BHR Cellulose Ethanol Aff

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Cellulose Ethanol Affirmative
Cellulose Ethanol Affirmative................................................................................................................................................ .........1

***Plan***...................................................................................................................................................................................
....3
***Solvency Contention***..................................................................................................................................... .......................4
***Warming Advantage***.................................................................................................................................................. ...........7
***Dead Zones Advantage***............................................................................................................................................ ..........16
***Pesticides Advantage***...................................................................................................................................... ...................17
***Oil Advantage***............................................................................................................................................................ .........27
*Pesticides Extensions*............................................................................................................................................................... .35
Pesticides – Bees Link................................................................................................................................................... ...............35
Pesticides – Bees Uniqueness........................................................................................................................................ ..............38
Pesticides – Uniqueness...................................................................................................................................................... .........39
Pesticides – Bees Economy MPX..................................................................................................................................... .............40
Pesticides – Bees MPX........................................................................................................................................................... .......41
Pesticides – Bees MPX........................................................................................................................................................... .......42
Food Prices MPX............................................................................................................................................................... ............43
Food Prices MPX............................................................................................................................................................... ............44
Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food Prices............................................................................................................................... ...45
Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food PRices............................................................................................................................. ....46
Pesticides - AT: Biodiversity Resilient.................................................................................................................................... .......49
*Warming Advantage Extensions*.................................................................................................................................... ...........50
Warming Advantage – Link..................................................................................................................................... .....................50
Warming Advantage – Link..................................................................................................................................... .....................51
Warming Advantage – Link ..................................................................................................................................... ....................52
Warming Advantage – Ethics MPX.......................................................................................................................... .....................53
*Dead Zones Extensions*........................................................................................................................................... .................59
Dead Zones Link........................................................................................................................................................ ..................59
Dead Zones Link........................................................................................................................................................ ..................61
Dead Zones Link........................................................................................................................................................ ..................62
Dead Zones - AT: Oceans Resilient........................................................................................................................ ......................63
Dead Zones - AT: Oceans Resilient........................................................................................................................ ......................64
Dead Zones - Invisible Threshold.............................................................................................................................................. ...65
Dead Zones – Fish Extinction Impact................................................................................................................................. ..........66
*Oil Extensions*........................................................................................................................................................... ................68
Oil Advantage – Link................................................................................................................................................. ...................68
Oil Advantage – Link ................................................................................................................................................ ...................69
Oil Advantage – Link................................................................................................................................................. ...................70
*Solvency Extensions*.................................................................................................................................................... .............71
Solvency – Companies Say Yes...................................................................................................................................... ..............71
Solvency – Long-Term Incentives............................................................................................................................... ..................73
Solvency – Long-Term Incentives............................................................................................................................... ..................74
Solvency – Second Generation Key.............................................................................................................................................. 75
Solvency – Incentives Key...................................................................................................................................................... ......76
Solvency – Incentives Key...................................................................................................................................................... ......77
Solvency – Yes Feasible.......................................................................................................................................................... ......78
Solvency – Federal Government Key..................................................................................................................... ......................79
Solvency – US Modeled ................................................................................................................................................... ............80
Solvency – US Modeled.................................................................................................................................................... ............81
***2ac Add-ons***...................................................................................................................................................................... ..84
Economy Add-on 1/2.............................................................................................................................................................. ......84
Economy Add-on 2/2.............................................................................................................................................................. ......85
Economy Add-on – Link........................................................................................................................................................... .....86
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Economy Add-on – Link........................................................................................................................................................... .....87
Biodiversity Add-on 1/2............................................................................................................................................................. ...88
Biodiversity Add-on 2/2............................................................................................................................................................. ...89
Systemic Death Add-on.......................................................................................................................................... .....................90
Protectionism Add-on............................................................................................................................................................ .......91
Environmental Leadership Add-on......................................................................................................................................... ......92
Environmental Leadership........................................................................................................................................... ................93
Environmental Leadership........................................................................................................................................... ................94
Water Advantage.........................................................................................................................................................................96
Water Advantage.........................................................................................................................................................................97
Water Advantage.........................................................................................................................................................................98
Water Advantage.........................................................................................................................................................................99
Water Advantage.......................................................................................................................................................................100
Generic AT: DA’s.....................................................................................................................................................................
....101
AT: Soil Erosion DA....................................................................................................................................................
.................102
AT: Soil Erosion DA – Erosion Now...................................................................................................................................... ........103
AT: Soil Erosion DA – Link Turn................................................................................................................................. ..................104
AT: Soil Erosion DA....................................................................................................................................................
.................105
AT: Carbon Tax CP – Econ DA................................................................................................................................ .....................106
AT: Carbon Tax CP.................................................................................................................................................
.....................107
AT: Environment DA’s.............................................................................................................................................................. ...108
AT: Corn Industry DA................................................................................................................................................... ...............112
AT: Not Enough Land.......................................................................................................................................................... ........113
AT: Obama Solves Case.................................................................................................................................... .........................114
AT: Obama Solves Case.................................................................................................................................... .........................115
AT: McCain Solves Case..................................................................................................................................... ........................116
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***Plan***
PLAN: THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTATION PROJECTS, AND JOINT
INVESTMENT PRODUCTION TAX CREDITS FOR SECOND GENERATION ETHANOL
PRODUCTION. WE CAN CLARIFY.
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***Solvency Contention***
CONTENTION __ - SOLVENCY
PLAN SOLVES – PROMOTES ETHANOL DEVELOPMENT AND COST

COMPETITIVENESS
Greer 5
Diane, Scientist, Creating Cellulosic Ethanol: Spinning Straw into Fuel,
http://www.harvestcleanenergy.org/enews/enews_0505/enews_0505_Cellulosic_Ethanol.h
tm
The arguments in favor of cellulosic ethanol as a replacement for gasoline in cars and
trucks are compelling. Cellulosic ethanol will reduce our dependence on imported oil,
increase our energy security and reduce our trade deficit. Rural economies will benefit in
the form of increased incomes and jobs. Growing energy crops and harvesting
agricultural residuals are projected to increase the value of farm crops, potentially
eliminating the need for some agricultural subsidies. Finally, cellulosic ethanol
provides positive environmental benefits in the form of reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions and air pollution. There is a growing consensus on the steps needed for
biofuels to succeed: increased spending on R&D in conversion and processing
technologies, funding for demonstration projects and joint investment or other incentives
to spur commercialization. "If you do not do all three of these pieces, the effort is
likely to stall," said Greene. "The challenge is to be really focused and make the
commitment to make biofuels a part of our economy. We need to make these
technologies work." There is also agreement on one of the main factors impeding the
development of biofuels - inadequate government funding. "We are grossly under
investing in this area," says Dechton. "We are piddling along at 30 or 40 million dollars
per year. This is a national security issue." Sheehan agrees, adding "the other problem is
over the last several years Congressional earmarking has been horrendous. It is
splintering critical resources, as a result effectiveness is way down. We do not have well
aligned, consistently directed R&D effort." The "Growing Energy" report calls for $2 billion in funding for cellulosic biofuels over the
next ten years, with $1.1 billion directed at research, development and demonstration projects and the remaining $800 million slated for the deployment of biorefineries. Other
advocated subsidies and incentives for the industry include production tax credits, bond insurance for feedstock sellers and biofuels purchasers and efficacy insurance. "We would
like to see private insurance but lacking private sector involvement, government should offer the insurance," said Greene. "The idea has
two features, the amount of money available goes down over time, so by 2015 the industry is ready to stand on its own two feet and, second the dollars available to developers is
Given sufficient investment in research,

in a menu format. We will let them pick subsidies that work best for their product."
development, demonstration and deployment, the report projects biorefineries producing

cellulosic ethanol at a cost leaving the plant between $.59-$.91 per gallon by 2015. The
price range is dependent upon plant scale and efficiency factors. At these prices,
biofuels would be competitive with the wholesale price of gasoline.
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COMPANIES SAY YES – THEY WANT 2ND GENERATION ETHANOL INCENTIVES
Hendricks and Inslee 7
Bracken, Senior Fellow with American Progress, Jay, Representative from Washington,
Apollo’s Fire, pg. 277
ONLY FEDERAL INCENTIVES ENSURE INVESTOR CONFIDENCE – ANY OTHER

ACTOR CAN’T CREATE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Endres 7
Don, CEO, VeraSun Energy, “The Next Frontier in Bio-fuel Production” Hearing of the
United States Senate Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy, Science, and
Technology,
http://agriculture.senate.gov/Hearings/hearings.cfm?hearingid=2670&witnessId=6223
Fostering Cellulose Technologies We believe the market must see a path toward E85 in
order for cellulose ethanol to evolve. The E10 and perhaps the E20 market could largely
be served by corn-based ethanol. In large part, the Federal Government’s focus on
increasing demand for the use of renewable fuels in the near and long term will give
investors’ confidence in aggressively pursing the commercialization of cellulosic
ethanol. The Federal Government can, and should, do more to jumpstart the
commercialization of cellulosic technologies. Specifically, the Federal Government should
do three things to help spur the development of cellulose technologies. Increase
biomass to ethanol research and development funding. 2. Streamline and increase the
availability of Federal grants and loan guarantees for investments in cellulose production
facilities. 3. Offer additional blenders tax credit for ethanol produced from cellulose.
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NO COUNTERPLAN SOLVES THE CASE – ETHANOL DEVELOPMENT IS IMPOSSIBLE
ABSENT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAX CREDITS
Hymel 06
Mona, Prof of Law @ U Arizona, 38 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 43
Just as market-entry risk was used to justify tax incentives for the fledgling petroleum
industry, the significant risks involved with entry [*75] into the alternative fuel market
justify similar tax incentives. Studies evaluating the effectiveness of tax incentives for
alternative or renewable fuel technologies indicate that subsidies are necessary to the
development of this industry. The energy industry's entrenched infrastructure is nearly
impossible to compete with absent federal tax incentives. Such incentives were
instrumental in overcoming the risk factor and establishing the current petroleum
industry, 205 and they are as necessary now for the alternative fuel businesses as they
were 100 years ago to overcome high initial start-up costs, minimize the risk associated
with new industries, and signal to taxpayers support for these industries. In 1978, when
Congress enacted the first tax incentives designed to encourage environmental
activities, it included wind power and solar power among those technologies it wanted to
encourage. 206 Then, in 1992, Congress enacted the production tax credit (PTC) to further
encourage the production of electricity from wind. At the time of enactment, Congress
indicated that the credit was "intended to enhance the development of technology to
utilize the specified renewable energy sources and to promote competition between
renewable energy sources and conventional energy sources." 207 After enactment, the
wind industry took off and the United States quickly became the world leader in the
development of wind technologies. 208 In large part due to Congress's failure to make the
production tax credit permanent and to adopt renewable production standards, 209 the
United States has since [*76] fallen behind while other countries have recognized the
immense benefits from this renewable energy source. The American Wind Energy
Association noted that: The PTC, a key incentive, helps level the economic playing field
for wind projects in energy markets where other forms of energy are also subsidized ... .
However, ... the current "on-again, off-again" status of the credit is hobbling project
development and the industry as a whole ... . One major developer stated that a five
year extension of the PTC would provide enough long-term certainty to squeeze an
additional 25 percent out of vendor costs. Unfortunately, Congress only extended the
provision for two years in the 2005 legislation.
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***Warming Advantage***
ADVANTAGE __ - WARMING
A) MECHANICS
WARMING IS REAL AND HUMAN INDUCED

Monbiot 7
George, Professor @ Oxford Brookes University, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from
Burning, pg. 5
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MOREOVER, CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BE RAPID
Lynas 7
Mark, Environmental Activist, Educational focus on Politics and History, Six Degrees, pg.
46-47
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RAPID WARMING PREVENTS ANY EFFECTIVE ADAPTATION
Brown 2
Donald, Phillip R. Allen Professor of Economics, American Heat, pg. 239
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WHILE SOME WARMING IS INEVITABLE, EVERY TEMPERATURE DECREASE HELPS
AVOID CATASTROPHIC IMPACTS
Chemical and Engineering News 5
Stark Effects From Global Warming,
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/83/i12/8312globalwarming.html
It may not be feasible to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C, Keller warned.
“But if you want to limit the temperature increase to 2.5 °C, you have to decarbonize the
economy during this century,” he said. In other words, society must start deriving energy
from sources other than fossil fuel or find some way to sequester the CO2 from fossil
fuel. Keller pointed out that “these predictions of threshold responses are deeply
uncertain because of uncertainties in the structural models and in observational
constraints.” Resolving the uncertainties could have considerable economic benefits, he
said. All of the scientists who spoke during this AAAS session agreed that, despite
uncertainties about when climate thresholds will be reached, near-term action should be
taken to reduce emissions. If society waits for the research that will nail down the
thresholds with greater clarity, it may well be too late to avoid exceeding them,
they said. “If we don’t reduce CO2 emissions now, then future generations may bear
the cost,” Keller said.
SECOND GENERATION ETHANOL SOLVES WARMING

-overcomes the deficiencies of first generation corn, and lowers emissions by 90 percent
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EVEN IF THERE ARE SHORT-TERM INCREASES IN CO2, INCENTIVES FOR 2ND
GENERATION ETHANOL WILL CAUSE DRASTIC REDUCTIONS IN EMISSIONS
Eilperin 8
Juliet, Studies Say Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid Warming,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020704230.html
Brent Erickson, executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization's

industrial and environmental section, said using renewable resources always made sense
in the long run, compared with gasoline and diesel fuel. "It makes no sense to continue
burning fossil carbon, which is essentially carbon that has already been sequestered for
millions of years in the Earth's crust, and which when burned releases carbon dioxide
and also creates a carbon debt that can never be paid back," he said. "It is much more
logical to produce biofuels that recycle carbon, even if a short-term carbon debt is
created. Even if it's 167 years, you're still better off than burning oil that can never be
paid off." But an array of senior scientists who work on climate change, including
Missouri Botanical Society President Peter H. Raven and William H. Schlesinger, president
of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, sent a letter to Bush and congressional
leaders yesterday urging them to reconsider their energy policies in light of the new
studies. "While politicians in the U.S. and Europe have tried to craft policies dictating
that new biofuels will not come at the expense of clearing land, the papers show that
sometimes land conversion is often an indirect result of this expansion," the 10 scientists
wrote. "There is an urgent need for policy that ensures biofuels are not produced on
productive forest, grassland or cropland." Alex Farrell, a professor with Berkeley's Energy
and Resources Group who concluded in 2006 that biofuels produce a net environmental
benefit, said the paper by Searchinger and his colleagues changed his mind. "The
qualitative result that biofuel produced on fertile land has higher greenhouse gas
emissions than fossil fuels is almost certainly true, even if it's only by a certain amount,"
Farrell said in a telephone interview. "But we can make better biofuels. The right
thing to do is to give the biofuel industry the incentives and support to move
to a more sustainable production method."
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B) IMPACTS
FAST WARMING LEADS TO EXTINCTION – QUICK TIME FRAME

Pearce 7
Fred, With Speed and Violence, environment and development consultant, pg. 240-241
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INDEPENDENTLY OF WARMING, CO2 LEADS TO OCEAN ACIDITY
Monbiot 7
George, Professor @ Oxford Brookes University, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from
Burning, pg. 9
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THE IMPACT IS EXTINCTION
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THEIR TURNS ARE HYPE – ANY POSITIVE IMPACT OF WARMING IS MASSIVELY
OUTWIEGHED
Brown 2
Donald, Phillip R. Allen Professor of Economics, American Heat, pg. 204
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***Dead Zones Advantage***
ADVANTAGE __ - DEAD ZONES
CURRENT INTENSIVE ETHANOL PRODUCTION IS CAUSING HYPOXIC DEAD ZONES

IN THE GULF – IT’S THE SINGLE GREATEST CAUSE, AND IS ABOUT TO
DRASTICALLY SPREAD
Garber 8
Kent, US News and World Report, Gulf Dead Zone Likely to Set Record, Lexis
U.S. News reports the growth and environmental impact of marine dead zones: large,
oxygen-depleted swaths of water that form each summer off the U.S. coast because of
fertilizer runoff and other pollutants. Among other concerns, scientists have warned that
efforts to meet recently adopted U.S. energy policies will likely stall efforts to reduce the
size of dead zones, since the extra fertilizer needed to satisfy the demand for corn for
corn-based ethanol will send more nitrogen and phosphorous into waterways. Now, new
figures point to the immediacy of the problem. In a forecast released this week, a
team of Louisiana scientists predicts that the Gulf of Mexico dead zone will cover more
than 10,000 square miles this summer, a swath nearly 20 percent larger than the record-
setting dead zone of 2002 and more than 50 percent larger than the annual average
since 1990. Behind the growth, they say, is a sizable increase in the nitrogen load at the
mouth of the Mississippi River and in the Gulf. One reason: U.S. farmers, encouraged by
ethanol mandates and higher commodity prices, have expanded corn plantings and
driven the acreage of other crops to record levels. Farmers are using more fertilizer,
which contains nitrogen and phosphorous. These chemicals, when not used by crops,
often find their way from farmland into water. Corn, because of its shallow roots, tends to
be quite "leaky." In May, the team of scientists, which includes researchers from
Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, found that
nitrogen loading in the Gulf was 37 percent higher this year than in May 2007. The level
was the highest since researchers began taking measurements in 1970. The predicted
size of the dead zone—roughly that of the state of Massachusetts—has researchers
particularly worried. Although the dead zone has gradually expanded over time, it has
remained confined to relatively shallow water and has yet to seep over the ocean shelf
and into deeper water. But that streak could be in peril. "The shelf only has so much
room," R. Eugene Turner, the Louisiana State professor who led the forecasting team,
told U.S. News. "It is getting saturated."
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***Pesticides Advantage***
ADVANTAGE __ - PESTICIDES
FIRST GENERATION ETHANOL REQUIRES EXORBANANT PESTICIDES AND

FERTILIZERS – A TRANSITION IS NECESSARY
Niles 8
Meredith Niles, coordinator of the Cool Foods Campaign, Center for Food Safety. “Amazin’
maize: Corn tries to look a little too sweet.” 6/27/2008.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/26/124453/177/
More than 76 million acres of corn are cultivated annually in the United States. Of overall
U.S. production, 43 percent will be fed to livestock, more than 20 percent will be turned
into ethanol, and most of the remainder will become high fructose corn syrup, corn oil
and a host of other corn-based additives and starches destined to end up in foods such
as the heavily processed, over-packaged Ring Ding. Yet, the consequences of producing
so much corn don't end at our own belt buckles. While the government spends billions to
subsidize food that adds weight to our bellies, they simultaneously fund destruction of
America's fertile land. The environmental impact of growing all of this corn is simply
astounding. Aside from industrial animal production, there is no food raised that is more
destructive than industrial corn. Every year, this corn is sprayed with 162 million
pounds of chemical pesticides. The production, packaging, and transport of these
pesticides contribute 2.7 billion pounds of greenhouse gases to the environment every
year. An estimated 17.8 billion pounds of synthetic fertilizers are used on our corn every
year -- more than any other crop -- contributing an additional 35 billion pounds of
greenhouse gas emissions. When you add harvesting, processing, and water pollution
from agricultural runoff, you've got one big carbon footprint. It derives almost completely from animals, corn syrup
and preservatives. The funny thing about corn is that most of the kind that we grow in this country doesn't directly feed people. (Having grown up in Northern Maryland, I learned
that when I got hungry while playing in corn fields next to my house.) Industrial corn grown for animals and corn byproducts does not taste at all like the corn we eat. The
delicious sweet corn we all cherish during summer months is only a small percentage of corn grown domestically. Farm stand corn has a minimal environmental impact, and its
nutritional value can not be disputed. Unfortunately, its industrial cousin seems to have gained all the fame -- at least in the eyes of corporations and agri-business investors.
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PESTICIDES DEVASTATE BEE POPULATIONS
Sanford 93
extension beekeeping specialist, Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and
Agricultural Sciences, Protecting Honey Bees From Pesticides,
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AA145#FOOTNOTE_2
Pesticides can affect honey bees in different ways. Some kill bees on contact in the field;
others may cause brood damage or contaminate pollen, thus killing house bees. Before
dying, poisoned bees can become irritable (likely to sting), paralyzed or stupefied,
appear to be 'chilled' or exhibit other abnormal behavior. Queens are likely to be
superseded when a colony is being poisoned. Sometimes solitary queens, banished as if
they were somehow "blamed" for poisoning, may be found near a colony. These
symptoms are not always distinct and they cannot be taken as definite signs of pesticide
poisoning. Many chronic management problems such as starvation, winter kill, chilled
brood or disease may result in the same symptoms. Often these problems may be
caused by pesticides in an indirect manner.
BEE EXTINCTION CASCADES INTO WIDESPREAD ECOSYSTEM COLLAPSE

