Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Interp Debate:
They say plan text doesnt specify an end to exploitation of its
backdoors. So? They read you no piece of evidence say the
government doesnt put backdoors in to computers so if we
win a net decrease of government surveillance we win.
The government does it lol
Teri Robinson, SC Magazine, July 2014, OTI report exposes economic costs of NSA
spying, http://www.scmagazine.com/oti-report-exposes-economic-costs-of-nsaspying/article/363660/ DOA: 3-21-15
And, the study noted, by weakening key encryption standards, allegedly inserting
surveillance backdoors into "widely used hardware and software products, " being
slow to report software security vulnerabilities and participating in a "variety of
offensive hacking operations," the NSA has roundly damaged internet security . To
mitigate the economic and foreign policy damage caused by NSA surveillance
activities, OTI made a number of recommendations, including "strengthening
privacy protections for both Americans and non-Americans" and "providing for
increased transparency around government surveillance, both from the government
and companies." The report also noted that the U.S. should take steps to restore
trust in cryptography standards through the National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The U.S. government must not "undermine cybersecurity" by putting
surveillance backdoors into tech products and should commit to eliminating
vulnerabilities rather than stockpiling them.
Violation Debate
They say Zetter evidence few issues
1. From an article from WIRED.com called the Hacker
Lexicon. Really gonna take that into consideration?
2. It just says administrator. Never once said that these
administrators are nongovernmental. We read evidence
saying they are governmental which means no violation.
This also answers the B subpoint. The backdoors are
owned by the government and used by the government
3. This shit
Zetter, 14
Zetter, Kim. "Hacker Lexicon: What Is a Backdoor?" WIRED. N.p., 14 Dec. 14. Web. 4 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.wired.com/2014/12/hacker-lexicon-backdoor/>. Kim Zetter is an award-winning, senior staff reporter at
Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, and security. She is writing a book about Stuxnet, a digital weapon that was
designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. //PS
Standards Debate
They say Vacuum Test no we dont seek to abolish
nongovernmental backdoors. Big mistake reading no evidence
says that backdoors are nongovernmental.
They say Prescriptive vs Descriptive Language there is no
analysis for this. Dont give it any weight. Idek what this
means.
Voters Debate
They say Elmore evidence
1. This evidence doesnt make an argument
2. No reason policy making is good in the 1NC
3. Our proposal is pretty well understood, not our fault that
they dont know what a backdoor is.
They say Fairness and Moving Target
1. There is no vague wording
2. No evidence saying this is vague wording
3. No off case with links dependent on the plan text so this
argument is a nonstarter.
They say Education
1. We arent spiking out of links answered this above
2. You dont give us an opportunity to spike out of links
means no in round abuse and dont vote on what we
justify because 1. We dont justify anything bad. 2. No its
what you justify argument in the 1NC
3. We arent using evasion techniques. Make them prove
that.
4. We are clashing on t and on case disproves their clash
arguments
5. No reason education is good
6. Youre shitting me if you really think you are learning
nothing in this debate. Make them prove that they have
learned nothing.
7. No reason we arent going back and forth on an issue.
8. Actually education isnt a real impact because education
is inevitable in debate and also you concede heg will be
hurt so you are incorrect.
Inherency
This argument is bad and you should feel very uncomfortable
voting for it.
1. All the internal links on the aff prove that the government
has and is abusing backdoors for surveillance purposes.
