Impact calc game

InstructionsEach student will be given an impact with evidence below.

Each student will prepare a 45 second speech extending their impact and comparing it to another student’s impact.

Students in the lab will vote for who they extended and compared their impact the best (lab leaders have veto power). The student who wins can choose to either keep their original impact or take the one they just defeated.

The students will compete in a single elimination bracket style tournament.

Russian Population Crisis - Alan H.Russian population decline causes a nuclear warEberstadt 11 - Political economist and demographer @ American Enterprise Institute [Nicholas Eberstadt (Chair in Political Economy @ AEI, Senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research and PhD in political economy and government from Harvard University), “The Dying Bear: Russia's Demographic Disaster,” Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2011, pg. http://tinyurl.com/otrhvvr

Throughout the Putin and Medvedev eras, the potential security risks to Russia from the ongoing demographic crisis have weighed heavily on the minds of the country's leaders. In his first State of the Nation address, in July 2000, Putin declared that "year by year, we, the citizens of Russia, are getting fewer and fewer. . . . We face the threat of becoming a senile nation." In his 2006 address, he identified demographics as "the most acute problem facing our country today." In Medvedev's May 2009 National Security Strategy, the country's demographic situation was noted as one of the "new security challenges" that Russia must confront in the years ahead. In other words, the potential ramifications of Russia's population trends are not entirely lost on the Kremlin -- and they are hardly just a domestic concern. But how will Russia's bunkered and undemocratic leaders cope with the demographic pressures and unfavorable human resource trends that are undermining their goals? For

the international community, this may be the single most disturbing aspect of Russia's peacetime

population crisis : it is possible that Russia's demographic decline could prompt Moscow to become a more unpredictable, even menacing , actor on the world stage.

Most immediately and dramatically, the decline could lead Russia's military leaders, aware of their deficiencies in both manpower and advanced technology, to lower the threshold at which they might consider using nuclear weapons in

moments of crisis. Indeed, such thinking was first outlined in Putin's 2000 National Security Concept and was reaffirmed in Medvedev's 2009 National Security Strategy. The official Russian thinking is that nuclear weapons are Russia's trump card : the more threatening the international environment, the more readily Moscow will resort to nuclear diplomacy.

For the moment, the Kremlin evidently still believes that its ambitious long-term socioeconomic plans will not only remedy the country's demographic woes but also propel Russia into the select ranks of the world's economic superpowers. But if Russia's demographic decline and relative economic decline continue over the next few

decades, as they most likely will, Moscow's leaders will be unable to sustain that illusion .

Indeed, once the Kremlin finally confronts the true depths of the country's ugly demographic truths, Russia's political leaders could very well become more alarmist, mercurial, and confrontational in their international

posture. And in the process, Moscow might become more prone to miscalculation when it comes to relations with both allies and rivals. Meanwhile, Russia is surrounded by countries whose stability and comity in the decades ahead are anything but given: for example, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and the Central Asian republics. If Russia's periphery

becomes more unstable and threatening at the same time that Russia's rulers realize their relative power is waning, the Kremlin's behavior may well become less confident -- and more risky.

Russia's monumental demographic and human resource crisis cannot be remedied without a commensurately monumental nationwide effort by the Russians themselves. Such an effort will require a historic change in Russian mentality, both in the

halls of power and among the general population. On the bright side, with hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign exchange in its vaults, Russia probably has the means to finance the education and public health campaigns needed for such a transformation.

Afghanistan Instability - SeanAfghanistan conflict causes central Asian instability that goes nuclear Starr, 1 (December 13, Chair of Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at John Hopkins University, “The War Against Terrorism and U.S. Bilateral Relations with the Nations of Central Asia,” Testimony before Senate Subcommittee on Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus)

All of the Central Asian states have identified these issues as their main security threat, and Afghanistan as the locus of that threat. So has Russia, which has used the issue to justify the stationing of troops in four of the five countries of the region. [Continued…] The Central Asians face a similar danger with respect to our efforts in Afghanistan. Some Americans hold that we should

destroy Bin Laden, Al Queda, and the Taliban and then leave the post-war stabilization and reconstruction to others. Such a course runs the danger of condemning all Central Asia to further waves of instability from the South. But in the next round it will not only be Russia that is tempted to throw its weight around in the region but possibly China, or even Iran or India. All have as much right to claim Central Asia as their “backyard” as Russia has had until now. Central Asia may be a distant region but

when these nuclear powers begin bumping heads there it will create terrifying threats to world peace that the U.S. cannot ignore.

Biowarfare - Julia

Biowarfare results in global extinction, which outweighs all elseOchs ‘2 [Richard, MA Natural Resource Management at Rutgers University , Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park, June 9th, immediately," http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html" target="_blank">"Biological Weapons must be abolished >immediately,")

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories.

While a "nuclear winter” resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future

generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine

hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nation’s survival was at stake. Will the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope? Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. To preclude

possibilities of human extinction, "patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanity’s survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our cherished freedom,

our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope. What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive

bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. We truly hold in our hands the precious gift of all future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors? Strategic brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes.

Terrorism - RoydenTerrorism leads to extinctionSpeice ‘6 (Patrick F. Jr., JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary “NEGLIGENCE AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION: ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS,” February 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427]

Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon

by a number of methods, including "steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438] such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of

these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear

devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire, 47 raising the chilling prospect

that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or

terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist

groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the

number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of

nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

US Econ - AtulGlobal depression will trigger global wars – prefer empiricsMead ‘9 (Walter Russell, Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, New Republic, February 4, 2009)So far, such half-hearted experiments not only have failed to work; they have left the societies that have tried them in a progressively worse position, farther behind the front-runners as time goes by. Argentina has lost ground to Chile; Russian development has fallen farther behind that of the Baltic states and Central Europe. Frequently, the crisis has weakened the power of the merchants, industrialists, financiers, and professionals who want to develop a liberal capitalist society integrated into the

world. Crisis can also strengthen the hand of religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists who are determined to resist liberal capitalist society for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, the companies and banks based in these societies are often less established and more vulnerable to the consequences of a financial crisis than more established firms in wealthier societies. As a result, developing countries and countries where capitalism has relatively recent and shallow roots tend to suffer greater economic and political damage when crisis strikes--as, inevitably, it does. And,

consequently, financial crises often reinforce rather than challenge the global distribution of power and wealth. This may be happening yet again. None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have been a normal part of life during the 300-year

rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe

was a pretty peaceful place in 1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still have to fight.

Constitution - Alan I.The Constitution prevents nuclear war – you must uphold itCongressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Oh, March, 2002 http://www.downwinders.org/Kucinich_Peace_p.html

"Politics ought to stay out of fighting a war," the President has been quoted as saying on March 13th 2002. Yet Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution explicitly requires that Congress take responsibility when it comes to declaring war. This

President is very popular, according to the polls. But polls are not a substitute for democratic process. Attributing a negative connotation here to politics or dismissing constitutionally mandated congressional oversight belies reality: Spending $400 billion a year for defense is a political decision. Committing

troops abroad is a political decision. War is a political decision. When men and women die on the battlefield that is the result of a political decision. The use of nuclear weapons, which can end the lives of millions, is a profound political decision. In a monarchy there need be no political decisions. In a democracy, all decisions are political, in that they derive from the consent of the governed. In a democracy, budgetary, military and national objectives must be subordinate to the political process. Before we celebrate an imperial presidency, let it be said that the lack of free and open political process, the lack of free and open political debate, and the lack of free and open political dissent can be fatal in a democracy. We have reached a moment in our country's history where it is urgent that people everywhere speak out as president of his or her own life, to protect the peace of the nation and world within and without. We should speak out and caution leaders who generate fear through talk of the endless war or the final conflict. We should appeal to our leaders to consider that their own bellicose thoughts, words and deeds are reshaping consciousness and can have an adverse effect on our nation. Because when one person thinks: fight! he or she finds a fight. One faction thinks: war! and starts a war. One nation thinks: nuclear! and approaches the abyss. And what of one nation which thinks peace, and seeks peace? Neither individuals nor nations exist in a vacuum, which is why we have a serious responsibility for each other in this world. It is also urgent that we find those places of war in our own lives, and begin healing the world through healing ourselves. Each of us is a citizen of a common planet, bound to a common destiny. So connected are we, that each of us has the power to be the eyes of the world, the voice of the world, the conscience of the world, or the end of the world. And as each one of us chooses, so becomes the world. Each of us is architect of this world. Our thoughts, the concepts. Our words, the designs. Our deeds, the bricks and mortar of our daily lives. Which is why we should always take care to regard the power of our thoughts and words, and the commands they send into action through time and space. Some of our leaders have been thinking and talking about nuclear war. Recently there has been much news about a planning document which describes how and when America might wage nuclear war. The Nuclear Posture Review recently released to the media by the government: 1. Assumes that the United States has the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike. 2. Equates nuclear weapons with conventional weapons. 3. Attempts to minimize the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. 4. Promotes nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack. Some dismiss this review as routine government planning. But it becomes ominous when taken in the context of a war on terrorism which keeps expanding its boundaries, rhetorically and literally. The President equates the "war on terrorism" with World War II. He expresses a desire to have the nuclear option "on the table." He unilaterally withdraws from the ABM treaty. He seeks $8.9 billion to fund deployment of a missile shield. He institutes, without congressional knowledge, a shadow government in a bunker outside our nation's Capitol. He tries to pass off as arms reduction, the storage of, instead of the elimination of, nuclear weapons. Two generations ago we lived with nuclear nightmares. We feared and hated the Russians who feared and hated us. We feared and hated the "godless, atheistic" communists. In our schools, each of us dutifully put our head between our legs and practiced duck-and-cover drills. In our nightmares, we saw the long, slow arc of a Soviet missile flash into our neighborhood. We got down on our knees and prayed for peace. We surveyed, wide eyed, pictures of the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We supported the elimination of all nuclear weapons. We knew that if you "nuked" others you "nuked" yourself. The splitting of the atom for destructive purposes admits a split consciousness, the compartmentalized thinking of Us vs. Them, the dichotomized thinking, which spawns polarity

and leads to war. The proposed use of nuclear weapons, pollutes the psyche with the arrogance of infinite power. It creates delusions of domination of matter and space. It is dehumanizing through its calculations of mass casualties. We must overcome doomthinkers and sayers who invite a world descending, disintegrating into a nuclear disaster. With a world at risk, we must find the bombs in our own lives and disarm them. We must listen to that quiet inner voice which counsels that the survival of all is achieved through the unity of all.

