Neoliberalism---NDI 2014

Neoliberalism Critique

neoliberalism---critique---1nc The AFFs ocean exploration constructs it as an object external to society—this makes it impossib le for us to connect with it—their desire can only be channeled through commodities which fuels neoliberalism Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

Contemporary concern for the marine environment typically is grounded in worries about the increasing rate at which humanity is using the ocean's resources . For instance, the Pew Oceans Commission, another high-level panel that recently studied US oceans policy, notes in its 2003 report that ocean management regulations to date have been based on a frontier mentality’ that holds that marine resources are inexhaustible and that encourages users to extract as much as they can from the ocean, as quickly as possible (Pew Oceans Commission 2003, vii—viii). The Pew Commission report asserts that this mentality and the patchwork of species-specific, allocation-oriented regulations associated with it need to be replaced with a management system based on ‘principles of ecosystem health and integrity, sustainability, and precaution’ (Pew Oceans Commission 2003, x). Similarly, An Ocean Blueprint argues for a new era in which ‘management boundaries correspond with ecosystem regions and policies consider interactions among all ecosystem components’ (United States Commission on Ocean Policy 2004a, xxxiv). This would require abandonment of the current management paradigm in which, ‘through inattention, lack of information, and irresponsibility, we have depleted fisheries, despoiled recreation areas, degraded water quality, drained wetlands, endangered our own health, and deprived many of our citizens of jobs (United States Commission on Ocean Polity 2004a, x). These sentiments echo similar proclamations from the 1990s - in documents surrounding the 1998 United Nations International Year of the Ocean and in popular magazines including Time, Natiotial Geographic, and The Economist — that argue d for a switch from thinking of the ocean as a frontier to be exploited to thinking of it as a space of ‘finite economical assets’ that need to be stewarded through purposive and integrated management (Steinberg 1999, 2001, 176-180).At one level, this story of marine environmental degradation - what I am calling the Overuse Narrative - cannot and should not be questioned: few would disagree that the ocean’s nature is being transformed with a new intensity, with lasting impacts on human society. Nor should we necessarily reject the normative principles that are associated with this narrative: that the ocean should be rationally stewarded and managed in an attempt to stabilize the relationship between humans and their marine environment. As an explanation, however, the Overuse Narrative falls short. An explanation derived solely from observation of a current condition seldom forms a reliable basis for interpreting environmental history, especially when that condition is identified as a ‘crisis’ because of deviation from a supposedly stable-norm. And a poor understanding of environmental history, in turn, can lead to ill-conceived environmental policy (Roc 1994, 1995).

Specifically, the Overuse Narrative falls short in two respects. One area of shortfall is that when one derives an explanation of environmental change from a current crisis, there is a tendency to privilege causes that are proximate in time and space , ignoring or underplaying the role of more distant factors . For instance, a crisis-based analysis of land degradation in Africa is likely to focus on the cattle-rearing practices of local agropastoralists and not on the activities of commodity speculators in Chicago or historic colonial land management policies (Blaikie 1985; Watts 1983). In the case of the ocean, recent environmental changes , such as declines in fish stocks, cannot simply be explained with

reference to a 'tragedy of the commons’ scenario. Instead, they must be placed within the context of broader societal dynamics , such as the increased intensity of global economic exchanges and the rise of neoliberal national development policies , as well as the complex (and not necessarily equilibrium-seeking) dynamics of marine ecology (Mansfield 2004a,b; Steinberg 1999).Additionally, just as the Overuse Narrative fails to adequately explain the cause of a crisis, it similarly fails to adequately explain society’s response. Recognition of an environmental crisis, and even explanation of its cause, does not necessarily

translate into public concern or public policy. Thus, the Overuse Narrative alone cannot explain why a consensus has emerged around developing a national, and ideally global, regime to steward the ocean’s resources while no similar consensus has emerged, for instance, for decommissioning nuclear reactors. To understand not just what we have done to the marine environment but also udiy we care about it (and why

we - and perhaps even the Bush administration - may actually do something to ameliorate those conditions), we need a theoretical framework richer than the Overuse Narrative.It seems likely that, in part at least, the embrace of the Overuse Narrative that is driving President Bush’s support for marine environment initiatives is a result of Americans’ fascination with marine biota. Consider the astounding success of marine theme parks, entities that tbse the voyeurism of the zoo, the educational component of the museum, the spectacle of the theatre, and the activity-oriented excitement of the amusement park. After Disney’s and Universal Studios’ Florida and California properties, two of the next three most popular amusement parks in the United States in 2007 were the Sea World parks in Florida (5.8 million attendance) and California (4.3 million attendance) (Themed Entertainment Association 2008).To some extent, the popularity of marine theme parks may be due to their rides and non-nature-oriented attractions, but there also appears to be an underlying fascination with marine animals. Average annual attendance at aquaria in the United States in 2006 was 13.4% higher than die average annual attendance at zoos, despite the average admission fee at an aquarium being 51% higher than that of a zoo (Morey and Associates 2007).5 Combining the figures for marine theme parks and aquaria, it has been estimated that in the United States more than 50 million people visited facilities featuring sea animals in 2003, spending at least US$1 billion (Kestin 2004).While this fascination with marine biota (and, in particular, megafauna like dolphins and whales) is especially strong, it carries over to a lesser extent to human uses of the marine environment. Attendance at the United States' leading maritime-themed living history museum, Mystic Seaport, is reported as being ‘more than 300,000', with some years reaching close to 600,000 (Mystic Seaport no datc-a,b), figures that are well above average for US museums (Morey and Associates 2007). In Japan, 12.4 million visitors flocked to Tokyo Disneysea in 2007, where the visitor experience, while certainly less explicitly educational than that found at Mystic Seaport, nonetheless revolves around the evocation of the world’s ports and maritime activities. This attendance figure was the second highest for any amusement park in Asia, with only Tokyo Disneyland being more popular (13.9 million attendees) (Themed Entertainment Association 2008).In this article, I am proposing that the fascination with the ocean, expressed in arenas as diverse as aquarium attendance and White House environmental policy , is so pervasive because a concern for overuse of the ocean has emerged in tandem with a complementary (if superficially contradictory) trend:

underexposure. Increased extraction of the ocean’s resources has been accompanied by decreased integration of the ocean’s material nature into everyday lives.Until relatively recently, there likely was a high correlation between one’s level of consciousness of the ocean and the degree to which one encountered it as a space that provided daily sustenance. For members of households in coastal communities or on small islands that earned their livings from the ocean (whether as fishers, sailors, or harvesters of non-fish resources, or by providing land-based support to these industries), the ocean was a crucial space of their everyday lives. Others, who lived inland or who lived land-bound lives in spite of their proximity to the sea/’ were relatively ignorant of the ocean’s existence. In recent decades, however, there has arisen around the world a large population for whom the sea is crucial for their livelihoods but for whom it is removed from the experiences of their everyday lives. Today, 11 of the world's 15 largest cities are on the coast or an estuary (Greenpeace no date) and, within the United States, 10 of the 15 largest cities and 53% of the nation’s population arc located in coastal counties (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration 2004). Residents of these burgeoning port cities likely are aware that their cities owe their existence to historic and, in many cases, continuing economic complexes based on maritime transportation (and often marine resource extraction as well). However, for the majority of these city dwellers, the ocean, although ever present, is encountered only as a virtual space : a space of history and potentialities, an abstract surface to be gazed at and reflected upon or learned about as a source of civic pride , but not a material space of contemporary social life (Steinberg 2001).In short, even as the ocean maintains its role in national (and local) economies, its materiality is encountered only by a select and marginal few . This process began several centuries ago with the denigration of sailors as wild misfits beyond civilization and it continues to this day with the relocation of container ports to inaccessible districts on the edges of cities. As a space whose significance is acknowledged but whose underlying processes and structures arc poorly understood, the ocean has emerged as a site of fetishization. In 19th-century Europe, the marine ‘other’ was a favored space of romantic writers and artists - different, but proximate enough that one could gaze at its expanse from the safety of an urban harbor or a beachside villa. The ocean was idealized as beyond society , where a ‘pure’ nature could be imagined and recovered and where a ‘foreign’ exoticism could be apprehended (Raban 1992).Since the 19th century, this romanticization of the ocean has developed further, in a number of directions. For some, the ocean is perceived as an empty surface across which one can take escapist imaginary journeys to distant horizons. Others perceive it as a space across which goods arrive from foreign civilizations . And still others perceive it as an arena of benign but mystically intelligent mammals (Konvitz 1979; Lencek &

Boskcr 1988; Sekula 1995; Urban 2003). In all of these instances, however, the ocean is perceived as fundamentally external to society (Steinberg forthcoming). Amid this externalization , the coastal waters, the material space of interaction between terrestrial society and marine nature, disappears as a concept. For the urbanite gazing

at the horizon from the shore (or from the deck of a cruise ship), there are no coastal waters whose meanings come from their nature or through encounters with their nature. There is just vast, undifferentiated ocean . To borrow a phrase applied by Beck in a different context, the ocean has come to be constructed as a space of ‘second-hand non-experience', a space in which ‘the experiential logic of everyday thought is reversed, as it were, (where) one no longer ascends merely from personal experience to general judgments, but rather general knowledge devoid of personal experience becomes the central determinant of personal experience' (Beck 1992, 72). As Barthes notes, for those whose interactions with the ocean are restricted to casual, escapist encounters, the ocean is a ‘non-signifying field’ that ‘bears no message’ (Barthes 1972, 112).As a ‘non-signifying field’, the ocean’s meanings and messages must be derived from external sources. In this context, a range of popular practices have emerged wherein affective meanings that arise from beyond the ocean are mobilized to construct the ocean as an object to be observed and preserved . These mechanisms for inserting meaning into an otherwise nonsignifying ocean include the seaside resort, the cruise ship, the harborside festival marketplace, the marine theme park , and - when combined with the Overuse Narrative - the marine protected area .

Humanity’s alienation from the sea as a space of social processes has been particularly thorough for a number of reasons. First, the vision of a ‘non-social’ ocean ironically is quite compatible with the marine imaginary of those who historically have gained the most economic value from the ocean: shippers and military planners . T he ocean’s greatest resource (in terms of economic benefit to global society) is that it provides a surface for movement,' and movement is unique in that, as a resource, it is most valuable when it is invisible and most obtainable when it is empty. The ideal shipping surface is one with no social markers or borders.

Indeed, celestial navigational systems (including the global positioning system satellites that presently guide ships at sea) and modern maritime law assume that a ship is navigating across an empty , placcless, asocial surface (Steinberg

2001). Thus, the distanced consumer’s ideal of the ocean as empty and without social relations is unwittingly promoted by two of the main groups ‘producing’ the ocean: global shippers and military planners . Additionally, whether the ocean is marketed as a romantic space of escape, a paradise of pure nature, or an empty space of movement, it requires management by a rational authority that is guided by concerns other than short-term profit. Those seeking to gaze across the sea as a pristine space of nature require a regime that prohibits the introduction of human artifacts (oil platforms, pollution, etc.) at sea and on the shoreline (Urban 2003). Shippers and navies similarly require a rational management regime that restricts social entities from drawing boundaries or leaving their mark at sea, because these social interventions could interfere with the ocean’s boundary-free cliaracter (Gold 1981). Thus, some of the forces most involved in the discursive construction of the ocean as an external space beyond society also, somewhat contradictorily, have an interest in the ocean being actively governed, an agenda that can potentially be aligned with those seeking to preserve the ocean’s fragile environment. Governance for all of these ends is then promoted through recitation of the Overuse Narrative, even by actors such as military leaders who are not typically associated with the promotion of environmental sustainability.Underexposure contributes to the traction of the Overuse Narrative in another way as well. The Overuse Narrative can be interpreted as a reaction to the alienation experienced by individuals when they seek connection with a romanticized image to which they are proximate as consumers (as more and more people live near the sea and consume its resources, either by enjoying its vistas or digesting its fish) but disconnected as producers (as fishing itself becomes a more capital-intensive, centralized industry in which fewer people directly engage the ocean, and as heavily capitalized shipping ports become spatially separated from the residential and production areas frequented by those who consume and produce the goods being shipped) (Sekula 1995). Like the consumer of fairtrade products who seeks to overcome alienation from the commodity by intervening in production relations, the alienated consumer of ocean space seeks to forge connections by being party to a rational governance regime dedicated to stewardship and sustainability.To summarize, in industrial and, to an even greater extent, postindustrial societies, the ocean has emerged as a space beyond s ociety for which one feels longing . This longing can produce a desire both to internalize the external space as a space of society (in which case its resources should be

commodified and treated as ‘assets’ ) and to preserve its status as a special space beyond the ravages of society ( which , as a practical policy matter , involves stewardship of these ‘assets’ through mechanisms like marine protected areas). In Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) analysis of capitalism, this tension between internalization and externalization underlies the instability of modern society . In the case of the ocean, at least for the present, these two tendencies combine to produce a conservation ethos that has lent a unique level of support to the stewardship principles suggested by the Overuse Narrative.

Try or Die—capitalist social relations in the ocean are unsustainable and guarantee extinction—vote neg and reject the AFFs economic intrusion Clark and Clausen 8—Brett, assistant professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah and Rebecca, Professor of Sociology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. “The Oceanic Crisis: Capitalism and the Degradation of Marine Ecosystem,” 60(3): online http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem

Turning the Ocean into a Watery GraveThe world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation under global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were teeming with abundance are being decimated by the continual intrusion of exploitive economic operations . At the same time that scientists are documenting the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing an oceanic crisis as natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined through overfishing and transformed due to global warming . The expansion of the accumulation system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species deemed valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture

enhances capital’s control over production without resolving ecological contradictions.It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that “ short of human extinction , there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to permanently ‘break down’ under the weight of its depletion and degradation of natural wealth.”44 Capital is driven by the competition for the accumulation of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of capitalism . It cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction of nature , which may entail time scales of a hundred or more years . Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit.The qualitative relation between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an ever-larger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, “Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most, time’s carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides everything.”45 Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of capital—not the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted and appropriated as a free gift.As a result, the system is inherently caught in a fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature. István Mészáros elaborates this point, stating:For today it is impossible to think of anything at all concerning the elementary conditions of social metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in which capital relates to them—the only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanity’s energy requirements, or of the management of the planet’s mineral resources and chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element without which no human being can survive: water itself….In the absence of miraculous solutions, capital’s arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end inevitably brings a bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].46

An analysis of the oceanic crisis confirms the destructive qualities of private for-profit operations. Dire conditions are being generated as the resiliency of marine ecosystems in general is being undermined .To make matters worse, sewage from feedlots and fertilizer runoff from farms are transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading marine ecosystems with excess nutrients, which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This leads to oxygen-poor water and the formation of hypoxic zones—otherwise known as “dead zones” because crabs and fishes suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that remove nutrients from the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around the world. A dead zone is the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same time, it contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the ecological crisis of the world ocean.Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and aquaculture, the oceans are experiencing ecological degradation and constant pressures of extraction that are severely depleting the populations of fishes and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if current practices and rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around the world could collapse by the year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature, and thus of global society itself.

Top Shelf

AT: Framework—2nc Counter-interpretation—the AFF has to defend the plan and its assumptions—this is key to neg ground—if the AFFs starting point is incorrect, we shouldn’t have to debate from it-it decks policy making by beginning from the false premise that the Federal government is the only subject of politics-- Only a political methodology that connects the environment to humans avoids depoliticization and engenders ethical policymaking which turns all of their offense Seckinelgin 6–Hakan is a lecturer in international social policy at the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, “The Environment and International Politics,” 149-152

The possibility of the political as an ecological process may be grounded in the position of human being. The ethical responsibility of being with

others obliges human being to think ecologically and to consider the claims of those beings whose lives are not necessarily clear to us, the Unheimlich.... It locates human being as a part of the ecological context in contact with beings ... The meaning of ‘ecological’, then, is not strictly limited to the issue area of the so-called environment but belongs to a larger relationality where human beings are located with

others It is in the relationality of being-in-the-world that human beings face each other and other beings. The discussion of Dasein's being constituted as being there, as always situated within a certain context, and locating its potentiality for Being, in other words, its becoming, to the concept of care, responsibility ... to other beings with which Dasein is in-the- world-on -Earth, establishes the pre-ontological condition of understanding relationality and morals constituted for epistemic disciplines, sciences. The original ethos as an ecological relationality is based on an unprivileged location of human being on Earth in the midst of other beings. None the less, this ethos docs not reduce the natural human capacity to influence its surroundings. By recognising the human ability to change, it attributes to human beings the responsibility of care for other beings. In doing so, the being of others becomes an existential issue for Dasein. It is in responsibility, in responding to the ecological call, that Dasein faces its potentiality for Being.The tension between Da, there, of Dasein and its ecological being, Dasein's authenticity as its potentiality-for-Being, may be seen as the location of the political. It is in the overcoming of the limits established by everydayness, thereness, that Dasein politicizes its being. Judith Butler observes that ‘to claim that politics

requires a stable subject is to claim that there can be no political opposition to that claim’ (Butler 1992: 4). The decision about who is the subject of the political forecloses the political space. In its everydayness, Dasein is then constituted among agents that are

already established, human subjects. Dasein's ecological relationality is reduced to the relationality limited by the everydayness, the political that is foreclosed. The constitution of Dasein as the subject of politics robs it of its ecological context. In other words, in the everydayness Dasein is excluded from the larger context in which this thereness is located. Within it, politics is restricted within the

boundaries of a foreclosure. As the limits of the political are represented in the agents, political contestation remains within the foreclosure. Those who are disqualified or ignored in the constitution of the political cannot become parties to the discussion.

Problems related to those identities are either ignored or reduced/ translated to the problems of the agents of the political . By thinking in terms of an ecological context and Dasein, as located in this context,

the methodological bind represented in the human subject as an agent of the political is unsettled.By attempting to realise its potentiality for Being, its authenticity, human being/Dasein recovers its place as a contingent being in the larger ecological context. This recovery, then, contests the limits of politics established as the normality. It tries to relocate the abstracted human subject back to its ecological location. It attempts to overcome the idle talk of the normal. In its relational structure, anxious Dasein recognises its responsibility to the other that is ignored within the foreclosed political space. As a result, Dasein is forced to transgress its limits deployed by everydayness, as a state of unquestioned normality. Through an existential relationship with the Unheimlich, the foreclosed political is forced to its limits. The established agents and their political discussion are problematised by ecological relationality. Here, a methodological turn may be observed.By understanding the political according to the relations implied within the ecological context of a question, this move breaks the bind of analysing a problem according to the foreclosed space of the political where already decided concepts reformulate the problem. In other words, the political does not dictate the definition of what is political in terms of agency. However, it becomes a dynamic process where what is political is decided according to a given situation and the ecological relations reflected within it. Since political contestation is taken out of the closure of normality, the political may be questioned in terms of its ethos, since a certain political settlement and the ethical relations within it may become contested by an ecological context. The political is secured by the ecological ethics rather than an abstracted resolution that fixes the possibilities of the political to limited subject positions. In the end. this turn shows a methodological move where a question that is analysed within an ecological context may come up with a new configuration of the political and a relationality.The methodological contention of the study of international relations (IR) in explaining the political through ‘the international' as the space of politics, and states

and other institutions as agents of this politics, has foreclosed the discussion of politics within IR. Since the political has been articulated as a matter of relations between states .10 the possibility of political objection to this framework within IR is limited to the discussions of the role of states and international organisations . By deciding the subject of the political, IR ignores those issues that cannot be accommodated within its structure . It also means that it ignores the impact of these politics on those areas that are structurally ignored, such as the subject matter of the present study, or in other cases where subjects are created by placing people in categorical units of patients, the

poor and refugees. Since these identities are not in the domain of the politics as actors, a question about the ethos of ‘the international' as a political space cannot be brought within the discourse; no political opposition (Butler 1992; 4) to ‘the international'. ‘The international' is established as the everydayness, a sociological space, that creates the

boundaries of thinking. The limits of the space combined with the stable subjects of the political give substance to what is political. The substance of

the political is always considered according to the stable subject positions. The relationship between the stable subjects represents the ethical relations and the political concerns.The ecological context presented in this study unsettles this stable internalised perspective oflR. It shows that what is being ignored is none the less implicated in

the discussions of ‘the international'. The foreclosure of the political and subsequent indifference to the context does not invalidate the existential relationship. By revealing this connection and showing the limited understanding prevalent in IR. the political cohesion represented in ‘the international' is questioned. The definitive authority of ‘the international' on the political has been delegitimised. What is political becomes an issue related to a particular question and the relations presented within it.

The ethos of questioning within the foreclosed political sphere of IR is criticised. In criticising it the ecological ethics systematically counters the grounding assumptions of IR . In locating the political in relation to the attempt to recover ecological relationality. the method of understanding and questioning becomes a dynamic process . This points to a politics of becoming and contestation rather than an affirmation of a foreclosed space. Therefore, a disciplinary boundary as an essential, secure ground of understanding represents an impasse.This attempt also questions various critical proposals to discuss ethics within the discipline. The renewed interest in ethics within the discipline11 suggests a turn

for IR. None the less, as the discussion of normative questions is aimed at the political defined within IR ,

the ethos of IR as a framework becomes obscured . Ethics seems to be considered as a prescriptive performance in which certain political behaviour is established as correct, without considering the general perspective of the political within which this prescription is located. From a philosophical point of view an ethical discussion presents a new relationality between the subjects as well as introducing new subjects, and the resulting political proposal may not necessarily resemble the political expressed in the international. Attempting to keep the political resolution of the international intact and to discuss the ethics therein represents a questionable method. A plethora of philosophical positions is imported into the discipline without considering the ontological assumptions of these concepts necessary to reformulate the conceptual frameworks. Put differently, ethics expressed as relationality is not allowed to reformulate the questions but is applied to explain already posed questions within the international as an a posteriori analytical tool. The problem is not only that this a posteriori approach bans the mutability of thinking, but the problem is also related to the issue of how far the ethical positions imported are compatible with the ethical position implicit in the formulation and the problem of‘the international'.12The method of existential/ecological questioning exposes this methodological bind within the discipline. It shows that the understanding of IR represents an

ontological bind that is reiterated constantly through its application of an international/ sovereignty binary. The method of understanding both in conventional and in critical variance performs a thinking based on the permanence of everydayness without questioning the fundamental assumptions implicit in the location of subject in its thereness. in 'the international. The subject of the political exists in the idle talk of international politics, where the codified positions obscure the possibility of

vigilance for those identities representing the limits of the political. The inability for vigilance, the loss of political imaginary, represents the abandonment of existential responsibility. The disciplinary method exercised as a boundary maintenance mechanism overdetermines the possibility of thinking. The ecological ethics, discussed as an existential method, on the other hand, remains as a method based on the philosophical thinking of relations through ecological ethics rather than a

method based on a foreclosed domain of politics or social science disciplines.13 By pointing out a relationality , by being vigilant to the life of the Unheimlich , it remains a methodological tool for resisting the closure of the political to contestation .14 This position represents the political that is both transformative and ethical .15In this study, then. I observed the international and IR as the thereness, everydayness, of the subject. The philosophical discussion and the methodological move have questioned the ethical, implied in the area, without observing the limits put by the thereness of‘the international'. In this, the questioning located itself in the ecological ethics and the concept of responsibility implicit in this ethical argument. being-y\ith-others-in-the-world. The move revealed that the discipline cannot

consider the ethos of its own formation and guarantee its legitimacy through its methodology based on a priori knowledge of what can be studied. The philosophical constitution of human being as a becoming within the ecological context, an ecological witness, does not foreclose the relationship between human beings and other beings. An ecological relationality remains dynamic, and thus the political and thinking about the political are connected to a perpetual thinking process about an ecological context . As grounded in this existential ethics, the method remains a methodological tool for both thinking politically and acting politically without being foreclosed. It keeps the political discussion open without overdetermining the substance of it.

Therefore, it does not try to arrive at a ground/tribunal from which the substance of the ethical and of the political can be legislated. Although this method arguably becomes limited with its language, it provides an important way of looking at those questions which are foreclosed under the concepts used in a way of intellectual ‘common sense’, based largely on disciplinary divides and imperatives in the social sciences, such as refugees, health behaviour, international health, free markets, the poor and poverty reduction, imposed on people constructed as beneficiaries of the policies defined by these concepts. Thus a new space is opened. Since this move of looking at an issue opens up a new process of questioning, it is far from being a romantic reflection on a theme of a metaphysics.

In this way. the study concludes as a discussion of an existential methodology, which leaves the political open to be determined by a given ecological context, constituting itself as a perpetual methodological move in resistance to normality.

No offense—our interpretation leaves plenty of ground for the AFF – they can weigh exploration/development based advantages—the AFF got to choose their impacts and advantages, if they can’t defend that they are true and outweigh the critique, they deserve to lose.

The judge should begin with the presupposition that sovereign power exists outside the government and that national borders are completely artificial—as long as decision making is focused on interstate relations, national security interests will trump ecological concerns Seckinelgin 6–Hakan is a lecturer in international social policy at the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, “The Environment and International Politics,” 6-7

It may be argued that the relationality and interconnectedness of human being s and nature suggested by the activists' actions is not addressed in the governments' responses. My intention , then, i s to find an intellectual orientation for the critical analysis of this juncture between the activists and the gov ernment. The juncture may be spotted between the official response and the ecological interconnectedness of species - that is, their relationality invoked in the protest - as well as in the meaning of the non-response to the ecological call for responsibility beyond official understanding of responsibility in terms of state interest . The ‘critical’ in ‘critical analysis' means that the analysis will attempt to reveal the limits of knowing10 in terms of ecology within the discourse that is framed by concepts of ‘state’, ‘territory', ‘interest' and ‘the international' as they are deployed by the governments. It is therefore important to conceptualise the nature of the problem between the call for responsibility and the location of the official government response within International Relations. This location between the two sides allows us to see what is at stake politically that is different from environmental politics.In the context of this book, the discourse that limits our understanding of politics is the study of international relations under the discipline of International Relations (IR).n The study of International Relations is taken to be a discursive practice insofar as it produces and forms the knowledge in relation to international relations.12 In this productive mode it applies discursive rules and categories such as ‘sovereignty' and ‘the international', without which the discipline of International Relations cannot explain actual international relations; none the less, in the statement of‘international relations' these rules and categories are always already assumed.13 The responses of the US administration and the British government to their opponents reflect the discourse of IR. which is based on territorial sovereignty claims through the means of international law and claims of priority of national interest over international responsibility - in other words, the discourse of International Relations through its rules and categories enables spatial differentiation between international and national. It creates two sides of political action where the basis of action is grounded on different ethical relations . Put

differently, this spatial distinction also differentiates the mode of political concerns and agents. Through this structure the state becomes the agent of political discourse in ‘the international' under the assumption of representing its territorial unity and the unified will of its citizens . In this enabling rests the question of how it is that concepts of ‘sovereignty' and ‘the international' create the conditions of the discourse.14 The ecological call as expressed in ANWR and by the Greenpeace attempt destabilises the disciplinary moves that are based on the framework of ‘sovereignty' and ‘the international'. As R.B.J. Walker suggests, the increasing importance of the problems arising outside traditional sovereignty claims such as ‘those involving the law of the sea. space law and speculative claims about a global commons or planetary habitat' makes traditional belief that ‘here is indeed here and there is still there' (Walker 1993: 174) rather difficult to sustain. The politics based on ecological relationality exposes the inner tensions of the concept of sovereignty . The image of sovereignty as reflected in state action becomes unstable, since these actions have larger consequences that cannot be assimilated within the boundaries of sovereign decision-making. The ecological understanding defined as a holistic relationality between species and the Earth presents an important discursive problem to International Relations.15 Of course, there is an attempt to locate ecological problems as an environmental problem within the discourse, as demonstrated by the British government's response. This prompts the question: How is it possible, in the face of an invocation of ecological responsibility, to manage the environment in terms of ‘sovereign’ spaces? Slated differently by Michel Foucault in his attempt to locate the conceptualisation of sex in relation to the general discourse of sexuality. *[w)hat is at issue, briefly, is the over-all “discursive fact”, the way in which sex is “put into discourse”' (Foucault 1990: 11). It is important to realise that the transformation of ecological problems into environmental issues is a discursive move. International Relations may explain the issue of Rockall through environmental management terms based on British sovereign rights and its international obligations and. by bringing this

explanation, imposes its own discursive structure over the issue. None the less, this precise juncture of transformation reveals the anthropocentric prejudice of the discourse. Although there are those theories , or schools,

of International Relations that are receptive to the environmental problems , they remain within the anthropocentric framework .16 The ecological call raised by these cases discussed above allows us to see the inadequacy of the rules and categories of the discourse . Or, from a Foucauldian perspective, this inadequacy represents the internal unvoiced and unthought existential values and norms in the discourse. In other words, to bring the concept of the ecological into perspective is an attempt to uncover power17 reflected in the possibility of the conditions of knowledge framed in the discourse of International Relations.1*

This process also allows us to see what is political in environmental politics and how it becomes subsumed under the discursive limits of politics created by these values and norms implicit in the discourse.

Not a voting issue – reject the argument not the team—even if they win the debate is focused on USFG policy, you can still vote neg because the link and impact outweigh the case

AT: Perm---2nc The link is premised on the exploring and developing the ocean—they cannot sever the ideology the plan is invested in—that would make being neg impossible—abandoning the AFF in the 2ac moots all preparation A total revolutionary approach to how humanity approaches the ocean is required to avert environmental catastrophe—that’s Clark and Clausen—that means we only need to win a small risk the perm links in order for you to vote neg The perm straight-jackets the alternative into a neoliberal paradigm—even minor commodification of the ocean will distort environmentalism through speculative capitalism Churchill 14—Ieuan, “Environmentalism in crisis: neoliberal conservation and wilderness romanticism,” International Socialism, Issue 142, http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=966&issue=142

The fundamental problems with Juniper’s work relate to h is choice of pro-capitalist mechanisms for environmental salvation. It is this, however, that explains why the book received vigorous endorsement from the upper echelons of environmental NGOs such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and plaudits from various corporations including Nestlé. For these admirers, the value of Juniper’s work is that it advocates “pragmatic” solutions to the environmental crisis—the development of new markets in environmental conservation through partnerships between NGOs, corporations and neoliberal governments. In this respect, Juniper’s work sits alongside that of other previously radical environmentalists such as Tim Flannery8 and Mark Lynas9 who now argue that the exit from our crisis lies through the corporate world, not against it. Lynas, for example, in his book The God Species, adopts an approach that “does not necessarily imply any limit to human economic growth or productivity… Nor does it necessarily mean ditching capitalism, the profit principle, or the market, as many of today’s campaigners demand”.10The thread that links all these works, and the emerging trend for neoliberal conservation , stems from a very crude process of abstraction . When practised well, conservation ecology is inherently dialectical because it is concerned with dynamic change, the historical interplay between humanity and nature, and the abstraction and recombination of ecological traits and concepts at various levels from the genetic to the landscape.In contrast, those proposing to break down ecological outputs into various anthropocentric “services” threaten to oversimplify the dynamism and holism inherent within ecology . Whatever “service” neoliberal conservationists may choose to promote for the market, they cannot hide from the fact that these ecological outputs are the product of ecological unity in the round. An ecosystem can produce several “services”—but any attempt to commodify just one or two will subject the ecosystem concerned to the distorting impact of speculative cap italism. In effect, Juniper and others are arguing for the disaggregation of ecosystem functionality—the division of any given ecosystem into its “service” roles in water, food, fuel, cultural and cash provision. In direct contradiction to their acknowledgement of the need for functioning holistic ecology, these neoliberal environmentalists are on the verge of artificially break ing ecosystems down into tradable “service” units . The assumptions that this can be rationally achieved are based on existing markets in carbon trading, the trading of “wetland credits” in the United States, the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) process, and the new ideas of so-called

biodiversity offsetting. All these mechanisms are portrayed as effective despite growing ev idence to the contrary , and the fact that they lead to the promotion of fictitious commodities .11

As far back as 1996 David Harvey anticipated today’s particular neoliberal conversion within environmentalism and warned of the consequences of this final capitulation to the logic of capital:

Appeal to monetary valuation [ of nature] condemns us, in short, to a world view in which the ecosystem is viewed as an “externality” to be internalised in human action only via some arbitrarily chosen and imposed price structure or regulatory regime .12Harvey’s prophetic comment is vitally important because it exposes the fundamental contradiction between monetary valuation and ecology. It also helps us to identify the class-bound qualities of emergent neoliberal environmentalism. Thus the ecosystem services agenda can be interpreted as a pretty cynical process of mystification—an ideological narrowing of our dialogue over the nature of Earth’s ecology and its human interactions—that serves the interests of corporations seeking to “green” their image, and the consultants lining up to prove how money can be made from ecological catastrophe (Tony Juniper is himself an “adviser” in this field).13

The agenda is also inherently anti-democratic . In defining chosen “ecosystem services” and their qualities, environmentalists and economists will soon start selecting the particular units and functions of ecosystems that represent profitable “services”. The determination of such is taking place with little or no input from those who are actually managing important ecosystems through their livelihoods, or the rest of us who benefit from healthy ecological outputs. This hands the science of ecology over to an elite whose interests will quickly align themselves with the cementing and continuation of this industry —

with its attendant technocrats, markets and dividends. As far as our understanding of ecology is concerned, the timing couldn’t be worse. Because of capitalism’s devastating ecological impact, and its inherent bias towards reductionist, corporate-sponsored science, it has simply not been possible to ascertain the true nature of ecosystem function. Juniper’s uncritical adoption of a neoliberal “ecosystem service” position will push us even further from this capacity—in stark contrast to the espoused hopes and desires of today’s conservationists and environmentalists.As a practising conservationist, I would also add that Juniper’s approach is starting to distort our efforts on the ground. Conservation has taken a generation to reach consensus over the fact that emphasis upon the ecosystem is fundamentally correct. But even before we have a chance to consider the implications of this, or to orient our

conservation efforts to reflect what we can glean from ecosystem functionality, the “ecosystem services” agenda threatens to straitjacket us into a paradigm of neoliberal economism through over-simplification and a dash for cash.This genie will be difficult to put back in the bottle. Once ecosystems, their functions and their constituent parts become artificially disaggregated and effectively privatised, they will become subject to the normative pressures of commodity fetishism. Already this approach is redefining nature as merely “natural capital” and organisations such as Environment Bank are pushing new markets in so-called “biodiversity offsetting” as a means of enhancing profits for landowners—confirmation that commodification of ecosystem units and functions lies at the heart of the “ecosystem services” paradigm.14 Furthermore, their historical and cultural significance to humanity will

disappear, rendering their functions subservient to the artificial priorities of speculative capital. This agenda, unchallenged, will compound rather than alleviate our ecological crisis , and place ecological understanding in the hands of a corporate-sponsored elite—further widening the ecological rift through dispossession and alienation . In short, it threatens to place environmentalism on the wrong side of the class struggle.15The rightward political drift of mainstream environmentalism has been barely acknowledged outside of pretty narrow academic circles.16 We desperately need serious environmentalists to expose the dangerous fallacies embedded within neoliberal ecology, not least because if the supporters of environmental organisations—that now number in their millions—knew of the corporate takeover of their groups they would probably despair. For many, membership of an environmental campaign or conservation group represents a desire for ecological protection from the forces of commodification. As David Harvey has noted: “We have loaded upon nature, often without knowing it, in our science as in our poetry, much of the alternative desire for value to that implied by money”.17

The perm is a marketing strategy not a revolution—it greens neoliberalism without shaking its foundations James McCarthy 4, Associate Professor of Geography at Penn State; and Scott Prudham, Program in Planning and the Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Toronto, May 2004, “Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism,” Geoforum, Vol. 35, No. 3, p. 275-283

Yet if environmentalism has been a potent source of resistance to neoliberalism, it is also true that

environmentalism and neoliberalism have each incorporated elements of the other during their now decades-long engagement. Many environmentalists have adopted elements of neoliberal ideology and discourse, reflecting and reinforcing neoliberal hegemony. “ Free-market” environmentalism, once an oxymoron, has proliferated since the Reagan-Thatcher years, in forms such as tradeable

emission permits, transferable fishing quotas, user fees for public goods, and aspects of utility privatization. Meanwhile, neoliberal ventures have increasingly assimilated environmentalism through key discursive shifts , such as the growing convergence of sustainable development with green capitalism , the purported ‘greening’ of

the World Bank (Goldman, 2001), and a vast tide of corporate green-wash. Such incorporations of ‘ environmentalism’ into the heart of neoliberalism’s central institutions has done far more to smooth the ‘roll out’ of neoliberalizations than attempts to dismiss or reject environmental concerns outright .

The alternative alone is more radical—the perm consumes the counterhegemonic potential of our criticism Jim Igoe et al 10, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, et al, June 2010, “A Spectacular Eco-Tour around the Historic Bloc: Theorising the Convergence of Biodiversity Conservation and Capitalist Expansion,” Antipode, Vol. 42, No. 3, p. 486-512

1 There will always be people, things and processes that cannot be co-opted by and/or are excluded from a prevailing historic bloc.

These people, things and processes are potentially counter-hegemonic. At the same time, however, historic blocs relentlessly set limits on thought, speech and action . As such, all that is potentially counter-hegemonic comes across as lacking credibility , and in most contexts is easily dismissed . The sustainable development historic bloc , especially, rests solidly on a technocratic view of the world , in which experts elected by

the historic bloc are presented as the holders of fundamental truths and wisdom . Views not sanctioned by this technocracy are dismissed as ill-founded . When a potentially viable critique of

the historic bloc emerges, the historic bloc is able to quickly and efficiently mobilize a seemingly endless array of experts to counter that critique . Finally, it is essential not to forget that critiques of a prevailing historic bloc run directly counter to the economic interests of extraordinarily large and diverse groups of people.2 Conflicts around issues of biodiversity in the context of the sustainable development historic bloc constitute what Gramsci (2000b) termed a war of position. In contrast to the types of direct frontal revolutions that occurred in Eastern Europe, Gramsci held that counter-hegemonic struggles in liberal capitalist societies would occur i n the context of civil society , the political terrain of public space and media in which the dominant classes organize their hegemony and in which opposition parties and movements organize, build coalitions, and generate counter - hegemonic forms of thought , speech and action . These types of struggles, he cautioned, require a thorough knowledge of the prevailing historic bloc, careful and meticulous strategizing, and

clever interventions [in] forums in which hegemonies are produced and reproduced . In the context of biodiversity conservation these forums include meetings, workshops, congresses, summits, and the media, especially the internet. Accordingly, these are important sites at which resistance to the sustainable development historic bloc are occurring. It is important to remember, however, that increasingly sophisticated forms of Spectacle have rendered these struggles more complex than they were in Gramsci's time.3 Spectacle continuously presents people with an aesthetic of a world that is already dead (Debord 1995 [1967]; see also Baudrillard 1993; Luke 1997).27 This aesthetic is filled with images of life and motion, but these images themselves are dead. They cannot be changed. To the extent that consumers interact with the Spectacle it is by choosing between a set of preprogrammed consumptive experiences. But they cannot change the Spectacle through these interactions. In the context of late consumer capitalism described above, they are offered a set of prepackaged choices. Although we cannot presume to know how consumers personally conceptualize and feel about these intended metaphors, we must recognize the structures and constraints within which consumer responses will operate. However sophisticated their understanding of these choices may be (cf Carrier 2003), there is little that they can do to change the ossified spectacles of reality with which they are presented. Happily, the democratization of media technology and the internet presents new opportunities for subverting and resisting Spectacle.We hope that this framework for understanding the sustainable development historic bloc will be useful in thinking about how future

investigations of conservation and capitalism should be designed and carried out. Moreover, as intellectuals and cultural critics , it is essential that we remain mindful of our own places and spaces on the political terrain of the sustainable development historic bloc, and the ways in which we might also contribute to

both its reproduction and its subversion . Hopefully, the framework we have presented in this essay will also prove useful in doing this as well.

