1AR LONG DEDEV SHELL

Order of cutability 1. News press (warming soon) 2. Martin (nuke war not bad) 3. Bennet 2 (the internalize card for econ collapse not cause war)

EXTEND THAT I CAUSE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE. I WILL WIN THAT IS A GOOD THING.

Subpoint A is terminal impact uniqueness

Economic Collapse is inevitable its just a question of when. Collapsing now will be a soft transition to a localized economy, and wont cause extinction. Korowicz1
the globalised economy cannot stand the convergence in real time of constraints in its primary enabling energy resource-oil; its primary human -food, and loss of trust in the credit that makes economic life possible. This convergence marks the end of economic growth, and initiates powerful destabilising shocks and stresses to the globalised economy. Because of this, across the political spectrum, people are claiming
And constraint solutions for a predicament that cannot be solved. They are claiming a level of insight and dominion over systems they can barely intuit and over which they have little and declining control. The electorate assumes there must be a solution to get us out of recession, a way to reverse what we have come to call austerity. More than that, we demand the ri ght to the realisation of their expectations- our pensions and purchasing power, jobs and savings, health and education services. Through these assumptions we enter the collective delusion about where weve been, where we are, and where were going. Part of the reason for this omission is a world-view maladapted to the conditions in which we now find ourselves. World-views comprise the meanings and assumptions through which our lives are understood; they embody the myths, stories and emotional attachments that frame our place in a complex world. They are social, and also define how we become socialised. We share a common world-view formed in the context of our past experience, and in particular, that of economic growth and the profound influence it brought to the human experience. We have become accustomed to the reassuring thought that at the end of every recession, no matter how deep or long, growth and prosperity will again take off. There is a sense that economic growth, though sometimes wayward, is the natural order of things. It is a powerful idea both redemptive and optimistic. Growth is part of the glue that holds together the social contract between the rich and poor, and between citizen and state. It stands behind our expectations of technology, the rise of China, population growth, and pensions. Growth shaped the specialisation of our occupational roles and the forms of social relations. It acclimatised us to increasing wealth, both personal and in the goods and services we expect from society and the state. We are now claiming as rights, services that only fifty years ago would have been considered miracles. It shaped our identity as the tormented consumer and the anxious lover. Growth is very recent, two hundred years or so, and resilient, bouncing back from world wars and a great depression. Its been the driving dynamic of the integrated, de-localised system that has tied our welfare to trillions of transactions across the world. It has been so stable, and we have become so habituated to it that we barely notice what has transpired, the inherent complexity obscured by attenuation in simple things and services-my phone rings, I take a bus, my money works to buy my bread. Bread was once hard won from our local environs and required a large share of our time or income. Now it is of slight cost, accessible with trivial effort, but requires the integrated dance of complex transport, IT, banking, electric grid infrastructure; factories supplying factories, supplying factories; and the economies of scale and supply-chains that depend upon a globalised world. Not only have our dependencies become more and more de-localised and complex, they have also become more dependent on high speed flows of good and services. The real-time flow of deliveries is an integral part of modern production processes. If deliveries are halted, for example, by a large-scale systemic banking collapse, the flow can be arrested, and economic production halted. The longer production is halted, the deeper the supply-chain failure extends, and the greater the entropic decay, from rust, for example. And the longer the down time, the harder it would be to re-boot the economy, and the greater the risk of a terminal systemic collapse in the global economy. Indeed internationalised production flows are as important for the viability of our complex economy as energy flows, they are two of a number of co-dependent systems that integrate the globalised economy. If spare parts for our national grid could not be replaced due to some supply chain failure, having plenty of fuel may not matter, electricity might not be delivered. And electricity failure would compromise other critical infrastructure such as banking infrastructure, IT systems, sewage and water. Our globalised economy is an emergent property of billions of people, businesses and institutions interacting through physical and mental worlds. Individuals, companies, and governments may have limited control in time and space, but the more our intentions and actions interact in the world, the greater the chance our intentions are lost. There has been no master controller. Like rafters down a white-water river, we do not set the route or the rate, we are tossed and buffeted. We can trim the craft, avoid an obstacle, and if wise ensure we do not tip it over. But the driving dynamic is riding down an energy gradient. Our identification with national or inter-national political economy and the psycho-drama therein obscures our real dependencies. So while national economies may have an individual character, they have no autonomous existence in anything like their present form outside the globalised economy, just as an arm, lung or heart cannot declare independence from the human body. Continuing the analogy,

