Aff 2ac Ethanol 86

WNDI 2008

1 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Ethanol Aff 2ACs A2 DA’s Ethanol Aff 2ACs........................................................................................................................................................1

Ethanol Aff 2ACs...........................................................................................................................1 A2 Brazil Sugar Production Bad Arguments (1/1).....................................................................................................6

A2 Brazil Sugar Production Bad Arguments (1/1).....................................................................6 A2 Agenda Politics DA (1/3)......................................................................................................................................7

A2 Agenda Politics DA (1/3)..........................................................................................................7 A2 Agenda Politics DA (2/3)......................................................................................................................................8

A2 Agenda Politics DA (2/3)..........................................................................................................8 A2 Agenda Politics DA (3/3)......................................................................................................................................9

A2 Agenda Politics DA (3/3)..........................................................................................................9 A2 Agriculture DA (1/2)...........................................................................................................................................10

A2 Agriculture DA (1/2)...............................................................................................................10 A2 Agriculture DA (2/2)...........................................................................................................................................11

A2 Agriculture DA (2/2)...............................................................................................................11 A2 Amazon DA (1/2)................................................................................................................................................12

A2 Amazon DA (1/2)....................................................................................................................12 A2 Amazon DA (2/2)................................................................................................................................................13

A2 Amazon DA (2/2)....................................................................................................................13 A2 Australia DA (1/3)...............................................................................................................................................14

A2 Australia DA (1/3)...................................................................................................................14 A2 Australia DA (2/3)...............................................................................................................................................15

A2 Australia DA (2/3)...................................................................................................................15 A2 Australia DA (3/3)...............................................................................................................................................16

A2 Australia DA (3/3)...................................................................................................................16 A2 Backstopping DA (1/3).......................................................................................................................................17

A2 Backstopping DA (1/3)...........................................................................................................17 A2 Backstopping DA (2/3).......................................................................................................................................18

A2 Backstopping DA (2/3)...........................................................................................................18 A2 Backstopping DA (3/3).......................................................................................................................................19

A2 Backstopping DA (3/3)...........................................................................................................19 A2 Bizcon DA (1/1)..................................................................................................................................................20

A2 Bizcon DA (1/1).......................................................................................................................20 A2 Elections DA (1/4)...............................................................................................................................................21

WNDI 2008

2 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Elections DA (1/4)...................................................................................................................21 A2 Elections DA (2/4)...............................................................................................................................................22

A2 Elections DA (2/4)...................................................................................................................22 A2 Elections DA (3/4)...............................................................................................................................................23

A2 Elections DA (3/4)...................................................................................................................23 A2 Elections DA (4/4)...............................................................................................................................................24

A2 Elections DA (4/4)...................................................................................................................24 A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (1/2)..................................................................................................................................25

A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (1/2).....................................................................................................25 A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (2/2)..................................................................................................................................26

A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (2/2).....................................................................................................26 A2 Japan DA (1/2)....................................................................................................................................................27

A2 Japan DA (1/2)........................................................................................................................27 A2 Japan DA (2/2)....................................................................................................................................................28

A2 Japan DA (2/2)........................................................................................................................28 A2 Jobs DA (1/2)......................................................................................................................................................29

A2 Jobs DA (1/2)...........................................................................................................................29 A2 Jobs DA (2/2)......................................................................................................................................................30

A2 Jobs DA (2/2)...........................................................................................................................30 A2 Mexico DA (1/2).................................................................................................................................................31

A2 Mexico DA (1/2)......................................................................................................................31 A2 Mexico DA (2/2).................................................................................................................................................32

A2 Mexico DA (2/2)......................................................................................................................32 A2 Natural Gas DA (1/3)..........................................................................................................................................33

A2 Natural Gas DA (1/3).............................................................................................................33 A2 Natural Gas DA (2/3)..........................................................................................................................................34

A2 Natural Gas DA (2/3).............................................................................................................34 A2 Natural Gas DA (3/3)..........................................................................................................................................35

A2 Natural Gas DA (3/3).............................................................................................................35 A2 Oil DA (1/5)........................................................................................................................................................36

A2 Oil DA (1/5).............................................................................................................................36 A2 Oil DA (2/5)........................................................................................................................................................37

A2 Oil DA (2/5).............................................................................................................................37 A2 Oil DA (3/5)........................................................................................................................................................38

A2 Oil DA (3/5).............................................................................................................................38 A2 Oil DA (4/5)........................................................................................................................................................39

WNDI 2008

3 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (4/5).............................................................................................................................39 A2 Oil DA (5/5)........................................................................................................................................................40

A2 Oil DA (5/5).............................................................................................................................40 A2 Saudi Oil DA (1/3)..............................................................................................................................................41

A2 Saudi Oil DA (1/3)..................................................................................................................41 A2 Saudi Oil DA (2/3)..............................................................................................................................................42

A2 Saudi Oil DA (2/3)..................................................................................................................42 A2 Saudi Oil DA (3/3)..............................................................................................................................................43

A2 Saudi Oil DA (3/3)..................................................................................................................43 A2 Slavery DA (1/4).................................................................................................................................................44

A2 Slavery DA (1/4).....................................................................................................................44 A2 Slavery DA (2/4).................................................................................................................................................45

A2 Slavery DA (2/4).....................................................................................................................45 A2 Slavery DA (3/4).................................................................................................................................................46

A2 Slavery DA (3/4).....................................................................................................................46 A2 Slavery DA (4/4).................................................................................................................................................47

A2 Slavery DA (4/4).....................................................................................................................47 A2 Spending DA (1/3)..............................................................................................................................................48

A2 Spending DA (1/3)..................................................................................................................48 A2 Spending DA (2/3)..............................................................................................................................................49

A2 Spending DA (2/3)..................................................................................................................49 A2 Spending DA (3/3)..............................................................................................................................................50

A2 Spending DA (3/3)..................................................................................................................50 A2 T – In the US.......................................................................................................................................................51

A2 T – In the US...........................................................................................................................51 A2 T – Incentives......................................................................................................................................................52

A2 T – Incentives..........................................................................................................................52 A2 T – 1AR Cards.....................................................................................................................................................53

A2 T – 1AR Cards........................................................................................................................53 A2 Consult CPs (1/3)................................................................................................................................................54

A2 Consult CPs (1/3)....................................................................................................................54 A2 Consult CPs (2/3)................................................................................................................................................55

A2 Consult CPs (2/3)....................................................................................................................55 A2 Consult CPs (3/3)................................................................................................................................................56

A2 Consult CPs (3/3)....................................................................................................................56 A2 Consult China (1/1).............................................................................................................................................57

WNDI 2008

4 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Consult China (1/1)................................................................................................................57 A2 Command CP (1/3)..............................................................................................................................................58

A2 Command CP (1/3).................................................................................................................58 A2 Command CP (2/3)..............................................................................................................................................59

A2 Command CP (2/3).................................................................................................................59 A2 Command CP (3/3)..............................................................................................................................................60

A2 Command CP (3/3).................................................................................................................60 A2 Trade CP (1/3).....................................................................................................................................................61

A2 Trade CP (1/3).........................................................................................................................61 A2 Trade CP (2/3).....................................................................................................................................................62

A2 Trade CP (2/3).........................................................................................................................62 A2 Trade CP (3/3).....................................................................................................................................................63

A2 Trade CP (3/3).........................................................................................................................63 A2 K 2AC (1/4).........................................................................................................................................................64

A2 K 2AC (1/4).............................................................................................................................64 A2 K 2AC (2/4).........................................................................................................................................................65

A2 K 2AC (2/4).............................................................................................................................65 A2 K 2AC (3/4).........................................................................................................................................................66

A2 K 2AC (3/4).............................................................................................................................66 A2 K 2AC (4/4).........................................................................................................................................................67

A2 K 2AC (4/4).............................................................................................................................67 A2 Capitalism K (1/4)...............................................................................................................................................68

A2 Capitalism K (1/4)..................................................................................................................68 A2 Capitalism K (2/4)...............................................................................................................................................69

A2 Capitalism K (2/4)..................................................................................................................69 A2 Capitalism K (3/4)...............................................................................................................................................70

A2 Capitalism K (3/4)..................................................................................................................70 A2 Capitalism K (4/4)...............................................................................................................................................71

A2 Capitalism K (4/4)..................................................................................................................71 A2 Neoliberalism K (1/5).........................................................................................................................................72

A2 Neoliberalism K (1/5).............................................................................................................72 A2 Neoliberalism K (2/5).........................................................................................................................................73

A2 Neoliberalism K (2/5).............................................................................................................73 A2 Neoliberalism K (3/5).........................................................................................................................................74

A2 Neoliberalism K (3/5).............................................................................................................74 A2 Neoliberalism K (4/5).........................................................................................................................................75

WNDI 2008

5 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Neoliberalism K (4/5).............................................................................................................75 A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5).........................................................................................................................................76

A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5).............................................................................................................76 A2 Realism / Security K (1/6)...................................................................................................................................77

A2 Realism / Security K (1/6)......................................................................................................77 A2 Realism / Security K (2/6)...................................................................................................................................78

A2 Realism / Security K (2/6)......................................................................................................78 A2 Realism / Security K (3/6)...................................................................................................................................79

A2 Realism / Security K (3/6)......................................................................................................79 A2 Realism / Security K (4/6)...................................................................................................................................80

A2 Realism / Security K (4/6)......................................................................................................80 A2 Realism / Security K (5/6)...................................................................................................................................81

A2 Realism / Security K (5/6)......................................................................................................81 A2 Realism / Security K (6/6)...................................................................................................................................82

A2 Realism / Security K (6/6)......................................................................................................82 A2 Amazon DA.........................................................................................................................................................83

A2 Amazon DA.............................................................................................................................83 A2 Amazon/Slavery DA...........................................................................................................................................84

A2 Amazon/Slavery DA...............................................................................................................84 A2 Slavery DA..........................................................................................................................................................85

A2 Slavery DA..............................................................................................................................85 Plan  Doha.............................................................................................................................................................86

Plan  Doha................................................................................................................................86 Doha Uniqueness......................................................................................................................................................87

Doha Uniqueness..........................................................................................................................87 Relations Uniqueness................................................................................................................................................88

Relations Uniqueness...................................................................................................................88 Trade Good – A2 Development................................................................................................................................89

Trade Good – A2 Development...................................................................................................89 Trade Good – A2 Environment.................................................................................................................................90

Trade Good – A2 Environment...................................................................................................90

WNDI 2008

6 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Brazil Sugar Production Bad Arguments (1/1) Brazil will expand ethanol production rapidly with or without tariff Dan Buglass, Rural Affairs Editor, 4/24/2008, “Ethanol Fuels Growth of Brazilian Agriculture,” Lexis Prime Ministers Gordon Brown's statement that the UK needs to reassess its commitment of producing biofuels from land formerly devoted to crops for food production will have come as no great surprise to those who have questioned the economics of the headlong rush to renewable sources of energy. Meanwhile, Brazil is pressing ahead from its already leading position as the world's largest producer of ethanol. This rapidly expanding industry is based on sugar cane, with suitable land for this crop now changing hands at up to GBP 8,000 per hectare - a valuation which sits very close to the top of the Scottish market. But the reality is that serious investors in agricultural land, including operators from New Zealand, Australia and North America, have now grasped the fact that production costs in Brazil are much lower than in most of the developed world. A group of 16 members of the Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs visited Brazil last December, largely as a result of sponsorship from the Cameron Trust. The trust was set up by John Cameron, a former president of NFU Scotland, and his wife Margaret following the sale of the major part of their extensive farming operations two years ago for price that must have approached GBP 10 million. The Camerons have no immediate family, but have a reputation of steering the younger generation in the right direction: those chosen must prove their worth. Andrew Stevenson from Fife was one of the group which visited Brazil. He reported this week on the scale and future potential of the sugar and ethanol industries in South America. He said: "Sugar cane is one of the biggest growth sectors within Brazilian agriculture for many reasons, with energy security and environmental concerns being two of the main drivers. Renewable sources of energy in Brazil are not uncommon with 45 per cent of the requirements being fed from these." But that is just a beginning, according to Stevenson, who was clearly impressed with what he saw during the ten-day tour. He said: "Currently there are 350 sugar-cane plants operating in Brazil producing 20 billion litres of ethanol and 30 million tonnes of sugar. By 2012 it is predicted that there will be 412 plants producing 38 billion litres of ethanol with an exportable surplus of 10.5 billion litres. "This source of energy, however, requires land to produce it. Fortunately this is something that Brazil has in abundance. Currently 6.3 million hectares are cultivated for sugar cane production and projections show that by 2020 that will have doubled." That expansion is almost certainly to be at the cost of a further reduction in the Amazon rainforest, an exceedingly touchy subject. On a world scale Brazil accounts for 38 per cent of ethanol production but, in terms of exports, Brazil is by far the largest player with over 65 per cent of the market. Stevenson added: "Sugar cane is undoubtedly the most competitive feedstock to produce ethanol, with higher yields, lower costs which are competitive with crude oil at dollars 40 per barrel, and a very positive energy and environmental balance."

WNDI 2008

7 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Agenda Politics DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1AC Yacobucci evidence says that the United States is already importing ethanol duty free from the CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U - COFTA will pass – congressional delegation Farm Futures, 7/17/2008, “Schafer Leads Congressional Delegation to Colombia,” http://www.farmfutures.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=CD26BEDECA4A4946A1283CC7786AEB5A&nm=News&typ e=news&mod=News&mid=9A02E3B96F2A415ABC72CB5F516B4C10&tier=3&nid=8425B28418D44B1C9D62E 5A504C6176B A Congressional delegation will leave July 18 for Cartegena, Colombia on a trip to showcase the country's advances in democracy, security and human rights. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer will lead the bi-partisan group and try to emphasize the importance of ratifying the pending free trade agreement with Colombia. "Colombia is an important friend and trading partner of the United States," Schafer said. "This trip will provide Congressional members with an invaluable opportunity to see first hand the Colombian government's success in bringing about stability and economic growth, and how the CTPA will help to continue this progress. We will also be able to see new markets for U.S. agricultural exports." Trade benefits for U.S. agricultural producers in this market will be achieved through immediate elimination of variable tariffs, with half of U.S. exports entering duty-free as soon as the CTPA is implemented, most tariffs being phased out in 15 years, and all within 19 years. In calendar year 2007, the United States shipped a record $1.2 billion worth of agricultural products to Colombia. Colombia is also an important agricultural supplier to the U.S. marketplace. Major U.S. imports from Colombia include coffee, nursery products, cut flowers and bananas and plantains.

3. N/U – COFTA will pass – newspaper endorsements, democratic switches, and Uribe popularity NYT, Steven R. Weisman, 7/13/2008, “Colombia Trade Deal is Threatened,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/washington/13trade.html?ref=americas To President Bush, the free-trade deal his administration negotiated with Colombia has something for everyone. If approved by Congress, it would open a new market for American produce and manufactured goods. Unlike other trade deals, it would not threaten American jobs, because imports from Colombia are already coming in nearly duty-free. And it would have the added benefit of shoring up a respected ally, President Álvaro Uribe, who has made progress in taming the narcotics traffickers, right-wing death squads and left-wing guerrillas that had almost made Colombia a failed state. In recent months, nearly 100 newspapers in the United States have endorsed the Colombia trade agreement. So have many top Democrats, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago. And Mr. Uribe, who was already popular in Congress, was widely lionized after the dramatic rescue of hostages in Colombia on July 2.

WNDI 2008

8 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Agenda Politics DA (2/3) 4. Turn - Empirically plan is unpopular – farm states and ag lobbies Council on Hemispheric Relations, 7/24/2007, “Aspiring To Leadership: Brazil, President Lula and SugarCane Ethanol,” http://www.coha.org/2007/08/aspiring-to-leadership-brazil-president-lula-and-sugar-cane-ethanol/ The burdensome import tax has been challenged in the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions. The latest attempt to rescind it was on June 20, when Republican Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) led a push to overturn the tariff, citing the current over-reliance of the U.S. on Venezuelan oil as his motivation: “I would rather buy ethanol from Brazil than oil from Venezuela. It just makes a lot more geopolitical sense in how we protect ourselves.” Brazil’s friendly geopolitical position weighs in favor of its worldwide strategies importance which inevitably will service the cause of the potential improvement of the country’s strengthened economy. But at the same time, its ability to threaten the U.S.-based corn ethanol methodology that would come from the lifting of the U.S. tariffs can not be ignored. However, the measure affecting ethanol, known on Capitol Hill as part of the “farm bill,” was shot down in the Senate by a vote of 56-36 in favor of continuing the tariff, thus protecting the price of U.S. corn. Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota explained his nay vote: “Eliminating the ethanol tariff would send a mixed signal to producers, investors and farmers who sell their products to ethanol plants.” Senator Thune’s thoughts appear to be the prevailing sentiment within the U.S. Congress. Lewis Perelman, a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute in Washington, is not very optimistic that any transformation will be revealed in the short term. During an interview with COHA, he explained, “I don’t see the political landscape changing anytime in the foreseeable future. Politicians and American citizens alike seem content with the way things are.” To date, there has been no realistic threat to the survival of the ethanol tariff in the House or the Senate. Most members of Congress believe that releasing the import tariff would be a disservice to American corn farmers more than it would abet the welfare of the American public, as rationalized by the recurring refusal to cancel the ethanol tariff.

5. Turn - Sugar lobby opposes plan and is strong Forbes, Joshua Zumbrun, 6/30/2008, “Sugar’s Sweet Deal,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/27/florida-sugar-crist-biz-beltway-cx_jz_0630sugar.html For now, discussion of a free trade deal involving the U.S. and Brazil is stalled, but American sugar producers worry that if such an agreement were put in place, Brazil’s sugar industry would gain a stronger place in the U.S. market. A separate tariff applies to Brazil’s foreign ethanol--one that domestic ethanol producers are keen to keep in place. Nonetheless, the U.S. sugar industry remains strong in Washington. "They have been a notoriously powerful lobby for decades and decades," says Cato's Edwards. As an explanation for sugar's lavish subsidies in the 2008 farm bill, which recently became law after a veto override, look no further than Congress' Agriculture Committees. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top beneficiaries of big sugar's influence for the current election cycle include Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa ($35,400), House Agriculture Committee member Tim Mahoney, D-Fla. ($33,923) and committee chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ($28,900). The U.S. Department of Agriculture says roughly 54% of total U.S. sugar-beet acreage is in the Red River Valley between Minnesota and North Dakota. North Dakota's sole Congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy, has been the greatest beneficiary of donations from sugar-related political-action committees for the 2008 election cycle, taking in $26,500, the Center for Responsive Politics says. Peterson, whose district in western Minnesota stretches along the Red River Valley, is No. 2, with $26,400 in PAC money. As a governor, Crist has no vote on federal farm subsidies--he can only influence what's done with Floridians' tax money. And federal taxpayers? They're still paying to support sugar and keep prices high at the store. Sweet.

6. No I/L – 1NC Inside U.S. Trade evidence says that Pelosi will be willing to trade CFTA for TAA passage and housing bill not ethanol tariff.

WNDI 2008

9 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Agenda Politics DA (3/3) Other issues key – stimulus NYT, Steven R. Weisman, 7/13/2008, “Colombia Trade Deal is Threatened,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/washington/13trade.html?ref=americas As the price for approval of the Colombia deal, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and a California Democrat, demands specifically that the administration expand programs for American workers. She blocked the agreement from coming to a vote in April, infuriating Mr. Bush. Her aides have not set a specific price, but some Democrats say it would have to be at least $30 billion for items such as worker training, children’s health programs, unemployment benefits and expenditures on roads, bridges and infrastructure.

7. Case turns DA – 1AC relations evidence says plan is key to check Chavez will collapse US hegemony. 8. Other issues key – stimulus NYT, Steven R. Weisman, 7/13/2008, “Colombia Trade Deal is Threatened,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/washington/13trade.html?ref=americas As the price for approval of the Colombia deal, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker and a California Democrat, demands specifically that the administration expand programs for American workers. She blocked the agreement from coming to a vote in April, infuriating Mr. Bush. Her aides have not set a specific price, but some Democrats say it would have to be at least $30 billion for items such as worker training, children’s health programs, unemployment benefits and expenditures on roads, bridges and infrastructure.

9. Reducing tariffs is key to leadership Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, 5/31/2008, “The Real World: Oil & Shifting Geopolitics,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed053108a.cfm To stave off geopolitical and economic decline and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the U.S. needs to recognize the damage high oil prices are doing, and to design a strategy to change the geo-economic equation. In the short term, the U.S. needs to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska, will help. More production from unconventional oil sources, such as oil sands and oil shale, is also crucial. A coal and nuclear power build-up are necessary as well. The U.S. Congress should also abolish the corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. A budgetary discipline by the Congress, coupled with a steady repayment of our domestic and foreign national debt will go a long way to restore the U.S. global economic clout. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors, such as deficit spending, the loss of industrial base, and stifling innovation and entrepreneurship. This does not have to be the case with the United States. The U.S. should not be intimidated - or bankrupted - out of existence.

10. No impact – Huffington Post evidence doesn’t say the US has high HR credibility in the status quo and it doesn’t say that the deal kills military credibility which is what they’re impact evidence is talking about. 11. Incentives coming now – Senate Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110) A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other purposes

WNDI 2008

10 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Agriculture DA (1/2) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. Case turns DA – 1AC Shaefer and Lieberman evidence says that lifting the tariff would bring down food prices like corn and grain. 3. Removing Brazilian ethanol tariffs would decrease food prices Brett D. Schaefer, Jay Kingham Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and Brian M. Riedl, 6/26/2008, “Addressing the Global Food Crisis,” The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/bg2151.cfm Eliminate ethanol and other biofuel mandates and remove tariffs on ethanol and other biofuel imports. Ethanol and other biofuel mandates adopted in the U.S. and many European countries have artificially increased demand for food crops and contributed to the current food crisis. Eliminating these mandates would immediately expand the amount of food available for consumption. Eliminating import tariffs on ethanol would also reduce the amount of food used to manufacture ethanol and other biofuels. For example, the U.S. levies a tariff of 2.5 percent plus 54 cents on each gallon of imported ethanol. This tariff protects domestic production of corn ethanol by preventing imports of less expensive ethanol, largely sugar ethanol from Brazil. As World Bank President Zoellick has noted, "Cutting tariffs on ethanol imported into the US and European Union markets would encourage the output of more efficient sugarcane biofuels that do not compete directly with food production and expand opportunities for poorer countries, including in Africa."[16]

4. No Link – 1NC link evidence is talking about regulations like the carbon tax or RPS not removing a tariff. 5. World bank and leading economists agree lifting tariff would relieve food prices Des Moines Register, Philip Brasher, 7/3/2008, “U.S. urged to import, not make, ethanol,” Truth about Trade & Technology, http://www.truthabouttrade.org/content/view/12014/54/ The skyrocketing price of grain is bringing new pressure on American and European leaders to ease biofuel incentives, including the U.S. tariff on imported ethanol. The World Bank on Wednesday called for the United States and the European Union to roll back biofuel mandates, subsidies and tariffs as part of a 10-point plan to deal with soaring food costs in poor countries. The plan, which also proposes doubling agricultural aid, was prepared for the Group of Eight economic summit meeting next week in Japan. "We're starting to see a breakdown in international agricultural and food markets," the bank's president, Robert Zoellick, said in an appearance at a Washington think tank. Meanwhile, a coalition of livestock producers and food companies called on President Bush to lift the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. The new farm bill extended the tariff through 2010. The organizations said that increasing imports of ethanol would hold down the price of grain for animal feed and food ingredients. The groups include the National Pork Producers Council, the American Bakers Association, dairy giant Dean Foods Co., meatpacker Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. The Iowa Turkey Federation also is among the 35 groups that endorsed the proposal. Removing the tariff on ethanol imports "will alleviate a portion of the unnecessary feed and food price inflationary pressures that are adversely affecting our economic well-being and American consumers," the groups wrote. The Brazilian ethanol industry is launching a small advertising campaign this weekend in Florida and California to generate public interest in repealing the tariff. Brazilian ethanol, which is distilled from sugar, cost about 90 cents a gallon to produce in 2007, compared with $1.70 for corn-based ethanol, according to the World Bank. Phasing out biofuel subsidies and reducing tariffs "would allow biofuels to be produced from the most efficient feedstock by the lowest-cost producers, removing pressure from food prices," the bank said. A spokesman for Bush, Scott Stanzel, said the White House is "always reviewing policies to best address the needs of the country."

WNDI 2008

11 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Agriculture DA (2/2) Removing the tariff would reduce corn prices The Hill, Jim Snyder, 7/7/2008, “Food, livestock groups push policies to reduce corn prices,” The Hill, http://thehill.com/business--lobby/food-livestock-groups-push-policies-to-reduce-corn-prices-2008-07-07.html Federal spending watchdogs have also signed on to a letter urging suspension of the tariff. But livestock producers that rely on corn as a feed grain, soft drink makers that use corn as a sweetener and food manufacturers that blame corn-based ethanol for raising the price of one of their main ingredients are the main backers of the lobbying campaign. “Feed prices and supply are press5ing dairy, livestock and poultry producers to endure one of the greatest adverse economic situations in decades, which is ultimately adding unnecessary economic pressure to all Americans,” 36 groups wrote President Bush last week. The American Meat Institute , Coca-Cola , the National Chicken Council and the Grocery Manufacturers Association were among the groups and businesses that signed the letter. The letter urged the president to suspend the ethanol tariff to “foster downward pressure for ethanol and its feedstock.” Dave Warner, a spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council , said farmers have lost on average $30 a pig between October 2007 and April 2008. While rising energy costs have contributed to the tough economic times, the rising price of corn is more to blame, Warner said. He noted feed prices account for 70 percent of the costs to raise a pig to market. The pork producers brought agriculture economists and farm lenders to a meeting with United States Department of Agriculture officials two weeks ago to talk about how high corn prices have hurt the livestock industry and could make it harder for producers to get operating loans in the future.