Methodology---2ncMethodology---neoliberal perspectives have a narrow conception of what counts as social science that excludes anything against the neoliberal consensus---all their evidence is self-referential and not objectively true Joanne Swaffield 12, Professor of Economics at The University of York, 2012, “Can ‘climate champions’ save the planet? A critical reflection on neoliberal social change,” Environmental Politics, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 248-267

So far, our research with climate champions is consistent with the claim that a neolib eral understanding of human motivations and

the processes of social change appears to many people to be the ‘inevitable and natural state’ of the world (Heynen and Robbins 2005, p. 6). In this section, we will argue that when the climate champions talk about their own motives and values and their own reasons for involvement in the climate champion scheme, they provide evidence that the dominance of neoliberalism is incomplete. We argue that the disjuncture between how they conceive of their own values and motives and the values and motives of others suggests that they may be capable of more radical forms of environmental citizenship.The dominance of neoliberalism and the inevitability of resistanceElizabeth Shove has recently argued that a neolib eral understanding of social change dominates climate policymaking and has a significant influence on social science research on climate change. As Shove (2010, p. 1280) suggests:This interpretation both of the problem (one of consumer behaviour and choice) and of potential policy responses (influencing choice) structures the meaning and the method of useful social science.Neoliberalism understands people as ‘autonomous agents of choice and change’ (Shove 2010, p. 1279).

Therefore, the study of social change is the study of individual choice – and ‘methodological individualism’ is a prerequisite for ‘useful’ social science (Lukes 2006, p. 6) Moreover, the neolib eral conceptions of the autonomous agent (as an instrumentally rational utility-maximiser) and of ethics (as a matter of

subjective preference) further restrict s the sources of ‘useful’ social science – to particular branches of psychology and economics, which share these assumptions about the nature of the person .

Neoliberalism is not just ‘the only economics in town’ but also ‘the only social science in town’ (Slocum 2004, p. 416).9Shove (2010, p. 1283) claims that this narrow psychological or ‘behaviour change’ approach to tackling climate change has ‘significant political advantages’:[In] this context, to probe further, to ask how options are structured or to inquire into the ways in which governments maintain infrastructures and economic institutions, is perhaps too challenging to be useful.A neolib eral approach to social change protects the interests of those who benefit from the material-discursive practices of neoliberalism by ensuring that questions about the economic, political and social practices and structures of neolib eralism are silenced . However, the dominance of any discourse is never likely to be complete. As Downing (2008, p. ix) suggests, ‘the history of any cultural phenomenon always involves, alongside the commonsensical or authorized version of events, ulterior narratives, an unspoken set of truths’. As a result, discourses are ‘in a state of constant reconstitution and contestation’ (Carabine 2001, p. 279). We should always expect to find evidence of resistance to a dominant discourse if we look hard enough. We might anticipate that evidence of resistance is most likely in the ‘margins’ of societies – in grassroots movements and local initiatives. However, we want to suggest that even in our interviews with individuals, who were thoroughly embedded in neoliberal material-discursive practices, there was an important challenge to the dominance of neoliberalism.

Epistemology---things like the aff sell themselves by creating false narratives of policy success Jim Igoe et al 10, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, et al, June 2010, “A Spectacular Eco-Tour around the Historic Bloc: Theorising the Convergence of Biodiversity Conservation and Capitalist Expansion,” Antipode, Vol. 42, No. 3, p. 486-512

Finally, success itself is a n extremely valuable form of “symbolic capital ” (Bourdieu 1977) that circulates far

beyond the scope of specific interventions. The production of success stories is a n essential marketing strategy for conservation BINGOs, whereby each seeks to distinguish itself in a highly competitive funding environment

(Chapin 2004; MacDonald 2008; Sachedina this issue). We found Mosse's (2004, 2005) insights into the ways in which networks operate to make specific interventions appear coherent and successful most useful. The social reproduction of transnational, national and local institutions involved in governance, conservation and the promotion of economic growth , Mosse argues, depends heavily on the   appearance of

success according to prevailing policy paradigms . According to the hegemonic ideologies of the sustainable development historic bloc, environmental problems in late market capitalism are best repaired by capitalist solutions, and it is possible to manage our planet in ways that simultaneously maximize its economic and ecological function. The creation of protected areas is clearly a type of intervention that can deliver visible and tangible success according to the criteria of these ideologies. Indeed the establishment of protected areas by the hybrid networks of capitalist conservation has been recorded in diverse contexts (eg Bonner 1993; Dzingirai 2003; Garland 2008; Goldman 2005; McDermott-Hughes 2005; Sunseri 2005). In most recent years there has also been a proliferation of new decentralized forms of protected areas (Brockington, Duffy and Igoe 2008). Some are purchased outright, a practice established by the Nature Conservancy in the 1970s (Luke 1997). However many others are created by NGOs, private companies and states using land trusts, leases, community titles and easements. Even more so than large state-sponsored protected areas, these new forms are especially amenable to the convergence of practices by trans-institutional networks (Igoe and Croucher 2007; Diegues, pers. comm. 2008; Dowie 2009; Sachedina 2008).18 As such interventions are occuring simultaneously all over the world, their aggregate visibility would lend significant coherence of the sustainable development historic bloc.

Links

link---overview---2nc(1).The AFF is an expression of neoliberalism--- the problem begins before the plan---starting with the premise that the world operates based on the ‘rational’ decisions made by autonomous individuals makes the social construction of neoliberalism appear natural and inevitable.(2). Representing the Ocean—the ocean is an un-representable social space, the AFFs desire to engage with it will always fall short, since our desires can never be fulfilled, the ocean becomes representable to the alienated consumer by making parts of it into assets, this commodification of ocean space turns it into an object for human consumption—That’s Steinberg (3). Economic Rationality--They use the ocean as an economic asset—their exploration/development of it has the instrumental end of <insert advantages>. This creates a relationship to the ocean that conceives it as a resource and an object instead of an independent entity--That’s Steinberg The ocean’s value is intrinsic to its existence—the AFF negates this value by justifying the plan in terms of human benefits—this anthropocentric vision negates any environmental benefits of the plan Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

As impressive as this all sounds, there are many grounds for questioning the depth of this apparent environmentalist revolution within the Bush administration.

First, to the extent to which environmentalism is associated with ecocentrism - the idea that policies should be devoted toward maintaining the ecosphere as a whole rather than any singular organism or species

(e.g. humans) - one might criticize Bush's initiatives as not being environmentalist at all. In An Ocean Blueprint, marine stewardship is justified not because the ocean is a good in itself but because of the benefits that it provides to humanity . For instance, the first chapter of the report is devoted to recounting the ocean’s ‘assets’ and the c ontribution that it makes to the US econ omy (over USS117 billion annually and over two million jobs).2

Although non-quantifiablc assets are also noted (the executive summary states, ‘there are even more important attributes that cannot be

given a price tag. such as global climate control, life support, cultural heritage, and the aesthetic value of the ocean with its intrinsic power to relax, rejuvenate, and inspire’ (United States Commission on Ocean Policy 2004a, xxxiij), even here the ocean is valued for the benefits that it provides to society.3 Finally, notwithstanding the administration’s apparent commitment to establishing marine protected areas, it is questionable whether the White House has fully embraced the report and its recommendations. It may be indicative that, although the Commission included a number of prominent and well-connected business leaders, former elected officials, and retired military officers, the White House welcomed An Ocean Blueprint with just a terse, one-paragraph news release (Office of the Press Secretary 2004). Rather than endorsing (or even commenting on) the Commission’s recommendations, this news release simply reviewed the Bush administrations own record on ocean policies, including its implementation of ‘an improved, market-based system to help restore our fisheries and keep our commercial and recreational fishing industries strong.’ The news release ended with a statement noting that ‘[the] Administration looks forward to building on fits] initiatives assisted by the work of the Commission,’ a gentle but firm assertion that the White House did not see the Commission’s report as a signal that it should change direction and that the overall orientation of national ocean policy would continue to be determined by the White House.

(4).Maritime biopower—the AFF is the latest development of late modernity’s use of the ocean to achieve imperial ends—ocean management can never be neutral—they shape the ocean to enforce the boundaries created by the neoliberal elite Mirzoeff 9—Nicholas, visual culture theorist and professor in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, “The Sea and the Land: Biopower and Visuality from Slavery to Katrina,” Culture, Theory & Critique, 50(2-3), 289-305, http://www.nicholasmirzoeff.com/Images/Mirzoeff_SeaAndLand.pdf

For Foucault, the extension of power over biological life marked the emergence of modernity. Biopower thus 'brought life and its mechanisms into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life' (1978: 143). A new

biopolitics would create institutions , disciplines and regulatory controls to embody and enable the production and management of life itself. Foucault noted that 'outside the Western world', it had not yet been possible to cross this 'threshold of modernity'. Implied here is a requirement for a supercession of the 'natural', discussed in terms of famine and disease, in order to pass over into the realm of biopower. Developing Foucault's argument that death is the point where life escapes and exceeds biopower, forcing it paradoxically to produce death to safeguard life, I will argue that any deployment of 'life' also exists in a relation to the 'natural'. Contrary to Foucault's suggestion that biopower was a modern

innovation, I argue that the very need to produce and accumulate life was itself engendered in the Atlantic world by the assemblages of chattel slavery. Slavery's modernity formed a cosmography in which the space of the living was divided from that of the dead by the sea, a place of simultaneous life and birth. In the period of abolition and the Industrial Revolution, the sacred circulation of the cosmogram became the secular figuration of key aspects of modernism in a dialectic that interfaced with the understanding of life itself. Enabled and sustained by Atlantic world slavery, sovereign marine power turned the oceans into divisions known as territorial waters, the high seas, rights of passage and the right to trade that shaped imperial experience and cost many lives in the process. Beginning with the reckoning of longitude in 1759, newly accurate charts , maps , navigation tables and depth soundings of the seascape were the rendition of imperial boundaries , expansions and claims that , as Marx and Engels highlighted in The Communist Manifesto, engendered a global 'Free Trade' . Marine biopower emerged in the nineteenth century as a limit and resource for settler colonies and the circulation of industrial capital. It was the product of human interaction with the marine environment the attempts to govern and profit from that exchange , and the resulting subjectivities . As an instrument of global modernity , marine biopower at once sustains circulation in the networks of power and indicates its periodic episodes of crisis . The present crisis of neoliberal circulation has now become interactive with the climate crisis to produce dizzying exchanges between 'real' and 'metaphorical' floods and sea levels .

This regime has created and sustained its own order of 'seeing', which I will call 'immersion'. Immersed subjectivity has no 'outside' but is constituted by the cosmographic circulation between nature and culture, the West and its Empire, and the land and the sea. This secular cosmogram also contains maps the crisis of circulation 'below the line', or 'under water' (a phrase used today to refer to a property whose mortgage exceeds its market value). My concern here is to sketch (in necessarily preliminary and abbreviated terms) a genealogy of this marine biopower, using tools derived from W. J. T. Mitchell's understanding of the imperial landscape, empire and objecthood, and picture theory. I pay special attention to its immersive crises of circulation, first via the intersection of John Ruskin's criticism with Joseph Turner's marine painting; then at its present moment of intensification by means of Spike Lee's four-hour film-document of Katrina When the Levees Broke: A Requiem for New Orleans (2006).

One effect of this biopolitical production has been to render the sea invisibly 'natural'. As one recent Turner exhibition catalog has claimed: 'In contrast to landscape, which centuries of human activity changes irrevocably, the sea remains the same whatever may happen upon it' (Hamilton 2003: 2). So much, then, for land reclamation, sea walls, canals, piers, wrecks, fishing, dredging, pollution, carbon-dioxide generated acidification of the water, and the possible changes to thermohaline

circulation induced by climate change. Given the obviousness of such refutations, it becomes clear that there is a remarkable investment (in all senses, whether economic, psychoanalytic, or emotional) in the imagining of the marine as elemental, primordial and unchanging, a dialectical corollary to the biopolitical struggles over land.

link---development---2ncOcean development is caught in the middle of capitalisms ecological contradiction—the AFF needs the ocean to static, homogenous and external to be a romantic object of desire but simultaneously needs it to be a free flowing pathway for trade—this contradiction is the ideological basis for industrial intrusion Steinberg 99—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “The maritime mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment and Planning: Society and Space, volume 17: 403-42, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf

The image of the ocean as a resource-rich space to be rationally managed and sustainably developed is itself in contradiction with the previous two. If the ocean is a cornucopia of exploitable but fragile resources, then it could be neither a space amenable to annihilation nor even a space dominated by a nostalgic consumable imagery. This third representation of the ocean can also be traced to the present crisis of ocean governance resulting from the intensification of both capital fixity and mobility. Capitalism has a tendency to increasingly abstract space and time from nature (Lefebvrc, 1991) and, as Altvater notes, this abstraction forms the basis for capitalism's ecological contradiction: "The heterogeneity of physical transformation in real space and time—that is, the particularity of materials, place, and ecology -is at odds with the axiom of general comparability in the world marketplace imposed by capitalism .... The space and time of a society, and the physical time and space of nature, arc in no way identical - and this is especially true for capitalism . The logics of their respective functional spaces collides (sic). Ideological crisis can, in many regards, be understood in terms of this collision" (Altvater. 1994, pages 79- 80. 82).In other words, the ecological contradiction of capitalism is rooted in its tendency to disregard the specific material conditions of production and to abstract the temporal and spatial contexts that place limits on the potential for transforming nature. The turn to an environmentalist discourse can then be seen as a response to this contradiction.Altvaters thesis is particularly persuasive when applied to the world ocean, for the rise of the environmentalist image (the image of the ocean as a fragile resource space to be sustainably managed) can be linked directly to the failings inherent in the spatial and temporal abstractions of the two images considered previously. In the first case, marine space and time are wished away by denying any significant materiality to the ocean. In the second, nostalgia similarly reproduces these abstractions, but the abstraction is primarily temporal; the specificity of today’s maritime economy is lost on consumers gazing upon icons of the maritime past.The language of sustainable development suggests a belated recognition of this ecological contradiction, as attempts arc made to incorporate the material obstacles of space and time into the business cycle, with corporate leadership providing environmental stewardship (Bridge, 1998; O’Connor, 1994, pages 125- 151). This discourse of a resource-rich but fragile ocean in need of comprehensive management and planning is the result (Nichols, 1999). Thus, National Geographic asserts that individuals engaged in fishing must come to terms with “this world of inevitable limits” and give way to long-range planning and corporate management. This challenge has been taken up by the Marine Stewardship Council, a joint effort of the multinational food corporation Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund designed "to harness market forces and consumer power in favour of healthy, well-maintained fisheries for the future" (Marine Stewardship Council, 1997). Although National Geographic regrets the loss of the independent fishing boat owner plying the ocean’s wilds, the bureaucratization of ocean management and the privatization of rights to its resources is presented as the maturation of our attitudes toward nature. The stewardship of marine resources by agents of capital is naturalized through explicit parallels to the enclosure of ag ricultural land in the western U nited States: fisheries, like post-dust-bowl agriculture, must be allowed to evolve into "big industry: highly regulated, tidy,” where rational management is applied for long-term sustainability (Parfit, 1995). Likewise, The Economist declares:“In fact, ( the ocean) is a resource that must be preserved and harvested . To enhance its uses, the water must become ever more like the land , with owners, laws and limits. Fishermen must behave more like ranchers than hunters” (The Economist 1998, page 4).This managerial environmentalist perspective is supportive of general guidelines for governing the uses of the sea without actually mandating its governance as territory . Indeed, parallels can be made

with the mercantilist-era regime. Under both regimes, the ocean is recognized as a crucial space for essential social processes but care is taken to protect it from the ravages of competitive territorial states. The mercantilist designation of the sea as a special space of commerce (res extra commercium), immune to territorial appropriation but susceptible to exertions of social power, is being paralleled by a postindustrial designation of the sea as a special space of nature (res extra natura). In contrast to the intervening industrial era, when the sea was denigrated as a void between the terrestrial spaces of production and consumption, the ocean is now once again configured as a significant space wherein states and intergovernmental entities are permitted to exercise nonterritorial power so as to manage the ocean's resources in a rational, efficiency-maximizing manner. The regulatory policies consistent with this corporate environmentalism will likely prove inadequate to resolve the ongoing spatial crisis in the regulation of ocean space. Even if an ocean-management regime were to negotiat e successfully the ecological contradiction of capital, it still would need to negotiate capitalism’s spatial contradiction . The account of the regulatory crisis surrounding the proposed manganese nodule regime demonstrates that this spatial contradiction is increasingly intense in ocean space, and it is questionable whether any regulatory regime that preserves the sea’s nonterritorial character (whether the ‘common heritage* regime proposed at UNCLOS III or a regime whereby stewardship of the ocean’s resources is entrusted to a global ‘ecocracy’) would provide enough security for potential investors in extrastate production sites.

link---tragedy of the commons---2ncThe representation of the commons as an unstable tragedy and in a discrete location displaces non-capitalist livelihoods Martin 9—Kevin, Professor of Geography, Rutgers, “Toward a Cartography of the Commons: Constituting the Political and Economic Possibilities of Place,” http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Kevin-St-Martin/Cartography_of_Commons.pdf

Recently there has been considerable storytelling and analysis generated around the commons in both academic (e.g. Giordano 2003; McCarthy 2005) and more popular work (e.g. Bollier 2002). In these stories the commons acts as the material entity and/or location where difference from a global hegemonic order might be found. The commons, however, is most often referenced relative to neoliberal rather than commons becomings (cf. St. Martin 2005b). It is represented as threatened , disappearing, shrinking, or being abandoned due to the expansion and penetration of neoliberal logics of privatization and commodification. The commons , rather than a site of hope, is seen as a site of disappearances and thefts of public wealth , of environmental decline, and of capitalism’s relentless push into all possible locations. This positioning of the commons is made possible through the maintenance of at least three intertwined discursive barriers that make imagining (and mapping) the emergence of the commons within the domain of capitalism difficult. The first is the representation of space in binary terms relative to capitalism . Space, via mapping technologies as well as other forms of scientific representation , is constituted in ways that accommodate capitalism and erase and/or displace non-capitalist economies and commons livelihoods (St. Martin 2005a). The space of capitalism may be unevenly developed but it is consistently represented as homogenously capitalist. Stories of commons and community-based economies, while generative of place-based politics and alternative forms of production and distribution, are seen as outside of capitalist space and therefore limited in their ability to disrupt it. Second, the commons, pushed from the center, is represented as a discrete and localized entity rather than a trend, knowledge, or process present to varying degrees in any given location (e.g. McCay and Acheson 1987). Where, for example, neoliberalism is an idea or knowledge to be institutionalized in part or in full through a variety of local practices, the commons describes the community utilization and management of some extant common property or resource . Where neoliberalism can be detected in policy statements, World Bank directives, citizen’s attitudes, media representations, or economic data, the commons seldom acts as an idea or knowledge that penetrates and transforms societies, economies, or individual subjectivities . As a result the former is easily global in scope and strength while the latter is inherently local, fragile, and vestigial. This ontology of the commons stifles work that might similarly dissect policy statements, World Bank directives, citizen’s attitudes, media, or economic data for traces of the commons, its logic, its appeal, or its becoming. Instead, analysis of the commons most often involves empirically discerning the viability and purity of some existent and local community /commons regime in terms of its environmental sustainability , equity, or economic efficiency (e.g. Busarto 2005).

link---exploration---2nc The exploration narrative starts from the premise that the ocean is a fixed, knowable, asocial surface external to society—the fluid nature of the ocean makes gaps and fissures of our knowledge inevitable—the distinction between inside and outside need to be erased Steinberg 9—Philip, Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University “Sovereignty, Territory, and the Mapping of Mobility: A View from the Outside,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99(3) 2009, pp. 467–495, http://philsteinberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/annals-offprint2-5.pdf

Since the nineteenth century, few cartographers or policymakers have dissented from the dominant view of the ocean as an external space , beyond the world of state-societies . Although Mahan (1890) and Mackinder (1904) differed greatly in their opinions regarding the geopolitical significance of the ocean— Mahan saw it as the arena on which global dominance would continue to be fought, whereas Mackinder felt that its days as a crucial surface for asserting and project-ing force had passed—the perspectives of both geopolitical theorists rested on an idealization of the sea as an unmanaged and un-manageable surface... that resonates with the spatial assumptions that permeate realist theories of international politics. ... As unclaimed and unclaimable “ international” space, the world- ocean lends itself to being constructed as the space of anarchic competition par excellence, where ontologically pre-existent and essentially equivalent nation-states do battle in unbridled competition for global spoils . (Steinberg 2001, 17)In other words, both sides of this keystone geopolitical debate accepted the construction of the ocean as a fundamentally external space, a counterpoint to the bounded, terrestrial state within whose borders the anarchy of global competition was contained.Given the degree to which this extemalization of the ocean has been accepted, it is not surprising that one finds few world maps today that display the ocean features that were prevalent in the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries. By the twentieth century, cartographers had few qualms about making maps that implied that the ocean was fundamentally external to modem society and its foundational territorial units (Konvitz 1979). Indeed, it is noteworthy that few modem “political” world maps depict the political divisions of the ocean—territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, high seas, and so on—instead portraying an undifferentiated, featureless space. This is yet another indication of how, by the twentieth century-, there was an accepted distinction between land as the space of sedentarism, civilization, and politics and the ocean as an external, asocial space across which one simply moved.By the turn of the twenty-first century, the idea of land-space as the domain of bounded, developable insides and the ocean as an external surface for movement had become so entrenched that contemporary' cartographers were faced with a representational dilemma similar to the one that had been posed by the Grand Banks: How does one depict Antarctica? Like the Grand Banks, Antarctica has the physical properties of one element (it is solid, like land) but the social properties of the other element (it resists division into sovereign, territorial space, albeit with some dissent). Thus, on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (2000) political world map, land is beige (and divided by state boundaries), the ocean is blue (and undivided), and Antarctica, as an outlier space that is not quite land or territory but not quite sea or nonterritory, is designated with a unique, third color: white (Figure 10).Despite the prevalence of the ocean as external to society in today’s cartographic representations, the history narrated in this article reveals that the depiction of the ocean as a space beyond territorialization, and the parallel depiction of land as a series of discrete, bounded territories, was a long time in the making. Indeed, the idea of depicting the ocean as a materially empty wilderness likely was counterintuitive to the mercantilist-era cartographer, both because one would expect a significant space to have a tangible materiality and because cartographers likely were aware that the ocean was not truly an undifferentiated mass devoid of nature. Thus, this history of ocean mapping reveals how, although maps achieve their power by attributing fixed properties to bounded and apparently natural spaces, the act of attempting to fix properties to space (by both the map’s producer and its consumer) “offers productive possibilities, particularly through the emergence of constitutive spaces at/in the ‘gaps and fissures’ of the mapping processes” (Del Casino and Hanna 2006, 41). These “gaps and fissures” can occur at specific spaces that defy emergent categorizations (as, for instance, can be seen in the decision to depict spaces like the Grand Banks and Antarctica with intermediate representations that both reproduce and challenge the binary-division of the world into social and extrasocial spaces) or they can be more conceptual (as, for instance, in attempts by mercantilist era cartographers to develop an ideological framework wherein spaces of mobility were perceived as both socially significant and materially empty).A history of how producers and users of maps attempt to fill these “gaps and fissures” so that they can be placed within a priori categories of inside and out' side , fixity and mobility, and social and extrasocial,

and how these “gaps and fissures” nonetheless reappear , suggests that the study and practice (or perfor-mance) of cartography can play an important role in generating new perspectives on the categories and institutions that define modem society . As Kwan (2007) notes, a range of alternative visualization practitioners, from advocates of consciousness' raising participatory geographic information systems to situationist members of the art-and' Cartography movement, have made this assertion. Perhaps it is not surprising that so many of these individuals’ experiments with alternative modes of visualization focus on mobility. As the examples discussed here have shown, it is difficult to represent spaces of

mobility in a manner that simultaneously portrays the experience of movement , the metric space through which one is moving, the idealized immateriality of that space , the actual materiality of that space, and the space’s significance in the reproduction of social institutions that go beyond the practices or designated spaces of mobility. Thus, the depiction of mobility has emerged as an arena not just for gaining new in' sights on the world, but also for advancing cartographic practice.Kwan’s (2008) work is representative of these experiments in cartographic representation, as she combines the representational practices of time-geography with an attempt to depict the subjective perceptions and emotions of individuals moving through an urban environment (in this case, Muslim women in Columbus, Ohio). This work is exemplary not just because Kwan attempts to portray the experiences of individuals. It is also significant because, in representing these experiences, Kwan reconstitutes the city not as a series of points with ontologically prior characteristics but as a series of affect-laden surfaces with meanings that are realized by the individual as he or she moves across them (or, in instances when the space is perceived as too dangerous, as he or she contemplates moving across them).In bringing mobility to the center of her mapping of both personal and urban spaces, Kwan aligns herself with a growing number of scholars who stress that mobility is a constitutive social practice (Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006). As this article has suggested, this new focus on mobility has far-reaching ramifications: Recentering movement (and the subjective experiences that emerge as one moves) involves rethinking a series of cartographic as well as political norms that have developed over hundreds of years and that underlie the very foundation of modem society. Thus, this article suggests two related agendas for further research. In one sense, this article has called for inverting foreground and background on our maps. Instead of focusing attention on the bounded land territories that we take for granted as the spaces of society, what would happen if we foregrounded the spaces across which people (and commodities, information, and capital) move, so that they become conceived of as something other than the residual spaces that are left “outside” society? As this study has shown, the designation of some spaces as external spaces of mobility has played a key role in the ways in which we order our world, including the ways in which we bound and order the “inside” spaces in which mobility is purported to play only a secondary role. Although cultural studies and critical development theorists have for some time focused on the processes by which cultures are designated as “others” that are in need of development (e.g., Said 1978), much less attention has been devoted to the processes by which some of the world’s spaces have been designated as being so “outside” that they lack even the potential for development. Historically, the construction of the modem system of territorial states has also involved the designation of outsides as being beyond territorial control, and as one studies the processes of drawing (and ascribing meaning to) boundary lines, one must focus on the construction of outsides as well as insides. Furthermore, this process has not ended with the formation of the juridical ideal of the modem, sovereign, territorial nation-state. There are numerous configurations by which spaces and peoples can be constructed as inside or outside the protection of the state, and this is as much a process of constructing outsides as it is one of constructing insides.13This agenda, however, also suggests a second, more radical agenda where, instead of tracing the historic ex-ternalization of a specific space (like the ocean ) or social function (like mobility), we revision a world without distinct insides and outsides . Under this agenda, one would go beyond bringing externalized spaces of mobility to the foreground. Instead, one would consider that, in fact, all spaces are spaces of both mobility and fixity and all social processes are driven by ideologies of both internalization and extemalization. This is an ambitious agenda. Analytical thought, after all, involves differentiating, comparing, and drawing “lines” of contrast. A first step, however, might well involve erasing the boundaries on our maps that divide inside from outside. Perhaps then we can begin working from behind the lines.

Even if exploration seems benign, the knowledge produced in the process only fuels capitalist cartographies—the scientific revealing of new spaces opens the oceans doors to new modes of neoliberal exploration Martin 9—Kevin, Professor of Geography, Rutgers, “Toward a Cartography of the Commons: Constituting the Political and Economic Possibilities of Place,” http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/Kevin-St-Martin/Cartography_of_Commons.pdf

Brian Harley and others (e.g. Boelhower 1988; Harley 1988; Pickles 2004) have pointed convincingly to the ways that

cartography has been instrumental in the development of capitalism. For example, enclosure mapping, the inventory and inscription of once common resources into private holdings (e.g. Harley 1992; Mingay

1999), makes clear that the origins of capitalism are found not just in the proletarianization of the poor but in new forms of knowledge and representations of the land and its resources. Enclosure mapping and accompanying enumerations of resources worked to produce and enlarge the terrain of capitalism by recasting occupied and inhabited landscapes as storehouses of resources open to appropriation, commodification, and exploitation; simultaneously new subjects of the emerging economy

were produced, in particular, individuated workers severed from community and commons and individual landowners exercising new individual rights over land and resources. This process is evident not only in early estate mapping and enclosure mapping but is inseparable from the experience of a European expansion globally, an expansion that reified a particular cartographic and geographic imaginary of economy across space (e.g. Blunt and Rose 1994; Driver 2001; Godlewska and Smith 1994; Said 1979). For

example, the Jeffersonian project of gridding and enumerating the resources of the Great Plains not only opened the frontier to settlement and capitalist expansion, it simultaneously erased, via a cartographic silencing (Harley 1988), the community inhabitation and commons economies of Native Americans (e.g. Michie and Thomas 2003). The advance of capitalism is a cartographic advance both in terms of the institutionalization of survey and

control by and within nation states and an imaginary of a spreading and all-encompassing economy. Capitalism spreads out from its origin, engulfing or displacing that which came before, and transforming societies and spaces to meet its needs.

The cartography of capitalism is, however, not just historic, it continues to map a capitalist becoming and a community/commons demise. This is clear in the case of contemporary fisheries where modern geo-technologies are today making marine

resources, traditionally difficult to count and make visible, more amenable to quantification and visualization. Along with more accurate and spatially encoded counts of resources, schemes to privatize and commodify access to fisheries as well

as a new breed of “fisherman,” more in tune with accumulation strategies rather than livelihood maintenance, are emerging (Davis 1991; Mansfield 2004a, 2004b; St. Martin 2001, 2007). In both cases, scientific forms of resource mapping constitute spaces as open to capitalism and absent of any commons logic, process, or livelihood strategy.

Capitalism’s production, like that of other sites of social relations and power, is ongoing; the stability and longevity of capitalism is, therefore, an outcome of a variety of ongoing processes, not the least of which are cartographic representations of space and nature that align with capitalism. In this sense,

capitalism’s ubiquitous presence is, at least in part, produced by those who define, assess, and represent the environment as a capitalist asset, a container of capitalist resources, and the stage where the expected behavior of capitalist subjects is performed.

link---privatization---2nc Privatization starts from the assumption that government regulations fail, the commons is an inherent problem, and the structural violence created by market competition is inevitable—this naturalizes economic rationality and neoliberal governance Mansfield 4—Becky, Professor, Department of Geography, Ohio State University, “Neoliberalism in the oceans: ‘‘rationalization,’’ property rights, and the commons question,” Geoforum 35: 313-326, ScienceDirect

These examples of the property revolution in one regional fishery in the United States show that property rights can take many forms, but that all of them revolve around this concern with economic rationality and enclosing the commons. These examples also show that enclosures of the commons can take the form of either individual or collective privatization. Di ff erent forms of privatization have di ff erent rules associated with them , and have somewhat di ff erent implications for both e ffi ciency and equity. Yet all of the forms entail reducing the options of those who once relied on public fisheries , while giving to those who qualify a form of wealth that can then be used for further gain . That neolib eralism can encompass varieties of privatization , including property rights assigned either individually or collectively, is also made clear by academic proponents of these plans, who do not make distinctions on individual/collective lines . First, proponents of the benefits of the commons have recently argued for these privatization plans for the North Pacific, as long as they include some kind of collective decision making—even if that collective is a group of firms. For example, Bonnie McCay. one of the early scholars of the benefits of the commons, has argued that the cooperative system currently in operation in the pollock fishery-land recommended for the crab and groundfish fisheries) is not only a property right that solves the economic problems of open-access, but is also a form of community management, because the individual factory trawler firms can collectively make decisions about how and when to catch fish (McCay. 2001. pp. 181-182: see also Hanna. 1995: Holland and Ginter. 2001). In this view, using privatization to create market incentives can be consistent with community management, as long as groups, rather than just individuals, are assigned rights.Second, although not writing specifically about the North Pacific, several economists also suggest that it is unimportant whether property rights arc collective or individual; rather, what is important is that privatization continue. Thus, Francis Christy, who has long argued for privatization in fisheries, makes a ease not for ITQs but for “territorial” or "stock" use rights in fisheries, in which a single entity has ownership of the resource. The holders of these fully privatized rights "could be individuals. communities, cooperatives, or corporations. They would have the incentives to take over most of the four basic functions of management from governments." including determining goals, collecting information. allocating capital and labor, and designing and enforcing regulations (Christy. 1996. p. 295). Another analyst has argued that if groups of individuals with fishing quota "cooperate they can collectively act like a sole owner." such that collective and private property-are much the same, and the debate between private vs. common property rights advocates is misplaced (Pcarsc. 1994. p. 87: see also Pcarsc. 1992). From all these perspectives, individuals acting collectively are much like any other single collective entity ( e.g. a firm), and the use of property rights to enclose the oceans can proceed .As these arguments show, orthodox fisheries economists do seem to be absorbing the lessons from common property research that individuals are not the only-decision making unit and that groups of people can decide on rules by which they can collectively manage a resource. But economists have been able to absorb this lesson without substantially altering their underlying argument about the relationship between property and economic rationality, the problems with state-led regulation. or the importance of markets for environmental governance. Common property theorists have also been able to influence debates in fisheries by shifting the focus from the commons to problems more specifically with open access, and many economists and managers seem to accept that idea that some forms of common property management may be workable. Yet. to the extent that common property theorists focus on open access as inherently a problem,

they are also aligning themselves with orthodox economists' arguments about property, economic rationality, and state vs. market governance . As long as these theorists treat open access as a realm in which economic rationality prevails , rather than itself as a social relation in which different sorts of institutions and power relations are at work, they are limiting their critique of orthodox economic approaches ; they more carefully specify existing models of social behavior and resource management, but do not offer completely different models that do not rely on the assumption of

economic rationality and market behavior. The result is that even though these different groups of scholars seem to have quite different perspectives, they can all agree on plans for neoliberal privatization of fisheries to solve the economic and environmental problems that are assumed to result from open access.It is in this sense that putting property at the center of fisheries problems is a neoliberal, market-based approach to ocean governance. All the approaches discussed in this paper—whether private-, state-, or group-oriented—start from a particular economic logic that takes economic rationality (meaning

individual profit maximization) as a given . From this starting point, the problems in fisheries stem from the ways that open access regimes inherently create irrational incentives; incentives to overuse , to use inefficiently, to race for the resource, and so on. In this view, open access represents a market distortion: what should be rational economic behavior becomes distorted under open access so that outcomes arc inefficient and environmentally destructive. The solution, then, must eliminate the market distortion. Government regulation, these theorists argue, cannot in itself do this; instead governments can assign property rights that allow the market itself to be the solution. From this neoliberal perspective, market incentives decrease capacity and increase efficiency as individuals or groups lease and sell privatized rights to fish: market incentives encourage conservation because each individual or group knows they can profit from the fish as much tomorrow as today, and thus they will fish more slowly and more carefully. Market incentives may also lead to overfishing when "mining” fish stocks makes economic sense , and they will also cause "a high degree of real pain" among those who are not the beneficiaries of privatization , but this, proponents argue, is inevitable and inexorable, and all in the name of the greater good (Christy. 1996. pp. 288. 297: see also Hanna. 1999). Property rights are at the center of a massive change in the political economy of the oceans around neoliberal , market-based socio-environmental polici es that enclose for a few what was once the property of all. Neoliberalism in the oceans takes a particular form and has its own history and timeline based on the ways that, for the last 50 years, fisheries analysts have structured regulation debates around the question of the commons and rationalization of the oceans.