India Economy - DylanIndian growth prevents global conflict and nuclear war between India and PakistanBouton 10 (Marshall M. Bouton, President – Chicago Council on Global Affairs, “America’s Interests in India”, CNAS Working Paper, October, http://www.cnas.org/files/documents/publications/CNAS_USInterestsinIndia_ Bouton.pdf)

In South Asia, the most immediately compelling U.S. interest is preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland originating in or facilitated by actors in South Asia, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan. To avert that possibility, the United States also has an interest in the stability and development of

both countries. At the same time, the United States has a vital interest in preventing conflict between Pakistan and India, immediately because such a conflict would do great damage to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan (such as the diversion of Pakistani military

attention away from the insurgency) and because it would pose the severe risk of nuclear escalation . Finally, the United States has an interest in peace and stability in South Asia as a whole. Instability and violence in nearly every one of India’s neighbors, not to

mention in India itself, could, if unchecked, undermine economic and political progress, potentially destabilizing the entire region. At present, a South Asia dominated by a politically stable and economically dynamic India is a hugely important counterweight to the prevalent instability and conflict all around India’s periphery. Imagining the counterfactual scenario, a South Asian region, including India, that is failing economically and stumbling politically, is to imagine instability on a scale that would have global consequences, including damage to the global economy, huge dislocations of people and humanitarian crisis, increasing extremism and terrorism, and much greater potential for unchecked interstate and civil conflict .

Monsoon - Jack Erratic monsoons destroy food & water stability in southeast asia - causes unmitigated catastropheGuterl 12 Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American and author of The Fate of the Species, citing Tim Lenton, Professor of Earth System Science and Chair in Climate Change at the University of Exeter, Scientific American, May 25, 2012, “Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amok [Excerpt]”, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-worlds-weather-could-quickly-run-amok/

These two opposite influences make the fate of the monsoon difficult to predict and subject to instability. A small influence—a

bit more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and a bit more brown haze—could have an out- size effect. Lenton believes

that the monsoons could flip from one state to another as quickly as one year. What happens then is

not a question that Lenton can answer with certainty, but he foresees two possibilities.

One is that the monsoons grow in force and intensity, but come less frequently. We have already seen hints of this in the newspapers. In the last few years rains have grown erratic and less frequent , but when they do come, they tend to dump an enormous amount of water , and in places where they wouldn't normally do so. This is almost as bad for farmers as drought, since the rain falls on parched ground with extra force, and much of it runs off without soaking into the ground, and it causes damage to boot by washing away soil and plants.

The flooding that devastated Pakistan in 2011 is a case in point. If this trend continued and strengthened in intensity, it would be bad news for the two thirds of the Indian workforce that depends on farming. It would be nasty for the Indian economy —agriculture accounts for 25 percent of GDP. A permanently erratic and harsh monsoon would depress crop yields , increase erosion on farms, and cause a rise in global food prices as India is forced to import more food.

The other possibility is even worse : the monsoons could shut down entirely . This would be an unmitigated catastrophe . A sudden stopping of monsoon rain , which accounts for 80 percent of rainfall in India, could throw a billion people into danger of starvation . It would change the Indian landscape, wiping out native species of plants and animals, force farms into bankruptcy, and exacerbate water shortages that are already creating conflict . The Indian government would almost certainly be unable to cope with a disaster of such proportions. Refugees by the hundreds of millions would stream into big cities such as Mumbai

and Bangalore, looking for some hope of survival. It would create a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions . Lenton foresees a similar danger of sudden change in the West African monsoon, the second tipping point.

Heg - MarcusUS primacy is key to every major impact—the alternative is global destabilization and wildfire prolif.Brooks & Wohlforth 4/13/16 (Stephen G. Brooks Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, and William C. Wohlforth Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. “The Once and Future Superpower Why China Won’t Overtake the United States”, Foreign Affairs, Published online on April 13th 2016, appears in the May/June 2016 issue, Volume 95, Number 3)

Given the barriers thwarting China’s path to superpower status, as well as the low incentives for trying to overcome them, the future of the international system hinges most on whether the U nited S tates continues to bear the much lower burden of sustaining what we and others have called “deep engagement,” the globe-girdling

grand strategy it has followed for some 70 years. And barring some odd change of heart that results in a true abnegation of its global role (as opposed to overwrought, politicized charges sometimes made about its already having

done so), Washington will be well positioned for decades to maintain the core military capabilities , alliances , and commitments that secure key regions , backstop the global economy , and foster cooperation on transnational problems .

The benefits of this grand strategy can be difficult to discern, especially in light of the United States’ foreign misadventures in recent years. Fiascos such as the invasion of Iraq stand as stark reminders of the difficulty of using force to alter domestic politics abroad. But power is as much about preventing unfavorable outcomes as it is about causing favorable ones, and here Washington has done a much better job than most Americans appreciate.

For a largely satisfied power leading the international system, having enough strength to deter or block challengers is in fact more valuable than having the ability to improve one’s position further on the margins. A crucial objective of U.S. grand strategy over the decades has been to prevent a much more dangerous world from emerging, and its success in this endeavor can be measured largely by the absence of outcomes common to history : important regions destabilized by severe security dilemmas , tattered alliances unable to contain breakout challengers, rapid weapons proliferation , great-power arms races , and a descent into competitive economic or military blocs.

Were Washington to truly pull back from the world, more of these challenges would emerge ,

and transnational threats would likely loom even larger than they do today . Even if such threats did

not grow, the task of addressing them would become immeasurably harder if the United States had to grapple with a much less stable global order at the same time. And as difficult as it sometimes is today for the U nited S tates to pull together coalitions to address transnational challenges, it would be even harder to do so if the country abdicated its leadership role and retreated to tend its garden, as a growing number of analysts and policymakers—and a large swath of the public—are now calling for.

Dehumanization - WheelerDehumanization is the greatest evil, worse than all other impacts.Berube ‘97 (David M. Berube, June to July 1997, Professor, PCOST CoordinatorPh.D, “Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side,” Nanotechnology Magazine, http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/Nanotechnological%20Prolongevity.pdf)

This means-ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse....

Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the

cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities

which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become things, they become dispensable.

When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon

Disease - MonaMutated disease cause extinctionDiscover 2000 (“Twenty Ways the World Could End” by Corey Powell in Discover Magazine, October 2000, http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)

If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.

Ozone - MalachiOzone loss causes extinctionSephton 4 (Mark Sephton, 7/26/2004. Professor of Organic Geochemistry and Meteoritics at Imperial College in London. “OZONE LOSS CAUSED GENETIC MUTATIONS AT TIME OF MASS EXTINCTION,” http://www.theozonehole.com/ozoneloss.htm.)

The Open University’s Dr Mark Sephton, who was part of an international team of scientists from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom who uncovered the remarkable new information, said: “The mother of all mass extinction just got worse”.

The findings are to appear in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) magazine, published today.

“In our work we have found that at the time of the end- Permian extinction increased amounts of u ltra v iolet light filtered through the Earth’s surface and caused damage to the DNA in plant spores. The results were abnormalities that prevented plant life from reproducing and a consequent collapse of terrestrial ecosystems ,” says Dr Sephton. “ The cause of the increased intensity of u ltra v iolet light was a disruption in the Earth’s ozone shield . Massive volcanic activity that was taking place in Siberia at this

time forced chlorine and bromine containing gases into the stratosphere where they catalytically destroyed ultraviolet-absorbing ozone gases. It was only when volcanic activity subsided, that life on earth could begin to recover from its biggest ever catastrophe,” he concluded.

Deforestation - ArjunDefo undermines key carbon sinks, upsets the hydrologic cycle, causes soil erosion and species extinctionHilderman 10 [Richard Hilderman, Jamestown College in North Dakota with a BS in biology. Richard decided to pursue a career in molecular biology and graduated from the University of Missouri with a Ph.D. in microbiology. He furthered his education with a postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry at the University of Connecticut Health Center prior to taking a faculty position at Clemson University 12-27-2010 http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/the-effect-of-deforestation-on-the-climate-and-environment.aspx#axzz3HkdJlTKy]

Deforestation is caused by the growing demand for forest products and the conversion of forest to agriculture as the human population continues to expand. In 1750 cropland and pastureland occupied 6-7% of the global land surface; by 1990 cropland and pastureland occupied 35-39% of the global land surface. It is estimated that the world is currently losing over 9 million hectares per year which is

an area the size of Portugal. Defo restation not only affects the climate by increasing the atmospheric level

of carbon dioxide but also affects the environment by inhibiting water recycling , triggering severe flooding , aquifer depletion , soil degradation and the extinction of plant and animal species. Trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis (see my posting entitled The

Carbon Cycle). Cutting down forests will cause a decline in photosynthetic activity which results in the atmosphere retaining higher levels of carbon dioxide. Forests also store an enormous amount of organic carbon which is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when forests are cleared by burning. Clearly, deforestation contributes to global warming and ocean acidification (see my two postings entitled Solar Activity, Greenhouse Gas Levels and Climate Change on Our Earth and Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels and Ocean Acidification). Water recycling is the movement of rain from the forest to land

masses further inland. When rain falls on forests the water is intercepted by the forest canopy.