our global

economys metabolism has become increasingly complex and high speed. The globalised economy is more than the sum of its parts, but
without the contributions of each, the whole would be diminished or fatally compromised. Because of this we might say that our local welfare is embedded within a high-speed de-localised fabric of exchange. Misreadings In The Birth of Plenty: How the prosperity of the modern world was created , William Bernstein writes prosperity is not about physical objects or natural resources. Rather, it is about institutions. He lists four: secure property rights, the scientific method, capital markets, and communications. While his institutions are certainly important, essential even, they could not have developed without the energy and other resources that underpin the economy. It is like claiming I live by my wits, charm and intelligence, while assuming food and water are a trivial side-show. A reasonable assumption in an age of abundance when our basic needs are met without comment, and what counts in terms of social status are personal and contextual differentiation. In such a way we privilege human culture, and its sense of ingenuity and control over its own destiny. Like the God of Genesis, we looked upon our civilisation, its extent and complexity, and saw that it was good and ingenious. We thought we did this! And if we did this, surely we can do anything we set our minds to. If there are challenges to our civilisation, from climate change or resource constraints, they can be surmounted, for we have faith in our abilities. Our self-reflection through economic growth provided the super-structure for the humanist idea of progress, which the political philosopher John Gray dubbed the displaced religious impulse. As our self-regard has grown, our real dependencies-on soil and bees, forests, natural gas, rivers and rain, worms and sticky hydro-carbons, beasts and ferrous oxides-have been largely framed as issues of managerial utility. Our welfare is assumed to depend upon politicians, entrepreneurs, competitiveness, the knowledge economy, our innate inventiveness, and so on. Outside of utility, the environment has been sentimentalised or used as a signifier of higher feeling. Yet our feet of clay are that our economy and civilisation exist only by virtue of resource flows from our environment. The only laws in economics are the laws of physics, everything else is contingent, supposition or vanity.

An economy, growing in size and complexity, is firstly a thermodynamic system requiring increasing

energy flows to grow and avoid decay. Waste, be it greenhouse gasses or landfill is also a natural outcome of such a thermodynamic process. News from Elsewhere Its been part of the background noise for over half a
century, warnings about resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, soil erosion or climate change. But impacts were always on the imaginative horizon. Sometime, far enough into the future to be re-assuring to a species that evolved with a clear preference for the short-term. Or on the hinterland between our safe European home and the barbarian other, where starvation, environmental disasters, angry mobs and crazy despots have always demanded our attention, at least while on TV. Yes we can! Yes we can! - chanted the posse of teenagers following Al Gore through a pavilion in Poznan, Poland for the annual gathering of climate policy acronyms. When not distracted by the everpresent, weve responded to these warnings with treaties and laws, technology and exhortation. Of course, every ecological in dicator kept getting worse. And we kept on about treaties and laws, and break-through technologies. Our mythic world-views gave us the shared faith that we may not be there yet, but we could, once a brilliant scheme is in place, a climate law passed, technologies adopted, evil bankers restrained, or once people just realised our predicament. Yes We Can! Yes We Can! Indeed, we could transcend our grubby selfishness and short-termism so we tied together the belief that we could will ecological sustainability and global equity. Still, our resource and environmental sink demands keep increasing, ecological indicators decline and inequality rises. The reality is that we are locked into an economy adapted to growth, and that means rising energy and resource flows and waste. By lock-in, we mean that our ability to change major systems we depend upon is limited by the complexity of interdependencies, and the risk that the change will undermine other systems upon which we depend. So we might wish to change the banking or monetary system, but if the real and dynamic consequences lead to a major bank freeze lasting more than a couple of days we will have major food security risks, massive drops in economic production, and risks to infrastructure. And if we want to make our food production and distribution more resilient to such shocks, production will fall and food prices will need to be higher, which will in the short-to-medium term drive up unemployment, lead to greater poverty, and pose even greater risks to the banking system. It is an oxymoron to say we can do something unsustainable forever. How would you know if we were approaching a limit, the end of growth? By warnings? Listen. By the great and the good, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, saying Ladies & gentleman we have a really big problem!? Politicians and civil servants, the IMF and the OECD, all missed the credit crisis of 2007, despite having expertise in the area and an abundant historical literature about asset bubbles. They embody the dogmatism of the age, they are a pivot point about which are world-views are confirmed. They mirror the authority of the court of Pope Urban VIII, stuffed with astronomer-astrologers, the economists of their age, confirming the earth centric universe against Galileo and Copernicus before him. What the Galileos of today are saying is that we are at or near the peak of global oil production now. That as affordable oil declines, the global economy must contract. That we do not have the time, nor resources to keep the economy growing by substituting for oil with efficiency measures, renewable or nuclear energy, or technology. That talk of an electric car future, advanced IT-renewable energy convergent infrastructure, and global super-grids is a fancy. The most obvious problem with focusing on this vision at the horizon is that you dont see that the ground is opening up beneath your feet. We will not get to that horizon because all the things you need to get there- monetary and financial systems, purchasing power and economies of scale, production systems, infrastructure and global trust networks-will be undermined by the convergence of a peak of global oil production, a peak of food production, and a giant credit bubble. The

food production is hitting an array of ecological constraints, while population growth and changing diets are driving up demand. They note that current food production is massively subsidised through
ground will open up, we will fall, and our visions will fall further and further from our grasp. They are saying that global fossil fuel inputs, and that as those inputs become less available, and people become poorer due to economic contraction, food productivity and access will be undermined. In totality, we are at the edge of an evolving systemic crisis. Peak oil and food constraints are likely to undermine the stability of our integrated globalised economy. The core pillars of that economy: critical infrastructure, production flows, economies of scale, the financial and monetary system, behavioural adaptation, resource access and energy flows-are likely to begin forcing contagious failure. The driving force of this failure is likely to be the fastest and most unstable process-the impact of energy and food constrained economic growth, and an already vulnerable monetary and financial system dependent upon continuing growth. Tightening binds Whatever of Irelands economic woes, the real debt bubble is global. The debt relative to GDP is far greater now in the US, UK, and much of Europe, than it ever was leading up to the great depression. Like many countries we responded to our debt bubble with more debt, we just shifted it onto the sovereign or the printing press.