Impact

impact calculus---impact---2ncNeoliberalism guarantees environmental and societal collapse—productivist economics will inevitably run up against a wall of finite resources—current consumption patterns outstrip replenishment which takes out any biodiversity defense—that’s Clark and Clausen Turns the case---neoliberal scholarship displaces blame from structure to proximate causes---as long as market competition dictates ocean management all policy changes will be failed from the get go---that’s Steinberg Its try or die neg—neoliberalism’s narcissistic drive makes democratization of the market impossible—humanity is at a crossroads—the timeframe is now Richard A. Smith 7, Research Associate at the Institute for Policy Research & Development, UK; PhD in History from UCLA, June 2007, “The Eco-suicidal Economics of Adam Smith,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 18, No. 2, p. 22-43

So there you have it: insatiable growth and consumption is destroying the planet and dooming humanity -but without ceaselessly growing production and insatiably rising consumption, we would be even worse off . Such is the

lunatic suicidal logic of capitalist economics. Adam Smith's fatal error was his assumption that the "most effectual" means of promoting the public interest of society is to just ignore it and concentrate instead on the pursuit of economic self-interest. In the 18th century, this narcissistic economic philosophy had little impact on the natural world. Today it has a huge impact and is, moreover, totally at odds with the world's scientific bodies who are crying out for a PLAN to stop global warming and save nature. Capitalist Limits to Corporate Environmentalist!! Corporations aren't necessarily evil, but corporate managers are legally responsible to their owners, the shareholders, and not to society. This means that the critical decisions about production and resource consumption -decisions that affect our health and survival - are mainly the private prerogative of large corporations and are often only marginally under the control of governments. The blunt reality of this situation was well summed up by Joel Bakan in his recent book (and film), The Corporation: Corporations are created by law and imbued with purpose by law. Law dictates what their directors and managers can do, what they cannot do, and what they must do. And, at least in the United States and other industrialized countries, the corporation, as created by law, most closely resembles Milton Friedman's ideal model of the institution: it compels executives to prioritize the interests of their companies and shareholders above all others and forbids them from being socially responsible - at least genuinely so.38So when corporate and societal interests conflict , even the "greenest " of corporate CEO s often have no choice but to make decisions contrary to the interests of society . British Petroleum's CEO, Lord John Browne, is good example. In the late 1990s, Browne had an environmental epiphany, broke ranks with oil industry denial, and became the first oil company executive to warn that fossil fuels are accelerating global warming. BP adopted the motto "Beyond Petroleum" in its advertisements, painted its service stations green and yellow, and bought a boutique solar power outfit. But under Browne, BP has spent far more on advertising its green credentials than it invests in actual green power production. Fully 99 percent of its investments still go into fossil fuel exploration and development, while solar power is less than 1 percent and seems to be declining. 9 In 1999, BP spent $45 million to buy the solar power outfit Solarex. By comparison, BP paid $26.8 billion to buy Amoco in order to enlarge its oil portfolio. BP's 2004 revenues topped $285 billion, while its solar power sales were just over $400 million. In February 2006, Browne told his board that the company had more than replenished its marketed output in 2005 with new proven reserves of oil and gas, and that "with more than 20 new projects due on stream in the next three years, and assuming the same level of oil price, the annual rate of increase should continue at some 4 percent through 2010."40 So, far from shifting to renewable sources of energy, BP is not only expanding its output of fossil fuels but increasing its overall reliance on fossil fuel sources of profit. BP now possesses proven reserves of 19 billion barrels produced in 23 countries, and the company currently explores for oil in 26 countries. Given the proven and stupendous profits of oil production versus the unproven profitability of alternative energy, how can Brown go "green" in any serious way and remain responsible to his owner-investors?41 Were he to do so, he would soon be out of a job.42Ecosocialism or CollapseIf we're going to stop the capitalist economic locomotive from driving us off the cliff, we are going to have to fundamentally rethink our entire economic life, reassert the visible hand of conscious scientific, rational economic planning, and implement democratic control over our economies and resources. We're going to have to construct a n entirely different kind of economy , one that can live within its ecological means. Such an economy would have to be based around at least the following principles: An Ecosocialist Economy of StasisFirst, in a world of fast-diminishing resources, a sustainable global economy can only be based on near-zero economic growth on average. That means that to survive, humanity will have to impose drastic fixed limits on development , resource consumption, the freedom to consume, and the freedom to pollute. Given existing global inequities and the fact that the crisis we face is overwhelmingly caused by overconsumption in the industrialized North, equity can only be achieved by imposing

massive cutbacks in the advanced countries combined with a program of rational planned growth to develop the Third World, with the aim of stabilizing at zero growth on average. This will require drastically cutting back many lines of production, closing down others entirely, and creating socially and environmentally useful jobs for workers made redundant by this transition. This will also require physical rationing of many critical resources on a per capita basis for every person on the planet. Human survival will thus require a profound rethinking of our most fundamental ideas -bourgeois ideas-of economic freedom. For too long, many Americans, in particular, have come to identify their notion of "freedom," if not their very being and essence, with insatiable consumption-unlimited freedom of "choice" in what to buy. But 50 styles of blue jeans, 16 models of SUVs and endless choices in "consumer electronics" will all have dramatically less value when Bloomingdales is under water, Florida disappears beneath the waves, malarial mosquitos blanket Long Island beaches, and the U.S. is overrun with desperate environmental refugees from the South. Once we as a society finally admit the "inconvenient truth" that we have no choice but to drastically cut production and severely reduce consumer choice, it will also become apparent that we have to put in place a planned economy that will meet our needs and those of future generations as well as the other species with whom we share the planet. A Restructured Economy of Production for Social Need and for UseSecond, we need to massively restructure the global economy. Enormous sectors in the global capitalist economy-plastics, packaging, much of the manufactured consumer electronics, petrochemical-based and other synthetic products, many pharmaceuticals, all genetically modified foods, and the vast and ever-growing production of arms-are either completely unnecessary or waste increasingly scarce resources and produce needless pollution.44 Our parents did without nearly all of this before WWII, and they were not living in caves. Many lines of production and most retail industries are built around unnecessary replacement and designed-in obsolescence. How much of the American economy from cars and appliances to clothes is purposefully designed to be "consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever-increasing rate"46 so the cycle of waste production can begin all over again? How much of the planet's natural resources are consumed every year in completely unnecessary annual model changes, fashion updates, and "new and improved" products whose only purpose is simply to sell and sell again? If a global population of 6 to 9 billion people is going to survive this century, what choice do we have but to reorganize the global economy to conserve what shrinking natural resources we have left, reorient production for need rather than profit, design products to last as long as possible, enforce as close to total recycling as possible, and aim for as close to zero pollution as is possible? A Socialist Economic DemocracyThird: an ecosocialist democracy. Endless growth or stasis? Resource exhaustion or conservation? Automobilization of the planet or enhanced public transport? Deforestation or protection of the wild forests? Agro poisons or organic farming? Hunt the fish to extinction or protect the fisheries? Raze the Amazon forest to grow MacBurgers or promote a more vegetarian diet? Manufacture products designed to be "used up, burned up, consumed as rapidly as possible" or design them to last, be repaired, recycled and also shared? Enforce private interests at the expense of the commons or subordinate private greed to the common good? In today's globalized world, decisions about such questions will determine the fate of humanity. Who can make these critical economic and moral decisions in society's interest and in the interest of preserving a habitable planet? In Adam Smith's view, which is still the operable maxim of modern capitalists and neoliberal economists , we should all just "Look out for Number 1 ," and the common good will take care of

itself. If Smith were right, the common good would have taken care of itself long ago, and we wouldn't be facing catastrophe . After centuries of Smithian economics, the common good needs our immediate and concentrated attention.

Corporations can't make such decisions in the best interests of society or the future , because their legal responsibility is to their private owners. The only way such decisions can be scientifically rational and socially responsible is when everyone who is affected participates in decision-making . And time is running out. We don't have 20 or 30 years to wait for Ford and GM to figure out how they can make a buck on electric cars. We don't have 60 or 70 years to wait while investors in coal-powered power plants milk the last profits out of those sunk investments before they consider an alternative. Humanity is at a crossroads . Either we find a way to move toward a global economic democracy in which decisions about production and consumption are directly and democratically decided by all those

affected, or the alternative will be the continuing descent into a capitalist war of all-against-all over ever-diminishing resources that can only end in the collapse of what's left of civilization and the global ecology . To be sure, in an economic democracy, society would sometimes make mistakes in planning. We can't have perfect foresight,

and democracies make mistakes. But at least these would be honest mistakes. The conclusion seems inescapable: Either we democratize the economy, construct the institutions of a practical working socialist democracy, or we face ecological and social collapse .

The case does not outweigh---we are not denying that the ocean is in crisis---nor are we saying the affirmatives proposal is normatively incorrect---it’s a question of how we view the ocean and how that shapes social relations—that’s Steinberg Don’t buy the AFFs risk calculus---neoliberalism sustains itself through instrumental use of uncertainty Luigi Pellizzoni 11, Associate Professor of Environmental Sociology at the University of Trieste, Italy, April 2011, “Governing through disorder: Neoliberal environmental governance and social theory,” Global Environmental Change, Vol. 21, p. 795-803

This article started out with two aims: first, to identify at the deepest, ontological, level the underpinnings of widespread environmental policy approaches often associated with neoliberalism. Second, to show that different socio-environmental theoretical perspectives have had difficulty confronting these underpinnings, which affects their capacity to interpret the latter’s implications for the governance of the biophysical world.Neoliberalism draws on established traditions in political liberalism and market capitalism, yet is characterized by a novel understanding of the ontological quality of nature . ‘ Nature’ is no longer conceived as an objectively given, though cognitively mediated, reality, but as a constitutively fluid entity , a

contingency purposefully produced and controlled for instrumental ends . Governance through uncertainty, instability or ‘disorder’ thus seems to be the distinguishing feature of the ‘neoliberalisation of nature’ . This ideational core may be considered the first reason for the sense of unity often felt when contemplating the array of sectors, approaches and cases characterizing current market-oriented environmental governance, and at the same time for the sense of uneasiness towards neoliberalism that environmental social theory conveys.Whatever the judgment, it is important to grasp what is at stake with neoliberal governance of nature. Browsing social science books and journals, one realizes that much critical energy has been focused on questioning the objectivist account of nature that allegedly dominates current policy narratives and practices. Only a discerning scholarship has begun to realize that objectivism and antiobjectivism are losing relevance as categories capable of distinguishing intellectual and stakeholder positions, and that they increasingly become claims usable in power games over the biophysical world. Attention, for example, has been recently paid to the instrumental use of uncertainty (Freudenburg et al., 2008; Jacques et al., 2008), which,

depending on the circumstances, is used either to ask for policy-making (as with GMOs) or to call for policy-avoiding (as with ‘unwarranted’ restrictive measures related to climate change). The very possibility of appealing to ‘sound science’ either for evidence of no problems, or no evidence of problems indicates the fundamentally anti-objectivist attitude that characterizes present political and cultural frameworks. Policy promoters share this attitude with their opponents. Those who ask for ‘precaution’ use the same arguments in reverse, requiring action when and where there is no evidence of no problems. 11 This

commonality entails that appeals to uncertainty are devoid of any strategic relevance in current controversies; rather, they play a tactical role . This is likely to represent a problem above all for counter-forces to neoliberalism, to the extent that in a tactical struggle the most advantaged are those provided with greater organizational, economic, cognitive and legal resources (to say nothing of military ones).In short, we are today in front of a refashioning of the symbolic order of society vis-a` -vis its biophysical underpinnings. In this change, neoliberal discourses, policies and practices are at the same time a powerful driver and a result. Disorder becomes order to the extent that uncertainty , contingency and instability are regarded not as disabling by-products of governance but as enabling ways of governing . In the public realm, this ends up constituting a sort of shared horizon of meaning : not only is no new ‘order’ (in the traditional sense) in sight, but anti-essentialism overflows from intellectual avant-gardes to become a widespread, albeit often implicit or negotiable, worldview.

sustainability---impact---2nc Neoliberalism in the ocean context is completely unsustainableFirst—the spatiality paradox—the ocean suffers from a contradiction of interests— there is a desire both to internalize the external space as a space of society and to preserve its status as a special space beyond the ravages of society It is rare and different, making it a valuable asset, but this process itself destroys the sanctity of the ocean, rendering any commodity worthless. --that’s SteinbergSecond—Resource Scarcity—capitalism is turning the ocean into a graveyard, high yield ag is causing dead zones, climate change is acidifying it, and fisheries are depleting it of life—mass extinctions are guaranteed by 2050

--that’s Clark and Clausen 8Neoliberalism is at a crossroads---it needs the aff, but that locks in irresolvable environmental contradictions that accelerate ecological collapse---this debate is a question of social relations---an aff ballot organizes social relations around a market model that’s driving the planet toward irreversible collapse Massimo De Angelis 12, Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of East London, 2012, “Crises, Movements and Commons,” Borderlands E-Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol11no2_2012/deangelis_crises.pdf

The world is today traversed by several crises , which raises the pressing question of their solutions. The recurrent and intensified crises of precarity and livelihoods, of environmental degradation, climate change and of social justice , all point to a global context that would require a radical reconfiguration of social relations , a new

world, new social systems articulating our production in common .But how and whether these crises will be an opportunity to embark on this journey of transformation of social reproduction is not clear nor is it given . While social contestations are gaining momentum in a variety

of theatres and contexts, it is clear that neoliberal capital seems adamant that it can push through a new phase of global governance without questioning the basic structures and policies that have precipitated the financial crisis in 2008 with the consequent intensification of all other crises. Indeed, not only the remaining bundle of social entitlements and rights are under threat under intensifying austerity policies around the world. There are also clear signs that the multimillion dollar operation that rescued banks in 2008 is now being institutionalised into the DNA of modern neoliberal capital governance. In Europe, for example, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is being set up as a permanent rescue-funding programme to succeed the temporary ad hoc mechanisms set up in the rescue operation of the financial system. Not only ‘the granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality’ (European Council 2012). Also, upon joining the mechanism, the countries involved will be obliged to contribute funding to the rescue package. Neoliberalism has never been about the withdrawal of the state from welfare, but the shift in the modality of welfare from the poor to the rich. In the first part of the neoliberal period, from the late 1970s, this amounted to slash in social services, privatisation, cut in higher tax rates and subsidies to exporters and incentives to foreign investors. In the middle part from the mid 1990s it was all about finding ways to govern the wasteland created and the conflict generated therein. After the attempt to incite the masses to work for the country in the war on terror period (from 2001), in this last fourth phase after the crisis of 2008, capital demands that public money is functionally funneled into the rescue of banks and the maintenance of the disciplinary function of finance without which modern capitalism could not operate. In the early 1980s we were told to look up at the world of finance for inspiration on how ‘betterment’ for all could be achieved with rigor and entrepreneurial risk taking. In the early 2010s we are told to pay with rigor t he austerity necessary to compensate the failed risk taking of the 1%, otherwise the entire paper castle would fall , with us inside. And we are told to accept this is the de-facto norm of our systemic interaction with one another . Yet, in spite of waiving the safety net for the financial system, capital seems to be at an impossible crossroad . On one

hand, it needs nonfinancial growth to buffer, accommodate and decompose struggles, and, at the same time, to fulfill its drive for accumulation and allow some debt to be repaid. On the other hand, however, today more

than ever, growth can only exacerbate the contradictions at the basis of these struggles, if only because

there cannot be any overall growth with simultaneous reduction in greenhouse emissions , nor without an intensification of existing inequalities also caused by the operations of current financial systems that governments are so eager to rescue.This crossroad is not avoided if instead of a future scenario of growth we postulate one of stagnation or de-growth. If on one hand this scenario would somehow mitigate the pressures on climate change, in so far as capitalist relations remain dominant in a rticulating and valuing social co-operation, it would do so with heavy social costs and at a likely intensifi cation of precarity, social injustice and social conflic t against these. In both scenarios, and given the historical experiences in other crises and looking at current dynamics, we can postulate the development of four phenomena. First, the growth of struggles of different sectors within the global society throwing a spanner in the wheel and resisting the reduction in rights and entitlements necessary for further neoliberal governance of the crisis, against debt and demanding some form of re-distributive justice to the state. This is what we will refer to as social movements. Second, the growth of collective self-help solutions to the problems of social reproduction faced by communities. This corresponds to what we call the development of the commons. Third, the development and refinement of capital’s commons cooptation strategies, or what I have elsewhere (De Angelis 2012) called commons fix. Fourth, the development and refinement of strategies of repression of struggles and enclosures of commons. In this paper I will not discuss in detail these four postulated developments, but problematise the interrelation among the first three for the purpose of contributing to the debate over the establishment of alternatives to capitalism. Indeed, what underpins this analysis is an attempt to answer, or at least develop a framework with which to start to answer an important naïve question. The role of naïve questions, Socrates taught us, is to problematise the systems of knowledge at the basis of our certainties , of our mental schemes through which we give meaning to the world around us and thus intervene in it . In this paper I want to address very big and naïve questions, in fact, meta-questions at the basis of what we may call a critical theory of the commons. How can social movements and struggles change the world ? And how can they do it in the direction of a far better place for all (or at least the ‘99%’), more convivial and cohesive, socially economically and environmentally just, where dignity, peace, freedom, autonomy, solidarity, conviviality, equality are not so much articles of faith, but guiding values of an orienting compass of ongoing social transformation? I do not intend nor aspire to provide a firm answer, as this can really be generated through praxis. Here I only want to discuss few points that I believe must be considered as part of the answer.

epistemology---impact---2nc Understanding the ocean as a context for human activity instead of a space of nonhuman enterprise makes all knowledge produced by the AFF fractured and incomplete---turns the case Steinberg 13—Phillip, associate professor of geography, Florida State University, “Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions,” Atlantic Studies, 10(2): 156-169, https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/downloads/r494vk39j

The problem, then, is not that studies that reference an oceanic center lack empirical depth. Rather, the problem is that the experiences referenced through these studies typically are partial, mediated, and distinct from the various non-human elements that combine in maritime space to make the ocean what it is. This then leads us back to Blum's call for a turn to actual experiences of the sea, as have been chronicled by anthropologists, labor historians, and historical geographers, as well as in maritime or coastal-based fiction. Unfortunately, a scholar of (Western) literature or history who pursues this agenda soon runs into methodological limits. As John Mack notes. Western accounts of “life at sea,” whether fictional or historical, are typically about “life on ship,”' as they fail to attend to the surface on which the ship floats, let alone what transpires beneath that surface.17 And yet, contrary to Dirlik's dismissal, the physical geography of the ocean does matter. How we interact with, utilize the resources of, and regulate the oceans that bind our ocean regions is intimately connected with how we understand those oceans as physical entities: as wet, mobile, dynamic, deep, dark spaces that arc characterized by complex movements and interdependencies of water molecules^ minerals, and non-human biota as well as humans and their ships. The oceans that unify our ocean regions are much more than surfaces for the movement of ships (or for the movement of ideas, commodities, money, or people) and they are much more than spaces in which we hunt for resources. Although these are the perspectives typically deployed in human-centered sea stories (i.c. the ones advocated by Blum), such perspectives only begin to address the reality of the sea that makes these encounters possible. Rather, the oceans that anchor ocean regions need to be understood as “more-than- human" assemblages .18 reproduced by scientists,19 sailors,20 fishers,21 surfers,22 divers,23

passengers,24 and even pirate broadcasters25 as they interact with and arc co-constituted by the universe of mobile non-human elements that also inhabit its depths, including ships, fish, and wratcr molecules.26 Although the

actions and interests of humans around the oceans edges and on its surface certainly matter, a story that begins and ends with human "crossings” or "uses” of the sea will always be incomplete. The physical boundaries of a maritime region arc indeed human-defined as Dirlik asserts, but the underlying, and specifically liquid nature of the ocean at its center needs to be understood as emergent writh, and not merely as an underlying context for, human activities.

structural violence---impact---2nc The war against nature is invisible but its real—it turns the AFFs war impacts and culminates in extinction Tamás Szentes 8, Professor Emeritus at the Corvinus University of Budapest. “Globalisation and prospects of the world society” 4/22/08 http://www.eadi.org/fileadmin/Documents/Events/exco/Glob.___prospects_-_jav..pdf

It’ s a common place that human society can survive and develop only in a lasting real peace. Without peace countries cannot develop. Although since 1945 there has been no world war, but --numerous local wars took place, --terrorism has spread all over the world, undermining security even in the most developed and powerful countries, --arms race and militarisation have not ended with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but escalated

and continued, extending also to weapons of mass destruction and misusing enormous resources badly needed for development, --many “invisible wars” are suffered by the poor and oppressed people, manifested in mass misery, poverty , unemployment, homelessness, starvation and malnutrition,

epidemics and poor health conditions, exploitation and oppression, racial and other discrimination, physical terror, organised injustice, disguised forms of violence, the denial or regular

infringement of the democratic rights of citizens, women, youth, ethnic or religious minorities, etc., and last but not least, in the degradation of human environment ,

which means that -- the “war against Nature ”, i.e. the disturbance of ecological balance, wasteful management of natural resources, and large-scale pollution of our environment, is still going on, causing also losses and fatal dangers for human life. Behind global terrorism and “invisible wars” we find striking international and intrasociety inequities and distorted development patterns , which tend to generate social as well as international tensions , thus paving the way for unrest and “visible” wars . It is a commonplace now that peace is not merely the absence of war. The prerequisites of a lasting peace between and within societies involve not only - though, of course, necessarily - demilitarisation, but

also a systematic and gradual elimination of the roots of violence, of the causes of “invisible wars”, of the structural and institutional bases of large-scale international and intra-society inequalities, exploitation and oppression. Peace requires a process of social and national emancipation, a progressive, democratic transformation of societies and the world bringing about equal rights and opportunities for all people, sovereign participation and mutually advantageous co-operation among nations. It further requires a pluralistic democracy on global level with an appropriate system of proportional representation of the world society, articulation of diverse interests and their peaceful reconciliation, by non-violent conflict management, and thus also a global governance with a really global institutional system. Under the contemporary conditions of accelerating

globalisation and deepening global interdependencies in our world, peace is indivisible in both time and space. It cannot exist if reduced to a period only after or before war, and cannot be safeguarded in one part of the world when some others suffer visible or invisible wars . Thus, peace requires, indeed, a new, demilitarised and democratic world order, which can provide equal opportunities for sustainable development. “Sustainability of development” (both on national and world level) is often interpreted as an issue of environmental protection only and reduced to the need for preserving the ecological balance and delivering the next generations not a destroyed Nature with overexhausted resources and polluted environment. However,

no ecological balance can be ensured, unless the deep international development gap and intra-society inequalities are substantially reduced. Owing to global interdependencies there may exist hardly any “zero-sum-games”, in which one can gain at the expense of others, but,

instead, the “negative-sum-games” tend to predominate, in which everybody must suffer, later or sooner, directly or indirectly, losses. Therefore, the actual question is not about “sustainability of development” but rather about the “sustainability of human life”, i.e. survival of mankind – because of ecological imbalance and globalised terrorism. When Professor Louk de la Rive Box was the president of EADI, one day we had an exchange of views on the state and future of development studies. We agreed that development studies are not any more restricted to the case of underdeveloped countries, as the developed ones (as well as the former “socialist” countries) are also facing development problems, such as those of structural and institutional (and even system-) transformation, requirements of changes in development patterns, and concerns about natural environment. While all these are true, today I would dare say that besides (or even instead of) “development studies” we must speak about and make “survival studies”. While the monetary, financial, and debt crises are cyclical, we live in an almost

permanent crisis of the world society, which is multidimensional in nature, involving not only economic but also socio-psychological, behavioural, cultural and political aspects. The narrow-minded, election-oriented, selfish behaviour motivated by thirst for power and wealth , which still characterise the

political leadership almost all over the world, paves the way for the final, last catastrophe. One cannot doubt, of course, that great many positive historical changes have also taken place in the world in the last century. Such as decolonisation, transformation of socio-economic systems, democratisation of political life in some former fascist or authoritarian states, institutionalisation of welfare policies in several countries, rise of international organisations and new forums for negotiations, conflict management and cooperation, institutionalisation of international assistance programmes by multilateral agencies, codification of human rights, and rights of sovereignty and democracy also on international level, collapse of the militarised Soviet bloc and system-change3 in the countries concerned, the end of cold war, etc., to mention only a few. Nevertheless, the crisis of the world society has extended and deepened, approaching to a point of bifurcation that necessarily puts an end to the present tendencies, either by the final

catastrophe or a common solution. Under the circumstances provided by rapidly progressing science and technological revolutions, human society cannot survive unless such profound intra-society and international inequalities prevailing today are soon eliminated . Like a single spacecraft, the Earth can no longer afford to have a 'crew' divided into two parts: the rich, privileged, wellfed, well-educated, on the one hand, and the poor, deprived, starving, sick and

uneducated, on the other. Dangerous 'zero-sum-games' (which mostly prove to be “negative-sum-games”) can hardly be played any more by visible or invisible wars in the world society. Because of global interdependencies, the apparent winner becomes also a loser. The real choice for the world society is between negative- and positive-sum-games: i.e. between, on the one hand, continuation of visible and “invisible wars”, as long as this is possible at all, and, on the other, transformation of the world order by demilitarisation and democratization. No ideological or terminological camouflage can conceal this real dilemma any more, which is to be faced not in the distant future, by the next generations, but in the coming years, because of global terrorism soon having nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, and also due to irreversible changes in natural environment.

Alternative

alternative---overview---2nc The alternative is to reject the AFFs economic intrusion into the ocean. To advert turning the seas into a watery grave, what is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in our relation to nature—that’s Clark and Clausen. Even if this is unlikely to produce change, it’s better than validating the AFF’s continuation of the failed neoliberal project. Filter your reading of the alternative through the framework debate--we don’t need to win that the alternative makes the world perfect, just that the affirmatives vision starts with an incorrect assumption that ought to be questioned and rejected. Re-writing our politics to begin with the premise that all life is interconnected creates an ethical basis for policy making—the ocean should be viewed as a dynamic social space that is constantly interacting with human society—even if this does not prescribe specific policy details immediately, it is an effective blueprint that changes what is politically feasible—our methodology of ocean as space is a better starting point Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

This article has argued, however, that it nonetheless would be valuable to take a more geographic approach , from which the ocean is viewed as a space and not just an object . When one adopts this geographic perspective, one appreciates that thes ocean - like all spaces - is a repository of memories and meanings , and this construction of the ocean , as an immaterially encountered space of ideals as well as a material space of resources, contributes to the cultural and political environment within which certain interventions are deemed desirable and others are deemed unattainable . The geographic approach thus provides a foundation for understanding the driving forces behind these interventions, and this understanding can then be used to design and promote new policies that extend the outer limits of what today seems politically feasible . To conclude, the policy recommendations contained in An Ocean Blueprint and the Bush administration’s marine environment initiatives are surprising when viewed from a political vantage point, given that the Bush administration has not been known for favoring the stewardship of nature over the enhancement of opportunities for resource extraction. However, once the ocean is considered not simply as an arena of political contestation but as a space that is saturated with social processes and cultural resonances, the emergence of this apparent consensus for marine environmentalism is not so surprising. The challenge for the social scientist (and the policy maker) is to understand the extent (and limits) of this consensus as well as the underlying conceptualizations of the ocean on which the consensus rests. With this understanding, one can extend the breadth and depth of the consensus and apply it to progressive policy ends . For these tasks, the geographic perspective is invaluable.

The sea is a site for social change—the alternative connects the dots between various social movements—looking beyond the AFFs superficial view of the ocean gives interpretive power to social critics to author new alternatives to capitalism Steinberg 99—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “The maritime mystique: sustainable development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world ocean,” Environment and Planning: Society and Space, volume 17: 403-42, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf

There is a long history of the ocean as an arena of social transformation. It is generally acknowledged that the early seventeenth century ‘Battle of the Books’ gave birth to the modern structures of international law (Colombos, 1967, page 8), and ocean law remains an important arena for shaping the system of international relations that structures states as well as governing relations among them (Robles. 1996; Ruggie, 1993; Taylor, 1993; 1995). Along with contributing to some of the social categories that have prevailed in land space, including modern notions of masculinity (Creighton, 1995) and class solidarity (Rediker, 1987X

struggles over ocean access have also inspired oppositional movements . They have provided an arena for challenging what Shapiro (1997) calls the "violent cartographies” of statism. Thus Foucault points to the ship at sea as the "heterotopia par excellence”: “In civilizations without boats, dreams

dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police take the place of pirates” (Foucault, 1986, page 27). Historical examples of the role of the sea in forging alternative identities and social structures range from pirate bands (Kuhn, 1997) and anarchist collectives (Sekula, 1995) to environmental movements (Brown and May, 1991) and diaspora nations (Gilroy, 1993).<4)Building upon this history and reflecting on the recent Law of the Sea negotiations, a number of scholars have suggested that the collective governance of the sea be used as a model for radical notions of global citizenship and entitlements (Borgese, 1998; Pacem in Maribus, 1992; Van Dyke et al, 1993). Keith (1977). in a discussion that has parallels to the actual case of the proposed manganese nodule mining regime, speculates that the emergence of ‘floating cities’ would likely challenge the entire system of territorial states that provides the fouiuiationat political divisions for capitalist competition. In literature too. the sea is increasingly depicted as a space of social liberation from the oppressions of militarism, capitalism, and patriarchy (Bcrlhold, 1995), as in the novels of Octavia Roller, Ursula LeGuin, and Joan Slonczcwski.Whether these visions of the sea as a site of social change come to fruition is not the point . As we have seen from the recent example of manganese nodule mining, the crisis in the regulation of ocean space has intensified to the point where , for a considerable duration, the world ’s powers found themselves supporting a regime that seemed to challenge the principles of capitalist enterprise . The broad support that this regime received suggests the depth of the regulatory crisis, and in this context one should not underestimate the transformative potential of struggles over oceanic space, resources, and access.This context—the structural contradiction of capitalist spatiality—also demonstrates the superficiality (and indeed the danger) of the three images that increasingly characterize ocean space . For the images not only tell partial stories. They obscure material relations of exploitation experienced by those who derive their living from the sea—seafarers, dockworkcrs, artisanal fishing communities, and others who may be ‘managed’out of existence by the regulatory strategics with which each image is aligned . Despite their erasure from the popular imagination , these individuals experience on a daily basis the fact that the ocean is a locus of intense capitalist contradiction and a potential source of social change . To interpret this contradiction and to contribute to the authoring of that social change , it is imperative that we look beyond the prevailing ocean imagery and pierce the maritime mystique.

alternative---solves borders---2nc The ocean must be understood as a social space itself—not a container for human social activities—this radical reimagining is critical to rupturing statist notions of borders Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

Indeed, they seize upon the opportunities that the geographic clustering of marine nature provides for applying territorial management tools like marine protected areas. As a range of geographic thinkers have shown, however, a space is not merely a geographic container in which natural phenomena occur. A space is also a collection of sites (or places) that are laden with meanings that, in turn, are reproduced through place-based social practices, overarching conceptions of the space, the perceptions that one has when one interacts with (or in) the space, and its relation to other spaces (Agnew 1987; Lefebvre 1991; Tuan 2001). In short, a space is social.Previous sections of this article, by presenting the ocean as a space of increased social significance but decreased individual exposure, have revealed some of the reasons for the popularity of Overuse Narrative-derived management practices. A focus on the ocean’s spatiality can also be used to suggest management alternatives. Such an alternative perspective would begin with a commitment to view the ocean not as a geographic clustering of resources used by society (the default perspective on the ocean when it is viewed simply as a container for nature and for social processes that have their origins on land) but rather as a space of society. This perspective would require that one fundamentally revision the world, so that it is seen not as a set of stable, bounded societies defined by the borders of land-based state territories, but as a global society consisting of land and ocean spaces that , although differentiated, are fundamentally integrated ( Steinberg 1998).

Some who have looked at the ocean from this alternative perspective have stressed that the ocean is a space of social struggles that in turn have impacted social organization on land (Linebaugh and Rediker 2000; Rediker 1987). Others have stressed the role of the ocean as a space that binds the territories of de-centered diasporic ‘internationalities’ or island dwellers (Gilroy 1993; Hau’ofa 2008). At the most basic level, proponents of this view assert that the ocean is a space of history to be advanced, not a space beyond history to be preserved (Klein and Mackenthum 2004). From this alternate perspective, the ocean is perceived as an ocean of places, in three dimensions, whose complex natural ecology is continually encountered and influenced by the equally complex human systems that share the oceans space.

alternative---history---2nc The alternative is feasible—there are a laundry list of historical examples of the ocean being perceived differently—it influences policymaking Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

Historical models for this perspective can be seen most clearly in fishing communities that govern their near-shore zones with nuanced understandings of specific places and with complex rules and understandings that preserve both human and non-human communities that live, work, and play in and across ocean space (Cordell 1989; Jackson 1995; McCay and Acheson 1987; Ostrom 1990; St. Martin 2001; Van Dyke et al. 1993).

Some non-Western sailing practices likewise are based on the ideal of the navigator who perceives and interacts with distinct places that have distinct natures (e.g. points where swells meet, currents, reefs) rather than the ideal of the ship that moves across a flat, empty surface delineated by nothing but abstract latitude-longitude coordinates (Gladwin 1970; Hutchins 1995; Lewis 1994). Even occasional users living in industrialized societies have at times adopted this more geographical perspective on ocean space . Rozwadowski (2005), for instance, writes about the popular fascination that accompanied the laying of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable, and how the tales of problems encountered led to a popular understanding of the sea as having a complex ecology that shaped and was shaped by society. Following the completion of the cable, this sensibility was taken up not just by scientists but also by yachters, who, thanks to the publicity surrounding the laying of the cable, were increasingly viewing the ocean not simply as a surface to be crossed or an abstract space to be gazed at, but as a complex space with distinct places to which the yachters imbued new meanings as they traveled.A similar sensitivity to the sea as a space of both social definition and natural interactions is being adopted today by some communities of divers who, in their efforts to appreciate the sea as a set of distinct places with complex natural interactions, have emerged as vocal advocates of integrated management initiatives that seek to preserve an environment that can support marine life while simultaneously supporting livelihoods in coastal human communities (Hclvarg 2001; Safina 1999). In popular education, living history museums like Mysdc Seaport present the ocean as an arena with distinct times and places in which human and non-human communities interact and transform each other, in contrast with aquaria where the ocean is presented as a timeless sink of resources that is to be either exploited or preserved.

AT: Apocalyptic Reps Good

AT: Apocalyptic Environmental Representations Good---2nc (1).No Link—our argument is not that you should not represent environmental destruction---the 1nc impact is about a future environmental apocalypse—we reject neoliberal, human interventions in the ocean that view it as an object (2). Turn—Apocalyptic representations are good in the abstract—but fusing them to support the AFFs policy degrades the environment Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

As the first sections of this article demonstrated, promoters of the Overuse Narrative have been exceptionally successful in forging marine awareness and building a commitment to marine stewardship . Indeed, those who wish to protect the marine environment can convincingly argue that the Overuse Narrative, even if it lacks explanatory depth, should be left unchallenged, simply because it has proven so effective in marshalling concern for endangered marine nature. A position along these lines is taken by Killingsworth and Palmer when they write that apocalyptic environmental narratives ‘are not to be taken literally. Their aim is not to predict the future but to change it . . . (Their] value ... is not scientific, but political’ (Killingsworth and Palmer 1996, 41).While Killingsworth and Palmer have a valid point, in the end the assumptions underlying apocalyptic narratives (such as

the scripting of the ‘problem’ as one of overuse) tend to resurface in policy doc ument s (like An Ocean Blueprint), and this poses dangers . According to the Overuse Narrative, ‘we’ - the human subjects, or our society - are misusing (victimizing) ‘it’ - an object, such as a specific species or perhaps a whole marine ecosystem. It follows that ‘ we’ must protect and insulate ‘it’ from human ravages to that we can continue to move across its surface without encountering political or social boundaries , view its surface as a space of romantic escape, or preserve into perpetuity our ability to extract its resources.Since the ocean is perceived as an object that is misused by humans, the proposed remedy is positive human intervention , at all scales. Thus, at marine theme parks, where recitation of the Overuse Narrative is combined with the visual (and sometimes tactile) consumption of species to which the Narrative refers, park attendees are encouraged to think of their interaction as intervention, as one human helps one non-human animal (Davis 1997). This scripting of the human—animal interaction as an act of rescue-through- connection occurs in spite of the fact that the human, by supporting a system whereby animals are sequestered in what are often oppressive conditions, is actually probably diminishing the animal’s quality of life ( Kestin 2004).

This perspective is flawed because the ocean is not simply an object. It is a space . Of course, marine managers recognize that the ocean is a space.

AT: Neolib Good

Neolib Fails---General---2NC The neoliberal system fails by its own metrics---fails to create growth and makes continual economic crises inevitable---it’s impossible to reform---overwhelming data goes neg William K. Tabb 3, Professor Emeritus, Queens College and of Economics, Political Science and Sociology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, June 2003, “After Neoliberalism?,” http://monthlyreview.org/2003/06/01/after-neoliberalism

What comes after neoliberalism? To answer that question we must ask a more fundamental question: What do neoliberalism and neoconservatism have in common with the antiglobalization and antiwar movements? The answer is that all ostensibly share a focus on redefining democracy in the contemporary world system. “Spreading democracy” is the rallying cry of both the Washington Consensus and the Bush Doctrine. The “Washington Consensus” is the claim that global neolib eralism and core finance capital’s economic control of the periphery and the entire world by means of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only realistic alternative to misery and disaster . The “Bush Doctrine” is the bald neoconservative justification of U.S. global military domination and preemptive war—as part of a renewed attempt to make the world safe for democracy. For the antiglobalization and antiwar movements these establishment doctrines, insofar as they profess to be “spreading democracy,” are nothing but window dressing for the global dictatorship of the U.S. and core corporate governing elites. While focusing their attack on the institutions that enforce this dictatorship, these movements also strive to create an alternative, a genuine participatory democracy.The first thing to recognize is that neolib eralism is widely understood , even by many mainstream economists and policy wonks, to have failed in terms of its announced goals . It has not brought more rapid economic growth, reduced poverty, or made economies more stable . In fact, over the years of neoliberal hegemony, growth has slowed, poverty has increased , and economic and financial crises have been epidemic . The data on all of this are overwhelming . Neoliberalism has, however, succeeded as the class project

of capital. In this, its unannounced goal, it has increased the dominance of transnational corporations , international financiers, and sectors of local elites.The admission that neolib eralism has failed in terms of its announced goals has forced its proponents to a tactical retreat—defend ing the broad thrust of the neoliberal policy agenda under cover of “reform .” The result is an augmented Washington Consensus that blames client states and not international institutions or transnational capital for the failures of neoliberalism. It is the poor who are expected to make still further adjustments along neoliberal lines . From this point of view, what comes after neoliberalism must be more neoliberalism.September 11, 2001 offered the Bush Administration an opportunity to pursue an even more ambitious program of control, which may be called Global Bonapartism. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive wars and regime change reflects a new level of imperial ambition by the most ideologically-driven fraction of the governing elite. The liberal institutionalists of Clinton White House, and the realists of the first Bush administration, however aggressive they were, remained aware of the downside of policies which alienated the rest of the world. In contrast, the second Bush’s agenda is neoconservative—it celebrates a unique American moral right to remake the world. It is, as the president has said, a crusade against evil, spreading truth, justice, and the American way whether the rest of the world likes it or not. Despite the weakness of the economy at home, the Bush agenda has changed the subject from meeting human needs to the fear of terrorists. It is a distraction, as well, from the consequences of neoliberal policies at home, diverting attention away from the sea of corporate scandals and the class-biased impact of tax cuts and slashed social spending. The administration has put us on a permanent war footing complete with domestic repression and duct tape. It is a plan which scares voters into not asking questions and into acquiescing to a war and domestic policies that are not in their interests. NeoliberalismLet us look further at the failure of IMF and WTO policies. The United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report, 2000 tells us that at the end of the 1990s, eighty countries had lower per capita incomes than at the end of the 1980s. The record is even worse when we consider that the average per capita measure obscures the grotesque and growing inequality and

poverty evident in almost all of these countries. Poverty in most countries is rising because: debt payments to foreign financiers continue to eat up a major part of the income the country earns through exports each year; foreign investment is not creating the needed jobs; and, tax forgiveness and incentives to transnational corporations deplete local social spending budgets, just as they do increasingly in the richer countries. Additionally, global economic growth rates have slowed even as neoliberal policies have squeezed living standards. Instead of increasing economic stability , financial liberalization has caused financial crisis in most of the world’s economies . An IMF study found that 133 of the fund’s 181 member countries suffered at least one crisis

involving significant banking sector difficulties between 1980 and 1995. The World Bank identifies more than one hundred

major episodes of banking sector insolvency in ninety developing countries and former communist nations from the late

1970s to 1994. The fact that two-thirds of the fund’s members experienced such crises cannot be altogether

coincidental but rather is connected to the fact that these were the years the IMF imposed financial liberalization .

