Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Blocks
1NC
Liberal values like privacy and liberty cause widespread
environmental destruction we must explicitly downgrade
these rights to allow for the emergence of a responsible
eco-authoritarian regime
Matthew Humphrey, 2007, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory:
The challenge to the deliberative ideal, p. 16-19, mm
In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through
the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union,
held annually in San Francisco. This years conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of
Nasas Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker
James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles. But it was Werners own session
that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled Is Earth F**ked? (full title: Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical
Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action
the geophysicist from the
Activism). Standing at the front of the conference room,
University of California, San Diego walked the crowd through the
advanced computer model he was using to answer that question. He talked about system
boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely
the bottom line was
incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But
clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so
rapid, convenient and barrier-free that earth-human systems are
becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a
clear answer on the are we f**ked question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, More or less.
There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope.
Werner termed it resistance movements of people or groups of people who
adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the
capitalist culture. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes
environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the
dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers,
anarchists and other activist groups. Serious scientific gatherings dont usually feature calls for mass
political resistance, much less direct action and sabotage. But then again, Werner wasnt exactly calling for
those things. He was merely observing that mass uprisings of people along the lines of the abolition
movement, the civil rights movement or Occupy Wall Street represent the likeliest source of friction to
slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control. We know that past social movements
have had tremendous influence on . . . how the dominant culture evolved, he pointed out. So it stands to
reason that, if were thinking about the future of the earth, and the future of our coupling to the
environment, we have to include resistance as part of that dynamics. And that, Werner argued, is not a
Plenty of scientists have been
matter of opinion, but really a geophysics problem.
moved by their research findings to take action in the streets .
Physicists, astronomers, medical doctors and biologists have been at
the forefront of movements against nuclear weapons, nuclear power, war, chemical contamination
and creationism. And in November 2012, Nature published a commentary by the financier and
environmental philanthropist Jeremy Grantham urging scientists to join this tradition and be arrested if
necessary, because climate change is not only the crisis of your lives it is also the crisis of our species
existence. Some scientists need no convincing. The godfather of modern climate science, James Hansen,
is a formidable activist, having been arrested some half-dozen times for resisting mountain-top removal
coal mining and tar sands pipelines (he even left his job at Nasa this year in part to have more time for
campaigning). Two years ago, when I was arrested outside the White House at a mass action against the
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, one of the 166 people in cuffs that day was a glaciologist named Jason Box,
a world-renowned expert on Greenlands melting ice sheet. I couldnt maintain my self-respect if I didnt
go, Box said at the time, adding that just voting doesnt seem to be enough in this case. I need to be a
citizen also. This is laudable, but what Werner is doing with his modelling is different. He isnt saying
that his research drove him to take action to stop a particular policy; he is saying that his research
shows that our entire economic paradigm is a threat to ecological
stability. And indeed that challenging this economic paradigm through
mass-movement counter-pressure is humanitys best shot at
avoiding catastrophe. Thats heavy stuff. But hes not alone. Werner is part
of a small but increasingly influential group of scientists whose research
into the destabilisation of natural systems particularly the climate
system is leading them to similarly transformative, even
revolutionary, conclusions. And for any closet revolutionary who has ever dreamed of
overthrowing the present economic order in favour of one a little less likely to cause Italian pensioners to
it makes the
hang themselves in their homes, this work should be of particular interest. Because
ditching of that cruel system in favour of something new (and perhaps, with
lots of work, better) no longer a matter of mere ideological preference but
rather one of species-wide existential necessity. Leading the pack of these new
scientific revolutionaries is one of Britains top climate experts, Kevin Anderson, the deputy director of the
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which has quickly established itself as one of the UKs premier
climate research institutions. Addressing everyone from the Department for International Development to
Manchester City Council, Anderson has spent more than a decade patiently translating the implications of
the latest climate science to politicians, economists and campaigners. In clear and understandable
language, he lays out a rigorous road map for emissions reduction, one that provides a decent shot at
keeping global temperature rise below 2 Celsius, a target that most governments have determined would
stave off catastrophe. But in recent years Andersons papers and slide shows have become more
alarming. Under titles such as Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous . . . Brutal Numbers and Tenuous
Hope, he points out that the chances of staying within anything like safe temperature levels are
diminishing fast. With his colleague Alice Bows, a climate mitigation expert at the Tyndall Centre,
Anderson points out that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies all
while global consumption (and emissions) ballooned that we are now facing cuts so drastic that they
challenge the fundamental logic of prioritising GDP growth above all else. Anderson and Bows inform us
that the often-cited long-term mitigation target an 80 per cent emissions cut below 1990 levels by 2050
has been selected purely for reasons of political expediency and has no scientific basis. Thats because
climate impacts come not just from what we emit today and tomorrow, but from the cumulative emissions
that build up in the atmosphere over time. And they warn that by focusing on targets three and a half
decades into the future rather than on what we can do to cut carbon sharply and immediately there is a
serious risk that we will allow our emissions to continue to soar for years to come, thereby blowing through
far too much of our 2 carbon budget and putting ourselves in an impossible position later in the
century. Which is why Anderson and Bows argue that, if the governments of developed countries are
serious about hitting the agreed upon international target of keeping warming below 2 Celsius, and if
reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle (basically that the countries that have been spewing
carbon for the better part of two centuries need to cut before the countries where more than a billion
people still dont have electricity), then the reductions need to be a lot deeper, and they need to come a
lot sooner. To have even a 50/50 chance of hitting the 2 target (which, they and many others warn,
already involves facing an array of hugely damaging climate impacts), the industrialised countries need to
start cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions by something like 10 per cent a year and they need to start
right now. But Anderson and Bows go further, pointing out that this target cannot be met with the array of
modest carbon pricing or green-tech solutions usually advocated by big green groups. These measures will
certainly help, to be sure, but they are simply not enough: a 10 per cent drop in emissions, year after year,
is virtually unprecedented since we started powering our economies with coal. In fact, cuts above 1 per
cent per year have historically been associated only with economic recession or upheaval, as the
economist Nicholas Stern put it in his 2006 report for the British government. Even after the Soviet Union
collapsed, reductions of this duration and depth did not happen (the former Soviet countries experienced
average annual reductions of roughly 5 per cent over a period of ten years). They did not happen after Wall
Street crashed in 2008 (wealthy countries experienced about a 7 per cent drop between 2008 and 2009,
but their CO2 emissions rebounded with gusto in 2010 and emissions in China and India had continued to
rise). Only in the immediate aftermath of the great market crash of 1929 did the United States, for
instance, see emissions drop for several consecutive years by more than 10 per cent annually, according
to historical data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre. But that was the worst economic
crisis of modern times. If we are to avoid that kind of carnage while meeting our science-based emissions
targets, carbon reduction must be managed carefully through what Anderson and Bows describe as
radical and immediate de-growth strategies in the US, EU and other wealthy nations. Which is fine,
except that we happen to have an economic system that fetishises GDP growth above all else, regardless
of the human or ecological consequences, and in which the neoliberal political class has utterly abdicated
its responsibility to manage anything (since the market is the invisible genius to which everything must be
there is still time to avoid
entrusted). So what Anderson and Bows are really saying is that
catastrophic warming, but not within the rules of capitalism as they
are currently constructed. Which may be the best argument we have ever had for changing
those rules. In a 2012 essay that appeared in the influential scientific journal Nature Climate Change,
Anderson and Bows laid down something of a gauntlet, accusing many of their fellow scientists of failing to
come clean about the kind of changes that climate change demands of humanity. On this it is worth
quoting the pair at length: . . . in developing emission scenarios scientists repeatedly and severely
underplay the implications of their analyses. When it comes to avoiding a 2C rise, impossible is
translated into difficult but doable, whereas urgent and radical emerge as challenging all to
appease the god of economics (or, more precisely, finance). For example, to avoid exceeding the
maximum rate of emission reduction dictated by economists, impossibly early peaks in emissions are
assumed, together with naive notions about big engineering and the deployment rates of low-carbon
infrastructure. More disturbingly, as emissions budgets dwindle, so geoengineering is increasingly
in order to
proposed to ensure that the diktat of economists remains unquestioned. In other words,
appear reasonable within neoliberal economic circles, scientists
have been dramatically soft-peddling the implications of their
research. By August 2013, Anderson was willing to be even more blunt, writing that the boat had
sailed on gradual change. Perhaps at the time of the 1992 Earth Summit, or even at the turn of the
millennium, 2C levels of mitigation could have been achieved through significant evolutionary changes
within the political and economic hegemony. But climate change is a cumulative issue! Now, in 2013, we in
high-emitting (post-)industrial nations face a very different prospect. Our ongoing and collective carbon
profligacy has squandered any opportunity for the evolutionary change afforded by our earlier (and
larger) 2C carbon budget. Today, after two decades of bluff and lies, the remaining 2C budget demands
We probably
revolutionary change to the political and economic hegemony (his emphasis).
shouldnt be surprised that some climate scientists are a little
spooked by the radical implications of even their own research . Most of
them were just quietly doing their work measuring ice cores, running global climate models and studying
ocean acidification, only to discover, as the Australian climate expert and author Clive Hamilton puts it,
But there are many
that they were unwittingly destabilising the political and social order.
people who are well aware of the revolutionary nature of climate
science. Its why some of the governments that decided to chuck their climate commitments in favour
of digging up more carbon have had to find ever more thuggish ways to silence and intimidate their
nations scientists. In Britain, this strategy is becoming more overt, with Ian Boyd, the chief scientific
adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, writing recently that scientists should
avoid suggesting that policies are either right or wrong and should express their views by working with
embedded advisers (such as myself), and by being the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public
arena. If you want to know where this leads, check out whats happening in Canada, where I live. The
Conservative government of Stephen Harper has done such an effective job of gagging scientists and
shutting down critical research projects that, in July 2012, a couple thousand scientists and supporters held
a mock-funeral on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, mourning the death of evidence. Their placards said, No
The fact that the
Science, No Evidence, No Truth. But the truth is getting out anyway.
business-as-usual pursuit of profits and growth is destabilising life
on earth is no longer something we need to read about in scientific
journals. The early signs are unfolding before our eyes. And
increasing numbers of us are responding accordingly: blockading fracking
activity in Balcombe; interfering with Arctic drilling preparations in Russian waters (at tremendous personal
cost); taking tar sands operators to court for violating indigenous sovereignty; and countless other acts of
In Brad Werners computer model, this is the
resistance large and small.
friction needed to slow down the forces of destabilisation; the
great climate campaigner Bill McKibben calls it the antibodies
rising up to fight the planets spiking fever. Its not a revolution,
but its a start. And it might just buy us enough time to figure out a way to live on this planet that
is distinctly less f**ked.
2NC Impact Overview
Extinction is inevitable the crunch is coming. All aspects
of the environment are in decline resource scarcity,
biodiversity loss, climate change due to liberalism and
democracy. Thats Humphrey, Buchanan and Klein from
the 1NC. This makes all of the affs impacts inevitable
absent the alternative.
The crunch is coming and causes extinction our evidence
is based on new scientific studies
Oliver Milman, 1/16/2015, The Guardian, Life on Earth now officially at
risk, scientists say, http://grist.org/climate-energy/life-on-earth-now-
officially-at-risk-scientists-say/, mm
Humans are eating away at our own life support systems at a rate unseen
in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases, and
releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has
found. Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have
pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark
results. Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded safe
levels human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land
system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen
flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use. Researchers spent five years identifying these
core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to
provide a baseline for the analysis. They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in
the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human
civilization has advanced significantly. Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic
highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100
times faster than the previous norm. Since 1950, urban populations have increased sevenfold, primary
energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertilizer used is now eight times higher. The
All of these changes are
amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.
shifting Earth into a new state that is becoming less hospitable to
human life, researchers said. These indicators have shot up since 1950
and there are no signs they are slowing down, said professor Will Steffen of the
Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center. Steffen is the lead author on both of
When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a
the studies.
massive increase in resource use and pollution . It used to be confined to local
and regional areas but were now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to
human activity, not natural variability. Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was
contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water. We are
clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we
change the marine ecosystem by overfishing its a death by a thousand cuts, he
said. That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate
change. There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For
example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the
the overall picture is one of deterioration
practice reversed in parts of Europe. But
at a rapid rate. Its fairly safe to say that we havent seen conditions in the past similar to ones
we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we dont want to cross, Steffen
said. If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6 degrees C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so
and that wont be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and thats true, there will
be life on Earth, but the Earth wont be robust for us. Some people
say we can adapt due
to technology, but thats a belief system, its not based on fact. There is no
convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37
degrees C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans cant and thats
a problem. Steffen said the research showed the economic system was
fundamentally flawed as it ignored critically important life support
systems. Its clear the economic system is driving us towards an
unsustainable future and people of my daughters generation will find it increasingly hard to
survive, he said. History has shown that civilizations have risen, stuck to their core values and then
collapsed because they didnt change. Thats where we are today. The two studies, published in Science
and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the U.S., Sweden,
Germany, and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, which takes place between Jan. 21 and 25.
2NC - Alt Overview
The alternative is an endorsement of a radical, eco-
authoritarian pedagogy. Only this political strategy can
create a governance model that allows us to survive the
crunch. The Humphrey evidence says we must reject the
liberal tradition and formulate a centrally planned society
governed by ecologically conscious elites. The Klein
evidence provides a strategy of direct action to bring
about this transition. Even if the alternative does not
result in immediate political action, we still solve because
this space provides a unique forum to deploy our
alternative the university is the key site for training the
new class of eco-authoritarian elites
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 133-34, mm
Both de la Boetie and Hoppe are primarily concerned with the preservation of freedom of the individual,
this being the core value in their systems. But for us freedom is not the most fundamental value and is
merely one value among others. Survival strikes us as a much more basic value. Now our proposal is that
since fighters for freedom are always likely to arise, the probability of fighters
for life and survival arising must be as great if not greater. This will be
especially so if the opportunity is provided for such ecowarrior/philosophers to
develop and be nurtured in special institutions called real universities or
academies. At present our leaders are primarily trained in institutions that
perpetuate and legitimate our environmentally destructive system. The
conventional university trains narrow, politically correct thinkers who
ultimately become the economic warriors of the system. Our proposal is to
counter this by an alternative framework for the training and complete
education of a new type of person who will be wise and fit to serve and to
rule. Unlike the narrowly focused economic rationalist universities of today, the real university
will train holistic thinkers in all of the arts and sciences necessary for tough
decision making that the environmental crisis confronts us with. These
thinkers will be the true public intellectuals with knowledge well grounded in
ecology. Chapter 9 will describe in more detail how we might begin the process of constructing such
real universities to train the ecowarriors to do battle against the enemies of life. We must accomplish this
education with the dedication that Sparta used to train its warriors. As in Sparta, these natural elites will
be especially trained from childhood to meet the challenging problems of our times.
It is not possible to take the argument further. Todaywe are reluctant to add the names of
any individuals who could be conscripted for our alternative Intensive Care
Management Government, because there are obviously defects in all individuals educated
in our existing institutionsincluding us! Nevertheless, as Darwinian evolutionists we believe
imperfections can be eliminated by a process of trial and error and selection. We
can rebuild the ship of civilization while it floats, slowly attempting to
produce better qualified people, people who are less selfish and more altruistic than
ourselves. The time frame for any sort of education-based leadership change
will be many decades and of course, humanity does not have the luxury of waiting for such a
time. Therefore, in our opinion, there is a considerable likelihood that some type of
economic or ecological crash will occur that will lead to the collapse of our
present social system. There will thus be casualties; there is no escape from the fact
that a great reckoning for humankind is to come. What we propose is a form of
crisis care management so that civilization does not perish; we wish to save a
remnant. Of course we have not answered all the questions that naturally arise when
any strategy of how to get there is postulated. Given that there is so little thought about what to
do in such worse case scenarios, we believe that some process is better than nothing
at all. Given the problems we have sketched, it is difficult to see where else one could go or what else
one could do. Therefore, take our proposal as a work in progress research program that can be
developed further.
