CNDI - Impact Defense

Impact Defense CNDI 2008
2WEEKERS
Impact Defense 1/1

Impact Defense 1/1..........................................................................................................................1
A2 Biodiversity Bogus1/3................................................................................................................2
A2 Biodiversity 2/3..........................................................................................................................3
A2 Biodiversity 3/3..........................................................................................................................4
A2 Famine 1/3..................................................................................................................................5
A2 Famine 2/3..................................................................................................................................6
A2 Famine 3/3..................................................................................................................................7
A2 Disease 1/5.................................................................................................................................8
A2 Disease 3/5...............................................................................................................................10
A2 Disease 4/5...............................................................................................................................11
A2 Disease 5/5...............................................................................................................................12
A2 Heg 1/7.....................................................................................................................................13
A2 Heg 2/7.....................................................................................................................................14
A2 Heg 3/7.....................................................................................................................................15
A2 Heg 4/7.....................................................................................................................................16
A2 Heg 5/7.....................................................................................................................................17
A2 Heg 6/7.....................................................................................................................................18
A2 Heg 7/7.....................................................................................................................................19
A2 Econ 1/3 ..................................................................................................................................20
A2 Econ 2/3...................................................................................................................................21
A2 Econ 3/3...................................................................................................................................22
A2 Trade 1/2..................................................................................................................................23
A2 Trade 2/2..................................................................................................................................24
Aff Cards........................................................................................................................................25
Biodiversity................................................................................................................................25
Famine .......................................................................................................................................26
Econ ..........................................................................................................................................27
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2WEEKERS
A2 Biodiversity Bogus1/3
Biodiversity claims are bogus, 99.9% of them are made on assumptions, there will be no loss of
any possible medicines from species that as of yet have not been discovered.
Foster, ’08 “Biodiversity claims will make you sick”: Foster, Posted: April 25, 2008, 3:05 AM by Jeff White, By
Peter Foster, association with the Financial Post goes back 25 years. author of eight books, winner of the National
Business Book award. Financial Post,
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/25/biodiversity-claims-will-make-you-sick-
foster.aspx
‘Biodiversity loss — it will make you sick.” This is the latest claim from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, the huge
environmental organization and supposed guardian of endangered species. According
to an IUCN-sponsored book, Sustaining
Life, the world stands to lose a whole range of undiscovered medicinal marvels because of fast-
disappearing plant, fish and animal species: “The experts warn that we may lose many of the
land and marine-based life forms of economic and medical interest before we can learn their
secrets, or, in some cases, before we know they exist.” But hang on. According to the IUCN’s
own figures, the annual rate of extinction of known species is around zero! Meanwhile claims of
species loss of 40,000 a year, which are endlessly regurgitated, are based on ultra-pessimistic
assumptions about the ongoing fate of undiscovered species. Obviously no medicinal
benefits could have come from species that we don’t know. And to deliver a list of cures that
might come from unknown species is disingenuous, especially if you are part of a scheme that
is effectively holding up pharmaceutical research. The authors do provide one example: of the
extinction of “gastric brooding frogs” which they claim “could have” led to new insights into the
treatment of peptic ulcers. But if these frogs were only found in “undisturbed rain forests” in
Australia in the 1980s, and had such potential value, why were they allowed to go extinct? The
story sounds fishy, but not as fishy as the whole thesis of a “biotic holocaust” that allegedly
endangers the future of medicinal discovery. In fact, the IUCN book is pure propaganda ahead of the massive meeting on
the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is due to bog down expensively in Bonn next month. There, delegates “will look to
accelerate action to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity by 2010.” But how
can you reduce the rate of biodiversity loss
if almost none is being recorded, and 99.9% of it is simply assumed? Here we come upon the distinctive
odour of a dangerous and far-from-extinct species: the United Nations socialistus rattus rattus. Biodiversity, and its related UN convention, is the
lesser-known twin to that mother of all UN boondoggles: “addressing” man-made climate change. It is a child of Maurice Strong’s Rio, which
was in turn a child of the Brundtland report’s concept of “sustainable development.” The whole thrust of this vast organizational wetland is anti-
growth and pro-regulation. As such, it threatens human welfare far more than the loss of any drug that might be stumbled upon in an unknown
species of salamander wallowing somewhere up the Orinoco. As
Bjorn Lomborg noted in The Skeptical
Environmentalist, we do not have any practical means of testing the medical benefits of even a
fraction of the plants and animals that we do know about. The Economist has also stressed that
the notion of “billion-dollar blockbuster drugs” waiting to be discovered in the jungle is bogus.
One effect of the CBD’s high-sounding objectives of imitating Noah while attempting to socialize “genetic resources” was to cause
pharmaceutical companies to be dubbed “bio-pirates.” Their crime was allegedly trying to steal and patent natives’ “traditional knowledge” of
plants and herbs. In reality, this was yet another UN attempt to transfer cash to developing governments (historically, a sure way of holding back
their peoples’ welfare).
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2WEEKERS
A2 Biodiversity 2/3
Rhetoric of Biodiversity Creates Complex Litigation Destroying Environmental Goals
Fred Bosselman 2000 (Professor of Law Emeritus, Chicago-Kent College of Law “Are all Species Equal” pdf
pg. online @ www.law.nyu.edu //Damien-sm)
The growing use of the word “biodiversity”1 has called valuable attention to some of the most
serious environmental issues that we and our succeeding generations will face,2 but as the word
begins to appear in the context of lawmaking we need to make sure that we understand what it
actually means. Biodiversity, as will be discussed extensively below, is a blending of a motley
variety of scientific ideas into a word so devoid of precision that it is nearly impossible to
meaningfully quantify.3 Using biodiversity as a legal standard may produce complex litigation
that will be counterproductive to many environmentalists’ goals of protecting endangered species
and preventing future extinctions. It is time for lawmakers to begin to dissect the concept of biodiversity so that the young
people who are being brought up to value “biodiversity” do not later become disillusioned when they learn that the ideas it contains are complex
and sometimes conflicting.
The Killing off of Redundant Species Won’t Risk Extinction