2. Heres a card if you want also an internal link for both
advantages
Sasso 14 (Brendan, technology correspondent for National Journal, previously
covered technology policy issues for The Hill and was a researcher and contributing
writer for the 2012 edition of the Almanac of American Politics, The NSA Isn't Just
Spying on Us, It's Also Undermining Internet Security, April 29 2014,
http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/the-nsa-isn-t-just-spying-on-us-it-s-alsoundermining-internet-security-20140429)
Bolstering the nations defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama
administrations top goals. Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated
cyberattack could cripple (destroy) critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make
off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to
enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didnt, he issued his own executive order in 2013. The cyber threat to our
nation is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we
face, Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. But critics argue that the National Security
Agency has actually undermined cybersecurity and made the United
States more vulnerable to hackers. At its core, the problem is the NSAs dual
mission. On one hand, the agency is tasked with securing U.S. networks and
information. On the other hand, the agency must gather intelligence on foreign
threats to national security. Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted
communications. Thats nothing new for the NSA; the agency traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi
messages during World War II. So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the
NSAs job harder. This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance, said Christopher Soghoian, the
head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. Surveillance at the scale they want
requires insecurity. The leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts
by the NSA to weaken cybersecurity and hack into networks . Critics say those programs,
while helping NSA spying, have made U.S. networks less secure. According to the
leaked documents, the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one
encryption standard that was developed by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on
suspected terrorists, but the vulnerability was also available to any other
hacker who discovered it. NIST, a Commerce Department agency, sets
scientific and technical standards that are widely used by both the
government and the private sector. The agency has said it would never deliberately weaken a
cryptographic standard, but it remains unclear whether the agency was aware of the back door or whether the NSA tricked NIST
into adopting the compromised standard. NIST is required by law to consult with the NSA for its technical expertise on cybersecurity.
The revelation that NSA somehow got NIST to build a back door into an encryption
standard has seriously damaged NISTs reputation with security experts. NIST is
operating with a trust deficit right now, Soghoian said. Anything that NIST has
touched is now tainted. Its a particularly bad time for NIST to have lost the
support of the cybersecurity community. In his executive order, Obama tasked NIST
with drafting the cybersecurity guidelines for critical infrastructure such as
power plants and phone companies. Because its an executive order instead of a law, the cybersecurity
standards are entirely voluntary, and the U.S. government will have to convince the private sector to comply. The Snowden
leaks werent the first to indicate that the NSA is involved in exploiting commercial
security. According to a 2012 New York Times report, the NSA developed a worm,
dubbed Stuxnet, to cripple Iranian nuclear centrifuges. But the worm, which
exploited four previously unknown flaws in Microsoft Windows, escaped the Iranian
nuclear plant and quickly began damaging computers around the world . The NSA and
Israeli officials have also been tied to Flame, a virus that impersonated a Microsoft update to spy on Iranian computers. Vanee
Vines, an NSA spokeswoman, said the U.S. government is as concerned as the public is with the security of these products. The
United States pursues its intelligence mission with care to ensure that innocent users of those same technologies are not affected,
stand behind for protecting national security systems and data, she said. The activity of NSA in setting standards has made the
Internet a far safer place to communicate and do business . But due to concern over the NSA damaging Internet security, the
presidents review group on surveillance issues recommended that the U.S. government promise not to in any way subvert,
undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available commercial encryption. Encryption
is an essential
basis for trust on the Internet; without such trust, valuable communications would
not be possible, the group wrote in its report, which was released in December. For the entire system
to work, encryption software itself must be trustworthy. The White Houses
cybersecurity coordinator said that disclosing security flaws "usually makes sense." In response to the report, the administration
adopted a new policy on whether the NSA can exploit zero-daysvulnerabilities that havent been discovered by anyone else yet.
According to the White House, there is a bias toward publicly disclosing flaws in security unless there is a clear national security
or law enforcement need. In a blog post Monday, Michael Daniel, the White Houses cybersecurity
coordinator, said that disclosing security flaws usually makes sense. Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities
while leaving the Internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest, he said.
But Daniel added that, in some cases, disclosing a vulnerability means that the U.S. would forego an opportunity to collect crucial
intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nations intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous
vulnerabilities. He said that the government weighs a variety of factors, such as the risk of leaving the vulnerability un-patched, the
officials have historically discussed cybersecurity issues with the NSA, but that he
wouldnt be surprised if those relationships are now strained. He pointed to news
that the NSA posed as Facebook to infect computers with malware. That does a lot
of harm to companies brands, Soltani said. The NSAs actions have also made it
difficult for the U.S. to set international norms for cyberconflict. For several
years, the U.S. has tried to pressure China to scale back its cyberspying operations,
which allegedly steal trade secrets from U.S. businesses. Jason Healey, the director
of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the U.S. has
militarized cyber policy. The United States has been saying that the world
needs to operate according to certain norms, he said. It is difficult to get
the norms that we want because it appears to the rest of the world that
we only want to follow the norms that we think are important. Vines, the NSA
spokeswoman, emphasized that the NSA would never hack into foreign networks to give domestic companies a competitive edge
(as China is accused of doing). We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on
behalf ofor give intelligence we collect toU.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom
line, she said. Jim Lewis, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that NSA spying to stop
terrorist attacks is fundamentally different from China stealing business secrets to boost its own economy. He also said there is
3. They literally say go with the status quo and then on the
K, they say that the status quo uses linear thinking.