None of this is really surprising. The neoliberal agenda (or “Washington Consensus”) calls for trade and financial liberalization , privatization, deregulation, openness to foreign direct investment, a competitive exchange rate, fiscal discipline, lower taxes, and smaller government, none of which could plausibly lead to mass prosperity . Now, remarkably, neoliberalism’s failure to stimulate growth , produce a decline in poverty, or generate greater economic stability has led to the “augmented” Washington Consensus , brought to you by many of the same folks who produced the original version. They blame the failure of the neoliberal agenda on the countries which have been asked to follow their dictates. In this blame-the-victim scenario, what is now said to be needed is more efficient enforcement of the original goals and strategies . It is to be up to the local governments to do a better job of carrying out the program. Some small concessions are offered but these prove hollow: Recognizing the failures that financial market liberalization produced on such a large scale in the past, policy makers now recommend “prudent” capital account opening. Central banks are told they must put in place a “proper” regulatory framework, financial standards, and enforcement capabilities—but banks continue to arrange crony loans, currency speculation, and capital flight. There is recognition that corporate governance matters, that there need to be anticorruption rules, perhaps even social safety nets, and that targeted poverty reduction strategies may be appropriate as part of the conditionalities imposed by the overseers. These obvious steps were absent for the last decades, during which lower income countries were forced to dismantle the protections they had so imperfectly built against foreign control and the instability caused by the fluctuations of the global economy. Of course corruption cannot be blamed on the poorer countries alone as the scandals at Enron and WorldCom show.The CritiqueNext stage neoliberalism begins by conceding the failure of the Washington Consensus, but in a brilliant sleight of hand, proposes as the solution reforms that continue to favor foreign capital . The good

governance measures now advocated by the World Bank and the IMF are not to be confused with genuine democratic empowerment. Their strict enforcement would redistribute power from incumbent elites to foreign capital—facilitating multinational capital’s economic penetration of the poorer countries. The political strategy has shifted from allying with rent-seeking local elites, once necessary to defeat the left in the era of the Cold War, to a new emphasis on diminishing the share going to these costly local liabilities. That these elites oppress their people is now admitted and even condemned by a West which has suddenly discovered human rights abuses. Blaming local elites for the failures, which are integral to a world system structured for the benefit of the capitalists of the core, undermines their power relative to foreign capital. The free market answer to the problem is for foreign capital to take over the dominant role in these economies, not to foster real democracy. Next stage neoliberalism stresses the importance of transparency, the rule of law, and a level playing field in the marketplace—but not in the society as a whole. Unequal access to government would continue for the vast majority of citizens. Claims that next stage neoliberalism or the revised Washington Consensus will engender poverty reduction and increased accountability of the local state to its own citizens raise two sorts of criticisms. The first, emanating from within the economics profession and policy-making community, suggests that it is an impossibly broad, undifferentiated agenda of institutional reform. It is far too insensitive to local context and needs and it does not correspond to the empirical reality of how development really takes place. The problem from this perspective is that the global economic governance institutions are still trying to fit all countries into a single development model. This is inappropriate because there have been many routes to success, most quite unexpected and combining unpredictable elements of sectoral specialization and governmental support arrangements. The neoclassical model assumes universally available knowledge , capacities to apply existing technologies, and transparent access to all market information . These assumptions are surely unrealistic . For most participants in low income countries, adoption and adaptation are problematic undertakings. Uncertainty is pervasive, access to resource markets limited and often on unattractive terms. Success depends on contingent factors about which it is not easy to generalize beyond saying that a proper balance between state regulation and the role of the market are crucial. Critics of the neoclassical approach would reform international regimes to make them fairer to the less developed countries by protecting local producers and the autonomy of local governments so that international exchange is truly based on mutual consent and fairness. The issue is how is this to be done? Is reform of existing structures and institutions possible? Or, is more fundamental change based on transforming class relations essential? These questions bring us to a second level of criticism which comes not from within the Washington Consensus but from NGOs and civil society groups that offer a more basic critique of corporate globalization and capitalism. To the social justice movements, class power and imperialism are at the core the problem. These movements oppose the domination of social needs by market criteria, and the power of transnational capital and the most powerful governments (above all, the United States) to establish rules for their own benefit at the expense of the weaker subordinate nations and classes. From this critical perspective, it is obvious that the reforms being suggested are reinforcing the system of class rule and imperial domination which must be replaced . The growing strength of what is called the antiglobalization movement, or better, the alternative globalization movement, is testament to this critique, which is becoming a material force in the international political economy.

The economic collapse of 2008 should conclusively prove that neoliberal economics is a failed system---continued belief in the system’s efficacy creates blindness to its failures that guarantees future crises Stephen Gill 12, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto, and a former Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association, 2012, Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, p. 29-32

One of the more interesting questions concerning the nature of leadership in global capitalism relates to the role of experts , or epistemic communities that define forms of regulation and governance in key sectors of the global political economy. Until the financial collapse of 2007 , most mainstream macroeconomists and financial economists assumed that the propensity to slump and depression in modern capitalism had been conquered , with the result that

macroeconomic planning had become a technical exercise concerned simply with the fine tuning of the business cycle. It was further assumed that the spreading of risk through financial innovations such as derivatives and the self-regulation of financial capitalism introduced over the past three decades had made for a much less risky and more stable system – one that would continue to deliver prosperity. Indeed, much of the reasoning of this fraternity of economists was underpinned by an almost religious belief in the validity of the so-called ‘efficient markets hypothesis’ .

Another way to look at this is to see that certain members of these epistemic communities act as organic intellectuals from the vantage point of dominant political and economic interests. Organic intellectuals both articulate the goals and legitimate the actions and institutions of the ruling elements of a given society, seeking to stabilize the basic relations between rulers and ruled, simultaneously marginalizing and incorporating opposition. One function of these organic intellectuals is to depoliticize fundamental questions relating to the nature of capitalism , transforming political debates into technical questions directed at appropriate means rather than at questioning the fundamental ends of the capitalist system ; they represent accumulation through the commodity form and markets as if it were common sense . In this way,

despite the economic slump of 2007 –10 , and the collapse of the theories meant to explain it , the dominant narratives are still represented as the only credible ways to address economic problems .It is, of course, important to underline the context. When the financial meltdown occurred credit lines were frozen and banks refused to lend to each other, confidence collapsed and the central banks of the world engaged in a huge financial rescue operation, costing according to some estimates as much as $17 trillion.2 A particular curiosity of that moment was the way in which the economic experts scrambled to explain the financial collapse , which , according to their theories, was an impossible occurrence . This was then followed by a series of mea culpas premised upon the idea that, very soon, they would resume their positions of authority as leading economists, and that normalcy would be restored. An amusing example concerns a high-level group of private sector economists, bankers and academics convened by the British Academy, following a state visit to the London School of Economics in November 2008 by Queen Elizabeth II. After being taken around the school and shown charts indicating the scale of the financial collapse, the queen asked why it was that, if the collapse was so enormous, nobody had anticipated it, or indeed acted to prevent it. The British Academy decided to write a letter in response to the monarch’s question. It concluded: ‘Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people [sic], both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.’3 Paul Krugman (2009b) has noted that those US economists who gave warnings were ignored or marginalized as cranks.A further example Krugman recounts is instructive. It occurred at a special conference convened in 2005 to honour Alan Greenspan’s long tenure as chairman of the US Federal Reserve System. Greenspan, a market guru and follower of the individualist philosopher Ayn Rand, has views close to leading neoliberals such as Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Greenspan was a firm believer in the wisdom of financial economics and the providential self-regulating capacity of financial markets. At the special conference a contrarian paper was presented warning that the US financial system was taking on potentially dangerous levels of risk. The paper was mocked as misguided ‘by almost all present’, including Ben Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor at the Fed; Obama’s economic czar (and former president of Harvard) Lawrence Summers; and his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.Their views were consistent with the neoliberal conventional wisdom of the time, as expressed by the IMF in its Global Financial Stability Report of April 2006, which cited, approvingly, comments by Greenspan that the global financial system was ‘far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient. . .than existed just a quarter-century ago’. This Panglossian report argued that banks had dispersed and diversified credit risk, and that technical innovations now allowed supervisors and firms to monitor market and credit risks in ‘real time’ (IMF 2006: 1–2). The IMF’s chairman summarizes the key finding of the report thus (ibid.: 132):[IMF] Directors welcomed the continued resilience of the global financial system, which has been supported by solid global growth, low inflation, abundant liquidity, and flat yield curves. They considered that financial conditions will likely remain benign in the most likely scenario of continued growth, contained inflation, and stable inflationary expectations.

The IMF view, therefore, was that the financial system was ‘much more resilient’ and far less prone to bank failures and credit problems than it had been for a quarter of a century!

Krugman (2009b; emphasis added) also notes: ‘Economics, as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a perfect , frictionless market system’ so that they became ‘ blind’ to the very possibility of ‘catastrophic failures in a market economy .’ Krugman is referring to the hegemony of the efficient markets hypothesis in the thinking of neoliberal economists. Nevertheless, by October 2008 Greenspan finally admitted that he was in a state of ‘shocked disbelief ’, as his ‘whole intellectual edifice. . .collapsed’ (Krugman 2009b). However, with respect to financial reforms, Wall Street maintained control over the policy response to the crisis and debates on changes, confining the policy discussion principally to modifications to the existing forms of regulation.

Neoliberal policies fail inevitably, locking in energy price spikes and cyclical global economic crises---no economic theory supports it Joseph E. Stiglitz 8, Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, 7/7/8, “The End of Neo-liberalism?,” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-end-of-neo-liberalism-

The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism , that grab-bag of ideas based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting, allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics, and the so-called “Washington Consensus” in favor of privatization, liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly on inflation.For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued neo- liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes ; when they did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.

Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it , their ideology also failed another test . No one can claim that financial markets did a stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990’s, with 97% of investments in fiber optics taking years to see any light. But at least that mistake had an unintended benefit: as costs of communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated into the global economy. But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of resources to housing . The newly constructed homes built for families that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of families are forced out of their homes, in some communities, government has finally stepped in – to remove the remains. In others, the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens, borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst nightmares.To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess investment in real estate: some Americans (perhaps only for a few months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves and the world economy! Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown. There is an increasing consensus on the prognosis: this downturn will be prolonged and widespread.Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices . Of course, neither sector is an example of free-market economics, but that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded when it does not.Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush’s administration is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was under Ronald Reagan. For all Reagan’s free-trade rhetoric, he freely imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious “voluntary” export restraints on automobiles.Bush’s policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly served America’s military-industrial complex has been more naked. The only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious. Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system) continue , and if Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would have been worse. This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their farmers might have been able to compete with American and European farmers, but they could not compete with US and European Union subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing countries faded, and a food gap widened.Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly.Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world still cannot afford the minimum nutritional requirements . In many countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a particularly devastating effect on the poor, because these items constitute a larger share of their expenditures.

The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly, have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: we are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in “price discovery” – in other words, discovering – a little late to do much about the problem this year – that there is scarcity. But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions. They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today and sell it later; and if they do not, they won’t be able to afford it if next year’s crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds up. Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market failure to government failure. One senior Chinese official was quoted as saying that the problem was that the US government should have done more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But that does not change the facts: US banks mismanaged risk on a colossal scale, with global consequences , while those running these institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in compensation. Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns . Unless they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well .

Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory . Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience. Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now hanging over the global economy.

Neolib Fails---Growth---2NCNeoliberalism makes economic growth unstable and unequal---every neoliberal policy is counter-productive for the overall economy George Monbiot 13, columnist for The Guardian, has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), Oxford Brookes (planning), and East London (environmental science), 1/14/13, “If you think we're done with neoliberalism, think again,” The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/14/neoliberal-theory-economic-failure

How they must bleed for us. In 2012, the world's 100 richest people became $241 billion richer. They are now worth $1.9 trillion: just a little less than the entire output of the United Kingdom.

This is not the result of chance. The rise in the fortunes of the super-rich is the direct result of policies . Here are a few: the

reduction of tax rates and tax enforcement; governments' refusal to recoup a decent share of revenues from minerals and land; the privatisation of public assets and the creation of a toll-booth economy; wage liberalisation and the destruction of collective bargaining. The policies that made the global monarchs so rich are the policies squeezing everyone else. This is not what the theory predicted . Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and their disciples – in a thousand business schools, the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and just about every modern government – have argued that the less governments tax the rich, defend workers and redistribute wealth, the more prosperous everyone will be. Any attempt to reduce inequality would damage the efficiency of the market, impeding the

rising tide that lifts all boats. The apostles have conducted a 30-year global experiment , and the results are now in. Total failure .

Before I go on, I should point out that I don't believe perpetual economic growth is either sustainable or desirable. But if growth is your aim – an aim to which every government claims to subscribe – you couldn't make a bigger mess of it than by releasing the super- rich from the constraints of democracy . Last year's annual report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development should have been an obituary for the neoliberal model

developed by Hayek and Friedman and their disciples. It shows unequivocally that their policies have created the opposite outcomes to those they predicted . As neoliberal policies (cutting taxes for the rich, privatising state assets, deregulating

labour, reducing social security) began to bite from the 1980s onwards, growth rates started to fall and unemployment to rise. The remarkable growth in the rich nations during the 50s, 60s and 70s was made possible by the destruction of the wealth and power of the elite, as a result of the 1930s depression and the second world war. Their embarrassment gave the other 99% an unprecedented chance to demand redistribution, state spending and social security, all of which stimulated demand. Neoliberalism was an attempt to turn back these reforms. Lavishly funded by millionaires, its advocates were amazingly successful – politically. Economically they flopped . Throughout the OECD countries taxation has become more regressive: the rich pay less, the poor pay more. The result, the neoliberals claimed, would be that economic efficiency and investment would rise, enriching everyone. The opposite occurred. As taxes on the rich and on business diminished, the spending power of both the state and poorer people fell, and demand contracted. The result was that investment rates declined, in step with companies' expectations of growth. The neoliberals also insisted that unrestrained inequality in incomes and flexible wages would reduce unemployment . But throughout the rich world both inequality and unemployment have soared . The recent jump in unemployment in most developed countries – worse than in any previous recession of the past three decades – was preceded by the lowest level of wages as a share of GDP since the second world war. Bang goes the theory. It failed for the same obvious reason: low wages suppress demand, which suppresses employment. As wages stagnated, people supplemented their income with debt. Rising debt fed the deregulated banks, with consequences of which we are all aware. The greater inequality becomes, the UN report finds, the less stable the economy and the lower its rates of growth . The policies with which neoliberal governments seek to reduce their deficits and stimulate their economies are counter-productive . The impending reduction of the UK's top rate of income tax (from 50% to 45%) will not boost government revenue or private enterprise, but it will enrich the speculators who tanked the economy. Goldman Sachs and other banks are now thinking of delaying their bonus payments to take advantage of it. The welfare bill approved by parliament last week will not help to clear the deficit or stimulate employment: it will reduce demand, suppressing economic recovery. The same goes for the capping of public sector pay. "Relearning some old lessons about fairness and participation," the UN says, "is the only way to eventually overcome the crisis and pursue a path of sustainable economic development." As I say, I have no dog in this race, except a belief that no one, in this sea of riches, should have to be poor. But staring

dumbfounded at the lessons unlearned in Britain, Europe and the US, it strikes me that the entire structure of neoliberal

thought is a fraud. The demands of the ultra-rich have been dressed up as sophisticated economic theory and applied regardless of the outcome . The complete failure of this world-scale experiment is

no impediment to its repetition. This has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with power.

AT: Neolib Key to Peace (Gartzke Etc)---2NCGartzke’s model has significant missing values which biases its findings Zhen Han 12, MA, Political Science, University of British Columbia, March 2012, “The Capitalist Peace Revisited: A New Liberal Peace Model and the Impact of Market Fluctuations,” https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/41809/ubc_2012_spring_han_zhen.pdf?sequence=1

The missing value problem needs serious attention for the students who study liberal peace models. Dafoe finds that missing values in Gartzke’s models are systematically associated with its major explanatory variable— market openness 96 , thus leads to a biased conclusion . For example, China , the U.S.S.R, and North Korea were involved in several militarized interstate conflicts, but a significant part of the market openness is missing for these countries 97, and excluding these cases from the model leads to a bias . While Dafoe assigns value 1 (least open to financial market) to all the missing values of China, U.S.S.R and North Korea, he finds that market openness lost its significance and democracy become significant again98. But Dafoe’s approach can be problematic as well, because these nations may be open to each other while staying closed to the west or the global financial markets. In case of North Korea, foreign capital from the U .S.S.R and China are pivotal to the survival of the regime.

Correcting for those missing values proves market liberalization causes conflict---Gartzke’s backwards Zhen Han 12, MA, Political Science, University of British Columbia, March 2012, “The Capitalist Peace Revisited: A New Liberal Peace Model and the Impact of Market Fluctuations,” https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/41809/ubc_2012_spring_han_zhen.pdf?sequence=1

Model 1 replicates Model 5 of Gartzke’s capitalist peace paper100. A major difference between the findings

of Model 1 and Gartzke’s capitalist peace Model 5 is that, Model 1 of this paper shows that higher level of financial market openness is positively associated with more conflict , while Gartzke finds his market openness index is

negatively associated with more conflict101. As Dafoe points out, Gartzke’s finding can be damaged by the missing values in his market openness variable , and the temporal dependence and cross-sectional dependence are not properly controlled102. Model 1 pays close attention to these problems , and finds that , at least in

this period, market openness is positively associated with more conflicts . As the data of this paper focuses on a different time period, this result does not suggest Gartzke is wrong, but further explanation of why market openness is positively associated with more conflict is necessary. The low value of democracy is negatively associated with conflicts, and this finding is consistent with the argument of democratic peace theory. The positive impact of the high value of democracy possibly shows that a discrepant dyad—when the democracy low value is controlled—is more likely to fight each other. As Choi points out, the interpretation of the democracy high variable is often difficult, but it seems the democratic peace theory is well supported by this data.The traditional commercial peace theory, which focuses on the trade dependency created by international commodity trade, is also supported by this model. Development makes noncontiguous states more likely to fight each other, as the development facilitated the capacity of states to project power to a longer distance, but development also makes contiguous states less likely to fight each other103. This finding supports that the interaction effect between contiguity and development is also robust in this period. Being a major power makes the state more likely to be involved in conflicts. Similar to this finding, a state is more likely to be involved in MIDs if its national power index is higher. However, formal alliances have no significant impact on the probability of MIDs. Model 2 replaces the high value of democracy with the democracy distance variable104 . Since the democracy distance variable is a linear transformation of the high value of democracy105 , this replacement produces identical results to Model 1, but the interpretation of democratic peace in this model is much easier. The positive and significant impact of the democracy distance variable supports the expectation from Choi: politically different countries— the authoritarian states and the democratic states—are more likely to fight each other 106 . Different political ideology can be the underlining reason for tension. As this paper suggests before, since many pacifying mechanisms available for democracies do not exist in autocratic and discrepant dyads, the same democracy distance should have different impact in different types of dyad. Model 3.1 applies this proposal and makes the lower value of democracy interact with the democracy distance variable. The findings are impressive: The negative coefficient of the lower value of democracy becomes significant again; the coefficient of democracy distance loses its significance, but the interaction effects between these two variables are positively significant. This finding supports the democratic peace argument: countries are less likely to fight if they both are highly democratic, but this pacifying effect has been mitigated if the democracy distance is getting bigger. Figure 1 presents a prediction of the probability of conflict based on Model 3.1. It shows that the probability of conflict is almost the same for autocratic and discrepant dyads, and both of them are much higher than the probability for democratic dyads. Model 3.2 replaces the low value of democracy with a three-category indicator of dyad type 107 and makes the dyad type indicator interacting with the democracy distance variable. The result shows that, compared with the base category (democratic dyad), the risk of fighting is higher in the other two types of dyads. In the base category, democratic distance does not have significant impact on their chance of fighting. Figure 2 shows how the predicted probability of conflict, based on Model 3.2, changes across different dyad types. The predicted probability shows that one can confidently claim that democratic dyads are more peaceful than other types of dyad, but the upward trend, which is similar to the trend showing in the predicted chance of fighting for autocracies, shows that bigger democracy distance leads to more conflicts in these two types of dyads. The discrepant dyad group generally behaves similarly to the autocracy group, except that the downward trend of the curve, showing that instead of fighting for different democratic ideology, shows discrepant dyads often fight for other reasons. However, the confidence interval of the discrepant dyad group largely overlaps with the confidence interval of the autocracy group, so more data are needed to distinguish whether discrepant dyads behave differently from autocracy dyads.In conclusion, this paper argues that the democratic peace model can be improved by interacting the democracy distance variable with the other democracy measurement of the dyad. Findings from these interaction models support the dyadic claim that ―democratic countries are unlikely to fight each other‖, but they also suggest one cannot extend this claim to the monadic level. Democratic countries are not more peaceful, as the chance of conflicts is high in a discrepant dyad. Increasing ideological differences, as measured by the democracy distance variable in these models, can increase the chances of conflicts.

On the commercial peace aspect, Model 1 of this paper suggests that higher market openness can lead to more conflicts. This positive correlation might be explained by the spillover effect of market fluctuation. In order to capture the impact of market fluctuation, Model 4 added a set of variables related to the measurement of foreign capital net inflows to the model. The results show that, once the capital flow factors are considered in the model, the market openness variable loses its significance, and a higher level of capital net inflow is positively associated with more interstate conflicts .

The missing value indicator of capital net inflows is included in the model to control the damage caused by missing data in the capital net inflow variable. This missing indicator is positive and significant, suggesting that missing economic data are systematically associated with militarized conflicts. The lagged capital net inflows variable, measured as the percentage of GDP, is included in the model, and higher level of capital net inflows is associated with a higher risk of conflicts. The change of capital net inflow variable, which is measured by the level of current capital net inflows minus the level of the one-year lagged capital net inflows, is also positively associated with more conflicts, meaning the risk of conflict is higher if there are more foreign capitals pouring into the country . These findings support the theory of this paper that large capital inflows can destabilize the domestic economy and cause crises , but they are also contrary to the conventional understanding that foreign capital will leave the conflicting region. However, it can be explained by the following reasons.

To the extent that capitalism creates peace, it’s only through social democratic capitalism, not neoliberalism---market liberalization has no theoretical correlation to peaceMichael Mousseau 12, Professor of International Relations at Koç University and Director of the Center for Conflict Studies in Istanbul, “A Market-Capitalist or a Democratic Peace?,” in What Do We Know About War, second edition, ed. Vasquez, p. 207-208

This chapter explored the state of theory and evidence on the capitalist peace and its prospects for explaining the

democratic peace. Two kinds of capitalist peace theories were distinguished , the free-market and the social-market, yielding four observable causal mechanisms: trade, capital openness, and size of private sector as free-market theories, and

contract-intensive economy as the social-market theory. Analyses of these causal mechanisms indicate that the free- market theories are not viable explanations for the democratic peace or the peace among the advanced industrial nations, primarily because none of them correlate substantially with democracy or developed democracy; they do not even

correlate much with each other. Only the social-market measure of contract-intensive economy correlates moderately with democracy and developed democracy. Application of the theories to the case of the Falklands / Malvinas War yields similar results: this war appears as an anomalous case for the trade (Weede 1996) and capital openness (Gartzke et al. 2001) models, while the public sector model (McDonald 2007) identifies Britain as a non-capitalist state; only the social-market model (Mousseau 2000) offers an account for this conflict. Finally, analyses of fatal militarized interstate disputes from 1961 to 2001 corroborate that the democratic peace is spurious , with contract-intensive economy the more likely explanation for both democracy and the "democratic" peace.The free-market theories also face problems of internal and external validity . Regarding internal validity,

to account for a peace between developed nations, all of these theories critically assume that free markets cause economic development . Yet the scientific evidence tells us this is not so (Gurr, Jaggers, and Moore 1990). Regarding external validity, for all but the most myopic observers of global affairs it is clear that the peace among the advanced capitalist nations is much more than restraint due to the high cost of killing each other (Weede 1996), fear of each other's resolve (Gartzke et al. 2001), or the credibility in their commitments (McDonald 2007). These theories may be correct, but it is apparent that these nations do more than just tolerate each other; they are friends. This is evident from the fact that whenever a capitalist economy takes a turn for the worse, the other capitalist nations seek to boost it back up, overcoming collective action problems with negotiations enhanced by shared norms of equity and law. The capitalist nations are not better balancers: they do not balance. They do not simply read each other's signals better or send or receive better information: they know that other capitalist nations will never attack them. Indeed, the very image of war today between France and Germany is comical, yet until they became market capitalist only five decades ago these two nations slaughtered each other with seeming zeal roughly every generation.

Market liberalization increases statistical risk of war Zhen Han 12, MA, Political Science, University of British Columbia, March 2012, “The Capitalist Peace Revisited: A New Liberal Peace Model and the Impact of Market Fluctuations,” https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/41809/ubc_2012_spring_han_zhen.pdf?sequence=1

The third causal mechanism is socialization theory. Market integration provides more forums allowing national policy makers to meet, thus policy transparency can be increased, and misinterpretations, which can lead to more conflicts, are reduced62 . Similar policy interests can also be developed through the socialization processes63.

***TO FOOTNOTES***63 This is the hypothesis 3 in Gartzke’s Capitalist Peace argument. Gartzke, 2007.

***END FOOTNOTES***

However, Waltz argues that as the number of contracts increases through international market integration , the number of contract default will also increase 64; therefore, socialization under globalization can work in a negative way and make conflicts more likely . On the other hand, the socialization effect caused by financial market integration can be limited, as the highly professionalized nature of financial markets creates interactions only within a small group of experts. Chewieroth suggests that state leaders often have little to say in the norm building of international financial structure, and the self-interested bureaucrats of IMF and other international financial organizations have a significant impact on financial liberalization65.These discussions suggest there are some reasons to argue that the pacifying effects of financial liberalization are not as strong as commodity international trade. The causal mechanisms of conventional commercial peace may not function well with the financial integration. Furthermore, the possible negative impact of liberalization needs to be considered, as liberalization does not always bring stability. Financial market fluctuations , often marked by significant amount of capital inflows and outflows, can destabilize economy and cause further crisis . While the negative impact of large capital

outflows, often known as the capital flight, are well recognized, this paper suggests that large capital inflows can be risky too. One can observe a large foreign capital inflow in cases of speculative accumulation, which often leads to financial crises when market confidence starts to collapse. The Asian Crisis in 1997 is an example of this type of crisis66. A large capital inflow also can be observed if the state is consistently borrowing from international financial markets to fix its budget deficits, such as the case in the 2011 Euro crisis. In both cases, large capital net inflows destabilize the economy and causes economic crisis . In the processes

discussed above, higher level of financial deregulation provides the tool for states to borrow more from foreign capitals market, and it also encourages foreign capitals to take the risk of entering a foreign market, as liberalization guarantee foreign capitals can pull out at any time as they want. For these reasons, it is reasonable to observe increasing capital net inflows67 before a crisis breaks out, and a higher level of liberalization increases the vulnerability of the state. These discussions lead to the Hypothesis 5 and 6 of this thesis.

H5: A higher level of financial liberalization leads to a higher chance of having militarized interstate conflicts.

H6: A higher level of capital flight leads to a higher chance of having militarized interstate Conflicts.

Consensus of new studies rejects Gartzke’s capitalist peace model---neoliberal market volatility means it doesn’t contribute to peace Zhen Han 12, MA, Political Science, University of British Columbia, March 2012, “The Capitalist Peace Revisited: A New Liberal Peace Model and the Impact of Market Fluctuations,” https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/41809/ubc_2012_spring_han_zhen.pdf?sequence=1

Erik Gartzke’s prize-winning paper “the Capitalist Peace” is a pioneer of testing the relations between market openness in this new era and interstate conflicts by combining commercial peace data and economic data on market openness4 . He finds that if two states have a higher level of market openness, they are less likely to have interstate conflicts5 . His findings also challenge the democratic peace theory, as he finds that democracy has no significant correlation with peace once control for market openness6 . These findings raise questions of the two major components—democratic peace and commercial peace—of the liberal peace model. Some recent studies challenge Gartzke by arguing that 1.) His measurement of democracy is problematic7 ; 2.) Missing values in his data has created a selection bias in his conclusion ; 3.) Temporal dependence and regional dependence are not properly controlled for in his statistical model 8 . The debate between Gartzke and his critics begs a new liberal peace model—a model in which democracy and market openness are properly measured, and dependence across cases are properly controlled.This thesis tries to build and test such a model with data focusing on later time periods when the data availability is better. In section 2, this paper reviews the current debate on the two pillars of liberal peace—democratic peace theory and commercial peace theory, and suggests some new measurements to improve conventional quantitative studies on liberal peace. Section 3 reviews the debate on methodological issues, such as the proper way to control temporal dependence, and proposes a new statistical model to test the liberal peace theory. Section 4 introduces the datasets used in this study. The missing variable problem , which has poisoned some previous studies on commercial peace , is also discussed in this section. Section 5 reports the findings from the new liberal peace models of this paper, and

section 6 provides some discussion for future studies. The results of these new statistical models of liberal peace theorie shows that while traditional democratic peace and commercial peace remain robust in the new era of global financial integration,

the pacifying effect of commercial ties is weakened by the volatile fluctuations in the international financial market .

Neoliberal financial markets are prone to destabilizing capital outflows---destroys the development necessary for interdependence to contribute to peace Zhen Han 12, MA, Political Science, University of British Columbia, March 2012, “The Capitalist Peace Revisited: A New Liberal Peace Model and the Impact of Market Fluctuations,” https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/41809/ubc_2012_spring_han_zhen.pdf?sequence=1

By emphasizing the opportunity cost argument, Gartzke introduces financial market integration as a causal factor of peace into the commercial peace model51 . He argues that, under financial liberalization, the cost of war has been further increased as the damage to the financial markets easily spread to other nations and cause significant cost to many nations52 . On the other hand, global financial markets provide new tools for nations to gain profit, further reducing the cost of trade 53 . An argument associated with this idea is the peace caused by economic development, which can be facilitated by increasing foreign capital investments 54. However, economists have argued that financial liberalization does not always facilitate development . Broner and Ventura find that liberalization often leads to short-run development in a capital-poor state, but once the state becomes less capital-poor, liberalization can lead to a capital out-flow , as newly - accumulated domestic capital evade risks by escaping to developed countries with better financial institutions, thus hindering further development55

AT: Development Good—2nc Generic “ocean exploration” good impacts are not offense—it’s a question of how we perceive the ocean—understanding the ocean as a space changes what is politically possible—and results in better policy making Steinberg 8—Phillip, Professor, Department of Geography, Florida State University, “It’s so Easy Being Green: Overuse, Underexposure, and the Marine Environmentalist Consensus,” Geography Compass 2(6): 2080-2096, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/EasyGreen.pdf

This article has argued, however, that it nonetheless would be valuable to take a more geographic approach, from which the ocean is viewed as a space and not just an object. When one adopts this geographic perspective, one appreciates that the ocean - like all spaces - is a repository of memories and meanings, and this construction of the ocean, as an immaterially encountered space of ideals as well as a material space of resources, contributes to the cultural and political environment within which certain interventions are deemed desirable and others are deemed unattainable . The geographic approach thus provides a foundation for understanding the driving forces behind these interventions, and this understanding can then be used to design and promote new policies that extend the outer limits of what today seems politically feasible. To conclude, the policy recommendations contained in An Ocean Blueprint and the Bush administration’s marine environment initiatives are surprising when viewed from a political vantage point, given that the Bush administration has not been known for favoring the stewardship of nature over the enhancement of opportunities for resource extraction. However, once the ocean is considered not simply as an arena of political contestation but as a space that is saturated with social processes and cultural resonances, the emergence of this apparent consensus for marine environmentalism is not so surprising. The challenge for the social scientist (and the policy maker) is to understand the extent (and limits) of this consensus as well as the underlying conceptualizations of the ocean on which the consensus rests. With this understanding, one can extend the breadth and depth of the consensus and apply it to progressive policy ends. For these tasks, the geographic perspective is invaluable.

AT: Squo Improving (Goklany Etc)

AT: Squo Improving (Goklany)---2NC Goklany’s wrong, oversimplified, and neolib destroys all the reasons the status quo is improving James Surowiecki 7, journalist and financial writer for The New Yorker, 7/18/7, “The Myth of Inevitable Progress,” http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/07/the_myth_of_inevitable_progres.hstml

"Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better." That mantra, invented by the self-taught psychologist Émile Coué in the nineteenth century, kept running through my head as I read Indur Goklany's new book on the relationship between economic growth and human and

environmental progress, The Improving State of the World. Just as Coué told his patients that incessant repetition of his mantra would make it come true, Goklany seems to believe that saying often enough -- and in enough different ways -- that life today is better than ever will make it so .¶ Goklany depicts a global economy in which nearly all signs are positive -- and in which the problems that do exist, such as stagnation or setbacks in sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union, will be solved if economic growth and technological improvements are allowed to work their magic. Nor is this, in Goklany's account, a new phenomenon. He marshals an impressive array of historical data to argue that the trajectory of the twentieth century has been generally upward and onward. Taken as a whole, Goklany argues, humanity really has been getting better and better day by day, so that today, as his subtitle puts it, "we're living longer,

healthier, more comfortable lives on a cleaner planet."¶ Seen from a broad historical perspective, this description is, for most people, accurate enough. Just about everyone living today is the beneficiary of what can almost certainly be called the single most consequential development in human history -- namely, the onset of industrialization. As the economic historian Angus Maddison has shown in a series of studies of economic development over the past two millennia, human economies grew very little, if at all, for most of human history. Between 1000 and 1820 or so, Maddison estimates, annual economic growth was around 0.05 percent a year -- which meant that living standards improved incredibly slowly and that people living in 1800 were only mildly better off than people living in 1000. But sometime around 1820, that

all began to change. Between 1820 and today, world per capita real income grew 20 times as fast as it did in the previous eight centuries. ¶ In the West, above all, the effects of this transformation have been so massive as to be practically unfathomable. Real income, life expectancy, literacy and education rates, and food consumption have soared, while infant mortality, hours worked, and food prices have plummeted. And although the West has been the biggest beneficiary of these changes, the diffusion of technology, medicine, and agricultural techniques has meant that developing countries have enjoyed dramatic improvements in what the United Nations calls "human development indicators," even if most of their citizens remain poor. One consequence of this is that people at a given income level today are likely to be healthier and to

live longer than people at the same income level did 40 or 50 years ago. ¶ In one sense, all of this should be obvious, since a moment's thought -- or a quick read of a nineteenth-century novel -- should suffice to remind you of how much better, at least in material terms, life is today than it was a century ago, let alone in the 1600s. But as behavioral economists have persuasively demonstrated, human beings quickly adapt to their surroundings and come to take their current state of affairs for granted. In other words, it is difficult, even after your life has changed dramatically for the better, to remain aware of just how much better it is, and even harder to truly appreciate how much better you have it than your great-grandparents did. So part of Goklany's project here -- and it is a valuable part -- is to make clear just how much real progress

there has been over the past two centuries and even (in many places) over the past two decades in the life of the average human being. ¶ THE ANTI-MALTHUS¶ Goklany's target is not just the natural tendency of human beings to take things for granted. His real opponents are what he calls the "neo-Malthusians" -- those who are convinced that there are natural limits to growth and that humanity has been butting up against them for quite some time now. The neo-Malthusians had their heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and the Club of Rome's appropriately titled The Limits to Growth. Although their doomsaying about population growth and industrialization is no longer front-page news, their deep-seated skepticism about the virtues of economic growth and their conviction that the richer people get, the worse things become for the earth remain an important strand of modern environmentalism. If Goklany sees progress everywhere he looks, the neo-Malthusians see impending disaster: air pollution, the disappearance of habitats, the emptying of aquifers, the

demolition of forest cover, and the proliferation of new diseases. Day by day, in every way, in other words, we are getting worse and worse. ¶ The problem with neo-Malthusianism, as Goklany appropriately suggests, is that it has consistently underestimated the beneficial effects of technological change. The e = mc2 of the neo-Malthusians was introduced three decades ago, when Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren invented the equation I = PAT. Environmental impact (I) was said to be the product of population size (P), level of affluence (A), and technological efficiency (T). According to this logic, not only are population growth and economic growth bad for the earth, but so, too, is technological change, since it has a multiplier effect on the other two factors. The only way to save the planet, from the neo-Malthusians' perspective, is to set

strict limits on human behavior, doing everything possible to rein in businesses and consumers. ¶ The I = PAT formula was not pulled completely out of thin air. As societies get richer and more populous, they do consume more resources, and, especially in the early phases of economic growth, they do so with a measure of indifference to the overall impact on the environment. But what the equation misses, and what Goklany spends a good chunk of his book demonstrating, is that technology can actually reduce environmental impact, thereby diminishing the demands made by affluence and population growth. A classic example of this effect is the massive expansion in the efficiency of agricultural productivity over the past 40 years. Productivity gains have dramatically reduced the environmental burden of farming (at least on the land -- there have not been similar advances in the efficient use of water) and shrunk the amount of land needed to feed the world. More recently, technological improvements in the scrubbing of power-plant smokestacks have brought about a sharp reduction in the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air. Improvements in the efficiency of wind and solar power have reduced (albeit only a little) the demand for fossil fuels. And although the impact of these innovations has been felt most strongly in the developed world, they have also improved conditions in the developing world, at least with regard to things such as access to clean water and some types of air emissions. Goklany may be exaggerating somewhat when he says that the entire planet -- as opposed to just the developed world -- is cleaner, but it is in fact not an outrageous claim.