Some people would carry the functional argument further by suggesting that certain
species in a functional group should
be considered redundant,371 so that the local elimination of such species would have no significant
effect on overall ecological system processes.372 If we can be sure that other species will perform the
necessary functions equally well, should we assign the “redundant” species a low priority?373
One difficulty in lumping species into functional groups is that so many species are tightly linked to other species that perform different
functions. For example, a particular plant may be pollinated by a number of different bird species, any one of which may perform the pollination
function adequately. But one of the bird species may also perform a different function, such as keeping down the population of a certain insect
that attacks the plant. Unless one studies all of the possible ecological functions of a species, it may be difficult to label it as redundant.374
Ecological redundancy is common. In many ecosystems, many species perform the same roles . . . . If
we rely too much on the
argument that the special economic value of nature justifies the costs of nature protection, even
expanding economic value to include ecological services, we are likely to find ourselves with
precious little protected nature.
Many Biologists Support Elimination of Weak Species as Long as Other Species Perform the
Same Ecological Functions
Many conservation biologists fear that resource managers would use functional type to justify the elimination of
individual species as long as another species appears to perform a similar ecological function.382
Daniel Simberloff points out that a “second-growth forest of low diversity often has greater primary productivity than does the diverse old-growth
forest it replaces. Is it therefore an acceptable substitute for the original?”383 Most ecologists would argue that it is not, but the debate goes
on.384 A panelof the National Research Council recently concluded that it “is clear that not all
species are equally important, but little is known about the general extent to which ecologically similar species can
substitute for each other in providing ecosystem services,” and that a dedicated research effort to advance understanding of the
relationship between diversity and ecological functions should be a high priority.385
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2WEEKERS
A2 Biodiversity 3/3
Too Many Species Will Threaten Overall Biodiversity and the Economy
Fred Bosselman 2000 (Professor of Law Emeritus, Chicago-Kent College of Law “Are all
Species Equal” pdf pg. online @ www.law.nyu.edu //Damien-sm)
We are accustomed to thinking of biodiversity as a good thing that should be maximized. But within the boundaries of any
given area, we often realize that too many species may threaten overall biodiversity. Frequently we wish we didn’t
have particular species in a local area because they are either exotics or hybrids. Conservation biologists generally draw a
distinction between native species and exotic species, with the native species to be protected and the
exotics discouraged even if the result is less local biodiversity.386 Thus, for example, invasions by exotic grasses in the
grasslands of the western United States are widely seen as a destructive change in the ecological
systems, even though species diversity may have been increased.387 Invasive species have sometimes caused the
complete extinction of native species, particularly on islands; the brown tree snake and the giant African
snail have had devastating effects on certain islands in the Pacific.388 Other invasive species have created
substantial economic costs, such as the zebra mussel that has clogged water systems in many
parts of the eastern United States.389 Invasive species can also modify ecological processes in undesirable ways,as the salt cedar
has by lowering the water table in riparian areas in the western United States.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Famine 1/3
Food Prices fluctuate all the time, this is nothing new.
Wade 07, Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), July 26, 2007 Thursday, First Edition, Matt Wade, Economics
Writer, “It's the underlying inflation, stupid;” , THE ECONOMY, NEWS AND FEATURES; Pg. 4, Nexis
BORROWERS have been warned to brace for an interest rate rise after the next Reserve Bank board meeting in a fortnight. But why is an
increase on the cards when the inflation rate is near the bottom of the central bank's target range at just 2.1 per cent? The
answer lies in
the difference between the headline inflation rate and the underlying rate. Measures of
underlying inflation eliminate the one-off distortions in the consumer price index often caused by
items like fresh fruit, vegetables and petrol, which can fluctuate wildly from quarter to quarter.
The value in doing this has been underscored over the past 18 months as the dramatic rise and fall of banana prices, drought-related
food price fluctuations, and the ups and downs of bowser prices have played havoc with the
headline inflation rate. The Reserve relies heavily on measures of underlying inflation to guide its decisions on interest rates because
they give the most accurate indication of real inflationary pressures in the economy.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Famine 2/3
Food Prices in the U.S. will gradually increase for the time being for four main reasons.
China Daily, 07 Chinadaily.com.cn, September 28, 2007 Friday, PRICE INCREASES ARE A MATTER OF
PERSPECTIVE,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4098998436
&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T4098998439&cisb=22_T40989984
38&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=227171&docNo=35
Though the consumer price index (CPI) keeps rising rapidly, the producer price index (PPI), a
leading indicator of production costs, shows a declining trend. This suggests that the increase in the CPI is mainly
the result of price hikes for food. The decline of the growth rate for non-food prices shows that supply and
demand are stable, providing the basis for a gradual descent in prices later this year. According to the
National Bureau of Statistics, the PPI grew by 2.4 percent in July, compared with 3.3 percent in January. The PPI growth was 0.2 percentage
points higher in August than in July, but the overall trend is still downward. The slowing growth in the PPI is mainly the result of declining
production costs. Though the cost of living rises with food prices, the slowing growth of production costs means an overall trend of slow growth
of the PPI. The rate of CPI growth hit 6.5 percent in August, leading to 3.9 percent year-on-year growth from January to August. Higher food
costs have led the faster rate of CPI growth. The
prices of industrial consumer goods and services have risen by
less than 1 percent this year, while food prices have soared, which has been a major factor in increasing the CPI
growth rate. The relationship between supply and demand affects price levels in the short term. The
huge supply potential, together with restricted growth in demand, is a basic reason for the declining
growth rate of non-food prices. The most recent round of economic growth kicked off after the shortage economy was eliminated. In this new
phase, output has reached a certain scale, productivity is increasing, the supplies of capital and labor are
abundant and the supply of applied technologies is expanding. As the recent round of reforms takes hold,
enterprises' ability to react to market fluctuations will improve. This means the potential to expand production and
supply is huge. When there is demand, there will be a corresponding growth in supply. On the other
hand, demand is getting more and more restricted. Since 2003, the central government has tightened its control of land and capital. It has put in
place multiple measures, such as raising the threshold to control the unchecked binge on fixed assets investment. Since last year, the government
has controlled the export of energy consuming, polluting and resource-intensive products by lowering tax rebates and collecting export tariffs. It
has also tightened control of the export of products affected by trade conflicts. Generally speaking, the control of demand growth has improved.
Having a high supply potential and controlled demand means a coordinated relationship between supply and demand. The possibility of a supply
shortage or inflation is slight. What is more, partial oversupply and overcapacity could be possible in the future.
Rising food prices,
which have a huge impact on the CPI growth rate, do not mean there is something wrong with agricultural
production. Grain production increased every year from 2004 to 2006. That continued this summer, when output saw a 1.3 percent year-on-
year increase. The foundation for the grain supply is good. Four short-term reasons contribute to the rising food
prices. First, world grain production decreased last year, and major producers such as the United
States have been using corn to make fuel. Second, the State grain reserve has not caught up with
the changing market. Third, the domestic capacity for making ethanol from corn has improved.
Fourth, food prices were affected by epidemics and seasonal factors. Considered from a long-
term perspective, these factors reflect a normal trend in economic development. The prices of
agricultural and food products will gradually increase with industrialization, urbanization and
rises in income levels. This reflects a natural adjustment of industrial-agricultural and urban-rural
