Disease

No Impact
Disease doesnt cause extinction- the populations too large
Smith et al 6 (KATHERINE F. SMITH, David H. Smith Conservation Research a Faculty Fellow of Brown's Environmental
Change Initiative, DOV F. SAX, AND KEVIN D. LAFFERTY, Conservation Biology Volume 20, No. 5, page, 1350
http://www.brown.edu/ Research/Sax_Research_Lab/Documents/PDFs/evidemnce%20for%20role%20of%20disease.pdf
\\ME)Recent studies suggest that infectious diseases in wildlife populations are emerging at unusually high rates (Harvell et al.
1999, 2002; Epstein 2001). Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are those caused by parasites
and pathogens that have recently increased in incidence, occupied host species or
geographic extent; have been newly discovered; or are caused by a newly evolved agent
(Lederberg et al. 1992; Daszak et al. 2000). The diversity of EIDs afflicting wildlife, coupled with the fear
that an increased frequency of outbreaks will occur in the future, have raised concern
that infectious disease may play a strong role in species extinction (Holmes 1996; Daszak et al.
2000; Harvell et al. 2002). Indeed, infectious diseases can extirpate local populations, mediate
community dynamics, and shrink host ranges (McCallum & Dobson 1995; Daszak et al. 1999; Lafferty 2003;
Walsh et al. 2003). Given the effects of infectious diseases on wildlife, it is not surprising that
a survey of biologists listed infectious disease among the top five causes of species
extinctions in the United States (Wilcove et al. 1998). However, the majority of available data
supporting this contention is largely anecdotal. Moreover, epidemiological theory
predicts that infectious diseases should only drive species to extinction under specific
circumstancesmost commonly when pre-epidemic population size is small, reservoir hosts
are available, or when the infectious agent can survive in the abiotic environment (de Castro & Bolker 2005). In response to a
growing interest in global species loss and emerging infectious diseases, it is worth investigating the generalization that infectious
diseases play a widespread role in species extinction.
Disease doesnt cause extinction- statistics and burnout theory
Smith et al 6 (KATHERINE F. SMITH, David H. Smith Conservation Research a Faculty Fellow of Brown's Environmental
Change Initiative, DOV F. SAX, AND KEVIN D. LAFFERTY, Conservation Biology Volume 20, No. 5, page, 1355-6
http://www.brown.edu/ Research/Sax_Research_Lab/Documents/PDFs/evidemnce%20for%20role%20of%20disease.pdf \\ME)
Specific knowledge of the individual factors contributing to species extinction and
endangerment is critical to the development of efficient and successful conservation strategies. To accomplish this, we
must move toward a systematic analysis of the relative effects of the widely proposed causal
threats, namely, habitat destruction, overexploitation, invasive species, pollution, and
infectious disease (Wilcove et al. 1998). Such analyses must be grounded in sound scientific evidence. As we have shown
here, this has been particularly difficult to accomplish for infectious diseases. Indeed, the
lack of adequate historical data and the level of uncertainty in existing data make it
difficult to gain a veritable understanding of the general role of infectious disease in wildlife
extinction and endangerment. Although we can infer patterns of infectious disease threats to
wildlife based on theoretical models and the data we have, there is a strong need for
improvement in data collection and compilation. We suggest several topics we believe deserve increased
recognition and future attention. First, the lack of historical data make it difficult to support claims
that infectious diseases have been emerging at increasingly high rates and are therefore
likely to be of significant concern in the future. Alternative indirect methods should not be discounted. For
instance, Ward and Lafferty (2004) tracked the proportion of published scientific papers related to infectious disease in several
marine taxa to assess whether normalized reports of infectious disease could serve as an indirect proxy for infectious disease
monitoring. In the absence of baseline data, this approach is useful for detecting quantitative trends in infectious disease
occurrence through time. This and similar methods should prove beneficial for future studies on temporal trends in emerging
infectious diseases. Second, it is crucial to recognize that not all infectious diseases increase the
likelihood of extinction. There is a growing need for rigorous scientific tests to determine whether an infectious disease
identified in a threatened host causes significant pathology. Related to this is the need to assess whether impacts
at the individual level scale up to the population or species level (Lafferty & Holt 2003).
Theoretical and historical evidence suggests that infectious disease can drive populations temporarily or permanently to low
numbers or densities, predisposing them to extinction by other forces (de Castro&Bolker 2005; Gerber et al. 2005). Infectious
diseases that are host specific and density dependent are unlikely to be the sole cause of
species extinction because they typically die out when the host population falls below a
threshold density (Anderson & May 1992). Infectious diseases that are frequency dependent, utilize reservoir hosts, or can
survive in the abiotic environment are more likely to induce extinction (de Castro & Bolker 2005). Experimental research on the
mechanisms of disease-induced extinction will help to clarify the validity of these generalizations.
Disease can only cause extinction in local populations
Lenihan et al 13 (Professor of Applied UC Santa Barbra, Tal Ben-Horin, Post Doctoral Researcher, Kevin Lafferty
Research ecologist USGS, Variable intertidal temperature explains why disease endangers black abalone in Ecology,
http://hsrl.rutgers.edu/abstracts.articles/Ben-Horin.et.al.2013.ecology.pdf \\ME)
Epidemiological theory holds that host-specific infectious diseases will rarely drive
hosts to extinction because transmission eventually breaks down due to a decline in
susceptible hosts (Anderson and May 1992, de Castro and Bolker 2005). This phenomenon, known as epizootic
fade out, implies that a disease will die out when the host population falls below a
threshold density (Lloyd-Smith et al. 2005). Accordingly, infectious diseases have played only a
minor role in global species loss, and have rarely provided the sole cause of threat for
species listed under either the U.S. Endangered Species Act or IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Smith et al. 2006). Yet
there are cases of infectious diseases threatening species with extinction on local scales
(McCallum et al. 2009). In these cases, pathogens maintain high incidence and the ability to spread efficiently even as the
susceptible host population declines, either through frequency-dependent transmission or the presence of a reservoir host species
(de Castro and Bolker 2005). Here, we consider a less appreciated pathway to host extinction, a
disease that spreads rapidly through a tolerant host population followed by host
mortality linked to an environmental stressor.
Even zoonotic diseases dont lead to extinction
Gage and Cosoy 5 (Kenneth L. Gage and Michael Y. Kosoy, Research Biologists, CDC Division of Vector-Borne Diseases,
NATURAL HISTORY OF PLAGUE: Perspectives from More than a Century of Research in Annual Review of Entomology Volume
50,
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ento.50.071803.130337?url_ver=Z39.882003&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpub
md&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&journalCode=ento \\ME)
In many respects, research on the natural history of plague presents an excellent example of how multidisciplinary
investigations can enhance our knowledge of the natural cycles, maintenance,
transmission, and focality of zoonotic diseases. The importance of this research can hardly be questioned, as
it has provided critical information for the development of effective plague prevention
and control techniques. And yet this same body of research often has yielded contradictory results and interpretations
that make it difficult to evaluate the relative merits of different concepts on the dynamics of plague cycles, the
occurrence of epizootics and spread of plague, the mechanisms for the interepizootic
maintenance of Y. pestis, the roles of fleas as biological and mechanical vectors, and the distribution and structure of natural
foci. Although such problems are not entirely unexpected, they point out the need for studies designed to test specific hypotheses on
the above topics. The success of such research likely depends on ongoing support for long-
term studies and collaborations between scientists from many disciplines, including
entomology, ecology, microbiology, molecular biology, mathematical modeling,
geographic information systems, and remote sensing.
Even if diseases arent specialized BioD solves- models
De Castro and Bolker 05 (Fransisco de Castro, research fellow at Queens University, Belfast, Benjamin M. Bolker,
professor in the departments of Mathematics & Statistics and of Biology at McMaster University, Parasite establishment and host
extinction in model communities in Oikos: Synthesizing Ecology Volume 111, Issue 3, pages 501513, December 2005,
http://www.acdemia.edu/170986/de_Castro_F._Bolker_B._M._2005._Parasite_establishment_and_host_extinction_in_model_
comunities._Oikos_111_501-513 \\ME)

According to the regression analysis, the size of the community is the most important characteristic
deter-mining the number of species that became extinct in all the infection attempts,
followed by community diversity. The effect of the number of species is not due to the fact that larger communities
reject the parasite more fre-quently, since the number of extinctions is defined relative to the number of successful invasions. The
positive effect of community size on extinction frequency applies to both host and non-
host extinctions. With respect to the extinction of hosts, larger communities have more
species affected in the case of generalist and semi-generalist parasites, since they infect
half or all the species, which increases the probability of one of them going extinct. For specialist and semi-
specialist parasites (which affect one or two species, irrespective of community size) the
effect of community size is not significant. With respect to the extinction of non-host
species, larger communities also have more connections per species, since connectance (0.5 for all
communities) is defined relative to the maximum possible number of connections, which is higher for larger communities. More
connections between species makes it more prob-able for host density changes to affect other (non-host)species. The effect of
diversity on extinction frequency is negative: more diverse communities experience
fewer extinctions (of both hosts and non-hosts). For a given number of species, higher diversity implies a more even
distribution of densities between species. This, in turn, implies that species with extremely low densities are
rarer and so the average extinction probability is lower.
Their models fail- dont take other species into account
De Castro and Bolker 05 (Fransisco de Castro, research fellow at Queens University, Belfast, Benjamin M. Bolker,
professor in the departments of Mathematics & Statistics and of Biology at McMaster University, Parasite establishment and host
extinction in model communities in Oikos: Synthesizing Ecology Volume 111, Issue 3, pages 501513, December 2005,
http://www.acdemia.edu/170986/de_Castro_F._Bolker_B._M._2005._Parasite_establishment_and_host_extinction_in_model_
communities._Oikos_111_501-513 \\ME)
Models of parasite ecology usually consider only the parasite and its host. Only limited
efforts have been made to include the interactions between multiple hosts, or between
the host and other species in the model. Here, we have modeled the dynamics of a multi-
species community and its influence on the outcome of the host parasite interaction,
focusing on the frequency of species extinction. We have shown that the structure of the
community can influence several aspects of that relationship. The interactions between the host and
other species will modify the minimum host density required for the parasite to invade. Also, although specialist
parasites cannot produce the extinction of the host (in the simple models we have used), they often cause
the extinction of other species indirectly, especially in small communities. The species richness or number of
interactions in the community and its diversity also influence the prob-ability of host
extinction
Econ
Aerospace
UX
Both public and private investment high in the aerospace industry
AIA 2/25 (Aerospace Industry Association is the voice of the U.S. aerospace and defense industry,
establishes industry-wide goals and strategies to issues that impact members and U.S. interests in civil
aviation, national security and space, AIA Welcomes Announcement of Public-Private Manufacturing
Innovation Institutes, February 25, 2014, http://www.aia-
aerospace.org/news/aia_welcomes_announcement_of_public-
private_manufacturing_innovation_instit/)
AIA welcomes todays announcement of two new public-private manufacturing
innovation institutes. It demonstrates a clear commitment on the part of the
administration to strengthen American manufacturing and invest in innovative new
technologies that will grow our economy and support our national security. The aerospace
and defense industry historically has been a leader in manufacturing and design innovation and has
continually developed products and processes that benefit the economy and society at large. It is exciting
that these and potentially future institutes will be devoted to investing in the advancement of aerospace
and defense technologies. We are encouraged that so many of our member companies are already fully
engaged with this initiative. AIA and our Technical Operations Council have been
particularly supportive of the presidents vision and looks forward to the opportunity to
partner with the government and companies across all sectors of the economy.

Aerospace industry strong and growing
AIA 2/25 (Aerospace Industry Association is the voice of the U.S. aerospace and defense industry,
establishes industry-wide goals and strategies to issues that impact members and U.S. interests in civil
aviation, national security and space, AIA Welcomes Announcement of Public-Private Manufacturing
Innovation Institutes, February 25, 2014, http://www.aia-
aerospace.org/news/aia_welcomes_announcement_of_public-
private_manufacturing_innovation_instit/)
U. S. aircraft manufacturers continue to hold strong positions in the world market due
to the dedication and hard work of American workers, the wisdom of executives leading
those companies, and the pursuit of technological advances that drive world markets. In
fact, the aerospace industry continues to be the United States' leading exporter of manufactured goods.
By value, our industry exported $72.1 billion more than we imported last year. This
figure was up 10% over the previous year, even as the overall U. S. economy improved in
fits and starts. Without a doubt, the success in net exports is related to our dominance
in commercial aircraft manufacturing. U. S. exports of civil aircraft, engines, avionics,
and related components represent 88 percent of all aerospace exports and almost all of
the increase we experienced last year. This is a sign of growth in the developing world. But it is
also a testament to an industry which has invested billions of dollars in research and development to
remain competitive through the use of increasingly sophisticated technologies. We have raised the
fuel efficiency of jet engines by 125% since 1960 and by 20% in the past ten years. And
while increasing efficiency, our manufacturers have also increased safety. In fact,
aircraft safety margins have doubled since 1990. Because of these advancements, the
competitiveness of our industry remains strong.
EX-IM

Export Import Bank key to global competitiveness in aerospace
AIA 3/13 (Aerospace Industry Association is the voice of the U.S. aerospace and defense
industry, establishes industry-wide goals and strategies to issues that impact members and U.S.
interests in civil aviation, national security and space, The U.S. Aviation Industry and Jobs:
Keeping American Manufacturing Competitive , March 13, 2014, http://www.aia-
aerospace.org/sectors/civil_aviation/news/the_u.s._aviation_industry_and_jobs_keeping_am
erican_manufacturing_competit)
The Export-Import Bank of the United States also plays a vital role in helping
American companies compete on a level playing field in the global marketplace. Last
year, the bank aided 3,400 companies large, medium and small in supporting over
205,000 U.S. jobs, maintaining a robust network of aerospace suppliers, and facilitating
a stronger U.S. presence in the global market. Significantly, nearly 88% of these jobs were at
small businesses around the country. Many people do not realize that the bank is self-sustaining, and
operates at no cost to U.S. taxpayers. In fact, through its fees and charges, the bank brought in more
than $1 billion to the U.S. treasury in fiscal years 2012 and 2013. Simply put, the federal deficit will
go up if the Export-Import Bank is shut down. At a time when defense cuts are causing
smaller suppliers to shrink their operations, Ex-Im financing maintains the financial
health of a large number of aerospace industry suppliers, providing assistance to 30,000
of them. Many of these suppliers have looked to other aerospace sectors to compensate for lost revenue
from the defense downturn. Furthermore, Ex-Im financing is a critical tool to the aerospace
exporter in both general aviation and space services. From May 2012 to February 2014, Ex-Im
financed over $1 billion in business jet exports, supporting over 5,000 jobs. Satellites and space launch
services have become Ex-Im's fastest growing sector. Prior to 2010, Ex-Im financed roughly $50 million
annually in space services. That number has risen to over $1 billion in each of the last two years. In fact,
over 60% of U. S.-built commercial satellite exports today are supported through Ex-Im financing.

Key to the global aerospace industry
AIA 3/13 (Aerospace Industry Association is the voice of the U.S. aerospace and defense industry,
establishes industry-wide goals and strategies to issues that impact members and U.S. interests in civil
aviation, national security and space, The U.S. Aviation Industry and Jobs: Keeping American
Manufacturing Competitive , March 13, 2014, http://www.aia-
aerospace.org/sectors/civil_aviation/news/the_u.s._aviation_industry_and_jobs_keeping_american_m
anufacturing_competit)
Equally important, the bank allows U.S. exporters to effectively compete with foreign
firms that have their own government-assisted financing. Our Export-Import Bank is
one of 59 export credit agencies around the world. Each of them supports the export of
manufactured goods in a highly competitive global marketplace. And many of these
governments extend more credit, at more favorable rates, than the United States. In fact, as a percentage
of GDP, U.S. export credit in 2012 ranked below six other countries. Germany and France extended nearly
two and a half times as much export financing; China and India almost three times; and Korea ten times
as much. The Export-Import Bank does not cost American taxpayers a dime. It helps our
manufacturers compete and sell their products around the world. And since aircraft
manufacturing is one of our nations biggest exports, it is not surprising that U.S. jobs
depend on our government helping to maintain a level playing field. The bank's authority is
set to expire on September 30, 2014, and we need your support to ensure there is no gap or shutdown in
this important program's operations


China Econ
Alt Causes
Chinese economic collapse is inevitable
Basu, 14 (Prasenjit Basu, founder of RealEconomics.com, an independent economic
research firm, Chinas crisis is coming the only question is how big it will be,
4/27/2014, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f627e162-cc96-11e3-ab99-
00144feabdc0.html#axzz388NaDSZ7)
A financial crisis in China has become inevitable. If it happens soon, its effects can be contained. But, if
policy makers use further doses of stimulus to postpone the day of reckoning, a severe
collapse will become unavoidable within a few years. The country is in the middle of by far the largest
monetary expansion in history. On one widely used measure, M2, its money supply has tripled in the past six years, an expansion
four times as large as that of the US over the same period. This unprecedented expansion is at least partly
responsible for Chinas extraordinary growth rate, which is now running up against a
demographic constraint. Last year, for the first time, the working-age population
declined, a trend set to continue for the next two decades. Unless the country can keep
lifting the labour force participation rate (for example by getting more women into the
workforce or persuading older people not to retire), China will struggle to expand its
labour force by even 1 per cent per year. To sustain economic growth of more than 7 per
cent, productivity would need to grow by 6-7 per cent a year across the entire economy.
This would be a tall order in any country. In China, where the labour-intensive services
and agriculture sectors make up half the economy, it is well-nigh impossible. The country
suffers from excess capacity in most industrial sectors. Yet investment in fixed assets continues to grow at double-digit rates. The
steel sector is a case in point. China has about 1bn tonnes of annual steel-production capacity; about a third of it sits idle.
Consequently, the growth statistics present a misleading figure. Output is being produced, sometimes even in the absence of any
demand. A continuing burst of credit is needed to help fuel new capital spending to keep the factories busy but that only adds to
the stock of unused capital. It is a similar story with property investment. China is brimming with high-quality
housing that is unaffordable. Sharp price declines are needed to clear the market. That
will involve severe pain for banks that participated in the monetary expansion. Observers
often cite Chinas closed capital account as a blessing that will stave off capital flight. But one consequence is a huge and persistent
balance of payments surplus. Foreign money flows into the country to pay for exported goods and investment, and much less flows
back out since there are few legal avenues for exit. Chinas surplus over the past 10 years has been far larger than Japans was in the
1980s the years when its disastrous asset price bubble was being inflated. This should have caused the currency to rise rapidly. But
the renminbi has been pegged to the dollar for most of that period, accumulating a big pile of foreign reserves. Compounding it all,
Chinese investors believe that none of the countrys banks or financial products will go bust because the government stands behind
them all. This is partly the legacy of the banking rescue mounted a decade ago, when about 40 per cent of loans belonging to four big
government-owned banks were transferred (at face value) to asset-management companies. But the broader problem
is the tendency of the party leadership to provide a policy stimulus every time growth
dips. Financial controls are gradually being relaxed. But the offshore market on which the renminbi is now allowed to trade is
tiny less than 5 per cent of the value of Chinas foreign reserves. Opening the capital account fully is
impossible; it would result in large flows of funds and a loss of control that policy
makers cannot countenance. In a country that already accounts for half of all capital-
intensive production globally, and nearly a fifth of all US imports, the growth of
manufacturing will inevitably slow. A thriving service sector could pick up some of the slack. But building more
houses and railways is not the way to encourage it. Chinas economy is in an unbalanced state. It can stay
that way for some time but the longer it does, the worse the eventual outcome will be.
The industrial sector is already plagued by falling prices. To avert a wider deflationary spiral, the
country needs to wean itself off the false cure of perpetual policy stimulus.
Alt causes to Chinese economic collapse flawed economic model and
excessive investment and debt
Schuman, 12 (Michael Schuman, Correspondent for TIME, Why China Will Have an
Economic Crisis, 2/27/2012, http://business.time.com/2012/02/27/why-china-will-
have-an-economic-crisis/)
I dont doubt for a second that China will be a major economic superpower with an
increasingly influential role in the global economy. In many respects, it already is a superpower. But
that doesnt mean the economy is free from problems, a good number of them created
by the very statist system lauded by pundits in the U.S. and Europe. And in my opinion,
if China doesnt change course, and in a big way, the country will experience an
economic crisis. Ive been thinking about Chinas economic future, and the likelihood it will face some sort of terrible
collapse, for some time, but I have until now been reluctant to come out with my views so strongly. The reason is that it is very
difficult to tell whats really going on in the Chinese economy. Data is sparse or unreliable. And China is in certain ways unique in
economic terms has history ever witnessed a giant of such massive proportions ascend so quickly in the global economy? Valid
precedents are hard to find. Then there is the issue of timing. It is easy to say China will have a crisis; it is almost impossible to say
when that might happen. Next month? Next year? Next decade? The fact is China could continue as it is for some time to come. So,
in other words, when you make the type of prediction I just have, you have a good chance of getting it just plain wrong. But the
more time I spend in China, the more convinced I am that its current economic system
is unsustainable. Yes, economists who specialize in China can give you all sorts of reasons why the country is supposedly
different, and thus the regular rules of economics dont necessarily apply. But one simple thing I always say about economics is that
you cant escape math. If the numbers dont add up, it doesnt matter much how big your economy might be or how fast it is growing
or how heavy a role the state might play. And China has lots of numbers that just dont add up. A big part of the bad
math is created by Chinas state capitalism. China has adopted a form of the Asian
development model, invented by Japan and followed, to varying degrees, by many
rapid-growth countries around East Asia. The model, very generally speaking, functions like this: 1) capitalize
on low wages to spark growth through exports and industrialize quickly with hefty amounts of investment, 2) guide the whole
process with the hand of the state, 3) employ industrial policies and state-directed finance to progress into more and more advanced
sectors. This system generates fantastic levels of economic growth for a while, but then
eventually, it crashes. Japan had its meltdown beginning in 1990 (and it hasnt escaped
two decades later); South Korea, the country that copied Japans model most closely,
experienced its crisis in 1997-98. What happens? The model is based on what Alice Amsden, in her study of the
Korean economy, called getting prices wrong. To spur on the high levels of investment necessary to generate rapid growth, the
model depends on state-directed subsidization to make investing in certain industries or sectors more attractive and less risky than
it otherwise would be. Cheap credit is made available for industry, or the state outright orders money to be invested in certain
preferred projects. The exchange rate is controlled to encourage exporters. All sorts of subsidies, for energy, exports and so on, are
dished out. Banks are not commercially oriented but act to a great degree as tools of government-development policy. All of these
methods funnel money, private and public, into industrialization, creating the astronomical growth rates we see again and again in
Asia. The problem here is that prices cant stay wrong indefinitely. There is a good reason why classical economists are always so
focused on allowing markets to find the correct price level. In that way, markets send the proper signals to potential investors on
where money should or should not go. If those price indicators are skewed, so is the direction of resources. The Asian
model, by playing around with prices, eventually creates tremendous distortions, in
which money is wasted and excess capacity is generated. Subsidized companies dont
have to generate returns in the same way as unsubsidized firms, and that leads them to
make bad investment decisions to build factories and buildings that are unnecessary
and unprofitable. As a result, loans go bad and banking sectors buckle. Thats exactly
what happened in both Japan and Korea. Though their crises were tipped off in very
different ways the bursting of an asset bubble in Japan, an external shock in Korea
the reason both countries collapsed was the same: weak banks, indebted companies,
silly investments. China is indulging in all of the same excesses as Japan and Korea, and then some. The level of
investment in China, at nearly 50% of GDP, is lofty even by Asian standards. The usual argument made in defense of such
astronomical investment in fixed assets is that China is a large developing country that needs all of the buildings and roads it is
constructing. Qu Hongbin, the very smart chief China economist at HSBC, made that very argument in a recent study: There is a
popular view in the market that China has overinvested and therefore can no longer rely on investment to sustain its growth. We
disagree. Chinas investment-to-GDP ratio is indeed very high (46%) [But] China is only half way through the process of
urbanisation and industrialisation. It still needs to invest more to cope with the rising demand for rail, hospitals and industrial
plants. The recent infrastructure boom has boosted the countrys transport capacity, but Chinas railway network is still shorter than
that of the US in 1880 In economic terms, we estimate that Chinas capital stock per worker is only about 8% of that of the US and
15% of that of Korea. In other words, Chinas capital accumulation is still far from reaching the stage of having diminishing returns;
we believe the country needs to invest more, rather than less. I completely agree. Yet the issue is not
whether China needs more investment. The issue is whether China is getting the types of
investment it requires. The fact that investment levels can be so high and yet the
economy is so deficient in certain key aspects makes me think the answer is no. We can
see that in the continued problem of excess capacity in China, in which companies go
hog wild building too many factories in certain industries, often with borrowing from
state banks. That has happened in steel and solar panels, for example. The country is investing hundreds of billions in high-
speed railways even though ticket prices are beyond the reach of most Chinese, while many major Chinese cities dont have
subways. A good part of this misdirected investment seems to be headed into the property sector. Real estate development has
become the key driving force of Chinese economic growth. In theory, Chinas very rapid urbanization makes such construction a
necessity but that depends on what is being built. In Wenzhou, a real estate agent recently offered free BMWs to anyone who
bought a high-end apartment a clear sign of overbuilding while there is an obvious shortage of housing affordable for most
Chinese. On either side of my Beijing apartment building are three big malls that hardly ever seem to see real shoppers. Rents for
top-quality office space in Beijing are now pricier than in New York City despite the fact that Chinas capital is one big
construction zone. Many of the buildings going up are of a quality unsuitable for major corporations. Even worse, much
of the investment in China is being financed with debt. The level of debt in the Chinese
economy has been rising with frightening speed. Rating agency Fitch estimates bank credit in 2011 was
equivalent to 185% of the countrys GDP an increase of 56 percentage points in a mere three years. Though that surge has not yet
had a significant negative impact on Chinas banks, many analysts fret that banks will eventually experience a rise in nonperforming
loans. In an indication of what is to come, the Financial Times reported recently that the government has ordered banks to roll over
the $1.7 trillion of loans owed by local governments. If true, this tells us two key things: 1) these governments invested money raised
from banks in projects that are not generating the returns necessary to pay them back and 2) the quality of loans on the banks books
are more questionable than official statistics suggest. On top of that, the fact that local governments
amassed so much debt in the first place shows a complete lack of rule of law in Chinas
financial sector. Technically, local governments arent permitted to borrow money at all.
Meanwhile, as government entities run up loans they cant pay, many small companies,
especially private ones, are unable to raise sufficient funds and remain starved of
capital. So we can see the pieces of a crisis falling into place: excessive, misguided
investment, including a giant property boom, propelled on by debt and the decisions of
government bureaucrats. Sound familiar? A crisis, of course, is not inevitable if Chinas leadership takes action and
reorients the direction of the economy. The positive thing is that at least some top policymakers understand the need to change. In
policy pronouncement after policy pronouncement, the government pledges to reform. The problem is that Chinas government is
not taking its own advice. The economy needs to rebalance away from investment and exports to
a more consumption-driven growth model with a primary focus on quality of growth,
not high rates at any cost. Thats not happening, or not happening quickly enough. Yes, the
Chinese consumer is gaining in global importance, but savings in China remains too high and consumption as a percentage of GDP
still way too low. Steps that the government could take to spur on the needed rebalancing reducing lofty taxes on many imported
goods, for example are nowhere to be found. More importantly, the government is doing nothing to set prices right. The currency
remains firmly controlled, interest rates unreformed. So investors within China are still acting based on the wrong price signals.
Why wont Chinas policymakers pursue more fundamental reform? They are afraid that
growth might slip. Sure, the latest five-year plan targets 7% annual GDP growth, but it seems to me that every time growth
drops under double digits, the leadership goes into panic mode and revs up the economy again. GDP surged 8.9% in the fourth
quarter of 2011, but thats not fast enough for Chinas leaders. Theyve already started loosening credit again slathering yet more
debt onto the economy.

Resilient
Chinese economy is resilient its growth is financed from domestic
resources
The Economist, 12 (The Economist, newspaper that covers international news,
politics, business, finance, science and technology, Resilient China: How strong is
Chinas economy?, 5/26/2012, http://www.economist.com/node/21555915)
CHINA'S weight in the global economy means that it commands the world's attention. When its industrial production, house
building and electricity output slow sharply, as they did in the year to April, the news weighs on global stock markets and commodity
prices. When its central bank eases monetary policy, as it did this month, it creates almost as big a stir as a decision by America's
Federal Reserve. And when China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, stresses the need to maintain growth, as he did last weekend, his
words carry more weight with the markets than similar homages to growth from Europe's leaders. No previous industrial revolution
has been so widely watched. But rapid development can look messy close up, as our special
report this week explains; and there is much that is going wrong with China's economy.
It is surprisingly inefficient, and it is not as fair as it should be. But outsiders' principal concernthat its
growth will collapse if it suffers a serious blow, such as the collapse of the eurois not
justified. For the moment, it is likely to prove more resilient than its detractors fear. Its
difficulties, and they are considerable, will emerge later on. Outsiders tend to regard China as a paragon of export-led efficiency. But
that is not the whole story. Investment spending on machinery, buildings and infrastructure accounted for over half of China's
growth last year; net exports contributed none of it. Too much of this investment is undertaken by state-owned enterprises (SOEs),
which benefit from implicit subsidies, sheltered markets and politically encouraged loans. Examples of waste abound, from a ghost
city on China's northern steppe to decadent resorts on its southern shores. China's economic model is also unfair
on its people. Regulated interest rates enable banks to rip off savers, by underpaying
them for their deposits. Barriers to competition allow the SOEs to overcharge
consumers for their products. China's household-registration system denies equal access
to public services for rural migrants, who work in the cities but are registered in the
villages. Arbitrary land laws allow local governments to cheat farmers, by underpaying
them for the agricultural plots they buy off them for development. And many of the
proceeds end up in the pockets of officials. This cronyism and profligacy leads critics to liken China to other
fast-growing economies that subsequently suffered a spectacular downfall. One recent comparison is with the Asian tigers before
their financial comeuppance in 1997-98. The tigers' high investment rates powered growth for a while, but they also fostered a
financial fragility that was cruelly exposed when exports slowed, investment faltered and foreign capital fled. Critics point out that
not only is China investing at a faster rate than the tigers ever did, but its banks and other lenders have also been on an astonishing
lending binge, with credit jumping from 122% of GDP in 2008 to 171% in 2010, as the government engineered a bout of stimulus
lending. Yet the very unfairness of China's system gives it an unusual resilience. Unlike the tigers,
China relies very little on foreign borrowing. Its growth is financed from resources
extracted from its own population, not from fickle foreigners free to flee, as happened in
South-East Asia (and is happening again in parts of the euro zone). China's saving rate, at 51% of
GDP, is even higher than its investment rate. And the repressive state-dominated financial system those savings are kept in is
actually well placed to deal with repayment delays and defaults. Most obviously, China's banks are highly liquid.
Their deposit-taking more than matches their loan-making, and they keep a fifth of their
deposits in reserve at the central bank. That gives the banks some scope to roll over
troublesome loans that may be repaid at a later date, or written off at a more convenient
time. But there is also the backstop of the central government, which has formal debts
amounting to only about 25% of GDP. Local-government debts might double that
proportion, but China plainly has enough fiscal space to recapitalise any bank
threatened with insolvency.

Chinese economy is resilient government can restructure its economy
China Daily, 12 (The Economist, English-language daily newspaper published in the
People's Republic of China, Chinese economy resilient enough to refute worries,
4/17/2014, http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-
04/17/content_17440339.htm)
The slowdown of the world's second largest economy has prompted some concerns, but
many of those worries are unwarranted in view of China's commitment to economic
restructuring. Official data released Wednesday by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics showed that China's GDP grew
by 7.4 percent year on year to 12.8213 trillion yuan ($2.08 trillion) in the first quarter. Some analysts claimed that
China would turn back to stimulus and give up reform as a result of the slowdown. Some
others even argued that the Chinese economy would slide down uncontrollably into an abyss and doom its trading partners. "By
using its old trick of spending its way to growth, the mainland runs the risk of falling deeper into its complicated structural
problem," said Geogre Chen, a columnist with the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. As a matter of fact, such
voices, eloquent as they may sound, cannot dim the outlook of the Chinese economy,
whose future is decided by nothing but the combination of the country's economic policy
and fundamentals. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), said recently that the Chinese economy will not see a rapid dip and that the
Chinese government is serious and determined to implement the reform. President of
the World Bank (WB) Jim Yong Kim also said recently that despite the recent slowdown
the Chinese government's resolve to restructure its economy is impressive. "The risk is not
slower growth," said Markus Rodlauer, the IMF's mission chief for China and deputy director of the fund's Asia and Pacific
Department. "The risk is that growth is not allowed to slow." "A series of economic policies ... show that
China's new leaders mean business with their commitment to reform," said Forbes in an article
published on its website last week. The Chinese officials in charge also responded to allay the worries. Chinese Vice Finance
Minister Zhu Guangyao said on the sidelines of the IMF and WB's spring meetings in Washington that China will not roll out a
massive stimulus package just for short-term gains. "The message that China is determined to endure
short-term economic pain to press ahead with structural reforms is likely to encourage
economists who say China needs to move quickly to wean its economy from runaway
credit, over-investment and excess capacity," said a Wall Street Journal article published Saturday on its
website. In terms of RMB's exchange rate, Lagarde defended China, saying that the latest increasing fluctuation of the yuan is a step
towards the currency's internationalization, rather than the so-called deliberate depreciation. Experts say that as China carries on
its reform, the ongoing economic slowdown should be taken by the international community as a necessary step in the restructuring
of its economy for further development, rather than as any signal of stagnation or even shrinking.

Chinese economy is resilient empirics prove
Yao, 11 (Kevin Yao, Correspondent for Reuters, Analysis: China economy resilient, for
now, 6/23/2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/23/us-china-economy-
growth-idUSTRE75M1AO20110623)
China's growth is slowing under the weight of Beijing's anti-inflation campaign and
weaker global demand, but any investors betting on a hard landing would be
underestimating the resilience of the world's second-largest economy. China's relentless
urbanization continue to drive expansion even as Beijing seeks to check unfettered investment by growth-obsessed local authorities,
while stronger domestic consumption is providing a firmer cushion against external shocks. China bears may have been
emboldened on Thursday by a purchasing managers' survey showing growth in the factory sector nearly stalled in June as new
export orders fell. But skeptics who are expecting an abrupt economic slowdown may have
miscalculated Beijing's resolve to act quickly if needed to revive growth, especially if
inflation eases later this year as expected, reducing the need for fresh monetary
tightening measures, analysts say. "The economy is set up for growth. You've still got
urbanization and industrialization to come and all the incentives at local government
levels are still to do with encouraging growth," said Stephen Green, an economist at
Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong. "People always over-worry about a China hard landing. Clearly
there are a lot of problems with the economy but people may underestimate the
government's ability to muddle through." Green expects some policy relaxation later this year as price pressures
start to moderate. Global investors are unnerved by any sign of a slowdown in China, a key global growth engine, even as the U.S.
economic recovery loses momentum and Europe struggles with a sovereign debt crisis. An abrupt slowdown in China could hammer
international financial markets and stifle demand for commodities from iron ore to soybeans. The economy has expanded at an
average annual pace of 10 percent in the past three decades. Fears of a hard landing have gained traction as
a recent stream of data showed the turbo-charged economy is cooling, but for now China
shows no signs of following the West with growth levels falling well below long-term
trends. Indeed, most market watchers typically define a hard landing in the Chinese context as a sudden dip in quarterly GDP
growth below 8 percent, a level advanced economies can only dream about. The 8 percent threshold is, more importantly, a political
line in the sand for Beijing, which it deems to be the minimum level needed to create enough jobs to ensure social stability. The
last time the economy showed signs of a sudden slump, during the depths of the global
financial crisis in late 2008, Beijing announced a 4 trillion yuan ($600 billion) stimulus
plan, quickly returning to double-digit growth. While few argue with the success of that scheme, many
economists say the spending binge also sowed the seeds of inflation and created excesses such as unrestrained lending and property
bubbles which are aggravating imbalances in the economy, leaving it more vulnerable if the current "soft patch" in Western demand
turns out to be a prolonged downturn. Policymakers will certainly have more room to consider fresh pump-priming if inflation
peaks in June or July near 6 percent, as widely expected, and then moderates steadily in the second-half of the year. Dong Tao,
an economist at Credit Suisse, believes the central bank will not rush to relax policy for
fear of fueling further property price rises, but said the government will unleash its
spending power to prevent growth from slowing too much. "Should the threat of a hard
landing emerge, we would expect fiscal stimulus to come to the rescue, instead of
monetary easing. Providing funding to policy housing and speeding up infrastructure projects would be the easy options,"
he said. China has already announced an ambitious plan to start building and upgrading 36 million affordable homes between 2011-
2015, with 10 million to be completed this year, to quell growing public discontent over rapidly rising house prices.
Japan Econ
Alt Causes
Collapse inevitable, rising unemployment rate.
Lah 11 (Kyung Lah, South Korean journalist and correspondent for CNN, Japan's economic woes
continue, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/05/31/japan.economy/index.html )
Economic data and analysis out of Japan Tuesday underscore the struggles in the
world's third largest economy, and how the lack of clear policy is adding to the
problems. Japan's unemployment rate rose to 4.7% in April, up 0.1% from March. It was
the first jump in unemployment in six months in the wake of the 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, reported
Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The data did not factor in three hardest
hit prefectures in the tsunami region: Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. Those areas saw
massive infrastructure and job losses, suggesting the actual unemployment in the
country is worse than today's figures suggest. Separate employment data showed the
number of jobs available dropped for the first time in 17 months. The number of jobs
available deteriorated to 0.61 in April from 0.63 in March. The figures from the Ministry
of Health, Labor and Welfare show only 61 jobs are available for every 100 job seekers.

No Impact
Japan collapse has no impact to the global economy
Schuman 11 American author and journalist who specializes in Asian economics, politics and
history. He is currently the Asia business correspondent for TIME Magazine, based in Hong
Kong(Michael, Will Japans quake rock the world economy?, 3/16/11,
http://business.time.com/2011/03/16/will-japans-quake-rock-the-world-economy/
Secondly, Japan has been in a 20-year economic funk, and as a result, the importance of the
country in the world economy has been on the decline. China supplanted Japan as the worlds
second-largest economy last year. Since the economy doesnt grow much, it doesnt
contribute much to world growth. BofA Merrill Lynch economists figure the impact of a severe
slowdown of Japans economy would produce barely a ripple to global growth: According to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), Japan represents 8.7% of global GDP as of 2010. Going
into last weeks tragedy, we had Japans economy growing 1.5% in 2011E. Assuming a drastic
scenario, where annual GDP growth comes in flat, then we estimate global GDP would
decline by just 0.1ppt to 4.2%. Similarly, Japans impact to US GDP will be limited as
wellWith its long languishing economy, news from Japan no longer has the powerful
effect on investor psychology that it once had. In fact, some economies and companies
around the world could come to benefit from Japans crisis, as the experts at Capital
Economics believe: Even though Japan is still the worlds third-largest economy, its
reliance on export-led growth means that it has been a passenger of the global recovery
rather than a main driver. Other countries may even see some economic benefits from the disaster in
Japan, including a share in the subsequent reconstruction work. Some Japanese firms will also have to
increase production at their overseas facilities, at least temporarily.

Impacts should of happened, demographics and earthquake.
Twaronite 11 (Marketwatch Tokyo bureau Chief (Lisa, Japans debt crisis moves in slow
motion, 6/29/11,http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japans-debt-crisis-moves-in-slow-motion-2011-
06-29?link=home_carousel
Compared to the acute contagion of a potential Greek default, Japans debt woes are more like a
critical but slowly-progressing illness. The Japanese patient can probably live for years
decades, even and wont spread its sickness far and wide. On the face of it, Japans
condition looks worse than Greeces. Even before the devastating earthquake and tsunami
on March 11, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Japans
public debt was on track to top 200% of its gross domestic product in 2011. That compares
with less than 140% for Greece, according to the OECD. Moreover, Japans birthrate is falling and
its population is aging. On Wednesday, the Internal Affairs Ministry released the results
of the 2010 census, which showed the number of elderly Japanese rose 2.9 percentage
points to 23.1% of the total population the highest percentage in the world. Last year,
children under 15 accounted for a record-low 13.2% of the total, dropping 0.6 percentage point from the
previous year. This ticking demographic bomb means Japan needs to double its
consumption tax to 10% by the fiscal year beginning in April 2015 to pay burgeoning
social welfare costs timing that Prime Minister Naoto Kan cant even get his own Democratic Party
of Japan to support, let alone get parliament to pass anytime soon. And then came the disaster. The cost
of the damage is still being tallied, and the funding details still being worked out, but when it comes to
the countrys balance sheet, its got to hurt.

Resilient
Japan economy resilient: earthquake proves
Gunn 12/6/12 (Campbell, Portfolio Manager @ T Rowe Price Japan Fund, "The Resilience of Japan,"
http://individual.troweprice.com/retail/pages/retail/applications/investorMag/2012/september/take-
note-cover-story/index.jsp
Japan is home to some of the world's largest and strongest companiesincluding consumer
electronics and auto manufacturersand it ranks among the most technologically advanced nations on
the globe. Japan is also notable for its resiliency: Within weeks of the earthquake and tsunami,
the Nikkei index had more than regained its losses. In March 2012, just a year after the
catastrophe, it closed its best quarter since 1988. The country todaywith a slightly weaker yen
and attractive stock valuationsmay offer growth potential for equity investors.

Japan resilient, earthquake recovery proves
Arnold 11 (Wayne, Reuters Breakingviews columnist, AlertNet, "Japan's economy may prove
surprisingly resilient,"http://www.trust.org/item/?map=breakingviews-japans-economy-may-prove-
surprisingly-resilient
HONG KONG, March 14 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Japan's tragic earthquake and tsunami are
unlikely to break the back of the world's third-largest economy. Experience with crises has
shaped the Japanese ethos of "gaman" -- "enduring the unendurable". Even after the March 11
disaster, Japanese industry seemed largely spared. Power shortages may crimp
production, but government stimulus should enable companies to step into the breach.
Gut-wrenching aftershocks aside, Tokyo was back at work on March 14. Stocks fell heavily -
- the Nikkei 225 index <.N225> down 6 percent -- yet analysts predicted corporate profits and economic
growth only slightly down for 2011, with the potential to surprise on the upside. While unease
remains about Japan's nuclear facilities, some of which have yet to be stabilised, the
quake's effect looks small relative to the economy. The worst-hit areas are home to
farming and fishing, not heavy industry. They represent no more than 8 percent of
Japan's GDP.
Manufacturing
AT: Reshoring
Reshoring doesnt solverestructuring, IPR, and workforce issues
Trentacosta 14 [John, partner with Foley & Lardner LLP and chair of the firms Complex Supply
Chain Litigation Group, What You Don't Know Can Hurt You, Manufacturing Leadership Journal,
April]//fw
Sir Isaac Newtons third law, For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,
applies to American manufacturing as much as it does to physics. After years of offshore expansion, U.S.
manufacturing is coming backand many predict it will be a mass homecoming. Contrary to what many manufacturers initially
believed, offshoring turned out to be less about cheap labor than about residual
costs. They often found themselves facing complex and costly business problemssuch as controlling intellectual
property, meeting rapidly changing customer demands while product lead times
spanned many months, and losing customers when quality control didnt meet
standards. These disadvantages, many manufacturers reported, offset any savings on labor and are now driving some to
reshore. According to the Boston Consulting Group*, 70 percent of U.S.based
manufacturers found sourcing in China more costly than they had anticipated; 92
percent believe labor costs there will continue to rise; and a third of those with annual sales over $1 billion
are planning or considering reshoring from China. For some, the reshoring decision also involves intangibles such as patriotism (and
the goodwill that comes from job creation) and rising demand for products with the Made in the USA label. Still others return
searching for opportunities to collaborate within like-minded industry clusters, where they can coordinate and leverage research and
development, nearby production facilities, workforce training programs, transportation, and natural resources, to name a few
considerations. Undoubtedly, offshoring for the past several decades has been, and will continue
to be, a significant force in American manufacturing. Maintaining a global production
footprint will likely continue where the business case works; for example, when there is a need to better access
growing consumer markets in developing countries or to sustain cheaper supply lines for certain parts. But there are
just as many business cases that support coming home. What Manufacturers Need to Know Before They Come Home While
reshorers typically compare relative costs before making their move, rarely do they understand that reshoring can involve
a wholesale restructuring and reorganization of operations that could cause
major disruption if not handled adroitly. Advance planning is critical, and not just in the obvious ways,
explains Greg Husisian, an attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP who advises clients on corporate risk management and compliance
issues arising from international trade. Whether a company is bringing all or just some of its operations
back to the United States, the reality is that it will face a combination of changing patterns of trade
and disruption to business as usual, with the upheaval depending on the level of
forethought and planning. In most cases, reshoring will alter the risk profile of the
organization. Like any reorganization, a reshoring decision will involve a wholesale re-
evaluation of the best way to structure manufacturing operations across the entire global footprint
of the organization, including not only direct company assets but also those of partners, suppliers, and affiliates. For most
companies, reshoring involves not the abandonment of non-U.S. production, but rather the rationalization of it across markets, with
collaborative production spanning a multinational manufacturing base. A firm that manufactures abroad in, for example, China or
India will evaluate its production footprint to determine which products or components should be re-sourced to the United States
and which should remain abroad. Even in the post-reshored production paradigm, many firms engaged in reshoring
find that they often still rely to some degree on foreign manufacture for production, whether
internally or from outside companies and partners. Thus, reshoring actually can complicate the supply
chain for U.S. firms that might have previously manufactured a product entirely in
China or other foreign locale. And that restructuring will likely involve U.S. regulatory
controls on exports, technical data, overseas conduct, and more. You do not want to move your
production back to the U.S. only to find there are permits or compliance issues that involve weeks, months, or even years to resolve,
says Husisian. U.S. laws governing the export of U.S.-origin goods, the sharing of controlled
technical data, increasing U.S. Customs oversight, and other regulatory issues all need
careful consideration. The costs involved in playing catch up can be considerable. So, while there are myriad details
involved in reshoringsuch as timing existing contracts, enforcing intellectual property rights
overseas, staffing and human resources issues, transportation, and logisticscompanies
should be prepared to address U.S. regulatory and legal requirements early on. Uncertainties such
as U.S. minimum wage increases, health insurance mandates, immigration reform, environmental impact fees, and morenone of
which are insurmountableshould be considered in the firms risk profile. However, manufacturers should build some padding into
their reshoring timeline to avoid costly disruptions that impact customers and/or cast a negative light on the company. The Hidden
Costs of Reshoring The consequences of reshoring could get ugly at some point, says Bob
Vechiola, outside legal counsel from Foley who has overseen the reshoring
process for a number of manufacturing clients. In considering the total cost of offshoring, its
easy to underestimate the likelihood of several things happening. For one, you have probably created your biggest competitor when
you leave your trained workforce behind in another country. The reshoring manufacturer may rationally expect to walk away with
all of its intellectual property, tooling, and other assetsalthough this is not always the case. But it is not realistic to
think that one can undo or get back all the training provided to its offshore workforce. To
illustrate, lets say that for the past 10 years manufacturer X has been training its foreign
workforce to make its widgets. These workers get really good at making widgets; in fact, it is
the only thing they know how to do. Once the manufacturer leaves, the chances that this workforce
will continue to produce such widgets is high, because what else would they do? Essentially,
this manufacturer has created a formidable competitor. Even if means are limitedusing
older methods without the benefit of further research and developmentthe possibility of a foreign workforce producing the same or
similar goods after a manufacturer reshores is very real. Manufacturers should be prepared to manage this in advance, before exiting
an offshore relationship. One the best ways to combat such competition is to have your intellectual property house in order.
Intellectual Property Considerations Reshorers should be prepared to use intellectual property rights to protect their products, both
in the original country of manufacture and the United States. For example, patent infringement issues can
present a burden on companies in the reshoring process if they do not plan ahead. Patents are
territorial. If you contemplate that your former Chinese team will become your biggest
competitor in China after you bring operations back to the United States, it will be
helpful to have secured patent protection on your products in China so that the patent rights can be
enforced in the jurisdiction of your new competitor, says Jeff Gundersen, a patent lawyer at Foley who represents a number of
manufacturing companies. Of course, this takes a bit of planning because existing patent rights
cannot be extended into China without an appropriate pending application that can be
nationalized in China. The cost of enforcing patent rights in a foreign jurisdiction can
cut into the expected cost benefit of reshoring. Therefore, it is prudent to carefully consider the benefit of
achieving an injunction or damages against a foreign infringer against the cost of litigating. As a general proposition, companies
secure patent rights in countries of manufacture and in key countries of commercialization to increase the potential enforcement
value of patent rights. Other intellectual property rights (e.g., trademarks, trade secrets,
copyrights, etc.) are also important to secure and maintain in the United States upon reshoring, in an
analogous manner to the approach taken in the foreign jurisdiction when offshoring in the first place. The State of the U.S.
Workforce Companies often underestimate the time it will take to develop a knowledgeable
and capable U.S. workforce within the requisite time during a reshoring event. And too often it is recognized only in
hindsight that the challenge is actually twofold. First, to offset the cost of higher wages in the United
States, reshorers tend to employ more automation. But even robots need humans to operate them, and
those humans must be skilled and able to perform in an advanced manufacturing environment. Second, manufacturing
in the United States fights against a long-held perception that is proving hard to shake.
For the majority of young people in the United States entering the workforce today, manufacturing conjures up images of men and
women doing repetitive tasks in unappealing environmentsdirty, dark, and possibly dangerous. For manufacturers bringing their
operations back to the United States, this image is hard to combat despite the fact that it is no longer true in most cases.
Acquiring a skilled, passionate, and dedicated U.S. workforce has become a top concern
of reshorers and a dominant conversation in the boardrooms of manufacturers throughout the country. Although many
educators, state governments, human resource professionals, and executives themselves have begun promoting manufacturing as a
career, not just a job, those efforts are not having the immediate results manufacturers hoped for as they struggle to fill advanced
manufacturing positions. A 2013 survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute**
found that the future talent pool is least excited about the prospect of a career in
manufacturing. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, manufacturing ranks dead last among industries in which they would choose to
start their careers. And while 75 percent of the public believes manufacturing is an important part of a local economy, only 25
percent would encourage their children to go into it. The consequences of decades of offshoring directly impact todays workforce.
Many vocational programs, once common in high schools, have gone by the wayside in favor of college preparatory schooling. The
result is that manufacturing has lost at least one generation of skilled workersthe one
manufacturers need now. Several states, in their quest to attract manufacturers to boost their economies and reduce jobless rates,
have launched aggressive efforts to rebuild the pipeline of skilled workers. Moneyboth public and privateis being poured into
regional workforce training programs, in some cases even tailored to an individual manufacturers needs. But training the
next generation of manufacturing professionals doesnt happen overnight, and manufacturers
that are considering reshoring should be prepared for that reality. Finding good candidates may be tough, and its highly likely
manufacturers will have to invest in their training.

Reshoring doesnt solve jobs
Heineman 13 [Ben W., senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, in
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and at the Harvard Law School's Program on Corporate
Governance, 3/26, Why We Can All Stop Worrying About Offshoring and Outsourcing, The Atlantic,
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/03/why-we-can-all-stop-worrying-about-offshoring-
and-outsourcing/274388/]//fw
Labor markets have for the past quarter century been at the center of the globalization
disputes under the "off-shoring and out-sourcing" rubric. How many jobs were lost at home to cheap
labor abroad? What were conditions for those overseas workers? But the rapidly changing nature of the global
economy has changed much, though not all, of that "off-shoring/out-sourcing" debate.
Today, cheap labor is only one of many factors leading global companies to choose where to do business in diverse nations across the
world. Major economic changes like the internal growth of emerging markets have
scrambled debates about the global economy, posed challenges for international business, stimulated
contradictory public policies and confused the general public. It was often cheap labor in emerging markets that, more than two
decades ago, led companies in developed markets to move company jobs away from the home country either to company owned
facilities (off-shoring) or to third parties (out-sourcing) in developing markets. The broad idea was that less expensive
manufacturing or inexpensive white collar workers would create goods and services in developing nations that would serve world
markets. China, especially, would be the global product-manufacturing center; India, via the web, would be the global service
provider. The well known debate ensued between free-trade (more competition, cheaper goods in U.S.,
growth in developing markets) and fair trade (only wealthy benefit, hollowing out of U.S. middle class, exploitive labor
standards overseas). The debate heated up in political years (including 2012), when
"outsourcing" became an especially a dirty word. But, in addition to dramatic economic growth in emerging
markets, four recent trends have significantly modified this old off-shoring and out-sourcing schematic. First, labor costs for
many businesses may no longer be the critical or even primary factor in global location
decisions. Wages are rising in many emerging markets due, in part, to increased demand, new labor laws, and greater worker
voice. Wages are declining in developed markets like the U.S. where depressed economic conditions for workers have led to lower
wage and benefit packages, especially for lower entry level workers, and often through negotiations with organized labor. New
technology, such as robotics, and higher productivity have also lowered the price of labor as a percentage of total
product or service costs. When labor cost differences are not as dramatic or important, other costs like materials, energy,
transportation, currency, capital, government imposed costs (tariffs, regulation) -- which were always
important -- may have as great (or greater) impact on the location as cheap workers. Second,
companies are retaining but modifying their global supply chains by selectively
reversing the long-term trend of outsourcing. They are "making" important parts of the
products or services rather than "buying" from third parties, as described recently by U.S. business
people and journalists, Companies are recognizing that closely interrelating, even co-locating, research and
development, design and marketing, manufacturing and assembly close to the markets
served can lead to much faster response to market shifts and to much faster innovation.
The old practice of designing at home and then manufacturing abroad can slow the pace of innovation and product change to a
crawl. So companies are making complex trade-offs between "making" and "buying" -- and between the need to develop technology
at connected global R&D centers and the need to apply it in a variety of local settings in a variety of ways. Similarly, companies
which were enamored of outsourcing key service functions like information technology to nations like India are discovering that
these, too, are key to fast-paced innovation and should be "made" not "bought" -- bringing them back in-house, with corporate units
integrated across the world under global/local management. The "de-verticalizing" outsourcing process - when a company sent
many of its functions between raw materials and the finished product to third parties - is now being partially reversed with "re-
verticalization." But, even with changes, global supply chains, even if owned more by the company and less by third parties, will
remain critical. Even when labor is a still a significant portion of the cost of a product (e.g. textiles, toys, some electronics), there
is a growing movement among major, developed world companies, as I have detailed
elsewhere, to engage in responsible off-shoring and out-sourcing by adopting labor and
quality standards which aim to create decent wages, working conditions and environmental protections as well as more
rigorous quality checks. The apparel industry has an off-shoring/out-sourcing code of conduct monitored by a third party, the Fair
Labor Association (FLA), a practice now followed by Apple, but not the electronics industry as a whole. But it must be emphasized:
there are still great problems in supply chains for low cost products (as demonstrated by last year's
deadly factory fire in Bangladesh) and there is a great deal yet to do. Most brand-name, iconic multi-nationals, however, do
understand that labor and quality standards are needed -- both in their own overseas facilities for their own employees and in their
supply chains -- which will either increase costs or ameliorate some of the worst practices. And, at least for these major companies,
this is another factor which may means that decisions about location and employment are not made
purely on the cheapest possible labor. Finally, companies' choice of where to do business
across the globe is heavily influenced by a witches brew of complex, often contradictory
governmental policies at national, regional and local levels. Governments may seek to attract foreign
investment yet also discriminate against it. They may promote non-protectionist policies for economic
growth (infrastructure, R&D, more open immigration, skilled work force) or they may, especially in a recession, enact
protectionist measures. They may, like China, engage in a host of illicit activities - pay-offs, piracy, hidden subsidies -- to
promote national champions. Or to counter state capitalism like China's, they may engage in explicit subsidies or tax breaks or
subsides or preferences or soft loans to promote domestic business's ability to compete overseas against state supported or state
owned companies -- trade promotion ideas which teeter between reasonable competitive measures and bad crony-capitalism.
Ultimately, governments may recognize that virtually every other government has its thumb on the
scale of economic activity and thus frustrate real global competition which can mean
new jobs at home (even if old jobs may suffer). As a result, they may seek new free trade agreements to knock down tariffs
and other trade barriers -- as in current major trade talks in the Atlantic (between the U.S. and the EU) and in the Pacific (involving
the U.S., Japan and others) -- to stimulate economic growth and also to counter the rising power of China's state capitalism. All
these currents and cross-currents in present and evolving government policy have significant impact on location of global business
activity. These four trends take place in the context, as noted, of one central change: faster economic growth in developing markets
than in developed markets. Much activity of global companies is now an attempt to sell in those new markets by having a powerful
new local presence, even as they retain global supply chains. This is called "on-shoring" because it involves creating new, additive
economic efforts in emerging markets which are far different than "off-shoring" jobs to cheap markets to export products back to
expensive ones. Take China. Foreign auto makers (Japanese, European and American), have roughly 60 percent of a 15 million unit
per year market, with tens of production facilities frequently owned with Chinese partners. GM is the leading car-maker in China
with about 20 percent of sales (selling more units than in the U.S.) and has 11 assembly plants and four power-train plants in eight
Chinese cities. For many U.S. multi-nationals approximately half their revenues, and 30-50 percent of their work-force, are outside
the United States, reflecting the need to serve overseas markets. Similarly, foreign companies have been "on-shoring" in the United
States for years. . Foreign automakers built more than 3 million cars at 16 facilities in the United States in 2011 with the 70 percent
of Japanese cars sold in the U.S. made in North America. Announcements of acquisitions or new plants in the U.S. are made almost
every day by a non-U.S. companies, like Airbus, Siemens, Lenovo, Infosys, Ikea, and Foxconn. Indeed, foreign companies employ
nearly 6 million Americans, account for 13 percent of manufacturing jobs and about 18 percent of exports. Stories of foreign
investment in the U.S. have been matched in the past few years with the "re-shoring" of
overseas work back to the U.S. Iconic American companies like Apple, Google, Caterpillar, Ford, Emerson, GE, and Intel are
adding plants and jobs in the U.S. or North America. The decisions are driven by some of the economic trends noted earlier
(competitive overall cost for U.S. markets, desire to "make" not "buy" and integrate corporate functions for innovation close to
customer). "Re-shoring" also helps symbolically and politically to counter, to an extent, the old "off-shoring" critiques. But,
while "re-shoring" may slow the decades long decline in U.S.
manufacturing jobs, from 20 percent of the workforce in 1980 to about 9 percent today, it is not likely to
reverse it, much less herald a return to the glory days (the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that
only 7 percent of the workforce in 2020 will be in manufacturing). For most of the public, this significant modification in the off-
shoring, out-sourcing debate is not well understood and people still revert to the old schematic This is because of politics.
Companies are struggling to adjust to new global realities but generally try to present a
strong nationalist face in their home countries (now aided by modest "re-shoring"). Importantly, nations that
practice some version of "market capitalism" (less government intervention than "state capitalism") are schizophrenic: torn between
government policies to support real global competition and policies to support national companies and local workers. Broad
adjustments in knowledge and attitudes about changes in global economic integration is necessary in developed "market capitalism"
to reach the right balance of policies promoting the long-term ideal of global competition, adopting near term measures that counter
state capitalism without engaging in crony capitalism, recognizing that with competition new domestic jobs may
replace old ones and protecting domestic workers whose jobs may be lost due to
technology and productivity - not just changes in trade.
Manufacturing Turns
Turn US manufacturing threatens the environment
Redden, 13 (Jim Redden, Correspondent for Portland Tribune, Manufacturing jobs:
Good for economy, bad for environment?, 12/5/2013,
http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/203243-manufacturing-jobs-good-for-
economy-bad-for-environment)
Oregon U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley has thrust himself into the middle of one of the most
contentious debates in the region the benefit of manufacturing jobs versus the
environmental impacts of the manufacturing companies. Merkley has introduced three bills he is
calling the Manufacturing Jobs for America package. The Senate Democrat touted them at two local news conferences during the
past few weeks. One was Nov. 15 at Indow Windows in North Portland. The other was outside the closed Blue Heron Paper Co. mill
in Oregon City on Nov. 26. At both appearances, Merkley stressed that manufacturing jobs pay more than average jobs. He also said
exported goods bring new dollars into the regional economy. And in Oregon City, Merkley said manufacturing companies in America
pollute less than those in some foreign countries, such as China. We can and must bring back jobs to our shores by cracking down
on unfair trade practices while rewarding companies that play by the rules and treat their workers well, Merkley said. Some people
might argue with all of that reasoning, however. Neighbors and environmental activists are complaining
about emissions from several manufacturing plants in the region. They charge the
emissions threaten public health and the environment, and accuse federal and state
environmental regulators of not doing enough to rein them in. The most prominent fight is about the
new air-quality permit being sought from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality by Intel, the large semiconductor
manufacturer with plants in Aloha and Hillsboro. Other companies targeted for criticism in the recent past include Esco in
Northwest Portland, Freightliner in North Portland and Precision Castparts in Clackamas County. All have been accused of violating
federal and state clean-air standards charges the companies deny. Even Merkleys office admits the issue is complicated.
Enforcement of existing regulation is important and Sen. Merkley is committed to seeing that environmental laws are enforced as
written. As with most things, theres always room for improvement, says Merkley staffer Matt McNally. Its easy to understand why
Merkley is pushing to increase manufacturing jobs in America, either by moving them from overseas or creating new ones.
Numerous government and private studies show they pay substantially more than other jobs requiring comparable education and
skill levels. The steady loss of American manufacturing jobs over the years is widely thought to be a major drag on the economy. The
Oregon economy is especially dependent on manufacturing. Oregon is the state with the greatest share of its economy tied to
manufacturing 29 percent of Oregons gross state product was from the manufacturing sector in 2011. The percentage is even
higher in the Portland region, where locally manufactured products are shipped out of the Port of Portland. The regional
importance of manufacturing was noted at the Portland Business Alliances monthly breakfast forum on Nov. 20. Guest speaker
Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institute called the region an export powerhouse, singling out Intel by name. And Portland Mayor
Charlie Hales praised Freightliner owner Daimler Trucks for committing to build a $150 million headquarters on Swan Island.
Merkley aims to increase manufacturing jobs with three bills. The BUILD Career and Technical Education Act would support
career and technical education in middle schools and high schools. The Job Creation through Energy Efficient Manufacturing Act
would provide competitive grants to states to fund new or expanded industrial energy-efficiency financing programs. And the Level
the Playing Field in Global Trade Act unveiled in Oregon City would classify substandard wages, workplace safety practices and
environmental protections as illegal subsidies requiring import tariffs to be imposed on foreign manufacturers. Despite the
praise and push for manufacturing jobs, controversies swirl around many of the plants
where products are made. Neighbors and environmentalists are threatening to sue Intel
over inadvertently failing to disclose fluoride emissions, even though the amount did not
violate federal or state limits. Activists submitted a petition with 2,600 signatures to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhabers
office calling for increased scrutiny of Intel late last month.
Turn US manufacturing growth tradeoffs with Chinese manufacturing
jobs
Margolis, 11 (Jason Margolis, Correspondent for PRI, Why China May Lose
Manufacturing Jobs to the US, 10/20/2011, http://www.pri.org/stories/2011-10-
20/why-china-may-lose-manufacturing-jobs-us)
The company could've paid workers a lot less in China. But it went with Oregon. At the Oregon factory, I asked company spokesman
Ben Santarris, why not do this in China? "Why don't you move to China?," retorted Santarris. "That's actually what we say to
investment analysts when they ask the same question. We say, 'Why don't you go ahead and move to China?'" Santarris said
the company is committed to western labor and environmental standards, standards
that China doesn't match. But SolarWorld is still a business, one that's beholden to shareholders. Santarris said
they did some math and came to the conclusion: We can make this work in Oregon
without relying on cheap Chinese labor. "Labor accounts for less than 10 percent of our cost. Of those costs, we
believe close to half is lost to the Chinese by greater shipping costs. Another half, or more, is made up for by the higher US labor
productivity." American workers are generally more productive because they work with
better machines and tend to be better trained. That said, Chinese workers put in a lot more
hours at lower cost. So it's still cheaper today to manufacture in China. SolarWorld is trying to
fight those economics. Yesterday, the company and six other American solar manufacturers filed a trade case in Washington at the
Commerce Department against the Chinese solar industry. They're seeking high tariffs on Chinese imports. The companies say they
need protection to compete with China and build in America. Some business analysts say it's time for more
American companies, across different industries, to consider manufacturing stuff back
home. Mark Kramer, managing director at the consulting firm FSG in Boston, said
outsourcing to China is not a slam dunk anymore. "When you take into account the
added costs of transportation, the additional lead time that's necessary to change your
stock and therefore the larger inventories you need to hold here. And the risks of things
like the lead paint recall for toys that cost Mattel $30 million, there really are a
tremendous number of costs to outsourcing." American companies may have another reason to think twice
about setting up shop in China: rising wages for Chinese workers. Hal Sirkin with the Boston Consulting Group is co-author of a new
study "Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the US. He said 15 years ago, workers in China earned 50 cents
an hour. "And that 50 cent an hour labor is now that $3 an hour labor," said Sirkin, who adds that Chinese wages are going up 17 to
20 percent a year. So, Sirkin thinks that in less than five years it will make just as much
business sense for some American companies to build things back home, particularly in
lower-wage southern states. "Now of course because factories are 25, 30-year assets, companies are going to need to
make the decisions now as to where they want to produce things." A few companies have already moved
their operations back from China. For example, a headphone manufacturer relocated to Florida and a producer of
ATM's is heading to Georgia. Still, there hasn't yet been a mass homecoming. And University of New Hampshire economist Ross
Gittell said, don't look for one. "Because if you compete on lower cost, those jobs are not going to
go to China, they're going to go to even lower cost countries than China, Indonesia, and
lesser developed nations where lower wages are going to be the source of competitive
advantage." But Gittell said that doesn't mean all manufacturing has to be surrendered to overseas competition. He said
higher-tech jobs that require more machinery, jobs such as building solar panels, can flourish in the US. "Yes, but we have to start
investing in clean technology innovation and a workforce right now, which is what China is doing! So we're losing the jobs
over the next 20 years to China now and there's something we can do about it."