¶ The paradox here is that technological change is generally associated with (or is actually the result of) increased affluence, which makes it likely that an economy will get cleaner even as it gets richer. And empirically, that does seem to be the case. After all, developed countries do generally have cleaner air, cleaner water, more forest cover, and less cropland devoted to food production than developing countries do, even though the latter are much poorer. The obvious, and important, exception is CO2 emissions and the broader problem of climate change. But

Goklany -- who spends too much of his book offering an overly familiar critique of excessive action in response to global warming -- argues that now that Americans are increasingly concerned about climate change, technology will soon help mitigate the problem. ¶ All of this does not mean that the United States is less polluted than it was in 1787, let alone than it was when it was inhabited only by Native Americans. But it does mean that the United States is arguably less polluted today than at any time in the last 100 years and that the last 40 years or so, in particular, have seen a dramatic improvement in the quality of air and water. And the same is true, to lesser and greater extents, in the rest of the developed world. One hypothesis for why this has historically occurred is demonstrated by what is called the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). When graphed, the relationship between prosperity and environmental degradation looks like an upside-down U. Initially, as countries grow, they trade off environmental well-being for economic growth -- that is, as they get richer, they also get more polluted. At some point, however, they become prosperous enough to shift their priorities and begin to seek out ways to grow more cleanly. Goklany suggests a variation on the EKC, the "environmental transition hypothesis," which tries to account for time and technology as well as affluence. The invention and spread of new technologies, he suggests, make it easier and more likely for countries to get on the right side of the U-curve quickly, even before they have become rich; the "green revolution," for instance, allowed poor countries to reduce the environmental burden of

farming. ¶ FREE MARKETS, FREE PEOPLE¶ The environmental transition hypothesis is a reasonable way of thinking about the relationship between prosperity, technology, and people's expectations about the environment. And Goklany's rebuttal to the environmental

doomsayers is both welcome and convincing. So why, then, is his overall take on the world -- and in particular on how we got to where we are and what we need to do to keep things moving in the right direction --

unsatisfying in that Couéist way? The simple answer is that Goklany 's account leaves out too much that matters and pretends that incredibly

complex phenomena can be explained away with a few catch phrases . In its overly sanguine and simplistic take on globalization, regulation, and the role of state and economic power, The Improving State of the World is symptomatic of what has become, in the eyes of many, a quintessentially American point of view -- a view according to which the task of creating a better world can ultimately be boiled down to the motto of the Wall Street Journal editorial page: "free markets and free people ." ¶ Free markets and free people are, to be sure, wonderful things. But what Goklany offers up in his book is a fundamentally deterministic take on the world: as countries get richer and more technologically advanced, their citizens (all, or almost all, of them) naturally get

healthier and better educated, eat better, live longer, and care more about the environment. The free market, recognizing people's resulting desires, delivers the goods they want. ¶ The environmental transition hypothesis is the most striking example of this view, since it postulates that environmental improvement happens, as it were, naturally. The reality, of course, is that the fight over environmental regulation, at least in the United States, was -- and remains -- a fierce one and that environmental skeptics and businesses have done their best to prevent regulations such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts from ever becoming law. It is also the case that without those regulations, the "cleaner planet" Goklany sees today would not exist. Goklany attempts the argument that air and water pollution in the United States were declining long before regulations were put into effect. Unfortunately, his own evidence shows that emissions for a host of pollutants peaked right around 1970, when the Clean Air Act was passed, or after, and myriad studies demonstrate that the United States' rivers and lakes are dramatically

more swimmable and fishable today than they were before the Clean Water Act. ¶ The point is that far from being the inevitable product of a strong economy, environmental improvement is often the result of political struggles that

could very easily have gone the other way. It is also unlikely to occur in the absence of a strong state that is accountable to its citizens. Yet Goklany's entire work -- perhaps not surprisingly for someone at the libertarian Cato Institute -- is predicated on the idea that the state mostly functions as an obstacle to the benevolent workings of the market . This assumption is especially peculiar in the context of a discussion of pollution, since

economic theory tells us that polluters , in the absence of regulation, have no reason to take the costs of their emissions into account . Pollution is the quintessential case of a negative externality and, accordingly, of market failure: since polluters do not pay the

cost of their pollution, they will produce more than is socially optimal even if they may reduce their emissions as a byproduct of improvements in overall efficiency. The only way, ultimately, to reduce pollution is to constrain polluters to do otherwise. It is not, in other words, free-market-driven economic growth and technological change alone that make the I = PAT equation false; it is those things coupled with the right incentives, incentives that the market by

itself cannot provide. ¶ The same facile assumption that the unfettered market is the solvent for all serious problems pervades Goklany's discussion of globalization and its impact on global well-being. As Goklany points out, correctly, it is a myth that the advent of globalization has been accompanied by a rise in

poverty and inequality. In fact, the percentage of the world's population that is poor has actually fallen over the past two decades (although 2.7 billion people still live on less than $2 a day). And inequality -- at least among individuals globally -- has actually declined some as well.

The surprisingly persistent picture of globalization as a process whereby the developed world exploits and immiserates the developing one is just wrong. ¶ The problem, however, is that the number of countries that have

dramatically improved their standards of living in the era of globalization is surprisingly small -- and most of them are in Asia. So even if economic growth is, as it seems to be, fundamental to "the improving state of the world," we have not done a very good job of figuring out how to spread the benefits of that growth around the globe . As Goklany acknowledges, the economies of sub-

Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union have in many cases not just stopped growing but actually shrunk over the past 15 years or so. Most of Latin America has seen only trivial economic growth in the past two decades, while even Asia's "little tigers" (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand) -- whose economies have grown rapidly since the 1970s -- have spent much of the past seven years recovering from the damage wrought by the 1990s Asian financial crisis. It is true that most of these countries have nonetheless seen their human development indicators

improve, thanks to the diffusion of technology and health care. But outside of Asia (and a few places such as Botswana and Chile), the economic benefits of globalization have been hard to

find , which is precisely why there has been such a backlash against what has come to be known as the Washington consensus. Goklany

argues that it only makes sense to attack globalization if there is evidence that rich countries are getting richer on the backs of the poor. But it is not surprising that people are made unhappy by the sight of others getting richer while they stay the same or actually get poorer.

The status quo only appears to be structurally improving because elites are gaining so much while the masses starve---aggregate measurements overlook structural inequality that makes the system unsustainable Stephen Gill 12, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto, and a former Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association, 2012, Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, p. 6-8

Nonetheless, some might query whether there really is, actually or potentially, a ‘global’ organic crisis, since many parts of the world , such as India and China, have continued to grow and develop; indeed, Craig Murphy has

noted that many parts of the global South have had a ‘good crisis’, insofar as many of the reforms that they implemented in response to the Asian financial and economic crisis of 1997–8 have made their financial structures and patterns of economic development more internally robust and better insulated from external financial shocks originating in New York, London or Tokyo (Murphy 2010). Murphy’s point is well made. It is of course important to emphasize the geographical and social unevenness of both the experience and impacts of financial and economic crises across the global social and geopolitical hierarchy.However, this is only part of the story . It is also important to reflect critically on the nature and quality of existing development patterns , particularly those that serve to generalize the dominant model of market civilization – a development model that is wasteful, energy - intensive , consumerist, ecologically myopic and premised on cateri ng mainly to the affluent . Moreover, the development of China and India is far from the happy story some seem to paint – a point that the Chinese leadership seems to have recently acknowledged by prioritizing redistribution and social welfare in its next five-year plan, not least to deal with growing social and ecological contradictions and widespread political unrest. For example, every day in China there are enormous numbers of localized protests concerning living conditions and corruption. Illustrating the displacement of livelihoods and the crisis of social reproduction that characterizes the present phase of primitive accumulation in China, the government estimates that 58 million ‘left-behind children’ (almost 20 per cent of all children in China and about a half of the children living in the countryside) now live with their grandparents or in foster centres, because their parents have left to earn income in the factories and cities (Hille 2011):Mao sent millions of parents into labour camps and their children to the countryside; he forced families to abandon the stoves in their homes and to use communal kitchens and dorms. Even so, Mao failed, ultimately, to destroy the family as the basic cell of Chinese society. Today, what the dictator was unable to accomplish with force is being realized instead by the lure of money.Meanwhile, in India, we see mass suicides of farmers as a debt crisis envelops their lives ; elsewhere in the country perhaps as many as 800 million poor people have been hardly touched by the changes. Most live in the shadow of ‘shining India’. The global situation is therefore replete with deep contradictions . On the one hand, few would deny that material conditions are improving for many Chinese and Indians, and that this should continue to be

the case. On the other hand, if the market civilization model of capitalist development not only continues in the

wealthier countries but also becomes more generalized in India, China and other large developing countries such as

Brazil (notwithstanding President Lula’s redistributive policies), and also assuming that the US rulers sustain their policies and military capabilities along similar lines to now in order to defend and extend that model , I hypothesize

that the global organic crisis will intensify . Its effects will be felt in ways that will be uneven geographically, unequal politically and socially and materially hierarchical. Put differently, the organic crisis may also be globalizing across regions and societies at varying speeds, and it will probably be differentiated in its effects on life chances and basic conditions of existence, generating diverse political effects within and across jurisdictions and throughout the social and political spectrum. Politically, and perhaps paradoxically, at this moment the global organic crisis has not been manifested as a crisis of legitimacy in the global North (although less so in many parts of the global South).However, the question is: will this situation persist – and, indeed, can the current neoliberal frameworks of global leadership

retain legitimacy and credibility while developing a constructive and meaningful set of policies to address it? If not, what are the prospects for alternative concept s of global leadership and frameworks of rule?

Their ev is a snapshot that can’t account for the future trajectory of neolib---it’s unsustainable and causes environmental system collapseBenny Goodman 11, Faculty of Health, Education and Society, Plymouth University, June 2011, “Transformation for Health and Sustainability: “Consumption is Killing Us,”” http://www.academia.edu/666114/Transformation_for_health_and_sustainability_Dualism_and_Anthropocentrism

Ben Ami (2010) tells us however that growth is good, consumption is good and we could have "Ferraris for air. He argues that in advanced industrial societies we have seen decreases in infant and maternal mortality rates and increasing life expectancy coupled with control of infections. We live longer healthier lives. Hans Rosling in his online gapminder series also points out that these indicators are also rising in many developing countries, but he warns that success may literally cost the earth. So how can consumption be killing us?Well, it isn't. Goklany (2006) argues that economic growth, technological change and free trade has helped to power a "cycle of progress" that in the last two centuries enabled unprecedented improvements in every objective measurement of human well-being. Poverty, hunger, malnutrition, child labor, illiteracy and unsafe water have ceased to be global norms; infant mortality has never been lower; and we live longer and healthier lives. Further, Goklany’s research suggests that global agricultural productivity is up, food prices are down, hunger and malnutrition have dropped worldwide, public health has improved, mortality rates are down, and life expectancies are up. So that its then, we are fine.

Except that since he wrote that in 2006 the world saw one food crisis in 2008 and this year 2011 the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation are giving the global food market 'critical' status , again . The Millennium Development Goals have still to be met and maternal and infant mortality is still at numbers too high in many countries to enable any level of complacency.However, if you view the world anthropocentrically within the frame of reference of consumer capitalism and

you happen to live in advanced industrial nations in wealthy suburbs. You can even muster hard empirical evidence to show the beneficence of the global economic system.

The problem with this viewpoint is time frame . Seen from the last 200 years enormous, unprecedented progress has without doubt been made. However the time frame for a proper assessment of the current global system is much longer than that . Even in human time frames the last 200 years is a very short period of history. Depending on definition, the Roman Empire lasted over 400 years, and from the steps of the senate, Julius Ceaser may have dreamed of a millennium of Roman domination. World history is littered with the ruins of human civilizations, hubris comes before a fall. We are not Rome or Byzantium. We have controlled the natural environment (up to a point) to produce food and shelter for billions. However there is a poverty of spirit, a neglect of the 'bottom billion' , willful ignorance of the casualties of inequalities based capitalism , a disconnect from environmental destruction and a lack of vision of alternatives that may lead to more healthy, sustainable lives on a finite planet as we bump up against limits.Of course, assertions about limits needs some evidence. A key paper in this respect is that which addresses the issue of planetary boundaries - i.e. that there are limits to what we can achieve on this planet, that we need urgently to identify what these limits are and then to address what socioeconomic conditions would allow all of humanity to live within the

planet boundaries. If we do not do this , the argument runs, then the ecosystem services upon which all of us (the biosphere) may well collapse leading to a cull of humanity in line with the extinction s we are already exacting on the living world right now. Rockstrom et al (2009) have tried to identify what the key boundaries are and what the limits are within each. They suggest that humanity has already transgressed three of nine boundaries:1. CO2 emissions for climate change.2. Biodiversity loss.3. Biochemical boundaries - the nitrogen cycle (the phosphorous cycle has not yet been transgressed)The other boundaries discussed include:4. Ocean acidification5. Stratospheric ozone depletion6. Global fresh water use7. Change in land use8. Atmospheric aerosol loading (not yet quantified).9. Chemical pollution (not yet quantified). They also argue:"In the last 200 years, humanity has transitioned into a new geological era—termed the Anthropocene—which is defined by an accelerating departure from the stable environmental conditions of the past 12,000 years into a new, unknown state of Earth".

"In order to maintain a global environment that is conducive for human development and well-being, we must define and respect planetary boundaries that delineate a 'safe operating space' for humanity . We must return to the long-term stable global environment that nurtured human development'.

The claim that the squo is improving is neoliberal ideology with no evidence---the system’s getting more unequal and more environmentally destructiveStephen Gill 12, Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science, York University, Toronto, and a former Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy of the International Studies Association, 2012, Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, p. 13

The enormous business literature on global leadership is also concerned with the problems confronting the transnational capitalist class, but sees these principally not as political and ecological challenges (and implicitly questions of legitimacy) but as problems of efficient corporate management or administration, decision-making and processes, and cultural and political sensitivity to local conditions. The litmus test of leadership is the level of profit in global markets. Oddly enough, relatively neglected in the management literature – as well as in much of the literature just reviewed – are the many important global forums that help to shape the strategic perspectives of capital and the state. Examples include the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and the scenario planning used by corporations and government agencies (e.g. by Shell, whose methods have been used by the CIA) not only to influence policy but also to anticipate political challenges to economic and cultural globalization . Organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission and the new Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) bring together dominant globalizing elites from government, corporations, universities, political parties, media, entertainment, the sciences and the arts to forge a consensus and to initiate strategic concepts of global leadership. What seems to be missing from these initiatives is precisely what Sklair (2000) claims was being attempted over a decade ago: comprehensive evidence of well-resourced, broad-based and serious efforts to deal with ever-widening global inequality , the systematic undermining and dispossession of livelihoods and growing threats to the integrity of the biosphere . The fact that this evidence is not forthcoming is perhaps not surprising if one reflects on the realities of the existing state of relations between rulers and ruled on a world scale. Why should international capitalists worry about growing global inequality and class polarization, or, indeed, the future of the planet , if there are no powerful political forces that force them to do so? Perhaps a more convincing hypothesis is that, far from creating a coherent redistributive and ecologically sustainable structure of globalization presided over by a transnational capitalist class, the opposite is true. What is gradually emerging is a more and more unequal and increasingly hierarchical global political and civil society directed by dominant social forces associated with disciplinary neoliberalism that seek to extend market civilization on a world scale, in ways that will further class polarization and the ecological crisis alike.

[Italics in original]

AT: Transition Wars

AT: Transition WarsTransition wars are an ideological lie---they’re happening now as neolib inevitably collapses---it’s try or die for embracing alternative social models that challenge green capitalist measures like the plan Ingar Solty 12, Politics Editor of Das Argument, and co-founder and Board member of the North-Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), an annual summit of left intellectuals organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and funded by the German Foreign Office, 2012, “After neoliberalism: left versus right projects of leadership in the global crisis,” in Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, ed. Gill, p. 213-215

The alternative to a failure of utilizing this crisis for a renewal of capitalism and hegemony appears to be an increasing slide into some form of barbarism. Again, barbarism should also be understood as a cipher ,

inasmuch as it means an acceleration of trends already present within neoliberal capitalism . This includes the rise of authoritarian forms of rule as well as the forceful management of the growing contradictions of global capitalism through new imperial endeavours, motivated both by geo-economic and geopolitical considerations and the likely growth of ‘blowbacks’ and neoliberal ‘boomerangs’ from

the global South. In other words, this development should be understood as a radicalization of the ‘new imperialism’ that emerged precisely in response to the crises produced by neoliberalism and particularly the attempt of the United States to use force as a means to avoid or deter hegemonic decline . The strengthening of elements of authoritarian capitalism would suggest growing inter-imperial rivalries , especially between the United States and China but possibly also between the United States and a German-led European Union. This scenario would also involve a potential fragmentation of the world market (e.g. through protectionism against German exports in the European Union, and possibly also in the United States, and against Chinese exports, especially in the United States but potentially also in Europe), a growing geoeconomic conflict over the world’s resources, particularly fossil fuels, and

the necessary internal authoritarianism to complement and reinforce such inter-imperial rivalries.

Nonetheless, this historic moment is open , and a third alternative does exist. This can be seen partly in the emergence of the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and their attempts at developing not only growing economic, political and ideological independence from the global North but also social and political alternatives to the status quo. At the same time, these semi-peripheral big players are in ideological struggles with, for example, those states of the Latin American ALBA coalition (the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America), which includes Venezuela and Bolivia, that seems to be moving more or less in the direction of an alternative to capitalism, or what it calls ‘twenty-first-century socialism’ – a move that is complemented by new regional military alliance structures. Similarly, also in the global North, the crisis of neoliberal hegemony has led not only to a vacuum filled by right-wing populist parties but, in some cases, most notably in Germany, the rise of political forces that, at least nominally, strive to replace capitalism with democratic socialism , understood as an economic system based on different forms of collective ownership .It is clear that the German situation is an exception throughout the (leading states of the) global North. All the same, it does mean that alternative political projects exist that challenge green capitalist ‘alternatives’ to neoliberal capitalism .

Of course, it might be exactly the emergence and growing strength of such projects, alongside a noticeable new

militancy within labour movements across Europe, that fuels the reestablishment of a new form of capitalist hegemony under a green capitalist order . At the same time, the differences between green capitalism and authoritarian capitalism must under no circumstances be downplayed, since, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels noted in a clear non-teleological moment in probably their most historico-philosophical text, the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the history of class struggle may also end with the ‘common demise of the struggling classes’ (Marx and Engels 1974 [1848]).

AT: Cede the Political

AT: Cede the PoliticalWe’ll straight turn it---neolib degrades political engagement and locks in destructive right-wing populist politics---only the alt solves it Ingar Solty 12, Politics Editor of Das Argument, and co-founder and Board member of the North-Atlantic Left Dialogue (NALD), an annual summit of left intellectuals organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and funded by the German Foreign Office, 2012, “After neoliberalism: left versus right projects of leadership in the global crisis,” in Global Crises and the Crisis of Global Leadership, ed. Gill, p. 205-208

The immediate empirical fallout of the neoliberalization of social democracy was quite obvious . The consequences could be seen in the erosion of the middle classes, the shrinking of the public sector for skilled workers and the expansion of low-wage sectors, especially in countries such as Germany, which, as a result of the lack of a national minimum wage, low strike levels and the dependence of the average wage level on national bargaining coverage, as well as far-reaching employment security (Ku¨ndigungsschutz), were transformed into low-wage economies in very short periods of time. This all found its empirical reflection in the many studies that showed the growing social inequality within the global North and the rapid return of poverty, especially among single mothers and their children. However, these material developments were accompanied by the spread of a deep-seated sense of social insecurity, often independent of actual income levels, that had to result in political change.Erosion of social democracy and conservatism and growing right-wing populismHegemonic theory is challenged by the fact that these social structural developments did not articulate themselves in an identical fashion, either among individuals or groups, despite the fact that the experiences were the same across countries. Nonetheless, a representation crisis was accelerated during the social democratic era of neoliberalism when it became clear that social democratic parties and conservative/Christian democratic parties alike had little to offer to the respective segments of the population that had been their traditional voters. This even included the United States, in which the Democratic Party had never been a class party in the European sense but, rather, had assumed quasi-socialdemocratic functions during the New Deal era while remaining to a large degree a classical liberal party. Thus, the trend towards voter abstention, or, to speak in terms of political sociology, the declining integrative potentials of political (cross-class) parties, was characterized by a clear class nature and a growing disenfranchising of the working-class segment of society, as well as of some parts of the eroding and less secure middle classes. This also meant that neoliberal attempts to portray abstention as a reflection not of people’s dissatisfaction but, rather, of (passive) consent were doomed to fail .

However, this representation crisis was flanked by the rise of rightwing populism , both in terms of right-wing parties

attracting protest votes from the radicalized middle classes and some parts of the alienated working class and in terms of deep-seated authoritarian reactions to the social restructuring under neoliberalism (Bischoff, Do¨ rre and Gauthier 2004). Thus,

not only did this right-wing populism form the backbone of any right-wing project, but it also poisoned the political situation in so far as, where it emerged, it shifted the political climate markedly to the right, and was partly responsible for new social democratic campaigns for workfare regimes and the increased flexibility of labour markets throughout the global North. It is absolutely correct to define right-wing populism as a petty bourgeois or (private sector) middle-class movement. The authoritarianism of the achiever ideology (Leistungsideologie) characteristic of right-wing populism (secular or religious) resonates among the radicalized middle classes. The middle classes experience capitalist competition in the most economically individualized manner; they feel squeezed between, on the one hand, the bourgeoisie and big business and, on the other, the working class. Many of them, such as members of the scientific and technical intelligentsia, as well as people in lower and middle management, are economically, culturally and socially oriented towards and aspire to the top of society. Partly in response to their socialization and partly in response to the experience of struggles connected to the need to succeed amid conditions of cut-throat competition, they tend to develop a habitus, in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of the term, that seeks to distinguish – or is supposed to distinguish – themselves from the working class ‘rabble’. Furthermore, often, and especially during economic crises, they display the particular type of authoritarianism that the Frankfurt School analysed so well (recall the Studies in Prejudice and Theodor Adorno’s description of the dialectic of authoritarian submission, to the ‘market’ status quo, and authoritarian aggression, against those who cannot or do not want to keep pace in the market and are denounced as ‘unproductive’). Although this lack of solidarity can also be focused towards ‘parasitic’ e´lites (financial speculators or politicians who support them), their anger is often – indeed, mostly – directed against groups at the social bottom . The form that this takes varies, but it is typically reflected in ‘tax revolts’. Although the underlying sentiment is that those who are not as ‘honest’ and ‘hard-working’ should take the brunt of paying for the crisis (through higher taxation or lower social benefits or a combination of both), the targeting normally involves some form of ideological disenfranchisement. The unemployed working classes are targeted as ‘lazy bums’. Also common are forms of racism, targeting minorities, asylum seekers, etc. As Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons (2000) have argued in their classic text on US right-wing populism, such populism uses the ‘ideology of the producer’, which juxtaposes the ‘hard-working’, middle (or ‘real’) America and the

objects of authoritarian aggression , whatever they may be.

In short, if right wing populism can be defined as the radicalization of economic liberalism propelled by (middle-class) authoritarianism mobilized during times of crisis, with its corresponding distributional struggles, the radicalized middle classes, in their fear of social decline, will turn the ideology of the producer against those groups that, according to them, should bear the costs of crisis, particularly those who have gained some social and economic protection from the state. Therefore, the aggression of the middle classes’ core, such as the smallscale entrepreneurs, is usually directed against the bottom third or half of society, which is portrayed as ‘parasitic’ and used as a scapegoat. Moreover, it would be wrong to assume that the right-wing populist ideology could not become generalized across many other social strata, including the (unorganized) working class as well: economic position and (objective) class interest are important, but not determining, factors of political behaviour. Therefore, right-wing populism could hold hegemonic sway across some elements of the working class, especially in situations in which no alternative left forces exist or emerge , as a result of the shift towards neoliberalism on the part of traditional social democratic parties and the more or less thorough demise of communist parties throughout Europe since the late 1980s.It should be noted, therefore, that the struggles to decide post-neoliberal pathways will be characterized by the struggle between two principles: the right-wing populist achiever ideology, with its middle-class social base, versus the (mostly working-class and public-sector-based) social democratic/socialist ideology, focused on the solidarity principle. The openness of the historic process is underlined by the fact that multiple constellations and social coalitions become thinkable – given that the divide between authoritarianism and cultural libertarianism runs vertical to the divide between horizontal collectivism and individualism, which is characteristic of the relationship of social forces vis-a`-vis the economic sphere. Put another way, although the dominance of issues capable of mobilizing authoritarian sentiments among the precarious middle class and the class-unconscious working class – such as foreign threats, high crime rates or racial targets – can lead to the ascent of political right turns and more or less top–middle coalitions, the opposite is also possible if coalitions can be built between the culturally more left-/libertarian-minded middle classes and the collective-solidarityoriented, but also more authoritarian, lower classes. This is particularly the case if the blocked wage-dependent middle classes, instead of turning against the bottom, form ‘counter-e´lites’ (Walter 2006) within ‘middle–bottom coalitions’ (Brie, Hildebrandt and Meuche-Ma¨ker 2008) as a result of successful left hegemonic politics.

The alt is the furthest possible thing from ceding the political---creating social relations based on commons instantiates a new political orderMassimo De Angelis 12, Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of East London, 2012, “Crises, Movements and Commons,” Borderlands E-Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol11no2_2012/deangelis_crises.pdf

The fallacy of the political involves therefore a conception of radical change , of ‘revolution’ that is aligned to

Marx’s conception of social revolution (rather than of Lenin’s political revolution).3 In the first place, a social revolution is not the ‘seizure of power’ engineered and lead by a political elite (whether through reformist or political revolutionary means), but the actual production of another form of power , which therefore corresponds to the ‘dissolution’ of the old society and of the old ‘condition of existence’ (Marx 2005 [1848], p. 19) or a change in the ‘economic structure of society’ that is constituted by ‘the totality of the [social] relations of production’ (Marx 1977 [1859]). Secondly, precisely for its characteristics of being constituent of new social relations reproducing life (and dissolving old relations), social revolution cannot be reduced to a momentary event, a ‘victory’, but it is epochal and configured by a series of ‘victories’ and ‘defeats’. Marx thus speaks of the ‘beginning’ of the ‘epoch of social revolution’ (Marx 1977 [1859]), but how long is this epoch, none can say (although climate change and the massive crisis of social reproduction are putting some constraints and urgencies on the horizons). This distinction between social and political revolution does not imply that social revolution is not itself ‘political’ . Social revolution is political in the sense that it acts as a crucial perturbation of established political systems that seek to discipline, order, and channel or draw resources from socioeconomic systems . In this sense, the old feminist dictum that ‘the private is political’ was spot on, in the sense that the social revolutions the women movements managed to produce (or aimed at having) had a crucial impact on political systems.

AT: Tragedy of the Commons

Tragedy of the Commons---2NC Tragedy of the commons assumes commodity based relations and hierarchy—their studies are not empirical—replacing modern mentality with faith in the commons resolves their defense John Byrne et al 9, Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP) and Distinguished Professor of Energy & Climate Policy; Cecilia Martinez and Colin Ruggero, April 2009, “Relocating Energy in the Social Commons,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 29, No. 2, p. 81-94

A tragedy occurred in the latter half of the 20th century when moderns tried to understand the idea of the commons. Garret Hardin began the process in a famous paper whose title mourned the result of social use of the idea: he was certain that growing environmental harm could be explained by its use and he offered a gloomy forecast if we did not quickly replace commons practice with modern practice (see Hardin, 1968). His paper conceived the commons as a natural resource bundle or physical area, and commons management was defined as the informal social scheme evolving out of growth in and greater proximity of human settlements to one another, to govern access and use of resources or environmental space. He regarded the scheme as leading to virtually unregulated access and use because enforcement, due to the informality of the scheme, was weak. Moreover, there would be little interest in enforcement of restrictions on access or use for environmental reasons. The fate of commons management, he concluded, would be environmental plunder. Only by the conversion of commons areas to privatized commodities or publicly regulated zones with strong economic incentives and penalties to guide access and use, could tragedy be averted. A large body of research literature formed around the proposition, most of it confirming that commons management is an out-of-date idea. However, in our view, the tragedy lies not in the commons , but in the modern idea of it and of the human personality that moderns regard as normal or, at least, practical. The t ragedy o f the c ommons is conceived by

Hardin and others from the perspective of a cornucopian political economy in which profit , unlimited production , and unstoppable demands for higher and higher per capita material wealth dominate nature-society relations . In this regard, the argument assumes a reality of commodity-based relations . The personality that would experience nature through this lens is similarly assigned standing as real . Indeed, it is presupposed that human beings who strive for wealth without limit are rational , leading many researchers to search for solutions to the tragedy by using sophisticated rational actor models .

Yet when checked in real time, many report the existence of commons management schemes built around cooperative arrangements that work (e.g., Byrne & glover, 2002; The Ecologist, 1993; Ostrom et al., 2003). The differences are

telling about why the tragedy may be conceptual, rather than social . First, empirical studies regarding the tragedy are mixed in their findings (Ostrom et al., 2003). This means that the actuality of overexploitation of nature may not significantly reside with commons management . But perhaps more important, a good portion of the research literature on commons tragedies is not empirical: often, researchers pose hypotheticals , lay out assumptions, refer anecdotally to how at least some of the assumptions made in their work appear to match reports in cited case studies , and then reach conclusions of a tragic character about the hypothesized life in the commons

(see Byrne et al., 2002; Ostrom et al., 2003). In our view, such hypothetical studies tell us more about what moderns would do if they fell on a commons than about commons history per se . Modern hypotheses may be correct that moderns cannot be trusted in the commons , but this begs the question : should we abandon commons ideas because modernity is real (although, admittedly, suffering from unsustainability and inequality, on a grand

scale)?14 Or should we replace the modern mentality and ideology with one more suitable for commons governance—and, possibly solve the hitherto entrenched problems that cornucopianism and energy obesity cannot?Obviously, we have chosen to explore the latter option. Although commons institutions do not in and of

themselves guarantee eradication of environmentally exploitive practices , they do offer elements for recover y of political agency in the formation of choices regarding energy and environmental futures and the foundation for a normative reconstitution of the good life . Diverse human populations have demonstrated that commons governance can provide for long-term environmental sustainability. In fact, 200 years of

industrialization and the attendant commodification of nature supported by the obese energy regime could be conceived as the tragedy in the historical record.

AFF Answers

A2: Neoliberalism K – 2AC Framework—focus of the debate should be on the material implications of the plan—key to AFF ground—their framework allows them to skirt the question of the necessity of the government taking action Beginning from rejection is bad-environmental reform must be gradual BUT this does not guarantee cooptionBarry, Belfast politics reader, 2007(John, “Towards a model of green political economy: from ecological modernisation to economic security”, Int. J. Green Economics, 1.3/4, ebsco)Economic analysis has been one of the weak est and least developed areas of broadly green/sustainable development thinking. For example, whatever analysis there is within the green political canon is largely utopian – usually based on an argument for the complete transformation of modern society and economy as the only way to deal with ecological catastrophe, an often linked to a critique of the socioeconomic failings of capitalism that echoed a broadly radical Marxist/socialist or anarchist analysis; or underdeveloped – due, in part, to the need to outline and develop other aspects of green political theory. However, this gap within green thinking has recently been filled by a number of scholars, activists, think tanks, and environmental NGOs who have outlined various models of green political economy to underpin sustainable development political aims, principles and objectives. The aim of this article is to offer a draft of a realistic, but critical, version of green political economy to underpin the economic dimensions of radical views about sustainable development. It is written explicitly with a view to encouraging others to think through this aspect of sustainable

development in a collaborative manner. Combined realism and radicalism marks this article, which starts with the point that we cannot build or

seek to create a sustainable economy ab nihlo, but must begin from where we are , with the structures , institutions, modes of production , laws and regulations that we already have. Of course, this does not mean simply accepting these as immutable or set in stone; after all, some of the current institutions, principles and structures underpinning the dominant economic model are the very causes

of unsustainable development. We do need to recognise , however, that we must work with (and ‘through’ – in the terms of the

original German Green Party’s slogan of ‘marching through the institutions’) these existing structures , as well as change and reform and in some cases, abandon them as either unnecessary or positively harmful to the creation and maintenance of a sustainable economy and society. Equally, this article also recognises

that an alternative economy and society must be based in the reality that most people (in the West) will not democratically vote for

a completely different type of society and economy. That reality must also accept that a ‘green economy’ is one that is recognisable to most people and that indeed safeguards and guarantees not just their basic needs but also aspirations (within limits). The realistic character of the thinking behind this article accepts that consumption and materialistic lifestyles are here to stay (so long

as they do not transgress any of the critical thresholds of the triple bottom line) and indeed there is little to be gained by proposing alternative economic systems , which start from a complete rejection of consumption and materialism. The appeal to realism is i n part an attempt to correct the common misperception (and self-perception) of green politics and economics requiring an excessive degree of self-denial and a puritanical asceticism (Goodin, 1992, p.18; Allison, 1991, p.170–178). While rejecting the claim that green political theory calls for the complete disavowal of materialistic lifestyles, it is true that green politics does require the collective reassessment of such lifestyles, and does require a degree of shared sacrifice. It does not mean, however, that we necessarily require the complete and across-the-board rejection of materialistic lifestyles.

There must be room and tolerance in a green economy for people to live ‘ungreen lives’ so long as they do not ‘harm’ others, threaten long-term ecological sustainability or create unjust levels of socioeconomic inequalities. Thus, realism in this context is in part another name for the acceptance of a broadly ‘liberal’ or ‘post-liberal’ (but certainly not anti-liberal) green perspective.1

No limits to growth-tech and demographics solveBisk, Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking director, 2012(Tsvi, “No Limits to Growth”, https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf)

The Case for No Limits to Growth Notwithstanding all of the above, I want to reassert that by imagineering an alternative future—based on solid science and

technology— we can create a situation in which there are “no limits to growth .” It begins with a new paradigm for food production now under development : the urban vertical farm. This is a concept popularized by Prof. Dickson Despommier of Columbia

University.30 A 30-story urban vertical farm located on five square acres could yield food for fifty thousand people. We are talking about high-tech installations that would multiply productivity by a factor of 480: four growing seasons, times twice the density of crops, times two growing levels on each floor, times 30 floors = 480. This means that five acres of land can produce the equivalent of 2,600 acres of conventionally planted and tended crops. Just 160 such buildings occupying only 800 acres could feed the entire city of New York. Given this calculus, an area the size of Denmark could feed the entire human race. Vertical farms would be self-sustaining. Located contiguous to or inside urban centers, they could also contribute to urban renewal. They

would be urban lungs, improving the air quality of cities. They would produce a varied food supply year-round. They would use 90% less water. Since

agriculture consumes two-thirds of the water worldwide, mass adoption of this technology would solve humanity’s water problem .

Food would no longer need to be transported to market; it would be produced at the market and would not require use of petroleum intensive agricultural equipment.

This, along with less ened use of pesticides , herbicides and fertilizers, would not only be better for the environment but would eliminate agriculture’s dependence on petroleum and significantly reduce petroleum demand. Despite increased efficiencies, direct (energy) and indirect (fertilizers, etc.) energy use represented over 13% of farm expenses in 2005-

2008 and have been increasing as the price of oil rises.31 Many of the world’s damaged ecosystems would be repaired by the consequent abandonment of farmland . A “rewilding” of our planet would take place. Forests, jungles and savannas would reconquer nature, increasing habitat and becoming giant CO2 “sinks,” sucking up the excess CO2 that the industrial revolution has pumped into the atmosphere. Countries already investigating the adoption of such technology include Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China—countries that are water starved or highly populated. Material Science, Resources and Energy The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place is the key to “no limits to growth.” I refer to “smart” and

superlight materials. Smart materials “are materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli.” 32 They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials) or by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing process by changing shape or repairing themselves as a consequence of various external stimuli. These materials have all

passed the “proof of concept” phase (i.e., are scientifically sound) and many are in the prototype phase. Some are already commercialized and penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has underlain a one-kilometer stretch of local highway with piezoelectric material to “harvest” the wasted stress energy of vehicles passing over and convert it to electricity.33 They reckon that Israel has stretches of road that can efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of the New Jersey Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential megawatts produced without any fossil fuels. Additional energy is derivable from thermoelectric materials, which can transform wasted heat into electricity. As Christopher Steiner notes, capturing waste heat from manufacturing alone in the United States would provide an additional 65,000 megawatts: “enough for 50 million homes.”34 Smart glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, airconditioning and lighting—up to 50% saving in energy has been achieved in retrofitted legacy buildings (such as the former Sears Tower in Chicago). New buildings, designed to take maximum advantage of this and other technologies could save even more. Buildings consume 39% of America’s energy and 68% of its electricity. They emit 38% of the carbon dioxide, 49% of the sulfur dioxide, and 25% of the nitrogen oxides found in the air.35 Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs with LEDS which use 1/10th the electricity of incandescent and half the

electricity of fluorescents. These three steps: transforming waste heat into electricity, retrofitting buildings with smart glass, and LED lighting , could cut America’s electricity consumption and its CO2 emissions by 50% within 10 years. They would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction and home improvements. Coal driven electricity generation would become a thing of the past. The coal released could be liquefied or gasified (by new environmentally friendly technologies) into the energy equivalent of 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. This is equivalent to the amount of oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela together.36 Conservation of energy

and parasitic energy harvesting, as well as urban agriculture would cut the planet’s energy consumption and air and water pollution significantly. Waste-to-energy technologies could begin to replace fossil fuels . Garbage, sewage, organic trash, and agricultural and food processing waste are essentially hydrocarbon resources that can be transformed into ethanol, methanol, and biobutanol or biodiesel. These can be used for transportation, electricity generation or as feedstock for plastics and other materials. Waste-to-energy is essentially a recycling of CO2 from the environment instead of introducing new CO2 into the environment. Waste-to-energy also prevents the production, and release from rotting organic waste, of methane—a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2. Methane accounts for 18% of the manmade greenhouse effect. Not as much as CO2, which constitutes 72%, but still considerable (landfills emit as much

greenhouse gas effect, in the form of methane, as the CO2 from all the vehicles in the world). Numerous prototypes of a variety of waste-to- energy technologies are already in place. When their declining costs meet the rising costs of fossil fuels , they will become commercialized and, if history is any judge, will replace fossil fuels very quickly —just as coal replaced wood in a matter of decades and petroleum replaced whale oil in a matter of years. Superlight Materials But it is superlight materials that have the greatest potential to transform civilization and, in conjunction with the above, to usher in the “no limits to growth” era. I refer, in particular, to car-bon nanotubes—alternatively referred to as Buckyballs or Buckypaper (in honor of Buckminster Fuller). Carbon nanotubes are between 1/10,000th and 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, more flexible than rubber and 100-500 times stronger than steel per unit of weight. Imagine the energy savings if planes, cars, trucks, trains, elevators—everything that needs energy to move—were made of this material and weighed 1/100th what they weigh now. Imagine the types of alternative energy that would become practical. Imagine the positive impact on the environment: replacing many industrial processes and mining, and thus lessening air and groundwater pollution. Present costs and production methods make this impractical but that infinite resource—the human mind—has confronted and solved many problems like this before. Let us take the example of aluminum. A hundred fifty years ago, aluminum was more expensive than gold or platinum.37 When Napoleon III held a banquet, he provided his most honored guests with aluminum plates. Less-distinguished guests had to make do with gold! When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, it was fitted with an aluminum cap—the most expensive metal in the world at the time—as a sign of respect to George Washington. It weighed 2.85 kilograms, or 2,850 grams. Aluminum at the time cost $1 a gram (or $1,000 a kilogram). A typical day laborer working on the monument was paid $1 a day for 10-12 hours a day. In other words, today’s common soft-drink can, which weighs 14 grams, could have bought 14 ten-hour days of labor in 1884.38 Today’s U.S. minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. Using labor as the measure of value, a soft drink can would cost $1,125 today (or $80,000 a kilogram), were it not for a new method of processing aluminum ore. The Hall-Héroult process turned aluminum into one of the cheapest commodities on earth only two years after the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum. Today aluminum costs $3 a kilogram, or $3000 a metric ton. The soft drink can that would have cost $1,125 today without the process now costs $0.04. Today the average cost of industrial grade carbon nanotubes is about $50-$60 a kilogram. This is already far cheaper in real cost than aluminum was in 1884.

