Stanford Debate Brian Manuel

2014-2015 #NFG

Impact Calculus Exercise

ACCIDENTAL LAUNCH
Accidental Launch causes extinction
PR NEWSWIRE 98 [“NEJM STUDY WARNS OF INCREASING RISK OF ACCIDENTAL NUCLEAR ATTACK; OVER
6.8 MILLION IMMEDIATE U.S. DEATHS POSSIBLE,” APR 29, LN]

Despite the end of the Cold War, American

and Russian nuclear arsenals remain on high-alert. That,
when combined with significant deterioration in Russian control systems, produces a
growing likelihood of an "accidental" nuclear attack, in which more than six million
American[s] men, women, and children could die, according to a study published in the April 30 New England Journal of
Medicine. The authors, physicians, public health professionals, and nuclear experts, will hold press conferences on April 29 in seven
U.S. Cities, including Boston, beseeching the U.S. Government to seek a bilateral agreement with the Russians that would take all
nuclear missiles off high-alert as an "urgent interim measure" toward the only permanent solution: the abolition of nuclear weapons
worldwide. "It is politically and morally indefensible that American children are growing up with the threat of an accidental nuclear
attack," says Lachlan Forrow, MD, principal author of the NEJM article, "'Accidental' Nuclear War: A Post-Cold War Assessment,"
and internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His study cites numerous instances of 'broken arrows' -- major nuclear
accidents that could have killed millions and exposed millions of others to potentially lethal radiation from fallout if disaster had not
been averted. "Nuclear weapons do not make us safer, their existence jeopardizes everything we cherish." Forrow adds, "We are
calling upon the mayors and citizens of all U.S. and Russian cities to join us in appealing to Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin
to end this threat by taking all weapons off high-alert status immediately." A strike on Boston would likely target Logan Airport,
Commonwealth Pier, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, resulting in 609,000 immediate fatalities,
according to the researchers. Depending on wind patterns, says Dr. Forrow, hundreds of thousands of other Boston-area residents
could be exposed to potentially lethal fallout. Launching nuclear missiles on false warning is the most plausible contemporary
'accident' scenario, according to the authors. More than mere conjecture, this scenario almost played out to horrifying results in 1995
when a U.S. scientific rocket launched from Norway led to activation of the nuclear suitcases carried by the top Russian command --
the first time ever in Soviet- Russian history. It took eight minutes for the Russian leadership to determine the rocket launch was not
part of a surprise nuclear strike by Western nuclear submarines -- just four minutes before they might have ordered a nuclear
response based on standard launch-on-warning protocols. An 'accidental' nuclear attack would create a
public health disaster of an unprecedented scale, according to more than 70 articles and
speeches on the subject, cited by the authors and written by leading nuclear war experts ,
public health officials, international peace organizations, and legislators. Furthermore, retired General Lee Butler, Commander from
1991-1994 of all U.S. Strategic Forces under former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, has
warned that from his experience in many "war games" it is plausible that such an attack could provoke a
nuclear counterattack that could trigger full-scale nuclear war with billions of casualties
worldwide.

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BIODIVERSITY
Loss of biodiversity will lead to extinction – global ecosystems are reliant
on each other
Bruce E. Tonn, Urban Planning Prof @ Tennessee, November 2007, Futures v. 39, no. 9, “Futures
Sustainability”, ln
The first principle is the most important because earth-life is needed to support earth-life. Ecosystems
are composed of countless species that are mutually dependent upon each other for
nutrients directly as food or as by-products of earth-life (e.g., as carbon dioxide and oxygen). If the
biodiversity of an ecosystem is substantially compromised, then the entire system could
collapse due to destructive negative nutrient cycle feedback effects. If enough ecosystems collapse worldwide,
then the cascading impact on global nutrient cycles could lead to catastrophic species
extinction. Thus, to ensure the survival of earth-life into the distant future the earth's biodiversity must
be protected.