Turn US manufacturing growth will cause Chinese manufacturing decline
Engardio, 8 (Pete Engardio, senior writer for BusinessWeek, China Losing Luster
with U.S. Manufacturers, 11/26/2008, http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-
11-26/china-losing-luster-with-u-dot-s-dot-manufacturersbusinessweek-business-news-
stock-market-and-financial-advice)
A new survey finds rising worries about product quality and intellectual-property theft. More U.S. companies are looking to Mexico
and their own backyard. Two years of disastrous quality-control breakdowns, from foul fish and
lead-tainted toys to poisoned drugs and dairy products, are taking their toll on China's
allure as a manufacturing platform. A new study by supply-chain consulting firm AMR
Research found that quality concerns are among the chief reasons U.S. manufacturers
are scaling back plans to source more goods from China. Instead, U.S. companies are
looking harder at Mexico and other locales closer to home when exploring where to put
new capacity. The findings are based on a survey of 130 U.S. manufacturers, ranging from producers of drugs (BusinessWeek,
9/4/08) and computers to auto parts. The survey, completed in mid-October, found a sharp swing in attitudes toward China since
May, when AMR conducted a similar study. The reasons for the shift suggest serious problems for
China's export machine that go far beyond the concerns over rising costs for wages,
shipping, and materials that got a lot of attention earlier this year. AMR asked U.S. manufacturers
to rate different regions around the world (China and the U.S. were each counted as region unto themselves) on 15 different risks
tied to sourcing products for sale in America. Just a few months ago the biggest concerns over China were rising factory wages and
the hike in trans-Pacific shipping costs owing to soaring fuel prices. Since then, the 60% plunge in oil prices and a sharp falloff in
U.S. imports from China have caused spot freight prices on ocean shipping to crash. Now, the biggest concerns over
China are quality and theft of intellectual property (BusinessWeek.com, 4/27/06). Half of respondents to
the survey cited China as the biggest source of "risk" for product quality failure. Fifty-seven percent rated China as the biggest risk of
intellectual-property infringement. Both categories represented sharp increases from May. No other region was named as the biggest
source of risk in those two areas by more than 7% of respondents. "China is in a league of its own in terms of risks associated with
intellectual property and quality," says Kevin O'Marah, AMR's chief strategist. In fact, China ranked highest in 9 of the 15 risk
factors. Rising labor costs are still an important factor for businesses, with 35% citing China as the leading source of concern.
Other risk categories where China ranked highest included regulatory compliance,
commodity price volatility, supply-chain security breaches, and information technology
problems. The shortage of Chinese managerial talentlong one of the top risk factors
during the go-go era that ended last yearhas tailed off as a major worry. The findings don't
suggest a mass pullout from China, O'Marah says. Two out of three companies said they still plan to expand there, mainly because
they already have operations and component suppliers in the mainland. But that's a big falloff since May, when four out of five
companies said they had China expansion plans. The number of companies saying they plan to actually decrease sourcing from
China rose from 9% to 17%. Asia in general is falling from favor as an import source, the AMR study found. Where are the
hottest new places for manufacturing investment? For U.S. companies, Latin America
seems poised to be the big winner. The number of companies planning Latin expansions rose from four out of five
in May to five out of six in October. Mexico is by far seen as the leading destination, cited by 73% as the primary source for new
outsourcing. AMR also found that more production work is expected to shift to the U.S., with the percentage of companies planning
to invest at home rising from 22% to 33%. Of course, this snapshot of corporate plans may have changed since the survey was taken.
The deepening U.S. recession may prompt U.S. companies to curtail expansion anywhere. The souring attitude should
be disturbing to China's leadership. If the issue were just eroding price advantages, that
would be less cause for alarm. Costs could swing back in China's favor, for example, with fluctuations in currency
rates, commodity prices, or changes in China's job market. What's more, Chinese manufacturers have a long history of sacrificing
profit margins with lowball pricing to win market share. The AMR study suggests, however, that U.S. companies are starting to
better appreciate the less-visible costs of producing in China. Quality problems, rampant piracy (BusinessWeek, 10/2/08),
allegations of sweatshop abuses, worker protests, and other factors not only drive up costs but also harm the value of brands and
corporate reputations. "Companies are realizing that the fully loaded costs of importing from China are a lot higher than they
imagined," says O'Marah. Trouble is, China will not be able to improve its quality problem
overnight. It will require a long-term transformation of China's regulatory bureaucracy,
legal system, and management practices. And Beijing has been promising to control
intellectual-property theft for decades, with unimpressive results. If China doesn't start
making progress fast, the current slump in export manufacturing (BusinessWeek, 3/27/08)
could be the beginning of a longer-term pullback.
Turn US manufacturing companies will take away Chinese manufacturing
jobs
LeBeau, 13 (Philip LeBeau, CNBC Auto and Airline Industry Reporter, U.S.
Manufacturing No More Expensive Than Outsourcing To China By 2015: Study,
4/19/2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/china-manufacturing-
costs_n_3116638.html)
Walk onto the shop floor at Prince Industries in Shanghai, China and it looks like most other manufacturing plants in this country.
It's busy running two shifts, cranking out components that will be shipped to major manufacturers like Caterpillar, Siemens, and
Honeywell. But change is in the air. The cost of manufacturing in China is going up and rising
quickly. "It's something that we anticipated when we went to China, we just didn't know how quick it would happen," said Mark
Miller, CEO of Prince Industries. China is no longer a slam dunk for manufacturers looking for the
lowest cost for operations. In fact, a new study by the consulting firm AlixPartners
estimates by 2015 the cost of outsourcing manufacturing to China will be equal to the
cost of manufacturing in the U.S. "The Chinese manufacturing cost advantage has eroded dramatically in the last
few years," said Steve Maurer, AlixPartners managing director. "If you go back to 2005, it was pretty common for landed cost from
China to be 25 to 30 percent less than the cost of manufacturing in the United States. Based on our analysis, two-thirds of that gap
has closed." Maurer said higher labor wages, the rising value of China's currency, and the
cost of shipping goods from China to points around the world have made manufacturing
in China more expensive. "If trends continue, the China cost is going to be on par with U.S. cost in the next four to five
years," said Maurer. Since Prince Industries opened its plant in Shanghai a decade ago, wages have increased an average of 12
percent annually, while China's currency, the RMB, has appreciated 25 percent vs. the U.S. dollar. The rising value of the RMB was
expected and has made it more costly to ship goods built in China around the world. Meanwhile, hourly wages have been going up
steadily due to China raising minimum wages, while competition for labor has forced manufacturers to pay more to attract skilled
workers and keep them. As the cost of manufacturing in China has risen, so have reports of
companies pulling their plants out of the country to find cheaper locations. Some have
re-shored facilities to the U.S., where cost differences are offset by higher productivity of
American workers.


Reshoring TurnTrade
No impact to offshoringkey to trade
Chapman 12 [Steve, columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune, 7/19, What Politicians
Don't Know About Outsourcing, Reason, http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/19/what-politicians-
dont-know-about-outsour]//fw
That's one problem with the war of allegations. The other is that they reflect and promote an erroneous assumption:
that outsourcing to other countries is something to be opposed at all costs. In fact, it's a vital part
of international trade, which in turn is an immense boon to human progress. Many Americans fear that every job
moved beyond our borders constitutes a grievous loss to our economic welfare. But if something can be made
cheaper elsewhere, the relocation will allow us to buy that product at a lower cost,
which is entirely desirable. We don't improve our material well-being by depriving ourselves of the
chance to get more goods for less money. We don't actually lose jobs when a
company decides to take its manufacturing elsewhere. A recent study of the U.S.
published by the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of
Economics and Political Science found, "Offshoring has no effect on native
employment in the aggregate." It destroys some jobs but creates just as many others.
Nor is it exactly optional. If clothing can be made far cheaper in China than in South Carolina, a company with
plants in South Carolina can do one of two things. It can move its production to China to take advantage of
the lower costs, or it can dig itself a grave and then climb in. A company that successfully outsources
saves jobs -- since a company that goes bust employs no one. If Bain had barred corporations from shifting factories when it
made sense to do so, it would have been guilty of economic malfeasance. Outsourcing, contrary to myth, has not
led to the collapse of American manufacturing. In fact, U.S. industrial production has risen
by nearly 50 percent in the past 15 years. The reason manufacturing employment has declined is that
workers have gotten more productive -- meaning it takes less labor to make more goods.
But outsourcing is a two-way street. Nobody here seems to think the German government should stop
Volkswagen from building cars in Tennessee. Some 700,000 Americans work for U.S. affiliates of Japanese companies, which
apparently is cool with Japanese politicians. Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin points out that the
U.S. has a trade deficit in goods but a trade surplus in services. Chinese companies, and U.S.
companies that operate in China, often need the services of lawyers, architects and software engineers working on this side of the
Pacific. In the end, both we and the Chinese gain from the process. But it's the nature of our politics to ignore
the vast benefits generated by international commerce and obsess about every negative
consequence that can be found. Romney and Obama both manage to convey the impression that they have no clue
how trade acts to continually raise our standard of living.

US Econ
AT: Diversionary Wars
Rational actors wont escalate the situation because they wont want
to pay the costs of a long term war
Bennett 04 (DS, The behavioral origins of war pgs 72-73 googlebooks.com, professor of political science at Penn State
University, published 2004)
An alternative chain of logic in the psychological literature focuses on leaders reactions
to crises. These arguments suggest that, in situations of internal political vulnerability, leaders may suffer from motivated
bias, leading them to see the enemy as they wish to see them, typically weaker and making an easier target than would be
expected given a rational evaluation of the situation (Jervis 1976; Lebow 1981). Expectations about the
escalation of conflict tinder these conditions are less than clear, however. Following the
diversionary argument from a rationalist unitary actor perspective, states engaged in
actions to shore up their domestic political situation may not want to pay the costs of a
long-running conflict or war, and so we should see less escalation beyond low-level
disputes. However, if challenged by another state, leaders facing intense internal political dissent may he likely to force a confrontation initially in order to gain needed, and expected, domestic political
benefits by standing tough against an external foe. Similarly, if such a state faces a challenge over some outstanding issue, there is no guarantee that it will be more willing to give in to the challenger compared to
rimes when the government is in a position of domestic political strength. Following the motivated bias argument, we might expect more or faster conflict escalation as a leader blindly pushes ahead in his or her
dispute with an opposing state.

Systemically collected historical data means that its impossible to test
diversionary war theory and thus diversionary war theory should be given
minimal risk in the round
Bennett 04 (DS, The behavioral origins of war pgs 72-73 googlebooks.com, professor of political science at Penn State
University, published 2004)
Insufficient systematically collected historical data make it impossible for us to test
directly arguments about the effects of internal political conditions using measures of a
states economic situation or the relative number of political protests in a cross-national
time-series analysis. However, we can examine the effects of abrupt changes in a regimes political institutional characteristics on international conflict.
Based on Polity IV data we include a variable that marks whether the states in a dyad experienced an abrupt polity change. As noted in the democratization section, we use
several variables to code general polity changes. We also mark a change corresponding to two additional conditions: (i) when a regime comes to an abrupt end according to the
Polity IV year variable and (z) under conditions marking a polity change coded when the polity variable (autocracy-democracy) takes a value of 66, 77, or 88, indicating
an interruption, interregnum, or transition period, respectively. All of these are circumstances where the states political
institutions are in significant flux. We lag the regime change variable one-year to avoid
the possibility of accidentally picking up conflicts that led to a polity change rather than
vice versa. If arguments about domestic instability leading to international conflict
initiator or escalation are correct, following a polity change we should find that (i) states initiate
disputes more frequently but may escalate those disputes less often and/or (z) states
initiate and/or escalate disputes more frequently against other stares that have recently
experienced a polity change.
External Diversionary war theorys empirical evidence is falseit is much
more likely that leaders will create internal conflicts
Tir and Jasinski 08 (Department of International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens;
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh; Domestic-Level Theory of War:
Targeting Ethnic Minorities published 9/11/08. By Sage Journals, found on Google Scholar, peer
reviewed, )
According to the diversionary war theory, problematic domestic circumstances motivate a countrys
leader to divert popular discontent by launching a militarized international crisis. Yet, empirical
support for this argument has proved to be ambiguous at best. Relying on extant ethnic
conflict research, we argue that the embattled leader can elicit public support by using armed force
against ethnic minorities within his/her country. We call this option domestic diversion and argue
that it is not only available to a larger number of leaders, but that it also often presents a
less risky course of action than external diversion. Empirical tests of the domestic
diversionary hypothesis show a connection between domestic problems facing the
leader and the use of force against minorities. This finding provides a potentially new
interpretation for the causes of some domestic conflicts, and suggests that the diversionary theory may
operate on the domestic level of analysis.

Econ Decline Good
Economic decline is good because it halts the pursuit of growth in
exchange for sharing and helps people in need
Jackson 09 (Tim, a top sustainability adviser to the UK government, Propensity without Growth: Economics for a Finite
Planet published by earthscan, 2009)
The prevailing response to these questions is to cast prosperity in economic terms and to call for
continuing economic growth as the means to deliver it. Higher incomes mean increased choices, richer lives,
and improved quality of life for those who benefit from them. That at least is the conventional wisdom This formula is cashed out (almost literally) as
an increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The GDP is broadly speaking a measure of economic
activity in a nation or region.4 As we shall see later, there are good grounds to question whether
such a crude measure is really sufficient. But for now its a fair reflection of what is meant, in broad terms, by rising
income. A rising per capita GDP, in this view, is equivalent to increasing prosperity. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why GDP growth has been
the single most important policy goal across the world for most of the last century. Such a response clearly still has an appealing logic for the worlds
poorest nations. A meaningful approach to prosperity must certainly address the plight of the 1 billion people across the world who are living on less
than $1 a day half the price of a small cappuccino in Starbucks.6 But does the same logic really hold for the richer
nations, where subsistence needs are largely met and further proliferation of consumer
goods adds little to material comfort? How is it that with so much stuff already we still hunger for more? Might it
not be better to halt the relentless pursuit of growth in the advanced
economies and concentrate instead on sharing out the available resources
more equitably? In a world of finite resources, constrained by strict environmental limits, still characterized by islands of
prosperity within oceans of poverty are ever-increasing incomes for the
already-rich really a legitimate focus for our continued hopes and
expectations? Or is there perhaps some other path towards a more sustainable, a more equitable form of prosperity?
No impact to economic decline2008 recession proves, were still peaceful
Daniel W. Drezner 12,( Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, The Irony
of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked, http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-
Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf)
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasnt barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border
conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states
to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.37 Whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars,
arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict, there were genuine concerns that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence
in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. The aggregate data
suggests otherwise, however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has constructed a Global Peace Index annually since 2007. A key conclusion they draw from the 2012 report is that The average
level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007.38 Interstate violence in particular has
declined since the start of the financial crisis as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other
studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict; the secular
decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.39 Rogers Brubaker concludes, the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protectionist
nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected.40None of these data suggest that the global economy is operating
swimmingly. Growth remains unbalanced and fragile, and has clearly slowed in 2012. Transnational capital flows remain depressed compared to pre-crisis levels, primarily due to a drying up of cross-border interbank lending in Europe. Currency volatility remains
an ongoing concern. Compared to the aftermath of other postwar recessions, growth in output, investment, and employment in the developed world have all lagged behind. But the Great Recession is not like other postwar recessions in either scope or kind; expecting
a standard V-shaped recovery was unreasonable. One financial analyst characterized the post-2008 global economy as in a state of contained depression.41 The key word is contained, however. Given the severity,
reach and depth of the 2008 financial crisis, the proper comparison is with Great
Depression. And by that standard, the outcome variables look impressive. As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff concluded in
This Time is Different: that its macroeconomic outcome has been only the most severe global recession since World War II and not even worse must be regarded as fortunate.42
Econ Resilient
Scholars have been consistently wrong about economic decline, sever
economic shocks have no real impact
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
His latest book, The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression, is just out from Oxford University Press;
The Uses of Being Wrong
http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T20276111299&
format=GNBFI&sort=DATE,D,H&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T20276111283&cisb=22_T20276111282&treeMax=true&tree
Width=0&csi=171267&docNo=1)
My new book has an odd intellectual provenance-it starts with me being wrong. Back in the fall of 2008, I
was convinced that the open global economic order, centered on the unfettered cross-border
exchange of goods, services, and ideas, was about to collapse as quickly as Lehman Brothers. A
half-decade later, the closer I looked at the performance of the system of global
economic governance, the clearer it became that the meltdown I had expected had
not come to pass. Though the advanced industrialized economies suffered prolonged
economic slowdowns, at the global level there was no great surge in trade
protectionism, no immediate clampdown on capital flows, and, most
surprisingly, no real rejection of neoliberal economic principles. Given what
has normally transpired after severe economic shocks, this outcome was damn near
miraculous. Nevertheless, most observers have remained deeply pessimistic about the functioning of
the global political economy. Indeed, scholarly books with titles like No One's World: The West, The
Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn and The End of American World Order have come to a
conclusion the opposite of mine. Now I'm trying to understand how I got the crisis so wrong
back in 2008, and why so many scholars continue to be wrong now.
Global economic governance institutions guarantee resiliency
Daniel W. Drezner 12, Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University,
October 2012, The Irony of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked,
http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-
Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf
Prior to 2008, numerous foreign policy analysts had predicted a looming crisis in global economic governance.
Analysts only reinforced this perception since the financial crisis, declaring that we live in a G-Zero world. This paper takes a closer
look at the global response to the financial crisis. It reveals a more optimistic picture. Despite initial shocks
that were actually more severe than the 1929 financial crisis, global economic governance structures responded
quickly and robustly. Whether one measures results by economic outcomes, policy outputs, or institutional flexibility, global
economic governance has displayed surprising resiliency since 2008. Multilateral economic institutions
performed well in crisis situations to reinforce open economic policies, especially in contrast to the 1930s. While
there are areas where governance has either faltered or failed, on the whole, the system has worked. Misperceptions about
global economic governance persist because the Great Recession has disproportionately affected the core economies and because
the efficiency of past periods of global economic governance has been badly overestimated. Why the system has worked better than
expected remains an open question. The rest of this paper explores the possible role that the distribution of power, the robustness of
international regimes, and the resilience of economic ideas might have played.
Econ resilient- new structural reforms prevent collapse
Behravesh, 6 (Nariman, most accurate economist tracked by USA Today and chief global economist
and executive vice president for Global Insight, Newsweek, The Great Shock Absorber; Good
macroeconomic policies and improved microeconomic flexibility have strengthened the global economy's
'immune system.' 10-15-2006, www.newsweek.com/id/47483) // JMP
The U.S. and global economies were able to withstand three body blows in 2005--one of the worst
tsunamis on record (which struck at the very end of 2004), one of the worst hurricanes on record and the highest
energy prices after Hurricane Katrina--without missing a beat. This resilience was especially remarkable
in the case of the United States, which since 2000 has been able to shrug off the biggest stock-market
drop since the 1930s, a major terrorist attack, corporate scandals and war. Does this mean that recessions are a
relic of the past? No, but recent events do suggest that the global economy's "immune system" is now strong
enough to absorb shocks that 25 years ago would probably have triggered a downturn. In fact, over the past
two decades, recessions have not disappeared, but have become considerably milder in many parts of the world. What explains
this enhanced recession resistance? The answer: a combination of good macroeconomic policies and
improved microeconomic flexibility. Since the mid-1980s, central banks worldwide have had great success in taming
inflation. This has meant that long-term interest rates are at levels not seen in more than 40 years. A low-inflation and low-interest-
rate environment is especially conducive to sustained, robust growth. Moreover, central bankers have avoided some of the policy
mistakes of the earlier oil shocks (in the mid-1970s and early 1980s), during which they typically did too much too late, and
exacerbated the ensuing recessions. Even more important, in recent years the Fed has been particularly adept at crisis
management, aggressively cutting interest rates in response to stock-market crashes, terrorist attacks and
weakness in the economy. The benign inflationary picture has also benefited from increasing competitive pressures, both
worldwide (thanks to globalization and the rise of Asia as a manufacturing juggernaut) and domestically (thanks to technology and
deregulation). Since the late 1970s, the United States, the United Kingdom and a handful of other countries have been especially
aggressive in deregulating their financial and industrial sectors. This has greatly increased the flexibility of their economies and
reduced their vulnerability to inflationary shocks. Looking ahead, what all this means is that a global or U.S. recession will likely be
avoided in 2006, and probably in 2007 as well. Whether the current expansion will be able to break the record set in the 1990s for
longevity will depend on the ability of central banks to keep the inflation dragon at bay and to avoid policy mistakes. The prospects
look good. Inflation is likely to remain a low-level threat for some time, and Ben Bernanke, the incoming chairman of the Federal
Reserve Board, spent much of his academic career studying the past mistakes of the Fed and has vowed not
to repeat them. At the same time, no single shock will likely be big enough to derail the expansion. What if oil
prices rise to $80 or $90 a barrel? Most estimates suggest that growth would be cut by about 1 percent--not good, but no recession.
What if U.S. house prices fall by 5 percent in 2006 (an extreme assumption, given that house prices haven't fallen nationally in any
given year during the past four decades)? Economic growth would slow by about 0.5 percent to 1 percent. What about another
terrorist attack? Here the scenarios can be pretty scary, but an attack on the order of 9/11 or the Madrid or London
bombings would probably have an even smaller impact on overall GDP growth. So what would it take to trigger a
recession in the U.S. or world economies over the next couple of years? Two or more big shocks occurring more or less
simultaneously. Global Insight recently ran a scenario showing that a world recession could happen if the following combination of
events were to take place: oil prices above $100 per barrel, inflation and interest rates running 3 percentage points above current
levels and a 10 percent drop in home prices across many industrial nations (e.g., the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain,
Australia, Sweden). The likely timing of such a recession would be 2007. However, given the extremeness of these assumptions, the
probability of such a scenario is less than 20 percent. The good news is that the chances of a recession occurring in the next couple of
years are low. The not-so-good news is that assertions about recessions being relegated to history's trash heap are still premature.
Global economy resilient
Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all
Newsweek editions abroad, December 12, 2009, The Secrets of Stability,
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/12/11/the-secrets-of-stability.html
This revival did not happen because markets managed to stabilize themselves on their own. Rather,
governments, having learned the lessons of the Great Depression, were determined not to repeat the same
mistakes once this crisis hit. By massively expanding state support for the economythrough central banks and
national treasuriesthey buffered the worst of the damage. (Whether they made new mistakes in the process remains to be
seen.) The extensive social safety nets that have been established across the industrialized world also cushioned the pain felt by
many. Times are still tough, but things are nowhere near as bad as in the 1930s, when governments played a tiny role in national
economies. It's true that the massive state interventions of the past year may be fueling some new bubbles: the cheap cash and
government guarantees provided to banks, companies, and consumers have fueled some irrational exuberance in stock and bond
markets. Yet these rallies also demonstrate the return of confidence, and confidence is a very powerful economic force. When John
Maynard Keynes described his own prescriptions for economic growth, he believed government action could provide only a
temporary fix until the real motor of the economy started cranking againthe animal spirits of investors, consumers, and companies
seeking risk and profit. Beyond all this, though, I believe there's a fundamental reason why we have not faced global
collapse in the last year. It is the same reason that we weathered the stock-market crash of 1987, the
recession of 1992, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, and the tech-bubble collapse of
2000. The current global economic system is inherently more resilient than we think. The
world today is characterized by three major forces for stability, each reinforcing the other and each
historical in nature. The first is the spread of great-power peace. Since the end of the Cold War, the
world's major powers have not competed with each other in geomilitary terms. There have been some political
tensions, but measured by historical standards the globe today is stunningly free of friction between the mightiest nations. This lack
of conflict is extremely rare in history. You would have to go back at least 175 years, if not 400, to find any prolonged period like the
one we are living in. The number of people who have died as a result of wars, civil conflicts, and terrorism over the last 30 years has
declined sharply (despite what you might think on the basis of overhyped fears about terrorism). And no wonderthree decades ago,
the Soviet Union was still funding militias, governments, and guerrillas in dozens of countries around the world. And the United
States was backing the other side in every one of those places. That clash of superpower proxies caused enormous bloodshed and
instability: recall that 3 million people died in Indochina alone during the 1970s. Nothing like that is happening today.
TTIP ensures global economic recovery
Doug Palmer 13, White House gives Congress 90-day notice on EU trade talks, 3-20,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/us-usa-eu-trade-idUSBRE92J17V20130320
Because tariffs across the Atlantic are relatively low, the hard work of the negotiations will
be smoothing out regulatory differences that have stunted trade in areas such as agriculture, chemicals,
pharmaceutical and autos. NOT 'A MAGIC POTION' Two-way goods and services trade between the United States and the EU
totals about $1 trillion annually. The two sides also have combined foreign direct investment in each other's market of about $3.7
trillion. But bilateral trade between the two large, mature economies has grown slowly in
recent years because of the effects of 2008-2009 financial crisis and competing subsidy
and regulatory policies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics noted in a recent policy brief. "A trade
accord is not a magic potion for prosperity, but it can contribute to economic recovery by
removing even relatively low barriers across a large volume of bilateral trade," the
Washington-based think tank said. The Center for Economic Policy Research in London has estimated a U.S.-EU free trade
agreement could generate 119 billion euros ($155 billion) a year for the European Union and 95
billion euros a year for the United States.
No War
Economics is a great-power game but doesnt trigger war; instead, states
politic with each other through the market
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression; page 22,
http://books.google.com/books?id=yopSAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=The+System+Worked:+How+the+World+Stopped+Another
+Great+Depression&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aNHOU928OPKy7AbX_IG4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=economy&f=false
published 2014 by Oxford University Press)
Third, questions about global economic governance are no longer the exclusive province of global political
economy scholars and policy- makers who are far removed from the public. For much of the twentieth
century, international relations commentators thought of the security realm as the place of high politics.
Economic cooperation was viewed as the more mundane realm of low politics. No longer. War has
become rarer and economic conflicts have become more common. As two
analysts at the US National Intelligence Council observed at the start of the Great
Recession, Artificial divisions between economic and foreign policy present a false
dichotomy. To whom one extends swap lines and how the IMF is recapitalized are as
much foreign policy as economic decisions.. . . Finance and markets are now high
politics. If the Great Game in the nineteenth century was about carving our spheres of territorial
influence in Central Asia, the twenty-first-century equivalent is about carving out spheres of
economic influence in the global marketplace. Global economic governance has become
a pivotal arena for great-power politics.
Economic decline wont lead to war, and can lead to more nationalism,
solving other problems
Robert Jervis 11, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International and
Public Affairs at Columbia University, December 2011, Force in Our Times, Survival, Vol. 25, No. 4, p.
403-425
Even if war is still seen as evil, the security community could be dissolved if severe conflicts of interest were to arise. Could the more peaceful world generate new interests that
would bring the members of the community into sharp disputes?45 A zero-sum sense of status would be one example, perhaps linked to a steep rise in nationalism. More likely
would be a worsening of the current economic difficulties, which could itself produce greater
nationalism, undermine democracy, and bring back old-fashioned beggar-thy-neighbor
economic policies. While these dangers are real, it is hard to believe that the conflicts could be great enough to lead
the members of the community to contemplate fighting each other. It is not so much that economic
interdependence has proceeded to the point where it could not be reversed states that were more internally interdependent than anything seen internationally have fought
bloody civil wars. Rather it is that even if the more extreme versions of free trade and economic
liberalism become discredited, it is hard to see how without building on a pre-existing
high level of political conflict leaders and mass opinion would come to believe that their
countries could prosper by impoverishing or even attacking others. Is it possible that problems will not only
become severe, but that people will entertain the thought that they have to be solved by war? While a pessimist could note that this argument does not appear as outlandish as it
did before the financial crisis, an optimist could reply (correctly, in my view) that the very fact that we have seen such a sharp
economic down-turn without anyone suggesting that force of arms is the solution shows
that even if bad times bring about greater economic conflict, it will not make war
thinkable.
The belief that war will happen is the reason war happensif we dont think
that war will happen, it wont
Robert Jervis 11, Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of International and
Public Affairs at Columbia University, December 2011, Force in Our Times, Survival, Vol. 25, No. 4, p.
403-425
To the fact that force may exercise its greatest influence when it is not being used we should add four other complicating factors.19 First is the powerful but often
conflicting role of expectations. In many circumstances, beliefs about the likelihood of future conflict
can be self-fulfilling as actors use force now because they expect that if they do not, they
will have to fight under less advantageous conditions later. Nuclear weapons made us
keenly aware of the danger of a mutually-undesired preemptive war,20 and the war in Iraq spurred scholars to look
back at history for the prevalence of preventive wars.21 Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to say that a fundamental cause of war is the fear of
war, and this is the dynamic behind the familiar security dilemma. Most scholars believe that fear of war in the future played a large role in the German decisions in 1914, and the Japanese expansion in the
1930s was driven by the desire for economic self-sufficiency, something that was needed because a future war with the West was believed inevitable.
Economic decline doesnt cause war
Deudney 91 [Daniel, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hewlett Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society
at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton, April, online]

Poverty Wars. In a second scenario, declining living standards first cause internal turmoil. then war. If groups at all levels of affluence protect their
standard of living by pushing deprivation on other groups class war and revolutionary upheavals could result. Faced with these pressures, liberal
democracy and free market systems could increasingly be replaced by authoritarian systems capable of maintaining minimum order.9 If authoritarian
regimes are more war-prone because they lack democratic control, and if revolutionary regimes are warprone because of their ideological fervor and
isolation, then the world is likely to become more violent. The record of previous depressions supports the proposition that
widespread economic stagnation and unmet economic expectations contribute to international conflict.
Although initially compelling, this scenario has major flaws. One is that it is arguably based on unsound
economic theory. Wealth is formed not so much by the availability of cheap natural resources as by capital
formation through savings and more efficient production. Many resource-poor countries, like Japan, are very
wealthy, while many countries with more extensive resources are poor. Environmental constraints require an end to
economic growth based on growing use of raw materials, but not necessarily an end to growth in the production of goods and services. In addition,
economic decline does not necessarily produce conflict. How societies respond to economic decline may
largely depend upon the rate at which such declines occur. And as people get poorer, they may become less
willing to spend scarce resources for military forces. As Bernard Brodie observed about the modein era, The
predisposing factors to military aggression are full bellies, not empty ones. The experience of economic
depressions over the last two centuries may be irrelevant, because such depressions were characterized by
under-utilized production capacity and falling resource prices. In the 1930 increased military spending
stimulated economies, but if economic growth is retarded by environmental constraints, military spending will exacerbate
the problem. Power Wars. A third scenario is that environmental degradation might cause war by altering the relative power of states; that is,
newly stronger states may be tempted to prey upon the newly weaker ones, or weakened states may attack and lock in their positions before their power
ebbs firther. But such alterations might not lead to war as readily as the lessons of history suggest, because economic power and
military power are not as tightly coupled as in the past. The economic power positions of Germany and Japan have changed
greatly since World War 11, but these changes have not been accompanied by war or threat of war. In the contemporary world, whole
industries rise, fall, and relocate, causing substantial fluctuations in the economic well-being of regions
and peoples without producing wars. There is no reason to believe that changes in relative wealth and
power caused by the uneven impact of environmental degradation would inevitably lead to war. Even if environmental
degradation were to destroy the basic social and economic fabric of a country or region, the impact on
international order may not be very great. Among the first casualties in such country would be the
capacity to wage war. The poor and wretched of the earth may be able to deny an outside aggressor an easy conquest, but they are
themselves a minimal threat to other states. Contemporary offensive military operations require complex
organizational skills, specialized industrial products and surplus wealth.

Historical examples prove war and econ decline are not always linked
Ferguson 2006 [Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. The next war
of the world, Foreign Affairs. V 85. No 5.]
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in modern historiography links the great depression to the rise of fascism and
the outbreak of World War II. But the simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started
the war In Europe only after its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected
bythe Great Depression were taken over by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact,
no general relationship between economics and conflict is discernible for
the century as a whole. Some wars came after periods of growth, others were the
cause rather than the consequences of economic catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not
followed by war.
Economic decline doesnt cause war
Deudney 91 [Daniel, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Hewlett Fellow in Science, Technology, and Society
at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton, April, online]
Poverty Wars. In a second scenario, declining living standards first cause internal turmoil. then war. If groups at all levels of affluence protect their
standard of living by pushing deprivation on other groups class war and revolutionary upheavals could result. Faced with these pressures, liberal
democracy and free market systems could increasingly be replaced by authoritarian systems capable of maintaining minimum order.9 If authoritarian
regimes are more war-prone because they lack democratic control, and if revolutionary regimes are warprone because of their ideological fervor and
isolation, then the world is likely to become more violent. The record of previous depressions supports the proposition that
widespread economic stagnation and unmet economic expectations contribute to international conflict.
Although initially compelling, this scenario has major flaws. One is that it is arguably based on unsound
economic theory. Wealth is formed not so much by the availability of cheap natural resources as by capital
formation through savings and more efficient production. Many resource-poor countries, like Japan, are very
wealthy, while many countries with more extensive resources are poor. Environmental constraints require an end to
economic growth based on growing use of raw materials, but not necessarily an end to growth in the production of goods and services. In addition,
economic decline does not necessarily produce conflict. How societies respond to economic decline may
largely depend upon the rate at which such declines occur. And as people get poorer, they may become less
willing to spend scarce resources for military forces. As Bernard Brodie observed about the modein era, The
predisposing factors to military aggression are full bellies, not empty ones. The experience of economic
depressions over the last two centuries may be irrelevant, because such depressions were characterized by
under-utilized production capacity and falling resource prices. In the 1930 increased military spending
stimulated economies, but if economic growth is retarded by environmental constraints, military spending will exacerbate
the problem. Power Wars. A third scenario is that environmental degradation might cause war by altering the relative power of states; that is,
newly stronger states may be tempted to prey upon the newly weaker ones, or weakened states may attack and lock in their positions before their power
ebbs firther. But such alterations might not lead to war as readily as the lessons of history suggest, because economic power and
military power are not as tightly coupled as in the past. The economic power positions of Germany and Japan have changed
greatly since World War 11, but these changes have not been accompanied by war or threat of war. In the contemporary world, whole
industries rise, fall, and relocate, causing substantial fluctuations in the economic well-being of regions
and peoples without producing wars. There is no reason to believe that changes in relative wealth and
power caused by the uneven impact of environmental degradation would inevitably lead to war. Even if environmental
degradation were to destroy the basic social and economic fabric of a country or region, the impact on
international order may not be very great. Among the first casualties in such country would be the
capacity to wage war. The poor and wretched of the earth may be able to deny an outside aggressor an easy conquest, but they are
themselves a minimal threat to other states. Contemporary offensive military operations require complex
organizational skills, specialized industrial products and surplus wealth.

No Impact
The Economics of interdependence proves that there will be no impact to
the me economy decline
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression; pages 88,
http://books.google.com/books?id=yopSAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=The+System+Worked:+How+the+World+Stopped+Another
+Great+Depression&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aNHOU928OPKy7AbX_IG4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=economy&f=false
published 2014 by Oxford University Press)
As previously noted, the resilience of a functioning, open global economy was a surprise to many
after 2008. Politics 101 suggested that the downturn should have led to an upsurge in scapegoating
the international economy, calls for protectionism, and a push toward more autarky in
the name of resilience. Punditry 101 also suggested a problem resulting from the perceived power transition taking place between the United States and
China. The financial crisis was expected to accelerate this transition, amplifying uncertainty
in the global economy. Global Political Economy 101, however, offers a different take.
The degree of interdependence among the key actors in the current era of
globalization gave powerful interests a strong stake in maintaining a
functioning, open global economy. As John Ikenberry observes, The complex
interdependence that is unleashed in an open and loosely rule-based order
generates expanding realms of exchange. (cut because of restraints of google books)
Global financial decline doesnt affect the United Statesexports
prove
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression; pages 183-184,
http://books.google.com/books?id=yopSAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=The+System+Worked:+How+the+World+Stopped+Another
+Great+Depression&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aNHOU928OPKy7AbX_IG4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=economy&f=false
published 2014 by Oxford University Press)
A similar story can be told about the United States. US economic misfortunes have little
to do with either the global economy or global economic governance. Indeed, the United
States benefited from the post-crisis global political economy through lower borrowing
costs and higher exports. Domestic policy stalemates and political uncertainty, on the other hand, acted as a significant drag on the US
recovery from the Great Recession.
The squo solves best for economic declinesystems in place ensure
no second Great Depression
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression; pages 183-184,
http://books.google.com/books?id=yopSAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=The+System+Worked:+How+the+World+Stopped+Another
+Great+Depression&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aNHOU928OPKy7AbX_IG4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=economy&f=false
published 2014 by Oxford University Press)
The most salient explanation for TARPs unpopularity is that it requires counterfactual reasoning to appreciate its success. The argument in
favor of TARP and the related Federal Reserve programs is that even though the US
economy has struggled since 2008, it could have been far, far worse. This is true of
global economic governance as well. There is no denying that, in the wake of the crisis,
the global economy shrunk, protectionism rose, cross-border financial flows dried up,
and governments squabbled over macroeconomic policies. Nevertheless, the system
worked. In the presence of functioning global economic governance, the global economy suffered only a
temporary downturn. In its absence, the world would have likely experienced an
explosion of trade and investor protectionism, an evaporation of liquidity, and a
second Great Depression.
2008 proves that there is no impact to the economy declining; states
cooperate to solve problemsempirical evidence proves
Drezner 14 (Daniel W., professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
The System Worked: How the World Stopped Another Great Depression; pages 183-184,
http://books.google.com/books?id=yopSAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=The+System+Worked:+How+the+World+Stopped+Another
+Great+Depression&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aNHOU928OPKy7AbX_IG4Cw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=economy&f=false
published 2014 by Oxford University Press)
In the fall of 2008, the global economy suffered a bigger and deeper shock than it did in
the fall of 1929. Despite that shock, the global economy rebounded. Given the
depth of the financial damage, and given how the global economy had previously
responded to similar shocks, the post-2008 performance was remarkable. Cross-border flows in trade,
FDI, and remittances suffered temporary downturns but soon exceeded or approximated pre-crisis averages. Despite the biggest financial
crash in seventy years and the ensuing sovereign debt crises in Europe, the global
economy demonstrated remarkable resilience. How did the global economy recover so
quickly? Global economic governance did what it had to do. During a systemic crisis,
markets need to stay open and liquidity needs to be provided. International institutions,
supported by the great powers, ensured that this happened. The data on trade
restrictions show that although levels of protection ism did increase after the crisis,
those increases were small; the number of restrictions eventually fell to historic lows.
The United States, the European Union, and China adhered to their WTO obligations,
ensuring that the rest of the world could export to them. Despite a lot of loose talk about currency wars, actual exchange-
rate volatility subsided and was never a serious concern for business executives. The worlds major central banks coordinated
interest-rate cuts and swap lines to revive the global economy and avert a liquidity
crisis. Quantitative easing and other monetary policy actions also helped to avert the
worst-case scenario. Between 2008 and 2010, the G2o economies also coordinate expansionary fiscal policies to make tip for the shortfall in private-sector
activity. These economies also bolstered the ability of the World Bank and the IMF to help the smaller and less-developed economies. Global economic governance structures
aided and abetted exactly the policies that Charles Kindleherger would have advocated to prevent a depression.

No impact to economic decline, its a long process and multinternational
institutions check
Hall 97 (Stuart, cultural theorist and sociologist. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the
founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural
Studies.[1] He was President of the British Sociological Association 199597; Dangerous Liasons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial
Perspectives, book, Chapter 9, edited by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, Ella Shohat, associated with the University of Minnesota,
1997)
First of all, in the British case, it results from a long process of economic decline. From being the
leading economic power in the world, at the pinnacle of commercial and industrial
development, the first industrializing nation, Britain then became simply one amongst other, better, stronger, competing, new
industrializing nations. It is certainly no longer at the forefront, or at the cutting edge, of industrial and economic
development. The trend towards the greater internationalization of the economy, rooted in the multinational firm, built on the foundations of Fordist models of mass production, and mass
consumption long outran some of the most important leading instances of this which one can find in the British economy. From the position of being in the forefront, Britain has
increasingly fallen behind as the new regimes of accumulation, production, and
consumption have created new leading nations in the global economy. More recently, the capitalist crisis of the
seventies has accelerated the opening up of new global markets, both commodity markets and financial markets, to which Britain has been required to harness
itself if it were not to be left behind in the race. With the horrendous noise of deindustrialization, Britain is, under Thatcherism, trying to ground
itself somewhere close to the leading edge of the new technologies which have linked production and markets in a new surge
of international global capital. The deregulation of the City is simply one sign of the movement of the British economy and the British culture to enter the new epoch of
financial capital. And new multinational production, the new new international division of
labor, not only links backward sections of the third world to so-called advanced sections of
the first world in a form of multinational production, but increasingly tries to reconstitute the backward sectors within its own society:
those forms of contracting out, of franchising, which are beginning to create small
dependent local economies which are linked into multi- national production. All of these
have broken up the economic, political and social terrain on which those earlier notions ofEnglish- ness prospered.
Global interdependence means that economic collapse is unthinkable
Hall 97 (Stuart, cultural theorist and sociologist. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the
founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or The Birmingham School of Cultural
Studies.[1] He was President of the British Sociological Association 199597; Dangerous Liasons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial
Perspectives, book, Chapter 9, edited by Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti, Ella Shohat, associated with the University of Minnesota,
1997)
First, there is the growth of monetary and regional arrangements which link Britain into
NATO, the Common Market and similar or- ganizations. There is a growth of these
regional, supranational organizations and connections which simply make it impossible,
if it ever was, to try to conceive of what is going on in English society as if it only had an internal dynamic. And this is a very profound shift, a shift in the conceptions of
sovereignty, and of the nation-state. It is a shift in the conception of what the English government can do, what is in its control, transformations which it could bring
about by its own efforts. These things increasingly are seen to be interde- pendent with
the economies, cultures and polities of other societies. Last but not least is the enormous impact of global ecological
inter- dependence. When the ill winds of Chernobyl came our way, they did not pause at the frontier, produce
their passports and say, "Can I rain on your territory now?" They just flowed on in and rained on Wales and on places which never
knew where Chernobyl was. Recently, we have been enjoying some of the pleasures and anticipating some
of the disasters of global warming. The sources and consequences are miles away. We could only
begin to do something about it on the basis of some form of ecological consciousness which has to have, as its subject, something that is larger than the freeborn Eng- lishman.
The freeborn Englishman cannot do anything about the destruction of the rain forest in Brazil. And he hardly knows how to spell ozone.
No impact to economic decline2008 recession proves, were still peaceful
Daniel W. Drezner 12,( Professor, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, October 2012, The Irony
of Global Economic Governance: The System Worked, http://www.globaleconomicgovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/IR-
Colloquium-MT12-Week-5_The-Irony-of-Global-Economic-Governance.pdf)
The final outcome addresses a dog that hasnt barked: the effect of the Great Recession on cross-border
conflict and violence. During the initial stages of the crisis, multiple analysts asserted that the financial crisis would lead states
to increase their use of force as a tool for staying in power.37 Whether through greater internal repression, diversionary wars,
arms races, or a ratcheting up of great power conflict, there were genuine concerns that the global economic downturn would lead to an increase in conflict. Violence
in the Middle East, border disputes in the South China Sea, and even the disruptions of the Occupy movement fuel impressions of surge in global public disorder. The aggregate data
suggests otherwise, however. The Institute for Economics and Peace has constructed a Global Peace Index annually since 2007. A key conclusion they draw from the 2012 report is that The average
level of peacefulness in 2012 is approximately the same as it was in 2007.38 Interstate violence in particular has
declined since the start of the financial crisis as have military expenditures in most sampled countries. Other
studies confirm that the Great Recession has not triggered any increase in violent conflict; the secular
decline in violence that started with the end of the Cold War has not been reversed.39 Rogers Brubaker concludes, the crisis has not to date generated the surge in protectionist
nationalism or ethnic exclusion that might have been expected.40None of these data suggest that the global economy is operating
swimmingly. Growth remains unbalanced and fragile, and has clearly slowed in 2012. Transnational capital flows remain depressed compared to pre-crisis levels, primarily due to a drying up of cross-border interbank lending in Europe. Currency volatility remains
an ongoing concern. Compared to the aftermath of other postwar recessions, growth in output, investment, and employment in the developed world have all lagged behind. But the Great Recession is not like other postwar recessions in either scope or kind; expecting
a standard V-shaped recovery was unreasonable. One financial analyst characterized the post-2008 global economy as in a state of contained depression.41 The key word is contained, however. Given the severity,
reach and depth of the 2008 financial crisis, the proper comparison is with Great
Depression. And by that standard, the outcome variables look impressive. As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff concluded in
This Time is Different: that its macroeconomic outcome has been only the most severe global recession since World War II and not even worse must be regarded as fortunate.42
The global economy is resilient
Ferguson 2006 [Niall, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. The next war
of the world, Foreign Affairs. V 85. No 5.]
the good news is that global economic volatility has been significantly lower in recent
years than at almost any time in the last century. By widening and deepening international markets for goods,
labor and capital, globalization appears to have made the world economy less prone to
crisis. At the same time, financial innovations have improved the pricing and the distribution of risk, and policy innovations such as inflation targeting have helped
governments to limit rises in consumer prices (if not asset price) inflation International organizations such as the World
Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund have helped to avert trade
disputes and other sources of economic instability.

US Not K2 Global Econ
The World is not dependent on our economy. Decoupling happening
now.
WASSENER, 09 (BETTINA 6/30/news rerporter from the new york times. Newyorktime.com, archive, )
For a while, when the economic crisis was at its worst, it was a dirty word that only the most provocative of analysts dared to use. Now, the D-word decoupling is making a comeback,
and nowhere more so than in Asia. Put simply, the term refers to the theory that emerging markets whether China or Chile will
become less dependent the United States as their economies become stronger and more sophisticated. For
much of last year, the theory held up. Many emerging economies had steered clear of investments that dragged down banking behemoths in the West, and saw nothing like the turmoil that began to engulf the United States and Europe in
2007. But then, last autumn, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers caused the financial system to convulse and consumer demand to shrivel, emerging economies around the world got caught in the downdraft, and the D-word became mud.
Now, the tables are turning, especially in Asia, where many emerging economies are showing signs of a stronger
recovery than in the West. And economists here have begun to talk of the decoupling once again. Decoupling is happening for real, the chief
Asia-Pacific economist at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, Michael Buchanan, said in a recent interview. To be
sure, the once sizzling pace of Asian economic growth has slowed sharply as exports to and investments from outside the region slumped. Across Asia, millions of people have lost their jobs as business dropped off and companies cut costs
and output. Asia is heavily dependent upon selling its products to consumers in the United States and Europe, and many executives still say a strong American economy is a prerequisite for a return to the boom of years past. But for
the past couple of months, data have revealed a growing divergence between Western economies and
those in much of Asia, notably China and India. The World Bank last week forecast that the economies of
the countries that use the euro and the United States would contract 4.5 percent and 3 percent,
respectively, this year compared with 7.2 percent and 5.1 percent growth forecast for China and India.
Forecasts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that were also published last week backed
up this general trend. Major statistics for June, due Wednesday, are expected to show manufacturing activity in China and India are on the mend. By contrast, purchasing managers indexes for Europe and the
United States are forecast to be merely less grim than before but still show contractions. Why this diverging picture? The crisis hit Asia much later. While the American economy began languishing in 2007, Asian economies were doing well
until the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September. What followed was a rush of stimulus measures rate cuts and government spending programs. In Asias case, these came soon after things soured for the region; in the United States,
they came much later. Moreover, developing Asian economies were in pretty good shape when the crisis struck. The last major crisis to hit the
region the financial turmoil of 1997-98 forced governments in Asia to introduce overhauls that ultimately
left them with lower debt levels, more resilient banking and regulatory systems and often large foreign exchange reserves. Another
crucial difference is that Asia, unlike the United States and Europe, has not had a banking crisis. Bank
profits in Asia have plunged and some have had to raise extra capital but there have been no major
collapses and no bailouts.The Chinese stimulus package of 4 trillion renminbi yuan, or $585 billion, announced last November, has led to a boom in spending and is a major reason why economists are
optimistic about China, and about much of the region as a whole Asias generally lower debt levels also mean there has been no credit crunch of the kind that has handicapped companies and consumers elsewhere.Asia does
not have a credit crunch. It has excess liquidity, Mr. Neumann of HSBC said. The banking system is stuffed with liquidity. This is benefiting Asian
asset markets from stocks to property and is leading to a gradual financial decoupling from the United States and Europe, Mr. Neumann said. For the
past two decades, equities markets have been driven by Western risk capital, not Asian investors themselves, he said. Now, youre finding that Asian money is increasingly driving the
market. Analysts at Merrill Lynch agree. In a recent research note they said the Hong Kong stock market, for example, had performed much better than markets in the United States, and property prices in the city have risen, partly
because of capital inflows from mainland China. Of course, none of this means Asia has become completely independent from the rest of the world. Asia remains heavily reliant on exports for economic growth. The result, despite increased
decoupling, is that growth in Asia has slowed down, in some cases sharply. The Indonesian economy, for example, is expected to grow 3.6 percent this year, the Asian Development Bank forecasts. This compares to more than 6 percent in
2008 and 2007 The bank expects the Indian economy to grow to 5 percent this year, and the Chinese economy 7 percent down from 7.1 percent and 9 percent, respectively, in 2008. Nor has the effect been uniform. Developed Asian
economies, like Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, are much more tightly tied into the world economy and financial system. All three are in recessions. The United States has deep structural
problems that are coming home to roost Asia hasnt got those, and that has been very, very important,
says Mr. Garner of Morgan Stanley Emerging Asian nations went into recession last, he says. Increasingly, they are looking like they will also to come out first and strongest.

United States economy has lost its Global importance
Bracy, 09 (Gerald, may 20, Fellow at the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State
University, U.S. Fails International Competitiveness Test: Schools (Rightfully) Blamed,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/u-s-fails-international-c_b_205593.html)
On February 1, 2008, President George W. Bush said "the fundamentals of the economy are strong; we're just going through a rough patch right now"
(UPI). Even while the economy was crumbling all around him, presidential candidate John McCain insisted on September 15, 2008, "the fundamentals
of our economy are strong." Perhaps these "fundamental" misperceptions by our national "leaders"
are why the U.S. just failed the Global Competitiveness Stress Test from the Lausanne-based Institute for
Management Development's World Competitiveness Center. Perhaps "failed" is not the right word, but the U.S. did finish average -- 28th among the 57
ranked nations. Yet, similar results in international comparisons with math and science tests have led to the use of that particular f-word as applied to
public schools. The Stress Test evaluates how well countries will cope with the current global recession. The U.S. finished behind such nations as Qatar,
Malaysia, Chile, Thailand, Jordan and Kazakhstan. Denmark is #1, but India (13th) and China (18th) are ahead of us, too. If this result came from an
international comparison of young people (9- and 13 year-olds) on math and science tests it would make front page news of most newspapers, but I'm
betting it doesn't get any coverage at all (this is being sent just after the embargo hour has passed, EDT). But I'm also betting that the people who sent
the economy over the cliff were not people who couldn't do the arithmetic. The stress test included four factors,
Economy Forecasts, Government, Business, and Society each made up of about a half-
dozen sub-components. The United States' lowest ranking, 33rd, was on the Business
component. That component itself is comprised of ethical practices, credibility of managers, corporate boards, corporate values and
entrepreneurship. It appears that the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, and independent businesses, don't have much to
offer in these areas. These results confirm allegations in the April 24th, 2009 Wall Street Journal that the principal culprits in the present debacle are
indeed the schools, namely, the business schools. "What have business schools failed to teach our business leaders and policy makers?" asked Walter
Jacobs, himself a B-school professor. As the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for American Progress put it in a different context, "the
measures of our educational shortcomings are stark indeed." First, everyone agrees that "incentive systems that rewarded short-term gain took
precedence over those designed for long-term value creation." A proper B-school education would inoculate against such folly. Second, "as
Washington scrambles to restructure the financial regulatory system, those who still
believe in the private sector are asking why corporate boards were AWOL as institution
after institution crumbled. Why did it take rumors of nationalization and a drop in Citicorp stock to below $2 a share to inspire
Citigroup to nominate directors with experience in financial markets?" Jacobs reports giving a speech at a B-school after which one student, only weeks
away from her MBA, said she'd never heard any discussion of the responsibilities of boards or the rights of shareholders. Third, while B-schools taught
the value of a diversified portfolio, they did not examine the notion of "agency cost." "The concept is simple: When money provided to homeowners or
businesses comes from an anonymous source, possibly half way around the world, there are serious challenges to operating a functioning system of
accountability... It should come as no surprise that financial institutions amassed securities that consist of a diversified portfolio of deadbeats." Jacobs
thinks we could have avoided the problems we now face had we attended to the three items noted above. "America's business schools need to rethink
what we are teaching -- and not teaching--the next generation of leaders." Now there's something Bob Wise, Roy Romer, Eli Broad, and Bill Gates and
the rest of the professional K-12 fear mongers should pay attention to. It's much more important than how well 4th and 8th graders bubble in answer
sheets on math and science tests. But it's doubtful that the fear mongers will let go of their lucrative propaganda machines.
It would be good if the U.S. was no longer the global economic leader,
this would spur large global growth.
Gross 07, The New York Times, May 6, 2007 Sunday, Late Edition Final, Does It Even Matter if the U.S. Has a Cold? By DANIEL GROSS. Daniel Gross writes the ''Moneybox'' column for
Slate.com. Section 3; Column 1; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 4,
https://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T4100124656&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T4100124670&cisb=2
2_T4100124669&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=6742&docNo=9
''Unless you run a sawmill in Canada, international trade isn't directly affected by the decline in U.S.
housing,'' Mr. Rosenberg said. Martin N. Baily, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics in Washington, says he thinks that it's a good thing for the United States if it's no longer the
leader. ''We have a huge imbalance in our trade, and we need to be a little less of an engine
of growth for the rest of the world, and let Europe and Japan, and hopefully China,
eventually, pick up the slack,'' he said. ''And right now it seems like they're doing so.''
Energy
Energy Dependence
Heg Turn
Turn US energy independence causes loss of hegemony
Hulbert, 12 (Matthew Hulbert, Forbes Contributor, Ten Reasons To Be Concerned
About U.S. Energy Independence, 11/12/2012,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewhulbert/2012/11/12/ten-reasons-to-be-
concerned-about-u-s-energy-independence/)
U.S. energy independence must be about to happen. The International Energy Agency just devoted its
World Energy Outlook 2012 to telling us so. America will become the largest producer of
oil and other liquid fuels on Earth by 2020; it will be entirely self-sufficient by 2030;
and a net exporter by 2035. Boom. Epic stuff. It would be churlish to deny that U.S. energy growth will provide major
economic gains to America of course it will. Heres a few hundred pages explaining exactly what they are. But this isnt going to be
a free lunch for America. Well leave aside the fact that IEA forecasts have a strong track record
of being universally wrong, or that a month ago they were pinning all their supply side
hopes on Iraq coming good to balance international oil markets. Minor stuff; but having just flown
over the Bosphorus en route to Ankara via Istanbul, believe me, the world looks very different depending on where youre sat. Here
are 10 reasons for the U.S. to be cautious on energy supply growth, irrespective of however the IEA forecasts play out: America
is never going to be in a position to produce enough liquids to perform the role of swing
producer in the oil world. It might notionally overtake Saudi production by 2017, but
that hardly leaves it much export margin to play with. U.S. pricing power will purely
become a function of how much collateral damage it does to other producer states, not
dictating how much consumers have to pay at the pumps. By the same token, America
can never truly escape international pricing pressures affecting broader supply-demand
fundamentals. If anything, once the Obama administration gets to grips with significant
infrastructure bottlenecks that have led to an inefficient domestic market, WTI
benchmarks will increasingly realign with international prices. What happens in the Gulf of Aden
still affects what happens in the Gulf of Mexico. The fact that America has seen such rapacious supply side activity averaging over
500,000b/d in the past four years was good news for President Obamas re-election, but its deeply concerning for traditional
producer states. America has played fast and loose with international oil market stability of late, first in Libya, and then in Iran,
purely on the back of new oil gains. Assuming U.S. supply growth forces oil under three ($100/b)
figures, OPEC states will be in deep political trouble. Supply side outages across
producer states will be the result when instability hits. American supply growth will not
be in a credible position to settle the markets; consumers will pay a heavy transitional
price. The transitional limits of energy independence will be clear for all to see, not just
in traditional producer states that needed high prices to maintain stability, but a range
of new players that all required firm prices to bring difficult fields to the wellhead.
Needless to say, this makes a total mockery of ongoing US external support for oil supplies coming from the Middle East. It
makes zero sense for Washington to be paying billions in tax payers money maintaining
the 5th Fleet in Bahrain only to watch OPEC states internally implode from the prospect
of lower oil prices driven by American supply growth. It also points to a very awkward
conundrum for State Department interests in the Gulf this is ultimately about U.S.
global power, not just oil. The more damaging geopolitical problem is that anywhere
East of Nigeria will be looking to China and India for security of demand and
geopolitical cover. China will stake its claim to regional dominance far more aggressively
and expand its influence into the Gulf. The Asian pivot will lose its bearings, and the dollar put on borrowed
time if China no longer sees fit to keep bankrolling the Fed for its own security ends. Whats worse, Washington will
still be intrinsically connected to global oil prices but have zero influence in the Gulf,
Caspian, Russia or East Africa to influence material outcomes. Thats on anything
ranging from nuclear proliferation to delicate succession issues. China will be calling the
shots, able to split the world in two by laying claim to the Middle East, the Caspian,
Australasia, Russia and East Africa as vital interests. Well, when we say split the world in two, its not
going to be quite that neat for the Americas. Theres no way Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador,
Venezuela, Brazil or Argentina will be happy relying on a single source of supply and a
single source of demand from Washington. Far from selling oil into a saturated U.S.
market, theyll redouble their efforts to export energy to Asia, a hedge that could
significantly reduce Washingtons long term influence in Monroes playground. Brazil could
end up joining OPEC; Canada will be very tetchy about Arctic developments. As for Europe, with the trans-Atlantic relationship
dead, theyll go looking for new friends to help with energy supplies. The most likely of which is China to align consumer interests on
the Eurasian land mass. The Western Hemisphere shrinks; for China, the sun never sets. Having lost most its friends (or
frenemies) as some like to put it, America has a bigger problem. Can it really follow through towards 2050 as the biggest energy
player in the world? The geological data is unsure. Americas 482tcf of gas and 25.2bn barrels of oil will start to look very small, and
particularly if other producers follow America down an unconventional path. Thats by no means unlikely when you consider U.S.
benchmark pressures could force traditional producers to give up trying to control prices, and go for a volumes strategy instead.
Were already on the verge of that happening in the natural gas world, theres no reason why it wouldnt be any different for oil.
110mb/d by 2020? Probably doable in a risk free, care free world; call it OPECs unconventional bounce. In a race to the bottom of
the barrel, the Middle East is always going to trump the U.S. mid-West. If that happens, fear not, the one
country that will keep investing in U.S. liquids production is China. Its in direct Chinese
interests to make sure America fulfils its oil potential to help forge a structurally cheap
and abundant energy world, not to mention hedging Beijings supply side portfolio. China
has pumped $17bn into America since 2010, $10bn into Brazil, $16bn into Venezuela, and $18bn into Canada. And thats before you
consider the prospective $15.1bn Nexen mega deal. Many think its farfetched, but look closely at the U.S. natural gas scene. Chinas
not only happy ploughing money into economically disastrous dry shale plays, its providing supply side contracts and finance for
U.S. LNG export growth. Ask Cheniere down at Sabine Pass. Cheap U.S. gas on international markets is exactly what China wants to
secure preferential contracts across the board, and its precisely what theyre now eyeing for oil. The core reason is
China knows it gains most from a world of cheap and abundant energy. America wins a
ten to fifteen year tactical victory from enhanced liquids output, but in doing so, loses
the long term battle for superpower status against China. Beijing gets to drive through
its industrial revolution on the cheap, all while the economic gains for America remain
marginal. Beijing leverages U.S. production gains to break the pricing game and force producers into a volumes future. Despite
80-85% import dependency, China picks up the pieces in a perennial buyers market. America goes home, broke.

