Harvard-Bhatt-Habermann-Neg-Wake Forest-Round2

1NC T
Interpretation— USFG increase space cooperation with Russia or China in one

of the topic areas
“Resolved” means legislation
Parcher 1 (Jeff, JD @ George Mason School of Law, Director for Communications at Center for
Community Change, former debate coach at Georgetown, Feb 2001
http://www.ndtceda.com/archives/200102/0790.html)
Pardon me if I turn to a source besides Bill. American Heritage Dictionary: Resolve: 1. To make a firm decision about. 2. To decide or
express by formal vote. 3. To separate something into constiutent parts See Syns at *analyze* (emphasis in orginal) 4. Find a solution
to. See Syns at *Solve* (emphasis in original) 5. To dispel: resolve a doubt. - n 1. Firmness of purpose; resolution. 2. A determination
or decision. (2) The very nature of the word "resolution" makes it a question. American Heritage: A course of action determined or
decided on. A formal statement of a decision, as by a legislature. (3) The resolution is obviously a question. Any
other conclusion is utterly inconceivable. Why? Context. The debate community empowers a topic committee to write a topic for
ALTERNATE side debating. The committee is not a random group of people coming together to "reserve" themselves about some
issue. There is context - they are empowered by a community to do something. In their deliberations, the topic community attempts
to craft a resolution which can be ANSWERED in either direction. They focus on issues like ground and fairness because they know
the resolution will serve as the basis for debate which will be resolved by determining the policy desirablility of that resolution.
That's not only what they do, but it's what we REQUIRE them to do. We don't just send the topic committee somewhere to adopt
their own group resolution. It's not the end point of a resolution adopted by a body - it's the preliminary wording of a resolution sent
to others to be answered or decided upon. (4) Further context: the word resolved is used to emphasize the fact that it's policy
debate. Resolved comes from the adoption of resolutions by legislative bodies . A resolution is either
adopted or it is not. It's a question before a legislative body . Should this statement be adopted or not. (5) The very
terms 'affirmative' and 'negative' support my view. One affirms a resolution. Affirmative and negative are the equivalents of 'yes' or
'no' - which, of course, are answers to a question.
"Federal Government" means the national government, not the states or

localities
Black’s Law 99 (Dictionary, Seventh Edition, p.703)
A national government that exercises some degree of control over smaller political units that
have surrendered some degree of power in exchange for the right to participate in national
political matters
The aff should establish a National Space Policy, which is a documented policy
direction for the conduct of national space programs
Gibbs 09 (Graham Gibbs, former CSA representative in Washington DC and Canada's
Counsellor for (US) Space Affairs at the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC for twenty-two
years. He continues to be involved in the space sector with a focus on space policy analysis and
development, international partnerships and university level lecturing. “An analysis of the Space
Policies of the Major Space Faring Nations and Selected Emerging Space Faring Nations” Annals
of Air and Space Law Vol. 37, 2009, pp. 282-3)
A country's national space policy usually provides policy directions for the conduct of the
government's civil, military and national security space programs. It may also cover relations with the
commercial and research space sectors, as well as international partners. In many cases a national space policy clarifies:
The roles and responsibilities of the government departments with a stake in the nation's space sector
including their inter-relationships; The government's position on the conduct of its space program e.g.,
peaceful use of outer space; The
government's position on space activiti es as they relate to national
security, sovereignty, foreign policy, international cooperation and similar matters ; The
government's civil, military and intelligence space priorities; and, Policy directions for
government departments, support of and relationships with, the commercial, research and education sectors. In some
cases, e.g., the United States, a national space policy includes a classified section. While a national space policy addresses a
government's space priorities, it
does not necessarily include all possible topics, as some space policy
matters are handled through lower tier policy directives or simply left unaddressed. A national
space policy is not a space strategy, nor a long term space plan. However, in analyzing national space
policies, it is necessary in some cases to review national or space agency strategies and long term plans since they often reflect
national space policies even in the absence of a single national space policy document. The
United States is one of the few
countries that consistently produces comprehensive national space policies to reflect a particular
administration's position. Recently the European Union (EU) has, through its executive arm, the European Commission (EC)
and in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA), developed a European space policy. Space policies may be
produced for a particular space sector (e.g., a national space transportation policy), or may be
embedded in broader policy documents and then reflected in a national space agency strategy as is the case for the
recent German Federal Space Strategy. Though the United Kingdom (UK) does not explicitly have a national space policy, its policies
with respect to space are reflected in the legislation creating the UK Space Agency and other supporting documents.
Space exploration is broadly defined as outer-space activity

Gibbs 97 (G., Head of Washington Office, Canadian Space Agency, Washington DC,
“International Cooperation In Space - Developing New Approaches”
https://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet89/gibbs89.htm)
The working group defined space exploration as human and robotic activity beyond Earth orbit
(both low-Earth and geosynchronous), such as exploration of the Moon and Mars. The group
concluded it was unlikely that a country or group of countries would, during the next ten to
fifteen years, make a commitment to a single, long-term, large-scale space-exploration initiative.
So, until such a commitment is possible, exploration is likely to focus on robotic missions rather
than on human spaceflight. The working group considered that:
Violation---they don’t defend instrumental evaluation of USFG action