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BIOTERROR
BIOLOGICAL TERRORISM RISKS EXTINCTION
John D. Steinbrenner, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997
[Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all houses," Winter,
InfoTrac]

Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential
weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are
alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not
independently engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively
simple observation has immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event.
Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over
time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for
instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of
radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning. The use
of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely
controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act
swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to
have a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use
- the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to
another would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten
the entire world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global
contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how serious a possibility
this might be, since there is no way to measure it reliably.

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DEHUMANIZATION
Dehumanization makes all impacts of nuclear war, genocide, and
environmental destruction inevitable
David Berube, professor of speech communication, June/July 1997, Nanotechnology Magazine,
http://www.cla.sc.edu/ENGL/faculty/berube/prolong.htm
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi
racial science. This would involve valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the
current ones, humans would never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-
ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its
destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural
calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of
civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be
called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a
dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a
dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact
dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer
great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits,
we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization
is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people
become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every
atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has
evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.

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DEMOCRACY
Democracy solves extinction.
Diamond -95 (Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE
1990S,
1995, p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html //)
Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life
on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and
unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of
democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness. The
experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic
fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize
themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much
less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships.
In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they
must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor
international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach
agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the
rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be
built.

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DISEASE
Unchecked disease causes human extinction
South China Morning Post, 1-4-1996 (Dr. Ben Abraham= “called "one of the 100 greatest
minds in history" by super-IQ society Mensa” and owner of “Toronto-based biotechnology company,
Structured Biologicals Inc” according to same article)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a
much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than
HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak
which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union
- they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of
virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could
face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a
lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from
anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain reaction
and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr
Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the
impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly
virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to spread.
Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen
anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus
experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said
Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very
serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a
preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to
learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an
example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World
and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the
very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the
survival of the human race," he said.

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ECONOMY
NUCLEAR WAR.
Mead 9. [2/4, Walter Russell, Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations,
Only Makes You Stronger: Why the recession bolstered America, The New Republic]
None of which means that we can just sit back and enjoy the recession. History may suggest that financial crises actually help
capitalist great powers maintain their leads--but it has other, less reassuring messages as well. If financial crises have
been a normal part of life during the 300-year rise of the liberal capitalist system under the Anglophone powers, so
has war. The wars of the League of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution;
the Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list of
financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in
1928, but the Depression poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler
to power. If the current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start
slouching toward Moscow, Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born? The United States
may not, yet, decline, but, if we can't get the world economy back on track, we may still
have to fight.

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ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION
Endocrine disruption causes extinction – prevents reproduction
Californians For Alternatives To Toxics, 2004, “Toxic Pesticides”,
http://www.alternatives2toxics.org/toxicpesticides.htm, accessed 9-12
Pesticides, such as oryzalin, metam sodium, simazine or oxyfluorfen, which laboratory studies show affect blood and blood-
forming tissues, may be especially dangerous for persons with inherited blood abnormalities or acquired blood diseases.
Even sulfur, which is considered relatively low in toxicity, can be threatening to an asthmatic. * chemical interactions such as
synergism and other effects that are created as a result of mixing chemicals together. Research on chemical blends like those in
pesticide formulations is limited to lethal effects and acute eye and skin effects. * endocrine disruption, or alteration
to the system that regulates hormones. Although there is evidence in nature and even in humans,
damage to the endocrine system by pesticides and other chemicals is only now beginning to be considered
by the EPA for future studies and regulatory action. Endocrine disrupting chemicals often affect reproductive
organs and reproduction and they are especially dangerous to fetuses or young children. This is
of particular concern to scientists because of the threat to future survival of humans and
other species. * immune system depression. Hundreds of scientific studies of humans in agricultural areas in Canada
and the former Soviet Union found adverse alterations to immune systems and higher rates of infectious disease than unexposed
populations (WRI 1996). Studies in experimental animals prove that many pesticides have the ability to disrupt immune system
flinctions following acute and even low-level exposures.