Inevitable
Energy dependence is inevitable
Reisser, 9 (Wesley Reisser, PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles,
Department of Geography, The US cannot drill its way out of energy dependence,
3/20/2009, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/20/oil-
america-energy-independence)
The chant "Drill Baby Drill!", commonly heard at Republican rallies last autumn, became one of the most memorable slogans of the
2008 US presidential election. Oil prices had skyrocketed, with prices running to almost $150 a barrel. While John McCain
suggested ratcheting up domestic oil production as the solution, Barack Obama promised a technological revolution that would
allow the development of green alternatives to petrol within 10 years. Energy independence became the watchword of the day.
President Obama clearly believes America's addiction to oil is a national security problem, and is calling for the US to wean itself off
foreign oil. Just six days into his presidency, he declared: "America's dependence on oil is one of the most serious threats our nation
has faced. It bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation, and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism." Among
the steps toward energy independence he recommends are improving energy efficiency
and building fuel--efficient vehicles. But although these initiatives will reduce oil
consumption, they will not remotely achieve the goal of US energy independence. The
US will never again meet oil demand through domestic production, as it faces
permanent declines. The 1970s saw the American peak in oil production. Since then, annual production rates in the US
have fallen. The US accounts for nearly one quarter of worldwide oil consumption, and now close to 60% of that must be imported.
Even a huge increase in the number of wells drilled there cannot reduce the import level
by more than a few percentage points. Potential new oil discoveries, including any in
the Arctic national wildlife refuge, will be insufficient to reverse projected declines. The US
is more extensively explored than any other country, and estimates by the US Geological Survey dash any hope of drilling to energy
independence. Too little oil remains in American reservoirs. Switching to alternative sources of energy is
touted as the other great solution. But even high oil prices and market forces are
unlikely to halt US import dependence, as no meaningful near and midterm alternatives
exist. Options to limit or end oil dependence in the transportation sector include fuel
switching and improvements in fuel economy. Fuel switching entails the retooling of the
transportation sector to vehicles powered by natural gas, electricity, biofuels or
hydrogen fuel cells. Fuel economy improvements could be attained by the more
widespread adoption of either hybrid cars or diesel-powered vehicles. Although these
changes might affect consumption per mile, projected increases in travel would more
than offset such gains. This means that nothing short of fuel switching can reduce oil
usage to the point where all oil used is produced domestically. Fuel switching is likelier to occur in an
era of high oil prices, but market incentives are low now that oil prices have slid from the record highs of summer 2008. High-
volume US oil importation will remain a constant for at least two to three decades. The current global energy market presents many
geostrategic challenges. These include the stability of oil producers, terrorism, embargoes, sanctions and ethnic conflicts. Also, by
2020, Chinese consumption will outpace that of the US. This adds an additional challenge for national security planners, as the US
has previously been the sole superpower engaging oil-producing regions and trying to influence their politics. A rising China
is likely to challenge the US for access and influence throughout the oil-exporting
world. Within the developed world, renewable production from wind, solar and geothermal sources will need to be dramatically
increased. This will eventually free fossil fuels for transportation use as opposed to electrical generation. Where oil originates is
largely irrelevant economically, so developing diverse supplies of energy globally may be the best energy security for all importers
not just the US. The major energy-consuming countries must work together on long-term solutions to replace oil rather than
worrying about where it comes from.
The US will be energy dependent despite growing domestic production
Walsh, 12 (Bryan Walsh, Senior Editor at TIME, The U.S. Will Be an Oil Giant Again.
But It Wont Be Energy Independent, 11/13/2012,
http://science.time.com/2012/11/13/the-u-s-will-be-an-oil-giant-again-but-it-wont-be-
energy-independent//)
U.S. Presidents since Richard Nixon have obsessed about American dependence on foreign oiland have proven unable to do much
about it. U.S. domestic oil production was on a long slope downwards, while the American thirst for crudeand the size of our
automobileskept increasing. As a result, despite all the bipartisan hand wringing about imports, the U.S. just kept getting more
and more dependent on foreign oiland especially foreign oil from the Middle East, which happens to be home to a number of
countries that arent exactly fond of us. But now, quite unexpectedly, thats changing. Thanks to a burst of new shale oil production
in states like North Dakota and Texasas well as conservation measures like increased auto fuel efficiencyU.S. oil imports have
been falling, with the country now bringing in just 20% of its energy from beyond its borders. And if the International
Energy Agencys (IEA) new World Energy Outlook is to be believed, the U.S. may be on
its way to becoming the single biggest player in the global oil market. By around 2020,
the IEA projects, the U.S. will be the worlds largest global oil producer, overtaking both
Russia and Saudi Arabia. U.S. oil imports will keep falling, and by around 2030 North America as a whole will become
a net oil exporter. From being the worlds biggest customer for oil, the U.S. could become the worlds biggest salesman. Thats good
news for the American economy and especially its trade deficit, which would benefit significantly from wiping away the $460 billion
the country spent on foreign oil last year. The burst in domestic oil will also help create well-paying jobs, especially in states like
North Dakota, Wyoming and Texas, where the oil boom is centered. The continued growth of shale natural gasalong with existing
supplies of coal and increasing renewables like wind and solarmeans that the U.S. may well be able to meet nearly all of its energy
needs itself. And so many domestic resources mean that electricity prices are likely to be much cheaper in the U.S. than in Europe,
which will aid industry. But the one thing politicians most want is the one thing the U.S. still
wont be: energy independent. Thats because no matter how much additional oil the
U.S. is able to pump in the years to come, the global oil market is just thatglobal. Oil is
the ultimate fungible commodity, able to be shipped and piped around the world. (In fact,
this portability is part of what makes oil so valuableelectricity, however its produced, cant easily be transported long distances or
stored for very long.) That means the price of oil is set on the global market, andgovernment
subsidies or taxes asideconsumers in oil-exporting nations will pay about as much for
crude as consumers in oil-importing nations. Thats why crude pricesand the price at the pump for
gasolinehas remained so high for U.S. consumers over the past couple of years, despite the fact that were in the middle of a real
domestic oil boom. External events like the 2011 crisis in Libyawhich took a major oil-exporting nation offlineand the tightening
sanctions squeezing Iran easily outweighed the additional million or so barrels a day that shale has been able to add to U.S. supplies.
Even a U.S. that can out-drill Saudi Arabia will remain subject to the global oil market
which increasingly will include the oil appetites of consumers in fast growing countries
like India and China. As long as we remain utterly dependent on oil to make our cars
and planes go, we wont be able to declare ourselves free from global oil markets. That
means that one way or another well still be entangled with the economics of the Middle
East oil market, since even as the U.S. imports less Persian Gulf oil, other regions, like
East Asia and most of Europe, will still be hooked on the stuff. Certainly, a healthier domestic oil
industry means the U.S. will be better cushioned in the event of a major supply disruption from the Middle Eastthe energy analyst
David Goldwyn notes that reduced imports mean that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could last weeks longer than it does nowbut
the price of oil would still skyrocket, hurting American consumers. And in a globalized economy, we wont be spared if painfully high
oil prices cripple the Chinese or Indian economies.

No Solvency
The US cant be energy independent domestic production cant solve
Weissmann, 12 (Jordan Weissmann, senior associate editor at The Atlantic, The
Myth of Energy Independence: Why We Can't Drill Our Way to Oil Autonomy,
2/9/2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-myth-of-energy-
independence-why-we-cant-drill-our-way-to-oil-autonomy/252812/)
It may theoretically be possible for the U.S. and Canada to more than double our oil
output, as the NPC suggests. To put that in perspective, we'd be adding the rough
equivalent of another Saudi Arabia to the world oil market. To do it, the countries would
have to pretty much tap every resource they have, both onshore and off. Obviously, the old "drill
baby drill" crowd would love that approach. But it's' still controversial in coastal swing states like
Florida. Beyond that, accessing some of the resources would require technology we don't
have yet. In the most likely scenarios, North American oil production will get a big
boost in the coming years. It just won't be enough for us to start waving goodbye to
OPEC. The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that the American oil production will reach 6.7 million barrels a
day by 2020, up from 5.5 million in 2010, then drop back to 6.1 million by 2035. Canada's National Energy Board foresees future
production doubling to 6.0 million barrels per day by that year. So we'd end up with about 12.1 million barrels
a day, around two-thirds* of what the United States currently chugs through on its own.

The US cant be energy independent even if it drills more oil
Weissmann, 12 (Jordan Weissmann, senior associate editor at The Atlantic, The U.S.
Won't Be Energy Independent Even If We Pump More Oil Than Saudi Arabia,
11/13/2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/11/the-us-wont-be-
energy-independent-even-if-we-pump-more-oil-than-saudi-arabia/265136/)
This just in: The United States is about to be the new Saudi Arabia. Not the Saudi Arabia of wind, or natural gas, or some other nerd
energy source nobody fights wars over, but of old-fashioned oil! That's an easy conclusion to draw from reading the International
Energy Agency's new report, which projects that the U.S. will replace Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer by around 2020,
and lends a massive dose of establishment cred to the idea that North America is en route to energy independence within the next
decade or so. Assuming that the prediction is correct, this is the sort of news that can, and will, be easily misconstrued -- probably in
Congress by people responsible for setting our national energy policy. Because here's the thing: While we may soon
produce as much crude as Saudi Arabia, we will not actually have the same power over
world markets as Saudi Arabia, and thus oil will continue to be a political and financial
thorn in our side. For simplicity's sake, here a few key points to remember if you hear the Saudi Arabia line. Saudi
Arabia is special for a few reasons. First, it has the world's second largest proven oil
reserves, behind Venezuela. Second, it pumps more crude each day than any other
nation. Third -- and this is the important fact about Saudi Arabia -- what gives it
enormous sway over the international oil market is that it could pump more if it chose.
As a net oil exporter, the country's only goal is to maintain a stable market that yields the maximum profit per barrel. It
accomplishes this by leaving a couple million barrels of oil a day untouched as an insurance policy. That way if, say, a major pipeline
explodes in Africa, or Iran decides to drop mines along a major oil shipping route, the country can increase its production and calm
everybody down. At the same time, if oil's price drops too low, the Saudis and the rest of OPEC can choose to decrease production
and stabilize its value. Even if we do eventually out produce Saudi Arabia, we won't be able to
get the world oil market under our thumb. We don't have a compliant state-owned oil
company that the president can dial up. We're also going to need whatever oil we
produce domestically, along with imports from Canada and Mexico. We're not going to get to be
the conductor waving our baton at the global oil market like the Saudis have been in the past. Another way to put it is
that producing a ton of oil in the United States isn't going to insulate us from the rest of
the globe. Mexico and Canada still aren't going to give our refineries any special
neighbors-only discounts. Nor are the privately run oil companies pumping out crude in
North Dakota, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico. And because oil is a mostly fungible commodity traded
worldwide, what happens to supply and demand in one corner of the planet impacts prices everywhere. If China and India start
growing wildly again, or some sort of war causes prices to spiral, we won't be immune.
Environment
Algae Blooms
Inevitable
Algae blooms are inevitable and natural
Lewis, 07senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (Marlo, XII. Algae, Ticks, Mosquitoes,
and Germs, http://cei.org/pdf/ait/chXII.pdf)
Comment: A global warming link to toxic algae blooms is plausible, because algae-
forming bacteria only produce blooms in warm water. But global warming is at most an
aggravating factor. Mass fish kills associated with red tide algae blooms have been
reported in Florida for hundreds of years. Indeed, reports the Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission, There is evidence that red tides have always existed in Floridas
waters. Scientists who study red tides globally consider Florida red tides to be unique
because they are natural events which existed long before Florida was settled.1
Similarly, dead zones are naturally occurring phenomena in the Baltic Sea, which has had
algae blooms since the last ice age, as shown by sediment cores.2 In both the Baltic Sea and the Florida
coast, sea surface temperatures in late summer are naturally high enough to support algae blooms, with or
without global warming.
No Impact
Algae blooms are not harmful
NOAA- no date, (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration No, not all algal blooms are
harmful, http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/habharm.html)
Less than one percent of algal blooms actually produce toxins. Harmful algal blooms are
blooms of species of algae that can have negative impacts on humans, marine and
freshwater environments, and coastal economies. These blooms occur when phytoplankton,
which are tiny microscopic plants, grow quickly in large quantities while producing toxic or harmful
effects on people, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds. A bloom does not have to produce toxins in
order to be harmful to the environment. It can also be harmful by causing anoxic conditions where oxygen
is depleted from the water. Blooms can block light to organisms lower in the water column, or even clog or
harm fish gills. Not all algal blooms are harmful, some can actually be beneficial.
Phytoplankton are found at the base of the marine food chain therefore all other life in
the ocean relies on phytoplankton. Blooms can also be a good indicator of
environmental change not only in the water, but also on land.



Fisheries
UX
Squo solves overfishing policy implementation and quotas solve
Conathan 11 [Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress. His work focuses on driving
progressive solutions to the multitude of problems facing the worlds oceans. Prior to joining American Progress, Mike spent five
years staffing the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportations Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries,
and Coast Guardinitially serving a one-year appointment as a Dean John Knauss Marine Policy Fellow before joining the
committee full-time as a professional staff member in 2007. In that capacity Mike worked primarily for Subcommittee Ranking
Member Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), as well as the Ranking Members of the full committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Kay
Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). He oversaw enactment of multiple key pieces of ocean legislation, including the Magnuson-Stevens
Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, the Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observing Act, the Federal Ocean
Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, and the Shark Conservation Act, March 25, 2011, Fish on Fridays: The End of
Overfishing in America, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news/2011/03/25/9243/fish-on-fridays-the-end-of-
overfishing-in-america/] //dickies
Eric Schwaab, the administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, stood before a crowd of fisheries experts on
Monday at the Boston Seafood Show. Schwaab had made many forays to New Englandhome of some of the squeakiest wheels in
our nations fishing industrysince taking over the job about a year ago. But this time was different. He came bearing a remarkable
message: We are witnessing the end of overfishing in U.S. waters. One of the biggest
changes to fisheries law in the 2007 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management
Act was the imposition of strict annual catch limits, or ACLs, in fisheries experiencing overfishing
beginning in 2010, and for all other fisheries in 2011, at a level such that overfishing does not occur. Schwaab said the 2010 target
of putting ACLs in place for all overfished fisheries was achieved, and We are on track to
meet this years deadline of having [ACLs] in place, as required, for all 528 managed stocks and complexes comprising
U.S. harvest. Schwaab went on to call this accomplishment an enormous milestone. Quite frankly, that is an even more enormous
understatement. The end of overfishing should be shouted from rooftops from New England to the Carolinas to the Gulf Coast to
Alaska to the Pacific Island territories and back to NMFSs Silver Spring, Maryland headquarters. This is the biggest national news
story our fisheries have seen in years. So where are the headlines? A few stories trickled onto the pages of local New England
newspapers. But even the Boston Globe didnt spare so much as a column inch. Prophetically, Schwaab alluded to the likelihood of
radio silence during the second half of his remarks, in which he suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
should do a better job of getting out the word on the progress made. Fisheries doomsayers have certainly been
more successful at garnering attention. Dr. Boris Worm, a scientist at Dallhousie University in Canada, published
a study in November 2006 that splashed across major media outlets worldwide. His study, Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean
Ecosystem Services, contained a message far more digestible than its title: Continuing the worlds current rate of fishing would lead
to the global collapse of fish populations by 2048. Now thats a headline. As panic ensued about the possibility of empty seafood
menus, Dr. Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington penned Faith-Based Fisheries. It was a sharp rebuke
of not just Worm, but the entire scientific publishing community, which he accused of
accepting articles on fisheries not for their scientific merit, but for their publicity value.
This all sounds esoteric on the surface. In the elevated discourse of academia, however, Hilborns words should have sparked
nothing short of a Biggie-versus-Tupac-level throwdown. Yet instead of Worm or Hilborn upping the ante with the academic journal
iteration of Hit Em UpTupacs vitriolic rap widely credited with escalating the east coast/west coast hip-hop conflagrationa
funny thing happened. The two scientists decided they had more in common than in opposition, so they sat down to work
on a collaborative assessment of world fisheries. Science published the result of their efforts, Rebuilding
Global Fisheries, in July 2009. It is a comprehensive assessment of 10 large ocean ecosystems with the most
comprehensive catch data. The findings showed that fishing in half of the areas they studied was
either already sustainable or showing significant progress toward sustainability and that
combined fisheries and conservation objectives can be achieved by merging diverse
management actions, including catch restrictions, gear modification, and closed areas.
Not coincidentally, all of these practices are in place in the United States today to varying
degrees. Of course, an important distinction to draw here is the difference between the act of overfishing and the fact that some
fish populations remain overfished. Overfishing means taking more fish out of the ocean than natural reproduction rates can
replacethink of it as withdrawing principal from an endowment instead of just the interest. A fish stock that is overfished is defined
as being below an optimal population level. While the two conditions can be and often are interrelated, one can also exist without the
other. In effect, this is the difference between a households budget and debt. Exceeding an annual budget is overspending.
Overspending for multiple years will accumulate debt, which can be referred to as being in an overspent state. Even when
overspending stops, the red ink doesnt magically turn black. The deficit remains. Many of our fisheries are still overfished (or
overspent), but the first step in resolving that dilemma is halting overfishing. We balance our fisheries budget by ending overfishing.
Then we can deal with the deficit. NMFSs rebuilding plans establish catch limits that pay down the principal on the fishy debt we
have accrued because in addition to ending overfishing, the law also requires that such limits rebuild fish populations to more
productive levels within 10 years. Simultaneously, fishermen are already seeing some returns as a result
of their sacrifices as fish stocks recover toward their rebuilding targets. Schwaab touted Exhibit A
in his statement: NMFS will increase catch limits for 12 of the 20 fish populations managed in the historic New England
groundfishery for the new fishing year that begins on May 1. This includes haddock, flounders, and the iconic cod. This
announcement follows decades of mismanagement that saw fishermens opportunity to fish cut deeper and deeper until by 2009 the
average groundfisherman was allowed to operate for fewer than three weeks a year. As an independent indicator of New Englands
nascent success, the Monterey Bay Aquariums Seafood Watch program shifted several groundfish species, including haddock and
pollock, from the red avoid list to the yellow good alternatives list. And it even added line-caught haddock to the green best
choices list. Meanwhile, controversy continues to roil in New England ports about the implementation of a new regulatory system
known as sector management that took effect in 2010. The next column in this series will delve deeper into the details of that saga.
We must acknowledge, too, that reductions under the previous system, referred to as Days-at-Sea, took steps to begin reducing the
overfishing that plagued the industry in the early 1990s. After decades of declineand thousands of pages
of apocalyptic rhetoricits time to give our fishermen and our fisheries managers a
little credit. They are making the difficult choices. They have endured tremendous hardships. And they are turning a
critical corner to ensure a healthy, sustainable future for Americas most historic
profession.

Fisheries are improving - global regulatory structures and data
EDF 13 [EDF Oceans, Environmental Defense Funds mission is to preserve the natural systems on which all life depends,
Guided by science and economics, we find practical and lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems, November 21,
2013, 5 Reasons for Hope on World Fisheries Day, http://blogs.edf.org/edfish/2013/11/21/5-reasons-for-hope-on-world-fisheries-
day/] //dickies
In the United States, improved managementin part due to the flexibility and alignment of
environmental, social and economic incentives that catch shares provideis paying off.
Fish stocks are rebuilding, fishermen are finding innovative solutions to be more
selective about the stocks they target and the value of commercial seafood landed in
2012 was almost 20% higher than the average of the last decade. Fishermen are also
seeing increased revenue per vessel. NMFS recently released an economic study of fisheries managed under quota
allotments which found revenue increases of 27% in the first year and 68% after 10 years of the
program. Read More. Earlier this year EDF examined successes from the United States and several other countries, such as
Japan, Chile and Mexico, to assemble a comprehensive toolkit for designing and implementing management systems that can build
resilient, profitable fisheries. This toolkit represents years of research and can deliver value to fishery managers around the world.
Read More. After years of deliberation, the European Union has finalized proposals to reform the
Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), the EUs framework for fisheries management.The new policy promises a
better future for both fishermen and fish by providing a comprehensive management
system designed to restore healthy marine environments while supporting profitable
fisheries and thriving coastal communities. The new CFP, which will enter into force in January, calls for
Member States to move to eliminate the wasteful practice of discarding fish at sea. It also requires fishing at
sustainable, Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) levels, and supports a regionalized approach through decentralized
decision-making. Read More. EDF is a proud founding member of an ambitious effort with the World Bank and more than
100 partners to bring 50% of the worlds wild fish under sustainable management in 10 years
while increasing economic benefits by $20 billion annually. This project represents
impressive cooperation among countries, the private sector, NGOs and fishery
stakeholders and can potentially transform the worlds fisheries and fishing
communities. Read More. Many struggling or collapsed fisheries across the globe are already
improving. The challenge is to replicate successful strategies and continue building partnerships with fishermen and other
fishery stakeholders in the regions of the world where healthy fisheries are most essential. We are confident this can be
achieved and will continue working to bring fishermen and managers together to find
efficient, sustainable solutions that will work for both fish and fishermen.

Fisheries are recovering - stats
Koch 13 [Wendy Koch takes a multimedia lens to energy and environmental issues. She joined USA TODAY in 1998 and has
also served as its morning editor and Congressional reporter. March 13, 2013, U.S. fish stocks rebound; two-thirds back from
depletion, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/13/depleted-fisheries-rebound-nrdc/1983297/] //dickies
Nearly two-thirds of once depleted U.S. fish stocks, including monkfish and sea scallops, are now
thriving or bouncing back, a report today says. Of 44 fish stocks, 27 or 64% have been rebuilt
or have met rebuilding targets because of 1996 federal requirements that protected them
from overfishing, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. The law that
sets such limits is due for an update this year, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is proposing to relax the rules. "We now
have the strongest fishery system in the world," says NRDC senior attorney Brad Sewell, noting many foreign
fisheries are in decline. His report says there's an upswing in the number of U.S. recreational fishing
trips and the gross commercial revenue of the 27 rebuilding stocks worth a total $585 million
annually. "We're at this watershed moment," Sewell says, referring to the re-authorization of the Magnuson-
Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. That law was used to help reverse what
was an emerging crisis in the 1990s when many of New England's iconic groundfish
stocks, such as cod, haddock and flounder, faced collapse. Yet anglers have protested what they say are the law's rigid and
arbitrary 10-year timetables to reach certain stock levels, as measured in pounds. "Fishermen are rightfully frustrated by overly
burdensome management measures," Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said at a 2011 news conference in Washington, about his bill to
extend the time periods for rebuilding fisheries. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has introduced a similar measure in the Senate, and
the proposals have GOP co-sponsors. "There's this slowly escalating support" to loosen the rules, Sewell says, adding it could
undermine the U.S. global leadership on rebuilding fish stocks. The NRDC report says that of the 44 stocks analyzed, 21 were from
New England 12 of which are rebuilt or making significant progress, including: Acadian redfish, American plaice, barndoor skate,
Georges Bank haddock, monkfish, red hake, sea scallops, scup, silver hake, spiny dogfish, windowpane flounder and yellowtail
founder (southern New England). In the Mid-Atlantic, six stocks showing significant progress include black sea bass, bluefish,
golden tilefish, scup, spiny dogfish and summer flounder. In the Pacific, seven of eight overfished stocks are fully or largely rebuilt:
bocaccio, canary rockfish, darkblotched rockfish, lingcod, Pacific Ocean perch, widow rockfish and yelloweye rockfish. The cowcod
continues to rebuild very slowly, with 2068 set as the target date. Off the coast of Alaska in the North Pacific, three of four monitored
crab stocks Bering Sea snow crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab and Bering Sea Tanner crab have been rebuilt. Pribilof
Islands blue king crab remains the exception. The report says the main reason that some stocks have made limited or very little
progress is overfishing during the rebuilding period. In New England, these stocks include the region's two iconic cod stocks
(Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine), two yellowtail flounder stocks (Cape Cod/Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank), Gulf of Maine
haddock, Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic winter flounder and white hake. Four other stocks red porgy and black sea bass in
the South Atlantic, and red snapper and greater amberjack in the Gulf are recovering more slowly than anticipated. U.S.
oversight of fish stocks extends 200 miles off the coasts.


Resilient
Fisheries are resilient disaster relief provides relief and past-hurricanes
prove
Nat Geo 12 [National Geography, October 31, 2012, Fishermen Look to Recovery After Hurricane Sandy,
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/10/31/hurricanes_and_fisherydisasters/] //dickies
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, thousands will be without homes, businesses along the Jersey Shore and the South Shore of
Long Island will be rebuilding for months, and the public health, safety, environmental, and economic problems will take even
longer to sort out. Fishermen, as you might imagine, are significantly affected by hurricanes. Shellfish,
finfish, and the people that harvest both, are regularly devastated by hurricanes, though rarely in the
Mid-Atlantic Ocean. According to a 2007 NOAA report, because oysters require two or more years to grow to marketable size, full
recovery from these hurricanes may take years, and some oyster habitats may be lost permanently. After Hurricane Katrina, 90% of
Mississippis oyster beds were lost, and 74% of Louisianas were destroyed sediment and debris covering oysters can easily
suffocate the bivalve. Also impacted by Gulf of Mexico hurricanes were artificial reefs (90% loss in Mississippi), barrier islands (15%
land area loss in Mississippi, 100-foot retreat in Texas), and corals, sea grass beds, and marshes. Together, these impacts
significantly impact fish by destroying or dramatically changing the habitats fish and shellfish need to survive over the long term. As
for the fishermen themselves, storms like Hurricane Sandy put everything at risk. Before storms like this hit, fishermen are already
living on the edge economically gas prices and high costs of coastal properties keep margins low. In the aftermath of Hurricane
Sandy, gas prices are going up even more, and dock repairs, boat repairs, infrastructure repairs (fixing ice machines, cargo
equipment, etc.), and replacing lost raw materials (bait, packaging supplies, spare line and nets), all add up. Here in the U.S.,
there are two federal avenues for fishery disaster relief the Interjurisdictional Fisheries Act (IFA)
and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). In disaster response, under both statutes,
fishery resource disasters can include both the fish themselves and fishing either a
sudden and unexpected large decrease in fish stock biomass or other event that results
in the loss of essentially all access to the fishery resource, such as loss of fishing vessels and gear, for a
substantial period of time in a specific area. As such, natural disasters like hurricanes, which lead to the loss of access
(through inaccessible ports, destroyed equipment and infrastructure, etc., count as fishery disasters. Under the MSA,
at the discretion of the Secretary or at the request of the Governor of an affected State or a fishing community, the Secretary shall
determine whether there is a commercial fishery failure due to a fishery resource disaster as a result ofnatural causes, man-
made causes, or undetermined causes. Interestingly, before any funds can be distributed for disaster relief, the Secretary of
Commerce must show that funded restoration projects will not lead to an increase in fishing capacity (as compared to pre-disaster).
Both the IFA and the MSA give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) broad
latitude for allocating funds they can be sent to states or to fishermen, can be used for
restoring damaged fisheries, or can even be used to ensure that similar disasters dont
occur in the future. Similarly, both statutory funds are capped at 75% of project costs, meaning fishermen or the states
must supply some of the fishery restoration costs themselves. Funds dispersed for disaster relief, according to a
2011 federal policy document that governs fishery disaster implementation, can be broadly used, and the disaster
declaration itself can lead to a variety of other avenues for relief. For example, once a disaster is declared, fishing related
businesses may qualify for certain Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, which can, in certain cases,
help address economic injury and physical damage. In addressing community-wide impacts (like when a hurricane decimates more
than just the fishery resource), assistancemay include developing and improving infrastructure or retraining, with the ultimate
goal of making such areas less dependent on a specific fishery or on fishing in general, [or] job retraining programs To date,
there have been 50 declared fishery disasters (under either law). In the Mid-Atlantic Region (hit hard by
Hurricane Sandy), only a few disasters have been declared (the 2008 NY Hard Clam fishery, 2008 Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, 1999
North Carolina Fisheries, and the 1999 Long Island Sound Lobster Fishery). The 1999 North Carolina disaster declaration, according
to the Press Release from the Department of Commerce, was a direct response to Hurricanes Floyd and Dennis. As the Commerce
Secretary notes, We cant keep Mother Nature from disrupting commercebut we can do our part to help those fishermen who face
economic ruin due to her actions. After weve done what we can to help local fishermen, we should start thinking about how
fisheries and healthy coastlines can help prevent future disasters like Hurricane Sandy. As Paul Greenberg recently wrote in the New
York Times, oysters can form beds along coastlines, forming undulations and contours on the harbor bottom that breaks up wave
action protecting places like low-lying barrier islands or parks from the worst of a storms power (around the NY/NJ region, these
oyster beds are just starting to make a comeback). The 2007 NOAA Fishery Disaster Report also notes that Coastal habitats
(i.e., barrier islands and shorelines, coral reefs, nearshore artificial reefs, mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, oyster reefs, and
emergent intertidal wetlands) also contribute to the coastal ecosystem by absorbing energy from
storms and hurricanes, thereby protecting more landward habitats, coastal communities, and
infrastructure vital to the Nation. The price of Hurricane Sandy will not likely be known for some time homes, businesses,
beaches, boardwalks, and lives, have been destroyed. Fisheries and the fishermen are one part of this picture, and we hope theyre
safe and secure. As for rebuilding our homes, our fisheries and our ecosystems, it will take time, but the communities and families of
the regions fisheries are strong and resilient, so were confident the fisheries will be back.

Squo solves marine ecosystems are resilient and recovering
Dawicki 9 [Shelley Dawicki, Science Writer/Communications Specialist at NOAA/ National Marine Fisheries Service, 30-Jul-
2009, New analysis of global fisheries data suggests marine ecosystems can recover,
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/nnmf-nao073009.php] //dickies
New analysis of global fisheries data suggests marine ecosystems can recover Positive signs evident that steps to
curb overfishing are beginning to succeed An international team of scientists with divergent views on ocean
ecosystems has found that efforts to rebuild many of the world's fisheries are worthwhile and
starting to pay off in many places around the world. Their study puts into perspective
recent reports predicting a total collapse of global fisheries within 40 years. In a paper
published in the July 31 issue of Science, study co-author Mike Fogarty of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) of
NOAA's Fisheries Service in Woods Hole, Mass. and 20 co-authors say that efforts made to reduce overfishing are
succeeding in five of ten large marine ecosystems studied. Some of the successes noted
are in U.S. fisheries. Despite some good news, the researchers found that 68 percent of the worldwide fisheries examined
by the team need rebuilding and that even lower rates of fish removals are needed to reverse the collapse of vulnerable species.
Based on the available data, the team estimated that lightly fished and rebuilding ecosystems account for less
than 10 percent of world fisheries area and catch, but represent examples of opportunities for successfully
rebuilding marine resources elsewhere. Fogarty, head of the NEFSC's Ecosystems Assessment Program and a
specialist in ecosystem based management, says finding a balance between fishing and conservation, while difficult, is possible and
has been accomplished in a number of fisheries. "Sometimes small changes have a big affect. It is not a 'one size fits
all' management approach since each fishery has its own unique circumstances," said Fogarty, who helped provide data from the
U.S. and worked on the analyses that helped shape the report. "Many of the world's fisheries have a long history of overexploitation.
Different management tools are needed, depending on the situation, to restore marine ecosystems and rebuild fisheries. It takes
time. There have been successes in New Zealand and on the U.S. West Coast, and there are promising solutions in other areas, but
rebuilding efforts have to be done on an ecosystem basis and from a global perspective." The new study follows a controversial
prediction that wild caught fish will disappear from the oceans by 2048. That statement, contained in a 2006 Science article that
focused on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services in the oceans, was made by marine ecologist Boris Worm of
Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Fisheries scientist Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington in
Seattle and others disagreed with the prediction, and a debate ensued between fisheries scientists and marine
ecologists about the status of the world's ocean ecosystems. But the two researchers soon met to discuss the issue through the
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) in Santa Barbara, Calif. Fogarty and scientists from various
disciplines around the world were asked to work with Worm and Hilborn to find common ground on which to assess the prospects
for restoring depleted fish populations and their ecosystems. The team compiled and analyzed global catch
data, and evaluated scientific stock assessments, research trawl surveys, and small-scale
fishery information using dozens of models. They considered historical fisheries and
current illegal or unreported fishery catches. The scientific team addressed two basic questions: How do
changes in exploitation rates (the amount of fish taken from the ocean each year) affect fish populations, fishing communities and
yields, and which management approaches have proved successful in rebuilding marine
ecosystems. The authors caution that their analyses were based largely on managed fisheries in developed countries, where
scientific data on fisheries have been collected for decades. There was far less data from other parts of the world, but nonetheless,
there are positive signs in developing countries. As one example, scientists, fishery managers and local
communities in Kenya worked together to close some fisheries and restrict certain fishing gear, management efforts that
have led to increased fish size and abundance and more income for fishers. Although
optimistic, the authors acknowledge that many problems face rebuilding efforts, which often take years or decades and have short
term economic costs. On a worldwide scale, the redistribution of fishing effort from industrialized countries to the developing world,
as is evident in Africa, has meant competition between local fishing boats and foreign fleets. The authors also note that effective
controls on exploitation rates are still lacking in vast areas of the ocean, including those beyond national jurisdictions. Steve
Murawski, chief scientist for NOAA's Fisheries Service, says the team's two-year effort has resulted in more comprehensive
databases and a broader view of the issue. "This study clearly demonstrates that in both developing and developed
parts of the world, if fishery exploitation rates are reduced sufficiently, species and their
ecosystems have the capacity to recover," Murawski said. "The study drew together two scientific approaches,
one focused on conservation of marine communities and the other focused on the science of fishery population dynamics. The result
is a product that has profound importance in the design of management systems to achieve diverse goals for conserving and using
marine ecosystems." The 21 study authors, led by Worm and Hilborn, found that management tools can pay off in the long run. A
combination of traditional approaches, such as catch quotas and community management, coupled with
strategically placed fishing closures, more selective fishing gear, ocean zoning, and
economic incentives hold promise for restoring marine fisheries and ecosystems. Laws
that explicitly forbid overfishing and specify clear rules and targets for rebuilding were
seen as important prerequisites. "When you reduce fishing rates, the sacrifice begins to pay off," Fogarty said.
"Now it is a matter of getting the recovery underway. We are seeing this in the northeast United States in haddock, sea scallops, and
other fishery resources. Sometimes the steps to get to recovery are painful, but the dividends at the end make it worthwhile."


Fish stocks have drastic improvements recent studies prove
Handwerk 13 [Brian Handwerk, Brian is a former National Geographic producer, a regular correspondent for National
Geographic News, and the New York Times Syndicate distributes his work. With more than a decade of experience writing and
editing award-winning interactive web projects, hes written National Geographics award-winning Genographic Project and Safe
Drinking Water is Essential for the National Academy of Sciences, MARCH 26, 2013, Once Decimated U.S. Fish Stocks Enjoy Big
Bounce Back, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130326-fish-stocks-rebound-fisheries-management/] //dickies
Two-thirds of the closely monitored U.S. fish species once devastated by overfishing
have bounced back in a big way thanks to management plans instituted 10 to 15 years
ago, a new study says. And fish aren't the only ones celebrating. Recovering populations can mean more
revenue and jobs for some fishermenbut unfortunately success hasn't been universal. Authors of a new Natural
Resources Defense Council report said the results prove that critically overfished species can be rebuilt, even
from very low levels, when Mother Nature is given a chance to recover. That's good news in a world where rampant
overfishing is a critical concern. "This demonstrates that when we trace the historic arch of these fisheries in which rebuilding
requirements were put in place 15 years ago, we see real positive news. We see populations that were depleted
or in decline turned around and rebuilt or well on their way to rebuilding," said principal author
Brad Sewell. "It's not 100 percent. It's two-thirds, so it's not unbridled good news but it does show the effectiveness
of a law that has had its share of controversy," he added. The study used in-depth stock assessments and other data from NOAA's
National Marine Fisheries Service to chart the progress of stocks managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and
Management Act. That law was revamped by Congress in 1996, in an attempt to address plunging fish populations around America's
coastlines, mandating that stocks be rebuilt within a decade (some were granted exceptions). The NRDC report charts progress for
the 44 stocks that have sufficient population and catch data under the act and found nearly two-thirds, some 28 stocks, have now
been designated as fully rebuilt or as having made significant progress toward sustainable populations. The study doesn't include
species not managed under Magnuson-Stevens, those for which recent stock assessments aren't available, or those fished
internationally. Despite those omissions, the success of so many rebuilding plans has delivered an
economic boon to many fishermen, Sewell said. Gross commercial fishing revenues from the 28 rebuilt stocks were
54 percent higher when adjusted for inflation during the 2008-2010 period than they were when rebuilding began. "The
system overall is working and making progress," said Galen Tromble, of NOAA Fisheries' Office of
Sustainable Fisheries. "We just have to keep doing the science, collecting all the data we can, and then adjusting our management
accordingly." (Related: "Entrepreneurs Fight for the Future of Fish.")

Kelp
Alt Causes
Alt cause- sea otters
NOAA No Date (Charity for ocean preservation, http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/about/ecosystems/kelpdesc.html \\ME)

In nature, all living things are in some way connected. Within each community each species depends on one or more of
the others for survival. And at the core of individual ecosystems is a creature, or in some cases a plant, known as a keystone species. This species
operates much like a true key stone, which is the stone at the top of an arch that supports the other stones and keeps the whole arch from falling down.
When a keystone species is taken out of its environment, the whole system could collapse. In California's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary
the sea otter is a keystone species in the kelp forest ecosystem. Kelp forests provide food and shelter for
large numbers of fish and shellfish. Kelp also protect coastlines from damaging wave action. One of the sea otter's favorite delicacies is the sea urchin
who in turn loves kelp. Sea otters When present in healthy numbers, sea otters keep sea urchin
populations in check. But when sea otters decline, urchin numbers explode and grab
onto kelp like flies on honey. The urchins chew off the anchors that keep the kelp in place,
causing them to die and float away, setting off a chain reaction that depletes the food
supply for other marine animals causing their numbers to decline. By the early 20th century when sea
otters were nearly hunted out of existence for their fur, kelp beds disappeared and so did the marine life that depended on kelp. Years later,
conservationists moved some remaining otters from Big Sur to Central California. Gradually, their numbers grew, sea urchin numbers declined, and the
kelp began to grow again. As the underwater forests grew, other species reappeared. Protecting keystone species, like sea
otters, is a priority for conservationists. Often, the extent of the keystone functions of a species aren't known until the
species has been removed from its environment and the ecosystem changes. Rather than wait until it may be too late for the system's health and
survival, scientists make every effort to keep an ecosystem working as nature had intended.
Alt cause- storms and algae fills in
Bagely 11 (Katherine Bagley is a reporter for InsideClimate News who covers the intersection of environmental science,
politics and policy, with an emphasis on climate change. Katherine holds master's degrees in journalism and earth and
environmental sciences from Columbia University, Two of Earths Ocean Carbon Sinks Shrinking, Studies Show,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/idUS415875382320110407 \\ME)

Kelp plants, known as the "underwater forest," are another vital ecosystem at risk, though for different reasons, according to a report
published online on Mar. 24 in the journal Global Change Biology. The large beds of seaweed, which can grow up to 50 feet high,
are scattered across the globe in temperate and polar regions, including the entire west coast of North America. They are widely
considered one of the most productive ecosystems on Earth because of a high rate of carbon cycling, the process by which carbon
travels through the ecological community. In giant kelp plants, most cycling of carbon works this way: the seaweed takes in carbon
through photosynthesis; marine life such as sea urchins graze on the kelp to provide them life, inhaling the carbon. It then moves
through the food web relatively quickly as one organism consumes another. While large swathes of carbon get recycled through the
ecosystem, the kelp forests are believed to store as many as 60 million metric of carbon, according to a 2009 report by the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). But their long-term health is now very much in
question. Kelp is particularly susceptible to damage from storm waves, which rip the
seaweed out of the earth as they tear through. The new research by a California-based team of ecologists, led
by Jarrett Byrnes of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, finds increased storm strength and
frequency from human-caused climate change will stop kelp from growing back after
wave damage. Wave height records collected over the last 60 years by government
agencies and universities show that winter storms have on average been getting stronger
and more frequent. Most climate science models argue this trend will continue as greenhouse gases accumulate and global
ocean circulations get disrupted. Using a decade of field records from the Santa Barbara region, satellite imagery, wave
records and data on kelp forest food webs, Byrnes found that if strong storms start
happening annually as predicted by models kelp won't be able to regenerate fast
enough to replenish its stock. The result will be that the forests get replaced by other
seaweeds. The researchers say this will eventually shrink diversity and complexity of animal species in the ecosystem, slow
carbon turnover and trigger a decline in storage carbon capacity. Unlike mangroves, though, the loss of kelp won't
necessarily lead to a sudden reduction in the sequestration of carbon from the
atmosphere because the replacement algae also have absorptive capacity, Byrnes and co-author
Dan Reed of the University of California, Santa Barbara told SolveClimate News.
Alt causes- Mangrove forest destruction
Bagely 11 (Katherine Bagley is a reporter for InsideClimate News who covers the intersection of environmental science,
politics and policy, with an emphasis on climate change. Katherine holds master's degrees in journalism and earth and
environmental sciences from Columbia University, Two of Earths Ocean Carbon Sinks Shrinking, Studies Show,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/07/idUS415875382320110407 \\ME)

Mangrove forests trees and shrubs that thrive in brackish waters have declined 30 to 50 percent in
the past 50 years, according to one study out this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The seaside carbon sinks are generally being razed for coastal development such as
houses, roads, railways, as well as to turn wetlands into farmland and expand fishing. Towns
built on coasts nearby can also leech toxins into the forests and poison sediment,
harming life-giving root systems. Mangroves suck up carbon through the atmosphere
during photosynthesis and store it in their leaves, branches and above-ground roots.
Because their thick, mucky soils have fairly low oxygen levels, the natural decay of the
biomass is slow, resulting in a steady but heavy buildup of carbon over time. For the first
time, scientists have crunched the numbers on the carbon sequestered in these trees, dead organic matter and soil in 25 sites across
Micronesia, Indonesia and Bangladesh which house a large portion of Earth's mangroves and gleaned insight into salty forests
worldwide. The international team, led by Daniel Donato, an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research
Station in Hilo, Hawaii, said soils account for a massive 45 to 98 percent of carbon storage in mangrove ecosystems. Because of this,
"coastal mangrove forests store more carbon than almost any other forest on Earth," the
research station said via release. Earlier research by Steven Bouillon, a mangrove ecologist with Catholic University of Leuven in
Belgium, estimated that the world's mangroves take in more than 200 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide annually, with some of it being stored and the rest getting cycled through to nourish other ecosystems.
Uproot the trees and degrade the soil, and the carbon gets spewed back into the atmosphere, the new study affirms. In total,
mangrove destruction releases as many as 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
annually, it finds an amount nearly equivalent to the yearly emissions of Norway, Finland and
Sweden combined. The emissions footprint of clearing mangroves is disproportionate to their presence. While
mangroves encompass only 0.7 percent of the world's tropical rainforests, their
discharge of stored carbon accounts for roughly 10 percent of all deforestation-related
emissions, Donato said in an interview. In total, forest loss is responsible for nearly a
fifth of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
Alt causes- nutrient pollution
Science Daly 13 (Reporting on the outcomes of a study done by The University of Adelaide by Dr Bayden Russell,
Research Associate, and Laura Falkenberg, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Stop marine pollution to protect kelp forests,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130717095215.htm \\ME)

"When we manipulated CO2 and nutrient levels in an experimental marine ecosystem
we found the effect of both of them together was greater than the sum of their individual
impacts," says Dr Bayden Russell, of the University's Environment Institute and Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth and
Environmental Sciences. The project, by PhD student Laura Falkenberg, found that removing
the nutrients from the water removed the combined effect, improving the environment for kelp
growth. Kelp forests are one of the most productive marine ecosystems in colder waters and form the basis of food webs for many
fish and other marine life. "They are the coral reefs of colder waters," Dr Russell says. "Increased nutrients from
agriculture, wastewater discharge and stormwater on urban coasts are already causing
damage to kelp populations in our coastal waters but our research shows that, as CO2 rises the impacts will
be much worse and we could lose these really important marine habitats," says Dr Russell. The researchers grew kelp in
experimental tanks floating in the North Haven Boat Harbour with different combinations of added nutrients and CO2. They
measured the growth of turf algae which is a precursor to kelp forest loss. As the turf algae
grows it displaces the kelp. "When we removed the nutrients but kept the CO2 high we found
that after six months we'd reduced the turf algae by 75% -- we'd removed that synergistic effect," says Dr
Russell.
Laundry list of alt causes and the impact is empirically denied
Steneck et al 2 (ROBERT S. STENECK Professor School of Marine Sciences University of Maine, MICHAEL H.
GRAHAM Associate Professor, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and San Jose State, Senior lecturer Bates College, DEBBIE
CORBETT US Fish and Wildlife Service, JON M. ERLANDSON Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, JAMES A.
ESTES US Geological Survey MIA J. TEGNER Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, Kelp forest
ecosystems: biodiversity, stability, resilience and future published in Environmental Conservation,
http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/download.php?
file=%2FENC%2FENC29_04%2FS0376892902000322a.pdf&code= 70d980b7353203fee332fec41a70bb64 \\ME)

Widespread kelp deforestation can result from disease, herbivory, and physiological
stress or interactions among those processes. At lower latitude kelp forests (usually less
than 40), periodic deforestations results from oceanographic anomalies in
temperature, salinity or nutrients that either kill kelps directly or trigger diseases that
become lethal to physiologically- stressed plants. At mid-latitudes (about 4060), herbivory by
sea urchins is the most common and most important agent of kelp deforestation.
Latitudinal differences in patterns and processes shaping kelp forests have resulted in different researchers working in the same
kelp forest system but reaching different conclusions (Foster 1990). Here we address the geography of kelp deforestation patterns
and processes. Kelp-free patches have probably always occurred at some scale but those created by
physical factors tend to be relatively small and short-lived. The oldest term for algal deforestation is the Japanese word isoyake,
which means rock burning (D. Fujita, personal communication 2002). The word was coined by Yendo (1902,
1903) to describe algal deforestation in coastal zones of central Japan where the algal
decline was thought to have resulted from salinity anomalies (Yendo 1903, 1914) rather than grazing,
because herbivorous sea urchins were rare. The isoyake killed all foliacious algae first and then all encrusting coralline algae; the
algae recovered several years later (Yendo 1914). Other mass mortalities of Ecklonia- and Eisenia-dominated kelp forests resulted
from incursions of the Kuroshio Current along the central Japan coast (D. Fujita, personal communication 2002). On Honshu
Island, near the southern limit of Japanese kelp, anomalous incursions of the warm Tsushima Current periodically create isoyake
conditions. Such oceanographically-induced kelp deforestations are usually short-lived and reversible, as was the original isoyake
case in Japan (Yendo 1914). Kelp deforestations also result from El Nio events. Strong El Nios
halt coastal upwelling of nutrient-rich water and cause surface waters to warm (Dayton
et al. 1999). These anomalies in California caused patchy deforestation followed by rapid
recovery (Tegner & Dayton 1987; Tegner et al. 1997). Such physiological stresses are likely to be more
common toward the low latitude limits of kelp ranges. For example, the northern limit of three species of
brown algae in northern Chile shifted south toward higher latitudes following the El Nio event of 19821983 (Peters & Breeman
1993). Such stresses may make kelps more susceptible to disease. Low-latitude kelps in northern New
Zealand have succumbed to a disease that may have resulted from physiological stress (Cole & Babcock 1996; Cole & Syms 1999).
Within mid-latitudes (roughly between 40 and 60 latitude) where kelp development
is less likely to be limited by physical processes such as temperature, nutrients and
light, deforestation most often results from sea urchin herbivory (Table 2; Leighton et al. 1966;
Lawrence 1975; Duggins 1980; Himmelman 1980; Dayton 1985a,b; Estes & Duggins 1995; Mann 2000). This is most evident in the
Northern Hemisphere where the most widespread and long-lasting herbivore-induced kelp deforestations have resulted from sea
urchin grazing (Table 3). These primarily Laminaria-dominated kelp forests (Fig. 1) have been reduced in historical times to
coralline-dominated urchin barrens in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the Gulf of Maine, Canadian Maritimes (to Newfoundland;
Himmelman 1980), northern Japan (Hokkaido Island), Iceland and northern Norway (Table 3). South of those regions, forests
either remain intact, such as in southern California (Dayton et al. 1984), or are deforested patchily in relatively few regions, such as
in southern Norway (Sivertsen 1997), Ireland (Kitching & Thain 1983), the UK (Kain 1975) and southern Japan (Honshu Island;
Fujita 1998).