New Scientist 98
Pollinators vital for crop yields are dying out,
http://www.dhushara.com/book/diversit/extra/pollin.htm
A WORLDWIDE decline in bees, bats, butterflies, birds and other pollinators is

threatening the yields of major food crops and the biodiversity of wild plants. A study published in
this month's Conservation Biology (vol 12, p 240) says that the most immediate cause for concern is an epidemic of varroa mites. The mites have wiped out millions of colonies of
honeybees in Europe and North America, where the bees are the prime method of pollination for more than a hundred commercial crops. A quarter of North America's wild and
domesticated honeybees have disappeared over the past eight years, the report finds. According to Gary Nabhan of the Arizona Desert Museum near Tucson, the study's lead
author, the disappearance of honeybees has increased production costs for many major American crops, notably California almonds. 'Impacts may be felt more strongly in home
gardens and on small farms that do not rent managed honeybees," he says. The paper puts the cost to American farmers of the declining honeybee population at $5.7 billion a
The
year. The study also reports a 'long-term decline' in other pollinators across the world, including 1200 wild vertebrate pollinators known to be at risk of extinction.
authors say these declines, often caused by pestidde use, explain depressed ali yields of
blueberries in New Brunswick, cherries in Ontario, pumpkins in New zcs York, cashew
nuts in Bomeo, and Brazil nuts in Bolivia and Brazil. Declining bat populations threaten the survival of many tropical fruit trees, including durians
and wild bananas, as well as neem and eucalyptus. In Central America, many plants are pollinated by threatened species of hummingbirds. And the dextrous fingers of primates,
such as the endangered black and white ruffed lemur of Madagascar, are uniquely fitted to open the buds of Ravenala madagascariensis, the traveller's tree. The researchers
wam that, apart from honeybees, data on invertebrate po@tors are hard to come by British ecologists agree that there are similar threats in Europe, where honeybees are also in
decline because of varroa mites. According to David Sheppard of Enghsh Nature, the government's conservation agency, a quarter of Britain's 250 native bee species are now
. 'These bees are responsible for most of the pollination of native wild
classified as rare or threatened
plants, including fruit crops such as strawberries, apples and pears," he says. Wild plants
around the world endangered by the lack of pollinators include the Japanese primrose,
Arizona agave and Hawaiian sflversword. In some case, the loss of a single pollinator
species can cause the collapse of entire ecosystems. On some Pacific islands, Nabhan and his
colleagues say, the loss of flying foxes could lead to cascades of extinctions, including mammals that depend on the fruit of trees
pollinated by the bats.
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OTHER POLLINATORS CAN’T FILL IN – THE BEE IS THE ONLY GENERALIST
Pardue 97
Leslie, What’s the Buzz,
http://www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:19192500
Professional growers are turning to renting bee colonies and having them trucked long
distances to ensure crop pollination. Small-scale farmers and backyard gardeners in
particular may see smaller yields and smaller, lower-quality fruits and vegetables as a
result of the decimation of wild honeybees. Other pollinators, including different bees,
hummingbirds and butterflies, may pick up some of the slack in performing pollination
duties, but Tew cautions against thinking of them as the ultimate solution to the
honeybee crisis. "A honeybee is a generalist; other types of bees are specific to certain
crops," he says. "We can't just whimsically switch to different bees and have that solve
all the problems."
HONEY BEES ARE KEY TO LOW FOOD PRICES

Wentz in 2k
Marilyn, U.S. honey producers stung by imports,
http://www.rmfu.org/News/Stories/ShowFeature.cfm?ID=43
While honey may not seem to be a mainstay in the American diet, it is heavily used in
processed foods, especially in breakfast cereals, breads and confectionary items. But
there is another area in which the beekeeping industry is vital to U.S. agriculture.
“We perform a valuable service for all of agriculture through pollination of plants,” Brady
said. “Livestock producers need us because they will not have alfalfa hay without bees to
pollinate it. In fact, 30 percent of food plants need honey bee pollination.”
Brady, who says beekeepers can no longer survive unless they also have pollination
work, has been asked to increase his hives for use in seed alfalfa pollination.
“I provide bees for 1,000 acres of seed alfalfa. The grower would like to increase his
production to 5,000 acres, but I just cannot take the risk,” Brady said. “Even with the
pollination contract, beekeeping is a money-losing business. Unless the anti-dumping
petition brings us relief, we cannot make it.” Other agricultural sectors have already
begun to suffer from the difficulties facing U.S. beekeepers. According to Hendricks,
there has recently been a shortage of bees used in pollination of California’s almond
crop. It takes 1700 semi-loads of bees to pollinate California’s almonds and 70 percent of
the world’s almonds are grown in California. Bees also are vital to the pollination of many
other crops, including cucumbers and melons.
“There will be a domino effect,” Hendricks said. “As commercial beekeepers fold, food
costs will increase.”Rocky Mountain Farmers Union member, Paul Hendricks, Englewood,
Colo., tends his hives. (Sep. 14, 2000)
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THE IMPACT IS BILLIONS OF LIVES
Tampa Tribune 6
That's troubling, Pinstrup-Andersen noted, since 13 percent is well below the 17 percent
the United Nations considers essential to provide a margin of safety in world food
security. During the food crisis of the early 1970s, world grain stocks were at 15 percent.
"Even if they are merely blips, higher international prices can hurt poor countries that
import a significant portion of their food," he said. "Rising prices can also quickly put
food out of reach of the 1.1 billion people in the developing world who live on
a dollar a day or less."
HONEY BEE COLLAPSE LEADS TO HUMAN EXTINCTION

Benjamin 8
Allison, Author of A World Without Bees, Last flight of the honeybee?,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/animalwelfare.environment
UK farming minister Lord Rooker, however, warned last year that honeybees are in acute
danger: "If nothing is done about it, the honeybee population could be wiped out in 10
years," he said. Last month, he launched a consultation on a national strategy to
improve and protect honeybee health. People's initial response to the idea of a bee-less
world is often either, "That's a shame, I'll have no honey to spread on my toast" or,
"Good - one less insect that can sting me." In fact, honeybees are vital for the pollination
of around 90 crops worldwide. In addition to almonds, most fruits, vegetables, nuts and
seeds are dependent on honeybees. Crops that are used as cattle and pig feed also rely
on honeybee pollination, as does the cotton plant. So if all the honeybees disappeared,
we would have to switch our diet to cereals and grain, and give our wardrobes a drastic
makeover. According to Albert Einstein, our very existence is inextricably linked to
bees - he is reputed to have said: "If the bee disappears off the surface of the
globe, then man would only have four years of life left."
Bees are a barometer of what man is doing to the environment, say beekeepers; the
canary in the coalmine. Just as animals behave weirdly before an earthquake or a
hurricane, cowering in a corner or howling in the wind, so the silent, empty hives are a
harbinger of a looming ecological crisis. But what is causing them to vanish -
pesticides, parasites, pests, viruses? No one knows for sure. The more fanciful theories
when CCD was first detected included an al-Qaida plot to wreck US agriculture, radiation
from mobile phones and even celestial intervention in the form of honeybee rapture.
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CONVERTING TO SECOND GENDERATION SOLVES NUTRIENT RUNOFF – ENDS
THE DEAD ZONE
Cornell 7
Clay, Honors B.S. in Biology and a minor in Chemistry from the University of Utah. He has also studied graduate level Toxicology and
Oregon State University, and most recently left a position there in the Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology,
October, Ethanol Incentives Contribute to Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, http://claytonbodiecornell.greenoptions.com/2007/10/20/ethanol-
incentives-contribute-to-gulf-of-mexico-dead-zone/
It turns out that the greater Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) drains a grand
total of 40% of the contiguous United States. The cumulative effect of all this runnoff
creates a Dead Zone approximatly 20,500 sq. km. - roughly the size of the state of New
Jersey. To address this issue, the Science Advisory board recommends a 45% reduction
in nitrogen and phosphorous fluxes from farmland. Unfortunately, recent trends pushing
corn-based biofuels are not exactly aligned with this strategy: Certain aspects of the
nation’s current agricultural and energy policies are at odds with the goals of hypoxia
reduction and improving water quality. . .[A]n emerging national strategy on renewable
fuels has granted economic incentives to corn-based ethanol production. Without some
change to the current structure of economic incentives favoring corn-based ethanol,
N[itrogen] loadings to the MARB from increased corn production could increase
dramatically in coming years, rather than decreasing, as needed… The alternative is
cellulosic ethanol and avoiding corn-based fuels altogether: Alternatively, the use of
perennial crops and other feedstocks for cellulosic ethanol requires a more complex
refining process that produces more net energy and results in lower fertilization and thus
less nutrient runoff than corn-based ethanol. The Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico is a
symptom our farming practices, and converting cropland to grow fuel will only
exacerbate the problem. This is just another chapter in the corn-based ethanol saga. The
EPA’s Science Advisory Board will vote on approval of the draft report in December.
DEAD ZONES COLLAPSE BIODIVERSITY

Carlisle 2k
Elizabeth, The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone and Red Tides, The Louisiana Environment,
http://www.tulane.edu/~bfleury/envirobio/enviroweb/DeadZone.htm
As the fresh, nutrient-enriched water from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers spread
across the Gulf waters, favorable conditions are created for the production of massive
phytoplankton blooms. A bloom is defined as an “increased abundance of a species
above background numbers in a specific geographic region”. Incoming nutrients
stimulate growth of phytoplankton at the surface, providing food for unicellular animals.
Planktonic remains and fecal matter from these organisms fall to the ocean floor, where
they are eaten by bacteria, which consume excessive amounts of oxygen, creating
eutrophic conditions. Hypoxic waters appear normal on the surface, but on the bottom,
they are covered with dead and distressed animal, and in extreme cases, layers of
stinking, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria, which cause the sediment in these areas to turn
black. These hypoxic conditions cause food chain alterations, loss of biodiversity,
and high aquatic species mortality.
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THIS SPILLS OVER TO AFFECT ALL MARINE BIODIVERSITY
IATP 2
HYPOXIA IN THE GULF OF MEXICO: A GROWING PROBLEM, Institute for Agricultural and
Trade Policy, Online
Hypoxia is essentially a form of habitat loss, eliminating areas in which fish

and other marine organisms can survive. The zone of hypoxic water can
also block the migration of marine organisms. Even under conditions in
which dissolved oxygen levels are not low enough to kill marine organisms,
stress due to insufficient amounts of dissolved oxygen can disrupt their life
cycles and increase their susceptibility to predation. 5
The increased nitrogen concentration
that leads to hypoxia can result in reduced marine biodiversity,
the proliferation of algae that block sunlight and impede photosynthesis,
and the outbreak of toxic algae blooms.
GULF OF MEXICO IS A UNIQUE BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT

Leahy 7
Stephen, ENVIRONMENT: Scientists Put an Ear to the Ocean Floor,
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36568
Lately local fishers have reported large numbers of cod in certain areas and the data
collected will show if these various populations or just the same group moving from one
spot to another, he said. Two other Atlantic curtains are under negotiation, one between
Florida and Cuba and another between Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. "The
Gulf of Mexico is a marine biodiversity hotspot and we don't know why, when or
how long species stay in the Gulf," Welch noted.
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OCEAN RUNOFF LEADS TO HUMAN EXTINCTION
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WE SHOULD EVALUATE OCEANIC HARM WITH THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE –
IT IS OUR FIRST PRIORITY TO AVOID OCEANIC HARM AT ALL COSTS
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OUR ETHICAL RESPONSIBILTY TO PREVENT DEAD ZONES IS THE HIGHEST
PRIORITY – YOU SHOULD BE HIGHLY SPECULATIVE OF ALL DISADVANTAGES
THAT IGNORE THE IMPACT OF OCEANIC HEALTH
Craig 3
Robin Kundis, Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, Lexis
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments have thus far rarely
been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs
protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the reefs' value for food production. n856 Waste treatment is another
ocean ecosystems play a major

significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. n857 More generally, "
role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic
building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as
other less abundant but necessary elements." n858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human
degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planet's ability to support life.
Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in general, an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in
the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable." n859 Coral reef ecosystems are particularly
dependent on their biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component species is higher on coral
reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many
maintaining and restoring the

otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. n860 Thus,
biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem

services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated
in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. n861 Similar calculations could
derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic value, or economic value
equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for
conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable
force and merit." n862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of
how little we know about the sea - and about the actual effect of human activities on
marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect marine
ecosystems because it was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we
now know that such harm is occurring - even though we are not completely sure about
causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should
inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know what
we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we
can - especially when the United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that
may be unique in the world. We may not know much about the sea, but we do know this much: if we kill
the ocean we kill ourselves, and we will take most of the biosphere with us. The Black Sea is almost
dead, n863 its once-complex and productive ecosystem almost entirely replaced by a monoculture of comb jellies, "starving out fish and dolphins, emptying fishermen's nets, and
converting the web of life into brainless, wraith-like blobs of jelly." n864 More importantly, the Black Sea is not necessarily unique. The Black Sea is a microcosm of what is
happening to the ocean systems at large. The stresses piled up: overfishing, oil spills, industrial discharges, nutrient pollution, wetlands destruction, the introduction of an alien
species. The sea weakened, slowly at first, then collapsed with [*266] shocking suddenness. The lessons of this tragedy should not be lost to the rest of us, because much of
what happened here is being repeated all over the world. The ecological stresses imposed on the Black Sea were not unique to communism. Nor, sadly, was the failure of
Oxygen-starved "dead zones" appear with increasing

governments to respond to the emerging crisis. n865
frequency off the coasts of major cities and major rivers, forcing marine animals to flee
and killing all that cannot. n866 Ethics as well as enlightened self-interest thus suggest
that the United States should protect fully-functioning marine ecosystems wherever
possible - even if a few fishers go out of business as a result.
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***Oil Advantage***
ADVANTAGE __ - OIL
SECOND GENERATION BIOFUELS CAN SUBSTANTIALLY DECREASE OIL

CONSUMPTION IN THE NEXT DECADE
Greer 5
tm
In the Grimm Brother's fairy tale, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold. Thanks to
advances in biotechnology, researchers can now transform straw, and other plant
wastes, into "green" gold - cellulosic ethanol. While chemically identical to ethanol
produced from corn or soybeans, cellulose ethanol exhibits a net energy content three
times higher than corn ethanol and emits a low net level of greenhouse gases. Recent
technological developments are not only improving yields but also driving down
production cost, bringing us nearer to the day when cellulosic ethanol could replace
expensive, imported "black gold" with a sustainable, domestically produced biofuel.
Cellulosic ethanol has the potential to substantially reduce our consumption of gasoline.
"It is at least as likely as hydrogen to be an energy carrier of choice for a sustainable
transportation sector," say the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the
Union of Concerned Scientists in a joint statement. Major companies and research
organizations are also realizing the potential. Shell Oil has predicted "the global market
for biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol will grow to exceed $10 billion by 2012." A recent
study funded by the Energy Foundation and the National Commission on Energy Policy,
entitled "Growing Energy: How Biofuels Can Help End America's Oil Dependence",
concluded "biofuels coupled with vehicle efficiency and smart growth could reduce the
oil dependency of our transportation sector by two-thirds by 2050 in a sustainable way."
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MOREOVER – 3 QUARTERS OF OUR GASOLINE CONSUMPTION CAN BE OFFSET
WITH MINIMAL LAND USE
Dale 6
Bruce, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University, Impacts of
Cellulosic Ethanol on the Farm Economy, Online
We have about 450 million acres of cropland in the United States with approximately
another
580 million acres of grassland pasture and range. Forest use land
totals about 640 million acres, for a total of nearly 1700 million acres
of land potentially available to produce feedstocks for ethanol pro-
duction. Approximately 40 million of these acres are in the
Conservation Reserve Program, a government program designed to
take more fragile lands out of conventional grain or oilseed produc-
tion. If we devote only 100 million acres to energy crop production
and obtain an average of 15 tons of biomass per acre per year on that
acreage and then convert that biomass to ethanol at 100 gallons per
ton (approximately 85 percent of the theoretical maximum yield),
we will produce 150 billion gallons of ethanol per year. This is equiv-
alent to about 75 percent of the gasoline we currently use, taking
into account ethanol’s lower energy content per gallon.
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OIL DEPENDENCE LEADS TO TERRORISM
Sandalow 8
David B. Sandalow, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy @ Brookings Institute May 22
Rising Oil Prices, Declining National Security
http://www.brookings.edu/testimony/2008/0522_oil_sandalow.aspx
First, oil dependence strengthens Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists. The
United States is in a long war. Islamic fundamentalists struck our shores and are
determined to do so again. Like the Cold War, this struggle has many causes and will last
for generations. Unlike the Cold War, oil dependence plays a central role in the struggle.
For more than 50 years, the need to protect oil flows has shaped U.S. policy and
relationships in the Persian Gulf. During the Cold War, we supported the Shah of Iran in
part to keep oil flowing from the region. In 1980, President Carter declared that attempts
by outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf would be “repelled by any means
necessary, including military force.” In 1991, with Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, President
George H.W. Bush told Congress that war was necessary because “[v]ital economic
interests are at risk…Iraq itself controls some 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves. Iraq
plus Kuwait controls twice that.” After removing Saddam from Kuwait in 1991, U.S. troops
remained in Saudi Arabia where their presence bred great resentment. These steps to
secure oil flows have come at a cost. By making us central players in a region torn by
ancient rivalries, oil dependence has exposed us to resentment, vulnerability and attack.
Osama bin Laden’s first fatwa, in 1996, was titled “Declaration of War against the
Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places.” Today, deep resentment of the
U.S. role in the Persian Gulf remains a powerful recruitment tool for Islamic
fundamentalists. Yet the United States faces severe constraints in responding to this
resentment. With half the world’s proven oil reserves, the world’s cheapest oil and the
world’s only spare production capacity, the Persian Gulf will remain an indispensable
region for the global economy so long as modern vehicles run only on oil. To protect oil
flows, the U.S. policymakers will feel compelled to maintain relationships and exert
power in the region in ways likely to fuel Islamic terrorists. Compounding these problems,
the huge money flows into the Persian Gulf from oil purchases help finance terrorist
networks. Al Qaeda raises funds from an extensive global network, with Islamic charities
and NGOs playing an important role. Saudi money provides critical support for
madrassas with virulent anti-American views. The sharp increase in oil prices in recent
months deepens these problems, further enriching those who fund terrorists committed
to our destruction.
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NUCLEAR WAR
Speice 6 (Speice, Patrick F., Jr. "Negligence and nuclear nonproliferation: eliminating the
current liability barrier to bilateral U.S.-Russian nonproliferation assistance
programs." William and Mary Law Review 47.4 (Feb 2006): 1427(59). Expanded
Academic ASAP.)
The potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material
to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly
horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of
immediate human and economic losses. (49) Moreover, there would be immense political
pressure in the United States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear
weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a
full-scale nuclear conflict. (50) In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of
nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the barriers that states with
nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear weapons.
(51) This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States
or its allies by hostile states, (52) as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts
will draw in the United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. (53)
INDEPENDENTLY, CELLULOSE ETHANOL SOLVES OIL CARTELS – PREVENTS

MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT AND DECREASES FORWARD PRESENCE
Lugar and Woolsey 99
Richard and James, Chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and a member of the Foreign Relations
Committee. R. JAMES WOOLSEY, an attorney, was Director of Central Intelligence from 1993 to 1995, The New Petroleum, Foreign
Affairs, Proquest
IF GENETICALLY engineered biocatalysts and advanced processing technologies can