Some of this intercepted water is returned to the atmosphere by evaporation and transpiration (release of water

vapor into the atmosphere through stomata on tree leaves) while the rest is returned to the ocean as river runoff. In a healthy forest about three fourth of the intercepted water is returned to the atmosphere as moisture laden air

masses which move inland, cool and are converted to rain. Land cleared by deforestation returns only about one fourth of the rain water to the atmosphere. This air mass has less moisture and delivers less rain further inland. Deforestation inhibits water recycling and converts inland forest to dry land and potential waste land . Severe flooding is a result of deforestation because removal of the forest leaves little vegetative cover to hold heavy rains. The inability of land void of forest to hold heavy rain water will also trigger mudslides like the ones that have occurred in recent years in California, China and other parts of the world. Severe flooding and mudslides are

extremely costly because they devastate homes and communities. The excess water from land cleared of forest becomes runoff water and enters the ocean instead of seeping downward into the soil to recharge aquifers. Aquifer depletion is already becoming a serious problem in certain areas of the

planet and as the human population continues to grow so will the demand for fresh water. Deforestation also results in soil degradation. Forests store nutrients that are required for all plant life. In the tropics almost all nutrients are stored in the vegetation because tropical soil has little organic matter and almost no nutrient storage capacity. If tropical forests are cleared for cropland, the land will yield crops for only a few years and when the nutrients are depleted they become waste

land. Today deforestation, especially, in the tropics, decimates plant and animal life . Tropical rainforest contain about 7% of land surface but over half of the plant and animal species on the planet. If tropical rainforest deforestation continues at the current rate, it is estimated that by the first part of the 21st century about half of the remaining rainforest will be lost along with about

5 to 10% of all the species on the planet. Global warming is not just about temperature. Global warming directly affects humans because everything about our life is tied to the climate such as food production, water supplies, health and well being, etc.

EMP - PebbleEMP = ExtinctionSchneider ‘8 [Mark. National Institute for Public Policy. “The Future of the US Deterrent” Comparative Strategy, Vol 27 No 4. July 2008. EBSCO [

Why can’t the United States deter WMD (nuclear, chemical, biological) attack with conventional weapons? The short answer

is that conventional weapons can’t deter a WMD attack because of their minuscule destructiveness compared with WMD, which

are thousands to millions of times as lethal as conventional weapons. Existing WMD can kill millions to hundreds of millions of people in an hour, and there are national leaders who would use them against us if all they had to fear was a conventional response. The threat of nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, as assessed by a Congressional Commission in 2004, is so severe that one or at most a handful of EMP attacks could demolish industrial civilization in the United States.3 The view that conventional weapons can replace nuclear weapons in deterrence or warfighting against a state using WMD is not technically supportable. Precision-guided conventional weapons are fine substitutes for non-precision weapons, but they do not remotely possess the lethality of WMD warheads. Moreover, their effectiveness in some cases can be seriously

degraded by counter-measures and they clearly are not effective against most hard and deeply buried facilities that are associated with WMD threats and national leadership protection. If deterrence of WMD attack fails, conventional weapons are unlikely to terminate adversaryWMDattacks upon us and our allies or to deter escalation.

Inner Mongolian Instability - Brian

Inner Mongolian instability causes widespread ethnic separatism in Tibet and TaiwanChunshan 11 Mu Chunshan is a Beijing-based journalist. Previously, Mu was part of an Education Ministry-backed research project investigating the influence of foreign media in shaping China’s image. He has previously reported from the Middle East, Africa, Russia and from around Asia. “Why Inner Mongolia Matters The protests that erupted after a herder was killed by a trucker highlight the conflicting interests in Inner Mongolia.” http://thediplomat.com/2011/06/why-inner-mongolia-matters/

Late last month, a friend in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, told me that military police were guarding the university there, and

that students weren’t allowed to freely come and go. I was taken aback. I didn’t think that the killing of a farmer could escalate so quickly.

Inner Mongolia certainly hasn’t been a peaceful place recently, due mainly to unrest prompted by the conflict there between economic and environmental interests, specifically the coal mining activities of the Han Chinese and the farmlands that the Mongolians depend on for a living.

Last month, a Mongolian herder was killed, apparently for refusing to let coal trucks pass through the grasslands

out of concern for the noise and pollution being caused. Following the herder’s death, protests involving hundreds of people erupt ed in the north-eastern region of Inner Mongolia. Among those protesting were students, who staged a sit-down protest against the government and demanded severe punishment for the ‘murderer.’ (The trucker was convicted and sentenced to death last week).

At a press conference held by local authorities, officials promised to promptly and strictly deal with the matter, but this wasn’t enough to quell growing anger . A text message urging a mass protest on May 30 began to circulate widely, and anxious local authorities dispatched a large number of military police to Hohhot and Xilin Gol; university students were even briefly stopped from attending school.

Inner Mongolia Communist Party Secretary Hu Chunhua, who is widely seen as a key member of the party’s sixth generation leadership, personally met the students, calling for calm and restraint. He also said that the government would properly handle the challenge of encouraging economic development while ensuring the environment is protected.

But a criminal case that should have been simple to resolve has become complicated due to a

number of factors – ethnicity, economics and social tensions.

Of China’s five autonomous regions, economic growth has been strongest in Inner Mongolia, with few protests and relative ethnic and

social harmony. Yet in some ways, this harmony has been superficial, and the incident involving the death of the herder highlights one of the big problems facing the region, namely how high GDP growth has come at the expense of many farmers’ livelihoods, adversely affecting the environment in the process.

Against this backdrop, senior communist party officials held a meeting to discuss

measures to strengthen and rejuvenate public administration. The media interpreted the meetings as the Chinese Communist Party finally acknowledging some of the defects of China’s economic growth model, and the serious social problems it can create.

Many Chinese scholars are concerned that those hoping to see China destabilized will see this incident as a new opening . China should therefore remain vigilant over the possibility that the unrest in Inner Mongolia will be exploited by those seeking independence in Tibet , Xinjiang, Taiwan and elsewhere . If these current tensions really are exploited, it could spark major social unrest around China.

Capitalism Bad - RushilCapitalism is the root cause of every conflict in the last century. Unless we stop it, future genocides and conflicts are inevitable. INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES, Spring 2000, p. 249

Mass death, and genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of whole groups of human beings, have become an integral part of the social landscape of capitalism in its phase of decadence. Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not merely the names of discrete sites where human beings have been subjected to forms of industrialized mass

death, but synecdoches for the death-world that is a component of the capitalist mode of production in this

epoch. In that sense, I want to argue that the Holocaust, for example, was not a Jewish catastrophe, nor an atavistic reversion to the barbarism of a past epoch, but

rather an event produced by the unfolding of the logic of capitalism itself. Moreover, Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not

"past", but rather futural events, objective-real possibilities on the Front of history, to use concepts first articulated by the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. The ethnic cleansing which has been unleashed in Bosnia and Kosovo, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the mass death to which Chechnya has been subjected, the prospect for a nuclear war on the Indian sub-continent, are so many examples of the future which awaits the human species as the capitalist mode of production enters a new millenium. Indeed, it is just such a death-world that constitutes the meaning of one pole of the historic alternative which Rosa Luxemburg first posed in the midst of the slaughter inflicted on masses of conscripts during World War I: socialism or barbarism! Yet, confronted by the horror of Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima, Marxist theory has been silent or uncomprehending. While I am convinced that there can be no adequate theory of mass death and genocide which does not link these phenomena to the unfolding of the logic of capital, revolutionary Marxists have so far failed to offer one. Worse, the few efforts of revolutionary Marxists to grapple with the Holocaust, for example, as I will briefly explain, have either degenerated into a crude economism, which is one of the hallmarks of so-called orthodox Marxism, or led to a fatal embrace of Holocaust denial; the former being an expression of theoretical bankruptcy, and the latter a quite literal crossing of the class line into the camp of capital itself. Economism, which is based on a crude base-superstructure model (or travesty) of Marxist theory, in which politics, for example, can only be conceived as a direct and immediate reflection of the economic base, in which events can only be conceived as a manifestation of the direct economic needs of a social class, and in the case of the

capitalist class, the immediate need to extract a profit, shaped Amadeo Bordiga's attempt to "explain" the Holocaust. Thus, in his "Auschwitz ou le Grand Alibi" Bordiga explained the extermination of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, as the reaction of one part of the petty bourgeoisie to its historical demise at the hands of capital by "sacrificing" its other -- Jewish -- part so as to save the rest, an undertaking welcomed by big capital, which could thereby liquidate a part of the petty bourgeoisie with the support of the rest of that same class. Quite apart from an economism which simply ignores the dialectic between the economy on the one hand, and the political and ideological on the other (about which more later), such an "explanation" asks us to conceive of genocide not as the complex outcome of the unfolding of the operation of the law of value in the diverse spheres of social life, but as the direct outcome of the utilitarian calculation of segments of the petty bourgeoisie and big capital. Auschwitz, the veritable hallmark of the fundamental irrationality of late capital, is transformed by Bordiga into a rational calculation of its direct profit interests on the part of the capitalists. However, an undertaking which fatally diverted the scarce resources (material and financial) of Nazi Germany from the battlefields of the imperialist world war, simply cannot, in my view, be comprehended on the basis of a purely economic calculus of profit and loss on the part of "big capital." While Bordiga's reaction to Auschwitz fails to provide even the minimal bases for its adequate theorization, the reaction of the militants of La Vieille Taupe, such as Pierre Guillaume, constitutes a political betrayal of the struggle for communist revolution by its incorporation into the politics of Holocaust denial. For Guillaume, Auschwitz can only be a myth, a fabrication of the allies, that is, of one of the imperialist blocs in the inter-imperialist world war, because it so clearly serves their interests in mobilizing the working class to die in the service of democracy; on the alter of anti-fascism. Hence, La Vieille Taupe's "fervor to contest the evidence of its [the Holocaust's] reality by every means possible, including the most fraudulent. For the evidence of genocide is just so many deceptions, so many traps laid for anticapitalist radicality, designed to force it into dishonest compromise and eventual loss of resolve." It is quite true that capital has utilized antifascism to assure its ideological hegemony over the working class, and that the Holocaust has been routinely wielded for more than a generation by the organs of mass manipulation in the service of the myth of "democracy" in the West (and by the state of Israel on behalf of its own imperialist aims in the Middle-East). And just as surely the ideology of antifascism and its functionality for capital must be exposed by revolutionaries. Nonetheless, this does not justify the claims of Holocaust denial, which not only cannot be dissociated from anti-Semitism, but which constitutes a denial of the most lethal tendencies inherent in the capitalist mode of production, of the very barbarism of capitalism, and thereby serves as a screen behind which the death-world wrought by capital can be safely hidden from its potential victims.