Yet revolutionary methods of production are now being developed that will drive costs down even more radically. At Cambridge University they are working on a new electrochemical production method that could produce 600 kilograms of carbon nanotubes per day at a projected cost of around $10 a kilogram, or $10,000 a metric ton.39 This will do for carbon nanotubes what the Hall-Héroult process

did for aluminum. Nanotubes will become the universal raw material of choice , displacing steel, aluminum, copper and other metals and materials. Steel presently costs about $750 per metric ton. Nanotubes of equivalent strength to a metric ton of steel would cost $100 if this Cambridge process (or others being pursued in research labs around the world) proves successful. Ben Wang, director of Florida State’s High Performance Materials Institute

claims that: “If you take just one gram of nanotubes, and you unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field”.40 Since other research has indicated that carbon nanotubes would be more suitable than silicon for producing p hoto v oltaic energy, consider the implications. Several grams of this material could be the energy-producing skin for new generations of superlight dirigibles—making these airships energy autonomous. They could replace airplanes as the primary means to transport air freight. Modern American history has shown that anything human beings decide they want done can be done in 20 years if it does not violate the laws of nature. The atom bomb was developed in four

years; putting a man on the moon took eight years. It is a reasonable conjecture that by 2020 or earlier, a n industrial process for the inexpensive production of carbon nanotubes will be developed , and that this would be the key to solving our energy,

raw materials, and environmental problems all at once. Mitigating Anthropic Greenhouse Gases Another vital component of a “no limits to growth” world is to formulate a rational environmental policy that saves money; one that would gain wide grassroots support because it would benefit taxpayers and businesses, and would not endanger livelihoods. For example, what do sewage treatment, garbage disposal, and fuel costs amount to as a percentage of municipal budgets? What are the costs of waste disposal and fuel costs in stockyards, on poultry farms, throughout the food processing industry, and in restaurants? How much aggregate energy could be saved from all of the above? Some experts claim that we could obtain enough liquid fuel from recycling these hydrocarbon resources to satisfy all the transportation needs of the United States. Turning the above waste into energy by various means would be a huge cost saver and value generator, in addition to being a blessing to the environment. The U.S. army has developed a portable field apparatus that turns a combat unit’s human waste and garbage into bio-diesel to fuel their vehicles and generators.41 It is called TGER—the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery. It eliminates the need to transport fuel to the field, thus saving lives, time, and equipment expenses. The cost per barrel must still be very high. However, the history of military technology being civilianized and revolutionizing accepted norms is long. We might expect that within 5-10 years, economically competitive units using similar technologies will appear in restaurants, on farms, and perhaps even in individual households, turning organic waste into usable and economical fuel. We might conjecture that within several decades, centralized sewage disposal and

garbage collection will be things of the past and that even the Edison Grid (unchanged for over one hundred years) will be deconstructed. The Promise of Algae Biofuels produced from algae could eventually provide a substantial portion of our transportation fuel. Algae has a much higher productivity potential than crop-based biofuels because it grows faster, uses less land and requires only sun and CO2 plus nutrients that can be provided from gray sewage water. It is the primo CO2 sequesterer because it works for free (by way of photosynthesis), and in doing so produces biodiesel and ethanol in much higher volumes per acre than corn or other crops. Production costs are the biggest remaining challenge. One Defense Department estimate pins them at more than $20 a gallon.42 But once commercialized in industrial scale facilities, production cost could go as low as $2 a gallon (the equivalent of $88 per barrel of oil) according to Jennifer Holmgren, director of renewable fuels at an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International.43 Since algae uses waste water and CO2 as its primary feedstock, its use to produce transportation fuel or feedstock for product would actually improve the environment. The Promise of the Electric Car There are 250 million cars in the United States. Let’s assume that they were all fully electric vehicles (EVs) equipped with 25-kWh batteries. Each kWh takes a car two to three miles, and if the average driver charges the car twice a week, this would come to about 100 charge cycles per year. All told, Americans would use 600 billion kWh per year, which is only 15% of the current total U.S. production of 4 trillion kWh per year. If supplied during low demand times, this would not even require additional power plants. If cars were made primarily out of Buckypaper, one kWh might take a car 40-50 miles. If the surface of the car was utilized as a photovoltaic, the car of the future might conceivably become energy autonomous (or at least semi-autonomous). A kWh produced by a coal-fired power plant creates two pounds of CO2, so our car-related CO2 footprint would be 1.2 trillion pounds if all electricity were produced by coal. However, burning one gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of CO2.44 In 2008, the U.S. used 3.3 billion barrels of gasoline, thereby creating about 3 trillion pounds of CO2. Therefore, a switch to electric vehicles would cut CO2 emissions by 60% (from 3 trillion to 1.2 trillion pounds), even if we burned coal exclusively to generate that power. Actually, replacing a gas car with an electric car will cause zero increase in electric draw because refineries use seven kWh of power to refine crude oil into a gallon of gasoline. A Tesla Roadster can go 25 miles on that 7 KWh of power. So the electric car can go 25 miles using the same electricity needed to refine the gallon of gas that a combustion engine car would use to go the same distance. Additional

Strategies The goal of mitigating global warming/climate change without changing our lifestyles is not naïve. Using proven Israeli expertise, planting forests on just 12% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset the annual CO2 output of one thousand 500-megawatt coal plant s (a gigaton a year).45 A global program of foresting 60% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset five thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (five gigatons a year). Since mitigation goals for global warming include reducing our CO2 emissions by eight gigatons by 2050, this project alone would have a tremendous ameliorating effect. Given that large swaths of semi-arid land areas contain or border on some of the poorest populations

on the planet, we could put millions of the world’s poorest citizens to work in forestation, thus accomplishing two positives (fighting poverty and

environmental degradation) with one project. Moving agriculture from its current fieldbased paradigm to vertical urban ag riculture would eliminate two gigatons of CO2. The subsequent re-wilding of vast areas of the earth’s surface could help sequester up to 50 gigatons of CO2 a year , completely reversing the trend. The revolution underway in material science will help us to become “self-sufficient” in energy. It will also enable us to create superlight vehicles and structures that will produce their own energy. Over time, carbon nanotubes will replace steel, copper and aluminum in a myriad of functions. Converting waste to energy will eliminate most of the methane gas humanity releases into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, artificial photosynthesis will suck CO2 out of the air at 1,000 times the rate of natural photosynthesis.46 This trapped CO2 could then be combined with hydrogen to create much of the petroleum we will continue to need. As hemp and other fast-growing plants replace wood for making

paper, the logging industry will largely cease to exist. Self-contained fish farms will provide a major share of our protein needs with far less environmental damage to the oceans . Population Explosion or Population Implosion One constant refrain of anti-growth advocates is that we are heading towards 12 billion people by the end of the century, that this is unsustainable, and thus that we must proactively reduce the human population to 3 billion-4 billion in order to “save the planet” and human civilization from catastrophe. But recent data indicates that a demographic winter will

engulf humanity by the middle of this century. More than 60 countries (containing over half the world’s population) already do not have replacement birth rates of 2.1 children per woman. This includes the entire EU, China, Russia, and half a

dozen Muslim countries, including Turkey, Algeria, and Iran. If present trends continue , India, Mexico and Indonesia will join this group before 2030.

The human population will peak at 9-10 billion by 2060, after which, for the first time since the Black Death, it will begin to shrink. By the end of the century, the human population might be as low as 6 billion -7 billion. The real danger is not a population explosion; but the consequences of the impending population implosion.47 This demographic process is not being driven by famine or disease as has been the case in all previous history. Instead, it is being driven by the greatest Cultural Revolution in the history of the human race: the liberation and empowerment of women. The fact is that even with present technology, we would still be able to sustain a global population of 12 billion by the end of the century if needed. The evidence for this is cited above.

Permutation—do the plan and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alternative Rejection fails-leaves people politically immobile due to lack of vision. Perm solves best because it pragmatically incorporates neoliberal elements for social good AND because it promotes experimentation over theoretical rejectionFerguson, Stanford anthropology chair and professor, 2010

(James, “Toward a left art of government: from ‘Foucauldian critique’ to Foucauldian politics”,History of the Human Sciences 2011 24: 61, SAGE)

One of the founding premises of this special issue and the conference with which it began is that Foucault has been read, and used, in different ways in different

academic disciplines. In this article I will discuss one common way of using Foucault’s thought in my own discipline of anthropology. I will suggest that the strategy of using Foucauldian modes of analysis to ‘critique power’ (as it is often put) has frequently led to a rather sterile form of political engagement. Attention to some of Foucault’s own remarks about politics hints at a different political sensibility, in which empirical experimentation rather than moralistic denunciation takes center place. I will reference some examples of such experimentation that come out of my current research on the politics of social assistance in southern Africa (though I do not have space here to give a full exposition of these). The sort of use of Foucault that I have in

mind is well represented in the anthropology of development (and the related field of what is sometimes called critical development studies). Here, the characteristic strategy is to use Foucauldian analysis to reveal the way that interventions, projects, etc., which claim to be

merely technical or benevolent, really involve relations of power. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but too often, in this

field, such a simple demonstration is apparently seen as the end of the exercise. Power has been ‘critiqued’, an oppressive system has been exposed as such, and that seems to be taken as a satisfactory end to the matte r.

This impasse in development studies and anthropology is related, I think, to a wider predicament that progressive or left politics seems to find itself in today. The predicament is that the left seems increasingly to be defined by a series of gestures of refusal – what I call ‘the antis’ (anti-globalization, anti-neo-liberalism, anti-privatization, anti-Bush, sometimes even anti-capitalism – but always ‘anti’, never ‘pro’). The current world system, the politics of the ‘anti-’ points out, rests on inequality and exploitation. The global

poor are being screwed, while the rich are benefiting. The powerless are getting the short end of the stick. This is all perfectly true, of course, if not terribly illuminating. But such lines of argument typically have very little to propose by way of an alternative ‘art of government’. Governing is exercising power over others, which is what the powerful do to the downtrodden. It appears as something to be resisted or denounced, not improved or experimented with. My first observation about this sort of analysis is that it rests on

what seems tome a very un-Foucauldian idea of the political. Foucault did, certainly, valorize certain forms of resistance, and worked tirelessly to undermine and denaturalize taken-for-granted arrangements of power . But he never suggested that power ought not be exercised, or that it was illegitimate for someto seek to govern the conduct of others.On the contrary, he repeatedly insisted that it made no sense (in his scheme of things) to wish for a world without power.1 Naive readings of Foucault turned his skeptical analytics of power into a simple denunciation. Thus the question (once posed to him by an interviewer) of whether it would be an intolerable use of power for a parent to prevent a child from scribbling on the walls of a house. Foucault’s instructive answer was: If I accepted the picture of power that is frequently adopted – namely, that it’s something horrible and repressive for the individual – it’s clear that preventing a child from scribbling would be an unbearable tyranny. But that’s not it. I say that power is a relation. A relation in which one guides the behavior of others. And there’s no reason why this manner of guiding the behavior of others should not ultimately have results which are positive, valuable, interesting, and so on. If I had a kid, I assure you he would not write on the walls – or if he did, it would be against my will. The very idea! (Foucault, 1988a: 11–13) In the same interview, he complained of those who . . . think I’m a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I’m trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent, attitude. . . . To question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that’s not the same thing as constructing a

mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse. (ibid.: 11–13) In fact, Foucault was as fascinated and attracted by power as he was by resistance, and his fundamental concern was with how (not whether) power is exercised. This led him, naturally enough, to the problem of government, which he inevitably took up as a pragmatic puzzle . Some

contemporary practitioners of what I have termed ‘Foucauldian critique’ seem to think it is some sort of scandal that people should be governed at all – supposing it to be somehow illegitimate that some should seek to guide the conduct of others. But Foucault took a deep and

largely sympathetic interest in the development of what he called ‘arts of government’. Indeed, he once suggested (in a provocative set of remarks on neo-

liberalism) that while the right had, in the mid- to late 20th century, invented powerful new arts of government, the left had suffered from the ‘absence of a socialist art of government’, and a historic failure to develop an ‘autonomous governmentality’ comparable to liberalism (Foucault, 2008: 93–4). This observation leads to a question that must be a central one for what I am here terming ‘Foucauldian politics’.

That is: What might a genuinely ‘left’ art of government look like? And where might we find the specific governmental techniques and rationalities that might enable such an art? Looking at the world as a whole – and especially at the poorest and most disadvantaged parts of it, in which both I and my discipline have long taken a special interest – it seems evident that we can only answer such questions if we are willing to question some of the foundational assumptions that have dominated left thought throughout the last century or more. Let me cite just two

reasons for this. First, in much of the world (and especially in the poorest parts of it), formal wage labor does not play the central role that so much left thought ascribes to it. The semimythical figure of the proletarian was, of course, at the heart of ideologies of state socialism, even as the extraction of labor was foundational to its political economy. But the ‘able bodied worker’ was hardly less central to the workings of social democracies and welfare states, where Keynesian policies implied a kind of pact between capital and labor, mediated by the state. ‘Society’, in such a scheme, was grounded on the (normatively male) wage earning worker and ‘his family’, while ‘social welfare’ intervention was available for those left outside the security of labor (whether through injury, old age, or periodic dips in the business cycle). Insurance rationality provided the technical means for universalizing

certain sorts of social citizenship (at the level of the nation-state) on the basis of the non-universal (but sufficiently widespread) social condition of wage labor. This template never really applied very well to Africa, where wage laborers have always been a small minority of the population.

And it applies even less well today, when economic restructuring and de-industrialization have meant that formal wage employment is ever more the exception than the rule. In the rapidly expanding cities of today’s Africa, the great mass of the population is not ‘employed’ in the usual sense of the word, and increasingly lacks connections (or rights) to land as well. Neither workers nor peasants, they dwell in the socalled ‘informal economy’, eking out a meagre survival through an impressive range of improvised bits of this and that (cf. Davis, 2007). The poverty of our analytical vocabulary in describing such people and their way of life (Are they ‘the lumpen’? ‘The youth’? ‘The informal’ – whatever that means?) ismatched by our inability to conceive of forms of politics that would given them a central place. Certainly, the old left strategy of

dismissing such people as a residual and degenerate fringe (Marx’s ‘lumpenproletariat’) can hardly suffice when we are talking (as we often are today) about the majority of the population. The second challenge I wish to note to conventional left thinking is the rise of forms of social assistance that bypass nation-states. The usual left stance identifies ‘neo-liberalism’ as the enemy of the state, and thus of such social goods as welfare and pensions. But in much of Africa, most forms of ‘social assistance’ are funded and implemented by non-state agencies. This has long been the case, in many areas, thanks to the key role of Christian missions in providing education, health care and other social services from the colonial era onward. The NGO revolution of the recent decades has only accentuated the pattern, to the point where many of the key governmental relations that servicer eceiving Africans have are not with state

bureaucracies, but with NGOs funded by transnational philanthropic foundations. The most common left response to this transnationalization of ‘the social’ has been to oppose such developments (again, the ‘anti’), and to defend the sovereignty of African states, which

are imagined as being (at least potentially) the agents of development and resistors of imperialism. Such stances have sometimes been justified, but they have not led to very effective forms of politics. Might another sort of left politics not be possible – one that would look forward and try to identify new possibilities and openings in the current transnational

regime, instead of looking back to an (often misremembered or idealized) era of sovereign ‘developmental states’ ? And (crucially for my purposes here), might it not be possible to identify or discover new ‘arts of government’ that might take advantage of (rather than simply fighting against) recent transformations in the spatial organization of government and social assistance? This is the sort of rethinking that will be necessary if we are to get

beyond the politics of the ‘anti’ and arrive at a convincing response to Foucault’s challenge to develop a true left art of government. Such rethinking will have to be willing to decenter the two sacred touchstones of 20th-century progressive politics – the worker and the nation-state – while finding or reinventing techniques of government that can gain traction in settings where most of ‘the masses’ are not workers, and most social services are not delivered by states. In such circumstances, simply attacking ‘neo-liberalism’ and defending ‘the welfare state’ is not terribly helpful. What is needed instead is a revitalized notion of the political good – and of what ‘social assistance’ might mean in a world where so many of the assumptions of the Keynesian welfare state no longer obtain. In matters of ‘social policy’, Foucault’s 1983 observation remains true nearly a quarter-century later: We are still bound up with an outlook that was formed between 1920 and 1940, mainly under the influence of Beveridge, a man who was born over a hundred years ago. For the moment . . . we completely lack the intellectual tools necessary to envisage in new terms the form in which we might attain what we are looking for. (Foucault, 1988b:

166) My recent work is concerned with empirical domains in which some of the conceptual innovation that Foucault called for may be under way. Perhaps the most provocative finding to date is that some of the most interesting and promising new forms of government being devised seem to be taking market mechanisms that we are used to associating with neo-liberalism, and putting them to new political uses. Consider, for instance, new anti-poverty programs in southern Africa that seek to provide cash support for incomes, and thus (in theory) harness markets to the task of meeting the needs of the poor. This is happening in several African countries, but also in a great many other postcolonial states – from Brazil and Venezuela to Mexico and Bangladesh – where leftist and rightist regimes alike have seen fit to introduce policies that transfer cash directly into the hands of the poor (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009; cf. Ferguson, 2010). The South African Basic Income Grant campaign is the example I know best. This involves a proposal to deal with a crisis of persistent poverty by providing a small unconditional minimum monthly payment to all. The argument goes like this: markets are not working for poor people because they are too poor to participate in them. Government programs are not working for them because the state is inefficient. So: provide income support directly, in the form of cash, then say to the poor: ‘You are now empowered to solve your own problems in the way you see best.’ In contrast to older forms of ‘welfare’ assistance, the claim is that such grants rely on poor people’s own ability to solve their own problems, without imposing the policing, paternalism and surveillance of the traditional welfare state. The ‘social’ of the social welfare state is largely discarded, in this scheme. Assistance is largely decoupled from familistic assumptions and insurance rationality alike, while the state is imagined as both universally engaged (as a kind of direct provider for each and every citizen) and maximally disengaged (taking no real interest in shaping the conduct of those under its care, who are seen as knowing their own needs better than the state does). (See Standing and Samson, 2003; Barchiesi, 20007; Ferguson, 2007.) Similar new lines of thought are visible in recent campaigns for an increased role for direct cash transfers in many forms of social and humanitarian policy. For instance, an increasingly influential argument in the area of humanitarian assistance maintains that hunger is best dealt with by boosting the purchasing power of those at risk, rather than by distributing food aid. The current international food aid system involves taking excess grain (produced under subsidized conditions in rich countries) and transporting it to places (largely in Africa) where people are at risk of hunger. Following Amartya Sen, critics have long noted the perverse effects of this: depressing producer prices for local farmers, and damaging the local institutions for producing and distributing food crops. Once food aid has arrived, local food production often never recovers, and the ‘temporary’ crisis becomes permanent. As an alternative, Sen’s followers have pushed for cash payments to be made directly to those at risk of food deficit. People with money in their pockets, Sen points out, do not starve. And the economic chain of events that is set in motion by boosting purchasing power leads (through market forces) to increased capacity for local production and distribution (Sen, 1983; Dreze and Sen, 1991). The argument recalls Jane Guyer’s groundbreaking work on feeding African cities (1989). Consider, Guyer suggests, how food ends up in bellies in the vast mega-cities of West Africa such as Lagos. The logistical task of moving thousands of tons of food each day fromthousands of local producers to millions of urban consumerswould be beyond the organizational capacity of any state (to say nothing of the less-than-exemplary Nigerian one). Here, market mechanisms, drawing on

the power of vast self-organizing networks, are very powerful, and very efficient. Such forms of organization must appear especially attractive where states lack capacity (and let us remember how many progressive dreams in Africa have crashed on the rocks of low state capacity).

Why should relying on this sort of mechanism be inherently right-wing? Well, the answer is obvious: markets serve only those with purchasing power. But the food aid example shows a way of redirecting markets toward the poor, by intervening not to restrict the market, but to boost purchasing power. I have become convinced that (at least in the case of food aid) this is good public policy. Is it also neo-liberal? Perhaps that is not the right question. Let us rather ask:

Are there specific sorts of social policy that might draw on characteristic neo-liberal ‘moves’ (like using markets

to deliver services) that would also be genuinely pro-poor? That seems to me a question worth asking. It seems clear that the governmental programs I have discussed here do draw on recognizably neo-liberal elements (including the

valorization of market efficiency, individual choice and autonomy; themes of entrepreneurship; and skepticism about the state as a service provider).2 But those who advocate and fight for these policies would insist that they are, in fact ‘pro-poor’ , and that they are ways of fighting against (rather than capitulating to) the growing inequality that recent ‘neo-liberal’ economic restructuring has produced. These claims, I think, are not easily dismissed. And this, in turn, raises the fascinating possibility that the ‘neo-liberal’ and the ‘pro-poor’ may not be so automatically opposed as we are used to supposing. What is of special interest here is the way that certain sorts of new progressive initiatives may involve not simply ‘opposing the neo-liberal project’, but appropriating key mechanisms of neo-liberal government for different ends. This does not mean that these political projects

are therefore suspect – ‘contaminated’ by their association with neo-liberal rationality. Rather, it means that they are appropriating certain characteristic neo-liberal ‘moves’ (and I think of these discursive and programmatic moves as analogous to the moves one might make in a game)

that while recognizably ‘neo-liberal’, can be used for quite different purposes than that term usually implies. As I have argued in a related paper (Ferguson, 2010), this situation may be analogous to the way that statistical techniques that were developed in the 19th century for calculating the probabilities of workplace injuries eventually became building blocks of the insurance techniques that enabled the rise of the welfare state. Such techniques were originally developed in the 19th century by large employers to control costs, but they eventually became the technical basis for social insurance, and ultimately helped enable unprecedented gains for the working class across much of the world (Ewald, 1986). Techniques have no necessary loyalty to the political program within which they were developed, and mechanisms of government that were invented to serve one purpose can easily enough be appropriated for surprising other uses. ‘Market’ techniques of government such as those I have discussed were, like workplace statistics, undoubtedly conservative in their original uses. But it seems at least possible that they may be in the process of being creatively appropriated, and repurposed for different and more progressive sorts of

ends. To be sure: we need to be skeptical about the facile idea that problems of poor people can be solved simply by inviting them to participate in markets and enterprise. Such claims (which often ascribe almost magical transformative

powers to such unlikely vehicles as ‘social entrepreneurship’ or ‘microcredit’) are almost always misleading, and often fraudulent. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the coupling of pro-poor social policy with market mechanisms out of hand, out of a reflexive sense that the latter are ‘neo-liberal’ and thus ‘bad’. Again, my interest here is in the potential mobility of a set of governmental devices. These devices originated within a neo-liberal project that deserves all the criticism it gets. But they may be in the process of being redeployed

in creative ways. If so, some emergent political initiatives that might appear at first blush to be worryingly ‘neo-liberal’ may, on closer inspection, amount to something a good deal more hopeful. This leaves us with a politics that requires more of us than simply denouncing neo-liberalism. The political demands and policy measures I have mentioned here (whether conditional cash transfers, basic income, or cash-based food aid) do not merit, I think, either wholesale denunciation or uncritical acceptance. Instead, they call on us to remain skeptical and vigilant, but also curious and hopeful. They leave us less with strong opinions than with the sense that we need to think about them a bit more, and learn a bit more about the specific empirical effects that they may produce. Are cash transfers, for instance, a device for demobilizing the poor (as some traditional Marxists claim) – effectively buying the political quiescence of those who have the most to gain from radical social change for a paltry sum? Or do they have the contrary effect, as many proponents of basic income argue – opening up a new space of mobilization and political demand by radically decoupling labor and consumption and opening a new domain of decommodification? This is not

a question to be answered theoretically or ideologically; the only answer that really convinces is the empirical and experimental one: Let us find out! Such a stance, I suggest, brings us much closer toward a truly Foucauldian politics. For politics, for Foucault, was always more about experimentation than denunciation. In an interview on social security, Foucault insisted that

what was required for a progressive rethinking of social policy was not a theoretically derived ‘line’, but, as he put it, ‘a certain empiricism’. We have to transform the field of social institutions into a vast experimental field, in such a way as to decide which taps need turning, which bolts need to be loosened here or there, to get the desired change. . . . What we have to do . . . is to increase the experiments wherever possible in this particularly interesting and important area of social life. (Foucault, 1988b: 165) What this implies is a form of politics that has less to do with critique and denunciation than with experimentation and assessment. It is a matter not of refusing power, but rather exercising it in a way that would be provisional, reversible, and open

to surprise. If we are indeed to arrive at viable left ‘arts of government’, we will need to be open to the unexpected, ready to ‘increase the experiments wherever possible’, and attentive to the ways that governmental techniques originally deployed for nefarious purposes can be appropriated toward other ends. To do this, we will need to forgo the pleasures of the easy, dismissive critique, and instead turn a keen and sympathetic eye toward the rich world of actual social and political practice, the world of tap-turning and experimentation. That is a world still full of invention and surprise, where the landscape of political possibility and constraint that we have come to take for granted is being redrawn, even as we speak.

Economic valuation of the environment is good-key to policy effectivenessEconomist 2005 (“Rescuing environmentalism”, 4-21, http://www.economist.com/node/3888006) THE environmental movement's foundational concepts, its method for framing legislative proposals, and its very institutions are outmoded. Today environmentalism is just another special interest.” Those damning words come not from any

industry lobby or right-wing think-tank. They are drawn from “The Death of Environmentalism”, an influential essay published recently by two greens with impeccable credentials. They claim that environmental groups are politically adrift and dreadfully out of touch . They are right. In America, greens have suffered a string of defeats on high-profile issues. They are losing the battle to prevent oil drilling in Alaska's wild lands, and have failed to spark the public's imagination over global warming. Even the stridently ungreen George Bush has failed to galvanise the environmental movement. The solution, argue many elders of the sect, is to step back from day-to-day politics and policies and “energise” ordinary punters with talk of global-warming calamities and a radical “vision of the future commensurate with the magnitude of the crisis”. Europe's green groups, while politically stronger, are also starting to lose their way intellectually. Consider, for example, their invocation of the woolly “precautionary principle” to demonise any

complex technology (next-generation nuclear plants, say, or genetically modified crops) that they do not like the look of. A more sensible green analysis of nuclear power would weigh its (very high) economic costs and (fairly low) safety risks against the important benefit of generating electricity with no greenhouse-gas emissions. Small victories and bigger defeats The coming into force of the UN's Kyoto protocol on climate change might seem a victory for Europe's greens, but it actually masks a larger failure. The most promising aspect of the treaty—its innovative use of market-based instruments such as carbon-emissions trading—was resisted tooth and nail by Europe's greens. With

courageous exceptions, American green groups also remain deeply suspicious of market forces. If environmental groups continue to reject pragmatic solutions and instead drift toward Utopian (or dystopian) visions of the future, they will lose the battle of ideas. And that would be a pity, for the world would benefit from having a thoughtful green movement. It would also be ironic, because far-reaching advances are already under way in the management of the world's natural resources—changes that add up to a different kind of green revolution. This could yet save the greens (as well as doing the planet a world of good). “Mandate, regulate, litigate.” That has been the green mantra. And it explains the world's top-down, command-and-control approach to environmental policymaking. Slowly, this is changing. Yesterday's failed hopes, today's heavy costs and tomorrow's demanding ambitions have been driving public policy quietly towards market-based approaches. One example lies in the assignment of property rights over “commons”, such as fisheries, that are abused because they belong at once to everyone and no one. Where tradable fishing quotas have been issued, the result has been a drop in over-fishing. Emissions trading is also taking off. America led the way with its sulphur-dioxide trading scheme, and today the EU is pioneering carbon-dioxide trading with the (albeit still controversial) goal of slowing down climate change. These, however, are obvious targets. What is really intriguing are efforts to value previously ignored “ecological

services”, both basic ones such as water filtration and flood prevention, and luxuries such as preserving wildlife. At the same time, advances in environmental science are making those valuation studies more accurate . Market mechanisms can then be employed to achieve these goals at the lowest cost. Today, countries from Panama to Papua New Guinea are investigating ways to price nature in this way (see article). Rachel Carson meets Adam Smith If this new green revolution is to succeed, however, three things must happen. The most important is that prices must be set correctly. The best way to do this is through liquid markets, as in the case of emissions trading. Here, politics merely sets the goal. How that

goal is achieved is up to the traders. A proper price, however, requires proper information. So the second goal must be to provide it. The tendency to regard the environment as a “free good” must be tempered with an understanding of what it does for humanity and how. Thanks to the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the World Bank's annual “Little Green Data Book” (released this week),

that is happening. More work is needed, but thanks to technologies such as satellite observation, computing and the internet, green accounting is getting cheaper and easier. Which leads naturally to the third goal, the embrace of cost-benefit analysis. At this, greens roll their eyes, complaining that it reduces nature to dollars and cents. In one sense, they are right. Some things in nature are irreplaceable—literally priceless. Even so, it is essential to consider trade-offs when analysing almost all green problems. The marginal cost of removing the last 5% of a given pollutant is often far higher than removing the first 5% or even 50%: for public policy to ignore such facts would be inexcusable. If governments invest seriously in green data acquisition and co-ordination, they will no longer be flying blind . And by advocating data-based, analytically rigorous policies rather than pious appeals to “save the planet”, the green movement could overcome the scepticism of the ordinary voter. It might even move from the fringes of politics to the middle ground where most voters reside. Whether the big environmental groups join or not, the next green revolution is already

under way. Rachel Carson, the crusading journalist who inspired greens in the 1950s and 60s, is joining hands with Adam Smith, the hero of free-marketeers. The

world may yet leapfrog from the dark ages of clumsy, costly, command-and-control regulations to an enlightened age of informed , innovative, incentive-based greenery .

Studies prove—neoliberal institutions are key to sustainability in the ocean Mitchell and Nemeth 7 Stephen C. Nemeth and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell Department of Political Science University of Iowa “Ruling the Sea: Institutionalization and Privatization of the Global Ocean Commons,” http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=polisci_pubsThe resources of the sea have long been a source of competition between states , although the pressing nature of these common property resource (CPR) problems has become more acute over time. States’ ability to extract oceanic resources has increased substantially through technological advances , and rapidly growing human populations

have increased the demand for fishing, mineral, oil, and other maritime resources. This creates a tragedy of the commons where everyone has incentives to over-exploit maritime resources for their own advantage, leading to diminishing resource supplies for all. Social scientists have devised several solutions to CPR problems, including coercion, privatization, and institutionalization. In this paper, we compare two prominent solutions for managing maritime resources: privatization in the form of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) and institutionalization via the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS). We examine the effects of EEZs and UNCLOS on efforts to resolve competing interstate claims to maritime zones in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001). We find that privatization through EEZs seems to be quite effective, as it promotes more frequent bilateral negotiations between disputing parties and enhances the chances that negotiations will produce agreements. On the other hand, UNCLOS is successful for bringing third parties to the conflict management table, which may facilitate the long run stability of agreements reached to resolve maritime claims (Mitchell and Hensel 2007). UNCLOS is also effective for preventing the onset of new disagreements over maritime areas. Our analyses suggest that privatization and institutionalization are differentially suited to promoting the long-run recovery of threatened fish stocks; there is no single optimal solution for problems associated with maritime CPRs.

Case outweighs--Default to specificity-their use of neoliberalism as a catch all phrase negates possibilities for changeBarnett, Open University social sciences faculty, 2005(Clive, “The consolations of ‘neoliberalism”, Geoforum, ebsco)

The blind-spot in theories of neoliberalism—whether neo-Marxist and Foucauldian—comes with trying to account for how top-down initiatives ‘take’ in everyday

situations. So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop thinking of “neoliberalism” as a coherent “hegemonic” project altogether. For all its apparent critical force, the vocabulary of “neoliberalism” and “neoliberalization” in fact provides a double consolation for leftist academics: it supplies us with plentiful opportunities for unveiling the real workings of hegemonic ideologies in a characteristic gesture of revelation; and in so doing, it invites us to align our own professional roles with the activities of various actors “out there”, who are always framed as engaging in resistance or

contestation. The conceptualization of “neoliberalism” as a “hegemonic” project does not need refining by adding a splash of Foucault. Perhaps we should try to do without the concept of “neoliberalism” altogether , because it might actually compound rather than aid in the task of figuring out how the world works and how it changes . One reason for this is that, between an overly economistic derivation of political economy and an overly statist rendition of governmentality, stories about “neoliberalism” manage to reduce the understanding of social relations to a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental programmes of rule (see Clarke, 2004a). Stories about “neoliberalism” pay little attention to the pro-active role of socio-cultural processes in provoking changes in modes of governance, policy, and regulation. Consider the example of the restructuring of public services such as health care, education, and criminal justice in the UK over the last two or three decades. This can easily be thought of in terms of a ‘‘hegemonic’’ project of “neoliberalization”, and certainly one dimension of this process has been a form of anti-statism that has rhetorically contrasted market provision against the rigidities of the state. But in fact these ongoing changes in the terms of public-policy debate involve a combination of different factors that add up to a much more dispersed populist reorientation in policy, politics, and culture. These factors include changing consumer expectations, involving shifts in expectations towards public entitlements which follow from the generalization of consumerism; the decline of deference, involving shifts in conventions and hierarchies of taste, trust, access, and expertise; and the refusals of the subordinated, refer- ring to the emergence of anti-paternalist attitudes found in, for example, women’s health movements or anti-psychiatry movements. They include also the development of the politics of difference, involving the emergence of discourses of institutional discrimination based on gender, sexuality, race, and disability. This has disrupted the ways in which welfare agencies think about inequality, helping to generate the emergence of contested inequalities, in which policies aimed at addressing inequalities of class and income develop an ever more expansive dynamic of expectation that public services should address other kinds of inequality as well (see Clarke, 2004b). None of these populist tendencies is simply an expression of a singular “hegemonic” project of “neoliberalization”. They are effects of much longer rhythms of socio-cultural change that emanate from the bottom-

up. It seems just as plausible to suppose that what we have come to recognise as “hegemonic neoliberalism” is a muddled set of ad hoc, opportunistic accommodations to these unstable dynamics of social change as it is to think of it as the outcome of highly coherent political-ideological projects. Processes of privatization, market liberalization, and de-regulation have often followed an ironic pattern in so far as they have been triggered by citizens’ movements arguing from the left of the political spectrum against the

rigidities of statist forms of social policy and welfare provision in the name of greater autonomy, equality, and participation (e.g. Horwitz, 1989). The political re-alignments of the last three or four decades cannot therefore be adequately understood in terms of a straightforward shift from the left to the right, from values of collectivism to values of individualism, or as a re-imposition of class power. The emergence and generalization of this populist ethos has much longer, deeper, and wider roots than those ascribed to “hegemonic neoliberalism”. And it also points towards the extent to which easily the most widely resonant political rationality in the world today is not right-wing market liberalism at all, but is, rather, the polyvalent discourse of ‘‘democracy’’ (see Barnett and Low, 2004).

Alternative

Alternative Fails – 1AR No alternative-left has no credibilityFukuyama, SAIS Foreign Policy Institute Senior Fellow, 2012(Francis, “The Future of History”, Foreign Affairs; Jan/Feb2012, Vol. 91 Issue 1, ebsco) One of the most puzzling features of the world in the aftermath of the financial crisis is that so far, populism has taken primarily a right-wing form, not a left-wing one. In the United States, for example, although the Tea Party is anti-elitist in its rhetoric, its members vote for conservative politicians who serve the interests of precisely those financiers and corporate elites they claim to despise. There are many explanations for this phenomenon. They include a deeply embedded belief in equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome and the fact that cultural issues, such as abortion and gun rights, crosscut

economic ones. But the deeper reason a broad-based populist left has failed to materialize is an intellectual one . It has been several decades since anyone on the left has been able to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of

what happens to the structure of advanced societies as they undergo economic change and, second, a realistic agenda that has any hope of protecting a middle-class society. The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for mobilization. Marxism died many years ago, and the few old believers still around

are ready for nursing homes. The academic left replaced it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory, and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends that are more cultural than economic in focus. Postmodernism begins with a denial of the possibility of any master narrative of history or society, undercutting its own authority as a voice for the majority of citizens who feel betrayed by their elites. Multiculturalism validates the victimhood of virtually every out-group. It is impossible to generate a mass progressive movement on the basis of such a motley coalition: most of the working- and lower-middle-class citizens victimized by the system are culturally conservative and

would be embarrassed to be seen in the presence of allies like this. Whatever the theoretical justifications underlying the left's agenda, its biggest problem is a lack of credibility. Over the past two generations, the mainstream left has followed a social democratic

program that centers on the state provision of a variety of services, such as pensions, health care, and education. That model is now exhausted: welfare states have become big, bureaucratic, and inflexible; they are often captured by the very organizations that administer them, through public-sector unions; and, most important, they are fiscally unsustainable given the aging of populations virtually everywhere in the developed world. Thus, when existing social democratic parties come to power, they no longer aspire to be more than custodians of a welfare state that was created decades ago; none has a new, exciting agenda around which to rally the masses.