I did not know how the dictionary defines the word utopia. Anyhow, Hovila uses it to indicate a model
differing from the dominating one or in more elaborate terms a model that differs from the one that
happens to prevail at the time of observation. This concept, I would argue, is both fruitless and
misleading. The words utopia and utopian are useful when used to describe reveries that are only dreamt
of: things impossible, deceptive, unrealistic or which lead to ruin. For a long time it has been clear that of
all known societies and economies, the most genuinely utopian are those that have been adopted at
present, as they are founded on the logical impossibility of continuous economic growth. When, in an
articles entitled Utopian Politics are Dangerous, Hovila describes the model societies suggested by Pentti
Linkola and Eero Paloheimo as unrealistic, dangerous utopias, his line of reasoning makes no sense
whatsoever. What could be more dangerous than the present unwavering
and relentless descent into a mass grave: this society of economic
growth and technology that every second is destroying the life
around us? If nothing else, the programmes of Linkola, Paloheimo and Schumacher
(who was also mentioned by Hovila) are examples of extreme realism, anti-idealism and
anti-utopianism. Each in their own way, these programmes have specifically
been devised to secure the survival of society, mankind and life: they are as far
away from being dangerous as could be. What Hovila writes is often unbelievable: The use of violent
methods poses a concrete risk. The recent raids carried out by animal-rights extremists are an example of
how utopians may collaborate with dissenters. In his expression of this matter Hovila even manages to
lump together two completely opposite things: the subtle and altogether limited violence of animal rights
activists on the one hand; the massive violence openly practiced by fur farmers and the vast, hidden
violence perpetrated by economic growth on the other. Hovila deftly writes: These models present the
same problem as all utopias: unless fully implemented, they will not be implemented at all. Without a
connection to the present, these programmes are simply meaningless. It is rather grotesque that Hovilas
words should be completely disproved by his own suggestions (in this case, in favour of greener farming).
For neither have his own compromising suggestions been realized to any degree: the complete end of
agriculture and absolute triumph of industrial farming are shaping market economy. Small adjustments
toward a softer direction have not been accepted any more than radical environmentalist alternatives:
integrated farming or IP (Integrated Production) plays no part whatsoever in the contemporary economy.
The worst mistake that
Hovilas point about being connected to the present is significant.
anyone thinking about society can make is to envisage the
prevailing system as the starting point: to begin from a tabula rasa, a
clean slate, is an absolute must in order to develop any sort of
programme. Human history across the world offers a wide range of
societal models: the model that happens to be the prevailing one in
our own society does no represent any intrinsically superior point of
reference. Any binding to a given societal model paralyses the whole
thinking process, as is shown by the conventionalities that Hovila like many others writes.
Links - General
Link Privacy
The affirmatives conception of privacy is not value-
neutral it reinforces a materialist view of the world that
allows for widespread environmental destruction
Bruce Jennings, May 2015, [Jennings is the Director of Bioethics and
Editor of Minding Nature at the Center for Humans and Nature], Center for
Humans & Nature, Mine and Ours, http://www.humansandnature.org/mine-
and-ours-article-202.php?issue=26, mm
She said, "Without the right of privacy, there is no real freedom of speech or freedom
of opinion, and so there is no actual democracy ." This is not just true of international
relations. It's also true here within the United States. Back before the Kennedy administration largely put
an end to it, J Edgar Hoover was infamous in political circles in Washington DC for his spying on and
blackmailing of both American politicians and activists like Martin Luther King. He even sent King tapes of
an extramarital affair and suggested that King should consider committing suicide. That was a shameful
the NSA, other
period in American history, and most Americans think it is behind us. But
intelligence agencies, and even local police departments have put the
practice of spying on average citizens in America on steroids. As Brazil's President
points out, without privacy there can be no democracy. Democracy requires opposing voices; it requires a
certain level of reasonable political conflict. And it requires that government misdeeds be exposed. That
can only be done when whistleblowers and people committing acts of journalism can do so without being
a larger problem is that well over half some estimates run as high as
spied upon. Perhaps
70% of the NSA's budget has been outsourced to private corporations . These
private corporations maintain an army of lobbyists in Washington DC who constantly push for more spying
With the privatization of intelligence operations,
and, thus, more money for their clients.
the normal system of checks and balances that would keep government
snooping under control has broken down .
Link Repression
Repressive political strategies like surveillance are key to
ensuring an authoritarian regime can maintain power
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm
History seems to teach us that the only reliable way to achieve true
autonomy from citizens demands is through an active and sustained
commitment to suppressing would-be dissenters and to imposing policies
without compromise. For both the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China, the
price of political openness was the risk of instability and political upheaval when
citizens came to disapprove of their leaders actions , and there is good reason to think
that this outcome was not a coincidence. 66 It is only by preventing robust civil
discourse and open dissent from emerging in the first place through
consistent repression that authoritarian governments have been able to
retain and exercise their power with relative impunity.67
Link Spillover/US Key to Global Demo
Global democracy is declining now restoring faith in the
US model reverses this trend
Larry Diamond, January 2015, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Democracy,
26(1), facing up to the democratic recession,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/ld_jod_jan2015-1.pdf, mm
Perhaps the most worrisome dimension of the democratic recession has been
the decline of democratic efficacy, energy, and self-confidence in the West,
including the United States. There is a growing sense, both domestically and
internationally, that democracy in the United States has not been functioning
effectively enough to address the major challenges of governance. The diminished pace of legislation,
the vanishing ability of Congress to pass a budget, and the 2013 shutdown of the federal government
are only some of the indications of a political system (and a broader body politic) that appears
increasingly polarized and deadlocked. As a result, both public approval of Congress and public trust in
government are at historic lows. The ever-mounting cost of election campaigns, the surging role of
nontransparent money in politics, and low rates of voter participation are additional signs of democratic
ill health. Internationally, promoting democracy abroad scores close to the bottom of the publics foreign-
policy priorities. And the international perception is that democracy promotion has already receded as an
The world takes note of all this. Authoritarian state
actual priority of U.S. foreign policy.
media gleefully publicize these travails of American democracy in order to
discredit democracy in general and immunize authoritarian rule against U.S.
pressure. Even in weak states, autocrats perceive that the pressure is
now off: They can pretty much do whatever they want to censor the media, crush the opposition, and
perpetuate their rule, and Europe and the United States will swallow it. Meek verbal protests may ensue,
but the aid will still flow and the dictators will still be welcome at the White House and the Elyse
It is hard to overstate how important the vitality and self-confidence of
Palace.
U.S. democracy has been to the global expansion of democracy during the
third wave. While each democratizing country made its own transition, pressure and solidarity from
the United State and Europe often generated a significant and even crucial enabling environment that
helped to tip finely balanced situations toward democratic change, and then in some cases gradually
If this solidarity is now greatly diminished, so will be
toward democratic consolidation.
the near-term global prospects for reviving and sustaining democratic
progress. Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last
decade, and there is a growing danger that the recession could deepen and
tip over into something much worse. Many more democracies could fail,
not only in poor countries of marginal strategic significance, but also in big swing states such as Indonesia
and Ukraine (again). There is little external recognition yet of the grim state of democracy in Turkey, and
Apathy
there is no guarantee that democracy will return any time soon to Thailand or Bangladesh.
and inertia in Europe and the United States could significantly lower the barriers
to new democratic reversals and to authoritarian entrenchments in many
more states. Yet the picture is not entirely bleak. We have not seen a third reverse
wave. Globally, average levels of freedom have ebbed a little bit, but not calamitously. Most important,
there has not been significant erosion in public support for democracy. In fact,
what the Afrobarometer has consistently shown is a gapin some African countries, a chasmbetween
the popular demand for democracy and the supply of it provided by the regime. This is not based just on
some shallow, vague notion that democracy is a good thing. Many Africans understand the importance of
political accountability, transparency, the rule of law, and restraint of power, and they would like to see
their governments manifest these virtues. While the performance of democracy is failing to inspire,
There is hardly a dictatorship in the
authoritarianism faces its own steep challenges.
world that looks stable for the long run . The only truly reliable source of regime stability is
legitimacy, and the number of people in the world who believe in the intrinsic legitimacy of any form of
authoritarianism is rapidly diminishing. Economic development, globalization, and the information
revolution are undermining all forms of authority and empowering individuals. Values are changing, and
while we should not assume any teleological path toward a global enlightenment, generally the
movement is toward greater distrust of authority and more desire for accountability, freedom, and
political choice. In the coming two decades, these trends will challenge the nature of rule in China,
Vietnam, Iran, and the Arab states much more than they will in India, not to mention Europe and the
United States. Already, democratization is visible on the horizon of Malaysias increasingly competitive
electoral politics, and it will come in the next generation to Singapore as well. The key imperative in the
near term is to work to reform and consolidate the democracies that have emerged during the third wave
With more
the majority of which remain illiberal and unstable, if they remain democratic at all.
focused, committed, and resourceful international engagement, it should be
possible to help democracy sink deeper and more enduring roots in countries
such as Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Ghana. It is possible and urgently important to help
stabilize the new democracies in Ukraine and Tunisia (whose success could gradually generate significant
diffusion effects throughout the Arab world). It might be possible to nudge Thailand and Bangladesh back
toward electoral democracy, though ways must be found to temper the awful levels of party polarization
in each country. With time, the electoral authoritarian project in Turkey will discredit itself in the face of
mounting corruption and abuse of power, which are already growing quite serious. And the oil-based
autocracies in Iran and Venezuela will face increasingly severe crises of economic performance and
It is vital that democrats in the established democracies not lose
political legitimacy.
faith. Democrats have the better set of ideas. Democracy may be receding somewhat in practice, but
it is still globally ascendant in peoples values and aspirations. This creates significant new opportunities
If the current modest recession of democracy spirals into a
for democratic growth.
depression, it will be because those of us in the established democracies
were our own worst enemies.
Links Case Specific
Link Mass Surveillance
The US is at a tipping point of an authoritarian transition
mass surveillance is key
John Suarez, 10/18/2013, Pam Am Post, The US surveillance state and
the totalitarian tipping point, http://panampost.com/john-
suarez/2013/10/18/the-us-surveillance-state-and-the-totalitarian-tipping-
point/, mm
In the 20th century, the United States reached levels of wealth for more people than had ever been seen in
human history. However, those in power whittled away at the nations basic freedoms, slowly and over
generations. Complaints were few because material prosperity endured. Today, massive and
unsustainable debts are maintaining the US standard of living.Freedom continues to be
whittled away at, but more US Americans are awakening to this hard truth, because material
prosperity for many is evaporating. One area that they view with growing alarm is the emergence of
the United States of America as a surveillance state , since, along with a militarized
police force, it is the infrastructure of totalitarianism .+ This is the second in a series of
reflections seeking to understand these negative trends in the United States. The first essay analyzed the
role of the US Supreme Court in particular, its decisions that undermined private property rights and
forced taxpayers to cooperate with evil. I concluded with the controversial proposition that the present
system in the United States is post-constitutional.+ For generations, US Americans believed that the first,
third, fourth, and ninth amendments found in the Bill of Rights protected the privacy of citizens of the
United States that only a small number engaged in criminal conduct would be subjected to surveillance,
the arrival of new
following a court order permitting such activity by the authorities.+ However,
technologies provided the state with the means to circumvent these
constitutional provisions. In the state of Florida, for example, automated systems are replacing
toll operators, and they either process your information via your Sun Pass or by photographing your license
plate and sending you the bill. According to the pre-paid toll program privacy policy, information
concerning a SunPass account is provided only when required to comply with a subpoena or court
order.+ In other words, they are compiling and storing information on your whereabouts.+ Affirming this
reality, the American Civil Liberties Union stated on July 18, 2013, that Police around the United States are
recording the license plates of passing drivers and storing the information for years with little privacy
protection. The information potentially allows authorities to track the movements of everyone who drives a
car.+ However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation makes clear that the federal and state governments
are monitoring not only US Americans physical movement, but also their telephone and e-mail
The government is mass collecting phone metadata of all US
communications.+
customers under the guise of the Patriot Act . Moreover, the media reports confirm that
the government is collecting and analyzing the content of communications of
foreigners talking to persons inside the United States, as well as collecting collecting
[sic] much more, without a probable cause warrant. Finally, the media reports confirm the upstream
The Edward Snowden
collection off of the fiberoptic cables that Mr. Klein first revealed in 2006.
revelations expose a national government that is systematically monitoring
and recording the communications of the entire US American people all of the
time, and beyond. From the Wall Street Journal:+ The National Security Agency which
possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens has built a surveillance network
that covers more Americans Internet communications than officials have
publicly disclosed, current and former officials say. The system has the capacity to
reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a
wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of
emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet
technology . . . What is equally disturbing is that private companies are complicit in the behavior when
not engaging in their own monitoring of internet communications although, to be fair, their will is not
always on the side of the spying. (See the video below.) Further, even though the immense and illegal
surveillance apparatus is out in the open now, we see no remorse from the instigators and the elected
officials responsible. Rather, they are doubling down, and their apologists are right there with them.
Unfortunately, there is no plan; there is no conspiracy. This expansion and centralization of power has
continued under both Republicans and Democrats in the United States and would most likely continue
under a third party. Centralized power has become an end unto itself, and as the late Czech president
Vaclav Havel observed:+ Once the claims of central power have been placed above law and morality,
once the exercise of that power is divested of public control, and once the institutional guarantees of
political plurality and civil rights have been made a mockery of, or simply abolished, there is no reason to
respect any other limitations. The expansion of central power does not stop at the frontier between the
public and the private, but instead, arbitrarily pushes back that border until it is shamelessly intervening in
The United States is reaching a tipping point that
areas that once were private.
leads into a totalitarian abyss and the crackdown on privacy whistleblowers is one of
many ominous signs regarding where this centralization of power is heading.+
Link Mass Surveillance (Spillover/US Key)
US mass surveillance gets modeled that empowers
authoritarianism abroad
Donahue 14 (Eileen,- visiting scholar at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute
for International Studies, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council
Why the NSA undermines national security)
The U.S. model of mass surveillance will be followed by others and could
unintentionally invert the democratic relationship between citizens and their governments. Under the
cover of preventing terrorism, authoritarian governments may now increase
surveillance of political opponents. Governments that collect and monitor digital
information to intimidate or squelch political opposition and dissent can more justifiably claim
they are acting with legitimacy. For human rights defenders and democracy
activists worldwide, the potential consequences of the widespread use by
governments of mass surveillance techniques are dark and clear .
Many of the countries in the Southern Hemisphere are failed or fragile states; many of
them are authoritarian or autocratic regimes. No doubt the elites in those regimes will use
the excuse of security to adopt more stringent state controls over the Internet
in their jurisdictions and support local versions of popular social media companies over which they
can exact their own nationalized controls -- a trend that began prior to the NSA revelations but which now
the revelations about NSA's
has additional rhetorical support. In the age of Big Data,
intelligence-gathering programs touched many nerves . The issue of surveillance won't
go away, and Americans will need to figure out the appropriate safeguards for
liberty in their democracy. It's an important debate, but one that doesn't include us "foreigners" that now
Americans would do well to consider the
make up the vast majority of the Internet users.
international implications of their domestic policies before they come home to bite
them.