Biodiversity - AlexBiodiversity is quick, and causes global wars and death. Torres 16 (Phil Torres, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Phil is the founder of the X-Risks Institute, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, , “Biodiversity loss: An existential risk comparable to climate change”. http://thebulletin.org/biodiversity-loss-existential-risk-comparable-climate-change9329)

The sixth extinction.

The repercussions of biodiversity loss are potentially as severe as those anticipated from climate change,

or even a nuclear conflict. For example, according to a 2015 study published in Science Advances, the best available evidence reveals “ an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries , indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way .” This conclusion holds, even on the most optimistic assumption s about the background rate of species losses and the current rate of vertebrate extinctions. The group classified as “vertebrates” includes mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, and all other creatures with a backbone.

The article argues that, using its conservative figures, the average loss of vertebrate species was 100 times higher in the past century relative to the background rate of extinction. (Other scientists

have suggested that the current extinction rate could be as much as 10,000 times higher than normal.) As the authors write, “The evidence is incontrovertible that recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history.” Perhaps the term “Big Six” should enter the popular lexicon—to add the current extinction to

the previous “Big Five,” the last of which wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

But the concept of biodiversity encompasses more than just the total number of species on the planet. It also refers to the size of different populations of species. With respect to this phenomenon, multiple studies have confirmed that

wild populations around the world are dwindling and disappearing at an alarming rate. For example, the 2010 Global Biodiversity Outlook report found that the population of wild vertebrates living in the tropics dropped by 59 percent between 1970 and 2006.

The report also found that the population of farmland birds in Europe has dropped by 50 percent since 1980; bird populations in the grasslands of North America declined by almost 40 percent between 1968 and 2003; and the population of birds in North American arid lands has fallen by almost 30 percent since the 1960s. Similarly, 42 percent of all amphibian species (a type of vertebrate that is sometimes called an “ecological indicator”) are undergoing population declines, and 23 percent of all plant species “are estimated to be threatened with extinction.” Other studies have found that some 20 percent of all reptile species, 48 percent of the world’s primates, and 50 percent of freshwater turtles are threatened. Underwater, about 10 percent of all coral reefs are now dead, and another 60 percent are in danger of dying.

Consistent with these data, the 2014 Living Planet Report shows that the global population of wild vertebrates dropped by 52 percent in only four decades—from 1970 to 2010. While biologists often avoid projecting historical trends into the future because of the complexity of ecological systems, it’s tempting to extrapolate this figure to, say, the year 2050, which is four decades

from 2010. As it happens, a 2006 study published in Science does precisely this: It projects past trends of marine biodiversity loss into the 21st century, concluding that, unless significant changes are made to patterns of human activity, there will be virtually no more wild-caught seafood by 2048 .

Catastrophic consequences for civilization. The consequences of this rapid pruning of the evolutionary tree of life

extend beyond the obvious. There could be surprising effects of biodiversity loss that scientists are unable to fully anticipate in advance. For example, prior research has shown that localized ecosystems can undergo abrupt and irreversible shifts when they reach a tipping point . According to a 2012 paper published in Nature, there are reasons for thinking that we may be approaching a tipping point of this sort in the global ecosystem, beyond which the consequences could be catastrophic for civilization.

As the authors write, a planetary-scale transition could precipitate “ substantial losses of ecosystem services required to sustain the human population .” An ecosystem service is any ecological process that

benefits humanity, such as food production and crop pollination . If the global ecosystem were to cross a tipping point and substantial ecosystem services were lost, the results could be “widespread social unrest, economic instability, and loss of human life.” According to Missouri Botanical Garden ecologist Adam

Smith, one of the paper’s co-authors, this could occur in a matter of decades —far more quickly than most of the expected consequences of climate change, yet equally destructive.

Biodiversity loss is a “threat multiplier ” that, by pushing societies to the brink of collapse, will exacerbate existing conflicts and introduce entirely new struggles between state and non-state actors. Indeed, it could even fuel the rise of terrorism . (After all, climate change has been linked to the emergence of ISIS in Syria, and multiple high-ranking US officials, such as former US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and CIA director John Brennan, have affirmed that climate change and terrorism are connected.)

The reality is that we are entering the sixth mass extinction in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth, and the impact of this event could be felt by civilization “in as little as three human lifetimes,” as the

aforementioned 2012 Nature paper notes. Furthermore, the widespread decline of biological populations could plausibly initiate a dramatic transformation of the global ecosystem on an even faster timescale : perhaps a single human lifetime .

The unavoidable conclusion is that biodiversity loss constitutes an existential threat in its own right. As

such, it ought to be considered alongside climate change and nuclear weapons as one of the most significant contemporary risks to human prosperity and survival.

Warming - AkashClimate change is a system disruptor and a risk amplifier--only mitigation prevents biodiversity loss, marine ecosystem collapse, resource wars, global food scarcity, and extreme weather events Pachauri & Meyer 15 (Rajendra K. Pachauri Chairman of the IPCC, Leo Meyer Head, Technical Support Unit IPCC were the editors for this IPCC report, “Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report” http://epic.awi.de/37530/1/IPCC_AR5_SYR_Final.pdf IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp)

SPM 2.3 Future risks and impacts caused by a changing climate

Climate change will amplify existing risks and create new risks for natural and human systems . Risks are unevenly distributed and are generally greater for disadvantaged people

and communities in countries at all levels of development. {2.3}

Risk of climate-related impacts results from the interaction of climate-related hazards (including

hazardous events and trends) with the vulnerability and exposure of human and natural systems,

including their ability to adapt. Rising rates and magnitudes of warming and other changes in

the climate system, accompanied by ocean acidification , increase the risk of severe, pervasive and in

some cases irreversible detrimental impacts. Some risks are particularly relevant for individual regions (Figure SPM.8),

while others are global. The overall risks of future climate change impacts can be reduced by limiting the rate and magnitude of climate change , including ocean acidification. The precise levels of

climate change sufficient to trigger abrupt and irreversible change remain uncertain, but the risk associated with crossing such thresholds increases with rising temperature (medium confidence).

For risk assessment, it is important to evaluate the widest possible range of impacts , including low-probability outcomes with large consequences. {1.5, 2.3, 2.4, 3.3, Box Introduction.1, Box 2.3, Box 2.4}

A large fraction of species face s increased extinction risk due to climate change during and

beyond the 21st century, especially as climate change interacts with other stressors (high confidence). Most

plant species cannot naturally shift their geographical ranges sufficiently fast to keep up with current and high projected rates of climate change in most landscapes; most small mammals and freshwater molluscs will not be able to keep up at the rates projected under RCP4.5 and above in flat landscapes in this century (high

confidence). Future risk is indicated to be high by the observation that natural global climate change at rates lower than current anthropogenic climate change caused significant ecosystem shifts and species extinctions during the past millions of years. Marine organisms will face progressively lower oxygen levels and high rates and magnitudes of ocean acidification (high

confidence), with associated risks exacerbated by rising ocean temperature extremes (medium

confidence). Coral reefs and polar ecosystems are highly vulnerable . Coastal systems and low-lying areas are at risk from sea level rise, which will continue for centuries even if the global mean temperature is stabilized (high confidence). {2.3, 2.4, Figure 2.5}

Climate change is projected to undermine food security (Figure SPM.9). Due to projected climate change

by the mid-21st century and beyond, global marine species redistribution and marine biodiversity reduction in sensitive regions will challenge the sustained provision of fisheries productivity and other ecosystem services (high confidence). For wheat, rice and maize in tropical and

temperate regions, climate change without adaptation is projected to negatively impact production for local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late 20th century levels, although individual locations may

benefit (medium confidence). Global temperature increases of ~ 4°C or more 13 above late 20th century levels,

combined with increasing food demand , would pose large risks to food security globally (high

confidence). Climate change is projected to reduce renewable surface water and groundwater resources in most dry subtropical regions (robust evidence, high agreement), intensifying competition for water among sectors (limited evidence, medium agreement). {2.3.1, 2.3.2}

Until mid-century, projected climate change will impact human health mainly by exacerbating health problems that already exist (very high confidence). Throughout the 21st century, climate change is expected to lead to increases in ill-health in many regions and especially in developing countries with low income, as compared to a baseline without climate change (high confidence). By 2100 for RCP8.5, the combination of high temperature and humidit y in some areas for parts of the year is expected to compromise common human activities, including growing food and working outdoors (high confidence). {2.3.2}

In urban areas climate change is projected to increase risks for people, assets, economies and ecosystems, including risks from heat stress , storms and extreme precipitation , inland and coastal flooding , landslides , air pollution , drought , water scarcity , sea level rise and storm surges (very high confidence). These risks are amplified for those lacking essential infrastructure and services or living in exposed areas. {2.3.2}

Rural areas are expected to experience major impacts on water availability and supply, food security, infrastructure and agricultural incomes, including shifts in the production areas of food and non-food crops around the world (high confidence). {2.3.2}

Aggregate economic losses accelerate with increasing temperature (limited evidence, high agreement),

but global economic impacts from climate change are currently difficult to estimate. From a poverty perspective,

climate change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth , make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security and prolong existing and create new poverty traps , the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger (medium confidence). International dimensions such as trade and relations among states are also important for understanding the risks of climate change at regional scales. {2.3.2}

Climate change is projected to increase displacement of people (medium evidence, high agreement).