No mindset shift and no successful movementsLockwood, former Institute for Public Policy Research Climate, Transport and Energy Associate Director, 2011(Matthew, “The Limits to Environmentalism”, 3-25, http://politicalclimate.net/2011/03/25/the-limits-to-environmentalism-4/)

This brings us neatly finally to the third problem with PWG: politics. Jackson does have some discussion of the need for our old favourite “political will” towards the

end of the book, and there are some examples of concrete ideas (e.g. shorter working week, ban advertising aimed at children), but there is basically no political strategy. Indeed, the argument is framed in terms of the need for “social and economic change” and “governance”, but not politics at all. The key question is how we are supposed to get from where we are to where he wants us to be. Jackson acknowledges that at the moment, many people want growth (or more precisely, economic stability) and so demand it of politicians, who then have a political incentive to deliver it. The quandary (not really acknowledged) is which strategy to adopt in this situation. Do you first reshape the economy to deliver economic stability without growth (e.g. by a shorter working week), which then demonstrates to people socially and politically that growth isn’t necessary for a good life, or do you first have to bring about major social change, moving people away from consumerism, as a precondition for transforming the economy and making the end of growth politically feasible? The discussion in chapter 11 of the book sort of implies that Jackson is thinking in terms of the latter route, but it actually has no strategy. He lays out (some quite conventional, even dare I say it, already proposed by economists) policies like carbon taxation and the aforementioned shorter working week but there is nothing on political narrative. The closest we get to a strategy for social transformation is banning advertising aimed at children (also a theme of Tom Crompton’s) and policies to drive greater durability of products. A counterview might be that all these changes are needed, and it doesn’t matter so much what happens first, that they all reinforce each other

etc etc. But I don’t think that’s enough. The political party in the UK that comes closest to offering the Jackson vision is the Green Party. They got 1% of the popular vote in the 2010 general election, and one MP. What stronger evidence can there be that the vision on its own is not enough? A final point takes us back to equity (see previous post), but this time within rich

countries. Certainly within the US and the UK, a large group of people in the low-to-middle part of the income distribution have seen their real incomes stagnate or fall over the last decade, as the rich have got richer. Telling this “squeezed middle” that economic growth is to end is not going to go down well unless there is a credible strategy for redistribution. That’s why a good initial step for a more sustainable economy might be a set of good old-fashioned social democratic policies on tax and spend. Prosperity without Growth raises some very important questions, and Tim Jackson shows how tight a squeeze we are in.

But the book leaves some even more crucial questions hanging. Of course ending economic growth in rich countries would make a solution to ecological limits a bit easier, but this would play only a small role . In the absence of radical technological change, only serious “de-growth”, what Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows call “planned economic recession” would be sufficient to bring about the cut in emissions needed.

With rapid growth in poor countries this conclusion is even stronger. So what we should be focusing on is achieving that technological change. Yes, it hasn’t materialised so far, but nor have the policies for low carbon innovation we need to produce it – like

Gandhi’s Western civilisation, the low carbon revolution would be a good idea. And yes, getting those policies in place will require political effort. But that effort will be as nothing compared with the political challenge of replacing capitalism with a new steady state system either lacking innovation or with a disappearing working week. Perhaps the most fundamental, indeed philosophical

issue here is that, despite the fact that Jackson has made a good effort to make an argument about limits into an argument about quality of life, his underlying message is (pace Obama): “No, we can’t”. But beyond the environmentalist camp, this message will not work . In the face of the biggest collective challenge that humanity has faced, we need a narrative that has the human potential to solve problems, and overcome apparently unbeatable odds, at its heart.

Sustainable

Sustainable – 1AR Scarcity and environmental degradation are self-correcting-but maintaining the profit motive is keyDesrochers, Toronto geography professor, 2010(Pierre, “The environmental responsibility of business is to increase its profits (by creating value within the bounds of private property rights)”, Industrial & Corporate Change. Feb2010, Vol. 19 Issue 1, ebsco)

Resources are limited, while human needs and desires are not. In a free market, the interaction of supply and demand

results in prices that reflect the relative scarcity of physical and intellectual resources. Profits and losses are then generated by individuals’

relative ability to combine scarce inputs in order to provide products and services that consumers value more than available alternatives. Over time, goods that are more valuable than the sums of the inputs taken separately get produced, while goods worth less than the sum of their inputs are

not. In this context, the appropriate measure of a firm’s success in creating value is long-term profitability . Some theorists and many environmental activists, however, argue that market incentives foster a short-term perspective in which production costs can be reduced and/or profitability increased through overexploitation of natural resources and polluting emissions that are not properly factored into the costs of production activities. The theologian John B. Cobb Jr (undated), for example, argues: “Keeping costs low often requires actions that are environmentally destructive,” while failure “to take such actions when similar ones are taken by competitors can have severely detrimental effects on a corporation.” Physiologist and geographer Jared Diamond (2005: 483) suggests that, “depending on the circumstances,” a firm “really may maximize its profits, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people.” 7 This perspective is also shared by leading environmental economist Robert Stavins (2004: 12) who argues that “[i]f the market is left to itself, too many pollution-generating products get produced,” a point summed up in the following way by economists Marie-Franc¸ois Calmette and Isabelle Pe´choux (2006: 184): “It is well known that polluting agents need to be induced to internalize the social cost of pollution damage, otherwise they will engage in excessive levels of emission of pollutants.” Management professors Roland Geyer and Tim Jackson (2004: 56) further argue that traditional supply chains are based “on a linear production paradigm which relies on constant input of virgin natural resources and unlimited environmental capacity for assimilation of wastes and emissions.” In their opinion, “there is general agreement that this is causing environmental costs on a large scale and of a systematic nature,

which cannot be fully addressed by traditional supply chain management.” This alleged market failure is nonetheless hard to reconcile with the fact that a firm’s survival is directly dependent upon the capacity of its owners and employees to create as much value as possible from costly inputs. In the words of businessman Charles G. Koch (2007: 104): “It is easy to fall into the trap of a single-minded

emphasis on cost reduction. Cost is only one component (although a critically important one) of value creation. If your goal is to lose weight, you could accomplish this by cutting off your leg, but that is hardly beneficial.

Cost-cutting for its own sake can be just as shortsighted and can seriously damage future profitability. It is more appropriate to focus on eliminating waste.” As scientist Jesse Ausubel (1998: 39) puts it: “Pollution and waste usually indicate inefficiency. In an economy of competing companies, inefficiency is for losers . So, over the long run, successful companies are going to be green and clean.” Building on this commonsensical insight and on his comparative work on the diverging environmental performance of market economies and centrally planned economies (with the former becoming wealthier and cleaner over time, while the latter stagnated or regressed while becoming increasingly polluted), Bernstam (1990: 348) suggests that the elimination of waste, rather than increased production or consumption, ultimately determines the impact of economic growth on the environment. In this perspective, “waste” includes not only “economically useless production” such as slag, refuse, scrap, spills, discards, and other processing losses, but also “destroyed primary resources” and “losses of intermediary and final output in transportation and storage.” 8 Thus when the growth in output exceeds the growth in resource input required, increased material wealth will be created while pollution levels decline. On the other hand, a poorer economy that uses a smaller amount of resources less

efficiently will experience greater environmental damage. In 1987, for example, industrial and domestic air pollutant concentrations were five times higher in the USSR than in the United States, despite the fact that the former’s GDP was only half that of the latter. 9 Similarly, more tropical rainforests will be felled when livestock production, processing, and distribution is less efficient than it could be. Greater livestock production can thus be perfectly compatible with more benign environmental repercussions when more efficient methods are used. In other words, the impact of human activity on the biosphere is not a function of the amount of resources produced from it in the first place, but of the amount released from the

economic sphere back into the biosphere. As will now be argued, the concomitant fear of resource exhaustion is similarly debatable. According to what is sometimes referred to as the “resourceship” paradigm (McDonald, 1995; Bradley, 2007), “resources are not, they become” in that they are neither fixed nor finite, but are created by renewable human intellect in an economic context where businesses transform and manipulate a variety of otherwise valueless inputs to generate saleable outputs (Zimmermann,

1951/1933; De Gregori, 1987; Simon, 1995, 1996; Bradley, 2007; Bra¨tland, 2008). 10 Historical evidence suggests that the profit motive has long acted as a powerful incentive to progressively increase the efficiency of material use. This is accomplished

in two ways: first, by changing the material resources used by developing valuable inputs out of previously worthless raw materials, and, secondly, by transforming industrial wastes into sought-after intermediate products. Each of these processes resulted in significant environmental improvements, even when no priority was given to the issue. In turn, the same practices incidentally promote sustainable development, which is here defined as wealth creation through innovative activities with net economic, social, and environmental benefits. 11 I now turn to a more detailed examination of these fundamental processes. One of the most forceful statements on the social benefits of more efficient material use belongs to Jonathan Swift (1920 [1727]: 138–139) who, through his fictional King of Brobdingnag in his classic Gulliver’s Travels, argued that whoever “could make two Ears of Corn, or two blades of Grass to grow upon a Spot of Ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of Mankind, and do more essential Service to his Country than the whole Race of Politicians put together.” The French economist Nicolas Baudeau (1910 [1767]: 46, author’s translation) reported efforts in this direction a few decades later by observing that the goal of large agricultural operations was “firstly to double, triple, quadruple, or increase tenfold if possible the harvest on a particular piece of land; secondly to reduce the amount of labor employed to one half, one third, one fourth, or one tenth, whatever possible.” Despite his belief in decreasing returns to additional agricultural investments, the economist John Stuart Mill (1909: 183–184) also described advances that enabled “the land to yield a greater absolute produce, without an equivalent increase of labour,” but also others that “have not the power of increasing the produce, but have that of diminishing the labour and expense by which it is obtained,” in the process liberating them for other valuable uses. Examples of the first included the abandonment of fallows, their replacement by crop rotations, and the introduction of new elements into the rotation, such as turnips and fertilizers. Examples of laborsaving technologies included better tools, instruments, and “a more skilful and economical application of muscular exertion,” such as the introduction of a new plowing technique requiring two horses and one man to achieve results that had previously required three or four horses and two men. A few years earlier, the polymath Charles Babbage (1846 [1832]: 62–63) had observed how advances in mechanical precision and mass production resulted in “a degree of economy in the consumption of the raw material which is, in some cases, of great importance.” For example, in the printing industry “large hemispherical balls stuffed and covered with leather” had been replaced by “cylindrical rollers of an elastic substance” which, with the later addition of steam engines to printing presses, had reduced the volume of ink needed to complete a given task by almost 65% without any visible change in the quality of the final product. Crory (1876) similarly describes numerous efficiency-improving technologies in his journalistic survey of a wide range of manufacturing activities in East London. For example, a building firm manager had supervised the construction of a timber drying-house following the best Norwegian practices to which he had added new ideas of his own. Among other improvements, the heat used to dry

the timber was delivered through underground pipes in such a way as “to render safety, economy, and efficiency at once practicable and certain.” The driving machinery was similarly built underground, which again minimized the risk of accidents and economized space that, “even in such a wide area as that occupied by these Works,” was valuable (p. 87). The sharpening of saws by the use of emery instead of files was also “a great improvement” that resulted, “in a place where so much sawing is done,” into a considerable saving of money (p. 88). A contemporary of Crory similarly observed in an essay on progress that improvements depend on inventions that help humans “obtain greater effects with less expenditure of space, of time, of materials and forces” (Gore, 1882: 151). While the evidence provided by past writers might have been mostly anecdotal, numerous studies on the increased efficiency of material use over time have demonstrated the validity of their analysis (Sanbach, 1978; Bernstam, 1990; Rosenberg, 1994a; Simpson, 1999). As Ausubel (1998: 39) writes, “the wheels of history [have long been] rolling in the direction of prudent, clean use of resources,” whether one looks at energy, land (for agricultural and timber production), water, and materials. For example: The US economy has averaged about 1% less energy to produce a good or service each year since about 1800; In the last 300 years, the efficiency of generators has gone up from 1% of their apparent limit to about 50%; In the last two centuries, the ratio of weight to power in industrial boilers has decreased almost 100 times; In 1860, globally, about 1.1 tons of carbon went into the primary energy produced by the energy equivalent of 1 ton of oil then in the fuel mix; this amount had decreased to about 0.7 tons in 1990; Since the late 1960s, per capita water use in the United States has fallen at an annual rate of 1.4%, while absolute water withdrawals peaked around 1980 (Ausubel, 1998). Scarcity-induced price increases effectively dissuade any inefficient use of resources and encourage reductions in the quantity of inputs needed to maintain the same amount of output. The concept of dematerialization is now often used to characterize the decline over time of the weight of materials used in industrial end products (Chadwick, 1997; Wernick et al., 1996; Cleveland and Ruth, 1998; Scarlett, 1999; De Bruyn, 2002; Labys, 2002). While it has also long been observed that increased efficiency in the use of a resource often results in a greater aggregate use or consumption of that resource (Jevons, 1865; Rosenberg, 1994a; Alcott, 2005), 12 a case will now be made that this “rebound effect,” even if coupled with a growing population, is rarely problematic because higher

quality resources are continually being created from both natural substances and production residuals. In a market economy, a sustained price increase for any resource not only encourages individuals to use it more efficiently, but also to look for more of it and to develop substitutes. As a result, despite the physical finiteness of the Earth, most resources for which there is a

sustained demand over time have become more plentiful and affordable (Barnett and Morse, 1963; Simon, 1995; Lomborg, 2001; Goklany,

2007). The scarcity/price stimulus also provides the incentive for human ingenuity to substitute smaller volumes of higher quality or technologically more sophisticated materials for the larger volumes of lower quality materials

utilized by mature industries, a process sometimes referred to as transmaterialization (Labys, 2002). In the former case, economic incentives reward the development of innovative resource extraction processes that open up newly profitable deposits (e.g. offshore drilling, less concentrated ores).

In the latter case, similar economic incentives stimulate the development of new inputs with some combination of advantages over earlier alternatives, such as being more powerful and/or abundant; stronger and/or lighter; and/or easier to produce, handle, transport, and/or store. 13 For example, whale oil was supplanted by coal gas and kerosene, which were themselves eventually displaced by electricity and the incandescent light bulb. Most energy needs in Western societies were originally supplied by wood and hay, which were eventually supplanted by coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power, oil, and natural gas (Ausubel, 1991; Smil, 1994). Nitrogen for agricultural production was originally provided by the recycling of organic waste (such as straw and manure), the rotation of nitrogen-fixing leguminous grains (including peas, beans, lentils, and soybeans), and the plowing under of leguminous cover crops (such as clover and vetches). In time, however, better (i.e., more cost-effective) substitutes were developed, including guano (desiccated sea bird excrement), superphosphates (prepared mostly by digesting powdered bones with dilute sulfuric acid), Chilean sodium nitrate, ammonia recovery (mostly ammonium sulfate) from the coking of coal, and ammonia synthesis

from the atmosphere (Smil, 2001). One aspect of transmaterialization that so far seems to have escaped the attention of most analysts, however, is that it often involved the development of new by-products out of formerly wasted industrial residuals. 14 This process will now be examined in more detail.

Sustainable – A2: Rebound Effect

No rebound effect-energy intensity doesn’t always increaseVaughn, Rocky Mountain Institute senior PR, 2012(Kelly, “Jevons Paradox: The Debate That Just Won't Die”, http://blog.rmi.org/blog_Jevons_Paradox)

Owen's counterfactual 2010 New Yorker article on energy "rebound" was demolished at the time by, among others, Dr . James Barrett of the Clean Economy Development Center, Dr. Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. David Goldstein of Natural Resources Defense Council, and myself . Cameron Burns and Michael Potts nicely summarized the key arguments here—the #1 Google hit for searches like "AmoryLovins+Jevons"—and RMI pursues the diverse "Jevons paradox" conversation at on our blog. A Times editor constructing a conversation on this theme could have easily found such references, leaving readers better-informed. There is a very large professional literature on energy rebound, refreshed about every decade as someone rediscovers and popularizes

this old canard. That literature supports neither Owen's view nor Prof. Matthew Kotchen's partial support that " rebound effects are potentially important." Real, yes; important, no . The price-elasticity and responding effects Owen cites, where measurable, are consistently minor —a theoretical nicety of little practical consequence. James Watt's more-efficient steam engine did spark an industrial revolution that (as Stanley Jevons observed) created great wealth and burned more coal. But this is no proof that energy efficiency generally triggers economic growth that devours its savings (or more)—a "backfire" effect never yet observed. Rather, it shows that many disruptive technologies stimulate economic growth and wealth, sometimes sharply. Some disruptive technologies, like microchips and the Internet, incidentally save net energy even though they are not meant to be energy technologies; some disruptive energy technologies, like automobiles and jet airplanes, increase energy use, while others, like electric motors, probably decrease it, and still others, like electric lights, could do either depending on technology and metrics (which Owen's cited lighting analysis muddles); still other disruptive technologies that Owen doesn't criticize, like key advances in public health, mass education, and innovation, enormously increase wealth and have complex and indeterminate energy effects. Blaming wealth effects on energy efficiency has no basis in fact or logic. To be sure, energy efficiency does modestly increase wealth, just as Owen's more efficient desk-lamp makes him slightly richer. I doubt this saving makes him use the lamp at least four times more (as would be needed to offset its energy savings), or that if it did, sitting longer at his desk would not displace other substantial energy-using activities. More likely his total energy use rose simply because he got richer: his writings and lectures have sold well to people who like his message, so he now has more stuff, uses it more, travels more, and probably doesn't reinvest much of his increased wealth in buying still more energy efficiency, which he thinks would frustrate his stated goal of environmental improvement. That U.S. energy productivity has grown faster than GDP in only nine of the past 35 years doesn't prove it can't, nor make

it less valuable; the U.S. now uses half the total energy it would have used at its 1975 energy intensity . (I'm one of two analysts who called this correctly back then.) Energy efficiency's speed and depth of adoption depend on many things—frugal technologies' price and easy availability, delivery channels' maturity and trustworthiness, citizens' attitudes and behaviors, and (most of all) barrier-busting so people can make smarter choices.

Some places do this well. California , for example, has held per-capita electricity use flat for 30 years while per- capita real income rose by four-fifths. Nor does continuing, though slackening, energy growth mean energy productivity can't accelerate to outpace economic growth consistently, as U.S. oil productivity did during 1977–85, when GDP grew 27 percent while oil use fell 17 percent Indeed, Rocky Mountain Institute's new synthesis Reinventing Fire (which properly counts rebound effects to the minor extent they've been established in the professional literature) explores what would happen if the United States achieved over decades the rates of efficiency improvement that some states have already sustained. The result: a 158 percent-bigger 2050 U.S. economy could use 24 percent less energy, need no oil or coal or nuclear energy, emit 82–86 percent less fossil carbon, and cost $5 trillion less (in

net present value, ignoring all externalities)—the transition needing no new inventions nor Acts of Congress, and led by business for profit. Owen's call to reject such practical and profitable transformation reminds me of the economic theorist who lay awake all night wondering whether what works in practice can possibly work in theory. Fortunately, his sophistry will not deter readers who understand energy and economics.

No empirical basis for the rebound effectSchipper et al., Stanford Precourt Energy Efficiency Center engineer, 2000(Lee, “On the rebound? Feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in IEA countries”, Energy Policy 28 (2000) 367}388) This can be stated slightly differently. Suppose that by 1994, economies are using roughly 20% less energy than otherwise because of lower energy intensities and 5% less than otherwise (on average) because of additional structural changes. The former changes reduce input costs from what they would have been to enterprises and reduce marginal costs of key energy-uses to consumers. The decline also produces a small income effect for consumers, which leads to re-spending in general. The

structural effects do not affect marginal costs per se, but do leave more funds to be spent. We argued in the introduction that this effect is not important as long as the income elasticity of consumer energy use is less than one , which is the case in the countries we studied. If economies are now 75% as energy intensive as they were in 1973, what could eat up these savings ? It would require an additional 33% growth in GDP (even with an energy-GDP ratio of 1) to swallow up the savings (0.75]1.33). It is fanciful to suppose that the 20% energy savings, together with the restraining effect of structural changes, would boost GDP by 33%. As Saunders notes, even a small boost to GDP dampens out. Eventually, of course, total GDP growth (not just that stimulated by greater energy efficiency) may lead to increases in energy use greater than the savings made, and total energy use will be greater than before savings were made, if intensity improvements do not continue.

This is crucial: energy savings are made over very long time periods of capital retrofit and replacement, during which economic growth boosts the overall size of the economy and output of firms or incomes of consumers. We therefore conclude that macro-rebounds, as best as we can discern them , do not lead to

more energy use (at a given GDP or at a given point in time) than if energy were not saved, nor do rebounds eat up a significant portion of the savings implied by reduced energy intensities. The incremental economic or activity growth stimulated by more efficient energy use leads to far less increase itself in energy use than the energy that was saved. Only a small amount of the savings in energy themselves “fuel” greater energy use. Only over a long enough period of time (perhaps decades) might rebound outweigh the savings, and even this is debatable if the boost to energy services or to GDP saturates, and/or intensity improvements continue. What all this has

in common is that with a few exceptions, changes in energy use in the short or medium term can only occur with changes in other resource use as well, because the cost of energy is only a small part of the cost of the energy service. This is why the short-run elasticity of energy use with respect to price for most end-uses is so small. In the longer run big changes in energy intensities have been made through technology. But the share of energy in the fixed (and in most cases the variable) costs of the output for which energy is used is still small. Hence big gains in energy efficiency by themselves only lead to modest reductions in the costs of output (which may be higher if energy prices have risen sufficiently). This in turn limits this feedback effect in almost every sector. Where energy costs are a key input or even constraint on output * the iron/coal example of Jevons (in which technological breakthrough in iron smelting was held to lead to a rapid increase in coal use) or space heating for low-income families * there can indeed be significant rebounds and even increases in energy use as a direct result of greater efficiency. These cases appear to be rare exceptions. Even where energy is the principal cost of a consumer activity * space and water heating if we ignore equipment maintenance, or driving (if we ignore time expended and parking fees as well) * the observed rebound from either lower prices or greater efficiency is still small. This is both because the household budget share for these uses is small and

because the elasticity of the services provided with respect to the price of energy is small. In conclusion, there is no evidence of an important rebound or feedback effect between energy efficiency improvements and energy use for individual end uses. Nor is there evidence for boosts in key energy-using activities that would raise sectoral energy use above levels before energy saving.

In fact when the entire experience of each country * changes in energy use, activity, and structure of each sector * is compared with the evolution of GDP, energy growth lags behind GDP (holding all energy intensities constant). Certainly more efficient energy use in enterprises does boost overall productivity (or is

a result of productivity increases), which boosts GDP. But given the small share of energy costs in both enterprise and household budgets, this effect must be small on average. Had there been a significant feedback between energy intensities and activities for which energy was important, we would have expected to see at the aggregate level the latter grow more than GDP. This only occurred for air travel!

Sustainable – A2: Resource Resource scarcity is self-correctingHaynes, BYU economics professor, 2008(Beth, “Finite Resources vs. Infinite Resourcefulness”, 8-19, http://wealthisnottheproblem.blogspot.com/2008/08/finite-resources-vs-infinite.html)

It’s common sense. Save today in order to have some available tomorrow. It’s how our bank accounts work, so it seems logical to apply the same reasoning to

resource use. But there is a catch. All of economic history, up to and including today, demonstrates that the more we exploit our natural resources, the more available they become. (3-7) How can this possibly be? If we use our “limited, non-renewable resources” we

have to end up with less, right? Actually, no. And here is why. We don’t simply “use up” existing resources; we constantly create them. We continually invent new processes, discover new sources, improve the efficiency of both use and extraction, while at the same time we discover cheaper, better alternatives. The fact that a particular physical substance is finite is irrelevant. What is relevant is the process of finding ways to meet human needs and desires. The solutions, and thus what we consider resources, are constantly changing . Oil was a nuisance, not a resource, until humans discovered a use for it. In order to survive and flourish, human beings must succeed at fulfilling certain needs and desires. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways using a multitude of materials. The requirements of life set the goals. How these goals are met does not depend on the existence or the availability of any particular material. Limits are placed not by the finiteness of a physical substance, but by the extent of our knowledge, of our wealth, and of our freedom. Knowledge. Wealth. Freedom. These are the factors which are essential to solving the problems we face. “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.” (8) Think for a minute about how we have solved the problem of meeting basic needs throughout history: Transportation: from walking to landing on the moon Communication: from face-to-face conversations to the World Wide Web. Food: from hunting and gathering to intravenous feeding and hydroponics. Shelter: from finding a cave to building skyscrapers Health care: from shamans to MRIs and neurosurgery. How does progress happen? A synopsis of

the process is provided by the main theme of Julian Simon’s book, The Ultimate Resource 2: More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices

present opportunity and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions . Many fail in the search, at cost to

themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run, the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen, that is, prices eventually become lower than before the scarcity occurred. (9) This idea is not just theory. Economists and statisticians have long been analyzing the massive amounts of data collected on resource availability.

The conclusion: our ability to solve the problems of human existence is ever-expanding. Resources have become less scarce and the world is a better place to live for more and more people. (3-7) Overall, we create more than we destroy as evidenced by the steady progress in human well being and there is no evidence for concluding that this trend can't and won't continue. Doomsday predictions have been with us since ancient times and they have consistently been proven wrong.

Status Quo Improving – 2AC The squo is structurally improvingGoklany, Assistant Director for Science and Technology Policy, 2009(Indur, PhD electrical engineering from MSU, “Have Increases In Population, Affluence And Technology Worsened Human And Environmental Well-Being?”, http://173-45-244-96.slicehost.net/public/journal_article/11)

Although global population is no longer growing exponentially, it has quadrupled since 1900. Concurrently, affluence (or GDP per capita) has sextupled, global economic product (a measure of aggregate consumption) has increased 23-fold and carbon dioxide has increased

over 15-fold (Maddison 2003; GGDC 2008; World Bank 2008a; Marland et al. 2007).4 But contrary to Neo-Malthusian fears, average human well-being, measured by any objective indicator, has never been higher. Food supplies, Malthus’ original

concern, are up worldwide. Global food supplies per capita increased from 2,254 Cals/day in 1961 to 2,810 in 2003 (FAOSTAT 2008). This helped reduce hunger and malnutrition worldwide. The proportion of the population in the developing world, suffering from chronic hunger declined from 37 percent to 17 percent between 1969-71 and 2001-2003 despite an 87 percent population increase (Goklany 2007a; FAO 2006). The reduction in hunger and malnutrition, along with improvements in basic hygiene, improved access to safer water and sanitation, broad adoption of vaccinations, antibiotics, pasteurization and other public health measures, helped reduce mortality and increase life expectancies. These improvements first became evident in today’s developed countries in the mid- to late-1800s and started to spread in earnest to developing countries from the 1950s. The infant mortality rate in developing countries was 180 per 1,000 live births in the early 1950s; today it is 57. Consequently, global life expectancy, perhaps the single most important measure of human well-being, increased from 31 years in 1900

to 47 years in the early 1950s to 67 years today (Goklany 2007a). Globally, average annual per capita incomes tripled since 1950. The proportion of the world’s population outside of high-income OECD countries living in absolute poverty (average consumption of less than $1 per day in 1985 International dollars adjusted for purchasing power parity), fell from 84 percent in 1820 to 40 percent in 1981 to 20 percent in 2007 (Goklany 2007a; WRI 2008; World Bank 2007). Equally important, the world is more literate and better educated. Child labor in low income countries declined from 30 to 18 percent between 1960 and 2003. In most countries, people are freer politically, economically and socially to pursue their goals as they see fit. More people choose their own rulers, and have freedom of expression. They are more likely to live under rule of law, and less likely to be arbitrarily deprived of life,

limb and property. Social and professional mobility has never been greater. It is easier to transcend the bonds of caste, place, gender, and other accidents of birth in the lottery of life. People work fewer hours, and have more money and better health to enjoy their leisure time (Goklany 2007a). Figure 3 summarizes the U.S. experience over the 20th century with respect to growth of population, affluence, material, fossil fuel energy and chemical consumption, and life expectancy. It indicates that population has multiplied 3.7-fold; income, 6.9-fold; carbon dioxide emissions, 8.5-fold; material use, 26.5-fold; and organic chemical use, 101-fold. Yet its life expectancy increased from 47 years to 77 years and infant mortality (not shown) declined from over 100 per 1,000 live births to 7 per 1,000. It is also important to note that not only are people living longer, they are healthier. The disability rate for seniors declined 28 percent between 1982 and 2004/2005 and, despite better diagnostic tools, major diseases (e.g., cancer, and heart and respiratory diseases) occur 8–11 years later now than a century ago (Fogel 2003; Manton et al. 2006). If similar figures could be constructed for other countries, most would indicate qualitatively similar trends, especially after 1950, except Sub-Saharan Africa and the erstwhile members of the Soviet Union. In the latter two cases, life expectancy, which had increased following World War II, declined after the late 1980s to the early 2000s, possibly due poor economic performance compounded, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, by AIDS, resurgence of malaria, and tuberculosis due mainly to poor governance (breakdown of public health services) and other manmade causes (Goklany 2007a, pp.66-69, pp.178-181, and references therein). However, there are signs of a turnaround, perhaps related to increased economic growth since the early 2000s, although this could, of course, be a temporary

blip (Goklany 2007a; World Bank 2008a). Notably, in most areas of the world, the health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE), that is, life expectancy adjusted downward for the severity and length of time spent by the average individual in a less-than-healthy condition, is greater now than the unadjusted life expectancy was 30 years ago. HALE for the China and India in 2002, for instance, were 64.1 and 53.5 years, which exceeded their unadjusted life expectancy of 63.2

and 50.7 years in 1970-1975 (WRI 2008). Figure 4, based on cross country data, indicates that contrary to Neo-Malthusian fears, both life expectancy and infant mortality improve with the level of affluence (economic development) and time, a surrogate for technological change (Goklany 2007a). Other indicators of human well-being that improve over time and as affluence rises are: access to safe water and sanitation (see below), literacy, level of education, food supplies per capita, and the prevalence of malnutrition (Goklany 2007a, 2007b).

A2: Impacts

Prefer Specificity Discount their impacts-prior assumptions dispose them to pessimism-better to adapt globalization for the better and prefer specificity.Aisbett, Crawford School of Economics and Government lecturer, 2007(Emma, “Why Are the Critics So Convinced That Globalization Is Bad for the Poor?”, March, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0113.pdf)

This paper has attempted to explain why criticisms of globalization’s impact on the poor continue to abound despite the general consensus that liberalization promotes growth and growth is good for the poor. The explanation consisted of four parts. First, many people view the empirical evidence in favor of globalization skeptically because they see

globalization as a process through which power is concentrated upward and away from the poor. In particular, they see transnational corporations as gaining a disproportionate amount of both political and market power. Critics of globalization are also firmly of the opinion that corporations will use

their increased power in ways that benefit themselves and harm the poor. Although these concerns are not without basis, there are mediating factors that make it di ffi cult to conclude that globalization is increasing corporate power or that increased corporate power is necessarily bad for the poor. On the first point it is important to remember that globalization exposes many previously powerful national corporations to outside competition, and requires greater transparency in government policymaking. On the second point, it may be that the e ffi ciency benefits of large corporations outweigh any losses from increased market power. Thus, it would seem that there is room for more empirical research to determine whether the corporate

globalization does indeed give the poor cause for concern. The next part of the explanation focused on the multiplicity of meanings of the phrases “worsening poverty” and “increasing inequality.” The discussion in regard to poverty followed on from Kanbur’s (2001) work, which identified four major differences between the concepts of poverty employed by globalization’s critics and proponents. These four dimensions are the total number of poor versus poverty incidence, monetary versus multidimensional measures, level of aggregation, and time horizon. I argued that although level of aggregation and time horizon do appear to be important distinctions, they are both emblematic of a more general concern that the poor should not be the ones to bear the adjustment costs of globalization. I then examined the implications of each of these different concepts for the assessment of the progress of the last twenty years.

It was argued that invariably some groups of poor are adversely a ff ected by globalization , even when a much larger number of poor are made better o ff . Thus, concern for negatively a ff ected subgroups will always lead to a less favorable assessment of the impact of globalization. In the presence of strong population growth, looking at total number of poor rather than poverty incidence also leads to a predictably more pessimistic assessment. However, the implications of including nonmonetary dimensions of poverty are less clear. Many

people clearly believe that liberalization will lead to negative impacts on nonmonetary dimensions of poverty, but the empirical evidence on this is mixed. In regard to inequality I argued that economic research generally applies measures of the shape of the income distribution, while many of the criticisms of globalization are based on polarization and on changes in absolute inequality. The latter concept is related to the observation that the poor often do not have equal access to the opportunities presented by globalization

(Birdsall 2003; Winters, McCulloch, and McKay 2004). Both polarization and absolute changes in inequality tend to indicate rising inequality more often than the measures of inequality preferred by economists. The next section showed that there remain important unresolved methodological issues in the calculation of even the most fundamental poverty and inequality measures. Foremost among these issues are the use of household survey data versus national accounts data to estimate average national incomes, and the method of comparing incomes across countries and over time. Both of these issues have major implications for our assessment of the last twenty years. Until we reach a consensus on them, there will be empirical support for both optimistic and pessimistic views of the period of globalization. Global trends over the last twenty years, however, are not the best facts on which to base claims about

the benefits or otherwise of globalization. Thorough empirical work, which links specific policy measures to poverty outcomes, provides a far better basis. The empirical work to date has contributed to a broad acceptance that trade and FDI are growth promoting. Yet much work remains to show which policies can reduce the adjustment costs borne by the poor

and maximize the share of the benefits they obtain from globalization. Overall it seems that the di ff erence of opinion between globalization’s supporters and critics can be largely explained by di ff erences in prior views and priorities , as well as current ambiguities in the empirical evidence. Rather than viewing criticism as a burden to be thrown off as quickly as possible, policymakers and

researchers alike could do well to heed its message: “good” isn’t good enough. We owe it to the world’s poor to do better.

A2: Environment Impact

No impact-cap can’t destroy the environment to extinctionSchweickart, Loyola philosophy professor, 2009(David, “Is Sustainable Capitalism an Oxymoron?”, Perspectives on Global Development and Technology, 8.2-3)

Anti-capitalist ecologists always say this. In Kovel’s (2007) words , “ capital must expand without end in order to exist (p. 38).” But

is this true? It would seem not to be. Individual small businesses sometimes survive for long periods of time. Marx ’s prediction that the “petty bourgeois” sector

would disappear has turned out not to be true . ( Th e tendency toward monopoly /oligopoly, which he correctly identifi ed, has been off set by the continual rise of new entrepreneurial businesses .) Cap italism itself has survived prolonged depressions—the Great One of 1929 lasted a decade. Periods of stagnation have been even more common—witness Japan

throughout the 1990s. To be sure, cap italism incentivizes growth, but it is not at all clear that thwarted growth leads to death. We can point to lots of counterexamples . It is not true either that the various ecological crises we are facing will bring about “the end of the world .” 4 Consider the recently-released Stern Review , commissioned by the British government, which has been applauded by environmentalists for its strong recommendation that urgent action be taken. If nothing is done, we risk “major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and economic depression of the fi rst half of the 20th century.”5 Th is is serious. Some sixty million people died in World War Two. Th e Stern Review estimates as many as two hundred million people could be

permanently displaced by rising sea level and drought. But this is not “the end of the world.” Even if the effects are far worse, resulting in billions of deaths, there would still be lots of us left . If three-quarters of the present population perished, that would still leave us with 1.6 billion people—the population of the planet in 1900. I say this not to minimize the potentially horrifi c impact of relentless environmental destruction, but to

caution against exaggeration. We are not talking about thermo nuclear war — which could have extinguished us as a species. (It still might.) And we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that millions of people on the planet right now, caught up in savage civil wars or living beneath those US bombers currently devastating Iraq , are faced with conditions more terrible than anyone reading this article is likely to face in his or her lifetime due to environmental degradation.6 Nor will readers suff er more than most of the three billion people alive now who survive on less than $2/day.

No environment impact-ecosystems aren’t that connected.Ridder, Tasmania Environmental Studies PhD, 2008(Ben, “Questioning the ecosystem services argument for biodiversity conservation” Biodiversity and conservation, 17.4, proquest)Advocates of the conservation of biodiversity tend not to acknowledge the distinction between resilient and sensitive ES. This ‘low resilience assumption’ gives rise to, and is reinforced by the almost ubiquitous claim within the conservation literature that ES depend on biodiversity. An extreme example of this claim is made by the Ehrlichs in Extinction. They state that “all [ecosystem services] will be threatened if the rate of extinctions continues to increase” then observe that attempts to fi replicate natural processes “are no more than partially successful in most cases. Nature nearly always does it better. When society sacrifices natural services for some other gain… it must pay the costs of substitution” (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1982, pp. 95–96). This assertion—that the only alternative to protecting every species is a world in which all ES have been substituted by artificial alternatives—is an extreme example of the ‘low resilience assumption’. Paul Ehrlich revisits this flawed logic in 1997 in his response (with four co-authors) to doubts expressed by Mark Sagoff regarding economic arguments for species conservation (Ehrlich et al. 1997, p. 101). The claim that ES depend on biodiversity is also notably present in the controversial Issues in Ecology paper on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Naeem et al. 1999) that sparked the debate mentioned in the introduction. This appears to reflect a general tendency among authors in this

field (e.g., Hector et al. 2001; Lawler et al. 2002; Lyons et al. 2005). Although such authors may not actually articulate the low resilience assumption, presenting such claims in the absence of any clarification indicates its influence .

That the low resilience assumption is largely false is apparent in the number of examples of species extinctions that have not brought about catastrophic ecosystem collapse and decline in ES, and in the generally limited ecosystem influence of species on the cusp of extinction. These issues have been raised by numerous authors, although given the absence of systematic attempts to verify propositions of this sort, the evidence assembled is usually anecdotal and we

are forced to trust that an unbiased account of the situation has been presented. Fortunately a number of highly respected people have discussed this topic, not least being the prominent conservation biologist David Ehrenfeld. In 1978 he described the ‘conservation dilemma’, which “arises on the increasingly frequent occasions when we encounter a threatened part of Nature but can find no rational reason for keeping it” (Ehrenfeld 1981, p. 177). He continued with the following observation: Have there been permanent and significant ‘resource’ effects of the extinction, in the wild, of John Bartram’s great discovery, the beautiful tree Franklinia alatamaha, which had almost vanished from the earth when Bartram first set eyes upon it? Or a thousand species of tiny beetles that we never knew existed before or after their probable extermination? Can we even be certain than the eastern forests of the United States suffer the loss of their passenger pigeons and chestnuts in some tangible way that affects their vitality or permanence, their value to us? (p. 192)

Later, at the first conference on biodiversity, Ehrenfeld (1988) reflected that most species “do not seem to have any conventional value at all” and that the rarest species are “the ones least likely to be missed… by

no stretch of the imagination can we make them out to be vital cogs in the ecological machine” (p. 215). The appearance of comments within the environmental literature that are consistent with Ehrenfeld’s—and from authors whose academic standing is also worthy of respect

—is uncommon but not unheard of (e.g., Tudge 1989; Ghilarov 1996; Sagoff 1997; Slobodkin 2001; Western 2001). The low resilience assumption is also undermined by the overwhelming tendency for the protection of specific endangered species to be justified by moral or aesthetic arguments, or a basic appeal to the necessity of conserving biodiversity , rather

than by emphasizing the actual ES these species provide or might be able to provide humanity. Often the only services that can be promoted in this regard relate to the ‘scientific’ or ‘cultural’ value of conserving a particular species, and the tourism revenue that might be associated with its continued existence. The preservation of such services is of an entirely different order compared with the collapse of human civilization predicted by the more pessimistic environmental authors. The popularity of the low resilience assumption is in part explained by the increased rhetorical force of arguments that highlight connections between the conservation of biodiversity, human survival and economic profit. However, it needs to be acknowledged by those who employ this approach that a number of negative implications are associated with any use of economic arguments to justify the conservation of biodiversity.