Lifting the tariff would decrease food prices Anne Korin, editor of Energy Security, 6/30/2008, “Thinking Outside the Barrel About OPEC and the Oil Weapon,” The Cutting Edge, http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=601 In Brazil, where ethanol is widely used, the share of flex fuel vehicles in new car sales is estimated to be 90 percent this year. These cars are manufactured by the same automakers that sell to the U.S. market and entail no size, power, or safety compromise by consumers. The proliferation of flex fuel vehicles in Brazil has driven fuel competition at the pump such that the Brazilian oil industry has been forced to keep gasoline prices sufficiently low to compete with ethanol in order not to lose more market share. Expanding U.S. fuel choices to include biofuels imported from developing countries can actually help ameliorate world poverty and hunger. Sugar, from which ethanol can be cheaply and efficiently produced, is now grown in 100 countries—many of which are poor and on the receiving end of U.S. development aid. Encouraging these countries to increase their output and become fuel suppliers (and by removing our protectionist 54 cent-per-gallon Brazilian sugar ethanol tariff) could have far-reaching implications for their economic development. By creating economic interdependence with countries in Africa, Asia, and the southern hemisphere, the United States can strengthen ties with the developing world, help reduce poverty, and wean itself from oil. The International Energy Agency has noted that biofuels are key to keeping the lid on an overheated transportation fuel market. According to Merrill Lynch, without the increase in biofuels production, oil prices would have been 15 percent higher, which at current oil prices translates into a savings of over $80 billion a year to the U.S. economy. Critics continue to hammer America's $4 billion biofuels program as expensive. However, if it generated $80 billion in fuel savings, the program yielded a $76 billion return. Moreover, it sent $4 billion to America's farmers instead of to petro-dictators in the Middle East.

WNDI 2008

12 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Amazon DA (1/2) 1. N/U – the US already imports Brazilian ethanol duty free from CAFTA/CBI states and cooperates with Brazil over ethanol in the status quo that’s our Seelke and Yacobucci evidence. 2. N/U Yacobucci evidence says that Brazil is expanding its ethanol industry right now at its maximum rater in the status quo plan doesn’t change this. 3. Brazilian ethanol does not lead to reduction of the Amazon The Economist, Ribeirao Preto, 6/26/2008, “Lean, green and not mean,” The Economist, http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11632886 Take this last point first. Demand for ethanol is growing fast in Brazil because 90% of new cars have flex-fuel engines that can run on any mixture of petrol and ethanol. Even so, ethanol remains cheap. This is because producers have invested in expanding capacity (see chart), partly because they hope for export markets, but mainly because they reckon they must sell at a 30% discount to petrol to keep the custom of Brazilians. The price of petrol has not risen for three years because the government has opted to hold it down. This year Brazil hopes to export up to 3 billion litres of ethanol to the United States. But this market depends on the corn price being so high as to make it profitable to pay the import tariff. That was not the case last year and it may not be the case next year. Brazil could expand output much more, but will do so only when export markets are less unpredictable. That is because supplying them requires investment in pipelines and port equipment. For those worried about climate change, Brazilian ethanol is worth buying only if it is as green as it claims to be. It is certainly much greener than its corn-based rival in America: it packs 8.2 times as much energy as is used in its production, compared with just 1.5 times for corn ethanol, according to the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a Washington thinktank. Some greens say that the spread of sugar is deforesting the Amazon. That is not true. The vast majority of the sugar crop is grown thousands of miles away from the forest, in São Paulo state or the northeast. Some 65% of new planting of sugar cane has been on land that was previously pasture; the rest was previously used for other crops, according to Conab, a government agency.

4. Economic factors and regulation prevent Amazon deforestation Reuters, Raymond Colitt, 7/11/2007, “U.S. officials: Brazil ethanol doesn’t harm Amazon,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSHO18246220070711?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel =0 Brazil's ethanol production is not devastating the Amazon rain forest or hiking food prices, U.S. energy officials said on Wednesday. "There is a huge misconception internationally that in Brazil, we're cutting down the rain forest to (make) fuels, which is not true," said Dan Arvizu, director of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "Done responsibly (ethanol production) does not have to (compete) with food or impact the environment," Arvizu told reporters in the capital Brasilia. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had said on Monday that European competitors were trying to undermine Brazil's biofuels production by raising environmental concerns. Environmentalists fear increased sugar cane production for ethanol could push other crops, such as soybeans, deeper into the Amazon rain forest. Oil and natural gas producers such as Venezuela and Bolivia along with Cuba have also openly criticized U.S. and Brazilian ethanol production, saying they would increase food prices and world hunger. The United States is the world's largest producer of ethanol, which it derives from corn. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of ethanol. It launched a program to fuel cars with ethanol derived from sugar cane 30 years ago. Both countries signed an accord in March to jointly forge a global ethanol market and promote its production in Latin America and the Caribbean. In Europe and the United States biofuel production costs far more than in Brazil and is highly subsidized. Cultivating sugar cane in the rain forest's tropical climate makes no business sense, said Gregory Manuel, International Energy Coordinator at the U.S. State Department. "Economics don't drive ethanol production in the rain forest. Yield rates in very wet environments are roughly half that in temperate environments," he said. Both officials spoke on the sidelines of a U.S.Brazilian business summit in Brasilia. Production growth must be monitored carefully to avoid unwanted consequences, said Arvizu. But he added that the current global market for ethanol was still far from what could be produced sustainably.

WNDI 2008

13 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Amazon DA (2/2) 5. Case turns DA – relations are key to Amazon forest preservation. 6. US/Brazil cooperation is key to the Amazon and human survival Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Hampden Macbeth, Philip Morrow, and Joseph Taves, 5/25/2005, “Amazon Rainforest, Barbados and Haiti and the Bolton Nomination,” http://www.coha.org/2005/05/amazonrainforest-barbados-and-haiti-and-the-bolton-nomination/ News reports on May 19 announced that more than 10,000 square miles of the Amazon rainforest had been deforested over the last year – an area the size of Massachusetts. Not only is the Amazon rainforest an area of breathtaking beauty and unparalleled biodiversity, through the process of photosynthesis it also ensures the survival of the human race, with its billions of trees producing much of the world’s supply of oxygen. While ultimately Brazil’s progressive president, Luiz Inácio “Lula”da Silva, bears the brunt of this fiasco, the U.S. and European nations also generously share in the responsibility for the destruction of vast swaths of the country’s rainforest. They have promoted the neo-liberal economic polices that persuaded Brazil to rely on the strength of its constantly expanding agricultural sector to pay down its suffocating international debt. As a result, loggers have felled hundreds of thousands of hectares of trees and farmers have cleared vast tracks of the rainforest to grow crops. Just as was the case under former President Henrique Cardosa, the negative repercussions which result from this arboreal homicide, were relatively mild because – despite presidential declarations to the contrary – Brazil’s environmental polices under Lula have been much more bark than bite. Brasilia, under the “people’s president” has failed to fulfill its commitment to prevent further destruction of the Amazon rainforest as promised last year when Lula announced a $140 million campaign to preserve and ensure better policing of the fragile habitat. However, external economic factors also have certainly played a role in persuading the government to turn a blind eye to the desecration of its own rainforest. It is critical to our common planet’s survival that the U.S. and the EU develop a comprehensive plan with teeth, in cooperation with Brazil, in order to provide the financial incentives necessary to preserve the rainforest, while also strengthening Brazil’s competitiveness in the global economy. The U.S. and the EU would be wise to accept this responsibility in order to temper the dangerous extremes involved in their push for globalization and the maximization of free trade that threatens the very integrity of the environment, if not the very survival of the human race.

7. Brazil will expand ethanol production rapidly with or without tariff Dan Buglass, Rural Affairs Editor, 4/24/2008, “Ethanol Fuels Growth of Brazilian Agriculture,” Lexis Prime Ministers Gordon Brown's statement that the UK needs to reassess its commitment of producing biofuels from land formerly devoted to crops for food production will have come as no great surprise to those who have questioned the economics of the headlong rush to renewable sources of energy. Meanwhile, Brazil is pressing ahead from its already leading position as the world's largest producer of ethanol. This rapidly expanding industry is based on sugar cane, with suitable land for this crop now changing hands at up to GBP 8,000 per hectare - a valuation which sits very close to the top of the Scottish market. But the reality is that serious investors in agricultural land, including operators from New Zealand, Australia and North America, have now grasped the fact that production costs in Brazil are much lower than in most of the developed world. A group of 16 members of the Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs visited Brazil last December, largely as a result of sponsorship from the Cameron Trust. The trust was set up by John Cameron, a former president of NFU Scotland, and his wife Margaret following the sale of the major part of their extensive farming operations two years ago for price that must have approached GBP 10 million. The Camerons have no immediate family, but have a reputation of steering the younger generation in the right direction: those chosen must prove their worth. Andrew Stevenson from Fife was one of the group which visited Brazil. He reported this week on the scale and future potential of the sugar and ethanol industries in South America. He said: "Sugar cane is one of the biggest growth sectors within

Brazilian agriculture for many reasons, with energy security and environmental concerns being two of the main drivers. Renewable sources of energy in Brazil are not uncommon with 45 per cent of the requirements being fed from these." But that is just a beginning, according to Stevenson, who was clearly impressed with what he saw during the ten-day tour. He said: "Currently there are 350 sugar-cane plants operating in Brazil producing 20 billion litres of ethanol and 30 million tonnes of sugar. By 2012 it is predicted that there will be 412 plants producing 38 billion litres of ethanol with an exportable surplus of 10.5 billion litres. "This source of energy, however, requires land to produce it. Fortunately this is something that Brazil has in abundance. Currently 6.3 million hectares are cultivated for sugar cane production and projections show that by 2020 that will have doubled." That expansion is almost certainly to be at the cost of a further reduction in the Amazon rainforest, an exceedingly touchy subject. On a world scale Brazil accounts for 38 per cent of ethanol production but, in terms of exports, Brazil is by far the largest player with over 65 per cent of the market. Stevenson added: "Sugar cane is undoubtedly the most competitive feedstock to produce ethanol, with higher yields, lower costs which are competitive with crude oil at dollars 40 per barrel, and a very positive energy and environmental balance."

WNDI 2008

14 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Australia DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U – Incentives coming now – Senate Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110) A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other purposes

3. No I/L – Coal isn’t key to the Australian economy. Other mining industries are key like uranium and silicon, their price evidence doesn’t even use the word coal. The Roberts evidence is generic but its talking about regulations and tax increases not a decrease in taxes. 4. N/U – Australian mining industry set to fail – their author Richard Price, Editor of EnergyMe.com, 7 July 2008, “Mining sector to keep Australian economy from stalling”, 07/27/08, http://www.energyme.com/business/2008/20080200219.htm The Mining in Australia, 2008 to 2023 report notes several key risks to the positive outlook. On the investment side, there are a number of downside risks including sharply rising costs for materials and equipment and skilled labour shortages. One-off events such as the Varanus Island gas explosion, which has constrained gas supply in Western Australia, also have the potential to impact the sector. However, Hart notes these risks will tend to keep commodity prices high in the short-term, hence extending the minerals investment cycle. A more serious risk to the longevity and extent of the mining boom is a severe downturn in the Chinese economy, which would affect prices and investment. China accounts for a substantial portion of the growth in metals demand, according to BIS Shrapnel, and a manufactured slowdown in the Chinese economy to prevent over-heating and an inflationary spiral could cause a sharper than expected downturn in commodity prices.

5. Australia’s economy is failing causing unemployment rates to skyrocket Nick Beams, SEP Senate Candidate For NSW, 10 Sept 1998, “A tacit agreement to deny reality” World Socialist Website, 07/26/08, http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/sep1998/unem-s10.shtml If the issues were not so serious, the attempts to deny the impact of the gathering world economic crisis on the Australian economy might be thought of as providing a dose of comic relief to the Australian election campaign. The latest official estimates show unemployment set to increase again after marginal falls over the past few months. Treasury Department estimates reveal that an additional 50,000 people will join the unemployment queues as a result of slowing economic growth. Other research indicates an even more rapid downturn and a consequent sharp increase in the jobless rate. The head of the National Institute of Economic Industry and Research, Dr Peter Brain, has forecast a return to double digit unemployment rates within the next three years. He stated that because of the build up in debt, the US economy would slow to a crawl resulting in "a grinding down of the Australian growth rate to zero levels by about 2000." Of course, none of the leaders of any of the major parties seriously believes that the Australian economy can somehow escape the effects of the global crisis.

WNDI 2008

15 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Australia DA (2/3) 6. No I/L – the coal industry will not be destroyed by a carbon tax- its abundance in Australia guarantees the industries survival. Stephen Wisenthal, April 4, 2007 Wednesday, “Coal's death much exaggerated”, The Australian Financial Review, 07/24/08, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/. A carbon tax will not destroy the coal industry. Coal remains the cheapest way to generate electricity for the world's industries. Its abundance in Australia guarantees it will play a large part in meeting future energy needs. However it may not be business as usual - technologies will be needed to continually lower the emissions coal produces. Those coal mining corporations that have deposits naturally lower in carbon, such as the high hydrogen-bearing coal of New Hope's New Acland mine in Queensland, will have a distinct advantage in this race The following companies were referenced in the original article

7. No Link - The increase in alternative energy would not trade off with the coal industry in Australia. Belinda Tasker, a London based writer and editor. “Clean energy switch will cost jobs: BHP” The Courier Mail pg. 17. October 27, 2007. http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4245334590&f ormat=GNBFI&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4245334593&cisb=22_T4245334592&tree Max=true&treeWidth=0&csi=244788&docNo=18 The head of the world's biggest miner said using nuclear, solar and wind energy sources would all help Australia cut greenhouse gas emissions. But he said switching to such energy sources would involve trade-offs, including massive job cuts in Australia's booming coal industry, which has played a key role in driving economic growth. ''It's a matter of tradeoffs the Government has to make, whether you close down coal power stations and rely on solar and wind,'' Mr Argus said. ''(Governments) hold the economic levers so it's about how quickly or slowly they introduce alternative sources of energy.'' Mr Argus was speaking after addressing shareholders at BHP Billiton's annual meeting in London. During the meeting, he downplayed claims by some investors that BHP Billiton should resist tapping into the world's biggest uranium deposit, at its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. He said while there were emissions associated with the life cycle of a nuclear power plant, they were ''insignificant'' compared to the fall in carbon emissions from switching to atomic power. After the meeting, Mr Argus said he believed nuclear power would be introduced in Australia one day, but only after people became more ''educated'' about it. ''The debate in the northern hemisphere is far more advanced than what it is in the

Australian community,'' he said. ''I think once people see nuclear is the cleanest form of energy then they will move on to the (nuclear) waste debate, and that's where I think we should be concentrating.'' Mr Argus also called on governments around the globe to join forces with big business to develop new technologies that reduce or capture greenhouse gases. He told shareholders that while alternative energy methods were becoming more

common, the use of coal would continue to grow.

8. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy. 9. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

WNDI 2008

16 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Australia DA (3/3) 10. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

WNDI 2008

17 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Backstopping DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci evidence says the US is already importing ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says that Brazil increase ethanol production at a maximum rate whether or not the plan is passed. 3. The Market flood is coming now John Mugarian Stock Analyst “We Need to See a Final Selling Panic!” June 27, 2008 http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2320051&title=We_Need_to_See_a_Final.html This being said, we need to ask if this event will mark the final bottom. If oil prices peak and begin a dramatic decline from current levels, I would say yes. If oil prices rise to the $150-$170 range this summer as OPEC's president suggested yesterday, then no. A $150-$170 price per barrel oil will translate into a sell off on the DJIA that could reach 10000, or slightly lower. If you are a long term investor, there are some incredible bargains to be had in the stock market. Assuming companies like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, General Motors and a host of others don't vaporize, extreme profit potential exists. After a Goldman Sachs analysts cut the three companies above to sell, GM hit a 53-year low, Citigroup traded back to its 1998 low, and Merrill Lynch went to a level not seen since 2002. The keys to a market turnaround are very simple; 1) Oil prices must drop dramatically. As you are aware there are a few factors that can cause this to happen. In July, the Bush (Oil) Administration will stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR). Saudi Arabia is going to flood the market with an addition 200,000 barrels per day. Some believe the figure could go as high as 500,000 bbl/ day. U.S. oil consumption is falling as citizens (consumers) are driving less. In 2005, I said consumers buying big SUV's would regret it

4. Removing trade barriers to Brazilian ethanol solves oil dependence Richard G. Lugar, Senator, and Roberto Abdenur, Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., 5/15/2006, “America and Brazil Intersect on Ethanol,” Renewable Energy World Online, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=44896 The key is ethanol, which Brazil long ago saw as an important element of its energy strategy and now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel, thanks to a booming sugar-cane-based ethanol industry. As a result, Brazil, which years ago had to import a large share of the petroleum needed for domestic consumption, recently reached complete self-sufficiency in oil. For its own energy security, the United States -- by far the world's largest oil importer -- similarly needs to break oil's near-monopoly on the transport sector by turning to ethanol for a much larger share of its auto fuel supply. Although the United States, using corn, produces nearly as much ethanol as Brazil and is expanding its annual production by 25 percent, the four billion gallons produced is still a tiny fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed. Using E-85 fuel, a blend of 15-percent gasoline and 85-percent ethanol, and easily available flexible-fuel technology so that cars can burn E-85, the United States could dramatically lower its oil dependence. Gaining consumer acceptance will spur the expansion of ethanol production and infrastructure. That means spreading the availability of E-85, now largely limited to the Midwest, to markets from coast to coast. One solution might be for the United States to import more Brazilian ethanol to blend on East Coast, where transportation costs significantly raise the price of Midwest ethanol. That would, however, require the politically difficult step of ending the protective tariffs on Brazilian ethanol that now shelters the U.S. industry. It makes strategic sense to import environmentally friendly ethanol from a reliable friend like Brazil in our own hemisphere. After all, the United States doesn't tax imported crude oil, which pollutes and often comes from unstable suppliers. Policymakers would need to consider the impact on the U.S. ethanol industry, where breakthroughs in making ethanol out of cheap and widely available biomass promise to lower costs and increase supplies. Currently, ethanol makers are highly profitable and are literally overwhelmed by demand. They have little immediate prospect of marketing large volumes of their product on the East Coast. Some analyses suggest that increasing foreign supplies to accelerate the U.S. switch to E-85 will create a bigger ethanol pie for all. What is clear is that dropping the tariff would remove a major source of friction between the two countries, as well as strengthen the energy security of both. This bold gesture of friendship could launch productive bilateral negotiations on trade and broader cooperation on other issues. Together, the two

countries could undertake an international joint action to globalize the production and utilization of ethanol, including by sharing their technology with potential producers of ethanol throughout the world, particularly in developing countries. We share common goals. We should start sharing common programs to achieve them.

WNDI 2008

18 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Backstopping DA (2/3) 5. Dependency allows countries to rely on oil wealth, preventing democracy or a diversified economy from emerging David Ivanovich, staff writer, May 18, 2003, Houston Chronicle WASHINGTON - Call it the curse of crude. The 11 countries that comprise the OPEC cartel pocketed nearly $ 180 billion in oil revenues last year. None is a thriving democracy. Coincidence? Oil wealth hinders development of a tax-paying middle class, the very segment of society most likely to agitate for a voice in government, political economists say. Bountiful crude reserves also discourage the kind of diversification needed for a successful capitalistic economy.

6. Global democratic consolidation is essential to prevent many scenarios for war and extinction. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, October 1995, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s,” http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html, accessed on 12/11/99 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

7. No internal link – their shell evidence is from ’99 any price dip wouldn’t reach ‘90s level means there is no impact to their da.

WNDI 2008

19 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Backstopping DA (3/3) 8. The politics of oil shapes US Mideast policy toward war Steve Kretzmann, PetroPolitics co-organizer, 1/5/2004, washingtonpost.com Steve Kretzmann: No conflict can ever be understood by looking at just one factor - but understanding the politics of oil sheds important light on facts that are often obscured in the fog of war. The peace movement's rallying cry of "No blood for oil" has resonance and power because it holds more than a grain of truth when talking about any proposed military action in Iraq. How much is the Bush administration's push for war with Iraq motivated by its desire to gain control of Iraq's oil fields? As one Bush adviser who chose to remain anonymous put it: "If you were trying to talk about Iraq and if you were not encumbered by the fear that your actions would be linked to ExxonMobil or the oil industry, you'd be talking about oil issues". Or as an oil industry consultant put it recently when asked if oil was part of the equation: "Of course it is. No doubt." Oil clearly has a role, and quite arguably a central one, in motivating and explaining not only the actions of the Bush administration, but also allies like France and Russia, the Iraqi opposition, and even Saddam Hussein. 1) Oil is unquestionably the long-term "vital interest" of the United States, Europe, and Japan in the Persian Gulf. Factors other than oil (e.g. supposed links to terrorism and possible weapons of mass destruction) clearly contribute to the rationale for war - but the dominant economic interest in the region and Iraq has been, is, and will continue to be oil. There is virtually no foreign investment in the region outside of the oil industry. Fully two-thirds of the world's proven oil supplies are in the Persian Gulf. As long as we are dependent on oil, we are dependent on this region. According to General Anthony Zinni, the US "must have free access to the region's resources"

9. Mideast war escalates and goes nuclear John Steinbach, Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Committee, March 2002, http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/02.03/0331steinbachisraeli.htm Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum (and the) next war will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major (if not the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing, and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon - for whatever reason - the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44).

10. Incentives coming now – Senate Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110) A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other purposes

WNDI 2008

20 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Bizcon DA (1/1) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U - No Business Confidence Fox Business July 17, 2008 Dismal Consumer Confidence Undermines 'Immunity' of Luxury Retail, Says Veteran Retail Analyst http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/dismal-consumer-confidence-undermines-immunityluxury-retail-says-veteran/ AGOURA HILLS, Calif., July 17, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ ----Luxury retailers' immunity to the economic slump has been an article of faith on Wall Street, but that faith was shaken this month by pallid sales reports from several upscale chains. The erosion of this last bastion of certitude speaks volumes about consumer confidence in the United States, says Stevan Buxbaum, executive vice president of Agoura Hills, Calif.-based Buxbaum Group. "The only thing we can count on is, we can't count on anything," Buxbaum observes. "Uncertainty is the watchword of the day." And both Wall Street and Main Street abhor uncertainty, he notes. "Consumers are going to be extremely careful with their purchases," says the veteran retail consultant and analyst. "They want name brands or quality merchandise at a value price, and so chains that can offer them this -- examples include Target, Kohl's, TJX Cos., Aeropostale and Ross Dress For Less -- will be clear winners moving forward."

3. No link – plan isn’t a regulation, it removes a tax on imports. 4. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

5. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

WNDI 2008

21 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Elections DA (1/4) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U and No I/L - Obama won’t necessarily win and issues aren’t key Steven Stark, culture commentator for NPR, 6-12-2008, “Will the Election Be All About Obama?” RealClearPolitics, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/going_dutch.html Sure, he'll occasionally get the spotlight, and there are things he can do to improve his chances marginally. But in the end, this election is about Barack Obama. The country wants a significant change in direction and Obama and the Democrats are the only ones who can credibly promise to deliver it. Thus, the results in November are going to come down to one question: can a significant portion of the electorate abide Barack Obama as its next president? Right now, it's an open question. And for Obama to get the answer he wants, he's going to have to be another Ronald Reagan or another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There is always a threshold over which nominees must pass when the electorate decides whether a candidate can be trusted with the most powerful job in the world. For some, like General Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, doing so is a cakewalk. For upstarts and more ideological purists, it's harder. Obama, of course, is the upstart of upstarts. The good news for Obama is that most nominees do, in fact, successfully make the transition, especially when there is an overriding desire for change. John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Reagan in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992 all faced an initially skeptical electorate and, through favorable debate performances and constant exposure in the general-election campaign, gradually reassured the public that it had less to fear from the unknown than from the known. Upon closer examination, however, the Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton comparisons may not offer much of a precedent for Obama. After all, each of the three was a centrist who ran at his challenger from the right as well as the left. Clinton and Carter came from the Southern GOP base and founded their appeal, in part, on their willingness to deviate sharply from party orthodoxy. JFK, too, was a hawk on military policy, running against Nixon from the right on the basis of a purported missile gap. In contrast, as his Senate voting record and positions demonstrate, Obama is as liberal as they come, without any public record of straying from his party's left-leaning causes and constituencies. That means to win, he'll have to replicate the Reagan experience and basically lead an ideological revolution that will redraw the electoral map. Risk assessment It's a highly risky strategy, to say the least. It's risky, in part, because Americans -- even when they say they want change -- often don't endorse a sharp turn in direction. Yes, FDR's election in 1932 signaled a transformation, but the nation was in the midst of its worst depression. Reagan fomented a shift in the other direction, but the economy was in tatters and another nation held our citizens hostage. Are the Iraq War and current economic situation commensurate woes? If precedent is any guide, for the Democrats to win, the voters will have to think so. Then there's Obama himself. FDR and Reagan were wellknown figures on the national scene for years before they finally made it to the Oval Office; they each had a track record as governor of the nation's then-largest state (New York and California, respectively) that, in the end, reassured voters they could be trusted with the nation's highest office. Obama, by comparison, has a short résumé. Yes, experience can be overrated (as Hillary Clinton discovered) but if you're promising to drastically refashion our politics, it may be more of a prerequisite than usual. Obama's uphill battle is made even trickier by the opponent he faces. Both FDR and Reagan won the office against damaged incumbents who, to a large number of Americans, had virtually disqualified themselves for a second term. McCain may not be a particularly vibrant candidate (especially if his Louisiana speech of this past week is any indication), but he's not the incumbent. Those focusing on Obama's challenges so far have tended to dwell on the issue of race. But race isn't really the main issue. Anybody would find it difficult to do what Obama is trying to do. He has a hard sell ahead of him, and there have been far more instances when such "revolutionary" candidates (think William Jennings Bryan, Barry Goldwater, or George McGovern) have found the general-election mountain far too steep to climb. Support him or not, give Obama credit for this: he thinks big, which is why the upcoming campaign will focus almost exclusively on his ideas and his persona. If only by doing that, he's already changed our politics.