Probably means that linear thinking is good.
Solvency
1. Their Ryge evidence is horrid. Its not about backdoors,
its about the Golden Key and a Golden Key is
mathematically impossible
2. Even if vulnerabilities inevitably exist (which is false
because we get rid of backdoors) then we resolve
cybersecurity concerns via private sector cooperation
thats Zezima
Cyber
Internal Link:
Criminals, nation state actors, terrorists, and cyber actors are
leveraging new techniques to exploit backdoors and attack
critical infrastructure specifically the grid- thats Burg
Blaze says backdoors create commonplace data breaches that
can only be resolved by stopping government exploitation of
NSA backdoors
Removing backdoors is key to restore trust with the private
sector- post revelations Silicon Valley is hesitant to work with
the government for fear of privacy violations, the plan resolves
this- thats Zezima
Next is the norms I/L I just read on inherency. Backdoors
makes it impossible for the US to set international norms
because we are viewed as breaking them thats Sasso
Critical Infrastructure:
Devastating cyber attacks on critical infrastructure coming
now- destroys food supply- triggers WW3 as countries fight
over remaining food supply- draws in all major powers and
escalates to nuclear use. Most probably and on brink- Wilhusen
study shows cyber attacks have increased by 650% in the past
5 years and were being attacked every day. thats our
Sebastian evidence
A cyberattack causes grid collapse and collapses the economy
Reuters 15
(Carolyn Cohn, reporter, 7-8-15, Cyber attack on U.S. power grid could cost
economy $1 trillion: report, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/uscyberattack-power-survey-idUSKCN0PI0XS20150708, BC)
A cyber attack which shuts down parts of the United States' power grid could cost as much as
$1 trillion to the U.S. economy, according to a report published on Wednesday. Company executives
are worried about security breaches, but recent surveys suggest they are not convinced about the value or
impact to the U.S. economy is estimated at $243 billion, rising to more than $1 trillion in the most extreme version
of the scenario," the report said. The losses come from damage to infrastructure and business supply chains, and
are estimated over a five-year time period. The extreme scenario is built on the greatest loss of power, with 100
generators taken offline, and would lead to insurance industry losses of more than $70 billion, the report added.
There have been 15 suspected cyber attacks on the U.S. electricity grid since 2000 ,
the report said, citing U.S. energy department data. The U.S. Industrial Control System Cyber Emergency Response
Team said that 32 percent of its responses last year to cyber security threats to critical infrastructure occurred in
the energy sector. "The evidence of major attacks during 2014 suggests that attackers were often able to exploit
vulnerabilities faster than defenders could remedy them," Tom Bolt, director of performance management at
Lloyd's, said in the report.
Of course, the report encompasses more than economics and indeed believes the future is likely to be the result of a number of
intersecting and interlocking forces. With so many possible permutations of outcomes, each with ample Revisiting the Future
likelihood that terrorism and nonproliferation will remain priorities even as resource issues move up on the international agenda.
Terrorisms appeal will decline if economic growth continues in the Middle East and youth
unemployment is reduced. For those terrorist groups that remain active in 2025, however, the diffusion of
technologies and scientific knowledge will place some of the worlds most dangerous capabilities within their reach. Terrorist
groups in 2025 will likely be a combination of descendants of long established groups_inheriting organizational structures,
command and control processes, and training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks_and newly emergent
important geopolitical implications. Maritime security concerns are providing a rationale for naval buildups and modernization
Cyber-terror/Retal:
The Tilford ev says that post grid collapse due to cyber
attacks, command and control centers go dark- causes nuclear
retaliation.
Fritz ev indicates that coming cyber attacks allow for terrorists
to gain control of our command and control centers thus
launching us into either 1. preemptive nuclear war or 2.
terrorist initiated nuclear war thru provoking a nuclear armed
state to attack another armed state.
Space:
Conceded. Donahue says rogue actors will target ground
stations that control satellites because they are lightly
guarded. This will stop data transmission and prevent satellite
control. The Tyson evidence indicates this causes extinction
through miscalculation due to tension escalation as
communication goes down.