Link Border Surveillance
Border surveillance is key to the expansion of a global
surveillance regime and the emergence of
authoritarianism
Todd Miller, 7/11/2013, Truthout, surveillance surge on the border: how to
turn the US-Meixcan border into a war zone, http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/17513-surveillance-surge-on-the-border-how-to-turn-the-
us-mexican-border-into-a-war-zone, mm
This border surge, a phrase coined by Senator Chuck Schumer, is also a surveillance
surge. The Senate bill provides for the hiring of almost 19,000 new Border Patrol agents, the building of
700 additional miles of walls, fences, and barriers, and an investment of billions of dollars in the latest
this, the bill only continues in a post-9/11
surveillance technologies, including drones. In
tradition in which our southern divide has become an on-the-ground
laboratory for the development of a surveillance state whose mission is
already moving well beyond those borderlands. Calling this immigration reform
is like calling the National Security Agencys expanding global surveillance system a domestic
Its really all about the country that the United States is
telecommunications upgrade.
becoming -- one of the police and the policed. The $46 billion border security price tag in the
immigration reform bill will simply expand on what has already been built. After all, $100 billion was spent on border enforcement in the first
decade after 9/11. To that must be added the annual $18 billion budget for border and immigration enforcement, money that outpaces the
combined budgets of all other federal law enforcement agencies. In fact, since Operation Blockade in the 1990s, the U.S.-Mexico border has
gone through so many surges that a time when simple chain link fences separated two friendly countries is now unimaginable. To witness the
widespread presence of Department of Homeland Security agents on the southern border, just visit that international boundary 100 miles
south of Border Security Expo. Approximately 700 miles of walls, fences, and barriers already cut off the two countries at its major urban
crossings and many rural ones as well. Emplaced everywhere are cameras that can follow you -- or your body heat -- day or night. Overhead,
as in Afghanistan, a Predator B drone may hover. You cant hear its incessant buzzing only because it flies so high, nor can you see the crew in
charge of flying it and analyzing your movements from possibly hundreds of miles away. As you walk, perhaps you step on implanted
sensors, creating a beeping noise in some distant monitoring room. Meanwhile, green-striped Border Patrol vehicles rush by constantly. On the
U.S.-Mexican border, there are already more than 18,500 agents (and approximately 2,300 more on the Canadian border). In counterterrorism
mode, they are paid to be suspicious of everything and everybody. Some Homeland Security vehicles sport trailers carrying All Terrain
Vehicles. Some have mounted surveillance cameras, others cages to detain captured migrants. Some borderlanders like Mike Wilson of the
Tucson-based Border Action Network, a member of the Tohono Oodham Nation (a Native American people and the original inhabitants of the
Arizona borderlands), call the border security operatives an occupying army. Checkpoints -- normally located 20-50 miles from the
international boundary -- serve as a second layer of border enforcement. Stopped at one of them, you will be interrogated by armed agents in
green, most likely with drug-sniffing dogs. If you are near the international divide, its hard to avoid such checkpoints where you will be asked
about your citizenship -- and much more if anything you say or do, or simply the way you look, raises suspicions. Even outside of the
checkpoints, agents of the Department of Homeland Security can pull you over for any reason -- without probable cause or a warrant -- and do
what is termed a routine search. As a U.S. Border Patrol agent told journalist Margaret Regan, within a hundred miles of the international
divide, there's an asterisk on the Constitution. Off-road forward operating bases offer further evidence of the battlefield atmosphere being
created near the border. Such outposts became commonplace during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were meant to house
U.S. soldiers deployed into remote areas. On the border, there are high-tech yet rudimentary camps that serve the same purpose. They also
signal how agents of the Department of Homeland Security are gaining, maintaining, and expanding into rural areas traversed by migrants
and used by smugglers, though to this point never crossed by a known international terrorist. These rural areas, especially in Arizona, are
riddled with migrant causalities. More than 6,000 remains have been recovered since the mid-1990s, deaths not for the most part from
bullets but from exposure. The U.S. borderlands, according to sociologist Timothy Dunn, started to become a militarized zone as early as the
1970s -- in part, in response to the Pentagons low-intensity conflict doctrine. With Congressional immigration reform, if it passes the House of
Representatives, it may very well become a full-fledged war zone. Since the 1990s, the strategy of the Border Patrol has been termed
prevention by deterrence and has been focused on concentrating agents and surveillance technologies in urban areas, once the traditional
migrant routes. The idea was to funnel migrant flows into areas too dangerous and desolate to cross like the triple-degree-temperature desert
in Arizona. Deadly yes; impossible to cross, no. Although unauthorized border-crossings have slowed down in recent years, tens of thousands
continue to cross into the United States annually from Mexico and Central America, thanks in part to the continued havoc of the North
American Free Trade Agreement, which left more two million Mexican farmers unemployed. I met Adira, a 21-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico,
in early June. She told me a story all too common in Arizona. As she described her experience, I realized that I was talking to somebody who
had probably died and been brought back to life. We were only a few blocks from the border. Homeland Security had formally deported her
only days before. Still reliving the trauma of her experience, she stared down, her face colorless, as she talked. I had heard the basics of her
story so many times before: to avoid the militarized surveillance apparatus, she and her companions walked for at least five days through the
southern Arizona desert with little -- and then no -- water or food. By the fourth day, the mountains began to talk to her, so she told me, and
she suspected she was coming to the end of her young life. After she couldnt walk any more, the guide dragged her, telling her constantly:
We just have to make it to the next point. When they reached a road on the American side of the border, she remembers convulsing four
times (just as she remembers blood bursting spontaneously from the noses of her companions). And then she remembers no more. She woke
up in a hospital. There were scars on her chest. Medics must have used a machine, she thought, to shock her back to life. She found out later
that somebody had lit a fire to attract the Border Patrol. Shes lucky not to be among those remains regularly found out in that desert. In
other words, each further tightening of the border is a death sentence passed on yet more Latin Americans. According to a statement by a
group of Tucson organizations, including No More Deaths and the Coalicin de Derechos Humanos, the border build-up in the immigration
reform bill promises more of the same: Make no mistake: this bill will lead to more deaths on the border. In early March , DRS
Technologies set up its integrated fixed-tower technology at the University of
Arizonas (UA) Science and Technology Park, just south of Tucson, an hour from the border, and very
close to where Adira almost lost her life. The company was eager to show off the long-
range surveillance technology it had been developing for borders in places
like Egypt and Jordan. It set up a mock operational control room to do a dog-and-pony show for
the local media. Four of its IT guys then focused their cameras on an elevated railroad spur more than four
miles away in the middle of the desert where two men were approaching each other to consummate a fake
drug deal. One handed the other a backpack. It was all vividly watchable on DRSs video screens. Although
the demonstration was
the odds of such a scenario actually happening ranged from slim to none,
a reminder of just how fertile the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are for defense-
and surveillance-related companies. Its here that new generations of
surveillance technology are regularly born and developed. For almost a
decade, the Department of Homeland Security has been attempting to build a
virtual wall along the border -- not a physical barrier but a high-tech
surveillance masterpiece, a complex web of technology, radar, unattended ground sensors, and
camera systems meant to detect anyone crossing the border anywhere. The last attempt to install such an
experimental system along part of the border was in 2006. Then the Department of Homeland Security
awarded Boeing Corporation a multi-billion-dollar contract to develop such a wall, known as SBInet. That
contract was abruptly cancelled in 2011, after the costly and delayed program advertised as offering
unprecedented situational awareness misfired regularly in the rugged terrain of the Arizona borderlands.
Now, companies like DRS are standing in line for the next round of potentially lucrative contracts, as
Homeland Security wantsto finish the job. The UA Tech Park is one place in the southern borderlands
where surveillance technology can be developed, tested, evaluated, and demonstrated. It has 18,000
linear feet of fencing surrounding its solar zone, a solar-technology-centric research area ideal for testing
sensor systems along a future border wall. On any of the roadways in its 1,345 acres, it can set up mock
border-crossings or checkpoints to test new equipment and methods. It draws on faculty and graduate
students from the college of engineering. In rapid-response teams, they offer third-party evaluations of
border control technology. Some of this same technology is also being created on the UA campus, thanks
in part to millions of dollars in DHS grants. Here, too, as Tech Park CEO Bruce Wright tells me, they can
test new technologies right in the field -- that is, on the border, presumably on real people. One of the
tech parks goals, he says, is to develop the first border security industry cluster of its kind in the United
States. In southern Arizona alone, they have already identified 57 companies, big and small, working on
border policing technology. The Tech Parks director of community engagement Molly Gilbert says, Its
really about development, and we want to create technology jobs in our border towns. These are sweet
words for the economically depressed communities of southern Arizona, their poverty rates usually
hovering at around 20%. With projected global revenues of approximately $20 billion in 2013 and a 5%
growth rate that has withstood a worldwide recession, the global border security industry was
flourishing even before the latest immigration reform proposal. Now, it is poised for a potential
bonanza. The key, as Wright stressed in a 2012 interview, is that the products developed for the U.S.-
Mexican borderlands be marketed in the future for the U.S.-Canada border, where defenses are already
being upgraded, for other international borders, but also for places that have little to do with borders.
These might include the perimeters of utility companies and airports, or police forces with expanding
national security and immigration enforcement missions. Theres
a huge market for this
technology worldwide, Wright told me then, because borders exist everywhere.
Theres the Palestinian-Israeli border, theres the Syrian-Israeli border, theres the German-Polish border...
Take it around the world and wherever you want to go there are borders, so the technology is very
adaptable and has a market worldwide.
Link Project Bullrun
Project Bullrun undermines the foundation of democracy
it is key to an authoritarian transition
Eben Moglen, 5/28/2014, Watching the Watchers, Is privacy essential for
democracy? http://watchingthewatchers.org/news/2771/privacy-essential-
democracy, mm
Some proponents of Prism assert that it is an essential tool against terrorism. They claim that only data
belonging to foreigners (that is, non-US residents) is retained, and that content is not reviewed as a matter
of course, only algorithmically analysed for suspicious patterns. They point out that a search warrant is still
required from a secret court set up under the US. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) may be
spun up so that content accumulated over years of daily internet spooling may be extracted and
analysed, laying bare a suspects entire virtual life. Those safeguards have limited value. According to
congressional reporting, the FISA court received 1,789 applications for authority to conduct electronic
surveillance in 2012, but not one application was denied. We cannot debate whether the FISA court is a
rubber stamp, because its proceedings are secret. Further, any assurance to US citizens that the NSA will
not gather and archive their data is suspect. The Five Eyes alliance between the intelligence agencies of
the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK effectively permits those governments to circumvent
the prohibition against gathering data on their own citizens by sharing information across the Five Eyes
intelligence community. The UK for example can spy on Americans and make that information available to
Prior
the US government on its massive spy cloud one that the NSA operates and the Five Eyes share.
to 9/11, the operative presumption in developed nations favoured privacy , but
the security narrative has since reversed the presumption, eroding our
privacy rights in favour of government control over our personal information. However,
government is an instrument sometimes a crude one susceptible to abuse, as
demonstrated by recent admissions that the US Internal Revenue Service has targeted specific groups
based on ideology. When we empower the state, we empower those that hold sway over the state, and the
state is subject to influence from a multitude of quarters. I have personally been a victim of such abuses.
The US government has indicted me, shut down my cloud storage company Megaupload and seized all of
my assets because it claims I was complicit in copyright infringement by some of the people who used the
Megaupload service. I have emphasised that I am being prosecuted not because the charges against me
have some sound basis in US copyright law, but because the US justice department has been
instrumentalised by certain private interests that have a financial stake in neutralising my business. That
trend represents a danger not just to me, but to all of us. Recent polls in the US suggest that the public is
not much preoccupied with the fact that our data is being retained, so long as our own political party is in
The point we should
control of the government. That kind of fickle comfort is small-minded.
derive from Snowdens revelations a point originally expressed in March 2013 by
William Binney, a former senior NSA crypto-mathematician is that the NSAs
Utah Data Center will amount to a turnkey system that, in the wrong hands,
could transform the country into a totalitarian state virtually overnight. Every
person who values personal freedom, human rights and the rule of law must recoil against such a
possibility, regardless of their political preference. Others take a more cavalier approach, such as former
Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2009: If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you
the
shouldn't be doing it in the first place. We should heed warnings from Snowden because
prospect of an Orwellian society outweighs whatever security benefits we
derive from Prism or Five Eyes. Viewed through the long lens of human history, concerns over
government tyranny are always legitimate. It is those concerns that underpin the
constitutions of most developed countries, and inform international principles of human rights and the rule
of law. Prism and its related practices should be discontinued immediately, and the Utah Data Center
should be leased to cloud storage companies with encryption capabilities.
Impacts Democracy Bad
Democracy Bad Environment
Democracy cant save the environment studies prove a
correlation between democratization and environmental
destruction
Mark Beeson, 3/30/2010, (Department of Political Science and
International Relations, University of Western Australia, Perth), The coming
of environmental authoritarianism, Environmental Politics, vol 19, no 2,
https://www.academia.edu/539179/The_coming_of_environmental_authoritari
anism, mm
In much of East Asia, the population may not have the luxury or capacity even to engage in these sorts of
discursive practices, while the absence of effective democracy in much of the region stands as a
continuing obstacle to achieving anything approximating deliberative democracy. Even more
there is no compelling evidence that democracy
problematically in the long-run,
of any sort will necessarily promote good environmental outcomes
(Neumayer 2002), or that rising living standards will inevitably deliver a
sustainable environment (Dinda 2004). On the contrary, there is evidence to
suggest that in the initial phases at least, democratisation could indirectly
promote environmental degradation through its effect on national
income (Li and Reuveny 2006, p. 953). In other words, even the best of all outcomes rising living
standards and an outbreak of democracy may have unsustainable
environmental consequences that may prove to be their undoing in
the longer-term. In such circumstances, ideas about possible ways of reorganising societies to
lessen their impact on the natural environment may not find sufficient support to make them realisable or
effective. As Lieberman (2002, p. 709) points out, an ideas time arrives not simply because the idea is
compelling on its own terms, but because opportune political circumstances favor it. In much of
Southeast Asia and China the forces supporting environmental protection are comparatively weak and
unable to overcome powerful vested interests intent on the continuing exploitation of natural resources
In short, predominantly Western concerns with thick cosmopolitanism and the hope that a metabolistic
[sic] relationship with the natural environment might bind us to strangers (Dobson 2006, p. 177), seem
bizarrely at odds with lived experience where climate change is already profoundly undermining
The
sociability within national frameworks, let alone between them (Raleigh and Urdal 2007).
sobering reality would seem to be that . . . as the human population
grows and environmental damage progresses, policymakers will
have less and less capacity to intervene to keep damage from
producing serious social disruption, including conflict (Homer-Dixon 1991,
p. 79).