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FOOD PRICES
Food shortages lead to World War III
William Calvin, theoretical neurophysiologist at the University of Washington, Atlantic Monthly,
January, The Great Climate Flip-Flop, Vol 281, No. 1, 1998, p. 47-64
The population-crash scenario is surely the most appalling. Plummeting crop yields would cause some
powerful countries to try to take over their neighbors or distant lands -- if only because
their armies, unpaid and lacking food, would go marauding, both at home and across the
borders. The better-organized countries would attempt to use their armies, before they
fell apart entirely, to take over countries with significant remaining resources, driving
out or starving their inhabitants if not using modern weapons to accomplish the same end: eliminating
competitors for the remaining food. This would be a worldwide problem -- and could lead to a Third
World War -- but Europe's vulnerability is particularly easy to analyze. The last abrupt cooling, the Younger Dryas,
drastically altered Europe's climate as far east as Ukraine. Present-day Europe has more than 650 million people. It has
excellent soils, and largely grows its own food. It could no longer do so if it lost the extra warming from the North Atlantic.

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FREE TRADE

Free trade solves nuclear war and extinction

Copley News Service ’99 (December 1, L/N)
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by nuclear war. The specter of nuclear
winter freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real. Activists protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle
apparently have forgotten that threat. The truth is that nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to
further their own prosperity, but also to forestall conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in
the threat of a worldwide nuclear war for the benefit of cooperative global economics. Some
Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past.
But they're not. They're special-interest activists, whether the cause is environmental, labor or paranoia about global government.
Actually, most of the demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or
philosopher Bertrand Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to work
together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO nations sitting
down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might have been settled by bullets and bombs. As long as nations
are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other countries, they
have a major disincentive to wage war. That's why bringing China, a budding superpower, into the
WTO is so important. As exports to the United States and the rest of the world feed Chinese
prosperity, and that prosperity increases demand for the goods we produce, the threat of
hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in Seattle claim that only multinational corporations benefit from global
trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who get hurt. That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's not the military-industrial
complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies that make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of jobs for
Americans. In San Diego, many people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom overseas
markets are essential. In Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose their livelihoods without world trade.
Foreign trade today accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing
global prosperity has helped counter the specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world
are learning to live and work together, like the singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care
about world peace shouldn't be protesting world trade. They should be celebrating it.

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HEG
Leadership is essential to prevent global nuclear exchange
Zalmay Khalilzad, RAND, The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1995
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a
return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision
is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership
would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to
American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better
chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation,
threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S.
leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United
States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,
including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than
a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

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INDO PAK WAR

India-Pakistan war culminates in extinction.
Fai -01 (Ghulam Nabi, Executive Director, Kashmiri American Council, Washington Times, 7-8)
The foreign policy of the United States in South Asia should move from the lackadaisical and distant
(with India crowned with a unilateral veto power) to aggressive involvement at the vortex. The most dangerous
place on the planet is Kashmir, a disputed territory convulsed and illegally occupied for more than 53 years and
sandwiched between nuclear-capable India and Pakistan. It has ignited two wars between the
estranged South Asian rivals in 1948 and 1965, and a third could trigger nuclear volleys and a nuclear
winter threatening the entire globe. The United States would enjoy no sanctuary.

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JAPAN RE-ARM
Japan re-arm causes nuclear war
Morton H. Halperin, Director of Policy Planning at State Department, -2K [“The Nuclear Dimension of the US-Japan
Alliance”, http://www.nautilus.org/archives/library/security/papers/Halperin-US-Japan.pdf]
However, any realistic appraisal of nuclear dangers would suggest that neither rogue
states/terrorist groups nor a deliberate Russian attack is the right focus if the goal of U.S.
national security policy is to prevent the use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world . The
most immediate danger is that India and Pakistan will stumble into a nuclear war following their nuclear tests and their apparent
determination to deploy nuclear forces. A second danger will continue to be that Russian missiles will be fired on the United States
by accident or as a result of unauthorized action. Over the longer run, these threats will be eclipsed by the
danger that the non-proliferation regime will collapse and other states will develop nuclear
weapons. A terrorist threat should, in my view, become a matter of serious concern only if
there is much wider dispersal of nuclear weapons among states stemming from an open
collapse of the nonproliferation regime.