Oceans
Oceans Resilient
Sea creatures have adapted to ocean acidification
Science Daily, 13 (The University of California at Santa Barbara did a study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130415100903.htm Ocean's future not so bleak?
Resilience found in shelled plants exposed to ocean acidification. CTB)
As fossil fuel emissions increase, so does the amount of carbon dioxide oceans absorb and dissolve, lowering their pH levels. "As pH
declines, there is this concern that marine species that have shells may start dissolving or may have more difficulty making calcium
carbonate, the chalky substance that they use to build shells," said Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, a professor in UCSB's
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology. Iglesias-Rodriguez and
postdoctoral researcher Bethan Jones, who is now at Rutgers University, led a large-
scale study on the effects of ocean acidification on these tiny plants that can only be seen under the
microscope. Their research, funded by the European Project on Ocean Acidification, is published in the journal PLoS ONE and
breaks with traditional notions about the vitality of calcifiers, or creatures that make shells, in future ocean conditions. "The
story years ago was that ocean acidification was going to be bad, really bad for
calcifiers," said Iglesias-Rodriguez, whose team discovered that one species of the tiny
single celled marine coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, actually had bigger shells in
high carbon dioxide seawater conditions. While the team acknowledges that calcification tends to decline with
acidification, "we now know that there are variable responses in sea corals, in sea urchins, in
all shelled organisms that we find in the sea." These E. huxleyi are a large army of ocean-regulating shell
producers that create oxygen as they process carbon by photosynthesis and fortify the ocean food chain. As one of Earth's main
vaults for environmentally harmful carbon emissions, their survival affects organisms inside and outside the marine system.
However, as increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide causes seawater to slide down the pH scale toward acidic levels, this
environment could become less hospitable. The UCSB study incorporated an approach known as shotgun proteomics to uncover
how E. huxleyi's biochemistry could change in future high carbon dioxide conditions, which were set at four times the current levels
for the study. This approach casts a wider investigative net that looks at all changes and influences in the environment as opposed to
looking at individual processes like photosynthesis. Shotgun proteomics examines the type, abundance, and alterations in proteins
to understand how a cell's machinery is conditioned by ocean acidification. "There is no perfect approach," said Iglesias-Rodriguez.
"They all have their caveats, but we think that this is a way of extracting a lot of information from this system." To mirror
natural ocean conditions, the team used over half a ton of seawater to grow the E.
huxleyi and bubbled in carbon dioxide to recreate both present day and high future
carbon levels. It took more than six months for the team to grow enough plants to
accumulate and analyze sufficient proteins. The team found that E. huxleyi cells exposed
to higher carbon dioxide conditions were larger and contained more shell than those
grown in current conditions. However, they also found that these larger cells grow slower than those under current
carbon dioxide conditions. Aside from slower growth, the higher carbon dioxide levels did not seem to
affect the cells even at the biochemical level, as measured by the shotgun proteomic
approach. "The E. huxleyi increased the amount of calcite they had because they kept calcifying but slowed down division
rates," said Iglesias-Rodriguez. "You get fewer cells but they look as healthy as those under current ocean conditions, so the shells
are not simply dissolving away." The team stresses that while representatives of this species seem to have biochemical mechanisms
to tolerate even very high levels of carbon dioxide, slower growth could become problematic. If other species grow faster, E. huxleyi
could be outnumbered in some areas. "The cells in this experiment seemed to tolerate future ocean
conditions," said Jones. "However, what will happen to this species in the future is still an open question. Perhaps the grow-
slow outcome may end up being their downfall as other species could simply outgrow and replace them."
Coral reefs are resilient new studies prove dolomite protects the reefs
Mercer, 12 (Phil Mercer writes for the Voice of America. http://www.voanews.com/content/reefs-
resilient-to-ocean-acidity-say-australian-researchers/1564767.html Reefs Resilient to Ocean Acidity Say
Australian Researchers. CTB)
SYDNEY New Australian research shows coral reefs are more resistant to ocean
acidification than first thought. Scientists have been concerned that coral is vulnerable when carbon levels in the
atmosphere rise, along with the acidity of the ocean. But an Australian National University study on the Great Barrier Reef suggests
otherwise. Amid the threat to reefs from the effects of climate change, pollution and overfishing, Australian researchers have found
some rare good news. A team at the Australia National University in Canberra has been
investigating coralline algae, which are plants that act like a glue to bind coral. One
useful analogy is that the algae are the cement, while the coral are the bricks that
comprise a reef system. A new study has found that dolomite, a carbonate mineral, helps
to protect reefs from rising ocean acidity, which is caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Lead author Merinda Nash, a doctoral student, says it is an important discovery. There was a lot of
concern that the coralline algae, which plays a key role in building the reef and binding
corals together, that this would be the first thing to dissolve as CO2 went up and that
that would impact the reef structure," she said. "So we found that this presence of dolomite actually
reduced the dissolution rate significantly to about one tenth the rate of the algae without
the dolomite, so that's quite good news.
Reefs have and will continue to adapt
Nature World News, 6/23/14
(http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7707/20140623/great-barrier-reef-more-resilient-
assumed.htm Great Barrier Reef More Resilient than Assumed. CTB)
The Great Barrier Reef has survived a wide range of temperature in the past, a new
study from Australia shows. Researchers at Australian National University and colleagues collected
fossilized coral samples from the Reef and mapped its history. The team used the corals to
reconstruct the ocean surface temperature between 20,000 and 13,000 years ago, abc
news reported. They found that the Reef grew during the last ice age, when the ocean
temperature was four to five degree lower than it is now. "It was right at the colder limit
of what corals can take, but the reef grew and developed from there," said Dr Helen
McGregor, from ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, according to a news release. The study
shows that the Great Barrier Reef is much tougher than previously assumed and has the
ability to cope with warm oceans. "The Great Barrier Reef has previously coped with
changes in ocean temperature and corals seem to be able to adapt to warmer
temperatures, at least when the changes occur over a few thousand years," McGregor told
ABC news.
Naturally, oil seeps release oil into the seabed no impact
Fin, 10 (Al Fin writes on energy, technology, news and politics. http://oilprice.com/The-
Environment/Oil-Spills/Why-Oceans-Are-So-Resilient-To-Oil-Spills.html Why Oceans are so Resilient to
Oil Spills. CTB)
Worldwide seeps can add up to more that 14 million barrels a year, and in the Gulf of
Mexico the NRC report suggests that the annual flow from the seabed is around 1
million barrels/year. (Etkin puts the high end estimate at 1,400,000 barrels a year). _BitTooth Mother nature
has had billions of years (approx.) to learn to deal with oil seeps. And mother nature has
not wasted her time, either. Micro- and macro-organisms have developed a wide
assortment of tools -- enzymes -- which efficiently break down hydrocarbons and many
other potentially toxic chemicals in very short order. The remainder of the natural oil not
evaporated each year is broken down by oil-eating bacteria (which did not instantly evolve in the hours
following the Deepwater Horizon explosion more proof that oil is constantly entering the seas) or it is
buried in sediments along with other hydrocarbon-rich detritus both equally scalable
processes. _EnergyTribune
Oceans are resilient to oil spills bacteria eats the methane
Kaufman, 11 (Leslie Kaufman is a media reporter for the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/12spill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Gulfs Complexity and
Resilience Seen in Studies of Oil Spill. CTB)
Still, there has been some independent scientific work done in the gulf, and it has produced some good news. Because the
spill occurred at very high pressure a mile beneath the oceans surface, some of the oil
was reduced to tiny droplets that remained suspended thousands of feet deep in a fine
mist. Terry C. Hazen, who leads the ecology department at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, took 170 samples from around the Deepwater Horizon between July 27 and Aug. 26
last year, just weeks after the wellhead was capped. Dr. Hazen was looking to track the fate of the
underwater oil as it spread and instead found it to be entirely gone. We can detect
down to 2 parts per billion, he said, but nothing was there. His work was financed by a grant his lab
won from BP, the owner of the well, long before the spill, and it was not in any way reviewed or influenced by the company, he said.
The results showed that the oil had not just been diluted with water but that it had
largely been eaten by naturally occurring bacteria. Researchers worried early on that such bacteria might
not exist thousands of feet down or that the process of digestion might be particularly slow because of colder temperatures at these
depths. But Dr. Hazens group found bacteria that specialized in oil eating in frigid
temperatures. Another byproduct of the spill was roughly 200,000 metric tons of
methane gas. In June 2010 there was as much as 100,000 times as much methane
dissolved gas in the gulf as normal. Scientists worried that it could remain dissolved in the water column, depleting
oxygen levels, for years. But by fall, researchers from the University of California, Santa
Barbara, and Texas A&M took water samples from 207 sites near the spill and found
that methane proportions were back to normal. John Kessler, an oceanographer at
Texas A&M, said: It appeared that the methane would be present in the gulf for years to
come. Instead, methane respiration rates increased to levels higher than have ever been
recorded.
Ocean bacteria have always been eating oil
DFO, 13 (Fisheries and Oceans Canada. http://www.dfo-
mpo.gc.ca/science/publications/article/2012/01-25-12-eng.html An Appetite for Oil: Oceans Rebound
from Oil Spills with the Aid of Microbes. CTB)
In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which sent an estimated 4.9 million
barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico during three months in 2010, nature continued to do
what it has long done slowly but surely break down the oil into its constituent parts
including carbon dioxide and water. A sheen of oil was readily visible on the surface in the Gulf of Mexico following
the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Oil in the environment is nothing new. Petroleum seeps leaks of
natural gas, crude oil and bitumen into the Earths atmosphere or onto its surface,
including the ocean floor have been recorded as far back as the Paleolithic Era. Recent
studies have documented their occurrence around the world in places such as the Arctic, the Gulf of Mexico and on the west coast of
California. Scientific studies have verified that naturally occurring microorganisms in the
environment, primarily bacteria and fungi, have a huge capacity for breaking down, or
degrading, oil. Taking into account the volume of oil released from natural seeps, if it
werent for microbial degradation wed probably be knee deep in oil, says Dr. Kenneth
Lee, Executive Director of the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research
(COOGER), a Fisheries and Oceans Canada centre of expertise headquartered at the Bedford Institute of
Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. COOGER coordinates research efforts into the environmental and oceanographic impacts
of offshore petroleum exploration, production and transportation. The work conducted by this research group
has established an international reputation for Fisheries and Oceans Canada in oil spill
response research.
Ocean ecosystems are resilient a decrease in species does not devastate
ecosystems and feedback loops ensure adaptation
Saikia, Ray, et al 11 [Surjya Kumar Saikia, Santanu Ray * , Joyita Mukherjee and Madhumita Roy Ecological Modelling
Laboratory, Department of Zoology, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India, 2011, Marine Biology : Aquatic Ecosystems,
New York, NY, USA: Nova Science Publishers, Inc,
http://site.ebrary.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umich//docDetail.action?docID=10681245] //dickies
The health of an ecosystem is reflected by its stability (or ecological resilience) is long held belief (Batabyal, 1998; Ferriera & Towns,
2001) and connectance (number of connections) of an ecosystem begets the stability of that ecosystem. Thus, greater the species
diversity (a proxy measure for connectedness) present in a system, the more stable the system network is likely to be and the more
likely the various ecosystem functions will be maintained (Folke et al ., 1996). This diversity-stability hypothesis is
the most legitimate ecological argument for preserving diversity within ecosystems. Importantly, in focusing on diversity, this
hypothesis is grounded in the population-community approach to ecology, which focuses on
organisms and species, and thus views ecosystems as networks of interacting populations (ONeill et al ., 1986; Allen & Hoekstra,
1992). Pioneering research investigating the diversity-stability hypothesis by MacArthur (1955) seemed to affirm that ecological
communities that were highly connected are more stable than simpler ones. MacArthur (1955) suggested that there was a direct
correlation between the logarithm of the number of food links in a food web and the degree of stability. Elton (1958) added further
weight to the argument when it was pointed out that the apparent extreme stability of tropical rain forests may well be because these
systems are the archetypal diverse and connected ecosystem. However, MacArthur (1972) suggests that stable systems
have in fact intermediate levels of connectance. This credible proposition was also taken up by ONeill et al.
(1986) who concluded that, because a system can become unstable either by being over or
underconnected, the addition of a new component can have an effect opposite to what
might be intuitively expected. Thus, an increase in diversity can stabilise the system, either by adding connected parts
to an underconnected system, or removing connected parts to an over-connected system. This diversity-stability relationship may be
formulated as follows: if the system can offer a better survival ( i . e . increasing stability in relation to the
changing forces functions by decreasing the diversity), the system will not hesitate to react accordingly.
Thus, the more diverse an ecosystem, does not give the best answer to stability and
survival (Olmsted, 1988). The above model was opposed by May (1973), who found in his study of randomly assembled model
food webs exactly the opposite: too rich a web connectance leads to instability. It is because as the
number of species increases, the probability increases that one of them will be
associated with a real positive eigen value, which will hence act towards an unstable
mode of oscillation within the system. In the computer simulation, Pimm (1991) found that
ecosystems with few species were easy to invade and destabilise. Indeed, ecological communities of
up to twelve species were easily entered by intruding and destabilising species. This conclusion was soon supported with empirical
evidence by Baskin (1994), who concluded from his findings that the biggest gains in stability, for example come with the first ten
species in a system; beyond ten, additional species did not seem to add much stability, perhaps
because the essential functional niches had already been filled. Interestingly, Baskin (1994) further
noted that similar conclusions can be made for productivity, in that more diverse systems are more productive
at least up to a point. From most empirical evidence it is found that patterns present in ecosystems
are for the most part entirely independent of the species the ecosystem contains (Naemm et
al., 1994; Holling et al., 1995; Lockwood & Pimm, 2001). In fact, ecosystem functioning can normally be
preserved even as the component species normally considered responsible for that
particular function are lost, as other species readily fill the vacated niche (Tracy & Brussard,
1994). Similarly, studies of various ecosystems have also shown that the population dynamics of individual species are
more sensitive to stress and perturbations within ecosystems than are ecosystem processes (Schindler,
1990; Vitousek, 1990). Then the question comes how important any species are in an ecosystem. In theory, we could experimentally
delete species one at a time, measure the ecosystem impacts on resilience and function, and generate a frequency distribution of
species importance, relative to abundance. Although some ecologist have tried to solve this insurmountable challenge the research
remains inadequate as only a fraction of the species in an ecological community have been deleted (Berlow et al., 1999). The
importance of a species might change in different places or at different times is an additional problem (Power et al., 1996). So, in one
place and at one time a species may be highly valuable ecologically but in another place or at another time may not be important
ecologically. It remains uncertain as what is the underlying relationship to deciphering ecological resilience. Keeping in
consideration, Costanza (1992) proposed that, a system state should be considered healthy if it is stable and therefore sustainable;
that is, if it is able to maintain its metabolic vigour, its internal organisation, structure and autonomy and is resilient to
perturbations and stresses over a time and space frame relevant to the system. According to Costanga, modelling ecosystem health
it must integrate measures of function, structure and stability, by incorporating potential, connectedness and ecological resilience
variables together a straightforward though ad hoc multiplicative index of ecosystem health is formulated (Costanza, 1992; Mageau
et al., 1995). m ax E H I C P R where EHI is the ecosystem health index, C is the connectedness of the ecosystem, P is the
potential of the ecosystem, R is the ecological resilience of the ecosystem Costanzas (1992) Overall Health Index (HI) was
HI=V*O*R where V = system vigor; O = system organization index (0-1); and R = system resilience (to stress) (0-1) Regardless, of
Costanzas efforts to develop a suitable ecosystem health index, it is apparent that the various models representing both the
processfunctionalist and population-community approaches are insufficient and have considerable reductionistic tendencies that
fail to capture the dynamics of non-linear systems and explore under the mist of ecosystem complexity.Von Bertalanffy (1968)
recently conceptualised a general theory of nonlinear systems, it has emerged from outside the scientific field of ecology, which
seems to have finally unveiled the development and behaviour of ecosystems into just a few fundamental principles. This new theory
of development and behaviour of dynamic non-linear systems is at its core based on the principle of self-organisation. That is,
dynamic non-linear systems such as ecosystems tend to lead to a process of lower to higher levels of organisation (through self-
organisation), while being kept within limits (Schuster & Sigmund, 1980). The emergence of higher formed
network structures is led by selforganisation (Figure 6). The nexus of this self-organising process is an
attractor, whereby attractor comes from the state space description of the behaviour of the ecosystem. Thus, a state within a
system behaves as if it were attracted toward a domain. The dynamics of a self-organising system are
largely a function of internal causality and as such the system is dominated by non-
Newtonian positive and negative feedback loops (Mandal et al. 2009a). These feedback loops allow
the system to maintain itself about an attractor despite changes in the external
environment, because the feedback loops of the system tend to maintain the systems
present state. Therefore, the environment may change substantially and exhibit new
emergent properties, without the system exhibiting major change. It is this capacity to
organise and maintain itself about an attractor that is the fundamental hallmark of a
self-organising system. As such, a self-organising system implies a goal-like function (similar in character to the climax
phase in the succession-to-climax model), whereby internal causal mechanisms direct the ecosystem towards the state attractor. It is
important to re-enforce that self-organisation is a process developed internally within the system,
and is not the product of an external engine as thought in case of vitalism where life forces directs an
ecosystem along some trajectory (Mandal et al., 2009a). Emergent properties arise from local interactions among system
components, and in turn they influence the local interactions. All evolving ecosystems possess emergent properties and appear to
behave like much-like super-organisms (Kay & Regier, 2000). But this super-organic behaviour is the result of a continuing two-way
feedback between local interactions and global properties. Prigogine (1980) proposed that thermodynamically, ecosystems as
selforganising systems are dissipative systems on the purview of the second law of thermodynamics. That is, according to the second
law, energy with a high amount of information and organisation always dissipates in a materially closed system. Thus, while the
quantity of energy is always conserved as implied in the first law of thermodynamics, the quality as implied in the second law does
not, which means that all energy transformations will involve energy of higher quality being degraded to energy of lower quality. In
the purview of second law of thermodynamics an ecosystem of selforganisation must face decay and degradation. But, it is
wondering how do ecosystems have the ability to build up and maintain increasingly newly emergent complex structures, when the
components of a system have an inherent predisposition towards disorder, decay and degradation? It would appear there is a
paradox of life; that is, the emergence of complex structures in the face of the second law of thermodynamics. This contradiction was
resolved by Schrodinger (1944) by pointing out that whereas the second law of thermodynamics describes isolated or closed systems;
all ecosystems have to be described as open systems, which exchange energy with surrounding systems and their environment. Thus,
an ecosystem is not strictly a system, but rather a system of systems. That is, there is a hierarchical nature of systems, whereby each
system is nested within a system and is made up of systems (Allen & Starr, 1982). Accordingly, because an ecosystem is an open
system it can maintain a non-equilibrium state and avoid thermodynamic equilibrium by importing high quality energy from other
surrounding systems and its external environment, whilst exporting low quality energy. This exchange of entropy (i.e. a measure of
energy disorder, whereby high quality energy has low entropy) by the ecosystem allows the ecosystems total entropy to decrease,
while inevitably increasing the entropy in the surrounding systems environment. Schrodinger (1944) concluded these findings by
expressing that life feeds on low entropy.
Marine ecosystems are resilient redundancy and adaptation solves
Bernhardt et al 13 [Joanna R. Bernhardt, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for
Environmental Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, Heather M. Leslie, Department of Zoology and Biodiversity
Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada; email:
joey.bernhardt@biodiversity.ubc.ca March, 2013, Resilience to Climate Change in Coastal Marine Ecosystems, doi:
10.1146/annurev-marine-121211-172411] //dickies
Abstract Ecological resilience to climate change is a combination of resistance to
increasingly frequent and severe disturbances, capacity for recovery and
selforganization, and ability to adapt to new conditions. Here, we focus on three broad categories of ecological
properties that underlie resilience: diversity, connectivity, and adaptive capacity. Diversity increases the variety of responses to disturbance and the
likelihood that species can compensate for one another. Connectivity among species, populations, and ecosystems enhances capacity for recovery by
providing sources of propagules, nutrients, and biological legacies. Adaptive capacity includes a combination of phenotypic plasticity, species range
shifts, and microevolution. We discuss empirical evidence for how these ecological and evolutionary mechanisms contribute to the resilience of coastal
marine ecosystems following climate changerelated disturbances, and how resource managers can apply this information to sustain these systems and
the ecosystem services they provide. 371 Annu. Rev. Marine. Sci. 2013.5:371-392. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Michigan
- Ann Arbor on 07/18/14. For personal use only. INTRODUCTION Climate Change and Coastal Ecosystems Coastal marine ecosystems are among the
most valuable and heavily used natural systems worldwide (Halpern et al. 2008, Millenn. Ecosyst. Assess. 2005). They provide many important
ecosystem services, including shoreline protection and food from fisheries and aquaculture. As human populations in coastal areas continue to grow, so
does our dependence on the functioning of these valuable systems. Among the multiple human impacts that threaten the functioning of coastal
ecosystems, anthropogenic climate change acts on the most extensive spatial and temporal scales (Halpern et al. 2008) and poses some of the most
severe threats (Doney et al. 2012, Hoegh-Guldberg & Bruno 2010). Rising greenhouse gas concentrations have triggered a suite of changes in the ocean.
The upper layers of the ocean have warmed by approximately 0.6C over the past 100 years (Intergov. Panel Clim. Change 2007). Along with warming
comes a set of additional abiotic changes in marine ecosystems, including sea level rise (Rahmstorf et al. 2007), more intense storms (Knutson et al.
2010), and changes in wind strength and upwelling patterns (Bakun & Weeks 2004). In addition, increases in the oceans heat content are likely to have
important impacts on the worlds major current systems (Pisias et al. 2001). Aside from warming, increased concentrations of anthropogenic CO2 in
the atmosphere have led to ocean acidification: The pH of ocean surface layers has decreased by approximately 0.02 pH units per decade since the
preindustrial period (Doney et al. 2009). These changes in ocean temperature and pH are significant when compared with the geochemical conditions
prevalent in the worlds oceans in the past (Pelejero et al. 2010, Petit et al. 1999). Moreover, the expected magnitude of pH change over the next few
hundred years is greater than that of any other pH changes inferred from the fossil record over the past 200300 million years (Caldeira & Wickett
2003). Together, these environmental changes impact all levels of biological organization and can disrupt ecosystem functioning. The direct effects of
climate changes, such as warming water temperatures, start at the cellular level (Hochachka&Somero 2002) and cascade up to the individual organism
and population levels by altering metabolic rates, survival, and other life-history traits (OConnor et al. 2007). Other population-level impacts arise
from shifts in oceanographic processes that affect dispersal and recruitment. Community-level effects arise from changes in the relative abundances of
interacting species and changes in per-capita interaction strength (Sanford 1999). Finally, these populationand community-level impacts may result in
ecosystem-level changes (e.g., in species diversity and distributions, ecosystem productivity, and ecosystem service production) (Doney et al. 2012).
Ecosystems and their responses to changing conditions are often unpredictable, and are characterized by thresholds and nonlinear dynamics (Folke et
al. 2004). Slowly accumulating changes in both biotic and abiotic variables can push coastal ecosystems toward critical thresholds, resulting in loss of
ecosystem functioning and services (Hoegh-Guldberg & Bruno 2010). One example of such a threshold is an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 450
ppm, beyond which coral growth rates will decline dramatically and reefs will be pushed into a negative carbonate balance and lost to erosion (Hoegh-
Guldberg et al. 2007; but see also Pandolfi et al. 2011). As rates of mortality and erosion exceed rates of coral growth, coral reef structure will be lost
and important ecosystem functions such as wave attenuation will decline. As a consequence, valuable ecosystem services, such as protection from
erosion and flooding, are threatened (Figure 1). Given the cumulative effects of climate change and the valuable ecosystem functions at risk, there is a
need for predictive conceptual frameworks and management that explicitly integrate across multiple scales of biological organization and function. 372
Bernhardt Leslie Annu. Rev. Marine. Sci. 2013.5:371-392. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Michigan - Ann Arbor on
07/18/14. For personal use only. Figure 1 Climate change threatens the delivery of valuable ecosystem services and human well-being. Through impacts
such as increased temperature and rising pH, ecosystems, including coral reefs, may be pushed toward critical thresholds. Crossing these thresholds
may lead to major changes in ecosystem structure (such as coral cover) and function (such as wave attenuation), which will then impact the delivery
and value of ecosystem services (such as protection from storms), with consequent impacts on human well-being. Adapted from Arkema & Samhouri
(2012). Resilience: the capacity of a system to maintain functioning, structure, and feedbacks in the face of disturbance (after Folke et al. 2004) Self-
organization: the development of structure and functioning on the basis of local interactions (after Levin 1999) Resilience Theory in the Context of
Climate Change Resilience theory originated in the ecological literature in the 1970s and has since informed marine reserve design, conservation
planning, and related analyses of coupled human-ocean systems (e.g., Folke et al. 2004, Halpern et al. 2012, Hughes et al. 2005, Leslie&Kinzig 2009,
Olsson et al. 2008, Steneck et al. 2011).Although resilience has been conceptualized in varied ways by anthropologists, ecologists, engineers, and other
systems scientists, here we adopt the broad definition of Folke and others, which is particularly relevant to the effects of climate change over tens to
hundreds of years: Resilience is the capacity of a system to maintain functioning, structure, and
feedbacks in the face of disturbance (Folke et al. 2004). The ecological resilience framework focuses on a systems response to
shocks and long-term change as well as on emergent properties and feedbacks among system components (Folke et al. 2004, Leslie & Kinzig 2009).
The changing climate will impose both short-term shocks, such as extreme weather events, and longer-term changes in environmental variables, such
as ocean temperature and pH. Further, ecosystem services, like the protection from coastal storms provided to coastal human communities by marshes
and other biogenic habitats, result from multiple ecological processes, including nutrient cycling and primary productivity. Thus, the focus of resilience
science on a systems emergent properties rather than on the functioning of its individual parts is particularly relevant to understanding the effects of
the changing climate on ecosystem service provisioning. Three components of resilience emerge from the literature (Figure
2). The first is the amount of change a system can undergo and still retain the same controls on structure and functioning (i.e., resistance). In the
context of climate change, this component refers to an ecosystems ability to persist despite increasingly frequent and severe pulse disturbances, such as
coastal storms and heat waves. The second component is a systems capacity for recovery and self-organization (versus vulnerability to organization by
external factors) following disturbance. The final component is the degree to which a system can adapt to new conditions, such as higher air
temperatures or lower ocean pH. Although these resilience elements are helpful heuristic tools, they have rarely been investigated in real systems.
Further, they remain too abstract for managers to incorporate them easily into the www.annualreviews.org Coastal Ecosystem Resilience 373 Change
in ecosystem service value Climate change Wave and storm surge attenuation Erosion and ooding near property Damage costs People a-ected Change
in ecosystem structure Change in ecosystem function Change in ecosystem service Extent of biogenic habitat Increased water temperature Annu. Rev.
Marine. Sci. 2013.5:371-392. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Michigan - Ann Arbor on 07/18/14. For personal use only.
Figure 2 Ecological mechanisms that underlie resilience at multiple scales of biological organization and time. (a) Genetic and species
diversity enhance resistance by increasing the range of responses to the environment
and the likelihood that species can functionally compensate for one another following
disturbance. (b) Connections among species, populations, and ecosystems contribute to
self-organization, stabilize ecosystems in the face of fluctuating environmental
conditions, and enhance recovery following severe disturbances. For example, reseeding of
individuals from other sites can prevent local extinction following disturbance. (c) Adaptation
to the changing climate will include a combination of phenotypic plasticity, species range shifts, and rapid
evolution of traits better suited to new conditions. For example, to keep up with the changing climate, a
species may either shift its range by dispersing to newly climatically suitable locations or evolve new adaptive traits in situ.
High genetic diversity, population size, and dispersal rates enable adaptive strategies.
Diversity: the variety of life, particularly from the genetic to the seascape scale design and monitoring of management strategies. To bridge the gaps
between resilience theory, our understanding of climate effects, and management, we propose three broad categories of ecological properties that
underlie resilience: diversity, connectivity, and adaptive capacity. We discuss empirical evidence for these ecological properties, and how resource
managers can use this information to manage and monitor coastal systems for resilience in the face of climate change and other, more local-scale
perturbations. ECOLOGICAL PROPERTIES AND PROCESSES THAT ENHANCE RESILIENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE Diversity Increases Resistance
and Recovery Biological diversity from the genetic to the species to the seascape scale facilitates continued ecosystem functioning in a changing
environment by increasing the range of biological responses 374 Bernhardt Leslie Hours Genes Species Communities Ecosystems a Diversity c
Adaptive capacity b Connectivity Days Months Local community Species Genes 1 year Decades Pulse disturbances: Storms, heat waves, etc. Press
disturbances: Rising temperatures, changes in ocean chemistry and circulation, etc. 50100 years and beyond Exchange of individuals and materials
Species interactions Evolution Range shift Annu. Rev. Marine. Sci. 2013.5:371-392. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of
Michigan - Ann Arbor on 07/18/14. For personal use only. Connectivity: the connections that promote stability and recovery at multiple scales
of biological organization; it includes interactions among species as well as demographic and
material flows among populations, biological communities, and ecosystems Adaptive capacity:
the ability of populations, communities, and ecosystems to adapt to changing climate conditions through a combination of phenotypic plasticity,
physiological responses, distributional shifts, and rapid evolution of traits better suited to new conditions Response diversity: the diversity of responses
to environmental change within and among species contributing to the same ecosystem function (adapted from
Elmqvist et al. 2003) Functional redundancy: the capacity of one species to functionally compensate for the
loss of another, thereby preventing losses in ecosystem functioning if diversity declines
owing to disturbance and the odds that species can compensate for one another if some are lost (Figure 2a). Further, because diverse communities tend
to use resources more efficiently and be more productive (Duffy 2008), they often have an increased capacity for
recovery following disturbance. Diversity operates in several distinct ways, as we detail below. Response diversity. Diversity
within a species can enhance resistance to disturbance by increasing the range of responses populations exhibit in any given environmental context. For
example, in Bristol Bay, Alaska, there are several hundred discrete spawning populations of sockeye salmon,
which display diverse life-history characteristics. These subpopulations spawn at
different times and places, thus compensating for one another as the broader environmental context shifts. In fact, over the past
century, fish yields from Bristol Bay have remained relatively constant, despite documented regime
shifts associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (Hilborn et al. 2003). Similarly, the increasing
genotypic diversity of clonal eelgrass enhances resistance to disturbances such as heat
waves and geese grazing by increasing the range of responses to disturbance and
increasing the chance of having a resistant genotype in any given area (Ehlers et al. 2008, Reusch et
al. 2005). Because of the initial increased resistance to disturbance, the time to return to the predisturbance state decreases with increased genotypic
diversity (Hughes 2004). Thus, increased genetic diversity can contribute to increased resistance to environmental changes by enabling
ecosystems to continue functioning in the face of increasing disturbance. Functional redundancy.
Functional redundancy is the capacity of one species to functionally compensate for the
loss of another. Greater species diversity increases the odds that species are capable of functionally
compensating for one another following disturbance, resulting in no net change in
productivity or other ecosystem processes (Hooper et al. 2005). Similarly, redundancy of similar
functions replicated at multiple scales confers resistance because most disturbances
influence ecosystem structure and/or functioning at specific scales (Thrush et al. 2009). In a
comparison of subtidal kelp forests with high and low grazer diversity, respectively, Steneck et al. (2002) proposed that forests with higher grazer
diversity are more resistant to deforestation triggered by El Ni no events and overexploitation of top predators, because the remaining grazer species
can compensate for others that are lost. Similarly, on the rocky shores of Panama, Menge & Lubchenco (1981) found that crustose coralline algae are
much more resistant to algal overgrowth when grazer diversity is high. Although systems with low species diversity are likely to lose functional traits as
diversity declines, the level of species diversity necessary for functional redundancy remains a critical question (Duffy 2008, Naeem 2002).
Complementarity effects. Diverse (i.e., species-rich) assemblages are better able to recover from disturbance because they are often more productive,
use resources more efficiently, and facilitate recruitment of other species (Duffy 2008, Hooper et al. 2005). For example, after experimentally
perturbing rocky shore algal communities, multiple investigators found that plots with high species diversity exhibited higher standing cover and lower
variability in biomass, and recovered completely within the two- to three-year experimental period. Plots with low diversity did not recover within this
period (Allison 2004, Stachowicz et al. 2008). Diversity in epifaunal communities enhances resistance to invasion (Stachowicz et al. 2002) because
diverse communities use more of the available space, thereby reducing the establishment of invaders. As species invasion rates rise with climate change
(Intergov. Panel Clim. Change 2007) and some nonnative species become dominant as they fare better under warmer conditions (Sorte et al. 2010), the
decreased invasibility conferred by diversity may be a key component of the resilience of coastal systems (Duffy 2008).

Marine ecosystems adapt genetic variability means natural selection
solves
Bernhardt et al 13 [Joanna R. Bernhardt, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for
Environmental Studies, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, Heather M. Leslie, Department of Zoology and Biodiversity
Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada; email:
joey.bernhardt@biodiversity.ubc.ca March, 2013, Resilience to Climate Change in Coastal Marine Ecosystems, doi:
10.1146/annurev-marine-121211-172411] //dickies
Tolerance of environmental stress and capacity to acclimate. The ability of an organism to maintain functioning in the face of
increasing environmental stress depends on its acclimation capacity (Somero 2005). In many cases, phenotypic plasticity may be the
most important component of adaptive potential because plasticity acts within a generation, whereas dispersal and evolutionary
genetic change involve multiple generations (Hoffmann & Sgr `o 2011). However, there are several constraints to plasticity. First,
there are potentially large fitness costs associated with immediate plastic responses. Second, species that have evolved under fairly
constant temperature conditions or live close to the limits of their environmental tolerances may lack the flexibility of gene
expression needed for further thermal acclimation (Somero 2005). For example, Southern Ocean species die of acute heat stress
when exposed to temperatures only a few degrees above their normal habitat temperatures (Peck et al. 2004, 2009). Surprisingly,
several studies that have examined the acclimation capacity of congeneric rocky shore species living at different latitudes and shore
heights have found that the most heat-tolerant congeners are least able to acclimate to increasingly warm conditions, probably
because they are living closest to their physiological limits (Berger & Emlet 2007, Somero 2010, Stillman 2003). As we discuss below
(see Evolutionary Potential), it is unclear whether these patterns translate to the metapopulation levelthat is, whether populations
living in more environmentally stressful regions tend to be less resilient to climate change. Variation in thermal
tolerances and capacity to acclimate among species within a community can have
important effects on ecosystem structure and functioning (Menge & Sutherland 1987, Peck et al. 2009,
Philippart et al. 2003).As the climate warms and species within different functional groups survive at different rates, the nature and
magnitude of different ecosystem processes may change. www.annualreviews.org Coastal Ecosystem Resilience 379 Annu. Rev.
Marine. Sci. 2013.5:371-392. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org by University of Michigan - Ann Arbor on 07/18/14. For
personal use only. Dispersal ability. A species ability to expand its range into more climatically
suitable habitats is a critical component of adaptation to climate change (Parmesan 2006). The
ability to disperse within and across habitats to track the changing climate will depend on reproduction and dispersal rates. For
most marine species, the early life stages are the most motile. The dispersal distances of marine
organisms range from centimeters to thousands of kilometers and are a function of oceanography, water temperature, food
availability, and life-history traits (Kinlan & Gaines 2003, OConnor et al. 2007). For example, macroalgae disperse much less widely
than fish and some invertebrates (Kinlan & Gaines 2003). Similarly, mean larval duration varies significantly among biological
communities: Approximately 80% of rocky intertidal organisms have widely dispersing larvae, whereas most sandy intertidal
organisms have nonplanktonic, short-distance offspring (Grantham et al. 2003). Dispersal ecology will likely impact range
expansion and other biogeographic patterns in the face of climate change. Some essential habitat-forming (or foundation) species
like kelps and corals disperse short distances, thereby potentially limiting the establishment of communities in newly climatically
suitable locations. Evolutionary potential. As the changing climate imposes a new selection regime on Earths biota, a species
evolutionary potential may increase its resilience to climate change. Increasing
environmental stress will impose directional selection for resistance, particularly in species living
close to physiological limits that may be exceeded in the coming decades, such as the intertidal porcelain crab (Stillman 2002). For
example, an increased frequency of heat waves will impose selection by causing excess
mortality and rapidly selecting for more heat-tolerant genotypes (e.g., of coral symbionts; Baker et
al. 2004). In addition, changes in seasonality may select for distinct phenological patterns (Bijlsma
& Loeschcke 2005). Evolutionary theory predicts that a species capacity for evolutionary rescue in the face of rapidly changing
environmental conditions depends primarily on population size, the quantity of genetic variance on which natural selection can act,
and the organisms life span (Bell & Gonzalez 2009, Hoffmann & Sgr `o 2011, Willi et al. 2006). Evolution is responsive
to climate variation and can occur on timescales relevant to current anthropogenic
climate change (Skelly et al. 2007). For example, several studies have found evidence for the recent evolution of phenology
(Edwards&Richardson 2004, Mackas et al. 2007, Philippart et al. 2003, Reale et al. 2003) and thermal tolerance (Grosholz 2001).
Further, many marine species show geographic variation in thermal performance within their
range, which may be evidence of localized evolution in response to climate variation and suggests the potential for
future evolution. For example, Henkel&Hofmann (2007) found that the maximum temperature threshold for heatshock
protein synthesis in the kelp Egregia was higher in southern than in northern populations. Similar patterns have been shown in a
rocky intertidal whelk (Sorte&Hofmann 2005), the killifish Fundulus (Fangue et al. 2006), and kelp crabs (Storch et al. 2009). More
recently, Kuo & Sanford (2009) demonstrated that geographic variation in heat tolerance in the predatory snail Nucella canaliculata
has a genetic basis. These patterns are evidence of past evolution, but they do not reveal the number of generations required to
produce such divergence.

Ecosystems are resilient new science proves
Fujita 13 [Rod Fujita is a leader in the theory and practice of sustainable fisheries that align conservation with the business of
fishing. He has extensive experience working with fishing communities, regulators, and business leaders in the U.S., Mexico, Canada
and internationally, Rod's skills as a scientist and consensus-builder mean he is frequently asked to serve on state and federal
advisory bodies, National Academy of Sciences and other academic panels and as an expert in public forums. Rod recieved his Ph.D.
in Marine Biology at the Boston University Marine Program, January 11, 2013, Managing for a Resilient Ocean,
http://blogs.edf.org/edfish/2013/01/11/managing-for-a-resilient-ocean/] //dickies
Healthy and resilient ocean ecosystems function similar to the United States governments system of checks and balances
different species do similar things but in slightly different ways, which help keep these
systems both interconnected and even-keeled. However, when we reduce species populations so much they
can no longer do their part, we alter the natural balance of the system, which can have grave effects. Luxuriant kelp forests that
support marine mammals and a myriad of other species provide us with various ecosystem services like seafood, agar (sugar made
from kelp), recreation, and sheltering the coastline from waves. However, these habitats can turn to rocky
barrens very rapidly when they reach their tipping points. We witnessed this in the 1800s when fur hunting became
prevalentdecreasing the sea otter population. With fewer sea otter to consume urchins, urchins became overabundant, overgrazing
the kelp and causing forests to disappear. Fortunately, science is providing insights into the factors
that make ocean ecosystems more capable of resisting these kinds of changes, and more
able to bounce back when they are damaged; in other words, the attributes that make some systems more
resilient than others. Having lots of species with different ecological jobs (biodiversity and niches) is very important, as is
having several species doing the same job but in slightly different ways (functional redundancy). Lots of genetic
diversity within species and populations is important as well. It's a little like rocket science: rockets are complex systems that
are made more robust and resilient (i.e., less likely to blow up) by building in redundant subsystems. Nature has done that one
better by building in even more diversity, allowing coral reefs for example to recover from hurricanes
and even volcanic eruptions that devastate human communities.


Marine ecosystems resilient Gulf spill proves
Hardwerk 11 [Brian Handwerk, Brian is a former National Geographic producer, a regular correspondent for National
Geographic News, and the New York Times Syndicate distributes his work. With more than a decade of experience writing and
editing award-winning interactive web projects, hes written National Geographics award-winning Genographic Project and Safe
Drinking Water is Essential for the National Academy of Sciences, APRIL 19, 2011, Gulf Oil Spill Anniversary: Resilience Amid
Unknowns, National Geography, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110420-gulf-oil-spill-anniversary-year-later-
science-nation-environment/] //dickies
On the first anniversary of the Gulf oil spill, scientists caution that it could take years to understand the full scope of the disaster.
(See photos of the Gulf oil spill in National Geographic magazine.) But many are encouraged because the damage could have been
far worseand nature is already showing signs of resilience. On April 20, 2010, a massive explosion rocked the
Transocean oil rig Deepwater Horizon, a state-of-the art mobile offshore drilling platform at work on a well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Eleven workers were killed by the blast and survivors had just minutes to flee an inferno that would soon burn and sink the rig. The
accident unleashed a torrent of oil that began roaring from an underground Macondo reservoir into the Gulf waters. During the first
few frantic days of the BP crisis that became the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, experts had a hard time determining what
was happeningmuch less what the spill's ultimate environmental and economic consequences might be. (See satellite pictures of
the Gulf oil spill's evolution.) As people around the world fixated on oil spewing from a pipe 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) beneath the
Gulf's surface, scientists clambered to discern just how much was gushing out. Estimates climbed from 1,000 barrels a day to 12,000
barrels to 62,000 barrels a day. Even less certain was how the damaged wellhead would finally be pluggedand for a while, people
feared the leak could continue for years. Authorities finally capped it in July. A spill that started with the tragic loss of life soon
wrought major environmental devastation over huge region of the Gulf. Disturbing images appeared daily of oiled wildlife, iridescent
surface slicks, overwhelmed cleanup workers, fouled beaches, burning oil fires, and blackened wetlands. The damage from
nearly five million barrels of oil was very real, yet many expert predictions missed their marks.
Hurricanes didn't drive enormous quantities of oil ashore, giant dead zones didn't materialize, and oil didn't round
the tip of Florida to rocket up the East Coast via the Gulf Stream. Fisheries now appear poised to rebound
instead of suffering the barren years or decades some feared. And Mother Nature had her own surprises in
store, showcasing an ability to fight back against the spill and, later, to bounce back
from the damageat least in the short-term. But anyone hoping to close the books on the Macondo debacle after a calendar
year is truly missing the boat. Uncertainty still reigns among those trying to come to grips with the spill's ultimate legacy. Even the
final fate of all that oil is a matter of some debatethough the gooey crude still clings to some shorelines, where it will be visible for
years to come.

Marine ecosystems are resilient different species adapt and fill in
Jones 7/14 [Dr Peter JS Jones, 1985 - BSc Biological Sciences, Portsmouth Polytechnic, specialising in marine ecology 1988 -
MSc Marine Resource Development and Protection, Heriot-Watt University 1997 - PhD Value conflicts underlying the governance of
marine protected areas, Heriot-Watt University 1997 - Research Fellow, Jackson Environment Institute, University College London
2000 - Senior Research Fellow, Jackson Environment Institute, University College London 2001 - Lecturer, Dept of Geography,
University College London 2010 - Senior Lecturer, Dept of Geography, University College London Peter specialises in research on
different approaches to governing human uses of marine ecosystems. He is internationally recognised as an authority on marine
protected area, marine spatial planning and fisheries governance issues, with a particular focus on how state, market and
participative approaches can be combined to achieve strategic conservation objectives. He has been an advisor to the European
Common Fisheries Policy and England's conservation agency on marine protected area governance and recently undertook a project
for the United Nations Environment Programme to analyse how different approaches can be combined to effectively govern marine
protected areas, based on 20 case studies around the world (www.mpag.info). He is also leading a work programme on governance
as part of a project on the monitoring and evaluation of spatially managed marine areas (www.mesma.org) to support the
development and implementation of marine spatial planning in Europe's seas, July 14, 2014, Resilience and protection of the
marine environment, http://openchannels.org/blog/pjsjones/resilience-and-protection-marine-environment] //dickies
It is increasingly recognised that marine ecosystems that have a higher diversity of species are more
resilient to impacts from non-native species, climate change, etc., but why is there a link between diversity and
resilience and how can marine protected areas (MPAs) be made more effective in building resilience? Species provide a variety of
functional roles in ecosystems, such as nutrient recycling, population control, etc. The higher the diversity of functional groups and
the higher the diversity of species and the population sizes within each functional group, the more resilient the ecosystem is, in that
it can remain stable in the face of factors that could otherwise perturb it. This is because one species can replace the
role of another species in the same functional group if that species is depleted by disease,
over-harvesting, etc. Also, if environmental conditions change, a species that previously appeared
to be redundant, in that it has no apparent functional role, can be better adapted to the new conditions
and thereby is able to adopt a functional role, replacing the role of a species which is less
well adapted to the new conditions. In these ways the ecosystem is able to remain in a
relatively stable state, including the capacity to adapt to changing conditions. This capacity for resilience is increasingly
recognised as being important, as the pressures related to human activities which can perturb marine ecosystems, e.g. greenhouse
gas emissions and species introductions, increase, potentially shifting ecosystems to alternative states that provide fewer ecosystem
services, e.g. food production, greenhouse gas sinks, genetic resources and tourism value. There are a growing number of studies
which demonstrate that effective MPAs can promote the resilience of marine ecosystems by providing for the recovery of species
diversity, where this was previously depleted by the impacts of local activities such as fishing, tourism development, pollution, etc. A
recent study by Peter Jones explores the links between different approaches to conserving MPAs and their effectiveness in
promoting resilience by providing for the recovery of species diversity. Drawing on 20 case studies from around the world, including
three in the UK, this study considered MPA conservation approaches in terms of governance incentives, ranging from legal (laws,
regulations, etc.), to economic (funding, property rights, etc.), participative (involving local people, etc.), knowledge (shared
learning, etc.) and interpretative (awareness raising, educational programmes, etc.). The findings indicate that MPAs are more
effective where a higher diversity of incentives is applied, these incentives interacting with each other in a manner which is
analogous to the way that different species interact in ecosystems, making the governance system more resilient to local threats from
overfishing, pollution, etc.. This effectiveness, in turn provides for the recovery of species diversity,
making the ecosystem more resilient to wider-scale impacts, such as climate change and
introduced species. The rationale behind this study is to move on from debates about which governance approach is best
or right, in focusing on how different governance approaches can be combined. The findings of this study were recently published in
the book Governing Marine Protected Areas: resilience through diversity (40 with discount code DC361), and it is hoped this way of
studying how MPAs can be more effectively conserved will provide for good practice combinations of governance incentives to be
transferred between MPAs. This innovative way of thinking about how we can make MPAs more effective is particularly relevant to
the UK, as more MPAs are designated and the focus shifts to how they can be effectively conserved, recognising that the key to
social-ecological resilience is diversity, both of incentives in governance systems and species in ecosystems.
Claims of extinction are overblown marine ecosystems are very adaptable
ITOPFL No Date [THE INTERNATIONAL TANKER OWNERS POLLUTION FEDERATION LIMITED, has responded
to over 700 incidents involving oil or chemical spills worldwide. Our highly skilled international team are ready to assist 24 hours a
day, 365 days a year to provide impartial technical advice. As a not-for-profit organisation, we have devoted efforts to developing a
wide range of technical services to promote effective response in the marine environment to back up our core role of responding to
ship-sourced spills. The five key services that we offer are spill response, claims analysis & damage assessment, contingency
planning, training and information, No date, Environmental Effects of Oil Spills, http://www.itopf.com/knowledge-
resources/documents-guides/environmental-effects/] //dickies
The effects of oil spills can have wide ranging impacts that are often portrayed by the media as long lasting environmental disasters.
Such perceptions are understandable as they are often fuelled by distressing images of oiled birds and other wildlife. It is true that an
oil spill can have severe short term effects, especially when organisms are considered on an individual basis. However,
environmental impacts should always be measured in a scientific context and should be
appraised at an ecosystem rather than individual level. In other words, it is important (or more
representative of long term environmental effects) to base the extent of environmental damage on the effects to ecosystems. For
example, has the ecosystem retained its normal functions or how quickly will they resume following an oil
spill? Read more How Can Oil Spills Cause Damage to the Environment? The effects of an oil spill will depend on a variety of factors
including, the quantity and type of oil spilled, and how it interacts with the marine environment. Prevailing weather conditions will
also influence the oils physical characteristics and its behaviour. Other key factors include the biological and ecological attributes of
the area; the ecological significance of key species and their sensitivity to oil pollution as well as the time of year. It is important to
remember that the clean-up techniques selected will also have a bearing on the environmental effects of a spill. Read more Oil spills
may impact the environment in the following ways: Physical smothering of organisms: This is caused by oils with a high viscosity, in
other words heavy oils. Smothering will affect an organisms physical ability to continue critical functions such as respiration,
feeding and thermoregulation. Chemical toxicity: This is characteristic of lighter chemical components which are more bio-available,
ie absorbed into organs, tissues and cells, and can have sub-lethal or lethal toxic effects. Ecological changes: This is caused by the
loss of key organisms with a specific function in an ecological community. They can be replaced by different
species undertaking similar functions in which case the implications for the ecosystem
as a whole may not be severe. However, more detrimental is the niche in the community being replaced with
organisms performing completely different functions thereby altering the ecosystem dynamics. Indirect effects: Loss of shelter or
habitat through oiling or clean-up operations. What Characterises Recovery for the Marine Environment? Extensive research and
detailed post-spill studies have shown that even major oil spills will rarely cause permanent effects.
Marine ecosystems have high natural variability and are subject to ever-changing
environmental phenomena such as storms, climatic anomalies (eg El Nio) as well as
anthropogenic pressures. Furthermore, marine organisms have varying degrees of natural
resilience to these pressures on their habitats. This natural variability means it is unlikely that exact pre-spill
conditions will be reached. It makes determining the point of recovery following an oil spill, and the time it will take, difficult to
accurately predict. It is generally accepted that recovery is reached when a community of plants and animals characteristic of that
habitat are established and functioning normally.


Alt Causes
Cant solve for the environment without a change in socioeconomic factors
Wood et al 2k [Alexander Wood, Pamela Stedman-Edwards and Johanna Mang are Senior Programme Officer, Principle
Consultant and Program Manager of WWF's Macroeconomics Program Office, Washington DC, The Root Causes of Biodiversity
Losses,
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=dTD_AQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=marine+biodiversity+loss&ots=EVqG8lX
HkM&sig=To1gUiwfxVKYJnkVlhEC0y-FEns#v=onepage&q&f=true] //dickies
Each of the ten case studies tells a unique story of biodiversity loss. By integrating analyses of the multiple
socioeconomic factors contributing to biodiversity loss, each case study reveals the
complexity of the root causes of biodiversity loss. Comparison of the study results reveals a common pattern
across the diverse range of stories they tell, a pattern that can help us understand why the loss of biodiversity has become so
widespread and so rapid in recent years. Degradation of habitat and overharvesting of species is the
common response to growing domestic and international pressures facing the countries studied.
Environmental management efforts have been insufficient to offset the impact of this pattern of development in which many
socioeconomic factors drive biodiversity loss. Expansion of agriculture logging, fishing
and other natural resource based activities, as well as increases in pollution, directly
drive biodiversity loss. A complex array of pressures that arise at local, regional, national
and international levels shapes the use of resources at the loyal sites examined by the case studies. In each
of the cases a number of domestic factors, including population growth, migration, poverty,
inequality and increased demand for consumer goods, are putting pressure on
socioeconomic institutions, leading to an expanded use of natural resources. At the same time, international or global
factors, such as changing trade opportunities and growing economic interdependence, also appear in many of the case studies,
creating pressure for resource exploitation. While none of these pressures is new, the combination of increasing external and
internal pressures is accelerating the rate of habitat and species loss in every case. The behavior of governments and the private
sector in the face of these growing pressures including changes in policies and changes in resource use patterns must be
understood if the problem of biodiversity loss is to be adequately addressed. This chapter first reviews the domestic and external
pressures, including economic, social and political pressures, which the case studies found important to
biodiversity loss. The ways in which government and society cope with these pressures are then explored in an effort to
understand how and why unsustainable resource use, inappropriate public policies market failures and lack of effective efforts at
environmental management are the common response to both domestic and international pressures. 'The pervasiveness
of biodiversity loss and the frequency with which the case studies uncover this similar
set of underlying root causes strongly surest that the value of biodiversity and the many
other environmental resources upon which biodiversity depends forests, oceans, rivers,
mangroves, grasslands are consistently ignored in the face of socioeconomic pressures that
government, communities and individuals must address in the short-term.
Alt causes to marine ecosystems land based pollution
Bors et al 13 [Eleanor K. Bors, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; Biological Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02654,
Susan Solomon, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge,
MA, May 7, 2013, How a nested framework illuminates the challenges of comparative environmental analysis,
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/19/7531.full] //dickies
Marine biodiversity loss encompasses diminishing diversity at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. One threat to
marine biodiversity is habitat degradation, which has many causes, including physical
disturbance from bottom trawling and pollution released into the ecosystem, leading to a nested set of
scientific and societal actors and activities involved with the problem. Trawling impacts are studied by fisheries scientists and
marine ecologists; trawling activities are usually regulated by fisheries management agencies. Pollution, on the other hand, is
often land-based, is the focus of water, soil, and watershed scientists, and may be regulated by coastal
municipalities. Thus, habitat degradation is nested within a wide range of both fishing and
land-based activities, is studied by diverse intellectual communities, and has deep
institutional nesting of management strategies. This is only one facet of marine biodiversity loss.

Cant overcome alt causes even with a reduction of CO2 we cant solve for
ocean destruction
Galland et al 12 [GRANTLY GALLAND1*, ELLYCIA HARROULD-KOLIEB2, DOROTHEE HERR3 1 Center for Marine
Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92083-0202,
USA 2 Melbourne School of Land and Environment, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia 3 Global Marine and Polar
Programme, International Union for Conservation of Nature, 1630 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20001, USA,
2012, The ocean and climate change policy, Climate Policy] //dickies
There are good reasons why the oceans role in climate regulation, value as a carbon sink, and importance as a source of food and
income for hundreds of millions of people around the world should receive more attention during the negotiation and
implementation of climate policy. Achieving this result is a two-step process: B Researching and designing policies
that deal with oceanclimate issues. B Injecting appropriate language into the laws and agreements at the highest
levels of national and international climate change negotiation. One could argue that the first step is well under way, if
not complete. Ocean researchers and advocates already have a good idea of what
policies could successfully manage oceanic carbon stores, preserve marine and coastal
ecosystems, and support the continued provision of ecosystem services. For example, in Blue
Carbon Policy Framework (Herr et al., 2011), several policy opportunities to include oceanic carbon storage more significantly in
international, regional, and national climate change mitigation strategies are discussed. Potential threats to the marine environment
(e.g. shifting ecosystem ranges and changes to ocean chemistry) in the absence of mitigation policies are also well known (see
above). As already mentioned, however, there has been little progress on the second, and practically more difficult, step of
convincing those at the negotiation table to consider language involving the ocean. COP decisions, as well as national legislation, are
often necessarily general in order to ensure that they are applicable to a wide range of stakeholders and to avoid limiting the
effectiveness of implementing agencies. Therefore, it can be difficult to obtain support for specific issues. Even the general
acknowledgement of an issue as important, however, can inspire a reaction, and the assignment of an issue to a working group,
subsidiary body, or committee leads to significant and timely analysis and action (again, forest management is an example). Tables 1
and 2 provide a menu of marine policy actions that should be considered when negotiating the best ways to address global climate
change. These actions are broadly divided into two categories: those that deal with mitigating future climate change (Table 1) and
those that deal with adapting to ongoing change (Table 2). Marine mitigation strategies include the protection of important coastal
and marine carbon stores, which are rarely considered in the global carbon budget (Herr et al., 2011), support of renewable
energy practices that harness some of the vast amounts of available ocean energy (wind, tidal, solar, etc.), and
consideration of marine commerce activities such as shipping, in order to mandate
higher energy efficiency (e.g. by slowing ship speed; Faber et al., 2010), among others. Some adaptation strategies
include: B The analysis of coastal development and marine resource use to reduce practices
that permanently alter natural systems and increase risk. B The support of practices that
facilitate disaster risk reduction for coastal communities. 766 Galland et al. CLIMATE POLICY B The
protection of both vulnerable and somewhat resilient ecosystems in order to maximize adaptation capacity (Marshall et al., 2009). B
The preparation for unpredictable costs associated with a changing ocean, such as the migration of people, living marine resources,
or shipping lanes. Both active adaptation strategies (including ecosystembased adaptation (see Hale et al., 2009) and technological
fixes) and reactive strategies (such as ecosystem restoration) have marine components that should be explored in more depth and
incorporated more significantly into climate change policies. TABLE 1 Recommendations to enhance consideration of the ocean in
climate change mitigation policies Policy action Level of implementation Possible costs of implementation Possible benefits of
implementation Utilize oceanic threshold data (akin to atmospheric CO2 levels) to design and support emission reduction targets.
These targets should consider ocean warming (8C) and acidification (pH), as well as non-linear changes to oceanic water masses.
Continue to support oceanic temperature and pH monitoring efforts, and implement new programmes in order to document the
approach and potential exceeding of these thresholds International Opportunity costs associated with choosing one threshold over
another; direct costs associated with support of oceanic monitoring networks Tangible mitigation targets Ensure that CO2 emissions
reduction targets consider the impacts of ocean acidification, not just climate change, as reductions in CO2 equivalents
may reduce the impacts of climate change without mitigating acidification International Loss of
benefits of CO2 equivalent reductions; costs associated with CO2 reduction Prevention of harmful impacts of ocean acidification;
synergistic benefits to the climate systems of reduced CO2 emissions.

Too many other variables marine ecosystems have multiple factors that
make effects hard to predict
Gamfeldt et al 2/17 [Lars Gamfeldt, Jonathan S. Lefcheck, Jarrett E. K. Byrnes, Bradley J. Cardinale, J. Emmett Duffy,
John N. Griffin, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Box 461, SE-40530 Gothenburg,
Sweden, Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The 10 College of William & Mary, PO Box 1346, Rt
1208 Greate Rd, Gloucester Point, Virginia, USA 23062-1346, Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100
Morrissey Blvd., Boston, Massachusetts, USA 20125, School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, 15 Michigan 48109, USA, Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, Washington
DC 20013-7012, USA, Department of Biosciences, Wallace Building, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK,
Feb. 17, 2014, Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: whats known and whats next?,
https://peerj.com/preprints/249v1.pdf] //dickies
Second, while meta-analyses and experiments show that the effects of changes in species richness are on par with the effects of other
drivers of ecosystem change 440 (Hooper et al. 2012, Tilman et al. 2012), we know little about the interactive
effects of species richness and environmental factors, especially in marine systems (but see
e.g. Blake and Duffy 2010, Eklof et al. 2012, Godbold 2012). Furthermore, while we know that indirect effects can just
as strongly influence functioning as direct effects (Alsterberg et al. 2013, Eisenhauer et al. 2013, Wootton
2002), indirect and 445 interactive effects of changes in diversity and other factors must be
explored further. As an example, acidification may have a direct and positive effect on
primary production. But if acidification also affects biodiversity it may indirectly affect
primary production negatively. The net outcome may be difficult to predict.

Alt causes policies empirically fail because of a fail to engage the larger
picture
Craig 12 [Robin Kundis Craig, attorneys Title Insurance Fund Professor at Florida State University College of Law. She is a
leading environmental law scholar who has written important works on water and ocean and coastal issues, May 9 2012, Marine
Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Governance of the Oceans, Diversity 2012, 4, 224-238; doi:10.3390/d4020224] //dickies

Marine biodiversity is important to ocean governance because biodiversity is one important measure of an ecosystems health [1] (p.
10). Thus, changes in marine biodiversitypositive or negativecan provide one outcome measurement of how well a governance
regime is working. By this measure, moreover, ocean governance is an area of law and policy much in need of improvement, even
before climate change adaptation is considered [53]. In most coastal nations, regulation of marine resources is
highly fragmented, with different governmental entities overseeing multiple
independent and largely uncoordinated regimes to address fishing, shipping, marine
mammals, endangered species, invasive species, pollution of the marine environment,
national security, and offshore energy production [5355]. In the United States, for example, the U.S.
Commission on Ocean Policy emphasized in 2004 that 11 of 15 cabinet-level departments and numerous federal agencies and sub-
agencies had some role to play in ocean governance, with no overarching scheme for coordinating their efforts [56]. As a result, one
of its primary recommendations was for improved coordination through a National Ocean Council [56]. These fragmented
governance systems have traditionally done little to address marine biodiversity in toto.
Instead, regulatory regimes tend to focus on particular specieseither because those species are
commercially important (fisheries management), protected under domestic or international law (whales, endangered species), or,
less frequently, recognized to be a problem to economically important interests (invasive species) [55]. Species-focused approaches
on land have occasionally resulted in much broader protections for surrounding ecosystems, such as through the critical habitat
and recovery plan provisions of the United States Endangered Species Act [57]. In the marine environment,
however, such species-focused regimes have almost always missed the bigger picture, as
it were, because they often never see the larger ecosystems involved or overall ocean
ecological health. Nations should improve three aspects of their marine governance regimes to both enhance protections for
marine biodiversity and to help those nations adapt to climate changes impacts on marine biodiversity: (1) incorporate marine
spatial planning as a key organizing principle of marine governance, including the use of biodiversity-relevant marine reserves; (2)
work to increase the resilience of marine ecosystems be reducing or eliminating existing stressors on those ecosystems; and (3) begin
to anticipate climate changes future impacts on marine biodiversity through the use of anticipatory zoning and more precautionary
regulation.

Cant solve marine ecosystems are set to collapse even with human
intervention acidification, overfishing, and pollution have already pushed
us over the brink
Bradbury 12 [Roger trained as an ecologist specialising in coral reefs. He has worked on the use in ecology of numerical
classification (1977), adaptive algorithms (1978), fractals (1983), learning algorithms (1983), catastrophe theory (1985), chaos theory
(1985), formal grammars (1986), nonlinear non-Euclidean modelling (1988) and cellular automata (1990). He has led multi-
disciplinary research teams using genetic algorithms, neural networks and agent-based models to understand the complex
interactions between social, economic and natural systems. Roger trained as an ecologist specialising in coral reefs. He has worked
on the use in ecology of numerical classification (1977), adaptive algorithms (1978), fractals (1983), learning algorithms (1983),
catastrophe theory (1985), chaos theory (1985), formal grammars (1986), nonlinear non-Euclidean modelling (1988) and cellular
automata (1990). He has led multi-disciplinary research teams using genetic algorithms, neural networks and agent-based models to
understand the complex interactions between social, economic and natural systems, July 13, 2012, A World Without Coral Reefs,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/a-world-without-coral-reefs.html?_r=0] //dickies
ITS past time to tell the truth about the state of the worlds coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have
become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to
collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem
with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the worlds poor will cease to be.
Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. Each
of those forces alone is fully capable of causing the global collapse of coral reefs; together,
they assure it. The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a
collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef
ecosystem. What we hear instead is an airbrushed view of the crisis a view endorsed by coral reef scientists, amplified by
environmentalists and accepted by governments. Coral reefs, like rain forests, are a symbol of biodiversity. And, like rain forests,
they are portrayed as existentially threatened but salvageable. The message is: There is yet hope. Indeed, this view is echoed in
the consensus statement of the just-concluded International Coral Reef Symposium, which called on all governments to ensure
the future of coral reefs. It was signed by more than 2,000 scientists, officials and conservationists. This is less a conspiracy than a
sort of institutional inertia. Governments dont want to be blamed for disasters on their watch, conservationists apparently value
hope over truth, and scientists often dont see the reefs for the corals. But by persisting in the false belief that coral reefs have a
future, we grossly misallocate the funds needed to cope with the fallout from their collapse. Money isnt spent to study what to do
after the reefs are gone on what sort of ecosystems will replace coral reefs and what opportunities there will be to nudge these into
providing people with food and other useful ecosystem products and services. Nor is money spent to preserve some of the genetic
resources of coral reefs by transferring them into systems that are not coral reefs. And money isnt spent to make the economic
structural adjustment that communities and industries that depend on coral reefs urgently need. We have focused too much on the
state of the reefs rather than the rate of the processes killing them. Overfishing, ocean acidification and
pollution have two features in common. First, they are accelerating. They are growing broadly in line
with global economic growth, so they can double in size every couple of decades. Second,
they have extreme inertia there is no real prospect of changing their trajectories in less
than 20 to 50 years. In short, these forces are unstoppable and irreversible. And it is these two
features acceleration and inertia that have blindsided us. Overfishing can bring down reefs because fish
are one of the key functional groups that hold reefs together. Detailed forensic studies of the global fish
catch by Daniel Paulys lab at the University of British Columbia confirm that global fishing pressure is still
accelerating even as the global fish catch is declining. Overfishing is already damaging reefs worldwide,
and it is set to double and double again over the next few decades. Ocean acidification can also bring down
reefs because it affects the corals themselves. Corals can make their calcareous skeletons only within a special
range of temperature and acidity of the surrounding seawater. But the oceans are acidifying as they absorb increasing amounts of
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Research led by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland shows that corals will be
pushed outside their temperature-acidity envelope in the next 20 to 30 years, absent effective international action on emissions.
We have less of a handle on pollution. We do know that nutrients, particularly nitrogenous ones, are increasing
not only in coastal waters but also in the open ocean. This change is accelerating. And we know that coral reefs
just cant survive in nutrient-rich waters. These conditions only encourage the microbes
and jellyfish that will replace coral reefs in coastal waters. We can say, though, with somewhat less
certainty than for overfishing or ocean acidification that unstoppable pollution will force reefs beyond their survival envelope by
midcentury. This is not a story that gives me any pleasure to tell. But it needs to be told urgently and widely because it will be a
disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in poor, tropical countries like Indonesia and the Philippines who depend on coral
reefs for food. It will also threaten the tourism industry of rich countries with coral reefs, like the United States, Australia and Japan.
Countries like Mexico and Thailand will have both their food security and tourism industries badly damaged. And, almost an
afterthought, it will be a tragedy for global conservation as hot spots of biodiversity are destroyed. What we will be left with is an
algal-dominated hard ocean bottom, as the remains of the limestone reefs slowly break up, with lots of microbial life soaking up the
suns energy by photosynthesis, few fish but lots of jellyfish grazing on the microbes. It will be slimy and look a lot like the
ecosystems of the Precambrian era, which ended more than 500 million years ago and well before fish evolved. Coral reefs will be
the first, but certainly not the last, major ecosystem to succumb to the Anthropocene the new geological epoch now emerging.
That is why we need an enormous reallocation of research, government and environmental effort to understand what has happened
so we can respond the next time we face a disaster of this magnitude. It will be no bad thing to learn how to do such ecological
engineering now.