income distribution patterns. It also means farmers and rural residents are enjoying the fruits of economic growth.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Famine 3/3
Turn: Famine is a natural check on nuclear war resulting from gross overpopulation.
Stewart, 02 Rixon Stewart, Writer for The Truth Seeker. "AIDS: The Myth and the Reality," April 11, 2002,
6/28/07, http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=106
According to an intelligence source (1) who attended the meeting McNamara announced that the world’s population would only stabilize at
around ten billion in 2020. “We
can assume that the levels of poverty, stress, hunger, crowding and frustration could
cause in developing nations – which by then would contain nine out of ten human beings on earth – would
be unlikely to assure
social stability, or political stability, or, for that matter military stability. It is not a world that
any of us would want to live in.” He then went on to propose a solution; one might even call it a final
solution. “Is such a world inevitable? It is not sure, but there are two possible ways in which a world
of ten billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down very
quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way. There are of course
many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, we can accomplish it
very quickly. Famine and disease are nature’s ancient checks on population growth, and
neither one has disappeared from the scene.”
Famine is Inevitable in the Status Quo, the Dollar Decline Plummits Food Prices
Scott Thrill 6/6/08 (staff writer “Is Famine Inevitable” pg. online @ http://www.alternet.org/environment/87071//)
These inconvenient truths generate a logical but nevertheless callous question: Who will starve, and who will survive? Even that has a
profit motive, as it should, considering that the oil sector's economic shenanigans -- occupations, ethanol, record-setting paydays -- under
the Bush administration have brought us to this disturbing tightrope. The
cold pursuit of profit promises to kick-
start further genetic experimentation to make up for what nature cannot provide, thanks to
hyperproduction and global warming's incoming floods, droughts and fires. And the fact that
we grow food now to put not into our bodies but into our cars only draws that dystopian
future closer. Shifting the auto market to another fuel source would go a long way to staving
it off, if political and popular will could only be galvanized from its comfy couch to start
saving and not wasting money and food."The best way to avert future famines on the supply and price side," concludes
Woodall, "is to ensure that there are enough food reserves that can feed the hungry in countries in crisis, (and) offer reasonable prices to
consumers in the developed world and fair prices for farmers. Under the current agriculture policies, the supply and price of food staples
has been very volatile, and there is no safety valve to ensure that the supply of commodities can match the need of consumers. Farmer-
owned reserves and the re-establishment of some government supply management policies could greatly ease the year-to-year price shocks
faced by development agencies, grocery store consumers and farmers."But that would be a solution for those interested in finding one.
Considering that billions are already on the edge of starvation, interest in earnings rather than solutions seems to be the main problem.
, the poor as always will remain the petri dish for such economic speculations
Until that changes
and resource shortages. They are already at ground zero in the war against an inevitable
famine."Skyrocketing prices are hitting them the hardest," Luescher continues, "those who already spend 60 percent, sometimes even
80 percent, of their budget on food. These groups include the rural landless, pastoralists and the majority of small-scale farmers. But the
impact is greatest on the urban poor. And the rises are producing what we're calling the
"new face of hunger" -- people
who suddenly can no longer afford the food they see on store shelves because prices have
soared beyond their reach."
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2WEEKERS
A2 Disease 1/5
Disease won’t kill us- humans are evolving faster to resist them.
Clover, 08,Charles Clover, Daily Telegraph Environment Editor 2008,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/05/scievol105.xml
A major genetic survey shows how we are changing, reports Roger Highfield Evidence that humans will
evolve to shrug off diseases such as type 2 diabetes and obesity has emerged. - Humans 'evolving to have
children later' - Dmanisi fossil sheds new light on human evolution - Language development
mirrors species evolution A survey of the human genetic code has shown that our resistance to malaria, diabetes and
other diseases is changing in response to our environment. Dr Lluís Quintana-Murci of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, and colleagues
analysed more than 2.8 million single letter spelling mistakes in the human genetic code to distinguish the usual random changes
over the last 60,000 years from those that seem to be occurring in response to the environment, when a genetic mutation gives
people an advantage over their peers. People are surprisingly similar at the DNA level and the work "abolishes the idea of race"
he says. But when it comes to the few differences, those showing the strongest signature of this effect, called positive selection,
are involved in skin pigmentation and hair development, as is already obvious from how white people live in darker climates.
"You do not need genetics to know this, but it shows our method works." In the journal Nature Genetics the team reports that
several traits are sometimes linked to the same gene, so that when people in the Far East evolved a different version of a gene
called EDAR to sweat differently, the same gene gave them much denser hair and changed their teeth too, an effect he calls
"hitchhiking." Genes that protect against disease are also evolving. For example, one called CR1 helps to cut the severity of
malaria attacks and is now present in eight Africans in every ten, yet is absent elsewhere, a novel finding. Several genes, such as
ENPP1, are involved in the regulation of the hormone insulin and in metabolic syndrome - a combination of adult diabetes and
obesity. These are present in 90 per cent of non-Africans and their relative absence could explain why African Americans are
particularly at risk of obesity and high blood pressure. The work suggests they are adapted to an African environment and have
not adapted to an American lifestyle. "They have not had the time to readapt," says Dr Quintana-Murci. Prof Steve Jones of
University College London comments: "They have shown that man was once more like other animals than we might like to
imagine, for Nature imposed her rules on us in the same way as she did on rats or flies. "There
are three great eras of
history; the age of disaster, when we were killed by cold or sabre-toothed tigers, the age of
disease - the epidemics which began with farming - and the age of decay, in which most of the
developed world now lives, and dies of old age. "DNA now shows how much we were moulded
by the force of natural selection during first two; but my guess is that in future, now that we nearly all survive for long
enough to pass on our genes, much less will happen. Perhaps you can ask me again in ten thousand years." An earlier study by a team led by
University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist Prof John Hawks suggested that humankind
has evolved more rapidly in
the past 5,000 years, at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human
evolution. This work counters a common theory that human evolution has slowed to a crawl or
even stopped in modern humans, since in modern society the survivors no longer have to be the
fittest.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Disease2/5
Exposure to disease allows survival – conquest of the “New World” proves.
Orlow, 05 Elizabeth Orlow, Millersville University, Summer 2005,
http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/orlow-e.html
Most infectious diseases result from a microparasite. Microparasites may be thought of as those parasites,
which have direct reproduction, usually at high rates within the host (Anderson 13). Their short generation time
and size characterize them. Microparasites also go through two stages until an infection leads to a disease. The period from the point of infection
to the appearance of symptoms is termed the incubation stage. At this stage, symptoms may not be extremely prevalent, and the person can infect
others. The incubation period is the most critical stage, because the microparisite is lying dormant, and unknowingly the disease can be spread.
The period from the point of infection to the stage of infectiousness is the latent stage. If
a host recovers from an infection he
or she has acquired immunity to the disease and are not re-infected. Many types of diseases were brought into
the Americas. The main diseases were smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus. There were also other diseases such as whooping cough, the
mumps, and diphtheria. Each
disease has a specific entry into the body, and each can cause various types
of symptoms. For example, diphtheria enters the body through the respiratory tract and attaches to the tissue in the throat.
Through natural selection and the growth in population the world can outrun disease.
Orlow, 05 Elizabeth Orlow, Millersville University, Summer 2005,