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KOREAN WAR
Korean war causes extinction.
Africa News -99 (AFRICA NEWS, December 25, 1999, p. online)
Lusaka - If there is one place today where the much-dreaded Third World War could easily erupt and
probably reduce earth to a huge smouldering cinder it is the Korean Peninsula in Far East Asia. Ever since
the end of the savage three-year Korean war in the early 1950s, military tension between the hard-line communist north and
the American backed South Korea has remained dangerously high. In fact the Koreas are technically still at war. A
foreign visitor to either Pyongyong in the North or Seoul in South Korea will quickly notice that the divided country is always on
maximum alert for any eventuality. North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has never forgiven the US for
coming to the aid of South Korea during the Korean war. She still regards the US as an occupation force in South Korea and wholly
to blame for the non-reunification of the country. North Korean media constantly churns out a tirade of attacks on "imperialist"
America and its "running dog" South Korea. The DPRK is one of the most secretive countries in the world where a visitor is given the
impression that the people's hatred for the US is absolute while the love for their government is total. Whether this is really so, it is
extremely difficult to conclude. In the DPRK, a visitor is never given a chance to speak to ordinary Koreans about the politics of their
country. No visitor moves around alone without government escort. The American government argues that its presence in South
Korea was because of the constant danger of an invasion from the north. America has vast economic interests in South Korea. She
points out that the north has dug numerous tunnels along the demilitarised zone as part of the invasion plans. She also accuses the
north of violating South Korean territorial waters. Early this year, a small North Korean submarine was caught in South Korean
waters after getting entangled in fishing nets. Both the Americans and South Koreans claim the submarine was on a military spying
mission. However, the intension of the alleged intrusion will probably never be known because the craft's crew were all found with
fatal gunshot wounds to their heads in what has been described as suicide pact to hide the truth of the mission. The US mistrust of
the north's intentions is so deep that it is no secret that today Washington has the largest concentration of soldiers and weaponry of
all descriptions in south Korea than anywhere else in the World, apart from America itself. Some of the armada that was deployed in
the recent bombing of Iraq and in Operation Desert Storm against the same country following its invasion of Kuwait was from the
fleet permanently stationed on the Korean Peninsula. It is true too that at the moment the North/South Korean border is the most
fortified in the world. The border line is littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air
missiles and is constantly patrolled by warplanes from both sides. It is common knowledge that America also keeps an eye on any
military movement or buildup in the north through spy satellites. The DPRK is said to have an estimated one million soldiers and a
huge arsenal of various weapons. Although the DPRK regards herself as a developing country, she can however be classified as a
super-power in terms of military might. The DPRK is capable of producing medium and long-range missiles. Last year, for example,
she test-fired a medium range missile over Japan, an action that greatly shook and alarmed the US, Japan and South Korea. The
DPRK says the projectile was a satellite. There have also been fears that she was planning to test another ballistic missile capable of
reaching North America. Naturally, the world is anxious that military tension on the Korean Peninsula must
be defused to avoid an apocalypse on earth. It is therefore significant that the American government announced
a few days ago that it was moving towards normalising relations with North Korea.

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LIBERTY
Every invasion of freedom must be rejected.
Petro -74 (Sylvester Petro, professor of law, Wake Forest University, Spring 1974, TOLEDO LAW REVIEW, p. 480.)
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway – “I believe in only one thing: liberty.” And it is always well to bear in
mind David Hume’s observation: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Thus, it is
unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because
there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny,
despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes
in freedom as a supreme value, and the proper ordering principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and
material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted
with undying spirit.

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MIDDLE EAST WAR

Middle East conflict escalates to a global nuclear war
Steinbach -02 (John, Center for Research on Globalization, 3-3, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/STE203A.html)
Meanwhile, the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future
arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break
out in the Middle East again,... or should any Arab nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear
escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar
Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum(and the) next war
will not be conventional."(42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major(if not the major) target of
Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of
Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in
1988, Israel no longer needs U.S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and
arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing,
and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use, if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the
familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed soon- for whatever reason- the
deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration ." (44)