make a transition from fossil fuels to biofuels affordable, the world's security picture
could be different in many ways. It would be impossible to form a cartel that would control
the production, manufacturing, and marketing of ethanol fuel. U.S. diplomacy and
policies in the Middle East could be guided more by a respect for democracy than by a
need to protect oil supplies and accomodate oil-producing regimes. Our intrusive military
presence in the region could be reduced, both ameliorating anti-American
tensions and making U.S. involvement in a Middle Eastern war less likely. Other
states would also reap benefits. Ukraine, rich in fertile land, would be less likely to be dominated over time
by oil-rich Russia. China would feel less pressure to befriend Iran and Iraq or build a big navy to secure the
oil of the South China Sea. The ability of oil-exporting countries to shape events would be increasingly
limited. The recent report by the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST)
predicted that U.S. oil imports will approximately double between 1996 and 2030, from 8.5 million barrels
per day, at a cost of $64 billion, to nearly 16 million barrels per day, at a cost of $120 billion. They
estimated, however, that with concentrated efforts in fundamental energy research and investment in
renewable fuel technologies, this could be reduced to 6 million barrels per day in 2030. The report
concluded, A plausible argument can be made that the security of the United States is at least as
likely to be imperiled in the first half of the next century by the consequences of
inadequacies in the energy options available to the world as by inadequacies in the
capabilities of U.S. weapons systems. It is striking that the Federal government spends
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about 20 times more R&D money on the latter problem than on the former.
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FORWARD PRESENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST SPARKS PROLIFERATION AND
RADICAL ULTRA-NATIONALISM, LINK TURNING EVERY POSSIBLE REASON FOR
HAVING HEG THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE
Layne in 6
Professor of Political Science, Christopher, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand
Strategy from 1940 to Present
Nondemocratic states know—and have known long before March 2003— that the United
States is willing to use its hard power to impose its liberal institutions and values on
them. This tends to create self-fulfilling prophecies, because it causes states that might
not otherwise have done so to become “threats.” When the United States challenges the
very legitimacy of existing nondemocratic regimes, the effect is to increase their sense
of isolation and vulnerability. States and regimes are highly motivated to survive, so it’s
no surprise that, in self-defense, others respond to U.S. offensive use of liberal ideology
by adopting strategies that give then, a chance to do so, including asymmetric strategies
such as acquiring weapons of mass destruction and supporting terrorism. Another grand
strategic consequence of U.S. democracy-promotion efforts is that these often generate
instability abroad. Again, Iraq is a good example. Convinced that the Middle East already
is so turbulent that nothing the United States does will make things worse, the Bush II
administration professes indifference about the destabilizing potential of democratic
transitions in the region.34 President George W. Bush declared that the United States will
not accept the status quo in the Middle East and that “stability cannot be purchased at
the expense of liberty.”35 Although it’s unlikely the United States can purchase real
democracy in the Middle East at any price, it is likely that by attempting to do so
Washington will end up buying a lot more turmoil in the region. Indeed, radical Islamic
groups see the U.S. push to democratization as a path for seizing power.36 The odds are
high that U.S. efforts to export democracy will backfire, because even if democracy
should take root in the region, it is not likely to be liberal democracy. Illiberal
democracies usually are unstable, and they often adopt ultranationalist and bellicose
external policies.37 In a volatile region like the Middle East, it is anything but a sure bet
that newly democratic regimes—which by definition would be sensitive to public opinion
—would align themselves with the United States. Moreover, if new democracies should
fail to satisfy the political and economic aspirations of their citizens—precisely the kind of
failure to which new democracies are prone—they easily could become far more
dangerous breeding grounds for terrorism than are the regimes now in power in the
Middle East.
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AND, PEACEFUL WITHDRAWAL IS KEY TO AVERTING US-IRAN CONFLICT
Layne in 7
Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 76-77
Iran Because of the strategy of primacy and empire, the United States and Iran
are on course for a showdown. The main source of conflict-or at least the one that
has grabbed the lion's share of the headlines-is Tehran's evident determination to
develop a nuclear weapons program. Washington's policy, as President George W. Bush
has stated on several occasions-in language that recalls his prewar stance on Iraq-is that
a nuclear-armed Iran is "intolerable." Beyond nuclear weapons, however, there are other
important issues that are driving the United States and Iran toward an armed
confrontation. Chief among these is Iraq. Recently, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S.
ambassador to Iraq, has accused Tehran of meddling in Iraqi affairs by providing arms
and training to Shiite militias and by currying favor with the Shiite politicians who
dominate Iraq's recently elected government. With Iraq teetering on the brink of a
sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, concerns about Iranian interference have
been magnified. In a real sense, however, Iran's nuclear program and its role in Iraq are
merely the tip of the iceberg. The fundamental cause of tensions between the United
States and Iran is the nature of America's ambitions in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
These are reflected in current U.S. grand strategy-which has come to be known as the
Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine's three key components are rejection of deterrence in
favor of preventive/preemptive military action; determination to effectuate a radical
shake-up in the politics of the Persian Gulf and Middle East; and gaining U.S. dominance
over that region. In this respect, it is hardly coincidental that the administration’s policy
toward Tehran bears a striking similarity to its policy during the run-up to the March 2003
invasion of Iraq, not only on the nuclear weapons issue but-ominously-with respect to
regime change and democratization. This is because the same strategic assumptions
that underlay the administration's pre-invasion Iraq policy now are driving its Iran policy.
The key question today is whether these assumptions are correct.
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NUCLEAR WAR
Hirsch 2k6
Seymour, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author, April 10, pg.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HIR20060422&articleId=2317
Iran is likely to respond to any US attack using its considerable missile arsenal against US forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. Israel may
If the US
attempt to stay out of the conflict, it is not clear whether Iran would target Israel in a retaliatory strike but it is certainly possible.
attack includes nuclear weapons use against Iranian facilities, as I believe is very likely,
rather than deterring Iran it will cause a much more violent response. Iranian military forces and militias are
likely to storm into southern Iraq and the US may be forced to use nuclear weapons against them, causing large scale casualties and
inflaming the Muslim world. There could be popular uprisings in other countries in the region like Pakistan, and of course a Shiite
uprising in Iraq against American occupiers. Finally I would like to discuss the grave consequences to America and the world if the US
uses nuclear weapons against Iran. First,
the likelihood of terrorist attacks against Americans both on
American soil and abroad will be enormously enhanced after these events. And terrorist's
attempts to get hold of "loose nukes" and use them against Americans will be
enormously incentivized after the US used nuclear weapons against Iran. Second, it will
destroy America's position as the leader of the free world. The rest of the world rightly
recognizes that nuclear weapons are qualitatively different from all other weapons, and that
there is no sharp distinction between small and large nuclear weapons, or between nuclear weapons targeting facilities versus those
targeting armies or civilians. It will not condone the breaking of the nuclear taboo in an unprovoked war of aggression against a non-
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will cease to exist,
nuclear country, and the US will become a pariah state. Third,
and many of its 182 non-nuclear-weapon-country signatories will strive to acquire
nuclear weapons as a deterrent to an attack by a nuclear nation. With no longer a taboo
against the use of nuclear weapons, any regional conflict may go nuclear and
expand into global nuclear war. Nuclear weapons are million-fold more powerful than
any other weapon, and the existing nuclear arsenals can obliterate humanity many times
over. In the past, global conflicts terminated when one side prevailed. In the
next global conflict we will all be gone before anybody has prevailed.
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*Pesticides Extensions*
Pesticides – Bees Link
INTENSIVE PESTICIDES KILL HONEYBEES

Swanson 8
Yvonee Swanson. “Whither the humble honeybee?”. St. Peter’s Times. July 5, 2008.
The hard-working pollinator's numbers have perilously declined - bad news for flowers,
worse for agriculture. Make them feel at home. back in the good old days, there were
lots of honeybees. They kept busy in the yard or on the farm, moving from one plant to
another and carrying tiny bits of pollen stuck to their legs and wings along the way.
That's a simple way to explain pollination, one of nature's building blocks in which pollen
is moved between two flowers of the same species or within a single (self-pollinating)
flower. About 75 percent of all flowering plants and 1,000 agricultural crops rely on
wildlife for pollination. Without these little winged creatures (butterflies, hummingbirds,
beetles, moths and bats help out, too), plants wouldn't fruit, produce fertile seeds or
reproduce. When was the last time you saw a lot of honeybees - not just a single bee on
occasion, but bees busily working in your yard? If you can't even remember, you're not
alone. The U.S. honeybee population has declined by 50 percent in the past 50 years,
and if the trend continues, certain fruits and vegetables will disappear from the global
food supply, scientists warn. Goodbye tomatoes, oranges and other produce. Honeybee
demise is blamed on a number of factors, including diseases spread by mites and
parasites, commercial and residential pesticide use, urbanization, increased use of
modern hybrid flowers that don't produce pollen or nectar and lethal "colony collapse
disorder" in which thousands of adult honeybees simply disappear from box hives
harvested by beekeepers. Worldwide efforts by government, corporate, education and
private organizations are under way to restore bee populations and save the food supply,
but homeowners are urged to take action, too.
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PESTICIDES KILL BEE POPULATION

Thomas 2008
Pat, Author on Ecology and writer for the ecologist, Give Bees a chance
2/11 http://www.theecologist.org/pages/archive_detail.asp?content_id=1170
Pesticides used on food crops and other crops can affect bees, even at sub-lethal doses.
Exposure can produce a kind of pesticide intoxication that makes the bees appear
'drunk', disrupts navigation, feeding behaviour, memory, learning and egg laying.
Fipronil, for example, impairs the olfactory memory process - which honeybees use to
find pollen and nectar. Spinosad can make bumblebees slower foragers even at low
doses. The insecticide imidacloprid can cause bees to forget where their hives are
located. The French government banned imidacloprin in 1999 due to its toxicity to bees,
the effects of which French beekeepers labelled 'mad bee disease'.
PESTICIDES CAUSE DECREASE IN BEE POPULATION

States News Service 6/26
CREATING A BUZZ ABOUT POLLINATORS
Lexis, June 26, 2008
All kidding aside, we have reason to be concerned about the health of pollinators, and
bee populations, especially. There are an estimated 25,000 species of bees that pollinate
one-third of the world's crops. The value of this service is calculated to be $70 billion
annually, worldwide. But scientists from nearly every continent have been documenting
dramatic declines in their native bee populations in recent decades. In China, many fruit
growers are pollinating flowers by hand because improper pesticide use has killed the
bees in the orchards. And nearly two-thirds of Britain's 25 species of bumble bees are in
decline. Reports of global pollinator declines over the past decade led to concerns in the
United States about a brewing "pollinator crisis." So, in 2004, USDA and the U.S.
Geological Survey asked the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council to
examine data on pollinator status in North America. We asked the Council to determine
whether pollinators are experiencing declines, what the causes of such declines may be,
what the potential consequences could be in agricultural and natural ecosystems, and
whether and how declines can be reversed or prevented. Their report, issued in 2006,
confirmed evidence of decline of some pollinator species in North America, including our
most important managed pollinator-the honey bee-as well as some butterflies, bats, and
hummingbirds.
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PESTICIDES PUSH HONEY BEES TO EXTINCTION

Horrigan Lawrence and Walker in 1
Center for a Livable Future, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, What's Wrong with Industrial Agriculture,
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/IndustrialAg502.cfm
Pesticides kill wild bees and other beneficial species that are nontarget victims. Managed
pollination--a
$10 billion a year industry in the United States and Canada--relies on just
two species of bee. In contrast, North America has 5,000 wild bee species,
but these have mostly disappeared from agricultural lands, due primarily to
pesticides, a lack of floral diversity, destruction of habitats, and
competition with managed pollinators (58).
Excessive fertilizer use also reduces biodiversity because of the effect
that nitrogen runoff is having on ecosystem balance. A minority of species
can thrive in high-nitrogen environments, and these sometimes crowd out all
other species in the ecosystem (59).
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Pesticides – Bees Uniqueness
BEE POPULATION UNCHARACTERISTICALLY DECREASING –

Johnson 2007
Renée, Analyst in Agricultural Economics Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33938.pdf August 14
Honey bees are the most economically valuable pollinators of agricultural crops
worldwide. Many scientists at universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) frequently assert that bee pollination is involved in about one-third of the U.S.
diet, and contributes to the production of a wide range of fruits, vegetables, tree nuts,
forage crops, some field crops, and other specialty crops. The monetary value of honey
bees as commercial pollinators in the United States is estimated at about $15 billion
annually. Honey bee colony losses are not uncommon. However, current losses seem to
differ from past situations in that colony losses are occurring mostly because bees are
failing to return to the hive (which is largely uncharacteristic of bee behavior); bee
colony losses have been rapid; colony losses are occurring in large numbers; and the
reason(s) for these losses remains largely unknown.
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Pesticides – Uniqueness
CURRENT INDUSTRIALIZED AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES EXPLODES THE USE OF

FERTILIZERS AND PESTICIDES.
Andy Kimbrell, founder and executive director for the Center of Food Safety. “Corn as
fuel may impair food suppy.” Chicago Tribune. 6/20/2008.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/sns-green-corn-
supplyjun20,0,5746994.story
The second lesson: our industrialized approach to agriculture essentially transforms fossil
fuels into human food. Food production American style consumes mountains of fossil-
fuel-based fertilizers, over half-a-billion pounds of petroleum-based pesticides, and
millions of gallons of fuel to drive farm equipment each year. Processing food and getting
it to market consumes still more. The cost of a pound of beef, a gallon of milk or a box of
cereal climbs ever higher, entangled with the skyrocketing price of oil.
39
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Pesticides – Bees Economy MPX
BEE POPULATION PLAYS A HUGE ROLE IN ECONOMY AND FOOD SUPPLY

Johnson 2007
Renée, Analyst in Agricultural Economics Resources, Science, and Industry Division,
Recent Honey Bee Colony Declines
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33938.pdf August 14
Honey bees (genus Apis) are the most economically valuable pollinators of agricultural
crops worldwide.1 In the United States, bee pollination of agricultural crops is said to
account for about one-third of the U.S. diet, and to contribute to the production of a wide
range of high-value fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, forage crops, some field crops, and
other specialty crops.2 The monetary value of honey bees as commercial pollinators in
the United States is estimated at about $15 billion annually3 (Table 1). This estimated
value is measured according to the additional value of production attributable to honey
bees, in terms of the value of the increased yield and quality achieved from honey bee
pollination, including the indirect benefits of bee pollination required for seed production
of some crops. About one-third of the estimated value of commercial honey bee
pollination is in alfalfa production, mostly for alfalfa hay. Another nearly 10% of the
value of honey bee pollination is for apples, followed by 6%-7% of the value each for
almonds, citrus, cotton, and soybeans. A number of agricultural crops are almost totally
(90%-100%) dependent on honey bee pollination, including almonds, apples, avocados,
blueberries, cranberries, cherries, kiwi fruit, macadamia nuts, asparagus, broccoli,
carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, onions, legume seeds, pumpkins, squash, and
sunflowers. Other specialty crops also rely on honey bee pollination, but to a lesser
degree. These crops include apricot, citrus (oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit,
tangerines, etc.), peaches, pears, nectarines, plums, grapes, brambleberries,
strawberries, olives, melon (cantaloupe, watermelon, and honeydew), peanuts, cotton,
soybeans, and sugarbeets.4
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Pesticides – Bees MPX
DECREASING BEE POPULATIONS WILL CAUSE A POLLINATION CRISIS AND KILL

BIODIVERSITY - OVER 60% FO RPLANTS DEPEND ON POLLINATION
APIS in 96
Vol. 15, No.3, 3/96 Copyright ©1996 M.T. Sanford "All Rights Reserved",
http://apis.ifas.ufl.edu/apis96/apmar96.htm
No efforts to reduce honey bee populations by poisoning feral colonies have been
proposed in the Sunshine State to my knowledge. However, at least one recent event
may have in fact created results that might be expected from such a program.
Introduction of Varroa into Florida appears to have eliminated many feral honey bee
colonies, setting the stage for a possible native pollinator comeback of some proportions.
Unfortunately, unmanaged pollinators are also in danger from many of the same
phenomena that have affected honey bees in the past. These organisms, however, have
no beekeepers to intervene when threatened with adversity. The risk exists, therefore,
that an as-yet-unnoticed crisis in pollination in both agricultural and so-called "natural"
areas might be brewing.
This potential lack of pollinators has also been a concern outside Florida, according to
the February 7, 1996 edition of PANUPS, Pesticide Action Network North America Updates
Service: http://www.panna.org/panna/ on the world wide web.
"Agricultural production could be threatened if populations of bees and other pollinators
continue to decline, according to the Forgotten Pollinators Campaign, a recently launched effort to educate the public about
pollinators' critical economic and agricultural importance. The Campaign emphasizes North American agriculture and ecology, but
Most fruits and vegetables consumed
advocates greater awareness and protection of pollinators worldwide.
globally grow as a result of pollination, the process by which pollen is carried from one
flower to another, thereby increasing the chances for fertilization and fruit production.
According to the campaign's literature, a recent survey of wild plants documented that over 60% of the plant species studied may
suffer reduced seed set due to pollinator scarcity.
"The Campaign, initiated by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM) in Tucson, Arizona, aims to create common cause among
farmers, pesticide reform activists, beekeepers, plant and animal conservationists and green belt proponents, all of whom may be
concerned about declining pollinators -- especially honey bees -- and the lack of policies aimed at protecting them. According to Gary
Paul Nabhan, a crop ecologist and Director of Science for the Campaign, pesticide use, disease, habitat fragmentation, and the arrival
of Africanized bees in North America have dramatically reduced honey bee populations in the U.S., by as much as 25% since 1990.
"Honey bees and the 4,000-5,000 species of wild bees native to North America pollinate 60 major crops in the U.S., including
potatoes, melons, cotton, onions and almonds. According to the Forgotten Pollinators Campaign,
the pollination services
provided by wild and domestic bees are 40-50 times more valuable than the market
price of all honey produced in the U.S. Steve Buchmann, a specialist with the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) bee laboratory in Tucson, Arizona and a research
associate at the Campaign, recently stated that the hidden value to crop pollination by
bees could be as high as US $10 billion. Other significant pollinators include flies,
butterflies, moths, beetles, hummingbirds and bats.
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Pesticides – Bees MPX
BEE EXTINCTION CASCADES

Henderson in 97
Caspar, The Independent, Once upon a time in the West,
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970401/ai_n14116525
Pollination", explains Hancocks, is "one of the simplest stories of interconnectedness." The

new gardens are to be a living testimony to a "Forgotten Pollinators" campaign, co-ordinated from the Desert Museum. The campaign
is a call to arms and national policy in the face of what Gary Nabhan, the museum's director of science, calls an impending ecological
human-induced changes in populations of pollinators, which include bees,
crisis. He explains that
butterflies, moths and bats, threaten a ripple effect on disparate species, ultimately
leading to a "cascade of linked extinctions". The causes are overuse of chemical
pesticides, unbridled development, and conversion of natural areas into cropland where
a single crop is planted - that is, monocultured. Already, he says, "the once-abundant
honey bee is suffering dramatic population declines throughout North America". The
ramifications for farming are potentially grave: crops such as tomatoes and alfalfa, a
basic livestock feed, depend on pollination. It has been more than 30 years since Rachel Carson predicted a
"silent spring", devoid of the chorus of insect-feeding birds, one where "no bees droned among the blossoms". Carson, who was
writing about animal deaths caused by the build-up of DDT, also suggested that fruitless autumns would become more commonplace.
Perhaps more than any other warning in the past 50 years, it changed the way farmers, wildlife managers and policy-makers
perceived environmental protection. But, of all her commentaries, the one that has been least heeded or understood was her warning
that habitats are being fragmented by physical destruction and chemical disruption.
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Food Prices MPX
RISING FOOD PRICES WILL KILL BILLIONS

Tampa Tribune 96 [Paul Power Jr., “Grain shortage growing problem,” Jan 20, LN]
There are more people in this world than ever, but less grain to feed them. That's kindled
fears of a world food crisis, a problem Florida may help prevent. Poor weather, drought, political unrest and economic shifts have
decreased planting, pushing world grain reserves to record lows. Meanwhile, the world's population grew by 100 million, to 5.75 billion in 1995 - a record
increase. Now, miners in West Central Florida are digging out phosphate more quickly, so it can be used to make fertilizer. Analysts are warning about
the increasing possibility of flood or drought in the world's food-producing regions. That can push food prices much higher, both here and abroad, and
even cause famine in the poorest countries. U.S. food prices may rise more than 4 percent this year, ahead of the rate of inflation. "Conditions today
indicate that there is at least some vulnerability in the food supply," said Sara Schwartz, an agricultural economist with the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. Corn and soybean production plunged last year in the United States, she said. Wet weather slowed grain planting in the United States and
Canada. Elsewhere, drought and civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa cut production to 20 percent below normal. The European Union has less than one
quarter of the grain reserves it held in 1993. The amount of corn expected to be available in the United States by summer - when corn is harvested -
was trimmed by crop forecasters this week to 507 million bushels, the lowest in 20 years. On a global scale, food supplies -
are not abundant. In 1995, world production failed to meet demand for the third consecutive year, said
measured by stockpiles of grain -
PerPinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington,

D.C. As a result, grain stockpiles fell from an average of 17 percent of annual consumption in 1994-1995 to 13 percent at the end of the 1995-1996
noted, since 13 percent is well below the 17 percent the United Nations considers essential to
season, he said. That's troubling, Pinstrup-Andersen
"Even if they
provide a margin of safety in world food security. During the food crisis of the early 1970s, world grain stocks were at 15 percent.
are merely blips, higher international prices can hurt poor countries that import a
significant portion of their food," he said. "Rising prices can also quickly put food out of reach
of the 1.1 billion people in the developing world who live on a dollar a day or less."
FOOD SHORTAGES LEAD TO WORLD WAR III

Calvin 1998 (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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Food Prices MPX
RISING FOOD PRICES RISKS COLLAPSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Business News 6/14/08 [World economy threatened by oil, food prices (2nd Lead),
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/business/news/article_1411196.php/World_eco
nomy_threatened_by_oil_food_prices__2nd_Lead_]
Osaka, Japan - Rising oil and commodity prices are posing a threat to the global
economy, the finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) said Saturday. 'Elevated
commodity prices, especially of oil and food, pose a serious challenge to stable growth
worldwide, have serious implications for the most vulnerable, and may increase global
inflationary pressure,' the G8 finance minsters said in their final communique. At the
meeting in Osaka, Japan, which concluded Saturday, the G8 finance ministers urged oil
producers to increase production and transparency in the oil market in order to slow
down skyrocketing crude prices. According to the New York Times newspaper, key OPEC
member Saudi Arabia said it planned to hike up production by 500,000 barrels per day as
crude prices peaked just below 140 dollars per barrel. The oil markets could be made
'more efficient by promoting greater transparency and reliability in market data,
including on oil stocks,' and on the size of financial flows coming into the oil markets, the
ministers said. G8 members were at odds over the role of speculation in the oil price
rally, participants indicated, with Italy being among those believing speculators were
partly to blame for rising prices and the US being at the other end of the spectrum,
calling for the markets to work. 'There are multifaceted reasons,' Japanese Finance
Minister Fukushiro Nukaga told journalists, adding that the G8 asked the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) to analyze the factors behind the surge in oil and commodity prices.
US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said donors had to provide emergency assistance
to mitigate the immediate effects of the world food crisis but also called for slashing
subsidies and export restrictions. 'But it is also imperative to remove supply-side
constraints, replace general food subsidies in developing countries with well-targeted
ones, remove export restrictions and improve the efficiency of international agricultural
markets,' Paulson said. The G8 consists of the world's seven richest nations - the United
States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy - as well as Russia.
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Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food Prices
CELLULOSE ETHANOL WON’T TRADE OFF WITH FOOD SUPPLY