Vote neg—
1. Prep and clash—post facto topic change alters balance of prep, which
structurally favors the aff because they speak last and use perms—key to
engage a prepared adversary and a target of mutual contestation.
2. Limits—specific topics are key to reasonable expectations for 2Ns—open
subjects create incentives for avoidance and monopolization of moral high
ground—that denies a role for the neg and turns accessibility.
3. Refinement -- unlimited topics makes assessing the validity of the 1ac’s truth
claims impossible AND cause concessionary ground which creates incentives for
avoidance
1NC PIC
We endorse the 1AC minus a rejection of space mining. We endorse legal modification to the
Outer Space Treaty indicating that presence of alien life will nullify mining attempts.
Space mining is booming, and U.S. companies are leading the charge.
Jahku et al. 17 – Ram S. Jahku, Associate Professor at the Institute of Air and Space Law,
Faculty of Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where he teaches and conducts research in
international space law, law of space applications, law of space commercialization, government
regulation of space activities, Member of the Global Agenda Council on Space of the World
Economic, Chairman of the Legal and Regulatory Committee of the International Association for
the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), B.A. as well as an LL.B. from Panjab University, LL.M.
from Panjab University in International Law, LL.M. from McGill University in Air and Space Law,
Doctor of Civil Law (on Dean’s Honours List) from McGill University in Law of Outer Space and
Telecommunications, Joseph Pelton, award winning author or editor of some 35 books and over
300 articles in the field of space systems, Member of the Executive Board of the International
Association for the Advancement of Space Safety, full member of the International Academy of
Astronautics, Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA),
Fellow of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), former
Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Vice President and Dean of the International Space
University as well as the Director Emeritus of the Space and Advanced Communications
Research Institute (SACRI) at George Washington University, Ph.D. from Georgetown University,
Yaw Otu Mankata Nyampong, Senior Legal Officer, Pan African University, African Union
Commission, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He also served as the Executive Director (Academic
Associate) of the Centre for Research in Air and Space Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada,
Doctor of Civil Law (DCL) degree and a Master of Laws (LL.M) degree in Air and Space Law from
the Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2017 (“Private Sector
Space Mining Initiatives and Policies in the United States,” Space Mining and Its Regulation,
Published by Springer International Publishing, ISBN: 978-3-319-39246-2, pp. 11-21)
These new space initiatives have also served to change U. S. regulators views on how to control,
license and encourage commercial space innovation. Various “space acts” passed by Congress
and signed into law have by and large served to encourage new commercial space enterprise.
Today the U. S. Federal Aviation Administration Office of Commercial Space Transportation
(FAA-AST) serves a dual role of regulator of commercial space safety as well as encourager of
new space enterprises.
Today NASA also relies on commercial vehicles to access the International Space Station and
have awarded contracts for new vehicles and capsules to take astronauts into and return from
space. Commercial ventures have developed spaceplanes to provide suborbital tourist
experiences. Commercial vehicles are now being developed to place satellites and even people
into space as well as to deploy private space habitats. Robotic systems are being developed to
refuel and service spacecraft and even actively deorbit space debris. Some of these systems
could even be deployed as anti-satellite weapons. Also, the U. S. Department of Defense and
especially its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plays a key role in
developing new capabilities in space, frequently in partnership with private space ventures.
This dramatic shift in the division between private and public space programs and the rapid rise
of private space systems to carry out activities that are sometimes called new space activities
has been driven first and foremost in the United States. This chapter explores the many new
space programs that have been started—largely by entrepreneurial and startup aerospace
companies in the United States in the last 15 years. It then proceeds to examine the various
new space enterprises that are being formed to pursue space mining and the recovery of natural
resources from space. Finally this analysis covers the planned course of action plus the
ambitious goals and objectives of new U. S. space ventures. It covers their efforts to create a
flexible partnership with U. S. governmental space agencies as well as to forge an open and
permissive regulatory structure for their operations. Their plans seek for them to be able to
proceed with a minimum of regulatory oversight, with few restrictions other than for the safety
of their operations and with very liberal interpretation of existing space law, treaties and
conventions.
The Rapid Growth of New Space Activities in the United States
Several U. S. entrepreneurs are developing new space ventures with the goal of carrying out
space mining as soon as within another decade. These American space entrepreneurs strongly
believe that the private sector will play a major role in new space initiatives, and they are intent
on being the pioneers that make this actually happen. They are advocating private enterprise
take the lead and are correspondingly advocating a limited role for government. A number of
these individuals and their companies have in the past strongly supported active involvement of
the private sector in other space activities. These space and “protospace” ventures have
included such activities as zero g flights, suborbital “space tourism” flights, stratospheric balloon
flights, high altitude platform systems for various applications, and private astronaut flights to
space habitats and the International Space Station. Their latest initiatives to pursue private
ventures aimed at the exploitation of space’s natural resources is very much a logical thought
extension of their earlier efforts to “privatize” space activities.
In the short to medium term, those private actors may not be able to mount a completely
comprehensive effort to provide all the needed space exploration and exploitation technologies
to cover all aspects of a space mining enterprise. They have therefore sought to get the U. S.
government to help them develop new capabilities. They have first worked to create new
mechanisms such as the Commercial Spaceflight Federation ( CSF) to strengthen their voice.
They have encouraged NASA and the FAAAST to sponsor contests and put up prize money to
stimulate new commercial space competency. Their aspiration is to do as much of these new
space activities—such as space mining and space transportation—as soon as possible via
commercial mechanisms and with the minimum amount of governmental involvement and
regulation.
Despite these aspirations there is some recognition on their part that cooperative relationships
with governmental space agencies, research agencies, and national and international regulatory
bodies may still be necessary. They understand that the substantial costs, the need for certain
technilogical capabilities, risk management, and international regulatory controls may ultimately
require governmental cooperation at the national level as well as in the international space
governance arena.
However, in the United States—and the phenomenon is currently largely limited to this country
—the role and voice of these new space entrepreneurs and their various space mining ventures
are increasing heard within Congress and the U. S. federal government—at least when it comes
to governmental space policy. These individuals and associated new space businesses often
have access to substantial amounts of financial capital and in various ways have had a
remarkable impact on recent space policies adopted by the government. In short they have
impacted the mind set of congressional legislators and staff as well as various Executive Branch
and even local state officials.
Just a few of the most recent privately led initiatives are the X-Prize (to build a private, reusable
spaceship that will herald a new era in commercial spaceflight); 1 the Google Lunar X Prize (to
send a robot to the Moon and perform a series of tasks; the SpaceX project (to develop the first
private sector launcher)2 ; and, the Bigelow Aerospace project (which has deployed an inflatable
module in low Earth orbit thatcould become the space habitat of the future).3
And NASA and the FAA have been increasingly supportive of new private space initiatives. NASA,
for instance, created a venture with RedPlanet Capital (with an investment of $75 million) at the
end of 2006 to develop technology that could help the agency to send missions to Mars. The aim
was to find companies whose technologies could also represent significant breakthroughs on
Earth, as well as in the heavens.4 NASA has also embarked on a series of prize competitions to
develop new technologies for Moon and Mars landings and even to develop the capabilities to
design and build space elevators.5 NASA has sought in the past decade to develop new
commercial rockets to resupply the International Space Station. The first step was to develop
commercial resupply vehicles. The first commercial competition started in 2006 with awards to
SpaceX and Kistler Aerospace. When Kistler was not able to meet performance deadlines NASA
shifted the award to Orbital Sciences (now Orbital ATK). This effort to develop a commercial
orbital transportation service evolved into a NASA program to create a commercial capsule and
launchers that are being developed by SpaceX and Boeing under two multi-billion-dollar
contracts.6
The FAA Office of Commercial Space Transport has created under congressional guidance
regulatory processes for granting experimental licenses for commercial suborbital flights that
has been in many ways quite flexible. Even more significant is that FAA-AST has licensed a
growing number of commercial spaceports in the United States. The number of commercial
spaceports that have been licensed in the United States (plus those currently pending license
approval) far outnumber the commercial spaceports in the rest of the world by a wide margin.
Figure 6.1 shows in blue dots the commercial spaceports fully licensed plus indicates the states
where about a dozen spaceports are pending license approvals.7
The number of commercial launches that have been approved under experimental licenses by
the FAA is now quite significant and also rapidly increasing. Thus not only are there many more
commercial spaceports, but there have been far more commercial launches in the United States
than anywhere else in the world. Table 6.1 below provides a listing of experimental licenses
given to commercial launch developers between 2008 and 2015. Beyond this list of actual
launches under experimental licenses there are more than a dozen other U. S. companies that
are at various stages of developing commercial launchers or spaceplanes. Thus there may be a
large increase in commercial launches under experimental licenses in the 2016–2018 timeframe.
The wide range of U. S. commercial space activities since 2000 has included development of
high-altitude platform systems, stratospheric balloon systems, spaceplanes for suborbital flights,
and commercial launchers capable of achieving low Earth orbit and beyond. These new space
ventures are an extension of commercial space activities in telecommunications, remote
sensing, and satellite navigation. Today there are emerging new commercial space industries
such as on-orbit servicing, on-orbit refueling and retrofitting of satellites, and even commercial
monitoring and active removal of space debris that are also predominately U. S.-based efforts as
well. These latest efforts have been supported not only by NASA and the FAA-AST, but very
prominently promoted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA
projects, such as Orbital Express8 and Project Phoenix9 , as well as joint development projects
with NASA are heavily dependent on aerospace contractors.
These initiatives to develop private and more cost effective commercial launchers, to develop
in-orbit robotic capabilities to refuel and service satellites, as well as other new commercial
systems to maneuver remotely and precisely in space are all useful precursor technologies that
could lead the way to future commercial space mining activities. Already several U. S.-based
space mining activities and private asteroid tracking activities have been organized.
Planetary Resources
On April 24, 2012, Planetary Resources10 became the first private enterprise to enter into the
realm of private space business directly dealing with the quest for natural resources in of space.
The vision of the company is as follows: “Planetary Resources is bringing the natural resources
of space within humanity’s economic sphere of influence, propelling our future into the twenty-
first century and beyond. Water from asteroids will fuel the in-space economy, and rare metals
will increase Earth’s GDP.”11 The company wants to develop a low-cost robotic spacecraft to
explore the estimated 9000 NEAs for potential resource extraction and utilization.12 According
to Peter Diamandis, the founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, “Many of the scarce
metals and minerals on Earth are in near-infinite quantities in space. As access to these
materials increases, not only will the cost of everything from microelectronics to energy storage
be reduced, but new applications for these abundant elements will result in important and novel
applications.”13 Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-chairman of the company, has also indicated
that the first targets for exploration will be water-containing asteroids. “Water is perhaps the
most valuable resource in space. Accessing a water-rich asteroid will greatly enable the large-
scale exploration of the Solar System. In addition to supporting life, water will also be separated
into oxygen and hydrogen for breathable air and rocket propellant.”14 The company has begun
a detailed exercise to identify potential candidate NEAs that could be reached without
excessively high thrust impulse and would potentially contain natural resources of significant
value. Its website includes a listing of dozens of potential target asteroids. It has also created a
process where amateur astronomers and scientists can add information to their database.
To the uninitiated this might seem like a straightforward and not too complicated exercise, but
in fact it is a major challenge. It is estimated that there may be a million NEAs that are 30 m or
more in diameter. In Chap. 4 the many types of orbits that these NEAs travel in and the difficulty
in locating and assessing their resource content was discussed.
However, this asteroid identification process is now actively underway by PRI. When the best
“goldilocks” NEA candidate is identified—i.e., an asteroid that has the best resource content and
in an orbit that would be not too difficult to access and mine, then Planetary Resources intends
to launch its first asteroid-hunting spacecraft on a reconnaissance mission (Fig. 6.2). Currently
the company is concentrating on the idea of creating small 3D-printed lowcost spacecraft to
serve as the explorerprospecting units that could fly close enough to an NEA to assess whether it
is indeed a prime candidate for space mining.15
Deep Space Industries
On January 22, 2013, a second U. S.-based company, Deep Space Industries (DSI), entered the
race of asteroid surveying and resource extraction.16 The company intends to develop a fleet of
three spacecraft using off-the-shelf technology to survey small NEAs.17 It hopes to attract $13
million in capital over the next few years.18 The Deep Space Industries website proclaims: Our
mission is a daring one. We are journeying to unknown frontiers, and pushing the limits of
technology to provide a brighter future for all mankind.” Essentially, DSI is suggesting that there
is great wealth in our Solar System and that their vision is to help bring that wealth back to
Earth. They anticipate the following progression. After prospecting missions have identified
asteroids with concentrated volatiles (such as water and hydrocarbons) and other materials of
interest, Deep Space will begin collection with specialized robotic spacecraft. Deep Space thus
describes its activities as a four-step progression that begins with prospecting, moves on to
harvesting, then processing, and finally manufacturing. The aspirations of the company are far
from small in scope. It has proclaimed that this will be the biggest industrial transformation in
human history. (See https:// deepspaceindustries.com/business/.)
To commence its activities, the company plans to send “asteroid-prospecting spacecraft” into
outer space with the launch of the first of its 25-kg “FireFlies” spacecraft. This will be followed
by the heavier “DragonFlies” that will go on mission and bring back samples. Deep Space
Industries has trademarked the name Mothership™. This refers to the concept of a larger carrier
spacecraft designed to aid in the delivery of nano satellites to deep space targets. After
deploying the nanosats, the spacecraft remains as a high bandwidth communication relay
between the deployed craft and Earth. One of the elements needing clarification is whether DSI
sees its mission as mining asteroids or whether it also has aspirations to carry out mining on the
Moon (Fig. 6.3).19
DSI has suggested that a spacecraft might capture an asteroid and reposition it in an orbit near
Earth for potential harvesting of resources. In this concept there is significant reliance on solar
power systems, but in other more conventional concepts, more proven chemical propulsion is
envisioned.
In press statements DSI has indicated that even a small asteroid might ultimately be valued at up
to $195 billion. This would represent, however, an extreme case of an NEA that is almost pure
platinum. 20
Space mining is vital to solve biod loss and resource shortages, particularly
REMs.
the Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2017 (“The Importance
of Natural Resources from Space and Key Challenges,” Space Mining and Its Regulation,
Coping with the Scale and Complexity Problem
The land area of the entire world is 148.94 million sq. km (or 57.506 million sq. miles), and its
water area is 361.132 million sq. km (or 139.434 million sq. miles). About half of that land area is
truly viable for year- round habitation when one eliminates most parts of Antarctica, the Arctic
north, Siberia, the most dangerous mountain ranges and the most arid desert regions. Rising sea
levels will further decrease available land areas. When one divides about 75 million sq. km by 10
billion people (or about 133 people people/sq. km) it becomes clear that rising global
population and shrinking land areas and exhaustion of many types of natural resources—
especially potable water— will be a growing problem.7 Figure 2.2 shows the volume of water in
the world in comparison to the total volume of Earth. This graphic helps us to realize just how
small the amount of potable water that is truly accessible today in comparison to a rising global
population actually is.
Figure 2.2 underscores the issue of just how difficult it will be to continue to provide key
resources especially to major urban centers as global population continues to grow. And this is
not just a question of sustaining human needs for water and natural resources. It is also a matter
of sustaining endangered species of flora and fauna. The United Nations had done an analysis
that shows the loss of species since 1800 and projections for the future show a very disturbing
trend.8
The graphs in Fig. 2.3 that come from the U. S. Geological Survey seem to show a relationship
between the rapid growth of the global human population in recent times and the increasing
rate of extinction on species. The future availability of petroleum products and water is most
often mentioned in studies of future resource scarcity, but broader studies have shown that the
world by the mid twenty-first century will have many shortages. The following results from a
detailed Global Nonrenewal Natural Resources (NNR) study came up with the following results,
as shown in Fig. 2.1. 9 Although these results might vary somewhat from year to year based on
economic downturns or upturns, the overall trend toward increasing shortages is clear. The
upward mobility of the populations in China, India, Indonesia, and other newly industrialized
companies suggest that up to three times more consumer demand for products and energy will
be present by the middle of the twenty-first century. Only recycling and new energy sources can
meet the great bulk of this burgeoning demand. Meeting the demand for natural resources has
been identified as a problem by many that have researched this problem. The projections of
shortages in the future are presented in Fig. 2.4 and in even greater detail in Fig. 2.5 are
certainly of concern. As Chris Clugston’s detailed analysis of this subject has concluded: “Global
Non Renewable Natural Resource (NNR) scarcity will intensify going forward, as global economic
activity levels, economic growth rates, and corresponding NNR demand return to their pre-
recession levels; and global NNR supply levels continue to approach and reach their geological
limits.”
Yet the prospect of space mining can provide new options. A modest nearEarth asteroid rich in
platinum, approximately spherical in shape and 30 m in diameter would constitute a volume of
4500 cu. m and represent a mass of perhaps 5000 metric tons. If one assumed that this asteroid
was 50% platinum, then its value at current world market prices would be on the order of $90
billion. Even if the asteroid recovery mission and refinement costs ran to $5 billion and even if
some of the proceeds were to go into some sort of global commons development or ecological
fund, just a single such mission would produce many billions of dollars in profits. This may
represent an extreme example, but there are over a million PHAs that are on the order of 30 m.
The key in the early days of space mining would be to identify high-value targets.
A 50-m PHA would be over 4.6 times more massive in volume and content and would be
incredibly valuable if it contained precious metals or rare earth materials such as iridium,
rhodium, ruthenium, palladium, or osmium. In contrast, the economics would be much more
difficult in the case of PHAs with less valuable natural resource contents. An asteroid with 70%
nickel and molybdenum content and 50 m in diameter would have something like a market
value of only about $200 million based on current market prices of $13,000 a metric ton for
molybdenum and $10,000 a metric ton for nickel. This much lower valuation would call for
space mining transport equipment of the longer term future that could be used over and over
again. It would also likely mean systems that ran off of solar and electric propulsion systems.
Resource scarcity will drive a global conflict explosion.
Klare 13 – Michael T. Klare, Defense Correspondent for The Nation, Professor emeritus of
peace and world-security studies at Hampshire College, senior visiting fellow at the Arms
Control Association in Washington, DC, 2013 (“How Resource Scarcity and Climate Change Could
Produce a Global Explosion,” The Nation, April 22nd, Available Online at
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-resource-scarcity-and-climate-change-could-produce-
global-explosion/, Accessed 8-20-19)
Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the US
intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not,
you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before
experienced.
Two nightmare scenarios—a global scarcity of vital resources and the onset of extreme climate
change—are already beginning to converge and in the coming decades are likely to produce a
tidal wave of unrest, rebellion, competition and conflict. Just what this tsunami of disaster will
look like may, as yet, be hard to discern, but experts warn of “water wars” over contested river
systems, global food riots sparked by soaring prices for life’s basics, mass migrations of climate
refugees (with resulting anti-migrant violence) and the breakdown of social order or the
collapse of states. At first, such mayhem is likely to arise largely in Africa, Central Asia and other
areas of the underdeveloped South, but in time, all regions of the planet will be affected.
Goes nuclear
Wooldridge 9 – political writer and former lecturer at Cornell University (Frosty, “Humanity
galloping toward its greatest crisis in the 21st century”
http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10042:humanity-
galloping-toward-its-greatest-crisis-in-the-21st-century&catid=125:frosty-
wooldridge&Itemid=244)
It is clear that most politicians and

most citizens do not recognize that returning to “more of the
same” is a recipe for promoting the first collapse of a global civilization . The required changes in energy
technology, which would benefit not only the environment but also national security, public health, and the economy, would
demand a World War II type mobilization -- and even that might not prevent a global climate disaster. Without transitioning away
from use of fossil fuels, humanity will move further into an
era of resource wars (remember, Africom has been added
to the Pentagon’s structure -- and China has noticed), clearly with intent to protect US
“interests” in petroleum reserves. The consequences of more resource wars, many likely
triggered over water supplies stressed by climate disruption, are likely to include increased
unrest in poor nations, a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, widening inequity within
and between nations, and in the worst (and not unlikely) case, a nuclear war ending civilization.
Space mining causes prolific innovation with huge terrestrial implications.