LBL:
The Internal Links argument is a non starter. All of our internal
links are indicative of backdoors causing the problem. Just
because it doesnt say the word backdoors verbatim doesnt
mean that the evidence isnt about them. Look through our
evidence. Im not wasting words on this horrid argument.
They say Pagliery1. Its strictly in the context of ISIS which is a subset of one
of the many groups we outline that could attack.
2. Next, Burg evidence says new capabilities allow for a
complete hacking of the grid because they can now
bypass safeguards.
3. Our Blaze evidence says they can take down the grid as
well through hacking c-c centers.
They say Lee and Rid evidence
1. The hyped up argument is strictly in the context of the
Pentagon, DOH, and White House. None of our evidence is
from that.
2. Also, cyberattacks are not hyped up. Our evidence is
indicative of cyber threats being real and that
cyberattackers are capable.
They say Heasley evidence
1. This evidence says that cyberattackers will attack critical
infrastructure in the ununderlined portion.
2. This evidence is a year before Burg. Burg says every claim
in this evidence is obsolete because cyberattackers can
bypass safeguards.
3. Blaze also makes this evidence obsolete. Says risk is
increasing as of late 2015.
Heg
I dont understand how you concede an advantage in a v
debate, but ya know. They did it. No new block answers- makes
the 1AR impossible and guts the 2AC, thats a voter for
fairness and education. Only response is the whole math
internal links argument which Ill answer now.
They say the evidence only says backdoors 6 times. This is not
an argument. Ill copy paste the warrants of our internal links
here for all to view.
Sasso evidence:
the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption
standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology.
companies have become reluctant to share security information with the
U.S. government, fearing the NSA could use any information to hack into
their systems. When you want to go into partnership with somebody and work on serious issuessuch as
cybersecurityyou want to know youre being told the truth, Black said. Google
Clark evidence:
Ever since the Edward Snowden leaks started it has become more and more obvious that the NSA and their Five Eyes partners
(the spooks in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have been making a concerted effort to monitor and control the entire
Internet. They've engaged in vast data stealing exercises designed to sweep up and store the private communications data of
virtually everyone; the NSA have employed a team of some 850,000 NSA staff and private security contractors to trawl this ocean of
stolen data for whatever they can find; they've damaged international relations by snooping on dozens of
heads of state; they've used their snooping powers to spy on companies like the Brazilian oil company Petrobras (surely motivated
undermined
encryption technology - endangering the security of financial transactions; and
they've compelled countless US based technology companies to violate the privacy of
their own customers and to build backdoors
by industrial espionage, rather than their stated justification of "fighting terrorism"); they've
the most damning element of all (from an American perspective) is the extraordinary amount of
damage the NSA have done to the reputation of US technology companies,
millions of customers are turned off the idea of investing in buggy, insecure and
spyware laden products from US companies
Linear Action
1. Framework we get the effects of the plan and the neg gets
the status quo or a competitive policy option; best for fairness
because there are an infinite of philosophical ideas we have to
research and education because its key to learning about the
actual topic.
2. Perm - do the plan and the alternative
a. the two arent mutually exclusive the plan text doesnt
necessitate linear predictions their contradicting reps with
this K and T means we should be able to sever our reps too
b. their evidence doesnt say linear predictions cause
extinction, it just says that complex predictions solve
extinction no DAs to the perm.
3. Prioritization of theoretical constructs over problem-driven
approaches causes policy paralysis
Owen 02 (David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton,
655-7)
comment that these terms are often used loosely.4 However, loosely deployed or not, it is clear that debates
concerning ontology and epistemology play a central role in the contemporary IR theory wars. In one respect,
this is unsurprising since it is a characteristic feature of the social sciences that periods of disciplinary
disorientation involve recourse to reflection on the philosophical commitments of different theoretical
approaches, and there is no doubt that such reflection can play a valuable role in making explicit the
commitments that characterise (and help individuate) diverse theoretical positions.