http://www.millersville.edu/~columbus/papers/orlow-e.html
The origin of disease in the New World and the Old World is very different. In the Old World,
Europeans had already come in contact with various types of infectious disease and acquired
immunity. The European’s genes also became resistant overtime. Through natural selection the
relative frequency of a gene appears to change over generations. For an example, people who have
acquired resistant genes over generations are more likely to survive various types of diseases.
Also, when the human population becomes larger a disease is sustained better. One of the reasons why the
Europeans acquired immunity to various diseases was due to domesticated animals.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Disease 3/5
Disease spread won’t cause extinction
Peters and Chrystal 03, (Dr. Clarence, Director of Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases @ UT, and Dr. Ronald, Chairman of
Genetics Medicine @ Cornell, FDCH Political Transcripts, “U.S. REPRESENTATIVE CHRISTOPHER COX (R-CA) HOLDS HEARING ON
COUNTERING THE BIOTERRORISM THREAT”, 3-15, L/N)
PETERS: I think we have one example from the movement of the Conquistadors to the New World. They brought
measles, smallpox and a variety of other diseases with them. They didn't wipe out the Indians, but
they destroyed their civilization and were instrumental in the Spaniards being able to conquer the New World with relatively few people. I think
we have something going on right now with SARS that we don't know exactly what the end of it's going to be, but we already know that Asian
economies are suffering tremendously. My prediction is that they will not be able to control it in China. If that's true, then we will be
dealing with repeated introductions in this country for the indefinite future so that we may see a change in our way of
life where we are taking temperatures in airports, in addition to taking your shoes off and putting them through the X-ray machine. And we may
see emergency rooms rebuilt so that if you have a cough you go in one entrance and go into a negative pressure cubicle until your SARS test
comes back. So
I think that while wiping out human life is extremely unlikely, we have unengineered examples of
bugs that have made great impacts on civilizations. COX: Dr. Crystal? CRYSTAL: The
natural examples of what you
suggested were, as hundreds of years ago, with smallpox and also with the plague. The plague
wiped out one-third of the civilization. We now have treatments for ordinances (ph) like the plague because they were
engineered to be resistant. And if they infected a number of people and had the capability of being spread rapidly from individual to individual, it
would cause enormous havoc. I agree with the panel --
I don't think it would wipe out civilization, but the
consequences to our society would be enormous.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Disease 4/5
Virulence reduction solves – humans will outgrow disease
National Geographic ’04 (“Our Friend, The Plague: Can Germs Keep Us Healthy?” September 8,
http://www.promedpersonnel.com/whatsnew.asp?intCategoryID=73&intArticleID=443)
Whenever a new disease appears somewhere on our planet, experts invariably pop up on TV
with grave summations of the problem, usually along the lines of, “We’re in a war against the microbes” – pause
for dramatic effect – “and the microbes are winning.” War, however, is a ridiculously overused metaphor and probably should be bombed back to
advocates a different approach to lethal microbes.
the Stone Age. Paul Ewald, a biologist at the University of Louisville,
Forget trying to obliterate them, he says, and focus instead on how they co-evolve with humans.
Make them mutate in the right direction. Get the powers of evolution on our side. Disease
organisms can, in fact, become less virulent over time. When it was first recognized in Europe
around 1495, syphilis killed its human hosts within months. The quick progression of the disease
– from infection to death – limited the ability of syphilis to spread. So a new form evolved, one
that gave carriers years to infect others. For the same reason, the common cold has become less dangerous. Milder strains of
the virus – spread by people out and about, touching things, and shaking hands – have an evolutionary advantage over more debilitating strains.
You can’t spread a cold very easily if you’re incapable of rolling out of bed. This
process has already weakened all but one
virulent strain of malaria: Plasmodium falciparum succeeds in part because bedridden victims of
the disease are more vulnerable to mosquitoes that carry and transmit the parasite. To mitigate malaria,
the secret is to improve housing conditions. If people put screens on doors and windows, and use bed nets, it creates an evolutionary incentive for
Plasmodium falciparum to become milder and self-limiting. Immobilized people protected by nets and screens can’t easily spread the parasite, so
evolution would favor forms that let infected people walk around and get bitten by mosquitoes. There are also a few high-tech tricks for nudging
microbes in the right evolutionary direction. One company, called MedImmune, has created a flu vaccine using a modified influenza virus that
thrives at 77 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the normal human body temperature. The vaccine can be sprayed in a
person’s nose, where the virus survives in the cool nasal passages but not in the hot lungs or elsewhere in the body. The immune system produces
Maybe someday we’ll barely notice
antibodies that make the person better prepared for most normal, nasty influenza bugs.
when we get colonized by disease organisms. We’ll have co-opted them. They’ll be like in-laws,
a little annoying but tolerable. If a friend sees us sniffling, we’ll just say, Oh, it’s nothing – just a touch of the plague.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Disease 5/5
No chance viruses will kill us all
Posner 05 (Richard, Judge 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Skeptic, “Catastrophe”, 11:3, Proquest)
AIDS illustrates the further point that despite the progress made by modern medicine in the
diagnosis and treatment of diseases, developing a vaccine or cure for a new (or newly recognized or newly
virulent) disease may be difficult, protracted, even impossible. Progress has been made in treating ATDS, but neither a
cure nor a vaccine has yet been developed. And because the virus's mutation rate is high, the treatments may not work in the long run.7
Rapidly mutating viruses are difficult to vaccinate against, which is why there is no vaccine for
the common cold and why flu vaccines provide only limited protection.8 Paradoxically, a
treatment that is neither cure nor vaccine, but merely reduces the severity of a disease, may
accelerate its spread by reducing the benefit from avoiding becoming infected. This is an important
consideration with respect to AIDS, which is spread mainly by voluntary intimate contact with infected people. Yet the fact that Homo
sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or so of its
existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been
enormously destaictive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to
destroying the entire human race. There is a biological reason. Natural selection favors germs of
limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be
spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural,
that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger that AIDS will destroy
the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would cause the extinction of
the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times, when
people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite
wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease. The reason is
improvements in medical science. But the comfort is a small one. Pandemics can still impose enormous losses and resist
prevention and cure: the lesson of the AIDS pandemic. And there is always a first time.
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A2 Heg 1/7
Turn: US Hegemony is bad, multiple warrants.
Muzzaffar 08, New Straits Times (Malaysia), July 1, 2008 Tuesday , Bringing an end to global hegemony,
Chandra Muzaffar, (Journalist) SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 23,
The US is not happy about this, though a weaker dollar may boost its exports and reduce its trade deficit
marginally. The US knows that it is the dominant position of the dollar that enables it to exercise
global financial and economic hegemony. It is because the dollar is the world's reserve currency
that the US has so much political clout in the international arena. This is why the dollar has been
described as one of the two principal pillars of US global hegemony, the other being its military
power. It explains why the US leadership was so incensed when the late Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, abandoned the dollar and switched
to the euro in 2000. He also converted Iraq's $10US billion (RM32.6 billion) reserve fund at the United Nations to euro. Commentators have
argued that it was partly because of these decisions that the US and British governments pushed hard for the invasion of Iraq, which at the time of
the currency switch was already under tough UN sanctions. Since 2002, Iran, currently the world's second-largest oil exporter, has converted all
its foreign exchange reserves to a basket of currencies, excluding the dollar. In the second quarter of this year, it went further and decided to