*robotics, space navigation and maneuvering, situational awareness, energe efficiency, and
cheap satellites + space travel
the Institute of Air and Space Law, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 2017 (“The Importance
of Natural Resources from Space and Key Challenges,” Space Mining and Its Regulation,
But the space mining industry can also aid in producing and perfecting new technologies that
could assist with other types of space missions, or produce innovations that can find useful
implementation right here on Earth. Space mining activities will be seeking to develop new and
more cost effective robotics missions, advanced navigation and precision maneuvering in space,
improved space situational systems, lower cost satellite manufacturing techniques, and
improved power systems, including higher efficiency photovoltaic cells and quantum dot
technology.
Of course the most important contribution could well be more cost effective space
transportation systems such as solar-powered electric propulsion systems. If one could
develop transport systems that are largely multi-use that can be used over and over again, they
could also be employed to boost cost effective solar power satellites into orbit.
Likewise if space mining enterprises can develop low cost satellites that could produce at lower
cost and in high volume via 3-D printing, such as Planetary Resources is now developing, this
could be quite significant. Such techniques could also find application in communications,
precision satellite navigation, and remote sensing constellations and on other space missions.
Clearly low cost remote surveying and reconnaissance satellites are currently the top priority
for space mining ventures, and Fig. 2.6 shows the prototype small satellite that Planetary
Resources Inc. together with 3D Systems is currently developing. This Arkyd-300[3] satellite bus
configuration as pictured below with its efficient torus shape holds the propellant and provides
the structure for the satellite. The fact that the satellite can be “manufactured” via 3D printing,
of course, greatly reduces its production cost. One of the characteristics of the new space
mining companies is that they have typically recruited partners that can help them develop
these new types of technology. They have also been skillful in winning contracts from NASA for
research and development work.11
That outweighs – it’s the upmost moral evil and disavowal of the risk makes it
more likely.
Elizabeth Burns 17. Elizabeth Finneron-Burns is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick
and an Affiliated Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, What’s wrong
with human extinction?,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00455091.2016.1278150?needAccess=true,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2017)
Many, though certainly not all, people might believe that it would be wrong to bring about the end of the human species, and the
reasons given for this belief are various. I begin by considering four reasons that could be given against the moral permissibility of
human extinction. I will argue that only those reasons that impact the people who exist at the time that the extinction or the
knowledge of the upcoming extinction occurs, can explain its wrongness. I use this conclusion to then consider in which cases human
extinction would be morally permissible or impermissible, arguing that there is only a small class of cases in which it would not be
wrong to cause the extinction of the human race or allow it to happen. 2.1. It would prevent the existence of very
many happy people One reason of human extinction might be considered to be wrong lies in the value of human life itself. The
thought here might be that it is a good thing for people to exist and enjoy happy lives and extinction would
deprive more people of enjoying this good. The ‘good’ in this case could be understood in at least two
ways. According to the first, one might believe that you benefit a person by bringing them into existence, or at least, that it is
good for that person that they come to exist. The second view might hold that if humans were to go
extinct, the utility foregone by the billions (or more) of people who could have lived but will now
never get that opportunity, renders allowing human extinction to take place an incidence of wrongdoing. An example of
this view can be found in two quotes from an Effective Altruism blog post by Peter Singer, Nick Beckstead and Matt Wage: One very
bad thing about human extinction would be that billions of people would likely die painful deaths. But in our
view, this is by far not the worst thing about human extinction. The worst thing about human extinction is that
there would be no future generations. Since there could be so many generations in our future, the value of all
those generations together greatly exceeds the value of the current generation. (Beckstead, Singer,
and Wage 2013) The authors are making two claims. The first is that there is value in human life and also something
valuable about creating future people which gives us a reason to do so; furthermore, it would be a very bad thing if we
did not do so. The second is that, not only would it be a bad thing for there to be no future people, but it would actually be the worst
thing about extinction. Since happy human lives have value, and the number of potential people who could ever exist is far greater
than the number of people who exist at any one time, even if the extinction were brought about through the painful deaths of
currently existing people, the former’s loss would be greater than the latter’s. Both claims are assuming that there is an intrinsic
value in the existence of potential human life. The second claim makes the further assumption that the forgone value of the
potential lives that could be lived is greater than the disvalue that would be accrued by people existing at the time of the extinction
through suffering from painful and/or premature deaths. The best-known author of the post, Peter Singer is a prominent utilitarian,
so it is not surprising that he would lament the potential lack of future human lives per se. However, it is not just utilitarians who
share this view, even if implicitly. Indeed, other philosophers also seem to imply that they share the intuition that there is just
something wrong with causing or failing to prevent the extinction of the human species such that we prevent more ‘people’ from
having the ‘opportunity to exist’. Stephen Gardiner (2009) and Martin O’Neill (personal correspondence), both sympathetic to
contract theory, for example, also find it intuitive that we should want more generations to have the opportunity to exist, assuming
that they have worth-living lives, and I find it plausible to think that many other people (philosophers and non-philosophers alike)
probably share this intuition. When we talk about future lives being ‘prevented’, we are saying that a
possible person or a set of possible people who could potentially have existed will now never actually
come to exist. To say that it is wrong to prevent people from existing could either mean that a possible person could reasonably
reject a principle that permitted us not to create them, or that the foregone value of their lives provides a reason for rejecting any
principle that permits extinction. To make the first claim we would have to argue that a possible person could reasonably reject any
principle that prevented their existence on the grounds that it prevented them in particular from existing. However, this is
implausible for two reasons. First, we can only wrong someone who did, does or will actually exist because wronging involves failing
to take a person’s interests into account. When considering the permissibility of a principle allowing us not to create Person X, we
cannot take X’s interest in being created into account because X will not exist if we follow the principle. By considering the
standpoint of a person in our deliberations we consider the burdens they will have to bear as a result of the principle. In this case,
there is no one who will bear any burdens since if the principle is followed (that is, if we do not create X), X will not exist to bear any
burdens. So, only people who do/will actually exist can bear the brunt of a principle, and therefore occupy a standpoint that is owed
justification. Second, existence is not an interest at all and a possible person is not disadvantaged by not being caused to exist.
Rather than being an interest, it is a necessary requirement in order to have interests. Rivka Weinberg describes it as ‘neutral’
because causing a person to exist is to create a subject who can have interests; existence is not an interest itself.3 In order to be
disadvantaged, there must be some detrimental effect on your interests. However, without existence, a person does not have any
interests so they cannot be disadvantaged by being kept out of existence. But, as Weinberg points out, ‘never having interests itself
could not be contrary to people’s interests since without interest bearers, there can be no ‘they’ for it to be bad for’ (Weinberg
2008, 13). So, a principle that results in some possible people never becoming actual does not impose any costs on those ‘people’
because nobody is disadvantaged by not coming into existence.4 It therefore seems that it cannot be wrong to fail to bring particular
people into existence. This would mean that no one acts wrongly when they fail to create another person. Writ large, it would also
not be wrong if everybody decided to exercise their prerogative not to create new people and potentially, by consequence, allow
human extinction. One might respond here by saying that although it may be permissible for one person to fail to create a new
person, it is not permissible if everyone chooses to do so because human lives have value and allowing human extinction would be
to forgo a huge amount of value in the world. This takes us to the second way of understanding the potential wrongness of
preventing people from existing — the foregone value of a life provides a reason for rejecting any principle that prevents it. One
possible reply to this claim turns on the fact that many philosophers acknowledge that the only, or at least the best, way to think
about the value of (individual or groups of) possible people’s lives is in impersonal terms (Parfit 1984; Reiman 2007; McMahan
2009). Jeff McMahan, for example, writes ‘at the time of one’s choice there is no one who exists or will exist independently of that
choice for whose sake one could be acting in causing him or her to exist … it seems therefore that any reason to cause or not to
cause an individual to exist … is best considered an impersonal rather than individual-affecting reason’ (McMahan 2009, 52).
Another reply along similar lines would be to appeal to the value that is lost or at least foregone when we fail to bring into existence
a next (or several next) generations of people with worth-living lives. Since ex hypothesi worth-living lives have positive value, it is
better to create more such lives and worse to create fewer. Human extinction by definition is the creation of no future lives and
would ‘deprive’ billions of ‘people’ of the opportunity to live worth-living lives. This might reduce the amount of value in the world at
the time of the extinction (by killing already existing people), but it would also prevent a much vaster amount of value in the future
(by failing to create more people). Both replies depend on the impersonal value of human life. However, recall that in contractualism
impersonal values are not on their own grounds for reasonably rejecting principles. Scanlon himself says that although we have a
strong reason not to destroy existing human lives, this reason ‘does not flow from the thought that it is a good thing for there to be
more human life rather than less’ (104). In contractualism, something cannot be wrong unless there is an impact on a person. Thus,
neither the impersonal value of creating a particular person nor the impersonal value of human life writ large could on its own
provide a reason for rejecting a principle permitting human extinction. It seems therefore that the fact that extinction would deprive
future people of the opportunity to live worth-living lives (either by failing to create either particular future people or future people
in general) cannot provide us with a reason to consider human extinction to be wrong. Although the lost value of these ‘lives’ itself
cannot be the reason explaining the wrongness of extinction, it is possible the knowledge of this loss might create a personal reason
for some existing people. I will consider this possibility later on in section (d). But first I move to the second reason human extinction
might be wrong per se. 2.2. It
would mean the loss of the only known form of intelligent life and all
civilization and intellectual progress would be lost A second reason we might think it would be wrong to cause
human extinction is the loss that would occur of the only (known) form of rational life and the knowledge and civilization that that
form of life has created. One thought here could be that just as some might consider it wrong to destroy an individual human
heritage monument like the Sphinx, it would also be wrong if the advances made by humans over the past few millennia were lost or
prevented from progressing. A related argument is made by those who feel that there is something special about humans’
capacity for rationality which is valuable in itself. Since humans are the only intelligent life that we know of, it would
be a loss, in itself, to the world for that to end. I admit that I struggle to fully appreciate this thought. It seems to me that Henry
Sidgwick was correct in thinking that these things are only important insofar as they are important to humans (Sidgwick 1874,
I.IX.4).5 If there is no form of intelligent life in the future, who would there be to lament its loss since intelligent life is the only form
of life capable of appreciating intelligence? Similarly, if there is no one with the rational capacity to appreciate historic monuments
and civil progress, who would there be to be negatively affected or even notice the loss?6 However, even if there is nothing special
about human rationality, just as some people try to prevent the extinction of nonhuman animal species, we might think that we
ought also to prevent human extinction for the sake of biodiversity. The thought in this, as well as the
earlier examples, must be that it would somehow be bad for the world if there were no more humans even though there would be
no one for whom it is bad. This may be so but the only way to understand this reason is impersonally. Since we are concerned with
wrongness rather than badness, we must ask whether something that impacts no one’s well-being, status or claims can be wrong. As
we saw earlier, in the contractualist framework reasons must be personal rather than impersonal in order to provide grounds for
reasonable rejection (Scanlon 1998, 218–223). Since the loss of civilization, intelligent life or biodiversity are per se impersonal
reasons, there is no standpoint from which these reasons could be used to reasonably reject a principle that permitted extinction.
Therefore, causing human extinction on the grounds of the loss of civilization, rational life or biodiversity would not be wrong. 2.3.
Existing people would endure physical pain and/or painful and/or premature deaths Thinking
about the ways in which human extinction might come about brings to the fore two more reasons it might be wrong. It could, for
example, occur if all humans (or at least the critical number needed to be unable to replenish the population, leading to eventual
extinction) underwent a sterilization procedure. Or perhaps it could come about due to anthropogenic climate change or a massive
asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out the species in the same way it did the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Each of these
scenarios would involve significant physical and/or non-physical harms to existing people and their
interests. Physically, people might suffer premature and possibly also painful deaths, for example. It is not hard to imagine examples
in which the process of extinction
could cause premature death. A nuclear winter that killed everyone
or even just every woman under the age of 50 is a clear example of such a case. Obviously, some types
of premature death themselves cannot be reasons to reject a principle. Every person dies eventually, sometimes earlier than the
standard expected lifespan due to accidents or causes like spontaneously occurring incurable cancers. A cause such as disease is not
a moral agent and therefore it cannot be wrong if it unavoidably kills a person prematurely. Scanlon says that the fact that a
principle would reduce a person’s well-being gives that person a reason to reject the principle: ‘components of well-being figure