WNDI 2008

22 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Elections DA (2/4) 3. N/U – McCain will win – Electoral College heavily tilted towards GOP Robert Novak, Syndicated Political Columnist, 5-28-2008, “Electoral College Outlook: McCain 270, Obama 268,” Human Events, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26723 Electoral College: While national polls garner attention, they have no direct bearing on choosing our next President. A state-by-state count of electoral votes is the key to analyzing the presidential race. For the first time this year, we run through all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in order to handicap the presidential race. Outlook: If the election were held today, we see a McCain victory by the narrowest of margins.

4. N/U – McCain benefits from energy debate now James Pethokoukis, Capital Commerce Correspondent, 7-15-2008, “4 Reasons the Weak Economy Is Now Helping McCain,” US News World Report, http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2008/7/15/4-reasonsthe-weak-economy-is-now-helping-mccain.html 1) Gas prices. Polls show the public wants lower gas prices and thinks oil drilling can help get them. And McCain and the Republicans have positioned themselves as the party of more energy and lower prices. They want to drill, and they want to build more nuclear plants. But instead of opening up new areas to drilling, Democrats want to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And who can forget Obama's response when asked what he thought of higher gas prices: "I would have preferred a gradual adjustment." One problem may be that Obama fashioned his energy plan when oil was a mere $60 a barrel. McCain seems to be smartly tweaking his policies on the fly—drilling, the gas tax moratorium—to appeal to voters furious about higher prices at the pump.

5. No I/L – the McKinnon evidence says that McCain will have to distance himself from Bush to win the election not that his popularity is linked. 6. Turn - Empirically plan is unpopular – farm states and ag lobbies Council on Hemispheric Relations, 7/24/2007, “Aspiring To Leadership: Brazil, President Lula and SugarCane Ethanol,” http://www.coha.org/2007/08/aspiring-to-leadership-brazil-president-lula-and-sugar-cane-ethanol/ The burdensome import tax has been challenged in the U.S. Congress on a number of occasions. The latest attempt to rescind it was on June 20, when Republican Senator Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) led a push to overturn the tariff, citing the current over-reliance of the U.S. on Venezuelan oil as his motivation: “I would rather buy ethanol from Brazil than oil from Venezuela. It just makes a lot more geopolitical sense in how we protect ourselves.” Brazil’s friendly geopolitical position weighs in favor of its worldwide strategies importance which inevitably will service the cause of the potential improvement of the country’s strengthened economy. But at the same time, its ability to threaten the U.S.-based corn ethanol methodology that would come from the lifting of the U.S. tariffs can not be ignored. However, the measure affecting ethanol, known on Capitol Hill as part of the “farm bill,” was shot down in the Senate by a vote of 56-36 in favor of continuing the tariff, thus protecting the price of U.S. corn. Republican Senator John Thune of South Dakota explained his nay vote: “Eliminating the ethanol tariff would send a mixed signal to producers, investors and farmers who sell their products to ethanol plants.” Senator Thune’s thoughts appear to be the prevailing sentiment within the U.S. Congress. Lewis Perelman, a senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute in Washington, is not very optimistic that any transformation will be revealed in the short term. During an interview with COHA, he explained, “I don’t see the political landscape changing anytime in the foreseeable future. Politicians and American citizens alike seem content with the way things are.” To date, there has been no realistic threat to the survival of the ethanol tariff in the House or the Senate. Most members of Congress believe that releasing the import tariff would be a disservice to American corn farmers more than it would abet the welfare of the American public, as rationalized by the recurring refusal to cancel the ethanol tariff.

WNDI 2008

23 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Elections DA (3/4) 7. Turn - Sugar lobby opposes plan and is strong Forbes, Joshua Zumbrun, 6/30/2008, “Sugar’s Sweet Deal,” Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/06/27/florida-sugar-crist-biz-beltway-cx_jz_0630sugar.html For now, discussion of a free trade deal involving the U.S. and Brazil is stalled, but American sugar producers worry that if such an agreement were put in place, Brazil’s sugar industry would gain a stronger place in the U.S. market. A separate tariff applies to Brazil’s foreign ethanol--one that domestic ethanol producers are keen to keep in place. Nonetheless, the U.S. sugar industry remains strong in Washington. "They have been a notoriously powerful lobby for decades and decades," says Cato's Edwards. As an explanation for sugar's lavish subsidies in the 2008 farm bill, which recently became law after a veto override, look no further than Congress' Agriculture Committees. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top beneficiaries of big sugar's influence for the current election cycle include Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa ($35,400), House Agriculture Committee member Tim Mahoney, D-Fla. ($33,923) and committee chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ($28,900). The U.S. Department of Agriculture says roughly 54% of total U.S. sugar-beet acreage is in the Red River Valley between Minnesota and North Dakota. North Dakota's sole Congressman, Democrat Earl Pomeroy, has been the greatest beneficiary of donations from sugar-related political-action committees for the 2008 election cycle, taking in $26,500, the Center for Responsive Politics says. Peterson, whose district in western Minnesota stretches along the Red River Valley, is No. 2, with $26,400 in PAC money. As a governor, Crist has no vote on federal farm subsidies--he can only influence what's done with Floridians' tax money. And federal taxpayers? They're still paying to support sugar and keep prices high at the store. Sweet.

8. No I/L – Public perception of Obama is the most important question for the election – issues aren’t key Myron Pitts, political columnist, 7-24-2008, “General Election Really a Referendum on Obama,” FayObserver.comhttp://www.fayobserver.com/blog/comments?bid=7&eid=6969 The more I think about it, the more I think the general election is all about Obama. This is not an original thought. MSNBC's Pat Buchanan and others have been saying the same thing. I think that you could have taken any Republican from the primary, except perhaps the radical Ron Paul, and the poll numbers would be roughly the same -- Obama with a slight edge or about even. I frankly think the GOP side could be blank -- no nominee yet -- and the poll numbers would be the same. I don't doubt that McCain is probably the best of a weak field on the other side, but really, the general election to date is not about him or his ideas. (He should be thankful for the latter, considering that on the two major issues, the war and the economy, his ideas are similar to Bush's.) The entire election is whether or not people will vote for the dramatic change that Obama represents, or whether they won't. It all comes down to whether they see that change as potentially good or potentially bad. This makes the GOP strategy fairly simple and conventional: Bring him down. (Another Buchanan notion.)

9. Case turns DA – 1AC relations evidence says plan is key to check Chavez will collapse US hegemony. 10. Reducing tariffs is key to leadership Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Policy Analyst at the Heritage Foundation, 5/31/2008, “The Real World: Oil & Shifting Geopolitics,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed053108a.cfm To stave off geopolitical and economic decline and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the U.S. needs to recognize the damage high oil prices are doing, and to design a strategy to change the geo-economic equation. In the short term, the U.S. needs to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska, will help. More production from unconventional oil sources, such as oil sands and oil shale, is also crucial. A coal and nuclear power build-up are necessary as well. The U.S. Congress should also abolish the corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. A budgetary discipline by the Congress, coupled with a steady repayment of our domestic and foreign national debt will go a long way to restore the U.S. global economic clout. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors, such as deficit spending, the loss of industrial base, and stifling innovation and entrepreneurship. This does not have to be the case with the United States. The U.S. should not be intimidated - or bankrupted - out of existence.

WNDI 2008

24 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Elections DA (4/4) 11. Incentives coming now – Senate Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110) A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other purposes

WNDI 2008

25 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (1/2) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CFTA states. 2. N/U – IATP evidence is talking about the effects of ratifying the Central American Free Trade Agreement, that’s already passed. 3. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy. 4. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

5. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

WNDI 2008

26 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Ethanol Tradeoff DA (2/2) 6. Relations are key the Brazilian economy Peter Hakim, President- Inter-American Dialogue, Jan/Feb 2004, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83111/peter-hakim/the-reluctant-partner.html Washington needs Brasilia's cooperation to make progress on critical regional issues, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Venezuela's worsening political confrontation, and Colombia's criminal violence and guerrilla warfare. Brazil's voice also carries weight on broader international issues such as global trade negotiations and the struggle against AIDS. Just as surely, Brazil needs U.S. cooperation to advance its domestic and international agendas, particularly the central challenge of economic growth, which requires dependable access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology. Brazil needs the United States to have any chance of energizing its long-stagnant economy, expanding job opportunities, and accelerating social development. An adversarial relationship would be extremely damaging to U.S. policy and interests in Latin America, more so than ever given the region's unsettled politics and uneasy relations with the United States.

7. Brazilian economic collapse would destroy the US economy Peter Hakim, President of Inter America Dialogue, 12/30/2007, “Latin America: the next U.S. President’s agenda,” Inter America Dialogue, http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/Peter%20Hakim%20%20Great%20Decisions%202008.pdf By any quantitative measure, what happens elsewhere in Latin America is less important to the U.S. The rest of the region is not central to U.S. security; it is neither a source of nor a target for international terrorism. Economic relations with South and Central America are expanding, but they are modest compared to Mexico. All of South America’s trade with the U.S., including the oil from Venezu- ela, amounts only to about 40% of U.S. commerce with Mexico alone. Trade with Brazil, the second-largest U.S. partner in Latin America, accounts for little more than 1% of U.S. trade worldwide. Still, an economic crisis in Brazil, the eighthlargest economy in the world, would have destructive spillover effects across the region, which could importantly damage the U.S. economy. And Brazil is a country that could become much more economically consequential to the U.S.— if it sustains a healthy rate of growth and continues to open its economy.

8. Trade key to agriculture Indur M. Goklany, Julian Simon Fellow at the Political Economy Research Center, August 22, 2002, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa447.pdf, accessed 5/3/03 Because it is always possible to have local food shortages in the midst of a worldwide glut, the importance of trade should not be underestimated. Currently, grain imports amount to 10 percent of production in developing countries and 20 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa. Without such imports, food prices in those countries would no doubt be higher and more people would be priced out of the market. In essence, globalization, through trade, has enhanced food security. And in doing so it has reduced the severe health burdens that accompany hunger and undernourishment.

9. The 1AC food prices advantage is an impact turn to this DA. The American corn ethanol industry is artificially inflating the price of food around the world. 10. Incentives coming now – Senate Congress.org 6/12/08 (Congress.org Bill # S.3126 6/12/08 http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/bills/?billnum=S.3126&congress=110) A bill to provide for the development of certain traditional and alternative energy resources, and for other purposes

WNDI 2008

27 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Japan DA (1/2) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U – Japan cannot assert environmental leadership – its CO2 emissions are rising and the tech is too expensive Hindustan Times, G-8 summit goes green in Japan, 7-6-2008, http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=fe550411-081e-42bc-9628127b560234f0&ParentID=76e2b769-66ba-4078-8763-a0476e852a80&&Headline=G8+summit+goes+green+in+Japan And even Japan, which is challenging the European Union (EU)'s role as the world's leader on climate change, has seen its carbon dioxide emissions rise rather than fall in recent years. Moreover, the current slowdown in the global economy risks making costly emission-reducing schemes even less popular. As the display in Toyako proved once again, it is not only a matter of lacking political will. Another problem is that the technology behind some the boldest environmentally friendly projects is still either untested or too expensive.

3. N/U – Japans environmental leadership will already be sapped from inaction at G8 The Globe, staff writer, Climate-change goals fall short at G8, July 7, 2008, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080707.G807/TPStory/ Hopes have dimmed for stronger action on climate change - a central goal of this week's G8 summit in Japan - with countries such as the United States and Canada resisting calls for the group to set hard midterm targets for reducing emissions. There's a sense here that, besides some modest steps, leaders are already looking beyond this summit to next year's UN climate-change talks, and the successor to U.S. President George W. Bush. Environmental groups and European groups had called for the G8 to set midterm targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020. But even before the summit opens today, Canada's Environment Minister John Baird has warned that won't happen here - but rather at a UN conference on climate change late next year. "I think that will be done in Copenhagen next year," Mr. Baird said this weekend as he travelled to the summit aboard Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plange.

4. No Link – the 1NC didn’t have a single piece of link evidence and there is no reason that lifting a tariff on Brazilian ethanol would effect Japan’s energy leadership. 5. N/U – US and Japan have plan future cooperation on a multitude of issues Whitehouse, Joint Statement: The Japan-U.S. Alliance of the New Century, June 29, 2006, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/06/20060629-2.html Such an expanded partnership would include: promoting growth and economic reform; promoting and maintaining open markets; ensuring efficient movement of legitimate goods, services, people, and investments, while tackling threats from terrorism; strengthening intellectual property rights protection and enforcement; enhancing global energy security; and fostering transparent and favorable business climates in both countries. The two leaders also affirmed their commitment to make a strong contribution to ensure a successful and ambitious outcome for the WTO Doha Development Agenda negotiations by the end of 2006 that opens markets and achieves a balanced outcome across the board. They expressed their determination to work together to strengthen the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, recognizing its crucial role in promoting stability, security, and prosperity in the region. The two leaders shared the view that the U.S.-Japan global alliance remains a constant and positive force. They shared the expectation that the U.S.-Japan friendship and global cooperation shall continue to grow stronger.

6. Case turns the DA – free trade is key to prevent a US/China war which is the most likely scenario for

WNDI 2008

28 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Japan DA (2/2) 7. Turn – US modeling and guidance is necessary to help build Japanese society Keizai Doyukai, Japan Association of Corporate Executives, September 1, 2006,http://www.doyukai.or.jp/en/policyproposals/articles/pdf/060901.pdf As the international situation experiences increasing tensions, issues related to foreign relations and security become more important and assume the highest priority. While firmly conveying to succeeding generations Japan’s tragic experience of the nuclear bomb and postwar reconstruction, it is our duty to help build a Japanese society, and an international society, that inspires the dreams and pride of the younger generation, making use of the country’s strengths.

WNDI 2008

29 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Jobs DA (1/2) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. Case turns the DA - Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy. 3. Turn – 1NC evidence says that DOHA rounds and WTO credibility is key to protect jobs. 1AC IPS evidence says plan is key to DOHA success. 4. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

5. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

WNDI 2008

30 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Jobs DA (2/2) 9. Relations are key the Brazilian economy Peter Hakim, President- Inter-American Dialogue, Jan/Feb 2004, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83111/peter-hakim/the-reluctant-partner.html Washington needs Brasilia's cooperation to make progress on critical regional issues, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Venezuela's worsening political confrontation, and Colombia's criminal violence and guerrilla warfare. Brazil's voice also carries weight on broader international issues such as global trade negotiations and the struggle against AIDS. Just as surely, Brazil needs U.S. cooperation to advance its domestic and international agendas, particularly the central challenge of economic growth, which requires dependable access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology. Brazil needs the United States to have any chance of energizing its long-stagnant economy, expanding job opportunities, and accelerating social development. An adversarial relationship would be extremely damaging to U.S. policy and interests in Latin America, more so than ever given the region's unsettled politics and uneasy relations with the United States.

10. Brazilian economic collapse would destroy the US economy Peter Hakim, President of Inter America Dialogue, 12/30/2007, “Latin America: the next U.S. President’s agenda,” Inter America Dialogue, http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/Peter%20Hakim%20%20Great%20Decisions%202008.pdf By any quantitative measure, what happens elsewhere in Latin America is less important to the U.S. The rest of the region is not central to U.S. security; it is neither a source of nor a target for international terrorism. Economic relations with South and Central America are expanding, but they are modest compared to Mexico. All of South America’s trade with the U.S., including the oil from Venezu- ela, amounts only to about 40% of U.S. commerce with Mexico alone. Trade with Brazil, the second-largest U.S. partner in Latin America, accounts for little more than 1% of U.S. trade worldwide. Still, an economic crisis in Brazil, the eighthlargest economy in the world, would have destructive spillover effects across the region, which could importantly damage the U.S. economy. And Brazil is a country that could become much more economically consequential to the U.S.— if it sustains a healthy rate of growth and continues to open its economy.

11. No link – 1NC link evidence says sugar price drops devastates jobs – plan doesn’t change sugar tariffs. 12. Trade creates more jobs in the US than it hurts Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Director-General of the World Trade Organization and former Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand. “American Leadership and the World Trade Organization: What is the Alternative?” Aderess to the National Press Club — Washington D.C Feb, 26, 2004 http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spsp_e/spsp22_e.htm The bigger challenge to American leadership comes from inside — not outside — the United States. In America's current debate about trade, jobs and globalization we have heard a lot about the costs of liberalization. We need to hear more about the opportunities. We need to be reminded of the advantages of America's openness and its trade with the world — about the

economic growth tied to exports; the inflation-fighting role of imports, the innovative stimulus of global competition. We need to explain that freer trade works precisely because it involves positive change — better products, better job opportunities, better ways of doing things, better standards of living. While it is true that change can be threatening for people and societies, it is equally true that the vulnerable are not helped by resisting change — by putting up barriers and shutting out competition. They are helped by training, education, new and better opportunities that — with the right support policies — can flow from a globalized economy. The fact is that for every job in the US threatened by imports there is a growing number of high-paid, high skill jobs created by exports. Exports supported 7 million workers a decade ago; that number is approaching around 12 million today. And these new jobs — in aerospace, finance, information technology — pay 10 per cent more than the average American wage. We especially need to inject some clarity — and facts — into the current debate over the outsourcing of services jobs. Over the next decade, the US is projected to create an average of more than 2 million new services jobs a year — compared to roughly 200,000 services jobs that will be outsourced.

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31 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Mexico DA (1/2) ( ) High prices devastate the Mexican economy – links to the US and refined petroleum importer Newsweek, Scott Johnson, 11/8/2004, “The Mexican Paradox,” Lexis Spirits have been high and coffers full in commodity-rich developing nations from West Africa to East Asia recently, thanks to record-high oil prices. Countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, East Timor and, of course, the Middle Eastern oil states are seeing record inflows as prices continue to spiral upward. Net exporter Mexico is growing fat, too--oil has yielded an extra $12 billion in revenues so far this year. But far from being gleeful about the boom, officials there are fretting about the impact of high oil prices on the country. The paradox is a result of Mexico's unique place in the global economy. Unlike many oil states, Mexico has a relatively diversified economy--only 10 percent of its exports come from oil. The problem is that the other 90 percent, including things like electronics, textiles and medical supplies, go almost wholly to the United States. And there, high oil prices are beginning to have a dampening effect on the economy. What's more, non-oil exports are facing increasing competition from China, which has siphoned off thousands of Mexican manufacturing jobs. And a sclerotic state-controlled oil sector hasn't invested enough in homegrown refineries, meaning that Mexico must buy refined petroleum from the United States, at the going prices. The result, says Alejandro Werner, a senior adviser at the Finance Ministry, is a situation in which "the Mexican economy may slow down, even as oil prices continue to go up." How much it slows will depend on just how far the U.S. economy falls. According to Jonathan Heath, chief Mexico economist for HSBC, for every $5 increase in the price of oil, U.S. growth is cut 0.4 percent. Already there are signs that nosebleed oil prices are dampening American consumer enthusiasm. Two weeks ago Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that high oil prices have cut into U.S. GDP growth this year, and warned of worse to come. If that happens, the border area Mexico shares with the United States, where hundreds of maquiladoras churn out goods for the U.S. market, would suffer. That's a concern; after all, it was the maquiladora sector that helped wean Mexico off its historical dependence on oil.

( ) Mexico’s economy is doomed for multiple reasons Marla Dickerson, LA Times, 2-16-2006, “Economic data show,” p ln Mexico's economy grew a sluggish 3% last year, the government announced Wednesday, marking one of the worst showings in Latin America and another disappointing year for a country that many analysts say should be expanding twice as fast. Gross domestic product, the country's output of goods and services, increased a modest 2.7% in the fourth quarter over the same period a year earlier. Officials blamed the lackluster

Mexico's economic doldrums couldn't be blamed on a passing storm. The nation ended 2005 as it did many years during the last decade, with GDP growth among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere and far off the pace of rival emerging economies in Asia. The country's perennial underachievement in growth and employment has surfaced as the biggest challenge facing the candidates in this year's presidential election. Mexico isn't generating anywhere near the 1 million jobs it needs showing largely on fallout from hurricanes that battered the tourist magnet Cancun and farming areas in the south. But analysts said

each year to keep up with population growth. Illegal emigration to the U.S. is believed to be at an all-time high. And China is grabbing market share in the U.S., the destination for more than 90% of Mexico's exports. What's more, Mexico is underperforming at a time when many factors should be working in its favor, notably a sound U.S. economy, high prices for its crude oil, record remittances from Mexicans living abroad and its lowest inflation rate in years. Although there is disagreement among policymakers and analysts on what needs to be done, nearly all concur that Mexico is fast losing competitiveness and that changes are needed to roust Latin America's second-largest economy from its funk.

"What they need to get a leg up on growth is serious structural reform," said economist Suhas Ketkar, a Latin American specialist at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets in Connecticut. He cited Mexico's "rigid" labor rules, inadequate tax collection and government-controlled energy markets among the areas the country must address to boost income and efficiency. Mexico isn't alone in falling well short of its potential. Latin America has posted anemic economic growth for two decades. While China experienced annual per-capita growth of about 8.5% from 1981 to 2000, Latin America's per-capita GDP declined 0.7% during the 1980s and increased only about 1.5% a year in the 1990s, according to a new study by the World Bank. As a result, poverty rates in Latin America have barely budged, and only sub-Saharan Africa is saddled with a wider gulf between its rich and poor. The economies of several Latin American countries have improved in recent years, thanks largely to skyrocketing commodity prices fueled by rising Chinese demand. Chile's copper exports to the Asian giant have exploded, for example, as have Brazil's shipments of soybeans. But Mexico is struggling with the Chinese challenge. Lowcost goods have flooded its consumer markets, costing Mexico thousands of jobs in the textile, toy and electronics industries. In return, China buys virtually nothing from Mexico. Mexico's trade deficit with China topped $14 billion last year. But Mexico's biggest concern is its slipping U.S. market share. In 2003, China surpassed Mexico to become the second-largest supplier of goods to the U.S., behind Canada. China's share of U.S. imports rose to 14.6% last year, up from 8.2% in 2000. During the same period, Mexico's share

Some industry leaders here argue that China's undervalued currency and government subsidies give its firms an unfair advantage. But many analysts fault Mexico. "It's not that China is crowding Mexico out. Mexico is crowding itself out by failing to pass structural reforms," said Christian Stracke, emerging market analyst with New York-based CreditSights. slipped a percentage point to 10.2%.

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32 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Mexico DA (2/2) ( ) Mexican economy is empirically denied – it crashed in 2001 Latin American Economy and Business, 2-21-2006, “Mexico,” p ln President Ernesto Zedillo, who was elected in the pivotal year of 1994 (which started with the Zapatista uprising, continued with the assassination of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional's candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio and ended with a catastrophically misjudged devaluation), made his priority what he called the blindaje (literally armour-plating) of the economy to prevent his successor facing the economic mess he had to confront. President Vicente Fox did not face a home-grown economic crisis in 2000, though the Mexican economy was sent reeling by the sharp decline in the US economy in 2001. Like Zedillo, Fox has focused his economic policy on ensuring macro-economic stability. The budget is now in surplus (so it should be with oil prices where they are). Foreign debt has fallen as a proportion of total debt as the government has borrowed more in pesos. The government even has the cash to pay off foreign debts that mature in 2006 and 2007.

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33 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Natural Gas DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U – natural Gas Prices are Rapidly Increasing Now Gulf News 4-29-2008 Already consumers are starting to feel the pinch as natural gas follows oil skyward.Even before Sunday's strike, consumers in some parts of Canada are expecting prices to jump 55 per cent over the prices of May 2007. s one analyst said, he once would have pegged $12 per Btu natural gas as astronomical, but no one saw $120 per barrel crude oil either.As of Monday, prices are hovering in the $11 range, which is a two-year high for natural gas.