The indebted world, even without oil and food price rises is straining at the limits of debt servicing and credibility. Yet it is

demanding even more credit, while its ability to service the debt is being undermined by debt deflation, austerity, rising job losses, and defaults. The bank lenders of that money can only lose so much before they are too are insolvent. Rising food and energy prices are driving the deflationary forces even harder. And if central banks misinterpret the cause of food and oil price rises, and raise interest rates, the deflationary pressures risk becoming cyclonic. The cost of essentials and debt servicing rise, while income declines. Discretionary spending will collapse, job losses and defaults rise, income will declines further. This re-enforcing spiral of decline will increase, and spread to more and more countries. The fear of contagion from peripheral Eurozone defaults are not merely that they could topple French, UK, and German banks, but that this could brink down US banks and effectively shut down the

[David Korowicz is a physicist and human systems ecologist, the director of The Risk/Resilience Network in Ireland, a board member of FEASTA - The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, In the world, at the limits to growth, May 14, 2011, http://www.feasta.org /2011/05/14/in-the-world-at-the-limits-to-growth/]

global financial system in very short shift. The destabilising force is not just that the banks are already in a precarious position, but a monstrous pile of derivative contracts worth ten to twenty times the global economy that hangs over the financial system. Some of those contracts are effectively insurance against default. If bank defaults start spreading, then other banks and the shadow financial system will be forced to cover obligations on default, or

This may cause a fire-sale of assets, whereby the banks bluff is called, and they are shown to have values far below what is required for solvency.
increase premiums on their insurance.

Also
Collapse is inevitable because of lock in and maladaptation Korowicz2
we are locked into an economy adapted to growth, and that means rising energy and resource flows and ability to change major systems we depend upon is limited by the complexity of interdependencies, and the risk that the change will undermine other systems upon which we depend. So we might wish to change the banking or monetary system, but if the real and dynamic consequences lead to a major bank freeze lasting more than a couple of days we will have major food security risks, massive drops in economic production, and risks to infrastructure. And if we want to make our food production and distribution more resilient to such shocks, production will fall and food prices will need to be higher, which will in the short-to-medium term drive up unemployment, lead to greater poverty, and pose even greater risks to the banking system. It is an oxymoron to say we can do something unsustainable forever.
The reality is that waste. By lock-in, we mean that our

This means if they dont have a card that is time sensitive and makes a distinction between collapse NOW and collapse LATER IN THE FUTURE, THEY CANNOT WIN THIS DEBATE. the economy collapsing is non-unique; its just a question of when. Ill win that collapse now is good. They have to win that collapse now is bad. Any super generic card they read is not offense.

[David Korowicz is a physicist and human systems ecologist, the director of The Risk/Resilience Network in Ireland, a board member of FEASTA - The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, In the world, at the limits to growth, May 14, 2011, http://www.feasta.org/2011/05/14/in-the-world-at-the-limits-to-growth/]

Subpoint B is collapse now is Key

First, biodiversity
The economy is killing biodiversity, which will cause extinction in the short term, outweighs their arguments. Taylor3
Although we dont know the exact rate of extinction, we do know that the rate of loss is accelerating. The evolutionary proce ss has always meant that on average every year one species in a million disappear, while a slightly higher number of new species emerge to replace them.

The rate of extinction is 10,000 times the normal rate All species have to live on limited resources As humans consume these resources, less is left for other species Under disappearing habitats, climate change, pollution, invasive species and relentless overharvesting, their populations are rapidly declining
now somewhere between 100 and . . the on the planet and less the worlds renewable biological increasingly and pollute over all . the pressure of . Between 1970 and 2003 the populations of terrestrial species declined by an average of 31%, marine species declined by 23%, and freshwater species declined by 28%. 100 Global warming has already severely damaged and disrupted ecosystems. 101 An international study has concluded that climate change alone will probably cause the extinction of between 15% and 35% of all specie s studied by 2050, if global temperatures rise as expected by over 3.6F (2C). 102 The United Nations agency responsible for preserving biodiversity warned that Unless action is taken now, by 2100, two thirds of the Earths remaining species are likely to be extinct. 103 In the less likely but possible event that temperatures rise as high as 11.5F (6.4C) by the end of the century, up to 90% of species will die off. Climate change accelerates species extinction in a number of ways. Up to half the world s species live in tropical rainforests, and already more than half the rainforests have been cut down for timber or to clear land for agriculture.