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MONOCULTURE
Loss of genetic diversity causes extinction
Cary Fowler and Pat Mooney, Rural Advancement Fund International, Shattering: Food, Politics,
and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, 1990, p. ix
While many may ponder the consequences of global warming, perhaps the biggest single environmental
catastrophe in human history is unfolding in the garden. While all are rightly concerned
about the possibility of nuclear war, an equally devastating time bomb is ticking away in the
fields of farmers all over the world. Loss of genetic diversity in agriculture—silent, rapid,
inexorable—is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction—to the doorstep of hunger on
a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify the environment as we have done with agriculture is to
destroy the complex interrelationships that hold the natural world together. Reducing
the diversity of life, we narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more
precarious. It is life at the end of the limb. That is the subject of this book. Agronomists in the Philippines warned of what
became known as southern corn leaf blight in 1061.' The disease was reported in Mexico not long after. In the summer of 1968,
the first faint hint that the blight was in the United States came from seed growers in the Midwest. The danger was ignored. By
the spring of 19701 the disease had taken hold in the Florida corn crop. But it was not until corn prices leapt thirty cents a bushel
on the Chicago Board of Trade that the world took notice; by then it was August—and too late. By the close of the year,
Americans had lost fifteen percent of their most important crop—more than a billion bushels. Some southern states lost half
their harvest and many of their farmers. While consumers suffered in the grocery stores, producers were out a billion dollars in
lost yield. And the disaster was not solely domestic. U.S. seed exports may have spread the blight to Africa, Latin America and
Asia.

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NORTH KOREAN WAR

WAR ON THE PENINSULA GOES NUCLEAR.
Africa News -99 (AFRICA NEWS, December 25, 1999, p. online)
Lusaka - If there is one place today where the much-dreaded Third World War could easily erupt and
probably reduce earth to a huge smouldering cinder it is the Korean Peninsula in Far East Asia. Ever since
the end of the savage three-year Korean war in the early 1950s, military tension between the hard-line communist north and
the American backed South Korea has remained dangerously high. In fact the Koreas are technically still at war. A
foreign visitor to either Pyongyong in the North or Seoul in South Korea will quickly notice that the divided country is always on
maximum alert for any eventuality. North Korea or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has never forgiven the US for
coming to the aid of South Korea during the Korean war. She still regards the US as an occupation force in South Korea and wholly
to blame for the non-reunification of the country. North Korean media constantly churns out a tirade of attacks on "imperialist"
America and its "running dog" South Korea. The DPRK is one of the most secretive countries in the world where a visitor is given the
impression that the people's hatred for the US is absolute while the love for their government is total. Whether this is really so, it is
extremely difficult to conclude. In the DPRK, a visitor is never given a chance to speak to ordinary Koreans about the politics of their
country. No visitor moves around alone without government escort. The American government argues that its presence in South
Korea was because of the constant danger of an invasion from the north. America has vast economic interests in South Korea. She
points out that the north has dug numerous tunnels along the demilitarised zone as part of the invasion plans. She also accuses the
north of violating South Korean territorial waters. Early this year, a small North Korean submarine was caught in South Korean
waters after getting entangled in fishing nets. Both the Americans and South Koreans claim the submarine was on a military spying
mission. However, the intension of the alleged intrusion will probably never be known because the craft's crew were all found with
fatal gunshot wounds to their heads in what has been described as suicide pact to hide the truth of the mission. The US mistrust of
the north's intentions is so deep that it is no secret that today Washington has the largest concentration of soldiers and weaponry of
all descriptions in south Korea than anywhere else in the World, apart from America itself. Some of the armada that was deployed in
the recent bombing of Iraq and in Operation Desert Storm against the same country following its invasion of Kuwait was from the
fleet permanently stationed on the Korean Peninsula. It is true too that at the moment the North/South Korean border is the most
fortified in the world. The border line is littered with anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air
missiles and is constantly patrolled by warplanes from both sides. It is common knowledge that America also keeps an eye on any
military movement or buildup in the north through spy satellites. The DPRK is said to have an estimated one million soldiers and a
huge arsenal of various weapons. Although the DPRK regards herself as a developing country, she can however be classified as a
super-power in terms of military might. The DPRK is capable of producing medium and long-range missiles. Last year, for example,
she test-fired a medium range missile over Japan, an action that greatly shook and alarmed the US, Japan and South Korea. The
DPRK says the projectile was a satellite. There have also been fears that she was planning to test another ballistic missile capable of
reaching North America. Naturally, the world is anxious that military tension on the Korean Peninsula must
be defused to avoid an apocalypse on earth. It is therefore significant that the American government announced
a few days ago that it was moving towards normalising relations with North Korea.