3. N/U – summer Prices Will Continue to Climb Foster Natural Gas Report, 5-16-2008 Nonetheless, for this summer, the U.S. natural gas market "looks tight," with working gas storage levels expected to be 142 Bcf lower by October, when compared to last year. Although U.S. natural gas production is expected to be up 1.5 Bcf/d (2.8%), Canadian production and liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports will be down 0.5Bcf/d and 1.5 Bcf/d, respectively. Lower gas demand in the electric power sector due to improved hydroelectricity and nuclear generation could trigger a drop of 0.1 Bcf/d in gas deliveries to the sector this year. A greater decrease will come from the U.S. industrial sector - with a 0.4 Bcf/d decrease (or a 2.1% decrease).

4. No I/L – Gas Price Predictions are Too Uncertain Foster Natural Gas Report, 5-16-2008 Actually, Denhardt acknowledged, long-term forecasts "are typically not even close" to reality. "Planning requires more creative approaches than what is typically used today and is not as helpful as many are led to believe," he said. For example, a study from 1996 - by the world's largest consulting firm was "totally off the mark" when it predicted that Henry Hub prices in 2010 would be $3.00 (nominal). Another study predicted that coal would be the major source of new generation, but as gas prices fell, environmental regulations tightened and the efficiency of natural gas-fired combined-cycle generating plants improved, and gas plants ended up "taking over" the generation market.

5. No link – plan isn’t a regulation or tax incentives for renewables that their evidence talks about. 6. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.

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34 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Natural Gas DA (2/3) 7. No impact to chemical industry – higher prices for natural gas can be diffused due to increased commodity demand Purchasing 1-13-2005 "The fortunes of the industry began to turn around in the last quarter of 2003 and that accelerated through 2004," says Swift. "Demand, production and operating rates are up, and, at that point, pricing power shifts from the buyer to the producer."Chemicals producers are not only passing on the increased natural gas and feedstock costs to buyers, but they are going well beyond it, in some cases, to improve their profit margins. In a recent update, Merrill Lynch analyst Donald Carson feels that pricing power is accelerating for many commodity chemicals producers. "Pricing power has decisively shifted from buyers to sellers in commodity chemicals. Polymer buyers have begun to recognize that supply has tightened, and in many cases [they] have become more concerned about reliable supply than price."For example, Dow Chemical Chairman William Stavropoulos said recently that his company is raising prices faster than the increasing costs of gas and oil. Dow Chemical's prices in its plastics unit rose 31% in the third quarter and profits increased a whopping 86%. "The chemical industry is now in a strengthening volume and price environment, and Dow continues to see improvements in product supply-demand balances across most businesses and in all geographic areas," said CFO J. Pedro Reinhard in a statement. "Elevated and extremely volatile feedstock and energy costs continue to give cause for concern within Dow both in relation to the immediate impact on margins and the long-term toll on consumer confidence." The price increases are hitting buyers hard. Buyers in Purchasing magazine's monthly business survey report that "prices in resins have risen the past few months due to the price of gas," according to one industrial commodities buyer, while many others report higher resin prices without specifically citing natural gas costs as the culprit. "Business is strong but price pressures on plastic resin are of great concern," is the way a buyer at one Midwest manufacturer puts it. GE Advanced Materials, maker of high-performance plastics, recently said increased demand and prices for plastic resin may boost operating profit for the unit by 25% in the fourth quarter. Chemicals giant BASF, in its third-quarter earnings statement, said "high oil prices allowed the company to pass on some necessary price increases to the market." Westlake Chemical said in its third-quarter earnings statement that increased sales volumes and prices outpaced higher feedstock and energy prices. And Neville Chemical cited "continued escalation of petrochemical related feedstock" for its decision to raise prices on its resins between 3¢ and 4¢/pound in November.

8. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

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35 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Natural Gas DA (3/3) 10. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

11. Relations are key the Brazilian economy Peter Hakim, President- Inter-American Dialogue, Jan/Feb 2004, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83111/peter-hakim/the-reluctant-partner.html Washington needs Brasilia's cooperation to make progress on critical regional issues, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Venezuela's worsening political confrontation, and Colombia's criminal violence and guerrilla warfare. Brazil's voice also carries weight on broader international issues such as global trade negotiations and the struggle against AIDS. Just as surely, Brazil needs U.S. cooperation to advance its domestic and international agendas, particularly the central challenge of economic growth, which requires dependable access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology. Brazil needs the United States to have any chance of energizing its long-stagnant economy, expanding job opportunities, and accelerating social development. An adversarial relationship would be extremely damaging to U.S. policy and interests in Latin America, more so than ever given the region's unsettled politics and uneasy relations with the United States.

12. Brazilian economic collapse would destroy the US economy Peter Hakim, President of Inter America Dialogue, 12/30/2007, “Latin America: the next U.S. President’s agenda,” Inter America Dialogue, http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/Peter%20Hakim%20%20Great%20Decisions%202008.pdf By any quantitative measure, what happens elsewhere in Latin America is less important to the U.S. The rest of the region is not central to U.S. security; it is neither a source of nor a target for international terrorism. Economic relations with South and Central America are expanding, but they are modest compared to Mexico. All of South America’s trade with the U.S., including the oil from Venezu- ela, amounts only to about 40% of U.S. commerce with Mexico alone. Trade with Brazil, the second-largest U.S. partner in Latin America, accounts for little more than 1% of U.S. trade worldwide. Still, an economic crisis in Brazil, the eighthlargest economy in the world, would have destructive spillover effects across the region, which could importantly damage the U.S. economy. And Brazil is a country that could become much more economically consequential to the U.S.— if it sustains a healthy rate of growth and continues to open its economy.

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36 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (1/5) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U – Oil Prices are falling and have dove $10 this month AP 07/26 Oil prices have settled sharply lower for the second straight day, capping a dizzying drop that has left crude more than $10 cheaper in just two days of frenzied trading. Light, sweet crude for August delivery fell $4.14 to settle at $134.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after earlier sinking as low as $132. The drop follows a $6.44 sell-off Tuesday, meaning prices have plummeted over $10 since Monday The two-day slide marks a dramatic turnaround in crude prices, which as recently as Friday traded at record highs above $147 a barrel. Analysts are unsure whether the drop represents a longterm shift in sentiment or simply a correction to crude's bull rally.

3. N/U - Oil Prices are diving AFP 07/16 Oil prices plunged five dollars on Wednesday, extending this week's spectacular losses after a surprise jump in crude reserves in key energy consumer the United States. Prices had already tumbled on Tuesday as US economic growth concerns sent New York crude tumbling by the largest drop for 17 years. On Wednesday, New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for August delivery, shed another 5.06 dollars to 133.86 dollars a barrel. It had dived Tuesday by 6.44 dollars in the sharpest daily decline since January 1991. London's Brent North Sea oil for August plummeted 4.35 dollars to 134.40 dollars on Wednesday. Prices tumbled after the US Energy Information Administration said US crude stocks rose by 3.0 million barrels to 296.9 million barrels in the week ending July 11 -- surprising a market that had expected a drop of about 2.2 million barrels. Oil hit record highs last Friday when the New York contract hit 147.27 dollars and Brent 147.50 dollars. The market had paused earlier Wednesday as traders caught their breath following severe losses on Tuesday that were sparked by a gloomy economic outlook from US Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke, dealers said. "Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments about the bleak economic outlook in the US was of particular significance as it raised concerns about faltering demand in the world's largest oil consumer," said Barclays Capital analysts. "In his semi-annual testimony to the Senate, he stressed that the outlook for economic growth and inflation was unusually uncertain, a gloomier assessment than the central bank gave late last month when it said risks to economic growth had diminished somewhat." Bernanke said Tuesday the Fed had however, raised its 2008 growth forecast to a range of 1.0 to 1.6 percent, up from an April projection of 0.3 to 1.2 percent. But he also warned of numerous risks, including a potentially troublesome rise in inflation and stressed financial markets. Traders fear that a slowing economy in the United States will sap global demand for crude. At Wachovia Securities, Al Goldman blamed the huge price fall on Bernanke's "gloomy assessment" as well as a cut in OPEC's demand forecast. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Tuesday cut its forecast for growth of world oil demand this year to 1.20 percent from 1.28 percent, citing an economic slowdown and high fuel prices. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia meanwhile on Wednesday denounced speculative trade in oil and called for more dialogue between producing and consuming nations. "Oil has become ... practically like a currency (that) has attracted speculative interest among some companies and people," said Saudi Arabian King Abdullah in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica. "We don't want the price to be so high. It is not in our interest because it is not in the interest of the rest of the world." Saudi Arabia has warned repeatedly that speculation is leading cause of soaring oil prices along with rising demand and the taxation of oil products in consumer countries. Many Western nations, led by the United States, have consistently argued that runaway prices are a result of tightening global oil supplies

4. No link – Brazilian ethanol could only possibly account for 7% of US energy consumption but will actually account for much less. Even if lifting the tariff could effect energy costs they’re would still be no link Darmstadter and Parry 2004 (Joel and Ian , Seniors Fellows @ RFF, “How should policymakers respond”, Feb 6) But again, the ability of the United States to counteract the abuses of market power by OPEC is limited. Most likely a reduction in US oil imports would have only a moderate effect on the world prices and it is difficult to reduce oil imports, as opposed to total US oil consumption, or to favor imports from secure suppliers (such as Canada) without running afoul of WTO trading rules. Moreover, many analysts argue that a modest reduction in US oil imports would not produce much of a dividend in terms of reduced military spending, in part because Middle East military expenditures serve numerous objectives (for example, the security of Israel), in addition to oil security.

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37 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (2/5) 5. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy. 6. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

7. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

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38 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (3/5) 8. High Oil price undermine Chinese economic growth and spur social unrest Agence France Presse – English September 11, 2005 Sunday 3:34 AM GMT Rocketing global oil prices are eating away at the high-flying Chinese economy, provoking a slowdown that officials and analysts warn could lead to inflation and even social unrest. "I have to admit that the rise in oil prices is having an impact on the Chinese economy," Zhu Zhixin, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a business forum in Beijing last week. Although Zhu did not give concrete estimates, analysts say that China's 2006 growth in gross domestic product will easily drop off by one percentage point. They also estimate the consumer price index, its main measure of inflation, will jump two percentage points from around two percent now. While China is not as vulnerable as other oil-reliant Asian economies, the prospect of high prices over a sustained period is a serious concern to economic planners in Beijing, analysts said. China is the world's second biggest oil consumer. It relies on imports for about 3.7 million barrels per day, or 40 percent of its oil needs. Demand in China is currently at 6.4 million barrels per day and though demand growth has slowed this year, consumption is expected to continue to expand, driven by strong economics and the low domestic retail fuel prices. Beijing fixes oil prices by using a basket of the previous month's global trading levels in London, New York and Singapore and then allows the price to fluctuate eight percent. Even though the two-tiered system is meant to protect consumers the discrepancy between pricing and suppliers sparked shortages of fuel this summer in southern China, pressuring the government to liberalise prices. Overhauling the system would act as a brake on the economy, analysts said. Morgan Stanley has revised its 2006 GDP growth forecast down to 9.3 percent from 9.5 percent and to 6.7 percent for 2007 as a result of higher oil prices. The Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund estimate a loss of about one percentage point next year. Carl Weinberg, of High Frequency Economics, said that the cost would be significantly higher -- and it would raise China's import bill by 47 billion dollars over one year. "We view this as a gross transfer of income to foreign oil producers, money that otherwise would have been spent at home," he said. It would trim 2.8 percent from GDP growth with 260,000 fewer urban jobs created, Weinberg estimated. Some economists are even more

pessimistic, estimating that every 10 percent rise in oil prices represents a GDP reduction of 0.3 percentage points and an increase in the consumer price index of 0.4 percentage points. Deutsche Bank said China is about five times as energy-intensive as the US which means its takes five times as much energy to produce a dollar of GDP. "High oil prices, if they were to be passed onto domestic users, would seem to impose a greater burden on China's economy," the Deutsche Bank report said. High oil prices are becoming the norm and China's solution of forcing refiners to subsidize low petrol and diesel costs has to end, analysts say. Angry refiners, which posted losses of 4.2 billion yuan (517 million dollars) in the first six months, have called on the government to loosen its price policies after fuel shortages paralyzed southern parts of the country due to production cutbacks by refiners. The shortages in July and August were widely seen as artificial as refiners were reluctant to sell oil products at a loss. It is unclear how Beijing will respond amid growing calls for reform as it struggles to keep CPI at around two percent -- a level it feels is necessary if it is to maintain its socio-economic contract of allowing people to get rich but not grating political freedoms. "Can the government introduce price relaxations gradually enough so as to keep CPI at two-three percent a year?," asked Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered Bank. "The big worry is that these energy prices hit the economy all at once and CPI rises too quickly."

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39 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (4/5) Chinese economic decline causes war with the US Dr. Thomas M. Kane teaches security studies at the University of Hull, UK and Dr. Lawrence W. Serewicz recently received his Ph.D. in politics from the University of Hull, UK, Fall 2001, Parameters Despite China's problems with its food supply, the Chinese do not appear to be in danger of widespread starvation. Nevertheless, one cannot rule out the prospect entirely, especially if the earth's climate actually is getting warmer. The consequences of general famine in a country with over a billion people clearly would be catastrophic. The effects of oil shortages and industrial stagnation would be less lurid, but economic collapse would endanger China's political stability whether that collapse came with a bang or a whimper. PRC society has become dangerously fractured. As the coastal cities grow richer and more cosmopolitan while the rural inland provinces grow poorer, the political interests of the two regions become ever less compatible. Increasing the prospects for division yet further, Deng Xiaoping's administrative reforms have strengthened regional potentates at the expense of central authority. As Kent Calder observes, In part, this change [erosion of power at the center] is a conscious devolution, initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1991 to outflank conservative opponents of economic reforms in Beijing nomenclature. But devolution has fed on itself, spurred by the natural desire of local authorities in the affluent and increasingly powerful coastal provinces to appropriate more and more of the fruits of growth to themselves alone. [49] Other social and economic developments deepen the rifts in Chinese society. The one-child policy, for instance, is disrupting traditional family life, with unknowable consequences for Chinese mores and social cohesion. [50] As families resort to abortion or infanticide to ensure that their one child is a son, the population may come to include an unprecedented preponderance of young, single men. If common gender prejudices have any basis in fact, these males are unlikely to be a source of social stability. Under these circumstances, China is vulnerable to unrest of many kinds. Unemployment or severe hardship, not to mention actual starvation, could easily trigger popular uprisings. Provincial leaders might be tempted to secede, perhaps openly or perhaps by quietly ceasing to obey Beijing's directives. China's leaders, in turn, might adopt drastic measures to forestall such developments. If faced with internal strife, supporters of China's existing regime may return to a more overt form of communist dictatorship. The PRC has, after all, oscillated between experimentation and orthodoxy continually throughout its existence. Spectacular examples include Mao's Hundred Flowers campaign and the return to conventional MarxismLeninism after the leftist experiments of the Cultural Revolution, but the process continued throughout the 1980s, when the Chinese referred to it as the "fang-shou cycle." (Fang means to loosen one's grip; shou means to tighten it.) [51] If order broke down, the Chinese would not be the only people to suffer. Civil unrest in the PRC would disrupt trade relationships, send refugees

flowing across borders, and force outside powers to consider intervention. If different countries chose to intervene on different sides, China's struggle could lead to major war. In a less apocalyptic but still grim scenario, China's government might try to ward off its demise by attacking adjacent countries.

WNDI 2008

40 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Oil DA (5/5) High Prices result in Philippine instability Manila Standard August 19, 2005 IN the news this week was a proposal coming from the government's economic managers asking for emergency powers for the President in order to allow her to deal with the crisis of high prices of crude oil. We are not talking, dear reader, simply of focused interventions such as specific subsidies or price subsidies like what other countries are discussing. We are talking about measures that include the truly extreme intervention of rationing. A matter of logic Now, I am no economist but something does not compute here. There is a failure in logic involved in invoking rationing as a solution to oil price increases. Rationing is a supply solution. In easy English, if there is not enough oil to go around, then we need to control how much oil is available for consumption. In other words, if there is a shortage of gasoline, then the government must control availability. However, there is, in fact, no shortage. Unlike the last time rationing was invoked in this country, there is no oil embargo today. There is no real shortage. What the government is proposing to Congress is to allow it to have the ability to create an artificial shortage even when there is no real shortage. Unfortunately, this artificial shortage will create some very real effects -- gas lines, quite possibly a transportation crisis, and again, quite possibly, even an unemployment crisis resulting from factories remaining idle. Matching solution to problem A basic tenet of rational decision-making is that the right solution can only be crafted if the problem is defined correctly. The problem, dear reader, is high oil prices. The real concern, of course, is the effect on inflation. Last week, the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center held a conference entitled "The Global Oil Situation: What is it to the Philippines?" In that conference, it was pointed out that an IMF study dated 2000 estimates that a 20 percent oil price hike translates to a one year after effect of 0.8 percent in inflation and a negative 0.8 percent effect on real GDP. And, no, I did not misplace that decimal point. The reason for this rather surprisingly small effect of oil price hikes on inflation is that the portion of spending that is oil-related is actually a rather small amount. Alexander Escucha, president of the Philippine Economic Society, says that he cannot recall the precise percentage for the Philippine basket of spending but that the percentage for the United States is about 5 percent. Even more interestingly, Alex points out that the last time rationing was seriously entertained seriously by government, the price of crude was at a current price equivalent of about $ 80 per barrel. In fact, the news in oil for the day is that crude oil futures dropped to $ 62.80 per barrel on news of increased inventories as well as refining capacity coming back on line. Presuming we are still worrying about inflation, the correct answer, it would seem to me, would be some sort of price subsidy targeted at relieving the effect of inflation for those that really need it. In fact, all the economists at the table agreed on two basic things. First, the best method of dealing with the current crisis is to let market forces determine a new equilibrium for the supply-demand-price equation. Second, the solution must match the problem. Rationing is a supply solution. It was an appropriate solution for the oil crisis caused by the oil embargoes of the last century but it is not an appropriate solution for the current crisis that is actually being caused by high prices. Prof. Federico Macaranas, executive director of the Asian Institute of Management's Policy Center, had this to say about the proposal of rationing as a solution to high oil prices: "They seem to be attempting to solve a political crisis by creating a possible economic crisis." The extreme situation Ernest Leung, former secretary of finance, said that the only justification for government intervention with market forces is to alleviate social cost. When asked for his opinion about rationing as an intervention, he stated that rationing is so extreme a measure that it should be invoked only under extreme circumstances. How extreme? His response: war or circumstances that would approximate the severity of war. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales has been quoted as saying that the current high cost of oil can

be considered a "serious national security threat." It is difficult for me to imagine how high oil prices can be considered a security threat. Unless, of course, the theory is that there will be massive civil unrest as a result of rising oil prices. Given the low translation of oil price increase to inflation, this seems an unlikely possibility. Escucha, however, pointed out that there is an SWS survey that says only about 15 percent of Filipinos understand that rising gasoline prices are a result of rising global oil prices. The rest of the population, apparently, blames all of this on various combinations of private sector greed and government incompetence and corruption. The reality, of course, is that everyone is feeling the crunch of higher oil prices. The reality is that this government cannot afford to subsidize oil prices for large volumes or long periods. The reality is that our deficit problem continues. The reality is that the all-important EVAT law is still stalled. The reality is that this government is still in a political crisis of confidence. The reality, it seems to me, is that our national economic interest is still being held hostage by the fight for political survival. And that, perhaps, is what the emergency is really all about.

Phillipine instability leads to nuclear war and destruction of the world. Michael May, Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford, Washington Quarterly, Summer 97 The unpalatable facts, to Europeans and North Americans, are that Asia has about half of the world's people, that it is growing faster than other parts of the world, and that, by mid-century, it will probably have more than half the population of the developed world and more than half of its money. Energy consumption, economic influence, and military power will be distributed in proportion. That is the rosy scenario. The dark scenario is that of a war that would, in all likelihood -- because nuclear weapons can be procured and deployed by any of these countries at a fraction of the cost of peaceful development --leave most of the civilized world devastated.

WNDI 2008

41 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Saudi Oil DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. No link – Brazilian ethanol could only possibly account for 7% of US energy consumption but will actually account for much less. Even if lifting the tariff could effect energy costs they’re would still be no link Darmstadter and Parry 2004 (Joel and Ian , Seniors Fellows @ RFF, “How should policymakers respond”, Feb 6) But again, the ability of the United States to counteract the abuses of market power by OPEC is limited. Most likely a reduction in US oil imports would have only a moderate effect on the world prices and it is difficult to reduce oil imports, as opposed to total US oil consumption, or to favor imports from secure suppliers (such as Canada) without running afoul of WTO trading rules. Moreover, many analysts argue that a modest reduction in US oil imports would not produce much of a dividend in terms of reduced military spending, in part because Middle East military expenditures serve numerous objectives (for example, the security of Israel), in addition to oil security.

3. Saudi Oil Production is Already Declining Robin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor, June 30th 2008, The Times (London), "Former Bush Advisor Says Globalization is Over and Oil is Running Out", Lexis Matt Simmons, chief executive of Simmons & Company, a Houston energy consultancy, said that global oil production had peaked in 2005 and was set for a steep decline from present levels of about 85million barrels per day. "By 2015, I think we would be lucky to be producing 60million barrels and we should worry about producing only 40 million," he told The Times. His controversial views, rejected by many mainstream experts, suggest that some of the world's biggest oilfields, particularly in Kuwait and those of Saudi Arabia, the world's leading producer, are in decline. "It's just the law of numbers," he said. "A lot of these oilfields are 40 years old. Once they roll over, they roll over very fast."

4. No Impact - The Transition from Oil Will be Slow- Saudi Arabia Will Adapt Anthony H. Cordesman, Energy Developments in the Middle East, 2004, pg.56 Time and technology will almost certainly change this situation, but not in a few years or even a few decades- barring some massive, unanticipated breakthrough in alternative energy supplies. In fact, even if dramatic changes did take place in the cost alternative energy supplies, it might well take a decade for such changes to really have a decisive global impact. The world has simply invested too much in vehicles, facilities, homes, and industrial processes that use oi, and few breakthroughs could take the form of supplies that could be cheaply and quickly produced on a global basis.

5. No Impact – No Threat Posed From Saudi Regime Collapse Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, July 2002, "Befriending Saudi Princes: a High Price for a Dubious Alliance", USA Today, Questia Should the House of Saud fall or be overrun, Washington would finally be relieved of the moral dead weight of defending that regime. Consumers almost certainly would continue to purchase sufficient oil, if not directly from a hostile Saudi regime, then from other producers in a marketplace that would remain global. Americans would adjust to any higher prices by finding new supplies, developing alternative energy forms, and reducing consumption.

6. Case turns DA – Crane evidence says free trade is key to the US economy.

WNDI 2008

42 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Saudi Oil DA (2/3) 7. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

8. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

WNDI 2008

43 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Saudi Oil DA (3/3) High Prices result in Philippine instability Manila Standard August 19, 2005 IN the news this week was a proposal coming from the government's economic managers asking for emergency powers for the President in order to allow her to deal with the crisis of high prices of crude oil. We are not talking, dear reader, simply of focused interventions such as specific subsidies or price subsidies like what other countries are discussing. We are talking about measures that include the truly extreme intervention of rationing. A matter of logic Now, I am no economist but something does not compute here. There is a failure in logic involved in invoking rationing as a solution to oil price increases. Rationing is a supply solution. In easy English, if there is not enough oil to go around, then we need to control how much oil is available for consumption. In other words, if there is a shortage of gasoline, then the government must control availability. However, there is, in fact, no shortage. Unlike the last time rationing was invoked in this country, there is no oil embargo today. There is no real shortage. What the government is proposing to Congress is to allow it to have the ability to create an artificial shortage even when there is no real shortage. Unfortunately, this artificial shortage will create some very real effects -- gas lines, quite possibly a transportation crisis, and again, quite possibly, even an unemployment crisis resulting from factories remaining idle. Matching solution to problem A basic tenet of rational decision-making is that the right solution can only be crafted if the problem is defined correctly. The problem, dear reader, is high oil prices. The real concern, of course, is the effect on inflation. Last week, the Asian Institute of Management Policy Center held a conference entitled "The Global Oil Situation: What is it to the Philippines?" In that conference, it was pointed out that an IMF study dated 2000 estimates that a 20 percent oil price hike translates to a one year after effect of 0.8 percent in inflation and a negative 0.8 percent effect on real GDP. And, no, I did not misplace that decimal point. The reason for this rather surprisingly small effect of oil price hikes on inflation is that the portion of spending that is oil-related is actually a rather small amount. Alexander Escucha, president of the Philippine Economic Society, says that he cannot recall the precise percentage for the Philippine basket of spending but that the percentage for the United States is about 5 percent. Even more interestingly, Alex points out that the last time rationing was seriously entertained seriously by government, the price of crude was at a current price equivalent of about $ 80 per barrel. In fact, the news in oil for the day is that crude oil futures dropped to $ 62.80 per barrel on news of increased inventories as well as refining capacity coming back on line. Presuming we are still worrying about inflation, the correct answer, it would seem to me, would be some sort of price subsidy targeted at relieving the effect of inflation for those that really need it. In fact, all the economists at the table agreed on two basic things. First, the best method of dealing with the current crisis is to let market forces determine a new equilibrium for the supply-demand-price equation. Second, the solution must match the problem. Rationing is a supply solution. It was an appropriate solution for the oil crisis caused by the oil embargoes of the last century but it is not an appropriate solution for the current crisis that is actually being caused by high prices. Prof. Federico Macaranas, executive director of the Asian Institute of Management's Policy Center, had this to say about the proposal of rationing as a solution to high oil prices: "They seem to be attempting to solve a political crisis by creating a possible economic crisis." The extreme situation Ernest Leung, former secretary of finance, said that the only justification for government intervention with market forces is to alleviate social cost. When asked for his opinion about rationing as an intervention, he stated that rationing is so extreme a measure that it should be invoked only under extreme circumstances. How extreme? His response: war or circumstances that would approximate the severity of war. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales has been quoted as saying that the current high cost of oil can

be considered a "serious national security threat." It is difficult for me to imagine how high oil prices can be considered a security threat. Unless, of course, the theory is that there will be massive civil unrest as a result of rising oil prices. Given the low translation of oil price increase to inflation, this seems an unlikely possibility. Escucha, however, pointed out that there is an SWS survey that says only about 15 percent of Filipinos understand that rising gasoline prices are a result of rising global oil prices. The rest of the population, apparently, blames all of this on various combinations of private sector greed and government incompetence and corruption. The reality, of course, is that everyone is feeling the crunch of higher oil prices. The reality is that this government cannot afford to subsidize oil prices for large volumes or long periods. The reality is that our deficit problem continues. The reality is that the all-important EVAT law is still stalled. The reality is that this government is still in a political crisis of confidence. The reality, it seems to me, is that our national economic interest is still being held hostage by the fight for political survival. And that, perhaps, is what the emergency is really all about.