denominate its entire oil trade in currencies other than the dollar. Is it any wonder that Israel, America's closest ally, has become more bellicose in
its threat to attack Iran in recent weeks? Of course, as in the case of Iraq, there are also other motives behind attempts by the US, Israel and their
other Western allies to bring Iran to its knees. For the US, any move by a major oil exporter to wean itself from the dollar is a direct challenge to
its hegemo-nic power. Look at its continuous manoeuvres to undermine Venezuela's democratically elected president, after Hugo Chavez placed a
portion of his country's oil trade out of the dollar's orbit. It is not difficult to fathom why the US is so obsessed with perpetuating the oil-dollar
nexus. It is partly because most of the oil trade - more than any other trade - is denominated in the dollar that the US currency is able to dominate
the world economy. In fact, it was America's agreement with Saudi Arabia in 1974 that the oil trade would be denominated in the dollar which
gave a huge lift to the dollar's reign. The US will fight tooth and nail to ensure that that reign continues. But the supremacy of the dollar must end
if US hegemony is to end. US
hegemony - like all hegemonies in history - has been a bane upon
humanity. It has brought death and destruction to millions through wars and conflicts. It has
widened the gap between the "have-a-lot" and the "have-a-little" across the globe. It has
reinforced global authoritarianism and stymied the growth of global democracy and international
law. It has given rise to antagonism and antipathy between civilisations, especially between the
Western and Muslim worlds. It has denied equality and respect to civilisations and cultures
outside the West. It has led to global environmental degradation and a global climate crisis.
Global hegemony has also provoked a vile and vicious reaction from a fringe within the Muslim
world in the form of global terror.
13
2WEEKERS
A2 Heg 2/7
Hegemony is Unstable, Other Countries are Gaining Power over the U.S.
KUPCHAN 02 (Professor of International Relations @ Georgetown Charles, The End of the American Era: US
Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century, Alfred A. Knopf, New York)
The problem is that America’s unipolar moment and the global stability that comes with it
will not last. Europe now has a single market, a single currency, and more frequently speaks
with a single, self-confident voice. The aggregate wealth of the European Union’s fifteen members already approaches
that of the United States, and the coming entry of new members, coupled with growth rates comparable to America’s, may eventually tilt
the balance in Europe’s favor. The
EU has embarked on efforts to build a military force capable of
operating without U.S. participation. These moves will make Europe more autonomous and
less willing to follow America’s lead. Along with an integrating Europe, Russia, Japan, and
China will gradually emerge as counterweights to American strength. The waning of U.S.
primacy will result not just from the rise of alternative centers of power, but also from an
America that is tiring of the burdens of global hegemony. The United States should not and will not pursue a
foreign policy as ambitious as that of the Cold War now that it lives in a world in which it faces no major adversary but instead confronts a
terrorist threat that is better countered by freezing bank accounts than by dropping bombs. As during earlier periods in American history,
the absence of a commanding threat will make the country considerably more reluctant to shoulder strategic commitments abroad .
Americans and their elected leaders are justifiably losing interest in playing the role of
global guardian. At the same time, the United States is drawing away from multilateral
institutions in favor of a unilateralism that risks estranging alternative centers of power,
raising the chances that their ascent will lead to a new era of geopolitical rivalry. The rise of other
powers and America’s waning and unilateralist internationalism will combine to make America’s unipolar moment a fleeting one. As
unipolarity gives way to multipolarity the stability that follows naturally from the presence of an uncontested hegemon will be replaced by
global competition for position, influence, and status. As in the past, the world’s principal fault lines will fall where they have fallen
throughout the ages—between the world’s main centers of power. The
disorder that comes with rivalry will soon
replace the order afforded by Pax Americana. [P. 28-29]
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A2 Heg 3/7
An Economic Openness Will Allow Competitive Countries to Catch Up to the U.S. Resulting in
Great Power Wars
LAYNE 98 (Assoc. Professor of Poli Sci @ Miami Christopher, “Rethinking American Grand Strategy”, World
Policy Journal, Summer 1998, vol. 15, no. 2)
In purely economic terms, an open international economic system may have positive effects. But economics does not take place in a
political vacuum. Strategically, economic openness has adverse consequences: it contributes to, and
accelerates, a redistribution of relative power among states in the international system (allowing rising
competitors to catch up to the United States more quickly than they otherwise would). This leads to the emergence of
new great powers. The resulting "power transition," which occurs as a dominant power
declines and new challengers arise, usually climaxes in great power wars.[24] Because great power
emergence is driven by uneven growth rates (that is, some states are growing faster economically than others), there is little, short
of preventive war, that the United States can do to prevent the rise of new great powers. But
U.S. grand strategy, to some extent, can affect both the pace and the magnitude of America's relative power decline. A crucial
relationship exists between America's relative power and its strategic commitments. The historian
Paul Kennedy and the political economist Robert Gilpin have explained how strategic overcommitment leads first to "imperial
overstretch," and then to relative decline.[25] Gilpin has outlined succinctly the causal logic supporting this conclusion. As he points out,
the overhead costs of empire are high: "In order to maintain its dominant position, a state must expend its
resources on military forces, the financing of allies, foreign aid, and the costs associated
with maintaining the international economy. These protection and related costs are not
productive investments; they constitute an economic drain on the economy of the dominant
state."[26] Ultimately, the decline in its relative power leaves a waning hegemon less well placed to fend off the challenges to its system-
wide strategic interests.
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A2 Heg 4/7
Heg is Counter Productive, Weakens Regional Powers With Other Nations
James Bill 2001 (Dr. Bill professor of government and director emeritus of the Reves Center for International
Studies at the College of William and Mary “Politics of Hegemony: U.S. and Iraq” pg. online @
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol8/0109_bill.asp//Damien-sm)
In its attempt to protect and expand its hegemonic power, the United States has pursued
policies designed to weaken regional powers such as Iran and China. The pressures applied
by the global hegemon often have unintended, counterproductive consequences. U.S.
pressure, for example, acts as a catalyst strengthening and solidifying relations between and
among dominant regional hegemons. Figure 1 indicates how two regional hegemons, Iran
and China, have come to form a fundamental cross-regional alliance. U.S. condemnation has
resulted in both intraregional and interregional alliances featuring Iran and China at the
center of concentric circles of countries that resent and resist U.S. interventionary
hegemony. In the Middle East and East Asia these nation-states include Syria and North Korea respectively. The global hegemon
seeks to anchor its foreign policy in military might. Despite a huge defense budget and sophisticated armaments, however, the United
States has discovered that its power is not unlimited, as the confrontation with Iraq has
demonstrated. Billions of dollars in U.S. military expenditures have not altered Saddam Hussein's behavior. Over the last decade,
the United States has unleashed more than 700 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a cost of nearly $1 billion against Iraq and targets in Sudan
and Afghanistan. Washington is beginning to understand that delicate social and political problems cannot be bombed out of existence.
(Nonetheless, the George W. Bush administration has plans to pursue the expensive missile defense system, a system that is strongly
opposed by Europe, Russia and China.) The policy of the global hegemon differs with respect to the particular region or regime. These
leading
differences can be explained by the differing worldviews that mark other cultures and civilizations. In this context,
regional hegemons such as Iran, North Korea and China represent cultures that seem
particularly alien to the United State. China is often viewed as a huge backward nation of
inscrutable drones who live in poverty and ignorance. North Korea is accused of "capricious and whimsical
behavior" and, in the words of one observer: "There is enough that is weird about North Korea to gobsmack you." Iran is considered to be
a nation of cats, caviar and carpets, where religious fanaticism triumphs over rational discourse and where little value is placed on human
life. After a long article analyzing Iranian politics and the elections of June 2001, an American journalist inexplicably ends her analysis by