At current rates of deforestation,

another

40% of rainforests

in the Amazon alone

will disappear

by 2050. 104 With

global warming many of the remaining areas will dry out and either become grasslands, or be regularly swept by forest fires. Not only does climate change accelerate species loss, but deforestation accelerates climate change. The burning and cutting of forests produce a quarter of all greenhouse gases. Every 24 hours, deforestation releases as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Coral reefs, the home of hundreds of thousands of marine species, are also in danger since they begin to die when ocean temperatures rise by a few degrees. When the corals die, the reefs often collapse into rubble, depriving fish of food and shelter. A combination of rising temperatures, pollution and destructive fishing te chniques (trawling, poisons and dynamiting) has already killed 20% of the worlds coral reefs and degraded many more. 106 As carbon dioxide levels rise, the oceans are also becoming more acidic, making it increasingly difficult for corals to build their skeletons and for other species to build their shells. 107 Almost all coral species will be killed by temperature increases of above 3.6F (2C), along with krill and other species of zooplankton crucial to the marine food web.

ecosystems up the food chain

forests, fields, lakes, rivers and coastal fisheries but also

Pollution is killing off entire because toxic chemicals become more concentrated as they travel
is another growing problem, not only because the waste from industry, factory farming, cities and landfills

. In low concentrations chemicals are affecting the social and mating behaviors of many species, and in high concentrations they are lowering sperm counts as well as causing birth defects, reproductive problems and cancers. 108 Health

problems due to ingested poisons and pollutants are increasingly showing up in whales, bears, eagles, dolphins and other top predators including humans. 109 Apart from the destruction of habitat from deforestation, desertification, pollution and the spread of farms, cities and roads, the plants and animals of the world face the almost insurmountable problem of having to migrate to avoid rising temperatures and changing environments. Studies show that species have been moving towards the poles over the last 50 years at the rate of about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) per decade. This is not fast enough, since areas with the same temperatures (isotherms) have been moving towards the poles at the rate of 35 miles (56 kilometers) per decade and will soon be moving polewards at the rate of 70 miles (112 kilometers) per decade. Because

interconnected ecosystems

of trees, birds, insects and other species

species are especially vulnerable to climate change as they have no place to go.

This

process

will

help

cannot migrate drive 50% of the worlds species to extinction

up to the web of life that supports

that quickly, many of them will find themselves trapped in strange environments for which they are not adapted. Mountain . 110 Scientists are calling this the

sixth mass extinction event in the history of our planet. Although mass extinctions have occurred before (the last great extinction occurred 65 million years ago), this will be the first time that humans will have caused a disaster of this magnitude. 111 And it will be an unimaginable tragedy after most of the existing mammals, birds, flowers, fish and other living things have disappeared, it will take tens of millions of years for new species to evolve and take their place. Life in its present forms only exists because of the existence of a complex biophysical equilibrium. 113

Every extinction upsets this equilibrium and weakens human societies. If we lose other life forms it will do irreparable damage We cannot survive without the services other species provide us: services such as climate regulation, oxygen, clean water, food, pollination, biological diversity constitutes the indispensable foundation for our lives without the[se] ecological services other species, human societies cannot exist To destroy the is to self-destruct
many of the on Earth, it will not only be a huge spiritual loss, aesthetic loss and recreational loss, but ecosystem that also to our economies. waste recycling, building materials, crop agricultural nutrients, bioenergy and medicines. 114 Sigmar Gabriel pointed out that and for global economic development. 115 Not only is 40% of world trade based on biological products or processes . countless of plants, insects, microbes and .

biodiversity of our planet

Transitioning now specifically is key for biodiversity and warming. Barry

This essay explores the possibility that from a biocentric viewpoint of needs for long-term global ecological, economic and social sustainability;

it would be

better for the economic collapse to come now rather than later . Economic growth is a deadly disease
upon the Earth, with capitalism as its most virulent strain. Throw-away consumption and explosive population growth are made possible by using up fossil fuels and destroying ecosystems. Holiday shopping numbers are covered by media in the same breath as Arctic ice melt, ignoring their deep connection. Exponential

Humanity has proven itself unwilling and unable to address climate change and other environmental threats with necessary haste and ambition. Action on
economic growth destroys ecosystems and pushes the biosphere closer to failure. coal, forests, population, renewable energy and emission reductions could be taken now at net benefit to the economy. Yet, the losers primarily fossil fuel industries and their bought oligarchy successfully resist futures not dependent upon their deadly products. Perpetual economic growth, and necessary climate 3

[Graeme Taylor is a social activist committed to constructive global transformation and the coordinator of BEST Futures, a project supporting sustainable solutions through researching how societies change and evolve, Evolution's Edge: The Coming Collapse and Transformation of Our World, Pomegranate Press, 2008, ISBN: 9781550923810, EBrary, pg. 52-55]
4

[Dr. Glen Barry, President and Founder of Ecological Internet, an online portal for the global environmental movement, Ph.D. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, M.S. in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and B.A. in Political Science from Marquette University, 2008, Economic Collapse And Global Ecology, Earth Meanders, January 14th, Available Online at http://www.countercurrents.org/barry140108.htm, Accessed 09-09-2008]

and other ecological policies, are fundamentally incompatible. Global ecological sustainability depends critically upon establishing a steady state economy, whereby production is right-sized to not diminish natural capital. Whole industries like coal and natural forest logging will be eliminated even as new opportunities emerge in solar energy and environmental restoration. This critical transition to both economic and ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary environmental policies even as economic growth ends and consumption plunges. The natural response is going to be liquidation of even more life-giving ecosystems, and jettisoning of climate policies, to vainly try to maintain high growth and personal consumption. We know that humanity must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% over coming decades. How will this and other necessary climate mitigation strategies be maintained during years of economic downturns, resource wars, reasonable demands for equitable consumption, and frankly, the weather being more pleasant in some places? If efforts to reduce emissions and move to a steady state economy fail; the collapse of ecological, economic and social systems is assured. Bright greens take the continued existence of a habitable Earth with viable, sustainable populations of all species including humans as the ultimate truth and the meaning of life. Whether this is possible in a time of economic collapse is crucially dependent upon whether enough ecosystems and resources remain post collapse to allow