Ocean Acidification
CO2 emissions arent anthropogenic multiple natural alt causes
WYI, No date (Whats Your Impact is a non-profit organization to help fight climate change.
http://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/carbon-dioxide-sources. What are the main sources of
carbon dioxide emissions? CTB)
Ocean-atmosphere exchange The largest natural source of carbon dioxide emissions is from
ocean-atmosphere exchange. This produces 42.84% of natural carbon dioxide
emissions. The oceans contain dissolved carbon dioxide, which is released into the air at
the sea surface. Annually this process creates about 330 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
emissions. Many molecules move between the ocean and the atmosphere through the process of diffusion, carbon dioxide is
one of them. This movement is in both directions, so the oceans release carbon dioxide but they also
absorb it. The effects of this movement can be seen quite easily, when water is left to sit in a glass for long enough, gases will be
released and create air bubbles. Carbon dioxide is amongst the gases that are in the air bubbles. Plant and animal respiration An
important natural source of carbon dioxide is plant and animal respiration, which accounts for
28.56% of natural emissions. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the chemical reaction that plants
and animals use to produce the energy they need. Annually this process creates about
220 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Plants and animals use respiration to produce energy, which
is used to fuel basic activities like movement and growth. The process uses oxygen to break down nutrients like sugars, proteins and
fats. This releases energy that can be used by the organism but also creates water and carbon dioxide as byproducts. Soil respiration
and decomposition Another important natural source of carbon dioxide is soil respiration and
decomposition, which accounts for 28.56% of natural emissions. Many organisms that
live in the Earth's soil use respiration to produce energy. Amongst them are
decomposers who break down dead organic material. Both of these processes releases
carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Annually these soil organisms create about 220 billion
tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Any respiration that occurs below-ground is considered soil respiration.
Plant roots, bacteria, fungi and soil animals use respiration to create the energy they
need to survive but this also produces carbon dioxide. Decomposers that work underground breaking
down organic matter (like dead trees, leaves and animals) are also included in this. Carbon dioxide is regularly
released during decomposition. Volcanic eruptions A minor amount carbon dioxide is created by volcanic eruptions,
which accounts for 0.03% of natural emissions. Volcanic eruptions release magma, ash, dust and gases
from deep below the Earth's surface. One of the gases released is carbon dioxide.
Annually this process creates about 0.15 to 0.26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
emissions. The most common volcanic gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. Volcanic activity will cause
magma to absorb these gases, while passing through the Earth's mantle and crust. During eruptions, the gases are
then released into the atmosphere.
Natural CO2 emissions are worse than man-made emissions squo solves
Gosselin 13 (Pierre Gosselin is the Associate Degree in Civil Engineering at Vermont Technical
College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/ Most
Of The Rise In CO2 Likely Comes From Natural Sources. CTB)
We know, from ice measurements, measurements at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Barrow Alaska, and the South Pole, that atmospheric
carbon dioxide has been increasing in our atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age. We also know that temperatures
have been increasing in that same time interval, as the earth warms up from the Little Ice Age. The proponents of the theory that
mans production of CO2 has resulted in this temperature increase, use that idea to predict future temperature increases based on
our continuing to use fossil fuels and continuing to force an increase in atmospheric CO2. But, is the increase in CO2 due to man; or
is the increase in CO2 natural, due to rising temperatures caused by natural means? The natural CO2 flux to and
from oceans and land plants amounts to approximately 210 gigatons of carbon annually.
Man currently causes about 8 gigatons of carbon to be injected into the atmosphere,
about 4% of the natural annual flux. There are estimates that about half of mans emissions are taken up by nature.
But is that true? Are there variations in the natural flux? Could those explain the CO2 increase? In June, 2011, Dr. Murry Salby gave
a presentation at a IUGG meeting in Melbourne, Australia. This presentation was mentioned later on Judith Currys blog, and some
others. DirkH brought this presentation to my attention recently in comments on NTZ, and I tracked down the YouTube version. In
that presentation, Dr. Salby plotted the changes in CO2 and changes in global temperature and soil moisture. The soil moisture data
is behind a paywall, but the monthly global temperature and sea surface temperature sets are easily and freely available from
WoodForTrees. The annual carbon fossil carbon release figures are also available, covering nearly the same period as the Mauna Loa
CO2 numbers. The differential changes in CO2 are calculated on a two-year centered average of the monthly figures, then taking the
monthly differential on that average. This gives a somewhat smoothed number, removing the annual cycles, yet preserving the
timing. Figure 3 is a magnified view of Figure 2, the interval from 1990 to 2000, showing the effect of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in
June 1992 and the El Nios of 1995 and 1998. The sharp cooling from the volcanic eruption appears before June 1992 because of the
centered averaging to remove the noise and the annual variation. Changes in CO2 seem muted at the South Pole, and the Barrow
station is noisy as well as having a somewhat short record. Effects at the equator appear delayed at the stations closer to the poles.
For those reasons, we will use the Mauna Loa record. It seems evident from Figures 2 and 3 that temperature influences CO2. But is
it the global land and ocean temperature, or just the sea-surface temperature that is most important? Figure 4 is a plot of global
surface temperature and monthly CO2 change: Sea surface temperature seems to be driving atmospheric CO2 changes. This makes
sense because CO2 solubility in seawater is temperature dependent. But what of mans CO2 additions to the atmosphere? The data
for carbon release is annual data, so the graphs are much coarser in appearance, and the change in CO2 must be annualized. It is
ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming
ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources. The changes in CO2 track
ocean surface temperature, not global carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels is not increasing atmospheric
CO2. Recovery from the Little Ice Age, driven by the sun, is causing the oceans to release
CO2. It is temperature driving CO2 release, not the other way around. Just as it has always been.
As the sun gets quiet in the next few years, sea surface temperature will begin to fall, and
the rise in CO2 will cease. If the sun stays quiet for 30 or 40 years, ocean surface
temperatures will fall far enough to reverse the CO2 rise, the globe will enter a new little
ice age, and things will get really interesting.
Climate change happened prior to the Industrial Revolution
EPA, No date (United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html Causes of Climate Change. CTB)
Earths temperature depends on the balance between energy entering and leaving the
planets system . When incoming energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth system,
Earth warms. When the suns energy is reflected back into space, Earth avoids warming.
When energy is released back into space, Earth cools. Many factors, both natural and
human, can cause changes in Earths energy balance, including: Changes in the
greenhouse effect, which affects the amount of heat retained by Earths atmosphere.
Variations in the suns energy reaching Earth. Changes in the reflectivity of Earths
atmosphere and surface. These factors have caused Earths climate to change many
times. Scientists have pieced together a picture of Earths climate, dating back hundreds
of thousands of years, by analyzing a number of indirect measures of climate such as ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths,
pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in Earths orbit around the sun. [1] The historical record shows that
the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the
Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes
in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG)
concentrations. [1]
Aff cant solve for the amount of solar energy reaching the earth its a
cause of climate change
EPA, No date (United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html Causes of Climate Change. CTB)
Climate is influenced by natural changes that affect how much solar energy reaches
Earth. These changes include changes within the sun and changes in Earths orbit.
Changes occurring in the sun itself can affect the intensity of the sunlight that reaches
Earths surface. The intensity of the sunlight can cause either warming (during periods of
stronger solar intensity) or cooling (during periods of weaker solar intensity). The sun follows a natural 11-year cycle of small
ups and downs in intensity, but the effect on Earths climate is small. [1] [5] Changes in the shape of Earths orbit
as well as the tilt and position of Earths axis can also affect the amount of sunlight
reaching Earths surface. [1] [2] Changes in the suns intensity have influenced Earths
climate in the past. For example, the so-called Little Ice Age between the 17th and 19th
centuries may have been partially caused by a low solar activity phase from 1645 to 1715, which coincided with cooler
temperatures. The Little Ice Age refers to a slight cooling of North America, Europe, and probably other areas around the globe. [1]
[2] Changes in Earths orbit have had a big impact on climate over tens of thousands of
years. In fact, the amount of summer sunshine on the Northern Hemisphere, which is affected by changes in the planets orbit,
appears to control the advance and retreat of ice sheets. These changes appear to be the primary cause of past cycles of ice ages, in
which Earth has experienced long periods of cold temperatures (ice ages), as well as shorter interglacial periods (periods between ice
ages) of relatively warmer temperatures. [1] [2] Changes in solar energy continue to affect climate. However, solar activity has been
relatively constant, aside from the 11-year cycle, since the mid-20th century and therefore does not explain the recent warming of
Earth. Similarly, changes in the shape of Earths orbit as well as the tilt and position of Earths
axis affect temperature on relatively long timescales (tens of thousands of years), and
therefore cannot explain the recent warming.
Sea creatures have adapted to ocean acidification
Science Daily, 13 (The University of California at Santa Barbara did a study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130415100903.htm Ocean's future not so bleak?
Resilience found in shelled plants exposed to ocean acidification. CTB)
As fossil fuel emissions increase, so does the amount of carbon dioxide oceans absorb and dissolve, lowering their pH levels. "As pH
declines, there is this concern that marine species that have shells may start dissolving or may have more difficulty making calcium
carbonate, the chalky substance that they use to build shells," said Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, a professor in UCSB's
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology. Iglesias-Rodriguez and
postdoctoral researcher Bethan Jones, who is now at Rutgers University, led a large-
scale study on the effects of ocean acidification on these tiny plants that can only be seen under the
microscope. Their research, funded by the European Project on Ocean Acidification, is published in the journal PLoS ONE and
breaks with traditional notions about the vitality of calcifiers, or creatures that make shells, in future ocean conditions. "The
story years ago was that ocean acidification was going to be bad, really bad for
calcifiers," said Iglesias-Rodriguez, whose team discovered that one species of the tiny
single celled marine coccolithophore, Emiliania huxleyi, actually had bigger shells in
high carbon dioxide seawater conditions. While the team acknowledges that calcification tends to decline with
acidification, "we now know that there are variable responses in sea corals, in sea urchins, in
all shelled organisms that we find in the sea." These E. huxleyi are a large army of ocean-regulating shell
producers that create oxygen as they process carbon by photosynthesis and fortify the ocean food chain. As one of Earth's main
vaults for environmentally harmful carbon emissions, their survival affects organisms inside and outside the marine system.
However, as increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide causes seawater to slide down the pH scale toward acidic levels, this
environment could become less hospitable. The UCSB study incorporated an approach known as shotgun proteomics to uncover
how E. huxleyi's biochemistry could change in future high carbon dioxide conditions, which were set at four times the current levels
for the study. This approach casts a wider investigative net that looks at all changes and influences in the environment as opposed to
looking at individual processes like photosynthesis. Shotgun proteomics examines the type, abundance, and alterations in proteins
to understand how a cell's machinery is conditioned by ocean acidification. "There is no perfect approach," said Iglesias-Rodriguez.
"They all have their caveats, but we think that this is a way of extracting a lot of information from this system." To mirror
natural ocean conditions, the team used over half a ton of seawater to grow the E.
huxleyi and bubbled in carbon dioxide to recreate both present day and high future
carbon levels. It took more than six months for the team to grow enough plants to
accumulate and analyze sufficient proteins. The team found that E. huxleyi cells exposed
to higher carbon dioxide conditions were larger and contained more shell than those
grown in current conditions. However, they also found that these larger cells grow slower than those under current
carbon dioxide conditions. Aside from slower growth, the higher carbon dioxide levels did not seem to
affect the cells even at the biochemical level, as measured by the shotgun proteomic
approach. "The E. huxleyi increased the amount of calcite they had because they kept calcifying but slowed down division
rates," said Iglesias-Rodriguez. "You get fewer cells but they look as healthy as those under current ocean conditions, so the shells
are not simply dissolving away." The team stresses that while representatives of this species seem to have biochemical mechanisms
to tolerate even very high levels of carbon dioxide, slower growth could become problematic. If other species grow faster, E. huxleyi
could be outnumbered in some areas. "The cells in this experiment seemed to tolerate future ocean
conditions," said Jones. "However, what will happen to this species in the future is still an open question. Perhaps the grow-
slow outcome may end up being their downfall as other species could simply outgrow and replace them."
Coral reefs are resilient new studies prove dolomite protects the reefs
Mercer, 12 (http://www.voanews.com/content/reefs-resilient-to-ocean-acidity-say-australian-
researchers/1564767.html Reefs Resilient to Ocean Acidity Say Australian Researchers. CTB)
SYDNEY New Australian research shows coral reefs are more resistant to ocean
acidification than first thought. Scientists have been concerned that coral is vulnerable when carbon levels in the
atmosphere rise, along with the acidity of the ocean. But an Australian National University study on the Great Barrier Reef suggests
otherwise. Amid the threat to reefs from the effects of climate change, pollution and overfishing, Australian researchers have found
some rare good news. A team at the Australia National University in Canberra has been
investigating coralline algae, which are plants that act like a glue to bind coral. One
useful analogy is that the algae are the cement, while the coral are the bricks that
comprise a reef system. A new study has found that dolomite, a carbonate mineral, helps
to protect reefs from rising ocean acidity, which is caused by the absorption of carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Lead author Merinda Nash, a doctoral student, says it is an important discovery. There was a lot of
concern that the coralline algae, which plays a key role in building the reef and binding
corals together, that this would be the first thing to dissolve as CO2 went up and that
that would impact the reef structure," she said. "So we found that this presence of dolomite actually
reduced the dissolution rate significantly to about one tenth the rate of the algae without
the dolomite, so that's quite good news.
Reefs have and will continue to adapt
Nature World News, 6/23/14
(http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7707/20140623/great-barrier-reef-more-resilient-
assumed.htm Great Barrier Reef More Resilient than Assumed. CTB)
The Great Barrier Reef has survived a wide range of temperature in the past, a new
study from Australia shows. Researchers at Australian National University and colleagues collected fossilized coral
samples from the Reef and mapped its history. The team used the corals to reconstruct the ocean
surface temperature between 20,000 and 13,000 years ago, abc news reported. They found
that the Reef grew during the last ice age, when the ocean temperature was four to five
degree lower than it is now. "It was right at the colder limit of what corals can take, but
the reef grew and developed from there," said Dr Helen McGregor, from ANU Research School of Earth Sciences,
according to a news release. The study shows that the Great Barrier Reef is much tougher than
previously assumed and has the ability to cope with warm oceans. "The Great Barrier
Reef has previously coped with changes in ocean temperature and corals seem to be able
to adapt to warmer temperatures, at least when the changes occur over a few thousand
years," McGregor told ABC news.
Many alt causes to loss of coral reefs
Crabbe, 10 (James Crabbe is Professor of Biochemistry at the University, a
Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford University, and Visiting Professor at
the University of Reading, and at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai in China. His
research, spanning biomedical and environmental sciences, has resulted in over 135
publications in refereed International journals, 21 books and major book chapters, 14
items of commercial software, and numerous invitations as Plenary speaker at
International conferences. Coral Ecosystem Resilience, Conservation and Management
on the Reefs of Jamaica in the Face of Anthropogenic Activities and Climate Change.
Page 882. CTB)
Coral reefs throughout the world are under severe challenges from a variety of anthropogenic and
environmental factors including overfishing, destructive fishing practices, coral bleaching,
ocean acidification, sea-level rise, algal blooms, agricultural run-off, coastal and resort
development, marine pollution, increasing coral diseases, invasive species, and
hurricane/cyclone damage [1,2]. Most reefs are considered as open non-equilibium systems [3], with diversity
maintained by disturbance and recruitment, as well as by predation, competition and evolutionary history [4]. Interspecific
competition [5,6] is pervasive among coral communities, and is important in maintaining their viability [7,8]. Heterospecific
competition of corals with algae reduces coral growth and survivorship [9,10]. In corals, spatial arrangement, orientation and
aggregation may be a key mechanism contributing to species coexistence on coral reefs [11,12]. Maintaining coral reef
populations in the face of large scale degradation and phase-shifts on reefs depends
critically on recruitment [13,14], maintenance of grazing fish and urchin populations [15],
clade of symbiotic zooxanthellae [16] and management of human activities related to
agricultural land use and coastal development [17]. To manage coral reefs it is important
to have an understanding of coral population demographystructure, biodiversity and
and dynamics [18-20]. Ideally, this involves the quantification of numbers of individual colonies of different size classesthe
population structure through time, in addition to quantifying coral growth rates, recruitment and survival.
Polar Melting
Alt Causes
Alt causewind
Adam 10 [David, environment correspondent, 3/22, Wind contributing to Arctic sea ice loss, study
finds, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/22/wind-sea-ice-loss-
arctic]//fw
Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the
region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study
reveals. Ice blown out of the region by Arctic winds can explain around one-third of the
steep downward trend in sea ice extent in the region since 1979, the scientists say. The study does not question that
global warming is also melting ice in the Arctic, but it could raise doubts about high-profile claims that the
region has passed a climate "tipping point" that could see ice loss sharply accelerate in coming years. The
new findings also help to explain the massive loss of Arctic ice seen in the summers of
2007-08, which prompted suggestions that the summertime Arctic Ocean could be ice-free withing a decade. About half
of the variation in maximum ice loss each September is down to changes in wind
patterns, the study says. Masayo Ogi, a scientist with the Japan Agency for
Marine-Earth Science and Technology in Yokohama, and her colleagues, looked at
records of how winds have behaved across the Arctic since satellite measurements
of ice extent there began in 1979. They found that changes in wind patterns, such as summertime winds
that blow clockwise around the Beaufort Sea, seemed to coincide with years where sea ice loss was highest.
Writing in a paper to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists suggest these winds have
blown large amounts of Arctic ice south through the Fram Strait, which passes between Greenland and the
Norwegian islands of Svalbard, and leads to the warmer waters of the north Atlantic. These winds have
increased recently, which could help explain the apparent acceleration in ice loss. "Wind-induced, year-to-
year differences in the rate of flow of ice toward and through Fram Strait play an
important role in modulating September sea ice extent on a year-to-year basis," the scientists
say. "A trend toward an increased wind-induced rate of flow has contributed to the decline
in the areal coverage of Arctic summer sea ice." Ogi said this was the first time the Arctic winds have been
analysed in such a way. "Both winter and summer winds could blow ice out of the Arctic [through]
the Fram Strait during 1979-2009," she said.
Alt CauseCoastal Floods Spec
Groundwater extraction causes coastal floods
Watts 14 [Anthony, meteorologist, 5/1, In some coastal cities, subsidence now exceeds absolute sea
level rise up to a factor of ten, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/01/in-some-coastal-cities-
subsidence-now-exceeds-absolute-sea-level-rise-up-to-a-factor-of-ten/]//
There is a story in the Daily Mail cited by the GWPF which talks about subsidence due to groundwater extraction. For example,
North Jakarta Indonesia has sunk four meters in the last 35 years, with other parts of the city also
affected, and the impact of subsidence combined with heavy rain and high tides can be seen in the photo at right. The gist of
the study is that in some cities, subsidence is now exceeding sea level rise. It is
something to think about and cite the next time there is an alarming story about sea
level "inundating" some city with a coastal flood. Here are some excerpts and an abstract: Forget
global warming and melting polar caps - groundwater extraction is causing
cities to SINK beneath sea level: Ground is dropping up to 10 times faster than the
sea level is rising in coastal megacities, a new study says Scientists at Deltares Research
Institute in Utrecht studied subsidence in five coastal cities, including Jakarta, New Orleans and Bangkok North
Jakarta has sunk four metres in the last 35 years - a fall of 10 to 20cm per year and experts have called on governments to take action
Land subsidence is contributing to larger, longer and deeper floods Total damage due to
subsidence worldwide is estimated at billions of dollars a year and is set to increase.
Inevitable
Polar melting inevitable
McCoy 14 [Terrence, Reporter, 5/13, West Antarctic glacial collapse: What you need to know, The
Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/13/west-antarctic-
glacial-collapse-what-you-need-to-know/]//fw
Years from now, when scientists look for a precise moment when the Earths climate began to
inexorably change, they may mark this week. Two separate studies Monday appeared to
confirm a fear scientists have harbored for decades: major glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet are irrevocably destabilized, and their slide into the ocean will swell the worlds
oceans by four feet. Glaciers in West Antarctica have passed the point of no
return, said Eric Rignot, the author of a study from the University of
California at Irvine and NASA published in Geophysical Research Letters. It will be a
major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come.
Thomas P. Wagner, another NASA researcher who studies polar ice, was equally
grave in an interview with the New York Times. This is really happening, he said. Theres
nothing to stop it now. But you are still limited by the physics of how fast the ice can flow.

Not Anthro
Not enough data to say polar melting is human-causedcant make
predictions about sea-level rise
DailyMail 13 [6/15, Ice cap melting data is too weak to suggest alarming
decrease is permanent or caused by humans, study claims, Daily Mail,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2364813/Researchers-prove-polar-ice-melt-caused-humans-
long-term-satellite-study-yields-inconclusive-results.html#ixzz37lMvMww9]//fw
Greenland and Antarctica have lost about 300 billion tons of ice per year of the 9-year study Melt-off could be the
result of natural processes Study warns against using current ice loss data as basis for
predictions in sea-level rise Ten more years of data needed to discover cause of
ice loss in Greenland. A team of researchers led by Dr. Bert Wouters at the University
of Bristol compared nine years of satellite measurements of glaciers in
Greenland and Antarctica in an attempt to determine if the melt-off is part of an
accelerating trend in ice loss and sea-level rise. While the study showed a loss of about 300 billion tonnes of
ice per year from the arctic and Antarctic regions, it concluded that natural processes cannot be ruled
out as the force behind the receding ice sheets and thus that future sea-level rise cannot
currently be accurately predicted. No conclusions: A new study says we don't know
enough about polar ice melt to say whether or not it is human-caused or if the sea-levels
will rise as they liquify The ice covering Antarctica and Greenland contains about 99.5 per cent of the Earth's glacier ice
and would raise global sea levels by around 206 feet if they somehow melted completely. As such, the two ice sheets are the biggest
potential sources of sea level rise and are of particular interest to scientists studying changes in sea level and polar ice mass. In order
to measure changes in ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland, the researchers used satellites to detect tiny variations in Earths
magnetic field that are indicative of a change in the distribution of mass, in this case the movement of ice into the ocean.
Beginning in 2002, researchers looking at sea level rise led by Dr. Burt Wouters used
satellites to take monthly measurements of Greenland and Antarctica's glaciers--the largest potential sources of
rising tides--in an effort dubbed Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). The study found that the two land
masses lost about 300 tonnes of ice to the ocean each year of the study. However, the 9-year
length of the research was insufficient to determine if the melt-off was part of an
accelerating trend (ie caused by humans) or part of an ebb and flow of natural processes. The study
found it had almost enough data to conclude Antarctica's ice sheets are melting as part of an increasing trend with a 'reasonable level
of confidence.' However, Wouters' team said another decade of data is needed before the same is true for Greenland. Since current
ice melt data could indicate variable climate trends and aren't necessarily part of an accelerating trend, the study warned that
predictions of future sea-level rise should not be based on measurements of glacial loss.
Squo Solves

Squo solvesscientists developing sensors to monitor Arctic ice melt
Algar 7/16/14 [Jim, Sensors placed on Arctic ice sheets to track melting and breakup, Tech Times,
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/10618/20140716/sensors-placed-on-arctic-ice-sheets-to-track-
melting-and-breakup.htm]//fw
An international team of scientists say it has placed sensitive instruments both above and
below Arctic ice in the region's Beaufort Sea to monitor summer ice melt in unprecedented detail.
The project, led by researchers from the University of Washington, is funded
through the U.S. Office of Naval Research to study the effect weather has on the region's ice cover and its
melting, which is usually constant right through the month of September when it reaches its lowest cover. "We're really trying to
resolve the physics over the course of an entire melt season," UW oceanographer and study principle investigator Craig Lee says. The
science team conducting the Marginal Ice Zone project includes researchers from the United States, Great Britain, France and
Korea. The sensor network was put in place in March, when the ice cover was of sufficient thickness for a plane carrying the
scientists and their equipment to land. The team placed four sensors in a line extending from south to north for almost 200 miles.
"This has never been done at this level, over such a large area and for such a long period of time," Lee says. The researchers
say their sensors will measure characteristics of the ocean, atmosphere and the region's ice sheets, with
particular attention paid to the marginal ice zone, the transition region between open ocean water and solid ice cover that is just now
forming along the northern coasts of Canada and Alaska. That's the zone where an ice sheet experiences the
impact of ocean waves hitting it, which generally leads to the sheet breaking up and the
pieces moving into the open water, increasing the force of subsequent impacts on the still intact portions of the ice
cover. As the ice sheet retreats, it exposes more open water that absorbs more solar radiation, the researchers explain, which can in
turn lead to faster and more extensive ice melt. "As there is more and more open water in the summer,
the processes that control the evolution of the sea ice are changing," says Luc
Rainville, another UW oceanographer. In addition to the network of sensors, the state and extent of
the ice cover will be monitored using satellite images, the researchers say.
Squo solvesmonitoring isolates the causes
Labbe 7/16/14 [Mark, undergrad @ Stonehill College, Scientists to study impact of global warming
on Arctic ice, http://www.thewestsidestory.net/2014/07/16/14345/scientists-study-impact-global-
warming-arctic-ice/]//fw
The Arctic regions continue to melt as Earths temperatures rise, and scientists from across the
globe are strengthening their efforts to study the frigid regions and better understand global warming. Headed
by the University of Washington, a group of international researchers are
planning to monitor the Arctic on an unprecedented scale. The scientists will be planting
sensors under ice sheets in the Beaufort Sea in order to both understand and track the
melting of ice there. This has never been done at this level, over such a large area and for such a long period of
time Were really trying to resolve the physics over the course of an entire melt season,
said Craig Lee, the leader of the research team. The melt season starts in the summer and continues
until September. During those months, the ice will melt the fastest, making it the perfect time
for the scientists to monitor the ice sheets. The main goal of the study is to see if global
warming has any impact on the melting of the ice sheets. Researchers will be focusing on a large amount of open water
to the south of the sheets, trying to see if it is getting warmer and melting the ice. They will also be studying the
affects of wind and waves on the ice sheets to see if they could be causing them to break. Increased open
water likely means more wind-driven mixing, said Luc Rainville, from the University
of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory. Similarly surface waves will be able to
travel further in open water, gaining height and power. Once these waves meet the ice they contribute to
breaking the ice edge. By studying the Arctic regions, researchers hope to have a better understanding of
the exact impacts of global warming, and if anything can be done to stop it.
Random Animals
Bluefish Tuna
Alt causeoverfishing and biology
Harvey 13 [Fiona, environment correspondent, 1/9, Overfishing causes Pacific bluefin
tuna numbers to drop 96%, The Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/09/overfishing-pacific-bluefin-tuna]//fw
The bluefin tuna, which has been endangered for several years and has the misfortune to
be prized by Japanese sushi lovers, has suffered a catastrophic decline in stocks in the Northern
Pacific Ocean, of more than 96%, according to research published on Wednesday. Equally concerning is the fact that
about 90% of specimens currently fished are young fish that have not yet reproduced. Last week, one fish sold in Japan for more
than 1m, reflecting the rarity of the bluefin tuna and the continued demand for its fatty flesh, which is sold for high prices across
Asia and in some high-end western restaurants. Bluefin tuna is one of nature's most successful ocean inhabitants, the biggest of the
tuna and a top-of-the-food-chain fish with few natural predators. But the advent of industrial fishing methods and a
taste for the species among rich sushi devotees have led to its being hunted to the brink of
extinction. If current trends continue, the species will soon be functionally extinct in
the Pacific, and the frozen bodies held in a few high-security Asian warehouses will be the last gasp the species. More than
nine out of 10 of the species recently caught were too young to have reproduced,
meaning they may have been the last generation of the bluefin tuna. Amanda
Nickson, of the Pew Environment Group, which produced the latest report, said: "There is no
logical way a fishery can have such a high level of fishing on juveniles and continue." She
said that urgent measures needed to be taken in order to preserve stocks and allow them to recover. "The population of
Pacific bluefin is a small fraction of what it used to be and is in danger of all but
disappearing," she said. "It's a highly valuable natural commodity and people naturally want to fish something that gives
them such a high return." She called for fishing of the species to be halted as a matter of urgency. Although there are measures to
manage the exploitation of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic, and some measures in the eastern Pacific, the main spawning ground for
Pacific bluefin tuna in the western part of that ocean is not managed. The main fishing fleets exploiting the stocks are from Japan,
Mexico, South Korea and the US, and the high value of the few remaining fish is a further
encouragement to fishermen to hunt down the last of the species. A single specimen could make the
catchers rich for life, and without catch limits and rigorous enforcement, there is nothing to stop fishermen pursuing them. Nickson
said: "This assessment shows just how bad the situation really is for this top predator. This highly valuable fish is
being exploited at almost every stage of its life cycle. Fishing continues on the spawning
grounds of this heavily overfished tuna species." About two-thirds of the world's tuna comes from the Pacific,
but bluefin tuna accounts for only about 1% of this. For years, the species was neglected in fisheries management, being lumped in
with other more prolific species. But in recent years it has become clear that it was in danger, from
overfishing and its own biology - being bigger than other tuna, it takes longer to come to
sexual maturity, which scientists estimate takes between four and eight years, which
limits its reproductive ability and makes it more vulnerable to the predations
of modern industrialised fishing techniques.
Alt causethose darn Canadians
Contenta 12 [Sandro, Feature Writer, 12/29, Scientists fear Canada will fish bluefin tuna and other
species to extinction, The Star,
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2012/12/29/scientists_fear_canada_will_fish_bluefin_tuna_and
_other_species_to_extinction.html]//fw
Top marine scientists are denouncing Canadas management of fish stocks as a commercially
driven approach threatening to wipe out species at risk. The attack comes from two senior members of the Committee on the Status
of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) the body mandated by federal law to advise the government on species at risk.
They note the federal government has consistently refused to list several endangered fish
under the Species at Risk Act, which would make their fishing or trade illegal. They include
Atlantic cod, cusk and porbeagle shark. During the acts 10-year history, there has not been a
commercially exploited fish assessed as endangered or threatened that has been included on that
list, says Jeffrey Hutchings, a biology professor at Dalhousie University and
member and former chair of COSEWIC. Commercial interests always trump ecological ones,
Hutchings charges. A stark example, he insists, is the porbeagle shark, whose population has declined by at least 85 per cent since
the 1960s. It was assessed by COSEWIC as endangered in 2004. The government refused to list it as a species at risk because a
handful of Canadians were fishing it. Today, a dozen fishermen have licences to fish porbeagle in the Atlantic. No one used the
licence to fish them this year and only one fisherman did so in each of the last two years. Yet Canada, which fishes more porbeagle
than any other country, was roundly criticized last month for blocking a European proposal at an international conference that
would have ended porbeagle fishing. Our (international) reputation is very poor, says Alan Sinclair, a
COSEWIC expert on fish populations who retired from the federal Department of Fisheries and oceans three years ago. We used to
be a leader internationally in conservation and protecting our fish resources back in the 1970s and 80s, he adds. Now people look
at us and Im sure they shake their heads and wonder what the heck is going on in Canada. Frustration hit a boiling
point when Canada pushed for an increase in the bluefin tuna fishing quota at a
meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) in November. At the same time back home,
the government was consulting Canadians on whether to list bluefin tuna as a species at risk, a process triggered by COSEWICs 2011
assessment of bluefin as endangered. This risk level, the government consultation document
notes, indicates that the species is likely to become extinct or extirpated in parts of its range
unless something is done to address the threats it is facing. (Extirpated means found in the wild somewhere, but not in
Canada.) Sinclair and Hutchings point to Canadas tuna quota push at ICCAT to insist the federal government has already
made up its mind: They wont list the bluefin, Hutchings says flatly.
Seabirds
Alt causesfood shortages and climate change
STV News 13 [9/23, Seabirds 'face extinction' from food shortages and climate change, STV News,
http://news.stv.tv/highlands-islands/240570-seabirds-face-extinction-from-food-shortages-and-climate-
change/]//fw
Some of Scotland's important seabird colonies could become extinct unless urgent action is taken to
protect them, a conservation charity has warned. Recent counts have revealed a severe decline in the
number of common guillemots at RSPB Scotland's coastal reserves. Species such as razorbills and puffins are
also struggling to cope with challenges including food shortages and the effects of
climate change. Guillemot numbers at Dunnet Head on the Caithness coast have dropped by around 45% since the last
seabird census in 2000, falling from 8,980 to 4,880. The RSPB reserve at Noup Cliffs on Orkney recorded a 41% decline over the
same period, while the colony at Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde reduced by more than 27%. The charity is calling on the Scottish
Government to protect more species through Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Scotland's seas. A Government consultation on
possible MPAs is due to close in November. Black guillemots have been marked for protection under the proposals and colonies of
the bird are said to be doing well, particularly in the northern isles, but the RSPB said other species were still in danger. RSPB
Scotland marine policy officer Allan Whyte said: "Scotland is home to 24 species of breeding seabird and it is baffling that the
Scottish Government chooses to ignore all but one when designating MPAs. "Puffins, kittiwakes, common
guillemots and the rest are struggling to survive these tough times.
Alt causespredation and invasive species
BBRC 6/25/14 [British Birds, monthly journal for all keen birdwatchers lol, 6/25, First global
assessment of seabirds threatened by invasive alien species on islands released, BBRC,
http://britishbirds.co.uk/article/first-global-assessment-of-seabirds-threatened-by-invasive-alien-
species-on-islands-released/]//fw
To guide island-based seabird conservation actions, a new peer-reviewed paper has been
published in the journal Conservation Biology. The paper identifies, for the first time ever,
every single island and islet worldwide where globally threatened seabirds breed, as well
as whether invasive alien species are present and threatening them. Seabirds are some
of the most threatened marine animals in the world, with 29% of species at risk of extinction. Significant
threats to seabirds occur on islands, which is where seabirds breed, including
predation and disturbance from invasive alien species such as rats, cats and pigs. However,
in many cases, effective island conservation can mitigate these threats. Thanks to hundreds of
collaborations from seabird biologists around the world, we were able to compile
a global database that identifies islands where threatened seabirds are vulnerable to
extinction. The Threatened Island Biodiversity database also highlights islands where invasive species eradications are needed
or where protected areas are missing, said Dena R. Spatz, lead author of the paper. The Biogeography of Globally
Threatened Seabirds and Island Conservation Opportunities, written by scientists from the Coastal
Conservation Action Lab at the University of California, Island Conservation, and BirdLife International, identified all
islands where populations of the 98 globally threatened seabird species (as classified by BirdLife
International on the IUCN Red List) now remain, and documented the presence of threatening
invasive species, protected areas, and human populations. This list was then refined to identify islands
that have the greatest opportunity for interventions to benefit threatened seabirds. It will now form the basis of further priority-
setting to determine where action is most urgently needed. This information is critical to guiding where to prevent threatened
seabird extinctions, and is a rare opportunity for effective conservation at scale, said Nick Holmes, Director of Science, Island
Conservation. Invasive alien species like rats cause significant economic damage
and harm to people too, but on islands it is often feasible to eradicate invasive species, benefiting local communities as well as native
wildlife, added coauthor Dr. Stuart Butchart, Head of Science at BirdLife
International. Top findings: Over 1300 present and locally extinct seabird populations
(representing 98 species) were identified on 968 islands. Invasive species a major threat to
seabirds potentially impact breeding populations on 60% of these islands.
Only one third of threatened seabird islands (359 islands; or 37%) are formally protected (i.e.
>90% covered in protected areas), and over half (534 islands; or 55%) have no legal protection. 83% of
threatened seabird islands lack adequate protection and/or are threatened by invasive
alien species.
Alt causeslack of governmental action and poor breeding seasons
Munro 13 [Alistair, 9/24, Seabirds face extinction after poor breeding season, The Scotsman,
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/seabirds-face-extinction-after-poor-breeding-season-1-
3107724]//fw
SEABIRDS at a number of Scotlands internationally-important colonies face extinction after suffering
another poor breeding season, a conservation charity has warned. RSPB Scotland
is calling on the Scottish Government to act quickly to provide a lifeline to protect
certain species, particularly common guillemots, razorbills and puffins. To date, only the black guillemot is listed in
government proposals, leaving species like common guillemot, kittiwake, arctic skua and razorbills, unprotected at sea.
Challenges include a shortage of food and the effects of climate change, the
charity claims. A lack of action, it says, will leave Scotlands once-bustling and noisy seabird cities in danger of being
silenced. The warning comes after end-of-season counts at the RSPBs coastal reserves found some species declining dramatically.
Recent counts carried out on the RSPB reserve at Noup Cliffs on Orkney reveal a 41 per cent fall in numbers of the common
guillemot since the last seabird census in 2000. Dunnet Head on the Caithness coast saw a decline of about 45 per cent, from 8,980
to just 4,880 since 2000, while common guillemots on Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde have suffered a decline of more than 27 per
cent over the same period. Allan Whyte, marine policy officer at RSPB Scotland, said: Scotland is home to 24 species of breeding
seabird and it is baffling that the Scottish Government chooses to ignore all but one when designating Marine Protected Areas
[MPAs]. Puffins, kittiwakes, common guillemots and the rest are struggling to survive these tough times. The Scottish Government
can and must throw these birds a lifeline and designate MPAs to protect this amazing group of species in danger of disappearing
from our coasts. A Scottish Government spokesman said it was seeking further information regarding MPAs. He said: The Scottish
Government has asked Scottish Natural Heritage and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee to provide formal advice regarding
what additional Marine Special Protection Areas are required for the conservation of seabirds, and this is expected to be received at
the end of 2013. Also we are protecting a number of sand eel habitats which will help protect a vital food
source of most seabirds. Other measures being taken that assist in the conservation of
seabirds include the control of non-native species, surveys of seabirds at sea and
continued monitoring of sites. Seabirds are already well represented in the network through Special Protection
Areas. In contrast with its close cousin, the black guillemot appears to be doing well, with colony counts in the northern isles in
particular showing good productivity. Black guillemots are included in the governments MPA proposals because they dont migrate.
The rest of Scotlands 24 breeding seabird species do migrate, so they qualify for protection under European designations like
Special Protection Areas.
Alt causesoil spills and drilling
Xinhua 5/26/14 [5/26, Offshore drilling plans threat to New Zealand's endangered seabirds:
conservation group, Xinhua News, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/sci/2014-
05/26/c_133361553.htm]//fw
WELLINGTON, May 26 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand has more threatened seabird species than
anywhere else in the world and planned deepwater oil and gas drilling could drive them to
extinction, a leading conservation group warned Monday. The Forest and Bird group
issued the warning with the release of a report on important bird areas (IBAs) for New Zealand seabirds, part of a global effort to
identify marine IBAs and ensure protection. More than a third of the world's seabird species lived at
least part of their lives in 69 IBAs New Zealand's territorial seas and Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ) waters, Forest and Bird seabird advocate Karen Baird said in a statement. "New Zealand also has more
seabird species that breed only within its jurisdiction than any other country in the
world. We have 36 species. Mexico is next on the list, with only five species," said Baird. "Sadly, New Zealand also has
more threatened seabird species than anywhere else in the world." These
included the Chatham Island taiko, yellow-eyed penguin, antipodean wandering albatross, the New Zealand fairy tern, which was
down to 10 pairs, and the tiny New Zealand storm petrel, which was thought to be extinct until 2003. "The sheer number of IBAs for
seabirds calls for a major rethink of the mass sell-off of deep water oil and gas drilling rights within our EEZ," said Baird. "As the
industry oil spill modeling shows, a deep sea blowout could cover thousands of square
kilometers of bird habitat in oil, which in turn could push some species to the brink of
extinction."
Seals
Alt causesclimate change, ozone hole, krill shortages
Spotts 7/24/14 [Pete, staff writer, 7/24, Antarctic fur seals, once hunted to near extinction, now face
climate threat, CS Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2014/0724/Antarctic-fur-seals-
once-hunted-to-near-extinction-now-face-climate-threat]//fw
Climate change appears to be pulling the ecological rug out from under a once-stable population of
Antarctic fur seals. Their numbers on a remote island in the South Atlantic are falling, even though an increasing proportion of
survivors are displaying greater genetic variation a trait generally thought to boost an organism's ability to adapt to environmental
stress. That's the pattern a pair of scientists has detected in a new study of the seal
population, which researchers have been scrutinizing for 31 years at the level of individual seals as well as at the wider
population level. The work has implications beyond the seals themselves, the researchers say. The seals, which feed on
Antarctic krill, sit near the top of the food chain, notes Joe Hoffman, a molecular
ecologist at Bielefeld University in Bielefeld, Germany, and one of the two scientists
reporting the results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. As a result, the seals tend to reflect the general health of the
ecosystem they inhabit and so are "an indicator for many other species," he explains. Until the 1990s, the seals inhabiting the South
Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, some 1,100 miles east of the southern tip of South America, represented a good-news
conservation story. The seals there were nearly hunted to extinction during the 19th century. By the 1990s, the number of seals had
rebounded to a population estimated at about 3 million and considered stable. In the colony the two researchers studied, however,
the number of breeding females fell by by 25 percent over the past 27 years. "The motive for this study was to find out what was
causing the decline and if the cause of the decline was a problem for the entire ecosystem as a whole," Dr. Hoffman says. Hoffman
and Jaume Forcada, a biologist with the British Antarctic Survey and the
study's lead author, focused on females, because they reach reproductive maturity and come ashore to breed when
they are three-to-four years old. Over 30 years, data accumulated on many generations of offspring. Males, on the other hand, don't
start coming ashore until they are about 10 years old and are big enough to tangle with already established males in the breeding
colony. In addition to the general decline in breeding females during the past 27 years, female pups on
average weighed 7.8 percent less at birth than they did in the '90s. The average time span covered by a
generation shrank from 13.7 to 6.1 years. And the number of females whose genetic makeup
displayed the least variety fell by 17 percent, boosting the proportion of females with
high genetic variation. Yet this high genetic variation, which increases the likelihood
that an individual will survive the tougher environmental conditions, can't be passed
from mother to pups, the researchers note. Females that reached reproductive age and returned to the island
to breed tended to be among the larger, older females and generally bore their first pups a year later than they did in the '90s, the
researchers found. These patterns tend to be associated with animals facing food shortages. In
exploring the factors determining the abundance and distribution of krill, climate
patterns are crucial, the team notes. In particular, they point to a band of high-altitude winds encircling
Antarctica. The band expands and contracts on average in a cycle known as the Southern Annular Mode. Between 2003 and
2012, the mode entered a phase in which the band of high-altitude winds generally contracted toward the South Pole, allowing
warmer water to migrate farther south into regions where the seals gulp krill. When the water warms, krill
populations fall. Overall, the breeding population of females dropped by 30 percent during
this period. This phase has been attributed to a combination of the ozone hole over Antarctica
and global warming, and models project an increase in the persistence of the phase with additional warming.
SealsAT: Warming
Seal genetic variability solves pressures of warming
Spotts 7/24/14 [Pete, staff writer, 7/24, Antarctic fur seals, once hunted to near extinction, now face
climate threat, CS Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2014/0724/Antarctic-fur-seals-
once-hunted-to-near-extinction-now-face-climate-threat]//fw
Armed with these data, "we can obtain very clear evidence that as the climate is changed, it's
getting more difficult for these animals to get by," he says, because conditions are changing
faster than the animals can evolve to adapt to the changes. Given fur seals' bellwether status and the
range of other species that rely on the same source of food, Hoffman says it's possible that other species in the Southern Ocean may
be experiencing similar changes. He and Dr. Forcada speculate, however, that as environmental conditions get
worse, natural selection could lead the genetic diversity within individuals to become
dominant enough to persist in the population, better equipping it to adapt
to future changes.
Sea Colonization
Possible Now
Tech exists for sea colonies
Nuwer 13 [Rachel, science journalist, 9/30, Will we ever... live in underwater cities?, BBC,
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130930-can-we-build-underwater-cities]//fw
According to Koblick, the technology already exists to create underwater colonies supporting up
to 100 people the few bunker-like habitats in operation today providing a blueprint. There are no
technological hurdles, Koblick says. If you had the money and the need, you could do it
today. Beyond that number, technological advances would be needed to deal with emergency evacuation systems, and
environmental controls of air supply and humidity.
Sea colonies are already possibleplan not key
Nuwer 13 [Rachel, science journalist, 9/30, Will we ever... live in underwater cities?, BBC,
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130930-can-we-build-underwater-cities]//fw
Larger underwater colonies are already feasible. What stops them becoming a
reality is a lack of interest, motivation and funding. However Polish company Deep Ocean
Technology thinks tourism is the way to make the endeavour economical. It has signed deals with architects
and builders to deliver the Water Discus Hotel at the Noonu Atoll, Kuredhivaru Island in the Maldives within three years.
The company is also involved in discussions about building hotels under the waves in
Dubai, Singapore and more than one European location, including in Norway.
Unlikely
Sea colonies unlikely
Nuwer 13 [Rachel, science journalist, **quoting Ian Koblick, president of Marine Resources
Development Foundation and guy who builds this stuff, 9/30, Will we ever... live in underwater cities?,
BBC, http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130930-can-we-build-underwater-cities]//fw
Outside of the realm of science fiction, however, Koblick doubts the life aquatic vision will come to pass.
He still hopes that people will come around to the idea of creating new and larger
underwater habitats for scientific and educational purposes, but laments that he sees
no indication that this will happen within his lifetime. In some ways, he shares Pauleys
sentiments. I was 27 when I went on my first long, deep dive, and Im now 74 years old, he says. Ive spent 40-something years
trying to unlock the idea of living under the sea. Spending more than half his life trying to convince others of the value of longer
stays below the waves has convinced him that only a major catastrophe will persuade people to follow
his lead. That, or greed. The only real motivation is if we destroyed the air environment up here and were forced to leave
because we couldnt live in it, he says. Or if we started picking up gold nuggets from the bottom. Then it would be done in a
heartbeat.

Sea Turtles
Squo Solves
Squo solvesnew critical habitat for sea turtles nowand multiple alt
causes
McConnaughey 7/9/14 [Janet, journalist, Critical habitat designated for loggerhead turtles, AP,
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/07/09/4226639/critical-habitat-designated-for.html]//fw
NEW ORLEANS -- About 685 miles of beaches and nearly 200,000 square miles of the Atlantic
Ocean and Gulf of Mexico have been declared critical habitat for threatened
loggerhead sea turtles. It was the largest such federal designation in history, according to
environmental groups that went to court to make the government designate habitat necessary for the turtles to recover. The U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service listed 88 nesting beaches in six states. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries
service listed marine areas including waters just off beaches, winter habitat in North Carolina, breeding areas in Florida and narrow
migration corridors between the two. It also listed mats of Sargassum also known as sea holly and Gulf weed in the western
Gulf of Mexico and in U.S. waters within the Atlantic Gulf Stream. Two beaches totaling 37 miles of coast were deleted from the
original proposal because officials already had plans in place to protect the turtles, agency spokesman Charles Underwood said. A
federal agency that names a critical habitat must be consulted before federal permits or contracts are issued there. The designation
does not affect land ownership or create wildlife preserves or refuges. Offshore oil and gas leases already required NOAA Fisheries
consultation to consider effects on sea turtles, all of which are endangered or threatened, spokeswoman Connie Barclay said. Effects
on Sargassum habitat now must also be considered but are unlikely to affect the leases, she said. The loggerhead is the
most common sea turtle in the Southeast. Officials say the long-lived species is
vulnerable to collisions with boats, fishing nets and alterations to beaches.
"While migrating thousands of miles in the course of their lifetimes, loggerheads face persistent threats
from fishing gear, pollution and climate change," said Amanda Keledjian, a
marine scientist at Oceana, one of the groups that sued NOAA and the wildlife agency. "This critical
habitat designation is essential for the future survival and recovery of sea turtles
in the U.S. and will ensure that populations are more resilient in the future."
Loggerheads come ashore to lay eggs along about 1,530 miles of coastal beaches, according to a joint news release. "Given the vital
role loggerhead sea turtles play in maintaining the health of our oceans, rebuilding their populations is key as we
work to ensure healthy and resilient oceans for generations to come," said Eileen Sobeck, NOAA's
assistant administrator for fisheries. The turtles' powerful jaws break up crustaceans' shells, leaving fragments that return nutrients
to the ocean floor. They also eat jellyfish, helping control the creatures that prey on fish eggs and larvae. More than 100 kinds of
small animals, including crabs, live on loggerheads' shells. The turtles also carry nutrients onto beaches. Florida is one of
two areas worldwide where more than 10,000 females nest each year, according to the Fish and
Wildlife Service. More than 1,000 nest in areas along the other East Coast states, while the Gulf states see 100 to 999 females.
Turtles will stay in the critical habitat until the recovery plan is met
Queram 13 [Kate E., reporter, 8/19, Sea turtle population appears to be recovering, but how much?,
http://www.newbernsj.com/news/local/sea-turtle-population-appears-to-be-recovering-but-how-much-
1.189565]//fw
Turtles need sand. If critical habitat is designated for loggerhead turtles, these existing, successful
programs will be burdened with additional and unnecessary measures, and will become more costly and difficult to implement, said
Harry Simmons, mayor of Caswell Beachand a member of the states Coastal Resources Commission. The answer, Godfrey said, is
simply that the turtles remain a protected species under a federal recovery plan. Until that
changes, protective measures can, and probably will, continue to be put in place. Until
they come off, they are subject to protection, he said. The recovery plan has specific
benchmarks, explaining what the federal government believes constitutes recovery. Until it meets that criteria,
the species will still be listed.
Alt Causes
Litany of alt causes
Clearwater Gazette 7/16/14 [7/16, Critical habitat designated for loggerhead sea turtles in
Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, http://clearwatergazette.com/cg/news/critical-habitat-designated-for-
loggerhead-sea-turtles-in-atlantic-gulf-of-mexico-20140717/#sthash.m0axKWJn.dpuf]//fw
The most significant threat to loggerhead populations, according to NOAA, is beach
erosion caused by coastal development that contributes to the loss and degradation of
nesting and foraging habitats. Beachfront lighting from such development also disorients turtle hatchlings as they
leave the nest and head to the water. Other threats include marine pollution and debris, native and
non-native predators, watercraft strikes, disease, and incidental channel
dredging and commercial trawling. In 2012, the state Department of Environmental Protection
inventoried Floridas erosion problem areas fronting the Atlantic Ocean, Straits of Florida, Gulf of Mexico and the roughly 70 coastal
barrier tidal inlets. Its findings determined that in Pinellas County, 21.4 miles out of 35 miles of beach on 11
barrier islands from Honeymoon Island to Fort Desoto are critically eroded, which could have an impact
on sea turtle nesting.
Alt causeseaweed
Rice 6/27/14 [Harvey, Galveston Bureau Reporter, 6/27, Groups: Seaweed could be killing sea
turtles, Houston Chronicle,
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/Groups-Seaweed-could-be-
killing-sea-turtles-5585589.php]//fw
As seaweed continues to pile up on Texas Gulf Coast beaches due to an unusually large influx of the marine algae
since April, Reich is among a number of scientists and turtle advocates who worry that nests laid by the state sea
turtle are being buried or crushed by heavy equipment that's being used to
remove the sargassum. They are also concerned that endangered green turtles being washed
ashore with the seaweed are suffering the same fate. Despite extraordinary efforts to avoid harming the
turtles, the volume of seaweed may be so great in places that it's too difficult to spot
turtles or turtle nests, said Reich, director of the Sea Turtle Research Lab at
Texas A&M University at Galveston. "I still think we are losing turtles and I still think we are
having nests covered up because of the sheer mass they are having to clear," she said. The seaweed onslaught is
coinciding with the nesting season for the Kemp's ridley, said Reich and Joanie
Steinhaus, Galveston representative of the Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
"We've had a lot of strandings and unfortunately with the (beach) cleaning the impact is tremendous," Steinhaus said. A reasonable
concern Since May 10, the National Marine Fisheries Service, which keeps track of turtles washed ashore, has
found 20 live and 23 dead green turtles on the beach among the sargassum, said Andy Krauss,
research assistant at the service's Galveston office. Krauss said he knows of at least one green turtle that was caught in a front end
loader, but crawled away unharmed. He knows of no turtle deaths caused by cleaning equipment but believes it's a
reasonable concern. Protection efforts are complicated by the fact that private contractors handle beach
cleaning along parts of the shore.
Alt causeclimate change
White 5/18/14 [Mike, assistant editor, 5/18, Sea Turtle Female Population Is Growing With Global
Warming Trends, http://guardianlv.com/2014/05/sea-turtle-female-population-is-growing-with-global-
warming-trends/#8ZUq52eO7EMwUr4Q.99]//fw
A new study has found that the rising temperatures caused by global warming are beneficial
to the population growth of sea turtle populations. However the study also says that if temperatures rise too much
that it will systematically cause the sea turtle embryos to die before they hatch. For the time
being it seems that the sea turtle female population is growing with global warming trends. Professor Graeme Hays
from Deakin University is a co-author to the research. The study focuses on breeds of sea turtles that are located at
the globally important loggerhead turtle rookery that is housed on the Cape Verde Islands which are located in the Atlantic ocean.
Even though the study was done in the Atlantic ocean, the lessons learned still apply to other species
located in other oceans in other parts of the world, such as the Pacific Ocean. The study found that
beaches with more lightly colored sand currently produce a group of sea turtle
hatchlings that are 70.1 percent female. The study also found that beaches with sand that is of a darker color
produces a group of sea turtle hatchlings that are 93.5 percent female. This proves that the sea turtle female
population is growing with global warming trends. Science has taught that the reproductive cycle
of a reptile is dependent on the given temperature of the environment. Sea turtles are no
exception to this law. The incubation period for a sea turtle embryo is 29 degrees, any higher than that and the ratio of female
turtles becomes higher than the ratio of male turtles. Once the temperature rises to the area of 30.5
degrees the sea turtle embryos will then become all female and the male half of the
embryos will die off all together. However, if the temperature goes any higher than 33
degrees than all of the sea turtle embryos die. Even with the chance of a population increase, the number
of sea turtles that will appear will be small in comparison to the growth that was recorded in past research. An example would be the
green sea turtles found in the Caribbean. The population of that particular species is less than one percent of numbers that have
been recorded in the past. The research study also stated that even if the sea turtle population continues to
balloon over coming decades, sea turtles that have already made it to their adult stage of
life will not be in danger for the next 150 years. The findings of the study will attempt to make conservation
of the sea turtle species a priority by instructing beaches with regular human traffic to plant more trees or other types of vegetation
in order to deter the sand from getting too warm and compromising the sea turtle population. The authoring professor stated that if
a beach is going to build a hotel on or near the water, it should cover some areas of the beach where the sand is of a lighter color.
Aside from the breeding effects, the effects of global warming are also likely to affect the sea
turtles feeding sources and make food more scarce for them. This was also
stated in the research study. In addition, the rising sea levels are making it even more difficult
for sea turtles to find appropriate spots in order to lay their eggs. This is yet another way
in which the sea turtle female population is growing with global warming trends. Professor Hays stated that there is still much to be
contemplated about the sea turtles and global warming. Sea turtles have swam the earths seas for
hundreds of millions of years and it is still not known if they can quickly adapt to the
changes being brought forth by global warming and climate change.
Data
Data methods cant predict trends
University of Florida 13 [6/25, Better data needed in determining sea turtle population trends,
http://news.ufl.edu/2013/04/25/sea-turtles/]//fw
GAINESVILLE, Fla. Sea turtle populations may be increasing or decreasing but by
using the most common method of simply counting nests or nesting females there is no way to
know for sure, a University of Florida research team reports in the journal
PLOS ONE today. The study suggests that at least some of the optimism regarding sea turtle population trends in recent
years may have been premature. The team used comprehensive data collected over the last 40 years by the Caretta Research Project
on Wassaw Island, Ga., to compare trends in sea turtle abundance based on nest counts and
female counts with trends corrected for imperfect detection, which arises frequently when counting
mobile, hard-to-monitor wildlife populations, such as sea turtles. Imperfect detection is estimated using capture-mark-capture
methods. This requires capturing and tagging individual turtles, which are later recaptured. Annual population estimates are then
adjusted for imperfect detection, which provides more reliable estimates of sea turtle abundance. The Caretta Research Project
collects both count and tagging data, which allowed for the comparison. The team concluded that using data from tagged
turtles to correct for imperfect detection avoids erroneous conclusions about population
trends. As a result, past sea turtle assessments in recent decades may need to be reviewed.
We need to be cautious about interpreting trends, said biologist Karen
Bjorndal, director of the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research. Weve all
been feeling relatively confident that this population of loggerheads was increasing, headed in the right direction, but what this says
is maybe we shouldnt be complacent. This is a wake-up call for management agencies, said Bjorndal, a distinguished professor of
biology. The study was led by doctoral student Joseph Pfaller, 30, who has worked with the Caretta
Research Project since he was 15. Pfaller knew this was one of the few long-term datasets that would allow for this
study. Pfaller and Bjorndal, as well as biologist Alan Bolten of the Archie Carr Center for Sea
Turtle Research, collaborated with Milani Chaloupka of the University of Queensland on
the study. Bolten said a population estimate based solely on counts of nests or nesting females
could be misleading. Those counts could increase or decrease without a change in the
population. This concern echoes a recent report by the National Research Council. In
recent years, Bjorndal said, population abundance estimates often were based on nest counts because it is easier and less expensive.
The nesting of Floridas loggerhead sea turtles has been consistently monitored since 1989, and until 1998, nest numbers appeared
to increase. After that, numbers dropped and by 2006 had declined by 43 percent, Bjorndal said. The new research calls
into question the accuracy of those counts and makes a compelling argument for more
tagging effort. Six of the seven species of sea turtles are endangered, so accurate assessments are important. Sea turtles are
difficult to monitor because they have lifespans longer than many research projects and wide-ranging migration patterns. Bolten
said Florida has the largest nesting population of loggerhead turtles in the world, and it is the states responsibility to accurately
monitor the loggerhead population as a steward of natural resources. Pfaller said the results could apply to other species that are
monitored with raw count data that are not corrected for imperfect detection. Relying on nest counts for birds, for example, as
opposed to banding individuals, could lead to imprecise population counts there, too. This has management implications,
particularly in censuses of endangered species, Pfaller said. We need to tag individuals. Bolten said people are
interested in wildlife population trends and always ask him how the sea turtle
populations are doing. I guess we dont have the answer, he said.

Sharks
UX
Shark populations highconservation projects work
Murphy 6/27/14 [Susan, reporter, 6/27, Report: Great White Shark Population Off California Is
Growing, http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/jun/27/great-white-shark-population-california-growing-
ne/]//fw
More than 2,400 great white sharks are thriving off the California coast,
according to a new report. A team of shark researchers, including Cal State
Long Beach marine biology professor Chris Lowe, found the population is
much larger than previously thought and does not warrant further
protections. A 2011 study, conducted by UC Davis and Stanford University researchers, stated the population of white
sharks and subadult white sharks near Ano Nuevo Island and the Farallon Islands off California was 219, prompting environmental
groups to petition for the predator to be listed as an endangered species. White sharks have been protected in
California since 1994 and protected in all federal water since 2005, Lowe said. And its really been
since the early 2000s that weve started to see this uptick. Lowe said the sharks recovery can also be attributed to
increased protections of marine mammals, a great whites favorite meal, and the fishery industry fewer pups are dying in nets.
Since the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1973, and better fisheries management
and regulation of commercial fisheries, weve seen marine mammal populations really
skyrocket, Lowe said. He said the biggest indication of the shark's increase comes from the commercial fishing records.
"Despite the fact that fishing pressure has been substantially reduced over the last 20 years, the number of little white sharks
incidentally caught in some of these commercial fisheries and recreational fisheries has been increasing," Lowe said.
"However, most of the sharks are released alive and those sharks we know now will
survive." Lowe uses two tagging tools to track adult and juvenile great whites. Acoustic telemetry requires us to catch a shark," he said. The researchers then surgically implant into the shark a transmitter that has a battery life of 10 years. Then we
have listening stations, underwater listening stations, all along the coast, he said. Lowe's other method is satellite transmitters. Every time the shark comes to the surface we can actually get a position of where the shark is, he said. Lowe said the tracking devices
have helped him identify hotspots where great whites spend some of their time. There seems to be a hotspot in Santa Monica Bay, there seems to be a hotspot off Ventura, there seems to be a hotspot off San Onofre. He said San Diegos waters provide a nursery
ground for 5-foot-long harmless newborns. The pups are often drawn close to shore to feed on stingrays and fish. Weve had several sharks, up to four sharks, go in and out of Los Angeles Harbor, Lowe said. And we suspect the reason why theyre doing that is
because when theyre born theyre naive. Their moms leave them, they have to learn how to hunt on their own and we suspect that theyre looking for places where theres readily abundant prey that are easy to catch. The pups' 20-foot-long parents prefer a meal of
seals and sea lions. Lowe assured that La Jollas pinniped population of 300 isnt large enough to lure adult predators to the region. Those are a drop in the bucket compared to what you find along the Central California coast or along the offshore islands, Lowe
said. Guadalupe Island, or Isla Guadalupe is a volcanic island located 241 kilometers off the west coast of Mexico's Baja California peninsula and some 400 kilometers southwest of the city of Ensenada in Baja California. The two main population centers for adult
great white sharks is the Farallon Islands off of San Francisco and Mexicos Guadalupe Island. Lowe said people should be excited and not worry about the
great white shark population increasing because it could be one of Californias greatest conservation success
stories. Its a sign that were doing things better, Lowe said. And despite the fact that we have
three times more people living in coastal California now than we did 40 years ago, the fact that all these
populations are showing signs of increase in the last 40 years is a sign that we can fix
some of the problems that weve created. "
Newest studies indicate shark populations are increasingthrow out old
data sets
Curtis et al. 6/11/14 [Tobey H., Marine Biologist, Shark Researcher and Fisheries Manager, Camilla
T. McCandless, John K. Carlson, Gregory B. Skomal, Nancy E. Kohler, Lisa J. Natanson, George H.
Burgess, John J. Hoey, Harold L. Pratt Jr, 6/11, Seasonal Distribution and Historic Trends in Abundance
of White Sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, in the Western North Atlantic Ocean, PLOS ONE,
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0099240]//fw
Despite recent advances in field research on white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in several regions around the world,
opportunistic capture and sighting records remain the primary source of information on this species in the northwest Atlantic Ocean
(NWA). Previous studies using limited datasets have suggested a precipitous decline in
the abundance of white sharks from this region, but considerable uncertainty in these
studies warrants additional investigation. This study builds upon previously published data
combined with recent unpublished records and presents a synthesis of 649 confirmed white shark records from the NWA compiled
over a 210-year period (1800-2010), resulting in the largest white shark dataset yet compiled from this region. These
comprehensive records were used to update our understanding of their seasonal
distribution, relative abundance trends, habitat use, and fisheries interactions. All life
stages were present in continental shelf waters year-round, but median latitude of white shark
occurrence varied seasonally. White sharks primarily occurred between Massachusetts and New Jersey during summer and off
Florida during winter, with broad distribution along the coast during spring and fall. The majority of fishing gear
interactions occurred with rod and reel, longline, and gillnet gears. Historic abundance
trends from multiple sources support a significant decline in white shark abundance in
the 1970s and 1980s, but there have been apparent increases in abundance since
the 1990s when a variety of conservation measures were implemented. Though the white shark's
inherent vulnerability to exploitation warrants continued protections, our results suggest a more
optimistic outlook for the recovery of this iconic predator in the Atlantic.
Shark populations high and increasing
Serad 6/23/14 [Althea, writer, Growing Great White Sharks Population: Species Not Endangered,
Optimistic Outlook After 40 Years Of U.S. Federal Protections For Marine Mammals,
http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/10512/20140623/growing-great-white-sharks-population-
species-endangered-optimistic-outlook-40.htm]//fw
Growing great white sharks population in the Pacific news is making headlines not just in the
science community but in the world of animal conservation groups as well. As such, the "good news" is indeed something to gloss
over as 40 Years of U.S. Federal Protections for marine mammals seems to be finally
paying off. According to a new study, the growing great white sharks population
in the Atlantic Coast is thanks to conservation measures which began in the 1990s. The project was to
help save great white shark species from depleting completely. Reuters reports that there is a research being
conducted which researches on the population of great white sharks in the eastern north part of the Pacific Ocean.
Surprisingly, what the international research team found is the growing great white
sharks population in the Atlantic Coast. The growing great white sharks population findings have been
presented in a study published this month in the PLOS ONE online journal by scientists for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
According to George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark
Research, who led the new study published Monday in the journal PLOS ONE, 'The good news is that white sharks
are returning to levels of abundance.' Burgess estimates the growing great white
sharks population along the California coast to be at more than 2,000 and likely
rising. The findings on the new study of growing great white sharks population has
overturned the previous impression that the population of the species is alarmingly low.
The previous data on low number of the population of the great white sharks has been gathered by a 2011 Stanford University study.
Burgess said he and other shark experts "did a double take" when the Stanford researchers estimated the adult population of great
whites along the central California coast was at 219. Burgess said the Stanford researchers simply made
assumptions about the decrease in white shark population and only counted those feeding off seals and sea lions at
Farallon Islands and Tomales Point. Burgess said they should have considered sharks which fed
elsewhere and growing great white sharks population from juvenile sharks. Because of
the 2011 study, petitions by conservationists have been raised to add white sharks to
state and federal endangered lists. The findings were reportedly based on data from
200 years ago of fishermen's logs and newspaper clippings which recorded sightings
of the mammals. Scientists conjectured the decline of the population was due to a growing commercial shark fishing
industry. The industry uses shark fins and jaws in food and folk medicine. Great whites are reportedly the largest among its species.
The predatory, big-toothed and flesh-eating fish can grow as long as 20 feet long, which is about 6.1 meters. Burgess said that the
growing great white sharks population may most likely be a result of 40 years of U.S.
federal protections for marine mammals. The federal protection includes sharks, especially sea lions and seals.
In addition to the protection, white sharks have also reportedly been protected as a prohibited
species, making it illegal to bring a great white to port.
Sharks are fineyour studies are flawed and status quo efforts have
ensured shark populations will only grow
OCallaghan 14 (Jonathan, Science and Technology Reporter for MailOnline, 6/17/14, Daily Mail,
Great White Sharks are NOT endangered: Study shows the number of predators is ten times higher than
previously thought, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2660356/Great-White-Sharks-
NOT-endangered-Study-shows-number-predators-ten-times-higher-previously-thought.html)
Great White Sharks are NOT endangered: Study shows the number of predators is ten
times higher than previously thought A team of scientists led by the University of
Florida studied shark numbers They found that measures to improve the population had been
successful The study was based on analysis of the Eastern North Pacific Ocean region In
2011 only 219 had been found at two sites leading to fears of extinction But new research
by scientists suggests this number is closer to 2,000 Great White Sharks are now listed as 'vulnerable' on
the IUCN Red List In 2011 an alarming study by Standford University suggested Great White Sharks were becoming an endangered
species. But new look at research on them in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean indicates the
population is now growing thanks to conservation efforts, according to an international research team.
And the lead author of the study says the 2011 study underestimated the number of Great White Sharks in the oceans - and it should
not be regarded as an endangered species. The good news is that white sharks are returning to levels of
abundance,' said Burgess, also a co-founder of the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation
of Nature. 'White sharks are the largest and most charismatic of the predator sharks, and
the poster child for sharks and the oceans in general. 'If something is wrong with the
largest, most powerful group in the sea, then something is wrong with the sea, so it's a
relief to find they're in good shape.' Great White Sharks are now listed as 'vulnerable' on the IUCN Red List rather
than 'endangered'. Burgess credits the growth in sharks to 40 years of U.S. federal protections
for marine mammals that sharks feed on, especially sea lions and seals. In addition,
white sharks have been protected as a prohibited species, making it illegal to bring a
great white to dock. Burgess said he and some other shark experts 'did a double take' when the Stanford researchers
calculated the population of adult and near-adult great whites along the central California coast at 219. The Burgess study claims
that the Stanford researchers then claimed inappropriately the 219 count represented half of the adult and near-adult population in
the entire Eastern North Pacific, which runs from Alaska down to Central America. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
was petitioned to add white sharks to the endangered species list but declined, based on its own research, bolstered by a preview
copy of the study by the international team, said Heidi Dewar, a fisheries research biologist. NMFS estimated the Eastern North
Pacific population at about 3,000 sharks. 'We determined there were enough animals that there
was a low to very low risk of extinction, and in fact, most developments suggest
an increasing population,' Dewar said.
Alt Causes