claiming that President Muhammad Khatami planned to conclude his electioneering at a breakfast "where he will serve up an Iranian
specialty -- stewed sheep brains."6
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2WEEKERS
A2 Heg 5/7
The U.S. Will be to threatening to Other Countries, States Balance this.
Kenneth Waltz 2000 (Kenneth, Prof at UC Berkeley “Structural Realism After the Cold War”, International
Security, Summer, vol. 25, no. 1, p. asp)
Will the preponderant power of the United States elicit similar reactions? Unbalancedpower, whoever wields it, is a
potential danger to others. The powerful state may, and the United States does, think of itself
as acting for the sake of peace, justice, and well-being in the world. These terms, however,
are defined to the liking of the powerful, which may conflict with the preferences and
interests of others. In international politics, overwhelming power repels and leads others to try to balance against it. With benign
intent, the United States has behaved and, until its power is brought into balance, will continue
to behave in ways that sometimes frighten others. For almost half a century, the constancy of the Soviet threat
produced a constancy of American policy. Other countries could rely on the United States for protection because protecting them seemed
to serve American security interests. Even so, beginning in the 1950s, Western European countries and, beginning in the 1970s, Japan had
increasing doubts about the reliability of the American nuclear deterrent. As Soviet strength increased, Western European countries began
to wonder whether the United States could be counted on to use its deterrent on their behalf, thus risking its own cities. When President
Jimmy Carter moved to reduce American troops in South Korea, and later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and strengthened its
forces in the Far East, Japan developed similar worries. With the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer faces a
major threat to its security. As General Colin Powell said when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "I'm running out of demons.
I'm running out of enemies. I'm down to Castro and Kim Il Sung."[68] Constancy of threat produces constancy of policy; absence of threat
permits policy to become capricious. When few if any vital interests are endangered, a country's policy becomes sporadic and self-willed.
The absence of serious threats to American
security gives the United States wide latitude in making
foreign policy choices. A dominant power acts internationally only when the spirit moves it.
One example is enough to show this. When Yugoslavia's collapse was followed by genocidal war in successor states, the
United States failed to respond until Senator Robert Dole moved to make Bosnia's peril an issue in the forthcoming presidential election;
and it acted not for the sake of its own security but to maintain its leadership position in Europe. American policy was generated not by
external security interests, but by internal political pressure and national ambition. Aside from specific threats it may pose, unbalanced
power leaves weaker states feeling uneasy and gives them reason to strengthen their positions. The
United States has a long
history of intervening in weak states, often with the intention of bringing democracy to
them. American behavior over the past century in Central America provides little evidence
of self-restraint in the absence of countervailing power. Contemplating the history of the
United States and measuring its capabilities, other countries may well wish for ways to fend
off its benign ministrations. Concentrated power invites distrust because it is so easily
misused. To understand why some states want to bring power into a semblance of balance is
easy, but with power so sharply skewed, what country or group of countries has the material
capability and the political will to bring the "unipolar moment" to an end?
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2WEEKERS
A2 Heg 6/7
Other Countries Will Inevitably Rise Above the U.S.
Khanna 08 Parag Khanna 1/27/08 (Parag Khanna senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the
New America Foundation published by Random House in March “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” pg. online @
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1//Damien-sm)
The rise of China in the East and of the European Union within the West has fundamentally
altered a globe that recently appeared to have only an American gravity — pro or anti. As Europe’s and
China’s spirits rise with every move into new domains of influence, America’s spirit is weakened. The E.U. may uphold the
principles of the United Nations that America once dominated, but how much longer will it do so as its own social
standards rise far above this lowest common denominator? And why should China or other Asian countries become “responsible stakeholders,” in
former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick’s words, in an American-led international order when they had no seat at the table when the
rules were drafted? Even as America stumbles back toward multilateralism, others are walking away from the American game and playing by
their own rules. Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted as its organizing principle and leader? It’s very much too late
to be asking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither
China nor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the
world’s sole leader; rather all three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own and
balance one another. Europe will promote its supranational integration model as a path to
resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa, while China will push a Beijing consensus
based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itself irresistible to stay in the
game.
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A2 Heg 7/7
Europe Will Replace the US as the Dominant Hegemon by Centralizing Authoritative
Governance
Kupchan 02 (Professor of International Relations @ Georgetown) 2002 (Charles, The End of the American Era:
US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century, Alfred A. Knopf, New York)
Times, however, are changing. Europe has arrived at a turning point. For several reasons, its
military presence will mount in the years ahead. For starters, Europe is in the midst of
creating more centralized and authoritative structures of collective governance, a necessary
precursor to a common defense policy; It is one thing to coordinate trade policy and standardize the size of electrical
outlets. It is another to give up your national currency and debate the desirability of an EU constitution—acts that in symbolic and practical
terms constitute a true pooling of sovereignty and the lifting up of politics, interest, and identity from the national to the supranational
level. And in
preparation for the addition of new members, the EU is likely to take steps to
further centralize authority; Europe’s institutional reforms promise to set the stage for more
geopolitical ambition, just as the centralization of America’s political institutions did in the
late nineteenth century; Another clear sign of Europe’s maturation is its redoubled effort to forge a
common security policy and acquire the military capability needed to back it up. In 1999 the EU
established the position of high representative for foreign and security policy—in effect, a collective Europe’s first foreign policy chief.
Javier Solana, the former secretary general of NATO, was selected as its initial occupant. Solana oversaw the development of new political
and military councils capable of pro ducing a common defense policy; And the EU committed itself to have ready by 2003 a rapid
reaction force of roughly 6o,ooo capable of being deployed on short notice and sustained in the field for at least one year. The member
states thereafter began integrating their defense plans and budgets in order to make good on this pledge.Euro skeptics are right to point out
that EU defense budgets have been shrinking and that new expenditures will ultimately be needed if Europe is to acquire the level of
capability that it has envisaged. But the EU can achieve a great deal by spending more wisely the resources that it already devotes to
defense. More coordination among national procurement programs, a sensible division of labor as to which member states fulfill which
military tasks, and the switch from poorly trained conscript armies to polished professional units will do much to improve the EU’s
military capability;Signifipant reforms have already been accomplished. France has phased out universal military service. Germany
has already conducted a thorough review of its defense establishment and is in the midst of
implementing important changes. And new, collective procurement programs have been taking shape. In June 2001, nine
European nations (Germany; France, Spain, Britain, Italy; Turkey; Belgium, Portugal, and Luxembourg) committed to buy a total of 212
A-4 ooM transport aircraft. The aircraft will be built by Airbus, 8o percent of which is owned by the European Aeronautic Defence &
Space Corn pany; a new consortium of European defense contractors. EU mem hers have also agreed to construct their own satellite
network, called Galileo, a move that will reduce European reliance on U.S. assets and technology
Hegemony Rise Causes Proliferation
Rodman 2000 (dr., National Security Programs, Nixon Center Peter W., National Interest, Summer, p. 77+, ASP)
The Pentagon has a phrase, "asymmetric