prominently as grounds for reasonable rejection’ (Scanlon 1998, 214). However, it is not settled yet whether premature death is a
setback to well-being. Some philosophers hold that death is a harm to the person who dies, whilst others argue that it is not.7 I will
argue, however, that regardless of who is correct in that debate, being caused to die prematurely can be reason
to reject a principle when it fails to show respect to the person as a rational agent. Scanlon says that
recognizing others as rational beings with interests involves seeing reason to preserve life and prevent death: ‘appreciating the
value of human life is primarily a matter of seeing human lives as something to be respected, where
this involves seeing reasons not to destroy them, reasons to protect them, and reasons to want them to go well’ (Scanlon 1998,
104). The ‘respect for life’ in this case is a respect for the person living, not respect for human life in the abstract. This means that we
can sometimes fail to protect human life without acting wrongfully if we still respect the person living. Scanlon gives the example of
a person who faces a life of unending and extreme pain such that she wishes to end it by committing suicide. Scanlon does not think
that the suicidal person shows a lack of respect for her own life by seeking to end it because the person whose life it is has no reason
to want it to go on. This is important to note because it emphasizes the fact that the respect for human life is person-affecting. It is
not wrong to murder because of the impersonal disvalue of death in general, but because taking someone’s life without
their permission shows disrespect to that person. This supports its inclusion as a reason in the contractualist
formula, regardless of what side ends up winning the ‘is death a harm?’ debate because even if death turns out not to harm the
person who died, ending their life without their consent shows disrespect to that person. A person who could reject a principle
permitting another to cause his or her premature death presumably does not wish to die at that time, or in that manner. Thus, if
they are killed without their consent, their interests have not been taken into account, and they
have a reason to reject the principle that allowed their premature death.8 This is as true in the case of death due to extinction as it is
for death due to murder. However, physical pain may also be caused to existing people without killing them, but still resulting in
human extinction. Imagine, for example, surgically removing everyone’s reproductive organs in order to prevent the creation of any
future people. Another example could be a
nuclear bomb that did not kill anyone, but did painfully render
them infertile through illness or injury. These would be cases in which physical pain (through surgery or bombs) was
inflicted on existing people and the extinction came about as a result of the painful incident rather than through death. Furthermore,
one could imagine a situation in which a bomb (for example) killed enough people to cause extinction, but some people remained
alive, but in terrible pain from injuries. It seems uncontroversial that the infliction of physical pain could be a reason to reject a
principle. Although Scanlon says that an impact on well-being is not the only reason to reject principles, it plays a significant role, and
indeed, most principles are likely to be rejected due to a negative impact on a person’s well-being, physical or otherwise. It may be
queried here whether it is actually the involuntariness of the pain that is grounds for reasonable rejection rather than the physical
pain itself because not all pain that a person suffers is involuntary. One can imagine acts that can cause physical pain that are not
rejectable — base jumping or life-saving or improving surgery, for example. On the other hand, pushing someone off a cliff or cutting
him with a scalpel against his will are clearly rejectable acts. The difference between the two cases is that in the former, the person
having the pain inflicted has consented to that pain or risk of pain. My view is that they cannot be separated in these cases and it is
involuntary physical pain that is the grounds for reasonable rejection. Thus, the fact that a principle would allow unwanted physical
harm gives a person who would be subjected to that harm a reason to reject the principle. Of course the mere fact that a principle
causes involuntary physical harm or premature death is not sufficient to declare that the principle is rejectable — there might be
countervailing reasons. In the case of extinction, what countervailing reasons might be offered in favour of the involuntary physical
pain/ death-inducing harm? One such reason that might be offered is that humans are a harm to the natural environment and that
the world might be a better place if there were no humans in it. It could be that humans might rightfully be considered an all-things-
considered hindrance to the world rather than a benefit to it given the fact that we have been largely responsible for the extinction
of many species, pollution and, most recently, climate change which have all negatively affected the natural environment in ways we
are only just beginning to understand. Thus, the fact that human extinction would improve the natural environment (or at least
prevent it from degrading further), is a countervailing reason in favour of extinction to be weighed against the reasons held by
humans who would experience physical pain or premature death. However, the good of the environment as described above is by
definition not a personal reason. Just like the loss of rational life and civilization, therefore, it cannot be a reason on its own when
determining what is wrong and countervail the strong personal reasons to avoid pain/death that is held by the people who would
suffer from it.9 Every person existing at the time of the extinction would have a reason to reject that principle on the grounds of the
physical pain they are being forced to endure against their will that could not be countervailed by impersonal considerations such as
the negative impact humans may have on the earth. Therefore, a principle that permitted extinction to be accomplished in a way
that caused involuntary physical pain or premature death could quite clearly be rejectable by existing people with no relevant
countervailing reasons. This means that human extinction that came about in this way would be wrong. There are of course also
additional reasons they could reject a similar principle which I now turn to address in the next section. 2.4. Existing
people
could endure non-physical harms I said earlier than the fact in itself that there would not be any future
people is an impersonal reason and can therefore not be a reason to reject a principle permitting extinction. However, this
impersonal reason could give rise to a personal reason that is admissible. So, the final important reason people might
think that human extinction would be wrong is that there could be various deleterious psychological effects that
would be endured by existing people having the knowledge that there would be no future generations. There are two main
sources of this trauma, both arising from the knowledge that there will be no more people. The first relates to
individual people and the undesired negative effect on well-being that would be experienced by
those who would have wanted to have children. Whilst this is by no means universal, it is fair to
say that a good proportion of people feel a strong pull towards reproduction and having their lineage
continue in some way. Samuel Scheffler describes the pull towards reproduction as a ‘desire for a personalized relationship with the
future’ (Scheffler 2012, 31). Reproducing is a widely held desire and the joys of parenthood are ones that many people wish to
experience. For these people knowing that they would not have descendants (or that their descendants will endure painful and/or
premature deaths) could create a sense of despair and pointlessness of life. Furthermore, the inability to reproduce and have your
own children because of a principle/policy that prevents you (either through bans or physical interventions) would be a significant
infringement of what we consider to be a basic right to control what happens to your body. For these reasons, knowing that you will
have no descendants could cause significant psychological traumas or harms even if there were no associated physical harm. The
second is a more general, higher level sense of hopelessness or despair that there will be no more
humans and that your projects will end with you. Even those who did not feel a strong desire to
procreate themselves might feel a sense of hopelessness that any projects or goals they have for
the future would not be fulfilled. Many of the projects and goals we work towards during our lifetime are also at least
partly future-oriented. Why bother continuing the search for a cure for cancer if either it will not be found within humans’ lifetime,
and/or there will be no future people to benefit from it once it is found? Similar projects and goals that might lose their meaning
when confronted with extinction include politics, artistic pursuits and even the type of philosophical work with which this paper is
concerned. Even more extreme, through the words of the character Theo Faron, P.D. James says in his novel The Children of Men
that ‘without the hope of posterity for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet
live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and
crumbling defences shored up against our ruins’ (James 2006, 9). Even if James’ claim is a bit hyperbolic and all
pleasures would not actually be lost, I agree with Scheffler in finding it not implausible that the knowledge that extinction was
coming and that there would be no more people would have at least a general depressive effect on people’s motivation and
confidence in the value of and joy in their activities (Scheffler 2012, 43). Both
sources of psychological harm are
personal reasons to reject a principle that permitted human extinction. Existing people could therefore
reasonably reject the principle for either of these reasons. Psychological pain and the inability to pursue your personal projects,
goals, and aims, are all acceptable reasons for rejecting principles in the contractualist framework. So too are infringements of rights
and entitlements that we accept as important for people’s lives. These psychological reasons, then, are also valid reasons to reject
principles that permitted or required human extinction.
1NC Case
1.
Temporality DA—the 1AC’s creation story retelling is far from a radical
rupturing—history is only as radical as the action it can inform. They
misperceive political strategies as only “short term.” Historical injustices can
inform progressive politics, but A FOCUS ON FUTURE, PRESENT, and MATERIAL
action is the only way to combat urgent, catastrophic political problems of
climate change and fascism
Kelz 19 (Rosine, 5/6/19, PHD Philosophy; research associate for the Institute of Advanced
Sustainability Studies. “Thinking about future/democracy: towards a political theory of futurity”
Sustainability Science, July 2019, Volume 14, Issue 4, pp 905–913| Cite
ashttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-019-00697-6)
Today, representative politics are often perceived as being primarily concerned with short-term
goals. Moreover, the future appears to be pre-determined by economic or technological
necessities. This ‘closing’ of the future, however, becomes increasingly problematic in the face of
global existential crises, such as environmental depletion and climate change. These
catastrophic developments could only be mitigated by immediate, decisive political
interventions, which would amount to systemic changes that redirect technological research and economic
activities. This article seeks to outline how political theory and philosophy can contribute to
“(re-)Politicizing the Future”. I argue that political thought should take temporality, and in
particular futurity, as a central conceptual and methodological concern . Drawing on the works of
prominent twentieth century thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Stanley Cavell, and Jacques Derrida, I want to develop a deepened
analytical understanding of the possibility for a ‘future directed’ political thought which highlights intrinsic connections between
sustainability and democracy.
Introduction Politics is concerned with the future —this seems to be too obvious to need stating. Whether in
debates about the building of a new road, the overhaul of national pension systems, or the forging of
transnational agreements on climate change mitigation, all these disparate forms of political
decision-making carry implicit or explicit visions of preferable futures. For many, however, this truism
sounds increasingly hollow. It appears as if representative politics in contemporary liberal-capitalist countries is
concerned primarily with short-term goals. Even social movements are often criticized for lacking
positive visions of a future that would radically difer from the current status-quo. Western societies seem to have lost their
abilities to imagine utopian futures (Habermas 1985: 7). The disappearance of possible futures that would be
profoundly diferent from the present has been propagated as both a political reality and a normative
standpoint since at least the early 1980s, and is often linked to the rise of neoliberal forms of
government (see, e.g., Fukuyama 1992; Séville 2017). From Margaret Thatcher’s famous proclamation that
‘There is no Alternative’ to current austerity reforms, the political future is presented as pre-
determined by economic or technological necessities. This ‘closing’ of the future at frst sight would seem to be
at odds with the obvious acceleration of late modern societies, where things appear to be in constant fux. However, while
acceleration and rapid change are often regarded as hallmarks of modernity, these are highly uneven and aporetic processes. Some
theorists argue that the acceleration of other parts of society leads to a ‘hyper-accelerated standstill’ or to ‘polar inertia’ in the
political sphere (see, e.g., Rosa 2003: 17, 21). In
the face of rapid movements and shifts in areas such as
fnancial markets or scientifc research, representative democratic politics appears to have lost
the ability to actively steer social developments. The need for future directed political action
and thinking, however, becomes ever more pressing. From the extraction of fossil fuels and the
use of nuclear power to genome editing—the use of contemporary technologies has consequences
which stretch far into the future. At the same time, capacities for modeling and thus anticipating the possible efects of
actions on a global scale have increased rapidly in the past decades. We are currently confronted with dystopian
scenarios of environmental depletion and a rapidly changing climate, but current liberal
democratic governments often seem to lack the political will to implement systemic change s that
would make it possible to avoid the most disastrous pathways.
Even though there is thus an obvious need to theorize how politics relates to the creation of
future(s), current political theory often appears strangely uninterested in the temporal character
of the political sphere. What is called for, then, is political thought that contributes to a project of
actively (re-)politicizing societal and political notions of the future. As the ‘Politicizing the Future’
project members argue, this would involve a number of diverse practices which enable the
proliferation of multiple alternative possible futures in the present. These practices are
intrinsically linked to the pluralization and deepening of democratic processes. However, even though
one explicit normative goal of this project is to ‘open up’ the realm of thinkable futures, not all visions of future are equally valued.
The normative dimension also entails a notion of strong sustainability, allowing for future
generations to exist in a world with a livable natural and just social environment . Thus,
Politicizing the Future involves a ‘de-colonization’ of the future, where present people have to
refrain from using up resources and creating ecological and socio-political issues that would
disadvantage those who come after them (Knappe et al. 2018, this issue). The aim of this article is, therefore,
twofold. First, I want to show that there are resources in political and moral thought to highlight the
importance of temporality and futurity , which can be useful for current debates in sustainability
studies. Second, this paper seeks to further explore the normative connections between futurity, democracy, and sustainability,
which are proposed by the members of the ‘Politicizing the Future’ project.
The notion of (political) contingency is an excellent starting point to