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OCEANS
Ocean health is key to prevent extinction
Robin Kundis Craig, Law Prof @ Indiana, Winter 2003, “Taking Steps,” 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, ln
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than
[seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," n17 oceans provide food; marketable
goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon
sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and
economic, for millions of people worldwide. n18 Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of
the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it
remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the
chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate."
n19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. n20
In addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a
common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations. n21

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OZONE
OZONE DESTRUCTION EMPIRICALLY CAUSED MASS EXTINCTIONS ON
EARTH
Paleontological Research Institute, Permian Extinction,
http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm

Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova occurring 30 light years
away from earth would release enough gamma radiation to destroy the ozone layer for several years.
Subsequent exposure to direct ultra-violet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only
those living deep in the ocean will be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone
destruction- large amounts of NOx gasses and C14 plus “global and atmospheric cooling.” With sufficient
destruction of the ozone layer, these problems could cause widespread destruction of life.This was the
biggest extinction event in the last 500 million years, and researchers want a theory that is scientifically
rigorous. Therefore, all these theories are possible but also have many faults and create much controversy
in determining if it is the one exact theory which will explain this historic mass extinction.

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PROTECTIONISM
Protectionism causes nuclear wars.
Spicer -96 (Michael Spicer, economist; member of the British Parliament, The Challenge from the East and the Rebirth of the
West, 1996, p. 121)
The choice facing the West today is much the same as that which faced the Soviet bloc after World War II: between meeting head-on
the challenge of world trade with the adjustments and the benefits that it will bring, or of attempting to shut out markets that are
growing and where a dynamic new pace is being set for innovative production. The problem about the second approach is not simply
that it won't hold: satellite technology alone will ensure that he consumers will begin to demand those goods that the East is able to
provide most cheaply. More fundamentally, it will guarantee the emergence of a fragmented world in which natural fears will be
fanned and inflamed. A world divided into rigid trade blocs will be a deeply troubled and unstable
place in which suspicion and ultimately envy will possibly erupt into a major war . I do not say
that the converse will necessarily be true, that in a free trading world there will be an absence of all strife. Such a proposition would
manifestly be absurd. But to trade is to become interdependent, and that is a good step in the
direction of world stability. With nuclear weapons at two a penny, stability will be at a
premium in the years ahead.

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PROLIF
Proliferation causes extinction.
Taylor -02 [Stuart Taylor, Senior Writer with the National Journal and editor at Newsweek, Legal Times, 9-16-2002]
The truth is, no matter what we do about Iraq, if
we don't stop proliferation, another five or 10 potentially
unstable nations may go nuclear before long, making it ever more likely that one or more
bombs will be set off anonymously on our soil by terrorists or a terrorist government. Even an airtight
missile defense would be useless against a nuke hidden in a truck, a shipping container, or a boat. [Continues…] Unless we get
serious about stopping proliferation, we are headed for "a world filled with nuclear-weapons states,
where every crisis threatens to go nuclear," where "the survival of civilization truly is in
question from day to day," and where "it would be impossible to keep these weapons out of the hands of terrorists,
religious cults, and criminal organizations." So writes Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., a moderate Republican who served as a
career arms-controller under six presidents and led the successful Clinton administration effort to extend the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty. The only way to avoid such a grim future, he suggests in his memoir, Disarmament Sketches, is for the
United States to lead an international coalition against proliferation by showing an unprecedented willingness to give up the vast
majority of our own nuclear weapons, excepting only those necessary to deter nuclear attack by others.