In our time, it is not only unfashionable but inconceivable to think outside the
method of preserving individual autonomy. We worship freedom, itself
a negative definition focused not on what we can do but what we cannot be obligated to do. Our
civilization understands itself not as a product of history and maker of future history, but as a facilitation
like a big shopping mall with a legal system of individuals doing what pleases them, so long as they do
This condition has not made
not interrupt others doing the same and disrupt the peace.
us happy. While we agree that liberty, equality, fraternity and open economies are noble methods, the
goal of these having a better civilization and individual live s has not
manifested itself through those methods. By basing our ideal on
freedom, we have closed ourselves off to obligations outside of
ourselves, which coincidentally are the things that make us feel most alive. We are prisoners
of the self, and it is no surprise we act selfishly as a result . Linkola
most clearly distinguishes himself from other environmental
spokesmen by thinking practically about the effect of individuals as
a group: The consciousness of ecology has grown, but still the
Average Joe only increases the load. The bustle is controlled by three words: as long
as. As long as we can still travel to the other side of the globe four times a year, we will do it. As long as
we can still buy a SUV, we will buy it. This is the reality. In doing so, he has escaped the methodological
ghetto. The safe methods we have been using do not achieve our goals, so we must change. Linkola saw
that while every well-meaning education program has vanished without making change, the occasional
Either we
governmental fascism like the Endangered Species Act in the USA has produced results.
enforce an unpopular truth on ourselves, or we wait paralyzed by
our inability to transcend our methods, and let nature enforce it on
us through environmental cataclysm. To avoid the selfishness of
individuals, Linkola advocates an end to Third World aid and immigration, mandatory
population control, and the creation of a ruthless green police to clean up
the planet. His theories tie together deep ecology with a recognition
that democratic, liberal societies cannot control themselves. He believes
that the individual who connects himself to reality through struggle and not the individual withdrawing
into him or herself brings the greatest meaning to life.
In this textwe have listed the impediments to recognition within the liberal
democracies, the inertia and self-interest in preventing political change , the
self-interest of the so-called free press, and the corporate and financial interests. And to
these impediments we must add the lack of understanding by the ordinary robotic worker and mechanical
consumer that he or she has now become. It will require a fundamental change in society for the citizen
to be able to understand the present political system, let alone the complexities of our dependence on
We doubt if any transformation of the masses is possible, at
ecological services.
least to the extent needed for a radical democratic transformation of the
present system. For example, most people have difficulty understanding the
nature of the monetary system of capitalism at the basic level described here. It is difficult
even for those with slightly higher IQs to grasp the diabolical logic of credit
creation. Yet without such a grasp, reform of the present system is
impossible. Without leadership with a will and power to act the crisis is
certainly insoluble. As scientific realists, we must look elsewhere if we are to
find a political answer adequate to the challenge of the environmental crisis.
Democracy, like communism, is a nice idea, and it is a pity that neither
works. If there was a way of saving democracy then we should save it, but it is unlikely that
there is any such way because the ordinary person or mass man is not made of
the right heroic stuff necessary to meet the challenge of our age .
AT Petro/Liberty Impacts Environment O/W
The environment outweighs liberty putting liberty first
ensures extinction
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 162, mm
The atomistic, liberal societies of today, along with their expansive notions of
personal freedom, are an artifact of an abnormal and transitory period of
abundance enabled by humanitys exploitation of found wealth the
virgin resources of the New World and the storehouses of untouched fossil fuels. With the return
of ecological scarcity, individuals will not have the same latitude to
go their own way to exist apart from or even in defiance of their community, on which they will
increasingly depend for livelihood. Nothing less than a resurgence of fraternity will make the return of
scarcity bearable. Without some feeling of kinship that induces us to seek or at least accept a common
the response to scarcity is likely to be Hobbesian in the
mode of life,
worst sense a war of all against all, ending only with the imposition
of order by a heavy-handed Leviathan.
AT Democratic Peace Theory
Democratic peace theory is wrong- democracies do go to
war
Layne 7
Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 94
Wilsonian ideology drives the American Empire because its proponents posit that the
United States must use its military power to extend democracy abroad. Here, the
ideology of Empire rests on assumptions that are not supported by the facts. One
reason the architects of Empire champion democracy promotion is because they
believe in the so-called democratic peace theory , which holds that democratic states do not
fight other democracies. Or as President George W. Bush put it with his customary eloquence,
"democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful."136 The democratic peace theory is the
probably the most overhyped and undersupported "theory" ever to be concocted by
American academics. In fact, it is not a theory at all. Rather it is a theology that suits
the conceits of Wilsonian true believers-especially the neoconservatives who have
been advocating American Empire since the early 1990s. As serious scholars have
shown, however, the historical record does not support the democratic peace
theory.131 On the contrary, it shows that democracies do not act differently toward other
democracies than they do toward nondemocratic states. When important national
interests are at stake, democracies not only have threatened to use force against other
democracies, but, in fact, democracies have gone to war with other democracies.
The story of non-human life on the planet Earth over the past few decades is a simple
one: loss. While there are always a few bright spotsincluding the recovery of threatened animals like the brown pelican,
thanks to the quietly revolutionary Endangered Species Act on
a planetary scale biodiversity is steadily
marching backwards, with extinctions rising and habitat destroyed . Species as diverse as the tiger
less than 3,500 live in the wild todayto tiny frogs could be gone forever if the trends keep
heading downwards. In a bitterly ironic twist, back in 2002 the United Nations declared that 2010 would be the
international year of biodiversity, and countries agreed to" achieve a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss
at the global, regional and national level," as part of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). At this paper in
Science shows (download a PDF here), however, the world has utterly failed to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, and by
just about every measurement, things are getting worse all the time . (Read the Global Biodiversity
Outlook if you really want to be depressed.) With that cheery backdrop, representatives from nearly 200 nations are meeting in
the Japanese city of Nagoyahome to Toyota and not a whole lot elsefor the 10th summit of the CBD, where they will set
new goals for reducing species loss and slowing habitat destruction. At the very least, they should know how critical the
biodiversity challenge isas Japanese Environment Minister Ryo Matsumoto said in an opening speech: All life on
Earth exists thanks to the benefits from biodiversity in the forms of fertile soil, clear water
and clean air. We are now close to a 'tipping point' - that is, we are about to reach a threshold
beyond which biodiversity loss will become irreversible, and may cross that threshold in the
next 10 years if we do not make proactive efforts for conserving biodiversity. Ahmed
Djoghlaf, the executive secretary of the CBD, struck an even darker note, reminding
diplomats that they were on a clockand time was running out : Let's have the courage to look in the
eyes of our children and admit that we have failed, individually and collectively, to fulfil the Johannesburg promise made by
110 heads of state to substantially reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010. Let us look in the eyes of our children and
admit that we continue to lose biodiversity at an unprecedented rate, thus mortgaging their future. But what will actually come
out of the Nagoya summit, which will continue until Oct. 29? Most likely there will be another agreementa new protocol
outlining various global strategies on sustaining biodiversity and goals on slowing the rate of species loss. (You can download a
PDF of the discussion draft document that will be picked over at Nagoya.) It won't be hard for governments to agree on general
ambitions for reducing biodiversity losswho's against saving pandas?but the negotiations will be much trickier on the
question of who will actually pay for a more biodiverse planet? And much as we've seen in international climate change
negotiations, the essential divide is between the developed and developing nationsand neither side seems ready to bend. The
reality is that much of the world's biodiversitythe most fantastic species and the most complete forestsis found in the
poorer, less developed parts of the world. That's in part because the world's poor have been, well, too poor to develop the land
around them in the way rich nations have. (There was once a beautiful, undeveloped island off the East Coast of the U.S., with
wetlands and abundant forests. It was called Mannahatta. It's a little different now.) As a result, the rural poorespecially in
tropical nationsare directly dependent on healthy wildlife and plants in a way that inhabitants of developed nations aren't. So
on one hand that makes the poor directly vulnerable when species are lost and forests are chopped downwhich often results
in migration to thronging urban areas. But on the other, poverty often drives the rural poor to slash-and-burn forests for
agriculture, or hunt endangered species to sell for bush meat. Conservation and development have to go hand in hand. That
hasn't always been the mantra of the conservation movementas Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writes in Slate, conservation projects
in the past sometimes displaced the human inhabitants over a reserve or park, privileging nature over people. But that's changed
in recent decadesenvironmental groups like Conservation International or the Nature Conservancy now spend as much of
their time working on development as they do in protecting nature. "Save the people, save the wildlife"that's the new mantra.
The missing ingredient is moneyand that's what will be up for debate at Nagoya. As climate change has risen on the
international agenda, funding for biodiversity has laggedthe 33 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development (OECD) donated $8.5 billion for climate change mitigation projects in 2008, but just $3 billion
annually for biodiversity. One way to change that could be through "payment for ecosystem services." A biodiverse
landscape, intact forests, clean water and airall of these ebbing qualities of a healthy world
are vital for our economies as well. (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, a UN-
funded study, estimates that nature degradation costs the world $2 trillion to $5 trillion a
year, with the poorest nations bearing the brunt of the loss.) Rich countries could pay more biodiverse developing nations to
keep nature runningallowing poorer countries to capitalize on their natural resources without slashing and burning. Will that
work? I'm skepticalthe experience of climate change negotiations have shown that the nations of the world are great at high
ideals and fuzzy goals, but not so hot at actually dividing up the pie in a more sustainable fashion. That doesn't mean there
aren't smaller solutionslike Costa Rica's just-announced debt-for-nature dealbut a big bang from Japan this month doesn't
seem too likely. The problem is as simple as it is unsolvable, at least so farthere's no clear path to national development so far
that doesn't take from the natural world. That worked for rich nations, but we're rapidly running out of planet, as a report last
week from the World Wildlife Fund showed. And there's something greater at stake as well, as the naturalist E.O. Wilson once
put it: The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is
the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats-this is
the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us. We're losing nature. And that loss
really is forever.
Impact Warming
Global warming is real, anthropogenic, and causes
extinction
Deibel 7 (Terry L. Deibel, professor of IR at National War College, 2007,
Foreign Affairs Strategy, Conclusion: American Foreign
Finally, there is one major existential threat to American security (as well as prosperity) of a nonviolent nature,
global warming to the stability of the climate
which, though far in the future, demands urgent action. It is the threat of
upon which all earthly life depends. Scientists worldwide have been observing the gathering of this threat for
three decades now, and what was once a mere possibility has passed through probability to near certainty. Indeed not
one of more than 900 articles on climate change published in refereed scientific journals from 1993
to 2003 doubted that anthropogenic warming is occurring. In legitimate scientific circles, writes
Elizabeth Kolbert, it is virtually impossible to find evidence of disagreement over the
fundamentals of global warming. Evidence from a vast international scientific monitoring
effort accumulates almost weekly, as this sample of newspaper reports shows: an international panel
predicts brutal droughts, floods and violent storms across the planet over the next century; climate
change could literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine Snowcaps
and aid the spread of cholera and malaria ; glaciers in the Antarctic and in Greenland are melting much faster
than expected, andworldwide, plants are blooming several days earlier than a decade ago; rising sea temperatures have been
accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes; NASA scientists have concluded from direct
temperature measurements that 2005 was the hottest year on record, with 1998 a close second; Earths warming climate is estimated
to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year as disease spreads; widespread bleaching from Texas to
Trinidadkilled broad swaths of corals due to a 2-degree rise in sea temperatures. The world is slowly disintegrating, concluded
Inuit hunter Noah Metuq, who lives 30 miles from the Arctic Circle. They call it climate changebut we just call it breaking up.
From the founding of the first cities some 6,000 years ago until the beginning of the industrial revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere remained relatively constant at about 280 parts per million (ppm). At present they are accelerating toward 400 ppm, and
by 2050 they will reach 500 ppm, about double pre-industrial levels. Unfortunately, atmospheric CO2 lasts about a century, so there is
no way immediately to reduce levels, only to slow their increase, we are thus in for significant global warming; the only debate is
how much and how serous the effects will be. As the newspaper stories quoted above show, we are already experiencing the effects of
1-2 degree warming in more violent storms, spread of disease, mass die offs of plants and animals, species extinction, and threatened
inundation of low-lying countries like the Pacific nation of Kiribati and the Netherlands at a warming of 5 degrees or less the
Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could disintegrate, leading to a sea level of rise of 20 feet that would cover North Carolinas
outer banks, swamp the southern third of Florida, and inundate Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village. Another
catastrophic effect would be the collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the winter weather in Europe far warmer
than its latitude would otherwise allow. Economist William Cline once estimated the damage to the United States alone from
the most
moderate levels of warming at 1-6 percent of GDP annually; severe warming could cost 13-26 percent of GDP. But
frightening scenario is runaway greenhouse warming, based on positive feedback from
the buildup of water vapor in the atmosphere that is both caused by and causes hotter surface temperatures. Past
ice age transitions, associated with only 5-10 degree changes in average global temperatures, took place in just decades, even
though no one was then pouring ever-increasing amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this specter, the best one
humankinds continuing enhancement of the natural greenhouse effect is
can conclude is that
akin to playing Russian roulette with the earths climate and humanitys life support
system. At worst, says physics professor Marty Hoffert of New York University, were just going to burn everything up;
were going to het the atmosphere to the temperature it was in the Cretaceous when there were crocodiles at the poles, and
then everything will collapse. During the Cold War, astronomer Carl Sagan popularized a theory of nuclear winter
to describe how a thermonuclear war between the Untied States and the Soviet Union would not only destroy both countries
but possible end life on this planet. Global warming is the post-Cold War eras equivalent of nuclear
winter at least as serious and considerably better supported scientifically. Over the long
run it puts dangers from terrorism and traditional military challenges to shame. It is a threat
not only to the security and prosperity to the United States, but potentially to the continued existence of life on
this planet.
Crunch UQ
Crunch UQ Collapse Coming (Global Industrial
Collapse/Transition)
Global collapse is inevitable only our alternative allows
for us to survive the crunch
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, 66-
69, mm
This failure to grasp that the root of the disease is not defective public policies but a
defective public philosophy motivated me to resume the discussion in 1997 with Requiem
for Modern Politics. In that work, I argued that the modern political paradigm that is, the
body of political concepts and beliefs inherited from Thomas Hobbes and his successors was bound
for self-destruction even before the emergence of ecological
scarcity. That paradigm is no longer intellectually tenable or practically viable because any polity that
abandons virtue and rejects community necessarily becomes the author of its own demise. The
tendencies toward moral decay, social breakdown, economic excess, and
administrative despotism that are evident everywhere in the so-called developed world testify
to the need for a new public philosophy on political as well as ecological grounds. This book attempts to
sketch the basic outline of such a philosophy a natural law theory of politics grounded in ecology,
physics, and psychology. In doing so, I make explicit the basic principles of ecological polity that were
implicit in my previous work and add new material to make the theory more robust. I start from the radical
premise that sustainability as usually understood is an oxymoron. Industrial man
[people] has used the found wealth of the New World and the stocks of fossil
hydrocarbons to create an antiecological Titanic. Making the deck chairs
recyclable, feeding the boilers with biofuels, installing hybrid winches and windlasses, and every other
effort to green the Titanic will ultimately fail. In the end, the ship is
doomed by the laws of thermodynamics and by implacable biological
and geological limits that are already beginning to bite . We shall soon be
obliged to trade in the Titanic for a schooner in other words, a postindustrial future that, however
technologically sophisticated, resembles the preindustrial past in many important respects. This book
attempts to envision the politics of that smaller, simpler, humbler vessel.