Wiley 7
John, Citing Comparative Economists, Economics of next generation biofuels,
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0808-biofuels.html
‘Second generation' biorefineries – those making biofuel from lignocellulosic feedstocks

like straw, grasses and wood – have long been touted as the successor to today's grain
ethanol plants, but until now the technology has been considered too expensive to
compete. However, recent increases in grain prices mean that production costs are now
similar for grain ethanol and second generation biofuels, according to a paper published
in the first edition of Biofuels, Bioproducts & Biorefining. The switch to second
generation biofuels will reduce competition with grain for food and feed, and allow
the utilization of materials like straw which would otherwise go to waste. The
biorefineries will also be able to use lignocellulosic crops like poplar and switchgrass,
which can be grown on land less suitable for farming than traditional row crops. These
findings should be a boost to companies hoping to establish themselves in this emerging
field. Two researchers working at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa
State University set out to compare the capital and operating costs of generating fuel
from starch and cellulose-containing materials.
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Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food PRices
PLAN DECREASES FOOD PRICES – ENERGY COSTS ARE A VITAL INTERAL LINK
Wooley 8
Robert, June, Director of Process Engineering for Abengoa Bioenergy, Second Generation
Biofuels: The New Frontier for Small Businesses, US House of Reps for Small Business
Regarding the impact of biofuels on world food prices, the current starch ethanol has
little impact and production from cellulosic materials will have no impact (if residues of
current starch production are utilized) or little impact if dedicated energy crops are used.
Many other factors, such as growing demand in developing countries, dietary changes,
commodity funds, and energy prices have contributed most. . Energy prices have a
much bigger impact, as much as 3 times more. Grain production in developing countries
is considerably below that if the US and other leading countries. The potential
productivity increases by improving agronomics practices in these countries could easily
exceed the demands for food even while some less productive land is used for
dedicated
energy crops.
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SECOND-GENERATION BIOFUELS DON’T GET IN THE WAY OF FOOD

PRODUCTION.
Business and Finance Magazine, September 28, 2007(“The Good, The Bad and The
Biofuels,” lexis)
“Ireland is particularly well-placed to take advantage of a move towards second
generation biofuels as our climate is much more suited to growing the fuels
necessary for these rather than traditional biofuels. An additional benefit of
second-generation biofuels, once strict sustainability criteria are applied, is that
second-generation biofuels don't compete with food, as second-generation
biofuels tend to be developed from crops such as grass rather than wheat," says a
spokesperson for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural
Resources.
Taylor says that second-generation fuels could provide an answer to the
limitations of current biofuels but stresses it is too early to know as it is still at a
research stage.
"Biofuels is an appropriate first step but everyone can see the limitations. It does
provide an additional source, some substitution, a degree of stability and
environmental benefit, but lignocellulose - if we had the technology - could bring
us into a different paradigm. Certainly EU research policy is focused on doing that.
The priority is to crack the technological issue and then look at the economics,"
he says.
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NO LINK – DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ARE SELF-SUFFICIENT AND FACILITIES WILL

COPRODUCE ANIMAL FEED
Dale 6
Bruce, Professor ofChemical Engineering at Michigan State University, Impacts of
Some are worried that large scale

production of ethanol from cellulose will reduce food supplies in a
hungry world. However, the actual world situation seems quite dif-
ferent than this picture. Recent analysis suggests that population
growth rates are declining and that world population will stabilize
by mid-century. China and India, once large food importers, are
now much more nearly food self sufficient. Per capita production of
wheat more than tripled in China from 1960 to 2000 while rice pro-
duction per capita nearly doubled. India achieved less, but still very
significant, growth in per capita food production. Also, most agri-
cultural production capacity in the developed world does not feed
humans directly, but rather feeds our livestock and humans then
consume the meat, milk, eggs, cheese, etc. that the animals produce.
Finally, large cellulosic ethanol productions facilities (called “biore-
fineries”) will almost certainly coproduce animal feed just as biore-
fineries based on corn grain do now. Thus acreage devoted to cel-
lulosic ethanol crops will probably produce both food and fuel.
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Pesticides - AT: Biodiversity Resilient
EVEN SMALL CHANGES IN ECOSYSTEM STABILITY LEAD TO TOTAL COLLAPSE

ENN in 1
Environment News Network, Gradual change can push ecosystems into collapse,
http://www.well.com/~davidu/collapse.html
After decades of continuous change imposed by human activity, many of the world's
natural ecosystems appear susceptible to sudden catastrophic change, an international
consortium of scientists reported. Coral reefs and tropical forests are vulnerable, as are
northern lakes and forests, the team has found. Marten Scheffer, an ecologist at the
University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, said, "Models have predicted this, but
only in recent years has enough evidence accumulated to tell us that resilience
of many important ecosystems has become undermined to the point that even
the slightest disturbance can make them collapse."
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*Warming Advantage Extensions*
Warming Advantage – Link
SWITCHGRASS ETHANOL SOLVES WARMING – MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ALL

PREVIOUS BIOFUELS
BBC 8
Ethanol from Switchgrass releases 94 percent less co2 than Oil, Lexis
Using switchgrass as the source of biofuels cuts emissions 94% compared with petrol,
according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Also, switchgrass derived ethanol produces 540% more energy than required to
collect it. The study involved 10 farms, and is described as the largest of its kind. A
report last year suggested switchgrass only produces 343% of the energy required to
collect it."A lot of their information was based on small plot data and also estimates of
what would be needed in the agronomic production of biofuels," coauthor Dr Vogel
explained. "We had on-farm trials, so we had all the data from the farmers on all the
inputs needed to produce the crops,” including nitrogen fertiliser, herbicides, diesel and
seed production.The process to produce ethanol from switchgrass is more complex than
producing ethanol from corn, but the product, 2nd generation “cellulosic” ethanol, yields
much more energy.Burning biofuels produces greenhouse gases, but producing the
plants absorbs a comparable amount. However, other factors make the fuel rarely
carbon neutral. Switchgrass may be an exception."Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of
ethanol from switchgrass, using only the displacement method, showed 88% less GHG
emissions than conventional ethanol," the researchers wrote.
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CORN ETHANOL INCREASES CO2 WHILE LOW-INPUT HIGH-DIVERSITY ETHANOL

REDUCE CO2 MUCH GREATER
Tilman, Hill and Lehman 6
David, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Jason,
Department of Applied Economics, Ecolgy, Evolution and Behavior, University of
Minnesota, Clarence, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of
Minnesota, Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass,
Science Magazine 8 December
Across their full life cycles, biofuels can be carbon neutral [no net effect on atmospheric
CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG)], carbon negative (net reduction in GHG), or
carbon sources (net increase in GHG), depending on both how much CO2 and other
greenhouse gases, expressed as CO2 equivalents, are removed from or released into the
atmosphere during crop growth and how much fossil CO2 is released in biofuel
production. Both corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel are net carbon sources but do have
12% and 41% lower net GHG emissions, respectively, than combustion of the gasoline
and diesel they displace (14). In contrast, LIHD biofuels are carbon negative, leading to
net sequestration of atmospheric CO2 across the full life cycle of biofuel production and
combustion (table S3). LIHD biomass removed and sequestered more atmospheric CO2
than was released from fossil fuel combustion during agriculture, transportation, and
processing (0.32 Mg ha–1 year–1 of CO2), with net life cycle sequestration of 4.1 Mg ha–1
year–1 of CO2 for the first decade and an estimated 2.7 to 3 Mg ha–1 year–1 for
subsequent decades. GHG reductions from use of LIHD biofuels in lieu of gasoline and
diesel fuel are from 6 to 16 times greater than those from use of corn grain ethanol and
soybean biodiesel in lieu of fossil fuels (Fig. 3A).
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CELLULOSIC ETHANOL CAN SOLVE MANY OF THE PROBLEM THAT ARE CAUSED
BY FOSSIL FUEL USAGE INCLUDING GLOBAL WARMING
UCS 6-25-08 (Union of Concerned Scientists: Citizens and Scientists for Environmental
Solutions, “Alternative Fuels: the Truth About Ethanol,”
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/fuel_economy/ethanol-frequently-asked-
questions.html)
Cellulosic ethanol can reduce lifecycle global warming emissions by as

much as 80 to 90 percent compared with gasoline. Cellulosic materials
require less fertilizer to grow and require less land in order to produce an
equivalent amount of fuel. Additionally, the non-fermentable parts of the
plant can be used as combustible fuel in place of fossil fuels. However, if
cellulosic ethanol is made from crops that compete with food crops for land, indirect
changes in land use can reduce or eliminate the benefits of cellulosic ethanol. In
order for cellulosic ethanol to achieve its potential, we need to make good choices
about how and where the cellulosic materials are grown.
SOLVES GLOBAL WARMING AND AVOIDS CREATING ANOTHER PROBLEM THAT

RESULTS BY USING CORN
Butterfield 1-30-08 (G.K.Butterfield, Democratic Representative from N.C., “The Promise

of Cellulosic Ethanol, The Hill, http://thehill.com/op-eds/the-promise-of-cellulosic-ethanol-
2008-01-30.html)
Conversion to cellulosic ethanol also requires less fossil fuel, so it would

have a greater impact than corn ethanol on reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. Also, an acre of grasses or other crops grown specifically to
make ethanol could produce more than two times the number of gallons of
ethanol as an acre of corn, in part because the whole plant can be used instead of just the grain.
The technology and infrastructure are still in the early phases but there is a great deal of promise. The Department of Energy (DOE) will soon award up to $200 million
over five years to fund up to 10 plants that demonstrate different cellulosic production methods. That’s in addition to the $385 million DOE has awarded to build six
commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants, and about $400 million to fund basic research into bioenergy at three research centers.
In diversifying our
To best serve our future, Congress should embrace an aggressive approach to the production of cellulosic biofuels.
nation’s energy supplies and meeting the challenges of global warming we

must avoid solving one problem only to create another.
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Warming Advantage – Ethics MPX
THE ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY OF WARMING REQUIRES THAT WE TRANSITION AWAY

FROM CURRENT TRENDS IN POLICY MAKING – WE MUST ORIENT OUR ETHICAL
QUESTIONS TOWARDS THE EFFECTS OF A TRANSFORMING CLIMATE ON THE
MOST VULNERABLE NATIONS IN THE WORLD – THIS ETHIC ASSURES WE
PREVENT THE ANNIHILATION OF THE OPPRESSED
Gordon Professor of Law at Villinova 2007 Ruth University of Colorado Law Review fall
lexis
There is no longer any question that the earth's climate is warming. We can, and must,
continue to question and ponder the rate of this transformation, as well as the potential
effects on different parts of the planet. The debate as to whether this shift is actually
underway, however, is over. n1 It is just as certain that anthropogenic forces are at the root
of this change. [*1560] Nevertheless, even as the dire, and more ominously unpredictable,
consequences of climate change become increasingly evident, it is equally apparent that
humankind is hesitant to take the kind of decisive action that will halt this probable
disaster. n2 For example, take the case of the United States, which is the leading emitter of the greenhouse gases that are at the
heart of this impending calamity and thus in the position to have the greatest impact in reversing global warming. America has
chosen to stand on the sidelines, as other nations undertake measures that are likely to
be inadequate but certainly superior to not acting at all. n3 There is a rich literature on this somewhat
surprising and quite remarkable lack of action by nations such as the United States, n4 as well as an extensive literature on the Kyoto
Protocol, which is the legal instrument embodying the very modest steps the international community has managed to agree upon
thus far. n5 Indeed, this paper will briefly consider aspects of the diverse and generally inadequate international response to this
enormous and quite complex problem. These issues will then be explored from the perspective of the true subjects of this essay -
the nations of the South, and especially the poorest and most vulnerable members of
this part of the international community, the segment now sometimes termed the "Fourth World."
Unfortunately, these nations are between a proverbial enormous rock and an exceedingly hard
place. Impoverished, small Third World nations are among the most vulnerable to the effects of
global warming, while simultaneously being in the weakest position to halt its progress.
Their vulnerability in [*1561] the inevitable advance toward a warmer planet is part and
parcel of their overall weakness within the international system. n6 In this instance,
however, the consequences may be annihilation, in the case of small island states and the indigenous
communities of the North, or a slow death in ecologically vulnerable and technologically lacking
low-income nations.
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THIS ETHICAL POSTURE IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS COMFORTABLY CRITICIZING

POVERTY – EQUALITY IN ENVIRONMENT IS A BASIC AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT
WHICH RESPONDS TO GENERAL DEGRADATION OF SOCIAL SPACES
Burkett Associate Prof University of Colorado Law 2008 Maxine Buffalo Law Review April
lexis
From the environmental justice perspective, geography is destiny, and the right to a flourishing
environment is a basic human right. n85 Depressed spaces, both rural and urban, will
determine the educational attainment and economic prosperity of their citizens. n86 As
they lag behind the rest of the nation in these public welfare indicators, they will also lag in their
access to environmental health and amenities. In other words, the limits inherent in
population growth, industrialization, pollution, and resource depletion are borne
unequally by poor and of-color communities. n87 The poor and politically powerless are
"confined to national environmental sacrifice areas" throughout the nation, including Navajo or
Western Shoshone lands, Chester, Pennsylvania, and Cancer Alley, Louisiana. n88
These disadvantages are not solely associated with [*190] poverty. n89 Environmental
risks are elevated for middle-class African-Americans, Latinas/os, and Asian-Americans.
n90 The risk more accurately tracks differences in access to power. Though the quality
and quantity of these risks decline as income rises, "in both public and private arenas ...
power disparities drive outcome disparities - and the resulting patterns reflect race and
ethnicity as well as wealth." n91 The causes of the disproportionate effects are manifold
and include racism, inadequate healthcare, limited access to environmental information,
and the simple lack of sufficient political influence. n92
Environmental justice acknowledges and further unveils these environment-based inequities. As
David Pellow and Robert J. Brulle describe, "the environmental justice (EJ) movement is a political response to
the deterioration of the conditions of everyday life as society reinforces existing social
inequalities while exceeding the [*191] limits to growth." n93
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THESE ARE THE MOST CERTAIN IMPACTS – EVEN IF WARMING DOESN’T CAUSE
LARGE SCALE IMPACTS FOR THE WESTERN WORLD – OUR SCENARIOS ARE
CERTAIN FOR THE UNDER-REPRESENTED
Gordon Professor of Law at Villinova 2007 Ruth University of Colorado Law Review fall
lexis
It is impossible to state the countless possible results of a warmer planet with absolute
certainty, and this uncertainty has been used to deny that global warming is transpiring.
n64 What is certain, however, is that the impact will be diverse, multitudinous, and largely
negative. Indeed, perhaps we should be humbled by what we do not know and cannot
anticipate, simply because it is impossible to predict what will transpire in a system as
complex as our climate and the systems it supports and nurtures. Nonetheless, climatologists
predict that climate change will have varying and uneven consequences, many that may be undesirable and some that could be
It is also certain that Third World peoples will generally be the first peoples
devastating. n65
affected, will endure the most challenging effects, and be the least equipped to handle
them. n66
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NO ETHICAL PRINCIPLE JUSTIFIES THE INEQUALITY OF CLIMATE CHANGE –

MITIGATION IS THE UTMOST ETHICAL IMPERATIVE BECAUSE IT IS THE ONLY
THING THAT ADDRESS STRUCTURAL INJUSTICE
lexis
The emerging field of "climate justice" is concerned with the intersection of race,
poverty, and climate change. It takes, as a basic premise, that the disadvantaged in the
[*193] United States stand to suffer the risks of warming more severely than others, as do
their counterparts in the global South. Climate justice also recognizes the direct kinship
between social inequality and environmental degradation, which is not isolated to the
global south. The most obvious example is the relatively ubiquitous siting of industrial power plants in environmental justice
communities, negatively affecting the public health and welfare of those who live in proximity while greatly contributing to global
warming. n102
As an ethical matter, an aggressive mitigation approach is virtually mandatory in light of
the existing and predicted effects of climate change. n103 Extensive greenhouse gas
emissions are a result of industrialization, and the byproduct of this lifestyle is great social, economic, and ecological
destruction, unevenly distributed. The response of the industrialized world, however,
suggests blindness to the moral imperative at base. n104 That it is wrong to harm
[*194] others, or risk harming others, for one's own gain is a universal ethical principle.
n105 Paul Baer argues that the immorality of such action is justified by many moral frameworks, "from divine revelation to
deontological ethics to social contract theory," if not common(sense) morality. n106 Further, the tenets of distributive justice make
similar demands regarding immediate and aggressive mitigation. Donald Brown argues,
because distributive justice demands that the burdens of reducing a problem either be
shared equally or based upon merit or deservedness, there is no conceivable equitably
based formula that would allow the United States to continue to emit at existing levels once
it is understood that steep reductions are called for. n107
There is no plausible argument that merit and deservedness should favor the United States. Instead, the historical impacts
of the lifestyle of the wealthy on the less well-off militate in favor of distribution bending
steeply in favor of the poor.
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DECREASING US CONSUMPTION IS AN ETHICAL IMPERATIVE – FORCING OTHERS

TO EXPERIENCE THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTION IS THE LARGEST
POSSIBLE IMPACT
lexis
U.S. patterns of consumption historically, and certainly today, introduce a particularly strong
obligation for aggressively confronting climate change domestically. The utterly
unsustainable nature of American consumption cannot be overstated. n108 Presidents to
oilmen have straight- [*195] forwardly articulated the excesses of American lifestyle. In
1997, President Clinton noted that the United States had less than five percent of the world's population, while having twenty-two
percent of the world's wealth and emitting more than twenty-five percent of the world's greenhouse gases. n109 In 2006, Shell Oil
Company President John Hofmeister stated that the "United States has 4.5 percent of the world's population but uses 25 percent of
That this is a
the world's oil and gas, and there needs to be a cultural or "behavioral change' toward the use of energy." n110
result of lifestyle excesses, relative to our global counterparts, is undeniable.
For those who are not immediately convinced, however, Simon Caney lays out a persuasive ethical frame, which I will briefly
summarize here. Caney argues that current consumption of fossil fuels is unjust because it generates
outcomes in which people's fundamental interests are unprotected and, as such,
undermines certain key rights. n111 As a baseline, Caney establishes that "[a] person has a right to X when X is a
fundamental interest that is weighty enough to impose obligations." n112 The effects of global climate change
damage a person's interests. Caney then asks, "Might the interests in "not suffering from climate change' be trumped
by the interests in "using natural resources to support oneself'?" n113 He argues that the level of greenhouse gas
emissions to "support oneself" would not in itself cause harmful climate change. Of course,
supporting oneself in reality only involves keeping warm, growing crops, and other essential activities, according to Caney. The
climate endangering activities are far more peripheral. He contends: "What do contribute to
dangerous climate change are the fossil-fuel intensive practices of the highly [*196]
affluent industrialized world; and it is certainly possible to cut back on many of their high
emission activities without compromising the fundamental interests invoked by the
objection." n114
He continues, arguing that with "the relatively trivial nature of many climate endangering activities, it is fair to conclude that
adequate protection of the interest in not suffering from the ill-effects of global climate
change does not impose unduly demanding obligations on others." n115 This is true, particularly in
light of unfettered global warming.
According to Caney, therefore, the appropriate response to global climate change is to "engage[] in
a policy of "mitigation,'" to cut back on fossil fuels, in other words. n116 Cutting back on energy-inefficient cars, reducing
the volume of air travel, eliminating poor building insulation, decreasing transportation of goods, and using renewable
energy sources are a compromise of interests that seem insignificant in light of the
fundamental interests at stake for most. n117 Even if, theoretically, the United States determined
that the danger posed by existing climate change trends was acceptable to it, Donald Brown
persuasively insists that "the question remains what right exists to unilaterally impose dangerous
threats on the most vulnerable." n118 The United States must give the most vulnerable -
including those within its own borders, I argue - an opportunity to concur with current
American interpretations of acceptable dangers. n119 Even putting this [*197]
opportunity aside, severely compromising the fundamental interests of the poor and EJ
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communities carries its own significant obligation.
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*Dead Zones Extensions*
Dead Zones Link
USAGE OF PESTICIDES AND WATER ARE HIGH IN CURRENT ETHANOL

PRODUCTION.
Josh Tickell, one of the nation’s leading experts on alternative fuels, author, and
researcher. “Who Ate My Tortillas? The Truth About Food vs. Fuel.” The Huffington Post.
7/6/2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-tickell/who-ate-my-tortillas----
t_b_110827.html
So, who is to blame for the increasing cost of corn? Many fingers point to biofuels,
especially ethanol, the alcohol fuel predominantly made from corn in the US. Ethanol is
generally sold blended into gasoline. It is blended in ratios as low as 5% but recently,
there has been a national push for more "E85" or 85% ethanol blended with 15%
gasoline. Unlike other biofuels such as butanol or biodiesel, ethanol is derived from the
food portion of the crop. As corn prices have skyrocketed, the wisdom of making fuel
from food has been put under an increasingly unforgiving microscope. So how does this
"wonder crop" really stack up? Corn is a low-yielding crop requiring an extraordinary
amount of pesticides and fertilizer. The National Corn Growers Association estimates
that 597,388 gallons of water are required per year to grow an acre of corn (7). In
addition, three to four gallons of water are required to make a single gallon of ethanol,
once the crop has been harvested (1). And then there is the pollution. According to a
University of Minnesota study, "when you look at the entire life-cycle of ethanol --
from growing to harvest to processing to combustion -- burning E85 (85
percent ethanol) as fuel actually produces more carbon monoxide, volatile
organics, particulates, and oxides of sulfur and nitrogen than an energy-
equivalent amount of gasoline (2) [...]". However you cut it: ethanol from corn is
wasteful. Many claim that corn ethanol is energy negative: that means that for each unit
of energy you put into making the fuel, you get only one unit or less back in the final
product. (This is not true for other fuels, such as biodiesel from soy, which is energy
positive and requires significantly less input.) The exorbitant amount of pesticides
used in corn production has lead to a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico. Nitrogen
and phosphate-based (read: petroleum-based) pesticides and fertilizers are used to
stimulate growth in the corn plants. The compounds that are not absorbed
subsequently trickle to neighboring creeks, rivers, and ultimately into the Mississippi
River and into the Gulf. Just as fertilizers promote growth in plants, they also promote
growth of algae in this region. The algal blooms deplete the oxygen supply, making it
impossible for any other plants or species to exist there. In 2005, National Geographic
reported that the lifeless span of water in the Gulf of Mexico was almost the size of New
Jersey, ranging 5,000 - 8,000-plus square miles (10).
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Dead Zones Link
POOR FARMING PRACTICES ARE THE ROOT CAUSE

IATP 2
HYPOXIA IN THE GULF OF MEXICO: A GROWING PROBLEM, Institute for Agricultural and
Trade Policy, Online
Yet the root of the hypoxia problem is an overabundance of corn and

soybean production in the Midwest. Farmers need profitable alternative
crops with accessible markets. If opportunities are available, farmers will
take advantage of them. Current farm policies provide government support
and reduced financial risk for only a few “program” crops. Instead, we need
to promote policies that shift the focus to a diversified agricultural system.
WITHOUT THE PLAN, HYPOXIC ZONES ARE INEVITABLE

Mitsch 98
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS FOR GULF OF MEXICO’S “DEAD ZONE” EXPLORED,
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hypoxia.htm
“
Hypoxia may be a standard of living issue,” he said. “If we decide not to cut back on our
pesticides and fertilizers, we may not be able to solve the problem.” The main problem,
he added, comes from farming. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 56
percent of the nitrogen entering the Gulf is from fertilizer runoff.
SPECIES WON’T RECOVER

Melville 7
Kate, Limited Resources The Key To Biodiversity?,
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070225202426data_trunc_sys.shtml
"In essence, the data in the article strongly supports a new explanation for why the world
contains so many species," said UM's David Tilman. "It shows that plant diversity is
directly related to the number of limiting factors [such as soil moisture, nitrogen,
phosphorous, potassium and water]." Tilman's study helps explain why grasslands, lakes
and rivers that are polluted with agricultural runoff have fewer species. Where the
Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico is perhaps the best known example of
this phenomenon. The experiments were carried out at the University of California's
Sedgwick Reserve in the Santa Ynez Valley but the results were also analyzed in context
with the 150 year old Rothamsted Park Grass Experiment. "Our results show that the loss
of plant species from a habitat due to nutrient pollution can persist for more than 100
years," said co-researcher Stanley Harpole. "Human actions that simplify habitats can
lead to long-term loss of biodiversity."
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Dead Zones Link
DEMAND FOR ETHANOL IS KILLING FISH IN THE GULF VIA THE HYPOXIA
The Washington Post April 22, 2008 (Lester Brown and Johnathan Lewis, “Ethanol’s
failed promise,” lexis)
Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples,
leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm. Here in
the United States, farmers are pulling land out of the federal conservation
program, threatening fragile habitats. Increased agricultural production also
means increased fertilizer use. The National Academy of Sciences reported last
month that meeting the congressional food-to-fuel mandate by 2022 would lead
to a 10 to 19 percent increase in the size of the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" -- an
area so polluted by fertilizer runoff that no aquatic life can survive there.
INCREASING DEAD ZONES RISK THE GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM.