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RUSSIA
Russian civil war leads to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism against the US
Steven R. David, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, Foreign Affairs Jan 19 99
Should Russia succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe
will be severe. A major power like Russia -- even though in decline -- does not suffer civil war quietly or alone. An
embattled Russian Federation might provoke opportunistic attacks from enemies such as China.
Massive flows of refugees would pour into central and western Europe. Armed struggles in
Russia could easily spill into its neighbors. Damage from the fighting, particularly attacks
on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much of Europe and Asia. Within
Russia, the consequences would be even worse. Just as the sheer brutality of the last Russian civil war laid the basis for the
privations of Soviet communism, a second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most alarming is the real possibility
that the violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its nuclear
arsenal. No nuclear state has ever fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the grim consequences can be
foreseen. Russia retains some 20,000 nuclear weapons and the raw material for tens of thousands more, in
scores of sites scattered throughout the country. So far, the government has managed to prevent the loss of any weapons or
much material. If war erupts , however, Moscow's already weak grip on nuclear sites will slacken,
making weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American groups and states.
Such dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now faces. And it is hard to think of
anything that would increase this threat more than the chaos that would follow a
Russian civil war.

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SPACE MIL
SPACE MILITARIZATION CAUSES WAR

Chuck Robb, Senator, 1999

[The Washington Quarterly, Winter, p. 84]

If history has taught us anything, it is that a future more like the second scenario will prevail. It defies
reason to assume that nations would sit idle while the United States invests billions of dollars in
weaponizing space, leaving them at an unprecedented disadvantage. This second scenario suggests three
equally troubling consequences. The first is that Americans would, in a relative sense, lose the most from
a space-based arms race. The United States is currently the preeminent world military power, and much
of that power resides in our ability to use space for military applications. A large percentage of our
military communications now passes through space. Our troops rely on weather satellites, our targeters
on satellite photos, and virtually all of our new generations of weapons on the Global Positioning System
satellites for pin-point accuracy. By encouraging potential adversaries to deploy weapons into space that
could quickly destroy many of these systems, a space-based arms race would render many of these more
vulnerable to attack than they are today. Even if our potential adversaries were unable to build a
competing force, they could still position deadly satellites disguised as commercial assets near or in the
path of our most vital military satellites.

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TERRORISM
Unchecked terrorism will result in extinction
Yonah Alexander, professor and director of the Inter-University for Terrorism Studies in Israel and the United States. “Terrorism myths and
realities,” The Washington Times, August 28, 2003

Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale
of violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact . The
internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear we
have entered an Age of Super Terrorism [e.g. biological, chemical, radiological, nuclear
and cyber] with its serious implications concerning national, regional and global security concerns. Two
myths in particular must be debunked immediately if an effective counterterrorism "best practices" strategy can be developed
[e.g., strengthening international cooperation]. The first illusion is that terrorism can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated
completely, provided the root causes of conflicts - political, social and economic - are addressed. The conventional illusion is
that terrorism must be justified by oppressed people seeking to achieve their goals and consequently the argument advanced by
"freedom fighters" anywhere, "give me liberty and I will give you death," should be tolerated if not glorified. This traditional
rationalization of "sacred" violence often conceals that the real purpose of terrorist groups is to gain political power through the
barrel of the gun, in violation of fundamental human rights of the noncombatant segment of societies. For instance, Palestinians
religious movements [e.g., Hamas, Islamic Jihad] and secular entities [such as Fatah's Tanzim and Aqsa Martyr Brigades]] wish
not only to resolve national grievances [such as Jewish settlements, right of return, Jerusalem] but primarily to destroy the
Jewish state. Similarly, Osama bin Laden's international network not only opposes the presence of American military in the
Arabian Peninsula and Iraq, but its stated objective is to "unite all Muslims and establish a government that follows the rule of
the Caliphs." The second myth is that strong action against terrorist infrastructure [leaders, recruitment, funding, propaganda,
training, weapons, operational command and control] will only increase terrorism. The argument here is that law-enforcement
efforts and military retaliation inevitably will fuel more brutal acts of violent revenge. Clearly, if this perception continues to
prevail, particularly in democratic societies, there is the danger it will paralyze governments and thereby encourage further
terrorist attacks. In sum, past experience provides useful lessons for a realistic future strategy. The prudent application of force
has been demonstrated to be an effective tool for short- and long-term deterrence of terrorism. For example, Israel's targeted
killing of Mohammed Sider, the Hebron commander of the Islamic Jihad, defused a "ticking bomb." The assassination of Ismail
Abu Shanab - a top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip who was directly responsible for several suicide bombings including the
latest bus attack in Jerusalem - disrupted potential terrorist operations. Similarly, the U.S. military operation in Iraq eliminated
Saddam Hussein's regime as a state sponsor of terror. Thus, it behooves those countries victimized by terrorism to understand a
cardinal message communicated by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940: "Victory at all costs, victory
in spite of terror, victory however long and hard the road may be: For without victory, there is no survival."