A2: Structural Violence

Globalization solves structural violence-infant morbidity down and life expectancy is upKrieckhaus et al., Missouri political science professor, 2011(Jonathan, “Globalization and human well-being”, International Political Science Review, SAGE)

Globalization is increasingly prevalent in the modern world, and scholars have therefore rightly explored both its causes and consequences. Human well-being is also

a heavily studied topic, given that citizens around the globe desire healthy children and longer lifespans. Surprisingly, however, there has been scant research on the myriad ways through which globalization might influence human well-being . We have argued

that there are advantages and disadvantages to globalization, but that in spite of the shortcomings, on balance globalization has a positive effect on human welfare, due to its ability to bring increased development, technology, knowledge, and foreign support. We tested three aspects of this argument, namely the effects of economic globalization, social globalization, and

political globalization. We found that all three of these forms of globalization have enhanced human welfare, and that these positive effects are relatively robust to a wide range of statistical specifications. These findings have significance for both social science and public policy. Concerning social science, we contribute to the longstanding debate as to whether the forces of globalization are a positive or negative force in the world. Although our results speak only to the issue of human physical well-being, we suggest that this is an important criterion for evaluating globalization. Given that we find that three different dimensions of globalization all have consistently positive effects on well-being, we provide new evidence in support of globalization. Concerning public policy, our findings have clear implications for child welfare advocates. While organizations like the UNDP and UNICEF

can, and should, continue to advocate for the interests of developing countries, they should also keep in mind that encouraging developing countries to incorporate themselves into the global system (economically, socially, and politically) will also encourage child welfare. For these same reasons, our results should be of considerable interest to policymakers in the developing world, who

often face difficult choices concerning the political costs and benefits of economic liberalization and decreased cultural autonomy. While we cannot provide here a full cost/benefit analysis of globalization, we do note that a new and important dimension must enter such calculations, namely globalization’s positive effects on the well-being of children. [Note- 132 countries over the time period 1970– 2007]

Inequality is going down AND doesn’t change the effect on human well beingGoklany, Assistant Director for Science and Technology Policy, 2007(Indur, “IS A RICHER-BUT-WARMER WORLD BETTER THAN POORER-BUT-COOLER WORLDS?”, http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2006/02/14/Goklany_160.pdf)

It has been sometimes argued that the extent to which economic growth increases society’s (or another entity’s) capacity to reduce climate change damages via adaptation or mitigation, this capacity would depend considerably on the distribution of the determinants of human well being (such as economic growth) between and within countries. For example, if economic growth is concentrated on countries that are already wealthy, as sometimes has been claimed to be the case in recent decades, then today’s poorer countries’ ability to reduce future climate impacts (due to higher adaptive capacity because of economic growth) could be seriously overestimated. While there is some merit to this argument, it

should be noted that in the recent past, economic growth in some of the most populous developing countries (e.g., China and India)

has outstripped that in developed countries. As a result, income inequalities have, for the world population as a whole, shrunk around the world (Sala-i-Martin, 2007; Bhalla, 2002), as have inequalities between developing and developed countries since the 1950s in terms of determinants of human well-being. 6 More importantly, according to the IPCC scenarios, between 1990 and 2100 income growth in developing countries relative to developed countries will be greater by a factor of 3.6 to 9.4 (IPCC, 2000: 301). Secondly, an

examination of Figures 1 and 2 indicates that the dependence of virtually all determinants of human well-being on income is highly non-linear (generally logarithmic) with their improvements occurring much more rapidly at the lowest levels of income (Goklany, 2007a). Thus even a small improvement in income for poor societies (or the

poor within a country) could enhance their adaptive capacity more than a larger increase for richer societies (or the rich). Thirdly, over the long haul (say, 50 to 100 years), secular improvements in technology could dominate over increases in income with respect to enhancing adaptive capacity, particularly at low income levels (see Figure 3). The long term impact of technological change is one reason for the remarkable declines—99 percent or greater—during the 20th century in mortality and morbidity rates in the United States for various waterrelated diseases, e.g., typhoid, paratyphoid, dysentery,

malaria and various gastrointestinal diseases) (Goklany, 2007b: 153; USBC, 1975: 77).

Every indicator of inequality is treanding downSegerstrom, Stocholm School of Economics professor, 2010(Paul, “Naomi Klein and the Anti-Globalization Movement”, 6-23, http://www2.hhs.se/personal/segerstrom/naomiklein.pdf)

Much of what Naomi Klein writes about the marketing behavior of large corporations is true. But I want to focus on her reason for being concerned. According to Naomi Klein (NL, p.122), “over the last decade [the 1990s], there has been a massive redistribution of the world’s resources, with everyone except those in the very highest tier of the corporate elite…getting less.” There appears to be a general consensus among anti-globalization activists that the world we live in is characterized by disturbing increases in poverty and income inequality. But is this really the case? Economists have devoted a lot of energy to measuring poverty and income inequality in the world. I want to discuss at length the influential paper “The World Distribution of Income: Falling Poverty and…Convergence, Period” by Xavier

Sala-i-Martin (2006), an economist at Columbia University. Sala-i-Martin (2006) uses aggregate Gross Domestic Product data and within-country income shares for the period 1970-2000 to assign a level of income to each person in the world. All income data used are purchasing-power-parity-adjusted since people tend to buy goods where they live and one wants to compare incomes across

people who live in different countries. Also all income levels are converted to 1996 constant US dollars and are thus corrected for inflation. Sala-i-Martin estimates a densit function for the world distribution of income. The implications for poverty and income inequality

are surprising. Sala-i-Martin finds that the percentage of people in the world with incomes below $1 per day (one

commonly used measure of poverty) has fallen from 15.4% in 1970 to 5.7% in 2000 and the percentage of people in the world with incomes below $2 per day (another commonly used measure of poverty) has fallen from 29.6% in 1970 to 10.6% in 2000. The recent period of globalization has been associated with a substantial decrease in the fraction of the world population living in poverty (using either measure). Indeed, the entire distribution of income in the world has shifted

significantly to the right (see Sala-i-Martin’s Figure 4). 5 Turning to income inequality, Sala-i-Martin uses eight different popular indexes to measure income inequality . All indexes show a reduction in global income inequality between 1980 and 200 0.

Within-country income inequality has increased slightly during the sample period but not enough to offset the substantial reduction in across country disparities. 6 The reduction in global income inequality is driven by China, where 1.2 billion people (20% of the world population) have benefited from high economic growth rates since 1978. If one removes China from the data, then global income inequality would be roughly constant over time.

A2: War Impact

Reduces conflict-last 3 decades prove. Tures, LaGrange political science professor, 2003(John, “Economic Freedom And Conflict Reduction: Evidence From The 1970s, 1980s, And 1990s”, http://www.freetheworld.com/papers/John_Tures.pdf)

The last three decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of market-based reforms and the profusion of economic freedom in the international system. This shift in economic policy has sparked a debate about whether free markets are superior to state controls. Numerous studies have compared the neoliberal and statist policies on issues of production capacity, economic growth, commercial volumes, and egalitarianism. An overlooked research agenda, however, is the relationship between levels of economic freedom and violence within countries. Proponents of the statist approach might note that a strong government can bend the market to its will, directing activity toward policies necessary to achieve greater levels of gross domestic product and growth. By extracting more resources for the economy, a powerful state can redistribute benefits to keep the populace happy. Higher taxes can also pay for an army and police force that intimidate people. Such governments range from command economies of totalitarian

systems to autocratic dictators and military juntas. Other economically unfree systems include some of the authoritarian “Asian tigers.” A combination of historical evidence, modern theorists, and statistical findings, however, has indicated that a reduced role for the state in regulating economic transactions is associated with a decrease in internal conflicts. Countries where the government dominates the commercial realm experience an increase in the level of domestic violence. Scholars have traced the history of revolutions to explain the relationship between statism and internal upheavals. Contemporary authors also posit a relationship between economic liberty and peace . Statistical tests show a strong connection between economic freedom and conflict reduction during the past three decades.

Neolib boosts freedom and peace-strong statistical support. Soysa et al., Norwegian University of Science and Technology professor, 2011(Indra de, “Does Being Bound Together Suffocate, or Liberate? The Effects of Economic, Social, and Political Globalization on Human Rights, 1981–2005”, KYKLOS, Vol. 64 – February 2011 – No. 1, 20–53, ebsco) There is a large volume of research on human rights and their determinants, but theoretical models and empirical evidence on the effects of globalization on the extent of human rights are sparse. The empirical evidence on this subject that does exist assess very simple dimensions of globalization, typically measures such as the level

of trade openness or the penetration of FDI (Hafner-Burton 2005). Instead of these commonly-used proxies of globalization, we use an index that aggregates several factors that in combination capture how globalized a country is along three main dimensions—economic, political, and social globalization (Dreher et al. 2008). As far as we are aware, no study has estimated how differentially these three dimensions of globalization affect government respect for human rights and the degree of political terror, an important normative policy concern as well as a crucial

aspect of future socio-political development. We employ panel data for 118 countries for which there is complete data (94 developing and 24 developed countries) over the period 1981–2005 (25 years). Our results are easily summarized:

globalization and the disaggregated components along economic, social, and political dimensions predict higher human rights, controlling for a host of other factors. These results are robust to instrumental variables techniques that allow us to assess

the endogenous nature of the relationship between human rights and globalization. The results support those who argue that increased globalization could build peace and social progress, net of all the other factors such as democracy and higher levels of income.

Case Turns KCollapse is worse for all their impacts---causes extinction of every other species and then humansMonbiot, visiting Environmental Policy professorship at Oxford, 2009(George, “Is there any point in fighting to stave off industrial apocalypse?”, 8-17, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change)

The interesting question, and the one that probably divides us, is this: to what extent should we welcome the likely collapse of industrial civilisation? Or more precisely: to what extent do we believe that some good may come of it? I detect in your writings, and in the conversations we have had, an attraction towards – almost a yearning for – this apocalypse, a sense that you see it as a cleansing fire that will rid the world of a diseased society. If

this is your view, I do not share it. I'm sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war. These alone surely give us sufficient reason to fight on, however faint our chances appear. But even if we were somehow able to put this out of our minds, I believe that what is likely to come out on the other side will be worse than our current settlement. Here are three observations: 1 Our species (unlike most of its members) is tough and resilient; 2 When civilisations collapse, psychopaths take over; 3 We seldom learn from others' mistakes. From the first observation, this follows: even if

you are hardened to the fate of humans, you can surely see that our species will not become extinct without causing the extinction of almost all others. However hard we fall, we will recover sufficiently to land another hammer blow on the biosphere. We will continue to do so until there is so little left that even Homo sapiens can no longer survive. This is the ecological destiny of a species possessed of outstanding intelligence, opposable thumbs and an ability to interpret and exploit almost every possible resource – in the absence of political restraint. From the second and third observations, this

follows: instead of gathering as free collectives of happy householders, survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political

accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero. The human and ecological consequences of the first global collapse are likely to persist for many generations, perhaps for our species' remaining time on earth. To imagine that good could come of the

involuntary failure of industrial civilisation is also to succumb to denial. The answer to your question – what will we learn from this collapse? – is nothing. This is why, despite everything, I fight on. I am not fighting to sustain economic growth. I am fighting to prevent both initial collapse and the repeated catastrophe that follows. However faint the hopes of engineering a soft landing – an ordered and structured downsizing of the global economy – might be, we must keep this possibility alive. Perhaps we are both in denial: I, because I think the fight is still worth having; you, because you think it isn't.

Collapse is better for transnational capital-they are the only ones with the resources to exploit the crisis.McCoy, Wisconsin history professor, 2010(Alfred, “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire Four Scenarios for the End of the American Century by 2025”, 12-6, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/06-1)

Complicating matters even more, the economic, military, and technological trends outlined above will not operate in tidy isolation. As happened to

European empires after World War II, such negative forces will undoubtedly prove synergistic. They will combine in thoroughly unexpected ways, create crises for which Americans are remarkably unprepared, and threaten to spin the economy into a sudden downward spiral, consigning this country to a generation or more of economic misery. As U.S. power recedes, the past offers a spectrum of possibilities for a future world order. At one end of this spectrum, the rise of a new global superpower, however unlikely, cannot be ruled out. Yet both China and Russia evince self-referential cultures, recondite non-roman scripts, regional defense strategies, and underdeveloped

legal systems, denying them key instruments for global dominion. At the moment then, no single superpower seems to be on the horizon likely to succeed the U.S. In a dark, dystopian version of our global future, a coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an

international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no

longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all. While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis offers at least a partial vision of such a world from the bottom up. He argues that the billion people already packed into fetid favela-style slums worldwide (rising to two billion by 2030) will make “the 'feral, failed cities' of the Third World… the distinctive battlespace of the

twenty-first century.” As darkness settles over some future super-favela, “the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression” as “hornet-like helicopter gun-ships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts… Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions.”

Mobilizing anti-systemic movements damages institutions that regulate capital—makes the system more violent Wallerstein, former Binghamton sociology professor, 2000(Immanuel, “Globalization or the Age of Transition? A Long-Term View of the Trajectory of the World System “, International Sociology, June, http://www.iwallerstein.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/TRAJWS1.PDF)

The major argument for patience has been the inevitability of reform . Things will get better – if not immediately, then for one’s children and grandchildren. A more prosperous, more egalitarian world is on the horizon. This is, of course, official liberal ideology, and it has dominated the

geoculture since the 19th century. But it has also been the theme of all the anti-systemic movements, not least those which have proclaimed themselves most revolutionary. These movements have particularly emphasized this theme when they have occupied state power. They have said to their own working classes that they were ‘developing’ their economies, and these working classes must be patient while the fruits of economic growth eventually improve their life situations. They have preached patience not only about standards of living but also about the absence of political equality. As long as such anti-systemic movements (whether they were communist, social-democrat or national liberation movements) were in their mobilizing phase against inegalitarian, militaristic, dictatorial, fascist, colonial or even simply conservative regimes, this theme was muted and did not interfere with

the ability of anti-systemic movements to secure extensive popular support. Once, however, such movements came to power, as they did extensively throughout the world during the period 1945–70 (the Kondratieff A-period of which we have been speaking),

they were put to the test. And worldwide they have been found wanting. The record of post-’revolutionary’ regimes has been that they have not been able to reduce worldwide or even internal polarization to any significant degree, nor have they been able to institute serious internal political equality . They have, no doubt,

accomplished many reforms, but they promised far more than reforms. And because the world system has remained a capitalist world economy, the regimes outside the core zone have been structurally unable to ‘catch up’ with the wealthy countries. This is not merely a matter of academic analysis. The result of these realities has been a monumental disillusionment with the anti-systemic movements. To the extent that they retain support, it is at most as a pis aller, as a reformist group

better, perhaps, than a more right-wing alternative but certainly not as a harbinger of the new society. The major result has been a massive disinvestment in state structures. The masses of the world, having turned toward the states as agents of transformation, have now returned to a more fundamental skepticism about the ability of the states to promote transformation

or even to maintain social order. This worldwide upsurge of anti-statism has two immediate consequences. One is that social fears have escalated, and people everywhere are taking back from the states the role of providing for their own security. But of course this institutes a negative spiral. The more they do so the more there is chaotic violence, and the more there is chaotic violence, the more the states find themselves unable to handle the situation, and therefore the more people disinvest the state, which further weakens the ability of the states to limit the spiral. We have entered into this kind of spiral at varying paces in the various countries of the world system but at a growing pace virtually everywhere.

Neolib Answers – No Alternative – 1AR

No movements against neoliberalism-incrementalism pacifies resistanceStelzer, Hudson Institute economic policy studies director, 2009(Irwin, “Death of capitalism exaggerated”, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/death-of-capitalism-exaggerated/story-e6frg6ux-1225783517725)All of this is contrary to expectations. The communist spectre that Karl Marx confidently predicted would be haunting Europe is instead haunting

Europe's left-wing parties, with even Vladimir Putin seeking to attract investment by re-privatising the firms he snatched. Which raises an interesting question: why haven't the economic turmoil and rising unemployment led workers to the barricades, instead of to their bankers to renegotiate their mortgages? It might be because Spain's leftish government has proved less able to cope with economic collapse than countries with more centrist governments. Or because Britain, with a leftish government, is now the sick man of Europe, its financial sector in intensive care, its recovery likely to be the slowest

in Europe, its prime credit rating threatened. Or it might be because left-wing trade unions, greedily demanding their public-sector members be exempted

from the pain they want others to share, have lost their credibility and ability to lead a leftward lurch. All of those factors contribute to the unexpected strength of the Right in a world in which a record number of families are being tossed out of their homes, and jobs have been disappearing by the

million. But even more important in promoting reform over revolution are three factors: the existence of democratic institutions; the condition of the unemployed; and the set of policies developed to cope with the recession. Democratic institutions give the aggrieved an outlet for their discontent, and hope they can change conditions they deem unsatisfactory. Don't like the way George W. Bush has skewed income distribution? Toss the Republicans out and elect a man who promises to tax the rich more heavily. Don't like Gordon Brown's tax increases? Toss him out and hope the Tories mean it when they promise at least to try to lower taxes. Result: angry voters but no rioters, unless one counts the nutters who break windows at McDonald's or storm banks in the City. Contrast that with China, where the disaffected have no choice but to take to the streets. Result: an estimated 10,000 riots this year protesting against job losses, arbitrary taxes

and corruption. A second factor explaining the Left's inability to profit from economic suffering is capitalism's ability to adapt, demonstrated in the Great Depression of the 1930s. While a gaggle of bankers and fiscal conservatives held out for the status quo, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his experimenters began to weave a social safety net. In Britain, William Beveridge produced a report setting the stage for a similar, indeed stronger,

net. Continental countries recovering from World War II did the same. So unemployment no longer dooms a worker to close-to-starvation. Yes, civic institutions were able to soften the blow for the unemployed before the safety net was put in place, but they could not cope with pervasive

protracted lay-offs. Also, during this and other recessions, when prices for many items are coming down, the real living standard of those in work actually improves. In the US, somewhere between 85 per cent and 90 per cent of workers have kept their

jobs, and now see their living costs declining as rents and other prices come down. So the impetus to take to the streets is limited. Then there are the steps taken by capitalist governments to limit the depth and duration of the downturn . As the

economies of most of the big industrial countries imploded, policy went through two phases. The first was triage - do what is necessary to prevent the financial system from collapse. Spend. Guarantee deposits to prevent runs on banks and money funds, bail out big banks, force relatively healthier institutions to take over sicker ones, mix all of this with rhetorical attacks on greedy bankers - the populist spoonful of sugar that made the bailouts

go down with the voters - and stop the rot. Meanwhile, have the central banks dust off their dog-eared copies of Bagehot and inject lots of liquidity by whatever means comes to mind. John Maynard Keynes, meet Milton Friedman for a cordial handshake. Then came more permanent reform, another round of adapting capitalism to new realities, in this case the malfunctioning of the financial markets. Even Barack Obama's left-wing administration decided not to scupper the markets but instead to develop rules to relate bankers' pay more closely to long-term performance; to reduce the chance of implosions by increasing the capital banks must hold, cutting their profits and dividends, but leaving them in private hands; and to channel most stimulus spending through private-sector companies. This leaves the anti-market crowd little room for manoeuvre as voters seem satisfied with the changes to make capitalism and markets work better and more equitably.

Turns

Market Good For Environment – 1ARShort-term market mechanisms are the only solution to environmental destructionBryant, Collin College philosophy professor, 2012(Levi, “We’ll Never Do Better Than a Politician: Climate Change and Purity”, 5-11, http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/well-never-do-better-than-a-politician-climate-change-and-purity/)Somewhere or other Latour makes the remark that we’ll never do better than a politician. Here it’s important to remember that for Latour– as for myself –every entity is a “politician”. Latour isn’t referring solely to those persons that we call “politicians”, but to all entities that exist. And if Latour claims that we’ll never do better

than a politician, then this is because every entity must navigate a field of relations to other entities that play a role in what is and is not possible in that field . In the language of my ontology, this would be articulated as the thesis that the local manifestations of which an entity is capable are, in part, a function of the relations the entity entertains to other entities in a regime of attraction. The world about entities perpetually introduces resistances and frictions that play a key role in what comes to be actualized. It is this aphorism that occurred to me today after a disturbing discussion with a rather militant Marxist on Facebook. I had posted a very disturbing editorial on climate change by the world renowned climate scientist James Hansen. Not only did this person completely misread the editorial, denouncing Hansen for claiming that Canada is entirely responsible for climate change (clearly he had no familiarity with Hansen or his important work), but he derided Hansen for proposing market-based solutions to climate change on the grounds that “the market is the whole source of the problem!” It’s difficult to know how to respond in this situations. read on! It is quite true that it is the system of global capitalism or the market that has created our climate problems (though, as Jared Diamond shows in Collapse, other systems of production have also produced devastating climate problems). In its insistence on profit and expansion in each economic quarter, markets as currently structured provide no brakes for environmental destructive actions. The system is itself

pathological. However, pointing this out and deriding market based solutions doesn’t get us very far. In fact, such a response to proposed market-

based solutions is downright dangerous and irresponsible . The fact of the matter is that 1) we currently live in a market based world, 2) there is not , in the foreseeable future an alternative system on the horizon, and 3), above all, we need to do something now . We can’t afford to reject interventions simply because they don’t meet our ideal conceptions of how things should be. We have to work with the world that is here, not the one that we would like to be here. And here it’s crucial to note that pointing this out does not entail that we shouldn’t work for producing that other world. It just means that we have to grapple with the world that is actually there before us. It pains me to write this post because I remember, with great bitterness, the diatribes hardcore Obama supporters leveled against legitimate leftist criticisms on the grounds that these critics were completely unrealistic idealists who, in their demand for “purity”, were asking for “ponies and unicorns”. This rejoinder always seemed to ignore that words have power and that Obama, through his profound power of rhetoric, had, at least the power to shift public debates and frames, opening a path to making new forms of policy and new priorities possible. The tragedy was that he didn’t use that power, though he has

gotten better. I do not wish to denounce others and dismiss their claims on these sorts of grounds. As a Marxist anarchists, I do believe that we should fight for the creation of an alternative hominid ecology or social world . I think that the call to commit and fight, to put alternatives on the table, has been one of the most powerful contributions of thinkers like Zizek and Badiou. If we don’t commit and fight for alternatives those alternatives will never

appear in the world. Nonetheless, we still have to grapple with the world we find ourselves in . And it is here, in my encounters with some Militant Marxists, that I sometimes find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are unintentionally aiding and abetting the very things they

claim to be fighting. In their refusal to become impure, to work with situations or assemblages as we find them , to sully their hands, they end up reproducing the very system they wish to topple and change. Narcissistically they get to sit there, smug in their superiority and purity, while everything continues as it did before because they’ve refused to become politicians or engage in the difficult

concrete work of assembling human and nonhuman actors to render another world possible. As a consequence, they occupy the position of Hegel’s beautiful soul that denounce s the horrors of the world, celebrate the beauty of their soul , while depending on those horrors of the world to sustain their own position . To engage in politics is to engage in networks or ecologies of relations between humans and nonhumans. To engage in ecologies is to descend into networks of causal relations and feedback loops that you cannot completely master and that will modify your own commitments and actions. But there’s no other way, there’s no way around this, and we do need to act now.

Alt doesn’t solve-economic evaluation is key to preservation of the environmentThompson, Stanford natural resources professor, 2003 (Barton, “What Good is Economics”, 27 Environs Envtl. L. & Pol'y J. 175, lexis)Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable for other purposes. Indeed, economics is indispensable in diagnosing why society currently does not achieve the level of environmental protection desired by the moralist. Those who turn their backs on economics and rely instead on ethical   [*187]   intuition to diagnose environmental problems are likely to find themselves doomed to failure. Economic theory suggests that flaws in economic markets and institutions are often the cause of environmental problems . Three concepts of

market failure have proven particularly robust in analyzing environmental problems. The first is the " tragedy of the commons ." n28 If a resource is open and free for multiple parties to use, the parties will tend to over-utilize the resource, even to the point of its destruction. Economists and others have used the tragedy of the commons to explain such environmental problems as over-fishing, the over-drafting of groundwater aquifers, the early and inept exhaustion of

oil fields, and high levels of population growth. n29 The second, more general concept (of which the tragedy of the commons actually is a specialized instance)

is the " negative externality ." n30 When parties do not bear the full cost to society of environmental harms that they cause, they tend to under-invest in the elimination or correction of the harm. Externalities help explain why factories pollute, why landowners destroy ecologically valuable wetlands or other forms of

habitat, and why current generations consume high levels of exhaustible resources. The final concept is the problem of " collective action ." n31 If political or market actions will benefit a large group of individuals and it is impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, each

individual will have an incentive to "free ride" on the actions of others rather than acting themselves, reducing the possibility that anything will get done. This explains

why the private market does not provide us with more wildlife refuges or aesthetic open space. n32 Although these economic explanations for environmental problems are not universal truths, accurate in all settings, they do enjoy a robust   [*188]   applicability. Experimenters, for example, have found that subjects in a wide array of countries succumb to the tragedy of the commons. n33 Smaller groups sometimes have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons and govern a resource in collective wisdom. Yet this exception appears to be the result of institutional characteristics peculiar to the group and resource that make it easier to devise a local and informal regulatory system rather than the result of cultural differences that undermine the economic precepts of the tragedy of the commons. n34 These economic explanations point to a vastly different approach to solving environmental problems than a focus on environmental ethics alone would suggest. To environmental moralists, the difficulty is that the population does not understand the ethical importance of protecting the environment. Although governmental regulation might be necessary in the short run to force people to do what they do not yet appreciate is proper, the long run answers are education and moral change. A principal means of enlightening the citizenry is engaging them in a

discussion of environmental goals. Economic analysis, by contrast, suggests that the problem lies in our economic institutions. The solution under economic analysis is to give those who might harm the environment the incentive to avoid the harm through the imposition of taxes or regulatory fines or the awarding of environmentally beneficial subsidies . The few studies that have tried to test the relative importance of environmental precepts and of economics in predicting environmentally relevant behavior suggest that economics trumps ethics. In one 1992 experiment designed to test whether subjects would yield to the tragedy of the commons in a simulated fisheries common, the researchers looked  [*189]  to see whether the environmental attitudes of individual subjects made any difference in the subjects' behavior. The researchers measured subjects' environmental beliefs through various means. They administered questionnaires designed to elicit environmental beliefs; they asked the subjects how they would behave in various hypothetical scenarios (e.g., if someone asked them to volunteer to pick up litter on the weekend); they even tried to see

how the subjects would react to real requests for environmental help (e.g., by asking them to participate in a Saturday recycling campaign). No matter how the researchers tried to measure the environmental attitudes of the subjects , attitude failed to provide a statistically significant explanation for participants' behavior in the fishing commons . Those who appeared to have strong environmental beliefs behaved just as tragically as those who did not when fighting for the limited stock of fish. n35 In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth

subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels. n36 Ethical beliefs , in short, frequently fall victim to personal convenience or cost considerations . Ethical views sometimes can make a difference in how people behave. Examples include the role that ethics has played in encouraging people to recycle or to eat dolphin-free tuna. n37 But the  [*190]  personal cost, if any, of recycling or of eating dolphin-free tuna is exceptionally small. For most of the environmental dilemmas that face the nation and the world today, the economic cost of changing behavior is far more significant. And where costs are high, economics appears to trump most peoples' environmental views. Even if ethics played a more powerful role, we do not know for certain how to create or strengthen environmental norms. n38 In contrast, we do know how to change economic incentives. Although environmental moralists should continue trying to promote environmental ethics, economic analysis currently provides the strongest tool for diagnosing and thus helping to resolve environmental problems. The environmental moralist who ignores this tool in trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration.

Market forces key to sustain the environmentWager, EDF economist, 2011(Gernot, But Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World, pg 11-2)

The fundamental forces guiding the behavior of billions are much larger than any one of us . It's about changing

our system, creating a new business as usual. And to do that we need to think about what makes our system run. In the end, it comes down to markets , and the rules of the game that govern what we chase and how we chase it. Scientists can tell us how bad it will get. Activists can make us pay attention to the ensuing

instabilities and make politicians take note. When the task comes to formulating policy, only economists can help guide us out of this morass and save the planet. In an earlier time with simpler problems, environmentalists took direct action against the market's brutal forces by erecting roadblocks or chaining themselves to trees. That works if the opposing force is a lumberjack with a chain saw. It might even work for an entire industry when the task is to ban a particular chemical or scrub a

pollutant out of smokestacks. But that model breaks down when the opposing force is ourselves : each and every one of us

demanding that the globalized market provide us with cheaper and better food, clothes, and vacations. There is no blocking the full, collective desires of the billions who are now part of the market economy and the billions more who want to—and ought to—be part of it. The only solution is to guide all-powerful market forces in the right direction and create incentives for each of us to make choices that work for

all of us. The guideposts we have today for market forces evolved helter- skelter from a historical process that gave almost no weight to the survival of the planet , largely because the survival of the planet was not at stake. Now it is. Since we can't live without market forces, we need to guide them to help us keep the human adventure going in workable ways, rather than continue on the present path right off the edge of a cliff .

Turn – Climate Change – 2AC Neolib solves warming-allows the greatest adaptive capacity and improves human wellbeing that overwhelms negative effects.Goklany, Assistant Director for Science and Technology Policy, 2007(Indur, “IS A RICHER-BUT-WARMER WORLD BETTER THAN POORER-BUT-COOLER WORLDS?”, http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2006/02/14/Goklany_160.pdf)

Table 10 indicates that notwithstanding gross inflation of the adverse impacts of climate change, welfare should be higher in 2100 than it was in 1990 under all scenarios. Remarkably, even after accounting for climate change, welfare in developing countries (on average) should be higher in 2100 than it was for developed countries in 1990 for all but the A2

scenario. This also calls into question arguments that present generations are morally bound to take aggressive actions now to mitigate climate change because future generations will, otherwise, be worse off in the future. Future generations will not only be better off, they should also have at their disposal better and more effective technologies and greater human

capital to address not just climate change but any other sources of adversity. Second, well-being in 2100 should, in the aggregate, be highest for the richest-but warmest (A1FI) scenario and lowest for the poorest (A2) scenario.

This conclusion was reached despite the previously noted tendency of impacts analyses to overestimate net adverse impacts, especially for wealthier societies. To summarize, over this century the SRES scenario that leads to the greatest risk of climate change is also

the one that leads to the greatest gains in human welfare. Notwithstanding climate change, through this century human well-being is likely to be highest in the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) world and lower in poorer-but-cooler worlds. Thus, if humanity could choose between the four scenarios examined here, it should for the next few decades

strive to realize the richest-but-warmest (A1FI) world. Strictly from the perspective of human well-being, the richest-but-warmest world characterized by the A1FI scenario would probably be superior to the poorer-but-cooler worlds at least through 2085, particularly if one considers the numerous ways

GDP per capita advances human well-being. Human well-being would likely be the lowest for the poorest (A2) world. With respect to environmental well-being, the FTA’s results suggest matters may be best in the A1FI world for some critical environmental indicators through 2100, but not necessarily for others. On the other hand, the Stern Review’s worst-case results for potential welfare losses due to climate change suggest that, welfare, adjusted for market and non-market impacts and the risk of catastrophe due to climate change, will be highest under the A1FI scenario, at least through 2100. It should however be noted that the results of this paper would not by themselves justify any inference that intervening to mitigate the impacts of climate change, either through limiting emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases or through adaptation, would reduce welfare by making us poorer. That needs a different type of economic analysis involving, among other things, analysis of the marginal costs and benefits of various interventions and include consideration of co-benefits of adaptation and mitigation and opportunity costs (Goklany, 2007a), which is outside the scope of this paper.

Nevertheless, the above results cast doubt on a key premise implicit in all calls to steer the world toward lower emission pathways and to take actions now that would go beyond “no-regret” policies in order to reduce GHG emissions in the near term, namely, a richer but-warmer world will, before too long, necessarily be worse for the globe than a poorer but-cooler world. But the above analysis suggests this is unlikely to occur, at

least not before the 2085–2100 period, and that in the short-to-medium term, societies should strive to advance their level of economic development and their ability to develop, implement and acquire new and improved technologies while simultaneously implementing “no regret” actions to mitigate climate change and reduce vulnerability to current climate sensitive problems that might be exacerbated by climate change (Goklany, 2005, 2007a).

Turn – Hegemony – 2AC Neolib is key to hegCafruny, Henry Platt Bristol International Affairs professor, 2008(Alan, “The Imperial Turn and the Future of Us Hegemony: Terminal Decline or Retrenchment?” 3-25, http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/5/2/1/0/pages252105/p252105-3.php)

The role played by U.S. structural financial power in the construction of Europe’s neoliberal project has been analyzed by many scholars (Helleiner, 1994;

Gowan, 1999; Seabrooke, 2001; Baker, 2003); Panitch and Gindin, 2005; Cafruny and Ryner, 2007a; Ryner, 2007). However, the relationship between neoliberalism and geopolitics has received less attention . In the first part of this chapter I discuss the role of U.S. military power as it has served, in tandem with U.S. structural financial power, to consolidate the turn to neoliberalism in Europe. Beginning in the mid-1990s the United States transformed NATO from a containment-oriented and defensive alliance to an

instrument designed to promote the forward expansion of American power across the European continent and into central Asia. This reinforced Europe’s geopolitical dependence on the United States and buttressed neoliberal social forces across the continent. In the second part of the chapter I consider the long-range possibilities for the United States and Europe in view of growing challenges to U.S. power in both its geoeconomic and geopolitical dimensions. The uncertain status of the

dollar is the natural accompaniment to relative industrial decline and the transnationalization of production even as U.S. hegemony has been prolonged through financial deregulation and a resultant series of bubbles. In this context the Bush administration’s policy of geopolitical advance and militarization, designed in part to maintain its hold over global energy resources, is a compensatory strategy (Harvey, 2003) that has, however,

encountered substantial costs and risks. Notwithstanding the deepening crisis of the U.S. imperium, the possibilities for a European challenge are sharply circumscribed by its subordinate participation within a U.S.-led neoliberal transnational financial order and its related inability to develop an autonomous regional security structure. U.S. power in both its structural financial and military dimensions has been central to the construction and consolidation of a European neoliberalism. It has not, however, led to transnational class formation or the

suppression of inter-imperialist rivalry either at the Atlantic level or within the European Union. Neoliberal ideology cements national capitalist classes together in an organic alliance under a declining but still minimally hegemonic U.S. superpower. From within the framework of this intersubjective agreement the United States continues to provide collective goods in the form of liquidity, trade openness, and military security, albeit very much on its own terms as it externalizes its own problems and social contradictions into the international system. In the eurozone mercantilist rivalry has been displaced from the sphere of national monetary policy to “structural labor reform” and, intermittently, fiscal policy. AFTER THE COLD WAR: INTERREGNUM AND RESTORATION OF U.S. COERCIVE SUPREMACY IN EUROPE 3

Turn – Poverty – 2AC

Globalization solves poverty and repressionChen, Minnesota law school professor, 2000(Jim, “ESSAY: PAX MERCATORIA: GLOBALIZATION AS A SECOND CHANCE AT "PEACE FOR OUR TIME”, 24 Fordham Int'l L.J. 217, lexis)

The antiglobalization movement has made some extraordinary claims. Let us transplant a precept of natural science into this social realm: n177 extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. n178 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. n179 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 [*246] level. n180 Since 1820 global wealth has expanded tenfold, thanks largely to technological advances and the

erosion of barriers to trade. n181 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. n182 (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.") n183 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." n184 In concrete terms, "economic growth associated with globalization" over the course of that

decade helped lift 1.4 billion people out of absolute poverty. n185 Whatever its precise magnitude, this improvement in global welfare has taken place because of, not in spite of, flourishing world trade. n186 The meaning of American victory in the Cold War. The liberal democracies of the north Atlantic alliance decisively defeated their primary political rivals in the Eastern bloc. Capitalism coupled with generous civil liberties crushed central planning coupled with dictatorship of the proletariat. "America, so the world supposes, won the Cold War." n187 And the world is right. The true nature of the environmental crisis. The most serious environmental problems involve "the depletion and destruction of the global commons." n188 Climate change, ozone depletion, [*247] and the loss of species, habitats, and biodiversity are today's top environmental priorities. n189 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." n190 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 ." n191 The enhancement of individual

liberty through globalization. By dislodging local tyrants and ideologies, globalization has minimized the sort of personal abuse that too often seems endemic to one place, one population. n192 The twenty-first century will witness "people voting with their feet to escape from some village elder's idea of how to live, or some London School of Economics graduate's idea of protecting Indian

folkways." n193 This changing social reality will undermine the conventional assumption that capital is mobile but labor is immobile. Generations of scholarship on trade and international relations hang in the balance. At the very least we will have to recalibrate

existing race-to-the-bottom models and their sensitivity to "giant sucking sounds." [*248] Nor has localism propounded plausible solutions to challenges such as food security, n194 AIDS and other epidemiological crises, and barriers to full equality for women and

children. n195 The localist package of autarky, retaliatory protectionism, and isolationism would be catastrophic. It really is a shame that Ralph Nader will probably not be named "the first U.S. ambassador to North Korea," where he could "get a real taste of what a country that actually follows [his] insane economic philosophy - high protectionism, economic autarky, anti-markets, antiglobalization, anti-multinationals - is like for the people who live there." n196 The policies preferred by the protesters at Seattle and Prague guarantee penury for most, security for some, and power for an unjustly privileged few. That way runs anew the road to serfdom. n197