Crunch UQ Transition Key
The crunch is coming we are entering a sixth mass
extinction only the transition can solve
Dovey 6/23/15
Dana Dovey, writer for Medical daily cites study from scientists at Stanford,
Princeton and Berkeley
http://www.medicaldaily.com/end-world-6th-mass-extinction-earths-history-
has-begun-and-humans-may-not-survive-339480
Extinction is a natural part of life. With each passing century species enter and fade
from existence, but mass extinctions are few and far between . To date,
Earth has seen only five, with the last one taking out the dinosaurs
about 65 million years ago. However, according to a recent study
completed by an international team of biologists, we are currently in
the midst of a sixth mass extinction, and humans may be one of the first species to die
off. Stories on pollution, habitat destruction, and the impending end of days are nothing new. What
marks this collaborative paper apart from the countless number of doomsday predictions is that it is based
on accurate and hard-to-dispute scientific data. Using fossil records, the team compared natural extinction
rates, which are also known as background extinction rates, to current extinction rates, and came up with
some disturbing figures. Results showed that even with conservative estimates, species today are
disappearing up to 100 times faster than the normal rate between mass extinctions. We emphasize that
our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis, because our aim was to
According
place a realistic lower bound on humanitys impact on biodiversity, the researchers wrote.
to Dr. Paul Ehrlich, a researcher involved in the study, "[The study]
shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the
sixth great mass extinction event." Whats A Mass Extinction? The mass extinction of
the dinosaurs, scientifically known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or K-T) extinction, is the best known of all
mass extinctions, but it is only one of five extinction events believed to have occurred on Earth. Mass
extinctions are defined as periods where abnormal or above average numbers of species completely die
out. For example, BBC reports that in the Permian mass extinction, which occurred an estimated 248
million years ago, about 96 percent of all of Earths species died out. The International Union for
Conversation of Nature, which maintains an authoritative list of threatened and extinct species, estimates
the current specter of extinction could wipe out 41 percent of amphibian species, 26 percent of all
mammals, and 13 percent of birds. It takes the Earth millions of years to recover
from mass extinctions. In the press release, senior author Geraldo Ceballos said, "Our species
itself would likely disappear early on." In a video clip, Ehrlich explains that this is because of our
dependence on the natural services that other species provide. Examples of this include the pollination
of crops and climate control. We are not likely to lose the honey bee as a species but we are already
losing it in lots of places where its important, say for pollinating your almond orchards, Ehrlich said. Past
extinctions were brought about by a number of uncontrollable factors, such as climate change, sea level
shifts, and possibly a large, catastrophic asteroid impact. What marks this current descent into extinction
as different is not only that it's believed to be completely man-made but also that it might be avoidable if
we take action against it now. The team writes that deforestation for farming and settlement, the
introduction of invasive species, carbon emissions, and our introducing toxins to the environment are
permanently and irreversibly destroying ecosystems. Despite the grim news, it may still be a bit early to
start building a doomsday bunker. Through intensified conservation efforts, we may still be able to
preserve the Earths ecosystem. But the window of opportunity is rapidly closing, the researchers said.
"Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly
intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species, and to
alleviate pressures on their populations notably habitat loss, over-
exploitation for economic gain, and climate change ," they wrote.
Crunch UQ AT Growth Sustainable
(Technology)
Tech doesnt make growth sustainable entropy and the
Jevons Paradox
William Ophuls, 2012, "Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, 25-
26, mm
In 1947, George Kennans X-Article argued for a policy of containment to combat the spread of Soviet
influence. That policy would become the basic strategy of the United States throughout the Cold War.
More than six decades later, in an underappreciated twist, todays leading authoritarian
regimes are turning containment on its head, using massive
resources and coordinated political efforts to chip away at the rules-
based institutions that have served as the glue for the post-Cold War liberal order, while checking
the reform ambitions of aspiring democracies and reshaping the way the world
thinks about democracy. Call it the democracy containment
doctrine. Russias destabilization of Ukraine, where Moscow has annexed Crimea and provoked a
debilitating separatist rebellion in the eastern part of that country, has dominated the news recently. But
this action should be seen for what it is: a Kremlin containment effort to prevent Ukrainians from achieving
a democratically accountable government that would threaten Russias corrupt authoritarian system. The
Ukraine example is just one small part of a vast containment
ambition led by the regimes in Moscow, Beijing, Riyadh and Tehran ,
which may disagree on many things but share an interest in limiting the spread of democracy. The
strategy has evolved in three key areas. The first concerns
institutions. Seeing regional and international rules-based bodies as a threat to regime interests,
authoritarians have focused their efforts on hobbling key institutions democracy and human rights
mechanisms. Russia, in cooperation with other authoritarian regimes in Eurasia, has undermined the
human rights dimensions of the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, especially the latters election-monitoring and media-freedom functions. Venezuela plays a
Within the United
similarly harmful role with regard to the Organization of American States.
Nations, an authoritarian fraternity led by Security Council members China and Russia
routinely blocks democracy-friendly measures on a range of issues. Iran, along
with China and Russia, is pursuing greater control of the Internet in intergovernmental bodies worldwide.
As the authoritarians whittle away at democratic standards, they have created their own clubs, such as the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian Customs Union, that mimic their liberal
counterparts but whose aim is to institutionalize authoritarian norms. Through a treaty arrangement with
SCO members, China has challenged the norm against refoulement the return of persecuted individuals
to the hands of their persecutors by using a designation of terrorist as the basis for repatriation. China
has persuaded non-SCO countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia to cooperate with this new standard.
More broadly, authoritarian regimes work with each other to monitor activists and oppositionists and block
their movement, for instance through international watchlists and blacklists that are generated within
The second sphere relates to
the context of the SCO and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
the containment of both young democracies and middle-performing countries with
reform ambitions whose democratic success would pose a threat to authoritarian regimes. In
addition to Ukraine, Russia pursues a disruptive policy toward democratic hopefuls Georgia and Moldova.
The Baltic states, although NATO and European Union members, nevertheless are targets of Kremlin-
backed political efforts and media campaigns that aim to raise doubts about the integrity of their young
democracies. China is taking measures to slowly squeeze the democracy out of Hong Kong. Saudi Arabias
political and security commitment to Bahrains government has served to contain its smaller neighbors
The third sphere of containment is in the realm of ideas.
democracy movement.
These regimes may not be ideological in the Cold War sense, but they understand the
importance of ideas, which explains a good deal about why they
work so hard to try to prevent the emergence of alternative ones
within their own systems. With time, they have fine-tuned
arguments that share the goal of creating an anti-American, anti-
democracy narrative. This matters because the best-resourced regimes especially China
and Russia have built formidable traditional and new media outlets that enable them to project such
messages into the global marketplace. This prowess is especially apparent in the developing world, where
a new battle of ideas is underway. China has an enormous media presence in sub-Saharan Africa and has
rapidly gained a foothold there. Its multibillion-dollar international CCTV has programs in Arabic, French,
Russian and Spanish, and the state news agency Xinhua is expanding worldwide. Russias RT, in addition to
its virulently anti-Western English programming, broadcasts its jaundiced view of the world around the
clock in Spanish and Arabic. While the authoritarians claim that their massive international broadcasting
ventures are needed to offer an unfiltered view of their countries, it is telling that these state-led media
conglomerates devote so much of their programing to assailing the West and the idea of democracy. We
can infer from this that the emerging authoritarian doctrine reflects the need for leaders in Moscow, Beijing
and elsewhere to contain what they fear and do not possess: democratic accountability and legitimacy.
Given the stakes for the liberal order, the democratic world will need
to develop a serious long game sooner rather than later to respond to the
growing challenge presented by the migration of the authoritarians illiberal norms beyond their
borders.
From Azerbaijans Ilham Aliyev to Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe, dictators seem to be gaining
the upper hand these daysoutsmarting the most determined pro-
democracy activists with a clever mix of 21st-century technology
and old-fashioned repression. Why this is happening, and what we can do about it, is the
subject of an insightful new book that covers the A-to-Z of dictatorship around the globe: Is
Authoritarianism Staging a Comeback? The answer is a resounding
yes, according to half a dozen scholars who gathered April 21 at the Atlantic Council to discuss the book
and its implications. The panel included the volumes two editors, Mathew Burrows and Maria J. Stephan,
The success rate
who together lead the Atlantic Councils Future of Authoritarianism project.
of civil disobedience has declined to a rate not seen since the 1950s .
Its worrisome, said Stephan, a Senior Policy Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP).
Theres an element of authoritarian resilience around the world .
The environment has become the defining public policy issue of the era. Not only will political responses
continuing
to environmental challenges determine the health of the planet, but
environmental degradation may also affect political systems. This
interaction is likely to be especially acute in parts of the world where environmental problems are most
pressing and the states ability to respond to such challenges is weakest.One possible
consequence of environmental degradation is the development or
consolidation of authoritarian rule as political elites come to privilege regime maintenance and
internal stability over political liberalisation. Even efforts to mitigate the impact of, or respond
to, environmental change may involve a decrease in individual
liberty as governments seek to transform environmentally destructive behaviour. As a result,
environmental authoritarianism may become an increasingly
common response to the destructive impacts of climate change in an age of diminished
expectations. Long before the recent global economic crisis inflicted such
a blow on Anglo-American forms of economic organisation, it was
apparent that there were other models of economic development
and other modes of political organisation that had admirers around
the world. The rise of illiberal forms of capitalism and an apparent
democratic recession serve as a powerful reminders that there was
nothing inevitable about the triumph of Western political and
economic practices or values (Zakaria 2003, Diamond 2008). Nowhere has the potential
importance of authoritarian, state-led capitalist development been more evident than in East Asia.1 An
examination of East Asias development and the concomitant environmental problems it generates
highlights a number of broad-ranging trends that have widespread relevance.
Alt
Environment Solvency Democracy Fails/Eco-
Authoritarianism Good
Democratic choice theory ensures environmental
destruction only eco-authoritarianism solves
Matthew Humprhey, 2007, Ecological Politics and Democratic Theory:
The challenge to the deliberative ideal, p. 12-13, mm
The second set of background assumptions concerned the motivational aspects of human behavior and the
problems of co-ordinating collective responses to collective problems. The understanding of the
motivations and execution of human actions were based upon the rational actor model in its
people have a much clearer understanding
Schumpeterian mode. For Schumpter,
of their own personal, short-term interests than they do of their interests in respect
of political questions, which frequently relate to policy choices filtered through complex social and
economic problems and long-term time horizons. There are good reasons for this; we have sufficient
control over the circumstances of our daily lives such that our actions can make a genuine difference to
our welfare. If we know we can get the same model car cheaper at one showroom rather than another, or
we understand that an item of electrical equipment is still under guarantee and can be exchanged for
something new, this is important information. When it comes to the world of democratic politics, however,
the understanding of the average citizens, says Schumpeter, drops to that of a primitive, who fails to
understand complex processes of cause and effect (1943: 262). Who can say whether a drop in interest
rates two years ago caused inflation today? Or whether a rise in the value of the national currency in the
past led to increased unemployment now? It is not merely that these complex causal process are difficult
to understand, it is also that the average citizen has no incentive to try and understand them, which would
involve a great deal of effort for little reward (the reward of a better informed vote, for example, which
would have no more effect on the outcome of an election than an uninformed vote. Inefficacy does not
The implication of this argument is that when
reward information gathering).
citizens do come to take political action within a democracy, they
will be motivated by a narrow conception of their interests , and will
possess only a very rough understanding of how to promote them through the ballot box. This certainly
eco-authoritarians, who have no faith in the
appears to be the assumption of the
ability of citizens to act democratically with regard to a more
(ecologically) enlightened sense of their self-interest . Citizens cannot
be expected to vote for new laws that would curtail their existing
freedoms in the name of long-term environmental sustainability . Nor
can they be expected to modify their individual behavior through
appeals to an environmental ethic; and even if they did that, it
would be counter-productive for them in the long run, at least for
certain important behaviors (as explained in the following paragraphs).
Environment Solvency China Proves
Eco-authoritarianism solves China proves
Thomas Friedman, 9/8/2009, New York Times, Our One-Party
Democracy, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html?
_r=0, mm
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following
conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy,
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But
which is what we have in America today.
when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today ,
it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically
difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st
century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric
cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power .
Chinas leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising
emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy
efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering
the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Alt AT Elites Wont be Benevolent/Wont Last
1NC Humphrey evidence says this version of
authoritarianism will not be abusive the alternative
ensures a class of virtuous elites committed to ecological
integrity rise to the top that prevents abuses of power
Eco-authoritarianism will be benevolent and durable a
political class already exists and the Roman Catholic
Church provides an appropriate model
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 134-35, mm
Government in the future will be based upon (or incorporate, depending on the level of
breakdown of civilization) a supreme office of the biosphere. The office will comprise
specially trained philosopher/ecologists . These guardians will either rule
themselves or advise an authoritarian government of policies based upon their
ecological training and philosophical sensitivities. These guardians will be specially trained for this task.
In the meantime can we move forward? There are those unsullied by the search for
power and influence and with ability, who already serve humanity with meager
financial reward in the professions, in science and medicine, in the
entrepreneurial social services, and, yes, in the religious orders, but they are not
prepared to join the political rabble. And even if they were, the present political cabal would not move
over for them. The emergence of the World Social Forum may offer some lessons in networking
individuals with common goals, the seed of an international organization for environmental equity and
sustainability. This would not be inward looking and self-serving like various Zionist organizations or the
Yale Skull and Bones, but might be universal like a reformed Roman Catholic Church. Come back St.
Authoritarian leadership exists in the Roman Catholic Church where
Francis!
power and greed are successfully suppressed to deliver spiritual succor to
the believers and nourishment for the poor. Lessons can be learned from the
modus operandi of this Church . In its service to humanity it publicly abhors
the destructiveness of both totalitarianism and capitalism , and its views might allow
it to be the chrysalis of care for the earth through directions to its flock. As Pope John Paul II stated: The
ecological crisis is a moral issue . . . respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also
to the rest of creation . . . Humanity has disappointed Gods expectations. Man, especially in our time, has
without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfi gured the earths habitat,
made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydrological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas
into deserts and undertaken unrestrained industrialization . . . We must therefore encourage and support
the ecological conversion which in recent years has made humanity more sensitive to the catastrophe to
which it has been heading.36 A recurrent theme in this text is the need for a new religious basis to
modern life to give substance and meaning to peoples existence as an alternative to consumerism and
materialism. A green pope who actively pursued the philosophical words of Pope John Paul II quoted
above would make a substantial contribution to the saving of civilization. But there is another important
The Roman Catholic Church is one of
contribution that Catholicism offers to our argument.
the longest surviving Western institutions. It is much older than the common
law, democracy, the English language, and Western science. The Church has seen
the collapse of one civilization (the Roman), has existed through a dark age, and survived wars,
it is truly remarkable and offers to all of us a
revolutions, and plagues. As a social institution
lesson in how to set up an organization for long-term survival. What is
important for our argument is that the Roman Catholic Church, unlike the fragmented
Protestant churches, has a rigid authoritarian structure and a strict hierarchy of
rule. If the Roman Catholic Church had been run as a democratic institution, as the Protestant churches
have been to some degree, it is highly doubtful whether the Roman Catholic Church would have
survived. We do not see in the Church an exact model to replicate for an alternative authoritarian model
of government, as it obviously would be a dangerous gamble to have one person as a political pope or
the survival of the Church as an authoritarian structure
world emperor. Nevertheless
does indicate that authoritarian systems, if set up correctly, can be long
lasting and stable.