Alt causesshark fin soup and illegal smuggling
Vance 13 [Erik, science writer, 5/29, Struggling to Save Sharks From Extinction, Discover June 2013,
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/june/15-struggling-to-save-sharks-from-extinction]//fw
Valuable Fins So where did the sharks go? To Asia in the worst possible way. In China, shark
fin soup is as important for weddings as diamond rings and champagne in the United
States. Once a sign of wealth, shark fins are now ubiquitous at any important event; the Japanese put them into sushi, cookies and
even food for cats. As Asia grows wealthier, so does its fin demand. From 1985 through 1998, imports to
Hong Kong surged, and the worldwide trade leapt more than 214 percent. During that time, the La Paz area became a hub for soup-
bound shark fishing, especially hammerheads, which fishermen say have especially large fins. At prices in the hundreds of dollars
per pound in Hong Kong markets, shark fins are among the worlds most expensive ingredients. One
study estimates global trade at about half a billion dollars and 73 million sharks per year a shocking haul. Shark fins are
even illegally smuggled as part of organized crime. Anyone who has spent time on
the ocean over the last 20 or 30 years will tell you that they used to see lots of sharks and
that they dont anymore, says Boris Worm, a marine conservation biologist and
leading expert in shark populations at Dalhousie University in Canada. Wide swaths of the
Caribbean and the Mediterranean are now nearly shark-free. At St. Pauls Rocks, about 600 miles off
the coast of Brazil, Charles Darwin described teeming masses of reef sharks during a stopover on his famous voyage. By 2011,
scientists declared the Galapagos reef shark locally extinct.
Alt causeoverfishing
Jha 08 [Alok, science correspondent, 2/17, Shark species face extinction amid overfishing and appetite
for fins, The Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/feb/18/conservation.aaas]//fw
Nine more species of shark are to be added to the endangered list as scientists warn that oceans are
being emptied of the fish by overfishing and finning. The scalloped hammerhead shark, which has declined by 99% over the past 30
years in some parts of the world, is particularly vulnerable and will be declared globally endangered on the World Conservation
Union (IUCN) list. "Sharks are definitely at the top of the list for marine fishes that could go
extinct in our lifetimes," said Julia Baum of the Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in California and a member of IUCN shark specialist group.
"If we carry on the way that we are, we're looking at a really high risk of extinction for some of these shark species within the next
few decades." At the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston yesterday, Baum said that in
addition to the scalloped hammerhead, other shark species that will be added to the revised IUCN
endangered list later this year are the smooth hammerhead, shortfin mako, common
thresher, big-eye thresher, silky, tiger, bull and dusky. There are already 126 species of
shark on the IUCN's list. "The perception has been that really wide-ranging species can't become endangered because if they are
threatened in one area, surely they'll be fine in another area," said Baum. "But fisheries now cover all corners of the earth and they're
intense enough that these species are being threatened everywhere." Recent studies have shown that all shark
populations in the north-west Atlantic Ocean have declined by an average of 50% since
the early 1970s. Shark numbers can become depleted very quickly because they take a
long time to mature - 16 years in the case of a scalloped hammerhead. Their fins are highly prized in China and can
fetch up to 140 a kilogram. Until recently the eating of shark fin was a delicacy restricted to the rich in China, said Baum, but
as the country's middle class has grown in the past 25 years, so has the market for shark
fins. Excessive fishing has caused a 90% decline in shark populations across the
world's oceans and up to 99% along the US east coast, which are some of the best-
managed waters in the world, according to Baum. The decline in predators such as sharks can have devastating
consequences for the local marine ecology. In a case study published last year, Baum found that a major decline in the numbers of
predatory sharks in the north Atlantic after 2000 had allowed populations of the sharks' prey, cownose rays, to explode. The rays in
turn decimated the bay scallop populations around North Carolina. "There was a fishery for bay scallops in
North Carolina that lasted over a century uninterrupted and it was closed down in 2004
because of cownose rays." Fishing for sharks in international waters is unrestricted, but
Baum supports a recent UN resolution calling for immediate limits on catching sharks and a ban on shark finning.
Alt causefishing for shark fins
Doolittle 11 [Robyn, Urban Affairs Reporter, 6/8, Tide is turning in shark debate,
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/07/08/tide_is_turning_in_shark_debate.html]
Each year, more than 70 million sharks are killed, almost exclusively for their fins.
At this rate, experts predict numerous species of the deep sea predator could be extinct in just over a decade. Shark hunting
in such great numbers is a relatively new phenomenon, said Stewart. It took off in the 1980s because of a
growing Chinese middle class and a shift to longline fishing. The idea was that compared to dragging nets, longline would reduce the
number of accidental catches. They ended up catching lots of sharks. It was a fast way for anyone
looking to make a quick buck, said Stewart. Fisherman with small boats could make a financial killing. There was no
need to store thousands of fish. Tiny and lightweight shark fins harvested from the top, sides
and tail sell for $600 to $700 per kilo. The mutilated fish is then discarded, often still
alive, back into the ocean to drown or be eaten. At first, attempts were made to outlaw the definning. Canada
was one of the first to do this in 1994. Today, more than 95 countries have laws against the practice. But activists found that since
numerous shark-rich countries didnt have bans and laws cant be enforced in
international waters, they needed to go after the demand. In other words, to stop the sale of
the product at the consumer level, said Gillies.
Alt causecommercial fishing
Eilperin 13 [Juliet, Washington Post White House reporter, 3/1, Fishing is pushing sharks closer to
extinction, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fishing-is-
pushing-sharks-closer-to-extinction/2013/03/01/8dd88eac-81e4-11e2-8074-
b26a871b165a_story.html]//fw
New study estimates that commercial fishing kills 100 million sharks annually Commercial
fishing kills roughly 100 million sharks a year, a toll that is pushing many of species of the fish closer to
extinction, according to a study published Friday in the journal Marine Policy.
The new estimate by Canadian and American researchers the most comprehensive analysis yet of
global shark mortality is substantially higher than numbers found in previous studies,
in part because it takes into account the impact of illegal catches and discarded sharks. It comes
as international negotiators are about to gather in Bangkok starting Sunday to debate whether to impose new trade restrictions on
several imperiled shark species. Sharks are being fished at an average rate that is 30 to 60
percent higher than they can sustain, the scientists conclude, noting that the animals take
years to sexually mature and produce their small litters. Sharks are primarily targeted for their fins,
which are used in the Asian delicacy sharks fin soup, though they are also caught accidentally by vessels seeking tuna, swordfish and
other species. The analysis, based on a survey of roughly 100 papers, suggests that despite several efforts to curb
shark finning worldwide, the total number of shark deaths has declined only slightly
between 2000 to 2010, from 100 million to 97 million.
AT: Climate Change
Sharks can cope with climate change
NDTV 7/14/14 [NDTV, **citing study done by Sora Kim, prof of geology and geophysics @ Wyoming,
7/14, Sharks Able to Cope with Climate Change, http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/sharks-able-to-
cope-with-climate-change-558028]//fw
Washington: Amid fears that climate change may further contribute to already declining
population of sharks, a study has found that sharks in the Arctic may be able to
cope with the change. The researchers studied the fossil of the sand tiger sharks' teeth found on
Banks Island of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. The teeth date back to the Eocene epoch 38 to 53 million years ago,
when the region had a temperate climate and its water had a lower salinity. "That period
is a "deep-time analogue for what is going to happen if we do not curb CO2 emissions
today, and potentially what a runaway greenhouse effect looks like," marine scientist
Sora Kim of University of Wyoming was quoted as saying. For the study, researchers analysed the ratio of
oxygen isotopes in the teeth - a measure that tends to reflect ocean temperature and salinity and found that the numbers indicated
the water had such low salinity that it practically looked like freshwater. However, the sand tiger sharks, which prefer high salinity,
had managed to live in the region. Sharks may be able to cope with rising temperatures and
decreasing salinity, the researchers concluded. Their findings assume significance as a 2013 study
showed that warming elsewhere in the oceans is pushing sharks and other marine
species increasingly northward, Discovery News reported. The study
appeared in the journal Geology.
Space Colonization
Space Colonization
Focus on space colonization trades off with focus on current problems
Murphy 11 [Tom, associate professor of physics @ UCSD, 10/12, Why Not Space?,
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/]//fw
Ask a random sampling of people if they think we will have colonized space in 500 years, and I expect it will be a while before you
run into someone who says its unlikely. Our migration from this planet is a seductive vision of
the future that has been given almost tangible reality by our entertainment industry.
We are attracted to the narrative that our primitive progenitors crawled out of the ocean, just as well crawl off our home planet (en
masse) some day. Im not going to claim that this vision is false: how could I know that? But I will point out a few of the
unappreciated difficulties with this view. The subtext is that space fantasies can prevent us from tackling
mundane problems whose denial could result in a backward slide. When driving,
fixing your gaze on the gleaming horizon is likely to result in your crashing into a
stopped car ahead of you, so that your car is no longer capable of reaching the promised land ahead. We have to
pay attention to the stupid stuff right in front of us, as it might well stand between us and a smart future. I was
completely astonished by the prevalence of the space reaction to the inaugural Do the Math post on galactic-scale energy. The post
illustrated that continuing growth of our physical scale (energy) is not viable on a number of frontsnot the least of which is that
Earths surface would reach the boiling point of water in a mere 400 years, based purely on thermodynamic arguments, and
independent of which energy technology is employed. Many comments on the internets chided this view as being hopelessly
unrealistic in its willful ignorance of the great space migration to come. The connotation is that we should not heed repeated
warnings about our current collision course with a finite world whenby some clairvoyant means that eludes mewe know we are
destined to colonize the infinite void beyond. Space is therefore seen as an escape hatch for the human
endeavor and from our arguably botched track record on Earth. Escapism may be
more accurate.
Space is hostile for humans
Murphy 11 [Tom, associate professor of physics @ UCSD, 10/12, Why Not Space?,
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/]//fw
Space is a hostile place for humans. Its mostly empty, though not lacking in
deadly ionizing radiation and cosmic rays. What few resources exist are so mind-
blowingly scattered that they would seem to be utterly absent to the casual observer. Some point
out that the open ocean is also hostile to human life, and conjure the image of a luxury ocean liner placidly plying the waters,
oblivious to the surrounding harshness. If we can picture that, why is it such a stretch to imagine a luxury liner in space? Its a
gripping image, and would seem to counter worries about the cruelty of space. But lets look at the oh-so-many ways the two
situations cannot compare. If the ship sinks, and you have a life raft, you stand some chance of rescue. The ocean is vast, but its a
two-dimensional vastness teeming with human activity (compared to any realistic vision of 3-d space inhabitation even within the
confines of our solar system). People have survived for months on the open ocean, subsisting on the elements around them. Running
out of air is not a problem. Fresh water falls out of the sky as rain. Critters that are attracted to the cover of your life raft provide a
source of food. I recommend the book 117 Days Adrift for a gripping account of a British couple who survived such an ordeal.
Sometimes edible fish would actually jump into their dinghy. By contrast, a hamburger has never slammed into the side of the space
shuttle in orbit, and I very much doubt that chicken nuggets are going to float up seeking the shelter of your space rescue pod! If you
fall overboard in the ocean, you can conceivably survive for a day or more depending on water temperature. I have actually met a guy
who twice survived being stranded overnight treading water in the oceanonce in Indonesia and another time in Australia! In
space, youre dealing with a life expectancy of about one minute, unless youre lucky
enough to be suited up for the unexpected accidentin which case you have a perhaps a
few hours to enjoy the view. If the ship springs a leak, you can pump out water indefinitely, and that magical, life-
supporting air fills in the void: it surrounds the ship, which is open to the air above. In space, a leak must be
replaced with air brought on board (presumably in pressurized containers), but cannot
be counted on to last indefinitely. A submarine is therefore a more apt analogy, but even then, the safety of the
surface is never more than walking distance away. And lets not forget: ships take us to places that are naturally habitable. Where
are the space versions of cruise-ship submarines going to take us? I, for one, would hope back to Earth! No, the ability to picture a
luxury liner in the hostile open ocean is hopelessly insufficient for me to extend the analogy to space. Well see our oceans teeming
with people-laden vessels or inhabitation of the ocean floor before we see a population explode into space. These options are just so
much easier, and carry some hope of acquiring vital resources. Failure of a Narrative This brings us back to the compelling narrative
that our evolutionary ancestors finned their way out of the water, so it is only naturalnay, inevitablethat we will wing our way off
the planet. When creatures crawled out of the water to inhabit the land, it was to reap the
unbelievable vegetative bounty of the land, free of the threat of predation. No bounty
of food or sense of safety tugs us into space. Its quite the opposite on both fronts,
in fact. We live on the bounty right now.
Cant sustain lifenutritional and agricultural uncertainties
Abate 10 [Tom, Chronicle Staff Writer, 11/6, Promise - and problems - of power from space, SFGate,
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Promise-and-problems-of-power-from-space-
3246966.php]//fw
Meanwhile, studies in physiology are needed to help people adapt to micro- and zero-gravity
environments. "You don't want to end up like a boneless chicken," quipped speaker Joe Carroll of Tether Applications, a
company developing technologies to rope and recycle orbital space debris. Nutrition and agriculture have
huge implications for space colonization, said Dr. Lee Valentine, a
physician and conferee, adding that we still don't know which plants and
animals, operating in a closed environment, could sustain human life. Nor do we
yet grasp the psychological perils of long-term confinement, said Taber MacCallum, a
veteran of Biosphere 2, a privately financed, early-'90s experiment involving humans living in a closed environment, in this case in
Arizona. "I'm told that we were the prototype for reality television," said MacCallum, who spent two years and 20 minutes in
voluntary confinement While challenges abound, conferees saw technologies being used in extreme mining operations on Earth that
seem applicable in space - and vice versa. At one session, Canadian entrepreneur Greg Baiden of Laurentian University in Ontario
showed how $1 million, semiautonomous loaders, directed by joystick operators hundreds of miles away, are being used in very deep
mines where it doesn't make sense to send humans.
AT: Mars
Mars sucks
Murphy 11 [Tom, associate professor of physics @ UCSD, 10/12, Why Not Space?,
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/]//fw
Ideas of terraforming Mars must be seen in a new light given the challenge revealed by
global warming. Compared to pre-industrial levels, we have a 100 part-per-million (0.01%) CO2 problem in our atmosphere that has us
completely stymied. Crudely speaking, Mars has a one-million part-per-million (100%)
problem with its atmosphere. As much trouble as we are having mitigating climate
change with unfettered access to all the resources on Earth, what hope would we have of
turning around a place like Mars with no infrastructure to rely upon? Likewise, attempts
to create a self-contained biosphere to support human life have so far been
failuresdespite having the overwhelming advantage of being set up in an otherwise habitable environment with unencumbered access for
construction and provisioning efforts. Making something work in the harshness of space, far from any Home Depot, would represent a challenge many
orders-of-magnitude harder still. Despite this, and the winding-down of the NASA shuttle program,
the optimism of many space enthusiasts is not fazed. They look forward to future mining operations on asteroids
and on the Moon. I would think we would tear up the much closer ocean floor first, given the
comparative convenience and cheapness of such operations.
Travel to Mars is impractical
Murphy 11 [Tom, associate professor of physics @ UCSD, 10/12, Why Not Space?,
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/]//fw
However, there are practical realities to consider. If we extend our solar system model using the
standard-size Earth globe as our reference, the Moon is 30 ft (9 m) away, and is about the size of an apple. The sun is 2.2 miles (3.6
km) away. Mars is sometimes as close as 0.8 mi (1.3 km) and sometimes as far as 6 mi (10 km). Light travels at a sprinting speed of
16 m.p.h. (26 kph) in this scale, but an energetically feasible transfer orbit to Mars would take 8.5
months, effectively traveling slower than a snail. First, reflect on the vastly different scale in travel to the
Moon vs. Mars. In our model, you could toss a rock to the Moon. But getting something to Mars is
a whole different ballgame. Not even a slingshot would be up to the task. In practical
terms, a three-day lunar journey becomes 260 days to Mars: almost 100 times as long. The closest star to
the Sun, in this model, is about a million kilometers distant: 2.5 times farther than the actual Earth-Moon distance. On a separate
model scalecompressed 17,000 times compared to our previous model scalethe density of stars in the local Milky Way (one star
per 100 cubic light years) is analogous to grains of sand 50 km apart! Can you imagine this? Mostly empty, empty space, folks. I
often travel to the Apache Point Observatory in southern New Mexico to tend to my lunar ranging experiment. On a recent trip, I
was excited to find a newly-installed solar system model consisting of planet signs positioned along highway 6563 (named by nerds
after the wavelength of the hydrogen-alpha emission line of great importance in solar, stellar, and galactic astronomy). Even
traveling at 15 times the speed of light, or 40 m.p.h., the scale is daunting (although, considering
relativistic time dilation, a traveler would experience this pace if traveling at 0.998 times the speed of light). If youll forgive me, it
really drives home the isolation even within the local oasis we call the solar system.

Leadership
Free Trade
Turns
Turn free trade promotes war and conflict
Staples, 03 (Steven Staples is a Canadian policy analyst. He is president of Public Response, a digital
agency that services non-profit organizations and trade unions in the fields of online engagement and
government relations. http://www.rense.com/general41/prono.htm Ten Ways Globalization Promotes
Militarism. CTB)
Globalization, more correctly called corporate globalization, is founded upon a conservative, free
marketoriented world view that seeks to limit the economic impact of government actions. The free trade
agreements that codify globalization, such as those negotiated between states or at the World Trade
Organization, place restrictions on government services and regulations that might inhibit corporate
profits. This unfortunately limits the positive roles governments play in society through redistributing
wealth from rich to poor, providing non-profit social services, creating jobs and protecting the
environment. Ironically, while the free market ideology minimizes the role of government,
it champions the state's role in providing national security. "Security exceptions" in
trade agreements ensure that the free trade rules do not apply to government actions
taken for national security including maintaining and arming a powerful military
establishment. The special treatment of security roles of the state combined with the
limits on its social and regulatory roles is a powerful mix that creates the conditions for
war and provides the means to wage it. 1. Globalization creates a breeding ground for
terrorism. Globalization feeds resentment in poor countries as poverty increases, foreign
products flood local markets displacing local producers, and human rights are abused by
northern corporations exploiting low-paid labour. The result is an audience of desperate people
ready to listen to religious extremists' exhortations to take up arms or undertake acts of terrorism. 2.
Globalization requires military protection of corporate interests abroad. Great empires
of the past learned that their colonial holdings and trade routes needed to be protected
by military power against local uprisings and competing empires. The September 11, 2001
terrorist attacks against the United States demonstrated that the global economy was vulnerable, and
economic elites demanded governments provide military protection for the system. Today, the Pentagon
is realigning and expanding its vast international network of bases along the frontiers of the global
economy, such as in central Asia. And in places like Colombia, U.S. troops and weapons are being
deployed where uprisings threaten corporate investments. 3. Globalization requires police
protection of corporate interests at home. Popular movements opposed to
globalization's harsh economic agenda have been emerging around the world, especially
since the famous protests derailed the WTO in Seattle in 1999. Police forces have responded with
increased repression and intolerance for political protests. Armed with powerful new anti-
terrorism laws such as the Patriot Act, security forces can use totalitarian-like measures to investigate and
detain people whose only "crime" may be to advocate for a fair global economy that serves the interests of
ordinary people. 4. Globalization promotes military spending over social spending. Security
exceptions in free trade agreements grant governments a free hand in military spending,
but place limits on social spending. Thus, governments use military spending to achieve non-
defence goals such as job creation, regional development, and subsidization of local corporations through
defence contracts. Since the late 1990s, world military spending has been on the rise and is now nearly $1
trillion a year almost half of this is by the United States alone. 5. Globalization promotes the
conditions for war. Ethnic and religious differences mask the underlying economic
causes of the more than 30 wars raging around the world today. Inequality, competition
for dwindling resources, and environmental degradation are factors in the outbreak of
armed conflict that are worsened by free trade. Globalization undermines the ability of
governments to regulate and mitigate the damaging effects of free market, resulting in
the exacerbation of all of the economic causes of war. 6. Globalization militarizes the
economy of industrialized countries. Free trade is "de-industrializing" many northern
countries as corporations move manufacturing to lower-wage southern countries. But
northern countries are retaining their high-tech and advanced manufacturing industries especially for
the production of fighter planes, space systems and advanced weapons. Military spending and "Buy
American" policies subsidize domestic production of high-tech military products built by corporations
such as Boeing, the world's largest manufacturer of both commercial and military aircraft as well as the
United States' largest exporter. 7. Globalization militarizes the economic development of
emerging countries. Free trade agreements limit the ability of governments to stipulate
that foreign investment and government purchases must benefit the local economy.
However, security exceptions permit poorer southern governments to buy arms from foreign, northern-
based corporations and demand that technology and manufacturing be transferred to help the local
economy. But military production is a poor development tool because it creates fewer jobs than
investment in public works would provide, and makes no long-term contribution to the economy (except
from arms exports). Even more, the new local military industries become dependent upon military
spending, draining resources away from social programs such as health and education. 8. Globalization
undermines citizen peace work. Government and corporate interests can use trade
agreements to limit the ability of citizens to lobby for government policies that promote
peace. Legislative victories by citizens advocating economic sanctions or divestment
campaigns against repressive states may be challenged and overturned by free trade
regimes such as the WTO. A successful citizen campaign encouraging local governments to not
contract with corporations doing business in Burma/Myanmar was overturned by the U.S. federal
government after it was threatened with a WTO challenge. 9. Globalization limits the use of
economic sanctions against corporations and repressive states. Free trade agreements
make it more difficult for governments to enact economic sanctions or trade restrictions
against other states or corporations that are benefiting from armed conflict or
repression. Economic sanctions, used properly, can provide the international community with an
alternative to the threat of military force in order to lodge a protest or to apply external pressure on a state
or corporation. Sanctions were crucial in applying pressure on South Africa to end apartheid. 10.
Globalization promotes corporate security over human security. Globalization and free
trade regimes align government interests with corporate interests, resulting in the state
increasingly assuming the role of promoter and defender of corporate interests at home
and abroad. This focus on corporate interests comes at the expense of governments
providing for the security of their citizens through social programs and public-interest
legislation, and from states undertaking international actions to promote peace and
security and achieve the greater public good, regardless of the impact on corporate
profits.
Russian-Ukraine tensions prove
Popescu, 13 (Nicu Popescu is a Senior Analyst at the EUISS. The Russia-Ukraine trade spat page 1.
CTB)
In mid-August, Russia blocked virtually all imports from Ukraine. Although the cross-border flows between
the two countries have since resumed following a week of heightened tension, the issue is far from over. On the contrary, the
trade spat was probably just the first warning shot in what could escalate into a full
blown trade war, the ultimate aim of which would be to prevent Ukraine from signing an
Association Agreement with the EU at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in late November, thereby
preventing further economic integration with the European Union and steering it in a
Eurasian direction instead. It is in Ukraines political interest to sign the Association
Agreement, containing a free trade component, with the EU, while maintaining the
existing free trade agreements it has with other post-soviet states, including Russia.
Although a country can have multiple free trade agreements and such an arrangement would be a winwin situation for Ukraine,
Russia is adopting a more zero-sum stance towards the matter. This is primarily due to the fact that, once Ukraine signs the
Association Agreement with the EU, it will no longer the able to join the Russia-led Customs Union - or the proposed Eurasian
Economic Union - due to the differing standards and tariffs in place. An EU-Ukraine free trade deal will mean greater access for
Ukraine to the EU market through lower customs and non-tariff barriers, higher export quotas for certain sensitive goods, and the
adoption of EU standards in a wide range of domains. Until recently, Russia was relatively at ease, feeling
secure in its belief that the EU would not sign the already finalised and initialled
Association Agreement with Ukraine as long as former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko remained in jail, and
that President Yanukovich was unlikely to release his main political rival a year and a half before the next presidential elections, due
in early 2015. However, in the last few months there has been some progress made, with the
European Commission putting forward a proposal for a Council decision on the signing
of the Agreement, and the EU and its member states working more actively to seal the
deal with Ukraine in Vilnius.
Ukraine crisis is a case in point
Curran 3/16/14 (John Curran is a student at the New York University studying Digital Business and
Political Science. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johncurran/russian-ukrainian-conflict-
explained_b_4909192.html Russian-Ukrainian Conflict Explained CTB)
While tensions in Ukraine have become increasingly intense in the past few days, one thing remains constant: The conflict
arising in Ukraine today stems from the Ukrainian president's rejection of a single
economic deal with the European Union regarding an association agreement. Ironically, the
interests driving this proposed agreement were quite straightforward. The EU sought more Eastern European
economies to enter into their trade agreements, while Ukrainians yearned for further
involvement with Western Europe's more modern and productive economies. Unfortunately,
even a textbook case of "win-win" economic reform was still not strong enough to withstand the highly fractured nature of Ukraine's
political alliances in this case. When the deal was being considered late last year, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych began to
capriciously voice doubts in the final stages about signing the EU's proposed association agreement. For Ukrainians, their
president's waffling was a clear signal that he was caving to pressure from President Vladimir
Putin of Russia to reject the EU's proposed deal. A few days later, President Yanukovych
outright rejected the EU proposal, accepting a new deal from Russia in the form of $15
billion in aid and other economic benefits. President Yanukovych's retreat beneath the wings of Russia
immediately incited the ire of many Ukrainians. For years, Ukrainians have sought economic reform that would bring the country's
economy in line with the economies of more prosperous Western countries. President Yanukovych's rejection of the EU proposal not
only ignored the views of a majority of Ukrainians but signaled the government's strengthened alignment with Russia. These factors
spawned a serious uproar among the Ukrainian people in which they condemned their government's corruption and denounced the
legitimacy of their president's patriotism. Within hours of the EU proposal's rejection, thousands of
protesters stormed the streets of Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) to renew their cry for
economic reform and voice their opposition to the president's decision, calling for his
immediate resignation. In response to the protesters (opposition), the Ukrainian
government began to carry out aggressive action. Riot police, armed guards, and
military personnel quickly descended on protest sites throughout Ukraine in order to
shut down the opposition. Tensions between the two groups quickly escalated, with
YouTube videos showing protesters throwing Molotov cocktails at riot police and armed
guards tormenting opposition prisoners. These protests have persisted and slowly
escalated over the past two months. Throughout, the United States and the European Union have offered new
deals for the Ukrainian government to enter into, providing its government with several "last chances" to come around and respect
the decisions of its mobilized public. In mid-February, the death toll from the protests in Kiev rose
sharply into the hundreds. Talks of a resolution between opposition leaders and
President Viktor Yanukovych appeared less and less likely. On Feb. 21, protesters overtook
the capital and the president's residence. President Viktor Yanukovych quickly fled to
Russia, fearing for his life, while also facing charges from the opposition for the killing of
protesters. His residence can only be described as characterized by outrageous opulence, a symbol of the political corruption
within the nation. President Yanukovych's retreat essentially rattled the cage of the bear, waking Russia up to the fact that their
political influence over Ukraine was dwindling. Russia, however, has viewed the protests as an illegitimate threat to the Ukrainian
president's power that must be quashed. Russia has a significant interest in helping President Viktor
Yanukovych stay in power, and in curbing any sort of democratic political reform that
would align Ukraine more with Europe and less with Russia. Simply put, Russia will not allow itself to
lose its once-satellite state so quickly. Why would Russia care about Ukraine or its economic deals? For one, Russia had (and
continues to have) legitimate fears about the economic blowback it would endure if Ukraine signed an association agreement with
the EU. This kind of agreement would translate to a massive influx of high-quality, low-priced European products into Ukraine.
Some of these products would inevitably end up in Russia and would not be subject to tariffs due to Ukraine and Russia's free-trade
agreements. In addition, the Cold War may be over, but Russian sentiments regarding its regional supremacy very much live on.
With the recent Sochi Olympics, and this year's G8 Summit also slated to take place in Sochi, Russia was poised for a steady stream
of positive publicity on the global stage. An economic deal between the EU and Ukraine would severely undercut the image of Russia
as a formidable world power (at least in Putin's view). After the opposition had completely taken control
of Kiev, sending its president running to Russia for cover, unmarked guards began
appearing on the Ukrainian-Russian border. Russian President Vladimir Putin also
called for a military drill involving over 100,000 troops, many of whom were situated by
the Ukrainian border. President Putin's deliberate show of force sent the message that
Russia was prepared to go to war with Ukraine. Following the initial movements of
Russian aggression, the unmarked soldiers quickly began to enter the Ukrainian
province of Crimea. Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine that contains a large Russophone population and
generally identifies more closely with Russia. Crimea is roughly the size of Massachusetts and is also the location of several strong
naval bases for Russia. Russia has now gained full control of the Crimean province and is
continuing to maintain a militaristic occupation of Ukraine's military installations in the
area, arguing that they are protecting their own interests within the region from the political instability of the nation.
President Putin has also received parliamentary approval to send more troops toward
Ukraine, a development that has sent waves of panic throughout the global community.
The possible Russian annexation of Crimea has moved Russian and Ukrainian forces
closer and closer to violent conflict.
Leads to clash between the US and Russia
Krist and Benka, 3/21/14(Bill Krist is a Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. His experience include Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for
Industrial Trade in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the White House Office responsible for
formulating and coordinating U.S. trade policy. Samuel Benka is currently a Research Assistant at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars working with William Krist and James Reston Jr.
http://americastradepolicy.com/ukraine/#.U8lyM_ldUm0 Trade Agreements and the Russia-Ukraine
Conflict. CTB)
Ukraine has been caught in a tug of war between the EU and Russia. Commission President
Barroso told Ukraine that entering the customs union would be incompatible with a potential EU free trade agreement. On the other
side, Russia also says Ukraine cannot be a member of the customs union and have a free trade agreement with the EU. Russias fear
is that a Ukrainian FTA with the EU would lead to a flood of imports into Ukraine, which would then be re-exported duty-free to
members of the Russian customs union, thereby undermining Russias tariff structure. The issue of whether to sign a
free trade agreement with the EU or join Russias customs union, of course, boiled over
last fall. On November 21 Yanukovych announced he would not sign the FTA with the
EU, and protestors converged on Kiev driving Yanukovych from office. Following the
ensuing turmoil, Russia seized control of key airports in Crimea and is now in the
process of annexing Crimea. Politics aside, it would be technically possible for Ukraine to both be a member of Russias
customs union and have an FTA with the EU. For this to happen, however, everyone would have to calm down and work out rules of
origin which define what products are eligible for duty free treatment in order to prevent trade diversion. And most critically the
political crisis stemming from Russias seizure of Crimea would have to be resolved. Unfortunately, tensions are
escalating on all sides. Last August Russia slowed imports from Ukraine to a standstill
by imposing tedious border procedures and recently seized a Ukrainian confectionary
plant. Ukraine has said it might drop out of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The EU and U.S. have imposed modest sanctions on Russia, but are considering far more extensive sanctions. For its part, Russia
is threatening counter-retaliation, for example by restricting its exports of natural gas to the EU. Right now no one
knows how this dispute will finally be resolved. But as William Pomeranz, Deputy Director of the Wilson Centers Kennan Institute
says If the current crisis does not escalate beyond Crimea, then the next major clash
between the U.S. and Russia will be the trade front. And whereas Obama has no cards to
play militarily in Crimea, the sanctions available to the U.S. can cause significant
damage to the Russian economy.
Free trade does more harm than good NAFTA proves
Global Exchange, No date (http://www.globalexchange.org/resources/FTAA/oppose Top Ten
Reasons to Oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas. CTB)
1. The FTAA Expands a Proven Disaster The FTAA is essentially an expansion of NAFTA. But NAFTA has proven to be a nightmare
for working families and the environment. A look at NAFTA's legacy shows why these kinds of "free
trade" agreements should be opposed. Working families suffer: In the US, more than
765,000 jobs have disappeared as a result of NAFTA. When these laid off workers find new jobs, they earn
23 percent less on average than at their previous employment. In Mexico, manufacturing wages fell 21 percent from 1995 to 1999,
and have only started to recover. The percentage of Mexicans living in poverty has also grown since
NAFTA went into effect. The environment suffers: In the maquiladora zones along the
US-Mexico border, the increased pollution and the improper disposal of chemical
wastes have dramatically raised rates of hepatitis and birth defects. NAFTA should be repealed, not
expanded. 2. The Agreement Is Being Written Without Citizen Input Despite repeated calls for the open and
democratic development of trade policy, the FTAA negotiations have been conducted
without citizen input. A process has been set up to solicit citizens' views, but there is no real mechanism to
incorporate the public's concerns into the actual negotiations. The public has been given nothing
more than a suggestion box. At the same time, however, hundreds of corporate representatives are advising
the US negotiators and have advance access to the negotiating texts. While citizens are
left in the dark, corporations are helping to write the rules for the FTAA. 3. The Agreement Will
Undermine Labor Rights and Cause Further Job Loss The NAFTA experience demonstrates how basic labor rights and
the interests of working families are eroded by "free trade" agreements that lack
enforceable labor protections. Corporations move high-paying jobs to countries with lower wages and bust
unionization drives with threats to transfer production abroad. According to a Cornell University study, since NAFTA two-thirds of
manufacturing and communications companies faced with union organizing campaigns threatened workers with moving their jobs
abroad. This "race-to-the-bottom" will accelerate under the FTAA as corporations pit
exploited workers in Mexico against even more desperate workers in countries such as
Haiti and Guatemala. Already, Mexico is losing maquiladora jobs to countries with
cheaper wages. In the last two years, some 280,000 jobs have vanished with the closure
of more than 350 maquiladoras. 4. The Agreement Will Exacerbate Environmental Destruction The export-
driven growth model promoted by "free trade" agreements and the policies of the World
Bank and the IMF have destroyed ecosystems around the world. Under this
unsustainable model, many countries in the Global South cut down their forests,
overfish their waters and exploit other natural resources to pay off foreign debts. Since
NAFTA, 15 US wood product companies have set up operations in Mexico, and logging there has increased dramatically. In the
Mexican state of Guerrero, 40 percent of the forests have been lost in the last eight
years, and massive clear cutting has led to soil erosion and habitat destruction. 5. The
Agreements Will Hurt Family Farmers NAFTA has been a disaster for small farmers in the US and
Mexico. By favoring the interests of agribusiness corporations over the needs of family
farmers, NAFTA's model of export-oriented agriculture has slashed farmers' income.
Between 1995 and 2000, the prices US farmers receive for corn declined 33 percent, 42 percent for wheat, and 34 percent for
soybeans. No wonder that since NAFTA went into effect 33,000 small farmers in the US have gone out of businessmore than six
times the pre-NAFTA rate. In Mexico, the price farmers receive for corn has plummeted 45 percent in three years as agribusiness
giants dump their subsidized corn there. At least half a million farmers have left their land. The FTAA threatens to
make this crisis worse by encouraging even more overproduction. 6. The Agreement Will Lead to
Privatization of Essential Services The FTAA is expected to force countries to privatize services such
as education, health care, energy and water. Such privatization would especially harm
working class communities and communities of color. In some countries, these
privatizations are already occurring, and those least able to pay for vital services are the
ones who suffer the most. When the Bolivian city of Cochabamba privatized its water utility, water rates increased 200
percent. In the ensuing protests, police shot and killed a 17-year-old student. 7. The Agreement Will Jeopardize Consumer and
Environmental Protections NAFTA includes unprecedented ways for corporations to attack our laws through so-called "investor-to-
state" lawsuits. Such suits, established by NAFTA's Chapter 11, allow corporations to sue governments for compensation if they feel
that any government action, including the enforcement of public health and safety laws, cuts into their profits. Already, Chapter 11
lawsuits have been used to repeal a Canadian law banning a chemical linked to nervous
system damage, and to challenge California's phase-out of a gas additive, MTBE, that is
poisoning the state's ground water. Negotiators want to include these anti-democratic
lawsuits in the FTAA. 8. The Agreement Will Spread the Use of GMOs US trade negotiators are trying
use the FTAA to force other countries to accept the use of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs). But environmental groups warn that these technologies haven't been adequately
tested, and food security experts say GMOs could increase hunger in poor nations. Farmers
have traditionally saved their seeds from year to year, but as multinational corporations patent GM seeds these farmers will be
forced to pay for seeds, pushing them further into dependency. 9. The Agreement Will Increase Poverty and Inequality "Free
trade" is not working for the majority of the world. During the most recent period of
rapid growth in global trade and investment-1960 to 1998-inequality worsened
internationally and within countries. Without debt cancellation and rules to curtail rampant capital speculation,
countries in the Global South will remain dominated by the Global North, inequality will increase, and the hope of achieving
sustainable development will be farther off. 10. There Are Proven Alternatives Policy makers and pundits often try
to convince us that corporate globalization is inevitable. In fact, the current economic
processes known as "globalization" have been defined and driven by a very small
number of corporations. Now people around the world are creating an alternative
grassroots globalization. Citizens' groups from across the Western Hemisphere have
written an "Alternative Agreement for the Americas" that offers a picture of what
socially responsible and environmentally sustainable trade would look like.
Laundry list
Chmielewski, No date (Tom Chmielewski is a freelancer.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-effects-trade-5221.html Negative Effects of Free Trade. CTB)
Free trade is meant to eliminate unfair barriers to global commerce and raise the economy in developed and developing nations
alike. But both apparent and feared repercussions can create a grave mistrust on the part of workers who believe their country is
giving foreign producers an unfair advantage and costing domestic jobs. The World Trade Organization is the
key target for protest, for the WTO is the main instrument in advocating and enforcing
free trade. Adverse Working Conditions As underdeveloped countries attempt to cut costs to gain a
price advantage, many workers in these countries face low pay, substandard working
conditions and even forced labor and abusive child labor. This race to the bottom, as
critics call this drive to cut costs at the expense of human rights, is a key target of
protests aimed at the WTO. Yet the WTO states it does not consider a manufacturers
treatment of workers reason for countries to bar importation of that manufacturer's
products. The WTO notes developing countries insist any attempt to include working conditions in trade agreements is meant to
end their cost advantage in the world market. Environmental Damage According to critics, the increase of corporate
farms in developing countries increases pesticide and energy use, and host countries
ignore costly environmental standards. The Global Development and Environmental Institute, however, finds
the environmental impact mixed. In some countries, for instance, replacing native crops with coffee and cocoa trees reduces erosion.
The WTO is criticized for not allowing barriers to imports based on inadequate
environmental standards in countries where goods are produced. Yet the WTO points to its ruling in
the 1990s allowing a U.S. ban on shrimp imports because the fishing methods threatened endangered sea turtles outside U.S.
borders. The extent to which environmental standards should be considered in free trade is an ongoing debate within the WTO. Job
Loss Free trade agreements draw protests from the U.S. public due to feared job loss to
foreign countries with cheaper labor. Yet proponents of free trade say new agreements improve the economy on
all sides. There is no clear picture of whether free trade significantly affects U.S. employment levels, given all the economic forces
that affect job rates. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues free trade deals with countries like
Korea and Colombia arent job creation measures. Proponents of free trade contend
that even if the economies of developing nations improve under free trade, those
economies are still too small to have any real effect on the U.S. economy and job market.
Union Opposition Unions have strongly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between
the United States, Mexico and Canada as critically harmful to workers and the U.S. economy. The AFL-
CIO argues NAFTA has harmed consumers and workers in all three countries, contributing
to a loss of jobs and drop in income while strengthening the clout of multinational
corporations. The unions contend that the increased capital mobility facilitated by free
trade has hurt the environment and weakened government regulation.
Free trade hurts the U.S. economy loss in deficit
Johnston, 13 (David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The
New York Times, teaches business, tax and property law of the ancient world at the Syracuse University
College of Law. http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/12/jobs-employment-
freetradeagreementstpp.html Want to create more jobs? Reject 'free trade' agreements. CTB)
On this score, proponents of the secret new trade pacts will argue that they are good for the U.S.s trade deficits. On the
surface, 2012 looked like a year of declining trade deficits. Compared with 2011, the U.S.
trade deficit in goods and services declined to $540.4 billion, a drop of $19.5 billion, or
3.5 percent. But the entire decline and more was accounted for by reduced imports of crude oil and petroleum products, which
fell by $34.8 billion. NAFTA was originally sold as a job-creation scheme. President Bill Clinton
said in 1993 NAFTA would mean more trade, more exports and more jobs for the
United States and the only way a wealthy country grows wealthier in a global economy
is to increase the volume of trade. Instead we turned small trade surpluses in goods
with Mexico before NAFTA into deficits that last year exceeded $61 billion. The deficit in goods
traded with Canada passed $31 billion last year. Clinton sold Americans on liberalized trade with China,
saying of the deficit in 1999 that over time, clearly it will shrink with this agreement.
On the basis of the first nine months of this year, the 2013 deficit is likely to be about
$316 billion, roughly the same as in 2012 but more than triple the inflation-adjusted
deficit in 1999. Americas goods deficit with South Korea in the first nine months of this year was just shy of $17 billion, more
than the $16.6 billion for all of 2012. The last U.S. surplus with Seoul was 15 years ago. Trade rules, though often picayune, are
important because disputes can damage U.S. exports. For example, a single case of mad-cow disease in the U.S. shut down sales of
American beef to Seoul in 2003 an issue that took five years to resolve. South Korean beef consumption rose, yet the value and
amount of American beef shipped to South Korea was smaller in 2012 than in 2001. And despite the free trade deal
that took effect last year, South Korea continues to impose tariffs on imported American
cars at a time when Hyundai and Kia, which are owned by the same conglomerate, sell
every seventh new car in the United States. Trade in services, rather than goods, is supposed to be the future for
America. But increased services fall far short of making up for the damage done by deficits
in goods. Measured in 2012 dollars, the deficit in goods worsened by more than $741 billion from
1992 to 2012, while the surplus in services exported grew by less than $207 billion. The
result was a net trade deficit that grew almost ninefold in two decades. In addition, services face
other challenges. Many services can be moved offshore easily, as Princeton economist Alan S. Blinder has
shown. Some types of services, such as financial trades, can face subtle restrictions. For instance, South Korea requires approval
from customers before their data may be stored on computers in, say, Singapore or Seattle. The evidence from two decades of trade
deals is clear: Americans end up with the short end of the stick as jobs, investment and the prosperity they bring flow to our trading
partners. The way to end this self-inflicted damage and create millions of jobs is to embrace the democratic process with a robust
debate on each element of any new trade deals which would begin with killing the fast-track approval process.
Turn free trade hurts the environment, itll only get worse
Moody, 13 (Glyn Moody is a technology
write.https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131022/10231424967/us-free-trade-agreements-are-not-just-
bad-economy-environment-too.shtml US Free Trade Agreements Are Bad Not Just For The Economy, But
For The Environment, Too. CTB)
But of course bare economic statistics don't capture the full effect of free trade agreements.
For example, there is also the environmental impact to consider. An interesting press
release from the Sierra Club reports on a meeting held to consider that aspect. It turns out
that things look as bad there as they do on the economic front: "Nearly 20 years into NAFTA and the evidence
is in," said Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Clubs Responsible Trade Program. "NAFTA led to an expansion of
deforestation and unsustainable water use in order to support export-oriented
agriculture. It gave massive rights to corporations to challenge environmental and
climate safeguards in private trade tribunals. It expanded exports in dirty fossil fuels in
a time when we should be moving beyond these outdated fuels and investing in clean
energy. Governments must take a page out of the history books and stop negotiating
trade pacts that gut protections for our air, water, land, workers, and communities."
That last comment is a clear reference to TPP, but applies equally to TAFTA/TTIP. Both of
these are likely to include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) measures that allow companies to sue entire nations for alleged
"expropriation" of future profits in the "private tribunals" referred to above. One of the ways that governments can be accused of
doing that is by strengthening safeguards for the environment, since that often has the knock-on effect of increasing costs for
businesses, and thus reducing their future profits. Companies then try to claim ISDS provisions in trade agreements give them the
"right" to sue for compensation -- Techdirt recently wrote about a case involving the Canadian province of Quebec. The problem with
ISDS is not just the literally limitless awards that can be made against governments, which have to be paid out of public funds. The
mere threat of such actions can have a chilling effect on the formulation of national policy. It's been happening in Canada for over a
decade, thanks to the ISDS chapter in NAFTA, as a former government official in Ottawa explained: "I've seen the letters
from the New York and DC law firms coming up to the Canadian government on
virtually every new environmental regulation and proposition in the last five years. They
involved dry-cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, patent law. Virtually all of
the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day." What this
means in practice is that ISDS clauses in major US trade agreements currently being
negotiated are likely to have the same negative effects on the environment as NAFTA,
but on a much greater scale. That's because they involve far larger trade blocs, and
recourse to ISDS tribunals has increased greatly in recent years, adding to the credibility
of threats to use them unless plans for more stringent environmental policies are
dumped. So alongside the dubious economic claims being made for them, which are
undermined by the failure of both NAFTA and KORUS to produce the predicted exports
or jobs, we can now add the hidden environmental damage as yet another reason to call
into question the alleged benefits of both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP.
Longtime failure of NAFTA proves free trade worsens environmental and
economic impacts
Byrnes, 13 (http://content.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2013/10/trade-experts-reveal-costs-north-
american-free-trade-agreement TRADE EXPERTS REVEAL COSTS OF NORTH AMERICAN FREE
TRADE AGREEMENT. CTB)
We need a real change! said Alejandro Villamar, Trade Policy Analyst with Red Mexicana de Accin Frente al Libre Comercio
(RMALC). The total cost of environmental destruction each year in Mexico since NAFTA is
equal to 9 percent of the countrys gross domestic product. Twenty years of neglect for
environmental issues and handouts for investors under NAFTA is not only
unsustainable, its unacceptable. In Canada, carbon emissions have skyrocketed, and
there has been no significant new environmental policy since 1994 while many existing
policies or environmental decisions have been challenged by U.S. companies as illegal
under NAFTAs investment chapter. When the United States, Canada, and Mexico
signed NAFTA, environmental protection was an afterthought or potential distraction
from the agreements true objective of encouraging unlimited corporate-led growth, said
Stuart Trew, trade campaigner with The Council of Canadians. Twenty years later, its clear North American corporations had
nothing to worry about. As an added insult, the current Canadian government has dismantled
environmental legislation to attract new investment to tar sands, shale gas, and other
polluting mining projects, which is also supposed to be illegal under NAFTA. Families and
communities have not only been affected by increased pollution and other environmental hazards. Many have also lost
jobs due to weak labor standards outlined in NAFTA. Twenty years later, NAFTA continues to fail
workers in all three countries, said Cathy Feingold, Director of the AFL-CIOs International Department. Rather than
increasing employment, the agreement led to significant job losses in the U.S. and
ongoing attacks on worker rights, wage stagnation, and degradation of work in all three
countries. The U.S., Mexico, and Canada are currently in talks with other nations along the Pacific Rim to expand trade among
what is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Public interest groups fear that the new trade pact will just be an expansion of the failed
model of NAFTA. If only NAFTA countries could learn from the fiasco, but they are busy
signing more NAFTA-like deals around the world, further taking away our ability to
protect the environment and merely crossing their fingers that our ecosystems can
sustain all this new growth, Trew said. Villamar agreed and said, A new model of trade that
includes binding environmental commitments, effective oversight of environmental
obligations, and meaningful protections for communities and the environment is
urgently needed now.
Naval Power
Alt Causes
Alt causes- Naval overstretch, Chinese tech, geography and nationalism
Kraska 10 (Dr. James Kraska, Senior Fellow in FPRI's Program on National Security, a naval and commander, served as a
principal in bilateral and multilateral treaty negotiations, China Set for Naval Hegemony in The Diplomat,
http://thediplomat.com/2010/05/china-ready-to-dominate-seas/?allpages=yes \\ME)

While the United States has the forward-deployed USS George Washington on a short tether, oftentimes Washington has no other
carrier in theater, meaning that even two or three Chinese carriers operating in the area likely will exceed the number of US flattops.
The Chinese fleet is about 260 vessels, including 75 major warships and more than 60 submarines, and the entire force is
complemented by hundreds of fast cruise-missiles shooting offshore patrol vessels and land-based aircraft. By comparison, the
US Navy battle force, run ragged with global responsibilities, has shrunk by 20 percent since 2001.
The US fleet will be hard-pressed to maintain a force of 11 carriers, 31 amphibious warfare ships, 88 major
surface combatants and 48 submarines, all spread thinly throughout the world. The United States
believes it can be virtually present everywhere, and then surge actual forces in the event
of a crisis. But virtual presence is actual absence, and the US strategy is tacit recognition that the Navy that
had approached 600 ships in the 1980s is incapable of maintaining even half that number. In February, the Center for Naval
Analysis issued a report suggesting that none of this is hyperbole: the US Navy is at the tipping point, about to abandon its position
of maritime superiority. So accustomed to being militarily superior, the United States is under the delusion that it could maintain
sea control in Asia. Third, China has mastered quiet air-independent propulsion (AIP) power
plants for its new Type 041 Yuan-class boats. AIP extends underwater endurance from a
few days to one month, and enables submarines to sprint underwatergreatly
increasing their attack radius. Reportedly quieter than the US fast attack Los Angeles-class boats, the elusive AIP
diesel electrics are equipped with wake-honing torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles. In one incident in October 2006, an ultra-
quiet Songclass AIP submarine surfaced inside the protective screen of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. Fourth, Chinas
geographic position, with short and secure internal lines of communication, is a force
multiplier. All of Beijings warships and land-based aircraft and submarines already are
present in theater. Chinese ground command and control is connected by spoof-proof hard-wire landlines. Fifth,
China is riding a wave of national overconfidence at the same time many regard the
United States as preoccupied with counter-insurgency in central Asia, strategically listless and
brooding. Brimming with uncontained satisfactioneven joyat its relentless ascent, China is overflowing with ethnic and cultural
pride and itching to teach lessons and settle old scores. These emotions fuel a ballooning sense of past wrongs to be compensated
and future entitlements to be seized. Any maritime conflict with the United States (or Japan) will push China teetering over the edge
of a war fever not seen since the Guns of August.
Alt cause- reduced spending
Kaufman 4/20 (Robert G. Kaufman is a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, Obama's assault on
American primacy in The Orange County Register, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/american-610420-internet-
administration.html \\ME)

President Barack Obama yearns to relinquish American primacy. The administration's deep and accelerating
reductions in defense spending imperil the military preeminence essential for the
safeguarding of the enlightened self-interest of the U.S. and democratic allies. The Army will
be smaller than at any time since before a feebly armed United States began building belatedly for World War II. The
American Navy already has reduced its surface fleet to 280 - its lowest level since World
War I and less than half the size of Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy. That number will
plummet to a 230 - nearly 100 fewer than what American admirals consider the bare
minimum needed to credibly project power in vital regions - unless Congress and Obama cooperate to
modify the sequester. The administration has eviscerated the capabilities as well as the size of
the American fleet. Last month, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the administration will
end the purchase of the Tomahawk, the navy's premier cruise missile, with stockpiles
dwindling and no replacement on the horizon. Seth Cropsey, Director of the Hudson Institute's Center for
American Seapower, blasted the decision for violating all "common sense." He could imagine "no
more effective way to reduce America's influence in the world." Worse, the ebbing of
America's naval power has coincided ominously with a prodigious increase in China's
maritime capabilities, rendering vital sea lanes less secure, deterrence less robust, and
American commitments to Asian allies less reliable. The Obama administration's neuralgic aversion to
developing an effective defense against long range ballistic missiles has exacerbated the erosion of American capabilities and resolve.
Adversaries and allies will increasingly discount the credibility of American security guarantees as a militarily declining United
States becomes increasingly vulnerable to China's and Russia's growing nuclear arsenal - not to mention a revolutionary Iran on the
cusp of the nuclear threshold. The probabilities of regional aggression will rise as inhibitions intensify on Americans statesmen
averse to risking nuclear escalation that even a conventional military response may entail. President Obama deems
the end of American primacy as desirable and necessary rather than regrettable and
reversible. By his logic, a less powerful United States would lack the means, hence, the temptation, to shoulder expensive and
counterproductive commitments detrimental to Obama's overriding goal of vastly expanding the cost, size and prerogatives of
government at home. This perverse logic also accounts for the Obama administration's abortive plan to surrender American control
of the Internet to the "international community," which the president abandoned only because of the firestorm of objections from
coalition of Republicans in Congress and President Bill Clinton. No sensible administration concerned with
enhancing American influence ever would have contemplated, much less pursued, a
capitulation so detrimental to America's national interest. American oversight of the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has served the world well: providing open access to the Internet, catalyzing freedom,
dynamism and innovation; prevented tyrannies such as Russia, China and Iran from controlling general access to the Internet
despite their severely curtailing the Internet access of their own people. Russia, China, Iran and other closed societies have long
pressed for transferring Internet Control to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union composed mostly of unfree
regimes seeking more control over website addresses. Though the administration has thwarted previous efforts to endow the ITU
with that authority, ceding U.S. stewardship over the Internet to the "international community" would entail many of the same risks.
Any alternative administering agency composed mainly of nation states would increase the leverage of dictatorship to impose a web
tax, chill speech and restrict content. The execrable record of the United Nation demonstrates graphically the fatuousness of relying
on an imaginary international community as an adequate substitute for American power. Transferring control of the Internet would
complicate American efforts to develop effective defenses against the mounting threat of cyber warfare. It would compromise the
fundamental freedoms of Americans that the Constitution provides and American power protects. The administration's
predisposition to surrender American preeminences will haunt the world for decades
unless coalitions of the willing unite to stop it.
Alt cause- budget mismanagement
Cropsey 13 (Seth Cropsey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute a naval officer from 1985 to 2004 and as deputy
undersecretary of the Navy, China's Growing Challenge to U.S. Naval Power in The Wall Street Journal,
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324 798904578531781367548350 \\ME)

The budgets needed to achieve the Navy's goals were unlikely even before sequestration.
The defense budget since 9/11 has averaged 4.1% of GDP. Under the budgets projected by the Obama
administration, the figure is projected to drop to 2.5% in less than a decade. If America's
unilateral disarmament occurs and the Pentagon leadership clings to a more or less equal division of
dollars among the military services, the U.S. sea power available in the Western Pacific
will decline significantly. Alternatively, to maintain strong forces in the Pacific, the U.S.
would be forced to abandon its naval presence in such areas of strategic concern as the
Caribbean or the Persian Gulf. Such a shell game is not in the best interest of U.S. strategy. Neither is it in the
interest of the international order that America has helped to establish and maintain in the decades since World War II. What
ultimately matters for the U.S. and for a stable world order is America's ability to maintain a distributed and powerful presence
across the globe. Yes, the U.S. needs to pay greater attention to the security situation in Asia.
But "rebalancing" requires weight, and America is losing this weight. Japan's plan to
increase its submarine fleet to 24 from 16 demonstrates that Asia's leaders know it.


No Impact
No impact to decline- still the most powerful navy and coalitions solve. Also,
economy is an alt cause
Kaplan 08 (Robert D. Kaplan, Robert D. Kaplan has been an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American
Security, pointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Pentagons Defense Policy Board, U.S. Hegemony May Be in Decline,
but Only to a Degree in The Washington Post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/12/16/AR2008121602480. Html \\ME)
Yet the debacle did not signal the end of the British Empire, which expanded for nearly another century. Rather, it signaled a
transition away from an ad hoc imperium fired occasionally by an ill-disciplined lust to
impose its values abroad -- and to a calmer, more pragmatic and soldiering empire built
on trade, education and technology. That is akin to where we are now, post-Iraq: calmer, more
pragmatic and with a military -- especially a Navy -- that, while in relative decline, is still
far superior to any other on Earth. Near the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Navy had almost 600 ships; it is down to
280. But in aggregate tonnage that is still more than the next 17 navies combined. Our
military secures the global commons to the benefit of all nations. Without the U.S. Navy, the seas
would be unsafe for merchant shipping, which, in an era of globalization, accounts for 90 percent of world trade. We may not be able
to control events on land in the Middle East, but our Navy and Air Force control all entry and exit points to the region. The
multinational anti-piracy patrols that have taken shape in the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden have done so under the aegis of
the U.S. Navy. Sure the economic crisis will affect shipbuilding, meaning the decline in the number of our ships will continue, and
there will come a point where quantity affects quality. But this will be an exceedingly gradual transition,
which we will assuage by leveraging naval allies such as India and Japan. Then there are the
dozens of training deployments around the world that the U.S. military, particularly Army Special Forces, conducts in any given
week. We are all over Africa, Asia and Latin America with these small missions that increase America's diplomatic throw-weight
without running the risk of getting us bogged down. Aside from Iraq and Afghanistan, our military
posture around the world is generally light, lethal and highly mobile. We have been quietly
reducing land forces in South Korea while compensating with a more effective air and naval presence. In Colombia, platoon-size
numbers of Green Berets have been instrumental in fighting narco-terrorists; in Algeria, such training teams have
helped improve our relationship with that formerly radical Arab country. Such stripped-down
American military deployments garner no headlines, but they are a formula that works. The Marines, after becoming
virtually desert forces since 2001, will return to their expeditionary roots aboard
amphibious ships in the Greater Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. American military power is not going
away. But instead of being in-your-face, it will lurk just over the horizon. And that will make all the difference. In sum, we
may no longer be at Charles Krauthammer's "Unipolar Moment," but neither have we
become Sweden. Declinism of the sort being preached will go immediately out of fashion
at the world's next humanitarian catastrophe, when the very people enraged at the U.S.
military because of Iraq will demand that it lead a coalition to save lives. We might have
intervened in Darfur had we not been bogged down in Iraq; after Cyclone Nargis, our ships would have provided large-scale relief,
had Burma's military government allowed them to proceed. As world population rises, and with vast urban areas with tottering
infrastructures in the most environmentally and seismically fragile zones, the opportunities for U.S. military-led disaster relief will
be legion. The American military remains a force for good, a fact that will become self-evident in the crises to come. Of course we are
entering a more multipolar world. The only economic growth over the next year or two will come
from developing nations, notably India and China. But there are other realities, too. We
should not underestimate the diplomatic and moral leverage created by the combination of the world's
most expeditionary military and a new president who will boast high approval ratings at home and around the world. No power but
the United States has the wherewithal to orchestrate an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, and our intervention in Iraq has not changed
that fact. Everyone hates the word, but the United States is still a hegemon of sorts, able to pivotally
influence the world from a position of moral strength. Yet American hegemony post-Iraq will be as
changed as Britain's was after the Indian Mutiny. It will be a more benign and temperate version of what transpired in recent years.
Henceforth, we will shape coalitions rather than act on our own. For that, after all, is the
essence of a long and elegant decline: to pass responsibility on to like-minded others as
their own capacities rise.
No other powers gaining on the US- even China is way behind
Drezner 11 (Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and
Diplomacy, bhgs at ForeignPolicy.com, ...AND CHINA ISN'T BEATING THE U.S in Foreign Policy,
http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/840433005?pq-origsite=summon (ProQuest) \\ME)

China is a great power in every sense of the word. It is the most populous country in the world. The Middle Kingdom has weathered
the Great Recession better than the West. It is developing a blue-water navy to rival the United States in the Pacific. In 2010, China
surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy. For many Americans, however, this is not enough. Politicians,
commentators, and the public believe China has already supplanted the United States to
achieve primacy in world politics. This is not only wrong - it is dangerously wrong.
According to a November 2009 Pew Research Center survey, 44 percent of Americans
believe that China is "the world's leading economic power," compared with 27 percent
who name the United States. Elites have fed this mass perception. After a midterm
election cycle that featured anti-China ad after anti-China ad, President Barack Obama
warned, "Other countries like China aren't standing still, so we can't stand stilt either."
With public perception and political rhetoric like this, it is little wonder that Forbes magazine recently named Chinese President Hu
Jintao the world's most powerful individual. It's time to make a few things clear. If one measures power strictly
according to gdp at market exchange rates, then the United States is roughly 250
percent more powerful than China. If one uses a combination of metrics - as does, for
example, the U.S. National Intelligence Council's 2025 project - then China possesses a
little less than half of America's relative power. Even on the financial side, the U.S. still reigns, and, hype
notwithstanding, the dollar is not going anywhere as the world's reserve currency. The renminbi could be an alternative in the far
future - but after the 2008 financial crisis, China is loath to open up its capital markets. Even by the less tangible metrics of soft
power, the United States still outperforms China handily in new public opinion surveys from the Pacific Rim by the Chicago Council
on Global Affairs. Right now, the United States is vastly more powerful than the People's Republic
of China. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something. Why the massive misperception? In part, people
are looking at the wrong measures. China has the world's largest currency reserves,
leading many to conclude that Beijing now has the ability to dictate terms to the United
States and everyone else. But that just ain't so. The "balance of financial terror" constrains China as well as
the United States because China needs American consumers at least as much as the United States needs China to buy its debt. No
doubt, China amassed more power while American might ebbed over the last decade,
and Beijing is now throwing its weight around. But the United States still has a huge
lead. As for China's recent bout of belligerence, it has yielded Beijing little beyond Japan releasing a fishingboat captain - while
pushing South Asia and the Pacific Rim closer to the United States. Exaggerating Chinese power has
consequences. Inside the Beltway, attitudes about American hegemony have shifted from complacency to panic. Fearful
politicians representing scared voters have an incentive to scapegoat or lash out against a rising power - to the detriment of all.
Hysteria about Chinese power also provokes confusion and anger in China as Beijing is
being asked to accept a burden it is not yet prepared to shoulder. China, after all, ranks 89th in the
2010 U.N. Human Development Index, just behind Turkmenistan and the Dominican Republic (the United States is fourth).
Treating Beijing as more powerful than it is feeds Chinese bravado and insecurity at the
same time. That is almost as dangerous a political cocktail as fear and panic.
Missiles make naval power useless
Talmadge 10 (Eric Talmadge, writer at the AP, (notice it cites other people internally), Chinese missile changes power
game:: Naval carriers are target of powerful weapon, supposedly accurate from 900 miles published in The Charleston Daily Mail,
http://search.proquest.com.pr oxy.lib.umich.edu/docview/739993768?pq-origsite=summon (PROQUEST) \\ME)

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON - Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more
vividly than supercarriers. Bristling with fighter jets that can reach deep into even landlocked trouble zones, America's
virtually invincible carrier fleet has long enforced its dominance of the high seas. China may soon put an end to
that. U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-
changing weapon being developed by China - an unprecedented carrier-killing missile
called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to
penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of
more than 900 miles. Analysts say final testing of the missile could come as soon as the end of this year, though
questions remain about how fast China will be able to perfect its accuracy to the level needed to threaten a moving carrier at sea.
The weapon, a version of which was displayed last year in a Chinese military parade,
could revolutionize China's role in the Pacific balance of power, seriously weakening Washington's
ability to intervene in any potential conflict over Taiwan or North Korea. It could also deny U.S. ships safe access to international
waters near China's 11,200-mile-long coastline. While a nuclear bomb could theoretically sink a carrier,
assuming its user was willing to raise the stakes to atomic levels, the conventionally-
armed Dong Feng 21D's uniqueness is in its ability to hit a powerfully defended moving
target with pin-point precision. The Chinese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to the AP's request for a
comment. Funded by annual double-digit increases in the defense budget for almost every year of the past two decades, the
Chinese navy has become Asia's largest and has expanded beyond its traditional mission
of retaking Taiwan to push its sphere of influence deeper into the Pacific and protect
vital maritime trade routes. "The Navy has long had to fear carrier-killing capabilities," said Patrick Cronin, senior
director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the nonpartisan, Washington-based Center for a New American Security. "The
emerging Chinese antiship missile capability, and in particular the DF 21D, represents
the first post-Cold War capability that is both potentially capable of stopping our naval
power projection and deliberately designed for that purpose." Setting the stage for a possible conflict,
Beijing has grown increasingly vocal in its demands for the U.S. to stay away from the wide swaths of ocean - covering much of the
Yellow, East and South China seas - where it claims exclusivity. It strongly opposed plans to hold U.S.-South Korean war games in
the Yellow Sea off the northeastern Chinese coast, saying the participation of the USS George Washington supercarrier, with its
1,092-foot (333-meter) flight deck and 6,250 personnel, would be a provocation because it put Beijing within striking range of U.S.
F-18 warplanes. The carrier instead took part in maneuvers held farther away in the Sea of Japan. U.S. officials deny Chinese
pressure kept it away, and say they will not be told by Beijing where they can operate. "We reserve the right to exercise in
international waters anywhere in the world," Rear Adm. Daniel Cloyd, who headed the U.S. side of the exercises, said aboard the
carrier during the maneuvers, which ended last week. But the new missile, if able to evade the defenses of
a carrier and of the vessels sailing with it, could undermine that policy. "China can
reach out and hit the U.S. well before the U.S. can get close enough to the mainland to
hit back," said Toshi Yoshihara, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He said U.S. ships have only twice been
that vulnerable - against Japan in World War II and against Soviet bombers in the Cold War. Carrier-killing missiles
"could have an enduring psychological effect on U.S. policymakers," he e-mailed to The AP. "It
underscores more broadly that the U.S. Navy no longer rules the waves as it has since
the end of World War II. The stark reality is that sea control cannot be taken for granted anymore." Yoshihara said the
weapon is causing considerable consternation in Washington, though - with attention focused on land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
- its implications haven't been widely discussed in public. Analysts note that while much has been made of China's efforts to ready a
carrier fleet of its own, it would likely take decades to catch U.S. carrier crews' level of expertise, training and experience. But
Beijing does not need to match the U.S. carrier for carrier. The Dong Feng 21D, smarter,
and vastly cheaper, could successfully attack a U.S. carrier, or at least deter it from
getting too close. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned of the threat in a speech last September at the Air Force
Association Convention. "When considering the military-modernization programs of countries
like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the U.S.
symmetrically - fighter to fighter or ship to ship - and more with their ability to disrupt
our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options," he said. Gates said
China's investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry,
along with ballistic missiles, "could threaten America's primary way to project power"
through its forward air bases and carrier strike groups. The Pentagon has been worried for years about China getting an anti-ship
ballistic missile. The Pentagon considers such a missile an "anti-access," weapon, meaning
that it could deny others access to certain areas. The Air Force's top surveillance and
intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. David Deptula, told reporters this week that China's effort
to increase anti-access capability is part of a worrisome trend. He did not single out the DF 21D, but
said: "While we might not fight the Chinese, we may end up in situations where we'll certainly be opposing the
equipment that they build and sell around the world." Questions remain over when - and if - China will
perfect the technology; hitting a moving carrier is no mean feat, requiring state-of-the-art guidance systems, and some experts
believe it will take China a decade or so to field a reliable threat. Others, however, say final tests of the missile could come in the next
year or two. Former Navy commander James Kraska, a professor of international law and sea power at the U.S. Naval War College,
recently wrote a controversial article in the magazine Orbis outlining a hypothetical scenario set just five years from now in which a
Deng Feng 21D missile with a penetrator warhead sinks the USS George Washington. That would usher in a "new
epoch of international order in which Beijing emerges to displace the United States."
While China's Defense Ministry never comments on new weapons before they become operational, the DF 21D - which
would travel at 10 times the speed of sound and carry conventional payloads - has been much
discussed by military buffs online. A pseudonymous article posted on Xinhuanet, website of China's official news agency, imagines
the U.S. dispatching the George Washington to aid Taiwan against a Chinese attack. The Chinese would respond with three salvos
of DF 21D, the first of which would pierce the hull, start fires and shut down flight operations, the article says. The second would
knock out its engines and be accompanied by air attacks. The third wave, the article says, would "send the George Washington to the
bottom of the ocean."
Terror
Bioterror
Alt Causes
Bioterror is inevitable- Alt causes, pharmaceutical industry
Meek 04 (James Gordon Meek, former Senior Counterterrorism Advisor and Investigator for the
House Committee on Homeland Security, SUSPECT DUBBED 'FALLEN ANGEL' SENT RICIN TO
WHITE HOUSE IN . . . POISON HATE MAIL PLOT Feb 4, -Lexis accessed)
A BIO-TERRORIST attack can be expected in the next decade, but the U.S. and other
countries are unprepared to handle an event in which up to 100,000 will die when lethal
viruses and bacteria are sprayed into the atmosphere. The warning came from a U.S. senator
yesterday during a bio-terrorism debate at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum here. "Our
assumption should be we will almost certainly see such an attack," said Bill Frist, a Republican from
Tennessee and the Senate majority leader. "The risk of bio-terrorism is increasing," said Senator Frist, a
medical doctor whose Senate office last year received a letter containing ricin, a toxin made from castor
beans that has no known antidote. He called bio-terrorism "the greatest threat" facing the world. Other
panel members, in the main, agreed. Former Central Intelligence Agency chief John M. Deutch, who is
working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "Responsible governments must plan for the
possibility" of a bio-terrorist attack, starting with large-scale vaccination programs and the installation of
virus and bacteria sensors in public places." Senator Frist and Mr Deutch said making lethal viruses and
bacteria in huge quantities would become increasingly easy with potential bio-terrorists finding the
internet to be a mother lode of information and anonymity. Also, said Senator Frist, during the Cold War
the Soviet Union produced huge quantities of lethal viruses and bacteria. "Do we know where all of that is
now? No, we don't," he said. He said the U.S. - despite an anthrax scare in Washington and elsewhere
after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - remains "underprepared" for a bio-terrorist attack. The
picture elsewhere was not much better, said Tara O'Toole, head of the University of Pittsburgh's Centre
for Biosecurity. She said 70 per cent of the outbreaks of disease reported by World Health Organisation
originate with media reports. "We do not have fundamental disease-reporting networks in
the world," she said. "Bio-terrorism is one of the world's most pressing issues today." In
the U.S., Senator Frist said, the "vaccination industry has been decimated" as
Americans' taste for malpractice suits against doctors and drug makers have scared
away vaccine makers. "There used to be 20 companies making childhood vaccines in the
U.S. Today there are two." Common bio-terrorist scenarios foresee the release into
malls, cinemas, subways or open streets and avenues of lethal biological or chemical
agents. Mr Deutch said the targets were not only people, but also livestock and crops.