Yet, such a
commitments (otherwise criticism of these features would not be a criticism that had any value), it is by no
means clear that it is, in contrast, wholly dependent on these philosophical commitments. Thus,
for example, one need not be sympathetic to rational choice theory to recognise that it can provide powerful
accounts of certain kinds of problems, such as the tragedy of the commons in which dilemmas of collective
class of problems (i.e., how it is that the relevant actors come to exhibit features in these circumstances that
approach to IR. Paraphrasing Ian Shapiro, the point can be put like this: since it is the case that there
is always a plurality of possible true descriptions of a given action, event or phenomenon,
the challenge is to decide which is the most apt in terms of getting a perspicuous grip on
the action, event or phenomenon in question given the purposes of the inquiry; yet, from
this standpoint, theory-driven work is part of a reductionist program in that it dictates
always opting for the description that calls for the explanation that flows from the
preferred model or theory.5 The justification offered for this strategy rests on the mistaken
belief that it is necessary for social science because general explanations are required to
characterise the classes of phenomena studied in similar terms. However, as Shapiro points out,
this is to misunderstand the enterprise of science since whether there are general
explanations for classes of phenomena is a question for social-scientific inquiry, not to be
prejudged before conducting that inquiry.6 Moreover, this strategy easily slips into the
promotion of the pursuit of generality over that of empirical validity. The third danger is
that the preceding two combine to encourage the formation of a particular image of
disciplinary debate in IRwhat might be called (only slightly tongue in cheek) the
Highlander viewnamely, an image of warring theoretical approaches with each, despite
occasional temporary tactical alliances, dedicated to the strategic achievement of sovereignty over the
decision-making process sensitive to cognitive limitations necessarily sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth as
with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and
validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation... The
greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions .16 The decision-making
environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not long-term strategic planning. But a
strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environ- ment brings upon himself
some of the pathologies of crisis decision-making . He invites ambiguity, takes
conflicting data for granted and substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of
prediction for time pressure as a rationale for discounting the importance of analytic
rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and rigorous assessment can illuminate
strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and
judgement of decision-makers will always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some
formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and unrealistic. All the same, there is
danger in the opposite extreme as well.
what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A
under a door, left to report it. When three naive subjects were present, the smoke was reported only 38% of the
time. A naive subject in the presence of two confederates who purposely ignored the smoke, even when the room
became hazy, left to report the smoke only 10% of the time. A college student apparently having an epileptic
The
bystander effect is usually explained as resulting from diffusion of responsibility and
pluralistic ignorance. Being part of a group reduces individual responsibility .
Everyone hopes that someone else will handle the problem instead, and this
reduces the individual pressure to the point that no one does anything . Support for
seizure was helped 85% of the time by a single bystander and 31% of the time by five bystanders.
obviously an emergency. Is the man lying in the alley a heart-attack victim or a drunk sleeping one off? . . . In times
The bystander effect is not about individual selfishness, or insensitivity to the suffering of others. Alone subjects do
Pluralistic ignorance can explain, and individual selfishness cannot explain, subjects
failing to react to a room filling up with smoke. In experiments involving apparent dangers to either others or
the self, subjects placed with nonreactive confederates frequently glance at the
nonreactive confederates. I am sometimes asked: If existential risk X is real, why arent more people
doing something about it? There are many possible answers, a few of which I have touched on here. People
may be overconfident and over-optimistic. They may focus on overly specific
scenarios for the future, to the exclusion of all others . They may not recall any past extinction
events in memory. They may overestimate the predictability of the past, and hence
underestimate the surprise of the future. They may not realize the difficulty of
preparing for emergencies without benefit of hindsight . They may prefer philanthropic gambles
with higher payoff probabilities, neglecting the value of the stakes. They may conflate positive
information about the benefits of a technology as negative information about its
risks. They may be contaminated by movies where the world ends up being saved. They may purchase moral
satisfaction more easily by giving to other charities. Or the extremely unpleasant prospect of
human extinction may spur them to seek arguments that humanity will not go
extinct, without an equally frantic search for reasons why we would. But if the question is,
specifically, Why arent more people doing something about it?, one possible component is that people are
asking that very questiondarting their eyes around to see if anyone else is
reacting to the emergency, meanwhile trying to appear poised and unflustered . If
you want to know why others arent responding to an emergency, before you
respond yourself, you may have just answered your own question.
usually act.
the problem of expertise as follows: it is no surprise that, in order for there to be genuine discussion in Schmitts
Indeed, to imagine a world in which such delegation did not occur would be to imagine a simpler society, at best a
society of Jeffersonian yeomen, in which everyone knew pretty much what everyone else knew that was relevant to
through a process of legitimation also means that legitimacy may be withdrawn and the cognitive authority of
experts may collapse, and this suggests something quite different than the idea that liberalism is a kind of self-
to be treated as neutral fact. This is, so to speak, a liberal argument about expertise. It grants that cognitive
authority and the acceptance of expertise, in modern conditions, is a condition of genuine public discourse.