It may be better for the Earth and humanity's future that economic collapse comes sooner rather than later, while more ecosystems and opportunities to return to nature's fold exist. Economic collapse will be deeply wrenching part Great Depression, part African famine. There will be starvation and
humanity to recover and reconstitute sustainable, relocalized societies. civil strife, and a long period of suffering and turmoil. Many will be killed as balance returns to the Earth. Most people have forgotten how to grow food and that their identity is more than what they own. Yet there is some justice, in that those who have lived most lightly upon the land will have an easier time of it, even as

Economic collapse now means humanity and the Earth ultimately survive to prosper again. Human suffering already the norm for many,
those super-consumers living in massive cities finally learn where their food comes from and that ecology is the meaning of life. but hitting the currently materially affluent is inevitable given the degree to which the planet's carrying capacity has been exceeded. We are a couple decades at

Humanity can take the bitter medicine now, and recover while emerging better for it; or our total collapse can be a final, fatal death swoon.
most away from societal strife of a much greater magnitude as the Earth's biosphere fails.

Second, warming
It is physically impossible to stop emissions from increasing, let alone actually decrease them, without economic collapse. Given current rates, we are literally screwed without an immediate transition. Spiegel 5
Nov. 22, 2009 - In a provocative new study, a University of Utah scientist argues that rising

carbon dioxide emissions - the major cause of global warming - cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. "It looks unlikely that there will be any substantial near-term departure from recently observed acceleration in carbon dioxide emission rates," says the new paper by Tim Garrett, an associate professor of atmospheric
sciences. Garrett's study was panned by some economists and rejected by several journals before acceptance by Climatic Change, a journal edited by renowned Stanford University climate scientist Stephen Schneider. The study will be published online this week. The study - which is based on the concept that physics can be used to characterize the evolution of civilization - indicates: Energy

conservation or efficiency doesn't really save energy, but instead spurs economic growth and accelerated energy consumption. Throughout history, a simple physical "constant" - an
unchanging mathematical value - links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. "Stabilization

of carbon dioxide emissions at current rates will require approximately 300 gigawatts of new non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power production capacity annually - approximately one new nuclear power plant (or equivalent) per day," Garrett says. " Physically , there are no other options without killing the economy."

The best scientific models prove that warming risks extinction. Burkett 6
The unparalleled scale of impact [of] the climate crisis has had, and will continue to have, on the globe has been forecasted for almost a century. n3 Most recently, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the warming of the climate system is "unequivocal." n4 With this warming comes the threat of more [*174] extreme weather, including more intense and longer droughts than have already been observed, n5 heavy precipitation including increased intensity of tropical cyclones, n6 and hot extremes and heat waves. n7 While these changes sound merely inconvenient and perhaps costly, they have been described by the IPCC Chairman, without hyperbole, as dangers that risk "the ability of the human race to survive ." n8
In the short term, these extremes will risk the survival of communities that are ill-equipped to adapt to warming as they struggle to moderate and cope with its consequences. n9 [*175] Human beings, and in particular U.S. citizens, are responsible for this dramatic change. n10 Global

atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases - including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, n11 and hydrofluorocarbons - have increased markedly as a result
of human activities since 1750 and now "far exceed" pre-industrial values. n12 These activities include land-use changes and, most importantly, the combustion of

changes that result from the concentrations are non-linear, such that positive feedback loops accelerate the adverse effects that climate
fossil fuels. As a result, the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the highest in at least a million years. n13 The change sets in motion. n14 These changes will continue for centuries because of the "timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks." n15 In other words, [*176] even if anthropogenic emissions were to stabilize at this very moment, the average time for removal of added carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is measured in centuries, during which climate change effects will continue to manifest. n16 Particularly frightening to those communities least able to adapt to climate change, is the great possibility that

continued greenhouse gas emissions will trigger an abrupt climate surprise . n17

The evidence supporting the urgency of climate change, generally, is based on fairly linear data points and does not - in fact, cannot - take into account an abrupt shift in climate patterns due to feedback loops that are difficult to model. n18 The result of such a shift could be significant regional cooling or warming,
5

Lee Siegel is the author of four books and a winner of the National Magazine Award. He has published over 600 articles, essays, and reviews in numerous publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, Time, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Guardian, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. *November 22, 2009, Is Global Warming Unstoppable? http://www.unews.utah.edu/old/p/112009 -1.html] 6 Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School [Maxine Burkett, Just Solutions to Climate Change: A Climate Justice Proposal for a Domestic Clean Development Mechanism, Buffalo Law Review, April, 2008, 56 Buffalo L. Rev. 169]

widespread droughts, shifts in hurricane frequency, or flood regimes that could occur in as little as a decade, yielding very rapid, large-scale impacts on ecosystems and human health and welfare. n19 Regional changes in climate are particularly
dangerous because of the challenges and risks they pose in a modern world marked by increasing population and limited resources. n20