Phillipine instability leads to nuclear war and destruction of the world. Michael May, Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford, Washington Quarterly, Summer 97 The unpalatable facts, to Europeans and North Americans, are that Asia has about half of the world's people, that it is growing faster than other parts of the world, and that, by mid-century, it will probably have more than half the population of the developed world and more than half of its money. Energy consumption, economic influence, and military power will be distributed in proportion. That is the rosy scenario. The dark scenario is that of a war that would, in all likelihood -- because nuclear weapons can be procured and deployed by any of these countries at a fraction of the cost of peaceful development --leave most of the civilized world devastated.

WNDI 2008

44 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Slavery DA (1/4) 1. N/U – the US already imports Brazilian ethanol duty free from CAFTA/CBI states and cooperates with Brazil over ethanol in the status quo that’s our Seelke and Yacobucci evidence. 2. N/U Yacobucci evidence says that Brazil is expanding its ethanol industry right now at its maximum rater in the status quo plan doesn’t change this. 3. Civil society and government policies check slavery Paulo Sotero, director of the Brazil Institute, 9/19/2007, Testimony before congress, http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/110/sot091907.htm Personally, I have problems when some of my fellow Brazilians reject the discussion of both issues as a matter of principle, arguing they do not belong in conversations about trade. The recent flooding of our own markets with cheap and sometimes unsafe products from Asian countries where labor is not allowed a free and independent voice forces us to reconsider this issue. Besides, Brazil has its own challenges in this area. I am aware that some members of the U.S. Congress have raised concerns about the issue of forced labor in my country. It is important to underline that abuses of workers’ rights are not denied or ignored in Brazil. The Brazilian media has done its part to keep the issue in the public eye. It is a subject of great concern to Brazilian society and government. And it would be irresponsible not to recognize that President Lula, a leader who came from the labor movement, has kept his commitment to defend workers’ rights in the last four and a half years. Don’t take my word for it. A study of this very topic produced by the International Labor Organization was presented just yesterday at a conference we hosted at the Wilson Center. The report, entitled “Rights at Work,” presents a comprehensive assessment of the implementation by four countries of commitments they made to combat all forms of abuse against workers rights as signatories of the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. Brazil is one of the countries studied by the ILO. The report concludes with a recognition that “Brazil has shown a strong commitment towards guaranteeing the rights and principles of the Declaration for all Brazilians,” introducing various programs, legal reforms, policies and institutions “in an effort to initiate change across a spectrum of human rights issues, and to move the country toward compliance with the fundamental labor standards of the Declaration.” The document highlights the positive involvement of no less than sixty companies in corporate responsibility initiatives to eradicate slave labor and the contributions made by the United States Department of Labor in some of the programs Brazil has implemented with ILO’s assistance. Much remain to be done. This type of collaborative effort is producing results and should continue. It would be tragically counterproductive and completely unacceptable, however, if Brazil’s recognition of the abuses against workers it confronts and the country’s efforts to address the problem were be used as pretext for the adoption of protectionist measures in the United States and elsewhere.

WNDI 2008

45 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Slavery DA (2/4) 4. Brazil will expand ethanol production rapidly with or without tariff Dan Buglass, Rural Affairs Editor, 4/24/2008, “Ethanol Fuels Growth of Brazilian Agriculture,” Lexis Prime Ministers Gordon Brown's statement that the UK needs to reassess its commitment of producing biofuels from land formerly devoted to crops for food production will have come as no great surprise to those who have questioned the economics of the headlong rush to renewable sources of energy. Meanwhile, Brazil is pressing ahead from its already leading position as the world's largest producer of ethanol. This rapidly expanding industry is based on sugar cane, with suitable land for this crop now changing hands at up to GBP 8,000 per hectare - a valuation which sits very close to the top of the Scottish market. But the reality is that serious investors in agricultural land, including operators from New Zealand, Australia and North America, have now grasped the fact that production costs in Brazil are much lower than in most of the developed world. A group of 16 members of the Scottish Association of Young Farmers' Clubs visited Brazil last December, largely as a result of sponsorship from the Cameron Trust. The trust was set up by John Cameron, a former president of NFU Scotland, and his wife Margaret following the sale of the major part of their extensive farming operations two years ago for price that must have approached GBP 10 million. The Camerons have no immediate family, but have a reputation of steering the younger generation in the right direction: those chosen must prove their worth. Andrew Stevenson from Fife was one of the group which visited Brazil. He reported this week on the scale and future potential of the sugar and ethanol industries in South America. He said: "Sugar cane is one of the biggest growth sectors within

Brazilian agriculture for many reasons, with energy security and environmental concerns being two of the main drivers. Renewable sources of energy in Brazil are not uncommon with 45 per cent of the requirements being fed from these." But that is just a beginning, according to Stevenson, who was clearly impressed with what he saw during the ten-day tour. He said: "Currently there are 350 sugar-cane plants operating in Brazil producing 20 billion litres of ethanol and 30 million tonnes of sugar. By 2012 it is predicted that there will be 412 plants producing 38 billion litres of ethanol with an exportable surplus of 10.5 billion litres. "This source of energy, however, requires land to produce it. Fortunately this is something that Brazil has in abundance. Currently 6.3 million hectares are cultivated for sugar cane production and projections show that by 2020 that will have doubled." That expansion is almost certainly to be at the cost of a further reduction in the Amazon rainforest, an exceedingly touchy subject. On a world scale Brazil accounts for 38 per cent of ethanol production but, in terms of exports, Brazil is by far the largest player with over 65 per cent of the market. Stevenson added: "Sugar cane is undoubtedly the most competitive feedstock to produce ethanol, with higher yields, lower costs which are competitive with crude oil at dollars 40 per barrel, and a very positive energy and environmental balance."

5. Free trade is key to human rights Jim Chen, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Fordham International Law Journal, November / December, 2000, 24 Fordham Int'l L.J. 217 John Rawls's difference principle poses one final obstacle. Pax mercatoria is legitimate only if it advances the welfare of society's least advantaged class. Free trade may promote freedom and environmental quality in a country justly described as "the Michael Jordan of geopolitics," but what does it promise beyond the shores of the United States? Far from undermining the legitimacy of pax mercatoria, a look at the developing world and at formerly Communist countries confirms the metaphysical benefits of international economic coordination for nations rich and poor. Although the exact relationship between political freedom and economic growth remains ambiguous, certain constants have emerged since Bretton Woods. Chief among these is the recognition that neither wealth nor liberty can flourish unless private parties can realistically expect that courts will decide cases according to reasoned law and free of interference from the political branches of government. Rule of law, taken for granted in the United States and its peer nations, remains the sine qua non for development. Perhaps no element of rule of law is as critical as an independent judiciary. Corrupt or politically captive judiciaries impair development. The kleptocracies that have arisen in the former Soviet Union demonstrate all too clearly how corruption in judicial administration and law enforcement can stunt growth and freedom. By contrast, the restoration of Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 has not drained the wealth from the former Crown Colony. The difference lies in the Chinese government's respect for the independence of Hong Kong's judiciary, however fitfully and grudgingly China honors that pledge. On balance, increases in wealth do enhance human rights. Economically vibrant societies tend to adopt and maintain beneficent laws and legal institutions. Cheaper, easier communication empowers the heretofore oppressed and dispossessed. Through these channels globalization achieves its indirect but positive impact on political freedom. "Globalization is not only the creation of world markets and transnational companies; it also means the extension of justice and democratic values into regions where barbarism still flourishes."

WNDI 2008

46 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Slavery DA (3/4) 6. Case turns DA - 1AC food prices advantage access dehumanization because people starving are subject to failed states and human suffering. 7 Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71. The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it stretches toward, but it

is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection, brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on. (The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal." Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear, acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.

WNDI 2008

47 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Slavery DA (4/4) 8. Consequentialist decision-making is imperative. Gender paraphrased. Kai Nielsen, Professor of Philosophy, University of Calgary, Absolutism and Its Consequentialist Critics, ed. Joram Graf Haber, 1993, p. 170-2 Forget the levity of the example and consider the case of the innocent fat man. If there really is no other way of unsticking our fat man and if plainly, without blasting him out, everyone in the cave will drown, then, innocent or not, he should be blasted out. This indeed overrides the principle that the innocent should never be deliberately killed, but it does not reveal a callousness toward life, for the people involved are caught in a desperate situation in which, if such extreme action is not taken, many lives will be lost and far greater misery will obtain. Moreover, the people who do such a horrible thing or acquiesce in the doing of it are not likely to be rendered more callous about human life and human suffering as a result. Its occurrence will haunt them for the rest of their lives and is as likely as not to make them more rather than less morally sensitive. It is not even correct to say that such a desperate act shows a lack of respect for persons. We are not treating the fat man merely as a means. The fat man's person-his interests and rights are not ignored. Killing him is something which is undertaken with the greatest reluctance. It is only when it is quite certain that there is no other way to save the lives of the others that such a violent course of action is justifiably undertaken. Alan Donagan, arguing rather as Anscombe argues, maintains that "to use any innocent man ill for the sake of some public good is directly to degrade him to being a mere means" and to do this is of course to violate a principle essential to morality, that is, that human beings should never merely be treated as means but should be treated as ends in themselves (as persons worthy of respect)." But, as my above remarks show, it need not be the case, and in the above situation it is not the case, that in killing such an innocent man we are treating him merely as a means. The action is universalizable, all alternative actions which would save his life are duly considered, the blasting out is done only as a last and desperate resort with the minimum of harshness and indifference to his suffering and the like. It indeed sounds ironical to talk this way, given what is done to him. But if such a terrible situation were to arise, there would always be more or less humane ways of going about one's grim task. And in acting in the more humane ways toward the fat man, as we do what we must do and would have done to ourselves were the roles reversed, we show a respect for his person. In so treating the fat man-not just to further the public good but to prevent the certain death of a whole group of people (that is to prevent an even greater evil than his being killed in this way)-the claims of justice are not overriden either, for each individual involved, if he is reasonably correct, should realize that if he were so stuck rather than the fat man, he should in such situations be blasted out. Thus, there is no question of being unfair. Surely we must choose between evils here, but is there anything more reasonable, more morally appropriate, than choosing the lesser evil when doing or allowing some evil cannot be avoided? That is, where there is no avoiding both and where our actions can determine whether a greater or lesser evil obtains, should we not plainly always opt for the lesser evil? And is it not obviously a greater evil that all those other innocent people should suffer and die than that the fat man should suffer and die? Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is still more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One could even usefully and relevantly adapt herethough for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's. Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not theory, is corrupt."" Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism, it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral convictions, that would be another matter indeed. Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of people who will sanction such killing of the innocent, but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking of the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and far greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery but merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity, he [it] allows, when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times

worse. He tries to keep his `moral purity' and [to] avoid `dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard called `double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this does not make it right.

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A2 Spending DA (1/3) 1. N/U – 1NC Yacobucci and Seeke evidence says the US already cooperates with Brazil over ethanol technology and that the US already imports ethanol duty free from CBI and CAFTA states. 2. N/U - Recession is either inevitable or impossible CNN interview with Fareed Zakaria, world affairs analyst, July 11, 2008, Zakaria: Perfect storm hitting U.S. economy NEW YORK (CNN) -- Between the mortgage crisis, record high oil prices and a lackluster stock market, Americans are not exactly confident about the economy. CNN spoke with world affairs analyst and author Fareed Zakaria about his view of the situation. CNN: How bad is the U.S. economy right now? Zakaria: It almost looks like a perfect storm. We have a collapsing housing market, weak consumer spending and a credit crisis that has kept banks reluctant to extend credit easily. Plus, food and fuel prices are soaring. It's actually a sign of the strength of the American and global economy that we're not in a big global recession given all of this. But it's not going to get better fast. CNN: So, we're not past the worst yet? Zakaria: Look I'm not a trained economist but I had three of the best on the show this week -- Larry Summers (Treasury Secretary for Bill Clinton) Jeff Sachs (Director of UN Millennium Project), and Paul Krugman (op-ed columnist on economy for The New York Times). And they all agreed that it was unlikely that we had worked through most of the problems in the economy. They felt we seemed to have avoided the worst of the financial crisis but that now the real economy was beginning to show the signs of pain -- housing was going to

keep declining, the consumer would scale back and companies would cut their workforces.

3. N/U - Recession is inevitable – the best data proves that GDP growth will collapse Caroline Baum, Bloomberg News Columnist, July 13, 2008, APP.com, Caroline Baum: Its all over but the dating for U.S. recession With no prospect for a near-term turnaround in the labor market, the real question becomes, at what point do the employment declines gain the critical mass to warrant the official recession designation? "Depth level" I posed the question to Robert Hall, chairman of the BCDC, in an e-mail this week. After emphasizing that he was "speaking as an individual member of the committee and not as chair," he said the committee "may reach the question of what depth level constitutes a recession, but we are not there yet." The committee may not be there yet, but the economy most likely is. All four of the BCDC's coincident indicators peaked late last year or early this year. The trends in the components aren't likely to reverse anytime soon. So as Hall said, it's only a matter of determining what "depth level" will suffice to make the recession official. What about real gross domestic product, which is still growing? The BCDC uses four monthly indicators because they are a) more timely than quarterly GDP and b) a proxy for it. Real GDP rose 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter and 1 percent in the first. The meager fourth-quarter increase could turn to mush as early as July 31, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its annual benchmark revisions to the National Income and Product Accounts for the last three years. A decline in GDP in the fourth quarter wouldn't be the depth charge the BCDC needs to designate an official cycle peak. That comes with a long lag, sometimes after the recession has ended. It would just be a confirmation for those of us who, to paraphrase economist Robert Solow, see a recession everywhere except in the GDP data.

4. No link – plan doesn’t require any new spending just signing a bill.

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49 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Spending DA (2/3) 5. Recession is inevitable – the best data proves that GDP growth will collapse Caroline Baum, Bloomberg News Columnist, July 13, 2008, APP.com, Caroline Baum: Its all over but the dating for U.S. recession With no prospect for a near-term turnaround in the labor market, the real question becomes, at what point do the employment declines gain the critical mass to warrant the official recession designation? "Depth level" I posed the question to Robert Hall, chairman of the BCDC, in an e-mail this week. After emphasizing that he was "speaking as an individual member of the committee and not as chair," he said the committee "may reach the question of what depth level constitutes a recession, but we are not there yet." The committee may not be there yet, but the economy most likely is. All four of the BCDC's coincident indicators peaked late last year or early this year. The trends in the components aren't likely to reverse anytime soon. So as Hall said, it's only a matter of determining what "depth level" will suffice to make the recession official. What about real gross domestic product, which is still growing? The BCDC uses four monthly indicators because they are a) more timely than quarterly GDP and b) a proxy for it. Real GDP rose 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter and 1 percent in the first. The meager fourth-quarter increase could turn to mush as early as July 31, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases its annual benchmark revisions to the National Income and Product Accounts for the last three years. A decline in GDP in the fourth quarter wouldn't be the depth charge the BCDC needs to designate an official cycle peak. That comes with a long lag, sometimes after the recession has ended. It would just be a confirmation for those of us who, to paraphrase economist Robert Solow, see a recession everywhere except in the GDP data.

6. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

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A2 Spending DA (3/3) 7. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

8. Relations are key the Brazilian economy Peter Hakim, President- Inter-American Dialogue, Jan/Feb 2004, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040101faessay83111/peter-hakim/the-reluctant-partner.html Washington needs Brasilia's cooperation to make progress on critical regional issues, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), Venezuela's worsening political confrontation, and Colombia's criminal violence and guerrilla warfare. Brazil's voice also carries weight on broader international issues such as global trade negotiations and the struggle against AIDS. Just as surely, Brazil needs U.S. cooperation to advance its domestic and international agendas, particularly the central challenge of economic growth, which requires dependable access to U.S. markets, capital, and technology. Brazil needs the United States to have any chance of energizing its long-stagnant economy, expanding job opportunities, and accelerating social development. An adversarial relationship would be extremely damaging to U.S. policy and interests in Latin America, more so than ever given the region's unsettled politics and uneasy relations with the United States.

9. Brazilian economic collapse would destroy the US economy Peter Hakim, President of Inter America Dialogue, 12/30/2007, “Latin America: the next U.S. President’s agenda,” Inter America Dialogue, http://www.thedialogue.org/PublicationFiles/Peter%20Hakim%20%20Great%20Decisions%202008.pdf By any quantitative measure, what happens elsewhere in Latin America is less important to the U.S. The rest of the region is not central to U.S. security; it is neither a source of nor a target for international terrorism. Economic relations with South and Central America are expanding, but they are modest compared to Mexico. All of South America’s trade with the U.S., including the oil from Venezu- ela, amounts only to about 40% of U.S. commerce with Mexico alone. Trade with Brazil, the second-largest U.S. partner in Latin America, accounts for little more than 1% of U.S. trade worldwide. Still, an economic crisis in Brazil, the eighthlargest economy in the world, would have destructive spillover effects across the region, which could importantly damage the U.S. economy. And Brazil is a country that could become much more economically consequential to the U.S.— if it sustains a healthy rate of growth and continues to open its economy.

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51 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 T – In the US 1. We Meet – 1AC says reduction of tariff would be a $.54 incentive per gallon of ethanol for consumers. 2. We Meet - lifting the tariff would be a domestic incentive for both producers and consumers Lauren Etter and Joel Millman, 3/9/2007, “Ethanol Tariff Loophole Sparks a Boom in Caribbean,” Alternative Energy, http://hughbartling.blogspot.com/2007/03/ethanol-tariff-loophole-sparks-boom-in.html Encouraging more imports of foreign ethanol would drive down prices and likely boost the American market further. While the 54-cent tariff early on encouraged the U.S. domestic industry, now it has become counterproductive, contends Robert Howse, a trade expert at the International Food & Agriculture Trade Policy Council, an advocacy group sponsored largely by agricultural companies. "If we wanted to achieve the energy goals in the U.S. we would disassemble a lot of the protectionist policies," he says. 3. Counter-interpretation - IN IS DEFINED AS MOVING FROM AN OUTSIDE POINT TO A POINT WITHIN. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1), 2006, Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in. (used to indicate motion or direction from outside to a point within)

4. No Ground Loss – Neg still guaranteed links to US alternative energy increase and gets agent/advantage counterplans. 5. No Limits Explosion – Strategy and limited solvency advocates prevents most international cases from being run. 6. Education – AFF interpretation is key to access the core of the literature with debates over US energy leadership and trade. 7. Ground – Key to access relations good/bad Das. 8. Topicality is not a voting issue. Good is good enough if we win our interpretation than you should vote AFF. 9. No topical case – all affirmatives that pass on incentives to consumers outside of the US aren’t topical.

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52 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 T – Incentives 1. We Meet – 1AC says reduction of tariff would be a $.54 incentive per gallon of ethanol for consumers. 2. We Meet - lifting the tariff would be a domestic incentive for both producers and consumers Lauren Etter and Joel Millman, 3/9/2007, “Ethanol Tariff Loophole Sparks a Boom in Caribbean,” Alternative Energy, http://hughbartling.blogspot.com/2007/03/ethanol-tariff-loophole-sparks-boom-in.html Encouraging more imports of foreign ethanol would drive down prices and likely boost the American market further. While the 54-cent tariff early on encouraged the U.S. domestic industry, now it has become counterproductive, contends Robert Howse, a trade expert at the International Food & Agriculture Trade Policy Council, an advocacy group sponsored largely by agricultural companies. "If we wanted to achieve the energy goals in the U.S. we would disassemble a lot of the protectionist policies," he says.

3. We Meet - Even if they win 100% of their violation evidence removing the tariff would still be a $.03/gallon incentive for ethanol ICIS, 5/15/2008, “US Congress extends ethanol subsidy and tariff,” ICIS News, http://www.icis.com/Articles/2008/05/15/9124273/us-congress-extends-ethanol-subsidy-and-tariff.html The farm bill’s extension of the ethanol import tariff means that volumes of sugarcane-based ethanol directly from Brazil will remain priced out of the US fuels market. As investment bank Friedman, Billings & Ramsey (FBR) noted, by lowering the tax credit to 45 cents/gal while maintaining the tariff at 54 cents/gal, Congress has effectively raised the barrier to ethanol imports from 3 cents/gal to 9 cents/gal.

4. We Meet – the text of their interpretation is a definition of motivator not incentives. We meet the other words in the resolution. 5. C/I - An incentive is a motivator MSN Encarta Online, 2008 something that encourages somebody to action: something that encourages or motivates somebody to do something

6. No Ground Loss – Neg still guaranteed links to US alternative energy increase and gets agent/advantage counterplans. 7. No Limits Explosion – Strategy and limited solvency advocates prevents most international cases from being run. 8. Education – our interpretation is key to AFFs at the core of the topic ranging from RPS to carbon tax to Brazilian ethanol. Neg interpretation prevents education. 9. Ground – our interpretation is key to regulation and predictability das. 10. Topicality is not a voting issue. Good is good enough if we win our interpretation than you should vote AFF. 11. No topical case – all affirmatives that pass on incentives to consumers outside of the US aren’t topical.

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53 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 T – 1AR Cards Removing the tariff while maintaining subsidies would increase demand without increasing etha Inside Energy with Federal Lands, Jean Chemnick, 7/7/2008, “Stoppin tariff on imports of ethanol would aid US markey, producers: Lugar,” Lexis A senior Republican senator says eliminating the tariff on ethanol imports while maintaining other government support for US ethanol production would give Americans access to relatively inexpensive foreign fuel while still encouraging the growth of the domestic biofuels industry. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, a strong advocate for the US ethanol industry, is virtually alone among farm-state lawmakers in calling for an end to the 54 cent/gallon tariff. Lugar told reporters outside an American Enterprise Institute conference last week that he believes Brazil and other countries are in a better position to supply ethanol to America's coastal states than the US heartland can do, because there is not a pipeline infrastructure for ethanol. Furthermore, he said, with corn prices high and ethanol prices relatively low, an infusion of low-cost biofuels from abroad might help maintain, and expand, the demand for ethanol. Access to less expensive biofuels from abroad would encourage blenders to use more biofuels, Lugar said. This in turn would encourage the spread of E85, an 85% ethanol-gasoline blend. Currently, most ethanol-blended gasoline in the US is E10.

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54 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Consult CPs (1/3) 1. No spillover – consulting on one issue doesn’t set up a framework or cause more consultation in the future. If it does, it proves they’ll say no in the future because our plan will start disadvantaging them 2. Perm – Do both 3. Perm – Do the CP -- It’s not textually competitive. Textual comp is best – - checks infinite regression to the worst counterplans which short-circuit clash with the aff and decrease topic-specific education - ensures core neg ground - and doesn’t allow bad perms - They’ll have no OFFENSIVE REASON to prefer infinite bad counterplans over select challenging ones - all their reasons textual comp is bad are CREATED by functional counterplans, and disads alone check Voter because it proves the counterplan isn’t competitive 4. Perm – Consult ________ as per the CP and do the plan no matter what. 5. Perm – Do the plan and consult __________

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55 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Consult CPs (2/3) 6. Dispositional Consultation Counterplans are a voter a) Ground – we can’t read add-ons about the net-benefit or make our best arguments why they’d say no. Damage is already done, the 2AC is key. b) Dispo is conditionality in disguise because we HAVE to make a perm, creating multiple worlds and strategy skews c) Infinite – they could consult anyone, jacking education and ground d) No literature – the US has never given a veto to another country and they have NO evidence we should consult on the plan, destroying topic-specific education and encouraging lazy research e) Competes on severing certainty, which isn’t inherent to the plan – proves it’s not competitive f) Bad CP’s – their interpretation will legitimize the worst in anti-educational unfair counterplans, like condition the plan on space g) Consulation is uniquely bad on this topic – we already have to defend conditioned action good h) vagueness. The fact that consultation never happens means that the negative can read an awful piece of evidence to prove plan is modified – makes the neg a moving target i) it artificially inflates the net benefit. If this argument isn’t true, it proves they should have read the disad alone and gone for case defense or a legitimate counterplan j) Consulting Israel is uniquely abusive against a Syria aff, since there is nary a solvency advocate that doesn’t talk about Israel and we already have to defend Israel compliane to solve the core advantage – they functionally kill a fifth of the topic

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A2 Consult CPs (3/3) ) Cplan jacks democracy—unaccountable policymakers are acting instead of representative democracy John Hulsman, research fellow in Euro. Affairs @ Heritage and Greg Schmitt, Heritage Euro Affairs, 7-212001, Washington Times The treaty would infringe on the sovereignty of the national court system and give more power to a supranational organization that has no democratic claim over U.S. citizens, and is thus politically unaccountable. Obviously, such a system undermines the legitimacy of the U.S. Constitution and the rights of each citizen.