strategies", which refers to the strategies by which smaller
powers seek to exploit the vulnerabilities of a stronger power. Lord knows we have such
vulnerabilities -- and others are eagerly searching for them. (Chinese strategists, for example, have analyzed the 1991 Gulf War
and satisfied themselves that if Saddam Hussein had not committed a few key errors, the outcome would have been quite different.) The
intensity of rogue states' pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, moreover, undoubtedly
derives from their conviction that such a capability would prove a great "equalizer",
significantly compounding America's reluctance to use its power in some hypothetical future
confrontation
19
2WEEKERS
A2 Econ 1/3
The U.S. is beginning to play a smaller role in the global economy.
Gross 07, The New York Times, May 6, 2007 Sunday, Late Edition – Final, “Does It Even Matter if the U.S. Has a Cold?” By DANIEL
GROSS. Daniel Gross writes the ''Moneybox'' column for Slate.com. Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC
VIEW; Pg. 4,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4100124656&format=GNBFI&sort=RE
LEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4100124670&cisb=22_T4100124669&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=6742&docNo=9
FOR the last several decades, the United States has functioned as the main engine of growth in a
global economy that has been moving with synchronicity. ''We're going through the longest
stretch of concerted growth in decades,'' said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director at the Economic Cycle Research
Institute in New York. So you might think that a sharp slowdown in growth in the United States -- the domestic
economy grew at a measly 1.3 percent annual clip in the first quarter this year, less than half the 2006 rate -- would mean trouble for
the rest of the global economy. Right? Wrong. As the domestic growth rate has declined sharply
in recent quarters, the rest of the world is growing rapidly. India is blowing the door off its
hinges. China's economy is expanding at a double-digit pace. In the United States, the Federal
Reserve has held rates steady since last June, and its next move will most likely be a rate
reduction to stimulate growth. The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan, meanwhile, have been raising rates -- lest their
once-suffering economies overheat and spawn inflation. ''The U.S. slump in the first quarter didn't pull down
growth in Europe or Asia,'' said Brad Setser, senior economist at Roubini Global Economics. The seemingly countervailing trends
-- deceleration in America, full speed ahead abroad -- have led some economists to wonder
whether the United States and the rest of the global economy are going their separate ways. Some
even suggest -- shudder -- that changes in the global economy have made the United States a less-central
player. ''Four or five years ago, there was an important switch in the global economy,'' said Stephen
King, an economist based in London for HSBC. ''Since then, other parts of the world have really grabbed the
growth baton from the U.S.'' Until relatively recently, when the United States sneezed, the world
caught a nasty cold. Today, Mr. King says, the United States has sneezed, but the world has gone shopping.
Mr. King notes that emerging markets like China, India, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East are injecting life into the European and
Japanese economies through their enormous purchases of capital goods -- all those construction cranes in Dubai, bullet trains in China, oil rigs in
Russia. ''Emerging markets' share of global capital spending has risen from 20 percent in the late 1990s to about 37 percent today,'' he said.
Western Europe is benefiting from rising trade with Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia and the Middle East. As a result, the euro zone, America's
largest trading partner, is simply not as reliant on the United States as it used to be, Mr. Setser said.
''Europe is clearly no longer growing on the back of U.S. domestic demand growth,'' he said. As
other economies increasingly trade with one another, the United States plays a diminished role.
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A2 Econ 2/3
Turn: It would be good if the U.S. was no longer the global economic leader, this would spur
large global growth.
Gross 07, The New York Times, May 6, 2007 Sunday, Late Edition – Final, “Does It Even Matter if the U.S. Has
a Cold?” By DANIEL GROSS. Daniel Gross writes the ''Moneybox'' column for Slate.com. Section 3; Column 1;
Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 4,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4100124656&f
ormat=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4100124670&cisb=22_T4100124669&tr
eeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=6742&docNo=9
''Unless you run a sawmill in Canada, international trade isn't directly affected by the decline in U.S. housing,'' Mr.
Rosenberg said.
Martin N. Baily, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington,
says he thinks that it's a good thing for the United States if it's no longer the leader. ''We have a
huge imbalance in our trade, and we need to be a little less of an engine of growth for the rest of
the world, and let Europe and Japan, and hopefully China, eventually, pick up the slack,'' he said.
''And right now it seems like they're doing so.''
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A2 Econ 3/3
The impact is empirically denied, we are up to our ears in recession right now
Murno, 08 Ian Munro, (Journalist) New York, July 5, 2008, “Little doubt that US is in recession; rest of the world
can't claim immunity”, http://business.theage.com.au/little-doubt-that-us-is-in-recession-rest-of-the-world-cant-
claim-immunity-20080704-31wp.html
IF IT looks and feels like a recession, then it's a recession, and six consecutive months of job
losses leave little room for doubt. Another 62,000 jobs disappeared from the US last month,
which was in line with economists' forecasts, but there was a sting in the tail of the latest Labor
Department figures released yesterday. Job losses in April and May were revealed to be much bigger than previously
disclosed. All told, the US has shed 438,000 jobs this calendar year, 60,000 more than had been expected by even the most accurate forecasts for
the June outcome. "When
we look back, this will be seen as a recession," said Josh Shapiro, senior US
economist with consulting firm MFR. Pointing to official figures that showed new registrations
for unemployment benefits increased by 16,000 last week, he said: "If you are looking ahead, the
news is not going to get any better. "I think that for at least the next year the US economy is
going to be very weak. It's going to be weaker next year than it is now." He said that rather than rely on those
"two consecutive quarters of negative growth" that observers look for to declare a recession, consider instead measures such as payrolls and
industrial production. Official figures showed that the US unemployment rate remained steady at 5.5% while the number of unemployed last
month was 8.5 million, compared with 7 million a year ago. "Employment continued to fall in construction, manufacturing, and employment
services, while health care and mining added jobs," the department said in its employment summary. Mr Shapiro said there were no circuit-
breakers on the horizon, instead there was a growing global slowdown, with the impact being felt in Europe and Japan. "The idea of (the rest of
the world) decoupling from the US, I think, will be proven to be a fantasy," he said. Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan, said the
economy was "in the netherland world between growth and a genuine recession, but there still are downside risks". Standard and Poor's equity
analyst Howard Silverblatt said the sharemarket had lost $2.9 trillion since coming off its high in October. "Outside the financials and consumer
discretionary (sectors), companies are still in decent shape," Mr Silverblatt said. "Second-quarter earnings, if you exclude financials, will come in
on 9% gains and they have plenty of cash still on their books. "Therefore, they have the ability to ride out the storm, as long as the storm does not
turn into a hurricane." Despite that, the
market was still lame and the Government's stimulatory packages
were being spent on petrol and household goods. Consumers had only started adjusting to fuel
prices. "There is not a lot of support. No one wants to put their money down," he said. "Whether
we are in a recession or not, it sure looks like one. Consumers are reacting like it and markets are
reacting like it. Even if oil was to go down to $US130 a barrel … that's still a drastic change in
expenses and lifestyles." This week, the Starbucks chain announced the closure of 600 stores,
with the loss of 12,000 full and part-time jobs. Following that, the Los Angeles Times announced
it was cutting costs by about 15% because of declining revenue and announced a new round of
cuts costing 250 jobs. At least one other newspaper group is looking at a similar choke point in revenue and a round of job cuts.
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2WEEKERS
A2 Trade 1/2
An expansion of the trade deficit causes foreign investors to abandon the dollar, forcing interest
rate hikes, recession, and economic disaster
Shostak ’06 (Frank, Scholar at the Mises Institute, “Does the widening US trade deficit post a threat to the
economy?”, February 2nd, http://www.mises.org/story/2029)
Most economists are extremely alarmed about the effect of the expanding deficit on the
current account. In 2004 the deficit stood at $668 billion, or 5.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP). For 2005 we have
estimated that the deficit was around $788 billion, or 6.3% of GDP. As a result of the ballooning deficit, the value of US net external
liabilities, expressed at historical cost, jumped to $5.1 trillion in 2005 from $4.3 trillion in 2004. As a percentage of GDP, net external
liabilities climbed to 41% in 2005 from 37% in the previous year and 4.9% in 1980. It is held that this
increase in foreign
debt cannot go on forever. If the Americans do not begin reducing their trade deficit, there
will come a time when foreigners will become less willing to hold dollar denominated
assets. This in turn will weaken the US dollar. Consequently, once this happens the United States
will be forced to increase interest rates (maybe sharply) to continue to attract foreign investments.
Higher interest rates in turn will plunge the economy into recession. In short, given the size of
the current account deficit it is held that the US dollar has to plunge in a big way against most
currencies, and it is not possible to avoid a painful adjustment as a result of this. It would appear that the
trade deficit is a major economic problem that must be urgently addressed in order to avoid
serious economic disaster.
Trade Deficit is Unsustainable, it will Inevitably Destroy the Economy by 2010
Preeg ’00 (Ernest H., senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington and holds a Ph.D. in economics from the
New School for Social Research, member of U.S. delegations to the Kennedy and Uruguay Rounds of GATT trade
negotiations, “The Trade Deficit, the Dollar, and the U.S. National Interest”, Hudson Institute, p. 96-7)
This is a more elusive question, and the answer depends to a large extent on economic performance within the U.S. and other major
economies, and on policy actions by governments directly influencing trade and investment flows. The
dominant current
assessment is nevertheless that a very large current account deficit is sustainable for somewhat
longer, at least another year or two, and that a major downward adjustment in the deficit
with all that that implies for the U.S. and global economies is at most a threatening cloud
somewhere beyond the short-term horizon. The ubiquitous stock market analysts allude to
the longer-term unsustainability of the external deficit and the broad implications of a
downward adjustment, but they tend to limit their specific projections to how relatively small changes in the trade balance
impact on the short term domestic outlook with respect to labor markets, interest rates, and whether the Federal Reserve Board will raise or
lower interest rates by a quarter of a percent at its next meeting. The most thorough examination of this question is
by Catherine Mann in her book, Is the U.S. Trade Deficit Sustainable?,' and her conclusions are refreshingly specific :
The deficit is sustain able for another two or three years in view of "robust domestic
demand" in the U.S. economy and the special status of the United States in international
financial markets, but "the economic forces leading to a narrowing of the trade imbalance
are likely to build within and beyond that time frame," and her 2005 and 2010 projections under
alternative scenarios, including a 25 percent devaluation of the dollar, leads to the time zone of
unsustainability. Key sustainability benchmarks that are breached are the ratio of the foreign debt to GDP (27-39 percent in 2005
and 39-64 percent in 2010, depending on the scenario projected), and the sheer size of the foreign debt ($3.2-$4.4 trillion dollars in 2005 a
23
2WEEKERS
A2 Trade 2/2
Other nations will inevitably create bilateral and regional trade agreements – lending U.S.
support to the process is key to make it effective
Cooper ’05 (William H., Specialist in International Trade and Finance, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade
Division of the Congressional Research Service, “Free Trade Agreements: Impact on U.S. Trade and Implications
for U.S. Trade Policy”, CRS Report for Congress, June 24th, http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/49097.pdf)
The Bush Administration has affirmed the strategy of pursuing U.S. trade policy goals
through the multilateral trade system but is giving strong emphasis to building bilateral and
regional trade ties through free trade agreements. Lamenting that the United States was
involved in only two FTAs while most of its major trading partners were negotiating many
more, USTR Robert Zoellick stated early in the Administration: America’s absence from the proliferation of
trade accords hurts our exporters... If other countries go ahead with free trade agreements and the United States does not,
we must blame ourselves. We have to get back into the game and take the lead. We are certainly in a position to do so. Indeed, the United
States will be pursuing a number of regional free trade agreements in the years ahead, though not to the exclusion of global talks and the
WTO process. The fact that the United States can move on multiple fronts increases our leverage in the global round, just as the Clinton
Administration used the North American Free Trade Agreement and the APEC summit to help squeeze the European Union to complete
the Uruguay Round of GATT.
Turn: Trade Spreads Diseases
National Public Radio, March 12, 2001, (www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/mar/010309.disease.html.//)