explore the connections between a commitment to an open future and the concept of
democracy. By political contingency, I mean the simple fact that even
though the way a society is
organized is not random, it could always be otherwise (Marchart 2010: 80). As
political systems are created by overlapping processes, whose beginnings
cannot be clearly determined and whose developments do not follow necessary pathways,
contingency is a feature of any form of societal organization. However, many forms of rule
disavow their own contingency. Often, they seek to afrm their own necessity and immutability by appealing to
something outside of the realm of politics, as, for example, a doctrine of divine right, or the unyielding laws of the
market. By contrast, the idea of democracy presupposes its own contingent political foundation.
Making contingency explicit, in turn, allows for a continuous renegotiation of

possible futures. Moreover, as I will discuss in Section I, affirming contingency entails a specifc
relationship to the past—and to the role of history in understanding the present and the future—that enables
us to learn from past events without understanding history as
determining the future. Section II concentrates on the notion that the concept of democracy is closely linked to a
particular understanding of futurity. A democratic commitment to an open future, in turn, also implies a commitment to at least a
“thin” notion of sustainability. In Section III, the relationship between democracy and sustainability is explored further. I argue that
while a societal turn to more sustainable social and economic practices would involve the willingness of individuals to make
substantive changes in their daily lives, these commitments are political in nature. Instead
of sliding into a neoliberal
logic of individualized ‘sustainable consumption’, what is called for is an understanding of
moral autonomy that involves a deepening of shared, democratic practices.
Prefer the contextual use of humanism of the aff over their generic indicts -
investing in the idea of a humanist ethic mitigates the worst atrocities that prop
up colonialism and genocide
Lester 12 – (January 2012, Alan, Director of Interdisciplinary Research, Professor of Historical
Geography, and Co-Director of the Colonial and Postcolonial Studies Network, University of
Sussex, “Humanism, race and the colonial frontier,” Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, Volume 37, Issue 1, pages 132–148)
Anderson argues that it is not an issue of extending humanity to … negatively racialised people, but
of putting into question that from which such people have been excluded – that which, for liberal discourse, remains
unproblematised. (2007, 199) I fear, however, that if we direct attention away from histories of humanism’s
failure to deal with difference and to render that difference compatible with its fundamental universalism, and if we
overlook its proponents’ failed attempts to combat dispossession, murder and oppression ; if our history
of race is instead understood through a critique of humanity ’s conceptual separation from nature, we dilute
the political potency of universalism. Historically, it was not humanism that gave rise to racial innatism,
it was the specifically anti-humanist politics of settlers forging new social assemblages through
relations of violence on colonial frontiers. Settler communities became established social
assemblages in their own right specifically through the rejection of humanist interventions . Perhaps,
as Edward Said suggested, we can learn from the implementation of humanist universalism in
practice, and insist on its potential to combat racism , and perhaps we can insist on the contemporary conceptual
hybridisation of human–non-human entities too, without necessarily abandoning all the precepts of humanism
(Said 2004; Todorov 2002). We do not necessarily need to accord a specific value to the human, separate from and above nature, in
order to make a moral and political case for a fundamental human universalism that can be wielded strategically
against racial violence. Nineteenth century humanitarians’ universalism was fundamentally
conditioned by their belief that British culture stood at the apex of a hierarchical order of
civilisations. From the mid-nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century, this ethnocentrism produced
what Lyotard describes as ‘the flattening of differences, or the demand for a norm (“human nature”)’, that ‘carries with it
its own forms of terror’ (cited Braun 2004, 1352). The intervention of Aboriginal Protection demonstrates that humanist
universalism has the potential to inflict such terror (it was the Protectorate of Aborigines Office reincarnated that was responsible,
later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for Aboriginal Australia’s Stolen Generation, and it was the assimilationist vision of
the Protectors’ equivalents in Canada that led to the abuses of the Residential Schools system). But
we must not forget
that humanism’s alternatives, founded upon principles of difference rather than commonality ,
have the potential to do the same and even worse. In the nineteenth century, Caribbean
planters and then emigrant British settlers emphasised the multiplicity of the human species , the
absence of any universal ‘human nature’, the incorrigibility of difference, in their upholding of
biological determinism. Their assault on any notion of a fundamental commonality among
human beings has disconcerting points of intersection with the radical critique of humanism
today. The scientific argument of the nineteenth century that came closest to post-humanism’s insistence on the hybridity
of humanity, promising to ‘close the ontological gap between human and non-human animals’ (Day 2008, 49), was the evolutionary
theory of biological descent associated with Darwin, and yet this theory was adopted in Aotearoa New Zealand and other
colonial sites precisely
to legitimate the potential extinction of other, ‘weaker’ races in the face of
British colonisation on the grounds of the natural law of a struggle for survival (Stenhouse 1999). Both the upholding
and the rejection of human–nature binaries can thus result in racially oppressive actions,
depending on the contingent politics of specific social assemblages . Nineteenth century colonial
humanitarians, inspired as they were by an irredeemably ethnocentric and religiously exclusive form of universalism, at least
combatted exterminatory settler discourses and practices at multiple sites of empire, and provided spaces on mission and
protectorate stations in which indigenous peoples could be shielded to a very limited extent from dispossession and murder. They
also, unintentionally, reproduced discourses of a civilising mission and of a universal humanity that could be deployed by anticolonial
nationalists in other sites of empire that were never invaded to the same extent by settlers, in independence struggles from the mid-
twentieth century. Finally, as Whatmore’s (2002) analysis of the Select Committee on Aborigines reveals, they provided juridical
narratives that are part of the arsenal of weapons that indigenous peoples can wield in attempts to claim redress and recompense in
a postcolonial world. The politics of humanism in practice, then, was riddled with contradiction,
fraught with particularity and latent with varying possibilities. It could be relatively progressive and
liberatory; it could be dispossessive and culturally genocidal. Within its repertoire lay potential to combat
environmental and biological determinism and innatism, however, and this should not be forgotten in a rush to
condemn humanism’s universalism as well as its anthropocentrism. It is in the tensions within
universalism that the ongoing potential of an always provisional, self-conscious, flexible and
strategic humanism – one that now recognises the continuity between the human and the non-
human as well as the power-laden particularities of the male, middle class, Western human
subject – resides.
2.
Space programs create spinoffs that benefit every aspect of life
Comstock and Lockney 7 Douglas A. Comstock, Director, Innovative Partnerships Program;
Senior Member, AIAA, NASA, and Daniel Lockney, NASA Center for AeroSpace Information
(CASI), IAA SPACE 2007 Conference & Exposition, “NASA’s Legacy of Technology Transfer and
Prospects for Future Benefits.”
NASA’s technologies have been transferred to many different areas that contribute to quality of
life and safety of the public, as well as to economic growth. These areas include: Health and Medicine; Transportation;
Public Safety; Consumer Goods; Environmental and Agricultural Resources; Computer Technology; and Industrial Productivity. A
sampling of some well known historic examples, all of which can be accessed through the Spinoff database, include: 1978: Teflon-
coated fiberglass developed in the 1970s as a new fabric for astronaut spacesuits has been used as a permanent
roofing material for buildings and stadiums worldwide. 1982: Astronauts working on the surface of the Moon wore liquid-
cooled garments under their space suits to protect them from lunar temperatures that often reached 250°F. Developed by
NASA’s Ames Research Center, the technology is one of the most widely used spinoffs in NASA history. The technology has been
adapted to portable cooling systems for treatment of medical ailment s such as burning limb syndrome,
multiple sclerosis, spinal injuries, and sports injuries. 1986: A joint National Bureau of Standards/NASA project directed by Johnson
Space Center resulted in a lightweight breathing system including face mask, frame, harness, and air bottle for fire fighters. To this
day, every major manufacturer of breathing apparatuses incorporates NASA technolog y in some
form, and inhalation injuries have been significantly reduced. 1991: Employing three separate NASA-developed technologies in the
design and testing of its school bus chassis, a Chicago-based company was able to mathematically analyze a design and predict how
it will hold up under stress, monitor structural changes during fatigue testing, and develop a measurement of ride vibration and
sound level. This testing contributed to the company’s creating of a safer, more reliable, advanced chassis and allowed the company
to gain nearly half of the school bus chassis market within its first year of production. 1994: Using
technologies created
for servicing spacecraft, a Santa Barbara-based company developed a mechanical arm that
enables surgeons performing laparoscopic surgery to operate three instruments simultaneously .
The robot, AESOP (Automated Endoscopic System for Optimal Positioning), holds the laparoscope and moves it in response to a
controller operated by the surgeon. In August of 2001, the first complete robotic surgical operation was performed, when a team of
doctors in New York removed the gallbladder of a woman in France using the Com- puter Motion equipment. 1995: The Left
Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD) is used to supplement the heart’s pumping capacity in the left ventricle. David Saucier of NASA’s
Johnson Space Center teamed with Dr. Michael DeBakey of the Baylor College of Medicine to develop the device with tools and
techniques used by NASA in spacecraft propulsion system compo- nent design. The device can maintain the heart in a stable
condition in patients requiring a transplant until a donor is found, which can range from one month to one year. In some cases, the
need for a transplant may be negated by permanent implantation of the LVAD. 2000: Internet-based Global Differential GPS (IGDG)
was developed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and won its inventors the “2000 NASA Software of the Year” award. The C-language
package provides an end-to-end system capability for GPS-based real-time positioning and orbit determination. The software is
being used to operate and control real-time GPS data streaming from NASA’s Global GPS Network. The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) adopted its use into the Wide Area Augmentation System program that provides pilots in U.S. airspace with
meter-level accurate knowledge of their positions in real-time. 2002: Three SBIR contracts with NASA’s Langley Research Center to
research and develop a new, low cost, lightweight recovery system for aircraft in both civilian and military markets resulted in a
unique ballistic parachute system that lowers an entire aircraft to the ground in the event of an emergency. These parachutes are
designed to provide a safe landing for pilots and passengers while keeping them in their aircraft, and a uniquely effective safety
technology in the event of engine failure, mid-air collision, pilot disorientation or incapacitation, unrecovered spin, extreme icing,
and fuel exhaustion. To date, over 200 lives have been saved as a result of this parachute system. The
uniqueness of living
and working in space teaches us to think in new ways . The weightless environment can be very counter-intuitive,
as things don’t fall when you drop them, and liquid doesn’t pour. A key example of this is what was learned from a sintering
experiment on Shuttle, which led to improved manufacturing here on earth. Liq- uid-phase sintering is an industrial process of
heating and compacting materials used to manufacture many products such as cutting tools and automotive turbochargers.
Experiments conducted in space showed exactly the opposite behavior relative to what was
predicted: the sintered samples distorted more in microgravity . After analyzing the surprising behavior with
NASA researchers, Kennametal, Inc., the North American market leader in the metal- cutting tool industry and second worldwide,
with annual sales of $1.8 billion, changed their sintering process. Be- fore, grinding was required to bring the part into specification
after sintering because the sintering process produced an imperfect shape. The cost of this extra production step was about 40% of
the total manufacturing cost. Using the insight obtained from space research, it was possible to nearly eliminate the grinding step,
and make parts more simply and at less cost. The importance of this Shuttle-based research was verified by independent experts of
the National Research Council8. NASA technologies have been saving lives and improving the quality of
life all over the globe. Advances recently featured in Spinoff include the use of a portable water
filtration device that is a direct descendant of a technology developed for use on the ISS and space shuttle to provide
clean drinking water to people in Pakistan, the Do- minican Republic, and Northern Iraq . Space suit
technologies have been adapted to create a type of weather balloon that have been used as an affordable “satellite” for cell phone
coverage in remote parts of Africa. A
technique for diffusing landmines with surplus NASA rocket fuel is
saving lives in Kosovo and Jordan. A device originally developed for monitoring astronaut health
is now being used in networks of sensors for monitoring environmental changes, including
monitoring water quality in Vietnam and tracking public health information in Ethiopia. The radiant
barrier material popularized as the “space blanket” was shipped in mass quantities to Pakistan after the earthquakes in 2005.
Techniques developed for groundwater remediation at Kennedy Space Center’s launch sites
have been used to reclaim areas heavily contaminated with solvents and industrial byproducts .
These are just a few of the many historic examples of how NASA technologies are helping people around the
world, and exemplify the type of public benefits NASA seeks to document each year in Spinoff. While historic examples are
interesting, what has NASA done lately? To provide a sense of the current benefits NASA technology is providing, a few brief
examples – that are fully documented in the soon-to-be-released 2007 edition of Spinoff – are summarized below. They are
presented in seven major benefits categories.
Space programs demand growth in artificial food production and nutrition –