The Philadelphia Inquirer September 12, 2006 (“Editorial | We’re Killing Our Oceans;
Seas without life,” lexis)
Increasingly, scientists say, beneath the dependable tides lie signs of serious
trouble. Overfishing, destruction of wetlands, agricultural runoff, industrial
pollution, and climate change are destroying the ocean ecosystem. Each year,
more evidence mounts that "what we once considered inexhaustible and resilient
is, in fact, finite and fragile." That's what the Pew Oceans Commission concluded
in 2003, seconded the following year by the government-funded U.S. Commission
on Ocean Policy. The news continues to be bad: Large-scale agriculture and
coastal development produce nitrogen- and phosphorus-rich runoff that
contributes to "dead zones" as large as Massachusetts in places like the Gulf of
Mexico. Devoid of oxygen, the zones kill fish and shellfish while promoting growth
of harmful algae.
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Dead Zones - AT: Oceans Resilient
HUMAN ACTIVITY PREVENTS OCEAN RESILIENCY
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Dead Zones - AT: Oceans Resilient
SMALL ISSUES SPILLOVER
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Dead Zones - Invisible Threshold
THERE IS AN INVISIBLE THRESHOLD FOR OCEANIC BIODIVERSITY

Pew Oceans Commissions 3
Leona E. Panetta, Chair, America’s Living Oceans – Charting a Course for Sea Change, May, www. Pewoceans.org
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Dead Zones – Fish Extinction Impact
EXTINCTION OF FISH FROM AGRICHEMICALS KILLS BILLIONS
Wilkinson 2007
Marian, Environment Editor for Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Population pressure
takes earth to limits
Lexis, October 26
THE most authoritative scientific report on the planet's health has found water, land, air, plants,
animals and fish stocks are all in "inexorable decline" as 2007 became the first year in
human history when most of the world's population lived in cities.The United Nations'
Global Environment Outlook-4 report, released in New York, reveals a scale of
unprecedented ecological damage, with more than 2 million people possibly dying
prematurely of air pollution and close to 2 billion likely to suffer absolute water scarcity
by 2025.Put bluntly, the report warns that the 6.75 billion world population, "has reached a stage
where the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available".And it says climate
change, the collapse of fish stocks and the extinction of species "may threaten humanity's very surviva
l". Launching the report, the head of the UN's Environment Program, Achim Steiner, warned that, "without an accelerated effort to reform the way we collectively do business
on planet earth, we will shortly be in trouble, if indeed we are not already".One of the most disturbing findings is that environmental exposures are now causing almost one
quarter of all diseases including respiratory disease, cancers, and emerging animal-to-human disease transfer.Pressure on the global water supply has also become a serious
threat to human development as the demand for irrigated crops soars. The report estimates that only one in 10 of the world's major rivers reaches the sea all year round because
of upstream irrigation demands.Each person's "environmental footprint" has on average grown to 22 hectares of the planet but the report estimates the 'biological carrying
, fish stocks, a key protein source for several billion people, ar

capacity" is somewhere' between 15 and 16 hectares per person.Critically
e in crisis.
Some 30 per cent of global fish stocks are classed as "collapsed" and 40 per
cent are described as "over-exploited".Exploitation of land for agriculture has massively increased
as population and living standards rise. A hectare of land that once produced 1.8 tonnes of
crops in 1987 now produces 2.5 tonnes. But that rise in productivity has been made
possible by a greater use of fertilisers and water leading to land degradation and
pollution."The food security of two-thirds of the world's people depends on fertilisers,
especially nitrogen," the report explains.In turn, the nutrients running off farmland are increasi
ngly causing algal blooms and in the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea have created huge "dead zones" wit
hout oxygen.The report estimates that all species, including animals and plants, are becoming extinct
at rates 100 times faster than those shown from the past in fossil records. The main causes include
land clearing for agriculture, over-exploitation and pollution. Of the major species
assessed, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are under threat of
extinction.
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*Oil Extensions*
Oil Advantage – Link
BIOFUELS CAP OIL PRICES – DISCOURAGE CARTEL OVERTAKE

Hausmann 7
Ricardo, director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development, Financial
Times, Lexis
Third, even if only partially used, this large potential biofuels supply will cap the price
of oil because its supply is much more elastic than the supply of oil. This will cause the
price of oil to be set at the marginal cost of bio-energy, independently of the
production decisions of Opec. If Opec tries to raise prices above the price at which
biofuels become highly profitable, it will only crowd in more biofuels. Oil producers
will still be rich, but they will not have incentives to form a cartel.
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CELLULOSE ETHANOL KEY TO SOLVE OIL DEPENDENCE

Genomics 8
Cellulosic Ethanol: Benefits and Challenges,
http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/benefits.shtml
Today the United States is dependent on oil for transportation. Developing domestic
sources of renewable energy is essential to ensuring national security. America accounts
for 25% of global oil consumption yet holds only 3% of the world's known oil reserves.
About 60% of known oil reserves are found in sensitive and volatile regions of the globe.
Increasing strain on world oil supply is expected as developing countries become more
industrialized and use more energy. Any strategy to reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil
will involve a mix of energy technologies including conservation. Biofuels are an
attractive option to be part of that mix because biomass is a domestic, secure, and
abundant feedstock. In addition, fuels from biomass are the only renewable liquid-fuel
alternatives to today's petroleum-based transportation fuels. Global availability of
biomass feedstocks also would provide an international alternative to dependence on an
increasingly strained oil-distribution system as well as a ready market for biofuel-
production technologies.
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PLAN SOLVES MIDDLE EASTERN OIL DEPENDENCE

Affairs, Proquest
OIL IS a magnet for conflict. The problem is simple-everyone needs energy, but the sources of
the world's transportation fuel are concentrated in relatively few countries. Well over two-
thirds of the world's remaining oil reserves lie in the Middle East (including the Caspian basin), leaving the
rest of the world dependent on the region's collection of predators and vulnerable autocrats. This
unwelcome dependence keeps U.S. military forces tied to the Persian Gulf, forces foreign
policy compromises, and sinks many developing nations into staggering debt as they
struggle to pay for expensive dollar-denominated oil with lowerpriced commodities and
agricultural products. In addition, oil causes environmental conflict. The possibility that
greenhouse gases will lead to catastrophic climate change is substantially increased by
the 4o million barrels of oil burned every day by vehicles. Ethanol has always provided an
alternative to gasoline. In terms of environmental impact and fuel efficiency, its advantages over gasoline
substantially outweigh its few disadvantages. But until now it has only been practical to produce ethanol
from a tiny portion of plant life-the edible parts of corn or other feed grains. Corn prices have fluctuated
around $100 a ton in the last few years, ranging from half to double that amount. Ethanol has thus been
too expensive to represent anything but a small, subsidized niche of the transportation fuel market. In
spite of recent reductions in the expense of ethanol processing, the final product still costs roughly a dollar
a gallon, or about double today's wholesale price of gasoline. Recent and prospective
breakthroughs in genetic engineering and processing, however, are radically changing the
viability of ethanol as a transportation fuel. New biocatalysts-genetically engineered enzymes,
yeasts, and bacteria-are making it possible to use virtually any plant or plant product (known as cellulosic
biomass) to produce ethanol. This may decisively reduce cost-to the point where petroleum products would
face vigorous competition. The best analogy to this potential cost reduction is the
cracking of the petroleum molecule in the early twentieth century. This let an
increasingly large share of petroleum be used in producing highperformance gasoline, thus reducing waste
and lowering cost enough that gasoline could fuel this century's automotive revolution. Genetically
engineered biocatalysts and new processing techniques can similarly make it possible to
utilize most plant matter, rather than a tiny fraction thereof, as fuel. Cellulosic biomass
is extremely plentiful. As it comes to be used to produce competitively priced ethanol, it will
democratize the world's fuel market. If the hundreds of billions of dollars that now flow
into a few coffers in a few nations were to flow instead to the millions of people who till
the world's fields, most countries would see substantial national security, economic, and
environmental benefits.
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*Solvency Extensions*
Solvency – Companies Say Yes
COMPANIES WILL ACCEPT INCENTIVES – THEY SUPPORT FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

INCENTIVES
Greer 5
tm
John Sheehan of National Renewable Energy Laboratory has been utilizing process
simulation software to look at biorefinery design. "Scale is a huge issue," said Sheehan.
"The cost of capital is extremely scale specific." He has discovered that biorefineries
need to be able to process 5,000 to 10,000 tons of biomass per day to be economically
viable. "Below 2,000 tons per day, capital costs skyrocket." "Capital is a problem," says
Brent Erikson, Vice President of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). "Nobody
has constructed a commercial size biorefinery. They cost between $200 and $250 million
to build." Erickson's group is trying to facilitate funding of commercial biorefineries. "We
have a proposal sent to the White House for federal loan guarantees to build these
biorefineries," comments Erikson. The proposal requests upwards of $750 million in loan
guarantees for full-scale commercial plants.
COMPANIES WILL USE INCENTIVES TO PROMOTE CELLULOSE ETHANOL

DEVELOPMENT
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Solvency – Long-Term Incentives
LONG-TERM INCENTIVES ARE NECESSARY FOR CONSISTENT CELLULOSE

DEVELOPMENT
Gillam 8
Carey, More incentives needed for cellulosic ethanol,
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN1629003120080616?pageNumber=1&virtualBr
andChannel=0
The U.S. government needs to ante up more in loan guarantees to convince

lenders to back commercial development of cellulosic ethanol, Verenium Corp (VRNM.O:
Quote, Profile, Research) Chairman Carlos Riva said on Monday. Riva said the 5-year U.S.
farm law enacted last month was a good start in boosting cellulosic technology, which
aims to produce large quantities of ethanol for fuel from switchgrass, crop residues and
other plant cellulose wastes. Ethanol in the United States is now mostly made from corn.
The new farm law provides $320 million in loan guarantees for the next two years for
construction of cellulosic refineries. But an additional $150 million may be allocated if
lawmakers are able to find the funding. But Riva said a moderately sized plant costs
more than $150 million, so more guarantees are needed if the fledgling industry is to
meet a renewable fuel standard goal of producing 16 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol
by 2022. "They need to give a helping hand ... so the commercial lending industry can
get involved. To meet the mandate ... we need a greater focus, more support," Riva
said in an interview on the sidelines of the BIO International Convention.
"It's going to be very difficult to convince a commercial bank to take the technical risk
associated with the new technology," he added.
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Solvency – Long-Term Incentives
LONG-TERM INCENTIVES SOLVE

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Solvency – Second Generation Key
SECOND GENERATION BIOFUELS SOLVE WITHOUT RISKING FOOD PRICE HIKES

Tong 8
June 7, PhD, chief executive of the Molecular Plant Breeding CRC, Biofuels need not eat
into food stocks, The Age, Lexis
DURING World War II, legendary BHP chief executive Essington Lewis was put in charge
of all Australia's munitions production to meet the unique challenges of the war effort. It
is arguable that business needs to be mobilised today to help combat global warming
while not adversely affecting world food supplies. Recent media reports have
highlighted the problem of rising food prices around the world, especially in developing
countries. Just like fossil fuels, arable land is a finite resource and competition between
growing crops for food and for fuel presents ethical questions. Developing countries
assert that rich countries, in their hurry to respond to global warming, are driving up food
prices by encouraging the use of crops to produce biofuels rather than feed people. In
the US, most of the rise in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 was used for
biofuels production. According to the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report,
about a quarter of a tonne of corn - enough to feed a person for a year - is needed to
produce 100 litres of ethanol, enough to fill the tank of an SUV once. UN Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon recently called for an investigation of biofuels as he fears that their
proliferation will compromise world food stocks. One of his officials went so far as to
declare that biofuels were a "crime against humanity". The reality is that biofuels can be
part of the response to the climate change challenge without reducing food production.
And business can play a key role. The focus must be on second-generation biofuels
that use crop residues like stalks and husks rather than the grain itself, leaving food
stocks unaffected. But much more research is needed.
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Solvency – Incentives Key
INCENTIVES ARE KEY TO PROMOTE 2ND GENERATION ETHANOL DEVELOPMENT

Tong 8
June 7, PhD, chief executive of the Molecular Plant Breeding CRC, Biofuels need not eat
into food stocks, The Age, Lexis
The Molecular Plant Breeding Co-operative Research Centre has technologies that could
make the use of wheat straw as a feedstock for bioethanol a reality. If ethanol can be produced from wheat
straw cheaply and efficiently, it would be a plentiful and easy solution to our renewable energy challenges. But a lot of investment over
many years will be required to crystallise this opportunity. Demand for

bioethanol will soon likely far exceed supply if the industry is confined to using only first-
generation, starch-based ethanol production. Business has had some involvement in this sector but it can play an even greater
role. The Queensland Government's recent $5 million investment in a sugar cane bioethanol research centre together with Syngenta and an Australian company, Farmacule, is a
step in the right direction. The dream of having a viable and sustainable biofuels industry in Australia is not new. In the early 1980s Shell developed a pilot ethanol scheme in Far
North Queensland. The difference is we now have the biotechnological tools to make it a reality. Business, of course, is used to long lead times in investment.
Manufacturing plants can take three to five years before they start production and many
more years to achieve their maiden profit. The North West Shelf resources project had a lead time of a decade or more. The forerunner
of Orica, ICI Australia, had a large research department at Ascot Vale and many new chemicals and industrial products that went on to benefit the community in several ways
were developed there after long years of research. The Rudd Government needs to encourage corporate Australia to further develop biofuels for the national good. This is already
being done via substantial government financial assistance in the form of large subsidies for biofuels in the US and Europe. But support for the Australian biofuels sector is very
Like any other innovative technology, enormous start-up costs are

meagre by comparison.
associated with the development of biofuels. And, just as the Federal Government
provides financial incentives and support to a range of other community and business
areas, it is logical that greater incentives be provided to develop the all-important
biofuels sector.
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Solvency – Incentives Key
INCENTIVES SOLVE BEST

Dale 7
Bruce, TESTIMONY BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE, PhD,
Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science Michigan State University
How can we be sure that our nation’s farmers and farm communities benefit
from cellulosic ethanol? If they are simply suppliers of raw materials to others
who process the raw materials to fuels, farmers probably will not do very well.
We need research, policies, technologies, supply chains and business
models that help farmers: 1) supply low cost cellulosic biomass and 2)
participate financially in the processing, thereby capturing some of the added
value. Our research, energy, agricultural, environmental and tax policies will
need to be properly coordinated to accomplish this…a tall order. Regarding
tax policy, which falls under your jurisdiction, we need incentives to
encourage the collection of cellulosic materials, the planting of relevant crops
and the development of the first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plants.
These steps will maximize our country’s ability to produce this alternative fuel
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Solvency – Yes Feasible
THE PLAN IS FEASIBLE – DOESN’T REQUIRE HIGH-YIELDS OR A TON OF LAND

Dale 6
Bruce, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State University, Impacts of
How can we start on the road to this promis-

ing future? Is there enough biomass to get this industry going in the
absence of high yield biomass crops and large acreages devoted to cel-
lulosic ethanol? Yes, there is. A recent comprehensive study by the
Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture identifies
a sustainable supply of about 1.3 billion tons per year of biomass
available in the near to mid term with proper management practices.
The energy value of this much biomass is very nearly equal to 3.5 bil-
lion barrels of oil, which happens to be the energy content of the
most oil the United States has ever produced in one year.
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Solvency – Federal Government Key
FEDERAL ACTION IS NECESSARY

-changes in federal tax code
-federal commitment spurs private sector R & D
Affairs, Proquest
WHILE THE private sector will provide the capital and motivation to move toward ethanol,the federal
government has a vital role to play. Market forces seldom reflect national security risks,
environmental issues, or other social concerns. The private sector often cannot fund long-term
research, despite its demonstrated potential for dramatic innovation. Hence, the federal government
must increase its investment in renewable energy research, particularly in innovative
programs such as genetic engineering of biocatalysts, development of dedicated energy crops, and
improved processing. The very small sums previously invested by the Departments of
Energy and Agriculture have already spawned dramatic advances. Every effort should be
made to expand competitive, merit-based, and peer-reviewed science and to encourage research that cuts
across scientific disciplines. Research is essential to produce the innovations and technical
improvements that will lower the production costs of ethanol and other renewable fuels and let
them compete directly with gasoline. At present, the United States is not funding a vigorous program in
renewable technologies. The Department of Energy spends under two percent of its budget on renewable
fuels; its overall work on renewable technologies is at its lowest level in 30 years. Because private
investment often follows federal commitment, industrial research and development has
also reached new lows. These disturbing trends occur at a time of national economic prosperity when
America has both time and resources for investing in biofuels. The United States cannot afford to wait for
the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources. Research alone will not
suffice to realize cellulosic ethanol's promise. The federal government should also modify
the tax code to spur private investment. The existing renewable alcohol tax credits have recently
been extended by Congress through 2007-which will help the growth of the new biofuels industry and offer
some protection in the transition from grain to cellulosic biomass. But the tax credit structure
should facilitate the gradual adoption of cellulosic ethanol-in time, it should not
need subsidies. Government incentives to produce FFVS should also be increased.
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Solvency – US Modeled
US CELLULOSE ETHANOL PRODUCTION WILL BE MODELED BY DEVELOPING

COUNTRIES
Affairs, Proquest
To BE politically and economically acceptable, changes in fuel must be understood by the American public
to be affordable and not disruptive. Most other countries require the same tough criteria-U.S.
difficulties in convincing developing nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are
directly related to the cost and the damage this would have on their development plans.
But if one of the most effective ways to reduce greenhouse emissions also produced an
improved balance-of-payments deficit and opportunities for rural development, economic
benefits would suddenly far exceed the costs. The political acceptability of reducing
emissions changes substantially when the economics change. A shift to biomass
fuels stands out as an excellent way to introduce an environmentally friendly energy
technology that has a chance of both enjoying widespread political and economic
support and having a decisive impact on the risk of climate change. Renewable fuels
produced from plants are an outstanding way to substantially reduce greenhouse gases.
Although burning ethanol releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it is essentially the same carbon
dioxide that was fixed by photosynthesis when the plants grew. Burning fossil fuels, on the other hand,
releases carbon dioxide that otherwise would have stayed trapped beneath the earth.
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US ACTION AND PARTICIPATION IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS KEY TO