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TYRANNY
Tyranny outweighs full scale nuclear war
R.J Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science @ U of Hawaii, 1994 Death by Government
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Power kills, absolute Power kills absolutely. This new Power Principle is the message emerging from my previous
work on the causes of war1 and this book on genocide and government mass murder--what I call democide--in this century.
The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the
whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its
foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the
more it is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit
democide. At the extremes of Power2, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their
people by the tens of millions, while many democracies can barely bring themselves to
execute even serial murderers. [HE CONTINUES] Consider also that library stacks have been
written on the possible nature and consequences of nuclear war and how it might be
avoided. Yet, in the life of some still living we have experienced in the toll from democide
(and related destruction and misery among the survivors) the equivalent of a nuclear war, especially at the high
near 360,000,000 end of the estimates. It is as though one had already occurred! Yet to my knowledge, there is only one book
dealing with the overall human cost of this "nuclear war"--Gil Elliot's Twentieth Century Book of the Dead.

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US-CHINA WAR
US/China war over Taiwan causes extinction.
Straits Times -2K (Straits Times, June, 25, 2000, No one gains in war over Taiwan] (PDNSS2115)
THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO -THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating
into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that
splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes
unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -
horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately
that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its
retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to
retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn
the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in
the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its
own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase: Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to
General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at
the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a
personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway
said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear
weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is
little hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses
about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A
Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear
weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the
Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there
were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the
country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see
the destruction of civilization. There would be no victors in such a war. While the prospect of a nuclear Annaggedon
over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty
above everything else.

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US-RUSSIAN WAR
US Russia war causes extinction --- outweighs other wars
Bostrom 2 [Nick Bostrom,. Professor of Philosophy and Global Studies at Yale. "Existential Risks:
Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards,"
38, www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html]

A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR. An
all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might
have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best acquainted
with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our
species orpermanently destroy human civilization. Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that
could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately . There is also a risk that other states
may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however thata smaller nuclear exchange, between India and
Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankind’s potential
permanently.

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WARMING
THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION.
Tickell 08 [Oliver, “On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinction]
We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Gurdian last week. At
first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to
a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe
that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never spoke, "the end of living and the beginning of
survival" for humankind. Or perhaps the beginning of our extinction. The collapse of the polar ice caps
would become inevitable, bringing long-term sea level rises of 70-80 metres. All the
world's coastal plains would be lost, complete with ports, cities, transport and industrial
infrastructure, and much of the world's most productive farmland. The world's geography would be
transformed much as it was at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose by about 120 metres to create the Channel, the
North Sea and Cardigan Bay out of dry land. Weather would become extreme and unpredictable, with
more frequent and severe droughts, floods and hurricanes. The Earth's carrying capacity
would be hugely reduced. Billions would undoubtedly die.

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WATER WARS
Water Wars cause nuclear conflict
Weiner, Prof. At Princeton 1990 (Jonathan, The Next 100 Years p. 270)
If we do not destroy ourselves with the A-bomb and the H-bomb, then we may destroy ourselves with the C-bomb, the Change
Bomb. And in a world as interlinked as ours, one explosion may lead to the other. Already in the Middle East,
from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and from the Nile to the Euphrates, tensions over dwindling water supplies and
rising populations are reaching what many experts describe as a flashpoint . A climate shift in that single
battle-scarred nexus might trigger international tensions that will unleash some of the 60,000 nuclear
warheads the world has stockpiled since Trinity.

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