this solves food and water shortages on earth
Pandya ‘9 S., University of Alberta, “From Orbit to OR: Space Solutions for Terrestrial
Challenges in Medicine” P. Olla (ed.), Space Technologies for the Benefit of Human Society and
Earth,
Nutrition in space is highly subject to a host of factors, including many of those discussed above. Obviously, the weightless
environment greatly influences one’s diet and eating habits based on mechanics alone, but proper nutrition may also impact
cognitive function and cancer susceptibility after radiation exposure. Like the on- board atmosphere, however there is also the
added limitation of being isolated from food sources and the need for contamination prevention. The challenge, therefore, lies in
creating meals that are nutritionally sound, easily stored and packaged, have a long shelf life, and that are possibly regenerative.
These stringent requirements for “astronaut food ” therefore have many useful repercussions
for the terrestrially- bound. By way of example, research from the Nutrition, Physical Fitness and Rehabil- itation Team at
NSBRI suggests that up to one-third of all cancers may be linked to nutrition – and some foods actually help protect against specific
cancers. One of the team’s initiatives is therefore concerned with designing a diet to protect against radiation-induced DNA damage
and cancer. Other researchers are looking at the use of particular amino acids – alone or in combination with carbohydrates to
target insulin secretion, thereby preventing diabetes and muscle-wasting. The potential halt in muscle wasting based on dietary
measures alone would be extremely valuable, directly impacting the millions of people the world over who suffer from muscle
wasting due to disease, injury or aging. (NSBRI 2008) In addition to dietary composition, issues of food storage, synthesis and
sustainability have also led to relevant medical spinoffs. After all,
one of the greatest threats to health on a
global scale stems from access to adequate food and water. NASA has long since realized that
any long-term Moon and Mars missions will need to be largely self-reliant and sustainable, with
minimal reliance on outside supplies for reasons of cost, practicality and survivability. Plants are
therefore key because of their ability to provide food, water and oxygen . More importantly, the
lack of soil in space and other celestial bodies has spawned a large body of research on the use
of hydroponics, or liquid nutrient solutions in lieu of soil to support plant growth (The Space Place
2004). In the face of growing food shortages, increasing population demands, decreasing
agricultural land space, and variable soil quality from year to year, hydroponics will have a huge
role to play in food supplementation and growth on Earth in the coming decades . NASA
research has resulted in similar advances in the nutritional content of food. One research product, a
microalgae-based vegetable-like oil dubbed “Formulaid,” has been developed for long-duration space travel, but has since been
spun-off to create enriched baby food. Forumulaid contains two essential fatty acids vital for mental and visual development,
typically found in breast milk but not in most other formulae. (The Space Place 2004) Global disease is also greatly impacted by
contaminated water sources. The occurrence of a contaminated water supply aboard the ISS would be perilous for the crew. As
such, NASA has put much time and effort into creating a compact, reliable water filtration system.
Known as the Regenerable Biocidal Water Delivery Unit, this
water filtration system relies on iodine instead of
chlorine to kill bacteria and has also been made available in developing countries to ensure
access to clean drinking water (The Space Place 2004). Also on the subject of contamination, the NSBRI Nutrition,
Physical Fitness and Rehabilitation Team is currently exploring ways to extend the period for which food can be preserved, which will
obviously be of interest to everyone from Emergency Rescue teams in natural disaster situations to grocers (NSBRI 2008). Related to
the issue of food storage is that of delivery: research has shown that hospital in-patients’ appetites are related to a meal’s warmth
(when it is supposed to be heated). To help address this issue, many hospitals now make use of the Food Service Sys- tem, initially
designed for meal service aboard the 1966–7 Apollo missions, helping maintain patient well-being by providing warm meals (JAXA-b
2005).
3.
You should consider settler colonialism a set of technologies, not only a
totalizing identity – refusal is not enough – we have an obligation to radical
pragmatism – to challenge the working of the state internally
Paperson 17 la, also K. Wayne Yang, an associate professor of ethnic studies at the University
of California, San Diego. “A Third University Is Possible” June 2017.
The scyborg’s medium is assemblage. When we take assemblages seriously as both analytical
of power and as the medium for it, then the question becomes, how do you hack
assemblages? The scyborg is a sculptor of assemblage—s-he splices one machine to another,
de/links apparatuses from/to one another, places machines to work in making new machines,
disassembles and reassembles the machine. The scyborg can connect Black radical thought to
the paper-producing academic–industrial complex and set the print command to “manifesto.”
The scyborg is like R2D2 in the Death Star, opening escape tunnels, lowering and raising doors
to new passageways, making the death machine run backward, and ultimately releasing the
plans for its destruction. The scyborg is an artist in the un/patterning of relations of power .[19]
The scyborg loves dirty work.[20] Scyborgs do not care whether the assemblage they are retooling
is first, second, or third world. Categorical thinking is not the point. Nothing is too dirty for
scyborg dreaming: MBA programs, transnational capital, Department of Defense grants.
Scyborgs are ideology-agnostic, which creates possibilities in every direction of the witch’s
flight—not just possibilities that we like. This is why some of you are not always decolonial in behavior. Thankfully, your
newly assembled machine will break down. Some other scyborgs will reassemble the busted
gears to drive decolonial dreams. To dream it is to ride the ruin. Scyborgs are creating the free
university. Scyborg desires are connecting the neoliberal motor that drove President Obama’s
campaign for tuition-free community college to antipoverty organizing and to critical
education. One of the interesting ways this is being done is by connecting free universities to the
rhetoric of democracy and citizenship. Democracy is not decolonization. Democratization will
expand, at best, the normative class of citizens through reinvestments in settler colonialism
and new articulations of antiblackness. However, “democracy” as a discourse was also ready
material for assemblage, a gear to attach to build the free university. The dream of universal
education is born from the reality of exclusive schooling. This dream may shift as educational
expansion creates new imbalances, such as inflated credentials, the devaluing of unschooled
knowledge, new gaps between educational training and employment, or gaps between the
trained workforce and the available supply of jobs. However, in building the free university
assemblage and watching it fall apart, perhaps something unpredictable will come of its ruin. As
to what, and whether the free university will be decolonizing, will be answered in scyborg
assemblage. To be very clear, I am not advocating for rescuing the university from its own neoliberal
desires but rather for assembling decolonizing machines, to plug the university into
decolonizing assemblages. Close to my heart, Roses in Concrete Community School opened its doors
in 2015 in Ohlone, what some call Oakland, California. This school is part of a larger self-
determination project for a mostly Black and Brown community, in which we hope for a pre-
K–16 educational institution, community-based economies, and land.[21] Also in 2015, also in
what is now called Oakland, longtime Indigenous educators and activists Corrina Gould
(Chochenyo/Karkin Ohlone) and Johnella LaRose (Shoshone Bannock) created the first women-led urban
Indigenous land trust built upon “the belief that land is the foundation” that can bring all
peoples together in “the return of Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone lands . . . to Indigenous
stewardship.” Sogorea Te’ Land Trust also reworks Western concepts of “land tax,” nonprofit
status, and inheritance. Decolonizing land relations is the heart that reworks this machinery.
Sogorea Te’ not only calls on but indeed provides an avenue for people living in Ohlone lands “to heal from the legacies of
colonialism and genocide, to remember different ways of living, and to do the work that our
ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.”[ 22] Nearby Roses in Concrete is an abandoned U.S. Navy base
the size of a small town. California community colleges are talking expansion, while the tuition-free college movement had nearly found a federal
reality under President Obama. A scyborg might connect these pieces—might imagine how the
machines of freedom schools and
free community colleges could purchase land, land that could become part of an Indigenous
land trust. Roses in Concrete has a sister school in Aoteroa that originated from a Māori
bilingual program Te Whānau o Tupuranga (Centre for Māori Education) and Fanau Pasifika
(Centre for Pasifika Education), which became a school in 2006 and then became Kia Aroha
College in 2011. Similar to Roses, Kia Aroha College is built on a holistic “scholar warrior” culture that developed the school over twenty-five
years into a “culturally-located, bilingual learning model based in a secure cultural identity, stable positive relationships, and aroha (authentic caring
and love).”[23] This
craft of creating Indigenous space in an urban colonial context requires a
constant rearrangement of settler law, Indigenous rights, state educational ministry systems,
built schooling environments, and community systems of Indigenous education . Furthermore,
these associations between school makers in Māori/Pasifika and in U.S. ghetto colonial
contexts produce new shared scyborg flight plans. These technologies are driven and
repurposed by scyborg desires. Where I am now, on Kumeyaay land at UC San Diego, we are at the confluence of
the engineering apparatus, the naval and sea industries, the U.S.– Mexican border, the white
utopian project of Black exclusion, the settler project of Native disappearance, the transnational
project of international (read model Asian) recruitment . Scyborgs might reorganize these
technologies into third university organisms with decolonizing programs: a project of water, a
project of transnational/Indigenous solidarity, a project of Black assertion, a project of islands.
As I write, Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (my other I) are supporting a collective of collectives, the Land Relationships Super
Collective, that connects different land-based movements across North America with one
another to share strategies, resources, learnings, and so on. As Eve and I are both university professors, the
university plays into this as an institution that must be refused, and yet also as an organism,
an assemblage of machines, that we can make work, make space in, make liquid enough to
allow us to contribute to land rematriation projects directly. The third world university will be
built by scyborg labor. This is not a revolutionary call for scyborgs of the world to unite. This is
a call to gear-in and do the dirty work of desiring machines. Through desires’ dirty work, we
might recommission these first world scraps into a third world machine.
Failure to recognize the contingent nature of the world fractures solidarity by

foreclosing shared histories of oppression in favor of an over-determined,
essentialized structuralism.
Joanne BARKER 17, Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University,
former Visiting Scholar in the American Indian Studies Program of the Inter-American Cultures
Institute at UCLA, has received fellowships from the University of California, the Rockefeller
Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, self-identifies as an enrolled member of the Delaware
Tribe of Indians, holds a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness from the University of California-
Santa Cruz [“The Analytic Constraints of Settler Colonialism,” Tequila Sovereign, February 2,
2017, https://tequilasovereign.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/the-analytic-constraints-of-settler-
colonialism/]
I’d like to re-frame my critique of the constraints of settler colonialism with the twelve little women
in mind. I am going to try to show that a certain analytic within the studies has, however unwittingly,
foreclosed and even chilled understandings of Black and Indigenous histories and
identities in ways that derail our understandings of U.S. imperialism as a social formation
and so our work with one another. One of the consequences of this goes to our ability to
think through how #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, #NoDAPL, and #MMIW are co-
generative — even as I recognize the reasons why each of these movements have at different times demanded we respect their
particularity.
Drawing from Marxist structuralism, Patrick Wolfe defines the settler colonial society through
two key differentiations.
The first is between the structure and the event of invasion. Wolfe maintains that the
permanence of invasion distinguishes the structure of a settler society, which originates with the
withdrawal of the empire and the rise to power of a land-holding class who always intended to stay. Wolfe defines the
ideology that cements this structure together as the logic of elimination. The settler exploits
Indigenous labor but more importantly seeks to eliminate all vestiges of Indigenous land claims by the elimination of Indigenous
cultures and identities.
definition is to mark how it rearticulates the