REDUCE EMISSIONS GLOBALLY
Biden 6
Biden 5/23/06 chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [Sen. Joseph R.
Biden: Time for U.S. to Re-Engage in Global Warming Negotiations,
http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=256059]
WASHINGTON, DC – Today the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee called on the
Bush Administration to reverse course on global warming and return the United States to
a leadership role in international climate change negotiations. In a major restatement of the Senate’s position on
international climate treaties, the bipartisan resolution – co-authored by Senators Joe Biden (D-DE) and Dick Lugar (R-ID) – calls global warming a threat to international stability as
well as a risk to the environment and our economy. “The scientific evidence is clear: we need to take significant steps toward worldwide reduction of greenhouse gases to avoid
permanently altering our climate,” said Biden. “As a parent, I am worried we’re leaving our children and grandchildren a global warming problem they won’t be able to stop or
stabilize. I believe the Senate is ready to take a stand.” Prior to the Kyoto meetings in 1997, the Senate adopted a resolution setting severe restrictions on U.S. participation in
Lugar-Biden
any international treaty addressing climate change. That resolution is often cited as the last Senate position on the issue. In contrast, the
Resolution calls for the active engagement and leadership of the United States in the
search for an international agreement to fight global warming. Citing a “scientific
consensus” that greenhouse gases from human activity “threaten the stability of the
global climate,” the Biden-Lugar resolution declares that “the United States has the
capability to lead the effort to stop global climate change.” The Biden-Lugar resolution
calls for negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change – signed by the first President Bush – that will protect the economic and security
interests of the United States, and commit all nations that are major emitters of
greenhouse gases to achieve significant long-term reductions in those emissions. The
resolution also calls for a bipartisan Senate observer group to monitor talks and ensure
that our negotiators bring back agreements that all Americans can support. “What is at stake here is
more than just the environmental health of the planet. Global warming will cause droughts in some areas and floods in others. It will lift sea levels and change growing seasons,”
said Biden. “It will shift other fundamental building blocks of economic, social and political arrangements around the world and cause conflict, massive migrations, the spread of
disease - threats to international stability.” The evidence of global warming cannot be ignored. Since 2001, the earth has experienced three of the hottest years on record, with
2005 and 1998 tied for the hottest and 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third. A section of Antarctic ice shelf larger than the state of Rhode Island collapsed between January
and March 2002, disintegrating at a rate that astonished experts. According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the alarming rate of nine percent per decade. As ocean
“With the United States on

temperatures have gotten warmer, the number of category 4 and 5 storms has greatly increased over the past 35 years.
the sidelines, and with the growing emissions of emerging economies soon to overtake
our own, international action against global warming is at an impasse. “We need to
rethink the path forward to make room for the very different histories and circumstances
that countries bring to these talks. That will require flexibility and openness on all sides.
This resolution says it is time to take action. “Without US leadership and participation,
there is no way to stabilize global greenhouse gases before irreparable harm is done.”
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US ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY IS MODELED GLOBALLY

Tobin in 90
The Expendable Future, Richard, Questia
Still another reason for emphasizing the United States involves its role as one of the
world's leaders in environmental conservation. In many areas, such as the use of
environmental impact statements, the United States is a model for much of the world.
Such is also the case with the protection of endangered species. The United States, along
with Japan, Russia, and Great Britain, signed the first agreement to protect wildlife in
1911. It was the United States that convened an international meeting to discuss the
regulation of international trade of fish and wildlife species that are in danger of
becoming extinct. The result -- the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) -- was developed in 1973. The United States was
the first of nearly one hundred nations that have ratified the convention. Here again,
what happens in the United States affects the success of efforts to regulate the
international trade of endangered species. Despite its good intentions, the United States
offers the world's largest market for wildlife. Illegal imports of live endangered species
into the United States are a booming business involving more than $100 million per year.
23 When one adds the millions of skins, shells, horns, furs, and feathers from deceased
animals, the value of illegal imports rises still further.
In sum, although most species, including the endangered ones, are located in
the tropics, events in the United States often determine the fate of species
worldwide. This occurs either because of Americans' patterns of consumption or
because U.S. environmental policies and their implementation serve as a standard
against which other nations judge themselves. Consequently, an evaluation of public
policies for the protection of native American species can serve as an indicator
of the likelihood that human-caused extinctions will be halted, reduced in
number, or significantly increased, not only in the United States, but
elsewhere as well.
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US ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY MODELED GLOBALLY

Paarlberg 96
Robert, Environment, Proquest
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***2ac Add-ons***
Economy Add-on 1/2
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CELLULOSE INDUSTRY KEY TO THE US ECONOMY

Dale 6
As a full scale U. S. cellulosic ethanol industry takes hold and

grows, it will transform our economy in at least two ways. First, the
domestic fuels and chemicals industry will be revitalized, with many
new jobs being created and new wealth generated. Given the wide
distribution and bulky nature of biomass resources these new jobs
and new wealth will largely be produced in rural America, rather
than near oil production/importing sites on the coast. Second, the
entire U. S. economy will benefit by a strengthened fuels and chem-
icals sector. We will be able to retain more of our fuel dollars at
home and our economy will be much better insulated from shocks
due to high petroleum prices and uncertain availability
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Economy Add-on 2/2
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE LEADS TO GLOBAL CONFLICT

Lopez 98
Bernardo V., Business World, September 10, pg. 12, LN
What would it be like if global recession becomes full bloom? The results will be
catastrophic. Certainly, global recession will spawn wars of all kinds. Ethnic wars can easily
escalate in the grapple for dwindling food stocks as in India-Pakistan-Afghanistan,
Yugoslavia, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Indonesia. Regional conflicts in key flashpoints can easily
erupt such as in the Middle East, Korea, and Taiwan. In the Philippines, as in some Latin American countries,
splintered insurgency forces may take advantage of the economic drought to regroup and
reemerge in the countryside. Unemployment worldwide will be in the billions. Famine can be triggered in key Third World nations
with India, North Korea, Ethiopia and other African countries as first candidates. Food riots and the breakdown of law and order are
possibilities. Global recession will see the deferment of globalization, the shrinking of international trade - especially of high-
technology commodities such as in the computer, telecommunications, electronic and automotive industries. There will be a return to
basics with food security being a prime concern of all governments, over industrialization and trade expansions. Protectionism will
reemerge and trade liberalization will suffer a big setback. The WTO-GATT may have to redefine its provisions to adjust to the
changing times. Even the World Bank-IMF consortium will experience continued crisis in dealing with financial hemorrhages. There will
not be enough funds to rescue ailing economies. A few will get a windfall from the disaster with the erratic movement in world prices
of basic goods. But the majority, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs), will suffer serious shrinkage. Mega-mergers
and acquisitions will rock the corporate landscape. Capital markets will shrink and credit crisis and spiralling interest rates will spread
internationally. And environmental advocacy will be shelved in the name of survival. Domestic markets will flourish but only on basic
commodities. The focus of enterprise will shift into basic goods in the medium term. Agrarian economies are at an advantage since
they are the food producers. Highly industrialized nations will be more affected by the recession. Technologies will concentrate on
servicing domestic markets and the agrarian economy will be the first to regrow. The setback on research and development and high-
end technologies will be compensated in its eventual focus on agrarian activity. A return to the rural areas will decongest the big
cities and the ensuing real estate glut will send prices tumbling down. Tourism and travel will regress by a decade and airlines
worldwide will need rescue. Among the indigenous communities and agrarian peasantry, many will shift back to prehistoric
subsistence economy. But there will be a more crowded upland situation as lowlanders seek more lands for production. The current
crisis for land of indigenous communities will worsen. Land conflicts will increase with the indigenous communities who have nowhere
else to go either being massacred in armed conflicts or dying of starvation. Backyard gardens will be precious and home-based food
production will flourish. As unemployment expands, labor will shift to self-reliant microenterprises if the little capital available can be
sourced. In the past, the US could afford amnesty for millions of illegal migrants because of its resilient economy. But with
unemployment increasing, the US will be forced to clamp down on a reemerging illegal migration which will increase rapidly.
Unemployment in the US will be the hardest to cope with since it may have very little capability for subsistence economy and its
agrarian base is automated and controlled by a few. The riots and looting of stores in New York City in the late '70s because of a
state-wide brownout hint of the type of anarchy in the cities. Such looting in this most affluent nation is not impossible. The weapons
Arms escalation will have primacy over food
industry may also grow rapidly because of the ensuing wars.
production if wars escalate. The US will depend increasingly on weapons exports to nurse its
economy back to health. This will further induce wars and conflicts which will aggravate US
recession rather than solve it. The US may depend more and more on the use of force and its superiority to get its ways
internationally. The public will rebel against local monopolies. Anarchy and boycotts will be their primary weapons against cartels
especially on agricultural products such as rice and vegetables, which are presently in the hands of a few in most Third World nations.
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Economy Add-on – Link
PLAN KEY TO RURAL ECONOMY – SPILLS OVER

Dale 6
Expanding the Benefits to More Farmers—Overall, many more

farmers in many more states can expect to profitably produce cellu-
losic biomass than can competitively grow corn for ethanol. The
“grass belt” is much broader geographically than the Corn Belt.
Modeling done by the University of Tennessee predicts that farmers
paid $40 per ton for switchgrass would plant 28 million acres of the
crop and would produce 200 million dry tons. Obviously, they
would produce even more at higher biomass prices.
If farmers were to receive between $40 and $50 per ton for cellu-
losic biomass yielding around 8 to 10 tons per acre, their gross
receipts per acre would be comparable to those for corn. These bio-
mass yields and prices are aggressive but not unrealistic. Each $10 per
ton paid for biomass translates to approximately $0.10 per gallon for
the resulting ethanol so that $50 per ton for the raw material trans-
lates into $0.50 per gallon of ethanol produced. As cellulose ethanol
processing technology matures and processing costs decline, a rea-
sonable goal is that processing will cost about half as much as raw
material, so the ethanol will cost about $0.75 per gallon to produce,
or about $1.10 per gallon on an equivalent energy basis with gasoline.
As farmers supply biomass for cellulosic ethanol the value of the
remaining traditional crops would increase because reduced supply
would generate better prices for these crop commodities. Total farmer
net income would increase by well over $12 billion and these benefits
would be distributed across the country with the largest increases
occurring in the Plains states and the Corn Belt. Greater wealth and
employment opportunities in rural America arising from cellulosic
ethanol, both in crop production and the ethanol biorefineries, would
benefit all farming communities, and the farmers who live there.
Potential economic impacts of cellulosic ethanol on rural American
communities are described more fully below. The cost of food should
not be impacted much. Food prices are only affected slightly by crop
prices received by farmers. But decreased or stabilized transportation
fuel costs and enhanced energy security will benefit all Americans
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Economy Add-on – Link
ETHANOL PRODUCTION KEY TO THE US ECONOMY

Sneller and Durante 6
Technical Writers with assistance from the USDA, Economic Impacts of Ethanol
Production, Ethanol Across America,
http://www.ethanolacrossamerica.net/CFDC_EconImpact.pdf
The impact of ethanol production and use goes far

beyond Rural America. Virtually every sector of the
U.S. economy benefits from the rapidly expanding
ethanol industry. From the technology sector which
provides software for sophisticated plant operations,
to the manufacturing sector, which provides
plant components, ethanol production stimulates
economic activity. Economists continue to measure
the impact of ethanol production at the local and
national level. A variety of econometric models are
used to calculate this rapidly expanding business
activity. This publication examines a variety of
ways in which the ethanol industry affects the U.S.
economy and local communities. As this largely
Midwestern industry expands across the continent,
these economic impacts are projected to have an
ever expanding effect from coast to coast.
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Biodiversity Add-on 1/2
CELLULOSE ETHANOL IS KEY TO BIODIVERSITY

Robertson Landis and Khanna No Date
All Ag Professors @ MSU, The Sustainability of Cellulosic Biofuels,
http://www.esa.org/pao/policyActivities/Sustainability%20of%20Cellulosic%20Biofuels%2
0handout%206.11.pdf
Ecosystems are communities of living things and the environment in which they
interact. Ecosystems are essential to life, providing innumerable and invaluable
services
such as clean water, food, and fiber, nutrient cycling, crop pollination, and pest
suppression. Biodiversity refers to the portfolio of organisms in a natural community.
Generally Cellulosic biofuel sources can diversify agricultural landscapes by allowing
farmers to grow a greater variety of crops with more complex mixtures of plant species.
This increases the diversity of plants and the birds, insects, and other organisms that live
in different plant communities. A mixture of native grass and tree crops can keep wildlife
habitat intact and support vital ecosystem services, including those that help other crops
in the landscape, the more diverse the portfolio, the greater the degree of ecosystem
services provided.
ECOSYSTEM DECLINE LEADS TO HUMAN EXTINCTION

Diner sex edited 94
Military Law Review Winter 1994 143 Mil. L. Rev. 161 LENGTH: 30655 words ARTICLE:
THE ARMY AND THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: WHO'S ENDANGERING WHOM? NAME:
MAJOR DAVID N. DINER BIO: Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army.
[*173] Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist

species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable
than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it
can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several
strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of
threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." n79 By causing widespread
extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa,
and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild
examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new
animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could
cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the
risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's
wings, n80 [hu]mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.
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Biodiversity Add-on 2/2
HABITAT DESTRUCTION OUTWEIGHS NUCLEAR WAR

Tobin in 90
The Expendable Future, p. 14
“From the standpoint of permanent despoliation of the planet,” Norman Myers observes,
no other form of environmental degradation “is anywhere so significant as the fallout of
species.” Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in assessing the relative
consequences of human-caused extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen
to earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of energy supplies, or even nuclear war.
As frightful as these events might be, Wilson reasons that they can “be repaired within a
few generations. The one process ongoing…that will take millions of years to correct is
the loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.”
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Systemic Death Add-on
BILLIONS ARE DYING YEARLY FROM HUNGER DUE TO CURRENT CORN ETHANOL
FOCUS
Lieberman 4/2/08 Senior Policy Analyst, Energy and Environment, Thomas A. Roe
Institute for Economic Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation [Ben, Time for Second
Thoughts on the Ethanol Mandate,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/energyandenvironment/wm1879.cfm]
Not surprisingly, diverting corn from food to fuel use has raised food prices. At a little
over $2 per bushel when the 2005 law was signed, the price of corn has surged above
$5, primarily because a quarter of the crop is now used to produce energy. A host of
corn-related foods, such as corn-fed meat and dairy, have seen sharp price increases.
Wheat and soybeans are also up, partly as a result of fewer acres being planted in favor
of corn. There's talk of inflation rising to levels not seen in decades as renewable
mandates have conspired with other factors to drive up food prices. For corn farmers,
the mandate has exceeded their wildest dreams, but for consumers, it has been an
expensive double-whammy—higher costs to drive to the supermarket and higher prices
once you're there. A recent study from Purdue University puts the added food cost from
the renewable mandate at $15 billion in 2007—about $130 per household.[2] And that
was from ethanol usage at a fraction of what will be required in the years ahead.
Globally, with nearly a billion people at risk for hunger and malnutrition, the costs are far
higher. Several anti-hunger organizations have weighed in heavily against current
policies. An August 2007 United Nations report warns of "serious risks of creating a battle
between food and fuel that will leave the poor and hungry in developing countries at the
mercy of rapidly rising prices for food, land, and water."[3] There is evidence that this
may already be happening, including food-related rioting in Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt,
and the Philippines. The food-versus-fuel critique of the renewable fuels mandate is
persuasive from a consumer and humanitarian perspective, but high corn prices have
done something that may prove even more powerful politically: They have split the farm
lobby. The poultry, hog, beef, and dairy producers who buy corn as feed have felt the
pinch,[4] and they are fighting back. For farm-state legislators who are otherwise
hesitant to take on the powerful corn lobby, this increases their incentive to join their
urban colleagues in reconsidering the mandate.
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Protectionism Add-on
PLAN PROMOTES RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND SOLVES THE TRADE DEFICIT – THIS
DETERS CONGRESSIONAL PROTECTIONISM
Lugar, Richard G. Chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee and a member of the Foreign Relations
Committee. and Woolsey, R James. an attorney, Director of Central Intelligence from 1993 to 1995, serves on the boards of
several corporations, including BC International, which is expected to open the first commercial biomass ethanol plant in the United
States in 2000. “The new petroleum”. Foreign Affairs. Jan/Feb 1999 Vol 78, Issue 1, pg. 88. ProQuest
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL would radically improve the outlook for rural areas all over the
world. Farmers could produce a cash crop by simply collecting agricultural wastes or
harvesting grasses or crops natural to their region. Agricultural nations with little to no
petroleum reserves would begin to see economic stability and prosperity as they steadily
reduced massive payments for oil imports. Even more striking would be the
redistribution of resources that would occur if farmers and foresters produced much of
the world's transportation fuel. We know from the positive results of micro-credit
institutions and other such programs that even small increases in income can be a major
boost to a subsistence-level family's prospects. If family income is a few hundred dollars
a year, earning an extra $50-$100 by gathering and selling agricultural residues to a
cellulosic ethanol plant could mean a much improved life. Such added income can buy a few used sewing machines to
start a business or a few animals to breed and sell. It can begin to replace despondency with hope. There are likely to be even larger effects on rural development if biomass
The cleanliness of
ethanol production can lead a shift toward using plant matter for other products as well, such as biochemicals and electrical energy.
renewable fuel technologies makes them particularly attractive to countries that lack a
sophisticated infrastructure or network of regulatory controls. At least some facilities that
process carbohydrates should lend themselves to being simplified and sized to meet the
needs of remote communities. If such towns can produce their own fuel, some of their
fertilizers, and electricity, they will be far better positioned to make their way out of
poverty and to move toward democracy and free enterprise. Local economic
development can promote political stability and security where poverty now produces
hopelessness and conflict. A major strength of the new technologies for fermenting
cellulosic biomass is the prospect that almost any type of plant, tree, or agricultural
waste can be used as a source of fuel. This high degree of flexibility allows for the use of
local crops that will enrich the soil, prevent erosion, and improve local environmental
conditions. Finally, as recession and devaluations overseas move the American balance-
of-payments deficit from the 1998 level-$i billion every two days-toward nearly $1 billion
every day, there will be increased calls for protectionism. The best way to avoid the
mistakes of the 1930s is to have a solid economic reason for increasing U.S. production
of commodities now bought abroad. The nearly $70 billion spent annually for imported
oil represents about 40 percent of the current U.S. trade deficit, and every $1 billion of oil
imports that is replaced by domestically produced ethanol creates 10,000-20,000
American jobs.
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Environmental Leadership Add-on
US ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP IS KEY TO CURTAILING EMISSIONS

Center for American Progress 3/27/07 [A Lost Opportunity for Environmental Leadership,
U.S. Must Lead the Charge on Climate Change,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/climate_change.html]
“The planet has a fever,” Al Gore said in his testimony before Congress last Wednesday.
“If your baby has a fever, you go the doctor...You take action.” Gore’s message to
Congress was simple: human activity is causing global warming; failure to combat it
carries great risks; and significant cuts in the emissions that cause global warming will
only be enacted if the United States leads the charge. Another discussion on climate
change will take place today as the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on
Energy and Air Quality hears testimony on how to engage developing countries in efforts
to combat it. The United States is in an extraordinary position to lead the fight against
global warming. As one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries, the United
States has substantial leverage at its disposal to encourage other countries to follow its
policy prescriptions. And there isn’t a better way the United States could make use of its heft than by encouraging developing nations to make efforts to cut
emissions. Not only will developing countries be impacted most severely by climate change, but these countries are also some of the worst environmental offenders. China and
India were big contributors to a 15-percent increase in global greenhouse gas emissions between 1992 and 2002, according to a World Bank report released last year. It is critical
But the United States can’t lead the fight

that developing countries be brought into the climate regime as early as possible.
against global warming until we knock out one of our worst enemies: ourselves. China and
India’s share of global greenhouse gas emissions may be increasing, but the United States is still the worst polluter in the world—the source of about a quarter of all emissions. At
the same time, the United States under the Bush administration has been one of the countries least willing to enact measures to combat warming. We lag far behind other rich
countries in working to cut down greenhouse gases, most notably because President Bush failed to ratify the international Kyoto treaty that puts a mandatory limit on emissions.
Today’s congressional climate-change hearing will bring up the specter of lost opportunities for U.S. leadership in fighting global warming. A hearing that took place yesterday
offered a glimpse of what some countries are doing to face the issue—and the course of action the U.S. government should take. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee heard testimony on the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, which requires companies that exceed their allowed emissions to buy other firms’ unused
emissions permits. The Center for American Progress has called for the United States to implement a national cap-and-trade program similar to the European Union’s scheme. An
effective U.S. cap-and-trade plan would include the immediate creation of a national cap on emissions and a market for trading credits; economy-wide implementation that
protects early adopters and provides opportunities for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and agriculture and forestry industries to participate; and the potential for integration
into international carbon credit trading markets in the future. Furthermore, an effective U.S. program would provide for mechanisms by which U.S. companies can meet their
If the United States were to

emissions reductions by investing in the capacity of developing countries to adopt lower-polluting technologies.
follow the European Union’s example and undertake such a program, it would bring
immeasurable gains in the fight against global warming. Not only would U.S. emissions
decrease, but the United States could then use the power of its own good example in
addition to its other forms of influence to encourage developing nations to cut their own
emissions. The planet has a fever: in just the last century, the planet’s temperature has
already increased 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to rising sea levels, a decrease in
snow coverage, retreating glaciers and sea ice, and increasing instances and severity of
droughts. It’s time for the U.S. government to take action to prevent further warming and
use its unique position of power and influence to lead other countries to do the same.
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Environmental Leadership
AMERICA’S SUPERPOWER STATUS IS KEY TO SOLVE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL

PROBLEMS
Scherr 5/18/05 [S. Jacob, Global Superpower: The United States Must Lead the Fight to
Protect Our Planet, http://www.nrdc.org/international/osuperpower.asp]
As a young lawyer at NRDC in the 1970s, I found it incredibly inspiring to watch the
United States lead the world in the fight to protect our planet from mounting pollution
and resource degradation. I would never have imagined then that decades later -- as we
enter a time of unprecedented global change -- the leadership of the United States would
be so blind to the world's growing environmental threats. What makes this situation
particularly hard to fathom is that no single nation has more to lose by refusing to
confront our current environmental problems -- or more to contribute toward solving
them -- than the United States. As shareholders in the world's largest economy, Americans have grown more accustomed to material comfort than
any other people. Yet with resources such as oil, land and fresh water in finite supply -- and with consumer demand in China and other nations rapidly increasing -- we simply
cannot sustain our current rate of consumption. At the same time, we are the world's biggest polluter. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States
contributes 25 percent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions -- more than China, Japan and India combined -- and consumes 26 percent of the world's oil, 25 percent of the
coal and 27 percent of natural gas. No single nation has more to lose by refusing to confront our current environmental problems -- or more to contribute toward solving them --
America's status as both the wealthiest and most polluting country on earth
than the United States.
means that we must be a central player in any effort to protect the global environment.
Yet despite our unparalleled influence -- and the growing pressures on our planet's natural systems -- the United States has increasingly failed to take a leadership role on
environmental protection. In the 1970s, Americans were at the forefront of establishing a system of
international environmental governance. We played an active role in creating institutions such as the United Nations Environment
Programme and in shaping international treaties including the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the 1987 Montreal
Protocol, which aims to protect the earth's ozone layer. At the same time, U.S. officials pushed for more transparency and
environmental accountability for international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And countries worldwide have used U.S. laws
such as the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act as a blueprint for establishing their own environmental legislation. We have made important strides in recent decades in
cleaning up our air and water, setting aside wildlands for protection and preserving biodiversity. But these efforts have not gone nearly far enough. Without a dramatic shift in how
we consider and manage our remaining natural resources, we as Americans will find our standard of living, our health, and our security in jeopardy. According to a major
international scientific report released in 2005, human demand has already wiped out 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers and lakes. And scientists
predict that as the global population swells to an estimated 9 billion people by 2050, widespread conflicts could arise over the world's supplies of fresh water and other resources.
at
As the economies of China, India and other developing countries continue to grow, the number of vehicles on the road is projected to climb to some 1.2 billion by 2025, and
its current growth rate, energy consumption could be twice what it is today by 2035. As a
result, pollution from vehicle tailpipes and coal-burning power plants will surge, trapping
heat in the earth's atmosphere and creating more severe global warming. Climate change will lead to a
heightened risk of natural disasters, such as floods and drought, and could drive one-third of all wildlife species extinct by mid-century, scientists say. Despite the obvious
implications of these changes for the national security, economy and public health of the United States, U.S. officials continue to refuse to make the global environment a priority.
Since taking office, the Bush administration has by and large failed to assist other countries in coping with environmental problems or in implementing laws, and in many cases
has conducted a systematic effort to weaken international environmental regimes. The administration has: * Twice sought exemptions from the Montreal Protocol's provision
banning the use of methyl bromide, the most potent ozone-depleting chemical still in widespread use. * Refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first international
agreement calling for mandatory reductions of global warming gas emissions. * Failed to move forward several other key treaties, including the 1989 Basel Convention on the
Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and the 1979 Bonn Convention on Migratory Species. * Hindered international efforts to establish binding limits on mercury
emissions from power plants and the use of high-intensity military sonar, which causes serious harm to whales and other marine mammals. * Regularly sought to undercut
decades-old U.S. laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, forsaking America's record as a pioneer of environmental
legislation. NRDC is calling upon Congress to take the first step toward restoring U.S global environmental leadership. It is time to take a hard, bipartisan look at the combined
impacts of population growth, resource use and environmental pollution on our national interests. We have never undertaken this kind of congressionally mandated review -- and
the last time the federal government took an extensive look at these issues was in the late 1970s. NRDC is working with other organizations on the Earth Legacy Campaign, which
calls upon Congress to create a commission to review current scientific understanding about the state of our planet and to make recommendations for U.S. leadership to protect
No other country in the world is as well positioned as the United States to

the global environment.
stimulate the kinds of sweeping changes that are critical right now. If we embrace technologies that help us
live more efficiently and actively cooperate with other countries on environmental issues, we can sustain our societies without overwhelming the world's ecosystems. Otherwise,
what kind of planet will we leave our children?
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Environmental Leadership
US LEADERSHIP IS KEY TO CURB GREEN HOUSE GASES – WITHOUT US ACTION

OTHER NATIONS FIND NO INCENTIVE TO REDUCE EMISSIONS
Biden 5/7/07 chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [Sen. Joseph R. U.S.
Should Lead Fight Against Global Warming,
http://biden.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=273938&&]
The physical consequences of global warming are right before our eyes. Those who don't
see, or choose to dismiss, the effects - such as the shrinking polar ice cap, the retreating
glaciers, the horrific storms - remind me of those who refused to see that the world was
round. The science is clear: our world is changing and the U.S. cannot continue on a path
of passive indifference. We must cap greenhouse gas emissions here in the United States
and restore our position as a leader to a global solution. Future consequences if we
continue business as usual will include rising sea levels, the spread of diseases, abrupt
climate shifts. Global warming could shut down the Atlantic cycle that warms Europe or
the shrink the Amazon rainforest, which provides twenty percent of the oxygen we
breathe. In February, the United Nations released the most authoritative international
review of climate change science. This report showed that the concentrations of
greenhouse gases are at historic highs, that they are due to human activity, that global
temperatures are rising, and that the consequences will range from costly to
catastrophic. We are on a path that could double the pre-industrial levels of greenhouse
gases, threatening an increase of as much as 10 degrees in the next century. In April, a
second United Nations analysis confirmed what we have seen too frequently reported in
the news: the impacts of climate change will alter not only our natural environment, but
the political and economic systems we have built up over centuries. Our national
borders, our cities, our cultures, are all built around patterns of rainfall, arable land, and
coastlines that will be redrawn as global warming proceeds. By one estimate, 200 million
people, in the coastal cities of New York, Tokyo, Cairo, and London, in low-lying countries
such as Bangladesh, in the islands of the Pacific and Caribbean, could be permanently
displaced by climate shifts. This is a recipe for global resource wars. Throughout human
history, massive population shifts, frustrated expectations, and the collapse of
economies, have all led to conflict. Just as our physical climate has changed, the climate
has changed in Washington, where a response to the threat of global warming is now
major priority of this new Congress. For too long we have abdicated the responsibility to
reduce our own emissions - the largest single source of the problem we face today. It is
now clear that our country's retreat from leadership in global climate talks reduces the
effectiveness of international efforts to address climate change, and provides an excuse
for China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and the other leading emitters of the future to stay with
us on the sidelines. In response to this impasse, I have joined with my colleague Senator
Dick Lugar to pass a resolution calling for a return of the United States to a leadership
role in the international negotiations on climate change. The effects of global warming
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know no borders, but rather than leading by example, the U.S. has retreated from
meaningful, binding, multilateral international negotiations that help deal with this
growing problem. This resolution will turn this retreat into re-engagement. The
resolution is already the first climate change legislation to pass out of any committee
this Congress and calls for United States participation in negotiations under the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed by the first
President Bush. The resolution states that the evidence of the human role in global
warming is clear; the toll will be costly; and the response must be international. A recent
report penned by eleven retired U.S. Army Generals and Naval Admirals, calls climate
change a "threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the
world." This week in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we will hear first-hand
from three of the report's authors and get their assessment of the national and
international security risks posed by global warming. What is at stake here is more than
just the environmental health of the planet. If it continues at the current rate, global
warming will cause shifts in fundamental building blocks of economic, social and political
systems around the world. The United States can no longer be on the margins of an issue
with so much potential to threaten international stability. Without U.S. leadership and
participation, there is no way to stabilize the effects of climate change before irreparable
harm is done.
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Water Advantage
DOMESTIC INTENSIVE BIOFUEL PROJECTS COLLAPSE KEY AQUIFERS

Koplow 6
Doug, Founder of EarthTrack, Biofuels – At What Cost?, The Global Subsidies Initiative,
Online
MORE EV
Koplow 6
Doug, Founder of EarthTrack, Biofuels – At What Cost?, The Global Subsidies Initiative,
Online
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Water Advantage
THE OGALLALA AQUIFER IS AT A STRESSING POINT, AND INCREASE IN BIOFUEL

PRODUCTION IS INEVITABLE – CONTINUED CORN BASED ETHANOL PRODUCTION
WILL COLLAPSE IT DUE TO OVERABUNDANT WATERING AND PESTICIDES – CITES
EXPERTS
MSNBC 10/10/07
Experts: Ethanol boom could mean water bust. Pollution and shortages will worsen unless precautions taken, report says [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21221396/]
water quality and

WASHINGTON - When it comes to solving the fossil fuel crisis, it seems like every silver lining comes accompanied by a dark cloud. Both
the availability of water could be threatened by sharply increasing crops such as corn for
ethanol, according to a National Research Council report released Wednesday. President
Bush's stated goal is to increase biofuel production about six times, to 35 billion gallons,
by 2017. "That would mean a lot more fertilizers and pesticides" running into rivers and
flowing into the oceans, said Jerald Schnoor, who chaired the panel of experts that
prepared the report. The experts noted that more fertilizer and pesticides are used on
corn than any other crop. Switching to more corn crops could send more nitrogen into
the water system. "When not removed from water before consumption, high levels of nitrate and nitrite — products of nitrogen fertilizers — could have significant
health impacts," the National Research Council noted in a statement issued with the report. Nitrogen in stream flows is also the major cause of "dead zones" in coastal waters,
where a lack of oxygen chokes off marine life, the experts said. The report did note that ways to reduce nutrient pollution exist, such as injecting fertilizer below the soil surface
and using special controlled-release fertilizers. The committee added that erosion, which contributes to
fertilizer runoff, might be reduced if perennial crops — like switchgrass and poplars —
were used instead of row crops like corn. "From a water quality perspective, it is vitally
important to pursue policies that prevent an increase in total loadings of nutrients,
pesticides, and sediments to waterways," the experts stated. Lots of water needed In
terms of water use, the experts stated that "there are likely to be significant regional and
local impacts where water resources are already stressed." Schnoor noted that water availability depends on where the
crops are grown. If it is an area needing irrigation, it takes 2,000 gallons of water for every bushel of corn: "That's
a high amount of water." And that's in addition to the secondary issue of how much
water is needed by the biorefineries that produce the ethanol, said Schnoor, a professor of environmental
engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa. "A biorefinery that produces 100 million
gallons of ethanol a year would use the equivalent of the water supply for a town of
about 5,000 people," the National Research Council said. "Biorefineries could generate
intense challenges for local water supplies, depending on where the facilities are located." The report suggests the possibility of
irrigating crops for biofuel with wastewater that would not be suitable for food crops. The experts also noted that biorefineries are starting to use less water via recycling and new
conversion methods. Cellulose solution? What is needed is a breakthrough in technology so that ethanol can be produced from cellulose
such as grass, wood and sawdust, Schnoor said. "If we could do that it would be much
better environmentally." While Brazil is having success producing fuels from sugarcane, "we don't have much tropical land in the United States," Schnoor
observed. Also, he noted, Brazil uses waste from the cane to fuel its ethanol factories, while the U.S. uses natural gas or other fuels. Supplies are already
stressed in some areas of the country, including a large region where water is drawn
from the underground Ogallala aquifer, which extends from west Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming. The study was sponsored by
the McKnight Foundation, Energy Foundation, National Science Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Research Council Day Fund. The National Research
Council is an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent organization chartered by Congress to provide science, technology and health policy advice.
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Water Advantage
CURRENT WATER MINING IN THE OGALLALA AQUIFER HAS HINDERED ITS

REFILLING ABILITY – SHIFTS TO NEW SOURCES OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES ARE
KEY
Reuters 10/10/07 U.S. ethanol rush may harm water supplies: report
[http://www.enn.com/energy/article/23777]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. ethanol rush could drain drinking water supplies in parts
of the country because corn -- a key source of the country's alternative fuel -- requires
vast quantities of water for irrigation, the National Research Council reported on Wednesday. U.S. President George W. Bush has called for
production of 35 billion gallons per year of alternative motor fuels including ethanol by 2017, as part of an effort to wean the country from foreign oil. U.S. capacity to make the
But the use of more corn to

fuel, believed to emit low levels of greenhouse gases, has spiked about 28 percent this year to nearly 7 billion gallons.
make ethanol could drain water supplies like the Ogallala, or High Plains, aquifer, which
extends from west Texas up into South Dakota and Wyoming. "The aquifer is already
being mined to the extent that recharge of precipitation into it is much, much less than
withdrawals, and that would be exacerbated by any increase in corn or any increase in
irrigated agriculture in the region," Jerald Schnoor, a professor of environmental
engineering at the University of Iowa, told reporters on a conference call about the
report. Schnoor chaired a committee set up to develop the report. Large portions of
Ogallala show water declines of more than 100 feet, said the report from the Council,
which advises Congress and the federal government on scientific matters. Corn requires
more irrigation than other crops like soybeans and cotton in the Plains states across the
middle of the country, the report said. Much of the water used to irrigate corn, the main
source of ethanol in the United States, is lost to the ecosystem as it evaporates from the
plant and from the ground. DEAD ZONES Schnoor said poor water supplies in some parts of the U.S. Midwest have already stopped a few ethanol
refineries, also heavy water users, from being built in Iowa and Minnesota. If they had been built, water supplies to a few towns there may have suffered, he said. In addition,
fertilizers used to produce corn could increase the runoff of oxygen-starving nitrogen into
streams that run down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. Such runoff has been
blamed for forming "dead zones" in the Gulf where many forms of marine life cannot
survive. Schnoor said each gallon of ethanol made from corn can leave behind about 8
grams, or about the weight of three pennies, of nitrogen that can wind up in water
supplies. A similar report from nonprofit group Environmental Defense this summer said
ethanol could increase demand for scarce water supplies by 2 billion gallons a year.
Ethanol industry sources have said concerns about ethanol's impact on water supplies
are overblown and that ethanol plants will not be locating where water availability is a
question. The NRC report said technological developments could help protect water
supplies. Ethanol producers are learning to recycle water in refineries that make the fuel,
and an emerging fuel, called cellulosic ethanol, could lead to reliance on feedstocks like
switchgrass, which may require less irrigation than corn.
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Water Advantage
OGALLALA AQUIFER KEY TO RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIES

Guru and Horne 2000 Agricultural Policy Specialist, President & CEO of The Kerr Center
for Sustainable Agriculture [Manjula V., James E., The Ogallala Aquifer,
http://www.kerrcenter.com/publications/ogallala_aquifer.pdf]
The purpose of this section is to introduce the prevailing water requirements in the
United States. Further the section focuses on the declining as well as deteriorating water
conditions in the Ogallala Aquifer. This aquifer plays an important role in fulfilling the
needs of the American people. The Ogallala 1 Aquifer (also known as the High Plains
Aquifer) is now facing declining water levels and deteriorating water quality. More than
90% of the water pumped from the Ogallala irrigates at least one fifth of all U.S.
cropland. This water accounts for 30% of all groundwater used for irrigation in America.
Crops that benefit from the aquifer are cotton, corn, alfalfa, soybeans, and wheat. These
crops provide the Midwest cattle operations with enormous amounts of feed and account
for 40% of the feedlot beef output here in the U.S. Since the advancement of agricultural
irrigation in the earlier part of the 20 th century, the Ogallala has made it possible so
that states such as Nebraska and Kansas can produce large quantities of grain required
to feed livestock. 2 If the High Plains Aquifer were unaffected by human activities, it
would be in a state of equilibrium in which natural discharge from the aquifer would be
approximately equal to natural recharge to the aquifer. However, activities such as
pumpage from wells, surface-water diversions for irrigation and hydroelectric-power
generation, and cultivation and grazing practices result innon-equilibrium inthe
aquifer.Theresultisthat discharge does not equal recharge in many areas. This non-
equilibrium results in substantial changes in groundwater levels. 3 Half of the U.S.
population and almost all of those in rural areas draw water from underground aquifers
for their domestic needs. Additionally farmers depend on it for irrigation. Once thought
an unlimited source of pure water, these sources are increasingly threatened. While toxic
waste dumps, cesspools, landfills, and septic tanks contribute their share of wastes to
groundwater, agricultural chemicals contribute the most in sheer volume and affect the
greatest area. Excess nitrates from fertilizer (and manure), can leach into ground water,
and in high enough concentrations make such water dangerous to drink. Other farm run-
off can also reduce water quality. Furthermore, some farm pesticides pollute ground
water in agricultural areas. 4 Conservation of water is therefore imperative. It is
extremely important that we search for solutions to deal with the problem. We also need
to urgently explore the alternative approaches thatcouldbetaken instead of those being
implemented now.
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Water Advantage
US WATER SHORTAGE LEADS TO ATTACK ON CANADA

Louis 2003
Margot, Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Unholy Union
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Mark Lovewell and Anthony Westell, all eager to flatter the United States and flatten
Canada, ignore the wishes of the majority of Canadians, who in poll after poll have
clearly affirmed that they have no wish for a political union with Americans. The authors
suggest that Canada might gain economic benefits from the union while "retaining
control of social and cultural policy." That grotesquely ignores the real state of things.
Our social and cultural policies are already being gutted to placate U.S. corporations;
joining the U.S. would only hasten the process. We need more independence, not less.
There is nothing "inevitable" about Canada's being swallowed up by the United States,
except in the minds of the greedy and the timid.The real agenda is inadvertently
revealed at the end of the article, when the authors suggest that a water shortage in the
United States would "require a continental response"; that is, the United States would
want our water, and would find it easier to get if we had given up our independence, as
the authors urge us to do.
US-CANADA WAR LEADS TO CHEMICAL WARFARE

Rudmin 2006
FLOYD Professor of Social and Community Psychology Plan Crimson: War on Canada
Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism
http://mostlywater.org/u_s_war_plans_included_invasion_of_canada, February 17
If U.S. war plans for the conquest of Canada provoke laughter, that is a comment on
those who are laughing, not a comment on the war plans. In its day, War Plan RED was
not meant to be funny. The 1928 draft stated that "it should be made quite clear to
Canada that in a war she would suffer grievously". The 1930 draft stated that "large
parts of CRIMSON territory will become theaters of military operations with consequent
suffering to the population and widespread destruction and devastation of the country..."
In October 1934, the Secretary of War and Secretary of Navy approved an amendment
authorizing the strategic bombing of Halifax, Montreal and Quebec City by "immediate
air operations on as large a scale as practicable." A second amendment, also approved
at the Cabinet level, directed the U.S. Army, in capital letters, "TO MAKE ALL NECESSARY
PREPARATIONS FOR THE USE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE FROM THE OUTBREAK OF WAR.
THE USE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE, INCLUDING THE USE OF TOXIC AGENTS, FROM THE
INCEPTION OF HOSTILITIES, IS AUTHORIZED..."
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Generic AT: DA’s
CELLULOSE ETHANOL IS INEVITABLE – THE PLAN IS NECESSARY TO SOLVES

INVISIBLE THRESHOLDS TO THE ADVANTAGES
0handout%206.11.pdf
So there will still be very large business risks. Congress should consider
providing tax credits or other incentives for the first full commercial scale
plants in order to reduce these risks, and so investors will not fear that their
investments will be stranded. Such an approach could be limited to the first
billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol will happen—but such
incentives can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil much more quickly.
When those large scale commercial plants become fully functional, the
economics become well understood and the risks are sufficiently reduced, I
believe cellulosic ethanol will take off. The industry will grow very rapidly,
limited mostly by our ability to gather enough cellulosic raw material together
in one spot. Biofuels in the longer term What can we expect in the longer term? I
testified
before Senator Lugar’s Committee on Agriculture in 2001. I will repeat now
what I said then. I believe that in the longer term we can replace all of our
petroleum imports, every bit of it, with cellulosic ethanol produced
domestically at much less than $1.00 per gallon. This is not a pipe dream,
but a sober, hardheaded assessment of our ability to produce the required
raw materials and process them to biofuels.
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AT: Soil Erosion DA
FORAGE BASED ETHANOL DOESN’T LEAD TO SOIL EROSION

Greer 5
tm
Perennial grasses, such as switchgrass, and other forage crops are promising feedstocks
for ethanol production. "Environmentally switchgrass has some large benefits and the
potential for productivity increases," says John Sheehan of the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL). The perennial grass has a deep root system, anchoring soils
to prevent erosion and helping to build soil fertility. "As a native species, switchgrass
is better adapted to our climate and soils," adds Nathanael Criers, NRDC Senior Policy
Analyst. "It uses water efficiently, does not need a lot of fertilizers or pesticides and
absorbs both more efficiently."
CELLULOSE ETHANOL KEY TO PREVENT WARMING AND SOLVES SOIL EROSION

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AT: Soil Erosion DA – Erosion Now
OVER USE OF LAND NOW – LEADING TO SOIL EROSION WHICH DESTROYS