Alt AT Authoritarianism Bad
1NC Humphrey evidence says this version of
authoritarianism will not be abusive the alternative
ensures a class of virtuous elites committed to ecological
integrity rise to the top that prevents abuses of power
Historical failures of authoritarianism do not disprove the
alternative eco-authoritarianism learns from past
failures to avoid repeating them
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 124, mm
In proposing that liberal democracies will be replaced by authoritarian structures, we differ somewhat
from a select group of environmentalist writers who have also rejected a liberal democratic solution to the
environmental crisis.12 In general, such writers have felt that only centrally commanded economies can
meet the challenge of dealing with the environmental crisis. We do not join that camp. We recognize that
command economies committed to militarism and industrialization can be just as destructive, if not more
so than liberal democracies. The former Soviet Union is not our idea of paradise on
earth. Planned economies, where there is an attempt by a body of elite planners to coordinate
all aspects of an economy, is a recipe for disaster because there is simply too much information,
chaotic nonlinear effects, and unpredictable events to permit accurate planning. However we
believe that many aspects of the economy must be firmly regulated. This
position is a long way away from a planned economy. We have no lingering belief that
communism could or will save humanity, but we hold that when civilization-threatening
changes occur, liberal democratic solutions are the first things to go. The rule of law is abandoned, and
the rule of the strong dominates. We are not indicating that we like this; we are maintaining as a matter of
Nor are we supporting
real politick that this is what occurs historically and is likely to occur again.
a form of authoritarianism as witnessed in Nazi Germany where one Fuhrer makes
fundamental decisions about life and death for society. Such forms of authoritarianism typically lead to
social disaster when the leader, following the weaknesses of human will, succumbs to corruption or
madness.Our form of authoritarianism looks to the leadership of an entire
stratum of society rather than one individual or even part, and there is a
better chance that corruption and madness of the Hitler and Stalin levels can
we weeded out. But there is no guarantee; human life is uncertain and down the track, human life
promises to be desperate.
Alt AT Human Nature
Historical evidence proves authoritarianism is more in line
with human nature than liberalism
David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith, 2007, The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, p. 130, mm
The hypothesis that a steady state economy will characterize the new order
follows from the limits to growth thesis defended in this book. If a growth economy is not
sustainable, then the economy must be either a steady state nongrowth economy or one that is
constantly decreasing and degenerating. A degenerating economy eventually leads to economic collapse
A
that is nonsustainable. By elimination, a sustainable economy must be a steady state economy.
future society is likely to be stratified and nonegalitarian because history
shows that this is the way societies in the past have been . The hypothesis defended
in this book is that liberalism and its values, as well as democracy, are just
moments in human history. It is likely that the human brain is hardwired for
authoritarianism, for dominance, and submission (chapter 5). This is a
reasonable scientific hypothesis that better fits the available historical
evidence than the hypothesis of liberal egalitarianism .
Aff Answers
Aff AT Auth. Inevitable/Global Demo Resilient
Global democracy is resilient the US isnt key our
evidence assumes current trends
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm
This is an odd moment to predict a bright future for democracy. Despite the
unprecedented expansion of political freedom during the three decades from 1974, democratic regimes
are in trouble worldwide today. The past decade has witnessed democratic
breakdowns at a growing pace, and levels of freedom have receded in many places. Autocrats are
cooperating and innovating to preempt movements for democratic change. The worlds oldest and
most esteemed democracies, beginning with the United States , have lost
their luster and (it seems) their capacity to function effectively to address their most important
public policy challenges. Still, no other broadly legitimate form of government exists
today, and authoritarian regimes face profound challenges and
contradictions that they cannot resolve without ultimately moving toward
democracy. During the past century, democracy went from being a unique feature of the West (and
a few Western-leaning Latin American countries) to a system incorporated by a growing number of
nonWestern countries, most of them former British colonies that reached independence during the first
two decades after World War II. But the rise of communism and fascism and the shock of the Great
Depression during the interwar period had occasioned what the political scientist Samuel Huntington
called a reverse wave of democratic breakdowns. From the late 1950s to the mid- 1970s, the world
wrestled with a second reverse wave, during which military coups swallowed fragile and often deeply
polarized democracies in Latin America, Greece, Turkey, and parts of Asia, while elsewhere in Asia and
Africa one-party or personal authoritarian regimes came to dominate. A number of factors fed the
authoritarian zeitgeist: the spectacular failures of some democracies to govern effectively or maintain
order, the successes of East Asian developmental dictatorships, the popularity in poor countries of
authoritarian socialist models and ideologies, and the US-Soviet Cold War rivalry that saw each
superpower back any dictator who would offer geopolitical support. By the mid-1970s, democracy
seemed to many a quaint relic of a liberal pasta model of where the world had been, not where it was
headed. Then came Portugals Revolution of the Carnations in April 1974, overturning nearly half a
century of quasi-fascist dictatorship, and a new wave of democratization began. Even with the rise of
democracy in Portugal, Spain, and Greece in the subsequent few years, and then the transitions from
military to democratic rule in Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, few imagined that a truly
global process of transformation was under way. Even the popular protests that toppled Ferdinand
Marcos in the Philippines, or the student demonstrations that compelled the military to hand over power
The fall of the Berlin Wall, however, changed
in South Korea, did not suggest a global trend.
everything. Not only did it spark democratic transitions in Central and
Eastern Europe; the end of the Cold War unfroze the African landscape and
encouraged democratic openings throughout the continent. By the mid-
1990s, democracy had become a global phenomenon, accounting for about
three of every five states in the world.
Global democratization is consolidating now the US isnt
key
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm
Even so,a surprising number of other emerging democracies have met a litmus
test of reasonably liberal democracy (garnering one of the two best scores on the seven-point
Freedom House scales of both political rights and civil liberties). Forty percent of the worlds states
and about twothirds of the worlds democracies (or 79 nations in all) now meet this
test. And while the number and proportion of liberal democracies have hardly
changed in the last seven years, at least they have not declined. Moreover, a
number of other emerging market countries have consolidated a decent
level of democracyin the sense that it is very difficult to imagine another reversal of democracy in these
countries. To the extent that they find democratic consolidation a useful concept, most scholars of Brazil would put it
in this category. The same is true for Mexico, where democracy has survived in the face of widespread violence related
to drug trafficking. For all its disturbing levels of corruption, clientelism, paralysis, and dysfunction, it is similarly
difficult to imagine democracy being replaced by another type of regime in India. If, after a disappointing second term
for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia elects a reformist president in 2014 (such as the energetic,
progressive governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo, who is now leading in the polls), Indonesian democracy might also turn in
a more liberal and stable direction. South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Indonesia are among the emerging market
members of the Group of 20 industrialized nations Three other members of that clubTurkey, Argentina, and South
Africafall into the category of more troubled or embattled democracies, with ruling executives and parties that appear
to harbor hegemonic ambitions. Each of the three will hold national elections in 2014 or 2015, during which each could
move either in the direction of further democratic decay or toward a more liberal and rooted democracy. Having
decimated the old power establishment in suspiciously wide-ranging trials of alleged coup plotters, while also continuing
to intimidate and constrain the press, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party
(AKP) remain the dominant political force in Turkey. After serving more than a decade as prime minister, Erdogan (whose
partys rules bar him from seeking another term in that post) is trying to change the constitution to create a muscular,
French-style semi-presidential system, which would enable him to remain in power for a long time. Turkey will hold its
first direct presidential election in August 2014, but it is not at all clear that Erdogan will succeed in amending the
constitution to give that post the strong executive powers he seeks. Widespread youth protests in recent months signal
the beginning of a societal pushback against the AKPs autocratic governing style. In Argentina, President Cristina
Fernndez de Kirchners bid to aggrandize her power has already failed. In midterm elections in late October 2013, her
party fell far short of the two-thirds majority it would need to amend the constitution to allow her a third term. Political
momentum is now shifting from her party due to corruption and economic mismanagement, and Argentines are
beginning to look beyond what will be a dozen years of rule by Fernndez de Kirchner and her late husband, Nstor
Kirchner. In South Africa, while there is little doubt that President Jacob Zumas African National Congress will win the
2014 national elections, a viable multiracial opposition is slowly beginning to rise in the form of the Democratic
Alliance, the countrys only party to have steadily and significantly increased its share of the vote in each of the four
post-apartheid national elections. Led by a savvy and effective institution builder, Western Cape Premier Helen Zille,
the Democratic Alliance is gradually expanding from its roots in South Africas racial minorities to appeal to black
voters dissatisfied with corruption, high unemployment, and poor service deliverylong-standing problems that have
The fate of democracy outside the West will be shaped
only grown worse under Zuma.
disproportionately by what happens in these weighty G-20 countries that could move
in either directionIndonesia, Argentina, Turkey, and South Africaand by whether Brazil and India can demonstrate
If
the ability of large democracies to generate vigorous, sustainable, and reasonably equitable economic growth.
these countries move even incrementally to entrench democracy and deliver
development, the G-20 will have become a strong club of democracies, with
only Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia holding out.
Global democracy is increasing liberal values and civil
society are trending upwards
Larry Diamond, January 2014, [prof. at Stanford], Journal of Current
History, vol. 99, The Next Democratic Century,
http://cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/LD_Current_History_Jan_14.pdf,
mm
There are other reasons for optimism about the future of democracy. Particularly in
Asia, economic development in a number of countries is having the predictable effects it had in South
With rising levels of education and
Korea and Taiwan, and before that in Spain and Portugal.
incomes and growing access to information, values are changing . People are
becoming more tolerant of diversity, more politically demanding and
assertive, and more willing to protest. As Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan and
Christian Welzel of Leuphana University put it, peoples value priorities are shifting from
material gain to emancipation from authority. Closely intertwined with this
psychological shift is the rise of civil societyof independent organizations and flows of
information, opinion, and ideas. These psychological and social changes undermine the legitimacy of
authoritarian rule and generate favorable conditions for democratization in Asianot only in Malaysia
and Singapore, where it will probably happen within a decade, but in China itself, where both the decay
of communist rule and the rise of a middle-class society are much more advanced than has generally
been appreciated. Without major political reforms, it is unlikely that communist rule can survive in China
beyond Xi Jinpings expected two five-year terms as president. And in terms of the pressure for political
change, Vietnam is not all that far behind China (particularly given South Vietnams earlier experience
with more pluralistic politics and more capitalist economics). Factor in as well the incremental progress
toward reviving democracy in Thailand, the efforts of reformist President Benigno Aquino to rein in
corruption in the Philippines, and a political opening in Myanmar (though it is still far from democracy),
it becomes possible to imagine that one of the most powerful emerging-
and
market trading blocs could be predominantly democratic within a decade.
Aff AT Growth Unsustainable
Growth is sustainable innovation constantly increases
our carrying capacity
Tsvi Bisk, 2012, World Future Society, No Limits to Growth,
https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf, mm
When one factors in the growth of the proportion of GDP of services, the picture becomes even less
foreboding. Services have become the major drivers of global economic growth. They constitute over
63% of global GDP and well over 70% of GDP in the developed world,6 and the proportion is increasing.
While services such as translation, consulting, planning, accounting, massage therapy, legal advice, etc.,
also consume some natural resources, the quantity is infinitesimal in relation to the economic value
produced. If I manufacture a car for $10,000 I have consumed a huge amount of natural resources and
energy. But if I translate a 100,000-word book for $10,000 I have consumed merely the electricity
necessary to run my computer, and the electricity used to send the translation as an email attachment,
Consumers and the consumer society are not
and little else that is even measurable.
the problem. The problem lies in the production methods presently used by
manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. And the solution lies in the revolutions that are
also presently taking place in material science, water engineering, energy
harvesting, and food production. We might speculate that the world economy can
continue to grow indefinitely at 4%-5% a year while our negative footprint
on the planet simultaneously declines. By the end of this century the planet
will be able to carry a population of 12 billion people with an American
standard of living and one-tenth the present negative environmental
impact.
The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place is the key to no
limits to growth. I refer to smart and superlight materials. Smart materials are materials that
have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external
stimuli.32 They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials)
or by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing
process by changing shape or repairing themselves as a consequence of various external stimuli.
These materials have all passed the proof of concept phase (i.e., are scientifically
sound) and many are in the prototype phase. Some are already commercialized and
penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has underlain a one-
kilometer stretch of local highway with piezoelectric material to harvest the wasted stress energy of
vehicles passing over and convert it to electricity.33 They reckon that Israel has stretches of road that
can efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of
the New Jersey Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway
and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential megawatts produced without any
fossil fuels. Additional energy is derivable from thermoelectric materials, which can transform wasted
heat into electricity. As Christopher Steiner notes, capturing waste heat from manufacturing alone in the
United States would provide an additional 65,000 megawatts: enough for 50 million homes.34 Smart
glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, airconditioning and lighting
up to 50% saving in energy has been achieved in retrofitted legacy buildings (such as the former Sears
Tower in Chicago). New buildings, designed to take maximum advantage of this and other technologies
could save even more. Buildings consume 39% of Americas energy and 68% of its electricity. They emit
38% of the carbon dioxide, 49% of the sulfur dioxide, and 25% of the nitrogen oxides found in the air.35
Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluorescent light
bulbs with LEDS which use 1/10th the electricity of incandescent and half the electricity of fluorescents.
These three steps: transforming waste heat into electricity, retrofitting buildings with smart glass, and
LED lighting, could cut Americas electricity consumption and its CO2 emissions by 50% within 10 years.
They would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction and home improvements. Coal
driven electricity generation would become a thing of the past . The coal released
could be liquefied or gasified (by new environmentally friendly technologies) into the energy equivalent
of 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. This is equivalent to the amount of oil the United States imports from
the Persian Gulf and Venezuela together.36 Conservation of energy and parasitic energy harvesting, as
well as urban agriculture would cut the planets energy consumption and air and water pollution
significantly. Waste-to-energy technologies could begin to replace fossil fuels .