The quickest way I can explain my concerns with Wolfe’s
problematics of structuralism. It treats society as a fixed, coherent thing that can be
objectively described. The descriptions are simultaneously over-determined by the
historical event of the empire’s withdrawal and the exceptionalism of a permanent
invasion. We’ve been in this trouble before – we know structuralism generates all kinds
of ahistorical and apolitical problems, not to mention essentialisms, even as it is
conditioned by the intersectionalities of originary events and political identities.
For instance, Lorenzo Veracini
argues that settler colonialism is “characterized by a settler
capacity to control the population economy” as a marker of sovereignty and that this
situation is “associated with a particular state of mind” and “narrative form” so powerful that
“the possibility of ultimately discontinuing/decolonizing settler colonial forms remains
problematic.” Veracini maintains that “settlers do not discover: they carry their
sovereignty and lifestyles with them. As they move towards what amounts to a representation of the world, as they
transform the land into their image, they settle another place without really moving.”
I would argue that the

settler colonial is a contested and unstable concept. Drawing from critical
Indigenous, race, and feminist approaches — such as those developed by Jodi Byrd, Mishuana
Goeman, Jennifer Denetdale, and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers — that understand colonialism,
racism, sexism, and homophobia as permanent features of U.S. society, I would argue
that society is not an objectively settled structure to be described, nor an imaginary that
travels as an integral whole around the world. It is a set of contested meanings caught up
in struggles over power and knowledge.
And resistance is most certainly not futile.
The second differentiation on which Wolfe’s