( ) US democracy key to the global model Scott Langley, Instructor P.E.A.K., NetLeaf Corp & BS Oregon State U, Fall 1993, Daily Barometer With the Cold War over, we no longer feel an obligation to lead. But there is no nation or group of nations willing to take our place or that shares the same optimism that have about achieving a world of peaceful, democratic nations. Other nations will follow our lead, but they are not willing to do it without our leadership – witness Bosnia and the decline of the operation in Somalia. It doesn’t seem fair that the promotion of democracy around the world should rest upon our shoulders. But I believe that if we are not willing to take the lead or at least help develop the UN into an organization capable of tackling difficult peacekeeping tasks, the peace will not be kept outside of the increasingly narrowly defined sphere of ‘US national interests.’ World affairs will become more of a ‘survival of the fittest’ struggle, where the strong dominate the weak. That is why I believe this attitude of ‘Why should we have to do it?’ towards helping the UN will only result in a more cruel and indifferent world that I do not wish to see. The world needs our moral and political leadership.

( ) Democracy key to check inevitable extinction Larry Diamond, Sen. Research Fellow @ Hoover, 1995, Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s, p. 6-7 This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful internationalist crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly-corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness.

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57 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Consult China (1/1) ( ) China will say no - China’s rising influence in Latin America is part of a global challenge to American hegemony Stephen Johnson, former Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at the Heritage Foundation, 10/24/2005, “Balancing China’s Growing Influence in Latin America,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/research/latinamerica/bg1888.cfm#_ftn3 China’s neighbors are competing for many of the same world markets, as are Europe and the United States. Latin America is a particularly promising prospect. It is relatively unindustrialized and has an abundance of raw materials. Moreover, authoritarian leaders and/or corrupt oligarchies control a number of governments. Signing purchase agreements with them is much easier than dealing with the panoply of private corporations found in more democratic countries. Challenging the United States. China’s main rival for global preeminence is the United States. China sees the United States as preventing Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland and thwarting Beijing’s rise as a power. Previously, China was isolated, but now plays key roles in Asian geopolitics and aspires to do so elsewhere. Besides status as a nuclear nation, it is a member of the U.N. Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the Group of 77 developing nations, and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group. It also holds observer status in the Organization of American States. While China has become the second-largest U.S. trade partner after Canada, it challenges U.S. influence wherever it can. In fact, it will soon have more attack submarines than the United States, with the addition of four Russian Kilo-class subs and new diesel–electric vessels equipped with technology that will allow them to run quieter than nuclear submarines.[1] According to former U.S. Ambassador to Beijing James Lilly, “[T]he facts are that [the Chinese] run massive intelligence operations against us, they make open statements against us, their high-level documents show that they are not friendly to us.” Chinese military white papers promote power projection and describe U.S. policies as “hegemonism and power politics.”[2] In the Western Hemisphere, the Chinese are taking advantage of failures of half-hearted market reforms and Washington’s unwillingness to pursue neighborhood relations with much enthusiasm. National Defense University professor Cynthia A. Watson notes, “[T]he 1990s turned into a period of severe disappointment as free markets led to rampant corruption and unfulfilled expectations in Latin America while Washington became the world’s superpower rather than a partner for the region.”[3]

( ) Case turns the net benefit – Liu in 05 evidence from the 1AC says trade is key to prevent a US/China war. ( ) Perm solves - u.s. and china are already cooperating on alternative energy US Treasury in 2008 (“U.S. and China Deepen Their Economic Relationship” http://www.america.gov/st/texttransenglish/2008/June/20080619150836xjsnommis0.2596334.html, June 18, 2008) Recognizing that energy and environmental challenges represent two of the most important policy issues facing our two countries in the twenty-first century, and the importance of joint cooperation in addressing these challenges, the United States and China committed to strengthen long-term cooperation on energy and the environment. To this end, both countries: • signed a Ten Year Energy and Environment Cooperation Framework and announced the first five goals to be addressed under the framework, established five task forces and launched action plans focused on concrete cooperation for each goal, with the aim of completing all of these action plans by SED V, and also initiated discussion on exploring the concept of EcoPartnerships by SED V; • agreed on the critical relationship between energy security, economic growth, and

environmental protection, and on the importance of exploring energy efficiencies, alternative fuels, and next generation technologies; and agree to recognize the importance of ensuring responsible and transparent energy exploration and development that minimizes the negative impact on the environment and through bilateral dialogue will give full effect to the energy security principles embraced at Aomori, Japan in the Joint Statement of the Five-Party Energy Ministers on June 7, 2008 and the Joint Statement of Energy Ministers by the G8 Plus 3 on June 8, 2008; • agree to strengthen cooperation with

the International Energy Agency (IEA) on areas of mutual interest to address energy security issues of common concern, including global energy markets, strategic oil reserve, energy diversification, energy efficiency and clean energy technology, and agree that in times of oil supply disruption, to consider voluntary participation in the joint action of IEA member countries, building on the previous commitments made at the third SED meeting and the Joint Statement of the Five-Party Energy Ministers on June 7, 2008 at Aomori, Japan;

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58 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Command CP (1/3) 1. Perm do both 2. Perm – Do the CP -- It’s not textually competitive. Textual comp is best – - checks infinite regression to the worst counterplans which short-circuit clash with the aff and decrease topic-specific education - ensures core neg ground - and doesn’t allow bad perms - They’ll have no OFFENSIVE REASON to prefer infinite bad counterplans over select challenging ones - all their reasons textual comp is bad are CREATED by functional counterplans, and disads alone check Voter because it proves the counterplan isn’t competitive 3. No crunch is coming Bjorn Lomborg, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2001, The Skeptical Environmentalist, p. 4 In presenting this description I will need to challenge our usual conception of the collapse of ecosystems, because this conception is simply not in keeping with reality. We are not running out of energy or natural resources.’4 There will be more and more food per head of the world’s population. Fewer and fewer people are starving. In 1900 we lived for an average of 30 years; today we live for 67. According to the UN we have reduced poverty more in the last 50 years than we did in the preceding 500, and it has been reduced in practically every country. Global warming, though its size and future projections are rather unrealistically pessimistic, is almost certainly taking place, but the typical cure of early and radical fossil fuel cutbacks is way worse than the original affliction, and moreover its total impact will not pose a devastating problem for our future. Nor will we lose 25—50 percent of all species in our lifetime — in fact we are losing probably 0.7 percent. Acid rain does not kill the forests, and the air and water around us are becoming less and less polluted. Mankind’s lot has actually improved in terms of practically every measurable indicator. But note carefully what I am saying here: that by far the majority of indicators show that mankind’s lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, mean that everything is good enough. The first statement refers to what the world looks like whereas the second refers to what it ought to look like.

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59 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Command CP (2/3) 4. Food scarcity args are wrong—ag innovation can keep pace Bjorn Lomborg, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, 2001, Environmental Conflict, p. 131-132 The record till now is clear—the world is better fed and has fewer starving people. But the question is whether this can go on. It is often argued that the Green Revolution is running out of steam. We are beginning to experience ‘a massive loss of momentum’, writes Lester Brown (WI, 1994: 179). Growth is slowing and ‘either levels off or shows signs of doing so’ (WI, 1998: 88). This is true in the sense that global growth rates in yields have been declining for both rice, wheat, and corn, making up almost 50 percent of the world’s calorie intake. In the 1970s rice yield annually grew by 2.1 percent, whereas yield growth now is down to 1.5 percent annually, and the figures look similar for wheat and corn (WFS, 1996: 6: Box 1). Should we be worried? It is useful to subdivide this into three questions. First, does the reduced growth in yields indicate that we are reaching the biological and physiological limits of plant efficiency? Second, what is the effect of possible limits to the ordinary, developing world farmer? Third, does humanity now really need the high growth rates? An argument is often made to suggest that we are reaching biological limits. For instance, Brown tells us that the American wheat yield has not improved since 1983, and that this indicates an approaching limit (WI, 1998: 82ff). However, the choice of 1983 is crucial to Brown’s argument, in that it was the previous top year. The choice of U.S. wheat is similarly decisive, since wheat yields in almost all other regions have been steadily increasing and outcompeting the United States. Theoretically, there seems to be very little empirical foundation to the idea of impending limits. Tony Fischer, the leader of wheat research in the organization that led the Green Revolution, argues that: ‘It is a popular misconception that wheat research has not made much progress since the rapid gains of the Green Revolution during the 1960s’. Actually, since that time ‘we have steadily added to the yield potential of wheat at an average rate of about 1 percent per year’. At the same time, the new strains have become more resistant to diseases and more efficient in their use of water and nutrients. The International Rice Research Institute has announced a prototype of new rice yielding up to 25 percent more than the current modern high-yielding varieties.2 Second, it is important to look at the situation of ordinary peasants. By far the largest part of the peasants in the developing countries achieve much lower yields than even the locally best ones. Consequently, there is generally much room for improvement. FAO has specifically examined growth in yields in the developing countries. ‘For the developing countries as a whole, the growth rates of per capita agricultural production (all products) have not been generally lower in recent eight-year moving periods compared with earlier ones’. Therefore, the FAO points out that ‘in the light of this evidence, it is difficult to accept a position that developments in recent years have marked a turning point for the worse’ (FAO, 1995b: 44). Third, do we need the high growth in the future? Of course, when growth in yield for rice has declined from 2.1 percent to 1.5 percent it could seem troublesome. But at the same time population growth has also dropped from over 2 percent in the 1970s to less than 1.3 percent today, and it will further drop below 0.5 percent within the next fifty years. Consequently, a smaller growth in production today can actually give more to each individual than what a considerably larger growth could achieve in the 1970s. In summary, the FAO states that that there is no need to worry about the diminished growth in agricultural production. Basically it ‘reflects some positive developments in the world demographic and development scenes’: the world population grows ever slower, and inhabitants in more and more countries are reaching a level of food consumption where they cannot eat much more (FAO, 1995b: 5; WFS, 1996: 1: 4.6—7). Indeed, the FAO predicts that there will be more food for more people in the year 2010 (WFS 1996: 1, table 3). It is expected that there will be fewer malnourished and that all regions will experience increasing available calories per capita. The same general conclusion is reached by IFPRI, USDA, and the World Bank—and all three predict even lower prices.3

5. CP doesn’t solve net benefit because its still removing government control over ethanol.

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A2 Command CP (3/3) 6. Authoritarianism fails to protect the environment for Three reasons Dr. Ross E. Mitchell is a Ph.D. Research Scientist who teaches at Gallaudet University. “Green politics or environmental blues? Analyzing ecological democracy,” 2006. Sage Publications. http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/4/459 Second, closed democratic systems are antithetical to ecological democracy by definition, but they may actually increase environmental impacts (Dietz et al., 2001; Winslow, 2005).3 For example, peripheral countries with high levels of political repression tend to be highly carbon intensive and their nationstates often assume less responsibility for environ- mental protection, presumably to keep production costs competitive (Roberts et al., 2003).4 On the other hand, wealthier countries might improve their environments by “displacing” ecological risks and burdens elsewhere, such as shipping toxic wastes or locating eco- logically degrading production processes outside the home state, or even globally in the case of climate change. Still, a generally putative positive relationship between democracy and ecological well-being/health is presumed to exist by most accounts. In any case, democracies are not homogeneous: “certain characteristics that help determine the level of democracy in a nation, such as the free flow of information or the level of corruption, are important determinants of how successfully a democratic government can and will control environmental degradation” (Winslow, 2005: 781). Third, institutionally imposed social inequities hinder the attainment of ecological democracy. With the publicity generated from Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Bhopal, and other environmental crises, a burgeoning environmental justice movement has highlighted how racial, gender, and/or class differences are implicated in environmental inequities (Bullard and Johnson, 2000; Kalof et al., 2002). Strong evidence of racially distributed pollution can be found in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, for instance (Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss, 2001). Gender inequities that shift environmental ills to working and nursing women have been brought out in public light by the ecofeminism movement (de Chiro, 1998; Gaard, 1998; Mies and Shiva, 1993). A class focus “helps reveal that workers in their workplaces and homes are more vulnerable to environmental hazards than the affluent” (Torgerson, 1999: 46), since the working class stand to lose a healthy existence and scarce jobs.

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A2 Trade CP (1/3) 1. Perm do both. 2. Solvency deficit – CP doesn’t solve the food prices or trade advantage because it doesn’t lift the ethanol tariff. 3. Solvency deficit – CP doesn’t solve US/Brazilian protectionist conflict because it doesn’t lift the tariff, that’s our Reuters evidence. The impact is global nuclear war, that’s our Spicer evidence. 4. Solvency deficit - Lifting the tariff is key to free trade Russell Hasan, Researcher at Altenews.com, 6/8/2006, “A Research Report on Ethanol Investment: Golden Opportunity or Fool’s Gold?” Altenews.com, http://www.altenews.com/Ethanol%20Research%20Report.pdf South American Imports: Brazil, a major player in ethanol, now accounts for more than 50% of the 20,000 barrels/day of U.S. ethanol imports. Brazilian production costs have been 40-50% lower than the U.S., according to a Congressional Research Service Report for Congress of 2005. It may be as low as 20% now. Even with the supposedly prohibitive tariff, which violates WTO rules, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is competitive with domestic corn ethanol. Brazilian exports to the U.S. are limited only by its capacity constraints. Japan plans to invest $1.29 billion in Brazil towards the production of sugarcane ethanol and biodiesel, which will increase Brazilian ethanol capacity significantly before the end of the decade. Caribbean and CAFTA countries, because of the duty free access provided by the Caribbean Basin Initiative and CAFTA, have been long time exporters of ethanol to the U.S. CBI and CAFTA allow Caribbean and Central American countries to purchase ethanol from other countries such as Brazil, reprocess it, and export to the U.S. without paying the import tariff. It is questionable whether America can champion globalization and keep the ethanol import tariff indefinitely. It is also a matter of time before Brazilian ethanol finds its way to the U.S. via the Caribbean. Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is more energy efficient than American corn ethanol and cheaper than gasoline. By 2010, Brazil will export 2.5 billion gallons of ethanol, which is likely to put enormous pressure on domestic ethanol. Thus, competition from Brazil and the Caribbean may lower the price of ethanol in America in five years.

5. Solvency deficit – 1AC IPS 07 evidence says that removing tariffs on agriculture is all that’s needed for doha success. Their evidence is to old – Europe is now on board so HR credibility is irrelevant. 6. Removing tariffs prevent dollar tailspin Ariel Cohen, Ph.D. and Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 6/4/2008, “Big Money, Big Oil, Birg Risk,” the Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed060408b.cfm Finally, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and even US friend Kuwait are dumping the greenback in favor of the Euro in energy transactions. This is likely to decrease demand and increase the supply of dollars, sending the US currency into a tailspin. Weaker dollars and higher inflation may add insult to injury in the prolonged process of America's economic deterioration. To stave it off and to combat its oil-rich adversaries, the US needs, in the short term, to expand its domestic energy sector. Increasing oil and gas production in the West, along the Pacific and Atlantic continental shelf, and in Alaska will help, and so will a coal and nuclear power build-up. US should emphasize ties with friendly oil suppliers, such as Azerbaijan, Angola, Canada, Nigeria, Norway, Equatorial Guniea, etc. The US Congress should also abolish corn ethanol subsidy and lift tariffs on the really competitive ethanol made from sugar cane. Brazil and Africa can produce more ethanol than Iowa and Nebraska. However, in the long term, more advanced technological solutions are vital to stem the global wealth redistribution to OPEC potentates and other America-haters. World powers have risen and fallen over major economic factors. This should never be the case of the US. The oil potentates should know that the US will not be intimidated - or bankrupted out of existence. And US allies, from the Caspian to the Middle East, from the Pacific to Atlantic, should know that US is a true and trusted friend.

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A2 Trade CP (2/3) 7. Weak dollar means Euroswitch which undermines the US economy The Observer Sunday February 23, 2003 At various points in time since the early 1970s, oil producers have discussed this, especially in periods when the dollar has been weak. Opinions have tended to be wide-ranging, depending on the strategic and trade alliances certain members have with particular trade blocs,' said Yarjani. That was an elliptical reference to the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia, whose government is the staunchest ally of the US within Opec. 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN. Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.'

8. Removing trade barriers to Brazilian ethanol solves oil dependence Richard G. Lugar, Senator, and Roberto Abdenur, Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., 5/15/2006, “America and Brazil Intersect on Ethanol,” Renewable Energy World Online, http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=44896 The key is ethanol, which Brazil long ago saw as an important element of its energy strategy and now provides 18 percent of the country's automotive fuel, thanks to a booming sugar-cane-based ethanol industry. As a result, Brazil, which years ago had to import a large share of the petroleum needed for domestic consumption, recently reached complete self-sufficiency in oil. For its own energy security, the United States -- by far the world's largest oil importer -- similarly needs to break oil's near-monopoly on the transport sector by turning to ethanol for a much larger share of its auto fuel supply. Although the United States, using corn, produces nearly as much ethanol as Brazil and is expanding its annual production by 25 percent, the four billion gallons produced is still a tiny fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline consumed. Using E-85 fuel, a blend of 15-percent gasoline and 85-percent ethanol, and easily available flexible-fuel technology so that cars can burn E-85, the United States could dramatically lower its oil dependence. Gaining consumer acceptance will spur the expansion of ethanol production and infrastructure. That means spreading the availability of E-85, now largely limited to the Midwest, to markets from coast to coast. One solution might be for the United States to import more Brazilian ethanol to blend on East Coast, where transportation costs significantly raise the price of Midwest ethanol. That would, however, require the politically difficult step of ending the protective tariffs on Brazilian ethanol that now shelters the U.S. industry. It makes strategic sense to import environmentally friendly ethanol from a reliable friend like Brazil in our own hemisphere. After all, the United States doesn't tax imported crude oil, which pollutes and often comes from unstable suppliers. Policymakers would need to consider the impact on the U.S. ethanol industry, where breakthroughs in making ethanol out of cheap and widely available biomass promise to lower costs and increase supplies. Currently, ethanol makers are highly profitable and are literally overwhelmed by demand. They have little immediate prospect of marketing large volumes of their product on the East Coast. Some analyses suggest that increasing foreign supplies to accelerate the U.S. switch to E85 will create a bigger ethanol pie for all. What is clear is that dropping the tariff would remove a major source of friction between the two countries, as well as strengthen the energy security of both. This bold gesture of friendship could launch productive bilateral negotiations on trade and broader cooperation on other issues. Together, the two countries could undertake an international joint action to globalize the production and utilization of ethanol, including by sharing their technology with potential producers of ethanol throughout the world, particularly in developing countries. We share common goals. We should start sharing common programs to achieve them.

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A2 Trade CP (3/3) 9. Dependency allows countries to rely on oil wealth, preventing democracy or a diversified economy from emerging David Ivanovich, staff writer, May 18, 2003, Houston Chronicle WASHINGTON - Call it the curse of crude. The 11 countries that comprise the OPEC cartel pocketed nearly $ 180 billion in oil revenues last year. None is a thriving democracy. Coincidence? Oil wealth hinders development of a tax-paying middle class, the very segment of society most likely to agitate for a voice in government, political economists say. Bountiful crude reserves also discourage the kind of diversification needed for a successful capitalistic economy.

10. Global democratic consolidation is essential to prevent many scenarios for war and extinction. Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, October 1995, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990’s,” http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html, accessed on 12/11/99 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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A2 K 2AC (1/4) 1. Case OWs – the immanent scenarios for war and environmental destruction from the 1AC come before and outweigh the K impacts. 2. Framework A. Our interpretation is that plan focus is good B. Prefer our interpretation – 1. Aff Choice – If we’re fair and resolutionally based, there should be a presumption for the affirmative, otherwise they can moot 9 minutes of the 1AC. 2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy alternatives 3. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71. The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it stretches toward, but it

is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection, brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on. (The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal." Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear, acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.

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A2 K 2AC (2/4) 4. Relying on individual-level strategies fails and guarantees global politics is dominated by violence George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13 The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply suspicious of all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the world’s people. Others are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called ‘antipower’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose solutions which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate change, international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can be addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global institutions, it is impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile rich and their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker ones to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective global politics, moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by communities of interest which do not share our vision. We might, for example, manage to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up their cars in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the neighbouring communities can expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless we are simultaneously working, at the international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by people who are not as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first rebuilding the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can flourish. If, by contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There is little point in devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first been overthrown. There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.

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A2 K 2AC (3/4) 5 Don’t be fooled by their alternative spin. Disengagement from traditional politics is the worst in cynical leftist garbage – our hypothesizing about the complex inner-working of government is key to creating space for the critique David E. McClean, 2001, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,” Am. Phil. Conf., www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate

theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the

Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We

who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade

theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargonriddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."

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A2 K 2AC (4/4) 6. Perm: Do Both If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan 7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the plan 8. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of action that this actor. That’s a voter: ( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy ( ) Kills education – vague alts prevent substantive comparisons between policy options which is key to topic specific education 9. We must use the institutions that exercise power to change them Lawrence Grossburg, University which can operate within the systems of governance, understanding that such institutions are the mediating structures by which power is actively realized. It is often by directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be challenged. The Left has assumed from some time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of apparatuses of decision making and power. Otherwise, the Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not individuals who have produced starvation and the other social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals

who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to do so, they must act within organizations, and within the system of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as well as the moral responsibility) to fight them. Without such organizations, the only models of political commitment are self-interest and charity. Charity suggests that we act on behalf of others who cannot act on their own behalf. But we are all precariously caught in the circuits of global capitalism, and everyone’s position is increasingly precarious and uncertain. It will not take much to change the position of any individual in the United States, as the experience of many of the homeless, the elderly and the “fallen” middle class demonstrates. Nor are there any guarantees about the future of any single nation. We can imagine ourselves involved in a politics where acting for another is always acting for oneself as well, a politics in which everyone struggles with the resources they have to make their lives (and the world) better, since the two are so intimately tied together! For example, we need to think of affirmation action as in everyone’s best interests, because of the possibilities it opens. We need to think with what Axelos has described as a “planetary thought” which “would be a coherent thought— but not a rationalizing and ‘rationalist’ inflection; it would be a fragmentary thought of the open totality—for what we can grasp are fragments unveiled on the horizon of the totality. Such a politics will not begin by distinguishing between the local and the global (and certainly not by valorizing one over the other) for the ways in which the former are

incorporated into the latter preclude the luxury of such choices. Resistance is always a local struggle, even when (as in parts of the ecology movement) it is imagined to connect into its global structures of articulation: Think globally, act locally. Opposition is predicated precisely on locating the points of articulation between them, the points at which the global becomes local, and the local opens up onto the global. Since the meaning of these terms has to be understood in the context of any particular struggle, one is always acting both globally and locally: Think globally, act appropriately! Fight locally because that is the scene of action, but aim for the global because that is the scene of agency. “Local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion into the field of immanence. This requires the imagination and construction of forms of unity, commonality and social agency which do not deny differences. Without such commonality, politics is too easily reduced to a question of individual rights (i.e., in the terms of classical utility theory); difference ends up “trumping” politics, bringing it to an end. The struggle against the disciplined mobilization of everyday life can only be built on affective commonalities, a shared “responsible yearning: a yearning out towards something more and something better than this and this place now.” The Left, after all, is defined by its common commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy (although these might conflict) in economic, political and cultural life. It is based on the hope, perhaps even the illusion, that such things are possible.

The construction of an affective commonality attempts to mobilize people in a common struggle, despite the fact that they have no common identity or character, recognizing that they are the only force capable of providing a new historical and oppositional agency. It strives to organize minorities into a new majority.