The tipping points are on the brink. We must act NOW. News Press7 writes
The world's diverse regions and ecosystems are close to reaching temperature thresholds - or "tipping points" - that can unleash devastating environmental, social and economic changes, according to a new report by WWF and Allianz. Often global warming is seen as a
process similar to a steady flow of water in our bathrooms and kitchens, where temperature goes up gradually, controlled by a turn of the tap. But the report 'Major Tipping Points in the

changes related to global warming are likely to be much more abrupt and unpredictable - and they could create huge social and environmental problems and cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars. Without immediate climate action, sea
Earth's Climate System and Consequences for the Insurance Sector' documents that level rise on the East Coast of the USA, the shift to an arid climate in California, disturbances of the Indian Summer Monsoon in India and Nepal or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest due to increasing drought, are likely to affect hundreds millions of people and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The study explores impacts of these "tipping points," including their economic consequences and implications for the insurance sector. It also shows how close the world is to reaching "tipping points" in many regions of the world, or how close we are to tipping the scales toward disaster. "If we don't take immediate action against climate change, we are in grave danger of disruptive and devastating changes," said Kim Carstensen, the Head of WWF Global Climate Initiative. "Reaching a tipping point means losing something forever. This must be a strong argument for world leaders to agree a strong and binding climate deal in Copenhagen in December. According to the report, carried out by the Tyndall Centre, the impacts of passing "Tipping Points" on the livelihood of people and economic assets have been underestimated so far. The report focuses on regions and phenomena where such events might be expected to cause significant impacts within the first half of the century. "As an insurer and investor, we must prepare our clients for these scenarios as long as we still have leeway for action," says Clemens von Weichs, CEO of Allianz Reinsurance. "Setting premiums risk-appropriately and sustainably is of vital interest to everyone involved, because this is the only way to ensure that coverage solutions will continue to exist." Allianz intends to address climate change by entering into dialogue with its clients at an early date. This will allow it to point out countermeasures in a timely way, and work together to develop specific coverage concepts, whether for existing assets or for future climate-compatible projects like alternative energy and water supply concepts, dyke construction, or protection against failed harvests. Global temperatures have already risen by at

Global warming above 2-3 degrees in the second half of the century is likely unless strong extremely radical and determined efforts towards deep cuts in emissions are put in place before 2015 . The melting of the Greenland (GIS) and
least 0.7 degrees Celsius. the West Antarctic Ice Shield (WAIS) could lead to a Tipping Point scenario, possibly a sea level rise of up to 0.5 meters by 2050. This is estimated to increase the value of assets at threat in all 136 global port mega-cities by around 25.000 billion USD. On the North-eastern coast of the USA and due to a localized anomaly, the sea level could rise up to 0.65 meters, increasing the asset exposure from 1.350 to about 7.400 billion USD The South Western Part of the USA, namely California, is likely to be affected by droughts and levels of aridity similar to the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. The annual damages caused by wildfires could be tenfold compared to today's costs and could reach up to 2.5 billion USD per year by 2050 increasing to up to 14 billion by 2085. 70 percent of working population may be put at risk by droughts in India. The future costs of droughts are expected to rise to approx. 40 billion USD per decade until the middle of the century. In a tipping point scenario, dieback of the Amazon Rainforest could reach 70% by the end of the century as a consequence of a significant increase in the frequency of droughts in the Amazon basin. The impacts include loss of biodiversity and massive carbon release. Costs could reach up to 9.000 billion USD for a surface of around 4 million square kilometers. "The Tipping Points report shows how quickly we are approaching dangerous and irreversible levels of global warming," Carstensen said. "Economic consequences of passing the climate tipping points are absolutely overwhelming." " and this report shows how urgent it is to act immediately. A strong climate agreement in Copenhagen in December is the best, if not the only chance to prevent the worst impacts of devastating climate change."

There is still a chance to avoid the worst

Unchecked Climate change will put world at 'tipping point', WWF and Allianz report says, 11 -23, L/N

Subpoint C is collapse now not bad

First, the post-economic collapse transitions are stable

Little a, we are ready for a grassroots mindset shift. Trainer8
Although a minor phenomenon at present, it is likely that this shift

in thinking will accelerate in coming years given the pace at

which the globalisation of the economy will probably make it painfully obvious to more and more people that the old values and systems will not provide well for all. Building new systems. Much more impressive than the evidence of a change in world view is the growth of alternative settlements and systems. As Ife says, "At the grassroots level...increasing

numbers of people in different countries are experimenting with communityare building communities that attempt to are in the midst of a

based alternatives, such as local economic systems, community-based education, housing co-operatives...a community-based strategy based on
principles of ecology and social justice is already emerging, as a result of the initiative of ordinary people at grass-roots level, who are turning away from mainstream structures..." (Ife, 1995, p. 99.) According to Norberg-Hodge, "Around the world, people

get away from the waste, pollution, competition, and violence of contemporary life." (Norberg-Hodge, 1996, p. 405.) The agency she has
founded, the International Society for Ecology and Culture, works in Ladakh to reinforce local communities. (See the Society's books and videos, Ancient Futures, Learning From Ladakh, The Habitat Revolution and, Local Futures, for inspiring illustrations of its projects.) Korten says " We