Garbage, sewage, organic trash, and agricultural and food processing waste are essentially hydrocarbon
resources that can be transformed into ethanol, methanol, and biobutanol or biodiesel. These can be
Waste-
used for transportation, electricity generation or as feedstock for plastics and other materials.
to-energy is essentially a recycling of CO2 from the environment instead of
introducing new CO2 into the environment. Waste-to-energy also prevents the
production, and release from rotting organic waste, of methanea greenhouse gas 25 times more
powerful than CO2 . Methane accounts for 18% of the manmade greenhouse effect. Not as much as
CO2 , which constitutes 72%, but still considerable (landfills emit as much greenhouse gas effect, in
the form of methane, as the CO2 from all the vehicles in the world). Numerous prototypes of a variety of
When their declining costs meet the
waste-to-energy technologies are already in place.
rising costs of fossil fuels, they will become commercialized and, if history is any
judge, will replace fossil fuels very quicklyjust as coal replaced wood in a matter of
decades and petroleum replaced whale oil in a matter of years.
a number of
As Eco-Authoritarianism has re-emerged into contemporary environmental discourse,
scholars have begun to pay closer attention to the environmental and
political performance of actual authoritarian societies, primarily including but not
limited to China. This scrutiny has revealed a largely-mixed track record including
some important successes alongside significant shortfalls. Critics of China in particular have questioned
the ability of the Communist Party to successfully implement and enforce its high-minded directives,42
noting that sometimes being aggressive has no bearing on being effective .43
Reservations about the actual effectiveness of authoritarian environmental policies have been echoed in
discussions of other regimes in countries like Egypt,44 Iran,45 and Thailand.46 Bolstering these concerns,
a recent study by Hanna Bck and Axel Hadenius has suggested the existence of a more general J-
shaped relationship between democratization and administrative efficiency across various countries and
time periods. According to Bck and Hadenius, administrative
quality is higher in strongly
authoritarian states than in states that are partially democratized; it is
highest of all, however, in states of a pronouncedly democratic character.47
They suggest that this may be because highly democratic states can rely on a
well-developed civil society for help in making sure that policies are well-calibrated to particular
contexts and for constructive feedback on policies once they are implemented.48 The authors note that
authoritarian governments can sometimes perform better than partially democratized societies with
poorly-developed civil societies, but that they have thus far been hard-pressed to find an effective
substitute for the genuine citizen participation that enables successful democracies to formulate and
although authoritarian governments may
implement their policies successfully.49 Thus
be free from certain policy-making constraints faced by governments in
liberal regimes, administrators in even the most successful authoritarian
countries have historically failed to match the levels of state capacity enjoyed
by citizens of prosperous democratic countries like Finland, New Zealand, and the
Netherlands.50 The dubious performance of actually existing authoritarian
governments may be thought to cast some doubt on the viability of Eco-
Authoritarianism as a response to the ecological crisis. Thus Anthony Giddens has
recently defended democracy against Shearman and Smith by observing that Totalitarian states
have generally had poor or disastrous environmental records. So also have most of
those that have undergone processes of authoritarian modernization, such as China, Russia or South
Korea.51 What Giddens fails to appreciate, however, is the extent to which contemporary Eco-
Authoritarians accept his observations. Shearman and Smith, for example, begin The Climate Change
Challenge and the Failure of Democracy by announcing, We agree that existing authoritarian societies,
largely based upon Marxist doctrines, have had an appalling environmental record. We accept that there
is no example of an existing authoritarian government that does not have a record of environmental
abuse.52
The alt would be far worse for the environment history
shows that democratic societies have better track records
at protecting the environment
Jonathon Adler, Prof. Law and Dir. Center for Business Law and Regulation
Case Western Reserve U., New Atlantis, Green Bridge to Nowhere, Fall,
2008, http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/green-bridge-to-nowhere,
mm
The first item on his agenda is the replacement of modern capitalism with some undefined non-socialist
alternative. The planet cannot sustain capitalism as we know it, he warns, calling for a fundamental
transformation. But he does not understand the system he wants to reform, let alone what he would
substitute in its place. According to Speth, most environmental deterioration is a result of systemic
the least capitalist nations of the world also
failures of capitalism. This is an odd claim, as
have the worst environmental records. The ecological costs of economic
statism are far worse than those of economic liberty . The environmental
record of the various Soviet regimes amply bears this out : The Wests ecological
nightmares were the Soviet blocs environmental realities. This is not due to any anomaly of the Soviet
Nations with greater commitment to capitalist institutions experience
system.
greater environmental performance. While Speth occasionally acknowledges pockets of
environmental progress, he hardly stops to consider the reasons why some environmental resources have
been conserved more effectively than others. Fisheries are certainly declining throughout much of the
worldsome 75 percent of fisheries are fully or over-exploitedbut not everywhere. It is worth asking why.
Tropical forests in less-developed nations are declining even as most temperate forests in industrialized
Recognizing these different trends and identifying the key variables
nations are rebounding.
is essential to diagnosing the real causes of environmental deterioration and
prescribing a treatment that will work. Speth acknowledges that much of the world is undergoing
dematerialization, such that economic growth far outpaces increases in resource demand, but seems not
Were it
to appreciate how the capitalist system he decries creates the incentives that drive this trend.
not for market-driven advances in technological capability and ecological
efficiency, humanitys footprint on the Earth would be far greater. While
modern civilization has developed the means to effect massive ecological transformations, it has also
Market competition
found ways to produce wealth while leaving more of the natural world intact.
generates substantial incentives to do more with less thus in market economies we
see long and continuing improvements in productive efficiency. This can be seen everywhere from the
replacement of copper with fiber optics (made from silica, the chief component in sand) and the light-
weighting of packaging to the explosion of agricultural productivity and improvements in energy efficiency.
Less material is used and disposed of, reducing overall environmental impacts from productive activity.
The key to such improvements is the same set of institutional arrangements that Speth so decries:
property rights and voluntary exchange protected by the rule of lawthat is, capitalism. As research by
societies in which property
Wheaton College economist Seth Norton and many others has shown,
rights and economic freedoms are protected experience superior economic
and environmental performance than those societies subject to greater
government control. Indeed, such institutions have a greater effect on environmental performance
than the other factors, such as population growth, that occupy the attention of Speth and so many other
environmental thinkers. Speth complains that capitalism is fundamentally biased against the future; but
the marketplace does a far better job of pricing and accounting for future interests than the political
alternative. Future generations cannot participate in capitalisms markets [today], says Speth. Fair
enough, but they cannot vote or engage in the regulatory process either. Thus the relevant policy question
is what set of institutions does the bestor least badjob of accounting for such concerns, and here there
is no contest. However present-oriented the marketplace may be, it is better able to look past the next
election cycle than any plausibly democratic alternative.
China and Russia prove that eco-authoritarianism fails
Dan Shahar, 2015, Environmental Values, 24(3), Rejecting eco-
authoritarianism, again, 345-366, mm
In its own way, the early Eco-Authoritarian position made a certain amount of
sense: if it were true that an ecological crisis was being caused by excessive autonomy, that democratic market
liberal societies would systematically fail to generate the constraints necessary to avoid the crisis, and that
authoritarian governments would be able to keep societies away from
catastrophe through enlightened central planning , then the relative appeal of
authoritarianism would be clear.21 The problem with this position, however, was its crucial
assumption that authoritarian governments would actually be able to
generate better outcomes through central planning. This premise was quickly challenged in
the academic literature by critics who argued that authoritarian governments would be hard-pressed to cope successfully
the
with their vastly increased size and complexity while also navigating difficult ecological challenges.22 But
biggest blows to early Eco-Authoritarianism came from the failure of real-
world experiments with centralized authoritarianism around the world . With
the disintegration of the Soviet Union and thoroughgoing economic reform of
the Peoples Republic of China, it became increasingly untenable in any area
of discourse to advocate centralized authoritarianism as a solution to any
problem, never mind one requiring highly complex, efficient, and coordinated
actions by public agents.
The second concern about democracies being more prone war is also
exaggerated. Democracies do not go to war with each other. More
precisely, Bruce Russett, one of the closest observers of this
phenomenon, writes, First, democratically organized political systems
in general operate under restraints that make them more peaceful in
their relations with other democracies. . . . Second, in the modern
international system, democracies are less likely to use lethal violence toward
other democracies than toward autocratically governed states or than
autocratically governed states are toward each other. Furthermore, there are
no clearcut cases of sovereign stable democracies waging war with each
other in the modern international system. Reflecting on a vast academic
literature on the causes of war, Jack Levy concluded that the
democratic peace theory is "the closest thing we have to empirical
law in the study of international relations."107 Democracies are not
pacifist regimes when dealing with autocracies. But democracies are peaceful
when interacting with other democracies.!
Democracies settle disputes through peaceful dispute settlement processes more often than others.
Democracies are more likely to initiate wars against non-democracies than vice-versa. Democracies fight shorter
wars with lower costs when they begin the wars. Transitional democracies are more likely to fight, and larger democracies
are less likely to go to war than smaller ones. Critics have questioned whether the findings are
statistically robust, or have argued that omitted variables such as the stability of the Cold
War are the true explanations. Yet it appears that the democratic peace is as close to a
statistical law as anything will be in international politics .
It is not true either that the various ecological crises we are facing will bring about "the
end of the world." Consider the projections of the Stern Review, the recently released report
commissioned by the British Government. If nothing is done, we risk "major disruption to economic and
social activity, later in this century and the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars
and economic depression of the first half of the 20th century." This is serious. Some sixty million people
died in World War Two. The Stern Review estimates as many as 200 million people could be permanently
displaced by rising sea level and drought. But this is not "the end of the world." Even if the effects
are far worse, resulting in billions of deaths-- a highly unlikely scenario --there
would still be lots of us left. If three-quarters of the present population perished, that would still
leave us with 1.6 billion people--the population of the planet in 1900. I say this not to minimize the
potentially horrific impact of relentless environmental destruction, but to caution against
exaggeration. We are not talking about thermonuclear war--which could have
extinguished us as a species. (It still might.) And we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that millions
of people on the planet right now, caught up in savage civil wars or terrorized by U.S. bombers (which
dropped some 100,000 lbs. of explosives on a Baghdad neighborhood during one ten-day period in January
2008--the amount the fascists used to level the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War), are
faced with conditions more terrible than anyone here is likely to face in his or her lifetime due to
environmental degradation.
Aff Environment Impact Defense
No impact to the environment
Easterbrook 95 (Gregg, Distinguished Fellow @ The Fullbright
Foundation and Reuters Columnist, A Moment on Earth, p. 25, 1995)
In the aftermath of events such as Love Canal or the Exxon Valdez oil spill, every reference to the
environment is prefaced with the adjective "fragile." "Fragile environment" has become a welded phrase of
the modern lexicon, like "aging hippie" or "fugitive financier." But the notion of a fragile
environment is profoundly wrong. Individual animals, plants, and people are distressingly
fragile. The environment that contains them is close to indestructible. The living
environment of Earth has survived ice ages; bombardments of cosmic radiation more
deadly than atomic fallout; solar radiation more powerful than the worst-case projection for ozone
depletion; thousand-year periods of intense volcanism releasing global air pollution far worse than
that made by any factory; reversals of the planet's magnetic poles; the rearrangement of
continents; transformation of plains into mountain ranges and of seas into plains; fluctuations of ocean
currents and the jet stream; 300-foot vacillations in sea levels; shortening and lengthening of the seasons
caused by shifts in the planetary axis; collisions ofasteroids and comets bearing far more force
than man's nuclear arsenals; and the years without summer that followed these impacts. Yet hearts
beat on, and petals unfold still. Were the environment fragile it would have expired many eons
before the advent of the industrial affronts of the dreaming ape. Human assaults on the
environment, though mischievous, are pinpricks compared to forces of the
magnitude nature is accustomed to resisting.
Aff AT Biodiversity Impact
No impact to biodiversity loss
Sagoff 97 Mark, Senior Research Scholar Institute for Philosophy and Public policy in School of
Public Affairs U. Maryland, William and Mary Law Review, INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW
SYMPOSIUM DEFINING TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION:
MUDDLE OR MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT, 38
Wm and Mary L. Rev. 825, March, L/N Note Colin Tudge - Research Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy at
the London School of Economics. Frmr Zoological Society of London: Scientific Fellow and tons of other
positions. PhD. Read zoology at Cambridge. Simon Levin = Moffet Professor of Biology, Princeton. 2007
American Institute of Biological Sciences Distinguished Scientist Award 2008 Istituto Veneto di Scienze
Lettere ed Arti 2009 Honorary Doctorate of Science, Michigan State University 2010 Eminent Ecologist
Award, Ecological Society of America 2010 Margalef Prize in Ecology, etc PhD
Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the
brink of an episode of massive extinction, it may not follow from this grim fact that
human beings will suffer as a result. On the contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin Tudge have
challenged biologists to explain why we need more than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million species that grace the earth.
Noting that "cultivated systems often out-produce wild systems by 100-fold or more," Tudge declared that
"the argument that humans need the variety of other species is, when you think about it, a theological one." n343
elimination of all but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures does
Tudge observed that "the
not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344 This skeptic challenged ecologists to list
more than 10,000 species (other than unthreatened microbes) that are essential to ecosystem productivity or
functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if 99.9% of our fellow creatures
went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we need." n346 [*906] The
monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect to redundancy of
species. "At one extreme is the idea that each species is unique and important, such that its removal or loss will have
demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors of the
Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if any,
ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to centuries, the time period over which
environmental policy should operate." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that
species overlap in function to a sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others, with
negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other biologists believe, however,
that species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the life-support
systems and processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function perfectly well
with fewer of them, certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to remain even if
every threatened organism becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and
miserable world depicted in the movie Blade Runner could provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as
long as people forgot their aesthetic and moral commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The
Assessment makes this point. "Although any ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of species interacting among
themselves and their physical environment, the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of
. . . biotic variables on whose interactions the balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352 [*907] To
make up your mind on the question of the functional redundancy of species, consider an endangered species of bird,
plant, or insect and ask how the ecosystem would fare in its absence. The fact that the creature is endangered
suggests an answer: it is already in limbo as far as ecosystem processes are concerned. What crucial ecological
services does the black-capped vireo, for example, serve? Are any of the species threatened with extinction necessary
to the provision of any ecosystem service on which humans depend? If so, which ones are they? Ecosystems and the
species that compose them have changed, dramatically, continually, and totally in virtually every part of the United
States. There is little ecological similarity, for example, between New England today and the land where the Pilgrims
died. n353 In view of the constant reconfiguration of the biota, one may wonder why Americans have not suffered
more as a result of ecological catastrophes. The cast of species in nearly every environment changes constantly-local
extinction is commonplace in nature-but the crops still grow. Somehow, it seems, property values keep going up on
Martha's Vineyard in spite of the tragic disappearance of the heath hen. One might argue that the sheer
number and variety of creatures available to any ecosystem buffers that system against
stress. Accordingly, we should be concerned if the "library" of creatures ready, willing, and able to colonize
ecosystems gets too small. (Advances in genetic engineering may well permit us to write a large number of additions
to that "library.") In the United States as in many other parts of the world, however, the number of
species has been increasing dramatically, not decreasing, as a result of human activity. This is
because the hordes of exotic species coming into ecosystems in the United States far exceed the number of species
that are becoming extinct. Indeed, introductions may outnumber extinctions by more than ten to one, so that the
United States is becoming more and more species-rich all the time largely as a result of human action. n354 [*908]
Peter Vitousek and colleagues estimate that over 1000 non-native plants grow in California alone; in Hawaii there are
861; in Florida, 1210. n355 In Florida more than 1000 non-native insects, 23 species of mammals, and about 11 exotic
birds have established themselves. n356 Anyone who waters a lawn or hoes a garden knows how many weeds desire
to grow there, how many birds and bugs visit the yard, and how many fungi, creepy-crawlies, and other odd life forms
show forth when it rains. All belong to nature, from wherever they might hail, but not many homeowners would claim
that there are too few of them. Now, not all exotic species provide ecosystem services; indeed, some may be
disruptive or have no instrumental value. n357 This also may be true, of course, of native species as well, especially
because all exotics are native somewhere. Certain exotic species, however, such as Kentucky blue grass, establish an
area's sense of identity and place; others, such as the green crabs showing up around Martha's Vineyard, are
nuisances. n358 Consider an analogy [*909] with human migration. Everyone knows that after a generation or two,
immigrants to this country are hard to distinguish from everyone else. The vast majority of Americans did not evolve
here, as it were, from hominids; most of us "came over" at one time or another. This is true of many of our fellow
species as well, and they may fit in here just as well as we do. It is possible to distinguish exotic species from native
ones for a period of time, just as we can distinguish immigrants from native-born Americans, but as the centuries roll
by, species, like people, fit into the landscape or the society, changing and often enriching it. Shall we have a rule that
a species had to come over on the Mayflower, as so many did, to count as "truly" American? Plainly not. When, then,
is the cutoff date? Insofar as we are concerned with the absolute numbers of "rivets" holding ecosystems together,
extinction seems not to pose a general problem because a far greater number of kinds of mammals, insects, fish,
plants, and other creatures thrive on land and in water in America today than in prelapsarian times. n359 The
Ecological Society of America has urged managers to maintain biological diversity as a critical component in
strengthening ecosystems against disturbance. n360 Yet as Simon Levin observed, "much of the detail about
species composition will be irrelevant in terms of influences on ecosystem properties." n361 [*910] He added: "For net
primary productivity, as is likely to be the case for any system property, biodiversity matters only up to a point; above
a certain level, increasing biodiversity is likely to make little difference." n362 What
about the use of plants and animals in agriculture? There is no scarcity foreseeable. "Of an estimated 80,000 types of
plants [we] know to be edible," a U.S. Department of the Interior document says, "only about 150 are extensively
cultivated." n363 About twenty species, not one of which is endangered, provide ninety percent of the food the world
takes from plants. n364 Any new food has to take "shelf space" or "market share" from one that is now produced.