settler colonialism rests is between the settler and the
Indigenous. While many assume the settler to be white – and perhaps more so to be a white heterosexual male – Wolfe,
Veracini, and others characterize the settler as both white and all other non-Indigenous
people irrespective of gender and sexuality. Pressed on the politics of such characterizations, particularly of
figuring Blacks as settlers, Wolfe explains:
Willingly or not, enslaved or not, at the point of a run or not, they arrived as part of the settler-colonial project. That
doesn’t make them settlers in the same sense as the colonizers who coerced them to participate—of course not—but it
does make them perforce part of the settler-colonial process of dispossession and elimination. — Patrick Wolfe (2012)
As the work of Circe Sturm, Tiya Miles, Sharon Patricia Holland, and so many others have demonstrated, Black
and
Indigenous histories and identities (not necessarily distinct) are intersectional messes of
racialized and gendered contestation over and within the ongoing colonial forces of U.S.
imperialism. We need their analyses to understand these histories and identities and the
ways we have inherited them. We need to be careful about grouping all racial, ethnic,
diaspora, and immigrant communities in with settlers and pitting them and their
presumably shared struggles for civil rights against Indigenous sovereignty and territorial
claims. The kinds of polemics that result are not helpful. What if reparations and return are not
antithetical political objectives? Who decides their antithesis?
Creation, Generation
In 1985, during a speech at the United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobi, Lilla Watson said:
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if
you have come because your
liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Watson, a member of the Murri indigenous to Queensland, has said since and repeatedly that she was “not comfortable being
credited for [saying] something that had been born of a collective process” and preferred that the words and their meaning be
credited to “Aboriginal activist groups, Queensland, 1970s.” She thus held herself – and the practice of citing her – accountable to
the community to whom she belonged. That ethic is further reflected in her — in her community’s — perspective that genuine
decolonization will happen as our movements address our shared conditions of
oppression. Our liberation is bound together.
“But,” Oklahoma-based Black activist tells me, “I want Indigenous peoples to take responsibility for the way they enslaved Black
bodies and internalized white racism towards Blacks in the conduct of their tribal sovereignty.” “But,” Mississippi Choctaw scholar
says to me, “I want Blacks to take responsibility for the way they grabbed at Indian lands after the Civil War. For the way the U.S.
illegally and violently acquired the lands from us that they promised to give to Freedmen. That Freedmen and their descendants
ignore this when they call for reparations.”
But… I’m
still trying to figure out how in the difficult moments when the transgenerational
trauma of land dispossession, slavery, and racism so profoundly precludes our
perceptions and expectations of one another, we can find a way to affirm one another’s
concerns and move our liberation struggles forward.
A way that rejects the “respectability” of U.S. recognition and the containment politics of financial settlement. As Glen Coulthard
argues, recognition is a bullshit lie of capitalism that dresses up exploitation in liberal inclusion. As Alyosha Goldstein argues,
settlements “foreclose the lineages of historical injustice” and “individualize” in liberal fashion what is a matter of collective and
sovereign claims to territories and economic reckoning.
A way that rejects the kinds of legally and economically inconsequential responsibility-taking performance of church and
government apologia. A way that refuses to be settled up or settled down to negligible levels of financial compensation that change
nothing.
I believe we must draw from what Leanne Simpson argues are our cultural teachings for behaving
towards one another. She offers compassion, generosity, and humility as the points at
which genuine restoration of ourselves and our relationships are possible. From there,
as Coulthard argues, we must carve a way forward through a “disciplined maintenance of
resentment,” a “politicized anger” towards state oppression that refuses to accept guilt ridden,
meaningless gestures of acknowledgment and payouts for genuine reparations and land return.
Conclusions
As a conclusion I want to think about Black Lives Matter supporting the #NoDAPL actions at Standing Rock.
I don’t think it’s an accident that it is water that has brought the movements together. As
the Black community of Flint and the Lakota peoples of Standing Rock have taught us,
water links us together in our struggles for life. It points our attentions to what is
destroyed by military, security, and corporate concerns in Ferguson, Mexico, Palestine,
and British Columbia; what highlights the illegal seizing of lands for the illegal
construction of pipelines; what has been contaminated with hubris in the Delaware River
basin, Flint Michigan, the Dakotas, and too many other places to name.
Melissa Nelson writes that,
Most of us find it easier to separate ourselves from nature than to embrace the liquid mystery of our union with it. As
freshwater disappears on the earth, so do the water stories that remind us that we too can freeze, melt, conceive, and
evaporate. We too can construct a confluence of cultural rivulets where the natural and cultural coalesce. — Melissa
Nelsen
Perhaps we too can embrace the life of water to recognize the ways our movements co-
generate, to find our coalescence.
historical gains disprove their state claims - No DAPL AND other resistances to
Trump and Brexit’s nationalism prove coalitions are key
Julian Brave NoiseCat 16, enrolled member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen in British
Columbia and a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Oxford, “The Indigenous
Revolution,” Jacobin, November 26, 2016, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/standing-
rock-dakota-access-pipeline-obama/
Many Americans, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders believe that indigenous people are long gone
and defeated. Inheritors of the imperial myth of “Manifest Destiny,” they presume the colonizers’ victory was
inevitable and even predetermined. This racist myth has led empires and states to
underestimate indigenous power. Global histories of indigenous resistance, survival, and
resurgence tell another story. On these Oceti Sakowin plains in 1876, a cocksure General Custer
rushed into the Battle of the Little Bighorn only to be soundly defeated by allied Lakota,
Cheyenne, and Arapaho forces. Dalrymple appears poised to repeat Custer’s mistake. Countless
indigenous communities, nations, and confederacies from the Americas to Australasia, and South Africa to Siberia, including
Aboriginal Australians, Apache, Arapaho, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chukchi, Comanche, Cree, Creek, Diné, Hawaiian, Haudenosaunee,
Kiowa, Maori, Modoc, Nez Perce, Pueblo, Salish, Sauk, Seminole, Shawnee, Tasmans, Tlingit, Ute, Xhosa, Yakima, Zulu, and others
have resisted imperial powers and industrial states and prevailed. Before defeating Custer, the Oceti Sakowin had a long history of
settler handling. In 1862, the Dakota pushed thousands of settlers off the Minnesota frontier. Six years later, the Lakota defeated the
United States Army in Red Cloud’s War. Retribution followed many indigenous victories . In California, entire
communities were hunted like animals. After taking dozens of Dakota men as prisoners of war following
the uprising of 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed an order to execute thirty-eight of them — the
largest mass execution in American history. Later in 1890, the United States Army gunned down three hundred
Lakota at Wounded Knee. This history continues to devastate . Indigenous people remain the poorest
of the poor and the most likely to be killed by law enforcement . Four of the fifteen most impoverished
counties in the United States include Lakota reservations in South Dakota. The two poorest, Oglala Lakota and Todd
County, lie entirely within the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, where half of all residents
live in poverty. In Ziebach County, which includes parts of the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River reservations, 45 percent of
the population lives at or below the poverty line. Elsewhere in the United States , Canada, Australia, and New Zealand,
indigenous people are among the poorest, most oppressed, and least visible . They are
overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in universities. Their economic realities are
bleak. Their pain is intergenerational. In short, colonialism endures. Yet these same communities
are uniquely positioned to resist unjust systems and force them to retreat . We must hold
these two seemingly contradictory realities of devastation and resilience in our minds at the
same time. The Fourth World lives in devastation. The Fourth World is unconquered and on the
rise. Since the 1970s, indigenous people in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have
danced impressive victories. They have compelled states to forego assimilationist policies like
the involuntary removal of indigenous children to abusive residential schools and the relocation
of indigenous workers to cities. Overtly coercive policies have been slowly and steadily
replaced with policies that recognize indigenous rights to land, jurisdiction, and sovereignty.
Gains are limited, but they are still gains. At certain times over the past thirty years, indigenous
claims have prevented corporations from exploiting natural resources . In New Zealand in the
1980s, Maori claims under the Treaty of Waitangi stopped a state drive to privatize fisheries and
hydroelectric power. In Canada and Australia, from the 1990s to the present, aboriginal claims have increased risk for
prospective investors in extractive industries. But the dance with the state can be perilous. In recent decades, some indigenous
groups mistook neoliberals who denounced “big government” for allies. They accepted land claims settlements, treaty agreements,
and business deals that enabled states to slash social services for the most vulnerable while restructuring indigenous communities as
junior corporate partners in the global economy. As Trump prepares to take power in the US and Brexit
changes the economic calculus in Britain and across the world, it is clear that the dance with
the state is entering a new age. The New Colonialism The new age has precedents. Any Howard Zinn reader
knows that the United States is built on stolen land with stolen labor. However, this is an
observation too imprecise to help us understand and predict the trajectory of a global political
economy steered and shaped by the likes of Trump and Nigel Farage . If you squint hard enough, Jack
Dalrymple might look like a young George Custer, but that does not make him so. To prevail, indigenous people and
the Left must fully understand the precise ways that emerging systems will dispossess
indigenous communities. In the nineteenth century, the United States Army incarcerated
indigenous people on reservations, claimed land for homesteaders, protected prospectors, and
cleared the way for railroad barons. In the 1960s, a different set of historical, political, and
economic forces erected the Lake Oahe Dam on the Missouri River, flooding two hundred
thousand acres of the Standing Rock reservation to provide power to suburban homeowners.
Today, the drive for independence from OPEC sees a solution in hydraulic fracturing technology .
North American oil fields and infrastructure are funded by a financial system that encourages
speculation, drives massive inequality, and fails to account for costs associated with human and
environmental risks — passing these very real risks and consequences on to communities,
workers, and indigenous nations. Inherently unaccountable capitalists are paid big money for
being even more unaccountable, and indigenous dispossession continues on new frontiers.
Preliminary post-election forecasts indicate that Trump’s victory and Brexit will redirect capital back toward the American West and
the British Commonwealth. In particular, Trump
— a DAPL investor himself — will expedite completion of
DAPL and similar projects. He will push to reopen and complete the Keystone XL Pipeline. If he keeps his
campaign promises, he will support infrastructure projects and extractive industries, including coal and fracking, in indigenous
homelands across the American hinterlands. At the same time, a conservative Supreme Court, an Interior
Department led by Sarah Palin or oil baron Lucas Forrest, and a Justice Department led by Jeff
Sessions means limited but hard-won Native rights will be rolled back . If this gang of reactionary
appointees can’t figure out how to dismantle complex legal precedents, they can just cut funding to essential
services like housing, schools, and health care that are already woefully underfunded, putting
tribes in a stranglehold of austerity . Native resistance will be policed by Orwellian surveillance systems finely tuned by
the Obama administration. Militarized law enforcement will find reinforcements in the booming private
security and prison industries. Surveillance, state law enforcement, and private security will drive mass arrests, as we’re
seeing at Standing Rock. Law enforcement will have more power than ever to quash protesters and silence dissent. In the former
British Wests of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, where the right-wing populist revolution has yet to take hold in the same way,
suppression of indigenous resistance may be less visibly coercive — perhaps with the exception of skyrocketing policing,
incarceration, and deaths-in-custody of indigenous people, particularly Aboriginal Australians (the “most imprisoned people in the
world”). Politicians in the Commonwealth will look to roll back or restructure indigenous rights won over the last three decades in
ways that are favorable to capital. Governments, like Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in Canada, are already abandoning campaign
promises to indigenous people, opting instead to grab land and resources (as seen in the ham-fisted effort to force through the Site
C Dam against indigenous opposition). Trudeau’s minister of natural resources has already stated that Canada will no longer ask First
Nations for consent before going forward with lucrative natural resource projects like Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion
project and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipelines. In Australia, the government is steamrolling the Wangan and Jagalingou
peoples’ Native Title claims in order to move forward with the massive Carmichael Coalmine in Queensland. With the
Commonwealth clamoring to cash in on opportunities created by Brexit, new free trade deals with the United Kingdom will be
struck, resuscitating and rebuilding the capital networks of the former British Empire, previously weakened by globalization and the
European Single Market. The Tory dream of a revived Anglosphere, long derided as fanciful, nostalgic, and bad business by Liberals,
may even emerge as a legitimate principle and framework of international relations and trade. It will compete with increasingly
powerful Chinese and Indian capital throughout the Commonwealth, as already witnessed in the Canadian tar sands, Australian
coalmines, and New Zealand real estate and dairy. Combined with the rise of China and India, this will bring new waves of exploitive
capital into indigenous homelands, along with increased policing and the dismantling of indigenous rights. Renewed
colonial
and capitalist pressure on indigenous people means that the Fourth World’s adversarial
relationship with the state will become more central to the struggle to transform political and
economic systems for all. If the history of the indigenous dance with the state is any indication, the Fourth World will suffer
tremendously while at the same time standing athwart the forces of capitalism and exploitation. The Left must stand with
the Fourth World in our collective struggle. The Fourth World and a Fourth Way On November 14, the Army
Corps of Engineers temporarily halted DAPL’s progress , stating that “the history of the Great
Sioux Nation’s dispossessions of lands” and the United States’ “government-to-government”
relationship with indigenous nations demanded that the route of the proposed pipeline be
reassessed. The Army told Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the company building DAPL, that
construction beneath the Missouri River required explicit approval, and asked the Standing Rock
Sioux to negotiate conditions for the pipeline to cross tribal territory . Faced with a momentary
victory for Standing Rock, Kelcy Warren, Dallas billionaire and CEO of ETP, denounced the
decision as “motivated purely by politics at the expense of a company that has done nothing but
play by the rules.” Warren was right. Had it not been for thousands of people mobilizing
behind an indigenous-led coalition, DAPL would have been business as usual. ETP would have
desecrated the graves of Standing Rock ancestors unimpeded . Workers, lured by relatively
high wages, would have taken on toxic and insecure work. The tribe’s hunting and fishing
grounds would have been jeopardized, and if the pipeline leaked, Standing Rock and its
downstream communities would have been poisoned. Environmental degradation and
runaway climate change would have pressed ahead unabated . Carbon dependency would have become
even more deeply engrained in our political economy. Eventually, ETP and their investors would have cashed out, and future
generations would have been robbed. And all of this still will happen if President Obama doesn’t heed the water protectors and
instead sides with ETP. ETP spent $1.2 million over the last five years paying politicians to legislate in its favor. Warren personally
donated $103,000 to the Trump campaign. But when indigenous people organized, turning to direct action and the law to pressure
elected officials and government systems, they wrested power from ETP’s hands. DAPL
is just one chapter in a much
longer story of indigenous resistance to, and victories against, pipelines across North America .
In 2015, the Obama administration nixed the Keystone XL Pipeline, yielding to pressure from the Cowboy Indian Alliance. In
Minnesota, Enbridge shelved plans for the Sandpiper pipeline, after encountering tribal opposition. The Unist’ot’en camp in
northern British Columbia has held out against numerous proposed pipelines through their territory, building a space where
indigenous sovereignty stands tall on lands defined by industry as an “energy corridor.” The
American and Canadian oil
industries are more vulnerable than we realize. Fracked oil from the Bakken and Tar Sands is
expensive to extract and refine. Meanwhile, OPEC is pumping at breakneck speed, driving down
global oil prices. Oil infrastructure is costly, not only for indigenous people, workers, and the
environment, but for investors too. Canadian oil producers have sold crude at a loss. The North
Dakota and Tar Sands oil booms have busted. Indigenous opposition to pipelines through their
territories has made investors uneasy. ETP was concerned that their $3.7 billion pipeline would be cancelled. Just
this week, Warren used another one of his companies, Sunoco, to buy ETP for $20 billion in order to cut his losses. The move will
lowerprofits for shareholders of ETP in order to protect profits for Energy Transfer Equities (ETE), the DAPL umbrella company in
which Warren owns more than 10 percent of shares. Simply put, in the face of massive opposition, the Dallas billionaire reshuffled
his companies at shareholders’ expense in order to safeguard and grow his own vast fortune. The
show of force against
indigenous protesters, however brutal, is an act of desperation to protect his infinitely deep
pockets. If DAPL is not moving oil by the New Year, shipping contractors can cancel their
transportation agreements. Warren’s time is running out. Standing Rock, on the other hand, is the future.
Populism is killing the “Third Way” politics advocated by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and their
equivalents around the world. This is the Fourth Way. The Fourth Way will harness the power
and strategic location of indigenous people, exploiting pressure points beyond the workplace
to oppose and transform unjust, unequal, and undemocratic systems . Movements working to
reshape infrastructure, environmental policy, financial systems, policing, and work will be of
particular importance to indigenous people. Fossil fuel divestment and the “Keep It in the
Ground” movement can weaken and even undermine companies seeking to exploit fossil fuels
on indigenous lands. Regulations that dismantle financial instruments and policies that profit from natural resource
speculation could divert and damage returns on capital flows. The abolition of mass incarceration would loosen
the death grip of prisons and police on indigenous communities . Unions can turn individual
workers into collective forces of resistance, helping drive up costs for developers and protect
laborers from unsafe working conditions. Long-term efforts to reimagine work through full
automation and a universal basic income could prevent laborers from having to seek such
dangerous work in the first place. As Standing Rock has shown, indigenous nations that use
their unique standing to advocate for viable alternatives to unjust systems will gain
supporters. Our traditional territories encompass the rivers, mountains, and forests that capital
exploits with abandon. Our resistance — to the pipelines, bulldozers, and mines that cut through
our lands and communities — has greater potential than yet realized . Ours is a powerful voice
envisioning a more harmonious and sustainable relationship with the natural world rooted in
the resurgence of indigenous sovereignty. As long as indigenous people continue to make this
argument, we are positioned to win policies, court decisions, and international agreements
that protect and enlarge our sovereignty and jurisdiction. As our jurisdiction and sovereignty
grow, we will have more power to stop, reroute, and transform carbon-based, capitalist, and
colonial infrastructure. When the Justice Department halted construction of DAPL in October, they also said they would
begin looking into Free Prior Informed Consent legislation. This is a minimal first step, and we must hold them to it.
Longstanding alliances with progressive parties and politicians are key to our success . In the
United States, Native people have worked with Democratic elected officials like Bernie
Sanders and Raúl Grijalva to advance bills like the Save Oak Flat Act, which aimed to stop an
international mining conglomerate from exploiting an Apache sacred site in Arizona. In Canada,
First Nations have supported the New Democratic Party. In New Zealand, the Maori Rātana religious and political movement has an
alliance with the Labour Party that stretches back to the 1930s. Some indigenous leaders, such as outspoken Aboriginal Australian
leader Pat Dodson, a Labour senator for Western Australia, have won prominent positions in these parties. This does not mean, of
course, that we should pay deference to elected officials. In 2014, Obama became one of the first sitting presidents to visit an Indian
reservation when he travelled to Standing Rock. His visit was historically symbolic and emotionally important, but if Obama fails to
stop DAPL, indigenous people should renounce him. Politicians are helpful when they change policies and outcomes. We cannot and
should not settle for symbolic victories. If
there is to be an enduring indigenous-left coalition, the Left
must support indigenous demands for land, jurisdiction, and sovereignty . At their core, these
demands undermine the imperial cut-and-paste model of the nation-state, stretching from
Hobbes to the present, which insists that there is room for just one sovereign entity in the
state apparatus. Thomas Piketty’s call for a global wealth tax implies an international
governance structure to levy such a tax. He pushes us to think beyond the state. Similarly,
indigenous demands for lands, jurisdiction, and sovereignty imply that we must think beneath
it. As the Fourth World continues to push states to recognize our inherent, constitutional, and
treaty rights as sovereign nations, the Left cannot remain neutral. To remain neutral is to
perpetuate a long history of colonization. To remain neutral is to lose a valuable, organized,
and powerful ally. Struggle Without End On November 15, more than 1,500 protesters gathered in Foley
Square in Manhattan. With songs and chants of “Water is life,” we expressed our solidarity
with Standing Rock, and sent a strong message to Obama and the Army Corps of Engineers , whose
offices lie just across the street: rescind DAPL. We were just a fraction of the thousands who came together in cities across the
country that day. Marching into the street, a few dozen of us locked arms, sat down and stopped traffic in an act of civil
disobedience. We refused to move. We became the bodies blocking the behemoth. Police corralled us. An automated
announcement warned us that we faced imminent arrest if we refused to move. The machine blared louder and louder: “you are
unlawfully in the roadway and blocking vehicular traffic . . .” We responded with even louder chants and songs to drown out the
machine. The officers tightened their ranks and arrested us one by one. In jail, I was surprised to learn that I was just one of two
indigenous arrestees. The radical potential of July’s canoe journey had spread farther and wider than anything we’d imagined just a
few months earlier. We
can still stop the Dakota Access pipeline. The police may turn water cannons on us, assault
and maim us, and lock us up, but we own the momentum. And even
if we fail to defeat this pipeline, we will
have prevailed in many battles along the way, and we can still win the long war. As we seek a
way forward amid an ascendant right, the Fourth World has opened up a new window of
political possibility. The Left must stand with them and start stitching their successful formula
for resistance and transformation together with movements for economic, racial,
environmental, gender, and sexual justice into a winning coalition .

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Violation---they don’t defend instrumental evaluation of USFG action

The Rapid Growth of New Space Activities in the United States

Deep Space Industries

Coping with the Scale and Complexity Problem

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