fundamentally new phenomenon in the modern human experience, the creation of a new civilisation from the bottom up." Ordinary people are
doing these things. "Most are driven more by a simple desire to create viable living spaces in the midst of a troubled world than by grand visions of planetary change." (1999a, p. 241.) Korten also describes and endorses the movement for development of greater local self-sufficiency. (1999a, p. 271.) In another source he says, "Millions of people, unsung heroes of a new era, are already hard at work constructing the building blocks of a post corporate-postcapitalist civilisation. They are demonstrating alternatives." (1999a, p. 219.) The following pages are not intended to give a representative summary of what is happening. Rather, a number of specific examples and cases are briefly noted in order to indicate the nature and scope of the movement. In the rich countries. The most advanced of these developments is to do with "intentional communities" or Eco-viollages. Since the 1960s many of these have been established, especially in rich countries. Most are rural but some are urban. Many are inspiring examples of self-sufficient economies in which people live cheaply and cooperatively and ensure for each other a high quality of life with very low environmental costs. (Trainer, 1995a, Chapter 18, Schwarz and Schwarz, 1998.) A formal organisation exists, the Global Eco-Village Network, with regional branches in Europe, the USA, Asia and Oceania. Newsletters are published, conferences organised and new villages established. In the early 1990s GEN published a booklet summarising 20 Eco-villages. Another booklet in 1999 described 57 notable examples functioning or being developed in Europe. (Grindhdeim and Kennedy, 1999.) However the 2000 edition (Hagmeier, et al, 2000) lists over 300 in Europe and the Federation of Intentional Communities lists over 600 in the US. (FIC, 2000.) In other words, rapid growth is evident. In 2000 GEN launched Living Routes, an Eco-village consortium to link the sustainable communities movement with higher educational institutions in the US. It is envisaged that existing formal courses will include segments in which students can live and work in Eco-villages, and that universities and colleges will be able to access Eco-villages to carry out research. (Eco-village Millennium, 2001, p. 31.) The typical features within Eco-villages includes recycling of water and wastes, collection of all or a high proportion of energy and water used, ecologically benign building designs and materials, production of food, solar passive house design, cooperative procedures, committees, town meetings, high levels of cooperation and mutual concern, participatory community control of settlement affairs, a spiritual focus and the creation of enterprises serving the community. One of the best known settlements of this kind is the Australian Crystal Waters Permaculture Village which is now 20 years old and has 80 homes, guest accommodation, educational facilities and a village centre. A demonstration Eco-village is being developed in Russia on a 166 ha site including an abandoned village which is being restored. There is an Eco-village being built on an 4 ha site near the middle of Los Angeles, which includes 2 ha of gardens. Around 80% of paid work required by residents and about 40% of food needed is planned to be provided from within the site. Only 10% of water used will have to be imported. (Arkin, , p. 41.) In Sweden another 50 to 60 Eco-villages are being planned. (Fritz, 1995, pp. 231-233.) Friberg and Hettne (1985) argue that two main groups are behind the emergence of self reliant communities, viz., those holding "post materialist" values, and those who have been marginalised, such as the unemployed and the Third World poor. In Living Lightly Schwarz and Schwarz (1998) discuss the many alternative settlements they visited on a recent world tour. They say that these people "...hope that the tiny islands of better living which they inhabit will provide examples which will eventually supplant the norms of unfettered capitalism which rule us today. Their hope is not in revolution but in persuasion by example." ( p. 2.) "What is new is that small groups of Living Lightly people are now part of an articulate and increasingly purposeful global culture which promotes values that run counter to those of the mainstream." (p. 2.) " They

think the empire will eventually disintegrate...In anticipation of that collapse islands of refuge must be prepared." (p. 3.) Living Lightly people "...can only hope to prevail through their own example and the gradual erosion of the dominant system through local initiatives that exchange high living standards for a high quality of life." (p. 165.) Living Lightly people "...are in revolt against the emerging global economy and want to set up viable local alternatives."

Senior Lecturer, School of Social Work, University of New South Wales (Ted, The Present Scope of the Global Alternative Sciety Movement, http://ssis2.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D67.The-GASM.html)

Little b, ecological resource limits. Lewis9

I will argue that we are witnessing the collapse of global industrial civilization. Driven by individualism, materialism, and the endless pursuit of wealth and power, the modern industrialized worlds efforts to modernize and integrate the world politically, economically, and culturally since World War II are only accelerating this global collapse. In the late-twentieth century, global development leaves 80 percent of the worlds population outside the industrialized nations progress and affluence (Wallimann 1994). When

the modern industrialized world collapses, people in the underdeveloped world will continue their daily struggle for dignity and survival at the margins of a moribund global industrial civilization. With the collapse of the modern world, smaller, autonomous, local and regional civilizations, cultures, and polities will emerge. We can reduce the threat of mass death and genocide that will surely
accompany this collapse by encouraging the creation and growth of sustainable, self-sufficient regional polities. John Cobb has already made a case for how this may work in the United States and how it is working in Kerala, India. After

the collapse of global civilization, modern peoples will not have the material resources, biological capital, and energy to reestablish global civilization. Forced by economic necessity to become dependent on local resources and ecosystems for their survival, peoples throughout the world will work to conserve and restore their [end page 44] environments.