Corporations also find it difficult to create demand for a new product; for example, people are not inclined to eat paw-
paws, even though they are delicious. It is hard enough to get people to eat their broccoli and lima beans. It is harder
still to develop consumer demand for new foods. This may be the reason the Kraft Corporation does not prospect in
remote places for rare and unusual plants and animals to add to the world's diet. Of the roughly 235,000 flowering
plants and 325,000 nonflowering plants (including mosses, lichens, and seaweeds) available, farmers ignore virtually
all of them in favor of a very few that are profitable. n365 To be sure, any of the more than 600,000 species of plants
could have an application in agriculture, but would they be preferable to the species that are now dominant? Has
anyone found any consumer demand for any of these half-million or more plants to replace rice or wheat in the human
diet? There are reasons that farmers cultivate rice, wheat, and corn rather than, say, Furbish's lousewort. There are
many kinds of louseworts, so named because these weeds were thought to cause lice in sheep. How many does
agriculture really require? [*911] The species on which agriculture relies are domesticated, not naturally occurring;
they are developed by artificial not natural selection; they might not be able to survive in the wild. n366 This
argument is not intended to deny the religious, aesthetic, cultural, and moral reasons that command us to respect and
protect the natural world. These spiritual and ethical values should evoke action, of course, but we should also
recognize that they are spiritual and ethical values. We should recognize that ecosystems and all that dwell therein
compel our moral respect, our aesthetic appreciation, and our spiritual veneration; we should clearly seek to achieve
the goals of the ESA. There is no reason to assume, however, that these goals have anything to do with human well-
being or welfare as economists understand that term. These are ethical goals, in other words, not economic ones.
Protecting the marsh may be the right thing to do for moral, cultural, and spiritual reasons. We should do it-but
someone will have to pay the costs. In the narrow sense of promoting human welfare, protecting nature often
represents a net "cost," not a net "benefit." It is largely for moral, not economic, reasons-ethical, not prudential,
reasons- that we care about all our fellow creatures. They are valuable as objects of love not as objects of use. What is
good for [*912] the marsh may be good in itself even if it is not, in the economic sense, good for mankind. The most
valuable things are quite useless.
We are all familiar with the litany of our ever-deteriorating environment. It is the doomsday message
endlessly repeated by the media, as when Time magazine tells us that "everyone knows the planet is in
We are
bad shape", and when the New Scientist calls its environmental overview "self-destruct".
defiling our Earth, we are told. Our resources are running out. The population
is ever-growing, leaving less and less to eat. Our air and water is more and
more polluted. The planet's species are becoming extinct in vast numbers -
we kill off more than 40,000 each year. Forests are disappearing, fish stocks
are collapsing, the coral reefs are dying. The fertile topsoil is vanishing. We
are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere,
and will end up killing ourselves in the process . The world's ecosystem is
breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability. Global warming is probably
taking place, though future projections are overly pessimistic and the
traditional cure of radical fossil-fuel cutbacks is far more damaging than the
original affliction. Moreover, its total impact will not pose a devastating
problem to our future. Nor will we lose 25-50% of all species in our lifetime -
in fact, we are losing probably 0.7%. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and
the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. In fact, in
terms of practically every measurable indicator, mankind's lot has improved .
This does not, however, mean that everything is good enough. We can still do even better. Take, for
example, starvation and the population explosion. In 1968, one of the leading environmentalists, Dr Paul R
Erlich, predicted in his bestselling book, The Population Bomb, that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In
the course of the 1970s, the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions - hundreds of millions of
people will starve to death." This did not happen. Instead, according to the UN, agricultural production in
the developing world has increased by 52% per person. The daily food intake in developing countries has
increased from 1,932 calories in 1961 - barely enough for survival - to 2,650 calories in 1998, and is
expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030. Likewise, the proportion of people going hungry in these countries has
dropped from 45% in 1949 to 18% today, and is expected to fall even further, to 12% in 2010 and 6% in
2030. Food, in other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant. This is reflected in its price.
Since 1800, food prices have decreased by more than 90%, and in 2000, according to the World Bank,
prices were lower than ever before. Erlich's prediction echoed that made 170 years earlier by Thomas
Malthus. Malthus claimed that, unchecked, human population would expand exponentially, while food
production.
Aff AT Warming Impact
Warming will be slow and the impact will be small
Ridley 6/19/14, (Matt Ridley is the author of The Rational Optimist, a columnist for the Times
(London) and a member of the House of Lords. He spoke at Ideacity in Toronto on June 18., PCC
commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is
no , [ http://tinyurl.com/mgyn8ln ] , //hss-RJ)
The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is
conducted, you would think that only two positions are possible: that
the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact there
is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold,
which is that man-made climate change is real but not likely to do
much harm, let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind
this century. After more than 25 years reporting and commenting on
this topic for various media organizations, and having started out
alarmed, thats where I have ended up. But it is not just I that hold this
view. I share it with a very large international organization, sponsored
by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the worlds
governments: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
itself. The IPCC commissioned four different models of what might happen to the
world economy, society and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate,
given a certain assumption about the atmospheres sensitivity to carbon dioxide. Three of the models
show a moderate, slow and mild warming, the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade
Now two
warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer.
degrees is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous,
according to the scientific consensus. That is to say, in three of the four
scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my childrens children
are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful
warming, let alone catastrophe. But what about the fourth scenario? This
is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what
assumptions lay behind this model, I decided to look up the original papers describing the creation of this
Frankly, I was gobsmacked. It is a world that is very, very
scenario.
implausible. For a start, this is a world of continuously increasing
global population so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is
more than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in
the face of the fact that the world population growth rate has been
falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero i.e., stable
population in around 2070. More people mean more emissions.
Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5 scenario to be burning an
astonishing 10 times as much coal as today, producing 50% of its primary energy
from coal, compared with about 30% today. Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of
liquid fuel would then be derived from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies contribute little, because
of a slow pace of innovation and hence fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy
portfolio over the entire time horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario. Energy efficiency has improved very little.
These are highly unlikely assumptions. With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a
huge scale in the United States today, with the price of solar power plummeting, with nuclear power
experiencing a revival, with gigantic methane-hydrate gas resources being discovered on the seabed, with
energy efficiency rocketing upwards, and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually
every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible.
Notice, however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain.
The per capita income of the average human being in 2100 is three
times what it is now. Poverty would be history. So its hardly
Armageddon. But theres an even more startling fact. We now have many different studies of
climate sensitivity based on observational data and they all converge on the conclusion that it is much
lower than assumed by the IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have
risen much faster than they have over the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this
week, temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years. With these much more realistic
estimates of sensitivity (known as transient climate response), even RCP8.5 cannot produce dangerous
warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say, even if you pile crazy assumption
upon crazy assumption till you have an edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to
make climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let alone catastrophe. Thats
not me saying this its the IPCC itself. But what strikes me as truly fascinating about these scenarios is
that they tell us that globalization, innovation and economic growth are unambiguously good for the
environment. At the other end of the scale from RCP8.5 is a much more cheerful scenario called RCP2.6. In
this happy world, climate change is not a problem at all in 2100, because carbon dioxide emissions have
plummeted thanks to the rapid development of cheap nuclear and solar, plus a surge in energy efficiency.
The RCP2.6 world is much, much richer. The average person has an income about 15 times todays in real
terms, so that most people are far richer than Americans are today. And it achieves this by free trade,
massive globalization, and lots of investment in new technology. All the things the green movement keeps
saying it opposes because they will wreck the planet. The answer to climate change is, and always has
worry now in 2014 about a very small, highly implausible
been, innovation. To
set of circumstances in 2100 that just might, if climate sensitivity is
much higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal damage
to the world economy, makes no sense. Think of all the innovation that happened
between 1914 and 2000. Do we really think there will be less in this century? As for how to deal with that
small risk, well there are several possible options. You could encourage innovation and trade. You could put
a modest but growing tax on carbon to nudge innovators in the right direction. You could offer prizes for
low-carbon technologies. All of these might make a little sense. But the one thing you should not do is pour
public subsidy into supporting old-fashioned existing technologies that produce more carbon dioxide per
unit of energy even than coal (bio-energy), or into ones that produce expensive energy (existing solar), or
that have very low energy density and so require huge areas of land (wind). The IPCC produced two reports
last year. One said that the cost of climate change is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this
century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world economy with renewable energy is likely to
be 4% of GDP. Why do something that you know will do more harm than good?
A new paper just hit the scientific literature that argues that the apparent pause in the rise in global average surface
temperatures during the past 16 years was really just a slowdown. As you may imagine, this paper, by Kevin Cowtan and
Robert Way is being hotly discussed in the global warming blogs, with reaction ranging from a warm embrace by the
global-warming-is-going-to-be-bad-for-us crowd to revulsion from the human-activities-have-no-effect-on-the-climate
claque. The lukewarmers (a school we take some credit for establishing) seem to be taking the results in stride. After
all, the pause as curious as it is/was, is not central to the primary
argument that, yes, human activities are pressuring the planet to
warm, but that the rate of warming is going to be much slower than is
being projected by the collection of global climate models (upon which
mainstream projections of future climate changeand the resulting climate alarm (i.e., calls for emission regulations, etc.)
are based). Under the adjustments to the observed global temperature history put together by Cowtan and Way, the
models fare a bit better than they do with the unadjusted temperature record. That is, the observed temperature trend
over the past 34 years (the period of record analyzed by Cowtan and Way) is a tiny bit closer to the average trend from
the collection of climate models used in the new report from the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
than is the old temperature record. Specifically, while the trend in observed global temperatures from 1979-2012 as
calculated by Cowtan and Way is 0.17C/decade, it is 0.16C/decade in the temperature record compiled by the U.K.
Hadley Center (the record that Cowtan and Way adjusted). Because of the sampling errors associated with trend
estimation, these values are not significantly different from one another. Whether the 0.17C/decade is significantly
different from the climate model average simulated trend during that period of 0.23C/decade is discussed extensively
0.01C/decade in the global trend
below. But, suffice it to say that an insignificant difference of
measured over more than 30 years is pretty small beer and doesnt
give model apologists very much to get happy over. Instead, the
attention is being deflected to The Pausethe leveling off of global
surface temperatures during the past 16 years (give or take). Here, the
new results from Cowtan and Way show that during the period 1997-
2012, instead of a statistically insignificant rise at a rate of
0.05C/decade as is contained in the old temperature record, the rise
becomes a statistically significant 0.12C/decade. The Pause is transformed into The
Slowdown and alarmists rejoice because global warming hasnt stopped after all. (If the logic sounds backwards, it does
to us as well, if you were worried about catastrophic global warming, wouldnt you rejoice at findings that indicate that
future climate change was going to be only modest, more so than results to the contrary?) The science behind the new
Cowtan and Way research is still being digested by the community of climate scientists and other interested parties alike .
The main idea is that the existing compilations of the global average
temperature are very data-sparse in the high latitudes. And since the Arctic (more
so than the Antarctic) is warming faster than the global average, the lack of data there may mean that the global average
temperature trend may be underestimated. Cowtan and Way developed a methodology which relied on other limited
sources of temperature information from the Arctic (such as floating buoys and satellite observations) to try to make an
estimate of how the surface temperature was behaving in regions lacking more traditional temperature observations (the
authors released an informative video explaining their research which may better help you understand what they did).
They found that the warming in the data-sparse regions was progressing faster than the global average (especially during
the past couple of years) and that when they included the data that they derived for these regions in the computation of
the global average temperature, they found the global trend was higher than previously reportedjust how much higher
depended on the period over which the trend was calculated. As we showed, the trend more than doubled over the period
from 1997-2012, but barely increased at all over the longer period 1979-2012. Figure 1 shows the impact on the global
average temperature trend for all trend lengths between 10 and 35 years (incorporating our educated guess as to what
the 2013 temperature anomaly will be), and compares that to the distribution of climate model simulations of the same
period. Statistically speaking, instead of there being a clear inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of
the range which encompasses 95% of all modeled trends) between the observations and the climate mode simulations for
lengths ranging generally from 11 to 28 years and a marginal inconsistency (i.e., the observed trend value falls outside of
the range which encompasses 90% of all modeled trends) for most of the other lengths, now the observations track
closely the marginal inconsistency line, although trends of length 17, 19, 20, 21 remain clearly inconsistent with the
collection of modeled trends.Still, throughout the entirely of the 35-yr period
(ending in 2013), the observed trend lies far below the model average
simulated trend (additional information on the impact of the new
Cowtan and Way adjustments on modeled/observed temperature
comparison can be found here). The Cowtan and Way analysis is an
attempt at using additional types of temperature information, or extracting
information from records that have already told their stories, to fill in the missing data in the Arctic. There are
concerns about the appropriateness of both the data sources and the
methodologies applied to them. A major one is in the applicability of
satellite data at such high latitudes. The nature of the satellites orbit
forces it to look sideways in order to sample polar regions. In fact,
the orbit is such that the highest latitude areas cannot be seen at all.
This is compounded by the fact that cold regions can develop
substantial inversions of near-ground temperature, in which
temperature actually rises with height such that there is not a
straightforward relationship between the surface temperature and the
temperature of the lower atmosphere where the satellites measure the
temperature. If the nature of this complex relationship is not constant
in time, an error is introduced into the Cowtan and Way analysis.
Another unresolved problem comes up when extrapolating land-based
weather station data far into the Arctic Ocean. While land
temperatures can bounce around a lot, the fact that much of the ocean
is partially ice-covered for many months. Under well-mixed
conditions, this forces the near-surface temperature to be constrained
to values near the freezing point of salt water, whether or not the
associated land station is much warmer or colder. You can run this experiment yourself
by filling a glass with a mix of ice and water and then making sure it is well mixed. The water surface temperature must
hover around 33F until all the ice melts. Given that the near-surface temperature is close to the water temperature, the
limitations of land data become obvious. Considering all of the above, we advise caution with regard to Cowtan and Ways
findings. While adding high arctic data should increase the observed trend, the nature of the data means that the amount
of additional rise is subject to further revision. As they themselves note, theres quite a bit more work to be done this area.
In the meantime, their results have tentatively breathed a small hint of life back into the climate models, basically buying
them a bit more timetime for either the observed temperatures to start rising rapidly as current models expect, or, time
for the modelers to try to fix/improve cloud processes, oceanic processes, and other process of variability (both natural
Weve also taken a
and anthropogenic) that lie behind what would be the clearly overheated projections.
look at how sensitive the results are to the length of the ongoing
pause/slowdown. Our educated guess is that the bit of time that the
Cowtan and Way findings bought the models is only a few years long,
and it is a fact, not a guess, that each additional year at the current
rate of lukewarming increases the disconnection between the models
and reality.