More travel, more trade — globalization certainly has its benefits. But it has its victims too, and the results can be
deadly. As the global economy knits countries closer together, it becomes easier for diseases to spread through
states, over borders and across oceans — and to do serious damage to vulnerable human and animal
populations. American RadioWorks and NPR News present a series on this lethal side effect of globalization.
Disease Causes Extinction
John D. Steinbruner 98’ , Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, “Biological Weapons: A Plague Upon All Houses,”
FOREIGN POLICY n. 109, Winter 1997/1998, pp. 85-96, ASP.
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so far, the main lines
of defense against this threat have not depended on explicit policies or organized efforts. In the
long course of evolution, the human body has developed physical barriers and a biochemical immune system whose sophistication and
effectiveness exceed anything we could design or as yet even fully understand. But evolution is a sword that cuts both ways: New
diseases emerge, while old diseases mutate and adapt. Throughout history, there have been
epidemics during which human immunity has broken down on an epic scale. An infectious agent
believed to have been the plague bacterium killed an estimated 20 million people over a four-year period in the fourteenth century,
including nearly one-quarter of Western Europe's population at the time. Since its recognized appearance in 1981, some 20 variations of
the HIV virus have infected an estimated 29.4 million worldwide, with 1.5 million people currently dying of AIDS each year. Malaria,
tuberculosis, and cholera - once thought to be under control - are now making a comeback. As
we enter the twenty-first
century, changing conditions have enhanced the potential for widespread contagion. The rapid
growth rate of the total world population, the unprecedented freedom of movement across international borders, and scientific advances
that expand the capability for the deliberate manipulation of pathogens are all cause for worry that the problem might be greater in the
future than it has ever been in the past. The
threat of infectious pathogens is not just an issue of public
health, but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.
24
2WEEKERS
Aff Cards
Biodiversity
Alterations in biodiversity have been vital to human health, there needs to be a change in the way
we use energy to ensure all species survival.
Chivian and Bernstien, ’08 “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.” Oxford Univ. Jun. 2008.
c.528p.ed. by Eric Chivian, M.D., & Aaron Bernstein.
http://web10.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=sid+B6E5B31F%2D1B1C%2D4003%2D8C35%2D389D9FC9A209%40session
mgr7+dbs+buh%2Cbwh%2Cf3h+cp+1+BE2A&_us=mh+1+sl+%2D1+hs+False+or+Date+ss+SO+sm+KS+mdbs+buh%2Cbwh
%2Cf3h+ri+KAAACB5A00027123+dstb+KS+sel+False+frn+11+34B3&_uso=hd+False+tg%5B0+%2D+st%5B0+%2Dbiodiver
sity++AND++DE++%22BIODIVERSITY%22+db%5B2+%2Df3h+db%5B1+%2Dbwh+db%5B0+%2Dbuh+op%5B0+%2D+07
4C&fn=11&rn=11
This unique work, edited by two Harvard Medical School physicians, explores the symbiotic relationship
among the planet's species and how animals, insects, and plants on land and water have provided
enormous health benefits through the natural products they produce. Our quest for natural products
to treat and cure diseases is dependent upon this biodiversity of flora and fauna for the long term.
Alterations that result in pollution, habitat destruction, climate change, exploitation, radiation,
war, and conflict threaten the survival of many of the organisms that have been so vital to human
health. The editors illustrate this relationship by focusing on amphibians, bears, primates, gymnosperms, cone snails, sharks, and horseshoe
crabs whose contributions to human well-being are critical and the tragedy that would ensue if these organisms disappeared. They offer
strategies to change the way we eat, farm, travel, live, work, and use energy to sustain the ecological
complexity that allows all species to thrive. A powerhouse of information on a topic that concerns us all.
Highly recommended.
25
2WEEKERS
Famine
The implications of a global food crisis would have negative effects across the globe.
Hussain, 08 The Straits Times (Singapore), May 31, 2008 Saturday, Rising prices could spark war over food;
Multilateral efforts needed to avert global crisis: PM Lee., Zakir Hussain, Journalist
COUNTRIES need to work together to tackle the problem of rising food prices, Prime Minister Lee
Hsien Loong said yesterday. The issue has 'serious security implications', and could spark wars and failed
states. If a serious problem is to be averted, countries must improve productivity in farming.
Agencies like the World Bank and Food and Agriculture Organisation should promote research to increase yields, and agricultural trade must be
kept 'free and fair', he said. 'Only then will farmers everywhere have the right market signals and incentives to produce more food to meet
increased demand.' Mr Lee's remarks, made in a keynote speech at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue on security issues, come at a time when
humanitarian officials and other experts warn that rising food prices could destabilise governments. The issue is set to be discussed at sessions
today and tomorrow. Global
food prices have risen by half over the past year. Mr Lee specifically
cautioned food-producing countries against pursuing greater self-sufficiency and trying to keep
food production within their own borders. Such actions 'will cause greater international tensions',
he said, as they will make prices more unstable. 'Food importers will scramble to secure their
own needs and poor countries will suffer, not just greater privation but famine and starvation.'
Human ingenuity had deferred mathematician Thomas Malthus' forecast 200 years ago that population growth would outpace food production,
but such a scenario could happen in the future, he said. The
world's population is steadily growing and hundreds of
millions of Asians are becoming more affluent and consuming more and better food, 'crowding
out billions who are still poor', Mr Lee noted. And where food supply is concerned, 'misconceived green
policies to subsidise biofuels are encouraging farmers to grow fuel instead of food'. Climate change - a
security threat Mr Lee highlighted at last year's dialogue - will also see more extreme weather, reducing the supply of fresh water and fertile land,
he added. And while better harvests may moderate prices next year, he felt tighter supplies and higher prices will be a long-term reality. Poor
countries will be hardest hit by food shortages, and hunger and famine could lead to social
upheaval and strife. 'We are already experiencing a small foretaste of this today,' Mr Lee said, citing riots and unrest in several
developing countries. 'In vulnerable areas like Darfur and Bangladesh, large numbers of people are moving across borders, often illegally, in
search of food and water. Even without a food crisis, we have seen vicious xenophobic attacks in South Africa against immigrants fleeing
unstable regimes and desperate poverty,' he said. 'In
the event of a global food crisis, all this will play out on a
much bigger scale across the globe.'
26
2WEEKERS
Econ
The U.S. is still setting the pace for the global economy
VIEW; Pg. 4,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4100124656&format=GNBFI&sort=RELE
VANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4100124670&cisb=22_T4100124669&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=6742&docNo=9
But the consensus for decoupling is hardly complete. The United States is still setting the pace,
Mr. Achuthan said: ''We led the world up, and the rest of the world revved up after us. And areas like
Europe in particular will be slowing in the wake of our slowdown last year.'' The cars of the
global economic train are still tethered tightly together, in his view. ''It's less of a decoupling'' he said,
''and more like the jerking you get in a train when the first car stops, and then the other ones stop
after a bit of a lag.'' David Rosenberg, an economist at Merrill Lynch, said he believes that the apparent divergence in the
world's big economies has more to do with the nature of the growth slowdown in the United
States, which has stemmed not from a decline in consumption, but from a decline in investment
-- specifically in housing. ''Almost 100 percent of the U.S. slowdown has been due to the housing industry,'' Mr. Rosenberg said.
U.S. recession would still have dramatic global implications
VIEW; Pg. 4,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4100124656&format=GNBFI&sort=RELE
VANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4100124670&cisb=22_T4100124669&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=6742&docNo=9
But Mr. Baily added that weshouldn't be so quick to believe that the world economy is significantly more
independent of the United States than it was in the past. ''I don't think there's been a complete
decoupling,'' he said. ''A U.S. recession would dramatically slow growth in China and India.''
THE real test of the decoupling thesis, Mr. Rosenberg said, will come if consumer spending starts
slowing down. Consumer spending in the United States, which is still on the rise, accounts for an
astonishing 20 percent of the global economy, he said. ''I find it hard to believe,'' he said, ''that
the rest of the world is going to be immune to a consumer sector that's primarily responsible for
pulling in nearly $2 trillion of the world's output.'' Consumer spending hasn't fallen for a single quarter since the fourth
quarter of 1991. And while there are factors affecting domestic consumer spending -- higher interest
rates, lower housing prices, higher gas prices -- the indefatigable American spenders show few
signs of letting up. ''Before we can say there's a decoupling, we have to wait for a sneeze,'' Mr.
Rosenberg said. ''All we've had is a runny nose.''
27

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Impact Defense CNDI 2008

Impact Defense 1/1

The Killing off of Redundant Species Won’t Risk Extinction

Clover, 08,Charles Clover, Daily Telegraph Environment Editor 2008,

Orlow, 05 Elizabeth Orlow, Millersville University, Summer 2005,

Hegemony Rise Causes Proliferation

The Pentagon has a phrase, "asymmetric

Trade Deficit is Unsustainable, it will Inevitably Destroy the Economy by 2010

Turn: Trade Spreads Diseases

National Public Radio, March 12, 2001, (www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2001/mar/010309.disease.html.//)

Disease Causes Extinction

U.S. recession would still have dramatic global implications

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