WNDI 2008

68 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Capitalism K (1/4) 1. Framework A. Our interpretation is that plan focus is good B. Prefer our interpretation – 1. Aff Choice – If we’re fair and resolutionally based, there should be a presumption for the affirmative, otherwise they can moot 9 minutes of the 1AC. 2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy alternatives 2. 1AC trade advantage is an impact turn to the criticism. Spicer evidence says that capitalist economic interdependence is key to prevent multiple scenarios of protectionist trade wars. Specifically, 1AC Liu evidence says that the capitalist order is key to prevent trade wars between the US and China which Johnson says would culminate in extinction. 1AC Crane evidence says that moves away from the capitalist order collapse the economy which Bearden says culminates in extinction. 3. Transition leads to extinction – 1AC Bearden evidence says moves away from capitalism culminate in massive wmd use and extinction. 4. Open markets result in more sustainable environments – statistics prove Ana Eiras, Economic Policy Analyst for Latin America, and Brett Schaefer, Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage, September 27 2001, Trade: The Best Way to Protect the Environment, http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/BG1480.cfm, accessed 8/24/03 Moreover, the United States is an example of the elasticity of spending for environmental protection. As incomes have risen over the past three decades, America has increased "real spending by government and business on the environment and natural resource protection has doubled." 6 Economically free countries typically have a more sustainable environmental policy. In January 2001, the World Economic Forum, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy published an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). 7 The Index assigns the health of a country's environment a single number ranging from 0 to 100, in which zero means low sustainability and 100 means high sustainability. This number represents a country's success in coping with environmental challenges and cooperating with other countries in the management and improvement of common environmental problems. Chart 1 illustrates the relationship between The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2001 Index of Economic Freedom scores and the ESI. The chart shows a strong relationship between economic freedom and environmental sustainability. The freer the economy, the greater the level of environmental sustainability. The United States is a classic example of economic freedom's beneficial impact on the environment. America has been a champion of economic freedom for decades while simultaneously maintaining one of the world's cleanest environments. Countries with more open trade and investment policies generally have higher levels of environmental sustainability. Free trade and the investment that typically follows it are two important sources of economic growth. Therefore, an open trade policy and a business-friendly environment will not only increase growth, but also provide the means to protect the environment. The Heritage Foundation calculated a "Trade Openness Index"

based on the 2001 Index of Economic Freedom by averaging the score for the trade policy, property rights, capital flows and foreign investment, and regulation factors. Consider the relationship between the Trade Openness Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index illustrated in Chart 2. In countries with an open economy, the average environmental sustainability score is more than 30 percent higher than the scores of countries with moderately open economies, and almost twice as high as those of countries with closed economies.

WNDI 2008

69 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Capitalism K (2/4) 5. Warner says the impact to environmental collapse is extinction. 6. Perm: Do Both If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan 7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the plan 8. Total rejection of capitalism fragments resistance – the perm solves best J.K. Gibson-Graham, feminist economist, 1996, End of Capitalism One of our goals as Marxists has been to produce a knowledge of capitalism. Yet as “that which is known,” Capitalism

has become the intimate enemy. We have uncloaked the ideologically-clothed, obscure monster, but we have installed a naked and visible monster in its place. In return for our labors of creation, the monster has robbed us of all force. We hear – and find it easy to believe – that the left is in disarray. Part of what produces the disarray of the left is the vision of what the left is arrayed against. When capitalism is represented as a unified system coextensive with the nation or even the world, when it is portrayed as crowding out all other economic forms, when it is allowed to define entire societies, it becomes something that can only be defeated and replaced by a mass collective movement (or by a process of systemic dissolution that such a movement might assist). The revolutionary task of replacing capitalism now seems outmoded and unrealistic, yet we do not seem to have an alternative conception of class transformation to take its place. The old political economic “systems” and “structures” that call forth a vision of revolution as systemic replacement still seem to be dominant in the Marxist political imagination. The New World Order is often represented as political fragmentation founded upon economic unification. In this vision the economy appears as the last stronghold of unity and singularity in a world of diversity and plurality. But why can’t the economy be fragmented too? If we theorized it as fragmented in the United States, we could being to see a huge state sector (incorporating a variety of forms of appropriation of surplus labor), a very large sector of self-employed and family-based producers (most noncapitalist), a huge household sector (again, quite various in terms of forms of exploitation, with some households moving towards communal or collective appropriation and others operating in a traditional mode in which one adult appropriates surplus labor from another). None of these things is easy to see. If capitalism takes up the available social space, there’s no room

for anything else. If capitalism cannot coexist, there’s no possibility of anything else. If capitalism functions as a unity, it cannot be partially or locally replaced. My intent is to help create the discursive conception under which socialist or other noncapitalist construction becomes “realistic” present activity rather than a ludicrous or utopian goal. To achieve this I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces. I must make its unity a fantasy, visible as a denial of diversity and change.

9. Perm solves – only using capitalism to fight capitalism can be effective Monthly Review, March 1990, v. 41, no. 10, p 38 No institution is or ever has been a seamless monolith. Although the inherent mechanism of American capitalism is as you describe it, oriented solely to profit without regard to social consequences, this does not preclude significant portions of that very system from joining forces with the worldwide effort for the salvation of civilization, perhaps even to the extent of furnishing the margin of success for that very effort.

WNDI 2008

70 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Capitalism K (3/4) 10. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of action that this actor. That’s a voter: ( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy ( ) Kills education – vague alts prevent substantive comparisons between policy options which is key to topic specific education 11. We must use the institutions that exercise power to change them Lawrence Grossburg, University which can operate within the systems of governance, understanding that such institutions are the mediating structures by which power is actively realized. It is often by directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be challenged. The Left has assumed from some time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of apparatuses of decision making and power. Otherwise, the Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not individuals who have produced starvation and the other social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals

who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to do so, they must act within organizations, and within the system of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as well as the moral responsibility) to fight them. Without such organizations, the only models of political commitment are self-interest and charity. Charity suggests that we act on behalf of others who cannot act on their own behalf. But we are all precariously caught in the circuits of global capitalism, and everyone’s position is increasingly precarious and uncertain. It will not take much to change the position of any individual in the United States, as the experience of many of the homeless, the elderly and the “fallen” middle class demonstrates. Nor are there any guarantees about the future of any single nation. We can imagine ourselves involved in a politics where acting for another is always acting for oneself as well, a politics in which everyone struggles with the resources they have to make their lives (and the world) better, since the two are so intimately tied together! For example, we need to think of affirmation action as in everyone’s best interests, because of the possibilities it opens. We need to think with what Axelos has described as a “planetary thought” which “would be a coherent thought— but not a rationalizing and ‘rationalist’ inflection; it would be a fragmentary thought of the open totality—for what we can grasp are fragments unveiled on the horizon of the totality. Such a politics will not begin by distinguishing between the local and the global (and certainly not by valorizing one over the other) for the ways in which the former are

incorporated into the latter preclude the luxury of such choices. Resistance is always a local struggle, even when (as in parts of the ecology movement) it is imagined to connect into its global structures of articulation: Think globally, act locally. Opposition is predicated precisely on locating the points of articulation between them, the points at which the global becomes local, and the local opens up onto the global. Since the meaning of these terms has to be understood in the context of any particular struggle, one is always acting both globally and locally: Think globally, act appropriately! Fight locally because that is the scene of action, but aim for the global because that is the scene of agency. “Local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion into the field of immanence. This requires the imagination and construction of forms of unity, commonality and social agency which do not deny differences. Without such commonality, politics is too easily reduced to a question of individual rights (i.e., in the terms of classical utility theory); difference ends up “trumping” politics, bringing it to an end. The struggle against the disciplined mobilization of everyday life can only be built on affective commonalities, a shared “responsible yearning: a yearning out towards something more and something better than this and this place now.” The Left, after all, is defined by its common commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy (although these might conflict) in economic, political and cultural life. It is based on the hope, perhaps even the illusion, that such things are possible.

The construction of an affective commonality attempts to mobilize people in a common struggle, despite the fact that they have no common identity or character, recognizing that they are the only force capable of providing a new historical and oppositional agency. It strives to organize minorities into a new majority.

WNDI 2008

71 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Capitalism K (4/4) 12. Don’t be fooled by their alternative spin. Disengagement from traditional politics is the worst in cynical leftist garbage – our hypothesizing about the complex inner-working of government is key to creating space for the critique David E. McClean, 2001, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,” Am. Phil. Conf., www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate

theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the

Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We

who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade

theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargonriddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."

WNDI 2008

72 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Neoliberalism K (1/5) 1. Framework A. Our interpretation is that plan focus is good B. Prefer our interpretation – 1. Aff Choice – If we’re fair and resolutionally based, there should be a presumption for the affirmative, otherwise they can moot 9 minutes of the 1AC. 2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy alternatives 2. 1AC trade advantage is an impact turn to the criticism. Spicer evidence says that neoliberal economic interdependence is key to prevent multiple scenarios of protectionist trade wars. Specifically, 1AC Liu evidence says that the neoliberal order is key to prevent trade wars between the US and China which Johnson says would culminate in extinction. 1AC Crane evidence says that moves away from the neoliberal order collapse the economy which Bearden says culminates in extinction. 3. Comparative studies show that trade reduces the wealth gap between rich and poor nations – poverty is the results from lack of trade, not trade Joel R. Paul, Professor, University of California Hastings College of the Law. Do International Trade Institutions Contribute to Economic Growth and Development? Virginia Journal of International Law Association Fall, 2003 The leading study to challenge these results was conducted for the World Bank by the economists David Dollar and Aart Kraay. It divided developing countries into two groups, "globalizers" and "non-globalizers". The DollarKraay study found that from 1990-2000 industrialized countries grew at an average annual rate of 2.2% GDP per capita, globalizing developing countries grew 5.0%, and non-globalizing developing countries grew 1.4%.n48 In other words, the globalizers sprinted ahead of the non-globalizers and narrowed the income gap with the industrialized countries. Dollar and Kraay concluded that all developing countries should pursue greater openness to trade as a prescription for reducing world income inequality. n49

4. Even if they’re right and trade has some negative impacts, protectionism is uniquely worse for developing economies Robert McGee, professor in the W. Paul Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, 1994, A Trade Policy for Free Societies, p. 164 Protectionist regimes erected in developing countries have an especially detrimental effect on economic growth, because the limited resources these countries have are being used to protect inefficient producers at the expense of everyone else. This misallocation of resources cannot help but stifle economic growth, because resources are diverted from their most productive uses. Although free, unrestricted trade is always the best policy, regardless of the stage of economic development, developing countries can least afford the luxury of closing their borders to trade and, especially, to foreign investment, because their capital base needs to be expanded. The argument that

the underdeveloped countries can never catch up with the West is just not true. The experiences of South Korea and Hong Kong are only two examples that could be cited to refute this view. Underdeveloped countries lack a capital base, but they do not need to grow their own capital base. All they have to do is allow unrestricted foreign investment. If they enact legislation to protect property rights and allow foreigners to invest with minimal or no restrictions, capital and technology will flow into the country and produce an economic boom.

WNDI 2008

73 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Neoliberalism K (2/5) 5. Open markets result in more sustainable environments – statistics prove Ana Eiras, Economic Policy Analyst for Latin America, and Brett Schaefer, Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage, September 27 2001, Trade: The Best Way to Protect the Environment, http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/BG1480.cfm, accessed 8/24/03 Moreover, the United States is an example of the elasticity of spending for environmental protection. As incomes have risen over the past three decades, America has increased "real spending by government and business on the environment and natural resource protection has doubled." 6 Economically free countries typically have a more sustainable environmental policy. In January 2001, the World Economic Forum, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy published an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). 7 The Index assigns the health of a country's environment a single number ranging from 0 to 100, in which zero means low sustainability and 100 means high sustainability. This number represents a country's success in coping with environmental challenges and cooperating with other countries in the management and improvement of common environmental problems. Chart 1 illustrates the relationship between The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2001 Index of Economic Freedom scores and the ESI. The chart shows a strong relationship between economic freedom and environmental sustainability. The freer the economy, the greater the level of environmental sustainability. The United States is a classic example of economic freedom's beneficial impact on the environment. America has been a champion of economic freedom for decades while simultaneously maintaining one of the world's cleanest environments. Countries with more open trade and investment policies generally have higher levels of environmental sustainability. Free trade and the investment that typically follows it are two important sources of economic growth. Therefore, an open trade policy and a business-friendly environment will not only increase growth, but also provide the means to protect the environment. The Heritage Foundation calculated a "Trade Openness Index"

based on the 2001 Index of Economic Freedom by averaging the score for the trade policy, property rights, capital flows and foreign investment, and regulation factors. Consider the relationship between the Trade Openness Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index illustrated in Chart 2. In countries with an open economy, the average environmental sustainability score is more than 30 percent higher than the scores of countries with moderately open economies, and almost twice as high as those of countries with closed economies.

6. 1AC Warner evidence says the environment is key to prevent extinction. 7. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71. The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it stretches toward, but it

is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection, brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on. (The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal." Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear, acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.

WNDI 2008

74 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Neoliberalism K (3/5) 8. Relying on individual-level strategies fails and guarantees global politics is dominated by violence George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13 The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply suspicious of all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the world’s people. Others are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called ‘antipower’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose solutions which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate change, international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can be addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global institutions, it is impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile rich and their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker ones to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective global politics, moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by communities of interest which do not share our vision. We might, for example, manage to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up their cars in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the neighbouring communities can expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless we are simultaneously working, at the international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by people who are not as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first rebuilding the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can flourish. If, by contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There is little point in devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first been overthrown. There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.

9. Perm: Do Both If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan 10. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the plan

WNDI 2008

75 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Neoliberalism K (4/5) 11. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of action that this actor. That’s a voter: ( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy ( ) Kills education – vague alts prevent substantive comparisons between policy options which is key to topic specific education 12. We must use the institutions that exercise power to change them Lawrence Grossburg, University which can operate within the systems of governance, understanding that such institutions are the mediating structures by which power is actively realized. It is often by directing opposition against specific institutions that power can be challenged. The Left has assumed from some time now that, since it has so little access to the apparatuses of agency, its only alternative is to seek a public voice in the media through tactical protests. The Left does in fact need more visibility, but it also needs greater access to the entire range of apparatuses of decision making and power. Otherwise, the Left has nothing but its own self-righteousness. It is not individuals who have produced starvation and the other social disgraces of our world, although it is individuals

who must take responsibility for eliminating them. But to do so, they must act within organizations, and within the system of organizations which in fact have the capacity (as well as the moral responsibility) to fight them. Without such organizations, the only models of political commitment are self-interest and charity. Charity suggests that we act on behalf of others who cannot act on their own behalf. But we are all precariously caught in the circuits of global capitalism, and everyone’s position is increasingly precarious and uncertain. It will not take much to change the position of any individual in the United States, as the experience of many of the homeless, the elderly and the “fallen” middle class demonstrates. Nor are there any guarantees about the future of any single nation. We can imagine ourselves involved in a politics where acting for another is always acting for oneself as well, a politics in which everyone struggles with the resources they have to make their lives (and the world) better, since the two are so intimately tied together! For example, we need to think of affirmation action as in everyone’s best interests, because of the possibilities it opens. We need to think with what Axelos has described as a “planetary thought” which “would be a coherent thought— but not a rationalizing and ‘rationalist’ inflection; it would be a fragmentary thought of the open totality—for what we can grasp are fragments unveiled on the horizon of the totality. Such a politics will not begin by distinguishing between the local and the global (and certainly not by valorizing one over the other) for the ways in which the former are

incorporated into the latter preclude the luxury of such choices. Resistance is always a local struggle, even when (as in parts of the ecology movement) it is imagined to connect into its global structures of articulation: Think globally, act locally. Opposition is predicated precisely on locating the points of articulation between them, the points at which the global becomes local, and the local opens up onto the global. Since the meaning of these terms has to be understood in the context of any particular struggle, one is always acting both globally and locally: Think globally, act appropriately! Fight locally because that is the scene of action, but aim for the global because that is the scene of agency. “Local struggles directly target national and international axioms, at the precise point of their insertion into the field of immanence. This requires the imagination and construction of forms of unity, commonality and social agency which do not deny differences. Without such commonality, politics is too easily reduced to a question of individual rights (i.e., in the terms of classical utility theory); difference ends up “trumping” politics, bringing it to an end. The struggle against the disciplined mobilization of everyday life can only be built on affective commonalities, a shared “responsible yearning: a yearning out towards something more and something better than this and this place now.” The Left, after all, is defined by its common commitment to principles of justice, equality and democracy (although these might conflict) in economic, political and cultural life. It is based on the hope, perhaps even the illusion, that such things are possible.

The construction of an affective commonality attempts to mobilize people in a common struggle, despite the fact that they have no common identity or character, recognizing that they are the only force capable of providing a new historical and oppositional agency. It strives to organize minorities into a new majority.

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A2 Neoliberalism K (5/5) 13. Total rejection of capitalism fragments resistance – the perm solves best J.K. Gibson-Graham, feminist economist, 1996, End of Capitalism One of our goals as Marxists has been to produce a knowledge of capitalism. Yet as “that which is known,” Capitalism has become the intimate enemy. We have uncloaked the ideologically-clothed, obscure monster, but we have installed a naked and visible monster in its place. In return for our labors of creation, the monster has robbed us of all force. We hear – and find it easy to believe – that the left is in disarray. Part of what produces the disarray of the left is the vision of what the left is arrayed against. When capitalism is represented as a unified system coextensive with the nation or even the world, when it is portrayed as crowding out all other economic forms, when it is allowed to define entire societies, it becomes something that can only be defeated and replaced by a mass collective movement (or by a process of systemic dissolution that such a movement might assist). The revolutionary task of replacing capitalism now seems outmoded and unrealistic, yet we do not seem to have an alternative conception of class transformation to take its place. The old political economic “systems” and “structures” that call forth a vision of revolution as systemic replacement still seem to be dominant in the Marxist political imagination. The New World Order is often represented as political fragmentation founded upon economic unification. In this vision the economy appears as the last stronghold of unity and singularity in a world of diversity and plurality. But why can’t the economy be fragmented too? If we theorized it as fragmented in the United States, we could being to see a huge state sector (incorporating a variety of forms of appropriation of surplus labor), a very large sector of self-employed and family-based producers (most noncapitalist), a huge household sector (again, quite various in terms of forms of exploitation, with some households moving towards communal or collective appropriation and others operating in a traditional mode in which one adult appropriates surplus labor from another). None of these things is easy to see. If capitalism takes up the available social space, there’s no room for anything else. If capitalism cannot coexist, there’s no possibility of anything else. If capitalism functions as a unity, it cannot be partially or locally replaced. My intent is to help create the discursive conception under which socialist or other noncapitalist construction becomes “realistic” present activity rather than a ludicrous or utopian goal. To achieve this I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces. I must make its unity a fantasy, visible as a denial of diversity and change.

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A2 Realism / Security K (1/6) 1. Case OWs – the immanent scenarios for war and environmental destruction from the 1AC come before and outweigh the K impacts. 2. Framework A. Our interpretation is that plan focus is good B. Prefer our interpretation – 1. Aff Choice – If we’re fair and resolutionally based, there should be a presumption for the affirmative, otherwise they can moot 9 minutes of the 1AC. 2. Ground – plan focus provides a stable locus for negative links – solves all their offense, they can still read critiques of plan action C. If we win our framework, Reject representation based link arguments and non-policy alternatives 3. Death outweighs all their impacts – it’s the only impact you can’t recover from Zygmunt Bauman, University Of Leeds Professor Emeritus Of Sociology, Life In Fragments: Essays In Postmodern Morality, 95, p. 66-71. The being-for is like living towards-the-future: a being filled with anticipation, a being aware of the abyss between future foretold and future that will eventually be; it is this gap which, like a magnet, draws the self towards the Other,as it draws life towards the future, making life into an activity of overcoming, transcending, leaving behind. The self stretches towards the Other, as life stretches towards the future; neither can grasp what it stretches toward, but it

is in this hopeful and desperate, never conclusive and never abandoned stretching-toward that the self is ever anew created and life ever anew lived. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, it is only in this not-yet accomplished world of anticipation and trial, leaning toward stubbornly an-other Other, that life can be lived - not in the world of the `events that occurred'; in the latter world, `it is impossible to live, to act responsibly; in it, I am not needed, in principle I am not there at all." Art, the Other, the future: what unites them, what makes them into three words vainly trying to grasp the same mystery, is the modality of possibility. A curious modality, at home neither in ontology nor epistemology; itself, like that which it tries to catch in its net, `always outside', forever `otherwise than being'. The possibility we are talking about here is not the all-too-familiar unsure-of-itself, and through that uncertainty flawed, inferior and incomplete being, disdainfully dismissed by triumphant existence as `mere possibility', `just a possibility'; possibility is instead `plus que la reahte' - both the origin and the foundation of being. The hope, says Blanchot, proclaims the possibility of that which evades the possible; `in its limit, this is the hope of the bond recaptured where it is now lost."' The hope is always the hope of being fu filled, but what keeps the hope alive and so keeps the being open and on the move is precisely its unfu filment. One may say that the paradox of hope (and the paradox of possibility founded in hope) is that it may pursue its destination solely through betraying its nature; the most exuberant of energies expends itself in the urge towards rest. Possibility uses up its openness in search of closure. Its image of the better being is its own impoverishment . . . The togetherness of the being-for is cut out of the same block; it shares in the paradoxical lot of all possibility. It lasts as long as it is unfulfilled, yet it uses itself up in never ending effort of fulfilment, of recapturing the bond, making it tight and immune to all future temptations. In an important, perhaps decisive sense, it is selfdestructive and self-defeating: its triumph is its death. The Other, like restless and unpredictable art, like the future itself, is a mystery. And being-for-the-Other, going towards the Other through the twisted and rocky gorge of affection, brings that mystery into view - makes it into a challenge. That mystery is what has triggered the sentiment in the first place - but cracking that mystery is what the resulting movement is about. The mystery must be unpacked so that the being-for may focus on the Other: one needs to know what to focus on. (The `demand' is unspoken, the responsibility undertaken is unconditional; it is up to him or her who follows the demand and takes up the responsibility to decide what the following of that demand and carrying out of that responsibility means in practical terms.) Mystery - noted Max Frisch - (and the Other is a mystery), is an exciting puzzle, but one tends to get tired of that excitement. `And so one creates for oneself an image. This is a loveless act, the betrayal." Creating an image of the Other leads to the substitution of the image for the Other; the Other is now fixed - soothingly and comfortingly. There is nothing to be excited about anymore. I know what the Other needs, I know where my responsibility starts and ends. Whatever the Other may now do will be taken down and used against him. What used to be received as an exciting surprise now looks more like perversion; what used to be adored as exhilarating creativity now feels like wicked levity. Thanatos has taken over from Eros, and the excitement of the ungraspable turned into the dullness and tedium of the grasped. But, as Gyorgy Lukacs observed, `everything one person may know about another is only expectation, only potentiality, only wish or fear, acquiring reality only as a result of what happens later, and this reality, too, dissolves straightaway into potentialities'.

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A2 Realism / Security K (2/6) 4. Relying on individual-level strategies fails and guarantees global politics is dominated by violence George Monbiot, journalist, academic, and political and environmental activist, 2004, Manifesto for a New World Order, p. 11-13 The quest for global solutions is difficult and divisive. Some members of this movement are deeply suspicious of all institutional power at the global level, fearing that it could never be held to account by the world’s people. Others are concerned that a single set of universal prescriptions would threaten the diversity of dissent. A smaller faction has argued that all political programmes are oppressive: our task should not be to replace one form of power with another, but to replace all power with a magical essence called ‘antipower’. But most of the members of this movement are coming to recognize that if we propose solutions which can be effected only at the local or the national level, we remove ourselves from any meaningful role in solving precisely those problems which most concern us. Issues such as climate change, international debt, nuclear proliferation, war, peace and the balance of trade between nations can be addressed only globally or internationally. Without global measures and global institutions, it is impossible to see how we might distribute wealth from rich nations to poor ones, tax the mobile rich and their even more mobile money, control the shipment of toxic waste, sustain the ban on landmines, prevent the use of nuclear weapons, broker peace between nations or prevent powerful states from forcing weaker ones to trade on their terms. If we were to work only at the local level, we would leave these, the most critical of issues, for other people to tackle. Global governance will take place whether we participate in it or not. Indeed, it must take place if the issues which concern us are not to be resolved by the brute force of the powerful. That the international institutions have been designed or captured by the dictatorship of vested interests is not an argument against the existence of international institutions, but a reason for overthrowing them and replacing them with our own. It is an argument for a global political system which holds power to account. In the absence of an effective global politics, moreover, local solutions will always be undermined by communities of interest which do not share our vision. We might, for example, manage to persuade the people of the street in which we live to give up their cars in the hope of preventing climate change, but unless everyone, in all communities, either shares our politics or is bound by the same rules, we simply open new road space into which the neighbouring communities can expand. We might declare our neighbourhood nuclear-free, but unless we are simultaneously working, at the international level, for the abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone else from being threatened by people who are not as nice as we are. We would deprive ourselves, in other words, of the power of restraint. By first rebuilding the global politics, we establish the political space in which our local alternatives can flourish. If, by contrast, we were to leave the governance of the necessary global institutions to others, then those institutions will pick off our local, even our national, solutions one by one. There is little point in devising an alternative economic policy for your nation, as Luis Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, now president of Brazil, once advocated, if the International Monetary Fund and the financial speculators have not first been overthrown. There is little point in fighting to protect a coral reef from local pollution, if nothing has been done to prevent climate change from destroying the conditions it requires for its survival.

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A2 Realism / Security K (3/6) 5. Don’t be fooled by their alternative spin. Disengagement from traditional politics is the worst in cynical leftist garbage – our hypothesizing about the complex inner-working of government is key to creating space for the critique David E. McClean, 2001, “The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope,” Am. Phil. Conf., www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate

theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the

Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We

who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade

theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargonriddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."