Populations that lack the resources for planned migration experience higher exposure to extreme

weather events, particularly in developing countries with low income. Climate change can indirectly increase risks of violent conflicts by amplifying well-documented drivers of these conflicts such as poverty and economic shocks (medium confidence). {2.3.2}

Separation of Powers - SahilDestruction of separation of powers risks nuclear warRedish and Cisar 91(Martin H. and Elizabeth J., Duke University School of Law, “’If Angels Were to Govern’: The Need for Pragmatic Formalism in Separation of Powers Theory” Duke Law Journal, (41)3, Dec., p. 449-506) In any event, the political history of which the Framers were aware tends to confirm that quite often concentration of political power ultimately leads to the loss of liberty. Indeed,

if we have begun to take the value of separation of powers for granted, we need only look to modern American history to remind ourselves about both the general vulnerability of representative government, and the direct correlation between the concentration of political power and the threat to individual liberty. The widespread violations of individual rights that took place when Pres- ident Lincoln assumed an inordinate level of power, for example, are well documented.128 Arguably as egregious were the threats to basic freedoms that arose during the Nixon administration, when the power of the executive branch reached what are widely deemed to have been intolerable levels.129 Although in neither instance did the executive's usurpations of power ultimately degenerate into complete and irreversible tyranny, the reason for

that may well have been the resilience of our political traditions, among the most important of which is separation of powers itself. In any event, it would be political folly to be overly smug about the security of either representative government or individual liberty. Although it would be all but impossible to create an empirical proof to demonstrate that our constitutional tradition of separation of powers has been an essential catalyst in the avoidance of tyranny, common sense should tell us that the simultaneous division of power and the creation of interbranch checking play important roles toward that end. To underscore the point, one need imagine only a limited modification of the actual scenario surrounding the recent Persian Gulf War. In actuality, the war was an extremely popular endeavor, thought by many to be a politically and morally justified exercise. But imagine a situation in which a President, concerned about his failure to resolve significant social and economic problems at home, has callously decided to engage the nation in war, simply to defer public attention from his domestic failures. To be sure, the President was presumably elected by a majority of the electorate, and may have to stand for reelection in the future. However, at this particular point in time, but for the system established by separation of powers, his authority as Commander in Chief 130 to en- gage the nation in war would be effectively

dictatorial. Because the Con- stitution reserves to the arguably even more representative and accountable Congress the authority to declare war,131 the Constitution has attempted to prevent such misuses of power by the executive.132 It remains unproven whether any governmental structure other than one based on a system of separation of powers could avoid such harmful results. In summary, no defender of separation of powers can prove with certitude that, but for the existence of

separation of powers, tyranny would be the inevitable outcome. But the question is whether we wish to take that risk, given the obvious severity of the harm that might result. Given both the relatively limited cost imposed by use of separation of powers and the great severity of the harm sought to be avoided, one should not demand a great showing of

the likelihood that the feared harm would result. For just as in the case of the threat of nuclear war, no one wants to be forced into the position of saying, "I told you so."474 [Vol. 41:449

Water Wars - RajanWater wars are likely and lead to mass migration, unsustainable human living, and worldwide conflictLevitt, MSN Environmental writer, 2009(Tom, “Water Wars: How the world is facing a critical shortage” http://environment.uk.msn.com/climate-change/article.aspx?cp-documentid=9259609)

As water shortages and access to clean water become more critical so the potential for conflicts is becoming greater. "If the wars of the 20th century were fought over oil, the wars of this century will be fought over water." The World Bank It is often women and children who are responsible for collecting water everyday International cooperation on water is

generally good. In many cases it has to be with 13 river basins around the world shared by five or more countries, according to the UN. But that might change. “Just because there have not been outbreaks of war does not mean that we will not see any in the future,” said Northover. The Pacific Institute has been tracking water conflicts for over 20 years. Over a two-year period from 2006-7 it documented nine flashpoints. These included; 12 deaths in Ethiopia after clashes between farmers over competition for water; Tamil Tiger rebels cut the water supply to government-held villages in north-eastern Sri Lanka; Hezbollah rockets damaged a wastewater treatment plant in Israel, the Lebanese government claim their facilities along the Litani River have been damaged in Israeli attacks. The

Future As both the world and urban populations continue to rise, the need for more efficient use of water, particularly in agriculture, becomes ever pressing. However, even with such improvements, some areas of the world could still become unsustainable for human living. It is the mass migration as a consequence of this that campaigners worry could fuel future conflicts.

Nanotechnology Bad - AlysaSelf-replicating nanotech destroys the entire universe – outweighs all other extinction impactsHoward Rheingold, (Appointed lecturer at Stanford, Editor Emeritus of Whole Earth Review, Utne Magazine Independent

Press Award, widely recognized as a leading authority on social implications of technology), Fall, 1992, Whole Earth Review, www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n76/ai_12635777It looks as if something even more powerful than thermonuclear weaponry is emanating from that same, strangely fated corner of New Mexico where nuclear physicists first knew

sin. Those who follow the progress of artificial-life research know that the effects of messing with the engines of evolution might lead to forces even more regrettable than the demons unleashed at Alamogordo. At least nuclear weaponry and biocidal technologies only threaten life on Earth, and don't threaten to contaminate the rest of the universe. That's the larger ethical problem of a-life. The technology of self-replicating machines that could emerge in future decades from today's a-life research might escape from human or even terrestrial control, infest the solar system, and, given time, break out into the galaxy. If there are

other intelligent species out there, they might not react benevolently to evidence that humans have dispersed interstellar strip-mining robots that breed, multiply, and evolve. If there are no other intelligent species in existence, maybe we will end up creating God, or the Devil, depending on how our minds' children evolve a billion years from now. The entire story of life on earth thus far might be just the wetware prologue to a longer, larger, drier tale, etched in silicon rather than carbon, and blasted to the stars -- purposive spores programmed to seek, grow, evolve,

expand. That's what a few people think they are on the verge of inventing. Scenarios like that make the potential for global thermonuclear war or destruction of the biosphere look like a relatively local problem. Biocide of a few hundred thousand species (including ourselves) is one kind of ethical problem; turning something like the Alien loose on the cosmos is a whole new level of ethical lapse. The human species has precious little time to gain the wisdom necessary to handle the knowledge scientists have discovered. Artificial life is too important to remain an esoteric specialty. The time to think about what it might mean is

now, while we still have a choice. Military applications of autonomous, self-reproducing robots might lead to worse fates than mere annihilation. There's some question about whether it is ever possible to put knowledge back in the bottle, but there is no question that we still have time to make sure that the self-reproducing increasingly intelligent, interstellar lifeforms that we are about to create are more closely modeled on E.T. than on the Alien

US China War - ShauryaExtinction – no defenseGoldstein 13 AVERY GOLDSTEIN is David M. Knott Professor of Global Politics and International Relations and Director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at the University of Pennsylvania, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2013, "China’s Real and Present Danger", http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139651/avery-goldstein/chinas-real-and-present-danger Washington has also been vague about what it sees as its vital interests in the region. The United States hedges on the question of

whether Taiwan falls under a U.S. security umbrella. And the U nited S tates’ stance on the maritime disputes involving China and its neighbors is somewhat confusing: Washington has remained neutral on

the rival sovereignty claims and insisted that the disputes be resolved peacefully but has also reaffirmed its commitment to stand by its allies in the event that a conflict erupts. Such Chinese and U.S. ambiguity about the “ redlines ” that cannot be crossed without risking conflict increases the chances that either side could take steps that it believes are safe but that turn out to be unexpectedly provocative.∂ MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE COLD WAR?∂ Uncertainty about what could lead either Beijing or Washington to risk war makes a crisis far more likely , since neither side knows when , where, or just how hard it can push without the other side pushing back .

This situation bears some resemblance to that of the early Cold War, when it took a number of serious

crises for the two sides to feel each other out and learn the rules of the road. But today’s environment might be even more dangerous .∂ The balance of nuclear and conventional military power between China and the U nited S tates, for example, is much more lopsided than the one that existed between the Soviet Union

and the United States. Should Beijing and Washington find themselves in a conflict, the huge U.S. advantage in conventional forces would increase the temptation for Washington to threaten to or actually use force . Recognizing the temptation facing Washington, Beijing might in turn feel pressure to use its conventional forces before they are destroyed .

Although China could not reverse the military imbalance, it might believe that quickly imposing high costs on the United States would be the best way to get it to back off.∂ The fact that both sides have nuclear arsenals would help keep the situation in check, because both sides would want to avoid actions that would invite nuclear

retaliation. Indeed, if only nuclear considerations mattered, U.S.-Chinese crises would be very stable and not worth worrying about too much. But the two sides’ conventional forces complicate matters and undermine the stability provided by nuclear deterrence. During a crisis, either side might believe that using its conventional forces would confer bargaining leverage, manipulating the other side’s fear of escalation through what the economist Thomas Schelling calls a “competition in risk-taking.” In a crisis, China or the United States might believe that it valued what was at stake more than the other and would

therefore be willing to tolerate a higher level of risk. But because using conventional forces would be only the first step in an unpredictable process subject to misperception, missteps, and miscalculation, there is no guarantee that brinkmanship would end before it led to an unanticipated nuclear catastrophe. ∂ China, moreover, apparently believes that nuclear deterrence

opens the door to the safe use of conventional force . Since both countries would fear a potential

nuclear exchange, the Chinese seem to think that neither they nor the Americans would allow a military conflict to escalate too far. Soviet leaders, by contrast, indicated that they would use whatever military means were necessary if war came -- which is one reason why war never came. In addition, China’s official “no first use” nuclear policy, which guides the Chinese military’s preparation and training for conflict, might reinforce Beijing’s confidence that limited war

with the United States would not mean courting nuclear escalation. As a result of its beliefs, Beijing might be less cautious about taking steps that would risk triggering a crisis . And if a crisis ensued, China might also be less cautious about firing the first shot . ∂ Such beliefs are particularly worrisome given recent developments in technology that have dramatically improved the precision and effectiveness of conventional military capabilities. Their lethality might confer a dramatic advantage to the side that attacks first , something that was generally not true of conventional military operations in the main European theater of U.S.-Soviet confrontation. Moreover, because the sophisticated computer and satellite systems that guide contemporary weapons are highly vulnerable to conventional military strikes or cyberattacks, today’s more precise weapons might be effective only if they are used before an adversary has struck or adopted countermeasures. If peacetime restraint were to give way to a search for advantage in a crisis, neither China nor the United States could be confident about the durability of the systems managing its advanced conventional

weapons.∂ Under such circumstances, both Beijing and Washington would have incentives to initiate an attack . China would feel particularly strong pressure, since its advanced conventional weapons are more fully dependent on vulnerable computer networks, fixed radar sites, and satellites. The effectiveness of U.S. advanced forces is less dependent on these most vulnerable systems. The advantage held by the United States, however, might increase its temptation to strike first, especially against China’s satellites, since it would be able to cope with Chinese retaliation in kind.

