industry also argues that drivers
buying gasoline blended with a small amount of ethanol -- a common product at gas stations -- are paying less than they otherwise would.
"Consumers today who are filling up with the blended fuel are saving somewhere around a dime (a gallon)," said Matt Hartwig, a
spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry lobbying group.
But that's a tough sell to drivers.
"It's really hard to convince a consumer who is paying three-fifty at the pump that ethanol is helping them," Gilpin said.
81

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SDI 08

WW(J)D Randomness Update File Index

RES Counterplan—1NC Shell

Army Times 1/22/07 (lexis)

RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength

Renewable energy systems offer improved deployability, enhanced survivability, greater

RES Counterplan—RES Key to US Military Strength

the US Army will most certainly require energy as a vital

RES Counterplan—Reducing Fuel Costs → Military Modernization

Fund F-22 Raptors CP—1NC Shell

Wall Street Journal 12/27/07 ("On the Wings of Eagles, or Not,"

Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence

Investor's Business Daily 12/10/07 (lexis)

Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence

Fund F-22 Raptors CP—F-22s Key to Air Power/Deterrence

Gingrey 3/11/08 (Phil, House of Reps, R-GA, FNS, lexis)

Gingrey 2/27/08 (Phil, House of Reps, R-GA, FNS, lexis)

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—1NC Shell

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Solves CO2 Emissions

Living on Earth 08 ("Iron Fertilization," http://www.loe.org/series/iron_fertilization/)

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Solves CO2 Emissions

Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Solves CO2 Emissions

Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Emissions

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP—A2 Iron Fertilization Fails/Causes Ocean

Ocean Iron Fertilization CP Answers

Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

Graeber 00 (Charles, Contributor @ National Geographic, "Dumping Iron," November,

The proper functioning of the pump is key to all life on Earth

Stratospheric Scattering CP—1NC Shell

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Additional R+D Funding Key

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy DA/Solves Warming

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Solves Global Warming

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming***

Stratospheric Scattering CP—Avoids Economy/Politics/Solves Warming

Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Can’t Solve Ocean Acidification

Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 CP Manipulates Nature

Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Scattering → Adverse Effects

Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 International Cooperation Necessary

Stratospheric Scattering CP—A2 Microclimate Turn

OPEC Flood DA—Internals—Saudi Arabia Can Produce Cheap Oil/Russia

OPEC Flood DA—Uniqueness—OPEC Has Spare Capacity Now

Business Report 7/21/08 ("Speculators play a dominant role in oil trading,"

OPEC Flood DA—Link Magnifier—500000 MBD Production ↑ Drastically

CBS Mobile News 7/17/08 ("Home > Opinion," http://wap.cbsnews.com/site?t=8pD24zrz8I1d.oOb6U07UQ)

OPEC Flood DA Answers—No Spare Capacity

Russian Oil Good—Internals—Oil Price ↓ Destroys Russian Economy

Russian Oil Good—A2 Diversification Turn

iStockAnalyst 7/21/08 ("A Rougher Road for Emerging Market Stocks,"

Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economic Growth Slowing Now/Hard

Russian Oil Answers—Russian Economy Overheating Now

The Russian economy is overheating now—extensive economic evidence proves

CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—2NC Food Prices Module

CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Food Prices Extensions

Tampa Tribune, January 20, 1996, p. Lexis

CTL Neg—Railroads DA Impacts—Key to US Economy/Hegemony

CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle 1NC Turn

US Mission to the EU 01 ("Aerosol Pollution Could Threaten Earth's Water Supply,"

CTL Neg—Hydrological Cycle Extensions

US Mission to the EU 01 ("Aerosol Pollution Could Threaten Earth's Water Supply,"