HABITAT AND SPECIES
NPR 5/6/08
National Public Radio, What's a Farm Without Fallow Fields?
Lexis
Farm the best and conserve the rest. That's an old saying among farmers. It's advice for
how much land to harvest. The U.S. government agrees. It even pays farmers to keep some of their
land fallow. Not growing crops helps prevent soil erosion and it protects animal habitats. But recently
with rising food prices and a tight economy, farmers are putting conservation land back to work. Julie
Sibbing is with the National Wildlife Federation. Thanks for talking to us, Julie, and if you
can tell us about this program, it's called the Conservation Reserve Program. It's
voluntary. How much land does it usually keep fallow? Ms. JULIE SIBBING (Senior Program
Manager, National Wildlife Federation): Well, right now we have about 34 million acres of land, a
nd that's down significantly from just a few years ago. We've lost about four million acres in the last couple
of years due to those increased pressures to plant more corn and to plant more soy beans, as crop prices have grown. COHEN: And where
is that acreage? What states is this happening in? Ms. SIBBING: A lot of the land coming out is typically in the corn belt because that's, you know, the land that most people are
a lot of it is in the northern Great
growing corn on, and they want to try to expand and take advantage of the record high commodity prices right now. But
Plains, a very, very dry area, and we're very concerned about this land going back into production. COHEN:
Now, can you breakdown the numbers for us? If you're a farmer, how much could you make by keeping the land fallow, and how does that compare to what you could earn if you
grew crops on it? Ms. SIBBING: Well, it's really variable. The Conservation Reserve Program is supposed to operate by paying people at what they call an agricultural rental rate, or
what you would pay somebody to rent their agricultural land to farm it. This is adjusted, however, at every county level. They will have a committee of folks that will set how
much they will pay for a farmer to take that land out of production. It's supposed to be competitive. Unfortunately, those rates have just not been keeping pace, so most people
will say, well, I can get, you know, so and so dollars per acre if I reenroll this land into the conservation Reserve Program, but, you know, I think I could probably grow crops on it
and make a lot more, so I think that's the calculus a lot of people have been making. COHEN: And what are the environmental consequences if farmers start growing again? Ms.
there's a lot of environmental consequences. The thing about the Conservation Reserve Progr
SIBBING: Well,
am is a lot of that land is what they call highly erodible land. So, without a really serious soil conser
vation plan, a lot of that will erode steadily into our streams, and along with it are all the fertilizers they put
on the land to grow crops. And there's at least three species that I know of right now that are not list
ed on the endangered species list only because there's enough habitat right now on Conservation Reserve
Program lands to keep those species viable. If those areas start losing a lot of CRP, these birds,
including the different species of the sage-grouse and Prairie Chicken, will probably have
to be placed on the endangered species list.
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AT: Soil Erosion DA – Link Turn
CORN PRODUCTION MAIN CAUSE OF SOIL EROSION AND USE WATER FASTER
THAN THE AQUIFER RECHARGES
Pimentel 2003
David, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences @ Cornell University, Ethanol Fuels:
Energy Balance, Economics, and Environmental Impacts are Negative
Natural Resources Research, Vol. 12, No. 2, June,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n7533126g6363512/fulltext.pdf
Some of the economic and energy contributions of the by-products mentioned earlier are negated by the e
nvironmental pollution costs associated with ethanol production. These are estimated to be more
than 23c/ per gallon (Table 2). U.S. corn production causes more total soil erosion than any other U.S.
crop (Pimentel and others, 1995; Pimentel, 2002). In addition, corn production uses more herbic
ides and insecticides than any other crop produced in the U.S. thereby causing more water pollution than a
ny other crop (Pimentel and others, 1993). Further, corn production uses more nitrogen fertilizer th
an any crop produced and therefore is a major contributor to ground water and river water pollution (NAS,
2002). In some Western irrigated corn acreage, ground water is being mined 25% faster than the natura
l recharge of its aquifer (Pimentel and others, 1997). All these factors suggest that the environ
mental system in which U.S. corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Further, it
substantiates the con- clusion that the U.S. corn production system is not environmentally sustainab
le for the future, unless major changes are made in the cultivation of this major food/feed
crop. Corn is raw material for ethanol production, but cannot be considered to provide a renewable energ
y source.
PERENNIAL CROP PREVENT SOIL EROSION AND REDUCE WATER USE

Sanderson and Adler 2008
Matt USDA-ARS Biofuel Research Program, Paul Research Agronomist for USDA-ARS
http://www.mdpi.org/ijms/papers/i9050768.pdf, 20 May
A perennial crop permanently dedicated to biomass feedstock production would seem to be an ideal goal b
ecause (1) there would be no annual re-establishment costs, (2) tillage would be eliminated, which would r
educe inputs, costs, and soil erosion, and (3) a permanent vegetative cover would sustain soil conservation
and water-quality protection. Perennials, however, are rarely permanent and some annual
cropping or innovative combinations of annual and perennial bioenergy crops strategically
deployed across the farm landscape and combined into synergistic rotations may be necessary in the futur
e [71].
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AT: Soil Erosion DA
CELLULOSE ETHANOL SOLVES SOIL AND IS KEY TO THE ENVIRONMENT –

MULTIPLE INTERNAL LINKS
0handout%206.11.pdf
Cellulosic fuel crops can grow on lands that are not necessarily suitable for food
crops and thereby reduce or avoid food vs. fuel competition. If grown on land
that has already been cleared, cellulosic crops do not further contribute to the
release of carbon to the atmosphere. Because many cellulosic crops are perennial and
roots are always present, they guard against soil erosion and better retain nitrogen
fertilizer. Additionally, carbon is sequestered belowground in roots and soil organic
matter because there is no further tillage after crop establishment. Most cellulosic
sources require much less intensive management than do grain crops, saving the fuel
and carbon dioxide costs associated with field crop operations such as planting, tillage,
and weed control.
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AT: Carbon Tax CP – Econ DA
CARBON TAX COLLAPSES THE ECONOMY

Hovi and Holtsmark 6/30/06
Jon Hovi, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, and Bjart Holtsmark.
http://ezproxy.msu.edu:2047/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1081090001&sid=1&Fmt
=6&clientId=3552&RQT=309&VName=PQD
With all these nice arguments in favour of a tax regime, is there a catch? David
Victor contends that the major problem with a tax regime is that it might be difficult
to administer effectively: Monitoring and enforcement are extremely difficult.... In
practice, it would be extremely difficult to estimate the practical effect of the tax, which is
what
matters. For example, countries could offset a tax on emissions with less visible compensatory policies that
offer loopholes for energy-intensive and export- oriented forms that would be most
adversely affected by the new carbon tax. The resulting goulash of prior distortions, new
taxes, and political patches could harm the economy and also undermine the goal of
making countries internalize the full cost of the greenhouse gas emissions (Victor, 2001: 86).
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AT: Carbon Tax CP
DOESN’T SOLVE – THE GOVERNMENT WON’T REAPPROPRIATE IT

Wall Street Journal 7/10/07
Truth in Global Warming. WSJ.
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=10&did=1301902601&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt
=4&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1215626667&clientId=355
2
Speaking for ourselves, we don't favor a carbon tax. In theory, such a tax might make sense if it

were offset by lower taxes on income tax rates and capital investment -- which would be
a net plus for economic growth. However, there's not a chance in melting Greenland that the
current Congress would offset any new carbon taxes; it would merely pocket the extra
revenue to permanently increase the government's share of GDP.
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HBR
AT: Environment DA’s
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL IS MORE COST EFFECTIVE, LAND EFFICIENT – REDUCES

ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
Lynd 2003
Lee R., Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FACT
SHEET: National Commission on Energy Policy Forum: The Future of Biomass and
Transportation Fuels
June 13, http://www.energycommission.org/files/finalReport/IV.4.c%20-
%20Cellulosic%20Ethanol%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
Biomass composed primarily of plant fibers that are inedible by humans and have
cellulose as a prominent component. These fibers may be hydrolyzed to yield a variety
of sugars that can be fermented by microorganisms. Examples of cellulosic biomass
include grass, wood, and cellulose-rich residues resulting from agriculture or the forest
products industry. At a representative price of $40/dry ton, cellulosic biomass costs the
same per BTU as oil at $13/barrel. Cellulosic biomass may be available as either:
Residues - biomass resulting from activities or processes undertaken for some purpose
other than ethanol production. Examples of such residues include corn stalks and other
non-edible parts of plants used to produce food, municipal solid waste, and pulp and
paper industry wastes. Dedicated crops – crops grown for the primary purpose of
energy production. Examples of potential dedicated crops for producing cellulosic
biomass include grass and short rotation trees. Comparison of ethanol production from
corn and cellulosic biomass. Corn* is easier, and currently less expensive, to process
into ethanol than is cellulosic biomass. However, cellulosic biomass is less expensive to
produce than corn by a factor of roughly 2 on a per ton basis, and the amount of ethanol
that can be produced per acre of land of a given quality is higher for cellulosic biomass
than for to corn. Relative to corn, production of a perennial cellulosic biomass crop such
as switchgrass requires lower inputs of energy, fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide, and is
accompanied by less erosion and improved soil fertility. Finally, cellulosic biomass differs
from corn kernels in that it contains substantial amounts of non-fermentable, energy-rich
components that can be used to provide energy for the conversion process as well as to
produce electricity (see discussion of energy balance below). Process energy for corn
ethanol production is typically provided by coal or natural gas, although it would be
possible for process energy to be provided by biomass in the future.
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HBR
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL DECREASES ENVIRONMENT DESTRUCTION

Lynd 2003
Lee R., Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FACT
SHEET: National Commission on Energy Policy Forum: The Future of Biomass and
Transportation Fuels
June 13, http://www.energycommission.org/files/finalReport/IV.4.c%20-
%20Cellulosic%20Ethanol%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
Agricultural production of cellulosic biomass is widely thought to entail decreased

environmental impacts and some significant environmental benefits as compared to
production of row crops. Rates of erosion are exceedingly low for perennial grasses, and
field data and models indicate that soil organic matter and fertility increase over time
under grass cultivation even with regular harvest. Nutrient capture rates are very high
due to the extensive root system of perennial grasses, with loss of nutrients to water
sources corresponding low. Anticipated rates of pesticide and herbicide application are
much lower for energy crops than for row crops. Elements removed from the soil as part
of harvesting biomass must be replenished by additives to the soil, but there is potential
to recycle such elements from the processing facility back to the field. Several studies
associate conversion of cropland from row crops to perennial grasses with improved
water quality, fertility, and wildlife habitat. Effluents from biomass processing facilities
are amenable to conventional treatment technologies and are not expected to present a
significant burden on the environment if managed responsibly.
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HBR
PRAIRIE GRASSES HAVE REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS – POLYCULTURE GROWTH

REDUCES PESTICIDE, FERTILIZER, AND WATER USE
Groom, Gray and Townsend June 2008
Martha J. Groom, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington Elizabeth M.
Gray, The Nature Conservancy, , University of Washington Patricia A. Townsend
Department of Biology 28 Jun 2008Biofuels and Biodiversity: Principles for Creating
Better Policies for Biofuel Production,
Conservation Biology Volume 22, Issue 3, Pages 602-609
Biofuels that require few inputs, use native species, and emphasize perennial species,
particularly in polyculture or multiyear rotations, will be more biodiversity-friendly than
energy-intensive monocultures of annual crops. Polyculture methods, which could
increase the value of biofuel crops for biodiversity while decreasing pest and soil fertility
problems, have been explored only recently (Tilman et al. 2006) and could be an
important avenue for new research. Conservation biologists can contribute to this
research by investigating the biodiversity costs and benefits of cultivating a larger area
of land in polyculture or seminatural habitat compared with cultivating a smaller area of
land in monoculture. The answer to this question may depend in part on whether a
biofuel crop can produce high-energy yields per hectare under low-input methods. For
example, switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) generally can be grown with much lower
fertilizer inputs than other crops, particularly corn (Graham et al. 1995; Parrish & Fike
2005). Switchgrass has been explored far more extensively than most feedstocks, which
has led to improvements in yield and energy extraction and development of site-specific
agricultural best practices (Parrish & Fike 2005). As with other perennial crops,
switchgrass sequesters carbon below ground, resulting in a negative greenhouse-gas
balance (Adler et al. 2007; Table 1). Nevertheless, switchgrass is being developed as a
high-yield monoculture variety and therefore is likely to require greater fertilizer,
pesticide, and water inputs than biofuel crops grown in polycultures, particularly those
composed of native species. We should continue to explore the potential for native,
perennial prairie grasses (in addition to switchgrass) to serve as biodiversity-friendly
feedstock.
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HBR
NEW TECHNOLOGIES IMPROVE ETHANOL’S EFFECTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Apollo’s Fire, pg. 157-158
111
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AT: Corn Industry DA
NO LINK
Dale 6
Currently about 4 billion gallons of ethanol are

derived from corn grain in the U.S. The corn ethanol industry is slated
to grow rapidly under the renewable energy standard included in the
2005 energy legislation, nearly doubling from the current
4.0 billion gal lons per year to approximately 7.5 billion gallons per year. Corn farm-
ers and ethanol producers are naturally concerned about the effect of a
transition to cellulosic ethanol on the profitability of their farms and
ethanol plants. These worries may be ill-founded. It seems far more
likely that corn farmers and corn ethanol producers will benefit much
more from, rather than be harmed by,a transition to cellulosic ethanol.
PLAN CAUSES A TRANSITION TO CELLULOSE ETHANOL

Dale 6
First,most farmers who produce corn for

ethanol production can certainly grow biomass for cellulosic ethanol.
High yielding, low input grass crops sold to the biorefinery at $50 per
ton might well increase net farmer profit per acre compared with
corn. Thus farmers need have no worry that they will not be able to
participate in the supply side. Second, on the processing side, the
existing capital investment in corn ethanol plants can probably be
almost entirely recovered by converting such plants into cellulosic
ethanol plants instead. Given their strategic location on rail lines,
water transportation routes, etc., it is very easy to see corn ethanol
plants becoming the nucleus of much larger cellulose ethanol biore-
fineries. One possibility is that corn ethanol plants would become the
preferred location for converting solid cellulosic biomass to a liquid
stream of concentrated sugars. This liquid stream would then be
more easily shipped to much larger ethanol biorefineries.
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HBR
AT: Not Enough Land
BIOFUELS CAN SIGNIFICANTLY OFFSET OIL PRODUCTION – EASILY ENOUGH

LAND FOR PRODUCTION
Hausmann 7
Ricardo, director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development, Financial
Times, Lexis
Second, the world is full of under-utilised land that can grow the biomass that the new
technology will require. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world
has a bit less than 1.4bn hectares under cultivation. But using the Geographic
Information System database, Rodrigo Wagner and I have estimated that there are some
95 countries that have more than 700m hectares of good quality land that is not being
cultivated. Depending on assumptions about productivity per hectare, today’s oil
production represents the equivalent of some 500m to 1bn hectares of biofuels. So the
production potential of biofuels is in the same ball park as oil production today.
113
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HBR
AT: Obama Solves Case
OBAMA WOULD PUSH CORN BASED ETHANOL.
Mauritius Times. 6/27/2008. “In America, it’s back to politics”.

http://www.mauritiustimes.com/270608soobarah.htm
Senator Obama has opposed President Bush’s initiative, and one doubts whether that
initiative can go far in Congress where the Democrats are in a majority. The reason for
this opposition is that he fully supports the ethanol alternative. For all his talk about
abolishing lobbies, he seems to be sold out to the ethanol lobby. Press reports indicate
that he participates frequently in functions of the corn lobby. In America it is from corn
(called “maize” in our own country) that ethanol is produced. One of his closest advisers,
Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, serves on the boards
of three ethanol producing companies and, being a lawyer, provides “strategic and policy
advice to clients in renewable energy.” Senator Obama is with the ethanol lobby up to
the neck. Nothing wrong in itself, until we know a little more about the corn from which it
is produced and the extent to which American “free trade” policies go towards protecting
the corn lobby.
114
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HBR
AT: Obama Solves Case
OBAMA WILL PUSH CORN BASED ETHANOL – CLOSE TIES WITH PROMINENT
CORN BACKERS AND THE “CORN BELT”.
New York Times. Byline: Larry Rohter. “Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol”.
6/23/2008.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/us/politics/23ethanol.html?_r=3&adxnnl=1&oref=sl
ogin&adxnnlx=1215788730-/lsvMAVZldoqQsn88/9Ewg
When VeraSun Energy inaugurated a new ethanol processing plant last summer in
Charles City, Iowa, some of that industry’s most prominent boosters showed up. Leaders
of the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association, for
instance, came to help cut the ribbon — and so did Senator Barack Obama. Then running
far behind Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in name recognition and in the polls, Mr.
Obama was in the midst of a campaign swing through the state where he would
eventually register his first caucus victory. And as befits a senator from Illinois, the
country’s second largest corn-producing state, he delivered a ringing endorsement of
ethanol as an alternative fuel. Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to
reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful
constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost
all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close
ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the
parties and their presidential candidates. In the heart of the Corn Belt that August day,
Mr. Obama argued that embracing ethanol “ultimately helps our national security,
because right now we’re sending billions of dollars to some of the most hostile nations on
earth.” America’s oil dependence, he added, “makes it more difficult for us to shape a
foreign policy that is intelligent and is creating security for the long term.” Nowadays,
when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom
Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves
on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where,
according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time
providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.” Mr. Obama’s lead
advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from
the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr.
Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority
leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer
Daniels Midland. Not long after arriving in the Senate, Mr. Obama himself briefly
provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including
twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol
producer and is based in his home state.
115
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AT: McCain Solves Case
MCCAIN BACKS OTHER TYPES OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY.
VOA News. By: Leta Hong Fincher. “US Presidential Candidates Clash on Energy,
Environmental Issues”. 7/11/2008. http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-07-11-
voa36.cfm.
Both presidential candidates agree on the need for new technologies to curb carbon
emissions responsible for climate change. These include solar and wind power and
electric cars. Presumed Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, supports
government funding for clean coal technology. "Our coal reserves are larger than Saudi
Arabia's supply of oil," McCain said.
MCCAIN VOWS TO VETO FARM BILL WHICH SUPPORTS PRODUCTION OF

CELLULOSE ETHANOL.
MarketWatch. The Wall Street Journal. “DNC -- McCain Watch: John McCain's Strategy on
Jobs and Energy: Say One Thing, Do Another”. 7/9/08.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dnc----mccain-watch-
john/story.aspx?guid={C46FEE7C-D54F-44C4-A8E1-CC45AFD81AD6}&dist=hppr
McCain Says He Would Veto The Farm Bill -- $300 Million in Renewable Biofuels Funding.
The farm bill "provides $300 million in mandatory funding for payments to support
production of advanced biofuels including cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel." There is also
"$250 million in grants and loan guarantees for renewable energy and energy efficiency
systems for agriculture and rural small businesses." [McCain Prepared Remarks, 5/19/08;
Reuters, 5/15/2008]
116

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SDI 08-09

Cellulose Ethanol Affirmative

Cellulose Ethanol Affirmative................................................................................................................................................ .........1

PLAN: THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD SUPPORT

PLAN SOLVES – PROMOTES ETHANOL DEVELOPMENT AND COST

Given sufficient investment in research,

development, demonstration and deployment, the report projects biorefineries producing

ONLY FEDERAL INCENTIVES ENSURE INVESTOR CONFIDENCE – ANY OTHER

WARMING IS REAL AND HUMAN INDUCED

SECOND GENERATION ETHANOL SOLVES WARMING

Brent Erickson, executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization's

FAST WARMING LEADS TO EXTINCTION – QUICK TIME FRAME

***Dead Zones Advantage***

ADVANTAGE __ - DEAD ZONES

CURRENT INTENSIVE ETHANOL PRODUCTION IS CAUSING HYPOXIC DEAD ZONES

FIRST GENERATION ETHANOL REQUIRES EXORBANANT PESTICIDES AND

BEE EXTINCTION CASCADES INTO WIDESPREAD ECOSYSTEM COLLAPSE

A WORLDWIDE decline in bees, bats, butterflies, birds and other pollinators is

HONEY BEES ARE KEY TO LOW FOOD PRICES

HONEY BEE COLLAPSE LEADS TO HUMAN EXTINCTION

DEAD ZONES COLLAPSE BIODIVERSITY

Hypoxia is essentially a form of habitat loss, eliminating areas in which fish

GULF OF MEXICO IS A UNIQUE BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT

ocean ecosystems play a major

maintaining and restoring the

biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem

Oxygen-starved "dead zones" appear with increasing

SECOND GENERATION BIOFUELS CAN SUBSTANTIALLY DECREASE OIL

INDEPENDENTLY, CELLULOSE ETHANOL SOLVES OIL CARTELS – PREVENTS

IF GENETICALLY engineered biocatalysts and advanced processing technologies can

Pesticides – Bees Link

INTENSIVE PESTICIDES KILL HONEYBEES

Pesticides – Bees Link

PESTICIDES KILL BEE POPULATION

PESTICIDES CAUSE DECREASE IN BEE POPULATION

Pesticides – Bees Link

PESTICIDES PUSH HONEY BEES TO EXTINCTION

Pesticides – Bees Uniqueness

BEE POPULATION UNCHARACTERISTICALLY DECREASING –

CURRENT INDUSTRIALIZED AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES EXPLODES THE USE OF

Pesticides – Bees Economy MPX

BEE POPULATION PLAYS A HUGE ROLE IN ECONOMY AND FOOD SUPPLY

Pesticides – Bees MPX

DECREASING BEE POPULATIONS WILL CAUSE A POLLINATION CRISIS AND KILL

Pesticides – Bees MPX

BEE EXTINCTION CASCADES

Pollination", explains Hancocks, is "one of the simplest stories of interconnectedness." The

Food Prices MPX

RISING FOOD PRICES WILL KILL BILLIONS

PerPinstrup-Andersen, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington,

FOOD SHORTAGES LEAD TO WORLD WAR III

Food Prices MPX

RISING FOOD PRICES RISKS COLLAPSE OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food Prices

CELLULOSE ETHANOL WON’T TRADE OFF WITH FOOD SUPPLY

‘Second generation' biorefineries – those making biofuel from lignocellulosic feedstocks

Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food PRices

Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food Prices

SECOND-GENERATION BIOFUELS DON’T GET IN THE WAY OF FOOD

Pesticides – AT: Plan Increases Food Prices

NO LINK – DEVELOPING COUNTRIES ARE SELF-SUFFICIENT AND FACILITIES WILL

Some are worried that large scale

Pesticides - AT: Biodiversity Resilient

EVEN SMALL CHANGES IN ECOSYSTEM STABILITY LEAD TO TOTAL COLLAPSE

Dead Zones Advantage

Warming Advantage Extensions

Dead Zones Extensions