[Chris H. Lewis, Instructor in the Sewall American Studies Program at the University of Colorado, 1998, "The Paradox of Global Development and the Necessary Collapse of Modern Industrial Civilization," The Coming Age of Scarcity: Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-first Century, edited by Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, Published by Syracuse University Press, ISBN 0815627440, p. 44-45]

Second, economic decline does not cause war

Little a, Guns versus Butter Tradeoffs10
competition between states requires large amounts of resources, and rivals require even more attention. Leaders may choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up important resources that may be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a guns versus butter world of economic trade-offs, when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with competition in a rivalry, it is quite rational for leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry. This gain (a peace dividend) could be achieved at any time by ending a rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to be most important and attractive to leaders when internal conditions are bad and the leader is seeking ways to alleviate active problems. Support for policy change away from continued rivalry is more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites and masses are looking for ways to improve a worsening situation. It is at
Military these times that the pressure to cut military investment will be greatest and that state leaders will be forced to recognize the difficulty of continuing to pay for a rivalry. Among other things, this argument also encompasses the view that the cold war ended because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could no longer compete economically with the United States. Hypothesis 2: Poor economic conditions increase the probability of rivalry termination. Hypotheses 1 and 2 posit opposite behaviors in response to a single cause (internal economic problems). As such, they demand a research design that can account for substitutability between them.

10

D. Scott Bennett and Timothy Nordstrom, February 2000. Department of Political Science Professors at Pennsylvania State. Foreign Policy Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Ebsco.

Little b, focusing inward. Bennett 211

INTERNAL CONDITIONS AND EXTERNAL BEHAVIOR: IMPROVEMENTS By coming at externalization from the substitutability perspective, we hope to deal with some of the theoretical problems raised by critics of diversionary conflict theory. Substitutability can be seen as a particular problem of model specification where the dependent variable has not been fully developed. We believe that one of the theoretical problems with studies of externalization has been a lack of attention to alternative choices; Bueno de Mesquita actually hints toward this (and the importance of foreign policy substitution) when he argues that it is shortsighted to conclude that a leader will uniformly externalize in response to domestic problems at the expense of other possible policy choices (1985, 130). We hope to improve on the study of externalization and behavior within rivalries by considering multiple outcomes in response to domestic conditions."n particular, we will focus on the alternative option that instead of externalizing, leaders may internalize when

faced with domestic economic troubles. Rather than diverting the attention of the public or relevant elites through military action, leaders may actually work to solve their internal problems internally. Tying internal solutions to the external environment, we focus on the possibility that leaders may work to disengage their country from hostile relationships in the international arena to deal with domestic issues. Domestic problems often emerge from the challenges of spreading finite resources across many different issue areas in a manner that satisfies the public and solves real problems. Turning inward for some time may free up resources required to
jump-start the domestic economy or may simply provide leaders the time to solve internal distributional issues. In our study, we will focus on the condition of the domestic economy (gross domestic product [GDP] per capita growth) as a source of pressure on leaders to externalize. We do this for a number of reasons.

11

D. Scott Bennett and Timothy Nordstrom, February 2000. Department of Political Science Professors at Pennsylvania State. Foreign Policy Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Ebsco.

Third, Nuclear war isnt bad

No scientific support for nuclear extinction. Martin 84 Dr Brian Martin is a physicist whose research interests include stratospheric modelling. He
is a research associate in the Dept. of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Australian National University, and a member of SANA. *Extinction politics, Published in SANA Update (Scientists Against Nuclear Arms Newsletter), number 16, May 1984, pp. 5-6, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84sana1.html]
Yet in

spite of the widespread belief in nuclear extinction, there was almost no scientific support for such a possibility. The scenario of the book and movie On the Beach,[2] with fallout clouds gradually enveloping the earth and wiping out all life, was and is fiction. The scientific evidence is that fallout would only kill people who are immediately downwind of surface nuclear explosions and who are heavily exposed during the first few days. Global fallout has no potential for causing massive immediate death (though it could cause up to millions of cancers worldwide over many
decades).[3] In spite of the lack of evidence, large sections of the peace movement have left unaddressed the question of whether nuclear war inevitably means global extinction. The next effect to which beliefs in nuclear extinction were attached was ozone depletion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, scares about stratospheric ozone developed, culminating in 1982 in the release of Jonathan Schell's book The Fate of the Earth.[4] Schell painted a picture of human annihilation from nuclear war based almost entirely on effects from increased ultraviolet light at the earth's surface due to ozone reductions caused by nuclear explosions. Schell's book was greeted with adulation rarely observed in any field. Yet by the time the book was published, the scientific basis for ozone-based nuclear extinction had almost entirely evaporated. The ongoing

switch by

the military forces of the United States and the Soviet Union from multi-megatonne nuclear weapons to larger numbers of smaller

weapons means that the effect on ozone from even the largest nuclear war is unlikely to lead to any major effect on human population levels, and extinction from ozone reductions is virtually out of the question.[3] The latest stimulus for doomsday beliefs is 'nuclear winter': the blocking of sunlight from dust raised by nuclear
explosions and smoke from fires ignited by nuclear attacks. This would result in a few months of darkness and lowered temperatures, mainly in the northern mid-latitudes.[5] The effects could be quite significant, perhaps causing the deaths of up to several hundred million more people

evidence, so far, seems to provide little basis for beliefs in nuclear extinction. The impact of nuclear winter on populations nearer the equator, such as in India, does not seem likely to be significant.
than would die from the immediate effects of blast, heat and radiation. But the