US War Russia - SachetUS-Russia nuclear war risks extinction Starr 14 (Steven, Senior Scientist for Physicians for Social Responsibility and Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program @ University of Missouri, “Ukraine + NATO = Nuclear War,” Truthout, Tuesday, 11 March 2014 13:03 pg. http://tinyurl.com/ohgfk5p)

Furthermore, US/NATO naval forces should not be deployed in the Black Sea, where they would be in close proximity to Russian

naval forces. In the event of a war in which Russian forces were actively engaged, the presence of US forces nearby would create a significant chance for a mistake in which US or Russian forces would fire upon each other. Supersonic fighters traveling at more than 1,000 mph can easily overfly national boundaries or "hostile"

military forces. If NATO and Russian forces to come into direct military conflict, then the possibility of nuclear conflict increases exponentially. NATO cannot send in its 25,000 man Response Force and expect to defeat 150,000 Russian troops (or more) in a fight at the Russian border. In a NATO-Russian conventional conflict, in which Russian forces were prevailing, NATO would have the choice of withdrawing, calling for a ceasefire, or using its nuclear weapons against Russian forces. NATO has at least a couple hundred US B61 nuclear weapons forward deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The B61 is a "variable yield" weapon; the two models currently forward-based in Europe, the B61-3 and B61-4 both can be set to have an explosive yield of 300 tons of TNT (0.3 kilotons). In other words, the B61 is designed to be "useable" nuclear weapon, beginning with a "small" detonation that is roughly 20-30 times larger than our largest conventional weapon. However, the B61-4 can also be set to have an explosive power as much as 50,000 tons of TNT (50 kilotons), and the B61-3 as much as 170,000 tons of TNT (170 kilotons) – which is 70% greater than many of the strategic nuclear warheads carried by US nuclear subs. Even if NATO could manage to use its

conventional forces to defeat Russian conventional forces, Russia would *not* allow such a defeat upon its very

border. Russia would certainly use nuclear weapons to stop NATO. Russia has for some time adopted the policy of "nuclear de-escalation": "In order to maintain a credible nuclear deterrence effect under the conditions of a regional war, Russia believes it should not rely on strategic nuclear forces, or on them only, but must maintain a range of options for the limited or

selective use of nuclear weapons in order to be able to inflict a precisely set level of damage to the enemy sufficient to convince

him to terminate military confrontation by exposing him to the danger of further nuclear escalation . . . When introducing the concept of "nuclear de-escalation" in the late 1990s, the Russian defence establishment was obsessed with the possibility of a Kosovo-type US/NATO intervention in the war ("armed conflict") in Chechnya, which resumed in 1999. It did not exclude the possibility that, in the event of such a case, Russia would be forced to resort to nuclear weapons." In a NATO-Russian conflict, in which Russia introduced nuclear weapons, NATO would be fully capable of responding in a tit-for-tat fashion. This would

be the same pattern as was seen in the NATO war games of the Cold War. Once the nuclear "firebreak" is crossed,

once nuclear weapons are introduced into a military conflict in which *both sides have nuclear weapons*, there would likely be an almost inevitable escalation of conflict, a progressive use of nuclear weapons by both sides, with progressively

larger targets being taken out. Peer-reviewed scientific studies predict that a war fought with hundreds or thousands of US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons would ignite nuclear firestorms over tens of thousands of square miles. These mass fires would produce between 50 million to 150 million tons of smoke, which would quickly rise above cloud level in to the stratosphere, where winds would carry it around the Earth. In a matter of weeks or months, a global stratospheric smoke layer would form, which would block up to 70% of warming

sunlight, quickly producing Ice Age weather conditions in the Northern Hemisphere. The scientists predict that temperatures in the central US and Eurasia would fall below freezing every day for about three years. The smoke, the darkness, and

extreme cold weather would last for ten years or longer, eliminating growing seasons, making it impossible to grow food. Most people and animals would perish from nuclear famine. Nuclear war is suicide for the human race.

Democracy - AyushThat’s key to prevent multiple scenarios for extinction.Diamond 95—Larry Diamond, Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution [December 1995, “Promoting Democracy in the 1990s,” http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm]

On any list of the most important potential threats to world order and national security in the coming decade, these six should figure prominently: a hostile, expansionist Russia; a hostile, expansionist China; the spread of fundamentalist Islamic, anti-Western regimes; the spread of political terrorism from all sources; sharply increased immigration pressures; and ethnic conflict that escalates into large-scale violence, civil war, refugee flows, state collapse, and general anarchy. Some of these potential

threats interact in significant ways with one another, but they all share a common underlying connection. In each instance, the development of democracy is an important prophylactic, and in some cases the only long- term protection , against disaster . A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST RUSSIA Chief among the threats to the security of Europe, the United States, and Japan would be the reversion of Russia --with its still very substantial

nuclear, scientific, and military prowess--to a hostile posture toward the West. Today, the Russian state (insofar as it continues to exist) appears perched on the precipice of capture by ultranationalist, anti-

Semitic, neo-imperialist forces seeking a new era of pogroms, conquest , and "greatness." These forces feed on the weakness of democratic institutions, the divisions among democratic forces, and the generally dismal economic and political state of the country under civilian, constitutional rule. Numerous observers

speak of "Weimar Russia." As in Germany in the 1920s, the only alternative to a triumph of fascism (or some related "ism"

deeply hostile to freedom and to the West) is the development of an effective democratic order . Now, as then, this project must struggle against great historical and political odds, and it seems feasible only with international economic aid and support for democratic forces and institutions. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST CHINA In China, the threat to the West emanates from success rather than failure and is less amenable to explicit international assistance and inducement. Still, a China moving toward democracy--gradually constructing a real constitutional order, with established ground rules for political competition and succession and civilian control over the military--seems a much better prospect to be a responsible player on the regional and international stage.

Unfair trade practices, naval power projection, territorial expansion, subversion of neighboring regimes, and bullying of democratic forces in Hong Kong and Taiwan are all more likely the more China resists political liberalization. So is a political succession crisis that could disrupt incremental patterns of reform and induce competing power players to take risks internationally to advance their power positions at home. A China that is building an effective rule of law seems a much better prospect to respect international trading rules that mandate protection for intellectual property and forbid the use of prison labor. And on these matters of legal, electoral, and institutional development, international actors can help. THE SPREAD OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM Increasingly, Europeans and Americans worry

about the threat from fundamentalist Islam. But fundamentalist movements do not mobilize righteous anger and absolute

commitment in a vacuum. They feed on the utter failure of decadent political systems to meet the most elementary expectations for material progress and social justice . Some say the West must choose between corrupt, repressive regimes that are at least secular and pro-Western and Islamic fundamentalist regimes that will be no less repressive, but anti-Western. That is a false choice in Egypt today, as it was in Iran or Algeria--at least until their societies became so polarized as to virtually obliterate the liberal center. It is precisely the corruption, arrogance, oppression, and gross inefficacy of ruling regimes like the current one in Egypt that stimulate the Islamic fundamentalist alternative. Though force may be needed--and legitimate--to meet an armed challenge, history teaches that decadent

regimes cannot hang on forever through force alone. In the long run, the only reliable bulwark against revolution or anarchy is good governance--and that requires far-reaching political reform . In Egypt and

some other Arab countries, such reform would entail a gradual program of political liberalization that counters corruption,

reduces state interference in the economy, responds to social needs, and gives space for moderate forces in civil society to build public support and understanding for further liberalizing reforms . In Pakistan and Turkey, it would mean making democracy work: stamping out corruption, reforming the economy, mobilizing state resources efficiently to address social needs, devolving power, guaranteeing the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, and--not

least-- reasserting civilian control over the military. In either case, the fundamentalist challenge can be met only

by moving (at varying speeds) toward, not away from, democracy. POLITICAL TERRORISM Terrorism and immigration pressures also commonly have their origins in political exclusion, social injustice, and bad, abusive, or tyrannical

governance. Overwhelmingly, the sponsors of international terrorism are among the world's most authoritarian regimes: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan. And locally within countries, the agents of terrorism tend to be either the fanatics of antidemocratic, ideological movements or aggrieved

ethnic and regional minorities who have felt themselves socially marginalized and politically excluded and insecure: Sri Lanka's Tamils, Turkey's Kurds, India's Sikhs and Kashmiris. To be sure, democracies must vigorously mobilize their legitimate instruments of law enforcement to counter this growing threat to their security. But a more fundamental and enduring assault on international terrorism requires political change to bring down zealous, paranoiac dictatorships and to allow aggrieved groups in all countries to pursue their interests through open, peaceful, and constitutional means. As for immigration, it is true that people everywhere are drawn to prosperous, open, dynamic societies like those of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. But the sources of large (and rapid) immigration flows to the West increasingly tend to be countries in the grip of civil war, political turmoil, economic disarray, and poor governance: Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Central America, Algeria. And in Mexico, authoritarianism, corruption, and social injustice have held back human development in ways that have spawned the largest sustained flow of immigrants to any Western country--a flow that threatens to become a floodtide if the Zedillo government cannot rebuild Mexico's economy and societal consensus around authentic democatic reform. In other cases--Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan--immigration to the West has been modest only because of the greater logistical and political difficulties. However, in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia more remote from the West, disarray is felt in the flows of refugees across borders, hardly a benign development for world order. Of course, population growth also heavily drives these pressures. But a common factor underlying all of these crisis-ridden emigration points is the absence of democracy. And, strikingly, populations grow faster in authoritarian than democratic regimes.4 ETHNIC CONFLICT Apologists for authoritarian rule--as in Kenya and Indonesia--are wont to argue that multiparty electoral competition breeds ethnic rivalry and polarization, while strong central control keeps the lid on conflict. But when multiple ethnic and national identities are forcibly suppressed, the lid may violently pop when the regime falls apart. The fate of Yugoslavia, or of Rwanda, dramatically refutes the canard that authoritarian rule is a better means for containing ethnic conflict. Indeed, so does the recent experience of Kenya, where ethnic hatred, land grabs, and violence have been deliberately fostered by the regime of President Daniel arap Moi in a desperate bid to divide the people and thereby cling to power. Overwhelmingly, theory and evidence show that the path to peaceful management of ethnic pluralism lies not through suppressing ethnic identities and superimposing the hegemony of one group over others. Eventually, such a formula is bound to crumble or be challenged violently. Rather, sustained interethnic moderation and peace follow from the frank recognition of plural identities, legal protection for group and individual rights, devolution of power to various localities and regions, and political institutions that encourage bargaining and accommodation at the center. Such institutional provisions and protections are not only significantly more likely under democracy, they are only possible with some considerable degree of democracy.5 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of

tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another . They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not

ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer

better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

Free Trade - SkylerTrade is the biggest disincentive for war—maintaining globalization solves all their impacts Griswold 11 Daniel Griswold is director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and author of Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization. “Free Trade and the Global Middle Class,” Hayek Society Journal

Vol. 9 http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/Hayek-Society-Journal-Griswold.pdf Accessed 6/30/12

Our more globalized world has also yielded a “peace dividend.” It may not be obvious when our daily

news cycles are dominated by horrific images from the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan and Libya, but our more globalized world has somehow become a more peaceful world . The number of civil and international wars has dropped sharply in the past 15 years , along with battle deaths. The reasons behind the retreat of war are

complex, but again the spread of trade and globalization have played a key role. Trade has been seen as a friend of peace for centuries. In the 19th century, British statesman Richard Cobden pursued free trade as a way not only to bring more affordable bread to English workers but also to promote peace with Britain’s neighbors. He negotiated the Cobden-Chevalier free trade agreement with France in 1860 that helped to cement an enduring alliance between two countries that had been bitter enemies for centuries. In the 20th century, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull, championed lower trade barriers as a way to promote peaceful commerce and reduce international tensions. Hull had witnessed first-hand the economic nationalism and retribution after World War I. Hull believed that “unhampered trade dovetail[s] with peace; high tariffs, trade barriers and unfair economic competition, with war.” Hull was awarded the 1945 Nobel Prize for Peace, in part because of his work to promote global

trade. Free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways. First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend towards democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by raising the cost of war . As national economies become more intertwined, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means the loss of human lives and tax dollars, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy . Trade and economic integration has helped to keep the peace in Europe for

more than 60 years. More recently, deepening economic ties between Mainland China and Taiwan are drawing those two governments closer together and helping to keep the peace . Leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Straight seem to understand that reckless nationalism would jeopardize the dramatic economic progress that

region has enjoyed. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it has reduced the spoils of war . Trade allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies . In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in

high-tech, service economies. If people need reso urces outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by freely trading what they can produce best at home . The world today is harvesting the peaceful fruit of expanding trade. The first half of the 20th century was marred by two devastating wars among the great powers of Europe. In the ashes of World War II, the United States helped found the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, the precursor to the WTO that helped to spur trade between the United States and its major trading partners. As a condition to Marshall Plan aid, the U.S. government also insisted that the continental European powers, France, Germany, and Italy, eliminate trade barriers between themselves in what was to become the European Common Market. One purpose of the common market was to spur economic development, of course, but just as importantly, it was meant to tie the Europeans together economically. With six decades of hindsight, the plan must be considered a spectacular success. The notion of another major war between France, Germany and another Western European powers is unimaginable. Compared to past eras, our time

is one of relative world peace. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number of armed conflicts around the world has dropped sharply in the past two decades. Virtually all the conflicts today are civil and guerilla wars. The spectacle of two governments sending armies off to fight in the battlefield has become rare. In the decade from 1998 through 2007, only three actual wars were fought between states: Eritrea-

Ethopia in 1998-2000, India-Pakistan in 1998-2003, and the United States-Iraq in 2003. From 2004 through 2007, no two nations were at war with one another. Civil wars have ended or at least ebbed in Aceh (in Indonesia), Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Nepal, Timor-Leste and Sierra Leone. Coming to the same conclusion is the Human Security Centre at the University of British Colombia in Canada. In a 2005 report, it documented a sharp decline in the number of armed conflicts, genocides and refugee numbers in the past 20 years. The average number of deaths per conflict has fallen from 38,000 in 1950 to 600 in 2002. Most armed conflicts in the world now take place in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the only form of political violence that has worsened in recent years is international terrorism. Many causes lie behind the good news – the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy, and peacekeeping efforts by major powers among them – but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. In a

chapter from the 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report, Dr. Erik Gartzke of Columbia University compared the propensity of countries to engage in wars to their level of economic freedom.

He came to the conclusion that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, “Making economies freer translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free. A 2006 study for the institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, found the same pacific

effect of trade and globalization. Authors Solomon Polachek and Carlos Seiglie found that “trading nations cooperate more and fight less.” In fact, a doubling of trade reduces the probability that a country will be involved in a conflict by 20 percent. Trade was the most important channel for peace, they found, but investment flows also had a positive effect. A democratic form of government also proved to be a force for peace, but primarily because democracies trade more. All this helps explain why the world’s two most conflict-prone regions – the Arab Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa – are also the world’s two least globally and economically integrated regions. Terrorism does not spring from poverty, but from ideological fervor and political and economic frustration. If we want to blunt the appeal of radical ideology to the next generation of Muslim children coming of age, we can help create more economic opportunity in those societies by encouraging more trade and investment ties with the West. The U.S. initiative to enact free trade agreements with certain Muslim countries, such as Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain and Oman, represent small steps in the right direction. An even more effective policy would be to unilaterally open Western markets to products made and grown in Muslim countries. A young man or woman with a real job at an export-oriented factory making overcoats in Jordan or shorts in Egypt is less vulnerable to the appeal of an Al-Qaida recruiter. Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace or inoculation against terrorism, anymore than they guarantee democracy and civil liberty. Hot-blooded nationalism and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold economic calculations. Any relationship involving human beings will be messy and non-linear. There will always be exceptions and outliers in such complex relationships involving economies and governments. But deeper trade and investment ties among nations have made it more likely that democracy and civil liberties will take root, and less likely those gains will be destroyed by civil conflict and war.

Space Militarization Bad - SamSpace Weaponization Causes Nuclear WarGordon R. Mitchell, member of CSIS Working Group on Theater Missile Defenses in the Asia-Pacific Region, FLETCHER FORUM ON WORLD AFFAIRS, Winter

2001, p. 1-ff

A buildup of space weapons might begin with noble intentions of 'peace through strength' deterrence, but this rationale glosses over the tendency that '… the presence of space weapons …will result in the increas ed likelihood of their use' .33 This drift toward usage is strengthened by a strategic fact elucidated by Frank Barnaby: when it comes to arming the heavens, 'anti-ballistic missiles and anti-satellite warfare technologies go hand-in-hand'.34 The interlocking nature of offense and defense in military space technology stems from the inherent 'dual capability' of spaceborne weapon components. As Marc Vidricaire, Delegation of Canada to the UN Conference on Disarmament, explains: 'If you want to intercept something in space, you could use the same capability to target something on land'. 35 To the extent that ballistic missile interceptors based in space can knock out enemy missiles in mid-flight, such interceptors can also be used as orbiting 'Death Stars', capable of sending munitions

hurtling through the Earth's atmosphere. The dizzying speed of space warfare would introduce intense 'use or lose' pressure into strategic calculations, with the spectre of split-second attacks creating incentives to rig orbiting Death Stars with automated 'hair trigger' devices . In theory, this automation would enhance survivability of vulnerable space weapon platforms. However,

by taking the decision to commit violence out of human hands and endowing computers with authority to make war, military planners could sow insidious seeds of accidental conflict. Yale sociologist Charles Perrow has analyzed 'complexly interactive, tightly coupled' industrial systems such as space weapons, which have many sophisticated components that all depend on each other's flawless performance. According to Perrow, this interlocking complexity makes it impossible to foresee all the different ways such systems could fail. As Perrow explains, '[t]he odd term "normal accident" is meant to signal that, given the system characteristics,

multiple and unexpected interactions of failures are inevitable'.36 Deployment of space weapons with pre-delegated authority to fire death rays or unleash killer projectiles would likely make war itself inevitable, given the susceptibility of such systems to 'normal accidents'. It is chilling to contemplate the possible effects of a space war. According to retired Lt.

Col. Robert M. Bowman, 'even a tiny projectile reentering from space strikes the earth with such high velocity that it can do enormous damage — even more than would be done by a nuclear weapon of the same size!'. 37 In the same Star Wars technology touted as a quintessential tool of peace, defence analyst David Langford sees one of the most destabilizing offensive weapons ever conceived: 'One imagines dead cities of microwave-grilled people'.38 Given this unique potential for destruction, it is not hard to imagine that any nation subjected to space weapon attack would retaliate with maximum force , including use of nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons. An accidental war sparked by a computer glitch in space could plunge the world into the most destructive military conflict ever seen .