No Impact
Risk is small- statistics prove
Leitenberg 06 (Milton Leitenberg, a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, is the
author of "Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat. Los Angeles Times,
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0217-7.htm)

The United States has spent at least $33 billion since 2002 to combat the threat of biological terrorism.
The trouble is, the risk that terrorists will use biological agents is being systematically and
deliberately exaggerated. And the U.S. government has been using most of its money to
prepare for the wrong contingency. A pandemic flu outbreak of the kind the world
witnessed in 1918-19 could kill hundreds of millions of people. The only lethal biological
attack in the United States the anthrax mailings killed five. But the annual budget for
combating bioterror is more than $7 billion, while Congress just passed a $3.8-billion emergency package
to prepare for a flu outbreak. The exaggeration of the bioterror threat began more than a decade ago after
the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo group released sarin gas in the Tokyo subways in 1995. The
scaremongering has grown more acute since 9/11 and the mailing of anthrax-laced
letters to Congress and media outlets in the fall of 2001. Now an edifice of institutes,
programs and publicists with a vested interest in hyping the bioterror threat has grown,
funded by the government and by foundations. Last year, for example, Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist described bioterrorism as "the greatest existential threat we have in the
world today." But how could he justify such a claim? Is bioterrorism a greater existential
threat than global climate change, global poverty levels, wars and conflicts, nuclear
proliferation, ocean-quality deterioration, deforestation, desertification, depletion of
freshwater aquifers or the balancing of population growth and food production? Is it likely
to kill more people than the more mundane scourges of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, measles and cholera,
which kill more than 11 million people each year? So what substantiates the alarm and the massive federal
spending on bioterrorism? There are two main sources of bioterrorism threats: first, from countries
developing bioweapons, and second, from terrorist groups that might buy, steal or manufacture them. The
first threat is declining. U.S. intelligence estimates say the number of countries that conduct offensive
bioweapons programs has fallen in the last 15 years from 13 to nine, as South Africa, Libya, Iraq and Cuba
were dropped. There is no publicly available evidence that even the most hostile of the nine remaining
countries Syria and Iran are ramping up their programs. And, despite the fear that a hostile nation
could help terrorists get biological weapons, no country has ever done so even nations known to have
trained terrorists. It's more difficult to assess the risk of terrorists using bioweapons,
especially because the perpetrators of the anthrax mailings have not been identified. If the perpetrators
did not have access to assistance, materials or knowledge derived from the U.S. biodefense program, but
had developed such sophistication independently, that would change our view of what a terrorist group
might be capable of. So far, however, the history of terrorist experimentation with bioweapons
has shown that killing large numbers of people isn't as easy as we've been led to believe.
Followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh succeeded in culturing and distributing salmonella in Oregon in
1984, sickening 751 people. Aum Shinrikyo failed in its attempts to obtain, produce and disperse anthrax
and botulinum toxin between 1990 and 1994. Al Qaeda tried to develop bioweapons from 1997
until the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but declassified documents found by U.S.
forces outside Kandahar indicate the group never obtained the necessary pathogens. At
a conference in Tokyo this week, bioterrorism experts called for new programs to
counter the possibility that terrorists could genetically engineer new pathogens. Yet
three of the leading scientists in the field have said there is no likelihood at this time that
a terrorist group could perform such a feat.
No bioterror- multiple hurdles
Burton and Stewart 08 (security analysis stratfor, Busting the Anthrax Myth, July 30, 2008,
Stratfor Global intelligence http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/busting_anthrax_myth#axzz388WxHdoY)
In fact, based on the past history of nonstate actors conducting attacks using biological weapons, we
remain skeptical that a nonstate actor could conduct a biological weapons strike capable
of creating as many casualties as a large strike using conventional explosives -- such as the
October 2002 Bali bombings that resulted in 202 deaths or the March 2004 train bombings in Madrid
that killed 191. We do not disagree with Runge's statements that actors such as al Qaeda have
demonstrated an interest in biological weapons. There is ample evidence that al Qaeda has a rudimentary
biological weapons capability. However, there is a huge chasm of capability that separates
intent and a rudimentary biological weapons program from a biological weapons
program that is capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people. Misconceptions About
Biological Weapons There are many misconceptions involving biological weapons. The
three most common are that they are easy to obtain, that they are easy to deploy
effectively, and that, when used, they always cause massive casualties. While it is
certainly true that there are many different types of actors who can easily gain access to
rudimentary biological agents, there are far fewer actors who can actually isolate
virulent strains of the agents, weaponize them and then effectively employ these agents
in a manner that will realistically pose a significant threat of causing mass casualties.
While organisms such as anthrax are present in the environment and are not difficult to
obtain, more highly virulent strains of these tend to be far more difficult to locate,
isolate and replicate. Such efforts require highly skilled individuals and sophisticated laboratory
equipment. Even incredibly deadly biological substances such as ricin and botulinum
toxin are difficult to use in mass attacks. This difficulty arises when one attempts to take a
rudimentary biological substance and then convert it into a weaponized form -- a form that is potent
enough to be deadly and yet readily dispersed. Even if this weaponization hurdle can be
overcome, once developed, the weaponized agent must then be integrated with a
weapons system that can effectively take large quantities of the agent and evenly
distribute it in lethal doses to the intended targets. During the past several decades in
the era of modern terrorism, biological weapons have been used very infrequently and
with very little success. This fact alone serves to highlight the gap between the biological
warfare misconceptions and reality. Militant groups desperately want to kill people and
are constantly seeking new innovations that will allow them to kill larger numbers of
people. Certainly if biological weapons were as easily obtained, as easily weaponized and
as effective at producing mass casualties as commonly portrayed, militant groups would
have used them far more frequently than they have.

No Tech
No bioterror- tech
Stern 99 (Jessica Stern Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., USA, The Prospect of
Domestic Bioterrorism, CDC http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/4/99-0410_article
Would domestic terrorists use biological weapons?1 The conventional wisdom among experts
has been that terrorists "want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead" and are
unlikely to turn to weapons of mass destruction.2 A new school of thought proposes that
improved technology has made biological attacks resulting in hundreds of thousands or
millions of deaths all but inevitable. While terrorists are increasingly interested in
weapons of mass destruction, proponents of the latter view exaggerate the threat. Using
biological weapons to create mass casualties would require more than having biological
agents in hand. The terrorists would need to disseminate the agent, which presents
technical and organizational obstacles that few domestic groups could surmount. In
addition, relatively few terrorists would want to kill millions of people, even if they
could. For most terrorists, the costs of escalation to biological weapons would seem to
outweigh the benefits. Most modern terrorists have had substantively rational goals,
such as attaining national autonomy or establishing a government purportedly more
representative of the people's will. Escalating to such frightening weapons would result in a
massive government crackdown and could alienate the group's supporters. Biological weapons are
also dangerous to produce. A number of Aum Shinrikyo members reportedly damaged their own
health while working on biological agents. Additionally, some terrorists may perceive moral
constraints.3 Candidates for successful use of biological weapons represent the intersection of three
sets: groups that want to use these weapons despite formidable political risks; groups that can acquire the
agent and a dissemination device (however crude); and groups whose organizational structure enables
them to deliver or disseminate the agent covertly. The intersection of these sets is small but growing,
especially for low-technology attacks such as contaminating food or disseminating
biological agents in an enclosed space. Major attacks are also becoming more likely. In the
sections that follow, we consider eroding motivational, technical, and organizational constraints.
No bioterror- tech hurdles, cultural taboos
PARANCHI (RAND Analyst) 01 [John, Anthrax Attacks, Biological Terrorism and Preventive
Responses, Rand Testimony, Ct 186,
http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/testimonies/2005/CT186.pdf
The use of disease and biological material as a weapon is not a new method of warfare. What is surprising
is how infrequently it is has been used. Biological agents may appeal to the new terrorist groups because
they affect people indiscriminately and unnoticed, thereby sowing panic. A pattern is emerging that
terrorists who perpetrate mass and indiscriminate attacks do not claim responsibility.5 In contrast to the
turgid manifestos issued by terrorists in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, recent mass casualty terrorists have
not claimed responsibility until they were imprisoned. Biological agents enable terrorists to preserve their
anonymity because of their delayed impact and can be confused with natural disease outbreaks. Instead of
the immediate gratification of seeing an explosion or the glory of claiming credit for disrupting society,
the biological weapons terrorist may derive satisfaction from seeing societys panicked response to their
actions. If this is the case, this is a new motive for the mass casualty terrorist. There are a number of
countervailing disincentives for states and terrorists to use biological weapons, which
help explain why their use is so infrequent. The technical and operational challenges
biological weapons pose are considerable. Acquiring the material, skills of production,
knowledge of weaponization, and successfully delivering the weapon, to the target is
difficult. In cases where the populations of the terrorist supporters and adversaries are
mixed, biological weapons risk inadvertently hitting the same people for whom
terrorists claim to fight. Terrorists may also hesitate in using biological weapons
specifically because breaking the taboo on their use may evoke considerable retaliation.
The use of disease as a weapon is widely recognized in most cultures as a means of
killing that is beyond the bounds of a civilized society. From a psychological perspective,
terrorists may be drawn to explosives as arsonists are drawn to fire. The immediate gratification of
explosives and the thrill of the blast may meet a psychological need of terrorists that the
delayed effects of biological weapons do not. Causing slow death of others may not offer
the same psychic thrill achieved by killing with firearms or explosives. Perhaps the greatest
alternative to using biological weapons is that terrorists can inflict (and have inflicted) many more
fatalities and casualties with conventional explosives than with unconventional weapons. Biological
weapons present technical and operational challenges that determined killers may not
have the patience to overcome or they may simply concentrate their efforts on more
readily available alternatives.

War
Indo-Pak
Indo-Pak war wont happen internal Pakistan conflict and the US check
Sharma, 13 (Rajeev Sharma, New Delhi-based journalist-author and a strategic
analyst, Why India cant go to war with Pakistan, 1/16/2013,
http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-india-cant-go-to-war-with-pakistan-
590038.html)
Lets chuck the political grandstanding in the ongoing India-Pakistan theater of the
absurd and focus on how India-Pakistan relations may play out in the coming weeks in
the current geopolitical matrix. There are three issues. The most important question is
whether Pakistan army personnels barbaric act of mutilating the bodies of two Indian
jawans they killed on 6 January (which is nothing short of a war crime) needs to be
given a military response controlled or full blast? War's that way: What can India do to retaliate? PTI
The UPA government is clearly not thinking on these lines. The war drums are not beating; not yet. One may ask: if not now, then
when? But then matters of statecraft are not that simple. More so, when the habitual offender neighbour happens to be a nuclear
weapon power! But then does it mean that big power like India should allow itself to be
bullied by a fast failing state just because it is a nuclear weapon state? Far from it! The
beheading of the Indian soldier by the Pakistani regulars was a covert operation and
covert operations need not trigger an overt response. India has the option of beating Pakistan in its own
game without even giving a semblance of mobilizing its war machinery. India can also put itself on a denial mode just as Pakistan
has been for its sins of omission and commission in violating the ceasefire repeatedly over the past ten days. In all probability this is
what the chiefs of Indian Army and the Indian Air Force had in mind when they separately fired warning shots at Pakistan a few
days ago. The LoC would unlikely remain a Line of Control in the coming weeks. It will be a live wire. The Indian Army will do well
to deploy its best commandos in the vulnerable sectors of the LoC with a single-point brief: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
This is what Pakistan did on 6 January that has brought the Indo-Pak relations on the brink. The medieval age barbarism was
perpetrated by Pakistan armys Special Service Group (SSG) commandos. After the Pakistani provocation, the Indian army should
have its tail up and give a measured and proportionate response, to borrow words from the Indian political leaderships recent
lexicon. The likely scenario, therefore, would be that the Indian response to subsequent Pakistani provocations would be sector-
specific and event-specific without enlarging the sweepstakes. This is possibly what the chiefs of Indian Army and Indian Air Force
indicated and this is probably what BJP leaders like Yashwant Sinha and Sushma Swaraj meant when they made those hawkish
statements. Pakistan Army would be mis-adventurous if they were to mistake Indias continued recourse to the laid down diplomatic
means as cowardice and carry on with their business as usual. Two, this is not the right time for an overt response from India given
the chaotic situation in Pakistan. Nobody knows who the boss in Pakistan is today. The government
of President Asif Ali Zardari has become a rootless wonder. The Supreme Court has
ordered the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on corruption charges. Army
Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani remains as indecisive and a passive onlooker as he has been
for years. Gen Kayanis perceived best bets, Imran Khan and Tahir-ul Qadri, are busily
pursuing their own independent personal agendas, the former all to set to carry out a
tsunami march while the latter a million man march. Pakistans slide to anarchy is
being hastened with each passing day. The Indian government would only be displaying
knee-jerk reactions by beating the war drums. Why declare war with a state which is at
war with itself? India wont be wrong is playing the waiting game with a neighbour
which has its fingers on the self-destruct button. Declaring war on Pakistan at this stage
would be no less than a favour to Islamabad. Third, and perhaps the most important factor, is the United
States. The Obama administrations major foreign policy imperative at this moment is to
get out of Afghanistan. At the same time, the Americans cannot afford to exit
Afghanistan today only to re-enter tomorrow. The Americans exit policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan has to be
executed in such a manner that they do not have to stage a hasty come-back. Washingtons Afghanistan strategic
imperatives wont allow any escalation in India-Pakistan conflict. The Americans dont want to get
bogged down to South Asia as their priority has shifted to the South China Sea region. The Americans wont like to see even
controlled aggression by India against Pakistan which may have the potential of getting out of hand. However, the Americans are
also deeply aware that New Delhi has its own political compulsions. The question is not whether Pakistan would have the gall to
repeat the 6 January barbarity against India. The question is what will be the US policy if India were to have a controlled military
response (to borrow Yashwant Sinhas words) to play to its domestic constituency to salvage its pride?

Indo-Pak conflict wont go nuclear
Khan, 11 (Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistani nuclear physicist and a metallurgical
engineer, No chance of Indo-Pak nuclear war despite sabre rattling, 5/17/2011,
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-17/news/29552014_1_nuclear-
blackmail-nuclear-secrets-india-and-pakistan)
Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan has said that despite "sabre rattling"
between Islamabad and New Delhi, there is no chance of a nuclear war between the two
neighbours. Khan, who has been accused of selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and
Syria, wrote in Newsweek magazine that nuclear weapons in both countries had
prevented war for the last 40 years. "India doesn't need more than five weapons to hurt us badly, and we wouldn't
need more than 10 to return the favour," he said. "That is why there has been no war between us for the past 40 years." "India
and Pakistan understand the old principle that ensured peace in the Cold War: mutually
assured destruction," he said. "The two (India and Pakistan) can't afford a nuclear war,
and despite our sabre rattling, there is no chance of a nuclear war that would send us
both back to the Stone Age," he said. He claimed that Pakistan had to invest in a nuclear programme "to ward off
nuclear blackmail from India". "I would like to make it clear that it was an Indian nuclear explosion in May 1974 that prompted
our nuclear program, motivating me to return to Pakistan to help create a credible nuclear deterrent and save my country from
Indian nuclear blackmail," he said. "We are forced to maintain this deterrence until our differences
with India are resolved. That would lead to a new era of peace for both countries," Khan
wrote. "I hope I live to see Pakistan and India living harmoniously in the same way as the once bitter enemies Germany and
France live today," he said. Khan blasted various governments in Pakistan as well as "successive incompetent and ignorant rulers"
for not engaging in basic development of the country, and raising the people's standard of living. "We are far worse off now than
we were 20, or even 40, years ago when we were subjected to embargoes," he said.

India and Pakistan are increasing cooperation
Gul, 14 (Ayaz Gul, Correspondent for Voice of America, Optimism Ahead of India-
Pakistan Trade Talks, 1/17/2014, http://www.voanews.com/content/optimism-ahead-
india-pakistan-talks/1832017.html)
Pakistans new government under Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said it believes efforts to
improve trade links with India can eventually become a major confidence-building
step toward normalizing bilateral relations. Pakistan and India have made
considerable progress in the last three years on normalizing trade ties, including signing
several agreements to facilitate cross-border business contacts to increase annual
bilateral trade, which currently stands at around 2.6 billion dollars. However, military
tensions and ensuing skirmishes along the disputed Kashmir border during most of the previous
year stalled the trade liberalization process. The tensions have now subsided following a long-awaited
meeting in December between top military commanders of the two countries, where
they agreed to ensure peace on borders and respect a mutual cease-fire in Kashmir. All
eyes are now set on Saturdays meeting in New Delhi between Indian and Pakistani commerce ministers. The two sides are
expected to refocus fresh proposals to speed up the trade liberalization process. Ahead of
his talks with the Indian counterpart Anand Sharma, Pakistani trade minister Khurrum Dastgir Khan called for both sides to prevent
mutual suspicion and distrust from denying both nations people the opportunity to economically grow and prosper. Federal
Minister for Trade, Eng. Khurram Dastgir Khan, addressing the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Faisalabad, Jan.
9, 2014. Federal Minister for Trade, Eng. Khurram Dastgir Khan, addressing the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry at
Faisalabad, Jan. 9, 2014. We should have a relationship which is not dependent upon news of the day. We should have a
relationship as neighbors, which is uninterrupted and uninterruptable. So, yes, there will be tensions there will be certain issues on
both sides. But should that completely derail a relationship and we seal off the two people from each other and not benefit from each
others economies?" asked Khan. Islamabad has long linked restoration of full trade ties with New
Delhi to progress in a decade-old wide-ranging peace dialogue which is aimed at settling
bilateral disputes, including the Kashmir conflict. India insists that wider cooperation
in areas such as trade and the economy should not wait for political differences to be
settled. Minister Khan said he hopes increased trade links could clear the way for
progress on political issues dividing the two countries.
No risk of war over Kashmir
Zee News, 13 (Zee News, media and entertainment company and a subsidiary of Essel
Group, No threat of fourth India-Pak war: Farooq, 12/4/2013,
http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/no-threat-of-fourth-india-pak-war-
farooq_894417.html)
Srinagar: Union minister Farooq Abdullah on Wednesday said he did not see India and
Pakistan going to a war with each other ever again. "I don't feel there is a threat of a
fourth war," he told reporters on the sidelines of a function here. Reacting to Pakistan Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharifs recent statement that unresolved Kashmir issue can trigger another war,
Abdullah said such statements are issued for public posturing. "He (Sharif) has to run a
government and he has to say things by which he can keep his people with him. One
should not be afraid of such things," he said.
Indo-Pak nuclear war inevitable water conflicts
Daly, 11 (John Daly, chief analyst for Oilprice.com, Pakistani Editorial Says Nuclear
War with India "Inevitable" as Water Dispute Continues, 12/9/2011,
http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Pakistani-Editorial-Says-Nuclear-War-
With-India-Inevitable-As-Water-Dispute-Continues.html)
Every now and again, one reads an editorial that stops the reader in his tracks. On 8 December, with the headline "War Inevitable
To Tackle Indian Water Aggression," Nawa-e Waqt bluntly commented on Indias Kashmiri water
polices and Islamabads failure up to now to stop New Delhis efforts to construct
hydroelectric dams in Kashmir, India should be forcibly prevented from constructing
these dams. If it fails to constrain itself, we should not hesitate in launching nuclear war
because there is no solution except this. Potential nuclear war over water rights such
sentiments ought to light up switchboards from New Delhi to Washington. Needless to say, the
fact that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers is cause for concern. Nawa-e Waqt is a privately owned, widely read
conservative Pakistani Islamic daily with a circulation around 125,000 and is heavily critical of the U.S. and India. To put Nawa-e
Waqts circulation in context, consider that the conservative Washington Times has a current estimated circulation of 50,000. So,
what has the editorial board of the Nawa-e Waqt so excited? Indian dam building in the disputed area of Kashmir. Compared
with much of South Asia, Kashmir has many rivers and relatively few people. Bashir
Ahmad, a geologist in Srinagar, Kashmir commented grimly about the Indians future
intentions, They will switch the Indus off to make Pakistan solely dependent on India.
Its going to be a water bomb. A more dispassionate report by Americas Senate last February offered still a similar
assessment, noting, The cumulative effect of (the dam) projects could give India the ability to
store enough water to limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the growing
season before concluding that dams are a source of significant bilateral tension. How
many dams and hydroelectric reports? The Senate report counted 33 hydroelectric projects in the border area, a number that
Pakistani analysts nearly double to 60, which according to the states chief minister, Omar Abdullah, will add an extra 3,000
megawatts to the national power grid by 2019. Pakistans vulnerability is underwritten by the fact that, like Egypt it exists around a
single great river, although the Indus is nearly twice the Niles size when it reaches the sea. The Indus provides water
to over 80 percent of Pakistans 54 million acres of irrigated land, via a canal system
largely built by the British. A further potential diplomatic tar-pit is that Afghanistan
plans to build 12 dams on the Kabul river with a combined storage capacity of 4.7
million acre-feet, which Pakistan frets will further diminish the Indus water supply,
quite aside from the fact that Indian support for these dams will increase India's hydro-
influence in the region. The Kabul River Basin (KRB) is the most important river basin in Afghanistan and contains half
the country's urban population, including the city of Kabul. While New Delhi has not directly confirmed its support for the facilities,
the proposed hydroelectric projects represent one of Indias largest assistance interests, with $1.3 billion invested in infrastructure
projects.
SCS
No South China War
No risk of escalation- top leader cooperation proves
Strait Times 7/15 (Singapore-based English-language daily, is noted for its coverage of foreign
news, particularly those from Asia, US, China presidents agree to constructively manage growing
differences, 7/15/2014, http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/asia-report/china/story/us-china-
presidents-agree-constructively-manage-growing-differ)
US President Barack Obama told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday that he wants
US-Chinese relations defined by more cooperation and a constructive management of
differences during a phone call in which Iran and North Korea were also discussed. Escalating tensions between
China and some countries in the South China Sea and with Japan in the East China Sea, as well as US
charges over hacking and Internet spying, have provoked anger on both sides of the Pacific in recent months. A
White House statement about the Obama-Xi conversation did not get into the details of US-Chinese
tensions. It came after two days of talks in Beijing that were an opportunity for the worlds two biggest economies
to lower tensions after months of bickering over a host of issues. Obama and Xi have tried to
develop a working relationship over the past year, meeting for two days in June 2013 at a retreat in the
California desert and, more recently, chatting in March at The Hague on the fringes of an international summit. However, their talks
have done little to resolve festering issues in the Asia Pacific region. The statement suggested the two leaders would
seek to work together when they can despite their disagreements. The president
reaffirmed his commitment to developing a relationship defined by increased practical
cooperation and constructive management of differences, the White House said. Chinas official
Xinhua news agency said Xi told Obama that the two countries should continue to meet each
other half way and keep strengthening cooperation on key issues like climate change.
Cooperation checks any conflict escalation- economic interdependence,
Chinese focus on inner affairs, and no geographic incentive
***(can be used as no China-US war as well)
Follett 6/24 (Andrew, Research Associate at Cato Institute with Masters in Public Policy from George
Mason University, China and the US: Destined to Cooperate?, 6/24/2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/china-and-the-us-destined-to-cooperate/)
The 21st century will be defined by the relationship between the American superpower and rising China. A new Cold War
would threaten the world order while a mutually beneficial association could bring all
prosperity. The latter scenario is more likely. The geography, economies, and energy
resources of the U.S and China align their core interests. First, geography. The U.S. is located
on the most resource and capital-rich continent, North America. The American Midwest consists of valuable
arable land and is bisected by the worlds largest navigable rivers, allowing the export of food and products at bargain prices.
Nearby nations have either historically been on friendly terms (Canada) or lack the ability to present
a threat (Central America and the Caribbean) without an external sponsor. This benign environment has allowed America to focus
on projecting power and dominating global merchant marine traffic. Since China lies across an ocean
dominated by the American Navy, neither directly threatens the other. China, meanwhile, is a
populous and vast land power with a long coastline. Yet Chinas focus has historically turned inward, with
only sporadic efforts to build a naval presence. Chinas heartland is exposed to Russia from the north, Japan
to the east, various fractious states to the west, and the rising powers of Thailand, India, and Vietnam to the south. In other words,
China is surrounded, and its biggest threats are from other land-based powers,
particularly Russia and India. China therefore cannot afford to antagonize America, since
it would require American support or tacit neutrality in any conflict with Russia or India. Geography ensures that
China does not see American naval dominance on its shores as a comparable threat. A
Chinese move against American interests would open it to aggression from its neighbors
while simultaneously cutting off a needed ally. No Chinese government is foolish enough
to risk multiple high-intensity wars. The geography of China and the U.S. dictate their core interests as mutually non-threatening
states, and make cooperation more likely since both have an interest in opposing Russia. Secondly, the American and
Chinese economies are destined to become more interdependent, and integrated economies usually
lead to geostrategic alliances. The U.S. follows a laissez-faire economic model, entailing a boom-and-bust cycle that is harsher than
in more planned systems. When the free market dictates economic apportionment, at the height of the cycle resources are often
applied to unwise projects. During recessions, companies either downsize or go out of business, resulting in short spurts of high
unemployment. America tolerates these fluctuations because she long ago decided to trade
economic stability for higher long term growth. This has succeeded over the past century. This growth,
combined with other advantages, ensures the U.S. will endure as a superpower. America utilizes its advantages to maintain a global
maritime trade order in the form of organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade
Organization, resulting in economic growth for the world and a successful consumption-based economy at home. Contrastingly,
Chinas economy is a sort of state capitalism distinct from the European state champion model. The economy is based
around exporting finished manufactured goods to America, further integrating both
economies. Chinas two-decade-plus surge in economic growth will soon end, yet given the lack of progress in transitioning to a
more consumption-based economy, China has not achieved what its large population considers an equitable distribution of
resources and benefits. Such imbalances foster domestic tensions. The growth constraints facing Chinas economy will only create
additional problems with fewer new resources at Beijings disposal. The Chinese slowdown has already led to
political infighting, and this is likely to continue in the future. Addressing this problem while
transitioning to a consumption-based economy may reduce the ability of the ruling Communist Party to project power abroad while
retaining it at home. Economically, America is strong in areas like food production, education,
technology, and precision industrial manufacturing. China, by contrast, is strong in
areas like heavy industry, light manufacturing, and cheap labor. This presents a recipe
for complementary economic interdependence. Finally, both countries will move closer
geopolitically due to their complementary energy interests. Most of Chinas foreign policy centers on
attempts to acquire new energy resources, particularly oil. Over the following decades, China will seek to become more self-
sufficient by expanding its hydropower capacity and coal plants. America shares this goal, and with the shale revolution will likely
end up exporting energy to China, including oil and liquid natural gas. This gives America a geopolitical lever
over China by increasing economic interdependence. The American situation on energy resources,
particularly oil and natural gas, outclasses Chinas. Oil is non-renewable, and OPEC nations will likely be unable to meet Chinas
growing demand. However, America now controls the worlds largest untapped oil reserve, the Green River Formation. This
formation alone contains up to 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil-shale, roughly half of which may be recoverable. This single geologic
formation could contain more oil than the rest of the worlds proven reserves combined. As Chinese demand rises,
Beijing will likely become the top importer of this oil. No other oil source can supply Chinas needs as
efficiently. Eastern European and Russian oil shale reserves are smaller and less politically and economically extractable than
Americas emerging sources. If America invests a comparatively small portion of its new energy-based wealth into a larger Navy to
secure a Pacific trade route to China, the economic integration of the two nations will be virtually irreversible. Already
foreign investments are pouring into the new Middle East of America and Canada,
despite strong opposition from the current administration. American control over future markets for natural gas is almost as certain
as for oil. The U.S. produces natural gas abundantly and is building the facilities to export it
to foreign markets, including China. China imports roughly 56 percent of its oil and this number grows each year.
Beijing plans to increase reserves by acquiring new offshore resources and secure reserves abroad. Since between 60-70 percent of
its imported oil originates in Africa or the Middle East, the only way to inexpensively transport it is by sea. This makes China
vulnerable to economic warfare from India, which can sever much of its supply at will. This is a strategic concern and makes war
with India more likely. China doesnt have many other domestic energy options with the
exception of coal, which carries high health and environmental risks. Renewable energy is too
expensive, hydraulic power creates instability in rural areas, and social biases prohibit nuclear power. For technical reasons, Chinas
untapped oil shale reserves, though large, would be prohibitively expensive to process. They are estimated to be economically
recoverable at $345 a barrel, more than triple the price of American oil shale. An American boom in natural gas cannot fully bail
out China; nonetheless it will certainly be part of the solution. Domestic political pressures, environmental concerns and rising
demand for portable fuels mean the crux of Chinese foreign policy for the foreseeable future will be aimed at acquiring new oil
supplies and protecting existing supply lines across the Indian Ocean. The South China Sea is critical to Chinas goals because most
imported oil from Africa must cross it and the sea contains its own marginal reserves close to China. Inadequate naval forces
guarantee China will continue to depend upon the American Navy to protect its oil trade.
The dispute surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands does not change that. In any case,
heightened regional competition for energy assets will diminish as American reserves come online over the next five to ten years. In
the energy sector, America will ultimately transition to an energy and fuel exporter and
China will ultimately import American resources. This will further connect their
economies and build strong economic ties. Both China and America hope for a mutually
beneficial arrangement to meet their security and development goals. Geographic,
economic, and energy considerations ensure these two nations will become more
interdependent throughout this century.
No South China Sea conflict- removal of Chinese rig proves CCP responsive
to outside pressures
Tiezzi 7/17 (Shannon, Associate Editor at The Diplomat, A.M. from Harvard University and her B.A.
from The College of William and Mary, So China Moved Its Oil Rig. What Now?, 7/17/2014,
http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/so-china-moved-its-oil-rig-what-now/)
As Clint reported earlier today, China has removed its offshore oil rig from waters near the Paracel
Islands. The rig, which had been operating in an area Vietnam claimed as part of its exclusive economic zone, caused a major
rift between Beijing and Hanoi. The rig is currently being moved to a new project near Hainan, according to Chinas Foreign
Ministry. The move came as something of a surprise, as the rig was originally scheduled to stay in the area until mid-
August. Speculation raged over why the rig had been removed. A Chinese energy expert told Reuters that he though the rig had simply been able to
finish its task ahead of schedule due to favorable weather conditions over the past two months. Other analysts suggest that China took
advantage of the upcoming typhoon season to remove a major source of friction between
it and Vietnam. Vietnamese Maj. Gen. Le Ma Luong was even more blunt, according to the New York Times. He claims that the
strong reactions from Vietnam forced Beijing to move the rig early. The timing of the move is
somewhat curious. The rig was set up shortly after Obamas trip to Asia, causing many analysts to argue that China was sending a signal more to the
U.S. than to Vietnam. Now, the removal of the rig comes less than a week after Chinas South China
Sea maneuvers reportedly topped the agenda at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue
in Beijing. Still, months worth of criticisms (including heated speeches at the Shangri-La Dialogue) have had no effect on Beijings calculations;
its disingenuous to suggest that the S&ED was the tipping point. More likely, China simply calculated that it had little to gain from keeping the rig in
place, especially when compared with the potential benefits of moving it. From a tactical standpoint, the oil rig has largely achieved its purpose. China
proved that it has the capability to operate a drill near the Paracels, including the naval force necessary to protect the rig from Vietnamese ships sent to
the area. Beijing has also proven itself resistant to external criticisms on the issue, ignoring and counterattacking when Vietnam, the United States, and
other regional players accused China of provocation. After two months, there was little left for China to gain by
continued drilling. With the announcement that the drill discovered evidence of oil and gas, it will be easy for China to return the rig to the
area at any time. As Hong Lei told the press Wednesday, China National Petroleum Corporation will study the data and map out a specific work plan in
the next step. In the meantime, however, China gains the ability to begin trying to repair relations with
Vietnam. The task will be difficult after a popular surge of anti-China sentiment in Vietnam, but it would have been impossible with the rig still in
place. China is no more likely than it was before to enter into serious talks about the oil rig crisis, as Beijing insists the area is not disputed. However,
without the daily irritant of the rig and the accompanying clashes between Vietnamese
and Chinese vessels, Hanoi and Beijing can slowly begin to resume cooperation on other
topics. Similar logic applies to the U.S.-China relationship, which has been getting positive press in Chinese media since shortly before the S&ED.
Current economic talks amongst Asian countries solves South China Sea
conflict
Tangmeesang 7/4 (Onravee, special News Anchor/News Reporter at Nation News Network,
Economic pacts' may ease South China Sea row, 7/4/2014,
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Economic-pacts-may-ease-South-China-Sea-row-
30237708.html)
An economic approach to the South China Sea issue will turn the conflict into
cooperation for mutual benefit, former Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai
proposed at the Asean Peace and Reconcilation forum yesterday. During closed-door talks, the "functional
cooperation" roundtable explored the possibility of establishing joint development areas
and groundwork leading to building mutual trust and shared benefits among countries
that are feuding over disputed territorial claims in the sea. An example of a functional
cooperation addressed by the panel was the success story of the Malaysia-Thailand joint
development area in the Gulf of Thailand. As the chair of Asean this year, Myanmar is a facilitator for
discussions on the issue. "Myanmar wishes to see the competing claims resolved peacefully and would like to take every opportunity
to facilitate meetings between the claimants," Myanmar deputy Foreign Minister U Thant Kyaw said. In attendance at the dialogue
were former diplomats and policy-makers of claimant countries, including China, and non-claimant countries. Academics were also
present. China's former foreign minister Li Zhaoxing called on all sides to respect the basic
principles of the UN Charter, adding that it was not right to form a group of countries with shared views to go against
China. "I believe all the countries should abide by the basic principles of the UN Charter. That is, the UN is for maintaining world
peace," Li said in an interview with The Nation. "One of the principles is no interference in other countries' internal affairs. "How
can one country, no matter how strong or how powerful it is, have the right to interfere in other countries' domestic matters or
internal affairs." Meanwhile, the Philippines urged China to take the lead role in upholding and promoting international law. "It
must take courage and goodwill from all sides in order to arrive at an agreement with
China on this issue," said Raphael Lotilla, former secretary of energy of the Philippines. "I hope that since
China is an economic power, it can provide responsible leadership to the region." The
results of the forum will likely be raised at a meeting between the region's leaders at the Asean Summit and East Asia Summit in
November.
Status quo military survelliance deters and solves South China Sea conflict
Geoff Dyer and Richard McGregor and Demetri Sevastopulo 7/9 (Dyer is an award winning
novelist and journalist, McGregor was the chief political correspondent, Japan correspondent and China
correspondent for The Australian, South China Regional Correspondent at Financial Times, Pentagon
plans new tactics to deter China in South China Sea, 7/9/2014, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101823964#)
The US is developing new military tactics to deter China's slow but steady territorial
advances in the South China Sea, including more aggressive use of surveillance aircraft
and naval operations near contested areas. The rethink comes in the wake of the series
of low-level incursions China has used to shift the status quo in one of the vital
waterways of the global economy. The challenge for the US military is to find tactics to deter these small-scale
Chinese moves without escalating particular disputes into a broader military conflict. Every year, $5,300bn of goods cross the South
China Sea by ship. "Our efforts to deter China [in the South China Sea] have clearly not worked," said a senior US official. The
growing tensions in the South China Sea, which include disputes between China and Vietnam and the Philippines, cast a shadow
over the annual meeting between senior US and Chinese officials, known as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which started in
Beijing on Wednesday. The US delegation, led by Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew, face the delicate task of trying to shore up an increasingly fragile
relationship with Beijing, while laying out American concerns about Chinese maritime
expansionism and cyber theft. For their part, the Chinese are irked by US moves to prosecute Chinese military
officials over alleged cyber-hacking and by American alliances in Asia which Beijing views as a form of containment. One
element of the emerging US strategy was evident in March when the US flew P-8A
surveillance planes over the Second Thomas Shoal, an uninhabited atoll in the South
China Sea. Chinese ships there were trying to prevent the Philippines from supplying marines who were trying to get essential
supplies to a ship that in 1999 was deliberately run aground on a land-feature claimed by both countries. The US planes
flew at low altitude to make sure they were visible to the Chinese. "This is a new
dynamic," said a former Pentagon official familiar with the operation. "The message is,
'we know what you are doing, your actions will have consequences and that we have the
capacity and the will and we are here'." More extensive use of surveillance aircraft in the
region could be coupled with a greater willingness to publicise images or videos of
Chinese maritime activity. Some US officials believe the Chinese might be given pause
for thought if images of their vessels harassing Vietnamese of Filipino fisherman were to
be broadcast. The US military's Hawaii-based Pacific command has also been asked to
co-ordinate the development of a regional system of maritime information, which would
allow governments in the western Pacific detailed information about the location of
vessels in the region. Several governments say they have been caught unawares by the surprise appearance of Chinese
ships. The US has supplied the Philippines, Japan and other countries in the region with improved radar equipment and other
monitoring systems and is now looking for ways to build this information into a broader regional network that shares the data. The
Pentagon has also been working on plans for calculated shows of force, such as the flight
of B-52s over the East China Sea last year after China declared an exclusive air defence
zone over the area. The potential options involve sending naval vessels close to disputed areas. US officials say that there is
little appetite within the administration for some of the more confrontational ideas that have been proposed as a means of deterring
China. These include deploying the US coast guard to the South China Sea to counter the
activities of Chinese civilian vessels and using US-led convoys to escort fisherman from
the Philippines and other nations into areas where they have been expelled by the
Chinese. The Obama administration declared South China Sea a US "national interest" in 2010. Since then it has watched China
take effective control in 2012 of Scarborough Shoal, 120 nautical miles west of the Philippines' main island, Luzon. As well as the
altercation at the Second Thomas Shoal this year, Manila has accused Beijing of reclaiming land for a runway in a disputed area
while China has also placed an oil rig in waters also claimed by Vietnam. Despite Chinese complaints, the US has long
conducted aerial surveillance in the region, although the use of its new generation of P-
8A planes in contested areas represents an intensification of the activity. Bonnie Glaser, an Asia
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the surveillance flights showed that the US "has
an interest in peaceful resolution of these disputes and opposes China's coercion". However,
she added: "I'm sceptical such flights will deter Chinese behaviour." The Philippines wants to increase its surveillance capabilities to
help it shine the spotlight on what it sees as provocative Chinese actions in the South China Sea. One Philippine official said the
military intended to buy two surveillance aircraft, which was one of its highest priorities, and that it preferred planes to drones.
"We need the US now while we are building a minimum credible defence," the official said.
Trade relationships solve South China Sea conflict
Loh 6/18 (News Assistant for Asia Economy at CNBC, Is trade the answer to South China Sea
tension?, 6/18/2014, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101771458)
As saber-rattling in the South China Sea increases, more trade could help to ease
regional tension, according to IHS Senior Consultant for Country Risks Amarjit Singh. "It creates the room for
more dialogue and increases the costs if any of the countries try to provoke aggression.
The deeper you're linked economically, the higher the costs of any aggression or threat
of aggression," he said. Any sort of conflict would inflict a heavy cost on the economies
involved, and all sides would obviously "work hard to avoid it", he added. The South China Sea is
home to rich fishing grounds and untapped seams of oil and natural gas. It's also a busy sea lane, with half the world's trade and 80
percent of crude oil supplies passing through its waters. China has claimed the entire patch stretching from the tropical island of
Hainan, through to waters off the coast of Malaysia but its claims have been contested by neighboring countries. While the U.S.
does not take sides in the territorial disputes, it has repeatedly stated its desire to see a multilateral
resolution that maintains free passage through the South China Sea, and has expressed
support for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent offer to take a "greater and
more proactive role" in regional security. Singh says that Japan will use its "financial wherewithal" to push for
greater geopolitical strength and to ensure that it has "special relationships" in the region. "Japan has an interest now
in making its trade links stronger as it helps them to further entrench their presence in
the region," he said. "By pushing for more trade, it can deepen or lengthen its footprint in the region." While trade with China
will always be important to Japan, Professor Jeff Kingston, director of Temple University's Asian Studies program, said Japan will
look to hedge its bets by increasing its well-established trade links with the rest of Asia. "From a Japanese perspective,
there's growing political risk in China," he said. "We'll see Japan have an increasing
commercial profile in India and Southeast Asia. It's not going to happen overnight, but
in the next 5-10 years." "Clearly, there's also a strategic angle here," he said. I think the current problems between
Vietnam, Philippines and China provide an opportunity for Japan to strengthen relationships with those countries in the form of aid
and trade and also arms exports."
Dialogue and economic incentives deter conflict in South China Sea
Sathirathai 7/4 (Surakiart, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand overseeing Foreign Affairs,
Education and Culture. He is the current President of the Asian Society of International Law, Calming
the storm in the South China Sea, 7/4/2014, http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Calming-the-
storm-in-the-South-China-Sea-30237668.html)
Huge waves of misunderstanding threaten regional peace and global trade; they can be
tamed by dialogue that turns territory disputes into functional cooperation. The South
China Sea is currently the focus of issues that have wide-ranging implications for the
peace, security and prosperity of this region and the international community as a
whole. Territory disputes threaten to cast a long shadow over China-Asean relations, and could serve as an excuse for
involvement of powers from outside the region, creating a new "international situation" of permanent tension and even strife. This is
something to be avoided at all costs. Despite being a non-claimant state, Myanmar - as the current Chair of Asean - bears a special
responsibility to help address the issue and prevent the escalation of tensions. Likewise, as current coordinator of the Asean-China
dialogue, non-claimant state Thailand also bears a responsibility to help ensure that South China Sea issues do not disrupt the
mutually beneficial relations and understanding that Asean enjoys with China. Asean, China and friends in and
outside the region, too, share a responsibility to ensure that tension or armed conflict
will not take place nor impact the implementation of the Asean Economic Community
and hinder the free flow of goods, services, capital and investment, and skilled labour.
Tension in the South China Sea will certainly affect the business community's confidence in and outside the Asean region on the
emerging Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which will create the world's largest free trade area,
encompassing 16 countries: Asean's 10 members, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. It is no secret that
should the South China Sea disputes be allowed to escalate into further confrontation, we shall risk turning it into a sea of conflict,
armed brinkmanship and possible war disrupting global trade and vital lifelines for the Asia-Pacific region. The danger is that a lack
of progress, inadvertent actions, or continued stand-off will stoke nationalistic sentiment on all sides. It is perhaps time for all sides
to take a step back in order to obtain a better view of the larger picture and of the possible ways forward. The situation
must first to be depoliticised. A shared vision of shared opportunity has then to be
created. More than half of the world's annual merchant fleet tonnage - about US$5.3 trillion (Bt171.7 trillion) in value - passes
through the Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Makassar straits linking the Indian Ocean with the South China Sea. Over one-third of the
globe's crude oil and over one-half of its liquid natural gas are transported daily through the South China Sea, making it a vital link
in the global supply chain. Meanwhile, proven oil reserves are about 7.7 billion barrels and estimated reserves range from 28 billion
to 130 billion barrels. If the latter estimate is accurate, then South China Sea oil reserves would be second only to those of Saudi
Arabia. As for natural gas reserves, the estimates range between 266 trillion and 900 trillion cubic feet. The South China Sea holds
one-third of the world's marine biodiversity, providing seafood to 1.5 billion people living around it. Given these
enormous energy and marine resources, the South China Sea has the potential to be the
hub of an economic revolution for its littoral and hinterland states, lifting them up to
greater prosperity and well-being. Economic considerations based on projected natural resources in the area, the
vital importance to international shipping lanes - plus political considerations based on new balance-of-power calculations in the
region - have added to the complexities, and make it difficult to rely on any single approach towards resolution. Notwithstanding,
mechanisms for conflict avoidance are also actively being sought. On the formal governmental track, discussions on territorial
boundary issues take place. Running parallel is a second track whereby the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China
Sea has been concluded and consultations on a follow-up Code of Conduct are being held. These two tracks need to be supplemented
and complemented with a third track that focuses on functional cooperation, which will turn potential conflict over territorial claims
into potential cooperation. Chinese statesman Deng Xiaoping once advised that all parties shelve
their territorial claims for the time being and concentrate on cooperation for mutual
benefits. To shelve the territorial claims is not to relinquish them. Look at Antarctica, where nations have not relinquished their
territorial claims but have cooperated in environmental conservation and scientific exploration. Why can't the South China Sea's
littoral countries explore similar cooperation, for example on renewing fishery stocks, navigation safety and scientific exploration?
An important benefit of this functional cooperation would be to contribute to the
positive atmosphere of mutual trust in the two governmental tracks, thereby facilitating the eventual success of
those negotiations and avoiding a make-or-break situation. Pending formal delineation of maritime boundaries, countries are
cooperating in the form of joint development areas. Japan and South Korea agreed in 1974 on joint development of the southern
part of the continental shelf of the two countries. An agreement was signed in 1989 between Australia and Indonesia to create a zone
of cooperation in the area between East Timor and Northern Australia, and in 2002 the Timor Sea Treaty was signed between East
Timor and Australia. In 1992, an MoU was signed between Malaysia and Vietnam for oil exploration and exploitation in the
continental shelves of the two countries. China has signed joint development agreements with Japan and Vietnam in overlapping or
adjacent maritime areas. Back in 1979, Thailand and Malaysia agreed on a Joint Development Area for exploration and extraction of
oil and gas in overlapping maritime areas in the Gulf of Thailand. It is still functioning amicably to this day even without a formal
sea boundary agreement. "Brothers drinking from the same well" is the motto of the Malaysia-Thailand
Joint Development Authority. The multiple overlapping claims in the South China Sea should not present an insurmountable
obstacle. Indeed they should be seen as a good test for the ingenuity of international lawyers, as well as an opportunity to spread the
risks and burdens among a larger number of stakeholders, to attract more multinational investment, to create economies of scale,
and thus to enlarge the potential pie for all concerned. Nowadays there are many business models that
could be adapted to suit the situation in the South China Sea. For instance, instead of discussing the
area to be delimited as a basis for profit sharing, capital investment, special and differential treatment for certain claimant states,
management participation and in kind contribution can altogether form basis for a profit-sharing formula. To explore and discuss in
a concrete manner the possibilities and potentials of such functional, sectoral cooperation, a mechanism for alternative dialogue may
need to be established. A Forum on Functional Cooperation could be established to bring together representatives of national and
regional stakeholders, corporations, state enterprises, investors, academic institutions and business people, to identify, implement
and manage functional cooperation activities. The South China Sea is a vast region, much of it yet to be fully explored. In many ways
it is a new frontier, traversed only in passing. Globalisation, technological advances, economic necessities and geopolitical
imperatives have now caught up with it, and are threatening to churn up huge waves of misunderstanding and acrimony. We must
act quickly to ensure that these do not gather into a devastating tsunami. We must calm the waters by swamping
the area with a network of continuing dialogues on all tracks, of technical exchanges, of
functional cooperation, and of informal consultations among all stakeholders that can
help to foster trust and confidence. Dialogue on functional cooperation is less confrontational than claims on
sovereignty. It will create a comfort level among claimant states allowing them to feel that the South China Sea issue is a discussible
agenda. It is a confidence-building process which will complement the atmosphere in the discussions on territorial boundary and on
the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. After all, I firmly believe that no one, claimant or non-claimant states alike, wishes to
see the South China Sea become a crucible of conflict. With goodwill from all around and proper
management, the South China Sea must and will become the Sea of Partnership, Peace
and Prosperity. Professor Surakiart Sathirathai is chairman of the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council and former deputy
prime minister and foreign minister of Thailand. This article is based on a speech he gave at the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and
International Studies during a July 3 roundtable discussion on "Functional Cooperation in the South China Sea".
Sino-Japanese War
UX
Diplomats trying to improve relations
The Japan Times 7/2/14 [Diplomats in Beijing mull ways to improve Sino-Japanese ties, The
Japan Times, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/02/national/politics-diplomacy/diplomats-
beijing-mull-ways-improve-sino-japanee-ties/#.U8WafPldXss]//fw
A high-ranking Foreign Ministry official from Tokyo and his new Chinese counterpart on
Tuesday apparently discussed ways to improve deteriorated relations between the two
countries, NHK television reported. Visiting Beijing, Junichi Ihara, director general of the
Foreign Ministrys Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, talked with Kong
Xuanyou, the new director general of the Department of Asian Affairs at the
Chinese Foreign Ministry over dinner, during which the two top bureaucrats exchanged views on
mending tattered bilateral ties, NHK said without citing sources. Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo only
explained the meeting was mainly intended (for Ihara) to meet Kong for the first time, as Kong took office two months ago, the
broadcaster said. The relations between the two countries are at record low due to issues
surrounding interpretation of the two countries wartime past as well as over the
Senkaku Islands, which are under Okinawa jurisdiction. China also claims the islets and calls them Diaoyu.
Countries taking steps to improve relationships now
Tiezzi 7/17/14 [Shannon, Associate Editor, 7/17, Japan Opposition Leader Meets With Chinese
Officials, The Diplomat, http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/japan-opposition-leader-meets-with-chinese-
officials/]//fw
The leader of Japans opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), arrived in
Beijing on Tuesday for a three day visit. Banri Kaieda was accompanied by a DPJ
delegation for his first visit to China since assuming control of the DPJ in 2012. Kaieda met with
Liu Yuanshan, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, on Wednesday. According to Japan Times, Kaieda hopes
that his visit could be the first step to improve the relationship of the two countries.
Kaieda has also said that he wants in particular to help pave the way for a meeting
between top Japanese and Chinese leaders, something that has not happened since Shinzo Abe assumed office.
CCTV said that Kaieda emphasized the importance of such top-level diplomacy and
pushed for a bilateral meeting to take place during the upcoming APEC summit in
November, which will bring Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Beijing.
No Impact
No Sino-Japanese warpower, economics, and trends
Beauchamp 14 [Zack, B.A.s in Philosophy and Political Science from Brown University, M.Sc in
International Relations from the London School of Economics, 2/7, Why Everyone Needs To Stop
Freaking Out About War With China, ThinkProgress,
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/02/07/3222021/china-japan-war/]//fw
Of the two, Abes comparison is by far more reasonable, and he did dispatch a deputy to say Japan absolutely did not
believe war was coming, but the damage was done. Asia experts are warning about the risk of a
new Cold War between Japan and China and others are terrified by the prospect of a hot one. This is all
dramatically overblown. War between China and Japan is more than unlikely: it
would fly in the face of most of what we know about the two countries, and international
relations more broadly. Its not that a replay of 1914 is impossible. Its just deeply, vanishingly unlikely.
Power One of the easiest ways to evaluate the risks of Sino-Japanese war is by reference to three of
the most important factors that shape a governments decision to go to war: the balance
of power, economic incentives, and ideology. These categories roughly correspond to the
three dominant theories in modern international relations (realism, liberalism, and constructivism),
and theres solid statistical evidence that each of them can play a significant role in how
governments think about their decisions to use military force. So lets take them in turn. The
main source of tension is an East China Sea island chain, called the Senkakus in Japan and Diaoyus in
China. While there are other potential flashpoints, the current heightened tensions are centered on the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute.
Japan currently controls the islands, but China claims them, and the Chinese military has made increasingly aggressive noises about
the islands of late. But theres one big factor shaping the balance of power in East Asia that means
the talk is likely to remain just that: nuclear weapons. The tagline for World War I in 1914 The War To End All Wars
would have a decidedly different meaning in 2014, as wars end would be accomplished by the worlds end. So whereas, in 1914, all of
the European powers thought they could win the war decisively, East Asias great powers recognize the risk of
a nuclear exchange between the United States and China to be catastrophic. Carleton
Universitys Stephen Saideman calls this the end of the preemption temptation; nobody thinks
they can win by striking first anymore. Indeed, despite the words of some of its
military leaders, China (at least nominally) has a no-clash-with-Japan policy in place over
the islands. That also helps explain why the most commonly-cited Senkaku/Diaoyu spark,
accidental escalation, isnt as likely as many suggest. When The Wall Street Journals Andrew
Browne writes that theres a real risk of an accident leading to a standoff from which leaders in both countries would find it hard to
back down in the face of popular nationalist pressure, hes not wrong. But it wont happen just because two
planes happen across each other in the sky. In 2013, with tensions running high the whole year, Japan
scrambled fighters against Chinese aircraft 433 times. Indeed, tensions have flared up a
number of times throughout the years (often sparked by nationalist activists on side of the other) without
managing to bleed over into war. Thats because, as MIT East Asia expert M. Taylor Fravel argues,
there are deep strategic reasons why each side is, broadly speaking, OK with the
status quo over and above nuclear deterrence. China has an interest in not
seeming like an aggressor state in the region, as thats historically caused other regional powers
to put away their differences and line up against it. Japan currently has control over the
islands, which would make any strong moves by China seem like an attempt to
overthrow the status quo power balance. The United States also has a habit of constructive
involvement, subtly reminding both sides when tensions are spiking that the United States and its rather powerful
navy would prefer that there be no fighting between the two states. Moreover, the whole
idea of accidental war is also a little bit confusing . Militaries dont just start shooting
each other by mistake and then decide its time to have a war. Rather, an incident thats truly accidental say, a Japanese
plane firing on a Chinese aircraft in one of the places where their Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZs) overlap changes the
incentives to go to war, as the governments start to think (perhaps wrongly) that war is inevitable and the only way to win it is to
escalate. Its hard to envision this kind of shift in calculation in East Asia, for all of the
aforementioned reasons. Money Its wrong to talk about incentives to go war in purely military terms. A key component of
the Senkaku/Diaoyou is economic: the islands contain a ton of natural resources,
particularly oil and gas. But far more valuable are the trade ties between the two countries. China
is Japans largest export market, so war would hurt Japan more than China, but itd be pretty painful for both.
Proponents of the World War I parallel find a lot to criticize about this point. They like to cite Norman Angell, a pre-World War I
international relations theorist famous for arguing that war was becoming economically obsolete. Angell is now often used
interchangeably with Dr. Pangloss in international relations talk, a symbol of optimism gone analytically awry. But Angell gets a bad
rap. He didnt actually say war was impossible; he merely claimed that it no longer was worth the cost (if you remember the
aftermath of World War I, he was right about that). The real upshot of Angells argument is that, unless theres some
other overwhelming reason to go to war, mutually profitable trade ties will serve as a
strong deterrent to war. Despite a year of heated rhetoric and economic tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
dispute, bilateral trade has been recovering nicely of late. Angell may have been wrong about Europe, but
hes probably right about East Asia. M.G. Koo, a political scientist at Chung-Ang University,
surveyed several Senkaku-Diaoyu flareups between 1969 and 2009. He found that economic ties
between the two countries played an increasingly large role in defusing tensions as the
trade relationship between the two countries deepened. The 1978 crisis over the islands is a
good example. Bilateral trade had grown substantially since the end of the last big dispute (1972), but they had entered into a
new phase after Chinese Premier Deng Xiaopings economic reforms began in 1978. A key part of the early modernization plan was
the Peace and Friendship Treaty (PFT) with Japan, a diplomatic treaty that (among other things) facilitated a rush of Japanese
firms into the Chinese market. According to Koo, policy circles in China and Japan had increasingly
recognized that the [Senkaku/Diaoyu] sovereignty issue could possibly jeopardize the PFT
negotiations, thus undermining economic gains. The leadership tamped down tensions and, afterwards, shelving
territorial claims for economic development seemingly became the two countries diplomatic leitmotif in the treatment of the island
dispute. Theres reason to believe todays China and Japan arent bucking the historical pattern. Despite a year of heated rhetoric
and economic tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute, bilateral trade has been recovering nicely of late. Quartzs Matt
Phillips, looking over the numbers, concluded that the China-Japan trade war is pretty much
over. Sure, Chinese business leaders are making some nationalistic noises, but Phillips
points out that the lack of mass, nationalistic protests in China suggests the powers-
that-be have decided theres no need for that to hurt an important business
relationship. Trade really does appear to be calming the waves in the East China Sea.
Nationalism The last thing people worried about war between China and Japan cite is
ideology. Specifically, a growing nationalism, linked to the history of antagonism between the two
traditional East Asian powers, that threatens to overwhelm the overwhelming military and economic rationales
that militate against war. At its root, Asia experts Tatsushi Arai and Zheng Wang write, the Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute is an
identity-based conflict in which the divergent memories, perceptions, attitudes, and aspirations of the two national communities
combine in volatile combinations. The gist of the problem is that both countries believe they have historical claims to the islands
that extend at least back to 1895; Chinese books date its control way back in the Ming Dynasty. Japan claims it formally annexed the
Senkakus after World War II; China claims that Japan should have handed the Diaoyus back as part of its post-World War II
withdrawal from Chinese territory. This historical conflict cuts across modern lines of tension in particularly dangerous ways. Japan,
always threatened by Chinas overwhelming size, is baseline skeptical of Chinas military and economic rise. Aggressive moves in the
Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute suggest to Japanese citizens that Chinas plan is to eclipse and ultimately dominate Japan. China, by
contrast, still has deep, visceral memories of the brutal Japanese occupation during World War II, and its history books cast Japan
as the enemy responsible for its subordinate status in the past two centuries of global politics. Japanese defenses of the Senkakus
come across as, once again, an attempt to keep China down. To some observers, the risk that these nationalist impulses pressure
leaders into military escalation during a crisis is the greatest risk of war. The toxic mix of two rising nationalisms and unresolved
mutual resentments makes the risks of an accidental conflict becomes uncomfortably real, Isabel Hilton writes in The Guardian.
Times Michael Crowley agrees, writing that national pride and historical grievance threaten to drag in the U.S. into a Pacific war.
But the importance of nationalism as a driving force on both the Chinese and
Japanese side has been overblown. In fact, a deeper look at the prevailing ideological
winds in both China and Japan suggest much more pacific forces are likely to carry the
day. First, while its easy to see China as an aggressive expansionist power bent on retaking its
rightful place in East Asia by force, thats simply inconsistent with Chinas track record to
date. In an influential 2003 article, Iain Alasdair Johnston, a professor of China in
World Affairs at Harvard, argued that theres overwhelming evidence China is
more-or-less happy with the current international order. Johnston tested various
measures of Chinese interest in upending the global order like its willingness to work
inside the U.N. and internal dialogues within PRC strategists about overtaking the
United States and found very little evidence of China seeking to overturn the global
structure, including the U.S.JapanKorea alliance system that sets the terms in East Asia. The regime appears to
be unwilling, according to Johnston, to bear the economic and social costs of mobilizing the
economy and militarizing society to balance seriously against American power and
influence in the region, let alone globally. The Chinese leaderships ideology is better understood, in
Johnstons view, as centering on expanding Chinas power inside the international order
rather than overturning through gambles like military aggression in the
Senkaku/Diaoyu chain. In the face of 2013s flurry of headlines about a newly aggressive China, Johnston
revisited his thesis. He found basically no evidence that the Chinese leadership
had changed its tune. Panicked writers, in Johnstons analysis, were focusing on
minor changes in Chinese policy to the exclusion of major continuities (like
continued and deepening economic ties with the United States). They were also
consistently misinterpreting Beijings thinking during major so-called aggressive moves.
Take the 2010 Senkaku-Diaoyu flareup, after a Chinese trawler tried to ram some Japanese coast guard ships
near the islands. Johnston found no evidence of serious Chinese escalation the most serious such
step reported, an embargo on shipping rare earth metal s to Japan, was either very weakly
enforced or never happened. Moreover, Beijing took explicit steps to tamp down anti-
Japanese nationalism, placing anti-war editorials in major party outlets and shutting up the most anti-Japanese
voices on the Chinese web during the most diplomatically sensitive time in the dispute. In short, Chinas track record in
the past ten years suggests the government doesnt share the hardline nationalist
sentiment it occasionally indulges in. Rather, the Chinese government is interested in very
moderate regional advances that stop well short of war, and is capable of shutting
down the sort of nationalist outburst from its population that might goad the government into
war well before such protests might start affecting policy. What about Japan? Its true that Abe himself holds some fairly hardline
nationalist views. For instance, he wont admit that Japan waged an aggressive war during World War II, which is a pretty
gobsmacking bit of revisionism if you think about it. In December, Abe visited a shrine that honors (among others) Japanese war
criminals from that era, a move that contributed to the recent bout of nationalistic strife. But there are a number of reasons to think
that the resurgent Japanese nationalism Abe represents isnt going to force war during a
crisis. For one thing, his governments coalition partners would do their damndest to block
escalation. New Komeito, whose support keeps Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) in power, is an odd duck: pacifict Buddhist libertarians is way oversimplified, but it
gets the point across. Regardless, they are extremely serious about their pacifism its at
the core of their political identity, and it inclines them towards a more generous stance towards Beijing. Theyd
exert a calming pressure in any crisis. Now, there are rumblings that the LDP and New
Komeito may part political ways. But the cause of the split a disagreement over rewriting
or reinterpreting Article 9, the pacifist article in Japans constitution reveals the
broadest check on Japanese nationalism. Simply put, the Japanese people still retain much
of the nations post-World War II pacifist core, and Abes government has governed
accordingly. Mike Mochizuki, the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair at George
Washington University, took a hard look at Japanese opinion about militarization in
the Abe era. He and his coauthor, Samuel Porter, found enormous Japanese
opposition to anything resembling a significant return to active military
status. For instance, 56 percent of Japanese voters supported seeing the treaty as prohibiting collective self-defense (meaning
defense of its allies when attacked). A miniscule 7 percent wanted to see Japanese troops fighting on the frontlines with the U.S.
military. So why did they support Abes aggressive LDP? In a word, the economy. Japans citizens arent deeply
aligned with the LDP philosophy 83 percent, according to Mochizuki and Porter, felt that a party that can
effectively oppose the LDP is necessary in government. Rather, they threw out the previous government
because the economy was in tatters. Sixty percent of Japanese voters want Abe to focus on the economy, while only
9 percent see foreign policy as the priority. Abes government, nationalist stunts aside, isnt unaware of
this reality. Because China is Japans number one trading partner, reviving Japans
economy will be inordinately difficult if fractious political relations with China are
allowed to damage JapanChina economic relations, Mochizuki and Porter argue. If
SinoJapanese relations were to deteriorate further and lead to a more precipitous drop
in Japanese exports to China, this would jeopardize Abes growth strategy and thereby
threaten his political survival. As a consequence, they conclude, the Prime Ministers approach to
the Senkaku dispute will be measured and will not entail full-blown militarization, let
alone short term escalation. Abe and the LDP rank militaristic nationalism a distant second to the nations economic
health. Of course its possible that, at one point in the future, all of this changes. Chinese
hard power continues to grow, Japan remilitarizes in a big way, and the United States
pulls back it security guarantee. In that world, a combination of security competition
and nationalist fever might well swamp the economic incentives against war. But its
important to remember that were nowhere close to that reality. Too often, our political
discourse dramatically inflates the threats facing the United
States, leading to distorted, paranoid policy responses when something
more measured would do. Theres a lot going in East Asia that matters to American policymakers. We should
focus on solving those real problems, not the ephemeral specter of a
vanishingly unlikely war.
Chinas rise wont mean war
Acharya 6/28/14 [Amitav, professor of IR @ American University, Washington DC, 6/28, Six
reasons Chinas rise wont trigger a world war, as Germanys had done a century ago, The Times of India,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Six-reasons-Chinas-rise-wont-trigger-a-
world-war-as-Germanys-had-done-a-century-ago/articleshow/37337660.cms]//fw
In Asia, the rise of China and territorial disputes between China and its neighbours have raised concerns
that Europe's past could become Asia's future. The Economist has warned that in East Asia "disputes about
clumps of rock could become as significant as the assassination of an archduke". Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has
compared current China-Japan tensions with the German-British rivalry before World
War I. American philosopher George Santayana wrote: "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." But the
use of historical analogies can be deceptive unless one recognises what has changed as much as what has
not. Let's consider six main differences between Europe of 1914 and Asia of 2014. First, Europe
in 1914 was multipolar; the world in 2014 is better described as a multiplex that
is, multiple great powers bound together by complex forms of restraint and
interdependence. Some argue that interdependence among European powers did little to prevent World War I. But
European economic interdependence in 1914 was narrow and regional; today's
interdependence is broader, deeper and global in scope. Intra-Asian
interdependence today is based not only on trade (which is now more than half of Asia's total trade), but also on
production networks, finance and investments. US-China economic ties are marked by
the financial equivalent of the Cold War's Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) situation. Massive
Chinese holdings of US treasury bonds (amounting to $1.317 trillion in November 2013, or one-third of China's
total foreign exchange reserves) not only finances US debt, but ensures that any precipitate
Chinese withdrawal of those will seriously devalue its currency and wealth. A major reason for
World War I was the attempt by a rising Germany to achieve hegemony. A multiplex world, as in a multiplex theatre, has
multiple actors and directors powers, international organisations, multinational corporations; transnational
activists and terrorist networks (the villains), making it difficult and unlikely (more so than in a simple multipolar
world) for any single power like China to achieve hegemony, which might be a trigger for war. A second
difference has to do with nuclear weapons. They did not exist in 1914. Because of their enormous destructive
power, nuclear weapons are a major factor in discouraging war among great powers. Third,
the world in 1914 was rife with competition for overseas colonies among the great powers. This
contributed in no small measure to the First World War. There is no such colonial competition today. Fourth,
in the society and politics of Europe in 1914 there was a strong and widely held belief
that war was necessary to maintain stability and balance of power. As Bismarck put it in his famous
"iron and blood" speech to the Prussian parliament in 1862, "After all, war is, properly speaking, the natural condition of humanity."
Today such beliefs about the necessity of war, like war itself, are much harder to find. Fifth, in 1914 there were very few
institutions in Europe, or the world at large, to control geopolitical rivalry. The European Concert of Powers
created in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars had withered away. In 2014, there are multiple global and
regional institutions. Asian institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are criticised for not
doing enough to resolve the region's disputes, but they do provide channels of communication and develop
principles of conduct to constrain the use of force. A sixth difference involves the nature
of governments. In a 2013 speech, then Stanford University president David Starr Jordan feared that "some half-crazed
archduke or some harassed minister of state" might start a war in Europe. Today, Asia's leaders base their
legitimacy primarily on economic growth which will be seriously harmed if war breaks
out. However one might judge China's leaders today, they are not guided by impulsive adventurism
without regard for the severe consequences of using military confrontation. Neither do
they see war as a natural condition or necessary means for China to attain great power status.
AT: US
US intervention is unlikely
Kazianis 6/21/14 [Harry J., non-resident Senior Fellow at the China Policy Institute-University of
Nottingham, non-resident WSD Handa fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 6/21,
If China and Japan Went to War: What Would America do?, The National Interest,
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/if-china-japan-went-war-what-would-america-do-10722?]//fw
But let's back up for a moment. Say Obama did make the case for intervention in the scenario I outlined
above. How would the average American respond? If most Americans would not support
US military action in Syria, would they support a war over the Senkakus, or the Second Thomas
Shoal, or any other disputed island or reef in the Asia Pacific? Clearly, America's national interests are at stake if the status
quo is washed away in Asia. But in an age of quick sound bites and rabid social media, can such
interests be articulated so that Americans would be prepared to die for the Senkakus, a
reef, or even a hard-to-articulate international order? As much as I believe in my heart of hearts that America must rebalance its
foreign policy towards Asia and that Washington should certainly come to the aid of its allies, absent the loss of
American lives or an outright invasion of a treaty ally it is hard to see a scenario in the
near future where an American president is able to present successfully such a vision. To
be clear, none of this is to cast a vote in favor of America abandoning its Asian allies in any way, shape or form. I strongly believe the
present international order as constructed in the Asia Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific is worth fighting for. American prosperity and
security is based on an international order created by Washington and its allies after World War II. If and when it were to be
overthrown, Americans would find themselves in a less secure, less stable international environment. However, Washington's
Asia Pacific allies must understand the limitations of America's rebalance to the
region. Without such an understanding, Asia might be caught off guard in a crisis.