Liberalism, in the form of the principle of neutrality, is a means to the end of the creation of the conditions for public
discourse. It is a means, however, that is not given by God, or the courts, or reason, but lives in the political
decisions we make to regard assertions as open to public discussion or not. Historically, liberalism established the
space for public discussion by expelling religious sectarian expertise. The challenge of the present is, in part, to
deal with the claims of non-religious experts to cognitive authority. There is no formula for meeting this challenge.
10. Perm- do the plan and the alt in all other instances- either
doing the alt will be strong enough to overcome the residual
links to one instance of the plan or the alt will be too weak to
overcome the status squo. Our interpretation is that we get
one intrinsic perm- the purpose of a K alt is to resolve ALL the
links since Ks are nonunique. Key to check Ks that can never
be resolved and makes for better debates of method on
solvable problems
11. You read T. That is literally as linear as it gets. You link
back into this argument.
12. Perm do the alt and then the aff there is no sequencing
disad to doing the aff after the alt
13. extinction first
Wapner 3 (Paul, Associate Professor and Director of the Global Environmental
Policy Program American University, Leftist Criticism of, Dissent, Winter,
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=539)
THE THIRD response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they
themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world.
Postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity. But
isn't mastery exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own
conceptual domain? Doesn't postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward mastery
by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean to assert that
there is no such thing as nature? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes,
recognizing the social construction of "nature" does deny the self-expression of the nonhuman world,
but how would we know what such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesn't speak; rather, some
person always speaks on nature's behalf, and whatever that person says is, as we all know, a social
construction. All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even the most radical
postmodernist must acknowledge the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I
have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if
they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of
physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which doesn't appear . What doesn't
exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should
rightly worry about interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of
those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including environmentalists who do
that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression is existence. This in
turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be
seen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of
environmental preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea of a universal good. They rightly
acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a common value given the multiple contexts of our valueproducing activity. In fact, if there is one thing they vehemently scorn, it is the idea that there can be a
value that stands above the individual contexts of human experience. Such a value would present
itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean-Franois Lyotard has explained, postmodernism is characterized
fundamentally by its "incredulity toward meta-narratives." Nonetheless, I can't see how postmodern
critics can do otherwise than accept the value of preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is
the extreme "other"; it stands in contradistinction to humans as a species. In understanding the
constructed quality of human experience and the dangers of reification, postmodernism inherently
advances an ethic of respecting the "other." At the very least, respect must involve ensuring that the
"other" actually continues to exist. In our day and age, this requires us to take responsibility for
protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we are running roughshod over the
earth's diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems. Postmodern critics should find this particularly
disturbing. If they don't, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental
moral commitment. NOW, WHAT does this mean for politics and policy, and the future of the
environmental movement? Society is constantly being asked to address questions of environmental
quality for which there are no easy answers. As we wrestle with challenges of global climate change,
ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, and so forth, we need to consider the economic, political,
cultural, and aesthetic values at stake. These considerations have traditionally marked the politics of
environmental protection. A sensitivity to eco-criticism requires that we go further and include an ethic
of otherness in our deliberations. That is, we need to be moved by our concern to make room for the
"other" and hence fold a commitment to the nonhuman world into our policy discussions. I don't
mean that this argument should drive all our actions or that respect for the "other"
should always carry the day. But it must be a central part of our reflections and calculations. For
example, as we estimate the number of people that a certain area can sustain,
consider what to do about climate change, debate restrictions on ocean fishing, or
otherwise assess the effects of a particular course of action, we must think about the lives of other
creatures on the earth-and also the continued existence of the nonliving physical world. We
must do so not because we wish to maintain what is "natural" but because we wish to act in
a morally respectable manner.