Bees - EliBee extinction leads to human extinctionHutaff 07 (Matt Hutaff, “Give Bees a Chance,” The Simon, May 1, , pg. http://www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/01375_give_bees_chance.html)

Rumor has it Albert Einstein once declared humanity could only outlive the bee by about four years. His reasoning was simple: "no more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." Nothing like entomological doomsday scenarios from a classical physicist, right? Nonetheless, it looks like we're poised to find out if the godfather of relativity is right. Bees are disappearing at an alarming rate, particularly in the United States and Germany. And while it's normal for hive populations to fall during colder winter months, the recent exodus is puzzling beekeepers and researchers around the world. Are we witnessing the death throes of the human race firsthand? Will the bee go the way of the dodo? Not likely, but I'll tell you one thing – whatever's driving the collapse of the bee population, it's man-made. "During the last three months of 2006, we began to receive reports from commercial beekeepers of an alarming number of honey bee colonies dying in the eastern United States," says Maryann Frazier, an apiarist with Penn State University. "Since the beginning of the year, beekeepers from all over the country have been reporting unprecedented losses," including one gentleman who's lost 800 of his 2,000 colonies in less than four months. Those losses are atypical. The usual causes of death, aside from climate, are varroa mites, hive beetles, and wax moths, which infest hives weakened by sickness and malnutrition. Annual casualties tend to hover in the 20th percentile, and beekeepers work with entomologists to protect their investments via antibiotics, miticides, and advanced pest management. Not so today. The current blight has spread across the country rapidly, leaving abandoned hives full of uneaten food and unhatched larvae. Natural predators brave enough to enter behave erratically, "acting in a way you normally don' t expect them to act," says beekeeper Julianne Wooten. And whereas naturally abandoned hives are infested by other insects within a short period of time, hives affected by what is tentatively labeled colony collapse disorder (CCD) are avoided. California and Texas have been hit particularly hard by the sudden disappearance of bees, but dozens of other states are reporting major losses as well. And when you consider bees are big business as well as a

critical part of the food chain, that vanishing act is no laughing matter. Consider: bees are essential for pollinating over 90 varieties of vegetables and fruits, including apples, avocados, blueberries, and cherries; pollination increases the yield and quality of crops by approximately $15 billion annually; and California's almond industry alone contributes $2 billion to the local economy, and depends on 1.4 million bees, which are brought in from all over the United States. Bees stimulate the food supply as well as the economy. So what's the cause of colony collapse? Suspicions are pointed in several different directions, including cell phone transmissions and agricultural pesticides, some of which are known to be poisonous to bees. But if these two factors are responsible, why are the deaths not a global phenomenon? The bee collapse began in isolated pockets before progressing rapidly around the nation. If cell phones are to blame, shouldn't the effect have been simultaneous, and witnessed years ago? And if pesticides are strictly to blame, shouldn't beekeepers near major farm systems be able to track those pollutants and narrow the field of possible suspects? Perhaps

they have – and the culprit is bigger than we imagine. Several scientists have come forward with the startling claim that genetically modified food – you know, that blessing from above that would solve famine and put food in the belly of every undernourished, Third World child – is destroying bees. How could something so wondrous as pest-resistant corn kill millions upon millions of bees? Simple – by producing so much natural pesticide that bees are

either driven mad or away. Most genetically-modified seeds have a transplanted segment of DNA that creates a well-known bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), in its cells. Normally Bt is not a problem – it's a naturally-occurring pesticide that's been used as a spray for years by farmers looking to control crop damage from butterflies. And it's effective at helping beekeepers keep bees alive, too – Bt is sprayed under hive lids to keep those pesky

wax moths from attacking. But "instead of the bacterial solution being sprayed on the plant, where it is eaten by the target insect, the genes that contain the insecticidal traits are incorporated into the genome of the farm crop," writes biologist and beekeeper John McDonald. "As the transformed plant grows, these Bt genes are replicated along with the plant genes so that each cell contains its own poison pill that kills the target insect. "Canadian beekeepers have detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives, apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic canola plants. [And] the planting of transgenic corn and soybean has increased exponentially, according to statistics from farm states. Tens of millions of acres of transgenic crops are allowing Bt genes to move off crop fields." McDonald's analysis stands up under scrutiny. A former agronomist has commented that the one trial of GM crops in the Netherlands quickly led to colony collapse within 100 kilometers of the fields, and it's reasonable to hypothesize nature's pollinators would bear an averse reaction to plants with poison coursing through every stem. "The amount of Bt in these plants is enough to trigger allergies in some people, and irritate the skin and eyes of farmers who handle the crops," writes Patrick Wiebe. "In India, when sheep were used to clear a field of leftover Bt cotton, several sheep

died after eating it." If it can kill a sheep, it can certainly kill a bee. What can be done? Precious little if gene-modified plants are the genesis of colony collapse. "There is no way to keep genetically modified genes from escaping into the wild," says Mike Rivero. "Wild varieties of corn in Mexico have been found to contain artificial genes carried by the wind and bees. Indeed it is probable that the gene that makes the plant cells manufacture a pesticide has already escaped,

which means this problem will only spread. "This is far more dangerous than a toxic spill, which confines itself to the original spill and the downwind/downstream plumes. A mistake in a gene, once allowed into the wild, can spread across the entire planet." Genetically-modified food is produced by companies such as Monsanto (how many of its scientists do you think drive a hybrid?). Despite a number of tests, the food created by these gene-spliced crops are considered a failure. It consistently makes animals ill, increases liver toxicity, and damages kidneys. What's the incentive to grow this food? What's the incentive to eat it? In our dash to trademark the very building blocks of our food supply, companies experimenting with "upgrading" crops may have irreparably damaged one of nature's most important contributors. Instead of approaching famine from a balanced perspective, corporations have patented the right to subsist. If Einstein's lesser-known theory is right, they have unwittingly become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds.

Proliferation - JaredNuclear Proliferation Causes ExtinctionUtgoff 02Victor Utgoff, Deputy Director of the Strategy, Forces, and Resources Division of the Institute for Defense Analysis, SURVIVAL, Fall,2002, p. 87-90

In sum, widespread proliferation is likely to lead to an occasional shoot-out with nuclear weapons, and that such shoot-outs will have a substantial probability of escalating to the maximum destruction possible with the weapons at hand. Unless nuclear proliferation is stopped, we are headed toward a world that will mirror the American Wild West of the late 1800s. With most, if not all, nations wearing nuclear 'six-shooters' on their hips, the world may even be a more polite place than it is today, but every once in a while we will all gather on a hill to bury the bodies of dead cities or even whole nations.

Racism - Julian

Racism risks extinctionBarndt, Pastor and Co-director of Crossroads 91 –– Ministry working to dismantle racism (Joseph, Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America 155-6,)

 To study racism is to study walls. We have looked at barriers and fences, restraints and limitations, ghettos and prisons. The prison of racism confines us all, people of color and white people alike. It shackles the victimizer as well as the victim. The walls forcibly keep people of color and white people separate from each other; in our separate prisons we are all prevented from achieving the human potential that God intends for us. The limitations imposed on people of color by poverty, subservience, and powerlessness are cruel,

inhuman, and unjust; the effects of uncontrolled power, privilege, and greed, which are the marks of our white prison, will inevitably destroy us as well.     But we have also seen that the walls of racism can be dis mantled . We are not condemned to an inexorable fate, but are of fered the vision and the possibility of freedom . Brick by brick, stone by stone, the prison of individual, institutional, and cul tural racism can be destroyed .

You and I are urgently called to join the efforts of those who know it is time to tear down, once and for all, the walls of racism.     The danger point of self-destruction seems to be drawing ever more near .

The results of centuries of national and worldwide conquest and colonialism, of military buildups and violent aggres sion, of overconsumption and environmental destruction may be reaching a point of no return . A small and predominantly white minority of the global population derives its power and privilege from the sufferings of the vast majority of peoples of color. For the sake of the world and ourselves, we dare not allow it to continue.

Poverty - AlannaPoverty makes extinction inevitable Gilligan professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School 96 [James, , Director of the Center for the Study of Violence, and a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes, p 191-196]

The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country. Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence” I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we

attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural violence differs from behavioral violence in at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than sporadically, whereas murders, suicides,

executions, wars, and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time. *Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties, voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for

others. *Structural violence is normally invisible, because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other

socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18 million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and poor nations have increased dramatically and

alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths, including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the Vietnam war

(possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year. In other

words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is,

in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide,

perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world. Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from homicide and suicide to

war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each other, as cause to effect.

Nuclear Testing - AllieTesting modern nuclear weapons will result in the explosion of the EarthChalko 03Dr. Tom Chalko, MSC, PhD, head of Australia's physics, 2003 (March 3, Scientific Engineering Research, "Can a Neutron Bomb accelerate Global Volcanic Activity?", http://sci-e-research.com/neutron_bomb.html)

Consequences of using modern nuclear weapons can be far more serious than previously imagined. These consequences relate to the fact that most of the heat generated in the planetary interior is a result of nuclear decay. Over the last few decades, all superpowers have been developing so-called " neutron bombs". These bombs are designed to emit intensive neutron radiation while creating relatively little local mechanical damage. Military are very keen to use neutron bombs in

combat, because lethal neutron radiation can peneterate even the largest and deepest bunkers. However, the military seem to ignore the fact that a neutron radiation is capable to reach significant depths in the planetary interior. In the process of passing through the planet and losing its intensity, a neutron beam stimulates nuclei of radioactive isotopes naturally present inside the planet to disintegrate. This disintegration in turn, generates more neutron and other radiation. The entire process causes increased nuclear heat generation in the planetary interior, far greater than the initial energy of the bomb. It typically takes many days or even weeks for this extra heat to conduct/convect to the surface of the planet and cause increased seismic/volcanic activity. Due to this variable delay, nuclear tests are not currently associated with seismic/volcanic activity, simply because it is believed that there is no theoretical basis for such an association. Perhaps you heard that after every major series of nuclear test there is always a period of increased seismic activity in some part of the world. This observable fact CANNOT be explained by direct energy of the explosion. The mechanism of neutron radiation accelerating decay of radioactive isotopes in the planetary interior, however, is a VERY PLAUSIBLE and realistic explanation. The process of accelerating volcanic activity is nuclear in essence. Accelerated decay of unstable radioactive isotopes already present in the planetary interior provides

the necessary energy. The TRUE danger of modern nuclear weaponry is that their neutron radiation is capable to induce global overheating of the planetary interior, global volcanic activity and, in extreme circumstances, may even cause the entire planet to explode.