US-China War
No US-China War
No China US war- CCP image, power disparity, and trade competition solve
Feng 14 (Zhu, professor in the School of International Studies and the deputy director of the Center for
International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University, No One Wants a Clash, 3/10/2014, New York
Times, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/02/are-we-headed-for-a-cold-war-with-
china/no-one-wants-a-cold-war-between-the-us-and-china) TD
A series of events in recent months seem quite ominous for China-U.S. relations. Last
November, President Obama vowed that the U.S. would remain a power in the Asia-Pacific region for the rest of this century, while
the secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, declared that America was pivoting to Asia. The current standoff in the South China
Sea adds to the foreboding. The U.S.-China relationship is complex, but lucrative for both sides.
Neither nation wants confrontation. This rebalancing in the Asia-Pacific region is not necessarily the new U.S.
strategy after the military pullout from Iraq and Afghanistan, but it does unequivocally signal the shift of Americas attention from
Europe and the Middle East to Asia. What follows is Americas new and firm military restructuring in the region: setting Darwin Port
in Australia as the new submarine corps base, rotating military presence to the Philippines, ushering in the Pentagons global
security programs that very specifically target China. Now the Asian version of missile defense is under intense discussion,
reminiscent of the American plan to create a missile interception network all over Europe a plan that unnerved the worlds other
great power, Russia. Against this tense backdrop, human rights issues are now creating rifts
between Washington and Beijing. After a local police official, Wang Lijun, reportedly sneaked into the U.S.
Consulate in Chengdu in early February, the blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng sought shelter this week at the U.S.
Embassy in Beijing. Despite quiet diplomacy so far, there is little sign that the two nations
could realistically reach an agreement about human rights questions, as there is slight room to
maneuver. Beijing believes that the U.S. criticisms over human rights are deliberate and well plotted, aimed at abolishing the
Communist Partys ruling legitimacy and detracting from Chinas re-emergence. Therefore Chinas rulers might find it much harder
to back down over human rights clashes. However there is little worry that the two powers will collide
into a new cold war. First of all, Chinas authoritarian system has been tremendously
mobilized for international integration. Beijing has been pretty conservative and doesnt welcome
democratization. But it does not strictly adhere to traditional communism either. Any new
confrontation like the cold war would risk a huge backlash in China by greatly damaging
the better-off Chinese people. Such a conflict could ultimately undermine the
Communist Partys ruling legitimacy. Second, the power disparity between Washington
and China hasnt significantly narrowed, regardless of Chinese achievements in the past decades. My view is that
Beijing remains an adolescent power, and should learn how to be a great power rather than unwisely rushing to any confrontation.
Though some Chinese want the nation to assert itself more forcefully, the huge disparity in power should keep
China in place. China is in no position to challenge the U.S. But China will be more enthusiastic and
straightfoward about addressing and safeguarding its legal interests. Competition between Washington and
Beijing will intensify, but that does not automatically mean that the relationship will be
unmanageable. Lastly, the cycle of action and reaction has mostly turned out to be
fruitful for the U.S. and China. Further competition is promising. The U.S. doesnt want to put
China in a corner, or force Beijing to stand up desperately. The dealings over many thorny issues have proved that each side wants to
handle the conflict, not escalate it. Chen Guangchengs departure from the U.S. Embassy is telling evidence. Neither side
wants diplomatic confrontation. Rather, it seems that both sides are struggling to react
constructively. In the years to come, China-U.S. relations will continue to be very complicated, but also very important. The
glue to keep these two nations together is not pragmatism only, but mutual interest
especially in trade.
No US-China wars- talks solve and no incentive to
Jourdan 14 (Adam, Oxford University in London, Correspondent for Reuters in Shanghai, China's
top paper says no place for a 'new cold war' with U.S., 7/12/14, Reuters,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/12/us-china-usa-idUSKBN0FH06220140712)
China and the United States must avoid a "new cold war" in their international relations,
China's top newspaper said on Saturday, in the wake of high level talks in Beijing between senior leaders of the
world's two largest economies. China and the United States agreed on Thursday to boost military
ties and counter-terrorism cooperation during annual talks in Beijing, but there was little
immediate sign of progress on thorny cyber-security or maritime issues. "Both China and the United States
realize that today's world has already undergone profound changes, and there is no longer a market
for a "new cold war", the People's Daily, the ruling communist party's official paper, said in a commentary. It was published under
the pen name "Zhong Sheng", meaning "Voice of China", often used to give views on foreign policy. The commentary said
that the gravest risk to relations between the two countries was "misunderstanding",
and called for both sides to strengthen channels of communication as they looked to
shake off a "hazy" period of bilateral relations. The U.S. Department of Justice charged a Chinese
businessman on Friday with hacking into the computer system of airplane maker Boeing Co and other companies to obtain data
about military projects, the latest in a string of spying allegations between the two countries. The commentary added that complex
Sino-U.S. ties were unlikely to get easier to manage any time soon. Positive steps would include boosting
bilateral investment, deepening cooperation on environmental issues, strengthening
military ties and making travel easier between the two countries. "If we deal with (the relationship)
well, it could benefit both sides. But if we deal with this badly, that could be a slippery slope to terrible competition and even
conflict," the commentary said.
No US China war- economic interdependence
Garrett 12 (Geoffrey, Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, US and China
want to make money, not war, The United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney, May 26
2012, http://ussc.edu.au/news-room/US-and-China-want-to-make-money-not-war)
Foreign Minister Bob Carr reported after his recent trip to Beijing that his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi said: "The
time for Cold War alliances has long since passed." A broadsheet editorial then declared that the new US
marine rotations through Darwin "can only be seen in Beijing as a provocation". This follows Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull
both worrying aloud that embracing Barack Obama's Asia "pivot" risks aligning Australia too closely
with a values-laden anti-China US policy. The drumbeat says that Australia must rebalance its foreign policy
away from the US and towards China. This view assumes China soon eclipse the US as the world's
most powerful country and that the transition will be bloody. The problem with this line
of thought is that we won't be living in a China-dominant world anytime soon but one in
which China and the US will be twin superpowers. And despite profound differences in
their world views, China-US is not about to become another Cold War because the two
countries are joined at the economic hip. This economic codependence doesn't guarantee peace. But it does
create overwhelming incentives for both countries to cool down incipient crises before
they flame out of control. The power of these incentives was apparent in the recent tensions surrounding blind activist
Chen Guangcheng. The big risk was that American and Chinese national pride would spiral out of control. The US could
have climbed on a human rights high horse. China could have re-arrested Chen the
second he left the US embassy. Instead, both sides helped Chen land in the US to study
law. The same basic dynamic held after the 1989 student protests and military crackdown in Tiananmen Square, when the US
response was not sanctions but to facilitate China's integration into the global economy. These Chen-Tiananmen parallels should
comfort those who worry Australia must choose whether China or the US will be its "godfather", as a former senior Chinese People's
Liberation Army officer recently said. Instead Australia needs only to continue the strategy that has served it so well for decades:
broaden and deepen the US alliance while developing stronger economic and cultural ties with China. Welcome to Australia's G2
world, though neither China nor the US will describe their relationship in this way. The speed of China's economic
rise has been breathtaking. The Economist believes China will pass the US to become the world's biggest economy in
2018. Goldman Sachs thinks it will be more like 2027. The day China becomes the largest economy will be momentous. But it
will also likely herald something that will be far from people's minds that day: China's
big economic slowdown. Even China's economically bullish State Council projects that its annual growth rate by the
middle of the next decade will be down to 5 per cent, half that of the past three decades. And this assumes China will deal effectively
with the raft of shortterm problems that may pull growth down to 7.5 per cent this year. Chinese growth must slow
because of demography and development. These twin forces have turbocharged China's
rise; they will soon put a brake on its future. China has risen on the backs of a rapidly growing working-age
population earning very low wages. Because of the one-child policy, it will soon become the first country in history to get old before it
is rich. China is also transforming itself from being the world's low-cost producer of choice into an enormous middle-class
consuming nation. Good news for countries salivating over the Chinese market, but bad news
for China's headline growth rate. In the background, the US economy belies the
stereotypes associated with the made-on Wall Street global financial crisis. Unemployment is
still above 8 per cent and house prices are still 30 per cent below their pre-global financial crisis peak. But as the record profitability
of Apple and the Facebook initial public offering show, American multinational companies are raking in
the cash. The US economy grew 3 per cent in 2010, 1.7 per cent last year and 2.2 per cent in the first quarter
of this year. This is not only far better than Japan and all the big European economies outside Germany. It is also not so far below
the American economy's average growth rate since the end of World War II of 3.25 per cent. Given that the US remains
the global engine for innovation and the global magnet for immigration, there is little
reason to believe it won't return to its long-term growth trend once today's profound
global uncertainty lessens. Put all this together, and HSBC predicts that China's economy will be only 10 per cent larger
than the US's in 2050, with the US streets ahead of India in third place. The remarkable thing about the G2 is
how interconnected the two economies are. Last year, total China-US trade was more
than $US500bn, while China held more than SUS1.6 trillion in US debt taken together,
twice the size of the Australian economy. In contrast, the year before the Berlin Wall fell,
US-Soviet trade amounted to $US2bn and the Soviet Union held no US debt. The Soviet
Union was literally irrelevant to the US-led capitalist economy. Today, China depends on it just as much as
the US and the world depend on China. Economics may not be destiny. But it surely
matters, a lot. Obama startled many Australians when he said in Canberra last November that "prosperity without freedom is
just another form of poverty", a not-so-subtle reference to China. No surprise that the Chinese leadership blanched. Its foreign policy
is built on a simple premise: we don't tell you what to do, but you can't tell us what to do either. Hu Jintao famously
defended this "harmonious world" approach by saying: "Diversity of civilisations is a basic feature of humanity
and an important driving force behind human progress." Fighting words. But largely words that are intended for
audiences back home, and smoothed over behind the closed door of China-US summits.
Symbolism is the best way to understand both the decision to send more marines to Darwin and the truculent Chinese response.
Does anyone really believe rotating 2500 more marines through northern Australia each year will alter the strategic balance in the
South China Sea, much less the Taiwan Straits? China and the US want to make money, not war, with
each other. To do so, they know they will have to live with their radically different world
views and manage their tensions over trade, Taiwan and Tibet. Australia should follow their lead and
focus on its position as one side of a win-win-win economic triangle. Australia's Origin Energy decided with American oil and gas
giant Conoco Phillips to build a $US20bn liquefied natural gas facility in Gladstone. But little of the gas is destined for the domestic
market. What made the investment go was the Chinese para-statal company Sinopec's commitment to buy most of the gas for the
next two decades. Origin-Conoco-Sinopec better captures Australia's G2 world than a war of words over troops in Darwin. And what
it tells us is that Australia doesn't have to make invidious choices between security and prosperity, between an American past and a
Chinese future. We can and will have both.
No US-China war- no US incentive for attack
Want China Times 6/4 (established in 2010 to provide quality news reporting to the international
community and giving especial emphasis to news issues affecting China and Taiwan, US does not want
war with China, says Taiwanese scholar, 6/4/14, http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-
cnt.aspx?id=20140604000128&cid=1101)
The United States and its allies in the Asia-Pacific region are trying to constrain China's
expanding maritime power without starting a real conflict with Beijing, reports the Hong Kong-
based China Review News, citing Yen Chen-shen, a research fellow at National Chengchi
University in Taipei. Yen told the news outlet that Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines are all major partners of the United
States in its attempt to monitor the People's Liberation Army Navy, as all three nations have territorial disputes with China. In a
recent speech at the 13th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel blamed China for causing regional
instability in the East and South China seas. Despite his remarks, Yen believes that policymakers in
Washington do not want a war as the US is in no condition to start a conflict with China.
Yen said Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines all share very different relationships with
the United States. While Japan is considered a major ally and security partner in the region, the United States has no
obligation to defend Vietnam in its territorial conflicts with China. Washington is also unlikely to give any promises to nations that
have not signed a mutual security treaty with the United States like Japan, according to Yen. Meanwhile, the research
fellow said that the United States has hit a snag in its plans to contain China's maritime
power as Washington can only achieve its Asia Pivot policy when all 10 members of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations agree to follow. This is unlikely to happen, Yen said,
as countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have closer ties with China. Yen added that full-scale war over
regional maritime disputes is unlikely as the United States requires cooperation from
China when dealing with other global concerns, such as tackling terrorism a common issue
for both Beijing and Washington. The US also needs China to ensure stability on the Korean
peninsula and in Central Asia. A war between the two nuclear powers is thus thankfully
extremely unlikely to occur, Yen said.
Even if economic interdependence fails, geography and mutual destruction
checks
Keck 13 (Zachary, Managing Editor of The Diplomat where he authors The Pacific Realist blog, Why
China and the US (Probably) Wont Go to War, July 12 2013, http://thediplomat.com/2013/07/why-
china-and-the-us-probably-wont-go-to-war/)
As I noted earlier in the week, the diplomatic summits between China and the U.S. over the past
month has renewed conversation on whether Beijing and Washington, as rising and
established power, can defy history by not going to war. Xinhua was the latest to weigh in on this
question ahead of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue this week, in an article titled, China, U.S. Can Avoid Thucydides Trap.
Like many others, Xinhuas argument that a U.S.-China war can be avoided is based largely on
their strong economic relationship. This logic is deeply flawed both historically and logically. Strong economic
partners have gone to war in the past, most notably in WWI, when Britain and Germany fought on opposite sides despite being each
others largest trading partners. More generally, the notion of a capitalist peace is problematic at best. Close trading ties
can raise the cost of war for each side, but any great power conflict is so costly already that the addition of a
temporarily loss of trade with ones leading partner is a small consideration at best. And while trade can create powerful
stakeholders in each society who oppose war, just as often trading ties can be an important source of friction. Indeed, the fact that
Japan relied on the U.S. and British colonies for its oil supplies was actually the reason it opted for war against them. Even today,
Chinas allegedly unfair trade policies have created resentment among large political constituencies in the United States. But
while trade cannot be relied upon to keep the peace, a U.S.-China war is virtually
unthinkable because of two other factors: nuclear weapons and geography. The fact that
both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons is the most obvious reasons why they
wont clash, even if they remain fiercely competitive. This is because war is the continuation of politics by other means, and
nuclear weapons make war extremely bad politics. Put differently, war is fought in pursuit of policy ends,
which cannot be achieved through a total war between nuclear-armed states. This is not only
because of nuclear weapons destructive power. As Thomas Schelling outlined brilliantly, nuclear weapons have not actually
increased humans destructive capabilities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that wars between nomads usually ended with the
victors slaughtering all of the individuals on the losing side, because of the economics of holding slaves in nomadic societies.
What makes nuclear weapons different, then, is not just their destructive power but also
the certainty and immediacy of it. While extremely ambitious or desperate leaders can delude themselves into
believing they can prevail in a conventional conflict with a stronger adversary because of any number of factorssuperior will,
superior doctrine, the weather etc. none of this matters in nuclear war. With nuclear weapons, countries dont have to prevail on
the battlefield or defeat an opposing army to destroy an entire country, and since there are no adequate defenses for a large-scale
nuclear attack, every leader can be absolute certain that most of their country can be destroyed in short-order in the event of a total
conflict. Since no policy goal is worth this level of sacrifice, the only possible way for an all-
out conflict to ensue is for a miscalculation of some sort to occur. Most of these can and
should be dealt by Chinese and the U.S. leaders holding regularly senior level dialogues
like the ones of the past month, in which frank and direct talk about redlines are
discussed. These can and should be supplemented with clear and open communication channels, which can be especially useful
when unexpected crises arise, like an exchange of fire between low-level naval officers in the increasingly crowded waters in the
region. While this possibility is real and frightening, its hard to imagine a plausible scenario where it
leads to a nuclear exchange between China and the United States. After all, at each stage of the
crisis leaders know that if it is not properly contained, a nuclear war could ensue, and the complete destruction of a leaders country
is a more frightening possibility than losing credibility among hawkish elements of society. In any case, measured means of
retaliation would be available to the party wronged, and behind-the-scenes diplomacy could help facilitate the process of finding
mutually acceptable retaliatory measures. Geography is the less appreciated factor that will mitigate
the chances of a U.S.-China war, but it could be nearly as important as nuclear weapons.
Indeed, geography has a history of allowing countries to avoid the Thucydides Trap, and works against a U.S.-China war in a couple
of ways. First, both the United States and China are immensely large countriesaccording
to the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. and China are the third and fourth largest
countries in the world by area, at 9,826,675 and 9,596,961 square km respectively. They also have difficult
topographical features and complex populations. As such, they are virtually unconquerable by another power. This is an important
point and differentiates the current strategic environment from historical cases where power transitions led to war. For
example, in Europe where many of the historical cases derive from, each state genuinely
had to worry that the other side could increase their power capabilities to such a degree
that they could credibly threaten the other sides national survival. Neither China nor
the U.S. has to realistically entertain such fears, and this will lessen their insecurity and therefore the security
dilemma they operate within. Besides being immensely large countries, China and the U.S. are also separated by the Pacific Ocean,
which will also weaken their sense of insecurity and threat perception towards one another. In many of the violent power transitions
of the past, starting with Sparta and Athens but also including the European ones, the rival states were located in close proximity to
one another. By contrast, when great power conflict has been avoided, the states have often
had considerable distance between them, as was the case for the U.S. and British power transition and the
peaceful end to the Cold War. The reason is simple and similar to the one above: the difficulty of projecting power
across large distancesparticularly bodies of waters reduces each sides concern that
the other will threaten its national survival and most important strategic interests. True,
the U.S. operates extensively in Chinas backyard, and maintains numerous alliances and partnerships with Beijings neighbors. This
undeniably heightens the risk of conflict. At the same time, the British were active throughout the Western Hemisphere, most
notably in Canada, and the Americans maintained a robust alliance system in Western Europe throughout the Cold War. Even
with the U.S. presence in Asia, then, the fact that the Chinese and American homelands
are separated by the largest body of water in the world is enormously important in
reducing their conflict potential, if history is any guide at least. Thus, while every effort
should be made to avoid a U.S.-China war, it is nearly unthinkable one will occur.
Cooperation averts US-China conflict- recent talks prove
Denyer 7/9 (Simon, The Posts bureau chief in China, and previously bureau chief in India and as a
Reuters bureau chief in Washington, India and Pakistan, U.S., China try to emphasize potential for
cooperation, 7/9/2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-china-try-to-emphasize-potential-
for-cooperation-at-high-level-talks/2014/07/09/dcb6e0d8-e007-491a-abde-c2d2e6d60e19_story.html)
The United States and China said Wednesday that they are determined to avoid conflict
and maintain peace with each other, but deep differences over maritime security and mutual recriminations over
cyber-espionage continued to loom as high-level annual talks between the two governments began here. Relations between the two
sides have been on a downward spiral this year, but as the sixth round of the Strategic and Economic
Dialogue got underway in Beijing, the United States and China were trying to calm fears
about a further deterioration in ties and stressing the potential for cooperation on a
broad range of issues. Confrontation between China and the United States would
definitely spell disaster for the two countries and for the wider world, Chinese President Xi
Jinping told delegates as he opened the two-day talks. He added that the countries need to respect each others
sovereignty and territorial integrity, strengthen dialogue and promote cooperation. The immense sea allows fish to
leap at liberty, the vast sky lets birds fly freely, he said. The broad Pacific Ocean has
ample space to accommodate our two great nations. The talks took place in the same complex of villas in
western Beijing where President Richard M. Nixon met Chinese leader Mao Zedong on a historic visit in 1972. Secretary of State
John F. Kerry said the two countries have a profound stake in each others success but need actions not words to avoid tension.
It is not lost on any of us that throughout history there has been a pattern of strategic rivalry between rising and established
powers, he said. But such rivalry was not preordained, he added. It is not inevitable; it is a choice, he said. I can tell you
that we are determined to choose the path of peace and prosperity and cooperation and,
yes, even competition, but not conflict. Before the talks, U.S. officials had criticized China for its aggressive
pursuit of maritime claims in Asia. Kerry appeared to make little progress Wednesday in persuading China to take a softer line,
submit its territorial claims to arbitration or enter meaningful negotiations. Trying to fix the problem, so to speak, through creating
a new status quo, at the expense of regional stability and regional harmony, is unacceptable, a senior U.S. official said in a
background briefing after the talks. It is precisely there, the secretary pointed out, that the U.S. takes a very firm view. Chinas
unilateral declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea last year, including over islands administered by
Japan, and its forceful assertion of claims to South China Sea waters potentially rich in oil and gas have raised the hackles of many
neighboring nations. As China has flexed its military muscles, the United States has moved to bolster its security ties with key allies
Japan and the Philippines, as well as with other Asian nations. Kerry, however, tried to counter a widespread
impression in Beijing that this represents an attempt to contain China or slow its rise
while simultaneously telling Beijing to play by the rules. Let me emphasize to you today,
the United States is not trying to contain China, he said. We welcome the emergence of a peaceful, stable,
prosperous China that contributes to the stability and development of the region and chooses to play a responsible role in world
affairs. Bilateral relations have also been buffeted by mutual accusations of cyber-espionage, fueled first by reports that units of the
Chinese army were systematically spying on U.S. companies and then by Edward Snowdens revelations of widespread U.S. spying
on foreign governments. In May, the Justice Department charged five members of the Chinese military with cyber-espionage against
U.S. firms. China responded by suspending talks under a cybersecurity working group that had formed part of the broader Strategic
and Economic Dialogue. While the United States reiterated its call for those talks to restart, the Chinese did not agree, U.S. officials
said. Kerry also raised the issue of human rights in a very direct, candid and constructive way, especially criticizing the repression
of ethnic minorities in Chinas western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, U.S. officials said. But in an apparent snub to the United
States, well-known Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser was placed under house arrest with her husband late Tuesday, the day before she
was to attend a dinner at the U.S. Embassy, according to her Web site. Woeser was awarded the 2013 International Women of
Courage Award by the State Department, but Beijing banned her from traveling to Washington to receive the honor. Raising another
long-standing bone of contention, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said it is crucial for China to move to a market-determined
exchange rate as it attempts to rebalance, reform and reinvigorate its economy. The United States has long argued that Chinas
currency, the yuan, is undervalued, giving Chinese exports an unfair advantage in global markets and exacerbating a trade deficit
with the United States. But he also noted that economic relations between the two countries
have grown beyond what anyone could have imagined since diplomatic ties were
established in 1978, with bilateral trade exceeding $520 billion last year, up from $3
billion 35 years ago. The two sides announced small technology-sharing projects to raise energy efficiency and cut coal use,
as part of gradual efforts by the worlds two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases to deepen cooperation on climate change. They
also held an event affirming their shared commitment to combat wildlife trafficking.
Kerry said there is also room to find common ground on efforts to persuade North
Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program and restrain Irans nuclear ambitions, as
well as on global hot spots such as Syria, Sudan, South Sudan and Afghanistan.
President Obama echoed that sentiment. The United States and China will not always see eye-to-eye on every
issue, Obama said in a message to participants here. That is to be expected for two nations with different histories and cultures. It
also is why we need to build our relationship around common challenges, mutual
responsibilities and shared interests, even while we candidly address our differences.
Current talks solve US China war- takes into account cyberhacking incident
Klapper 7/9 (Bradley, Foreign affairs writer and Congress at Associated Press, US, China Vow to
Improve Cooperation, 7/9/2014, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/us-china-strategic-talks-
test-week-24461832?singlePage=true)
The United States and China vowed Wednesday to improve their economic and security
cooperation, saying they wouldn't let persistent differences over maritime claims,
cyberhacking and currency hamper a relationship critical to global peace and prosperity.
Opening this year's "Strategic and Economic Dialogue," Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need to avoid
confrontation between nations accounting for a quarter of the world's people and a third
of the global economy. His theme was largely echoed by Secretary of State John Kerry
and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, leaders of an American delegation that also included Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and
three other Obama administration Cabinet members. Nevertheless, the next two days are a test of whether the annual high-level talks can produce
tough compromises or just serve as a venue to talk about greater cooperation. Washington hopes to secure closer
coordination with China against climate change, an end to Chinese industrial
cyberespionage against American companies and stricter rules governing territorial
claims in Asia's contested, resource-rich seas. Xi made clear China wouldn't be pushed around. "The vast
Pacific Ocean has ample space to accommodate our two great nations," he said through
an interpreter. Differences between the U.S. and China, he said, were "natural." Yet he said the
only path forward was respect for each other's sovereignty and to "refrain from imposing your will or model on other side." And in a reference to
China's territorial disputes with its neighbors, he said the U.S. must respect Chinese "territorial integrity." American allies Japan and the Philippines, as
well as Vietnam, have become increasingly worried by Chinese efforts to drill for oil or assert authority in waters they consider their own. China also has
tried to enforce control over contested airspace. For its part, the U.S. says it takes no sides on whose claims are
valid. But its effort to establish rules for settling the disputes has gained no ground with Beijing. From Washington, President Barack
Obama released a statement hailing the 35th anniversary of U.S.-Chinese diplomatic
relations and referenced a pledge he made with Xi at a summit last year in California to
establish a "new model" of superpower cooperation. In Beijing, in the Diaoyutai guest house where former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's secret talks in the 1970s laid the groundwork for today's relationship, Kerry emphasized "a new model is not
defined in words." "It is defined in actions," Kerry said. "The new model will be defined by the choices we can make together." All told, U.S. and Chinese
officials will canvass 60 topics through Thursday. Economic friction centers on the valuation of China's currency and claims by American companies of
unfair market restrictions in China issues raised by Lew in his opening remarks. Strategic discussions include the threat posed by nuclear-armed
North Korea. On climate change, the world's two biggest carbon emitters announced eight
new projects aimed at capturing and storing carbon, and setting up more efficient
energy grids. They also agreed to stronger fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks and to study gas use in industrial boilers. U.S. and
Chinese officials repeatedly declared friction in their relationship unavoidable. The U.S. has the world's biggest economy
and strongest military, but China's economy is set to surpass the U.S. in the coming
decades and its armed forces are rapidly gaining strength. It's a recipe, Xi and Kerry both acknowledged, that
has consistently led to conflict in the past. Both said careful management of their differences could avert a
similar fate. No U.S. official on Wednesday explicitly mentioned the cyberhacking dispute between Washington and Beijing that has simmered
since the U.S. indicted five Chinese military officers on charges of stealing trade secrets from American companies' computers. China demands the
charges be withdrawn; it has no plans to extradite the men. And it has refused to allow a U.S.-Chinese working group on cybersecurity to hold any
further meetings until the issue is resolved. "We both depend on an open global trading system in which workers and companies can compete on a level
playing field," Lew said. He stressed the need to protect intellectual property and see China move
toward a market exchange rate for its currency.

Water Wars
No Water Wars
No water wars- cooperation overcomes incentives for conflict
Van der Molen and Hildering 05 (Irna and Antoinette, Professor at University of Twente, PhD in
Public Administration, with a specialization in International Relations and Development Studies, Water:
cause for conflict or co-operation?, ISYP Journal on Science and World Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2005)
The last section clearly showed that at the international level, water appears to pose a reason for
transboundary co-operation rather than for war, often preventing escalation instead of
causing it. Yoffe, Wolf and Giordano found that highly co-operative events often involved more
than two countries. Furthermore, the analysis of multilateral treaties on fresh water resources
shows that a large share of these treaties stressed several objectives: economic
development, joint management and water quality, rather than only water quantity and
hydropower [41]. This confirms the effectiveness of a coherent approach which foresees actual
or potential competition over water between different user groups as was indicated in
the introduction of this article. This positive conclusion does not mean that there are no concerns left. The degrading
situation under which many people have to live gives no reason to celebrate the stability of the status quo. Further co-
operation to improve their position is required in order to have a larger group of people living in relative
security. Such improvement might at the same time empower them to stand up against an
existing elite.
Empirics prove no water wars and not key to foreign policy
Selby 13 (Jan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Sussex Centre for Conflict
and Security Research, No water wars on the horizon, October 04, 2013,
http://www.abo.net/oilportal/topic/view.do?contentId=2148541)
Does anything similar apply in the case of water? The answer has to be a resounding no. To start with, while water is of
course biologically indispensable, the paradoxical truth is that oil is in other respects
more important for modern economically developed societies than water. By way of illustration,
in 1991 Israel experienced a significant drought to which it responded by reducing total
water consumption by a third with negligible impacts on economic growth or stability
(indeed, this was a boom period in Israel). By contrast an equivalent cut in oil supplies would have had far-reaching social and
economic consequences. Within industrialized or post-industrial societies, water demand is much more elastic
than demand for oil, at least over the short term. Secondly and here the differences with oil are most keen water is a
renewable, relatively plentiful, and relatively well-distributed resource. The total volume
of world water resources is on the order of 1,385 million square kilometers, and while
only 2.5 percent of this is fresh water, it is nonetheless the case that fresh water can be
created from saline water as well as reused and recycled ad infinitum. Wastewater is
now routinely recycled for agricultural and even human consumption. Sea water is very
often desalinated (including in the Gulf states, where oil helps power the process; and in Israel, which has the economic
might to desalinate whatever it needs). And states in water- scarce parts of the world increasingly rely
on "virtual water" imported in the form of food staples (indeed, Israel, Egypt, and many other Middle
Eastern states are as dependent on rain falling over the American prairies as they are on that from the Nile or Jordan Rivers).
There are multiple ways in which states and societies can adapt to water scarcity. Some
undoubtedly fail to adapt, or are prevented from adapting but the primary reasons for this are economic and political, not the
natural distribution of resources. Third, water does not and could not conceivably generate equivalent revenues to oil. It is
sometimes suggested that water might become a new "blue gold," but this is misleading.
The extraordinary revenues accrued from oil are products of the industrys complexity and concentration, combined with the
economic and infrastructural dependency of our "hydro-carbon societies" and the international oil trade. But none of these factors
apply in the case of water. Most of the worlds water supplies are accessed and consumed within
the boundaries of the same state, limiting the capacity of local elites and providers to
generate windfall profits from water supplies. Indeed, water is arguably of declining, not
rising, economic and political importance. Most water is still used for agricultural production, but agriculture
accounts for ever-smaller proportions of most countries national products, exports and employment. Unlike oil, water is not an
important source of economic or political power. A regional strategic resource It follows from this that water is not a strategic
resource to the same extent as oil. For some states water is, of course, an important foreign policy concern, especially in
circumstances where these states are dependent on large trans-boundary rivers flowing through arid regions (Egypt on the Nile, and
Syria and Iraq on the Tigris-Euphrates). But such cases are exceptions to the general rule. Moreover, water is a strategic
good only on a regional level, never more widely. While the U.S. has direct interests in
the stability of Middle Eastern oil production and supplies, it has no equivalent interest
in relation to water. Given these fundamental differences, it should be no surprise that there exists very little evidence of
water causing or even contributing to armed conflict. Even in the most water-scarce regions of the Middle
East, water is simply not important enough, as a source of revenues or security, for state
elites to warrant going to war over it. Water is sometimes a subject of hostile rhetoric as with Egyptian President
Morsis pre-coup threats against Ethiopia over the construction of its Grand Renaissance Dam but there is little evidence of such
rhetoric being followed through. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war, sometimes described as a "water war,"
was nothing of the sort. Equally, the water dimensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
often described as intractable, could fade away quickly if the broader conflict were
resolved: in strictly economic terms, Israel could quite feasibly grant the Palestinians a
much larger share of shared water resources. The only recorded Middle Eastern water
war occurred 4500 years ago, between two Mesopotamian city states. None of this exactly
suggests that water is on the verge of becoming the "new oil." Cooperation Indeed, the current academic
consensus is that water is more associated with cooperation than conflict. This does not mean
that water is a subject of harmony. Trans-boundary water "cooperation" can obscure and even perpetuate stark inequalities of water
supply. Moreover, localized violence over access to springs, pastures or pipelines occurs in many areas of the Middle East and
beyond, especially within peripheral rural areas. Sometimes this is violence is inter communal, but more often it involves states. In
central Sudan, Khartoum- backed militias have repeatedly employed violence to displace people from areas of rain-fed agricultural
land that have been marked out for agro-industrial development. On a very different scale, in the West Bank the Israeli military
authorities continue to restrict Palestinian water development and access to supplies in areas marked out for strategic and
settlement purposes. But such cases hardly amount to evidence of "water wars." It seems
unlikely that this will change in any significant way. Water may become an increasingly
important site or source of violence in peripheral agricultural regions, but these conflicts
are likely to be small-scale and localized rather than inter-state, and quite different from those
associated with oil. Indeed, given our ever-increasing oil dependency, combined with pressures on remaining reserves, the major
source of conflict in the Middle East is likely to remain disturbingly familiar. The main "new" source of conflict will probably be the
same as the old one: oil.
No chance of water wars- cooperation and empirics
Dinar et al 12 (SHLOMI DINAR is associate professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations and
associate director of the School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University. LUCIA DE STEFANO is
associate professor at Complutense University of Madrid and researcher at the Water Observatory of the Botn Foundation. JAMES
DUNCAN is consultant on natural resource governance and geography with the World Bank. KERSTIN STAHL is senior scientist at
the Institute of Hydrology in the University of Freiburg. KENNETH M. STRZEPEK is research scientist with the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. AARON T. WOLF is a professor of geography in
the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, No Wars for Water, OCTOBER 18, 2012,
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138208/shlomi-dinar-lucia-de-stefano-james-duncan-kerstin-stahl-kenneth/no-wars-for-
water)
The world economic downturn and upheaval in the Arab world might grab headlines, but another big problem looms: environmental
change. Along with extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels, and other natural hazards, global warming disrupts freshwater
resource availability -- with immense social and political implications. Earlier this year, the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence published a report, Global Water Security, assessing
hydropolitics around the world. In it, the authors show that international water disputes will affect not only the
security interests of riparian states, but also of the United States. In many parts of the world, freshwater is already a scarce resource.
It constitutes only 2.5 percent of all available water on the planet. And only about .4 percent of that is easily accessible for human
consumption. Of that tiny amount, a decreasing share is potable because of pollution and agricultural and industrial water use. All
that would be bad enough, but many freshwater bodies are shared among two or more
riparian states, complicating their management. Of course, the policy community has long prophesied impending "water
wars." In 2007, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon warned that "water scarcity ... is a potent fuel for wars and conflict." Yet
history has not witnessed many. In fact, the only official war over water took place about
4,500 years ago. It was a conflict between the city-states of Lagash and Umma in modern day Iraq over the Tigris river.
More recently, there have been some close calls, especially in the arid Middle East. About two years before the 1967 War, Israel and
Syria exchanged fire over the Jordan River Basin, which both said the other was overusing. The limited armed clashes petered out,
but the political dispute over the countries' shared water sources continues. In 2002, Lebanon constructed water pumps on one of
the river's tributaries, which caused concern for downstream Israel. The project never provoked any formal
military action, but with peace in the region already precarious, verbal exchanges between the two countries prompted the
United States to step in. Both parties eventually accepted a compromise that would allow Lebanon to
withdraw a predetermined amount of water for its domestic needs. In short, predictions of a Water World War
are overwrought. However, tensions over water usage can still exacerbate other existing regional conflicts. Climate change is
expected to intensify droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions that jeopardize freshwater quantity and quality and
therefore act as a threat-multiplier, making shaky regions shakier. So what river basins constitute the biggest risks today? In a World
Bank report we published in 2010 (as well as a subsequent article in a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research) we analyzed
the physical effects of climate change on international rivers. We modeled the variability in river annual runoff in the past and for
future climate scenarios. We also considered the existence and nature of the institutional capacity around river basins, in the form of
international water treaties, to potentially deal with the effects of climate change. According to our research, 24 of the world's 276
international river basins are already experiencing increased water variability. These 24 basins, which collectively serve about 332
million people, are at high risk of water related political tensions. The majority of the basins are located in northern and sub-
Saharan Africa. A few others are located in the Middle East, south-central Asia, and South America. They include the Tafna (Algeria
and Morocco), the Dasht (Iran and Pakistan), the Congo (Central Africa), Lake Chad (Central Africa), the Niger (Western Africa), the
Nile (Northeastern Africa), and the Chira (Ecuador and Peru). There are no strong treaties governing the use of these water reserves
in tense territories. Should conflicts break out, there are no good mechanisms in place for dealing with them. By 2050, an additional
37 river basins, serving 83 million people, will be at high risk for feeding into political tensions. As is the case currently, a large
portion of these are in Africa. But, unlike today, river basins within Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and Central
America will also be at high risk within 40 years. Some of these include the Kura-Araks (Iran, Turkey, and the Caucasus), the Neman
(Eastern Europe) Asi-Orontes (Lebanon, Syria, Turkey), and the Catatumbo Basins (Colombia and Venezuela). CROSSING THE
NILE Among the larger African basins, the Nile has the greatest implications for regional and global security. Tensions over access to
the river already pit Ethiopia and Egypt, two important Western allies, against one another. Egypt has been a major player in the
Middle East Peace Process and Ethiopia is an important regional force in the Horn of Africa, currently aiding other African forces to
battle Al-Shabbab in Somalia. Over the years, a number of international water treaties have made rules for the basin, but they are
largely limited to small stretches of it. In particular, only Egypt and Sudan are party to the 1959 Nile River Agreement, the principal
treaty regarding the river. Egypt, which is the furthest downstream yet is one of the most powerful countries in the region, has been
able to heavily influence the water-sharing regime. Upstream countries, such as Ethiopia and Burundi, have been left out, hard-
pressed to harness the Nile for their own needs. In 1999, with increasingly vitriolic rhetoric between Egypt and Ethiopia sidetracking
regional development, the World Bank stepped up its involvement in the basin. It helped create a network of professional water
managers as well as a set of investments in a number of sub-basins. Still, the drafting of a new agreement stalled: upstream countries
would not compromise on their right to develop water infrastructure while downstream countries would not compromise on
protecting their shares. In 2010, Ethiopia signed an agreement with a number of the other
upstream countries hoping to balance against Egypt and Sudan. More recently, the country has also
announced plans to construct a number of large upstream dams, which could affect the stability of the region. By 2050, the
environmental state of the Nile Basin will be even worse. That is why it is important to create a robust and equitable water treaty
now. Such a treaty would focus on ways to harness the river's hydropower potential to satiate the energy needs of all the riparian
states while maintaining ecosystem health. The construction of dams and reservoirs further upstream could likewise help even out
water flows and facilitate agricultural growth. Projects such as these, mitigating damage to ecosystem
health and local populations, would benefit all parties concerned and thus facilitate
further basin-wide cooperation.
No water wars- cooperation inevitable- Nile River management empirically
proves
Kameri-Mbote 07 (Patricia, law researcher and teacher based in Nairobi, an Advocate of the High
Court of Kenya and Chair of the Department of Private Law, Water, ConfliCt, and Cooperation: lessons
from the nile river Basin, Wilson Center, January 2007 Volume 4,
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/NavigatingPeaceIssuePKM.pdf)
Despite this gloomy scenario, interstate war is unlikely, according to history: no nations have
gone to war specifically over water resources for thousands of years. Instances of
cooperation between riparian nations outnumbered conflicts by more than 2-to-1 between
1945 and 1999.1 Instead of war, water fuels greater interdependence. By coming together to jointly manage
their shared water resources, countries build trust and prevent conflict. In the face of
potential conflict and regional instability, the Nile basin countries continue to seek
cooperative solutions. The political will to develop a new legal framework for managing
the Nile should continue. In principle, the countries of the Nile River basin agree that the situation should change.
However, they do not agree on how. To help reach a consensus, they developed the high-level Nile
Basin Initiative (NBI) in 1999. Originally designed as a way to share scientific information, the NBI today brings
together ministers from the basin countries to achieve sustainable socio-economic devel opment
through equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile basin water
resources, as stated in its shared vision.2 The NBI has served as a catalyst for cooperation in the
search for a new legal framework for the management of the Nile.
Alt cause to water wars- poor governance
SIWA 2005. Challenges of Water Security, Stockholm International Water Institute,
http://www.siwi.org/documents/Resources/Reports/Challenges_water_scarcity_business_case_study_
2005.pdf.
A considerable challenge to address equitable water allocation and environmental
sustainability, especially in developing countries, is the lack of capacity at the country level to
provide effective water governance. In general, developed countries have greater technical,
financial, and administrative capacity to address these issues. However the prevailing
water governance in the studied regions is much less encouraging.The prevailing conditions
give the impression of fragmented responsibility over water resources, including multiple
government agencies responsible for water management, which typically operate in isolation
and in competition for funds. Even if there is a capacity to develop regulatory frameworks, many of
the countries in these regions lack to the capacity to implement and enforce regulation
concerning water management issues.

Water wars don't escalate- they create cooperation and prevent war.
Wold et al 05 (Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State
University and Director of the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, Kramer- research Fellow,
Carius- Director of Adelphi Research in Berlin, and Dabelko-Director of the Environmental Change and
Security Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C-
2005,Aaron T. Wolf, Annika Kramer, Alexander Carius, and Geoffrey D. Dabelko, Global Policy Forum,
"Water Can Be a Pathway to Peace, Not War," June 2005,
https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/198/40369.html)

These apocalyptic warnings fly in the face of history: no nations have gone to war specifically over
water resources for thousands of years. International water disputeseven
among fierce enemiesare resolved peacefully, even as conflicts erupt over other issues. In fact,
instances of cooperation between riparian nations outnumbered conflicts by more than two to one between 1945 and 1999. Why?
Because water is so important, nations cannot afford to fight over it. Instead,
water fuels greater interdependence. By coming together to jointly manage their shared water resources, countries build trust
and prevent conflict. Water can be a negotiating tool, too: it can offer a communication lifeline connecting
countries in the midst of crisis. Thus, by crying water wars, doomsayers ignore a
promising way to help prevent war: cooperative water resources
management. Of course, people competesometime violentlyfor water. Within a nation, usersfarmers, hydroelectric
dams, recreational users, environmentalistsare often at odds, and the probability of a mutually acceptable solution falls as the
number of stakeholders rises. Water is never the singleand hardly ever the major
cause of conflict. But it can exacerbate existing tensions. History is littered with examples of violent water conflicts: just
as Californian farmers bombed pipelines moving water from Owens Valley to Los Angeles in the early 1900s, Chinese farmers in
Shandong clashed with police in 2000 to protest government plans to divert irrigation water to cities and industries. But these
conflicts usually break out within nations. International rivers are a different story. The worlds 263 international river basins cover
45.3 percent of Earths land surface, host about 40 percent of the worlds population, and account for approximately 60 percent of
global river flow. And the number is growing, largely due to the internationalization of basins through political changes like the
breakup of the Soviet Union, as well as improved mapping technology. Strikingly, territory in 145 nations falls within international
basins, and 33 countries are located almost entirely within these basins. As many as 17 countries share one river basin, the Danube.
Contrary to received wisdom, evidence proves this interdependence does not lead to
war. Researchers at Oregon State University compiled a dataset of every reported interaction (conflictive or cooperative) between
two or more nations that was driven by water in the last half century. They found that the rate of cooperation
overwhelms the incidence of acute conflict. In the last 50 years, only 37 disputes involved violence,
and 30 of those occurred between Israel and one of its neighbors. Outside of the Middle East, researchers found only 5 violent events
while 157 treaties were negotiated and signed. The total number of water-related events between nations also favors cooperation: the
1,228 cooperative events dwarf the 507 conflict-related events. Despite the fiery rhetoric of politiciansaimed more often at their
own constituencies than at the enemymost actions taken over water are mild. Of all the events, 62 percent are verbal, and more
than two-thirds of these were not official statements. Simply put , water is a greater pathway to peace
than conflict in the worlds international river basins. International
cooperation around water has a long and successful history; some of the
worlds most vociferous enemies have negotiated water agreements. The
institutions they have created are resilient, even when relations are
strained. The Mekong Committee, for example, established by Cambodia,
Laos, Thailand, and Viet Nam in 1957, exchanged data and information on
the river basin throughout the Viet Nam War.

Warming
Climate Change
CO2 emissions arent anthropogenic multiple natural alt causes
WYI, No date (Whats Your Impact is a non-profit organization to help fight climate change.
http://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/carbon-dioxide-sources. What are the main sources of
carbon dioxide emissions? CTB)
Ocean-atmosphere exchange The largest natural source of carbon dioxide emissions is from
ocean-atmosphere exchange. This produces 42.84% of natural carbon dioxide
emissions. The oceans contain dissolved carbon dioxide, which is released into the air at
the sea surface. Annually this process creates about 330 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
emissions. Many molecules move between the ocean and the atmosphere through the process of diffusion, carbon dioxide is
one of them. This movement is in both directions, so the oceans release carbon dioxide but they also
absorb it. The effects of this movement can be seen quite easily, when water is left to sit in a glass for long enough, gases will be
released and create air bubbles. Carbon dioxide is amongst the gases that are in the air bubbles. Plant and animal respiration An
important natural source of carbon dioxide is plant and animal respiration, which accounts for
28.56% of natural emissions. Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of the chemical reaction that plants
and animals use to produce the energy they need. Annually this process creates about
220 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Plants and animals use respiration to produce energy, which
is used to fuel basic activities like movement and growth. The process uses oxygen to break down nutrients like sugars, proteins and
fats. This releases energy that can be used by the organism but also creates water and carbon dioxide as byproducts. Soil respiration
and decomposition Another important natural source of carbon dioxide is soil respiration and
decomposition, which accounts for 28.56% of natural emissions. Many organisms that
live in the Earth's soil use respiration to produce energy. Amongst them are
decomposers who break down dead organic material. Both of these processes releases
carbon dioxide as a byproduct. Annually these soil organisms create about 220 billion
tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Any respiration that occurs below-ground is considered soil respiration.
Plant roots, bacteria, fungi and soil animals use respiration to create the energy they
need to survive but this also produces carbon dioxide. Decomposers that work underground breaking
down organic matter (like dead trees, leaves and animals) are also included in this. Carbon dioxide is regularly
released during decomposition. Volcanic eruptions A minor amount carbon dioxide is created by volcanic eruptions,
which accounts for 0.03% of natural emissions. Volcanic eruptions release magma, ash, dust and gases
from deep below the Earth's surface. One of the gases released is carbon dioxide.
Annually this process creates about 0.15 to 0.26 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide
emissions. The most common volcanic gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. Volcanic activity will cause
magma to absorb these gases, while passing through the Earth's mantle and crust. During eruptions, the gases are
then released into the atmosphere.
Natural CO2 emissions are worse than man-made emissions squo solves
Gosselin 13 (Pierre Gosselin is the Associate Degree in Civil Engineering at Vermont Technical
College and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson
http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/ Most
Of The Rise In CO2 Likely Comes From Natural Sources. CTB)
We know, from ice measurements, measurements at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, Barrow Alaska, and the South Pole, that atmospheric
carbon dioxide has been increasing in our atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age. We also know that temperatures
have been increasing in that same time interval, as the earth warms up from the Little Ice Age. The proponents of the theory that
mans production of CO2 has resulted in this temperature increase, use that idea to predict future temperature increases based on
our continuing to use fossil fuels and continuing to force an increase in atmospheric CO2. But, is the increase in CO2 due to man; or
is the increase in CO2 natural, due to rising temperatures caused by natural means? The natural CO2 flux to and
from oceans and land plants amounts to approximately 210 gigatons of carbon annually.
Man currently causes about 8 gigatons of carbon to be injected into the atmosphere,
about 4% of the natural annual flux. There are estimates that about half of mans emissions are taken up by nature.
But is that true? Are there variations in the natural flux? Could those explain the CO2 increase? In June, 2011, Dr. Murry Salby gave
a presentation at a IUGG meeting in Melbourne, Australia. This presentation was mentioned later on Judith Currys blog, and some
others. DirkH brought this presentation to my attention recently in comments on NTZ, and I tracked down the YouTube version. In
that presentation, Dr. Salby plotted the changes in CO2 and changes in global temperature and soil moisture. The soil moisture data
is behind a paywall, but the monthly global temperature and sea surface temperature sets are easily and freely available from
WoodForTrees. The annual carbon fossil carbon release figures are also available, covering nearly the same period as the Mauna Loa
CO2 numbers. The differential changes in CO2 are calculated on a two-year centered average of the monthly figures, then taking the
monthly differential on that average. This gives a somewhat smoothed number, removing the annual cycles, yet preserving the
timing. Figure 3 is a magnified view of Figure 2, the interval from 1990 to 2000, showing the effect of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption in
June 1992 and the El Nios of 1995 and 1998. The sharp cooling from the volcanic eruption appears before June 1992 because of the
centered averaging to remove the noise and the annual variation. Changes in CO2 seem muted at the South Pole, and the Barrow
station is noisy as well as having a somewhat short record. Effects at the equator appear delayed at the stations closer to the poles.
For those reasons, we will use the Mauna Loa record. It seems evident from Figures 2 and 3 that temperature influences CO2. But is
it the global land and ocean temperature, or just the sea-surface temperature that is most important? Figure 4 is a plot of global
surface temperature and monthly CO2 change: Sea surface temperature seems to be driving atmospheric CO2 changes. This makes
sense because CO2 solubility in seawater is temperature dependent. But what of mans CO2 additions to the atmosphere? The data
for carbon release is annual data, so the graphs are much coarser in appearance, and the change in CO2 must be annualized. It is
ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming
ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources. The changes in CO2 track
ocean surface temperature, not global carbon emissions. Burning fossil fuels is not increasing atmospheric
CO2. Recovery from the Little Ice Age, driven by the sun, is causing the oceans to release
CO2. It is temperature driving CO2 release, not the other way around. Just as it has always been.
As the sun gets quiet in the next few years, sea surface temperature will begin to fall, and
the rise in CO2 will cease. If the sun stays quiet for 30 or 40 years, ocean surface
temperatures will fall far enough to reverse the CO2 rise, the globe will enter a new little
ice age, and things will get really interesting.
Climate change happened prior to the Industrial Revolution
EPA, No date (United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html Causes of Climate Change. CTB)
Earths temperature depends on the balance between energy entering and leaving the
planets system . When incoming energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth system,
Earth warms. When the suns energy is reflected back into space, Earth avoids warming.
When energy is released back into space, Earth cools. Many factors, both natural and
human, can cause changes in Earths energy balance, including: Changes in the
greenhouse effect, which affects the amount of heat retained by Earths atmosphere.
Variations in the suns energy reaching Earth. Changes in the reflectivity of Earths
atmosphere and surface. These factors have caused Earths climate to change many
times. Scientists have pieced together a picture of Earths climate, dating back hundreds
of thousands of years, by analyzing a number of indirect measures of climate such as ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths,
pollen remains, and ocean sediments, and by studying changes in Earths orbit around the sun. [1] The historical record shows that
the climate system varies naturally over a wide range of time scales. In general, climate changes prior to the
Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by natural causes, such as changes
in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in greenhouse gas (GHG)
concentrations. [1]
Aff cant solve for the amount of solar energy reaching the earth its a
cause of climate change
EPA, No date (United States Environmental Protection Agency
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/causes.html Causes of Climate Change. CTB)
Climate is influenced by natural changes that affect how much solar energy reaches
Earth. These changes include changes within the sun and changes in Earths orbit.
Changes occurring in the sun itself can affect the intensity of the sunlight that reaches
Earths surface. The intensity of the sunlight can cause either warming (during periods of
stronger solar intensity) or cooling (during periods of weaker solar intensity). The sun follows a natural 11-year cycle of small
ups and downs in intensity, but the effect on Earths climate is small. [1] [5] Changes in the shape of Earths orbit
as well as the tilt and position of Earths axis can also affect the amount of sunlight
reaching Earths surface. [1] [2] Changes in the suns intensity have influenced Earths
climate in the past. For example, the so-called Little Ice Age between the 17th and 19th
centuries may have been partially caused by a low solar activity phase from 1645 to 1715, which coincided with cooler
temperatures. The Little Ice Age refers to a slight cooling of North America, Europe, and probably other areas around the globe. [1]
[2] Changes in Earths orbit have had a big impact on climate over tens of thousands of
years. In fact, the amount of summer sunshine on the Northern Hemisphere, which is affected by changes in the planets orbit,
appears to control the advance and retreat of ice sheets. These changes appear to be the primary cause of past cycles of ice ages, in
which Earth has experienced long periods of cold temperatures (ice ages), as well as shorter interglacial periods (periods between ice
ages) of relatively warmer temperatures. [1] [2] Changes in solar energy continue to affect climate. However, solar activity has been
relatively constant, aside from the 11-year cycle, since the mid-20th century and therefore does not explain the recent warming of
Earth. Similarly, changes in the shape of Earths orbit as well as the tilt and position of Earths
axis affect temperature on relatively long timescales (tens of thousands of years), and
therefore cannot explain the recent warming.