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A2 Realism / Security K (4/6) 7. Realism is epistemologically true Frank Harvey, associate professor of Political Science, Dalhouse University, The Future’s Back: Nuclear Rivalry, Deterrence Theory, And Crisis Stability After The Cold War, 1997, p. 139 Finally, the lack of purity and precision, another consequence of linguistic relativism, does not necessarily imply irrelevance of purpose or approach. The study of [IR] international relations may not be exact, given limitations noted by Wittgenstein and others, but precision is a practical research problem, not an insurmountable barrier to progress. In fact, most observers who point to the context-dependent nature of language are critical not so much of the social sciences but of the incorrect application of scientific techniques to derive overly precise measurement of weakly developed concepts. Clearly, our understanding of the causes of international conflict—and most notably war—has improved considerably as a consequence of applying sound scientific methods and valid operationalizations. The alternative approach, implicit in much of the postmodern literature, is to fully accept the inadequacy of positivism, throw one’s hands up in failure, given the complexity of the subject, and repudiate the entire enterprise. The most relevant question is whether we would know more or less about international relations if we pursued that strategy.

8. Only realism can address violence. Critical approaches promise abstractions but don’t provide a concrete solution. Alastair Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p. 185-186 Linklater seems to go some way towards acknowledging this in Beyond Realism and Marxism, recognising Morgenthau's commitment, in contrast to neorealism, to widening community beyond the nation-state. What he now suggests, however, is that `[w]hat realism offers is an account of historical circumstances which human subjects have yet to bring under their collective control. What it does not possess is an account of the modes of political intervention which would enable human beings to take control of their international history."' The issue becomes less a matter of what realism does, than what it does not do, less the way it constructs the problem, than its failure to solve it. Yet Linklater concedes that `it is not at all clear that any strand of social and political thought provides a compelling account of "strategies of transition"'. Indeed, where he has attempted to engage with this issue himself, he has proved manifestly unable to provide such an account. Although he has put forward some ideas of what is needed - a fundamental reorganisation of political relations, establishing a global legal order to replace the sovereign state, and a fundamental rearrangement of economic relations, establishing an order in which all individuals have the means as well as the formal rights of freedom - his only suggestion as to how such objectives should be achieved seems to be that `[s]ocial development entails individuals placing themselves at odds with their societies as they begin to question conventional means of characterising outsiders and to criticise customary prohibitions upon individual relations with them'. His critical theoretical `transitional strategies' amount to little more than the suggestion that individuals must demand recognition for themselves as men as well as citizens, must demand the right to enter into complex interstate relations themselves, and must act in these relations as beings with fundamental obligations to all other members of the species." More recently, he has proposed a vision in which `subnational and transnational citizenship are strengthened and in which mediating between the different loyalties and identities present within modem societies is one central purpose of the post-Westphalian state'. Such an objective is to be reached by a discourse ethics along the lines of that proposed by Habermas. Yet such an ethics amounts to little more than the suggestion `that human beings need to be reflective about the ways in which they include and exclude others from dialogue', scarcely going beyond Linklater's earlier emphasis on individuals acting as men as well as citizens. Realism does at least propose tangible objectives which, whilst perhaps lacking the visionary appeal of Linklater's proposals, ultimately offer us a path to follow, and it does at least suggest a strategy of realisation, emphasising the necessity of a restrained, moderate diplomacy, which, if less daring than Linklater might wish, provides us with some guidance. It is this inability to articulate practical strategies which suggests the central difficulty with such critical theoretical approaches. The progressive urge moves a stage further here, leading them to abandon almost entirely the problem of establishing some form of stable international order at this level in favour of a continuing revolution in search of a genuine cosmopolis. It generates such an emphasis on the pursuit of distant, ultimate objectives that they prove incapable of furnishing us with anything but the most vague and elusive of strategies, such an emphasis on moving towards a post-Westphalian, boundary-less world that they are incapable of telling us anything about the problems facing us today. If, for theorists such as Linklater, such a difficulty does not constitute a failure for critical theory within its own terms of reference, this position cannot be accepted uncritically. Without an ability to address contemporary problems, it is unable to provide strategies to overcome even the immediate obstacles in the way of its objective of a genuinely cosmopolitan society. And, without a guarantee that such a cosmopolitan society is even feasible, such a critical theoretical perspective simply

offers us the perpetual redefinition of old problems in a new context and the persistent creation of new problems to replace old ones, without even the luxury of attempting to address them.

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A2 Realism / Security K (5/6) 6. Perm: Do Both If the alternative can overcome the status quo it can overcome the plan 7. Perm: Do the plan and all portions of the alternative that don’t require rejection of the plan 8. Realism is transformative—it can synthesize critical theories to provide effective strategies of change Alastair J.H. Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p. 178-9 In Wendt’s constructivism, the argument appears in its most basic version, presenting an analysis of realist assumptions which associate it with a conservative account of human nature. In Linklater's critical theory it moves a stage further, presenting an analysis of realist theory which locates it within a conservative discourse of state-centrism. In Ashley's post-structuralism it reaches its highest form, presenting an analysis of realist strategy which locates it not merely within a conservative statist order, but, moreover, within an active conspiracy of silence to reproduce it. Finally, in Tickner's feminism, realism becomes all three simultaneously and more besides, a vital player in a greater, overarching, masculine conspiracy against femininity. Realism thus appears, first, as a doctrine providing the grounds for a relentless pessimism, second, as a theory which provides an active justification for such pessimism, and, third, as a strategy which proactively seeks to enforce this pessimism, before it becomes the vital foundation underlying all such pessimism in international theory. Yet, an examination of the arguments put forward from each of these perspectives suggests not only that the effort to locate realism within a conservative, rationalist camp is untenable, but, beyond this, that realism is able to provide reformist strategies which are superior to those that they can generate themselves. The progressive purpose which motivates the critique of realism in these perspectives ultimately generates a bias which undermines their own ability to generate effective strategies of transition. In constructivism, this bias appears in its most limited version, producing strategies so divorced from the obstacles presented by the current structure of international politics that they threaten to become counter-productive. In critical theory it moves a stage further, producing strategies so abstract that one is at a loss to determine what they actually imply in terms of the current structure of international politics. And, in post-modernism, it reaches its highest form, producing an absence of such strategies altogether, until we reach the point at which we are left with nothing but critique. Against this failure, realism contains the potential to act as the basis of a more constructive approach to [IR] international relations, incorporating many of the strengths of reflectivism and yet avoiding its weaknesses. It appears, in the final analysis, as an opening within which some synthesis of rationalism and reflectivism, of conservatism and progressivism, might be built.

8. Their alternative is vague – It doesn’t have an actor and they don’t specify the course of action that this actor. That’s a voter: ( ) Neg shifts – vague alts let them recharacterize what their alt does to get out of all our offense. That crushes 2AC time and strategy ( ) Kills education – vague alts prevent substantive comparisons between policy options which is key to topic specific education

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A2 Realism / Security K (6/6) 9. Their alternative fails – intellectuals cannot simply wish away realism John Mearsheimer, Ph.D. and Professor of Politics at the University of Chicago, 2005, “E.H. Carr vs. Idealism: the Battle Rages On.” International Relations, p. 140-141. When Carr set out to write The Twenty Years’ Crisis in July 1938, his goal was not to articulate a theory of realism, but instead to criticize British (and American) intellectuals for largely ignoring the role of power in international politics. He made this point clear in November 1945 in the preface to the second edition: ‘The Twenty Years’ Crisis was written with the deliberate aim of counteracting the glaring and dangerous defect of nearly all thinking, both academic and popular, about international politics in English-speaking countries from 1919 to 1939 – the almost total neglect of power.’1 The problem with British thinkers, according to Carr, was not just that they ignored power, but that they were utopians as well. He thought they held a hopelessly idealistic view of international politics. In particular, they had a normative agenda which led them to pay little attention to the world around them and to focus instead on changing how states relate to each other. Indeed, they were determined to radically transform world politics and create a peaceful international order where statesmen no longer cared about the balance of power. The idealists, Carr believed, saw themselves as the key agents for accomplishing this revolution. ‘The utopian’, he wrote, ‘believes in the possibility of more or less radically rejecting reality, and substituting his utopia for it by an act of will.’2 He later expanded on this point, noting that ‘intellectuals are particularly reluctant to recognize their thought as conditioned by forces external to themselves, and like to think of themselves as leaders whose theories provide the motive force for so-called men of action’.3 Carr surely would have been happy to transcend the world of the late 1930s and move to the utopia that the idealists hoped to create. Who in Britain at the time would not have welcomed such a development? However, Carr did not think it was possible to escape the existing world, a world where ‘power is an essential element of politics’.4 The fact is that Carr was a determinist at heart who did not think that individuals could purposely re-order the international system in fundamental ways. Consequently, he took out his cudgel and hammered away at the idealists’ worldview. When he was done, little of that enterprise was still standing. But The Twenty Years’ Crisis was more than just a wrecking operation. Carr also forcefully made the case that power is an essential ingredient in politics. ‘International politics’, he wrote, ‘are always power politics; for it is impossible to eliminate power from them.’5 Moreover, he asserted that ‘the ultima ratio of power in international relations is war’, which led him to conclude that of all the instruments of statecraft the military is of ‘supreme importance’.6 These claims about power in The Twenty Years’ Crisis earned Carr his realist spurs. However, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Carr did not directly address the two key questions that motivate most realist thinkers.7 First, why do states want power? What is the underlying logic that explains why great powers compete for it? Carr insists that they do, and offers plenty of evidence for his position, but he never explains why. Second, how much power do states want? How much is enough? On this second question, he hints at one point that states have an insatiable appetite for power. ‘The exercise of power’, he writes, ‘always appears to beget the appetite for more power.’8 But he does not elaborate this point to any significant extent. The explanation for these omissions, I think, is that Carr’s main goal in The Twenty Years’ Crisis was not to elaborate a theory of realism, but instead to criticize and undermine interwar idealism, which he considered delusional as well as dangerous.

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A2 Amazon DA Lula is committed to protecting the Amazon States News Service, “Biofuels and High Oil Prices—Who is to Blame?” 7/10/08, Lexis-Nexis President Lula has increasingly displayed support to protect the Amazon from ongoing destruction. On June 19, the government extended its two-year ban on the sale of soy from the deforested land in Amazonia until July 2009. Additionally, officials from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources have already begun bans on beef and timber from illegal Amazon lands (Mercopress). This recent commitment could signify the government's sincerity regarding prevention of deforestation and "its commitment to a policy of environmental registration and licensing for land in Amazonia (Brazzil Magazine). New policies also present Brazil as environmentally conscious to international groups such as Greenpeace, who have in the past heavily criticized the country's lack of effort in sustaining the Amazon's integrity. Greenpeace director Paulo Adario applauded Lula, stating, "Today's decision is important because it proves that it's possible to guarantee food production without cutting down one more hectare of Amazon forest." Also, in an attempt to speed the recovery of Amazonian pastures and degraded soils, the government will offer soft loans, ample credit for small farmers, and an insurance system designed to reduce the risks of climate change. With the appointment of strong conservationists such as the Minister of Environment, Carlos Minc, a UN awarded defender of the environment, the Lula administration is taking urgent steps to enhance agricultural production and increase Amazonian protection. If action indeed follows such rhetoric, Brazilian planners could be on the verge of helping the country become a world player in trade while it attempts to keep domestic prices low.

WNDI 2008

84 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Amazon/Slavery DA The oil industry is behind the claims of deforestation and slavery Carmen Gentile, staff writer, “Analysis: Brazil’s Leader Defends Ethanol” 6/11/08 Lexis-Nexis Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva said the world's oil companies are behind the bad press regarding his country's ethanol sector, denying claims by some that the industry uses slave labor and is responsible for deforestation in the Amazon. Da Silva [Lula], an ardent supporter of Brazilian ethanol, made defending the world's leading producer of the biofuel one of the focal points of his most recent national address. "I believe the main attacks against biofuels come from oil companies," said the Brazilian president earlier this week. "We are aware of the interests held by countries that don't produce ethanol, or produce ethanol from wheat or corn, which are not as competitiv5e." Hoping to dispel some of the anti-ethanol rhetoric regarding its environmental impact and the treatment of sugarcane cutters, da Silva noted that the cane processed into Brazil's sugar-based ethanol isn't grown anywhere near the Amazon and called "absurd" accusations that the industry was in part responsible for deforestation. The onetime labor leader turned president also denied claims that the ethanol industry relies heavily on poorly paid sugarcane cutters who are sometimes forced to work for no pay as modern-day slaves. However, human-rights groups have accused ethanol producers of treating their workforce like slaves and have called for the Brazilian government to exercise greater oversight of the industry. This isn't the first time Brazil's growing ethanol industry has come under fire. Last year, when Washington and Brasilia inked a deal to expand ethanol production in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro complained the deal in essence would reduce the amount of land used for food crops and rob the region's hungry of vital food supplies. Da Silva rejected the comments, saying food production would not be affected by the effort to produce alternatives to petroleum, of which Venezuela is the largest producer in the region and counts the United States as its best customer. "All South American countries and Africa can easily produce oil seeds for biodiesel, sugarcane for ethanol and food at the same time," he said, referring to Brazil's ambition to work with European nations to increase sugar production in Africa to promote ethanol production on that continent as well.

WNDI 2008

85 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

A2 Slavery DA Free Trade empirically results in better health, especially for poor people Roger Bate, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “Free Trade Improves Your Health” 6/11/08, As the USA heads into recession, protectionists are smiling. As always, they hide their self-interest behind concern for the environment, labour standards and health (such is the rhetoric of Presidential candidates Obama and Clinton). Indeed global competition can drive wages down and can make companies cut corners on health care. But, as a recent article, 'Is Trade Good for Your Health?' (Review of International Economics, Vol. 15, Issue 4, 2007) by economists Ann Owen and Stephen Wu of Hamilton College reveals, there are enormous health benefits from free trade. By analysing a variety of data from 219 countries over 35 years, they demonstrate that the citizens of economically freer nations are healthier than those where the economy is more tightly controlled. They conclude that openness to trade and higher volumes of trade are robustly associated with reductions in infant mortality and increases in life expectancy, particularly among males in developing nations. Interestingly, the effect is even more marked for the poorest of the poor: a small opening up of trade in the poorest developing countries gives disproportionately larger health benefits to that country's citizens, than to the citizens of richer nations. In terms of health, the worst off gain the most from more open trade.

WNDI 2008

86 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Plan  Doha Brazil is key to solving the stalled Doha Talks Jonathan Lynn, (Reuters), “Doha deal hinges on Brazil: US” October 12, 2007 There are fading hopes for the Doha round of global trade talks. The World Trade Organization (WTO) launched the Doha round several years ago to reduce poverty and boost the global economy by opening up world trade. US trade negotiators have become frustrated by the stalled Doha round.

The US negotiators believe that developing nations are not making enough concessions to open up their markets. The US negotiators have asked Brazil to use its influence with developing nations to ensure that the Doha round does not end in failure. Many developing nations do not want to open up their manufacturing sectors to foreign-made goods. The developing nations also want the US to end subsidies to its agriculture sector, in order to make more room for them to export agricultural products.

WNDI 2008

87 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Doha Uniqueness Relations tense now—holocaust comments prove Bradley Klapper, Associated Press Writer, “Brazilian FM's Nazi reference rocks WTO talks” 7/20/08 LexisNexis Academic Some pre-negotiation jabbing turned into a potentially damaging diplomatic incident Saturday when Brazil's foreign minister said rich countries' deception in trade talks reminded him of tactics used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. His comments drew a sharp rebuke from the United States, whose chief trade negotiator, Susan Schwab, is the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her spokesman described the reference to Goebbels as "incredibly wrong." The controversy threatens to overshadow next week's last-ditch effort to save seven years of frustrating talks on a new global trade pact toward alleviating poverty around the world. The so-called Doha trade round is already teetering on the brink of collapse. Piresident Bush has made a Doha deal a key part of his trade agenda. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said the U.S., Europe and other wealthy economies have so frequently misrepresented the talks launched in Qatar's capital in 2001 that public perception has become totally warped. "Goebbels used to say if you repeat a lie several times it becomes a truth," Amorim told reporters at the World Trade Organization, where top negotiators from over two dozen countries are expected Monday for the official start of the talks. Poorer countries have demanded cuts in the farm tariffs and subsidies used by wealthy countries, saying they hinder Third World development. In exchange, rich countries have insisted on better market access in developing countries for ther manufacturers and service providers. Amorim implied that rich countries were employing Goebbels' lying tactics in describing the agricultural concessions they claim they are willing to make, while criticizing poorer countries for refusing to liberalize their industrial markets. "I am reminded of Goebbels," said Amorim, whose country has co-led with India a broad coalition of developing countries at the WTO talks. Later, his spokesman qualified the remarks and apologized to Schwab. Sean Spicer, spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, said he was horrified by the "personal venom" of Amorim's words. "We came here to Geneva to negotiate on substance," Spicer told The Associated Press. "For him to make remarks like this is so incredibly wrong. They are insulting." Spicer noted that Schwab visited Amorim to soothe tensions immediately after negotiations collapsed in acrimony in 2006. In an interview with the AP, Amorim's spokesman Ricardo Neiva Tavares said the minister "regrets if Susan Schwab or anyone else was upset by his comments on a historical fact. He certainly did not intend to hurt anyone's feelings, which he deeply respects." Associated Press writer Eliane Engeler contributed to this report.

WNDI 2008

88 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Relations Uniqueness Relations have been declining recently because of the tariff States News Service, “BIOFUELS AND GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS - WHO IS TO BLAME? - COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS” 7/10/08 Lexis-Nexis U.S.-Brazil tension, a relatively recent development, resurfaced during the UN World Food Summit in Rome on June 3-5, encouraging the booming Brazilian sugar-based ethanol market to increase its new development projects. This rift represents a de facto counter move against the far less-efficient U.S. model predicated on corn-based ethanol production. Following the summit, Brazilian officials began a weeklong tour, stopping in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, during which they discussed a set of commercial agreements that will boost multilateral cooperation with several African countries. The trade agreements, projected to begin in 2009, include an expansion in ethanol investment, urbanism, air and sea transport, and cooperation in professional training between the two regions. In a statement that appeared in Brazzil magazine, Brazilian Secretary of Development Ivan Ramalho remarked that he hoped the meetings would enhance trade with other countries in order to diminish Brazil's over-reliance on the U.S. market. Brazil's recent trade initiatives with other developing countries have emerged largely due to the reluctance of some developed nations to lower trade subsidies. This impedes Brazil's ability to trade, adding significantly to the current debate over rising food prices. In an official statement released after the first set of meetings, Michel Alaby, Secretary General of the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, called for solidarity among countries suffering from rising food prices and demanded that developed countries, especially the U.S. and Europe, eliminate international trade barriers in the agricultural sector (Brazzil Magazine). With the emerging agreements, Brazilian officials hope to call attention to the U.S.' highly inefficient corn-based ethanol production at the height of a snowballing food crisis. The government aspires to be a strong actor in the midst of the food crisis and plans to show the rest of the world the benefits of Brazil's efficient sugar ethanol market, while it professes to be executing projects stalling the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

WNDI 2008

89 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Trade Good – A2 Development Trade is eliminating poverty now Jim Chen, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Fordham International Law Journal, November / December, 2000, 24 Fordham Int'l L.J. 217 The antiglobalization movement has made some extraordinary claims. Let us transplant a precept of natural science into this social realm: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. From Seattle to Prague, protesters have argued that the organs of international economic law conspire with multinational corporations to sap national and local governments of legitimate power, to destabilize global security, and to poison workplaces as well as ecosystems. That case has not met even the most generous standard of proof. The antiglobalization movement has failed to refute the following: Dramatic improvements in welfare at every wealth and income level. Since 1820 global wealth has expanded tenfold, thanks largely to technological advances and the erosion of barriers to trade. The world economic order, simply put, is lifting people out of poverty. According to the World Bank, the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty fell from 28.3 to 23.4% between 1987 and 1998. (The World Bank defines extreme and absolute poverty according to "reference lines set at $ 1 and $ 2 per day" in 1993 terms, adjusted for "the relative purchasing power of currencies across countries.") A more optimistic study has concluded that "the share of the world's population earning less than US$ 2 per day shrank by more than half" between 1980 and 1990, "from 34 to 16.6 percent." In concrete terms, "economic growth associated with globalization" over the course of that decade helped lift 1.4 billion people out of absolute poverty. Whatever its precise magnitude, this improvement in global welfare has taken place because of, not in spite of, flourishing world trade.

Comparative studies show that trade reduces the wealth gap between rich and poor nations – poverty is the results from lack of trade, not trade Joel R. Paul, Professor, University of California Hastings College of the Law. Do International Trade Institutions Contribute to Economic Growth and Development? Virginia Journal of International Law Association Fall, 2003 The leading study to challenge these results was conducted for the World Bank by the economists David Dollar and Aart Kraay. It divided developing countries into two groups, "globalizers" and "nonglobalizers". The Dollar-Kraay study found that from 1990-2000 industrialized countries grew at an average annual rate of 2.2% GDP per capita, globalizing developing countries grew 5.0%, and nonglobalizing developing countries grew 1.4%.n48 In other words, the globalizers sprinted ahead of the non-globalizers and narrowed the income gap with the industrialized countries. Dollar and Kraay concluded that all developing countries should pursue greater openness to trade as a prescription for reducing world income inequality. n49

Even if they’re right and trade has some negative impacts, protectionism is uniquely worse for developing economies Robert McGee, professor in the W. Paul Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University, 1994, A Trade Policy for Free Societies, p. 164 Protectionist regimes erected in developing countries have an especially detrimental effect on economic growth, because the limited resources these countries have are being used to protect inefficient producers at the expense of everyone else. This misallocation of resources cannot help but stifle economic growth, because resources are diverted from their most productive uses. Although free, unrestricted trade is always the best policy, regardless of the stage of economic development, developing countries can least afford the luxury of closing their borders to trade and, especially, to foreign investment, because their capital base needs to be expanded. The argument that the underdeveloped countries can never catch up with the West is just not true. The experiences of South Korea and Hong Kong are only two examples that could be cited to refute this view. Underdeveloped countries lack a capital base, but they do not need to grow their own capital base. All they have to do is allow unrestricted foreign investment. If they enact legislation to protect property rights and allow foreigners to invest with minimal or no restrictions, capital and technology will flow into the country and produce an economic boom.

WNDI 2008

90 Ethanol Aff 2ACs

Trade Good – A2 Environment Free trade is the only way to save the environment. Without it the global economy will collapse Martin Lewis professor in the School of the Environment and the Center for International Studies at Duke University. Green Delusions, 1992 p105-6 Contrary to the eco-radical vision, economic integration through extensive trade networks is not only beneficial for economic development but is also essential for future ecological health. Without the specialization made possible by transregional economic connections, and without the ability to transport essential resources over long distances, our entire economic and technological edifice would collapse. Environmental problems are global and require global cooperation Jim Chen, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, Fordham International Law Journal, November / December, 2000, 24 Fordham Int'l L.J. 217 The most serious environmental problems involve "the depletion and destruction of the global commons." Climate change, ozone depletion, and the loss of species, habitats, and biodiversity are today's top environmental priorities. None can be solved without substantial economic development and intense international cooperation. The systematic degradation of the biosphere respects no political boundaries. Worse, it is exacerbated by poverty. Of the myriad environmental problems in this mutually dependent world, "persistent poverty may turn out to be the most aggravating and destructive." We must remember "above all else" that "human degradation and deprivation ... constitute the greatest threat not only to national, regional, and world security, but to essential life-supporting ecological systems."

Open markets result in more sustainable environments – statistics prove Ana Eiras, Economic Policy Analyst for Latin America, and Brett Schaefer, Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs in the Center for International Trade and Economics at Heritage, September 27 2001, Trade: The Best Way to Protect the Environment, http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/BG1480.cfm, accessed 8/24/03 Moreover, the United States is an example of the elasticity of spending for environmental protection. As incomes have risen over the past three decades, America has increased "real spending by government and business on the environment and natural resource protection has doubled." 6 Economically free countries typically have a more sustainable environmental policy. In January 2001, the World Economic Forum, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy published an Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI). 7 The Index assigns the health of a country's environment a single number ranging from 0 to 100, in which zero means low sustainability and 100 means high sustainability. This number represents a country's success in coping with environmental challenges and cooperating with other countries in the management and improvement of common environmental problems. Chart 1 illustrates the relationship between The Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2001 Index of Economic Freedom scores and the ESI. The chart shows a strong relationship between economic freedom and environmental sustainability. The freer the economy, the greater the level of environmental sustainability. The United States is a classic example of economic freedom's beneficial impact on the environment. America has been a champion of economic freedom for decades while simultaneously maintaining one of the world's cleanest environments. Countries with more open trade and investment policies generally have higher levels of environmental sustainability. Free trade and the investment that typically follows it are two important sources of economic growth. Therefore, an open trade policy and a business-friendly environment will not only increase growth, but also provide the means to protect the environment. The Heritage Foundation calculated a "Trade Openness Index"

based on the 2001 Index of Economic Freedom by averaging the score for the trade policy, property rights, capital flows and foreign investment, and regulation factors. Consider the relationship between the Trade Openness Index and the Environmental Sustainability Index illustrated in Chart 2. In countries with an open economy, the average environmental sustainability score is more than 30 percent higher than the scores of countries with moderately open economies, and almost twice as high as those of countries with closed economies.